Windows Weekly 354 (Transcript)
Leo
Laporte: It's time
for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley are here with some bit
scoops. In fact, turns out Mary Jo Foley's scoop actually pumped Microsoft's
stock price up over 40 dollars a share. It's the Foley Effect next on Windows
Weekly.
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This is Windows Weekly with Paul
Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, episode 354, recorded March 19, 2014
The Foley Effect
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It's time for Windows Weekly, the
show that, each week, covers Windows, hence the name. With us, Paul Thurrott
from the SuperSite for Windows, winsupersite.com; Mary Jo Foley, from ZDNET,
allaboutmicrosoft.com. Hello, you two.
Mary
Jo Foley: Hello.
Leo: You getting excited about Build?
Coming out to the big city? (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: Yeah. Yeah!
Leo: Compared to New York, even compared
to Needham, Dedham. Sorry. What is the difference between Dedham and Needham?
(Laughs)
Paul
Thurrott: Uh ...
Leo: Letters.
Paul: Two — well, yeah, three letters.
Leo: (Laughs) Anyway, compared even to
Dedham, San Francisco is just a sleepy little fishing village.
Paul: (Laughs) That's right.
Leo: But it's our sleepy little fishing
village, so we will go there.
Paul: We have as many Apple stores per
capita as you do, buddy, so —
Leo: Exactly, exactly. Precisely.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: Are you going to get a chance to
visit the wine country or do anything fun; or are you just going to come out
here to Build and leave?
Paul: I don't think we're going to have
that much time.
Leo: Oh.
Paul: I'm not sure what Mary Jo's
planning, but —
Mary
Jo: I'm staying an extra day to hang
out with some of the TWITS.
Leo: Good. To drink some beer?
Mary
Jo: Yep.
Leo: Here?
Mary
Jo: Yep.
Leo: Well, welcome. And that — by the
way, that Build conference is coming up. We will be in studio here at the Brick
House April 4, doing a special edition of Windows Weekly if you want to join
us. There's plenty of room in the studio. Just come on by. It'd be nice if —
you don't have to, but it'd be nice if you emailed tickets@twit.tv so that we
could put a chair out for you and put a NEW CAR under your chair.
Paul: (Laughs)
Leo: New car not included.
Paul: Right.
Leo: And — but if you don't, we'll find
a way to jam you in, though. But nice to have a nice, large studio audience for
— this has become an annual event, Paul
and Mary — this time I'm here, though.
Mary
Jo: Yay!
Leo: Yeah, last time, I was in —
Paul: I'm still confused that you weren't
here last year. Who did we —
Leo: I was on the cruise.
Paul: Right, right, right.
Leo: And then, it was just a —
Paul: Pete. No.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: When was Build last year?
Paul: Is that right?
Leo: What time — what —
Mary
Jo: No, I think — weren't you in
Colorado?
Paul: I think you were at the — you were
on the cruise during Connection?
Mary
Jo: With your son?
Leo: I was in Colorado. Oh, so it was
the same time last year. Yeah.
Paul: Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Leo: Yeah. Because we were doing the
orientation for the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he is now ensconced
as a freshman.
Paul: Leo?
Leo: Yes?
Paul: What is that?
Leo: It's my monocle. I decided, instead
of wearing —
Paul: Why? (Laughs) Why?
Leo: — wearing my monocle ... (Laughs)
Because sometimes —
Paul: Hogan?
Leo: (Sings) Hogan, every once in a
while ... (Stops singing) And the thing about a monocle that's so useful is
when — say something surprising, Paul.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: What?
Leo: Something surprising. Anything.
Paul: Say something surprising?
Leo: Aaaaaaaah!
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: Oh.
Leo: I can — it pops out.
Paul: Very good.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs) Mr. Creativity there,
Paul. Don't take an improv class. My advice to you.
Paul: It's like the classic version of
the spit take.
Leo: Yes. No, I — you know, Warby
Parker's an advertiser, and they — among other fine glasses they sell, they
sell monocles. And I thought, Well, I can't resist that. You probably wouldn't
think that, but I — I thought that. So —
Paul: It's — it makes sense in some kind
of a strange way.
Leo: Yeah, yeah. A monocle? Well, that's
for me!
What should we talk about? I have
now, I'm pretty excited to say, OneNote on my Macintosh instead of — you know,
I mean, the web interface was great, was fine, but this is real. This is, like,
I've got a ribbon, I've got everything I could possibly ever want. And because
I'm an Office 365 subscriber, I have — I am told this is the same quality
OneNote as one would find on — on Windows. Was OneNote ever on the Mac before?
Mary Jo and Paul: No.
Leo: No.
Mary
Jo: First time.
Paul: And it's not — now, remember what
they used to do was they'd put note taking in Word on the Mac, previously.
Leo: Right. That's right, yeah. That's
not the same.
Paul: Yeah, I don't know. I didn't really
use.
Leo: At all.
Paul: But, I mean, I guess maybe that
made more sense than investing in a new app at the time.
Leo: Anyway, I'm very happy to have this
because it makes it easier to do this show, since we keep our show notes in
OneNote.
Paul: And now I can also use a Mac when I
do Windows Weekly, so it's nice.
Leo: Yeah. (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: Something you've been wanting to
do, I know, all along.
Mary
Jo: Excellent. (Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs)
Paul: Just looking for that final reason
to make the switch.
Leo: (Laughs) Oh, don't say it, Paul.
You're going to get the tweets —
Paul: Can you imagine?
Leo: — you're going to get the emails,
it's not going to be good. It's not going to be pretty. However —
Paul: I posted stuff about that product
and I put a screenshot up, and I heard from a lot of people who were like,
"You have a Mac?"
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: Sure.
Leo: You are a true technology
journalist, always hedging your bets. You never know when a platform's going to
die, and you need to move somewhere else.
Paul
and Mary Jo: (Laugh)
Paul: My room is — my office here is
filled with an amazing collection of devices, and unfortunately at this moment
in time, I'm not going to show this to you because it's too embarrassing, but
there are boxes everywhere. This place is completely — it's awful.
Leo: Well, that's —
Paul: And my wife walked in this morning
and she said, "Are we shooting for the [unintelligible] effect here, or
..."
Leo
and Mary Jo: (Laugh)
Leo: I want to be on Hoarders.
"Paul: She's like, "It looks like the back room at a Radio
Shack."
Leo: So is — and I never asked you this,
and here we are, we're episode 4- — or I'm sorry, 354. That means we've been
together, you and I, seven years —
Paul: Sure.
Leo: — practically. Almost into our
eights. I've never asked you, is this a —
Paul: Is this the silver anniversary?
What are we —
Leo: Yeah. I'm going to give you wood,
man.
Paul: That's good.
Leo: Is this a stand-alone building, or
is this a room in the back of the house? I've never — I've always — here's what
I envisioned. Just — I'm going to tell you.
Paul: This is a — yeah, it's a room in
the back of the house.
Leo: Oh, no. You see, I thought it was
this beautiful little — in the backyard —
Paul: By the way —
Leo: — beautiful little shed.
Paul: — it's very interesting you say
that. I have always envisioned that.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: The other thing I would like to do
— I would consider doing for a home office — would be — we have a single car
garage, and we have, like, a fourteen-car driveway. I don't know how this
works. But —
Leo: (Laughs) Oh.
Paul: I'd like to expand the garage and
put the home office kind of above the garage.
Leo: There you go.
Paul: Kind of a barn thing.
Leo: Yeah. You have the little — cute
little stairs, you go up on the side of the garage, and —
Paul: Yep.
Leo: — there's a door with a window and
a curtain in it, and you say, "Hey, Paul!"
Paul: And I would do it totally — it
would be just like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood —
Leo: Yeah!
Paul: — where I would wear slippers and,
like, a sweater.
Leo: "Come on in, Leo."
Paul: And I would change it every time.
Leo: "Come on in, Mary Jane."
Mary
Jo: (Laughs) It'd probably be bigger
than my whole apartment.
Paul: (Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs) "It's a beautiful
..."
Paul: Well, actually — so the reason that
has never happened — well, actually, I guess there are two reasons; one would
just be the cost of it. But the second one is that once you get beyond the
"it would be nice if I had this thing" stage, you actually have to do
it, and I'm — I kind of lose interest right there.
Leo: Yeah. I always wanted a treehouse.
That's where it stopped. That's where it ended. But I would. You know —
Paul: I joked, by the way — when we moved
from Phoenix, we lived in a single-floor home, and when we moved to
Massachusetts — back to Massachusetts, of course we live in a — what, for here,
is a normal home. Like, a two-floor, colonial house.
Leo: Right.
Paul: And now my commute has doubled
because now I have to go down the stairs in the morning ... (Laughs) and to my
office instead of just walking sideways to my office. Because it used to be,
like, ten feet from the bedroom, and now it's, like, 18 feet or something.
Leo: Awwww.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: Somebody said —
Paul: I get a little bit of exercise
every day; that's nice.
Leo: Yeah, a little bit of exercise
always helps. You said — somebody said you'd be kind of like Fonzie, living
above the Cunninghams' garage.
Paul: Yeah, exactly.
Leo: "Hey, Mrs. C! How are ya?"
Paul: Except I would, like, own the
house, so that would be weird.
Leo: (Laughs) That would be weird.
Paul: (Laughs) Yeah.
Leo: That would be weird.
So we have OneNote for the
Macintosh, free; and everybody really should download that. It's certainly well
worth looking at and playing with. You know, it competes with other products on
the Mac, like EverNote, which is pretty dominant.
Paul: (Makes a raspberry sound) Oh,
sorry. (Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs) Actually, you know, what's
interesting —
Paul: Sorry, is that still a thing? I —
Leo: The selling point on EverNote is
that it's on every platform, and now you can say that about OneNote as well,
which is great.
Paul: Yep.
Mary
Jo: Yes.
Leo: Every, every platform.
Paul: I guess the way I would put this
is, there's a lot of things that have happened in recent years — including some
stuff we'll talk about today — that Microsoft kind of innovated on a long time
ago; and then, either they gave up on it and now it's coming out in kind of a
better form, or they just kind of let it sit there while other things ran all
over it. And OneNote is a good example of the latter because Microsoft came out
with the original version of OneNote as part of Office 2003, if I'm not
mistaken. I remember being quite taken with it during the beta and thinking it
was like they had created this product just for me, and for people like me —
you know, people who need to take notes, like reporters. And then it kind of
just sat there for a while, and it got Cloud-powered eventually, and all that
kind of stuff, but EverNote kind of came out of nowhere. They took the idea,
they ran with it. They did it on mobile devices, they did it on the Mac, they
did it on multiple platforms and everything. And it's nice, at least in this
case, that they're kind of catching up. They've seen what's possible with this
kind of thing. They already have it all in place, but OneNote is very mature.
It's a great product as it is, and so I'm — it's nice to see this happening, in
a way, because all too often with Microsoft, you see the Apples of the world
coming out with phones and iPads and things, and it's like, "We did this
two years ago!" (Laughs)
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: And at least in this case, they're
running with it still.
Leo: So I also think it's an appropriate
kind of precursor and a way of getting Mac users' attention to an iPad release,
right? OneNote for the iPad's been out for a while, but —
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: — but a full Office release, right?
And I gather we're close.
Mary
Jo: Yeah. We're very close, we think.
We think it's next week they're going to —
Leo: Whoa! Really?
Mary
Jo: — take the wraps off this, yeah.
Leo: Wow!
Mary
Jo: Microsoft's holding a press event
in San Francisco next week, March 27 —
Leo: Okay.
Mary
Jo: — where Satya Nadella is going to
be the host, and —
Leo: Oh, we've got to go to that. We've
got to go to that, yeah.
Mary
Jo: — it's focused on the intersection
of cloud and mobile. Very mysterious, right?
Leo: Hmmmm.
Mary
Jo: My sources have been telling me for
the past month plus that Microsoft's goal was to get Office for the iPad out
before the end of March. So we're getting down to the wire, and it looks like
this might be where they announce it.
Leo: Wow, that's exciting!
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: And I wonder if that product will
in some ways be thematically like OneNote for the Mac in the sense that, in its
initial version, it might not be as full — it certainly won't be as
full-featured as it will eventually become. But the Microsoft of old would have
waited until it was as ready as it used to — should be or whatever, if that
makes sense. (Laughs) You know, the 1.0 release would have been more
full-featured and would have been a year later or something, that maybe this
one won't come out and — we don't know what form it'll take.
Mary
Jo: Right. I mean, if you guys remember
this, we've been hearing leaks about this product existing for two or three
years now, right? Like, people said they've seen it. I've talked to so many
people who say —
Paul: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: "I've actually seen it."
