Ask Paul: April 23 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and greetings from Massachusetts, where we’re spending the weekend. Here’s another great set of reader questions to kick off the weekend.
Short Takes
ggolcher asks:

Thank you always for the great content and to tirelessly make simple what many companies obfuscate. My question is: what's the situation with Short Takes? I haven't seen much activity around that segment.

Thanks … And yeah, sorry. That’s on me. It was getting too difficult/time-consuming to do both Ask Paul (which often goes past 3000 words) and Short Takes on Fridays, and so Short Takes always took the hit. But I do still want to do it, and I’ve intended to move it to Monday/Tuesday (depending on the week), but haven’t done so yet. I will try to get that going soon.
A potpourri of questions
bschnatt  asks:

1) Who is the most famous person to ask you for an autograph or a selfie (and conversely, what's *your* greatest autograph/selfie "conquest")? If a fan wanted to take a selfie with you with an iPad Pro, would you die from the tortuous conflict raging within your soul? ;)

I’m not sure anyone truly famous has ever asked me for an autograph. I’ve signed some odd things---a Kindle, for example---and I was asked to, but refused, to sign a woman’s breast. I always make a joke when someone wants a picture with an iPad, but I would of course allow it. :)

I’m not much for autographs anymore, but when I was very young and working at Burger King (my second job) ever, Bob Lobel, a famous local sportscaster at the time came in and I asked him for his autograph despite the fact that everyone I was working with was making fun of me for doing so. He told me not to listen to those guys, and he was really nice about it. There are others, I guess, like some of MTV vjs and Soledad O’Brien, both of which I met at industry events. But nothing major.

2) Has anyone from Microsoft ever asked you for advice on how they should proceed with something?

Yes. And while I can’t talk too much about this stuff, I spent a lot of time talking to people like Terry Myerson, especially, and even Steven Sinofsky before he finally realized I wasn’t just going to parrot his nonsense. Myerson, in particular, was very interested in my opinions about various things, including the Skylake disaster and how Microsoft should respond and Windows 10 Cloud, which because Windows 10 S. I’ve been close with various people all around Microsoft, and especially in Windows and Windows Server, over the years.

3) What would it take for you to abandon Microsoft and go all-in for Apple? Is there anything in the Apple ecosystem that you continually regret not seeing in the Microsoft ecosystem (and have you expressed these complaints to Microsoft)?

Honestly, the sticking point is the Mac: I could use iPhone (and have), and I already use an iPad every day. But I very much prefer Windows and PCs to the Mac, and I say that having owned/used literally dozens of Macs si...