Ask Paul: March 20 (Premium)

Spring is finally here, though the Coronavirus has dulled the celebration. But here’s a great set of questions to kick off the weekend.
Teraflops
sabertooth920 asks:

Can you explain why or why not the small advantage in teraflops that the Series X has over the PS5 is a big deal? Sony, predictably, claims this doesn’t tell the whole story.

Sony is correct, it’s not a big deal. But for Xbox and its fans, which have lost out to PlayStation for three console generations in a row, it’s a tiny victory. Granted, the Xbox One Series X is technically superior to the PS4 Pro today, and that hasn’t exactly helped reverse the sales deficit.

For those unfamiliar with this issue, Microsoft and Sony both revealed more information about their coming consoles, the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5. In terms of raw graphics horsepower, the Xbox Series X GPU will deliver 12 teraflops vs. 10.28 teraflops for the PS5, an advantage of over 14 percent. Since both consoles use similar processors and what appear to be almost identical GPUs, comparing these numbers seems perfectly reasonable.

But there’s more going on here. For one, the PS5 appears to have much faster I/O than the Xbox, and it possibly has faster storage too.

Overall, I’d say these two consoles are comparable and that the fight, as always, will come down to platform loyalty, exclusives, and personal preferences. And not to spec sheets.
Windows 10 requiring MSA sign-in
Finley asks:

My concern with Windows 10 going forward is the possibility that MS will continue to limit the ability of setting up a PC without a MSA.

On a related note, wright_is asks

What is with the new "log in with a Microsoft account" full screen blockers on Windows 10 PCs that use a local account? … we sometimes get the sort of full-screen blue dialog that you get during initial Windows 10 setup for selecting different options, pushing us to switch to a Microsoft account. As the account is only ever used locally and is shared by all admins, this is not the sort of login that should have or needs a Microsoft account.

Microsoft is suddenly being much more aggressive in pushing it, especially during initial Setup in Windows 10 version 1909 and newer. It’s easy to get stuck, too: If you sign-in to a wireless network during Setup, you’re not able to back out of it (using the GUI) so that you get the local account option. But there are workarounds, which I’m documenting in the book.

That said, it’s not possible for Microsoft to literally require a Microsoft account (MSA) sign-in with Windows 10, though I understand why they’re pushing it on normal users. As power users or whatever, we’ll always be able to work around it.
Android Studio vs. Visual Studio
Usman asks:

I’ve heard you jest about Android Studio when ever it is bought up, what shortcomings did you find?

Mostly performance, but also the application itself doesn’t adapt well to different display scaling...