Ask Paul: June 19 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here is an absolute marathon of thoughtful questions and hopefully decent answers to kick off the weekend.

Switching to iPhone

jbinaz asks:

Does the stuff in your “iPhone for the Windows Guy” article(s) still hold up? I’m about through with Google and their lack of respect for privacy, and thinking about jumping to iOS. (Of course Apple has their own issues, but more on the developer side, not the consumer side, and I’m pretty sure their issues will be straightened out by regulators soon enough.)

This is one of those grass is always greener things. There are very real issues for users on iPhone, some of which are tied to the developer issues (like we can’t buy Kindle ebooks in the Kindle app, etc.) and some of which are just app being unsophisticated (like we can’t arrange the home screen icons wherever we want as is possible on Android). And don’t get me started on the lack of default app configuration.

There’s one other consideration if you use Windows. Because iOS is so closed, almost none of the awesome stuff in the Your Phone app in Windows 10 works with iPhones. It’s all for Android only because Apple locks third parties out.

So just be clear-headed about the problems with the closed ecosystem there.

That said, it’s at least possible on either Android or iOS to mostly ignore the lock-in stuff/first-party apps and use the app/services you prefer. I didn’t get too far into the “iPhone for the Windows Guy” stuff but I think it’s mostly still accurate today.

I’d like to be able to keep all my contacts in Outlook.com, but use those on an iPhone to identify people in calls, messages, etc., instead of Apple’s contacts. Sounds like that worked before, but is that still true? Any major “gotchas” I should consider before jumping off the Android ship (besides the more limited ability to customize my phone, and having to buy things like Kindle books, music and movies outside apps)?

This will work. I think this is a good example of one thing that has changed, if I remember correctly: The users you access from Outlook.com in the Microsoft Outlook app should populate the phone contacts list now. If not, you can still configure contacts/Phone/Messages to use your Outlook.com account.

Digitizing photo albums

StevenLayton asks:

After sorting through our family home, my brothers and I have inherited dozens of large photo albums capturing not only our childhoods, but also that of our parent’s as well. I remember a while ago you documented as you embarked on a project of scanning and organising lots of your own photo albums. I remember you used some form of scanning device that sped up the process for you. Would you mind either point me in the direction of that article, or let me know the name of the device you used?

The article is Digital Decluttering: High-Speed Photo Scanning, and the scanner I used was a used/refurbished Epson FastFoto FF-640 High-Speed Photo Scanning System. Note that you will need to remove the photos from the albums to do this and this may physically damage or even destroy the albums. I didn’t care about that since I tossed the originals anyway.

Once scanned, we plan to upload these to a central cloud-based system so we can all have access to them. What service/solution would you recommend?

Google Photos.

But make sure you put them in at least one other cloud-based storage service, perhaps OneDrive or Amazon Photos, the latter of which offers unlimited storage if you’re a Prime member. I use both Google Photos and OneDrive, and I have the photos on my NAS at home as well.

Site issues

OldITPro2000 asks:

Paul, I’m curious to know what happened to the site a few weeks back. I read there was a security issue, and then read the site was moved to a new host. Can you expand a bit on what happened and where you guys are now?

I’m a bit fuzzy on the timing details now, but we moved to Kinsta as a hosting provider after the site attack (and, interestingly, Mehedi was the one who recommended it). They’re great. But we’ve been having issues ever since, some related to the difficulty of porting some of our custom stuff, so mostly self-inflicted, I guess. This is one of the issues when you’re such a small company.

Without getting into the nitty-gritty—and, seriously, I have very little understanding of our infrastructure and cannot help with tech/customer service-type questions at all, I’m just the writer—we’ve had backup issues and connectivity problems, with 502 errors. As of this morning, I believe we literally just now over the hump. We’ve not had a 502 in two days, which should be normal but is now a cause of relief.

I’m not sure if we’ll have anything formal to say about all this, but I believe we’re where we need to be now. And we are looking at fixing some other issues that should have been fixed a long time ago, like notifications. I would personally like to get off of our custom commenting module (where Premium and non-Premium comments are segregated; it seemed like the right idea at the time and was well-intentioned) and move to a more standard part, but first things first.

