Windows Weekly 378 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It’s time for Windows Weekly.  Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley are here.  The latest on the next version of Windows.  We have a date that they feel pretty strongly is real.  We’ll talk about the latest with Windows Phone and yes the Windows update that just won’t go away.  It’s all coming up next on Windows Weekly.

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This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley.  Episode 378 recorded September 3rd, 2014

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It’s time for Windows weekly the show where we learn about Windows weekly.  We have as co-hosts on the show two of the most astute most connected Windows observers out there.  They like to look through their Windows and see the landscape beyond.  Mr. Paul Thurrott from supersite for Windows, winsupersite.com.  And Ms. Mary Jo Foley from allaboutmicrosoft.com a ZDnet blog.  It’s good to have you both.  Welcome to the programme.

Mary Jo Foley: Thank you.

Leo: I say programme because I am spelling it with 2 mm’s and an e at the end British style. 

Paul Thurrott: Nice.

Leo: Yeah we’re going to spiff this place up.  Andrew is breathing down my back.  Got to do something.

Paul: You need a walking stick with a brass top.

Leo: I say Hello Paul, hello Mary Jo.  Still no word from Nokia about my broken phone.  Whine, whine, whine.  That’s okay because a big Samsung event today.  Another big phone on the market a 5.7 inch note 4.  In fact Epha is going on right now and I imagine Epha has a few thing besides smart phones to show off.

Paul: A few.

Leo: Is Microsoft at Epha?   

Paul: Yes they are.  There devices press event is some horrific time in the morning like 3 o’clock in the morning.  Is that right Mary Jo?

Mary Jo: Yeah tomorrow. 

Paul: Yeah the coming morning.  We don’t have anything to say there yet.  But we have other stuff to talk about. 

Leo: Epha stands for something having to do with Radio.  It’s like the European CES.  The oldest running electronic show, it started in the 20’s. 

Paul: So it has nothing to do with European soccer then. 

Leo: Nothing to do with Football.  I don’t know what happened during World War II, what happened to Epha.  I wish I were better at German because I don’t think I really understand this.

Paul: One of the minor details of the war.

Leo: Minor thing what ever happened to Epha.  The Wikipedia page has the name and I am going to attempt to pronounce it now.  No I am not going to attempt that. 

Paul: There is a reason you never see this one expanded. 

Leo: If you speak German, it’s one of those giant German words.

Paul: German is such a romantic and pleasant language.

Leo: Oh my Galaxy Note is making noise.  So tell me my friends, even though Microsoft has not yet announced anything there are Netbooks at Epha, yes?  Small notebooks?

Paul: Not netbooks but cheap laptops, cheap tablets and PC’s of all kinds.  But the cheap stuff which is kind of the interesting stuff comes in the wake of Microsoft’s decision to make Windows available for zero dollars on low end machines.

Leo: We are seeing a ton of little 200 dollar Windows devices. 

Paul: We seen a 120 dollar Windows device. 

Leo: States German name

Paul: Oh it’s the company that owns the MP3 patents. 

Leo: No that’s German name

Paul: Oh it’s the parent company of Mercedes Benz.

Leo: It has something to do with radio.  Shane says I pronounced it okay.  Toshiba we actually saw a 200 dollar Toshiba.  Reviewed it on Before you Buy and I was pretty impressed.  But that’s not as low as they can go.  There is a less expensive.  Can I be reading this right, Windows 8.1 tablet can I be reading that price right? 

Mary Jo: I thought it was a mistake when I saw it.  $119.99. 

Leo: What!?

Paul: It’s super low end.  1 GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, Windows 8.1 with Bing and a crazy low resolution like 124 x 600 screen.  Which a bunch of people on Twitter are freaking out about it today.  Because that is the below the minimum required for metro apps.  But I don’t believe that to be the case anymore and certainly they wouldn’t be selling it if it was because what else would you do with this thing.

Leo: How well does Windows Pro run on a GB of RAM? 

Paul: We don’t know because to my knowledge there is not a 1GB machine out and that requires that Windows 8.1 with Update 1.  So this is the first.  You can order it today, it won’t ship until later in the month.  But I believe this is the very first device that runs on that kind of hardware.  So this is going to be the first test of that. 

Mary Jo: You know what’s interesting you just mentioned the zero dollar thing.  I am curious why this isn’t one of zero dollar things because it’s 7 inches but it’s running Windows with Bing. 

Paul: What makes you think it’s not zero dollars? 

Mary Jo: Because Windows with Bing is not free right?

Paul: Well it’s not free on bigger devices.  I think this is a free offering.

Leo: That’s a deal with Bing. 

Paul: If it’s below 9 inches.

Leo: That’s what you have to say so that they get a free ad or something. 

Mary Jo: It means the OEM has to actually make the default search engine that it comes set with Bing.  But users can change it from Bing.

Paul: This is really weird because years ago to fight Netbooks, Microsoft made starter edition.  There was an XP starter edition and a Windows 7 starter edition.  There were serious requirements about what kind of machine that could be on.  The screen had to be really small, low hardware specifications and so forth.  This time around there are no limitations like that.  Obviously they are offering this on the low end but you could license this for use on a bigger computer.  In fact I just got a 15 inch computer that runs Windows 8.1 with Bing.  The big difference is that there are no restrictions from the users perspective.  Like Mary Jo said PC makers have to leave Bing as the default search engine but you can change it just like you do on a normal pre-existing version of Windows 8.1.  So from a perspective of a user this thing is just the core version of 8.1.  There’s no weird difference to it.  There’s no technical limitation.  There’s no licensing limitation from the users perspective.  It’s just Windows 8.1. 

Mary Jo: Microsoft is just counting on the fact that many “normal” won’t either know how to change the search engine or they won’t bother to change the search engine. 

Leo: It’s the terone of the default, they never do, right?

Mary Jo: Right, like most people are like oh yeah that’s a search engine. 

Leo: They don’t care.  That’s why people use Internet Explorer.

Paul: The point is you’re not limited to 2GB of RAM or something.  There isn’t some weird limit.

Leo: No other limits.

Paul: There are literally no other limitations. 

Leo: Of course price pressure keeps it down.

Mary Jo: The other thing we haven’t mentioned about this tablet, it comes with Office 365 personal for a year with the terabyte of storage for free.  That’s part of the $119.99. 

Paul: That is the retail pricing.  It’s like $69.99 for that year.

Leo: This is ridiculous.

Mary Jo: I know it’s really crazy.

Paul: That offers not unique to this device.  There are a bunch of other devices that get that free Office 365 personal.  But on a device that costs 120 dollars.  They should just give you a check for 50 dollars in the box.  It’s crazy how good of a deal this is. 

Mary Jo: It is.  Mike Bass is saying on Twitter, some people are saying it may retail for $99 by the holidays.  Because what that $119 is today.  So it could be under 100 dollars.

Paul: Today it is available for $119 on Toshiba.com.  It’s going to be a silly holiday period this year.  We are going to be swimming in tons of cheap low end hardware. 

Leo: It just blows me away.  So you and I when we talked about Netbooks, Paul, really blamed Netbooks for really the downfall of the PC market.  Because people expected a low price product and got a bad experience. 

Paul: I got a message privately from a Microsoft OEM guy at that time who said yep that’s exactly what happened.  This is not speculation on my part, this is supported by the data.  To fight the Netbook threat, the Linux Netbook threat Microsoft had to basically go low for the time.  Now they are going even lower.  They just destroyed the pricing the ASP in the PC market.

Leo: Have times changed or is that going to be the same thing happening this time?

Paul: No it’s going to be the same thing.  This is a tough one because the cynical among us, myself, will say something like race to the bottom of the market.  How low can they go?  The fact remains you need numbers and you need market share and that is really the primary concern at this point.  What they are fighting is this locust horde of Android knock offs that are going to sell for these same prices and even cheaper in some cases.  You can buy and incredibly awful cheap Android tablet like in a CVS right now for probably 79 dollars.

Leo: You can buy 69 dollar Toshiba running Android.

Paul: It’s insane.  So that’s what we are fighting.   Microsoft wants to be competing with the Macbook Air.  That’s why they make a Surface Pro III.  Certainly that’s a nice device and there are people who love that kind of stuff.  But the volume mainstream part of the market is here we are right in the gutter, 100 bucks, 200 bucks.  We will talk about this in a little while but I did get that 200 dollar Windows PC and honestly it’s not terrible.  It really isn’t terrible.

Leo: Mike Elgin reviewed the Encore II and as I look at it, it was also a GB of RAM.  That is the 200 dollar Toshiba running Windows 8.1 and it ran fine. 

Paul: That one probably had more storage, unless it came out fairly recently. 

Leo: No it’s pretty much a very similar product.  Unbelievable 119 dollars, 120 dollars list for an Atom processor but it does have L2 cache.  There is a GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, it’s pretty impressive.

Paul: Yeah and MicroSD expansion. It’s all the basics.   It’s got wireless and camera.

Leo: Is this going to be a tough deal, when people start using this are they going to say oh this doesn’t do it? 

Mary Jo: You know what’s different this time between the old argument about Netbooks and now.  I think before Netbooks were cannibalizing Windows PC sales.  Now Microsoft and the OEM’s are counting on these really cheap tablets to cannibalize  Android tablets but not Windows PC’s.  The question is are they betting right? 

Paul: Right.  Linux never sold in any volume in the PC market but they made up for that with Starter edition.  This time they are coming from behind.  They would rather have someone stay in the Windows Platform even if they lost a little money on each sale than to go to Android.  Because at that point those guys are gone forever for the most part.

Leo: It’s interesting because Toshiba is basically selling 2 kinds of tablets.  The Encores are Windows and the Excites are Android.  They’re similar in many ways, I guess if you get a zero dollar OS. 

Paul: Actually I think they are identical.  I think is something Mary Jo has in here.

