Ask Paul: March 21 (Premium)

Happy Friday! And happy first day of Spring, which I feel compelled to mention I’ve been enjoying since mid-January when we arrived in Mexico City. But no matter. We’re all on the same train now, so let’s kick off the weekend, and Spring, with another great set of reader questions.

? Digital decluttering detox

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Not to bring back a PTSD flashback, but when you were doing your digital decluttering, did you fix the date taken for scanned photos or did you just file them in year-month-day(?) folders. I did go back and read through the articles, but may have missed that.

Yes. That, to me, is the minimum: Each photo has to have some “Date taken” meta-data value. Nothing is ever 100 percent perfect, and as you move the photos from place to place (different services, but sometimes even just different drives or PCs), some things get lost. For that reason, I also store photos hierarchically, at least where I can, and certainly in the “master” copy. (Which I realize is not a great term these days, but I can’t think of a better way to say it that succinctly.)

We have begun decluttering the room of mysteries in the basement and it appears that I have a lot of scanning to do. Luckily, a lot of the photos are pristine so I have that going for me. Only tool I have found to change date taken is exiftool. We also have a batch of VHS and Hi-8 home videos that I will need to do, and at least 15 carousels of slides, so a busy time.

The way my brain works is that when I am doing this type of work, I get really good at it and can optimize it so that it goes as quickly/efficiently as possible. But then when I’m done, it’s out of my brain. So I have to go back and, in this case, re-read what I wrote to remind myself what it is that I did. The photo decluttering stuff was difficult and there was a lot to do, and so it happened in spurts over the years and then finally all came together. Now, it’s kind of in maintenance mode: Most of it is “done,” but there are still some scanned images in folders I have to finish up. And each year, I will be taking the previous year’s photos and applying the consolidation and organization work I had done previously to them to make it consistent/clean or whatever.

I think the article Digital Decluttering: Tagging, Deduping, and Replicating the Photo Collection (Premium) is the most pertinent here. But the short version is that I found a few tools useful for this process–which is about renaming and organizing photo files and then dealing with those without “Date taken” meta-data–but eventually settled on Bulk Rename Utility (BRU) for deduplicating and consolidating, and then just used File Explorer for the meta-data. This was most problematic for the oldest photos–pre-digital photo scans–but now that I’m just cleaning up new photos, this is not a big issue anymore.

Regarding videos, I did do that work as well. Most of my home videos (pre-smartphones) are fairly low quality, but I did re-encode those for which I still had the physical tapes, just to make sure I could get the best possible results. There are no shortcuts with video, but the act of just recording off a tape isn’t hard if you have the right hardware. It just takes that amount of time, and then you can leave it in raw form or not, and then post it to YouTube and/or back it up in whatever ways.

Just wondering if you have any recommendations regarding how retentive to be about the process.

You could turn this into a non-paying career if you let it, and if you’re as compulsive as I am, that can be a problem. The first thing to do is just figure out what you’re comfortable with. For some, that will simply be actually scanning photos, either all of them or just the most important.

The next step up is trying to identify dates and then perhaps just naming the scans accordingly. And then organizing them in date-based folders or whatever hierarchy. And then using apps like the ones I used to maybe help automate that. And/or literally make sure some/all of those files have the correct meta-data. I kind of did all that, but maybe that’s too much time/effort for others. Or they’re just comfortable with whatever level of completion there.

Doing the work is time-consuming and frustrating, and I think that’s true, no matter which route you choose. Some (many?) won’t see the value in it. Keeping up with it going forward requires a bit of maintenance work. But storing this work in different places, geographically and across services, is important. I am using multiple services and a NAS. To me, photos are important. It’s arguably the most important data I have. But again, where that falls for you may be different. Don’t waste time if there’s no point to it.

Ultimately, this is work. We may be on the cusp of AI making all this easier in various ways, and maybe that can help you as well. I didn’t have anything like that just a year or two ago, for sure.

? Display matters

iantrem asks:

Hi Paul, You’ve discussed screen aspect ratios on laptops in the past especially when Surface came out and started a move away from 16:9 everywhere. Have you seen the BenQ desktop monitors that offer a 3:2 aspect ratio for “Programmers”? Desktop monitors don’t seem to have been affected by the change in habits on laptops, might this be about to change?