Paul: Yeah, fake shots or, we don't know,
real shots, maybe —
Mary
Jo: Or maybe real, right?
Paul: — have made the rounds.
Mary
Jo: Yep. So I think this product's been
done for a while, and I think they've been probably rangling with Apple about
that 30 percent cut that Apple would take if it were going through the iTunes
store, which it will be.
Leo: Right.
Mary
Jo: So probably there's been some worry
about that. But my sources were saying earlier this year that even at the end
of his tenure, Steve Ballmer had decided that, "You know what? We're not
going to wait for the Windows version of the Touch-first apps, and we're going
to go out first with Office for iPad." So a lot of people are saying this
was Satya Nadella's choice — and ultimately, obviously, it is — but it wasn't
some new thing that he put in place, from what I heard. I heard that this was
something Ballmer actually decided to do, and now it's coming to fruition.
Leo: Wow.
Paul: It's not the type of thing they
could have turned around in 30 days.
Mary
Jo: No.
Leo: Obviously not. (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: Right. (Laughs)
Leo: Obviously not. And it would be — so
if — okay, so the Apple 30 percent issue, how do they resolve that? Give it
away?
Mary
Jo: Yeah. I mean, I —
Paul: No, they pay 30 percent. (Laughs)
Leo: They pay it.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: And they charge 30 percent more?
Mary
Jo: It depends, right?
Paul: Well —
Mary
Jo: Well, here's what we don't know. Is
it going to be free?
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: Right.
Paul: That's right. So I mean, you assume
it's going to be attached to a 365 —
Mary
Jo: Right.
Paul: — subscription. So obviously if you
—
Mary
Jo: I think you have to subscribe,
right?
Paul: Acquired that, yeah.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: If you already — if you acquire
that from outside of Apple's closed garden there, you're not paying Apple
anything.
Mary
Jo: Right.
Paul: But if you want — in other words,
you run the app, you don't have Office 365, and it says, "Hey, by the way,
you need Office 365." It's probably not coincidental they just announced
Office 365 Personal, which you might imagine a lot of iPad users might want to
get so that they could run this thing.
Leo: Right.
Paul: If you do it from within the app,
you would get the 30 percent —
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: — from Apple.
Mary
Jo: Right.
Leo: Okay.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, I think it's going to be a
lot like Office Mobile for iPhone, which is that way, right? It's a free app,
but you have to have an Office 365 subscription to use it. And I bet this will
be something like that. And if you look at what they just did with OneNote for
the Mac, and OneNote for Windows especially — the new free version — they're
doing this thing where they give you a free version and you can download it from the respective stores. But if you want the extra set of features,
then you have to either get a subscription or pay more to buy a higher-level
license. I bet we're going to see something like that.
Paul: And I — I'm not 100 percent sure
about this one because — maybe, you know — because I haven't actually installed
the free version on Windows, but the free version on the Mac, you have to sign
into a Microsoft account and it attaches to your OneDrive storage.
Mary
Jo: OneDrive, yep. I think it does,
too, the —
Paul: Yeah. So the paid version on
Windows, you don't — that's not a requirement. I mean, they — you know, you can
use it as kind of a standalone app that you just — you're — I almost call it a
PST file. You're OneNote notes, or whatever, are — could be stored locally,
conceivably.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: Although that's not the preferred
way to do it, but —
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: You know, they'll have that kind of
requirement as well.
Mary
Jo: Yeah. Also, with the free version
for Windows, you're missing some features that you get with the paid version,
right? So you don't have the Outlook integration, you don't have the SharePoint
support, you don't have version history. And so they're kind of making this
tier, right? It's free, but if you want all these extra things — integration
with Outlook, for example — you have to pay. It's not free.
Paul: Yeah. And also, it should be noted
— the — free for licensing purposes, free for personal use. It's free for
students, free for individuals. But if you're a business, you're supposed to be
paying for Office in some capacity, whether it's an Office 365 subscription or
licensing Office — or OneNote, I guess, you could do that separately otherwise.
Mary
Jo: Yeah. So I'm betting — I'm also
betting there could be some distinctions, when they come out with Office for
iPad, around licensing, right? This — if there is a free version, this free
version might be for home and personal use only; and then if you want to use
this in a business setting, you have to pay for some kind of a higher-level
subscription, or pay for the suite.
Paul: I bet they tie it to Office 365.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, for sure. I think so.
Paul: They just came out with that
personal version, that will launch in April, that makes sense for maybe the
iPad version, iPad OneNote — sorry, Office version launch.
Mary
Jo: Right. Yeah.
Paul: They have one PC, one tablet. One
tablet right now is Windows tablet. One tablet could very easily become iPad or
Windows tablet.
Mary
Jo: Yep.
Leo: Do — did they say anything about
what March 27 — I mean, besides the fact that Satya Nadella's there?
Mary
Jo: No, nothing.
Paul: This was —
Leo: No hints.
Paul: I mean, they haven't publicly
announced this.
Leo: Oh. This is all rumor stuff.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, they — well, they sent us an
invitation.
Leo: Oh, okay.
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: What does the — well, now see, if
you were Apple reporters, you would be —
Paul: Right.
Leo: — deeply parcing that invitation.
Tell me about it.
Paul: Yes.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: Is — what colors are in it? Is it —
Mary
Jo: No, it doesn't look like that. It's
all text. (Laughs)
Paul: (Laughs)
Leo: All text.
Paul: It's Microsoft, Leo.
Leo: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: And it just says — it tells you
where to park if coming to —
Leo: Okay. But what does it say? What's
the tagline? "Get ready for something amazingly touchable"?
Mary
Jo: Nothing. It's not a fancy invite
like you're imagining.
Leo: Oh.
Mary
Jo: It's just an email that PR sent out
that's —
Leo: "Hi. We'd like you to come to
an event. Satya will be there."
Mary
Jo: Exactly. (Laughs)
Leo: Are you going to come out? Are you
guys coming out?
Paul: Whatcha doin'?
Leo: It'd be crazy to come out because
you'd have to come out a few days later.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, yeah. They're going to
webcast this.
Leo: Okay.
Mary
Jo: We don't know the URL for that yet,
but they are going to.
Leo: And what time is it?
Mary
Jo: 10 a.m. Pacific.
Leo: All right. We'll be covering it
live right here.
Mary
Jo: Next Thursday.
Leo: Next Thursday.
Paul: It's Thursday, yeah.
Leo: Yep. Right before TNT, or during
TNT, we'll have live coverage of that event. That's exciting. I think —
Mary
Jo: Yeah, I —
Leo: I think that's — I hope that that's
it because I —
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: I think that's something that —
Mary
Jo: Our sources are saying yes on that.
But Bloomberg also did some additional reporting on this, and they said they're
hearing it will be Office for iPad, too. But they said there's something else
as well. It's not just that.
Leo: Ahhhh.
Mary
Jo: And I — I'm kind of curious if
they're going to show off Gemini, which is Microsoft's touch-optimized version
of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote —
Paul: Oh, yeah.
Mary
Jo: — for Windows 8.1.
Leo: That would be sensible, to say,
"Hey, we're going to do — we're" —
Mary
Jo: It would.
Leo: Because otherwise, people will say,
"Hey, wait a minute."
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: "What about us?"
Paul: People are going to say that no
matter what, but yeah, anyway.
Leo: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: Right.
Leo: So there are ways to phrase that.
Satya could say something like, "We believe in touch. You know, obviously with Surface, we've
released a touch hardware. We believe in touch for the operating system. And of
course, that means we want touch everywhere, including Office. We've been
working hard on it, and our first release is for the iPad, but stayed tuned
because we also are going to do a version for Gemini."
Paul: By the way, the iPad's been around
for two years longer than Windows 8.
Leo: Right.
Paul: iOS has been around for, what, five
or whatever years longer than Windows 8. I mean, it's quite likely that this
was in development for a long time, like Mary Jo suggested, and that they had a
headstart on this version.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: So it makes sense that it would be
ready first.
Leo: Yeah. Yeah, but that's logical and
reasonable when you say that.
Paul: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: Yeah. (Laughs)
Leo: That's not what we're talking here.
We're talking the emotional reaction of, "But wait!"
Paul: Right, right. Sorry, I've got to
work on that. I'm not very good at that.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs) We've only seen this
coding Gemini thing in public once. It was — they showed it really quickly last
year at Build. They showed PowerPoint, the Gemini version, and they said,
"By the way, this suite of apps is coming in calendar 2014." And
that's all they said."
Leo: Yeah. Interesting.
Mary
Jo: So yep. It could be a very interesting
event on the 27th.
Leo: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: Plus, it's really Satya Nadella's
first public introduction of some kind of product.
Leo: Yeah. It's big for that reason,
too.
Mary
Jo: It is. And if you — if you're a
follower of the Microsoft stock, they hit a high yesterday because of this
planned or expected announcement. They were, like, close to 40, or at 40,
yesterday.
Leo: Wow.
Paul: Let me — can I reword what you just
said?
Mary
Jo: Yes. (Laughs)
Paul: Because I want to make sure that if
anyone from Microsoft is listening to this, they actually understand the
implications of what you just said. Because of Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft's stock
price hit a high of almost $40 for the first time in over ten years.
Leo: Wait a minute. You mean this is
Mary Jo's scoop?
Paul: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: I — I think — it was a few minutes
—
Leo: Mary Jo? You singlehandedly pumped
Microsoft —
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: Yeah. I just want to be clear. Just
so we understand what's really happening.
Leo: Thank you, Paul. I'm glad you
clarified this.
Paul: Because she completely kind of
pushed that one into the carpet there, like —
Leo: She's self-effacing, which neither
you nor I had any trouble with in the past.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs) You know what? I just — I
know this —
Paul: I would have mentioned it if it was
me, but —
Mary
Jo: (Laughs) This won't matter —
Leo: "By the way ..."
Mary
Jo: This won't matter a whit for my
relationship with Microsoft, I have a feeling. (Laughs)
Leo: No, but it matters a whit to the
rest —
Paul: Right. It won't matter a whit for
my many holdings in Microsoft stock because I don't have any, but —
Mary
Jo: Neither do I, so ... (Laughs)
Leo: Very important. Neither do I. None
of us do.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Well, you know, I might in, like, a
fund that combines a market basket.
Paul: Not if it's a good fund, Leo.
Leo: (Laughs) Well, I do have — I —
Paul: Are you saving for the reverse of
retirement?
Leo: (Laughs)
Paul: I want to make sure and give all my
money away by the time I retire.
Leo: In interest of diversification,
yes.
Paul: (Laughs) Yeah.
Leo: No, I — because I have funds that
are tied to the overall performance of the market, so Microsoft's probably in
that somewhere.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: That — no one would hold you
responsible for that.
Leo: No, I'm not responsible. I don't
buy — I don't determine whether it's in there or how much of it and all that.
So big scoop, then, Mary Jo. Of course, immediately, Warren and everybody else
wrote about it, but —
Paul: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: Yeah, everybody else got it, too.
Like, we all kind of figured it out within the same, like, fifteen minutes.
Everybody was posting, you know?
Leo: So you got — but you figured this
out before you got the invite.
Mary
Jo: I heard about the invite. I got a
phone call saying, "Hey, we're going to have this event on March 27th. And
I pinged a couple sources and said, "What is this?" And I heard
"iPad."
Leo: Interesting. Interesting.
Paul: There you go.
Leo: Does the invite mention Satya?
Mary
Jo: Yes.
Leo: Okay.
Mary
Jo: It says, "Satya" — I
could read you the invite. Would you like me to? (Laughs)
Paul: This is the second time, by the
way, in the past, what, six months? — that the press has received an invitation
to go meet with Satya in San Francisco. But the first one was before he became
CEO, obviously.
Leo: Right.
Leo: This is a big, big deal.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Mary Jo Foley — see, you buried the
lead.
Paul: (Laughs)
Leo: Mary Jo Foley bumps Microsoft's
stock above 40 bucks, singlehanded.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: It's what we're now going to call
the Foley Effect.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: It's the Foley Effect. Ha! Let me
write that down.
Mary
Jo: I'm looking at the invite now. It
says, "Opening remarks will be from Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft"
—
Leo: Okay. Good.
Mary
Jo: "This is a briefing and news
event focused on the" —
Leo: Oh, see, it's news.
Mary
Jo: — "focused on the intersection
of cloud and mobile computing. RSVP here. Here's where to park." And
that's it. (Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs)
Paul: That's hilarious.
Leo: Where do you park, just out of
curiosity?
Paul: In the Oaklands, Leo.
Leo: (Laughs) Is it — where is the
event?
Mary
Jo: I don't know if I should say that,
should I? Because it's a private, invite-only thing.
