Ask Paul: March 29 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Welcome to the last Ask Paul for March. It's another great set of reader questions, but I also have a question for you!

So let's start with that.
Some questions for you
I was going to post this last week, but that installment of Ask Paul went super-long, so I didn't want it to get lost in the mix. But now that I'm home for a few months, I wanted to start expanding on some of the ideas we've discussed vaguely in the past and see what the interest is.

For example, I write a series of What I Use posts because this kind of thing is very interesting (and to me as well; I'm always interested in what other people use and do in the course of working with technology. This can be for work/productivity or personal/entertainment. So I'm curious what you all think about a series like What You Use (or whatever) in which individual readers either provide that type of list/post. Or, something topic-based where multiple-readers could contribute individual product/solutions (like What Web Browsers You Use or whatever). I would of course edit these (or, in the latter case, write these) for you.

Also, I recently did a series of tips videos with Chris Hoffman, who writes the Windows Intelligence newsletter. I'd love to have readers contribute individual tips like that, either via video or text, and I could create a short screen capture video as needed, like with those videos. That could be fun.

And I'd like to figure out some form of more direct interaction. This could be 1:1 videos in which individual readers and I discuss whatever topic, but also perhaps group video meet-ups.

Whatever form(s) this takes, it's something I (and before it was me, we) have wanted to do for some time. George and I used to talk about integrating the forums feed into the main/news feed, for example, but couldn't figure out a way to make that make sense. But I think making Thurrott.com more interactive could be fun for all of us. And starting with, or keeping it exclusive to, Thurrott Premium makes plenty of sense.

So, please, if you don't mind, let me know what you think of any of that. And if you have other ideas, I'm listening.

Thanks!

Paul
App store fees
vernonlvincent asks:

Regarding the Apple antitrust suit - a substantial number of people, including technology reporters, compare what Apple does with its 30% fee and app store policies with similar behavior on the console side. That seems like a false equivalence to me as the market of people who own or buy smartphones is not the same as those who buy consoles (even though there ls likely some overlap).

Is this a fair comparison?

No, it's not.

Worse, anyone who writes such a thing—regardless of their background or vocation—is only communicating that they do not understand antitrust.

There are two important differences between the smartphone and video game console markets, at least from an antitrust perspective.

The first is the business model: Consoles are explicit...