I wasn’t aware of the BenQ desktop monitor you mention, but I’ve come to believe that displays are similar to that “Right tool for job” thing, meaning in this case that different devices have different display needs. Like many who latched onto Surface and its 3:2 displays for whatever reasons, I always wanted Microsoft to make a standalone 3:2 display. But now I realize why that would have been dumb, beyond the single use case of someone would who use an external display by itself–without the Surface PC’s internal display in a dual-display set up–in which case, by not having scaling/resizing and window/icon/whatever UI placement problems when moving between docked and non-docked usage.

More specifically, the industry move to 16:9 displays everywhere–TVs, external monitors, laptops, etc.–was a mistake. Each device is best served by a different type of display. Some of this is obvious, but some is less so. Even on TVs, for example, it’s not like there’s a single aspect ratio for contents, TV shows and movies, especially, are all over the place. And now we’re in an era of people taking videos and photos in portrait mode, further exacerbating that problem. Some people prefer whatever video to fill the screen, some prefer the native aspect ratio regardless of the display, and some like that kind of middle ground most players support, a sort of “fill in one direction” thing where it perhaps fills horizontally, leaving black bars on the sides. Or whatever.

Anyway. For laptops, squarer displays–16:10, 4:3, 3:2, or whatever, though the latter two are rare now–are “better” in general because most people simply use a single app at a time, often full-screen, because of the relative smallness of these displays.

For desktops or whatever external displays, being able to run two apps side-by-side becomes more important because the displays are bigger, often much bigger. And so 16:9 is still the standard there. 16:9 is optimal for two side-by-side apps that one might run full-screen on a smaller, squarer display. Interestingly, half a 16:9 display is taller than it is wide, so not quite square. It’s 16:18. But that kind of thing is often ideal for document-based apps–web browsers, word processors, etc.–so it’s good for typical side-by-side usage.

This may be why ultra-wide monitors are popular with developers and other power-users. Depending on the resolution, you could have three or more square or slightly tall apps all displayed side-by-side. Such a thing can replace a multi-monitor setup for many.

I really like the Surface Laptop’s 3:2 display. But the move to 16:10 aspect ratio displays was the right choice, the right compromise, I guess. And I don’t really miss 3:2 when I use a 16:10 display. Every laptop I review now pretty much has a 16:10 display, and it’s all good. The only preference there, for me, is literally size. As I get older, I prefer (and, to be efficient, maybe even require) larger displays. So a 16-inch display is, to me, ideal right now. (The Surface Laptop and MacBook Air M3 I have both fall short of that a bit, but are close enough.)

But it depends on what you’re doing, too. I mostly write and read on laptops, I guess. But if I were using Excel all the time, or even PowerPoint (which still defaults to 16:9 because of the standard output everywhere), a wider aspect ratio screen would be desirable. That’s getting hard to find in the laptop space, but I suspect that the heaviest users of these apps–video creators, too–will more commonly gravitate to docked configurations (or just desktop PCs when at work).

I guess I don’t see desktop displays changing broadly from an aspect ratio perspective anytime soon. But there will be alternatives for those who want them, especially those ultra-wide displays.

? I’m more of a Mexican’t

Anlong08 asks:

When you are back in Pennsylvania do you seek out Mexican food? Do you have a population of Mexican or Latino people to support the demand for authentic (for lack of a better word) food? The kind of restaurant where broken English is the second language.

Regardless of where we’ve lived (Boston area/Pennsylvania most recently), and regardless of our current time in Mexico, we’ve always sought out authentic ethnic (for lack of a better term) foods. Each place has something along those lines.

When we lived in Boston, we would go into the city, especially East Boston, for Puerto Rican, Columbian, or whatever Latino-type foods. There are large populations of these groups there, and my brother, whose married to a woman from the Dominican Republic, has long been a good source for the best places to go.

But it’s not that. Boston, like many US cities, has a so-called Chinatown area (as does Mexico City, go figure) with various Asian restaurants and stores. We used to make our own sushi and would shop at H-Mart, an enormous Asian supermarket and store, for all the ingredients. We still make Chinese hot pot at home regularly, and now we go to a little mom-and-pop shop in Allentown for that. We used to go into Chinatown to eat, and the goal was to find a restaurant with no English on the menu. One time, I tried to order a whole fish that was being served to an Asian group at another table and was denied: My body would reject that food, I was told, and I would get sick.

We’ve always been fans of Indian food. My dad lived in London for almost a decade and that was always a great place for Indian, and still is. But the best Indian food I’ve ever had is in Easton, PA, about 30 minutes from where we live. This is a regular go-to when we’re there, and I miss it now. (A new Indian place opened up down the street from us here in Mexico City and we tried it immediately. It was only OK.)

I’ve lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Phoenix, Arizona, so I’m no stranger to what I’ll call “real” or “good” Mexican food. And I still miss the unique style of Mexican food we had in New Mexico, with sopaipillas that can be used for a meal (filled with meat) or as a dessert (with butter and honey). I recall the first time I went to McDonald’s in Albuquerque and being asked if I wanted red or green chili with my hamburger. (I wanted neither.)

Mexico City is the Paris of Mexico, meaning it’s the center of the country, and the capital, and it gets everything good from every part of the country, and so we have this incredible range of regional foods here. We are working our way through the different types of moles, which are sauces that are the meal (as opposed to salsas, which are sauces you add to a meal). And that’s a lifetime of exploration. We have our favorites for now. And that changes as we experience more.

To your question, Allentown, which is right next to us in Pennsylvania (and much closer than Easton) has big Latino and Asian populations of all kinds, and so, yes, there are great options there for both restaurants and markets. We don’t seek out Mexican food that much when we are home per se, and many of the restaurants there are what I’ll call “American Mexican restaurants,” meaning they have all the food Americans think is Mexican but aren’t. (Burritos, hard-shelled tacos, chimichangas, etc. are basically not available here, and even flour tortillas are quite uncommon.) That said, there is an incredibly authentic Mexican restaurant near us that has aguas frescas as good as anything we get in CDMX, and proper Mexican tacos. We’ll go there when we’re home for a bit too long and miss it. But not regularly.

More typically, when we’re home, we go to those places that are unique to the area and special to us. And, as noted, I do miss some of those places when we’re in Mexico for a long time. There are also just goofy things I happen to like but miss, like fried chicken, and this came up the other day and I was sort of focusing on it, trying to figure out a place nearby where maybe I could get some decent fried chicken. But we went to our local sushi place last night, and Thursdays are ramen night, and they coincidentally made a fried chicken ramen, so I got some of that, sans the ramen. (I was told I could get it with a salad and responded, “Nobody wants a salad, Carla,” and she laughed and agreed with me, and I got just the chicken.)

I guess the short answer–sorry–is that we don’t specifically seek out Mexican food in PA. But we do care very much about “ethnic” food generally–again, not a great word–and seek it out wherever we are.

And yes, we have eaten several times in Mexico City’s Chinatown, the Barrio Chino near Centro, and it’s a weird thing that I prefer that Chinese food to what I can get in PA. It’s more like what I grew up with, and American Chinese food isn’t just not “real” Chinese food (as with American Mexican food), it’s also regional, and different in different parts of the US. I miss the Chinese food from Boston. (Maybe I should write that as “Chinese” food.) But what we have here is the closest I’ve found. Which is weird.

Now I want Chinese food. 🙂

? Money, money, money, always sunny

jrzoomer asks:

Paul always curious what is your approach during earnings season. You seem to have a really good grasp on things after Microsoft, Google, Qualcomm etc come out with earnings. And occasionally you do go in depth with your analysis on Microsoft. Do you read the press release, or read the actual 10-qs, listen to conference call, or read articles from financial journals?

I do all that, though I mostly read earnings conference call transcripts now (as opposed to listening), as listening is time-consuming and inefficient; you can search for terms with the transcript, etc. I’m a big reader of industry books, and I’ve recently started going back and re-reading many older books about Microsoft, some of which are available only in paper form still. (For example, I purchased the book Hard Drive in paperback here in Mexico City during this trip.)

A few years back, I was amused when another blogger boasted about how they read Microsoft’s 10-Q filings because that’s where the “real” data was. I was like, um. I’ve been doing that, and more, for many years. It’s just part of the picture. (And is now much less useful due to ongoing reductions in transparency.)

At this point, a lot of it is just built-up experience. I’ve been doing this for so long that I have whatever perspective. But when it comes to Microsoft earnings, this is my focus, so I go more in-depth than I do with other companies, and I almost always write a longer analysis piece. These are always “biased”–focused, I guess–in the sense that I am most interested in what the company is doing for individuals, not big businesses. But the cloud era required attention, and now the AI era requires even more. At least there’s overlap with my interest now. And in some cases, these things can take on a life of their own. For example, when I started writing about the most recent Microsoft quarter, my intention was to cover it normally, but I went down such an AI rabbit hole that that became the focus.

I don’t have a template or whatever. It goes where it goes.

I like hard data. That is hard to come by these days. I don’t like to speculate. But you’re often forced to these days. And I like understanding trends. Microsoft (like any company) will cherry-pick what they promote each month, but I’m always curious about what’s really going on. Part of my fascination with Microsoft and AI is the sheer cost of that, and understanding how that gets paid for, and why the company’s shareholders may or may not be OK with that, is interesting to me. The way that Big Tech, generally, is evading regulation (or trying to) via these special backroom deals is interesting to me. (And troubling.) So it evolves over time.

? It’s a rich man’s world

helix2301 asks:

What are your thoughts on Apple losing 1 billion dollars a year on Apple TV+? They can afford to do so, but this does not look good for their service business. Friday night baseball and soccer just not worth it on its own.

I see this differently than most, it seems.

Apple is in the news a lot, generally, but it feels like they’re in the news now for all the wrong reasons. Or at least for negative reasons. Case in point, its failings with a next-generation Siri and/or Apple Intelligence. But I don’t really see this as being as dramatic as everyone is making out. What did Apple promise, exactly? What did they deliver? And what did they delay? If you really look at it, you’ll see this: Apple made a bunch of promises at WWDC last year, and they’ve delivered literally all of it except for conversational Siri, which they’ve delayed from iOS 18.x to iOS 19. And … so what? How is this a big deal?

Another comparison. Everyone is familiar with the Sonosgate fiasco, where the company jammed some horrible app down its customers’ throats and still isn’t done fixing it. But what people forget, ignore, or just don’t know, is that the previous Sonos app was a dumpster fire too. It was terrible. And if you go back to the very first thing I wrote about the app, you’ll find that it’s called The New Sonos App is a Dumpster Fire. Of Course It Is (Premium). And it’s called that because the previous app sucked, and this did not surprise me. (Sonos not fixing this in a timely fashion is another story.) “I’ve always been clear that this company’s mobile app is garbage, the Achilles Heel of its ecosystem.” I wrote at the time.

Siri is the same thing. Siri has always been terrible. Useless. Even “good” assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are/were used only to make timers, set alarms, and start music playing, and then by very few people, relatively speaking. And Siri was never any good. In my case, it only pops up unwanted, usually when I say something that sounds like “Siri.” (Like “Seriously,” which I say once per hour on average, I bet.) Did anyone really expect Apple to miraculously take this lump of crap it had ignored for several years and turn it to gold in a few months? And isn’t it fair to point out that all the people complaining about this setback–whether they’re Apple-loving idiots or anti-Apple idiots–don’t ever use Siri and won’t use it anyway? And what’s the crisis? Will a single customer leave the Apple ecosystem over this? Or will those that actually want to use an AI chatbot just use ChatGPT, Gemini, or whatever else on their Apple devices?

But you asked about Apple TV+.

(Sorry.)

Assuming the one billion figure is correct, I will simply point out that Apple TV+ is part of a broad ecosystem of products and services, that it is in the build-up/investment phase, and that during this phase, Apple must spend money to make it competitive with market leaders like Netflix. And that this investment, which is not really a “loss,” is about keeping customers in that ecosystem, it is one piece of a very big puzzle with many pieces. But the most important point is this: Everything that Apple does is subsidized by iPhone sales and, to a lesser degree, by other hardware sales. This is the richest company on earth, it is doing something right, and its business is sound. And so something like Apple TV+–which is, to paraphrase the movie A Fish Called Wanda, the “smallest freaking province in the Apple empire”–is almost immaterial. As is the $1 billion that Apple “loses” on this investment in the most lucrative customer base on earth.

Tied to this, I’m somewhat amused by opinions that Apple TV+ is somehow better than Netflix or competing service. Apple TV+ is to streaming video what Apple is everywhere else: High quality but a small selection of choices. Netflix is the PC of this world, with far more choices, some of which are as good or better than what Apple offers, but much of which is “crap,” or at least filler. There are some terrific Apple TV+ shows. But there are some terrific shows on every service. And if you had to pick one, and only one, you would be stupid to not pick Netflix. I would hold up Netflix shows like Narcos, Stranger Things, The Crown, The Queen’s Gambit, Wednesday, Mindhunter, Ozark, Orange is the New Black, Lupin, and more to anything on Apple TV. In fact, I think I just listed more shows than Apple has even made. (I kid, but you get the point.)

