I’ve been listening to an audio book series for the last few months, and am finally catching up on podcasts. The first series for me to catch up on is Windows Weekly.
I’ve just caught up, listening to everything from the 2019 Thanksgiving episode to current over the last two days (I listen at 1.5x speed).
I don’t know if Paul does this intentionally, or if it’s just because he’s a downer on everything I like, and seems to like everything I hate, but it sure seems like he’s really down on everything to do with Windows, Surface, Edge (not CrEdge), WSL…
I don’t think he’s actually hating on everything Microsoft, but he just seems to hate on everything I like! Does anyone else feel this way? (<3 to Paul if you read this, just in case. Windows Weekly is a favorite podcast partially because of you, despite your DOOMER feel).
Noooo, I wouldn’t say he is grumpy.
Jaded, bitter and a teensy bit resentful maybe
I suspect a lot of it is because when you know Microsoft can do better, more on-point, consistent or be more transparent, you do feel a little let down sometimes.
Things like the ever-shifting landscape of where certain security features are is enough to make you scream. Unless you are in there every day, the next time you go to change the defender and ATP settings you wonder if your memory is failing you.
BingJacking and having to use prayer and voodoo in the hope the latest update doesn’t kill your data or your system.
We expect better not because we are over-entitled, but because Microsoft promised us a better more reliable OS and eco-system yet keep doing things that make you wonder if someone spiked the water-fountain at Redmond.
Um, he earns his living from Windows. I do not think he is down on Windows in any way. He is down on the stupid decisions MS has made toward Windows, and I mostly agree with what he says in that regard. If anyone is down on Windows, it is Microsoft. They treat it like an old relative they’re forced to look after because it has nowhere else to go. Microsoft is making less and less money directly from Windows, and more and more from other things, so Satya Nadella is directing the company in a way that it could survive without Windows revenue.
I think this is what is coming over to me.
Going over the few responses so far, I’d assume I’m the only one that feels he’s too jaded and angry at things. Every time I listen to an episode I feel like I should be a little ashamed at liking Microsoft, but then I go try to use my terrible Android phone, or attempt to do something on CrEdge and can’t load a page and before long I’m feeling like he was just being intentionally negative.
There might have been. I scrolled through a bit, but I haven’t been on the forums in a few months, so I probably missed it.
I’ll check more carefully in the future.
Not too jaded I think.
It is difficult not to be jaded with any sector you care to look at.
I went into IT because of my interest and love of computers as a hobby.
My love for computing and tech has had a serious kicking since 1999.
I soon created a new phrase after a while of fixing and building systems for customers and companies.
“The devils box of tricks”.
For several years I kept my love of the joy of computers burning fiercely because I drew a line in the sand.
At work I used Windows. At home I used Amiga.
Well actually I guess I did cross the line somewhat thinking about it, as I did all my DTP and picture editing at home and then took the raw print buffer files back to the office.
However as I enjoyed doing DTP on the Amiga I didn’t mind.
Paul is fair as far as I can tell. There are plenty of times he congratulates MS on a job well done.
Some of his gripes maybe personal distastes for things but I think generally that comes across, and sometimes maybe he is simply echoing the sentiment of a load of annoyed people in the MS answers site.
TWiT is what it is because the presenters make their feelings known, rather that reading out a careful script. Often MaryJo or Leo will differ in opinion or pull him up on a point and make him explain why he feels so.
I prefer the honesty of listening to people I may not agree with, but they are able to state their case and feelings clearly about why their bias is such on any given matter.
I go through it on my own radio show. Week after week of reading out disaster stories that could have been avoided if only someone had asked someone competent for advice.
You get to a point of face-palming so much you worry about leaving hand-prints dented into your face.
I am often jaded, despondent, bitter and sour half way through my show notes, and if it is a bumper FB borks week and we reset the FB clock of disasters, I am ready to hit the bottle.
However, at the end of the day I shrug my shoulders and gripe that “it wasn’t like this in my day” knowing well it was and that “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.
Different day a different grumble, but don’t take any of it personally and you’ll survive.
I fully agree with this, and as I stated in my original post, I do think of Windows Weekly as one of my favorite podcasts, including Paul.
On the other hand, I also get frustrated having every single feature I like, and every single product I support being called stupid, useless, and pointless for 5 minutes at a time 3-4 episodes in a row.
It could just be that I binged a dozen episodes in two days, but it feels like a lot of the complaining is entirely personal feeling, isn’t actually anything bad or wrong at all, and is harped on far too strongly. My problem isn’t even that he doesn’t like products that I do like, so much as he presents them as being absolutely terrible from the ground up, without anything other than ‘okay, maybe someone out there uses this, I’m not saying literally no one…’ to something he doesn’t like.
He doesn’t use ToDo, but talks about it’s good points at the same time he attacks it’s bad points. How long it took to get feature parity, or the features of Wunderlust it still doesn’t have, for example.
He immediately goes into a rant about how stupid and pointless tab set-aside on Edge was, and how stupid it is for MS to add sets to CrEdge; spending his entire time attacking the feature as useless, edge case and terrible, without ever getting into the idea that there might be use cases or people that do like these features.
THIS is what frustrates me when listening sometimes. It seems inconsistent, and half seems that the features/products he likes are related to the people he’s met at the company, vs those he doesn’t like who’s engineers he hasn’t met.
Anyway, I hadn’t noticed the prior conversations about this, since I didn’t check all the comments in the episode by episode posts. I should probably request this post closed, since it does look like this conversation has happened before. I should have spent more time catching up before making my post.
Gosh, this is what I love about Paul…and I often think he’s right! He does have a snarky attitude but he is also doing his job. Mary Jo may not be as negative overall but I’ve heard her rip into MS before, too!
If I thought Paul was being really unfair when he rants, it’d be different but usually, he’s spot on (to me!)