Some of this is inside baseball, I guess. Everyone at BWW agrees that we need to be as transparent as possible, and that is always my intent. But some things are just internal things and don’t necessarily need to be broadcast to the world. We handled a serious breach pretty effectively in my opinion, and while the after-effects are possibly still reverberating a bit, we’re in a good place.

And for me, the experience post-move has been overwhelmingly positive, but I did have one experience where an article was fully queued up in our online editor, I clicked Publish, and it 502’d, losing everything. Not completely, I wrote it in Word. But the process of inputting and formatting it all again is tedious. The good news is that only happened once.

Regarding the attack, someone mentioned that we had communicated that no personal information had been stolen and that they reset my password anyway. We recommend that out of prudence and common sense. It’s best to be safe. But we know that the attack was a basic ransomware thing and that they were just looking for easy money. Which we did not provide.

The problem with video games

sabertooth920 asks:

I had heard several months ago that Sony would me opening up MLB The Show and perhaps others to other consoles. Any further rumblings on that front? Would buying a PlayStation and playing X-Box exclusives on a PC be a good way to get the full gaming experience, in the meantime?

For those unsure of what this is about, Sony, which makes the PlayStation consoles, publishes a baseball game for that platform called MLB The Show. Naturally, it doesn’t port it to other platforms because, well, that’s Sony’s schtick: PlayStation’s popularity is due in large part to these console exclusives. (I’m feeling this right now because of today’s release of the PS4-only “The Last Part of US Part II.”)

I’d not even heard that Sony was interested in doing that, but I would welcome such a change. As you and others know, Sony wasted a lot of time and effort over the years blocking cross-play in various games, including Minecraft. But that’s lightened up.

I would personally stick with Xbox Series X and PS5 if you wanted the full experience, but if you’re a PC gamer then, yes, PC + PS5 makes sense.

But what about the Switch? 🙂

Sports

Simard57 asks:

Do you still follow the Celtics? Are you hopeful they will do well in thus new NBA without their strong home court fanbase?

Since moving to Pennsylvania, the only Boston team I follow with any real interest is the Red Sox. I still like football and basketball, but I’m happy to just watch whatever games and don’t really care what happens to the Patriots or Celtics at this point.  And, no, I’m not going to become a Philadelphia sports fan or whatever. This is a good break for me, since I can just enjoy sports with no partisan team worries.

Of course, there are no live sports to watch now. Instead, I have watched a ton of basketball on YouTube over the past few months. Oddly, I have watched very little football or baseball. I can’t even explain why.

Delphi

bschnatt asks:

I know you used Delphi in the past. Have you tried it recently (i.e., did you rob a bank to be able to afford the license)? I haven’t used it since long before they came out with their own cross-platform functionality (Fire Monkey?) Have you tried Lazarus, the full-featured open-source version of Delphi?

No, I haven’t, and as strange as this sounds, I don’t really see the need. The creator of Delphi and Object Pascal, Anders Hejlsberg, joined Microsoft long ago and created C# and much of the .NET Framework and I see those (plus WinForms and WPF) as the successors to Object Pascal and the Delphi. The bigger advance, honestly, has been XAML (WPF and newer). The world has just kept evolving.

Linux

Bschnatt also asks:

I know you have no great love for Linux (to put it mildly). Have you *tried* Linux recently? I used Linux Mint recently and was surprised at how good it was (but when I discovered WSL, I decided I had better things to do than administer *another* operating system). If you have used Linux recently, I’m curious how similar it is to Mac OS as far as administration, backup, dealing with package management issues (if any), etc. (As an aside, my brother has used Windows all his life but wants to go the rest of the way into the Apple ecosystem — buying a Mac — which he thinks will resolve all his problems with Windows. Pointless?)