Apple TV+ is still relatively new. It’s not why you buy into the Apple ecosystem. But it’s very good, if somewhat limited still from a volume of content perspective. So it’s not a standalone hit, I guess. But it doesn’t need to be. Apple is doing great, and the cost of Apple TV+ to Apple is nothing like the investments it’s made in things like automated cars and VisionPro that may never pan out.

To tie this to the AI thing above, Microsoft is investing in AI, obviously. Is it “losing” money on AI? Or just spending money it has in a way that it thinks is best for the business? Apple is likewise investing in all kinds of things, and content is expensive. And one way to make that make sense financially is to be able to subsidize it somewhat through its hardware sales. That’s a luxury Netflix and the rest do not have. (The only company sort of on equal footing there is Amazon, and even they are have added costs for those who don’t want advertising. Well, maybe Disney, though they report streaming media revenues separately, so you can see how well that’s doing on its own.)

Plex is going up with their prices I use Mac Mini and a portable hard drive and we host a lot of our own videos. I know this is a nitch market but still great product and saves us money. I know there is more options but Plex such great product.

I agree. Plex is pretty great, and I appreciate some of the faux outrage I’ve seen over the new pricing. This is the first price hike in, what? Forever? The costs seem reasonable if you need whatever features. And there are free alternatives, notably Jellyfin, that seem quite good too. Watching people freak out over this is troublesome. Yes, we live in an era of enshittification. But we should also be open to paying for services we use and enjoy. I feel like Plex’s best fans already paid for a lifetime Plex Pass. And that those freeloading off the service should consider paying people/companies for their work where appropriate. (For whatever it’s worth, I do use Plex myself, and pretty regularly. I have no plans to move on.)

?Samsung expunged

fordy asks:

Hi Paul, I may have missed this asked elsewhere, but any plans to do more coverage / a review of the S25 Ultra? Cheers.

No, sorry. Though I do like some of the work it’s done with One UI, and the hardware is obviously incredible, I’ve long been on the fence about Samsung. Most because of all the redundant and pointless extra software it builds on top of Android, much of which I feel should come from the platform itself (Android) or its maker (Google). And as good as One UI may be, I prefer Pixel Android by a wide margin. The hardware is good enough, and the designs and software are incredible. Every time I use a Samsung device, I’m reminded of all the things I’m just not OK with.

That said, I would love to run Pixel Android on a Samsung flagship. But these two companies are partners with contrary aims, as is so often the case. (Reference: PC market.) And so that’s not an option.

You never know. I am sometimes inspired to check out Samsung devices. I’m curious about folding phones that can also be used as a tablet, and Samsung is a leader there (as it is in Android smartphones generally). But for now, no. No plans for the current products.

?️ Feeling NASty

kkern asks:

Any further thoughts on your NAS decision?

Oh, I have nothing but thoughts. 🙂

I’ve only written about this once recently, in Online Accounts 2025: Some Early Thoughts About the NAS (Premium), but not much has changed since then from a high level. The plan is still the same. I still need to wait until I get home from Mexico, so May at the earliest, before I can pull the trigger on anything.

But as I do with any big/expensive decision, I do waffle on some specifics. For example, in that article, I discussed why I would probably choose a Synology DS224+ over a DS723+, the latter of which supports much more RAM, SSDs (which I’d use for cache), and eSATA expansion, in part because of costs, and in part because of whatever needs I think I have. But I’ve been leaning toward the DS723+ lately, and we’ll see. I regularly read up on these things and watch YouTube videos–I literally watched several on this topic yesterday–hoping to come to some obvious decision.

I will write more about this, of course, and certainly when I’ve made the decision and am ready to get going on this. But I’m still sorting through my needs and which device makes the most sense. It’s easy to spend money on “what-ifs,” but I’d like to get this one right. Ideally, this is just infrastructure, something there that just works and I don’t need to think about. But to get there, I need to think about it quite a bit. I’m still in that part of the process, I guess.

(I watched a few NAS videos by Lon Seidman, who I had met at a Google event last year. I was actually thinking about reaching out to him on this topic and probably will do so.)