Chris_Kez

Poor Intel, these guys just can't keep it together; what a mess.

From DigiTimes: "Intel has reportedly rescheduled the release of its next-generation Cannon Lake-based processors to the end of 2018, which has already affected notebook brand vendors' new projects and their suppliers, according to sources from the upstream supply chain."

https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170920PD207.html

Saw this post on Medium that presents a fictionalized look back from a near future where Google has collapsed as a result of several trends that are in fact visible right now. Taken together it seems improbable, but a guy can hope can't he?

https://hackernoon.com/how-google-collapsed-b6ffa82198ee

I imagine it was a lot of work to get notifications working in the first place, and I appreciate that, but is there a plan to improve them? What would really be helpful is to actually see the content/text of new replies, in addition to the title of the post/thread. I liked how Disqus did this, with a Notifications page where you would see the title, then your comment, then someone's reply, and you could either "reply" right there or "view in discussion" and jump to that section of the comments.

Every day on this site I see dozens of comments from people who are aghast at the direction Microsoft is going (e.g. UWP, Windows Store, W10S, etc,). Can you please explain in detail what exactly you think Microsoft should do instead?

Who should Microsoft focus on? How big is that segment or segments? Are those segments growing or shrinking, and at what rate?

What should Microsoft offer them? What needs is Microsoft satisfying, and who else is competing to meet those needs?

How should Microsoft monetize its efforts? What is wrong with their current monetization efforts, and how does your suggestion improve upon it?

Based on your suggestions what does success look like for Microsoft in 5 years or 10 years? Based on what you think they should do, will they be larger, smaller or about the same size? Will they be more or less profitable?

What obstacles are there internally and externally that Microsoft would have to overcome in order to enact your plan? How do they overcome those and "sell" this plan to employees and shareholders?

Can we please have an update on notifications? I'd really love to get an alert when someone replies to one of my forum posts or article comments.

After reading through hundreds of comments here and other sites following the Surface Laptop and Windows 10 S event, I am struck by the number of people who either can't understand (or refuse to acknowledge) the fundamental nature of Surface and the point of Windows 10 S.

With regards to Surface, first-- and most clearly-- Surface is premium. From Merriam Webster: "a sum in advance of or in addition to the nominal value of something". In other words it costs more than it should; you are paying an extra amount over and above what you would expect to. Surface is not just expensive. No; a Dell or Lenovo business laptop with i7/16GB/256GB is expensive; a gaming laptop is expensive. Surface is priced at a premium; whether it's for the screen or the design or the Microsoft name-- it doesn't really matter since it probably can't actually be justified rationally. So forget about Surface Laptop being priced reasonably, and certainly not starting at $600 or $700 or $800 as I've seen some comments suggest.

Second, and most importantly, Surface is complementary, not competitive. Microsoft is not looking to build the best all-around device, or the best bang-for-your-buck, or the best selling PC of 2017. No, they want all of those devices to come from PC vendors. You want Surface Laptop to not only support touch and pen, but also have USB C/TB3 and a flip around screen for tablet/tent mode? And maybe offer all of that with i7/8GB/256GB for less than $1500? Well you're now squeezing the HP Spectre x360, Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 and Lenovo Yoga 910- key products from your three largest partners. Even if you price it at a premium to satisfy the "why can't you at least give us the option?" crowd, the very presence of such a product from Microsoft that seemingly does everything places pressure on their partners.

I think Microsoft, like Apple, is very carefully picking and choosing exactly which features to have on which Surface devices in order balance their own sales and profitability vs. their partners' success. Unfortunately those goals do not necessarily align with enthusiasts who just want Microsoft to make the best device possible at the best price possible.

With regards to Windows 10 S... I mean, sweet Jesus, the appeal of simpler/safer/more easily managed computing has been explained over and over and over. Yes, education is one market; but so is a chunk of the enterprise market and the consumer market. Allow me to digress with just one example of my own:

I work at one of the largest marketing analytics companies in the world. Last year we moved from Office 365 to Google Suite. My team and thousands of other people in similar roles still use Excel and PowerPoint on the desktop because they offer capabilities that are not available in Sheets/Slides. However, there are thousands more at our company who have moved their entire workflow to the web. I've seen lots of requests for Chromebooks. I've seen a few more people occasionally leave their laptop at home in favor of an iPad when they're going into the city for meetings; sure, this was possible before the switch but most people were tied to Outlook on the desktop. Breaking that bind and moving to a web/app-based workflow has made it easier. These people are doing "actual work", every day, and they don't need full Windows.

