Ask Paul: January 31 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s a final Ask Paul for January, with some amazing reader questions that I struggled to answer in some cases.

HyperChiller HC2

Zinger asks:

How did that drink cooler gadget you got your wife for Christmas work out? Mentioned on FRD. Just curious. Thanks.

That gadget is called the HyperChiller HC2 and … it’s OK. It does work as advertised, and I’ve used it for ice coffee a lot since I can put the hot espresso in there and it cools it down in less than 30 seconds. But I thought my wife would have more use for it for cocktails. Maybe when it gets warmer out.

Microsoft products, yay or nay

will asks:

What, if any, products or services do you believe Microsoft should retire in 2020? On the flip side, are there any products or services they should be spending more time and resources on?

I’m not sure if you saw this, but it’s an interesting coincidence: Satya Nadella this past week was quoted as saying that no individual products are more important than the overall vision. Which is kind of the problem with today’s Microsoft from the perspective of people who really do care about individual products: Nothing is sacred anymore.

The other problem, of course, is that Microsoft is so focused on selling its future in the cloud that it’s ignoring or at least not paying enough attention to the products that generate the most revenues now, the most obvious culprit being Windows. It will never happen, but I’d most like to see Microsoft pay more attention—and respect—to Windows. It deserves better, and not just because of its past: It is still Microsoft’s biggest and most lucrative business. And it not resonating with Wall Street is no reason to ignore it.

As for which products Microsoft should retire, hm. I honestly don’t see anything obvious. Microsoft is a big enough company that it can throw its weight behind all kinds of projects, and while I’ll never understand or care enough about the 1 million services currently offered through Azure, I suspect that there will have to be some consolidation there eventually.

Apple

sabertooth920 asks:

Beyond testing, is there any Apple software or services you actually use or prefer?

Yes.

I use an iPad every day to read the news in the morning and then read (sometimes Kindle ebooks, sometimes Pocket, Medium, or the like) before I go to bed. My news reading includes the Apple News app, which I have a mixed relationship with; but I do use it every day.

When I do purchase movies (and TV shows), I do so through iTunes (or whatever it’s called now) because of the extra features. I watch those movies via the Apple TV app (on Fire TV Stick), the actual Apple TV 4K (for the extra features), or, when traveling, via my iPad.

I will be retesting the iPhone 11 Pro Max again soon, but I’m not against using an iPhone full time if it works out for me. I just happen to prefer Android generally and Pixel handset more. That said, I also considered an Apple Watch in late 2019, for the health tracking. That’s a big leap, obviously, and I’m sticking with Fitbit for now.

(My daughter is currently using my MacBook Air because she had asked about getting a MacBook Pro of some kind and I wanted her to experience the terrible keyboard before we did anything like that. I’d like to see that fixed before it happens, but she seems to be OK with it. I rarely used it.)

It’s all black and white

Markld asks:

Thinking about technology, but in general terms of black and white (black being positive, white being negative, and a gray area in between by default).

In the black I would put:

• quick far reaching communications.

In the white I would put:

• invasion of privacy
• lack of social skills
• more effective systems
• better transportation systems

I could have made the lists very long, but I am more interested in yours and other’s thoughts. What would you put in the black and white?

Interesting. This could be a long discussion, but I’m particularly interested in the gray areas, where technology that was designed for good is often used for bad. It reminds me of McDonalds, which was invented to solve a problem but is now most often associated with weight gain and poor nutrition.

Social media is an obvious example; if you had told me that Facebook would usurp our democracy even a few years ago, I would have laughed at the absurdity of it. Or, Google Search, which is tied to the company’s vast advertising network and its privacy invasions. There’s an unexpected cost or consequence in each case.

I’ve discussed this one before, but the best example of this weird tech gray area, perhaps, is our ability online to filter out perspectives, opinions, or even facts with which we don’t disagree. It sounds like such a benefit: You’re using a news aggregator app, or whatever, and it lets you filter out some news or information source, or some kind of story, that you don’t like. And at first, that is good. But over time, you become so used to certain viewpoints that anything contrary to that becomes unacceptable. And you’ve become a tunnel-visioned partisan with no ability to see the other side of an opinion, no matter how well-reasoned or based in fact. Suddenly, we believe Fake News.

Surface Neo SDK

lvthunder asks:

When do you think the SDK for the Neo device will be out?

Soon. I don’t think we will need to wait for Build.

I’m most curious about what form this takes. That is, will it be a separate SDK, like we see on Android (for Duo), or will it be part of the wider Windows SDK. I’m guessing the latter, and if so, whether that means if some or all of it will be available on any Windows device.

Outlook.com Premium problems

SherlockHolmes asks:

I have a weird problem with outlook.com. I got the new Premium feature to add a GMail account. Strangely, sometimes when Im on the outlook.com website, I see the Google logo to login to my account, sometimes its gone and I cant access it. Is this thing still in a beta test? Do you have the feature yet? Also a weird problem: Credge logs me out everytime Im closing the tab. Firefox keeps me logged in.

I’ve had nothing but problems with this feature, and I had hoped to use the Outlook.com web app to access Gmail. The biggest of my issues is related to having multiple Gmail accounts, so I’ve been testing it on a browser with only one of them configured. But I still don’t like how it opens in its own tab, etc. (You can’t have one pinned Outlook.com taskbar icon because of this, which is silly.)

