Windows Weekly 379 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It’s time for Windows Weekly.  Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley are here.  We’ll get their reaction to the big new IPhone announcements.  But Tuesday was much more important than that, Patch Tuesday and of course the big destiny release. Lots of news coming up, Windows Phone news as well.   From Paul, Mary Jo Windows Weekly next.

Netcasts you love from people you trust, this is TWIT! Bandwidth for Windows Weekly is provided by Cachefly.  At cachefly.com.

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley.  Episode 379 recorded September 10th, 2014

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It’s time for Windows Weekly the show where Windows the show where we cover Windows weekly, every week.  Goodness gracious that’s the name.

Paul Thurrott: Hence the name. 

Leo: What year are we in Paul?  I think we’ve been doing this since Vista came out.

Paul: I am not getting into this conversation again.

Leo: That’s a long time ago. 

Paul: I don’t remember.  Stop highlighting that I don’t remember that. 

Leo: It’s been too long.  Paul Thurrott is here from Supersite for Windows winsupersite.com, author of a great many books on all sorts of subjects, including the Dell 53 super bible.  Also with us Mary Jo Foley at allaboutmicrosoft.com.  Good to see you both.

Mary Jo Foley: You too.

Leo: Welcome to the program.  I guess there’s really big news this week and I think we really should start off with that.  Big day yesterday, right? 
Paul: Talking about Patch Tuesday?

Leo: Yeah, Patch Tuesday.

Mary Jo: Patch Tuesday a big one.

Leo: Don’t you feel sorry for anybody unless you’re like accused of a really horrific crime you want to announce it on.

Paul: All joking aside we should talk about the important Apple new which of course which was the killing of the IPod classic. 

Leo: Yeah, I thought that would happen a long time ago.  That’s why I bought an IPod classic a couple years or last year even.  I felt like this can’t last. 

Paul: It’s like somebody didn’t notice it was there. 

Leo: Yeah and they forgot to kill it.  That’s why we’ve got it, right here.  Anybody wants to buy it, 1,000 dollars. 

Paul: Makes a clicking noise when you access the songs.

Leo: No I bought one for my car because I wanted to have maximum storage in my car and it’s a 128 GB of storage in my car.  It’s great. 

Paul: More than that isn’t it?  Or is it 128? 

Leo: 128?  Oh no you’re right it’s 160.  Wow!  But they do have a 128GB IPad and a 128GB phone now.  What do you need this for anymore, anyway? 

Paul: Music is so 2000’s, Leo. 

Leo: I am doing a survey.  Let me knock on your door.  Mr. Thurrott, Ms. Foley. 

Paul: Hold on let me give you the actual answer I would give you if you did come to my door.  Stephanie it’s for you.

Leo: Mrs. Thurrott I have a question do you still store stuff on your phone?  How much storage?  Take your phone out right now and tell me how much you’ve used?  Because I buy now 16GB phones because I never put anything on the phone.  It’s all streaming. 

Paul: Right I was just thinking that.  I partition things.  I do put some music on the phone and I put a couple of audiobooks, that kind of thing.  But I am not going to put videos on the phone.  So you don’t really need a lot of storage.  I’d feel more comfortable with 32.

Leo: Yeah the 16 is probably a little light. 

Paul: 16 plus MicroSD perfect.

Leo: Right, right. 

Mary Jo: I am using 5GB out of 30. 

Leo: My point exactly. 

Mary Jo: Yeah, not much.

Leo: Yeah but there are people still every time I say this who say to me oh you need to have much more room.  I put videos.

Paul: I need more room on my tablet than anything.  The reason is for work purposes on a laptop it’s just a couple of applications, some data synced from One Drive.  I don’t have any entertainment on there at all.  Where I want the space is for HD video on a tablet.  I don’t need a lot of space on a laptop.  120GB is great, SSD and then on a phone these days it depends on the phone.  32 with now expansion, 16 plus expansion is fine.

Leo: I was thinking the other day Microsoft is doing this exactly right.  Google releases glasses, Microsoft says we have them but doesn’t release them.  Then when Google glasses are a complete flop then they go phew.  Apple never announced anything but everybody assumed Apple is going to do a watch.  So Microsoft says oh we got one but doesn’t release it. 

