Ask Paul: January 28 (Premium)

With my trip to Mexico winding down, here’s a new round of great reader questions to kick off our last weekend here a bit early.
Android apps on Windows 11
ggolcher asks:

Now that Microsoft is making the preview of Android App support on Windows 11 more broadly available, I was able to finally try it in the Release Preview ring. To my disappointment, I noticed that the offering of apps and games doesn't seem to have meaningfully improved at all since it was first made available in the Dev channel. Ultimately, I found nothing of value to me and suspect that'll be the case for many others.

After the simpler, more elegant user interface, Android app compatibility is the biggest change that Microsoft promised for Windows 11. But as you’ve noticed, the reality of this implementation has yet to match the promises.

When Microsoft first made Android app compatibility available to Insiders back in October, I immediately tested it to see how well it worked and was likewise disappointed. At least at that point, the experience was not at all seamless, and it basically required(s) you to download an Amazon Appstore for Android app from the Microsoft Store and then use the former to install and manage Android apps. (It wasn’t the “store within a store” that Microsoft promised.)

Worse, the app selection was both small---50 apps total---and largely of little interest. Most of the apps were games, and I only found 5 apps in the lot that were of any interest: Yahoo Mail, United Airlines, Kindle for Android, Alaska Airlines, and The Washington Post. I haven’t yet tried the presumably updated version that’s available in Release Preview, but my understanding is that there are now fewer apps, not more. Ugh.

Do you think Microsoft will be able to make this feature more compelling or will it become the next Windows Store?

It feels cynical, but it’s fair to point out that most of what we’ve gotten so far with Windows 11 is disappointing in the sense that it falls short of the initial promises. And that, so far at least, the Android stuff is falling in line with that. I’ve long felt that we won’t get the “real” 1.0 release of Windows 11 until the first feature update. But since this feature is going to be part of that, it needs to be a better experience than what we now see. Will it be better? That’s anyone’s guess. But it has to be.

Now that this trip is winding down, I’ll put this PC into the Release Preview channel and check it out again. My expectations are low.
GSuite changes
brothernod asks:

Having had GSuite host my vanity domain for over a decade, I realize I don't understand the terminology of modern email hosting options (aliases?). Now that Google seems to be snubbing their free-tier G-Suite users and trying to charge them business rates, I and many others find themselves forced to find a new solution if they'd like to keep email/calendar tied to their own domain.

A couple of things here.

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