Ask Paul: September 18 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here is a particularly diverse and interesting set of questions to kick off the weekend.

Note 20 review?

wolters asks:

How’s your Note 20 Ultra evaluation going? This may be my favorite Samsung/Note phone in years but the camera still comes up short for me, mainly in low light or night mode.

Interesting. I really like the camera system, and I’ve actually gotten some decent-ish star pictures—and some killer moon pictures—just holding the phone normally (as opposed to using a tripod and needing a few minutes with Pixel 4 XL). I’d say the camera is one of my favorite features.

As for the review, I’m hoping for this weekend but certainly by next week. Not that this matters much to anyone, I guess, but I tend to write these things over time, filling in information as it occurs to me throughout the skeleton document I created for all smartphone reviews. It’s coming together.

Health, fitness, and personal tech

eeisner asks:

Got a few fitness questions for you this week Paul

Cool, I’ve been semi-obsessed with this topic this week.

I know you just ordered the new Apple Watch and have been using Fitbits for a while. Have you tested any “dumb” smart watches? I have been super interested in the Withings Scanwatch since CES and am hoping it gets released sometime soon.

No, but I was also very interested in this watch when it was first announced, and has all the sensors I’d want (including ECG and Blood Oxygen) and is attractive as a watch. I will definitely take a look at this if/when it’s released.

I did just (mini) review the Amazon Halo Mini, which is perhaps a bit too dumb in that it doesn’t have a display at all or any of the newer sensors.

I applaud how seriously you have taken COVID, but I know recently you have started returning to the gym in your area. I recently started to jog (on week six of Couch 2 5k) and returned to playing basketball a bit, and I’m trying to prepare myself for the Seattle winter. What changed in your area that made you feel comfortable enough to return to your gym?

In the sense that we all have our own comfort zones, let me start by stepping back a bit and describing my own reaction over time to COVID and social distancing.

We have three sets of couples that we trust to keep to a similarly small group of friends of their own, and only one of them has a child at home, who is in high school and doing remote learning. So we see each from time to time—usually one couple once a weekend—and there’s no touching, or hugging, or whatever. We wear masks if we go out to a restaurant or whatever, unless we’re eating.

We have a couple of local restaurants we love. But our favorite restaurant of all, which is a weekly trip, is small inside and we’ve not yet eaten inside and won’t for as long as we can avoid. We still go once a week, at the beginning of the pandemic for take out and since late June we eat there outside. We have gotten a lot of takeout from several local places, and we’ve eaten inside in only one restaurant, and it’s because we ate outside there first and were super-impressed with their cleanliness and distancing policies inside. In fact, I asked to speak to the manager and expressed our happiness with that and that that would cause us to visit more.

My wife goes food shopping once or twice a week, and while I rarely join her, I will sometimes go to the Allentown Farmer’s Market, which is pretty great. Masks-on for the duration, it’s the policy there, and I’d do so anyway. When she goes to the other local outside farmer’s markets, I usually don’t go. And I never go shopping. I don’t like crowds normally, now even less so.

Generally speaking, I leave the house 8 times per week. Once to go to that favorite restaurant, once to do something with some set of friends, and 6 times to go the gym. Every other time I go to the gym, I go to Dunkin’ Donuts afterward on the way home. I get a decaf iced latte with skim milk only and a breadless breakfast sandwich on those occasions.

So, the gym.

Early on in the pandemic, I had remarked to my wife that I’d never go back to the gym. It’s a dirty place with lackluster staff and I’ve witnessed far too many occasions where some big slob of a guy would sweat all over a piece of equipment and then move on without even cleaning it. Gross. So we picked up a Total Gym APEX G5 for working out. Honestly, it’s really good, but I found myself using it less and less as time went on.  So by May or so, I decided I needed to make some changes.

The first was going along when my wife walked the dog in the morning. It’s a brisk 30-minute walk, and while few would call this activity “exercise,” it gets the heart rate up a bit and it’s a good way to start the day. I think I’ve only missed one day since I started it.

Then I got an email from the gym when Pennsylvania announced whatever new phase of opening, probably in June. And … I was impressed. It was a really detailed explanation of everything they were doing because of COVID. So a few days after it opened, I swung by and walked in to check it out. They were temperature screening at the door (yes, probably not very useful), there were extra cleaning materials everywhere, the staff was walking around refreshing it all and cleaning machines regularly, and they had distanced the cardio machines. I figured I’d give it a shot.