Mary Jo: Yeah I was noting on the Acer ones that got introduced today.  It’s the exact same tablet.  Exact same 8 inch Windows Tablet.  You get a choice Windows or Android.   Both 150 bucks.

Leo: ARM or Intel?

Mary Jo: Intel. 

Leo: That’s the key to this right now.  That Intel has finally come up with processors that can be at these prices.

Paul: Acer processors run Android.  I think Mary Jo and I saw that at the Acer event back in April or May.  They had at that time launched a 7 inch Android tablet running on Atom.  It’s fine, there’s nothing special about it.  It works fine.

Leo: Just amazing.  That just blows me away. 

Paul: This is like crazy Eddie.  We’re going to be selling PC’s at the New Mexico state fair or something.  It’s such a weird place.  If you used to go to Comdex if you went between the different locations you had to go through the international hall.  That was where you saw these crazy Korean knockoffs and weird far east kind of PC’s.  This is everybody now.  It’s like the whole market. 

Mary Jo: I’m curious though how is Office going to work on a 7 inch lower resolution tablet?  I don’t know I think people are going to really hate that.

Paul: I don’t know, not well.  Like the Surface Mini stuff we were talking about earlier.  I think what those machines are waiting for of course is the modern, metro whatever version of Office.  Office Touch.  Office 2013 on such a machine is not going to be pleasant. 

Leo: Incredible.  What a world, what a world. 

Paul: It’s very strange.  There is going to be more, this is kind of day one of IFA, Ipha as we call it. 

Leo: We do, we call it Epha for no reason.

Paul: There’s more coming. 

Mary Jo: Did you see what the Windows account on Twitter just Tweeted, which people are kind of freaking out about.  At Windows just Tweeted big things are happening in the world of Windows, stay tuned at IFA. 

Paul: Oh so maybe they will make a Windows 9 announcement or something?

Mary Jo: I wondered if they might say, hey September 30th it’s happening guys.

Paul: Yeah that’s what I am thinking. 

Leo: What, Threshold, what?

Mary Jo: Yeah Tech Preview Threshold. 

Leo: So they haven’t announced that yet? 

Mary Jo: No. That’s my guess what it might be.  Otherwise I don’t know what it is. 

Leo: IFA which I had never heard of until a few years ago seems to now be a good platform comparable to CES for making announcements like that. 

Paul: I think it’s a better one because it’s right on the front of the Holiday season. 

Leo: Yeah that’s always good. 

Paul: Some of these machines that they are talking about now, a couple of them were actually announced at CES.  I always thought CES was too early in the year even June would be better than January. 

Mary Jo: Remember when they were doing Windows 8 they were using IFA a lot as a showcase for the new devices that they had coming.  In fact that was their preferred showcase for Windows 8.

Paul: They tend to latch onto every show that happens around the world.  Computex will happen and that will be a big deal and IFA obviously.  For now anyway they have Techead in the fall.  We will see if anything happens there.  This could be a busy 6 months or so. 

Leo: Fascinating. 

Paul: Trying to think of anything that stands out in my mind.  Not everything they announced was super low end.  Lenovo in fact was somewhat unique in not announcing anything low end except for maybe their little tiny PC.  All in one which is kind of a cute idea.  Most PC makers are announcing some combination of tablets and PC’s.  Acer has.  Remember that Dell inspiro that had that swivel around thing with the 2 sticks on the side?  Acer is doing a version of that kind of a convertible notebook.  Which actually looks pretty nice, I am not a big fan of that style.  You kind of go from a 2 in 1 to a 4 in 1 to a 5 in 1 and I think that one is a 8 in 1 or something.  It has all these different usage modes.  The big difference between these machines whether they are cheap or not, the cheap machine like the one I just got.  In the past to get a machine down to 350 dollars, 300 or 249 dollars or wherever we are at, you would buy this big hulking 15 inch thing that weighed 5 pounds and was an inch thick.  That’s how that worked.  These things are 11 inches, 13 inches and sometimes 14 inches but they are really thin, they are really light.  Screens pop off or at least they transform around, they have multi-touch or 10 point.  Some support active digitype or pens.  Super high resolution in many cases, 10 ADP or bigger.  I think one of the Acers is 2560 x 1440, IPS screen and it’s the one that is the 8 in 1 kind of design.  There’s a pretty wide range of stuff now that’s available.  It seems like whatever you’re into when it comes to PC’s.  It’s out there. 

Mary Jo: Even that Lenovo Edge 15 inch PC. 

Paul: That’s an example of a big one.  But not an inexpensive one either.

Mary Jo: No, $899.

Paul: Those machines started as Think pads.  Back when Think Pads were big and bulky they came out with the edge as a way to do kind of a styling experiment.  Kind of like when Ford made the Probe but they still had the Mustang and they weren’t sure which direction they were going to go.  Now of course they’ve brought that light styling across the board.  Made gorgeous machines.  The Edge machine they have today this one that they are announcing today, it’s not a Think Pad it’s just a Lenovo Edge.  It’s not even an idea pad, it’s just a Lenovo Edge.  It’s kind of a mainstream consumer PC. 

Mary Jo: Choice is good. 

Leo: Microsoft must be wheelin and dealing.  Not only do they offer an inexpensive Windows or a zero dollar Windows but Office too.

Paul: I think they must be pulling a truck up to these places and handing out licenses out of the back. 

Leo: Is this Nadella saying we are threatened all hands on deck we are going to create a eco system, we are going to keep people using Windows, basically?  By offering them a deal, is that right? 

Paul: If there’s a news story in 6 months that say Chromebook sales stall or Chromebook still sold a million but it didn’t keep growing.   If Android growth stalls or Android actually retracts a little bit.  Which it probably will anyway without any help from Microsoft.  Those are the kind of Wins that Microsoft needs so that they can show the world, look see you thought this thing was this inevitable downward spiral for us but actually things are kind of evening out.  I think that’s what they are really looking for here.    It’s basically numbers at any cost. 

Leo: Numbers at any cost, you nailed it. 

Paul: So I am really proud to be part of this. 

Leo: That’s taking the high road. 

Mary Jo: What choice do they have?  I don’t think they have a choice. 

Paul: Well no they have to do it, exactly. 

Leo: If they want to stay in the Windows business they do. 

Paul: This is born of necessity. 

Mary Jo: They can’t just say you know what we’re only going to play in the high end and that’s it we’re done.

Paul: Well they could but then they would be alien ware.

Mary Jo: That would be the end. 

Leo: So this is something the shareholders and the board demand?  They have to stay in Windows. 

Paul: I think this is just the new normal demands.  I don’t think they have a choice.  It’s either this or you give up.  Something like giving away Office, before there was an Office 365 subscription they used to give away this Office starter.  As Office 365 started coming out they would put this, in fact I see this on the big box I just got.  You get this little Office icon in there and you click on it and it lets you try it for free for 30 days. But after that you have to pay for it, you either buy the product or you subscribe to Office 365.  That’s not the same thing.  So offering a year of Office 365 personal is also not the same thing in the sense that it’s not perpetual.  But it is worth 69 dollars real world money.  It’s not a terrible deal.  Again I don’t know it would be a great experience on a 1024x600 but it’s a good offer and it’s kind of a unique thing that Microsoft can offer. 

Mary Jo: The other thing, I just thought of this when you were saying that is say you subscribe to that now.  By this time next year when your renewal is up a lot of things are going to be different.  Threshold’s going to be out, the Gemini Office Suite is going to be out,  so maybe you would find it a better experience and you would want to renew your Office at that point. 

Leo: So the end game is we got the numbers up.  We got a lot of users. 

Paul: The end game is nuked from space Leo.  Everybody dies.

Leo: The problem is the expectation.

Paul: We’re going down we’re taking you with us. 

Leo: I think so.  You set an expectation that computers are going to cost 100 dollars and Office is free. 

Paul: Okay but a lot of things keep changing.  Mary Jo is going to get to some information about Threshold that actually plays into this.  But without stepping on that, I think the thing I would say is that Microsoft historically was the Windows and Office business.  On the client side what we looked at was PC sales because that’s where those things kind of went out.  Businesses would license Windows and Office in different ways.  But as far as consumers were concerned you basically got this stuff with new computers.  So that was how we thought of things.  They’re kind of giving up that licensing revenue in many ways on the low end.  Which is the volume part of the market because they have to and what they are looking too is making money in other ways.  Office 365 subscriptions, OneDrive extra storage,  however they do it.  There isn’t a lot there to be frank it’s just not the same thing as selling Windows Licenses.  But this is the new world and success kind of breeds success.  So the idea is if people are still on Windows in numbers they will be using Microsoft services and hopefully paying for them.  This is just the way the world has changed.  It’s better for that to happen than for them to not make any money.  Or not have anyone using their platform.  Or that they would witness a steady decline down that kind of thing.  They are responding in the way that they can.  It’s not ideal but they are responding. 

Leo: You’ve been a busy boy, Paul.  You actually got back from a very expensive trip to Barcelona. 

Paul: The amount of money we spent on ham alone floats some states. 

Leo: The ham budget was through the roof.  But I see you’ve bought 3 new computers.

Paul: Yeah keeping up with the Jones is really expensive these days.  Because in the old days it didn’t really matter or the choices were slim.  These days you have to have IPhones and Android devices of all kinds.  IPad, Chromebooks, all this stuff.  I haven’t bought a Mac in a long time and I’ve kind of skated by on that because frankly Mac is not really where the action is these days.  

Leo: Not much is changing. 

Paul: But the Mac that I was using so to speak, I wasn’t really using it much, is really out of date.  Like Core 2 Duo out of date.  So that one was just kind of overdue.  The reason I mention this because I buy stuff all the time.  This is how I keep up with everything.  But it is interesting to me that in the past couple weeks I’ve bought 3 computers.  2 of which have just arrived, the 3rd one is sometime soon I guess.  But it’s just to give you an idea of how much the world has changed.  I bought a fairly high end Macbook Air so it was $1350.  I could have gotten one for $899.  The prices of Macbook Airs have come down dramatically.

Leo: Still premium priced product.

Paul: So that was the most expensive one.  I have ordered but have not yet received yet a coming new generation Chromebook.  Which cost 400 dollars.  Which is expensive for Chromebook and I could have gotten that for 350 and certainly you can get Chromebooks for 300.

Leo: Yeah but like you I want to try these relatively new versions.

Paul: Yeah I want to see what’s out there.  It’s like the IPad versus the PC.  The IPad goes up and the PC comes down and they kind of meet in the middle.  I am curious about how all these things turn out.  But I also ordered that 200 dollar PC.  It’s typically a 250 dollar PC but Microsoft had this one day sale so it’s a signature edition PC, Acer E series 15 inch laptop, 4GB of RAM, 16 GB of Hard Drive,  15 inch screen but it’s like 1366x768.  It’s big and it’s kind of clunky and it’s kind of heavy.  It’s just funny, first of all it’s 1/7th the cost of the Macbook.  They’re not comparable, don’t get me wrong.  The PC gets probably 4.5 hours of battery life if it’s lucky.  It’s half as expensive as the Chromebook which is crazy and I think this is how things are changing right now, with Windows Licensing and so forth.    It’s big and heavy because it’s not one of these new machines.  I think if I had waited a couple of months I think I could have gotten something a lot thinner and lighter.  I spent a lot of time with this thing last night, I set it up for one thing and I put all of my apps on it.  I actually wrote the article about it on the machine and published to my site from my machine to see what all the stuff was like.  Meaning I used Photoshop to resize the photo’s, I used Windows Applications to acquire pictures from the camera.  I did all that stuff and I have to say honestly for what I do for a living, I have to travel and all that kind of stuff.  I would not use this day to day.  I wouldn’t be able to do this podcast over this kind of machine.  But for 99% of the people out there, really who are kind of computing from home anyway and are never more than 6 feet away from a power connection, this is not a horrible experience.  There is going to be an interesting comparison to be made between that computer and a comparable Chromebook.  Not that there is a big 15 inch honking Chromebook per say but like a 14 inch Chromebook.  It’s not terrible.  We will see how it goes over time.  I’ll keep using it.  I was just surprised by how ok it was.  The Macbook Air arrived today.  It’s not like Christmas here when this happens because I get machines here like that all the time.  I opened it up and it was like yeah okay.  But the 200 dollar machine had the same kind of level of excitement, it was just 1100 dollars in savings.  I think for people who are older, who have bad eyesite or whatever the screen if anything is better.  Even though it’s reletively low resalution.  It’s interesting just how that kind of stuff happens.  My last PC purchase was an Ultrabook from the Microsoft store, signature edition and that machine was $1350 like the Macbook Air.  This is 200 bucks.

Leo: It’s amazing, it really is.

Paul: That’s amazing.  Mary Jo will laugh because I’ll bring it on a trip or something just to be goofy.  But it isn’t terrible. 

Leo: Yeah but that isn’t a strong praise, it’s not terrible.

Paul: No but it is when it’s 200 dollars.  If it was 600 or 800 dollars that would not be okay.  But for 200 bucks.

Mary Jo: Does it run Notepad, that is really all I care.

Paul: Brilliantly, Mary Jo. 

Leo: It’s a Notepad monster.  Absolutely!  Very interesting world we live in.  I am not sure that it’s a good thing.  I always tell people don’t buy the cheap computer because you get what you pay for and it’s going to be more prone to problems, it’s going to be harder to use and it’s just going to be annoyance.  Spend a few 100 bucks more, don’t be such a cheap skate, do you think that’s true or maybe not?

Paul: So it is true in isolation but the truth is people aren’t just using this thing anymore.  This isn’t it for them computing wise.  Most people will also have a phone. 

Leo: That’s much more powerful.

Paul: Many people will also have a tablet.  When you think about the point of Chromebook in home it’s always like that secondary case, it’s a kids computer, it’s a second computer, it’s the one I go to when I need to write an article well not an article but like a school project type thing and then I need to print it out.  The Windows alternative there is something that’s very familiar to everybody.  It runs that software that you already know and have.  Obviously offline works fine.  I look at it more like that, it’s not designed to be your one thing that you do everything on although actually you could.  It’s more something that exists in this new way of doing things.  It’s inexpensive or even more so than a Chromebook.  

Leo: Yeah and why not get a full operating system.  If you just want to use Chrome you could just use Chrome.  Well I guess for the security, it’s more secure to use Chrome.  Less problematic.

Paul: Maybe, it’s simplicity versus complexity but also power versus limitation kind of argument.  I think there are cases to be made on either side.  The tinkerer in me wants to get a screwdriver out take this thing apart and put a SSD in it.  Which you could do. 

Leo: Isn’t there an SSD already in it? 

Paul: No it’s a hard drive. 

Leo: Oh really?! 

Paul: Yeah so I streamed HD video on this thing to see what that was like.  It worked but it wasn’t great.  Downloaded an HD video that is better.  It’s weird when you use SSD you get up and this thing is 500 GB of free space.  Wow that’s a crazy amount of storage that I am never going to use for anything.  But there it is and some people like that kind of thing. 

Mary Jo: We keep judging computers because of how we use them.  We use them all day hours at a time but most people don’t, right.  That’s the other part of the equation, people are like I don’t know it’s not that great of computer experience.  But how much you use a PC factors into that equation.

Leo: I always try to put myself in the shoes of a normal user.  One of the reasons I do recommend Chromebooks and I guess I will consider recommending these Windows Machines.  No I am not.  But I would consider is because most people do email and surfing.  Really it’s just a simple light activity.  These are plenty fast for that.  Still I worry about recommending Windows I think there’s complexity there that unless you know you need it.

Paul: Absolute.  One of the things I like about this machine is that it’s a signature PC so that crappers is gone.  So you don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff.  There is nothing on this thing.

Mary Jo: Wow even for 200 bucks it’s with signature. 

Paul: Yeah it’s really neat.

Leo: Wow that’s kind of cool.  I like that.

Paul: It doesn’t have touch and all that kind of stuff. Honestly a big kind of low res screen for a lot of people is great because they can read it. 

Leo: Yeah we’re a little bit snobby about things like that.  That others don’t care about. 

Paul: This is like good enough computing.  When computing is in fact that occasional means to an end not the end like it is for us.  We use this stuff because we’re into it.  A lot of people are just wanting to check email once, get on Facebook for 10 minutes and that’s it.  Browse the web, see what’s going on in the world, then I am done.  I can print a map on Mapquest if I have too or whatever people use these things. That all works.  Well Mapquest might be gone.

Leo: Mapquest is not gone but noone uses it.  Alright let’s take a break, we’re going to come back with more we got some information about WAS. 

Paul: About what?  Oh about Wes Welker. 

Leo: But first a word about Carbonite.com.  As long as there are computers there will be a need to back them up and my favorite solution as you probably know by now is Carbonite online backup.  Whether you have one computer at your home or several at your business Carbonite is ready to keep your data safe.  It’s easy to forget to backup, it’s easy to rely on an unreliable system like a hard drive sitting next to your computer.  Why is that unreliable?  If there is a fire there goes your backup along with your originals.  That’s a problem especially for business.  Carbonite is always backing up whenever you’re online it’s backing up.  You can access your files anywhere.  Log onto your Carbonite account there’s your stuff.  You can download it, you can email it, you can verify that its been backed up.  I think that’s kind of critical.  They have free apps too which make it very easy to use your Carbonite stuff from anywhere.  Very affordable, you pay once a year or if you want some real discounts you can pay once every 2 year or once every 3 years.  If you go to Carbonite.com they are offering these special plans for a limited time.  Start your free trial though at carbonite.com no matter if you want the individual plan, 59 dollars a year for everything on a single Mac or a PC or a business plan.  You can try them all absolutely free, no credit card required but do use the offer code Windows when they ask you.  That way you’ll get 2 bonus months if you decide to buy.  You got to back it up to get it back so do it right with Carbonite the best solution for backup.  I know a lot of you listening are sophisticated users and an you may even have your own cobbled together offsite system.  But I bet you friends and family aren’t doing as well as you.  So make sure you tell them about Carbonite too.  carbonite.com and when you do make sure to use the offer code Windows to give Paul and Mary Jo a little bit of credit for the hard work they do for this show.

WAS is Windows as a Service.  I don't know, I can’t encompass that in my little puny mind.  What does that mean?

Mary Jo: Remember when we had WAD?   Windows Azure Directory.  This is yet another acronym.  Let’s see where to start this story.  So there have been a lot of leaks about Threshold and one that’s come back and haunted us a few times is whether Microsoft is going to do something around updates to turn them into a service.  So some people have been suggesting that there might be something like Windows 365 where you pay a subscription fee. 

Leo: I think Microsoft’s always wanted to do that right?  They certainly would do that with business?

Mary Jo: I think probably.  I would have thought so.  Paul and I both have speculated before here on Windows Weekly that we thought that they would do that.  But the more I kept asking around with my sources they said no they aren’t really going to do a Windows 365.  There’s nothing called that in the plan.  But there is something called Windows As a Service.  A lot of people think this means paid updates so once you get Windows 9 you’re going to pay a yearly or a monthly fee and that will guarantee you to continue to get updates, features, fixes and all that.  But my sources say right now there’s no plan in place about charging for those updates.  Instead what Windows As a Service is it’s something that they are using inside the company.  So it’s going to be a way that Microsoft distributes different feature sets to different users while they are building Threshold to test what users like best.  So Paul might get a build of a Threshold that has certain features in it that I don’t get.  Or I might get a different set. 

Leo: But that would be only if you worked at Microsoft. 

Mary Jo: So they are going to take this data.

Leo: They are dogfooding.

Mary Jo: Yeah dogfooding but using customers who are testers as the dogfooders and not just people inside the company.

Leo: Oh okay so it is customers too.

Mary Jo: So that’s where it gets interesting.  We’re thinking what’s going to happen is when you get Threshold the first technical previews sometime around late September, early October, there will be an option to opt into these updates and if you do you’re going to be part of the test group and you’re going to get some updates that some other people might not get.  They’re going to collect all this data and say hey, do people really hate it if we take the charms bar away or do they love it that we’re taking charms bar away.

Leo: Is that what they’re doing, Paul, right now with Xbox 1? 

Paul: Well sort of. 

Leo: I get updates every day now with Xbox 1 and there’s a lot of surveying and poles and what feature did you like.  They have quests to get you to try stuff. 

Paul: I’m actually confused by the level of engagement on Xbox 1.  I don’t mean this cynically but because it’s so obvious what’s wrong with it.  It launched in such an unfinished state it seemed like here’s your to do it list.  It’s 100 items just get through this.  But I guess at the very least by engaging with the community what you’re getting is the organization of that list.  What things are most important.

Leo: Wouldn’t Instrumentation tell you that as well? I would imagine they instrument all these versions and they watch.

Paul: Here’s something you don’t get through Instrumentation, I have a hard drive and I’m plugging it in and I’m wondering why I can’t play media from that hard drive one my console.  Now you can but for the first 6 months this thing was out or more that didn’t do anything.  Then 6 months in they added the ability to use that hard drive as external storage for games and Xbox content.  But if you did do that it would erase everything on there.  In fact the way it works now is actually kind of crazy.  I don’t have the screen in front of me but I think when you plug in a hard drive that you want to use for content you actually say cancel to use it for content.  Otherwise it will use it for backup.  So it is maturing and they are going to get it there and part of the way they do that quickly is by prioritizing based on what people want.  I actually think Windows is fairly similar to, Windows 8.  It’s not hard to figure out what people were upset about, you can focus on those things.

Leo: But traditionally self-reporting doesn’t work very well.  I remember if you surveyed people what television shows they liked, they always in great disproportion or PBS.  But that’s what you want you to think.

Paul: Because of viewers like you.

Leo: In fact when you instrument it, when you use a people meter they are all watching Survivor. 

Paul: That’s why they say viewers like you because it’s not you.  You’re not doing jack for that station.

Leo: Maybe you sent them some money.  So I figure Microsoft wants to instrument it because that would get you more.  Asking people is notorious, well you would do both.  A company the size of Microsoft can afford to do both.  Mary Jo: They do a lot of customer facing things.  So they go out and survey customers.  Like they go on customer trips and they say hey what do you like about Windows 8, what did you hate about it.  They have userVoice sites that are the feedback sites for different features.  They are doing that.

Leo: I like the idea of slipping in different versions to different groups.

Mary Jo: Me too. Like say if we are going to have the start menu let’s tweak it like this and see if people freak out or if we tweak it like this do they freak out less.

Leo: They don’t tell you right, you don’t know. 

Mary Jo: Bing does this now, sometimes people see different versions Bing.  They say hey I am seeing a different version of Bing that you’re not seeing.

Leo: That’s called AB testing.  The webs done that for year.

Paul: Did you see the new thing on Bing? 

Leo: That’s a real traditional thing in website business.  They do AB testing.  Google does it as well.

Mary Jo: Yep similar thing is going to happen here is what I am hearing.
Leo: So this is going to be AB testing for Windows.  That’s interesting.

Paul: Microsoft has a history of overreacting.  Every time.  They overreacted with Windows 8 went a little too far in the mobile direction.  Now the fear maybe is that they may overreact in the other direction and make another group of customers really mad.  There’s also that college humor video that came out on the context of Windows 7 where they had I designed whatever version of Windows it was.  Then they showed these people going I wanted it to be an attack robot, I wanted it to have a teddy bear and then they show this crazy machine with fireworks coming off of it and it is like I designed Windows 7 or whatever.  You want to be careful of that kind of thing to. 

Mary Jo: Yeah true.

Leo: A horse designed by a committee it’s a camel. 

Mary Jo: Because they have so many users who are so diverse.  They have people who want updates all the time as soon as they are ready.  Then they’ve got enterprises who are like you know what I don’t want updates monthly.  I want them yearly or every 2 years. 

Leo: Don’t ever update me.

Paul: Could you just support this one forever.

Mary Jo: They are trying to find a way to make everybody happy.  Which you never can but they are trying to find a way to not completely alienate any of these customer groups.  That’s the trick in this.

Paul: Good luck. 

Mary Jo: It’s going to be cool.

Paul:  It’s going to be interesting either way.  I think from our perspective this is a win win.  Because no matter what they do it’s hilarious and we’ll enjoy it.

Leo: Is there any way people can sign up for this or is it just by random selection? 

Paul: The Windows one?

Mary Jo: We don’t know yet because we think on September 30th there will be an event that Microsoft is inviting certain people to where they are going to show off the Enterprise Tech Preview and then we think the bits are going to go public and anybody can download the bits and be part of if you want.

Paul: I am crossing my fingers that it’s in Detom by the way.  Just throwing that out there. 

Leo: I don’t think so.

Mary Jo: I heard it’s in Detom mass. 

Leo: One guy would say yeah, and you would hear howling from 1,000’s.  Thousands of journalists scream out in agony.  Detom where’s that. 

Paul: I would have a cookout at my house or something. 

Leo: Yeah we’ll all go to Paul’s place. 

Paul: It wouldn’t be terrible. 

Mary Jo: Sushi for everyone.

Paul: Yeah I would make sushi. 

Leo: It is kind of interesting on the Xbox 1.  I got an email, I don't’ know if you’re on this thing or not, Paul but I got an email saying would you like to join this Beta test program.  Just out of nowhere and I said yes and now I get updates.  I get updates almost every day now. 

Paul: I don’t get updates every day.

Leo: It’s like a little bit too much.

Paul: But I am on that early release thing.  

Leo: Well how often are you getting updates? 

Paul: Once or twice a month.

Leo: Oh no.  At first I thought oh there is something wrong, like the update didn’t take but they are all different sizes. 

Paul: Every time you turn it on?

Leo: Every time I turn it on, 840 MB here, 400MB there, a GB here.  It’s all different sizes so I know they are different updates.  I think that’s part of that test. 

Paul: I think that’s good though.  Look Xbox 1 users by definition are enthusiasts.  I mean a lot of those guys.

Leo: I love my Xbox 1.  I do.

Paul: It’s a fine platform for Call of Duty I agree. 

Leo: I just played the entire Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls beginning to end.  I am now searching through Rifts.  Having a great time.  When I watch TV that’s how I watch TV pretty much.  What’s neat no matter what I am watching on it, whether it’s TIVO or the Xbox apps, I can say Xbox pause and it will pause it.  I’m very happy with it.  I know I am the only one. 

Paul: No you’re not.

Leo: Michael comes in the room, he loves this, it says Hello Michael.  He loves that.

Paul: Yeah my son does that, he walks in and it flashes his name.

Leo: What’s weird when his mother walks in the room it says Hello Michael.  To it she must look the same.  It doesn’t confuse me with him.  Isn’t that interesting.

Mary Jo: That is odd. 

Leo: Anyway that’s how I watch, in my office, in my den, home theatre, is the Xbox.  I am very happy with it.  I brought that up because they might be doing Xbox as a service. 

Mary Jo: Yeah I didn’t know about the Xbox part so that’s really interesting.

Leo: I don’t know if they are trying different things on different people.  I love that idea though. 

Paul: I think they are.

Leo: You think so, because I am getting all these updates.  Because you’re not getting as many as I am.

Paul: It’s not just that.  But they often talk about depending on which little group you’re in certain features will go out to different people different times.  They’ve actually said that.

Leo: That’s interesting.  So you got a Macbook, you got a Chromebook, and a cheap Windows PC.  Do you want to say who the 200 dollar PC was from?

Paul: Oh yeah I’ve written about it, it’s an Acer E series. 

Leo: Father Robert has pretty good connections with Acer, said they’re getting out of the low end business.

Paul: Are they really? 

Mary Jo: Oh wow.

Leo: Because Mary Jo and I have the high end laptop the ES7.  They want to stick with that higher end product.

Paul: Understandably, but you know they can’t escape the trends that are hurtling around them.  It’s just where the volume is. 

Leo: So September 30th we are looking forward to that.  You guys are acting and I know because I now know you’re cagey and sandbaggers.  I’ve seen this happen before where Paul will go 3 weeks and he’s had the phone sitting there on the desk and he just pretends he knows nothing about it.  I’m guessing you have a pretty good idea that there’s going to be an even September 30th.  Not Indicom and you will be invited to that event.  That’s what I am guessing.

Paul: I actually don’t in this case.

Mary Jo: I am hoping I am invited to that event. 

Paul: I know there’s no event Indicom.  I can give you that much.

Leo: Microsoft Consumer Services, you did a little article on the Supersite for Windows talking about Microsoft’s little known crown jewels.

Paul: I tend to even though I never really thought about it explicitly, I tend to cover Microsoft’s consumer offerings over the business offerings. 

Leo: It’s more interesting.

Paul: I was sort of researching this and it occurred to me that, it was funny because of some of the events this past week too.  People on other platforms don’t understand that Microsoft is there and in fact Microsoft’s presence there is in fact unique.  When you buy an IPhone, people are like I use iTunes, I use the Apple store and use Apple stuff.  And Google or Android guys do the same thing.  Presumedly from the outside without thinking about it you would imagine use the Microsoft side, use Microsoft stuff.  That’s how it is by in large, there are exceptions.  Google has a nice presence on the IPhone or on IOS.  But for the most part there is just stock advice, if you go with the IPhone you stick with the Apple stuff.  But the interesting thing is because of the way the market has changed it’s kind of forced Microsoft’s hand and it’s putting its products and services out on all popular mobile platforms.  Actually on borderline popular platforms like the Mac and Chrome OS.  If you look at the Microsoft services like Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote, Office 365 this stuff is available across platforms in ways that are often very unique.  Of course they also integrate with each other which are also unique.  So I am sort of starting a series looking at that.  But I also looked at in separate from this article, I looked up Microsoft’s definition.  How they introduced the concept of dual use.  I saw any interesting quote from Satya Nadella on the day that he first mentioned this.  Where he specifically mentioned services like OneDrive and One Drive for Business together as a thing.  Skype and Link together as a thing.  Outlook web access and Outlook the application as a thing.  Whereas today those are separate things.  One of the things that just happened, Microsoft last week just released a version of One Drive for Android.  Which was a platform where they did not have a One Drive for business app on.  One of the few.  They added support for One Drive for business to the consumer app.  So instead of having these 2 things, they have one thing, One Drive and it accesses both.  The theory there is the dual use theory by kind of put to code which is consumers don’t think okay I want to make a phone call but it’s to a personal friend not to someone at work so I am going to use Skype not Link.  That’s a weird requirement to put on the part of the user.  So my take on this is that they are going to integrate these things over time.  That Skype and Link, obviously we know they are doing work on the back end but I think they are going to do work on the client.  Just to have a brand, why would you have separate brands for something that does the same thing.  I think One Drive is the first step.

Mary Jo: Aren’t you worried though?  I am worried about the confusion in naming.  Like we already see that with One Drive.  Because sometime Microsoft calls One Drive, One Drive but sometimes they are talking about One Drive for business, sometimes they are talking about the consumer.  Even though they are the same, they’re available on the same app on Android now they’re still 2 different things.  So I am kind of scared if they do that.

Paul: There are a lot of examples of that.  Microsoft often refers to Outlook.com as Outlook.  Whereas I would say Outlook is a thing, and that thing is not Outlook.com.  But by commingling these brands, I think for people who know what’s really happening on the back end or however you want to describe that, technically whatever.  This stuff is disconcerting and confusing in some ways.  But I think they don’t want people to worry about this stuff.  Outlook.com and web access or Web app whatever they are calling it these days could literally remain separate and have different back ends for the rest of time.  But they want people to think Outlook.  Outlook is the brand.  I think they are going to have to do this same thing across the board.  I think Skype is a better brand than Link and I think that’s what is going to win out.  They pull that thing where the server or the service or the cloud side version of the product becomes Skype powered by Link or whatever.  But One Drive is the same thing.  One Drive and One Drive for business technically are completely different platforms but they do the same thing.  They are Cloud storage.  You can access them in the file system in Windows or mobile app for the one mobile app on Android.  That’s the future of it.  They are going to do this on Windows Phone, they are going to do it on Windows, they are going to do it on IOS.  I think this stuff is all interesting.  It gives you a really nice, it’s still happening and it’s still early days but it’s a nice peek at where Microsoft is going to go for consumers, for people.  For the actual users.

Mary Jo: I wrote about this a couple months ago.  When they actually started putting these teams together.  Some people didn’t believe that Link and Skype weren’t one.  But those teams came together in a single unit a few months back.
Leo: I know they weren’t one.

Paul: I know the Link guys very well.  They still remember this rant I had about Skype from like 2 years ago. 

Mary Jo: Yeah I know.  But then they put the other teams together like you just mentioned.  Like Outlook.com, Outlook Web app and Exchange.  They all sit in one group now and they didn’t used to.  Which is kind of crazy.

Paul: But you see, Satya Nadella can get up on a stage, and he can say blah, blah, blah.  It’s kind of meaningless because it’s just talk.  But now fairly quickly really, we’re starting to see these concepts that he talked about.  He kind of just blurts them out, this is a thing we are doing, we are doing dual use.  It’s Tuesday I missed dual use.  But it’s actually happening in products.  It happened on the backend first with what Mary Jo just said with those teams came together kind of like the One Microsoft thing I guess.  Now they are releasing actual products that exhibit these traits.  It’s happening pretty quickly, this has all happened in 2014. 

Mary Jo: It did happen fast.  So here are the groups now.  It’s Exchange, Outlook and Outlook.com are all sitting together.  Link and Skype set together.  One Drive and One Drive for business sit together.  Then OneNote.  OneNote has its own.  OneNote is over there, they are one of the big 4 new hubs but they’re kind of so important to the future that they are just on their own.  Their mission is to be on all Mobile platforms that matter.

Paul: I am surprise OneNote is not a bigger deal than it is.  Part of it I think is just inertia.  I think they got going a little too quickly.  It’s like the Dropbox problem.  I think One Drive and One Drive for Business both have huge advantages over Dropbox.  But Dropbox was just kind of there first and they got out there and people use it and they are familiar with it.  I think OneNote faces the same problem with Evernote.  You could look at the IOS App store today and you’ll see Word for IPad is in the top 10.  Powerpoint and Excel are in the probably in the top 30.  I can’t remember where exactly they were.  OneNotes in there it’s in the top 100 but it’s really far down.  You wouldn’t think that would be the one that would be kind of everywhere.  There’s a beautiful OneNote client on the Mac.  The Webclient is excellent.  It’s on Android Tablet and Handset.  It’s on IPad, it’s on IPhone.  It’s everywhere no matter what device you have you can access OneNote. 

Mary Jo: Still a little hard to use I would contend.  If it ever gets easier to use.

Leo: It ain’t no Notepad that’s for sure.  Our show brought to you by Audible.com.  It ain’t no Podcast app that’s for sure.  Audible is a place to go to get fabulous books.  150,000 titles read to you by the best readers in the world.  Pair great readers with great writers and you’ve got an entertaining experience.  Paul, did you bring a lot of books to Barcelona on your trip? 

Paul: Yeah although oddly enough by going to Barcelona.  I didn’t actually listen to as many while I was there or as much as I would normally because I wasn’t out walking around by myself.

Leo: Oh yeah you had stuff to do. 

Paul: So I listened to the Martian for almost the entire time I was there.

Leo: Isn’t that great? 

Mary Jo: Oh man I read that book, I loved it.

Leo: You like it too, Mary Jo? 

Paul: Best book of this year, by far.  Possibly the best Audible book, I’ve ever listened too.

Leo: A couple things to say about that, A. you’ve got to listen to our Triangulation interview Andy Were the author because he’s great and the story is great.

Paul: The guy who read it is just what sells it.  The story is fantastic. 

Leo: He’s perfect.

Paul: The reading of it is amazing.  It’s laugh out loud amazing.  It’s the kind of Science fiction like Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Arthur C. Clark where you know the Science is right.  If it’s not right it’s Michael Crichton right.  It’s so believable in detail.

Leo: He says there’s only one mistake in there.  There’s one intentional that he knew and then there’s one unintentional that he didn’t know about until it came out.  That’s pretty good considering that Andy Were is not a physicist. 

Paul: He is smart.

Leo: He is great.  This was his novel.

Paul: He is funny.  It’s just so funny. 

Leo: He has just finished another and we are going to get him on when the new one comes out.  We love him.

Paul: The guy who read it is brilliant. 

Leo: Narcy Gray read it and does a great job.  Matt Damon will play the role of Mark Watney in the movie which comes out year.

Paul: Oh that’s fantastic. 

Leo: Ridley Sky directed it.

Paul: I am sure the movie will be great but honestly what makes this so great as book is just the way you can space out.  He’s telling you the story for a lot of it but there’s also kind of funny chapter transitions where he says well I feel really really good about today everything is fine.  I’ve got all this lined up, I’m going to get up tomorrow and get going.  Then it’s like chapter 3 and everything is wrong.

Leo: Oh I am dead I am dying. 

Paul: It's beautiful like that.

Leo: It really is. It really is. Hey, I see the new Randall Munroe just came out, Will Wheaton narrates the book, "What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Randall Munroe is the creator of XKCD Comics and I can't wait to listen to this, I'm hearing great things about it and it just came out. That's the neat thing about Audible, they get these books right away, Will Wheaton, you couldn't find a better person to narrate it. I love Audible and I know you will too and so that's why we've set it up so you can get one free. If you visit audible.com/windows, you'll sign up for the Gold Account and normally you'll get a credit every thirty days. It's my favorite time of the month when I get the new credit. I love it because then the challenge is that I have to find a book. So many to choose from, so many great books. I use the Audible wish list to remember the books that I want to get and as you can see, I have quite a few on my wish list. I have a lot of aspiration here but on the other hand, I have 500+ books because I've been an Audible listener since 2000. So lots of books to listen to. I've already got two novels and two non-fiction- I try to balance those out. -Waiting for me. That's how far behind I am. See, you're lucky if you've got a big commute, Audible is made for you. ...Spend time at the gym, walk the dog, wash the dishes, I listen to Audible all the time. Go to audible.com/windows. You get that first month free, pick a book and listen to it, cancel anytime within the first three days you'll pay nothing and will also get the Daily Digest of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times as part of your subscription. I think you're going to love it, I really do. Start with "The Martian" if you haven't listened. Audible.com/windows and give it a try today. Paul Thurrott Mary Jo Foley talking about Microsoft and Windows. And the patches from last week, we mentioned last week that one of them has been replaced and the others have not. Redo part two? What, did the fix not fix it?

Mary Jo: I can't believe we're on week 3 of talking about this. Yeah, so right when we were doing Windows Weekly last week they issued one of the patches again but I guess it introduced some new problems and some people were reporting that it was disabling Windows Update and they had to modify their DNS settings to- Actually pointing to Google's DNS settings to get Windows Update to work.

Leo: 8.8.8.8.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: I think your website should be pointing to Google's DNS settings right now Mr. Paul Thurrott. You can thank Penton Media for that. I'll refresh I'm sure he's just posting an article, that's what happens.

Paul: Yeah, it happens when I post an article.

Leo: Yeah now it's even worse but I'm sure it will be back.

Mary Jo: Yeah. So yesterday they issued the remaining August patches, the redo of those patches. So that was the new currency symbol for the Ruble. And then a couple of rollups for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 and so I've been talking to people who have been applying these new refreshed updates and they are saying that everything seems okay. It's a little scary because we're up to the next Patch Tuesday and we're still just fixing August Patch Tuesday while it's almost time for September now. People are wary, and we've talked about this before and had that whole debate on whether or not you should wait because there have been so many botch patches lately and we were saying no on 0 days for sure. You should not wait but other people are starting to worry about the non 0 days and how long they should wait to see if other patches botch other people's computers. So not a good scene but right now everything seems to be working with the August updates.

Leo: I think it's just the link to that article. I see that your website, Windows IT is back up. Paul I see that you're going to do an event on the 30th.

Paul: Yeah, I've actually been meaning to email them about that because I don't think that's going to work.

Leo: You've got a problem.

Paul: Well it's pre-recorded but I need to be around to do Q&A and stuff but I just don't want to have to worry about that stuff, just to be pragmatic. And by the way Mary Jo, the funniest thing about this Patch Tuesday from August is that we're now less than a  week away from the next Patch Tuesday.

Mary Jo: I know... I know.

Leo: It'll be the same day Apple announces the new iPhone so everybody will be there ready to download.

Paul: Well the good news is that if it screws up no one's going to notice.

Leo: Right, no news is good news.

Paul: Nothing happened. Microsoft something something, but iPhone...

Leo: So what is the advice?

Paul: Chromebook is looking good.

Leo: Most people didn't have problems, I updated my Windows machines, no problem so I think you should do the update.

Mary Jo: Right, it was only a  small number of people. Although, like Paul and I said, I think we heard from all of them, people who are getting blue screens.

Paul: Yes, actually it is fair to say that I did not experience any problems from these issues myself.

Mary Jo: Me either.

Leo: Me either. Installed it on 3 machines, no problem.

Paul: Yeah, but it's like a giant roulette wheel.

Mary Jo: It kind of is.

Leo: Update Roulette.. No, I mean I guess if you really wanted to try to figure it out, Microsoft does say, 'If you have shortcuts in your font folder, don't do it.'

Paul: Leo...

Mary Jo: How many people know that?

Leo: Well you can look in your font folder and see the little-

Paul: I don't even know what to say to things anymore.

Mary Jo: Normal people.

Leo: Normal people have no idea. But you aren't normal if you listen to this show.

Mary Jo: True.

Paul: I write for a living and I don't look at the font folder, I mean...

Leo: What? Who looks at the font folder?

Paul: That's what I mean, that's crazy.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Is it safe to drink these 5 Hour Energy?

Paul: Oh, yeah. What could go wrong? Do you have a defibrillator handy just like next to you or something?

Leo: I am an old man and all, you know...

Paul: This show is exciting enough you know, just be careful.

Leo: If I start to talk at a rapid clip-

Paul: I am going to be talking about nude celebrities later so-

Leo: Oh this is exciting, I have been waiting for this. Is that going to be your tip of the week?

Paul: It's called How to Find Nude Celebrities. .....With Windows.

Leo: If only there were a way.

Paul: Using tools that are built into Windows.

Leo: You know just as a side note my Apple showed me a press release yesterday just as it came out that this was not a wide spread compromise of iCloud or Find My iPhone, these were targeted attacks people used, we believe, brute force.

Paul: My tip is related to that, by the way.

Leo: I should point out that iCloud runs on Azure and so had it been an iCloud issue, it might have just as much been an Azure issue.

Paul: But it wasn't.

Leo: But it wasn't on either account, nothing to worry about. Go ahead and put your naked pictures up, folks. They're safe as houses. Now Mono, Nigel De Eccaffa and his open source.net program. We always thought they'd buy Mono right? Like Microsoft would hiring Zamaren or whatever. Mono was the predecessor.

Paul: I still think they want to do that. I still think that almost happened in April and with this, we're just two ships passing in the night.

Leo: But, this has got to be a phony rumor. Cyanogen and Microsoft?

Mary Jo: Oh man...

Paul: I don't know.

Leo: This is from the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

Paul: So you know it's real.

Mary Jo: The information is the original source, so they're pretty good on rumors I think.

Leo: Oh very good I trust them and in fact, I subscribe to the information.

Mary Jo: Oh you do? Good. Then you could have read the original report but they-

Leo: I am going to look right now.

Mary Jo: -But they said amazon.com, Microsoft, Samsung, and Yahoo were among potential buyers or partners for Cyanogen.

Leo: By the way, Cyanogen is not an obscure Android software firm. I should tell Amir, Amir knows that. He has covered Google for years and knows what Cyanogen is.

Paul: Well I think compared to Google...

Leo: Yeah, to users of Android is far from obscure but to the business readers who read the information, obscure. I actually have used Cyanogen for years, it's a commonly used firmware to replace the stock firmware on many Android phones. In fact, my One+ phone that I'm using as my main phone right now, one of it's selling points is that it runs Cyanogen. Their version of Android, but their version of Android is a fairly pure version of Android.

Mary Jo: Does it strip anything out from Google or...

Leo: You know what, I think they do a little fudge on that. Like you get all of the Google services, it's the same. But generally when you download Cyanogen or root your phone and install your own bootloader, you download Cyanogen separately from Google apps. There's a bundle of Google apps that you get later, which presumably includes Google Services. Those are the behind the scenes services that most Android apps expect. And in order to have that, you have to have a Google approved Android variant. Not sure where Cyanogen sits on that spectrum. And I'm not sure also, what Amazon - I understand Amazon because they already make a fork of Android and could very easily be using Cyanogen. Samsung same thing, but Microsoft and Yahoo, weird.

Mary Jo: Yeah, the Microsoft angle- Which I think the information was the one who reported on this a month back. -They pointed out that Microsoft is experimenting with all different possibilities of what it would look like to run Android apps on Windows phone in Windows. And I've talked to people who have said, yep we are looking at what that might look like. Now, that obviously puts a lot of developers into a panic because they'd be like, wow if they're suddenly running Android apps, why are we developing Windows phone apps and Windows apps if you could do that. But that was one rumor and that's why the Microsoft thing kind of makes sense in a weird way. But I don't know, that just seems crazy. I can't believe they would buy them. Maybe invest in them like they did Facebook. But yeah, it's kind of an odd one.

Leo: So Amir points out that Cyanogen has $30 million dollars of investment from Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint ventures in benchmark capitals, three of the big VC firms in the valley and the Chinese web company, 10 Cent, which is entrusting. But it's looking for a Siri C Round and apparently they went to Microsoft for a Siri C Round.

Mary Jo: Right, so that's the part of the rumor to remember. So Cyanogen is trying to raise money. How do you raise money? You go out stir the pot and you have, hey everybody wants to invest in us so you guys should invest in us right?

Leo: For all we know they meeting was, hey how was the weather in Redmond? Oh I love it here. Good, Satya. See ya'. But Amir is pretty well connected especially when it comes to Google stuff so he's respectable. Interesting story.

Mary Jo: Definitely.

Leo: Microsoft does continue to update the Android X phones even though they've killed them, right?

Mary Jo: I know, this one is just weird.

Leo: They've added Google services, that's what's weird.

Paul: They must have had a certain number of things in the works. It just seems so odd. They're not updating KIN anymore, for example.

Mary Jo: Yeah, this was Neowin. They went into the change log and they found out that they had just updated the Nokia X2 dual SIM phone, including support for some Google services. You can sync your contacts and access your Gmail inbox now. So they said they're going to drop these phones, but continue to support them for some amount of time. But if you're on a maintenance mode path, why are you doing this right now? It's very odd.

Paul: Yeah. It's like going back and saying you're going to fix Windows XP after you were done saying you were going to fix Windows XP anymore. You know, it's sending a confusing message I think.

Leo: Well it's not sending a message, it's doing. If it weren't for Neowin no one would know. It's not like they trumpeted it from rooftops.

Mary Jo: Right, they weren't publicizing it.

Paul: That's fair. And actually that stuff that you just described, the Gmail email and contacts, that stuff is actually available on Windows phone too so it's not like Microsoft hasn't done this work in mobile platforms before. It's not in Windows, which is infuriating, but it is on Windows phone.

Mary Jo: That's odd.

Leo: That is odd. Speaking of China, more from the-

Paul: I love China because they are more like the villain from a Bond movie, you know? They're like slightly insane and clearly evil and they're working on their own operating system but it's not ready yet. And it doesn't deter them from just dumping all over everyone else who makes operating systems. And they're going after Microsoft ostensibly for the same exact same thing that EU went after ten years ago, Media Player and Internet Explorer. Except unlike the EU, China does something that the EU can't do, which is move quickly. And now they're saying, you need to respond to this formally within 20 days. It's just unbelievable.

Leo: 20 days? Respond like with a written response or actually do something?

Paul: Yeah, a written response. Explain yourself.

Mary Jo: This whole case is very vague though.

Paul: It's insane.

Mary Jo: It's like about bundling, it's about Office being one with Windows...

Paul: Well it's vague publicly. Microsoft knows what the charges are exactly. We've seen leaks about the things that you just said, the bundling stuff and Office is part of it- How they license Office and everything. But this is crazy. I don't know if I mentioned this I think last week I might have mentioned it but China is unique in that they're kind of behind the rest of the developed world and I think it was like 83% of the people who access the internet in that country still do so through Windows computers, not through smart phones. And so this kind of thing when you think of a totalitarian state, that literally has a firewall of sorts that prevents information from getting into the country over the internet, they're very concerned with making sure that the places that people do go to get information from the internet - the default web browser and Media Player in Windows for example - aren't usurping their control or whatever... I'm sure that might be part of it because they're afraid of spying and Microsoft's alleged ties to the US government and so forth. The whole thing is just so awesomely insane and it doesn't make sense.

Leo: As evil as China is, there are worse evils in this world obviously.

Paul: Name one, Leo.

Leo: So it was interesting, I was reading Tech Dirt and they said, why is everybody getting this wrong? A lot of headlines patting Microsoft on the back. "Microsoft defies judge and says, 'We aren't going to hand over the data from the Irish servers.'" Of course the Department of Justice is trying to get information about email that is not kept on Microsoft's servers in the US but on Microsoft's servers in Ireland. Microsoft has said no, and the case has gone against them and they still haven't handed it over because they're appealing.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: That's not exactly a courageous stance, that's just saying that we're out.

Paul: For a company like Microsoft, which I will remind you I described as milqutoast last week, that is a courageous stance. So I have to say in general, I applaud their public defense of privacy in general.

Leo: You bet.

Paul: In general... They're kind of milking this for the news credits that, you know.

Leo: So was it Microsoft that said, we're brave and we said no or was it just the interpretation of the news media?

Paul: No they consistently blog about it. They do right?

Mary Jo: Yeah, part of the reason why, too is because this is hurting their business. Like, people don't want to save stuff in their Cloud because of this. And so yeah if you're Microsoft, you're out there saying, hey customers look we're fighting this and don't want this to happen.

Paul: Yeah, not just Microsoft. Apple and Google who would normally be going at it with Microsoft over whatever issue are fully behind them on this and they all feel the same way because this impacts them as well. If trust in Cloud computing is eroded around the world because of alleged ties between Microsoft and the US government or because of actual US laws and actions such as this, this could irreparably harm their efforts in the Cloud and the future of those companies. I mean, honestly though... This Ireland data center thing is a serious gray area. It really is. My understanding of it is, first of all it's a criminal case, it's a US citizen, the data just happens to be in Ireland. He's not an Irish guy it's an American guy. And that just happens to be where the data is stored. So Microsoft is interpreting law in one way and saying you don't have the right to seize, not information, but to seize property that is outside of your jurisdiction. Whereas, the government's response is this information is controlled from the United States and that data center is US territory so we do have the right to do that. And so far, the judges to agree with the government.

Leo: And I'll read this quote from Tech Dirt, which seems to be the only publication that actually got this right. This is the judge writing, "Both parties, the Department of Justice and Microsoft share the common goal of permitting the Court of Appeals to hear this case as soon as possible. Their disagreement concerns the correct path to that goal." So yeah, there's a little fighting going on in between Microsoft and the DOJ and the judge is kind of trying to figure everything out. But she says, "In other words, the parties agree on the destination, the route to get there is a hot dispute." So eventually, it will be appealed and eventually, as you point out, they will lose right Paul?

Paul: I think so.

Mary Jo: They're trying to force something to happen, like a resolution of some kind. Even if they lose they're trying to force that.

Leo: Well certainly Microsoft isn't going to just bow down and say, oh do whatever, we don't want to go on with this. They're going to fight it every step of the way.

Paul: They are legally correct and now we have to do this and so they can do what they can do which is publicly disclose when the government makes these request. But now they can at least say, hey look, we clearly went to the mat for you guys, it's not our fault. It's not going to help them when everyone starts pulling their data out of Microsoft's Cloud services but-

Leo: Well I have to say that a lot of companies don't feel that the US courts should have jurisdiction over international servers. That is a big international problem, and Canadian judges have done the same. This is the nature of the internet, it's international so it will be very interesting to see. And we do need a body of law around us I think..

Paul: Well and this isn't the first time that technology has been ahead of the law.

Leo: Not at all.

Paul: This is very common.

Leo: Let's take a little break, the back of the book coming up next including your celebrity nude photo pick of the week. Oh wait, I'm sorry I don't think that's what you mean to say there.

Paul: I could change it.

Leo: No, no no. You know, it broke while we were doing TWiT on Sunday and really, I just didn't want to bring it up I didn't want to report on it. But it does become a tech story at least, when it comes to how the hack happened and what to do about it.

Paul: By the way, I never wrote about it until Apple addressed it. The reason I decided to write on it at that time was because Apple's take on this was- Well a lot of people were saying we hate Cloud computing, it's all screwed up. -This was just social engineering.

Leo: We've seen it time and time again, whether it was Mat Honan's accounts or whatever. That a persistent hacker - or in this case I think it was a group of persistent hackers. Given enough time and energy can crack into this stuff is if it's not really locked down. And the last people you expect to lock their stuff down is normal non-techy users. Mat Honan is a very sophisticated user and he got bit. But these things, I think, are getting better and I think Apple was quick to say this and they're probably right- That this is not a structural problem with the Cloud services that they offer but rather a-

Paul: In the pick I will bring up a little side issue to that.

Leo: Okay. Meanwhile on a brighter note, if you're hiring I've got a great solution for you. I'm sure you realize it's easy to hire nowadays thanks to the hundreds or at least 50+ job boards there are out there on the internet but then you sit down and think which job board should I use and it gets a little bit more complicated. How would you like to go to one site, post once, get on all of the job boards plus social media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Craigslist all within a single click. This is Zip Recruiter and they are doing really well. I just saw that they raised a big amount of funding because it's such a good idea. This solves the problem. We use Zip Recruiter and we were very happy with the results. You can find candidates in any city, any industry, nationwide. You post once and watch those qualified candidates roll in. They have a very easy to  use interface and they will also help you put a job page and career pages up on your site with your branding. They're mobile ready, which is great and they even have a large database, I think almost 5,000 resumes, that you can scan right away. Find out why Zip Recruiter has been used by over 200,000 business, maybe like yours. I want you to try it right now with Zip Recruiter's free offer. Go to ziprecruiter.com/windows. Ziprecruiter.com/windows and you'll get four days free. Then you'll be able to get a real sense of what you can do and you know, Zip Recruiter is so fast and so easy to use that you might even have that job done and filled within that time. 100% satisfaction guaranteed, ziprecruiter.com/windows. Give them a try today. Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley time for the back of the book. Mr. Paul Thurrott, we'll kick things off with his tip of the week.

Paul: I didn't do it.

Leo: I didn't do it, it wasn't me.

Paul: This is a bit tongue-and-cheek but looking at Apple's celebrity nude photo hack thing and discovering it was sort of social engineering- Because Moto said, the problem is that even if you use two step authentication on iCloud, which you can do- By the way I didn't even know Apple offered, so that's good. -There's a way around it. If you have to use a name and password for an account, which of course with brute force, you could gain access to their photo stream and that's possibly how some of this might have happened. So I made the observation today on Twitter that if those people had just used OneDrive to back up their photos, this could never have happened, assuming that they're using two step authentication on OneDrive as well because there is no way to bypass that on the Microsoft side. But this goes back to that consumer services part of Microsoft, where people don't know this and I wrote about this like last month. But OneDrive is that one service where you can use it to back up photos on an iPhone, an iPad, an Android handset or tablet, a Windows PC, tablet or Windows phone and it all goes to that same place. So I'm just sort of bringing up an old tip and I'm selling it with the nude celebrity thing. But basically, I wanted to remind people that OneDrive is one of those awesome consumer services that kind of just works everywhere and it supports two step authentication.

Leo: Yeah, I have to say Microsoft's two step is much better than what Apple uses for two step. In fact, Apple will even- If you sign up for two step, they take a few days to get it going. It's bizzare and it's not even available to everyone so it really isn't a good solution.

Paul: I wasn't even aware that they had it. So obviously, Google and Microsoft handled this very well and similarly and Dropbox does this.

Leo: I think the other issue is that PhotoSharing is on by default on iPhones so these celebrities probably didn't even know that these picture were being shared in the Cloud.

Paul: Yeah, in my news story about this there's an education bit that needs to occur- And I will give Apple some credit because when you sign on into an iOS device in particular, they're pretty good about like saying, by the way please put a password on this device or a pin code. They're not terrible about security but the fact remains that celebrities are normal people usually when it comes to technology and there needs to be a little bit of education around some of the common sense and not always terrible things you can do to- Just like basic security type things. Two step authentication isn't necessarily basic. It is a little complicated or irritating at times- You know when I just got signed onto Skype before we started, not only did I have to log on with my Microsoft account, but I had to go grab my phone and get the code so I could do the second factor. -But you know, it's safe. I think that in these all-connected days, we want to be safe and I think that's job 1 so I think consumers need to start being educated about this stuff.

Leo: I agree, I agree. And I think it is incumbent on all of the companies to make it straight forward, make it simple, make it secure...

Paul: And really explain what's going on. And seriously, by the way Apple doesn't do a horrible job of this.

Leo: No, but we talked about this on MacBreak Weekly Tuesday. Apple really does get behind this idea of, it just works. They don't want to get too nitty gritty, they want you to just feel like it's just magic and it works.

Paul: It's hard to do that with security. This is why they're going for the touch I.D. stuff and facial recognition will play a role in this and eventually, passwords have to go away because passwords are stupid but it's kind of all we have right now but two step or even three step authentication multifactor authentication could help eliminate a lot of the problems but I think Apple will eventually get this very right and they'll do it through touch I.D. or some camera recognition system or something.

Leo: Well they've already fixed the one Vector that could have been the cause. They did not rate limit password attempts on Find my iPhone so it's thought....                                        

Paul: So there was perhaps a brute force password thing...

Leo: It's not the perhaps. What happened is that people guessed certain people's email addresses. And you have to of course, know the address that was associated with iCloud. So number one folks, don't use your first and last name on OneDrive or iCloud, whatever you do.

Paul: Don't use the name of your first cat.

Leo: Don't use something guessable and if you went the whole brute force route, someone could guess the email right and get through like nothing.

Paul: That's what I meant with iCloud. Even if you had two factor authentication set up, that isn't required to access your photo stream so that brute force attack could work.

Leo: Right. The hacker who has been very good at hammering on Apple's security, Johnathan Z-Darsky, has been doing a lot of Tweeting the last couple of days. And he says that he believes that the files came from an iPhone backup. So that somebody was able to grab the backup, getting all of the files in there. Not only photos and videos, but everything else too. Everything. And I believe him. And yeah, it's a good idea using two factors, don't use your first and last name as your email address for recovery, there's a few basic things you can do to help this an awful lot. Anyway, we'll see if- Apple fixed that rate limit, they turned that rate limiting on Find My iPhone.

Paul: Like Microsoft, they'll pull the, there was nothing wrong. But here's the fix.

Leo: Right. They fixed it. And there was a Python script widely available on GetHub for a long time that showed exactly how to do this. My best guess is that there was a paste bin from somebody we think was the guy who thanked all the helpers he had, this guy wrote a script, had a bunch of people hammering on these specific accounts, once they got the password, they downloaded the iPhone backups from iCloud and the deed was done.

Paul: This is Apple discovering what Microsoft discovered 20 years ago, which is it's awesome having lots of users. Except for one thing. Now you are the biggest target.

Leo: Tip of the week number 2?

Paul: Yeah so I wasn't going to have a pick although Raphael and Josh on Twitter are mentioning there is a new version of Skype Desktop, Skype for Desktop Windows.

Leo: And you'll probably get that because Skype no longer allows you to not upgrade right?

Paul: I'll install that while I do this pick.

Leo: Would you mind?

Paul: But my second tip is Microsoft, this week, announced that there is the new bit of functionality for Office for iPad. Which is the Word Excel PowerPoint apps on iPad and they require an Office 365 subscription, consumer or business-related to get the full functionality of the apps. Until yesterday, you had to actually have one of those subscriptions and I think you can pay for those monthly through the web or you can pay annually and the point being, most people would come to the app with a subscription and if they don't they can subscribe but can only subscribe annually through the app. So now what they're doing is they're offering monthly subscriptions of Office 365 Home and Personal, which are the consumer offerings, at somewhat reasonable pricing. $999/month for Office 365 Home, which is verging for five users. Each of those users gets five PC or Mac installs, five tablet installs, and an additional one terabyte each of OneDrive storage, OneDrive for Consumers or Office 365 Personal and through the iPad is $699/month, that's the one user versions. So it's one terabyte of OneDrive storage, five installs of Office for that user and five installs of Office on tablets, which for now is just iPad. So those, for now are not bad prices. And some people want to go month to month and all of that but when I looked at this to see how much would you save if you just got the normal annual subscription? Office 365 Home is $99/year where you would actually save $20 versus paying monthly. Office 365 Personal is $69.99 so it's a $15 savings if you pay for it annually but- And as I say this, it's still true. -Amazon is offering both of those subscriptions for dramatic discounts and so for example, on Home is available for $64, so that's $36 off annually and $56 off paying monthly through the app. The savings on Personal are not quite as high that one is $48 on Amazon but still, that's over $20 in savings over the normal annual price. So if you want this subscription, get it through Amazon. And you know, we already discussed Office 365 and why it's awesome but those are huge savings and so the tip, so to speak, is not to pay month to month. At these prices, just pay for the year and do it cheap, it's really not that expensive.

Leo: I agree good tip. Enterprise time, Mary Jo Foley, what's your pick of the week?

Mary Jo: So this week, we found out on the OneDrive user Voice site, Microsoft has quietly started removing the 2 gig file size limit for OneDrive synced files. That was a big bone of contention with a lot of people because if you had a file bigger than 2gigs you could not sync it through OneDrive. I think this limit is also being lifted for OneDrive for Business customers too because that same limit applies to them. I have tried for the last three days to get Microsoft to confirm that and I cannot. Probably because they're trying to have some big announcement around that but this is starting to gradually roll-out across OneDrive Consumer accounts now and I would expect soon, across OneDrive for Business accounts. So I can't say this is 100% confirmed but I think that is what's going to be happening. And I would expect an announcement fairly soon from them about that.

Leo: That's good. 2 gigs is an old limit imposed by fat 32.

Mary Jo: Yeah, funny right?

Leo: We can let that go, yeah.

Mary Jo: Time to let that go.

Leo: And then codename pick of the week.

Mary Jo: I need you and Paul to weigh in on this codename. The codename is Incheon, I think it has to do with the Korean war.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: So what's interesting about this codename that someone forwarded on to me is that it seems to be a codename for an acquisition which is unusual. Usually Microsoft products have codenames. It was supposedly the codename for the InMage acquisition that Microsoft made earlier this year. If you remember that, they bought this company to add to Azure's site recovery because they had some disaster recovery capability that Microsoft wanted. It would let you protect virtual, physical, Unix database systems and you wouldn't have to use multiple products, you could use the one InMage product. So my tipster who sent me this codename said that the acquisition itself got this codename and not the technology which is kind of interesting. Yeah. I didn't know what Incheon was so I started looking around and concluded that it had something to do with Korea.

Leo: There was a big battle in 1950 and it was a big victory for the allied forces.

Mary Jo: Maybe that's the connection- It's a big victory for Microsoft to acquire this, I don't know. But yeah.

Leo: We don't know what it is that they acquired...

Mary Jo: We know it's the codename for the acquisition they made in July from the company called InMage, that's what it seems to be.

Leo: Oh, so we knew- Okay got it.

Mary Jo: Yeah I was just kind of asking you guys for help on the city and relevance of it all

Leo: Got it got it. And here you are with a stoned man. That's a good picture I like it.

Mary Jo: Last week I was at an event here in New York and I got to meet the head of Stone Brewing, which is like one of the biggest craft beer breweries in the world. I just went up to the guy, his name is Greg Koch and I said, hey I'm a craft beer fan and he said, let's take a picture.

Leo: Little did he know, fame and fortune await, as his identity is revealed on Windows Weekly.

Mary Jo: I think a lot of beer nuts know who that guy is, he's pretty darn famous.

Paul: Pardon the pun.

Mary Jo: Right, beer nuts.

Leo: I think that you should have a stone beer.

Mary Jo: As my pick, I do. Paul, I think, would love this beer. It was Stone Reason Be Damned Abby Ale. And wow, it was so good. I had never even heard of this one, it's a sour Belgian ale that is aged in red wine barrels. It's the best of all worlds, it tastes fruity like peaches and like stone fruit, no pun intended. But also a little sour but not too sour. And they call it an Abbey Ale, I have just never seen or heard of it until last week. I think Leo would like it as well.

Leo: I am a big fan of sour Belgian style.

Mary Jo: Oh yeah?

Leo: Yeah. I love Belgian ales.

Paul: So I checked in three IPA's from my favorite brewery last weekend and I started getting comments from people thinking I hate IPA's because what I hate are stupid hoppy IPA's. But the local brewery does it right.

Leo: There you go.

Mary Jo: You like the balanced, more malty style right?

Leo: I'm kind of with you Paul. I have never admitted this.

Mary Jo: Public confessions.

Leo: Public confessions.

Mary Jo: And I got to be on Padre's Corner last night and got to talk about home brewing, and got to show off how I do home brewing a little bit.

Leo: He's good, isn't he?

Mary Jo: Very good.

Leo: He'd be a good priest, he's good at getting people to confess.

Paul: Untapped should have an achievement or even an set of achievements for people who make their own beer.

Mary Jo: They do. I check in home brews.

Leo: Oh good, that's neat. Well, that does it. If you don't mind I think we can wrap this up. Paul Thurrott is available online for your counseling and your Windows needs, if you need he is there at the supersite for Windows, winsupersite.com. You can also find his books, many of them free, or as they progress at windows81book.com. Mary Jo Foley is at allaboutmicrosoft.com, that's where she hangs her hat. She writes all the time like 3 or 4 times a day, sometimes more. Always with great insight and scoops. We've got good people here on this show. We do this show every Wednesday at 11 AM Pacific, 2 PM Eastern time and 1800 UTC at live.twit.tv if you can watch live, do because we like to have you here. If not, don't worry on demand audio and video is always available, just like all of our shows at TWiT on our website, twit.tv and in this case in the ww section: twit.tv/ww. You can also get it at iTunes, the Xbox music store, the podcast app on your Windows phone or iPhone. Or anywhere you listen to downloadable content, we will be there just look for Windows Weekly. Thanks Paul thanks Mary Jo, I guess that's it and we'll see you next week on Windows Weekly. Bye bye. Yes Facebook is down, everybody freak out. I just am dying. How am I supposed to do my work if Facebook is down?

Paul: How am I going to see my cousin's kid's back to school pictures?

Leo: It's full of back to school pictures.

Paul: Yeah, my kids went back to school, and they're teenagers so when I asked if I could take a picture of them in front of the house, my daughter hit me physically and my son scoffed and walked away.

Leo: Isn't that right? Mine was sad the other day and it happened early for me, my kids just said, no more pictures. I was sad because I love taking pictures but I may have overdid it I think.

Paul: How can you overdo it as a parent, Leo?

Leo: I don't know, I wanted all of those pictures.

Paul: Can you love too much?

Leo: Alright boy and girl, thank you. We shall see you next week by then the Apple tremors will have subsided and we can converse normally.

Paul: God help us, everyone!

Leo: God help us... Bye, see you guys!