Anyone who follows this site and others like it, has already read countless anecdotes like this. So at some level, they already know what the point of W10S is. Paul himself has explained it multiple times. So if they can't see this, or refuse to acknowledge this, then they are either really not paying attention or they're being myopic (or perhaps just obstinate).

If someone simply wants to protest that this does not work for him then just say that; one's opinion will be duly noted. If someone wants to bring some hard usage numbers and offered some kind of detailed analysis and raise some interesting or thought provoking questions, then by all means do so.

I just don't know how Paul deals with all of the hyperbolic and pointless "why would anyone..." comments.

And by “gap”, I mean the extra spaces that people keep inserting between lines and paragraphs. What is going on with this? Some comments have double line breaks between every paragraph and it makes it a royal PITA to scroll through comments.

Any chance we could get a dark theme on the site? That would greatly enhance nighttime reading.

I'm not suggesting any kind of equivalence, and don't kill me for saying so, but conceptually, Thurrott Now actually reminds me of Daring Fireball-- both offer a handful of lightly contextualized snippets from around the tech web every day.

What's amazing is that while DF is the entirety of John Gruber's writing, these little snippets on Thurrott Now are just the errata that catch Paul's eye as he is writing his full-length posts for the main site. Throw in all of the podcasting work, and I think Paul might be hardest working man in tech journalism. It also makes me wonder how John Gruber makes a go of it writing a few hundred words a day.

Just curious.

You click into Thurrott Now, read through the posts, then you need to scroll back up to the top and find the tiny little calendar icon and select a specific day to see additional posts. Why is there a date picker in a micro blog? Just have a continuous scroll or else some kind of obvious navigation tool when you reach the bottom (e.g. “Older Posts”). If you really want the date picker, how about giving it a little color and making it persistent so you can at least hit it without scrolling back up.

Also, is there no way to just have the comments hide/expand? If you want to read or add comments you need to click through to a separate page, then click back to the feed. Honestly that’s a lot of extra clicking when each post is so short.

Have you considered adding a field to user profiles for pronunciation? Some of the user names are inscrutable. I feel bad for Paul and Brad trying to say them during podcasts.

We really need to if/when people respond to our forum posts or article comments.  I want to spend more time engaging and less time revisiting old threads/articles just to see if something has happened. 

Good day fellow Alpha Members, and Happy New Year!  I know we'll never have peace and unity, but can I gently request that we all be more thoughtful participants here and across the web in 2017?  

Rather than dismissing something as "useless", how about just stating the ways in which it falls short for you?  Perhaps you can really go above and beyond by considering the ways in which it might in fact be useful for others.  

Now go forth and comment.  Cheers!

A few suggestions for the podcast.  

My first suggestion would be guests.  The shorter length, daily schedule, and perhaps less formal atmosphere seems like it would lend itself to having "friends of the podcast" pop in.  Podcasts like Cordkillers, Night Attack (nee NSFW) and The Incomparable use this to great effect.  It needn't be an "expert" to come on and talk about a specific news item within his or her area of expertise; just someone smart and engaging to shoot the breeze with you guys.  If I can make a suggestion, please get the Lowdermilk brothers on ASAP.  

Second, how about a segment--maybe once a week-- where you revisit a recent post (maybe from the last few weeks) that generated a lot of comments/discussion?  You could take a few minutes to address the comments or provide additional thoughts/feedback.  I know you guys will periodically jump in and reply to a few comments, but there is often a lot of good stuff that develops in there over the course of a week and you obviously can't reply to all of it individually.  But maybe if you're just picking one article a week to revisit, you could read through all the comments (or at least all the Premium comments), pull out a few facts or questions that readers have shared, then address them.

A third, related suggestion would be a shout-out to particularly good comments.  Maybe a "comment of the day", or the "comments of the week".  It could be something really insightful; or something that provides great details or facts that would have otherwise been overlooked; or maybe a question or explanation that makes you say "hmmm, I wish I thought of that"; or maybe it's just a really funny comment.  It could even be something really terrible or bone-headed; the kind of thing where you're just like "wait, we need to put a stop to this kind of crap".  Ideally, it would be a mix of all of the above.  Hopefully this would inspire commenters to step up their game.  It would also be another way to connect you guys and your supporters.   

Finally, don't be afraid to mix it up.  Try stuff and see what works.  I've followed several podcasts from their "alpha" episodes through multi-year anniversaries, and even the best ones took a while to find their footing.