I’ve been going 6 days a week, as I was before, ever since. I wear a mask unless I’m doing cardio, and while mask usage among the patrons has gone down since June, there’s still a good percentage. I’m never near anybody, ever. I use a machine, clean it, and move to the next one, then I leave. I have never seen anyone not clean a machine since the reopening, and that alone is a huge and positive sign. And yes, I’m just enough of That Guy to say something if I ever see it; I look for it, and it’s never happened.

I wouldn’t personally play basketball. Too much contact, too much chance for airborne spray, too many variables with all those people and their own networks of interactions with people. But again, that’s how this works. We all have our own comfort zones.

Sorry if this is a bit too personal (don’t feel the need to answer if so), but I know you regularly mention how you rarely get a good nights sleep. Have you done a sleep study before? If not, have you thought about using the new Apple Watch to measure blood oxygen levels while sleeping? I only mention this because as a healthy weight 27 year old I was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea, which answers why I haven’t gotten a good nights sleep since high school, and now I’m anxiously awaiting my CPAP to show up in the mail so I can hopefully wake up feeling rested and not need a nap or two every day.

I did do a sleep study 8 years ago before it was quick and easy and I do have sleep apnea and use a CPAP when I sleep.

This never had the immediate and positive impact on my sleep that I had hoped for, but my understanding is that it works wonders for others, and it does at least help. I’ve always had a snoring problem, even when I was very young, thin, and health, and it’s certainly gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. I did order an Apple Watch in part because of the blood oxygen measuring, yes, but my current Fitbit has an oxygen variation monitoring feature and mine is always in the “low” range, which is good. If the Apple Watch doesn’t work out, I’ll look at Fitbit Sense, which also does blood oxygen measuring.

Shows I’ve never watched

bschnatt asks:

You sometimes talk about the stuff you watch on streaming services. Have you seen any of the following shows, and if so, what’s your opinion of them? I’ve often been frustrated with the speed with which the networks abandon shows and how we might fix that problem. Have any thoughts about this? People have tried to crowdsource shows with very limited success (Veronica Mars comes to mind). There’s got to be a better way! In no particular order: The Stargate shows (especially Stargate Universe – my favorite, ’cause I’m a nut 😉 ), Firefly, Dark Matter, The Expanse, Dollhouse, Lost in Space (2018), and Space: Above and Beyond.

I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I’ve not seen any of those somehow, though Dark Matter is on the queue and I’ve seen the Firefly movie, Serenity. I think I watched the first few episodes of Dollhouse on my own when it was first on, but I’ll add all of these to the queue too, thanks.

We started watching The Crown recently on Netflix, and while I had avoided it because I wasn’t really in the mood for a historical drama, I shouldn’t have waited. This is one the best shows we’ve ever watched, and it’s really opened my eyes to a person—Queen Elizabeth II—who is a much more impressive individual than I’d ever imagined. My bad.

I don’t do a good job of keeping track of this but we’ve recently watched Doctor Foster (not great), Perfume (skip it), Quicksand (decent), The Last Dance (amazing), The Woods, and The Stranger on Netflix. Not sure any but The Last Dance stick out. Waco: Truth and Lies on Hulu was pretty good. And Unforgotten and Homecoming on Amazon Prime Video; both were good.

A better DOOM

ErichK asks:

Paul, do you have an alternative vision for what the 2016 Doom reboot could have been? If I remember correctly in your review, you had some issues with it. I’ve been playing it as of late, and although I do like it (I mean, the graphics, come on), I sometimes think they could have gone about it totally different in order to really make a 21st century version of the original.

My issue with the DOOM reboot (I’ve not tried the version that just came out this year) was that they upgraded the graphics wonderfully but the movement feels like you’re just skating on ice. There are so many modern first-person shooters that get this right (like every Call of Duty title), so I’m not sure what happened there.

I really like what Id did with DOOM 3 back in the day, at least for the single-player, though it could be a bit slow at times. They created an atmospheric and truly scary experience with a reasonably good story. But the reboot went for more of the fast-paced, Serious Sam-style “shoot everything and keep moving” thing and I just feel it fell flat.

That said, it’s fair to say that we didn’t play the original DOOM/DOOM II for the story, which was probably drawn up over drinks and Mexican food in less than an hour. It’s just weird to me how uninteresting the reboot seems to me.

OneNote and Outlook

a_seeker asks:

Which version of OneNote do you use on Windows 10?

I use OneNote for Windows 10, and I prefer it quite a bit over the full desktop client. This is the rare example of a UWP version of an app making more sense than its desktop equivalent. It’s a great app.

