Ask Paul: January 8 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and welcome to the first Ask Paul of 2021. Let’s get the weekend, and the new year, off to an early start with some great reader questions.

Quick resume

whgb asks:

It seems that the best feature from either of the new consoles is the Xbox Series X/S’s Quick Resume feature. It’s especially good for people like me with young children with little time to game, who have to drop it at a moment’s notice.

Agreed. This might literally be the marquee feature of the new consoles.

Do you know or can you speculate if it might be coming to PC at some point? Or Xbox Cloud Gaming? The latter is a great concept, but it takes such a long time to load up and get into a game at this point. You’d have to think that they’d work on startup loading times at some point this year, perhaps replacing the Xbox One S blades that currently run it and take a long time to load.

Microsoft has never said that it would do so, but I could see this feature coming to both. On the PC, it would of course require some specific hardware capabilities with regards to SSD speed, etc. And in the cloud, yes, it would require upgrading to Xbox Series X blades, which I think is safe to assume to be inevitable.

Insider program status

eeisner asks:

What’s going on with the Insider Program these days? It seemed like (for better or for worse) under Aul and Sarkar the Insider Program was both very visible and made out to be a much bigger deal, and now these days… pretty quiet.

Yep.

I wonder about this a lot, but I think it’s also fair to say that the program dropped the engineering focus after Gabel Aul left and became more marketing-focused, which is understandable but still disappointing for some people (certainly for me). What this means, practically speaking, is that the Insider Program is divorced from engineering—i.e. the team(s) that are actually building Windows—and so they’ve become a middleman between engineering and Insiders. And it’s long suffered from poor communication, as I’ve complained many times.

But this past year or so has been particularly tough. The Insider program was essentially leaderless from October 2019, when Ms. Sarkar left, until March 2020, when Panos Panay appointed Amanda Langowski as the new lead for the Windows Insider Program. And since then … what? Nothing. She gets a bit of a pass for two reasons: The pandemic and the fact that Panay took control of Windows just a month earlier, in February, and no doubt needed time to formulate a way forward. And to be fair, she did say that she’d be less active/visible than her predecessor.

But still. It’s been almost a year, and I can’t think of a single substantive action or communication from Ms. Langowski, let alone the housekeeping that the Insider program has needed for years. She has literally written only two blog posts since taking over, and the most recent one is from June 2020. As with the wider Windows team, I think we’re overdue for an update. And some sweeping changes.

Podcasting equipment

rbwatson0 asks:

I know you got a new webcam for netcasting recently. What audio equipment do you use for your netcasts? Also, curious what Brad uses for recording and editing stuff.

I initiated a return on that webcam, which cost me $200 out of pocket, because the video quality issue isn’t my fault, and we were having the same issues as before. So my equipment is the same as before: A Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, a Focusrite Scarlett Solo (2nd Gen) USB Audio Interface, and a Heil PR 40 microphone with PL2T Boom Mount.

I occasionally detail the hardware, software, and services I use. The most recent What I Use is from June 2020.

Mary Jo vs. Surface Laptop 3

anderb asks:

What’s the latest on MJF’s Surface Laptop 3 that crapped out just after the 12 month warranty expired? Did Microsoft come to the party with a free replacement?

No. Mary Jo got it fixed locally, and she paid $400 for that. She says: “It was something having to do with the motherboard. They luckily didn’t have to replace the entire motherboard, not sure what happened.”

Using Outlook.com like an app

staganyi asks:

I’ve been testing Outlook.com as a web app on edge official v87 this past week with the goal to replace the built in mail & calendar apps. More specifically, getting notifications while the browser is closed to work. While it seemed to work at first, it’s pretty much hit or miss. I was not able to get calendar event reminder notifications to work. Don’t know if you have any experience with this or maybe someone else does.

Outlook.com (and Outlook on the web) only meet the barest of requirements to be called Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), and I’m hoping and expecting that they become more sophisticated over time. But … I’m not sure when you might be able to rely on this as a desktop app replacement, sorry. That they’re working towards this with One Outlook is a good sign, but that it will take until 2022 is perhaps telling.

3:2 laptops

waharris007 asks:

I’m a longtime Surface fan and have had the SP4, Book 1, Book 2, SGo, and Laptop 2 13” over the past several years. As a writer, the main things I love are the 3:2 display and quality keyboard. I played with the new Spectre x360 14 at Best Buy this week, and it is a beauty. Right now, it’s the only non-Surface laptop I’d consider because of its 3:2 screen. However, I think I want to bump up to a 15” for my next purchase. I was disappointed to see that HP doesn’t make a larger model with 3:2. Am I wrong, or is the Laptop 3 the only choice for a 15” screen size with the 3:2 ratio? Any rumors of a bigger Spectre with this form factor in 2021?

3:2 displays are very rare, and the big PC makers only use them occasionally and with tablet/convertible PC designs only for the most part. (The HP Spectre x360 14 falls into that category.) The only 15-inch laptops I know of with a 3:2 display are both Surface devices: Surface Laptop and Surface Book. But you might want to look at the Dell XPS 15: This has a 15-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio that’s a nice compromise between 16:9 and 3:2.