It’s not clear how Microsoft tested this, if at all. I know it was available to some select subset of users for some time period, but I don’t believe there was a formal beta-test or whatever. Is it still “in beta”? Who knows? They’ve never even acknowledged the functionality publicly to my knowledge. The way this has been handled so far is second rate.

Smartphone cases

harmjr asks:

Cell Phone cases. Why isn’t there a collective backlash to having to buy a $1000 cell phone and then having to buy a $10-50 case? Using Glass, Ceramics, scratch-able metals to me seems like a waste. Even you Paul when you got your last pixel stated that the backed looked really good but that it was the last time you would see it as you were about to place it in its case. I remember the older Galaxy phones with the tear off backs or Windows phones that boasted different color backs. Is a plastic back so bad when we put the phone in a plastic case anyway? …

Funny, I was just thinking about this. Literally, I just looked down at the Pixel 3a XL and 4 XL sitting on my desk, and I still haven’t switched off the 3a XL I’d been testing recently, in part because I can’t stand the case I have to use on the Pixel 4 XL. Even without going back to the days of removal batteries, I’m curious why hardware makers just can’t use more durable materials like polycarbonate. I just love it.

Yep too much coffee for me today. Hope you have a good weekend.

You too, but I’m with you. I don’t understand how the market got to this place where we love the design but are so scared to ruin it that we cover it with a case. It’s crazy.

Not-so-smart tech

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

With regard to “smart” devices in the home, broadly, are they good for anything more than parlour tricks at the moment? Does the convenience make the data collection acceptable? Something that you and Brad were discussing on a recent FRD got me thinking about the topic. Is there a reason that these devices need to be internet connected, with the data collected going to the manufacturer, rather than running on the LAN only? The patterns that emerge from one home, while they may be similar, are totally unrelated to those in any other home.

Well, the reason is that they’re more powerful: They can connect to Google Search and other backend services. But … yeah. I will probably write about my own decision to scale back on assistant-connected smart speakers soon because it’s just so pointless. If you do need to ask questions or speak to an assistant, the phone is right there. But I find myself never wanting/needing to do so.

The ultimate dig for any technology is that you launch it only by mistake and that you’re irritated when you do so. The assistant stuff is like that for me. It’s just not there yet.

Whole-house audio

kherm asks:

Paul, with regards to Whole-home audio, there is a great solution called Yamaha MusicCast that I highly recommend you look into. I installed a MusicCast system at a relative’s house and I thought it was fantastic. I sent you an email with some more info if you’re interested.

Thanks! I will definitely check this out. I’ve pretty much decided on Sonos, but I realize that’s not for everyone and I’d like to make sure I do know what all the options are.

Windows 10X and windowed apps

sheafferlb asks:

Do you know if Windows 10X will be able to run windowed apps? I’ve seen some conflicting information reported about this, including that it will only be an option available on certain screen sizes.

That … is an amazing question. And no, I don’t know. And now I’m very curious.

Obviously, we don’t have a Neo SDK to examine yet, but looking over Microsoft’s announcement about the Duo and Neo SDKs (and related news about web support for these platforms), I see now that it is very much focused on screens and not on app windows. And I hadn’t noticed that before.

If you think about a mobile platform like Android (Duo), this makes sense, because you don’t (typically) see floating windows; usually, it’s just one app taking up the whole screen or two apps tiled. The mobile app platform in Windows 8/RT was like that, and I guess I’d never even considered that Microsoft might limit Windows 10X in that fashion. But yeah… you can see how that might make some sense.

I guess we won’t know for sure until the SDK arrives. And then, if that just applies to new apps or also to built-in apps.

Printers

Anlong08 asks:

This may be more of a forum question/rant but here goes. Why does printing seem to be so difficult for windows? I have an HP small biz multifunction that is iffy at best to connect to. It is connected via network (static IP) and only sometimes will print on the first go. I’ll find myself in a series of restarting the print spooler service, rebooting the printer, rebooting the pc (win 10). The Printers and Scanners screen in Windows will show it offline while the HP utility connects just fine. I’m guessing it has something to do with sleep/wake and the PC sometimes waking while the printer is in standby. I get having a PC be connected to an environment one moment only to be closed and moved to another, and be expected to open up and find all of its peripherals and just work is a big challenge. But, iOS and Android devices always print. For me anyway. This printer makes me feel so inadequate. I’m supposed to be good at computers!

Having just been victimized over two months by printing support in Windows Forms, I feel your pain. And I suspect it’s because printing has become less important over the years, and so the various initiatives to improve it over time—the original Printers and Scanners interface dates back to Windows Vista—feel so incongruous.

Sorry. Not much I can offer here except my condolences.

Amazon vs. Microsoft and the DOJ

drjohnnyray asks:

Amazon had recently filed suit to block the Project Jedi contract being awarded to Microsoft, and that is still making is way through the court system. But, the bigger question is, do you think Microsoft has the ability and infrastructure to handle what appears to be an immense project?

Amazon feels that it offers the superior cloud, and maybe they do. But Microsoft offers the superior productivity cloud and, more important, has the relevant experience with hybrid computing and migrating legacy systems to the cloud. So while the general thinking here is that Amazon deserved it more but will never win this now, I feel that Microsoft actually was more deserving. (And have no opinion about Amazon’s chances legally.)

As to whether they can/will be successful, that’s anyone’s guess. But they have a full decade to make this right. And I think they’ll do so.