Ask Paul: October 16 (Premium)

Happy Friday and Happy iPhone Day! Let’s kick off the weekend with an unusually long Ask Paul thanks to some great reader questions.
New Surface, old dock
cwfinn asks;

Has anyone else experienced the poor performance (keyboard lag, video flicker on external monitor, mouse lag) with Surface Pro 7 and the 1st Gen Microsoft Surface Dock? It was so bad in my case I plopped down $175 for a Surface Dock 2 (needing to buy all new video cables as no more mini-DisplayPort output, "just" USB-C) and everything's working fine. FWIW, the original Surface Dock works fine with Surface Pro 3, 5 and 6 but SOL with Surface Pro 7

I also have this combination of hardware---Surface Pro 7 and the OG Surface Dock---but I’ve not experienced this, sorry. Hopefully someone else can chime in here.
Different smartphone strategies
davidD asks:

Do you think Samsung range of phones is too many / too complex when you add up all the model in their ranges? (S/Note/A/M (didn't know there was an m range!) plus others I've probably left out), or is this the right strategy? (question inspired by [a Verge video], and also I remember you mentioning on FRD about them possibly reducing some of the S/ Note range).

This has really triggered a lot of strange thoughts, which include such hackneyed phrases as “you go to war with the army you’ve got” (thanks, Donald Rumsfeld) and “you can’t please everyone” (author unknown), the latter of which both Apple and Samsung try to do with vastly different strategies. This is perhaps worth exploring further, but here’s my high-level take on this.

As a more traditional handset maker that predates the modern smartphone age, Samsung is still stuck in a mode in which it feels like it has to please carriers, and that, in doing so, it has to have many, many models, at different pricing levels, to meet their needs and the needs of their collective customers. The problem, of course, is that there are too many carriers, each of which wants exclusive models or at least variants. And the video you mention above only touches the very tip of this incredible iceberg of products.

To literally answer your question, yes, I do think that Samsung has too many models/variants. It’s confusing and it seems unnecessary.

But I also vaguely respect the fact that the firm can compete in this market (“go to war”) in the way that it chooses (“with the army it’s got”). And that the strategy seems to work, as Samsung consistently outsells Apple and is the biggest smartphone maker in the world.

On that note...

Related, do you think the small range of phones that Apple makes in comparison (I know they've just announced 4 phones, but that is a lot for them), and the reduced cost this brings (at least in theory) contributes to it's profitability (apart from the obscene prices obviously!)

There are huge advantages and disadvantages of Apple’s approach, for sure.

To put this in perspective, Apple did create the ...