Ask Paul: December 4 (Premium)

Happy Friday and welcome to the last month of the most terrible year of our lives. Let’s get the weekend started a little early with some reader questions.

2.5D

ErichK asks:

Paul, Duke Nukem 3D wasn’t a true 3D engine was it? My understanding is that honor goes to Quake.

Right, Duke Nukem 3D was not true 3D, it was what I think of as “2.5D” in that it faked 3D space, like the ability to be above other objects, when everything was actually flat. You can see this in the player and enemy sprites, for example, and on the first level there’s a great spot to see this weirdness if you jetpack up the side of the building in the back alley and look down. But it was still an incredible technical (and gameplay) advance over previous 3D-like games (DOOM and so on), and the ability to destroy in-game elements was impressive.

I’m not sure if Quake is literally the first “true” 3D game, but it probably is, and it was real 3D in that everything in the game, except for the skies, if I remember correctly, are 3D elements. The player and enemy characters were 3D objects with depth and height, but even the light sources were 3D.

It’s impossible to overstate how technically impressive all three of these games—DOOM, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake—were in their day. Each was an important step forward. And Quake triggered the push to hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. We still live in that world today.

Fitbit inconsistencies

cwfinn asks:

Has anyone else noticed the disconnect between the Fitbit Android app and the fitbit.com web dashboard numbers? Resting heartbeat on tracker 62, Android app 62 fitbit.com dashboard 63?! Web dashboard shows “Active minutes” Android app shows “Active Zone Minutes” using a different metric?! Have they lost their way at Fitbit while awaiting the Google takeover, oops, merger? The Versa 3 is a wonderful device with crappy software behind it. Sigh…

I could write a book about this kind of thing. I used to have to visit the Fitbit website because it wasn’t possible to edit activity of sleep using the Android app, but now that both are possible, I don’t even bother with the website anymore. Thanks to your question, I did look at it, of course. And … yeah, this Google acquisition can’t happen soon enough.

iPad Pro or Chromebook?

eeisner asks:

I’m trying to help my mom upgrade her machine. She’s currently on a Surface Pro 5 and is mad that her battery life is shot. Considering all she does is browse the web, send emails, read in bed, and occasionally edit an excel file or edit a photo, I’m pushing her towards either an iPad pro or convertible Chromebook. The iPad Pro would be perfect except that she is a Galaxy user and doesn’t want to exist in two ecosystems (having to re-buy apps, no texting from the iPad, etc). What direction would you recommend?

Ah boy, choosing between an iPad and a Chromebook is kind of a tough one. They’re still very different devices.

I don’t personally find it difficult to move between an iPad and Android; I use both daily.

I feel like the iPad in general is a lot more compelling than a Chromebook and that most of her activities you list would be better on an iPad. That said, if the texting thing is important, the Chromebook would be better for that one thing.

But Google does have a web-based version of its Messages app, so if she switched to Google Messages on her phone (from the Samsung app), she could access her text messages (and send new messages, etc.) from an iPad using any web browser. I just quickly tested this on my own (non-Pro) iPad and Mobile Edge and it seems to work fine.

I guess what this comes down to is preferences, where the iPad is touch-first and the Chromebook is more like a traditional PC, albeit with some weird limitations related to it being browser-based. The Chromebook is more familiar, but I still think the iPad would be “better” overall if it can meet all the needs.

Is that wishy-washy enough? 🙂

Fitness/health

eeisner also asks:

Any plans to start writing about fitness/health again? Always enjoyed those blogs of yours.

Nothing explicitly. Aside from going to the gym regularly, this hasn’t been a great year for my own fitness and health and that’s something I need to start focusing on again.

I’m reminded of a Dave Ramsey quip where he says something like, “you don’t ask a fat guy about dieting,” the point being that he’s a millionaire and is the type of person you should ask for financial advice. I feel like I’m not the best person right now to ask about fitness or health advice, basically.

Cortana in Germany

SherlockHolmes asks:

I had to reinstall Windows 10 20H2 again on my workstation so I looked at the new Cortana app. Not that I use Cortana on my main PC (infact I block it as soon as I can) but I was curious to see that it still isnt supported in Germany. Any idea when Cortana will be working outside the US?

No, sorry. Microsoft never comments on this kind of thing, and given the history, it’s not something I’d ever expect to happen.

Outlook.com as a desktop app replacement

staganyi asks:

With the latest version of edge, can the outlook.com pwa truly replace the desktop mail/calendar applications for a single account? Even receiving notifications when the pwa is closed ala Windows mail?

If you’re using that one account, yes. (It gets more complicated if you have multiple accounts, of course, especially if you intend to keep them separate.) It’s a PWA, you can install it to your PC, and you can even use it offline to some degree. Definitely experiment with this, I think you’ll be surprised.

