WW 977: Moonshine University

TWiT Shows Windows Weekly
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New Windows Weekly is out now:

This week we’re diving into Microsoft’s AI moves and the fallout—especially GitHub’s controversial auto-training feature that’s got devs concerned about their code.

:robot: GitHub’s AI training drama and how to opt out before your code gets fed to the machine
:shield: Windows updates galore: Smart App Control rolling out, emergency patches, and Console upgrades across the board
:video_game: Xbox shaking things up with leadership changes and a brand reset we weren’t expecting
:speaker_high_volume: The great AI wars heat up—Apple’s Siri ambitions, Google’s Gemini push, and Mozilla getting in the game
:money_bag: Sony and Nintendo throwing price increases our way while Game Pass sweetens the deal

Lots to unpack here on where tech is heading—and some of it’s getting weird.

#WindowsWeekly #Microsoft #TWiT

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I just saw a YouTube short comparing web and native apps, which made me reflect. I remember that, during the early days of iOS, Facebook initially tried to make a web app but later chose to develop a native iOS app. I think Bitwarden did the same. This suggests that sometimes, a native app is essential

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I thought Windows had that feature to make 2 finger click always be right click. The last couple of Windows PCs I had for work before going to the Mac, I had no issues with the right click and I’m very finicky. I actually liked the Windows trackpad software ever since they revamped it in Windows 10 (I believe) this was hardware and drivers. so it wasn’t just Windows. But the trackpads on all my business windows laptops have been pretty good

I’m gonna be one of the 3 people who move their taskbar to the top of the screen. That’s where it belongs for ergonomics and consistency across other platforms I use.

Just to correct something…. Leo said the Switch 2 is OLED but it’s not. Also he meant dock it. you can’t simply “cast” the Switch 2 to the TV.

Switch 2 games cost soooo much money here in Canada. Pokopia is $100 before tax. I’m a huge pokemon fan (my profile picture is a pokemon!) but I don’t think I would put a lot of time into Pokopia to get $100’s worth. It’s actually $115 here in Quebec after tax. I no longer just buy games willynilly anymore. I have to know I really want it & will play it.

I use semicolons a lot and em dashes frequently enough on my phone where I live in constant fear someone online is going to call me out for using AI when it’s just me. I made a post on bsky the other day where I said typos humanize people and then 2 weeks later chatGPT made a typo while I was asking it a question

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As I said elsewhere, the trend is for these companies to [need to] extract more and more from their customers… It feels like getting good value for money is a thing of the past. :tired_face:

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There are so many problems with web apps wrapped in an EXE package.

  • They are slower than native code
  • They use many more resources, especially RAM and CPU
  • They need a web browser to run (Electron or WebView2)
  • Every time Google updates their browser with a security update, you need to update EVERY web app on your system, assuming that the developer could be bothered to even try and keep you safe.

Web apps are great for developers, they mean less work and you need fewer developers to hit more platforms, but, apart from availability, there are only downsides for users:

  • The laptop runs hotter
  • The battery drains more quickly
  • You can do less things at the same time

The classic example was VisualStudio Code when it was launched (admittedly, in the meantime, it has become more complex), it had the same or fewer features than Notepad++, but N++ ran in less than 50MB RAM and used practically no CPU, VSC used over 1GB RAM and wasted a lot of CPU cycles to provide the same functionality.

In the meantime, VSC can do a lot more, but it still has the 1GB+ overhead for running a copy of Chrome in the background.

Unlike a web site in a tab, each webapp needs its own version of Chromium running in the background. Open 2 web apps and you double the overhead for Chromium, open 5 or 6, you multiply the overhead by 5 or 6.

Web apps are also incredibly inefficient at certain tasks, just take Teams as an example, it needs more than 8GB RAM if you are in a multi-way video conference and kills the performance on a Windows PC. Interestingly, under macOS, it uses a fraction of the memory and CPU that Windows requires, which hints at WebView2 being a lot less efficient on Windows.

At a time when RAM prices are skyrocketing, going back to native apps means we can do a lot more with a lot less. Not something the PC manufacturers want to hear, because it means we can make do with those old 8GB Windows PCs, if the developers play ball.

For a start-up, I can understand getting something out of the door using a web app, but for a company like Microsoft, I don’t know, I would have thought they could drum up a few Windows developers… I mean, Windows is their product, so there should be somebody at Microsoft that can program in it.

We are experimenting with new Outlook at work, because we will have to switch soon - some of our add-ins aren’t available as web add-ins, which is a problem. The new Outlook is so much slower and gobbles up so much RAM, and misses hundreds of little features that users are used to. I’ve found workarounds for some, but it is a tedious mess in many way. I like some of the new features, but the performance is the big problem.

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This is accurate, but it’s also important to remember that Apple has absolutely prevented progressive web apps from being viable on its platform. So, it’s hard to know whether the issues are due to the technology or Apple trying to preserve a revenue stream via its App Store.

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So true. Aside from the reckless resource management, the micro-latencies most of these webapps have in their UI can be so painful when coming from native applications. IMO it’s one of those things that’s mostly imperceptible but greatly affects one’s demeanor toward an application. I think it’s more important than developers think. Unfortunately it’s also something we seem to get used to and start to tolerate pretty quickly.

Most people will say Apple’s iPhone became successful because of the application ecosystem, but I’ve always maintained it was originally successful because Apple worked really hard to address UI microlatencies found in every other computing platform in that era, and the “normals” responded to that in a big way.

I’m not saying it’s impossible for a webapp to have good UI performance (see Discord), but I think it’s way easier for a developer to create a webapp that performs poorly than a native app that performs poorly.

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It happened

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You’re just going to have to stop making clear sense, using proper case and punctuation, and otherwise aiding the clarity of your communication. There is no other way /sarcasm :joy:

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It is a sad state of affairs, when using correct punctuation marks you down as an AI.

I’ve been using bullet points, emdash, semicolons and colons in my professional and online writing since the mid 80s.

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That would make sense David… maybe you’ve supplied a bunch of the training content for AIs :wink:

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