Ask Paul: February 19 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s an excellent collection of reader questions to kick off the weekend. No promises on the quality of the answers.

Photo scanning

erich82 asks:

Hello Paul, happy Friday. I’m in the process of digitizing my paper photos. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read in your series on this topic, and unlike you, I have hundreds and hundreds of photos as opposed to thousand and thousands.  I’m using my iphone SE 2020 along with the Google Photos scanning app, and overall it’s surprisingly good. I then modify the metadata directly in Google Photos. In your experience does a photo scanner produce a higher quality scan, or would a photo scanner only be faster and more efficient?

There are obviously different levels of quality to be had between the different ways of scanning photos (and negatives), but also levels of complexity when it comes to things like cropping, editing, and adding metadata. And you need to consider the volume of photos you wish to scan. In my case, it made sense to go with a pretty decent non-flatbed scanner, and I was very happy with how efficient it was.

But if the scanning app is working for you, I’d just stick with that. My previous scanning efforts involved using various flatbed scanners, and some of the earlier scans aren’t very high quality. I’d probably get better results scanning now via a phone. I’m not surprised to hear this works well for you.

Space, the final frontier

bschnatt asks:

If Elon Musk or Richard Branson offered you a FREE vacation to the international space station, would you go? (Yes, you would be allowed to take your XBox with you… 😉 )

One million years ago—OK, it was 1997—I went to COMDEX in Las Vegas with some coworkers/friends. Among the things we did that week was go to the top of the Stratosphere and rode the “Big Shot,” which catapults you 160 feet straight up to the top of the tower at 45 miles per hour in just a few seconds, triggering a disconcerting moment of near weightlessness. At least that’s what it felt like. Documentary evidence at the top of the article. 🙂

This was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, period. It is the highest point in Las Vegas, obviously, it was a perfectly clear day with 360-degree views, and I realized at that moment that I could never be an astronaut.

Point being, if the experience of going to the space station would require a rocket and that kind of straight, upwards explosion of movement, no, I could never do that. If it was more like a plane, somehow, sure, I’d love to see the earth from space. Absolutely.

.NET and the Mac

JaseCutler asks:

The .NET 6 Preview announcement (link) has under the Support section a call out for “Mac and Mac Catalyst, for x64 and Apple Silicon ‘M1’.” Curious your thoughts on this. You’ve covered for a long time how Microsoft does so much work on giving great developer tools, as well as now meeting customers where they are, so it seems per the course that they are supporting Apple’s new silicon. But what impacts do you predict, with .NET going to Mac M1?

The new .NET (formerly .NET Core) has always supported the Mac, so it makes sense that it would be native on M1 going forward. But if you look at what it means for .NET to be on the Mac, it’s more limited than on Windows, of course: You can create console apps and web apps (using ASP .NET), and you can use Xamarin.Mac to create native Mac apps. Aside from just supporting those things going forward on M1, I think the point of getting .NET 6 on the M1 is maybe more about MAUI, which is the next-generation version of Xamarin Forms, letting developers create native apps that run across Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.

How much of an impact will this have? Honestly, probably pretty minimal unless MAUI turns out to be more elegant and powerful than Xamarin Forms. But even then, it seems like those that need cross-platform capabilities on the desktop will mostly choose web apps.

Fitbit + Google

cwfinn asks:

Now that FitBit is owned by Google, do you foresee improvement or degradation? The Windows app has not been updated since Feb 2019 and borders on a bad joke.

I’m cautiously optimistic: Google has far more resources than Fitbit, so that will help. That said, Google, for all its market power, hasn’t been able to make WearOS successful. So nothing is guaranteed.

But the big question is how this will play out. Will Fitbit replace WearOS, coexist with it, or be combined with it in some way? Google hasn’t said yet, and if they do plan to replace WearOS with Fitbit, it could have a negative impact on the existing WearOS developer base (if there is one).

I hope/assume we’ll learn about Google’s plans at Google I/O (usually in May) if not before. I’m very curious to know what’s happening.

Regarding the Windows app, I’m not to optimistic about improvements. I could see Google going all mobile (plus web) as they do elsewhere.

Short Takes

SeattleMike asks:

How come you no longer do your “Short Takes” post on Petri on Fridays every week? I always looked forward to it and miss it.

Sorry about that. This has been bothering me as well. It’s basically a scheduling issue, and maybe the big mistake I made was adding a second big post (this one, “Ask Paul”) for the same day. Both of these things—Short Takes and Ask Paul—take a lot of time to write, and squeezing both in on Fridays, along with everything else I have to do, has been problematic. (A couple of weeks ago when I did the last one, I got up to go to the gym and realized there was no time; I had taken up the entire morning. Today, for example, I didn’t get this posted until after 3 pm.)

I’m going to try and figure this out. My week is sort of scheduled out based on a few things—Windows Weekly on Wednesday afternoon and a work meeting and What The Tech on Thursdays, after both I’m exhausted—and Fridays are pretty full too.