Have you tried out Outlook for the Mac beta?

I have not, but my understanding is that we’ll see the general release soon. I will give it a shot before that happens.

Stadia fadia

sabertooth920 asks:

Will Stadia still be a thing in another year or two?

I’m guessing no. But Google does keep improving the service, and they are one of the few companies on earth that can handle this kind of service at scale.

Site improvements

Chris_Kez asks:

Hey Paul, any update on changes coming to the site? I’m particularly interested in notifications, which have always been wonky for me, or things like the ability to @ people in comments or to send DM’s to other users; these are the kinds of touches that help build community around a site like this. Thanks for listening!

2020 was supposed to be the year that we improved this site, but we’ve had some big setbacks thanks in part to COVID (in which some big advertisers pulled out quickly) and in part to a key personnel loss (Harrison, who played a big role in the 2019 Petri makeover) and have been in kind of a scramble mode for much of the year. That said, we did hire Harrison’s replacement, Nick, and one thing he’s been working on is figuring out a lot of the backend stuff and making it all more efficient. (And part of that was a list of issues I had with Thurrott.com in particular.) So, it’s not something you’d see per se, but there have been some recent improvements.

But yeah, I’ll bring this up at the next meeting. At some point we need to move forward.

YouTube Premium

christianwilson asks:

I got fed up with being subjected to political ad after political ad while watching YouTube and it prompted me to subscribe to YouTube Premium. I know most people, even those who are political news junkies, get tired of the ads near an election. Do you think the ads will cause a noticeable increase in Premium subscriptions? Regardless of my reason for doing so, I should have subscribed long ago. YouTube is very enjoyable now.

This is the only way I’ll ever watch YouTube now. I get premium as part of my YouTube Music subscription (previously Google Play Music) and on those off times when I’m not signed-in to YouTube for whatever reason, I just can’t believe the ads. The service feels unusable to me in that condition.

On a semi-related note, I mentioned my gym schedule above, where I do upper boy every other day and then lower body on the other days. On the lower body days, most of the machines I use face a wall that has two TVs on it, one with some kind of morning shows and the other with game shows, no volume. I don’t really watch TV anymore, but every ad seems like it’s something political during these shows and most of them are just sickening. I’m glad Id don’t see those normally.

Excel + pen

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Any word yet on using the pen to input data directly in Excel? It was supposed to be ready by this Spring, but I have not seen it. Seems to me that if they are pushing for first line workers, this would be a bit higher on the priority list. It seems to me, that ink input in general would be getting a higher priority in Office, especially as they push more Courier-like devices like the Duo and Neo (if it is ever released.)

Nothing on that front, sorry. And we’re closing in on the one-year anniversary of that announcement, too.

My wife’s work

SeattleMike asks:

Paul, you mentioned in your article this week about the Apple Watch that your wife writes about healthcare and nutrition. As someone who is interested in these topics, is there a site or location where I can read her work?

My company wasn’t the only one that got hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, my wife’s two biggest clients, dropped her immediately back in March. She’s a freelancer, and one of those clients was NBC, which had a site called Better that’s now not even online anymore. But one of her remaining clients, Considerable, still has some of her work, though the more recent stuff is heavily SEO-focused, not by her choice. And she started a Medium blog after I got her a subscription and has been writing short pieces there since the pandemic too.

Alpha/Premium renewals

helix2301 asks:

Just saw my alpha membership renewed this past week. In the past years you and Brad would talk about premium memberships on the podcast and you guys would have specials this time of year. I was just wondering why nothing this year? Love the site and the premium stuff please keep it going its worth the $42 dollars a year. Thank you

I try to stay out of the marketing side of things as much as possible, but my understanding is that the next sale starts next month. I have no idea what this will entail, but if it somehow comes in at less than what you paid, let me know and we’ll fix that. Thanks!

Buyer’s regret

StevenLayton asks:

About 3 weeks ago I bought a new Apple Watch 5, which I do love, but I clearly gave no thought to Apples release cycle and now feel a slight pang of disappointment each time I look at my wrist. Have you ever made a similar poorly timed purchase?

Oh for sure. Though these days I’m usually pretty well attuned to what’s happening and what’s coming soon. The good news is that the Apple Watch Series 6 is a minor improvement over what you have: A slightly faster processor and the blood oxygen sensor are most of it.

This kind of thing always reminds me of an excellent scene from The Simpsons where Homer buys a new computer and then drives by a billboard advertising its much improved replacement. Which I can’t find, oddly. But this is still pretty great: