Ask Paul: April 26 (Premium)

It's Suntory time! By which I mean, Happy Friday! And welcome to another far-reaching set of terrific reader questions. We're all struggling with the same questions these days.
Tick tock, tick tock
JustMe asks:

With the potential shutdown/mandated selling of TikTok looming, what do you see as the potential outcome? If it is sold, who would be in the running to buy it? If it is simply shutdown, is there a competitor out there today that could possibly fill the void?

I don't think it's worth speculating about a potential buyer, since this order is unprecedented and almost certainly illegal. And it will be contested in court by many parties. ByteDance has said repeatedly that it hasn't even considered this option.

The politics in this country are an ongoing embarrassment that I really struggle with. Imagine the outrage if any one country dictated that Microsoft had to sell Windows to some other non-U.S. country so that that country would own and then maintain, license, and support this product everywhere in the world going forward. It's not just fantasy, it's ludicrous.

We have antitrust laws for a reason, and they work. If TikTok is violating those laws, charge them, go to trial, and make them fix it if you win. You don't take the ball away like a spoiled child with bad parents who always gets their way.
A living will for Windows
JustMe asks:

With the impending end of life of Windows 10 and 12 on the horizon, how do you think Microsoft plays this? Do they release Windows 12 early to encourage switchers, or do they delay the 12 release to get as many users as possible on 11 (possibly lowering OS requirements) before they roll out 12?

Without knowing whether there will even be a Windows 12 in the near term—this was Microsoft's plan until more logical people in the company successfully argued that yet another product name/version would just confuse customers—I suspect Microsoft will do what it has always done in this situation and evaluate where the user base is at, what enterprise customers have told them they will do and when, and then either push back the Windows 10 end of support date or not.

In the past, they did this with Windows XP (twice) but not with Windows 7, and since those are the only comparable versions from a usage perspective, that's good data. Windows XP was a special case, but with Windows 7, Microsoft had a viable alternative in Windows 10, and so it didn't need to extend (free) support. So I feel like Windows 10 parallels that version more clearly.

That said, Windows 10 is still being used by a bigger percentage of the user base now than was Windows 7 at a similar point in its life cycle. And if Microsoft gets enough pushback, it will delay the end of support. Microsoft may or may not want to do what its customers demand, but this market is too important to ignore.

All that said, my guess is that Microsoft will end free support for Windows 10 in October 2025 as planned. And that once we ge...