Leo: Oh. Don't say it. Nope.
Mary
Jo: Okay. Downtown San Francisco.
Leo: Okay.
Mary
Jo: 10 a.m. next week. (Laughs)
Leo: is it at a hotel?
Mary
Jo: No.
Leo: No. Okay. That's all. That's fine.
Say no more. Say no more, say no more. I don't think any of us got an
invitation, so we'll just have to — maybe we'll Skype you in after the event or
whatever.
Mary
Jo: Yep.
Leo: All right.
Paul: Well, I —
Mary
Jo: We could do maybe one of those
play-by-plays with you guys, like —
Leo: Well, if you want to do this —
Paul: They are webcasting it, I think,
too —
Leo: — we would love it. Yeah. So what
we normally do — you know, we do the little Mystery Theater, Science Theater
3000 stuff. If you want to be one of the heads, or two of the heads, we'd love
it. Sometimes, you know, like, people want to pay attention to the announcement.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, that's tricky, too, right?
Leo: Yeah, because you're —
Mary
Jo: I'm trying to listen to the —
(Laughs)
Leo: You've got a file immediately
after, right?
Mary
Jo: Right.
Leo: So — yeah.
Paul: Sure. Or immediately during.
Whatever.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Well, that's — in effect, we're
filing. That's how we file. (Laughs)
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: We play the video, and we talk
about it. So it's easy for us. Anyway, you're invited. That's exciting. So how
do you think the world's going to react to this? In particular, the iPad-using
world?
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Are they going to say, "Oh,
finally!" No.
Mary
Jo: Well, you know, it was —
Paul: I don't think it's going to be like
that.
Mary
Jo: I don't either. And people complain
when — I remember when Office Mobile came out for iOS, people were saying,
"Oh, but you need an Office 365 subscription. Ugh."
Leo: Right.
Mary
Jo: And I think you're going to see
something similar to that if that is indeed a requirement.
Paul: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: People aren't used to thinking
about things like that.
Leo: Right.
Mary
Jo: They're just like, "Hey, I
want to pay one time for an app and put it on my iPad and be done."
Leo: Right.
Paul: Also, I kind of wonder how fringe-y
that kind of use really is, on not iPad in particular, you know? That — I know
you can attach an Apple keyboard or any keyboard to it. They have keyboard
docks and keyboard cases and stuff. But I kind of wonder what — and the overall
usage of an iPad, where entering text into Pages or whatever —
Mary
Jo: A spreadsheet? (Laughs)
Paul: Yeah. Is — you know, how common is
that, really?
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: I suppose, for people who are
giving presentations, maybe they make the presentation on their Mac and maybe
they put it on their iPad so they can go do it that way, and they can do light
edits and things like that. But I don't — I don't know; I mean, I'm just
guessing, but it doesn't seem like that's a huge percentage of what occurs on
an iPad. I think it's important that it's there, and I think it's good that it's
there. But I don't — I don't think it's going to set the world on fire.
Leo: No.
Paul: And I — and that's sad, in a way,
because this is something that Microsoft maybe could have been on top of two
years ago.
Leo: Right.
Mary
Jo: Yeah. It depends — you know, it
really depends a lot what the app is like.
Paul: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: If it's like — I mean, if it's a
very — kind of — not dumbed down, but very simple interface, kind of like the
Word and Excel apps are on Windows RT, it might get a different kind of user. I
mean, we're not expecting it to be, like, every bell and whistle in Excel is
suddenly on your iPad. That wouldn't even make sense, right? I mean —
Paul: Right.
Mary
Jo: — you're not doing those gigantic —
Paul: But that's — that goes to my comment
earlier about OneNote, in a way.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: If you look at OneNote on the Mac
and you look at the percentage of stuff that it can do — because people use it
for five minutes, and they say, "Oh, that one feature I need all the time
— you know, the ability to embed a PDF file or whatever it is is missing. It
can't even print."
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: You know, that kind of thing. Those
features will come over time. I — it's possible that Office on the iPad is
going to be in that kind of weird middle ground. It's not — it's obviously not
going to be full-featured Office.
Mary
Jo: Right.
Paul: But it needs to be much better than
Office Mobile.
Mary
Jo: Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, I — the
audience I see looking for it are people who are standardized at work on
Office, right, and they want to come home and be able to have the true document
fidelity and at least a pretty good subset of the capabilities if they want to
do something at home.
Paul: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: Or if they want to take their iPad
with them on the road, if they're in sales, marketing, whatever. I think those
are the people who are most interested in this. It's not your everyday user
who's like, "Oh, I have to have Office on my iPad."
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: I will voice the fears of the
Windows generation because there is a remote chance, I suppose, that — what if
this thing is — what if it's really good? You know?
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: I mean, what if it actually is
really good?
Leo: No. I don't think you have to worry
about that.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: And what if this is the final point
because, "the only reason I was still using a Windows laptop is because
they didn't have this."
Leo: No.
Paul: "And — oh, wow, now I don't
need the Windows laptop anymore."
Leo: We know that —
Paul: I don't see that happening, but —
Leo: — an all-touch interface is not a
good — I mean —
Paul: Well, but if you — in other words,
you could —
Leo: I understand. What if they solve
these issues and it's wonderful, and —
Paul: Yeah. Well, you see little things.
You know, OneNote for Windows 8 has got these kind of radial menus; they're
actually really nice. It's possible — I mean, a lot of people still jump all
over the ribbon stuff that Microsoft did, but that's an area where Microsoft
innovated where people didn't think it was possible to innovate any more.
Leo: Right.
Paul: You know, with an Office
productivity suite of very mature applications.
Leo: Right.
Paul: 20, 25-year-old applications. You
know, the radial menu stuff in OneNote — I think it's only in OneNote — OneNote, the modern version of
OneNote. There's another example where — well, that's interesting. You know,
everyone thinks Metro's so dumb. But look at this.
Leo: Right.
Paul: This is pretty sophisticated. You
never know. I mean, the Office guys would be the ones that could pull it off.
Mary
Jo: Yeah. I think Office for iPad's
going to look more like Office for Windows 8 than it's going to look like
Office for the Mac.
Paul: Oh, yeah, I do, too.
Mary
Jo: I think it's going to be more like
that, right, than it is going to be, like, a full —
Paul: Yeah, no, I — I meant from a level
of functionality standpoint.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, yeah.
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: But that's — yeah. I mean, I don't
anticipate Microsoft making any massive, surprising changes in UI, right? Like,
some sort of breakthrough —
Paul: I don't know. That's the question.
In other words, do they —
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: Do they work with the existing iOS
7 interface widgets? Do they do their own thing? Do they do something that will
maybe make this look like it does on Windows, which I think is what Mary Jo is
suggesting. And I think it's probably true, by the way, that they'll have a
common touch UI that they work — use across devices. I don't know. You know, in
some ways, how sophisticated this is will tell us how serious Microsoft is
about being kind of holistic about their devices and services strategy.
Mary
Jo: And also how serious they are — as
we've heard Satya Nadella saying that they are also a software player, right?
Like, this is a software play and a services play. And I think Microsoft kind
of got away from calling itself a software vendor, but as we saw this week with
the OneNote for Mac and Windows, they still are very much a software company,
and they're good at making software. So they shouldn't really completely
distance themselves from calling themselves a software company.
Paul: Yeah, I agree.
Leo: Okay. Well, we'll know soon. This
is good.
Mary
Jo: We will.
Leo: This is good stuff. This is the
stuff of which dreams are made of. No.
Paul
and Mary Jo: (Laugh)
Leo: Sorry, that's something else.
Paul: OneNote on the Mac certainly is.
Leo
and Mary Jo: (Laugh)
Leo: Well, I have to say — okay. I don't
know if — well, OneNote on the Mac is a bellwether. If we assume it is, it is —
it's very ribbon-you.
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: So it's not — it is — I mean, if
you use this as a way of saying, "Well, how is Microsoft thinking about
putting this on a different platform?"
Paul: Well —
Leo: This looks just like — I mean, I
feel like I'm on Windows, frankly.
Paul: Yeah, but I actually think — so
here's the thing. So obviously, that's a ribbon user interface; it's much
better than the Mac Office 2011 product. It's less cluttered and clean-looking.
Leo: It's what — I expect the next
Office will be exactly like this, right?
Paul: Yeah. I think the ribbon makes
sense on the Mac for the same reason that it makes sense on the Windows
desktop, right? Because this is a mouse and keyboard productivity environment.
You can bunch up commands in a small space. It's okay; you're clicking them
with a mouse. So I think that kind of consistency is fine. This isn't as hoaky
as — you know, for that brief moment in time, I think Office 6 or whatever they
wanted to have a common code base between Windows and Mac. And of course, that
meant that the Mac version was going to be ridiculous and bad. It's not like
that. I mean, it's — it's a Mac product. It still has a menu bar at the top.
And some people noted on Twitter, "Why is there a command here on the
ribbon? The command is in the menu." Because Mac people expect the command
to be in the menu. That's —
Leo: Well, but that's kind of, I think,
the disconnect for me. Which is, we've got a ribbon which really feels like a
menu —
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: — and then, as a Mac user, I've
then got the menu.
Paul: So —
Leo: And I just feel like that's kind of
a disconnect.
Paul: It shouldn't be because I think
what you're — the way that you're thinking of this is, This is like the Windows
version.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: But the right way to think about it
is, This is like the web version.
Leo: Okay. Okay.
Paul: So this is — this is a commonality
that has nothing to do with making it less Mac-like and more Windows-like; it's
about making it consistent regardless of platform, regardless of how you choose
to access OneNote. You know?
Leo: Okay.
Paul: That's all.
Leo: I can accept that.
Paul: I don't — in other words, this
isn't like — remember when Microsoft and Office had a — and maybe it's still
there. They had Windows Live Messenger.
Leo: Yeah, yeah.
Paul: On the Mac.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: That's disrespectful. (Laughs)
Leo: That's disrespectful, yeah.
Paul: That's ridiculous.
Leo: Well, it's just not — the whole —
we're talking about native vs. non-native. And —
Paul: It's disrespectful to the platform.
Leo: It's non-native. It's non-native.
Paul: In other words, it's not being true
to the platform.
Leo: Yeah. It's non-native.
Paul: I don't like to see that kind of
thing. This doesn't reek of that to me. I suspect — I don't know what kind of
Mac you have, but I bet this thing is very compliant with high-resolution and
Retina displays, and all that kind of stuff.
Leo: Oh, yeah, it does all that stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul: And I think this is a — probably a
very well-written Mac program.
Leo: Well, that was the wrap always on
Office on the Mac, until more recently, was that they had their own memory
management.
Paul: Yes.
Leo: I mean, they — really, it was not
in any way a Mac app.
Paul: Right.
Leo: It was a — its own thing.
Paul: It's almost like a p-code thing
running in a —
Leo: Right.
Paul: — closed sandbox environment or
something.
Leo: I think this is kind of un-Macish
because you've got these rows of buttons. We've got the tabs, we've got the
ribbon, we've got these buttons here for "Open," back and forth, and
then you've got your — overlaid your Mac menu. I just — it doesn't feel native.
Paul: Well — yeah. In the old days, Leo,
I and Microsoft would have just told you to suck it down. You know, too bad.
Leo
and Mary Jo: (Laugh)
Paul: But today, what we're saying is,
it's really just about a unified platform.
Leo: Yeah, yeah. I'm not — I'm not
complaining. More what I'm saying is, that's why you may see a collective yawn
for the iPad community. Really, it's going to depend what they do, but it's —
just, if this is the bellwether, then what Apple's going to do is say,
"No" — or what Microsoft's going to do —
Paul: Oh.
Leo: — is say, "No, we're going to
make a — our program" —
Paul: Again, if this stuff had just
happened years ago — and it is an indication of Microsoft's lack of influence —
that in, I guess, 2011 in the wake of the first — I guess it would have been
2010, in the wake of the first iPad that Steve Jobs was kind of enraged by the
claims that the iPad was only a consumption tool. He pushed —
Leo: Right.
Paul: — the iWork guys to get that stuff
going in some kind of a sophisticated way on the iPad. Five years earlier, he
would have gone to Microsoft, and would have begged, borrowed, and stealed to
make sure that Office appeared on iPad 2.
Leo: Right.
Paul: But of course, by that point, they
had — you know, they were de-Microsofting themselves. I mean, it's — the world
has changed. It's too bad that Microsoft didn't seize that opportunity. But I
think the Microsoft of 2010, they weren't ready to make that —
Leo: Right.
Paul: — that leap quite yet.
Leo: Right.
Paul: Because Windows 8 was going to save
everything, baby.
Leo: Uh ...
Mary Jo and Paul: (Laugh)
Leo: Well, this — that's why I think
it'll be very interesting to see what they do, but —
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: And don't be disheartened if the —
if iPad users go, "Well, that's nice." I mean, really, don't you
think this is an application for Windows users who want to use an iPad more
than anything else?
Mary
Jo: Yes.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: And that's why I think it has to
kind of give them some concessions, right? (Laughs)
Leo: Yes, exactly.
Paul: By the way — yeah. Windows PC users
that also use iPads — we call those users.
Leo
and Mary Jo: (Laugh)
Paul: (Laughs) So those are just people.
I mean, that's —
Leo: Right.
Mary
Jo: A lot of people.
Paul: That's the way it is, yeah.
Leo: Yeah. Okay.
Paul: So it's not some weird little
splinter group over in the corner. I mean —
Leo: They're not mules, you're saying.
They can —
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of
people —
Leo: They can reproduce. Okay.
Paul: — on iPhone and iPad, but they also
have Windows PCS. So —
Leo: All right. Well, this — here we go.
Here we go. It gets exciting momentarily. And I'd love to see Gemini, the
Windows 8 version.
Paul: Yeah, I think that's — now that you
said that, I bet they do.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: I bet they do show that.
Leo: Makes sense. He said it's — — see,
you're not — I got to get Jim Dalrymple out here to do a little tutorial.
You've got to parce, baby. [unintelligible] would look at this —
Mary
Jo: It's not a parcing kind of thing.
(Laughs)
Leo: No, it is! NO, no, no, there is!
Paul: Because really — I get —
Leo: It says, news. News, that's a word.
Paul: This is — by the way, this is — no,
you don't understand. In the Apple world, you can parce. You can — I know what
you're talking about. I've seen this WWDC announcement, you know. If we parced
this stuff, somewhere in Redmond or in Portland or wherever [unintelligible]
is, someone would be made aware of our parcing of this —
Leo: Oh.
Paul: — and they would look at each other
and be like, "Wow, we never even thought of that." (Laughs) And it's
just —
Leo: (Laughs) Oh, really?
Paul: There's no — there's no guile here,
Leo. It's —
Mary
Jo: I'm not kidding. There's more in
this email about where to park than anything. (Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: I'm not kidding.
Paul: It's very pragmatic. This is
Microsoft.
Leo: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: They're engineers.
Paul: Like, "We're making people go
to San Francisco. How are they going to get around?"
Mary
Jo: There's no colors involved. There's
no little diagram, or —
Leo: Okay. Okay.
Paul: The Apple guys are walking around
in a daze. they don't care where to park. They don't own cars. They have
scooters, and —
Leo: They're going, (Makes meditating
noise)
Paul: They walk on air. They don't need
cars.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: "Channel the great Ghost of
Steve." So there is something, though. There will — say that line again.
There will be news ...
Mary
Jo: Yes. "There will be news at
this event around the intersection of mobile and cloud computing."
Leo: There's parceable stuff in there. I
know — I mean —
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: — "news" means new
product, means an announcement. Yes?
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: In Mobile and Cloud. Okay, that's
pretty parceable.
Mary
Jo: That could be everything, right?
(Laughs)
Paul: Devices and services is mobile and
cloud. What do you — I mean, it's —
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: (Laughs) Okay.
Paul: — it's literally devices and
services restated.
Leo: It's like — what you're saying is
like, "We're going to make an announcement that has to do with
Microsoft."
Mary
Jo: Yeah, pretty much. (Laughs)
Leo: And that's all they say. All right.
Okay.
Mary
Jo: And here are the —
Paul: Yeah. You know, "Next
Thursday, the world's largest maker of software is going to introduce a new
product."
Mary
Jo: It has — it says that; that's one
line. And then it has four different things with maps, saying "Here are
the closest parking lots."
Leo: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: And then it says —
Paul: I hope it's a location services
thing. That would be funny.
Mary
Jo: — "Here's your closest" —
Leo: Are they inviting eight thousand
journalists?
Mary
Jo: No, it's very small.
Paul: They're going to introduce the next
version of Bing Maps.
Leo: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: Clearly. (Laughs)
Paul: Then they're going to say, "If
only you had had this version of Bing Maps, you wouldn't have needed the
parking" —
Leo: If only! That's maybe it. Maybe —
see? Now you're parcing. Now you're parcing with gas.
Mary
Jo: There's just nothing else there.
(Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs)
Paul: It's the Mexican food.
Leo: (Laughs) All right, we're —
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: Do you want to mention this Surface
—
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: — with LTE, which is kind of an
iPadish kind of thing to do. Yes?
Mary
Jo: Right So this week, Microsoft came
out with the expected Surface 2 with the LTE support built in —
Paul: Yep.
Mary
Jo: — for a very robust $679, not
including the cover.
Paul: (Laughs)
Leo: "Robust" means expensive?
Mary
Jo: Pricey?
Leo: Pricey? Robust?
Paul: Well, to be fair — I mean —
Mary
Jo: I know. It's —
Paul: — this doesn't justify it, but that
— what is it? $130 more than a comparably-equipped, non-LTE Surface 2.
Mary
Jo: Yes.
Paul: That's the same price differential
Apple charges for an iPad with LTE.
Leo: Right.
Mary
Jo: Right.
Mary
Jo: It's a 64 gig.
Paul: So that makes it right. (Laughs) So
there you go.
Mary
Jo: Right. They're definitely — they're
positioning this as a competitor to the iPad, which you have to remember because
as soon as the price came out, people were saying, "Wait, I can get the
Nokia Lumia 2520 so much cheaper than this. Why — that has LTE, too. Why would
I care?"
Paul: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: And that's not who the target
market is. The target market is people who want the iPad with the LTE built in.
But yeah.
Paul: And I still firmly believe that the
Lumia 2520, or whatever it's called, is the first thing that Microsoft gets rid
of when that purchase goes through.
Mary
Jo: Too bad; it looks like a — well, we
both got to try it. It's a nice little machine.
Leo: Is it?
Paul: Yeah, it is.
Mary
Jo: Yeah. But Paul found out something
very interesting about the Surface 2 with LTE that — I think you're the only
one who's noticed. And I confirmed you're right.
Paul: Well, to be — and I want to — I
didn't notice this myself. So this is from my readers because, as the Microsoft
tool that I am, I reported what they told me, and then people said,
"Actually, Paul, this thing has a GPS in it." What do they call it?
"Assisted GPS," I think is the term.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: That means that the micro — I'm
sorry, the SIM card, silicon, and the slot and all that are not the only
difference between this device and the normal Surface 2. Surface 2 does not
have a GPS. That's a feature that's also in that Lumia 2520 that Mary Jo's
talking about, and to my knowledge — now there are two, but I previously
thought that was the only mainstream Windows tablet that had such hardware in
it. I could be wrong about that, but I thought that was the case. So it has
GPS, too.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Coolness.
Mary
Jo: And you would think — wouldn't you
have thought Microsoft would really be selling this hard? Because so many
people —
Paul: Mentioning it, at least.
Mary
Jo: — have said, "Wow, I can't believe
the Surface doesn't have GPS." And now it does, and nobody even mentioned
it.
Paul: I looked at my — I met with these
guys. I got to see this device a month ago or something, and I went back a
couple times. I went back after I was apprised of this to see what I had wrote,
the notes I took. And they were very clear. There are no differences except for
the slot for the SIM and the corresponding silicon. That's what they said.
Mary
Jo: Yep. Told me the same.
Paul: I don't —
Mary
Jo: So yeah. But it does have GPS. I
confirmed it with Microsoft; they said, "Yes, it does." And it's on
the spec sheet, if you go through the spec sheet.
Paul: Yeah, you have to really want it to
get to that, but yeah, it's in there.
Mary
Jo: Right. (Laughs) Yeah. But that's
good news because a lot of people wanted GPS on their Surface, and now you can
get it —
Paul: So they can find parking on the 27th
when they go to San Francisco.
Mary Jo and Leo:: (Laugh)
Mary
Jo: Yeah, you need it for that.
(Laughs)
Leo: It's not that hard to park, folks.
Paul: I don't know. Well, all those
one-way streets, Leo. San Francisco's a disaster.
Leo: Boston is the worst one-way street
disaster in the history of mankind.
Mary
Jo: Yes, it is. (Laughs)
Paul: That's true.
Leo: It's because it was built before
there were cars.
Paul
and Mary Jo: (Laugh)
Leo: San Francisco, we burned it to the
ground in 1906.
Paul: I told — did I tell you what the
state cop told my brother?
Leo: Yeah?
Paul: My brother was lost in Boston, and
he stopped a cop. I had my own story like this, actually, but his story's
better. He stopped and said, "Hey, I'm driving in circles, and I can't get
out of here. How do I" —
Leo: "I'm trapped!"
Paul: "How do I get out of
here?" And this — this is a state trooper, by the way, state of Massachusetts.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: He said, "What do I look like,
frickin' AAA?" (Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: Except he swore when he said it.
Leo: And say it in a Boston kind of
voice.
Paul: You know, he's like, I think he said,
"What do I look like, triple f—in' A?" And my brother was like,
"Thanks. Have a nice day."
Leo: (Laughs)
Paul: You know, like, welcome to
Massachusetts. The Massachusetts miracle continues into the twenty-first
century.
Leo: That's awesome. Awesome. (Laughs)
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: (Laughs) The Massachusetts miracle.
All right, folks. We're going to
take a break. When we come back, lots more. Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley, we're
talking Microsoft on Windows Weekly. Don't forget: April 4th, a special Windows
Weekly up here in our studios, and you're invited to stop by and enjoy the
festivities.
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Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley,
Windows on the air, baby. We move on to Build. You're coming out for it. And a
very interesting, hot rumor. We talk a lot about Miguel de Icaza and Xamarin.
Mary Jo Foley, you have kind of a surprising rumor on this.
Mary
Jo: Yeah. Not mine originally, but CRN
— Computer Reseller News — reported this week that Microsoft is in the final
stages of negotiation that could lead to either an outright acquisition or
investment in Xamarin.
Leo: Wow.
Mary
Jo: I know.
Leo: Xamarin was based on Icaza's
initial .net port, right? That made it possible to do .net on other platforms —
Mac and Linux —
Paul: Just Linux first, wasn't it?
Leo: Yeah, it was Linux first.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, Linux.
Leo: He's a Linux guy. He did — before
he did this, he was —
Paul: Which, by the way, despite that,
he's actually a really nice guy.
Leo
and Mary Jo: (Laugh)
Leo: Before he did this —
Paul: I mean, I guess it's possible.
Leo: You are such an evil, evil person.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: — he did a very well-known Linux
manager, window manager.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Really great guy.
Mary
Jo: yeah, he is.
Leo: Actually, he did the whole library
for it.
Mary
Jo: Right.
Leo: So he's a super developer. It would
— I would imagine that Microsoft would gain most from just having Miguel. Do
you think this is about Miguel, or is it about more than Miguel?
Paul: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: I think it's about more than Miguel
because now they've got the whole company, and they're doing a whole bunch of
different tools for —
Leo: Right.
Mary
Jo: — C-Sharp developers who want to
port to iOS and to Android. They even do tools for Google Glass and the new
Google wearable stuff. I mean, they're kind of all over the map with it, but
they've always been really big backers of .net developers.
Leo: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: All along.
Leo: Even if it's not for Windows.
Mary
Jo: Right.
Leo: That's great.
Mary
Jo: And that's why, at the beginning of
their relationship with Microsoft, it was very rocky. Because maybe five, six
years ago when they started doing a lot of the stuff, Microsoft didn't want
them to be helping people port to anything except Windows, right?
Leo: Right.
Mary
Jo: So they weren't friends back then.
At all.
Leo: Right.
Mary
Jo: And then, as managers came and went
at Microsoft, they started getting a little cozier. And last November, Xamarin
had a major announcement with Microsoft around a marketing and development
partnership —
Leo: Oh, all right.
Mary
Jo: — for doing C-Sharp on Android and
iOS.
Leo: Oh, mobile.
Mary
Jo: Yes.
Leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's big. Yeah.
Mary
Jo: So yeah. Now they're pretty
friendly.
Paul: They keep holding out for this. Use
Visual Studio to create apps that run on an iPhone. Amazing.
Leo: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: Yep.
Leo: That's big, right? Yeah.
Mary
Jo: Yeah. Miguel's not talking. I tried
to get him to say something, anything. He just said, "Working with
Microsoft has been a delight." (Laughs)
Paul: Really?
Leo: Right.
Paul: Which is how you know he's full of
crap.
Mary
Jo: "Absolute delight."
(Laughs)
Paul: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Paul: Huh.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, but we were talking earlier —
when you came into the show Leo, you were humming a Beatles tune, if I recall.
Leo: Yeah, I was.
Paul: So this is — yes, this is weird.
Leo: What?
Mary
Jo: You tell it, Paul. You were there;
I was there, too.
Paul: No, go ahead.
Mary
Jo: Okay. I'll tell him.
Paul: Well, I mean, for me it's just
embarrassing. I —
Mary
Jo: For you, it's weird. (Laughs)
Leo: What, did Paul McCartney send you
an — a fan letter?
Paul: No. So there's — Don Box, who's
another great guy, by the way. And he's still at Microsoft. He's, like, a — is
he a technical fellow now, or a —
Mary
Jo: Yeah, distinguished engineer at
Microsoft.
Paul: Distinguished engineer. You know,
he was a guy at a lot of the Build shows, and I guess maybe PBC, I don't
remember. But he would be the guy on day 2 who would do all the live coding
examples. You know, and —
Leo: Ah. One of those guys.
Paul: He's one of those rare developer
types you can also communicate very effectively with in public.
Leo: Love those guys, yeah.
Paul: He's funny, you know, he's a good
guy. And Microsoft was — in 2003, right, I think it was?
Mary
Jo: Right.
Paul: — was — really wanted to hire
Miguel and get him on board. And Don is part of a — like a lot of programmers,
a lot of techo people — are musicians. You know, and they have — he's part of a
band, and I think sometimes they get together at these tech events, and they
turn regular pop songs into songs about technology.
Leo: (Laughs)
Paul: Which is something I'm not —
Mary
Jo: Wait, you've got to tell him the
title of the band because that's even funnier. They're called Band on the
Runtime.
Leo: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: That's really their name. (Laughs)
Leo: A play off a Paul McCartney song.
Paul: See, I just threw up in my mouth a
little bit when you said that. Like, I —
Leo: (Sings) Band on the Runtime ...
Paul: I love these guys. This kind of
thing is a little on the edge for me. So anyway, they were on the top of a —
Leo: Well, you know, David Poke spoiled
it for me because he does so much of that.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: You know, the parodies.
Paul: I just don't like that kind of
stuff.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: So anyway, rooftop in L.A.,
downtown L.A., during, I think, Build — PBC 2003, I think it was the Msdm
party, something like that, probably. And his — Don Box's band were playing
these songs, these pop songs but redone for technical topics, you know.
Leo: Right.
Paul: So (Laughs) Anyway, Miguel was
there, and he basically serenaded Miguel with a version of the song
"Michelle" by the Beatles, which is what you were singing; but of
course, reworded to be "Miguel."
Leo: (Sings) Miguel, ma belle.
Paul: "Please come to Microsoft and
work for Microsoft."
Leo: (Sings) Please come to Micro —
(Stops singing) Wow. Wow. Oh.
Paul: Yeah. Yeah, so I — yeah, I don't
want to get into it. But anyway, so it was — (Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs)
Paul: It was just —
Leo: Revolting.
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: But it indicated a strong interest
in Miguel de Icaza.
Paul: YEAH. Miguel turned them down,
obviously.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: But yeah.
Leo: This guy's legendary in the Linux
space.
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: I mean, he really is.
Mary
Jo: Yes.
Paul: Miguel is.
Leo: Yeah. I've admired him tremendously
for years.
Paul: Yeah, yeah. And actually, at our —
was it the Build Blogger Bash we just had last year? — I was there with Rafael
hanging out, and we were talking to different people. This guy kind of comes
up, and he's — he's just talking to us. You know, blah blah blah. And I wasn't
— I — these events are so — these weeks are awful. A lot of stuff back-to-back.
I wasn't really paying a lot of attention, frankly. And so at some point, I
finally said, "So who" — I said, "What do you do?" And it
was Miguel.
Leo: Oh!
Mary
Jo: Oh, geez.
Paul: And he — as he starts talking, I'm
— it was like I kind of focused on him for the first time. And then I realized,
oh my God. And the way he described himself is hilarious because he's like,
"Oh, I'm a software developer. I do stuff that kind of combines .net with
open-source technologies, and everything." And I was like, "Oh, my
God." (Laughs) Like, what — you know, I just felt like such a jerk.
Leo: Aww.
Paul: I'm like, "Oh, that's what you
do."
Leo: "I've never heard of you. Uh,
what have you done lately?"
Mary
Jo: "Who are you again?"
(Laughs)
Paul: Couldn't have had an iota of an
ego.
Leo: "You know, I wrote the Delphi
Bible. Have you" —
Paul: Yeah, exactly. (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: Exactly.
Paul: "Oh, let me tell you something
about development. After all, [unintelligible] 15 years ago."
Leo: (Laughs) I — that happens to me all
the time because I don't remember people's names and faces. But whenever — I'll
just give you a little pro tip.
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: Whenever that happens, I
immediately start going, "I'm not worthy!" I bow down.
Paul: Sure.
Leo: "I'm not worthy! Oh, my God,
you're Miguel! Oh, my God!"
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: I don't think he would have —
honestly, he doesn't appear to be a guy who's looking for that kind of adulation.
I mean, he —
Leo: Again, another reason everybody
loves him.
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: I mean, if he came off like,
"I — do you know who I am?"
Paul: Yeah, exactly. I mean, right. He's
not — he does not have a jerk bone in his body, from what I can tell.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, he's not that way.
Paul: He's a great guy.
Leo: Maybe he'll be at Build Blogger
Bash 2014.
Mary
Jo: I know.
Paul: I assume we're going to see him
very soon.
Mary
Jo: I should make sure he's going to
come.
Leo: That would be awesome. You're doing
it again, this time on April 3rd, the night before you're appearance here.
That's really scary to me.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs) I know. Us, too.
Paul: We'll be fine.
Leo: It is invite-only at this point, right?
In fact, are you full?
Paul: Yeah.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, it sold out thirty minutes
after we announced it last week on the show.
Leo: Wow.
Paul: Just like an Apple event.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: Wow. Well, you know —
Paul: Apple's not the only one that can
sell out San Francisco, Leo.
Leo: So many great people are going to
be there, including Dr. Pizza.
Paul: Yep.
Leo: Ed Bott, Mary Jo, Paul, Tom Warren
from The Verge. Are you going to get a little dust up with Tom, and say,
"Hey, Tom, come here."
Paul: No, we get along fine.
Leo: Oh, okay.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, Tom's great.
Leo: Oh, all right. Aw, man. I'm pushing
it.
Mary
Jo: And even some non-traditional
bloggers who cover Microsoft are going to be there, who don't always come to
these things, like Dina Bass from Bloomberg —
Paul: Like "alternative
lifestyle" bloggers? What do you mean?
Leo: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: Yeah. (Laughs)
Leo: Yes, the big —
Paul: (Laughs) What are we talking about
here?
Mary
Jo: Oh, Daniel Rubino's going to be
there.
Paul: Yeah.
Leo: He's polyamorous, we know that. No,
I'm just kidding. Sorry, Daniel. But Daniel was great on this show when you
weren't there.
Mary
Jo: He was good.
Paul: Yeah, WP Central. Who else?
Leo: Alex Wilhelm from TechCrunch.
Paul: Yep, Alex is great.
Mary
Jo: Brad Sams from Neowin.
Leo: Neowin's Brad Sams. That's fun.
GOOD, good group of people.
Mary
Jo: Yeah, it's going to be a —
Leo: Dina Bass.
Mary
Jo: Frank Shaw from Microsoft joked —
he said, "Wow, I should just drop a bomb on this event" —
Leo: Oh, that's nice. That's the way to
—
Paul: Listen, we say that about the
Microsoft campus all the time, big guys.
Leo: Geez, Frank!
Paul: (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: No, he — it was very obvious that
he was kidding. (Laughs)
Leo: Yeah, but, you know, that really —
I have to tell you, that's not — if that's the way he thinks about these guys,
that's the wrong attitude.
Mary
Jo: No, he didn't — he said— no, no. He
said, "This would make an awesome target." (Laughs) I threw the
"bomb" —
Leo: No, I don't think it's that much of
a joke. I think it's —
Paul: No, he can just — he can walk
around the room and just correct everybody.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: This is, like, a target-rich
environment for him.
Mary
Jo: We — none of us took it in a bad
way. We joked.
Leo: Yeah. (Skeptical noise)
Mary
Jo: It was all good. (Laughs) Not bad,
not bad.
Leo: All right, all right. You guys are
—
Mary
Jo: And it's — yeah, and then we're
going to do the show live, as you already said, and Petaluma on April 4th. So
people should come to that, especially if you can't get into the —
Paul: We should say, you know, anyone can
come to that. I think we were saying earlier that people should — don't have
to, but should — RSVP? How do they do that?
Leo: Yeah, email tickets@twit.tv. It's
mostly just so we have a rough count of how many people are going to be there.
We can get finger foods.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Things like that. You know, we did
beer last time, didn't we?
Mary
Jo: Mmm-hmm. We did.
Leo: Maybe we'll do that again.
Paul: Yeah, beer would be good.
Leo: Okay. We'll get a Pony.
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Paul: Actually, we had a lot of beer last
time, now that I'm thinking about it. (Laughs)
Leo: Yeah, I think we did. (Laughs)
Mary
Jo: Yeah, we did.
Paul: Now that I'm —
Leo: Maybe too much?
Paul: it's no wonder I didn't remember
you were there, Leo. I —
Leo: (Laughs) I wasn't there.
Paul: Somebody was feeding me beer the
entire time I was sitting there.
Mary
Jo: I blame Liz. (Laughs)
Paul: Yeah, definitely.
Leo: I will be there this time, and I'm
much looking forward to it. It is my day off, and I am going to come in on my
day off just because I can. I can't miss it. Looking forward to it. So if you
can't get to Build Blogger Bash, make a little ride. We're about an hour north
of San Francisco. You get to visit the Brick House and see Paul and Mary Jo, too. Should be fun. Build is coming up.
Paul: Hopefully some other people. I
mean, maybe we can get some other guys —
Leo: Bring them all up.
Mary
Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Bring them all up. I'll lend you
the Audi. You can get ten people in that sucker. Yep. Uh (Hums) Well, we were
talking —
Paul: Can we get Frank Shaw?
Leo: You know what?
Paul: What's Frank doing Friday?
Leo: Frank, come up. I would actually be
thrilled to have Frank Francis X. Shaw in the studio.
Mary
Jo: That would be fun.
Paul: I think I referred to Frank as
"the mouth of Saran" on this podcast one time, and he actually
emailed me.
Leo
and Mary Jo: (Laugh)
Leo: I would say he listens, but I'm
sure that's not the case. He has — there are services you can subscribe to that
when anybody calls you "the mouth of Saran," you get an email.
Paul: Yeah, yeah. Right. I believe it's
mouthofsaran.io. (Laughs)
Leo: (Laughs) If This, Then That.
"If they call me the mouth of Saran, then email me."
Mary
Jo: (Laughs)
Leo: So for a while we were calling the Nook, the wook because
of this potential that Microsoft might in fact do a deal with Barnes &
Noble and they spent some money didn’t they? Put some money in there?
Paul: Yes
Leo: What happened with that? Because the nook is going
away, the nook’s a flop, right?
Mary Jo: Yes, pretty much.
Paul: Microsoft bump.
Mary Jo: So it was a year ago that Microsoft invested 300
million in a venture that became nook media that was a digital publishing
division that was responsible for the nook, and also college content textbooks. Just recently right after windows weekly
last week, Nook filed an 8K that said “Hey, we’re changing the terms of our
relationship with Microsoft. There are a lot of things in that that were
rejected so we couldn’t see all the details, but one thing it said was that we
have the right not to do a windows phone app, and we have the right to stop
making our windows 8 app, but we are going to be working with Microsoft on
something called the Microsoft consumer reader which immediately makes you
think Oh, it’s an eReader, but it’s not, it’s an app. Microsoft demo’d at their
internal company meeting last year, a reader app that seemingly is going to
work across all their platforms, and it may be branded as Xbox reader even though
it’s not tied to the Xbox, they may just be using Xbox as the consumer brand. I
think this is where you’re going to see the nook content probably show up, the
digital content will be in this reader app that Microsoft is building in conjunction
with nook media. So no eReader, guys, sorry; no wook.
Paul: No wook?
Leo: We just want to call it a wook; I don’t think anyone
really cares. This is all just because Amazon dominates the space with Kindle,
that’s all, nobody needs a wook.
Leo: The other thing’s the Kobo if you want a third party
reader I guess, but the Amazon’s got it down, perfect. They nailed it.
Mary Jo: Sadly, I know
Paul really likes the Windows 8 nook app, right?
Leo: Yes, he recommended it last week.
Paul: I picked it just as recently as last week; I guess I
put it in the notes. I’m pretty sure they’re doing this just to screw with me
because you know; it’s been around for a year or more, and in a weird coincidence,
at last year’s BUILD blogger bash, I met the guys who developed this app and
they were telling me, you have to try this, it’s much better than the….
Leo: Are they killing them too? Or is it just the app.
Paul: They did the windows app. I told them at the time that
I’m sure it’s great, but all my stuff is in Amazon, I can’t really use it.
Leo: See? See!
Paul: But as I noted last week, honestly for magazine subscriptions
& things like that which was the point of the tip last week, or the pick,
whatever it was, it doesn’t really matter it’s kind of throw away content
anyway. You don’t have to marry yourself to one platform for that kind of stuff.
So I started looking at magazine subscriptions on the nook. I hope and assume
that these things will continue to work on whatever reader that Microsoft
eventually puts out. But the one thing I would remind people, is that this
announcement that Mary Jo made reference to doesn’t mean that the nook software
disappears immediately. It doesn’t erase itself, it’s there & will still
work just as well as it did last week. I suspect Microsoft will release their
app before we have to worry about it disappearing. It’s not all bad.
Mary Jo: It was funny, At Nook customer care, someone pinged
them right after this came out and said, “Hey, what about the windows phone app?”
and this is what they said (on a twitter) “We appreciate your patience, we will
launch the best reading experience on Windows phone 8 in the near future.” And
then they immediately deleted that tweet but I grabbed the screen shot first.
Paul: By the way, that’s more of a promise that we ever got
from Sonos, just saying.
Leo: There is no Sonos app?
Paul: Not an official one, but their investigating it.
Leo: That’s a deal breaker….
Mary Jo: Well, now that Marc Whitten who went there from
Microsoft, the former Xbox product officer….
Paul: Maybe they can do it.
Leo: Seriously, I am so invested in this Sonos eco system happily,
that that is actually one of the deal breakers on a windows phone.
Paul: Well there are 3rd party apps.
Leo: Are they good?
Paul: As I have to keep reminding Windows phone users, and
as much as this pains me, personally you cannot complain because these guys are
targeting 93% of the market. That’s why people wrote Windows apps 10 years ago,
it is common sense.
Leo: We’ve been here before.
Paul: We can get indignant about it but we can’t really
blame them.
Mary Jo: We should give Mike Bauz a shout out, he’s one of our
listeners, and the one who pinged the customer care about that and then quickly
deleted the tweet.
Paul: It was a great tweet, it was
like their scripted response and then it was like “beep, beep, beep”.
Leo: Not only had they released it, they’ve killed it.
Mary Jo: To me their response actually says; Guess what, this
new app we’re building is going to be on windows phone8.
Leo: How are you liking Titanfall Paul, still enjoying it?
Paul: It’s OK, I think there are plenty of fine shooters on
plenty of platforms, and I think this is one of them I don’t think this is the
next big thing, I think it’s good, nothing wrong with it, but I just don’t
think it’s…
Leo: I’m really liking it. I’m feeling like it is in some
ways a break thru. I’m not a big call of duty player though, so maybe it’s just
me.
Paul: I do this thing where I get together with friends and
we play call of duty at night at some guy’s house once a month, and I haven’t
gone for the past 3 months now, but we went last night. They’re still on the
360, so I had to turn on my 360 for the first time since November, update Call
of duty, and make sure everything was all set. It was interesting going back. One
of the things I do when you used to offer anything, you can go back to the
previous version – if you’re running windows 8, you can go back to windows 7,
or whatever and you kind of note the difference. Is it good, bad or indifferent?
I think the sign of a good update is when you miss stuff from the new version
when you’re using the old version. And honestly, using the 360 and playing Call
of duty I didn’t miss anything. It was louder, the machine, the graphics aren’t
quite as good actually.
Leo: You could tell the difference?
Paul: Yes, I’ve been doing the PlayStation version today. PlayStation
4 to Xbox 1; no difference at all visually. Xbox 360 you notice the difference
immediately. That’s weird because I played the 360 version and went to the Xbox
1 and didn’t really notice it, but going back you really do notice it. And then
10 minutes goes by and you forget about it, it’s OK. So I think the one thing I’d say about the
Xbox 1 that I missed a little bit was some aspects of the controller, like the
bumpers are much better on the new controller.
Leo: The controller I think is hugely improved.
Paul: Yes. I tweeted something about this on twitter today,
wish I could find the guy, I apologize for not saying the guy’s name, but he
said “Was it $500.00 better?” No, it really wasn’t.
Leo: So how many upgrades for Xbox360 have you purchased?
Paul: Oh at least 8.
Leo: OK, so if we thought about how much money we are
spending it would be a different……
Paul: Oh, no! I don’t want to think about it! Please! One of the best things about the Xbox 1 is you
only have to buy one copy of the game now. We were joking last night that this
year in November when the next Call of duty game comes out it will be the first
year in 5, 6, 7 years whatever that my son & I don’t wake up at midnight,
drive out to a Best Buy, wait in line, buy the game, come home, install it,
play for a couple hours then go back to bed. I was telling him, I’ll just set
the alarm, start the download, go to bed, wake up in the morning & it is
there.
Leo: You can do what I did; set the alarm, go to the living
room to download it…
Paul: He said you know, that’s not going to be the same you
know, can we just get in the car and drive for half an hour & then just go
back & play the game? I said “Yeah, we can do that if you want”.
Leo: It was a fine bonding moment while it lasted.
Mary Jo: Did you guys hear that Azure HDInsight has Hadoop 2.2
this week?
Leo: So as we were talking about Titanfall, I just wanted
to ….. Nice try, Mary Jo
Paul: like someone just tried to throw a grenade in the
room. You know, if she was in the game she would be an assassin like that.
Leo: Yeah, she’s like a sniper she’s a camper I can tell a camper
from way back.
Paul: When you least expect it. Two guys bumping into each
other, & they’re like dufas’s, then the grenade comes in
Leo: I think your reaction to Titanfall is interesting. It
tells me I think that Titanfall appeals more to me, the casual, less than
hardcore first shooter, player, more than it does to someone like you that’s
really into the Call of Duty.
Paul: Actually I’ve tried to say this a lot, to be clear
about this, I do feel like Call of duty has biased me against other games, even
games that are very similar. Like Medal of Honor was the thing or Battlefield
was another example. These games are obviously very similar but because they’re
not exactly the same, they’re a little off-putting to me. That said, I actually
think Titanfall’s kind of complex and I’m surprised that a casual gamer could
get into these games and understand it.
Leo: I think that’s really a credit to Respond, and of course
these two guys used to run Infinity warden and Created Call of Duty, but credit
to them because I think they wanted to make a game that would be assessable,
but still have some lasting power, and I think that things like wall running,
the jump kit, the Titan itself, the game play, some of the weapon’s, makes it
very accessible to somebody like me. Like there’s a gun that targets everything
in the field of view and you shoot it and they all go, that’s the kind of a
thing that a guy like me likes.
Paul: But Leo, can I no scope someone with a noob tube in
this game, because I can’t.
Leo: And it has some great (?)* 1:11:09 including by the
way, some things you would enjoy, a (?) of a titan, if you can jump on its back….it’s
pretty awesome. So it is little things. I just find it a very playable,
compelling game. And I don’t think I’m alone because I think It’s bumped sales
of the Xbox 1 and it’s done quite well. I think it has gotten people excited,
it is a little hectic, it’s one of those. It reminds me of the excitement I
felt when I first saw “Unreal” where we were all playing quake 3 –
Paul: And Unreal was like this colorful gorgeous, slick, and
it was faster than Unreal tournament, you know.
Leo: I loved Unreal tournament, I played that a lot.
Paul: Yeah, it was like you know- like quake on speed.
Leo: All right, thanks Mary Jo for your patience.
Paul: I thought Unreal Tournament 2004 was possibly the apex
of that series and let me explain why…..
Leo: Paul and I
are on absolute agreement on this. And someone said this on a really rave
review, was it on the Verge somewhere? and one of the things he said it makes
games like Halo seem kind of quiet and calm, because there’s so
little…..compared to so much going on in Titanfall, it’s just constant,
everything. I’m not any good at it-
Paul: Is it called Call of duty Titanfall? Because if it
isn’t…
Leo: No it’s not. It’s not! Hey I want to tell you a little
bit about my friends, Don and Tim. They were fans originally of the
screensavers, became fans of twit. At the time they were training people how to
get their certifications; you know A+ certs, and Microsoft certs, Sysco certs
and things like that. And they said “What if we did kind of like what Leo does
with Twit, only for certification training and I.T. pro TV was born, and I am
not only flattered, I think it’s great. Here is the channel; it’s on all the
time. They have live broadcasts, they are airing about 20 hours of content
every week of live broadcasts, there’s a live chat just like ours you can talk
with Don and Tim and other trainers as they’re training, they have a Rochu
channel, of course you can watch it on your laptop or your tablet, etc. But one
of the beauties of I.T. pro TV is you keep it running all the time, you’re
learning while you’re watching. They’ve done such a nice job.
“I want you to visit itpro.tv/ww for windows weekly,
that’s their windows weekly channel and find out more about it. Take a look at
the episode library for instance. Are you interested in improving your skills
to become an I.T. professional, or maybe you’re already an I.T. and you want to
learn some more They’ve got the CompTIA, A+, Security+, they’re going to add
the CASP certs, the MCSA certs, the Cisco certs., Now the Isc2 stuff, this is
great stuff. That’s the episode library, and what’s nice if you go into an
episode you’ll see it’s broken down by test sections by goals, so you can even focus
on an area you want to learn more about. So here’s an exam objective for the A+
220-801. …OK, I need to learn more about “explain learn environmental impacts and
the purpose of environmental controls” You can actually jump right to that
portion of the video and watch CompTIA A+ Safety Procedures. It’s Don & Wes
on this one. I think it’s such a great idea, and I’m so flattered that they
copied us. They emulated us. It makes it a really easy way to watch and learn.
Now, normally this is very affordable. Regular $57.00 a month or $570.00 if you
get the 12 month package, they give you a little discount. Even then it’s a specular
savings over going to a school for this, or even buying the tests & study
materials. We’ll see what’s going on live right now on the studio. They are
going to do “Getting started with direct access here”, that’s cool.
“We have a deal. If you use the offer code WW50, you’ll
get 50% off your subscription for the life time of your account. That’s $28.50
a month, $285.00 a year, that’s not for the first week, month or year, but
forever. You can learn everything you need, forever for 50% off.”
Leo: It’s really good, engaging, and fun to watch, much
cheaper than going to I.T. boot camp, easy cancellation policy when you’re
done, direct interaction with the hosts, 10 years of experience in e-learning.
I want you to try it. Itpro.tv/ww Use the offer code WW50 to get 50% off for
life. At I.T.pro.tv. Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, Windows Weekly on the air.
Continuing on with our litany of fabulous stuff.
Paul: It is a litany.
Leo: It’s a litany.
Paul: It’s usually associated with something bad isn’t it?
Leo: no…..
Paul: complaints….
Leo: Oh maybe, it’s not only complaints although here’s one
Mozilla’s killing Firefox for Metro. They still do desktop Windows, right? I
don’t think that’s a reflection on Metro though? Maybe it is.
Paul: OK, so they say it is obviously. Some people are
suggesting that there are problems with Windows, that Mozilla does things that
maybe this reflects the growing irrelevance of their browser and etc. I guess
there are two sides to take, It’s hard from the standpoint of a windows 8 user
to feel good about this either way and the one thing I tried to point out in my
own write up about it is that it’s easy to complain when companies don’t
support your stuff, you know we were talking about Sonos, windows phone for
example, but when they actually do support your platform and nobody uses it that’s
kind of tough. That said honestly if I was going to blame anyone, I think I’d
have to blame Microsoft in this case because this isn’t just a metro app, it’s
sort of a metro browser app and browser apps in metro are severally limited by
design. I have no idea. They’ve explained it, I can’t tell you anything that
makes sense; they are just restricting the way that web browsers work in the
metro environment
Leo: is that security? It must be security.
Paul: I’m sure that must be one of the reasons…
Leo: Browsers are the vector for most issues in a computer.
Paul: Yes, and certainly they want Metro not to be the wild
west that the desktop environment is in Windows and all that kind of stuff, I
got that, but I think at some point you’re just artificially limiting the
platform, and harming the users by not letting them do the things they want to
do. There are decent versions of Chrome and IOS and things like that. This seems
like something that should be better than it is.
Leo: I think really it’s more of a reflection on the kind
of people who use Metro.
Paul: What are those kinds of people? What are you trying to
say?
Leo: Dummies. No, seriously it’s the same thing with the
iPad, there are many 3rd party browsers on the iPad nobody uses it. You
use IE. If you’re using Metro you use IE.
Mary Jo: You know, I’m one of those people who wanted a choice,
and the reason I did was because I really wasn’t working very well, the Metro
version, with IE11. It’s gotten a lot better I can say in the past months, but
if I had a choice, especially Chrome in Metro, I would use that.
Leo: No Chrome either for Metro.
Paul: No, and did they comment about this publically? I know
they complained about it at one point.
Mary Jo: Google did? Yeah they complained
Paul: I can’t remember if they ever came out and said it,
but I know the one thing they have said about Windows 8, they released the
google app and they basically said this is it, we’re not doing anything else.
Mary Jo: I use the google search app in Metro and it’s really
handy.
Leo: Why don’t you like IE? What’s wrong with IE?
Mary Jo: Initially when IE11 came out with the Metro version,
it was hanging a lot, like you’d get these blank white pages even on really
popular sites because of the way these sites were coded and it wasn’t
recognizing IE 11 I guess. And because of how Microsoft’s doing white listing
and all that now and people can submit non-working sites for inclusion in their
list, it’s better. Much better. But if you go to smaller sites, not mainstream
sites; like I go to a lot of cooking sites and a lot of times it just hangs or
the site doesn’t come up, things break in the site. I’m not blaming Microsoft,
but I can tell you it’s not a great experience.
Paul: There’s a certain kind of web experience that doesn’t
work well on touch based browsers and some websites I’ve found this; a year ago
today when I would have been looking for a car, I spent a lot of time on car
manufacture websites and I remember a lot of the sites didn’t work well with
touch because on a regular browser, you would have moved the mouse over
something and a big menu would have come down and then you could have selected
like a car model from a big grid. You can’t do that kind of thing with a touch,
so that’s the car makers not understanding how to properly handle this world
but it was like all of them, a lot of sites. And I remember a year ago that was
something I was testing and it was a huge problem on the surface.
Mary Jo: I still have mixed feelings about the URL bar being at
the bottom like it is on Metro IE. My eye always immediately goes to the top,
waiting for it to show up.
Leo: It doesn’t make good sense just to arbitrarily change
where it is.
Paul: No, it’s not arbitrarily, where you would hold a tablet;
it’s where your thumbs are.
Leo: I get it.
Mary Jo: so it’s great on a touch tablet, not so great on a PC
especially if you’re using it with a mouse.
Leo: That’s why Apple did it that way on the iPad because
it’s better that way
Paul: That’s interesting; I’ll give a compliment to
Microsoft and the mobile version of IE. When I use an iPad and I have to move
my finger all the way to the top to go back, I actually find that to be a pain
in the butt. I think that’s terrible. And there’s another thing I think is
actually pretty wonderful, the modern version of IE, you can swipe on the
screen to go back to the previous page. I find myself on the iPad constantly
doing that. It doesn’t do anything because you have to go tap on the “go back”
button like you do on a regular web browser.
Leo: I think that really it’s not the failure of Firefox or
the fault of Microsoft, I think that people just use the built in browser, and
at least you can change the default browser on Metro, you can’t even change it
on the iPad. But what is the experience like, because I’ve never tried it, of
changing the default browser?
Paul: It’s terrible, it’s stupid. There’s just no way we
could explain this to you, it’s just so dumb. If you change the default browser,
you can’t even use the metro version of value anymore. It’s SO dumb. It’s
terrible. That whole system is broke.
Leo: So I think this makes sense, the future of the 3rd party of metro browser wasn’t right to begin with. I commend Firefox for
attempting it.
Mary Jo: I think a lot of people didn’t even know the Beta of
the Firefox browser existed.
Leo: We told them but—
Mary Jo: Well, our listeners knew, but-
Paul: The usage was incredibly small.
Leo: Yeah, that’s why they stopped.
Mary Jo: Like 1000 people or something.
Leo: Really! Was it that small? That’s bad.
Paul: It was something where they had data for their desktop
versions and it was I don’t want to say billions, but it was some crazy number…
Leo: I’m sure it was. When you’re an open source project,
actually any business, but when you’re an open source project you don’t devote
resources to something nobody uses, unless those particular people want to keep
it alive. That’s the weird thing about developing Firefox on a platform like
Windows8 Metro. It’s kind of hard for it to be a real open source project.
That’s as close to a commercial product as you can get.
Paul: The closed platform?
Leo: Android wear. Where? Right on your wrist, that’s where
or on your eyes. Google has announced that they’re going to have an SDK support
Wearables with the android operating system. Motorola already has one that
looks kind of neat, the Moto 360. LG is going to make one too, these will be
coming soon. Google did not say they would be making one. I bring that up
because Microsoft was the first to do those kinds of things right?
Paul: Yes they were.
Leo: Spot watch. I have a spot watch.
Paul: before there was a spot watch, I had a Timex data sync-
Leo: Data link, yeah.
Paul: And you had to hold the watch in front of the screen and
the screen would give you this- sort of a wave. It was something that would
give you (* a buzz) like a seizure if you weren’t careful.
Leo: and you know why that went out of business? Because
everyone went to LCD screens, you couldn’t do that with them. You had to have a
CRT.
Paul: Right, because it used the interval blanking.
Leo: Or else these weren’t fast enough to do that with.
Paul: those were the days. I lost my watch on the Salt River
outside of Phoenix anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
Leo: I had a spot watch, I had a data Lync, I’ve always
liked the idea and I’m waiting for the ….
Paul: I’ve always like the idea, but problem is the watches
they made were really big, so you’d have this gigantic thing on your wrist, and
the spot watches had black & white, really tiny resolutions.
Leo: The Moto 360 is actually kind of attractive to me.
Paul: I like the google demo video’s, they have a circle
version. The square ones look like the giant spot, but the circle one looks
kind of cool.
Leo: It looks pretty thick, but at least it is round.
Paul: They have a round UI you can see on this picture, it’s
attractive, and it looks nice.
Leo: Basically it looks like their doing squared circles,
or circle squares.
Paul: Googles going to get to the point that if it knows
your schedule and you’re going down the wrong tunnel of the subway or something
it will actually tug on your arm to move you in the right direction—because they’re
just that creepy….
Leo: So that’s basically just a google now card, with the
edges cut off. What’s interesting, I thought when I saw the watch face oh
that’s an actual physical watch face, but apparently not, it’s a screen? That
way it looks like a wrist watch, it’s got analog dial, but they can do so much
more. And here’s the turn by turn, isn’t that cool. I notice he’s riding a
bicycle.
Paul: Yeah, no problem looking down and reading that. Leo: And I love how it can look like a
regular watch to the untrained eye.
Paul: I told you my kind of gag about –there’s a lot of cell
phone and now smart phone kind of etiquette issues, right? And a lot of
companies now you go to a meeting and they don’t want people looking down at
your computers even, looking down at tablets & phones. So they’ll tell
people, don’t do that, can’t do that, don’t even bring it to the meeting. But,
if there’s anything that signals to people that you’re over what their talking
about more than looking at a watch, I don’t know what it is.
Leo: I will be in line to buy one to be honest. I wasn’t
all that excited about anything else I’ve seen, certainly not the galaxy gear
watch.
Mary Jo: What about the Pebble, you didn’t like that one?
Leo: You know I bought it as a kick starter, so I was very
early on that and I had it for a while, but I couldn’t really bring myself to
wear it because it just really didn’t look that good. Now it did have the time
face and all that stuff. I think google now cards are actually…..
Paul: What sells this is google; Samsung maybe. If Samsung
had any class, they could pull this off. Apple was a company that could pull
this off. Google obviously is. The platform maker is the right company to do
it.
Leo: So they’re going to have a Google wear SDK then others
will make them. Everybody and their brother said we’re doing a watch too
because of Apple; I think. The rumor, never confirmed by Apple that they were
doing an iWatch. Is Microsoft thinking about coming back into this space? Or
have they learned their lessons?
Mary Jo: Nope, the rumor is they’re coming back in the space at
some point.
Leo: See, we told you watches are going to be big.
Mary Jo: Although you know, I’m going to be curious how they
come back into the space like exactly what form this takes because everyone’s
assuming it’s got to be a watch but I’m not so sure it has to be a watch. I
mean, it could be some other kind of wrist devise that maybe is or is not a
watch, I don’t know. The reason I’m saying it like that is because there’s a
team inside the operating system division at Microsoft that Alex Kipman is
heading and it’s a Wearables, I don’t know what other kind of devises, but
Wearables mostly and there’s also supposedly work happening in the devises side
of Microsoft on some kind of a wearable thing too. And we already know they’re
doing the Fortaleza glasses which are the augmented reality glasses that are
supposed to work with Kinect and Xbox. So they’re doing Wearables. The question
is when do those come out? Do they have to wait for Kratana to come out, which
I would think if they’re going along the Google model right?
Paul: I do think voice is something that helps sell this
although there’s a scene in the Google promo video that is emblematic for everything
I hate about this kind of technology. Which is some guy is on a bus full of people,
surrounded by people, gets some alert on his watch, and then starts talking to
it. You know, screw that guy on the bus. Seriously, like thank you for
respecting the public space we’re all in. It’s like those guys that use to have
those walkie-talkie types of conversations on their cell phones because It’s
bad enough that I have to listen to your side of the conversation, I want to
listen to the guy on the other end calling from Normandy while he storms the
beaches to get the Nazis’ out of France or whatever. Like I don’t understand
what possesses people to do stuff like that in public, and this just creates
another avenue for people to be ignorant which I hate.
Leo: I just don’t think anyone’s going to put a microphone
& speaker on a watch. I don’t know, maybe they will. That’s kind of weird.
Paul: You look like a crazy person you know, like people
with the blue-tooth, walking down the street, blah, blah, blah.
Leo: We’re used to it now.
Paul: Jerks-
Leo: Talking into your watch…
Paul: I just want to grab that thing off his ear and stomp
it into the ground. Problem solved, move on to the next.
Mary Jo: So many people in New York talk to themselves, it’ll
just be normal here.
Leo: Are we really ready for people to be looking at their
watch that much? I think it feels a little passive aggressive doesn’t it.
Paul: See if I was that woman next to him, I would have
upended that cake on to the floor of the bus, and I would have been like “Look,
now you know I’m here”.
Mary Jo: Remember that agent watch that is a kick starter
project? Kishware on the twitter is reminding me of this. The one was secret
labs and house of horology that supposedly has a dot net micro frame work in it
right?
Paul: Just like the original spot watch.
Mary Jo: I think that’s what it has inside, I may be wrong
about that. But that was something, Scott Hanselman was a big backer of that
and yes, dot net micro framework isn’t it. You can write for it with visual
studio.
Paul: I think Google’s going to get this one right. The
Google now stuff actually works really well. It’s got that creepy thing going
on, but it is amazing.
Leo: It’s what I’m convinced Google now was invented for.
Paul: They are going to get this right, there’s no doubt
about it. I hope to see some watches that look just like a band though. If you
look, like a fit bit; Instead of having that gigantic circle or rectangle thing
on it, just have it be the band.
Leo: Well did you like the galaxy gear fit?
Paul: Yes, that one I’m actually a little bit interested in
because it does that fitness tracking stuff I think that’s more a priory than having
yet another device that tells me the time.
Leo: And it’s kind of a curved thing that looks more attractive.
Paul: You’ve seen the goofy Apple mock-up’s for the curved
IOS icons going along the curb.
Leo: Yes, that’s what it looks like. Alright, we’ve got
some picks of the week coming up, tips of the week, beer, and enterprise, all
of that stuff. Hadoop moment, I think that would be fun, Mary Jo Foley’s Hadoop
moment.
Mary Jo: Hadoop weekly, that’s your next show.
Leo: We could do Hadoop weekly; it would have a very small
audience, but valuable audience, of Data minors. You know, actually speaking of
data, if you think about it, what’s among most important data to you? What your
money’s doing, right? And the problem is, it’s kind of hard to figure it all
out, even if you’re beginning in your financial life, your financial data is
all over the place. Bank accounts, credit cards, but then you add a mortgage
& some investments and pretty soon you have four or five sites you have to
visit, each with a different log in. It’s kind of hard to keep track of.
Personal capital solves that problem. Personal Capital takes all your financial
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absolutely free. personalcapital.com/windows. We thank them so much for their
support of windows weekly. Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley. Time for us to get our
tip and software pick of the week, Mr. Thurrott.
