Ask Paul: July 9 (Premium)

Happy Friday! It’s been another slog despite the short week here in the U.S., so let’s get the weekend started early with some great reader questions.

Your Phone

wolters asks:

Hey Paul. It’s been a while since I heard you mention Your Phone. Do you use it on a daily basis? And if so, do you find it useful? Do you have hope it will include RCS one day? I really think is a very strong app but not having RCS forces me to fall back to Google Messages on the Web, at least for sending full sized media files.

Your Phone is one of those things that sounds great on paper and demos well, but I’ve found it to be incredibly unreliable. So I do not use Your Phone.

The thing is, I normally don’t need Your Phone for anything. There are no/few Android apps I want to run on my PC, I rarely if ever need to access photos that are on a phone because Google Photos and OneDrive exist, and everything syncs to both places immediately. The one thing I would find useful, however, is text messaging. All these years into the smartphone era, I still find typing on a tiny screen to be difficult and error-prone, and if I need to write something long, I just dictate it. Which introduces its own errors.

On a coincidental note, we have friends visiting from out of town for several days, and my wife and I had intended to put together a list of Philadelphia restaurant choices for them to choose from. We had previously discussed these with my brother-in-law, who has lived in this area for his entire life and regularly eats out in Philly because of work. Anyway, we kept forgetting to send it, and our friends were driving here Thursday (yesterday), so on Wednesday night, my wife and I finally sat down to figure out which 5 or 6 restaurants to recommend. The issue is that the restaurants were pinned in Google Maps (originally from my phone), and I wanted to text them this information. But that would be tedious to do on a phone.

So I used Google Maps on a PC to go through the list. I used Notepad to create the final list for our friends, with names and website URLs. And then I installed the Google Messages web app, which actually works reliably, and texted them from my PC.

This is a great example of using something that, for me, “just works.” We all have our own preferences, etc. I know.

And not that this affects me, but there is the whole iPhone problem with Your Phone too. Why Microsoft can’t do better for 50 percent of its market (in the US at least) is unclear, even given Apple’s limitations.

What the tech

bschnatt asks:

Since Andrew Zarian is too busy to do the What The Tech podcast, have you thought of teaming up with someone else? Brad Sams is an obvious choice, but it would be interesting to see you team up with someone less technically inclined (to get their perspective on UI, etc), or perhaps someone who thinks a lot differently than you do.

Honestly, I’m kind of podcasted out here, and the longer this break from What the Tech goes, the less inclined I am to ever want to ramp it up again. First Ring Daily is easy because it’s just Brad and I BSing, and it’s short. But Windows Weekly, which I love doing, is curiously tiring, and I’m dead at the end of it. What the Tech was the same way. I think I’m just not built properly for that kind of thing. I could never podcast full-time like Leo does. I don’t know how he does it.

Have you ever thought of doing a non-tech type of podcast? Perhaps science fiction or movies in general?

No. I have certain podcasts and YouTube channels I follow, but many more I dip into and then lose interest in, and I feel like there are far too many “citizen podcasters” or whatever already. Tech is kind of perfect for me because I’m really interested in it and am in the middle of it. But for whatever other interests I may have—travel or whatever—-I’m happy just to be a consumer.

Self-publishing

bschnatt also asks:

I know you’re using LeanPub (sp?), but I’m interested in self-publishing and would like more information on how you actually go about doing that, the pitfalls, things to look out for, etc!

There are all kinds of ways to handle self-publishing and we’ve only done a few. Originally, we went directly to the various publishing platforms (Kindle, Nook, etc.) but that was time-consuming and painful since each has its own way of doing things and it was hard to keep things consistent. We moved to Leanpub because it’s a one-stop-shop that can output in formats that will work everywhere, and because we were able to offload the tech backend and (partially the) customer support. It’s worked out well for us, mostly, but there are other choices that I think about, like Gumroad, and other business models like monthly/yearly subscription (which I’m not a fan of) vs. a one-time payment for a book.

We’ve been doing this long enough now that it’s just sort of second nature, and because I’ve not really experimented with other services or other ways of doing things in a while, I’m not sure I have too much general advice to offer. But self-publishing, however you do it, is so easy to get into now, it’s certainly worth pursuing. Granted, I’m not writing about anything that will ever generate a lot of money, but it’s kind of a passion thing I guess.

Niche OSes

bschnatt also asks:

Have you ever installed one of those Android variant operating systems (like LineageOS, CyanogenMod, etc) on any device? I used to install versions of CyanogenMod on my HP TouchPad back in the day. (Speaking of which, have you ever used one of those WebOS devices? I *loved* my Palm Pre!) Would like to get your experience / history on that…

No, not all that much. I have a hard enough time keeping track of Linux distributions and the many rival desktop environments as it is.

Extraneous Windows features

rossfinnie asks:

Do you think Microsoft will eventually stop trying to add things like widgets, news and interests, my people, meet now, etc that (to me at least) are obviously going to be turned off by most users fairly quickly? Another example is that while the addition of being able to run Android apps sounds like a great idea, I suspect on a desktop or laptop very few users would ever use it other than to tryout it out and then promptly forget about it.

Generally, I feel like these things are cyclical. In recent years, Microsoft went from being heavy on new features (especially during the “Creator Update” years) to grinding to a halt, and now with Windows 11 happening, it’s swung back to more new features. But it’s not clear that this is how the next few years will go. In fact, if this first update to Windows 11 is any indication, and I think it is, we might be seeing a regular stream of changes and updates in the coming year. It appears they can basically change anything now via a simple cumulative update.

Regarding the specific features you mention, I have little doubt that Widgets development will slow and then halt inside of Microsoft, and that this feature will eventually just be deprecated and then removed from Windows. The Android thing is unclear right. I don’t personally see much need for running Android apps, but it’s possible that many others will, and that Amazon won’t be the only choice over time. If Microsoft could ever figure out a way to get the Play Store in there, that might be a game-changer. Or not. It’s hard to know what the general user base will use or care about.

The next controversy

justme asks:

You have mentioned several times that if the hardware requirements for Windows 11 controversy wasnt happening, people would be loudly complaining about the requirement of WIndows 11 Home to have an internet connection and an MSA for initial setup. Do you think there will be more complaining about this issue once more people are setting up Windows 11 Home?

Yes. It’s only a matter of time.

That said, I do find it interesting to watch writers at other tech publications going through the same “7 stages of confusion” when it comes to Windows 11. I saw a headline yesterday that was basically “You know, maybe those Windows 11 hardware requirements are a good thing.” This reflects two problems, I think: Microsoft’s terrible communication (which impacted how press/bloggers miscommunicated the hardware requirements upfront) and our natural 21st century kneejerk reaction to everything, which then has to be scaled back as time tempers the outrage. You know, maybe Microsoft is on to something. Sure. But maybe it could have communicated it better too.

Anyway, I find it outrageous that Microsoft would require an Internet connection and a Microsoft Account to set up Windows 11 Home only. And I write that knowing that I will personally always have an Internet connection and will use an MSA when I set up Windows 11. The question is whether Microsoft gets enough feedback to step back from this cliff.

Insider Program

navarac asks:

Given that the time-span between initial preview build and RTM (I know) is so short, do you think that there is any chance that the Insiders Program participants will get listened to more for Windows 11 than they did for Windows 10, or even less? The last couple of years – certainly since Gabe Aul left – I felt that Microsoft was just going through the motions, if that. Certainly A/B Testing tested my patience – spending a lot of time downloading and installing only to find the A/B version I had was Z! In the end I gave up at the beginning of 2020 after joining in Oct 2014.

I’m with you 100 percent (and I coincidentally aired this same opinion on Windows Weekly yesterday). When the Insider Program started, it was a right-minded reaction to the secretive Sinofsky years that helped Microsoft reconnect with the enthusiasts who love Windows, and it was run by an engineer with an engineering focus. Since then it’s turned into a poorly-run marketing exercise that has taken Microsoft miscommunication to new depths of unprofessionalism. And I feel bad about that: The Insider Program could be effective, and it could be special. But it’s neither, and all it’s doing now is alienating those same fans.

I enroll PCs into the Insider Program because I have to, to test new Windows versions or features. But there’s no indication that they will listen to feedback let alone act on it. And all you have to do is look at the Feedback Hub to know that. It’s too bad.

TPM

crunchyfrog asks:

At home I build my own PC’s for various tasks like video editing and gaming and general use. I prefer building them because I get to hand pick the elements that matter most and therefore maintain costs of owning and upgrading on an as needed basis. So far, the Windows 11 upgrade tool tells me that my computer lacks TPM and this makes me ineligible to upgrade. I’m not an expert at TPM knowledge, however the BIOS of my ASUS X570 tells me that fTPM is enabled and has been by default so apparently this version does not qualify for Microsoft’s upcoming OS.

Microsoft has a history of caving in to user demands when they’ve tried to force them down a specific path and I’m wondering if you know or believe that they will back off on this specific requirement or perhaps create a fork of Windows 11 that will operate on modern hardware that simply lacks full compatibility with TPM?

I can only speculate here, but based on experience and the past, yes, I do expect Microsoft to cave on two of its hardware requirements. I expect it to relax the TPM requirement to version 1.2, while recommending TPM 2.0, and I expect it to allow those with 7th-generation Intel Core processors (or the ARM equivalent) to upgrade. I also expect there to be workarounds to both requirements, so you may be fine either way.

What bugs me now is that Microsoft clearly knew these things would cause an uproar, and I now feel like this was calculated to see what they could get away with. For example, if the uproar over the 7th-gen processor thing wasn’t as bad as that over TPM 2.0, they would just stick with 8th-gen or newer. So I hope there’s enough of an outcry to fix both of these issues (not to mention that Windows 10 Home Internet/MSA requirement mentioned above).

SMB

chrishilton1 asks:

Hi Paul, in the light of the Print Nightmare bug, I thought I’d mention here another bug in Windows that exists today on fully patched systems, and exists even in Windows 11. It’s called SMB v1.0, and it is full of vulnerabilities, and is the main culprit that allows Ransomware to propagate. If readers have Windows Servers, remove this ‘feature’ of Windows if it is not needed. Many older applications enable this on installation and leave Windows machines open to Ransomware.

As I read this, I actually said “Ha! Exactly” out loud, so that might be my best response to this. This feels like something Windows should be able to block.

Windows 11 SKUs

north of 49th asks:

Paul, is there any concrete information on what the differences between Windows 11 Home and Pro will be?

There are rumors about SKU changes, but to date, Windows 11 SKUs map exactly to those in Windows 10. And while I’ve not seen an official comparison of Windows 11 Home to Pro, Microsoft has indicated that at least some of the differences—like BitLocker support—are the same. So for now, at least, nothing has changed. But it’s possible they have plans to make changes we’ve not seen yet.

When you are testing Windows 11 as an insider, is it the Home version?

Because Windows 11 is only officially available as an upgrade, you will get whatever version is on your PC. So if you’re using Windows 10 Pro and upgrade to Windows 11, you will get Windows 11 Pro.