My distaste for Linux is perhaps a bit overblown. I am always trying new Linux distributions, actually, and I’ve been using and writing about WSL 2 for a coming update to the Windows 10 Field Guide. It’s a weird thing being in my position because there are these pat statements that people fall into, like “Paul hates Linux,” “Mary Jo loves Notepad,” and so on. But we’re more complicated and nuanced than that. I play up the Linux thing for humor only.

That said, I’m not an expert in Linux or macOS, but my high-level view is that the macOS Terminal would feel very familiar to anyone using whatever Linux command-line shell and vice versa. (Or identical, I assume it’s the bash shell.) I don’t believe macOS has a package manager built-in to the OS. So that’s one area where Windows will soon surpass it unless I’m missing something.

In a weird coincidence, I was just this morning considering writing a post called “Real Developers Use the Mac,” which, yes, is purposefully aggressive, something I’d likely soften in the blurb. The point of that is that you actually do have to use a Mac if you intend to develop anything published to the Apple App Store for iOS/iPadOS or Mac; you can’t even get iPhone/iPad emulation or directly connectivity to a real device otherwise. This is yet another example of how Apple abuses its gatekeeper role, by the way.

But with regards to your brother, assuming he’s not a developer, he’ll simply be trading the problems he has on Windows for new problems on the Mac, just like the person above who is thinking about moving from Android to iPhone. These things aren’t better (or worse), they’re just different.

Working for Microsoft

Bschnatt also asks:

If Microsoft offered you a butt-load of money to go work there (say, in their marketing department), would you go? You could fix all those problems you keep pointing out with their messaging / marketing. 😉

Um. Hm.

In the past, I would have said no way. I’ve been working from home for so long that I could literally never go into an office every day. I’m lost to that. And Microsoft’s top-heavy corporate structure would be painful to deal with, not to mention the “everyone’s a winner” nonsense that is permeating the company since Nadella took over.

That said, COVID happened and everyone is working from home now and will continue to do so in many cases. So I guess my answer today would be, please define “a butt-load of money.” 🙂

In all seriousness, I do feel that Mary Jo and I could solve its communication problems, for sure. But I’m not sure I could deal with the big company stuff. And honestly, what I really like to do, and what I feel I’m good at, is writing. Fixing Microsoft’s communications problems would mostly involve arguing with people.

New PC/workstation

christian.hvid asks:

I’m in the market for a new desktop/workstation, but before I pull the trigger, I thought I might get some advice from the you and the well-informed crowd hanging around here. Here are my requirements:

• I want it to be at least 4x as fast as my SB2/Core i7-8650U, and I want it to last about 5 years.
• I’m a developer, I don’t do gaming or video editing. So, compilation speed is what I’m after primarily.
• My budget is about $4,000 (excluding peripherals).

I’m currently choosing between a Dell Precision 5820 with a Core i9-10980XE and a custom rig with a Threadripper 3960X. Any other options I should definitely not overlook?

In an odd coincidence, one of my best friends just texted me last night asking for advice for a new desktop PC. In his case, I’m not even sure why he uses one these days and mentioned that he should consider a docked laptop instead so he could use it around the house.

You’re currently using a laptop, but that Dell Precision is a desktop workstation, which is the general direction I was going to recommend. I’m not an expert in this area at all, but for longevity, I think a Core i9 or even Xeon might be interesting for development. But this is an area where I suspect other readers will have better advice.

What happened to Novell?

helix2301 asks:

Paul I just want to say I love your take on stuff especially the history of Microsoft and other companies you look at the entire picture. My question is what is your take on Novell they had a big lead over Microsoft for a lot of years then just one day sold to a small company. I remember all the way up till about 2008 and 2009 my friend worked for a company that all they handled was Novell and there was more work then they could handle then all of a sudden everyone just got off of Novell and company went out business. Where did Novell go wrong? NDS was before Active Directory and I think Novell sued Microsoft for ripping it off. Just wondering your take on the hold company.

Thanks … So, I’m going to do this off the top of my head because I have some specific memories and understandings of Novell and what happened, and hopefully they line up with reality. Certainly, this is an interesting story and is perhaps worthy of some research.

