Ask Paul: December 17 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another great set of reader questions to usher in an early start to the last weekend before the Christmas holidays.
Quick follow-up on Wirecutter alternatives
Two weeks ago, zahrobsky asked me about alternatives to The Wirecutter, which is now behind a paywall. I was not aware of any free alternative to this publication, but I still recommend it, and I pay for it myself. And while I still haven’t found anything quite like it, I did come across a publication that is sort of---not really, but sort---like The Wirecutter that may be of interest. To be clear, this isn’t as trustworthy or clinical, and it’s not based not on in-depth testing of multiple options per se but rather on enthusiast/influencer recommendations. In other words what they use themselves. It’s called The Strategist, and it appears to be owned by The New Yorker (or perhaps the conglomerate that also owns The New Yorker). Their electronics section is at least interesting. It’s likely that many of the things they discuss were given to the author by the company that makes them specifically to get coverage, but at least some of the articles involve long-term usage, etc. It’s … something.

But yeah, The Wirecutter is much better and on a whole different level.
The future of OneNote
jeroendegrebber asks

Is there any news on the future of OneNote? A while back you reported about Microsoft planning to stop with OneNote for Windows 10, etc but little seems to have happened. Do you have any insight in this?

There’s no new news that I’m aware of, but looking at the last update, from August, it appears that the desktop OneNote client will receive a “series of updates over the next 12 months,” so through August 2022. And that “these updates include a visual refresh [which I assume will resemble the visual refresh the core Office apps just received], the latest Microsoft pen and ink advancements, a new navigational UI layout option that can flex for customer preferences, and more.”

As for OneNote for Windows 10, it will continue to ship in Windows 10, and it can be downloaded from the Store in Windows 11, but it will not receive any new features. Those are all happening---or will happen--in the desktop client.

But there’s another hint from that August missive about the timeframe. I wrote that “sometime in the second half of 2022, Microsoft will begin alerting OneNote for Windows 10 users that it’s time to move over to the revamped desktop client. That suggests that it won’t complete this transition until late 2022 or early 2023, which is a surprisingly long time.”

So 2022 might be the year when we finally start seeing these changes to the desktop client.
Microsoft in 2022
spacecamel asks:

I have seen more stories about what Apple may or may not start selling next year but I have not seen any previews for Microsoft.

Well, sure. Apple is primarily a hardware company and its coming updates always leak, pr...