Ask Paul: January 24 (Premium)

Happy Friday! After a contentious week of Sonos outrage, I’m looking forward to a calmer weekend. Let’s get it started.
Theoretical theoreticals
Anderb asks:

If it's ok for Sonos to refuse to update your brand new Sonos speaker if it detects a 'legacy' Sonos speaker on your network, is it ok for Microsoft to refuse to update your Windows 10 machine if it detects a Windows 7 machine on your network?

Leaving aside the fact that Sonos has predictably quickly backtracked on its more egregious support polices, I never thought that it was OK to not update supported speakers just because there were on the same network as non-supported speakers. That was always dumb, and that was one of the many things that came up when Brad and I discussed this event on First Ring Daily this week.

But it is/was also a technical limitation of the Sonos ecosystem, one that Sonos is now going to fix. These speakers interoperate, and I assume the idea was that upgrading newer devices could break compatibility with the unsupported ones. And that having a fully-working set of speakers was the ultimate goal, and not limiting customers in some way.

Anyway, this is all academic. Thanks to the backlash, Sonos is doing the right thing.
Make the new Edge the default
Simard57 asks:

How do i make the new edge my default browser in Windows 10? Should i just wait for Microsoft to provide an update?

As a reader noted, you can do this manually in Settings > Apps > Default apps.  I would imagine that when the new Edge is automatically installed via Windows Update, that will happen automatically as well (assuming legacy Edge was the previous default).
Microsoft consumer vs. business
will asks:

A discussion on Thurott.com around the volume of people you see in an Apple Store vs a Microsoft Store got me thinking about the consumer side. I was curious how Microsoft compares device marketshare wise if there was a way to remove all of the business/corporate PCs and then compared Microsoft, Apple, and Google from a consumer level?

A few thoughts on this.

Microsoft absolutely knows how this breaks down but I’m sure it’s not in their best interest to communicate it. Back in the day---meaning I’m pretty sure this is no longer true---the running line was that two thirds of Microsoft’s users/revenues/whatever came from business and the remainder came from consumers.

IDC and/or Gartner occasionally provides this kind of a breakdown, I believe, but those are estimates and I’ve not seen one in a while. I’ll see if I can find something recent.

I talk and write a lot about engagement, and I think that’s an important part of this discussion. There may be x number of PCs out in the world, but how many of their owners are actively using them, or happy/excited/content to do so? How many are just sitting there for that rare use case? The size of the Windows user base vs. that of Android or iOS is an interesting number on one level. But if t...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC