Windows Weekly 391 (Transcript)

Mike Elgan: It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrot is here, so is Mary Jo Foley. Leo is off, I'm Mike Elgan filling in for Leo. We are going to talk about Windows 10, Windows Phone, Microsoft Office, Xbox, and much more. We even going to hear about what Paul thinks of the new Star Wars trailer! Stick around, Windows Weekly is next.

Netcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT! Bandwidth for Windows Weekly is brought to you by Cachefly at c-a-c-h-e-f-l-y.com.

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, Episode 391, recorded December 3, 2014.

I Want to Believe

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Mike: It's time for Windows Weekly, the show about Microsoft, Windows, and all things Redmand with Paul Thurrott of the SuperSite for Windows. How are you doing Paul?

Paul Thurrott: I'm okay. How are you?

Mike: We need some excitement.

Paul: I was curiously unprepared for that question.

Mike: Winsupersite.com is your site, and I remember you talking about it on this show that you didn't mean for it to be a superhero site version of Windows site, it was the extra site, the ultra-site.

Paul: It was just a site for one thing. A lot of people are like, oh you must think very highly of yourself. You have a super site, not a regular site. It was just meant to be something that was focused on a single topic, and of course it kind of, like so many things do, blew up.

Mike: I think that you should have a costume with a cape made. The Super Site!

Paul: I don't feel that super.

Mike: Well, I think that it's a super site. I think that it's an awesome site. You are breaking stuff left and right, and I'm not talking about software. I'm talking about news.

Paul: No, I am.

Mike: As a news person who is always looking for scoops and details on the news I find it incredibly, incredibly enlightening. I appreciate that. Speaking of enlightening, Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet, allaboutmicrosoft.com, how are you doing Mary Jo?

Mary Jo Foley: I'm doing well, thanks.

Mike: You guys are like the dynamic duo, again another superhero reference, of Windows revelation and it's just awesome to talk to you. I wish that I could get both of you on the show. You know what the problem is? On Tech News Today, which we do every day, a little plug for the other show, we are always looking for people who break stories. If you look at the larger scope of people who do tech journalism, the percentage of those who actually consistently break stories, it's a low one digit percentage. Both of you do it consistently. The problem with people like you is that you are too busy to come onto my show because you are too busy breaking stories.

Paul: There are many problems with people like us.

Mary Jo: There are.

Mike: Anyway, I appreciate it and I just want to get that plug in because in addition to all of that kind of technical help, and contextual information, and analysis, you are also breaking hard news in technology and I really, really appreciate that. Why don't we launch into something. I should say, by the way, my name is Mike Elgan. Leo is out today, he is sailing with Larry Ellison I think in San Francisco Bay.

Paul: You know what? That is actually plausible.

Mike: Probably in Lake Larry which is the little pond at Oracle Headquarters. Who knows, you never know what Leo is up to. I'm thrilled to be here hosting the show with you guys for the first time ever. Why don't we launch into it? Apparently Paul, Microsoft fixes build 9879?

Paul: Sort of. You know the past couple of weeks, Mary Jo was there for the first of those shows and then she was off last week. I think that you must have been flying home that day. I have really beaten this topic to death in that the latest and last technical preview build of this year is horribly unstable and unreliable, and all kinds of problems. So Microsoft has actually issued several fixes, none of which address the core issue which is instability in File Explorer, Explorer.AXC, what used to be called Windows Explorer on preview versions. It's gotten to the point where I have to reboot my computer at least a couple times a day basically to clear this out. I'm willing to take one for the team and everything, but after a particularly bad day the other day I was thinking, you know, I'm going to have to just go back to 8.1 for a little while, I can't get work done, this is becoming a problem. Then they announced this fix and I thought, fantastic. The funny thing is that some people are able to install it just fine, and some people who think that they installed it might just want to go look because it might not installed. That's what has been happening to me, because as a long time Windows guy one of the things that I know to do is that when you install Windows updates and you reboot your computer then the first thing that you do is you go back and you look at Windows updates again because there is almost always something else. The first time that I installed this update I rebooted and the update was being offered again. I thought that that was odd, maybe I did something wrong. I didn't really pay attention during the rebooting process. So I installed it again, rebooted, came back, and it offered it to me again. In Windows 8 or Windows 10 you can look at your update history, and sure enough, Windows Technical Preview December Update KB Article failed to install, failed to install, failed to install. I thought okay, that's interesting. This time I actually just pinged GabeAul on Twitter, the guy from Microsoft who posts about this stuff, and I said look, I'm having this problem. It turns out that I am one of many, many people having this problem, so they are going to fix it in some way. I don't know if that means that you just go back and grab it and at some point it works. I keep checking and it's still not fixed. Apparently there is a fix for this problem, I just can't get it installed. Maybe in the next 24 hours or so that will happen.

Mike: The best kind of fix is the kind that you can install I find.

Paul: Yeah, yeah. I particularly like how this one, I think that most people would install it and then go back about their business not realizing that in fact it hadn't installed, which would be funny if this wasn't such a huge problem. Hopefully they get this fixed soon.

Mike: Very cool, very cool. Mary Jo, you wrote a very interesting piece about what is next for Windows 10. I wasn't really expecting new details on Windows 10 this week, but you had a lot of nuggets in here. Can you tell us about that?

Mary Jo: Yeah, so a lot of people are wondering because Microsoft said in November when they released the latest technical preview that there would be no more technical previews until next year. What is going to happen between now and then? A few things have happened this week. A new build leaked, 9888 leaked. But that is not one of the technical preview builds, and Microsoft is very actively discouraging people from downloading it because if it would have been stable enough to be deemed ready to send it out to you guys we would have, but it's not really ready.

Paul: But they put that last one out.

Mary Jo: Yeah, and the last one broke more things.

Paul: Yeah, I actually believe this one to be more stable.

Mary Jo: Do you really?

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: This is supposedly a partner build which they give to some of their OEM and other partners, but not to the Windows Insiders. From what I have been reading from Paul and some of the other sites there is not a ton new in 9888. The biggest noticeable thing is that the Kernel version number changes to 10 from 6.4. So that is an obvious change, and one that they said that they were going to make, so it's not a surprise. There are a couple of things they tweaked with trying to make the Explorer more stable and they have changed a couple of the context menus. So they did some minor things in that build, but it's not a big, wild, huge new build or anything like that. The next step is what I think is going to be more interesting. We are hearing that there is going to be what we have called a consumer preview of Windows 10 coming in January. I'm hearing from my sources that we are going to see that likely around January 20th 0r 21st. There’s going to be some kind of event in Redman where Microsoft invites certain press and analysts to come. They are going to show us that build and maybe give it the bits here. They are also going to show us, I hear, the one that we haven't seen yet which is the mobile version. So this is Windows 10 that will run on Windows Phones, arm based tablets, smaller tablets, and smaller Intel based tablets. We don't know what they are going call that, if It's going to be Windows 10 Mobile, and they are going to show us at that event, but we may not get the bits that day or even in that vicinity of time. It sounds like that is a little further behind, that they are only in very early stages of testing that inside of the operating systems group, and it may take them a little more time before they deem that that is ready for everybody who is in the insider program to get. So those are the main two kind of things that we are hearing are going to be next. One other thing in January is that I think there is going to be the next update to the Windows Server Preview. So people who are testing Windows Server Next, or Windows Server 10, or whatever you want to call that, got a build of that October 1st, but anyone who is testing that hasn't gotten a build of that since. I think the next major build of that is also going to be timed around this January event and maybe we will hear and see some of that too around that same time.

Mike: Interesting. Do you think that the mobile versions and the tablet versions of Windows 10 are going to steal the show in the general press because that is so consumery and it's such an unusual thing to have this more continuation type of rollout of versions of Windows across devices? Do you think that people are really going to understand the significance of that?

Mary Jo: Hopefully they will. Hopefully it will bring some new things to the party that we haven't heard about or we haven't seen because the Windows 10 builds that are out right now, they were originally called the Enterprise Tech Preview or referred to that that way when we first heard about them because they were meant to try to win over Windows business users who were very reluctant to put Windows 8 on their machines. I think that this one, the coming Windows Mobile one will be of more interest to people with Windows Phone and of more interest to people who are into touch tablets and want to see what Microsoft is doing there to try to differentiate themselves from Android and iPads.

Paul: If I could just float that on its head a little bit, I think that one of the things that is really interesting about Windows 10 is that even in its current form it is a return to a the classic PC, the desktop PC. There is some value there for consumers as well. Part of the indecision of the last couple of years is that people didn't necessarily like the Windows 8 tablet stuff. Chromebooks have come along, they are stealing share from iPad and Windows, and I think the return to a version of Windows that is applicable to the Windows keyboard and computer is going to resonate as well. Of course they have all of the cheap options with the HP Stream and so forth. The consumer thing is very interesting to me personally. I really care what they do on the phone and the tablet, but sometimes I wonder if we haven't already seen the most important stuff because this is what is going to keep people from jumping ship potentially to Chromebook. This and the inexpensive licensing of Windows.

Mike: Paul, why doesn't Microsoft come out with a Chromebook type of Microsoft Cloud based device? They've got so many Cloud offerings, and the reason that I think, the most compelling reason for it, I think that we are hearing in the news these days, is the education market. Right now the Chromebook is just running away with the education market. In the olden days companies like Apple used to really target the education market because today's students are tomorrow's executives and buyers. If you can get their hearts and minds while they are in school you can sort of maintain them as a customer, theoretically. Finally, this most recent quarter is the first quarter ever where Google Chromebooks have exceeded Apple iPads in the education market. Momentum is all behind the Chromebook, so why wouldn't Microsoft showcase it's Cloud offerings in a Cloud based dumb terminal?

Paul: I was literally just thinking about this earlier today. The reason literally is because Surface was such a disaster for them from the perspective of partner relations. One of the reasons that every single PC maker on earth is making Chromebooks right now is because of Microsoft making Surface and basically competing with them on a product line that they used to partner with them on. Surface is a high end computer relatively speaking, and of course it is kind of a new computer too. If they were to compete directly with the kind of bread and butter Windows market, especially after they have done this zero dollar licensing to help those partners to be able to put those Chromebook priced computers into the market that run Windows, I think that would be a disaster. So I think the way that Microsoft could help that movement would be to promote Dells, and HPs, and Lenovo’s, and everyone else's computers that are in the $200 to $300 to $400 dollar range and get those computers into education. I think that there is a really compelling story there that they are just as inexpensive, modern computers running Windows 8 plus can be managed with the same sort of mobile device management technologies that Chromebooks and Android type devices are managed with. They run Office, they run real Office. They connect to printers. They are just a more natural kind of productivity device that people are familiar with. Now that the price has come down I think that could happen, but I don't think that Microsoft doing that with a Surface branded device would be the right approach at this point because of what happened before.

Mike: I could see them doing something creative in that space though. I could imagine building into Windows a mode where you can just reboot into a Cloud only mode. You have to hand your laptop over to a child or somebody at your workplace that you don't necessarily trust, I might be nice to go into that mode where they can't break anything, they can't download anything significant, they can't execute any...

Paul: Arguably that sort of exists. They have obviously have educational offerings, Microsoft accounts and eventually domain accounts will do exactly what you are asking. You can restrict what they can install, what they see, and that kind of stuff. It's kind of there. It's not quite as simple as what is available on the Chrome side, but I think that the upside is still a legitimate benefit, the Microsoft Office type stuff, the ability to run full on Photoshop if you want to do that. Obviously there are tradeoffs. Simplicity is nice because it is simpler, but simple is not always a positive. Simpler sometimes means that functionality is missing as well. Chromebooks make more sense in education than iPads, but I think that Windows PCs make more sense than Chromebooks, especially when the price is same or different and given some of the improvements that have happened in Windows 8 and will be happening in Windows 10 around management around those type of environmental issues that you have raised.

Mike: Cloud based systems are better than pen and paper, which is what Sony Pictures employees had to resort to after being hacked. It was a Windows based hack that possibly came, I'm sorry Paul, I'm dying to talk about this story, as we talked about before the show. This is an opportunity. Let me just summarize the story here. Basically 8 days ago Sony Pictures Entertainment had a catastrophic hack, and 2 things happened. The first thing was that tons of documents were stolen, personnel records, movie screeners, which were promptly posted on the pirate networks, and now Fury is probably the number one downloaded thing on BitTorrent even though it is still in theaters in some cases. Also Annie, which is the remake of the musical, hasn't even come out yet and it's already very popular on BitTorrent thanks to possibly North Korea. The beef that North Korea may have had was that Sony Pictures came out with a Seth Rogan and James Franco comedy called The Interview where 2 hapless journalists are sent by the CIA to North Korea and execute the leader there. They didn't like that, they threatened retaliation, they said it was an act of war, and then Sony Pictures got hacked. The documents are downloaded, and then the next thing that happened was that there was a sweet piece of malware that erased the hard drives, including the boot records, so that they couldn't recover. For several days Sony Entertainment employees were literally using pen and paper at work. I don't even think that I would know how to do that anymore. I guess paper is some sort of solid state storage device, and I don't really understand that, but they were doing that. You would think, okay they are going to go in there, fix the computers and get them back reinstalled, put their backup in there and get them back up and running. No, they are actually issuing new computers to employees. It's a catastrophic failure, but you could imagine that if there were some mode where you could go into a Cloud only interface at some point, I don't know if that is a solution, it probably isn't, but it would be nice to have some kind of fallback where you would have this hyper protected environment where people could at least access their Cloud based documents and so on. I don't know, it's just a thought.

Paul: I think that the big issue, well not the big issue, but one of the big issues with this is the reason that I think that they are replacing the PCs is that there is some incredible new form of malware on there that they are afraid is going to get out into the world beyond Sony's PCs. The FBI has stepped in, Homeland Security has stepped in, and they have actually secretly warned the security departments of major corporations around the country that this has happened. They didn't identify Sony, but obviously it is Sony, and that to be on the lookout for this kind of malware that could spread beyond Sony. I don't think that it is coincidental that North Korea threatened retaliation, they use some awesome language because you know that North Korea is crazy, but they described it as undisguised terrorism and a war just like you said. This is what happens when James Franco makes a movie.

Mike: It's really ill advised. He really shouldn't make movies for national security's sake of course, and for all of our sake's really to be honest.

Paul: South Park went to town on Kim Jung Yung's father some years ago. I don't believe there was any retaliation then, maybe they just didn't have the electronic capability.

Mike: Team America was the name of the movie that I think you are referring to, and it was hilarious. Another interesting aspect, and there are so many interesting elements to this story, but one of them was that the actual hackers came from China, and they were some sort of mercenary hackers or some secret rogue wing of a North Korean organization doing it from China. It's probably very difficult to have a very great group of hackers in North Korea because kids don't grow up with computers there.

Paul: Because they don't have electricity?

Mike: Exactly. There is no electricity, they don't have computers, they don't have the internet, some of the basic building blocks that lead to a healthy malicious hacker culture. So they have got to outsource it.

Paul: You must have seen this, there were shots of North Korea from space at night, and you can see all of this light in China around it, and you can see all of this light in South Korea, and North Korea is basically blacked out.

Mike: It's a horrible thing, and when visitors go to Pyongyang, the capital, they light up the parts where the visitors go. It's weird, you need a passport just to go from one town to the next. It's a dark and horrible place, and they really don't like James Franco.

Paul: So you have got to be careful.

Mike: What are you going to do? I don't know, Mary Jo, if you have any thoughts on this. The number of hack attacks that are happening these days, it's gotten to the point, and Leo has referred to it as breach fatigue. There are so many stories about catastrophic hacks. They have recently discovered that the Iranians have been having their way with the airline industry and defense companies for two years and nobody noticed. It's just awful. Is there anything that Microsoft can bring to bear? Microsoft Windows systems can do a lot more than other platforms generally speaking, and they can do a lot more for malicious hackers too. What can Microsoft do with this larger issue of everybody getting hacked?

Mary Jo: I don't know what they can do?

Mike: You've got 30 seconds to solve this problem Mary Jo. I know that you can do it.

Mary Jo: Okay, here we go. 

Paul: Tick, tick, tick.

Mary Jo: I was going to say, the one thing that we do know from some of the leaks that we have heard is that they are doing a lot of things with Windows 10 under the covers around security. They really haven't gone public with a lot of these things yet. I think that is something else we are going to hear when we see that January preview, that they are going to start talking about some of those things. They know, just like everybody else knows, that they need to harden the operating system. I think they have been working on that actually, probably in conjunction with some of the chip makers and the hardware makers to come up with more secure solutions. I don't think we will go back to like Palladium or NGSCB if you guys remember those things, but I think we will start to see them do more around that specifically to harden systems and to do it in conjunction with the people that are making the hardware. That's all I know, which is nothing.

Paul: There is stuff in Windows 10 coming and all of that. In Windows 8 they made the new app model with has a security and reliability aspect to it, which I think is important. The fact remains, the PC is a legacy platform. It's this heaping mountain of stuff that keeps getting more complicated going forward because we keep adding on to it. You don't often get a chance to start completely over like Google sort of did with Chrome, it's basically a lightweight version of Linux I guess. This is part of the reason why they are trying to shed legacy code more quickly than they did in the part. It's part of the reason why as of next year they want people on IE to be able to have only the most recent couple of versions, not the last 5 or 6 versions. There is all of this stuff that they are trying to do, but change is hard when your user base resists. When Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP back in April there were hundreds of millions of people still using that operating system. It's hard, you can't just issue an edict and expect the world to come along with you. It's kind of a complicated topic. That's always been the double edged sword of Windows, it's the complexity versus capability. Of course, like you said, the capability applies to both those who are malicious and those who are not.

Mike: Yeah, and the weakest link is always the user. Microsoft as a user facing operating system has always had this pendulum swing where they will have one version of Windows that is super locked down asking permission for every single little thing and everybody complains because it's like, oh this is really a hassle. So the next version comes out and it is super simple and streamlined and it is super easy to have malicious code running on it because they are not asking for permission for everything. It swings back and forth. There is really no perfect solution possible basically as you intimated because of the nature of Microsoft. They are super legacy, they are super enterprise, they are super everybody operating system, and they can execute code, and that is always a challenging thing. I don't know what the solution is, but it certainly does provide a lot of news for my other show. That's all I'm saying. I guess there is a silver lining there. Why don't we talk about Windows Phone? Is Windows Phone really going to gain ground in the low end of the market? Is this the kind of phone that is going to be able to penetrate the mind share of Android, and to a lesser extent the low end of IOS and Apple? Or is this just going to muddle around on the periphery forever? What do you think Paul?

Paul: I think it muddles around on the periphery. It's too bad in a way because I still prefer Windows Phone. I understand Microsoft's direction and why they would focus on the low end of the market. The low end of the market, when people hear that I think that they would imagine inexpensive phones obviously, but that they are going to walk into Best Buy, or AT&T, or something and their choice is going to be a $600 iPhone or a $99 phone. That is actually not the point of it, although you will see that kind of stuff too. It's to go after the next billion, or the next 2 billion, whatever the audience is, the group of people who are coming up in other parts of the world who don't have computers and never have. This phone may be their first and only computing device going forward. Those kinds of people are not influenced necessarily yet by Apple's marketing, or Android, or that kind of stuff. They will make their decision based on very different criteria than we do here in the United States. That said, obviously Google is going after that part of the market as well with Android One and I'm sure they will be very successful with that. It's hard as an enthusiast because there are wonderful features on Windows Phone, and over the years as people ignore the platform it gets watered down a bit. Android and IOS pick up some of those features, and then Microsoft only sees some success on the low end so they focus on those kind of devices, which is not what we want. It's just kind of what is the opposite of a virtuous cycle? It's something that feeds on itself in a way. It's too bad. All I can say is that Microsoft and formerly Nokia makes wonderful low end devices. The phone that I use right now is arguably kind of a low end device, or at least a mid-level device. It's not a flagship awesome device. It doesn't stand up to a new iPhone, or a Note 4, or anything like that, but I have my choice, I can use anything that I want, and I still prefer to use it. There is still some amazing value to it. We live in the United States. It's hard, I can communicate what I think about these devices, but it doesn't matter because I don't think most people are going to own these things. It reminds me of being an Amigo fan in the late 80's and early 90's and the best we could come up with is well, it's popular in Europe. I don't live in Europe.

Mike: It's not a purse, it's European.

Mary Jo: It was really interesting for me being in Stockholm and Copenhagen the last few weeks because you do see so many more Windows Phones. In those places you are not just seeing low end phones, you are seeing all levels of phones there. I think here we just kind of have this feeling that we know we are the 3%, or the 2.9%, or whatever we are now who are Windows Phone users.

Paul: It's like being a soccer fan in the United States.

Mary Jo: It kind of is. I think the one thing, I believe they are still going to have to make at least one flagship phone or continue with that to some extent because it's kind of a thing where you have to have that available to people to be your evangelists almost, the people like us who are like this is the best phone that you can get. This week there were some leaked renders, I don't know how many, if any, of those are real, but it looks like they are working on a successor to the 1020. Is that right?

Paul: It would be to the 1020. The only problem that I have with that theory, I want it to be true, it's like Sasquatch, I'd like to think that this scary monster man is living in the woods.

Mike: You want Sasquatch to exist?

Paul: Yeah, I want that to be real, but we also get that usage data from Duplex, and they have seen nothing that equates to this device in testing in the world. Just turning it on, and connecting to the internet, and downloading an app would get it in there somewhere. So for that and other reasons I kind of doubt that. I want to believe there is a 1030 happening, you know. Santa Claus real, right?

Mike: Oh yeah.

Mary Jo: The one code name McLaren, the phone that was supposed to have the ability to hover over it and it would react with your gestures without you touching the phone; I think that was a real phone at some point. I don't know if this thing that we keep seeing in renders is that, or something else, or if they have totally scrapped McLaren, or if they are redoing McLaren and have to wait for Windows Phone 10. We just are kind of in a limbo state right now if you are a Windows Phone user and you are hoping for something new. There isn't anything new other than the lower end.

Paul: I don't mean to say that you have to sort of generate excitement, because some of the stuff is genuinely interesting. Again, it's the opposite of the virtuous cycle thing from the perspective of the carriers. None of the high end Windows Phones since the 920, which is a couple years old, have ever sold at all. They don't want to put a lot of these things in stock and take up space in the store because no one is going to buy these things anyway. It just kind of feeds on itself. Even in the United States, if you look at the usage, when you add it up it's all of the low end phones. If you take the 920 out of the equation, which again is a couple of years old and is still being used because those people don't have a viable upgrade, it's all low end phones, it's 520's, it's 521's, it's 620's, 630, 625, etc. That is what everyone is using basically. They are buying these things at GoPhone or whatever Verizon's version of GoPhone is, and that is what people do, T-Mobile or whatever. It's too bad. It's just a tough thing. It's like I'm sure that Ford builds incredible Mustang race car type things, but they only sell like 17 of them. They sell a lot of the 4 and 6 cylinder versions of whatever they have these days. That's just the reality of the business.

Mike: I would like to sort of put you guys on the spot for something. This is an uber theory that I have been obsessing about for several years. Here it is. My belief about Microsoft's problem in the consumer mobile markets is not about the quality of their products, but about the timing of their products, and especially in relation to Apple's products. For example, I think that most people can agree that the Zune eventually became a fantastic device, but it was too late because Apple had gigantic mindshare. They had the iTunes music industry locked up. It was just too late. People who went to look at the Zune were like, hey this is great, this would have been really great like a year ago.

Paul: There are still people who pine away that it is gone.

Mary Jo: I do. I'm one of them.

Mike: And then the same thing happened with Windows Phone. The same thing happened with Surface. They were always behind Apple, and behind not just Apple's products but behind the reality of distortion field, the massive marketing, the massive fanboy love fest that accompanies every new Apple launch. How do you touch them? The Surface is a great device that is too late. All of the Windows Phones are great devices that are too late.

Paul: That actually ties into something I obsess over, which is basically the same topic but kind of approached from a slightly different angle, which is that if you go back about a decade, a little over a decade, Microsoft had its antitrust problems in the United States and Europe, and then they did Longhorn which threw them off the track. Microsoft lost a decade right there with antitrust plus Longhorn. Previous to that they kind of set the agenda. If somebody said that they were working on something that might be interesting then Microsoft would say that they were working on something like that too, and that might be enough to throw off interest of the other thing that was probably innovative and original. But because of that lost decade it allowed faster moving companies, Google and Apple primarily, but also Amazon and some other companies, to really push forward in ways that wouldn't have been possible if Microsoft had that kind of stranglehold on the market like they used to. So they have been put in this kind of awkward position and we saw those products you described falling very neatly, Zune, Surface, etc., are reactions to market forces. Oh, people are using tablets; let's turn Windows into a tablet OS. They are reacting, they are not setting the agenda. People who remember Microsoft in the hay day and were fans of Microsoft would obviously like them to turn things around. It's going to require them to actually lead in some ways. They do do things like that, but they are small, they are not major new platforms.

Mike: Okay, this gets us to the central theme of my obsession, which is the area where I think they can lead, and here it is essentially. If you work at Microsoft out there, please listen to this. I really believe in this. I believe that the future of the desktop, especially in companies, but also in the consumer market, is going to involve gigantic touch screens. A lot of people disagree with this because they say, oh, gorilla arms, and it's awkward, and stuff like that. No, I think that the combination that Microsoft has been obsessing about for many years, the combination of touch, in the air gestures, of voice control, and of artificial intelligent agents like Cortana, that combination is going to be favorable to a giant TV sized touch device that can flip up to become the presentation device, or the TV, or the movie projector, that can go flat to be an interactive display for multiple people to use at once, and to go into a drafting angle for individual use for moving around life sized documents, place the keyboard right on the thing and it recognizes the keyboard. Microsoft does all of this technology. They own Perceptive Pixel, they own PixelSense, they have got it all locked up. All they need to do is stop being so weird about this category. I've contacted Microsoft about PixelSense and Perceptive Pixel and asked them, and they are like we have no comment at this time. What if Microsoft next year, next summer, came out a consumer PixelSense device of some kind that costs $3000 and was a giant touch screen that automatically detected your identity from your phone and did all kinds of cool stuff? They would lead the market. That would be their iPad, that would be their iPhone, right?

Paul: Right.

Mike: Or am I wrong about that? Would that not be a compelling thing that they could actually make?

Paul: I would argue that they are sort of heading in that direction. That phone thing you just mentioned is part of Windows 10. Some of their partners are creating home smaller versions of this. If you think about a tablet, tablets typically go up to 13 inches at the most. There are partners like Dell, and HP, and Lenovo, I've got a Lenovo here, that make 18, or 20, or 22 inch, I don't know what you call them, but it's basically a giant tablet. It has a stand in the back with a keyboard and a mouse. You can carry it around, you are not going to go on a plane with it, but it is something that you use around the home. They have goofy little like how air hockey works, but you do it with touch. You can use it with your fingers if you want, but you can also use special controllers that glide on the glass. It gives you kind of that interactive thing, two people doing something at the same time. It's again a consumer thing, not a business scenario, but I think the market is sort of heading there on its own. We will see, these kind of fablets are a big deal, mini tablets are a big deal, this is in many ways another form of a crossover device if you think about it.

Mary Jo: I think they are building this for sure because they said just a couple of months ago, I forget who it was, but it may have been Stephen Elop who said it, we are in the middle of mass producing Perceptive Pixel devices now. It's going to be something like that, but I think that it is just such a stupid idea. I know they are going to do it, but it's dumb and ridiculous. It's just to me like it's just oh my god, here we go, Windows 8, like those big ass Windows 8 tablets that no one is going to want. People might want one for a home device.

Paul: It is something that Apple is not doing, and I think there is something to be said for that.

Mike: I guarantee you that Apple is going to do this within the next 4 years. They are going to have a huge, the iMac is going to become an IOS device. There is no question in my mind. All of the signs are there. They are moving towards that, nudging everyone towards the user interface. Mary Jo, instead of thinking of it as a computer replacement think of it as an everything surface replacement. What if the surface of your desk was an interactive Windows machine? How cool would that be?

Paul: It's pervasive computing.

Mary Jo: It's cool from like a look at this cool thing perspective, and totally impractical from doing real work. You guys, I'm the practicalian, that's not a word, but I'm the person who says, you know what, I would like to see Microsoft do...

Paul: A practicalian?

Mary Jo: A practicalian. I want them to fix keyboards, batteries, and mice because that is what people use to do work.

Mike: 35 year old technology. The Win system is 35 years old.

Mary Jo: I don't want them to do voice.

Mike: It's a Victorian contraption. I think the kids today are growing up on touch devices. They are going to look at mice and see it as a controller or something.

Paul: That's probably true. Until voice recognition gets good enough.

Mary Jo: If you are using an Excel spreadsheet you want a mouse.

Paul: I'm sure there are people who resisted the word processing in computers because they liked their IBM Selectric or something. I certainly can appreciate that.

Mary Jo: Remember when we first saw Windows 8 who said that this is so idiotic? Who is going to want those touch screens, and who is going to want this interface on their work machines? Guess who was right? Me. Sorry, I know.

Paul: Windows 10 was your idea.

Mary Jo: You know what?

Paul: You were, yes.

Mary Jo: You know what I am saying.

Paul: I can certainly confirm that report.

Mary Jo: I know this is fun. This is cool, and fun, and it is like Star Wars. But it's not real. People use spreadsheets.

Paul: Windows 8 to me was just goofy. I thought that had someone smaller than Microsoft come out with Windows 8 it wouldn't have been very interesting. The fact that Microsoft was doing this made it kind of hilarious. I was like they are going to force this on people, it's going to be amazing. I just sort of enjoyed it like you would enjoy roller derby. But that said, for example, I think Surface Pro 3 is a perfect example. Surface Pro 3 is a pretty good Ultrabook unless your goal is to put it on your lap. It's a pretty good Ultrabook. Using a touchscreen just scrolling while you are reading content is very enjoyable and very natural even on a traditional form factor device. I think that in the future, Mike sort of walked around this a little bit, but this notion that you can walk into any room, and if it is at work you are recognized, the stuff that you have permissions for are available, and ultimately the thing that we may be laughing at in the future aren't so much the particulars of it, the mouse, the 8 track tape, or whatever. It's that anyone carried any device of any kind with them. It's like why would you bother, because this stuff will just be available everywhere in whatever form you want it. When you sit down on a plane you will be recognized, your HBO subscription will be available, your work documents will be if you want to type on the tray table, I think that kind of stuff is where this heads.

Mike: Absolutely. Now there are 2 technologies that I think that Microsoft has that are killer. One of them is that they have technology that enables the screen itself to be a scanner. You take a piece of paper, you lay it flat on the table, and it is now in your database and instantly searchable. They also have incredible gestures that combine touch and pen so that you have a stylus in one hand and touch in the other, and you can do amazing things. I have seen the videos of that. I think the bigger picture that I have been inspired by, not just the videos of Jeff Hahn, who is the founder of Perceptive Pixel and who still works for Microsoft after the acquisition, but Microsoft itself has a bunch of vision videos that have this technology. Let's take a look at this one. You have essentially a touch screen based on glass so it's see through. This is a killer app for this technology if it can be made to work like this. Of course this is essentially the Xbox of the future where you are doing this through Skype. Imagine Skype actually working, and like being seamless and high def like that. It would be fantastic. Alex, can you go a little bit forward in this document where they are doing touch screen stuff that is really a table surface type? Here is an example of another window with this stuff. Again, there is a lot of interaction with the mobile devices that people are carrying, seamless data transfer from one to the other, and of course voice control, in the air gestures is being demonstrated now, this is breathtaking stuff. I don't see any way that this isn't going to happen.

Paul: By the way, if you haven't done it, and I haven't done it in years so I'm not sure how it's improved; Microsoft has a home of the future at their campus that you can visit. It has a lot of this kind of stuff. It's the type of thing where you open the refrigerator and when you pass the milk in and out past the thing it knows how much the milk is going down and it knows to reorder it automatically. You put down some ingredients on the table and say that I need to make dinner. This is the basics of what I have, what can we make with this? It gives you recommendations and that kind of stuff.

Mary Jo: You know Mike, I would say, the thing that everybody thinks that Microsoft is always late to the party? You know what, they are always too early to the party. They are not too late. Look at Windows 8. They were too early with that I would argue.

Paul: Look at the tablet PC.

Mary Jo: This is another one of those things. They have to do research in this, but if they roll this out next year there is going to be write downs just like there were on those Surface tablets. Mark my words.

Mike: I think that Windows 8 is too early in the sense that they tried to get people to embrace a new kind of interface that was touch centric, but they kind of did it half assedly from the top down. Apple did it right I think from the bottom up. The very first available touch screen from a major company was the original Microsoft Surface product, which was a coffee table for casinos that you had to customize. It wasn't a consumer product, but that shift between the time when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone and Apple shipped the iPhone, and then the iPhone was the first consumer broad based multi touch device from a major company. They were beat to market by a couple of things.

Paul: Ultimately Windows 8 and Surface at their heart were reactions to trends. These may be approvable type stories, but the guys from Microsoft went to CES and saw everyone touching the screens, even the ones that weren't touch screens, and said oh my god, it's all multi touch. We've got to go touch. The credit that should be given to them is that they were able to turn Microsoft on a dime, which is kind of incredible. To their detriment they made the wrong decision. They really kind of blew it unfortunately. The feeling was that everyone was going to want to touch things. Maybe they will, but just not in 2010.

Mary Jo: Research, you have to do research. You have to do concept videos. The trick is knowing when the market is ready for this stuff. It's a fine line, right? You have to not be late, but if you are early you are going to have just as many problems. Don't be fooled, Microsoft's business is Enterprise. 90% of their business is Enterprise. Those guys do not want this. Nope, they don't.

Paul: That's interesting.

Mike: I think they will want it once the consumers do. I'm not talking about this particular thing, but once everyone in the general culture is using something then the Enterprise people will want those interfaces as a front end to the Enterprise stuff. We are years away from this, let's face it. These big tablets are going to put things off, and people off of the idea of big tablets. I think there is something. I am just personally really inspired by Perceptive Pixel, but PixelSense, by these concept videos. I believe in it. I think that it taps into core things about human nature that are never going to change, and are really going to thrill people if they can get it right. I'm rooting for it, and I think that this is Microsoft's big chance, maybe their last chance in the next decade, to really lead again. If Apple comes out with something like this and then they follow 2 years later with the consumer version then it's going to be the Windows Phone all over again. That would be a tragedy. I think this horse has been dead for a while.

Mary Jo: It's a good conversation to have because it brings up the difference between you want to be ahead of the curve, and you want to lead and look like you are heading the market, but knowing the right time to get in with the right product and the right price.

Mike: Really, it's the old Microsoft story, they are the platform for everybody. That is their curse and their blessing at the same time. It's very difficult to force everybody into a completely new way of doing things and abandoning the past because then you are really not doing what Microsoft does which is not into cutting people off at the knees and so on. Let's talk about Microsoft Office. Should we shed a tear for the death of Clip Art? 

Paul: I don't know why anyone noticed.

Mary Jo: I thought Clip Art had been gone for a while, so when I saw that they had written a blog post saying that they were phasing it out I thought, wait, I thought that was gone already? Hasn't everybody quit using it?

Paul: You see it in there. I'm looking now.

Mike: I think it is why use Clip Art when you can steal perfectly good photographs?

Mary Jo: Or use ones that let you use them for free with Creative Commons Licenses, right? So much better.

Mike: Clip Art is the, when printers first went radically mainstream everybody started saying wow, look at all of these colors and fonts that I can use. Then documents suddenly became horrible, and Clip Art is the sort of that where you could put in very tasteless cheesy things and it's awful. It's like Facebook posts, everybody wants to do it but they don't want to get it.

Paul: I just went into Word. You can still insert Clip Art from office.com and Word. So I don't know what the plan is. I assume they are going to phase it out.

Mike: Yeah, oh well.

Paul: Also I just did it, so someone did it this year. I don't know why they are getting rid of it.

Mike: Alright Paul, so I have a question for you Paul. Last night I finally relented, and my wife and I went to Best Buy and bought my son and Xbox One. He has been using Xbox 360 for a long time. We didn't get the Kinect version, so there are a whole bunch of things. I'm sort of on the fence about getting that because I love all of the Skype stuff and the voice command. What do you recommend? He has had it for less than 12 hours or whatever it is, 15 hours. What do you recommend for him? What should he do?

Paul: How old is he?

Mike: He's 25.

Paul: Oh, thank god. That makes it a little easier. 

Mike: Yeah, I'm pretty much out of the woods.

Paul: What do you mean? From like a gaming perspective or from an entertainment perspective?

Mike: He will figure out the games. He's going to have all of the big shoot em ups there. What else would you recommend? He kind of wants to use it almost like his PC and his sort of cable box to the greatest extent possible. What information could he use that would be surprising to him that would be awesome?

Paul: Right, because this is one of those things that I am speaking almost theoretically because my Xbox One is in my home office. It's not connected to a TV or a signal or whatever. I think that one of the big advantages to this console is the VH DMI pass-through capabilities. You could throw another console through there if you had like a PS4 or something, but I think that the real thing that you do with that is you do like a TV pass-through and it integrates your cable guide with the guides that are kind of electronically created from online services. So it co-mingles those things into a single entertainment guide, which I think is a really cool feature. The problem is that I use mine very specifically for video gaming. It's interesting that you mention this now, because I was literally just thinking about putting this in the living room because a lot of the guys that I get together with, sometimes we get together physically in the same house and play with other people, and most of those guys still have 360's. I'm not going to cart this thing around, it's gigantic, it's like a surface type table. Why not just throw it in the living room and do all of that kind of stuff? I'm not a big fan of the Kinect gesture stuff. I am a huge fan of the Kinect voice control stuff. I think that is important, in fact, I think that it is so important that it should be separated from the Kinect. There should be a separate microphone for that purpose because speaking to your TV or to the console is somewhat transformative. That's kind of a big deal. So if you ever use something like Chromecast and the doorbell rings, the phone rings, whatever it is, even if someone needs to go to the bathroom; you need to wake up your device, log in, go back to the screen, and pause. Just being able to say it is actually kind of a big deal.

Mike: Do you think that they are going to integrate Cortana into Xbox anytime soon?

Paul: Yeah, yep, I think Windows 10 is going to do that across the board; tablet, phone, and Xbox. You can already do that kind of thing. It's almost just a branding change really. I think making it a consistent experience across the device types maybe will be the big benefit there.

Mike: What about music? What about Xbox Music?

Paul: I actually like Xbox Music. I know that Mary Jo does as well. It's fine on the console. There are some other options there, but Xbox Music with Xbox Music Pass in particular, because that opens up the entire catalog I think is a big deal. Xbox Video is fine for renting movies. I wouldn't buy anything with it, but for renting movies it's great. Obviously it's 1080p or whatever, it's beautiful. All of the major services are on there. There will be kind of NAS DLNA type streaming coming. There is a beta app that is out now. I'm trying to remember how that works exactly. I think that right now it only works with local files on USB, so if you have an external hard drive you can plug it in and it will read that stuff. There is a bunch of goofy things that aren't available yet on this console that were available on the 360. The ability to plug in a keyboard, for example, if you have to type in a log in or something. They don't have a chat controller or any of that kind of stuff. I think that this thing will evolve over time. Mostly I use it for games, so I kind of have to think about that.

Mike: Very interesting use of the Xbox, for games.

Paul: I know. I'm told that this is minority use of it these days.

Mike: I see. Speaking of Xbox Music, I understand that you wrote about some updates for Xbox Music for Windows Phone 8.1?

Paul: Yeah, so Windows 8.1 was completed in April, and it came with a version of Xbox Music which was a disaster. Microsoft later apologized for the quality, they should have shipped it as a beta. They spent the rest of the year improving it to the tune of I believe they have actually released 12 updates to this app this year, mostly focused on adding a few missing features, but also shoring up the reliability and all of that kind of stuff. The latest update, which came out this week, was basically fixes for performance, and reliability, and a couple of goofy missing things. They said something interesting, because actually the update wasn't all that interesting. They said that we will do a few more of these, but really right now the team is focused on Windows 10. I think that was an interesting note about phone because you know, one of the things that Mary Jo was first on and we have talked about since was that there is no Windows Phone 10, right? It's going to be Windows 10. You see these kind of implicit acknowledgements of this everywhere, and so presumably Windows 10 will have this Xbox Music app, which we don't see today in the builds. It is a universal app that works consistently across phone, tablet, and PC. I think that is what they were trying to say was that they were working on that now. That will benefit the Xbox too, by the way. If you are familiar with Xbox Music, or any of these kinds of apps, today what you will see is a different app. There is a OneDrive app on phone, there is one on Xbox, there is one on Windows, and they are all different. In the future these should all be universal apps. They may expose different features and they may look different on the different platforms obviously, but they will be the same app. That will ensure a consistent level of reliability, but also a general functionality. That will be nice on the Xbox in particular because the Xbox Music app is fine for whatever it is on Xbox One today, but it is also designed to be more of a streamer. It isn't designed, or even allow you to put a bunch of music on a hard drive and that is your collection. The assumption is that you are using it on the Cloud. The way that you use it on a PC is very different, the way that you use it on a phone is very different. I think in the future those things will be more consistent.

Mike: Awesome, well in just a sec we are going to come back with listener Q & A. We are going to let you put Paul and Mary Jo on the spot. But first, I want to take a break and talk about Carbonite. We were talking about all of these security issues, every time I do any sort of show, whether it's this show or whether it is the Tech News show that we do every morning, there is always security hassles. There are a couple of things about security and the danger to your files that malware and other problems can cause, which is number one, you always find out about it when it is too late to do anything about it after you have already been hacked. The second thing is that people tend to have a rosy sense of what is going to happen if they don't automate things. For example, people think that they are going to do a manual backup or something that has to be triggered by the user action. The truth is that most people are not going to do that. That's why you need a couple of attributes for your backup. It has to be automatic and it has to be in the Cloud because if something happens it is the famous story of Francis Ford Coppalla who was backing up to a local drive, and somebody broke into his house and stole both the laptop and the local drive, and it was all gone. That's the kind of thing that can happen if you back up locally. Backing up locally is a good idea as long as you also have the Cloud as backup. Carbonite is by far the easiest to use Cloud backup solution ever. You basically just install it. If you want to tweak it and define what gets backed up, and when, and how you can have it sort of delay your backup if you have important things going on. You can put it in the background to sort of keep it from using valuable processing. You can do all kinds of things like that, but if you do none of those things, if you simply install it, you are going to be safe and secure with a backup. Hopefully nothing will ever happen to you. Hopefully you will be the one person in the world for whom nothing happens to your basic system that you use for your personal life, and your personal photos, and your work, and your financial records, and all of that stuff. But if it does happen you can basically feel confident that all of your stuff is going to be there and you can simply restore it after you fix the problem. And that is incredibly reassuring! You can access your backed-up files wherever you go including from a mobile device which is really cool actually. So start your free trial today at carbonite.com. No credit card required. Use the offer code WINDOWS and that will get you two free bonus months when you decide to buy. And I know you will because when you try it you got to keep using it because again, so easy to use, so reliable. And no matter what happens, you’re not going to lose your data. That’s the most important thing, carbonite.com. Offer code WINDOWS and I highly recommend Carbonite. I use it myself for all of our devices.

Well kids, it’s time for Q and A. Why don’t we go through these and if you don’t mind I’ll go ahead and ask the questions and you guys can field them, if that works for you.

Mary Jo: We asked earlier on Twitter, anybody have questions they want us to do live. I’m just pulling them off Twitter and throwing them up there. They’re in no order or anything.

Paul: Probably should have prepped for this.

Mike: Nah.

Mary Jo: It will give us a real live Q and A feel.

Mike: Okay so let’s start with the first one. Mary Jo, is Microsoft reinventing email? Acompli and more to come. Now the Acompli acquisition I guess was announced this week, right? And it was accidentally the news of it was accidentally leaked by a Microsoft executive who posted something then deleted the thing. But the URL was still there and the URL says Microsoft is acquiring Acompli or something like that. So that was good fun for those of us in the tech press. But they are officially bringing in Acompli. Acompli is software that lets you sort of snooze your email. It does other kinds of automated things. And Microsoft is going to maybe build that into Outlook. But are they going to reinvent email? Is this a game changer, I guess, for Microsoft’s email offerings?

Mary Jo: When I saw they were buying this company which does native apps for Android and iOS that work on the backend with Exchange and Gmail and Google Docs and other servers, I was kind of surprised because whenever we have asked Microsoft what is your cross-platform strategy for mail; they have told us that it’s Outlook Web App. And I kind of thought that was their final answer. I guess it’s not their final answer. They seem to have gone back to the drawing board and said hey you know we should instead have a native app that works cross-platform with different backends. I’m going to be really interested what they do with this and how this impacts the future of Outlook. And also Outlook Web App. I don’t know if Paul, Paul I think wrote a long post about this actually. Because you’ve tried it out even, right?

Paul: Yea, in fact I tried it out and I recommended my wife install it. I’ve used it on an iPhone, on Android, and an iPad as well. What I see in this thing is Outlook as we know it on the desktop, but for mobile devices. It’s that combination that one app that does email, contacts, calendar, and so forth. It also integrates with your online storage which I think is a neat thing, especially in the context of email because you can use that to do virtual attachments and stuff. And attach very big files that they can then go get from your OneDrive or Drop Box or whatever. Like I said Microsoft has a slow app actually that does do that. It’s very limited today and they also have a confusing array of mobile apps. On some platforms they have an outlook.com and some they don’t. They have different clients. And I think what they need is a client. I think that this is it. I think when people think of Microsoft email, they think Outlook. And I think this is basically Outlook on iOS and Android. And that’s kind of cool just for that reason. What I would like to see is them push this over to Windows Phone.

Mary Jo: I wonder if they will do that.

Paul: As Outlook. In other words, this thing becomes Outlook. I think so. It’s not perfect. If anyone has used it and has particular needs, anyone who does things a certain way can find fault with anything. So I think one of the things it doesn’t do is support multiple calendars which is a problem for people with multiple calendars, obviously. So there’s little things like that. Broad strokes, it’s a pretty impressive application that’s free.

Mike: I should have said that question came from Hulgar Mueller, I think I’m pronouncing that right. So that’s where the question came from. Here’s another one for Mary Jo. This is from Dean Spencer.

Mary Jo: Actually Mike, these aren’t all for me. I just was collecting them. That’s why my name’s on them.

Mike: Understood. I’m trying to…

Mary Jo: Paul can weigh in here.

Paul: No, Mary Jo was the one who was nice enough to ask people for questions. So these are their replies to her as they appear on Twitter.

Mary Jo: I didn’t want to take them all.

Mike: No, your name is there. I’m going to give them all to you. I’m Ron Burgundy? Okay so this one’s from Dean Spencer and I do think this should be directed at you, Mary Jo. You can correct me if I’m wrong. Why does Microsoft have different branding for SharePoint and OneDrive for Business when it’s essentially the same thing?

Mary Jo: One of the worst name products ever from Microsoft: OneDrive for Business, right? Because OneDrive for Business is not the same as OneDrive consumer. OneDrive for business is really the Groove technology that Microsoft bought way back when they bought Ray Ozzy’s company.

Paul: Which was originally called… SharePoint or something other.

Mary Jo: SharePoint Workspace, yep. And now, there is one team that has OneDrive consumer, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint. They all work on the same team. But those three products are different. SharePoint is not the same as OneDrive for Business. OneDrive for Business connects to SharePoint and works with SharePoint, but SharePoint is a lot more than just that. So it’s super confusing and I think it was a real bad step for Microsoft to name OneDrive for Business. But I get what they’re trying to do, they’re trying to say all of our storage-related things are together now. And they all are going to work in a similar way to the extent that they can. But yea, it’s confusing.

Mike: I personally think they should rename OneDrive for Business to Another Drive, This One for Business. Or SkyDrive Pro. Microsoft is terrible at naming things with the exception of Windows which is the greatest technology product name ever. And then all the other names are horrible. Just an observation. Okay here’s another question for you, Mary Jo. What’s Paul’s take on the new Star Wars trailer?

Paul: Nice.

Mike: Paul, what do you think?

Paul: I loved it. I want more. I’m so excited that someone cares about Star Wars again and they’re going to do this. And it looks like they’re going to do it right. So we’ll see. It’s another thing, people are so negative online. People like tearing apart little bits of it and stuff. Who cares? This is awesome. I’m so glad they’re doing this. I think it’s great.

Mike: Yea. It looks really cool and you know that fact that everybody tears stuff up online, we’ve been talking about this. Recently in the news there was a study-sorry I don’t know who did the study-but it points out the social dynamic. And there’s a lot of negative people jumping in. The sort of positive people back off. And the negative people get on the bandwagon and start being more negative. Pretty much the negativity sort of takes over and everything becomes negative. I’m with you, Paul. Just a cheery note of positivity and boldly coming out and saying you love something.

Paul: Well we’ve all worked in some sort of retail or situation where we had to deal with the public. And nine out of 10 or 99 out of 100 bits of feedback are going to be negative. No one comes in and says thank you. Or to say hey you guys are doing a great job as always. It’s always something went wrong. And I’m going to complain about it. And I think the whole culture online just makes it easier. It’s like when people are in cars; they turn into maniacs. I live in the most educated state in the country and it has the most terrible drivers in the world. It’s like how is this possible? Because I don’t know why; I’m not a psychologist. But it’s the same thing; it’s the way we react online. It’s the way people freak out on planes. It’s very easy to be negative. People are horrible. Okay, people suck.

Mary Jo: Bottom line. I say every week how grateful I am for Notepad. So we’re not all horrible.

Paul: That’s true. You’re also very nice about Hudu.

Mary Jo: Hudu and Notepad, guys.

Paul: Mary Jo, I’ve never got a chance to say this before. I’m totally with you on Notepad. Single greatest technology product ever created. Because it’s the opposite of smart. It doesn’t think for you. It looks like you’re trying to create a text document! You don’t need any help!

Mike: I assume you want this URL to become a live link.

Paul: If you would like this to be in a fixed font format…

Mike: Okay, so here’s a question for you, Paul. Somebody’s asking, Dirk Mostert is asking if you know whether or not or have a hunch about whether or not an existing service tablet will be upgradeable to Windows 10. Because he is holding back on buying a new one based on the idea that he might not have to. What do you think?

Paul: So Microsoft has actually publically said that at least Surface Pro 3 will be upgradeable to Windows 10. I believe Mary Jo just published a story today and you’ll correct me if I’m wrong that Windows 10 is an upgrade for anything running Windows RT. So if you have Windows RT, you should be able to upgrade. Is that correct, Mary Jo?

Mary Jo: Mostly. Although remember, we asked in the late September Windows 10 preview event in San Francisco about backward compatibility. And they said we cannot guarantee 100% that everything is going to be backwards compatible. But our goal is to make as many things backwards compatible.

Paul: I would assume they can.

Mary Jo: I wonder about the Surface RT. The original Surface RT, that’s one we don’t know. And they wouldn’t answer when we asked about that exact product.

Paul: Right, that’s iffy.

Mike: Will there be a new Windows 10 RT? This is coming from Tegler 27. Any thoughts on that?

Mary Jo: The thing that’s currently called Windows RT is what’s going to be rebuilt as Windows 10 mobile. The thing that we’re calling that. And what Microsoft’s doing is they’re taking the Windows Phone OS and Windows RT OS and they’re pushing them together in some way. And what comes out is what’s going to be a single SKU that works on both things.

Mike: Alright. How do you describe that combination and not use the word unholy?

Mary Jo: I try to keep that out of it.

Paul: A lot of technical lingo on this show.

Mike: Alright so I think this is a question for Paul: why doesn’t the Xbox Music support OneDrive streaming?

Paul: Ugh, boy. It will. I keep hearing reports from people. I just got one of these as recently as yesterday where supposedly that’s kind of there. And if you were to go back and look at the original Xbox Music announcement. They talked about this feature coming soon. They didn’t say OneDrive; it probably would have been SkyDrive at the time. They talked about a music locker. And some people have said they’ve seen a music folder show up in their OneDrive that they didn’t create. Some people have said they’ve seen OneDrive-based music on Xbox Music. That wouldn’t be hard to do on Windows because of course, OneDrive is probably part of your libraries anyway. But there’s no way that’s not coming. It’s such an obvious feature, it’s so easy to do. On a Windows PC today, it’s well, not a Windows 10 because that’s screwing up OneDrive. But Windows 8.1 certainly, that’s fairly automatic. If it’s in OneDrive, you can see it in Xbox Music. With Windows going out to all your devices, Windows 10 that is, I can see that happening across the board. So I think that happens in a Windows 10 time frame.

Mike: Alright. Well in just a second we can come back and do more questions if you guys want to. We can go to the pics if you don’t want to. But first let’s take a break because I want to tell you about Square Space. You know, I’ve been doing ads for Square Space for almost all year. I’ve been a happy user of Square Space for two or three years. I actually love it. I find it more fun than playing an online video game or something like that. It’s so easy to use. It’s great to go in there and just see what’s possible. You just go in there and pick one of their fantastic templates. It’s always been super easy to use. But now with Square Space 7, it’s incredibly easy to use because they’ve added all kinds of really amazing features. Like for example, one of my favorites is that you can preview designs in device mode. So as you’re working on your site, you can say show me what this is going to look like on a phone. And there it is, boom. You don’t have to pull out your phone and load the page and all that. You can just see it right there in your browser which is really great. It’s got a mode now where you basically build your site in the same view so you can see what it’s going to look like as you’re building it. You don’t have to toggle like okay now I’m building the site and now I’m looking at what it’s going to look like. None of that gymnastics. It’s really fantastic. And I absolutely love their designs. That’s the most important thing I think: to have a beautifully designed site that looks like it’s professionally built. It’s logical and rational in a way that it goes from one page to another, in the way it looks on mobile devices. And Square Space just handles all that for you because of the design of their templates and the way they function. For example they have a template called Horizon and it’s laid out for bands. They have all these business and activity-specific templates for you to choose that sort of work just the way you want them to. If you’re a chef or have a restaurant, there’s a bunch for those. If you know somebody who’s getting married and you’re building a website for their wedding, they have six beautiful templates. And again you’re not locked into these templates at all. And you don’t need to use their photography or any of that stuff. You can in fact use Getty photography which you can add directly from the site for $10 per picture. Once you’ve selected a template, you can tweak it and change it. Change how wide it is, the color, the thickness of various things, the size of the font, the typography. You can change anything you want but the essential building block you’re starting with is a beautiful design. The best design you’re going to see anywhere online. And of course Square Space is mobile-ready with multiple apps. Portfolio, note, metric, and blog mobile apps on iOS and note and blog apps on Android. It’s fantastic to use it for mobile devices. It’s fantastic to see a Square Space site from a mobile device. It’s very mobile-friendly. And of course we live in a mobile world so that’s super important. Start a free two-week trial, no credit card required. And start building your website on Square Space. When you sign up for Square Space, use the offer code WINDOWS. And that will get you 10% off and show your support of Windows Weekly. And to begin using Square Space 7 for existing users, just go to the settings tab and activate the new features. They won’t activate on their own. They’re going to wait until you go in there and give permission for Square Space to give you all these goodies. But I highly recommend that you use it if you’re an existing user because they’re awesome. We thank Square Space for their support of Windows Weekly. Square Space: start here and go anywhere. Alright, you guys want to do any more questions or avoid these questions?

Mary Jo: I say a couple more. They’re kind of good questions.

Mike: Okay, you want to reach into the grab bag and grab the ones you like. A lot of these, there’s so many here, it’s like wow.

Mary Jo: I want to ask Paul one that I know he will want to answer.

Mike: Go for it. What do you think of the Star Wars trailer?

Paul: Yes!

Mary Jo: Paul, will you please comment on Windows Media Center in Windows 10.

Paul: Oh! You’re so mean, Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: I just want to make him cry on the air.

Paul: We don’t know. Media Center could have gone into the list of Zune and Windows Phone, whatever. We don’t know; the indications are that it’s not coming. Or at best, they’ll simply allow you to use the existing version of Media Center. I don’t think it’s going to be an integral part of Windows 10. I don’t think it’s something they improved. But I have not heard explicitly. When the first preview build appeared, a number of people were very excited that they could install it. You know, in other words they had acquired it online when they had Windows 8 or 8.1. And that product key they had worked fine and it installed. And someone from Microsoft had said that actually that was a mistake. That they didn’t intend to allow that. That to me is a warning sign that it’s probably not going to be coming soon. I don’t know for sure. But my gut is that they’re not going to support it or at the very least they’re not going to improve it.

Mike: Hmm. How about any questions that you want to answer, Mary Jo. Anything jump out at you?

Mary Jo: I see a juicy one that I want. Leonardo Sobrado asked about Docker. So let’s do the Docker question. What’s the Docker story? What’s the Docker support story for Windows as it relates to Draw Bridge? Microsoft’s bullish on Docker but they’re being very silent on Draw Bridge. So Docker, the containerization technology is being built into the next version of Windows Server, we know. It’s not there yet. It may be there in January-we don’t know. But what Microsoft has said is that they’re going to maintain compatibility with Docker on Linux and they’re working hand in hand with the Docker folks on that. A lot of us thought the way they were going to do this on Windows server was they’d use their own Draw Bridge technology that they built in Microsoft research. And Draw Bridge is like library-operating system technology. And it lets you get around the whole virtualization conundrum by using this specific technology they built there. And they’ve even done some tests where they’ve shown Draw Bridge working on Azure and Draw Bridge being able to host from versions of Windows. So it’s gone fairly far along. I had a chance to ask Mark Russinovich, the chief technology officer for Cloud Enterprise about this. And I said aren’t you using Draw Bridge to put Docker on Windows server? And what he said was interesting. He said you know we’re using the principles and the learnings and the thinking, the background thinking around how we handle containers in Draw Bridge when we’re devising the solution. But we’re not using Draw Bridge itself. So that’s why they’ve been kind of quiet about it. It was a research project; it never actually became a product. But they’re definitely using the thinkings and the learnings and the background to build Docker container support into Windows Server. So there you have it, Leonardo.

Mike: Amazing. So okay, I have a question here. I’m not going to tweet it to you, Mary Jo. I’m just going to ask it because I’m on the show so I can do that. And this is a question that I’m always grappling as I see the various things that are happening. There is obviously a sense that there is kind of a new Microsoft. And it’s a reinvigorated company. And whether it’s coincidental with Sacha Nadella or because of Sacha Nadella. Obviously a lot of the news that comes out, the decisions that Microsoft has been announcing, were set in motion before Nadella come on board. But it just feels like it’s a new Microsoft. More open, more cross-platform, more inclusive, more intelligent Microsoft that’s making better decisions. Is this-and I’ll ask this of both of you-is this an illusion or is it a new Microsoft? Are they a much hotter and more interesting company today than they were a year ago?

Paul: They were never uninteresting. What do you mean?

Mary Jo: You’re asking two people whose whole livelihoods are built around watching them. So we’ve always had to find them interesting.

Paul: Yea.

Mary Jo: And find things to be interested in.

Mike: It’s interesting inherently because of their stuff. But you have to admit that there’s all kinds of stuff going on that’s just like wow that doesn’t seem very Microsoft-like.

Mary Jo: I think Paul and I were just talking about this before the show. They are a really different company than they were a year ago. Like almost 180-degree different company than they were a year ago in terms of how they’re structured, how they make decisions, how quickly they roll stuff out. They really are different. How that difference will impact them going forward in terms of products and product uptake, and where they fit in the world especially in a cross-platform and mobile world, I think we have to wait and see. But I have to say, this year I’ve covered Microsoft on and off for 30 years. And this is the most interesting year that I can recall in covering them. Because it’s just like everything you could assume they were going to do, they almost did the exact opposite. So that made it fun and interesting.

Mike: Yea, that jives with my perspective. What do you think, Paul?

Paul: Yea, I agree with that. The other thing that Mary Jo sees like I do, is there’s also a backlash to this kind of stuff. Which is interesting kind of inherently as well. That this is core-contingent of Windows or Microsoft enthusiasts to a small degree, but just people that support the technology. Who see Microsoft porting all this stuff to mobile devices and don’t quite get what they’re doing. People getting very sensitive about features showing up on their iPhone or Android before showing up on Windows Phone for example. So that’s an interesting dynamic. And that’s not something we would have seen in Microsoft a year ago even. Even when you talk about devices and services, Mobile First Cloud first. You sort of assume in the background, Windows first hopefully. But at the very least Windows will always be best. And we’re not necessarily seeing that. The other thing looking at it from the outside world, from my perspective looking in at Microsoft; in the past Microsoft always had a very clear revenue model. They sold licenses for their software, largely to businesses and PC makers. And they made a lot of money doing that. But with people moving to mobile platforms, they need to find a new way to make money. And it’s confusing. They have subscription services, Office 365 being the big one. They have mobile apps that require those services. And then they kind of don’t require them anymore. So how are they making money on Office for iPad if no one has to pay to use it? It’s confusing. The list of features that you get with or without a subscription. It’s confusing. And in many ways that type of confusion is very typical of Microsoft, you know. The kind of arbitrary licensing rules that they’ve always had. So in that sense it’s somewhat comfortable. But I don’t know if the revenue stream from Office 365 subscriptions makes up for Windows plus Office from the golden years. And obviously there are other subscriptions they want to get people latched onto, Azure being a big one for businesses and so forth. But I do question whether that stuff ends up in the same way the old business model worked. I don’t know.

Mike: And I think it’s not just about the market. It’s about the fact that the world has changed. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to sustain a platform plus application area cash cow thing the way they used to. And it’s just not possible anymore. The world is a very different place. And it’s interesting to see Microsoft trying to find its way in a world where they used to be back in the days when people used to spend lots of money for desktop software, Microsoft was the company. And now they’re entering a new world. They’re still doing really well but they still need to figure out what it’s going to be.

Paul: Microsoft is the British Empire after World War II. We all remember the glory years and sometimes we go kicking and screaming into the reality of the present. Things are different now. And it’s hard! It’s hard for some people to accept. When that changes, it’s a big change.

Mike: Well stiff upper lip.

Mary Jo: I think they don’t have a choice, too. And you know what they could have done is just stayed the course and become increasingly irrelevant. It would have taken a long time for that to happen but it would have been a slow decline.

Paul: It would have been a slow motion car crash. It would have been terrible.

Mary Jo: I like seeing them fight back and at least try. I like the can-do, let’s try this spirit that we’re seeing. And it’s good.

Paul: And they make good stuff. And the reality is I don’t blindly support Microsoft because I’ve been doing it for a while or something. And there’s some weird inertia to it. I regularly try every device there is. I try rival platforms, I use Chromebooks, I have a MacBook Air as you can see. I just, I’m sorry, by and large-not always and 100% across the board-as far as the core platform stuff goes, I prefer Windows. I really do. I really prefer Office. And for very pragmatic not emotional reasons. I just feel that they’re more productive for me. And I give the other stuff a shot. And I get why people move on to different things. I understand all that stuff. I really feel like there is a value to what they do. They don’t always communicate it effectively, which is why Mary Jo and I have a job I guess. But it’s there. It’s real. It’s not something artificial. I really do prefer it.

Mike: I think it’s really fascinating to see them less apologetic about doing hardware. Of course Microsoft has always built hardware. And the interesting fact about their hardware business in the past, it’s little stuff: keyboards, mice, cameras or whatever it was. And their hardware, even though it is relatively insignificant categories, was always among the best hardware in their categories. And now that they’re building more hardware and more central hardware, I’d love to see them say, throw the whole don’t compete with your partners out the window. Because I think Google proved that that’s a model that actually pays off. Because if you rely on this ecosystem there are going to be a bunch of slackers. Just look what happened in the Windows Phone market.

Paul: The PC market too. That’s the double-edge sword thing.

Mary Jo: I’m glad they…

Paul: I don’t see them moving away from it. Microsoft has three or four major conferences a year. One of them is a partner conference and there’s a reason for that. And it’s not just historical. Yes, Windows Phone could have gone to market a little differently. Maybe Surface wouldn’t have been required if Microsoft’s PC-making partners had listened. Because Microsoft had tried for years and years to get them to stop providing crap-ware. To look at different models. And when Windows 7 actually put touch on computers and make these hybrid PCs, which they resisted at mass. So, yea things could have gone a little differently. I don’t see them completely abandoning the partner approach. I think it’s too core to what they do.

Mary Jo: I love having choice. The best thing about the Windows ecosystem to me is a choice. A lot of people like the Surface Pro 3 and that’s great. And they get to buy it from Microsoft. But I didn’t like it that much. And I had an option. I had the option to go buy a high-end really awesome Windows laptop from one of their partners. So I was glad that they weren’t the only game.

Mike: That’s a great point. In just a second, we’re going to come back and do our picks! I’m not going to do any picks. It’s going to be all Paul and Mary Jo. But we are going to do picks. But first, let’s talk about a good night sleep. One of our sponsors today is Casper. Casper has really disrupted the mattress industry because they’ve figured out a way to make it super great for you to try a bed, their beds-their amazing mattresses-in your own home. They send it by mail and you think okay that’s ridiculous. I’m going to get this mattress-sized package in the mail, I can’t imagine that. It’s going to be a much smaller package. And when you open it and turn this thing lose, it’s going to grow before your very eyes into a full-size ultra-comfortable mattress. And the way that they make it so comfortable is they use a combination of latex and memory foam. They put these together in a way that makes it both firm and really soft with that memory foam quality that remembers where you are. So it’s just a fantastic mattress. Here’s, if you’re watching the video, here’s Leo un-packaging. You can see that it came in a very small box. And now it’s just essentially growing in fast-motion into a full-size mattress. Here comes his swan dive into the mattress and here it is. If you have one of these mattresses and you jump on it, you too will be in slow motion just like Leo. And of course his dog likes it too. Even though the dog doesn’t have enough weight to press down the memory foam because it’s a tiny dog. But Casper is just fantastic. It’s disrupted the market because it enables you to get not only the quality of the mattress, but get it in the mail and try it for 100 days. If you go to the mattress store and get down on a mattress and you kind of think I guess this might be comfortable. I can’t really tell. I’m fully-dressed, I’m wearing shoes. And I’m just sitting here and the salesperson is standing there. So I’m not really sure if I like this or not. With Casper, you can sleep on it every night for 100 nights! And after 100 nights, I guarantee you you’re going to know whether or not you’re going to want this mattress. And believe me you’re going to want it, you’re going to keep it. And you’re going to love it because Casper mattresses are incredibly comfortable. And sleep is extremely important. So make sure you get a Casper mattress, at least one, so you can sleep better. And it’s very inexpensive. Get a Casper mattress, $500 for a twin or $950 for a king-size bed. If you compare that to mattresses in the industry. Industry averages for mattresses, that’s an incredible price. And you can save an additionally $50 just for listening to this show as one of our audience members by going to casper.com/windows and enter the promo code WINDOWS. $50! That will make you sleep better, too. That’s casper.com/windows and the promo code is WINDOWS. That is a $50 promo code. Got to sleep on a Casper mattress. Well, picks of the week. Paul, what is your tip of the week?

Paul: What is my tip of the week?

Mike: Something about a digital gift card.

Paul: Yes, so Microsoft this week released a digital gift cards app only for Windows Phone, which I thought was a little weird. And then only for Windows Phone 8.1. Which pretty much leaves out everyone on Verizon. But what it allows you to do is buy Microsoft store and by Microsoft store, I shouldn’t even say that. It’s really Xbox Store-Windows Store-Windows Phone Store. Virtual version of a gift card. So I bought one for myself to test it. $10 whatever. But you can go from $10-100, different designs. I think the only confusing bit is just that it works across the stores. So you can use it buy music for Xbox Music, rent movies or buy movies from Xbox videos, buy apps from any of the stores, buy games from any of the stores, that kind of stuff. So obviously physical gift cards aren’t going anywhere especially since this thing is only on Windows Phone. But kind of a neat new way to buy a gift card. Kind of a cool thing. Just as a side tip, I think I had the big tip about Microsoft Music deals app. Which at the time I think had 100 free albums and then 50 of them were $2 box sets. These are box sets that could cost up to $100 each normally. A tremendous deal. This week they added or they changed the deal over so there’s actually now 50 new free albums. And I went in and found some new stuff, so there’s definitely new stuff in there. So if you haven’t looked at it since last week, check that out as well.

Mike: Alright, and what is your software pick of the week?

Paul: Well it’s Acompli, right? So we actually already talked about it. This is, I think, a tremendous app. I don’t use iOS or Android daily but having installed in across all those devices, I look at that and I see this is what Outlook mobile should be. This is what it should be on Windows Phone, Windows 10. I hope they do that. And like I said earlier, it integrates not just multiple services meaning all the Exchange, outlook.com, Google, Yahoo, etcetera. But also the storage services so Google Drive, OneDrive, Drop Box. And you have all the stuff in one app. So it allows you to do things like send attachments virtually, where they’re kept in a cloud storage and don’t go with the email. And they also do a nifty job of just filtering email and you can change this. But by default it basically breaks down email from people and email that’s not from people. And I find that kind of simple. It makes sense. There’s been a lot of work with email apps, when you look at inbox from Google, or all these different apps where they’re trying to overthink email. And you know, separating the important email from the unimportant email, newsletter type stuff or whatever, is in some ways a machine learning job or whatever. It’s the type of thing they would have sent Clippie after 10 years ago. Acompli does a great job of it. It’s really nicely done. So if you’re running Android or iOS, definitely check that out.

Mike: Awesome. Alright, Mary Jo. Your enterprise pick of the week.

Mary Jo. My enterprise pick of the week. I’m not sure if Paul and Leo talked about this while I was away, but I’m guessing they did not.

Paul: We did not.

Mary Jo: Okay. Right before Thanksgiving, Microsoft said they would be rolling out some new features to Intune which is their mobile device management technology. It used to be called Windows Intune, now called Microsoft Intune because it also works with iOS and Android. And when they said they’d add some new features, I thought maybe a couple small new features. Well they’re rolling out a ton of new features. Not just one or two. The list is endless it feels like. But here are some of them that have been rolling out to people with Intune. They’ve got the new enhanced interface for the Intune administration console. You can push free store apps now to iOS devices. Enforcement of application install or uninstall. You can restrict access to Exchange on premises email based on device enrollment. There’s just so many. Remote PIN reset for Windows Phone 8.1. If you have Intune, these should have been rolling out to you over the past week or so. But if you aren’t familiar with what is available now, you might want to go back. And I’ll have the link to this in the show notes. But you can check out this whole list of features and they’ve said there are even more Intune features coming out next year as they continue their rollout toward managing not just devices, but the apps and the data on those devices. So they’re going to continue to have more Intune features rolling out on a more frequent basis. Something I think we’ll see in the first quarter, more Intune stuff coming as they start rolling out the Office for Android apps and a lot of other new things. So keep your eyes peeled on Microsoft Intune.

Mike: Awesome.

Mary Jo: It’s hard to break that habit. I know.

Mike: Just try saying Apple Watch instead of iWatch, it’s not easy I tell you. So what do you have in the codename pick of the week department?

Mary Jo: Codename pick of the week is Vega. Vega was the codename for dynamic CRM 2015 and the reason I made it this week’s codename pick is as of December 1^st, Microsoft made the dynamic CRM 2015 technology generally available. So they made both the on-premises version of CRM 2015 and the cloud version generally available starting this week. If you’re somebody who uses CRM 2015 online, the way you’re going to get this is you have to go in and tell Microsoft when you want these bits pushed to you. You can set up when you want them pushed to you, which is pretty nice. So you have to proactively go in and do that as an administrator and say hey I want these bits now. A couple interesting features in this release, Cortana is integrated so you can actually start doing things using voice with your CRM apps. If you have a phone with Cortana on it and right now that means Windows Phone 8.1. This release also is designed to break down silos between CRM and marketing. So Microsoft’s done some integration around their marketing modules for dynamics so it works more in-tightly with their CRM modules. There’s a whole list of other features that are part of this; I wrote a blog post. It has a link to a release guide. You can go check that out. It’s a free download and has the whole list of everything that’s on the new CRM 2015 update for dynamics.

Mike: That’s a lot of information but I got to tell you that the Cortana integration just stands out as being filled with possibilities.

Mary Jo: I know, it does. We have been using Cortana for cute things like set my alarm. Or what was the score of the blah blah game. Whatever your team is.

Paul: That’s not a cute thing. That’s mission-critical. What are you talking about?

Mary Jo: Now you can do real things like who’s going to be in my sales meeting or you know real things instead of just fun things.

Mike: Yea, that’s amazing. And I can’t wait to see further integrations. I love that whole category, it’s just fantastic. Alright, you have something in the fermented grain beverage department as well. What is your beer pick of the week?

Mary Jo: My beer pick of the week is, and I don’t know how to pronounce this brew. Maybe somebody who speaks Danish does: T-O-O-L. To-all, maybe?

Mike: It’s easy once you’ve had a few of these.

Mary Jo: It is. When I was in Denmark a week ago, I got to drink this. The beer is the liquid confidence cognac barrel-aged imperial stout. I love the name. Liquid confidence. After one of these, you have a lot of confidence. Because I think it’s like a 12-plus percent beer. But it’s delicious if you like imperial stouts. And you can taste the cognac, a little cognac touch from the barrels that this was aged in. Tool is a very famous microbrewer in Denmark. So it was really great to get to try one of their very interesting and hard-to-get beers over here. But if you can get this one, it’s in bottles and on tap in various places. I suggest trying it.

Mike: Are you supposed to drink it out of a snifter?

Mary Jo: Yea, you’re not supposed to drink a whole pint of it. Which I did not. But you should because it’s your birthday.

Mike: You are correct. So I won’t because I can’t get it unless you overnight me one or something like that. But yea, that is awesome. I love your beer picks of the week. It’s a refreshing close to every episode. Literally of every episode of Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott is at the Super Site for Windows, that’s winsupersite.com. There it is! Look at that, oh my… yikes. That is perfect.

Mary Jo: You’ve got to see this video, people.

Mike: Replace your entire home page with that. That is perfect. Who made that?

Mary Jo: One of our listeners.

Mike: Oh, that came from Twitter, okay. Alright Paul, well thank you for all your insights. And this is the first time I’ve ever hosted this show. Hopefully not the last. But I thank you for all your insights as an audience member. And I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Paul: Glad to have you, thank you for being here.

Mike: It’s my distinct pleasure. Mary Jo Foley, allaboutmicrosoft.com which will redirect to the ZD-Net site. Your insights are brilliant as well. I really enjoy them and I thank you for all your work. Again as an audience member and a fan boy, I want to thank you for all of it!

Mary Jo: Thanks, Mike.

Mike: Now do you recall working at CMP?

Mary Jo: Yep.

Mike: Back in the 90’s, I remember running into you because you were this Windows expert back then. And I was the editor in chief of Windows Magazine. And he’s like why doesn’t she work for us? The CMP has a strict anti-poaching policy.

Mary Jo: You’ve come a long way from your former Windows days.

Mike: Yea, I started there in my 20’s. But anyway, those are good times.

Paul: So you must know David Chernikoff?

Mike: Yes.

Paul: He used to write the Windows NT column for Windows Magazine and I later worked with him at Windows NT Magazine.

Mike: Yea, absolutely. Alright, well those are the days. Paul and Mary Jo, thank you so much. Leo, Paul, and Mary Jo do this show every Wednesday at 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1900 UTC at live.twit.tv and of course this show is available for download and subscription at twit.tv/ww. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Mary Jo. And thanks to everyone for tuning in. They, not I, they will see you. And I will also see you next week on Windows Weekly!