Maybe I’ll move one of the posts to Monday or Tuesday each week. Let me know if anyone has any preferences on that.

Windows 10X v. Insider Program

eeisner asks:

Listening to WW yesterday, when you 3 were talking about the lack of 10X insider builds I was surprised that you and Mary Jo didn’t mention one major issue with insider feedback – that 99% of insider build testers represent what, 1% if even of Windows users, and that a huge percentage of the feedback left is for super niche, nerdy features that the regular user won’t notice because insider testers are a more technical audience, typically in IT or software engineering. Considering 10X is supposed to be a very consumer and student friendly device aimed at the Chromebook audience, I’m sure the vast majority of the feedback insider testers would leave wouldn’t be relevant.

Sure, but that’s gotta be true of mainstream Windows 10 too. Regardless of the era, most people external to Microsoft who are beta testing software are by definition technical: When I started beta testing for Microsoft in 1994, everything was done through CompuServe and that wasn’t just technical, it was expensive. But I assume, by this point, the company knows how to filter the feedback accordingly.

Do you think this has had an impact on MSFTs decision to not publicly test 10X?

We can only speculate on the “why” of this. Mary Jo thinks it’s for the surprise, but if that’s true, it’s wrong-headed on Microsoft’s part. This thing will only disappoint most fans, and it will be a non-event for most customers. I don’t know, maybe they are testing it externally through the corporate-focused TAP program.

And how do you think MSFT can test 10X in the insider program going forward without getting bogged down by feature requests that are irrelevant to the OS’ use case?

By handling it differently. Microsoft could invite just their best testers, or make specific requirements around key usage scenarios and cut off those who don’t supply the feedback, for starters. I just think that more eyeballs are always better and that the one insightful bit of feedback you may get by opening it up to more people outweighs all the nonsense. It’s better to catch things before it’s released than after.

Password managers

crunchyfrog asks:

Paul, I have been a long time user of LastPass but have become somewhat dissatisfied with it over time … With that, I would like to know what you use and recommend, primarily focusing on reliability, stability and security. I am considering 1 Password, Dashlane, BitWarden and maybe Keeper. I don’t care about the costs, I’m happy to pay for quality.

I haven’t tested a standalone password manager in a long time, so my opinion here is out of date. But I do trust The Wirecutter, and they recommend 1Password as their top choice and BitWarden as their top free choice. Brad uses 1Password as well, and he recommends it.

I used to use LastPass as well, in fact I am reasonably positive that I paid for it for some time, but I switched to Chrome at some point and then Edge more recently. There are pros and cons to this, and this week’s LastPass news has inspired me to at least look into third-party password managers. We’ll see if anything comes of that.

Where have all the enthusiasts gone?

Eric_Rasmussen asks:

I know that memories tend to be romanticized the older they get, but I remember being actually excited for new Windows releases, starting with Windows 95. There was a lot of buzz around things like Windows Media Center and MSDN, a lot of IT people had the Action Pack and used a lot of new software, and the Windows community felt like a lot of normal people mixed in with a fairly large group of passionate enthusiasts. A number of these enthusiasts happened to be employed by Microsoft and I always looked forward to reading their articles in MSDN Library.

Where have the enthusiasts gone? Every release of something from Microsoft these days feels boring and corporate. I haven’t heard Microsoft even mention HoloLens for two years. Are there still enthusiasts in the halls of Microsoft? Is there such a thing as Microsoft Research anymore?

Back in the 1990s, Microsoft was personal computing, and advances like Windows 95 were broadly exciting to the public. These days, PCs are still useful tools, but they’re considered boring and mostly just for work, and most people spend the majority of their time interacting with software and services on other devices. Mostly phones, but also tablets, set-top boxes, smart speakers and displays, and so on. There is still a lot of excitement in personal technology, but most of it isn’t about Microsoft’s products anymore. Witness almost any Apple announcement.

The sweeping changes we’ve seen in the past 20+ years have impacted developers and commercial customers too. Developers used to need to know about what was new in the next Windows so they could write apps that would target their entire user base. But today, because of the way Windows usage has shifted to being mostly about productivity, those users are less engaged and developers correctly target more lucrative markets. (And cross-compatibility between all the popular platforms via the web.) In the commercial space, most companies have moved largely to the cloud, so admins and IT pros are no longer needed to manage version upgrades of servers. It all kind of adds up.

Realistically speaking, there’s just not a lot to get excited about on the desktop. Consider the recent news wave about Apple’s shift to M1. It’s an impressive chipset, and the resulting Macs are fast and quiet and they get better battery life. And … that’s it. That’s nice for Mac users who are ready to upgrade but it’s not very exciting, broadly speaking. And that was the biggest desktop news of the past year, really.

