Ask Paul: December 5 ⭐

Happy Friday! As we settle into the darkness and coldness of winter, it’s a good time to grab something warm to drink in front of the fire and watch me fumble my way through some great reader questions.

? Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate

LawrenceG asks:

How is the Pixel 10 Pro Fold ownership so far? How do you like it? It will replace a Kindle, an IPAD? How is to keep it in your pocket? How is to talk on it without buds\headphones? You will keep it or return it? Thank you.

I’m probably overdue on a follow-up there, sorry. And while I don’t want to completely stomp all over whatever I do write about this, let alone the review, it’s definitely worth an update.

I am keeping the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, for sure.

Whether it becomes my day-to-day phone will depend in part on my wife, who is also itching to give it a shot, and I figure she should use it for at least a month or so as well. So we’ll see when that happens, but I’d like to get my review out first.

The experience is mostly positive overall. The key here, I think, is that it has to work as well as a standard slab smartphone for those use cases, and also as well as a mini-tablet, like a Kindle or iPad. But there’s also that third more nebulous set of use cases, which are “things that I just couldn’t do before with a normal phone but appreciate having now.” Those things are tied to being able to switch from the outside display to the larger internal display as needs/wants dictate, and I think that’s important. If I just used it like a phone most of the time but only opened it up to, say, read or whatever, then I’m not sure any folding phone justifies the expense.

Stepping through all that, it works fine as a mini-tablet with two caveats. One is Android, sadly, and the quality (and in some cases, availability) of apps there compared to iOS/iPadOS. And the other is personal, given my eyesight, which is just that I’m used to a larger tablet and, as I found when I used an iPad Mini for several months this past year, I find the mini-tablet form factor a bit too small.

Tied to this, I have since gotten used to using my current iPad (an 11-inch Air) in landscape mode as it’s always in the Magic Keyboard. I had previously only used tablets in portrait mode when possible. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold doesn’t really have portrait and landscape modes when you open the internal screen as it’s roughly square, so that has sort of worked out in that it’s not super-different from what I’m used to.

But because of the Magic Keyboard, I’ve likewise gotten used to using the iPad like a laptop, where I navigate semi-exclusively with the touchpad and rarely touch the screen. This is oddly comforting and obviously familiar, but I think this may be related to me preferring computers over devices for whatever reasons. So making it more like a computer is better for me. With the Fold, I can prop it up on a Pixelsnap Ring Stand or whatever, and do. But I have to touch the screen to navigate, and since that happens more than I expected (having never really thought about it), I just started using it “normally,” like anyone would. Meaning, I pick the thing up and hold it in my hands while I read. Which is absolutely fine, it’s just that I had gotten out of the habit.

This reminds me of the original iPad announcement when Steve Jobs, about 10 minutes in, walked over to a chair on-stage, sat down, and picked up the device. “Using this thing is remarkable,” he said. “It’s so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smartphone.” The latter is not really true these days, but it’s fair to say that this kind of touch-first interaction is different from interacting with a laptop (or whatever device) through a physical keyboard and touchpad. And roughly the same as the way we interact with phones, the difference being that you’re using two hands for the most part.

This is good and bad, but the good bit for me is that it semi-forces me to bring the thing closer to me, and that helps the screen feel bigger than it is. If that makes sense.

From a portability perspective, the Fold is thicker than a Pixel 10 Pro XL, but not by much, and the overall dimensions are actually smaller. It’s heavier, as well, and has that kind of density to it. Plus the case adds a bit. But it’s not bad, and I don’t have issues carrying it around in a pocket at all. Though I do like to keep the Pixelsnap Ring Stand attached and that adds weight and thickness too.

The battery life has been surprisingly good. It’s almost too easy to charge MagSafe/Pixelsnap devices in my home now because I have so many wireless chargers everywhere suddenly. But forcing myself to leave it alone, it’s clear this will last into a second day as long as I’m not out in the world using it for photos or whatever.

I haven’t done an interactive meeting with it yet, but I will. What I have done is a thing I’ve taken to doing with the iPad over the past several months (tied to the Magic Keyboard thing) where I will sign into a presentation from whatever company so that they can discuss whatever product release with a group. That’s works very well, as you might expect, and I just play the audio through the built-in speakers. But I would likely wear earbuds if I were going to speak or interact with others.

In short, it’s been good so far. I haven’t landed on that one (or whatever number) of additive experiences yet, but that’s mostly because I’ve not gone out much since we’ve been home, and this past week in particular, I’ve been sick. (I literally didn’t leave the house for 7 days straight dating back to Thanksgiving day.) But this is something I am curious about and will test, using the internal display (or not) while taking photos, using Maps, and so on. That said, I do like how you can be reading an article on the outside display normally and you open it up and that app just moves to the bigger inside display. That I have done many times.

? Home insecurity

agilefrog asks:

Hi Paul – You briefly mentioned in a couple of home related posts that you use home security systems. I’m thinking of upgrading my decades old home system for something more connected, with the aim of monitoring the home from a distance. Any views on the Ring/Blink offerings, or any other suggestions you can offer?

As with the above, this is something I’ve been meaning to write about, so please stop reading my mind. 🙂

But seriously, I have been looking into smart home tech again thanks to a variety of changes, including the new Google Home, some improvements to the Matter standard, the recent IKEA announcement, and so on. This started when we were still in Mexico, you may recall I picked up a Google TV Streamer on sale back in October, and seeing how the smart home features had evolved was a big part of that.

Related to that, I had ordered two phones, the iPhone 17 Pro Max and Pixel 10 Pro Fold, towards the end of that trip, and while the latter was delivered without any issues, there was some confusion about the iPhone, so I had asked my sister and/or brother-in-law to run over to our place and see if the box was still sitting out there. And my brother-in-law, who works in the lighting business, commented on our lack of lighting, prompting further rethinking about what it is I could/should do given that we have two small places, either one of which is unoccupied for months at a time.

I don’t remember what I said or wrote about home security recently, but the best security we have in both places is our neighbors. In both cases, we have friends right next to us (and across from us in PA) that are always home and always keeping an eye out. And they’ve been terrific for collecting mail, meeting UPS and FedEx drivers and signing for packages as needed, and we had a mountain of packages and mail waiting for us on the dining room table here when we got home last month.

Both places have security systems of some kind as well. The place in Mexico City has a human security guard out front 24/7 and you can’t get in the building without him letting you in or by using your own fob. And the place here is part of a 55+ community that has a centralized security system that we don’t use when we’re there but enable when we’re gone. So there is some oversight, not of the smart home variety.

I only own a single security/smart camera right now, in Mexico, but it’s not for security, it’s pointed due west from our balcony and is just used so we can see the view when we’re gone. That camera is a Blink Outdoor 4 camera with an add-on battery pack. It’s fine, it’s only 1080p and it has some serious warping at the edges, and now I am thinking about upgrading. But the question is whether I stick with Blink or move to whatever Nest Cam. Both now have 2K/2K+ camera options, but this is all locked up in whatever I do with regard to smart home ecosystems.

I will be writing about this soon, but for now I’m comparing Apple Home and Google Home, and I am thinking about Home Assistant, though there are some additional hurdles there. I want whatever I use to be Matter compatible and to work with any/all of these ecosystems. I’ve added my existing Hue lights to each (Apple/Google) and am experimenting with those. I also grabbed some smart plugs so I can have a sort-of “proof of life” from the outside in that I can have lamps be on when we’re not there. And I am going to speak to my brother-in-law about what he recommends for doing the same for the exterior lights. Though just throwing Hue lights out there should do the trick, I guess.

I feel like Blink or Nest should be fine, and the trick with each will be figuring out if you need/want the subscriptions for video recording history. I get the Nest stuff (now Google Home Premium) as part of my Google One subscription, so that would be fine for me, I guess. But Blink Basic is not expensive, it’s like $30 per year.

I don’t personally want a camera outside of either place, but I could see putting one up in PA if only to monitor the outside lights when we’re gone and make sure that’s all working as expected.

Anyway, I will write something more formal about this soon.

?️ An affinity for change

ChrisG101 asks:

How are you getting on with Affinity 3.0 Studio? I am a paid user to the 2.0 suite and have been holding out from upgrading in case I lost a feature. Does it work having all 3 apps in one? Thanks!

It’s mostly fine and works as before. It has a sort of mode switcher, but I stick to Pixel mode, which is basically the old Photos app, most of the time. Aside from some small cosmetic changes (like the icons in the docked vertical toolbar on the left), it’s pretty much the same app.

The one thing I have noticed and can’t say that I like is that some of the keyboard shortcuts have changed. Affinity has always emulated Photoshop, which made it easier to switch whenever I did that. And so there are now-familiar shortcuts, like Ctrl + Alt + I for resizing the image, that are basically muscle memory now. That one still works, but I usually go to export in the next step, and the keyboard sequence there, Alt + F, followed by E, doesn’t work anymore. I had to look this up, but the actual keyboard shortcut, Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S, has not changed. It’s just that Affinity 3 moved Export to a submenu and it doesn’t support what I’ll call keyboard accelerators, so that keyboard sequence does not work. Typing Alt + F and then E does nothing.

This was such a huge blocker for me that I went into Settings > Shortcuts and create a new shortcut, Ctrl + E, that I use to open the Export window. And that works great, so much so that I prefer it to the old system. The problem there, however, is that the Export window is completely different now, and all my little keyboard-based actions no longer work. I used to be able to:

• Tap “J” to set the output file type to JPEG if it was something different (or “P” for PNG)
• Tap Enter to just export immediately
• Tap TAB twice and then type a number for the export image width (we use 1066 on Thurrott.com), TAB again to lock the aspect ratio auto-sizing, and/or TAB once more to change the export image height (600)

None of that works now, none of it. And that is frustrating. In the new Export window, instead of a dropdown for file types, the selected control is a search box. I usually do export to JPEG, so I can select that and it’s good going forward. But tabbing over to the export image with field is difficult because you can’t visually tell which control is selected. The old aspect ratio lock toggle is a new-style toggle button. And the Export button is no longer the default action. So I can’t just tap Enter and export. Arrggh.

So the way I export now, assuming I have no changes to make during the process, is to type Ctrl + E and then (God help me) I tap Shift + Tab three times to select the Export button, and then I tap Enter to export. It “works.” But I am not happy about this.

That’s just a tiny corner of this app, but it’s the part I use all day long every day, and it hasn’t been great. Functionally, the app seems to just work, and there’s no reason to not just install it and use it side-by-side with Affinity Photo 2.x and see how it goes. But I hope feedback triggers some updates here to address this kind of thing. This is all rote muscle memory stuff for me and it’s not working the same, and it makes me crazy.

? Things that will never make sense to me, part 127

train_wreck asks:

Thoughts on the Gelsinger interview?

He’s referring to a good interview with former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger that appeared recently in the Financial Times, in case you didn’t see the forum post about this. This was timed to the one year anniversary of his unexpected and undeserved ouster from the company, which I have always viewed poorly. But this is complicated, for all kinds of reasons, and this interview kind of adds to the complications.

It’s worth reading.

But the one thing I do take exception to is a bit of history rewriting in which the current CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, is allegedly just following Gelsinger’s strategy to the letter, which naturally leads to questions about why Gelsinger was ousted in the first place. That is what it felt like a year ago, before Tan was hired, but you can see how Tan has moved aggressively to split up Intel to stop the hemorrhaging of cash, and that was something Gelsinger never did.

If anything, Gelsinger’s bet was that Intel could remain whole and that there would be a future in which the company could somehow have it both ways, designing its own chips while building chips for competitors. This never really made sense, and still doesn’t, and if Intel has a future of any kind, it’s clearly the chip making that holds the most promise. But that has to be a separate company from the chip design company we think of as Intel today.

Beyond that, Gelsinger is a clearly a good man, and he has a rich history at Intel. The religious stuff is borderline sad to me, he’s too smart for that, but I can accept and even respect it when it’s not in my face and doesn’t get overly-specific. That I knew about, but there are some new and interesting tidbits in there.

• Gelsinger was the subject of a terrible Steve Jobs barb in the 1990s during a disagreement over USB. Gelsinger wanted USB, Jobs wanted something else, Intel went with Gelsinger and USB. Nice.
• Wall Street analysts apparently didn’t like the guy, which might have played a role in his ouster. (TSMC’s unnamed founder didn’t like him either, go figure, and there are other references to him being difficult to deal with.) To be fair, he always predicted that success was right around the corner, and it never came. It still hasn’t.
• I had made the point before that Gelsinger may have been a victim of arriving too late to save the victim, like Stephen Elop at Nokia. He seems to agree with that, noting that the “decay [at Intel] was deeper and harder” than he had realized.
• I am not a fan of the U.S. government’s “investment” in Intel since the company was owed that money already. I knew that Gelsinger played a major role, maybe the role, in getting the CHIPS Act passed, but the previous presidential administration never dispensed even a cent of the $11 billion Intel was promised in over 2.5 years. It’s unclear what might have changed for Intel had that just happened as expected, but it clearly harmed Gelsinger and the company.
• His take on the current state of Big Tech and what could happen to each company is interesting. But his remarks about the OpenAI and Microsoft relationship are incredible: “Essentially, [OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman is doing to Microsoft what Bill Gates did to IBM,” Gelsinger said, referring to how Gates made sure that Microsoft owned the intellectual property behind MS-DOS and only licensed it to IBM; Microsoft was tiny when this partnership started but powered past IBM by the 1990s. “The analogy is stunning.” It really is. This might be the most insightful comment in the entire industry.

The thing is, I really do like the guy. And while we will never know what might have happened had he stayed, Intel is still frail and in need of help. It has no major customers for its chip fabrication business and it’s losing marketshare in the PC industry every day. Lip-Bu Tan might have bought Intel some time. But I don’t think the fundamentals have changed, just the timing for the inevitable collapse. Which either will or will not be bailed out by the government. We’ll see.