Ask Paul: January 22 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s a delightfully brief Ask Paul to kick off the weekend a bit early while we ponder this nation’s overdue return to decency.

Improving Windows

darkgrayknight asks:

What would you want updated in Windows for consistency?

Windows today reminds me a bit of Windows Mobile 6.5, where the top-level UIs are or at least seem to be mostly consistent, but you don’t have to go too far to find inconsistencies. There are several different types of pop-up menus, each with different styles, and multiple generations of applications, control panels, and other interfaces that all have their own dated look and feel. Those are the things that need to be made consistent, and they need to be made consistent with the dominant visual style used by top-level Windows interfaces. There shouldn’t be an UIs in Windows that don’t respect the user’s Dark mode configuration.

Also, what features would be great to have in Windows?

I don’t think Windows needs any major new features, but I would like to see more customization capabilities and, even more important, a more complete settings sync functionality with granular, cloud-based management of those settings. You can look at Stardock products like Curtains, Fences, Groupy, and others, plus other utilities such as TaskbarX (formerly FalconX) for the types of customization options I’d like to see.

Microsoft mobile productivity

darkgrayknight also asks:

On the mobile front, is there any possibility for Microsoft to bring some more productivity to the Android app space? I really would like something more like the People hub brought into Android, at least for my Microsoft accounts.

I don’t see why not, but I suspect most of that type of work will go into the Microsoft Launcher rather than be made available on a piecemeal basis.

Why not Delphi?

bschnatt asks:

I’ve been using the Community Edition of Delphi to build an app (the first in a really long time), and I’m loving it. Unless I’m mistaken, you’re using Visual Studio / C#. Why not Delphi? I know you like/liked it. I’m having a blast with it.

I do have fond memories of Delphi, and of the Object Pascal language, but no desire to spend time with it now. Delphi isn’t really a mainstream solution anymore, but even when it was, it always suffered from being a generation behind because Borland (at the time) couldn’t add new features—for UI components, or whatever—until they were first implemented by Microsoft.

Food

bschnatt also asks:

So, we know you dislike (or are ambivalent about) ice cream. What foods do you like that everyone else hates (if any)? Have you ever eaten anything that smelled so bad, it drove people from the room? 😉

Yeah. Everyone probably has their own thresholds when it comes to food, whether it’s something I consider innocuous—like raw oysters or clams, or sushi—or something a bit more extreme like brains. I will eat almost anything, and often order things that most would not. Tripe, for example. Brains. Sweetbreads. Tongue, cheek, and any internal organ. Bone marrow. Steak tartare with a raw egg. We had a full pig roast one time, and I basically ate the entire head, including one of the eyes. One of my favorite meals to get in France is an Andouillette sausage (not to be confused with the lame andouille sausages we have in the US); it’s basically a pig’s entire digestive system (intestines, colon, etc.) diced up, and every single time I order it, the waiter will make sure I know what it is first. I do.

I draw the line at insects. No interest in that at all.

And I have very strong negative reactions to certain vegetables, including Brussels sprouts and broccoli. The smell of those things makes me almost nauseous.

Microsoft Edge

MartinusV2 asks:

Do you think Microsoft one day will update the image of the Windows Sandbox to replace old Edge with the new? Just annoying to have to download the new Edge each time I use it. And I may be the only one using it.

Sure. I’m surprised this hasn’t happened yet, actually.

And do you know if Microsoft Defender Application Guard still using old Edge? Or just the new Edge good enough to protect from bad web sites?

This is not a topic I’m super-familiar with, sorry. But I believe that it works with the new Edge as well. Maybe someone else has a better handle on this.

21H1?

madthinus asks:

So, any whispers on what 21H1 for Windows is coming or will be about, or must we take the blog posts of the insider program that it will just be a continuous stream of fixes for 20H2. Why the coyness / silence?

I find Microsoft’s inability to explain what’s happening with Windows to be very frustrating. But given the timing and the features we have seen being tested in the Insider program, I think it’s safe to say that 21H1 will be a very minor update, similar to 20H2. And I am absolutely OK with that.

Vertical tabs in Edge, where is that tracking now. Using stable this side.

Vertical tabs are currently available in all of the non-stable channels, so I assume it will be in the next major release of Edge (89, I believe).

Xbox Media Remote

simont asks:

Does the XBox Media Remote work with the Series S/X?

Yes. I briefly mentioned this in my Xbox Series X|S Media Features article.

Do you know if Microsoft is making a new version for Series S/X?

No, but I assume they will do so. And there are some third-party media remotes, like this one, which is currently out of stock.

I remember you saying to Brad that you were not impressed with the Media Remote, but compared to the AppleTV remote, it is very usable.

That’s true of any remote. 🙂 The Apple TV remote is a crime against humanity.

Bitlocker for home users

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Do you think that Microsoft will bring support for BitLocker to Windows 10 Home edition?

No, for a variety of reasons. But the big one is that it’s one of the few truly useful differentiators for most people between Windows 10 and Pro. Why Microsoft even has different Windows 10 product editions is beyond me.

Outlook Premium and Go Daddy

Xanth asks:

Got an email from MSFT about custom domains through legacy outlook premium. They mentioned custom domains will only work if you’re are an O365 subscriber (which I am), but mention needing to work with Go Daddy for your domain to configure it to work. Is that going forward, or will previous configurations still work? I had done the mail configuration (my custom domain is with Cloudflare) work years ago and it’s been working ever since. I’m an O365 subscriber and despise GoDaddy, am I doing to have to deal with the devil?

I also have a legacy custom domain through Outlook.com and, like you, the domain I’m using is not managed by Go Daddy. And yes, it works fine. I suppose that could change in the future, but I’m not going to worry about it until/unless that happens.

Search market futures

helix2301 asks:

Paul duck duck go recently had an article talking about how they serve 100 million searches a day which is nothing compared to Google’s 5.6 billion searches and 91% of market.

I almost wrote about that, but I couldn’t find an actual blog post, just a stats page and infographic. But yeah, a nice milestone for sure.

Bing is still the second largest search engine at 2.69% of daily searches and yahoo at Yahoo! 1.46% and I think duck duck got less then 1% my point is with all this Antitrust where do you think the search market is going.

I don’t see Google ever conceding the crown in this market, but I also don’t see why third-party options like Bing and DuckDuckGo can’t steal at least some share. The problem is, even if antitrust “solves” the Google problem, Google Search is still the standard, and the option most people know and trust. It will take a while to reverse that.