Upload from PC to Google Photos

staganyi asks:

Is there a desktop app to upload to Google photos if you have lots of pictures? I believe you said high quality versions are unlimited until June?

Yes to both.

You can upload an entire photo collection from your PC to Google Photos using the Google Backup and Sync utility. To get it, visit Google Photos on the web, click Upload, and you’ll see a link. (You can also just drag and drop to the web browser if you want.)

Windows, it had to be Windows

BigM72 asks:

Many trends have been growing over time and combining to make local computing on windows client less and less important. Assuming you’re still choosing to write in a few years’, what do you think you will mainly be writing about?

For starters, I’m only 54 years old, and given that I’m not personally wealthy, I suspect I’ll be writing for as long as I’m able.

I also don’t see Windows disappearing anytime soon. If anything, the availability of Windows, and Windows applications, in more places should help the platform. But whatever happens, happens. I write about personal technology, not just Windows. And I’m not sure that having a very specific focus makes sense now given the heterogeneous nature of the market.

Windows on Mac

BigM72 also asks:

Looking at the results posted by an AWS engineer this week, it seems like Macs may again become the best machines to run Windows on? (Assuming Microsoft allows WoA to be licensed for use on Macs)

Macs were never the best choice for running Windows. I’m not sure how that myth even started, but Apple designed Boot Camp specifically so that Windows could not be installed in the most efficient manner, impacting both its performance and battery life. Plus, there was never anything special about Intel-based Macs that made them “better” than PCs. They had all the same components as any PC. All you ended up with a less than efficient Windows with a weird keyboard layout.

With regards to Windows 10 on ARM running on an M1 Mac (in a virtual machine, by the way), I don’t see much of interest there. Windows 10 on ARM is problematic for compatibility reasons, regardless of the hardware. And given that a Mac is already not the best way to run Windows, why would anyone buy one to run a lackluster version of Windows?

More interesting, to me, is what real (x86/x64) Windows 10 virtualization looks like on the M1 Macs, and whether Parallels will be able to get its Coherence mode working so we can run Windows and Mac apps side-by-side. But even this capability is probably of little interest to most Mac users these days.

COD + PlayStation

BeckoningEagle asks:

If Sony bought Activision and COD was suddenly a PlayStation exclusive. Would you permanently change to Play Station? I ask because last night I dreamt Microsoft had purchased EA and Sony, in retaliation, had bought Activision.

I don’t think I’d ever go PlayStation. And that imagined change might be the push I need to play other/more games and explore the Xbox Game Pass catalog a bit. Helping matters, the new game is on the edge of being unbearable to me, so I might be making a change anyway.

Xbox Series X vs. Xbox One X

madthinus asks:

I am appreciating my Series X more due to realising the speed at which you load things. It is transformative. What is your experience like going back to a One X or S. Was it day and night or I am just looking at my purchase with rosy glasses?

I think it varies based on what games you play, and that the differences will make the Xbox Series X an even better experience as we move forward. But for the game I play the most, there’s not much difference today: I spent time recently playing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War on the Xbox One X, and I couldn’t detect any (visual) changes at all. But where the Series X really shines is load times, as you note, and the silence: I’ve never heard a fan. My Xbox One X sounds like a jet engine.

Living with web apps

AnOldAmigaUser and richardbottiglieri ask similar questions:

On the “Living With” idea, are you considering doing a series on the Office Web Applications and/or Google Apps. I think that for a large part of the population, they provide all the tools needed.

Yes. In fact, I originally intended to start a web apps series next, but I fell into the game streaming services series first. I will absolutely get to this.

richardbottiglieri adds:

Would be curious to see what you think of the most recent Firefox when used in place of Edge.

I used to be a big fan of Firefox, but I think the world is passing Mozilla by. I do try Firefox from time to time as new major releases appear, but it just doesn’t offer the right mix of features that I expect now. That said, I hope they survive, and I’ll continue to experiment with other browsers. As Microsoft adds more and more features to Edge, there’s a worry that they will bloat it up too much, and I’m always open to using the best tool.

New NUCs

John Dunagan asks:

When should we start to hear any news from Intel about NUC 11? How about yesterday?

It looks like it could be any day now. I had it in my head that new NUCs arrive early in the year, but I guess it’s normally around this time. And while Intel hasn’t confirmed this, reports are that the first 11th-generation NUCs will arrive this month. They’re expected to use Intel Tiger Lake U-series processors with Iris Xe graphics, which means they should be a nice upgrade. I may need to look into this one. (Also, “Extreme” versions aimed at gamers will arrive in early 2021 with a discrete GPU.)