Paul: This is from a reader and a listener William Alfred. A
very timely tip, we didn’t cover it this week here but I’m sure you could have
caught it on “This week at Google”. Obviously that was aimed probably primary
at drop box but there are a number of these kinds of cloud services out there
now, and with this kind of stuff happening, different deals, different places,
people may want to try different services, but getting data from one service to
another is kind of problematic so if you are a drop box user and you have lots
of stuff there & google drops prices or maybe you want to use one drive
because you’re kind of a windows guy, getting the data from one to another is
the blocker for a lot of people. I’ve done this in the past, kind of manually
download the music, that kind of desktop software then copy over to the new
service thing. It’s kind of laborious but actually there’s a service called
mover. I’d never heard of it, but it’s a mover IO. It works with a bunch of
different services including the Microsoft services like Onedrive and Onedrive
for business, but also a Dropbox, box, google drive, Amazon S3 and lots of
other ones. It allows you do this back & forth copying of data between the services
so if you have a lot of data and are concerned about how you might do that;
this is a potentially viable option. I should say I have not actually tried it
yet but I thought this was a timely thing to mention especially in light of the
Google drive.
Leo: This would be great for me because I keep all my
photos on Smug Mug. I could move them over to sky drive.
Paul: And it supports FSTP so that adds a huge number of
sites, including your own.
Leo: Cool. How much is it? Is it expensive?
Paul: Let’s find out. Leo, are you looking?
Leo: I don’t know I’m looking. I don’t see a price.
Paul: Maybe you have to join first.
Leo: I don’t see a price here about mover. Migrations, why
this works, how this works…I bet they charge you for storage or something like
that. They probably have a clever way of doing this.
Paul: Maybe just a onetime fee, I mean if you have enough
stuff up there, I’m sure it’s worthwhile. A lot of these services are aimed at
individuals.
Leo: Good tip, I want to take a look at it. Your software pick
of the week? Oh, actually you have something else too, want to mention that?
Paul: There’s a guy named Bob Tabor, he does instructional
videos for Microsoft and he does a bunch of different series. Some of them I’m
aware of and have watched, he’s done two sets for Windows phone 7, one for
Windows phone 8 and then for Windows and his core class is C# Fundamentals for
Absolute Beginners. This is now brand new, so he’s done a new version of this
that just came out in the past month. If you’re looking to learn how to
program, it’s so much better than it was 20-30 years ago, back whenever it was
when I learned how to program. I would have loved to have this kind of thing
available at the time. This is such an easy way in and this guy is fantastic.
He’s just a great instructor and has got really the right kind of rapport for
this kind. It’s just a free video course to learn how to program in C#. It’s on
the channel 9 website; you have to definitely check it out.
Leo: Twenty-five parts, that’s crazy.
Paul: Yes, absolutely free.
Leo: Microsoft virtual accadamy.com on channel 9 for
absolute beginners. Is Visual Studio Express free?
Paul: Yes.
Leo: So basically you use the free visual studio. You know
there’s no reason for anybody at this point not to have the things they want,
it’s all out there, and you just need internet access. Very cool thank you for
sharing that with us.
Leo: Somebody was telling me that Movers is a buck a
gigabyte which is a little pricy.
Paul: A buck a gigabyte, huh, that’s a little pricey.
Leo: yes, I don’t know if that’s accurate. If that’s the
case you’ll want to use it a lot.
Paul: If it’s that expensive, you might want to just sink
them down to your PC and drag & drop. That works, I’ve done that.
Leo: I wonder if it’s a buck a gigabyte for your basic data
set and then you can move it to a variety of places. Software pick of the week,
I guess we kind of touched on it, but we’ll mention it again.
Paul: So there’s a bunch of extra stuff going on here with
Windows; so the software pick of the week is OneNote. It’s free now everywhere,
so you can get it on Windows desktop, the Windows metro version. Windows phone,
it comes with Mac, Android, tablets, iPhone, iPad and on the web Office.com,
Office365.com. But there are a bunch of other things that are happening around
OneNote with regards to this new freebie release. There’s something called the
OneNote Clipper. Maybe you know the term for this kind of thing. It’s not a
browser plug in, but one of those things that you drag it onto the tool bar and
then it becomes a tool you can use.
Leo: It’s a book marklett.
Paul: So Windows clipper is a book marklett. It works for
IE, Chrome, Firefox & Safari on the Mac. It allows you to clip websites
that you see so it will copy them automatically into OneNote.
Leo: That’s nice. So you see, they are building an eco-system
to compete with Evernote that’s pretty obvious.
Paul: Yes, absolutely. There’s also a new app for Windows
phone called Office Lens, this is your basic kind of use the camera to scan
things type app. There are other Apps like this, including by the way some
things that are built into Windows phone. You can read my free Windows phone
book that explains that, but anyway, Office Lens does different types of
documents. You can get a white board with a picture or a diagram, a document
for text or business card. It adds the text of the thing to text search capability
within OneNote, so if you scan in a receipt, you can search for the name of the
restaurant or store and it will actually come up to that note where you took
the picture. There’s a send email to note feature, what you have to do is go to
onenote.com, sign up for it, you need a Microsoft account and what that allows
you to do, is from that Microsoft account, email me at window.com. Literally m
e. That thing that you emailed will be added to your window notes. So you can
get stuff into OneNote for email now. Maybe the biggest bit of this is they’ve
added extensibility to OneNote and so now OneNote is a service. It’s a
platform, they’ve got a lot of 3rd party apps and hardware products
that work with it like neat scanners, Doxie Mobile Scanners, the Livescribe
pen, Feedly and Weave News Reader and many others. One of them is that IFTTT. (If
This Then That.)
Leo: I Love “If This Then That”
Paul: It’s awesome, and the type of programmatic that
frankly Microsoft should have built into Windows. I love this kind of thing. If
you do not use IFTTT then it’s basically kind of a web based copy and paste if
you will, but it works with Events so if this happens over here, do this over
here. There’s a bunch of those for Windows now including someone built a “If
Paul Thurrott posts anything put it in Windows” I’m actually in there
somewhere. Rod Trent whom I work with at Windows IT Pro wrote a great article
about using this tool to get Windows IT Pro content up into OneNote as well and
I have a link to that in the show notes as well.
Leo: I might have to look at exporting all my stuff from Evernote.
I’m sure there’s a simple way of importing it into OneNote, I’ll have to look,
but this is awesome.
Paul: It’s just a lot of stuff. OneNote has been great, it’s
always been great but it’s amazing how this thing has kind of turned the spigot
on and there’s really a lot of stuff going on and it’s not just what we’re
going to do for you *(off the Mac)* It’s a lot of stuff happening here that’s
related to this new release, so it’s kind of a big one.
Leo: Is there a way to import into notebooks?
Paul: To import from Evernote?
Leo: Well, Evernote I can export out as PDF’s or RTF I
guess.
Paul: I don’t know, I’ll look into that.
Leo: I don’t see anything on the Mac on that.
Paul: It seems like that’s the type of thing they should be
doing if they’re not.
Leo: I’ll be honest, the nice thing about Evernote is of
course this eco system and it’s somewhat simpler. It’s missing a lot of
features of OneNote, and maybe to me, OneNote feels more like a battleship that
can do everything you know, an all in one thing.
Paul: Sometimes only a nuclear weapon will do you know, Leo.
Leo: I’m really impressed. Mary Jo Foley, time for your
enterprise pick of the week.
Mary Jo: My enterprise pick of the week is the Microsoft remote
desktop apps. The reason I’m picking them this week is Microsoft did another
update to these apps for Android, Mac OS, and iOS, this week so now you’re up
to version 8.0.5 of these if you go to the stores to get them. The Remote
desktop is what lets you connect to remote Windows PC’s and access your
resources on those PC’s. It’s actually one of the top 10 apps in the apple
store right now as of today. Which is crazy, So OneNote for iPad, this app, the
updated remote desktop and OneDrive for iPad I believe are all in the top 10
apps in the apple store as of this week; Three Microsoft apps. The weird thing
about remote desktop apps though is, there still is not one for Windows phone,
and everybody is wondering “when is this coming”. It is definitely coming,
Microsoft has said but I asked again this week and they said “We have nothing
to share”. We don’t know if it’s going to come after Windows phone 8.1 is out,
of if it will even somehow be part of Windows phone 8.1. I haven’t heard that
that is the case but you never know. But these other apps have all been updated
this week. All of them have bug fixes, stability improvements and a whole bunch
of different things mixed into these updates so you might want to check it out
if you’re someone using these apps, already. I have a bonus pick too. We’ve
talked about this guy before; He works at Microsoft; named Eric Ligman, if you
search him on the web. We’ve talked about him publishing a lot of free e-book
links before on all topics and this week he’s got a really great post up on his
blog about Office 365 resources. So it’s a whole blog post full of links for
free Office 365 books, free tutorials and courses and trainings. It’s got
everything you need if you’re just starting to learn Office 365 and you don’t
want to spend a ton of extra money. He’s got them all assembled on his blog. So
check out Eric Ligman’s blog, I think his title is Sales Excellence Manager at
Microsoft. He does a lot of great resource stuff for the community, especially
small business Community.
Leo: Good. Ligman. Your code name of the week?
Mary Jo: Code name pick of the week is Hekaton and I made this code
name pick because this week Microsoft released to Manufacturing SQL Server 2014
and the main feature in that release is the in memory OLTP engine that’s code
named Hekaton. And originally when I looked up “What is Hekaton” looking for
the source of the code name, there is three things that I found all referencing
Hekaton. One is its Greek for a factor of 100 and that makes a lot of sense
because Microsoft says this data base release can improve your performance by a
factor of 30. Not 30% but a factor of 30. So it’s a huge performance game
because of this OLTP engine that’s inside. The other two meanings were a giant
mythical creature and there is also a Dominican Thrash band named Hekaton. In
case you wanted to know. I don’t think that’s the origin of the code name, the
3rd one, but I think the other two are. Microsoft is going to make
SQL server 2014 generally available as of April 1 so if you’re someone looking
for the latest greatest release of SQL server; it’s on its way.
Leo: And finally, a Hekaton of beer. A Heck of great beer.
Mary Jo: I could not believe last week I forgot to do a St.
Patrick’s beer pick. What kind of an Irish woman am I?
Leo: Ach, Mary Jo Foley, you failed us again.
Mary Jo: I did, so I have to make up this week for it, and I
decided that of course you could drink a Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day, but why
not drink a craft beer, so I picked a beer that we have quite often, it’s
O’Hara’s Irish Stout. It’s just a nice basic all-purpose stout from Ireland.
It’s just an easy drinking, 4percenter, it’s “Sessionable” as we used our word
last week. And that was one of my beers on St. Patrick’s Day this week.
Leo: Ah, O’Hara’s Irish Stout; It’ll make you a man
Paul: Or a woman.
Mary Jo: You know what; there are a ton of alternatives to
Guinness that are traditional Irish dry stouts. There are a lot of them.
Leo: Don’t drink Guinness. Friends don’t let friends drink
Guinness.
Paul: I was disappointed on St. Patrick’s Day that no one
asked me why I wasn’t wearing green because my reply was going to be “I’m Irish,
I don’t have to wear green.”
Leo: That’s right, it’s green in me blood. Me blood is
green. Me heart is green. Well, it’s too late for St. Patrick’s Day, but still,
it’s never too late to have a beer.
Mary Jo: It’s never too late for a beer, or too early.
Leo: We’re going to have some beer, we’re going to find
some good beers to have; I’ll consult Liz and make sure we have some good beers
for you. When you visit us April 4 in the studio, don’t forget the BUILD is
coming up to San Francisco, and on the 27th in just a few days
something else is going on in San Francisco. We will do live coverage at 10a.m
Pacific of “ the whatever” Microsoft announces. It sounds like it’s going to be
something big and important.
Mary Jo: Maybe we’ll have some more info by the time of Windows
Weekly next week. It’ll be one day before the announcement.
Leo: Mary Jo Foley writes about this stuff all the time,
she is the queen of the scoop; you can thank her for pushing Microsoft stock
price over $40.00 a share. It’s the Foley effect. Paul Thurrott writes for the
super site for Windows, he has no effect on Microsoft whatsoever.
Paul: And that’s whatsoever.
Mary Jo: Only negative effect.
Leo: Supersite.com
Paul: Click to take negative effect for the previous decade
if you don’t mind.
Leo: Thank you Paul, thank you Mary Jo we’ll see you next
Wednesday, we do the show at 11 a.m. pacific, 2 p.m. eastern time 1800 UTC our
new time UTC because we are in summertime now and I guess it’ll be the first
show of the spring next week. Thank you so much guys, we’ll see you next time on
Windows Weekly!