There will be a lot of new PCs announced over the next week, and while I don’t recall any specific 3:2 models—and couldn’t say if I did—it’s worth paying attention to. You never know.

Windows 10 “news and interests”

Daninbusiness asks:s

How do you find the new Windows News Feed aligning up with the other Windows announcement a few days earlier about their push to offer a reinvigorated and unified Windows experience? A new news feed + refined user experience aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but they do seem a bit contradictory.

Just that there’s no reason Microsoft can’t add new features and improve the visuals. The combination of both is one definition of a major upgrade. I’m not a fan of this particular feature, but whatever. I don’t begrudge them trying.

Related to this, madthinus asks:

So this weeks news of a new news feed applet on the taskbar refers. Is this the price we have to pay to get continued support, looking at ways to monetise Windows more? Or is this a first step to a world with no live tiles and that they are consolidating probably the most useful live tiles into one pane. Is MSN news app, the Money app and Weather apps going away?

That latter idea—that Microsoft would replace some consumption apps with a feed that loads Edge and thus web-based ads—makes total sense to me. They must all have very low usage.

Also, is this a feature pack or experience pack deliverable? I think, and I might not be alone, that 21H1 is just an experience pack upgrade, not a feature release. This could be “it” for 21H1, they have kept the release preview ring and slow rings on 20H2 for a reason.

Since we’ve never even heard if there is going to be a 21H1, I have to guess that it will be even smaller than 21H2, assuming it happens, and that it will be almost exclusively fixes. I assume this feature, like Sun Valley, is planned for 21H2 or later. But it’s in Dev, so it could technically land at any time. Microsoft has been so quiet about the future of Windows recently, it’s hard to even speculate how/when things will happen.

Future of the Control Panel

hrlngrv asks:

Arcane question: would MSFT ever ditch Control Panel given, not least, configuration applets for old printers?

Would or could? It certainly could, using some set schedule. But will it? I doubt it. There are two many driver/installer sets that will literally never be updated, so the underpinnings of this system need to stay in Windows.

Alternatively, how long would it take them to be able automatically to add links to Settings for arbitrary 3rd party .CPL configuration applets? There are already links which display dialog-style configuration applets in Settings, e.g., Additional mouse options on the right side of the Devices > Mouse page. Could there be a Miscellaneous entry on the left side, and the page contain links for any other such applets which don’t have standard links elsewhere?

I feel like that should be the future of the user experience, yeah. But knowing Microsoft, they’ll just leave the Control Panel in there like some vestigial back leg on a whale.

Apple and the Beats brand

helix2301 asks:

I know Apple has been quiet about it but before Christmas, they released an updated version of the Solo Pros and just the other day they had a custom version of Beats made for all players on playoff NFL teams that was featured on a bunch of sites. I know Apple released the Airpod Max recently but it seems like the headphone market and wearables are still something Apple is dedicated to since iPhone sales slowed down a little a few years ago I just cannot picture them killing a company that still has a lot of market share just wondering your thoughts.

I’m not sure what to think about Apple making its own headphones alongside Beats. But I suppose you could argue that they serve (very) different markets, with Beats aimed at younger people and Apple’s aimed at (would-be) audiophiles and professionals. Still, Apple has an awful lot of products/brands these days.

Which programming language?

helix2301 also asks:

My other question is about programming I see a lot of people talking about which programming language to learn I have been using python, Javascript and new learning c#. I noticed other day on TWIT Steve saying he is learning just C. Which language do you think is up and coming. And Y?

To put Steve Gibson’s comments in perspective, he has spent his entire career writing Intel assembly language code, so moving to C is just a pragmatic shift given the way the world is going. Today, C/C++ is arguably as “low level” as ASM was 30 years ago (at least conceptually).

My choice would be JavaScript. It’s the number one programming language and for good reason. Plus, it’s gotten considerably more sophisticated over the years, and you could also look at TypeScript, which cleans up some JavaScript issues.

As far as up and coming languages, Rust seems like a big deal, but I don’t know anything about it. Functional programming languages like F# are interesting, but traditional languages (JavaScript, C#) are also picking up functional capabilities.

But seriously, JavaScript.

Internet-connected printers

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Do you know of any printers that do not need to be connected to the cloud? I really do not want my printer phoning home and reporting ink levels and usage. I am pretty sure the manufacturers do not need the data to improve the printing and scanning functionality, so it is clearly another tech company grab for personal information. I was reminded again today as I had to tell a new version of HP Smart that I did not want it collecting data.

No, I don’t, sorry.

HP’s printer business model is basically the razors/blades thing, where the ink is the blades, and they offer automated and subscription services for ensuring that customers never run out. But you can see which data that HP Smart collects here. I guess I’m kind of resigned to this kind of thing by now, but I don’t think it’s nefarious.