The basic story is that Microsoft did to Novell what it did to so many businesses and technologies and I pretty much mean this in a positive way, believe it or not. It took something that was expensive and complex and just made it part of Windows so that it could be used by the masses, inexpensively and easily. That was true of networking in general, starting with Windows 3.x for Workgroups and then NT, and then with Directory Services, first with WINS in NT and then Active Directory in Windows 2000.

Ray Noorda, the CEO of Novell into the 1990s, hated Microsoft and Bill Gates. In fact, you could view many of his latter business decisions, which were mostly bad, as attempts to one-up that competition. I don’t recall Novell suing Microsoft over AD, but it’s possible. It did sue Microsoft for its closed licensing and then it participated in the EU antitrust case against Microsoft, which resulted in Microsoft being forced to fully disclose and document its APIs (which had previously been used to lock out Novell and others).

But where Novell really lost the script was when it decided that, in order to compete with Microsoft, it had to become just like Microsoft, it acquired Digital Research (which had invented CP/M and had an MS-DOS alternative), WordPerfect (for its word processor) and the Quattro Pro spreadsheet (from Borland). Probably early to mid-1990s. Later, it even acquired SUSE Linux. It also continued to push proprietary networking protocols over emerging standards like TCP/IP.

So while Microsoft’s decision to democratize networking pretty much started the ball rolling on Novell’s decline, it was Novell’s own actions that sealed the deal. In this way, MSFT v. Novell kind of played out a lot like MSFT v. Netscape. The wounds were both external and self-inflicted.

Anyway, that’s what I remember.

Oh, one more thing.

Eric Schmidt took over the CEO role at Novell in the late 1990s, and this is where he entered the picture (at least in my mind). He literally presided over the decline and death of this company and he hated Microsoft just as much as Noorda. So when he was hired by Google, I thought it was a hilarious mistake. The guy was a failure, after all. But he did right by Google, and even though I still can’t stand the guy, it’s hard to argue against the partnership he created with Google’s founders. And it’s perhaps important to remember that Google’s knee-jerk anti-Microsoft vibe came from him and his experiences at Novell. There’s Novell’s legacy, right there.

Mac App Store and ARM

danielstephenson asks:

I’m just wondering do you think Apple will use the opportunity from their rumored switch to ARM on the Mac line-up to bring the walled garden approach they’ve adopted on the iOS Platform to macOS? Regardless of how much macOS kicks up security warnings, you can still download and install unsigned 3rd party applications currently. I’m thinking Apple could easily use the security argument to limit macOS on ARM to store downloads only going forward, which would of course include their cut on sales and subscriptions.

In reading the comments about the Apple transgressions in the App Store, I’m fascinated to see some people trying to defend the company and its policies. But regardless of our opinions on that, your question raises an interesting side-point that bolsters my stance: In platforms where there are both closed and open ways to acquire apps, like macOS and Windows 10, the closed, walled garden app stores lose big time. This undercuts any claims about the “value” of app stores in closed platforms like iOS. And it kind of reminds me of 1980s Soviet propaganda, honestly. Open is always better, guys. And it always wins in the end.

Anyway, to your question, we have to speculate for now about how Apple handles the transition to ARM to begin answering. That is, there’s a spectrum of possibilities from Apple only using ARM on low-end laptops to Apple literally moving off Intel and adopting ARM across the board. And everything in between. We need to guess about backward compatibility, performance, and so on.

We might argue that there’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle of open that is the Mac unless Mac on ARM is literally a subset of Mac as we now know it. But that would still be a tough message to developers and users, both of which expect to use the web for app distribution/acquisition. It would be Windows RT all over again: Something that in this case looks like macOS but cannot run third-party macOS apps that have not been recompiled for ARM and made available only from the Mac App Store.

I’d like to say that I don’t see this happening. But this is Apple. And Apple is terrible. And I could very much see them trying to sell this as a benefit of this platform.

We’ll see what happens. Either way, Monday could be very interesting. (Unless Apple literally never mentions Mac on ARM, which would be hilarious given all the pre-show speculation.)