Cross-play

vernonlvincent asks:

I am having problems with some of the cross play between Windows and XBOX. I’ve been trying to play Minecraft Dungeons with my son. He’s on an XBOX 1S and I’m on a Windows PC – and we can’t seem to connect for cross-play. Any suggestions?

I’ve not tried Minecraft Dungeons, let alone cross-play, sorry. Looking this up, even Mojang doesn’t have much to say beyond just making sure you’re on the latest version of the game on both platforms.

Hopefully, someone else has some ideas here.

Stadia futures?

sabertooth920 asks:

Where do you see Stadia going at this point? Maybe the technology could be licensed, if Google ends up shutting the thing down. It would really be a shame to see Stadia mothballed, it really has come a long way. If they could get Activision/Blizzard on their platform, that would be a big deal.

I was surprised to discover that I really like Stadia, and I feel like it deserves to continue too. But Google’s history is what it is, and it seems like it may be struggling. For the user-facing service, I think 2021 is going to be the make-or-break year.

There is that other aspect to Google’s cloud gaming ambitions, too, which they verbalized in the post about killing their in-house game development: They plan to offer Stadia-like capabilities and services to game publishers to use in their own services. I feel like this could be lucrative, and that Google is one of the few companies—alongside Amazon and Microsoft—that can offer such a thing.

But I also think that having both an in-house service, Stadia, and an offering for third parties is the right mix. Both sides can be complementary and can influence each other.

Microsoft’s password manager

staganyi asks:

Can Microsoft’s offerings, edge and authenticator, replace LastPass? More specifically on mobile (android/iOS), doest it integrate at the OS level to fill logins in apps?

Yes, it does. You can use Microsoft’s Edge-based password manager as the auto-fill manager on both Android and iOS. I could see Microsoft making this a more full-featured password manager solution that could compete with the 1Passwords and LastPasses of the world. But it would almost certainly require a paid Microsoft 365 account.

Microsoft 365 vs. small businesses

Anlong08 asks:

I own my own business (1 employee) and have a 365 business standard account. The product does way more than what my needs are and since I’m not an IT pro but just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous I am Intimidated by the complexities of the back end of it.

I couldn’t agree more: The Microsoft 365 admin portal is horribly complex, and it is intimidating to those not familiar with such things. (Google Workspace is similarly terrible.) Microsoft really needs a light interface for its smaller customers.

It’s also a bit scary from a security perspective knowing there is this super complex thing that I have, but don’t understand, and could be used against me if I configure something wrong. That fear may be unfounded, but again I’m not an IT pro.

I think it’s smart that you’re concerned about this. Not because there are inherent insecurities in the platform or whatever, but because you’re smart enough to admit you don’t know enough about this stuff and are worried that could come back to haunt you.

As an individual, there are a few basic steps you could take. Last year around this time, I did a limited podcast series with Microsoft’s Stephen Rose called Microsoft 365 Knowledge Series, and we discussed management and security several times over the course of the shows. And there are two big interfaces you should check out, Security Defaults and Secure Score, which I discuss in this article.

This is a bit of thinking out loud so I think my question is, do companies exist (and how do you find them) that can walk you through the setup of 365 features, in an instructive sort of way, and perhaps audit your setup from time to time?

There are certainly Microsoft partners, called Microsoft Solution Providers, that will manage Microsoft 365 for you. Granted, the cost might not make sense for an individual. You can find them here.

Windows Mixed Reality

Vladimir – 15 minutes ago

Hi Paul, do you know if there is any plan for WMR moving forward? I know it’s niche but there is still a number of VR gamers like myself. We are basically at the mercy of Facebook if it wasn’t for WMR and there have been some high end devices released recently, such as the hp reverb gen2. However the stance on this of Microsoft is unclear. They add vr support to Microsoft flight simulator but no word about vr support on Xbox. At each update of windows they break WMR but then they take the time to fix it. It’s a very inconsistent message and I wonder if you have any additional information. Apple is probably going to release a vr headset at some point and it’s really a pity if Microsoft throws in the garbage what they have done until now in this field. WMR overall is not bad at all, why allow Apple to claim another “pseudo-revolutionary” product?

I was impressed (and a bit surprised) that Microsoft integrated Mixed Reality capabilities into Windows 10, but I feel like that’s pretty much what they can do from the platform side. Now it’s up to hardware makers to release and improve the headsets, which has happened, slowly, and the software makers to release compelling games and apps.

Microsoft has said that it has no plans to add VR/MR to Xbox Series X|S, but given how powerful these consoles are, I could see that being a fun surprise announcement if it ever happens. Certainly, the release of Flight Simulator would be an obvious time for this to come up.

As for Apple, I think the issue there is that it makes consumer hardware products, and it has a market of over 1.6 billion users, and a pretty healthy presence in AR, so this is a market where they can make a difference. There are probably more people who would want AR glasses out in the world than a VR headset they can only use at home, tied to a PC. I don’t think we should begrudge them that, per se. But it’s a different (and bigger) audience than that for WMR.