Paul: No that’s coming soon, Leo.

Leo: Is it, you think? 

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: You know we should talk about that.

Leo: I’ve got a lot of people tweeting me this.  Is that the watch you’re talking about?  The Zune watch?

Mary Jo: That would be something I could do with my Zune.  I still have my Zune HD.  I’d like to use it for something.

Paul: There was a small Zoon.  Guess you could use one of those.  But I appreciate them using an original brown Zoon. 

Mary Jo: Especially brown. 

Leo: Let’s talk about, do you have anything to say. 

Paul: About what?

Leo: About what Apple announced. 

Mary Jo: I went shopping yesterday and I didn’t watch the announcement. 

Leo: Oh my God.  This is a political thing for you. 

Mary Jo: No, I knew at the end I could just read a few stories and see what happened.  I wasn’t waiting with bated breath because I don’t cover Apple.

Leo: You know what’s funny for the first 20 minutes of their live stream which we were covering of course.

Paul: Oh it was brutal.

Leo: There was Chinese translation going on the whole time someone was talking in Chinese.

Paul: I have never seen a stream mishandled like that.  The quality was terrible it dropped out.  I tried to watch it on Apple TV.  I actually moved my Apple TV in my office and put it on. 

Leo: Yeah because you had to use, you couldn’t watch it on Windows right? 

Paul: I don’t know I didn’t even try.

Mary Jo: No you had to use Safari. 

Leo: You had to use an Apple product. 

Paul: That didn't’ factor into my decision.  I had to unplug it twice to reboot it.  It literally crashed the thing to the point where it wouldn’t respond.

Leo: What!  Crashed your Apple TV!

Paul: Yes, twice.  That was so lousy.  Granted, everybody on earth who has an internet connection was watching this thing basically.  But it astonishes me that Apple’s technical prowess couldn’t figure this thing out. 

Leo: There’s an article that everybody has been sharing from a guy we’ve had on TWIT before, Dan Rayburn.  He’s a streaming media guru.  He said it’s actually Apple’s fault, it wasn’t that so many people were watching.  Apple didn’t let ACAMA cash it with the way they had designed their page.  They made like beginner mistakes. 

Paul: They don’t really do live streaming of events very often.

Leo: Well now we know why.  The funny thing is they do the iTune festival brilliantly.  That thing goes off without a hitch all September.

Paul: It was so awful.

Leo: I am thinking that’s just a 3rd party team and they should bring those guys in.

Paul: Sometimes when you watch a movie it’s so horrible that it becomes funny and fun.

Leo: Yeah well this wasn’t that.

Paul: But sometimes they are so horrible they are just painful.  That was what this was like.  It wasn’t even funny it was just awful.  I will watch it again without the Chinese hopefully or Japanese or whatever it was.  I maybe will couch a few of the things that they did in the context of what Microsoft is doing and what the rest of the industry is doing.  Obviously from the cynical Microsoft perspective a lot of people will look at this stuff and say wow the new IPhone 6 looks a lot like the Lumia 925.  Wow they’ve reinvented NFC mobile payments.  Which Windows phone added 2 years ago although it went absolutely nowhere.   There is all that kind of stuff.  Honestly some of this stuff about the IPhone is going to help Windows Phone I think. So what level payment being the biggest one.  Apple has the market power to get all of the major credit card companies, banks, retail, restaurants on board.  That will open up NFC mobile payments, which by the way have been around for years, to everybody to Windows Phone, to Android etc.  I think Apple by pushing this through and making it happen.  That will actually benefit everyone including people who don’t ultimately decide to buy an IPhone.  I think that’s really cool.  The rest a pretty much don’t care about. 

Leo: Apple has a lot of clout in the market.  So Apple not supporting NFC means it’s on hold until Apple does.  I am surprised they did frankly.

Paul: Well sort of.  Remember Android had it, Samsung.

Leo: Yeah it’s been on everything except.

Paul: By the way I had an instance this summer when I was in Barcelona where before I got my in country SEM kind of thing figured out I wasn’t able to get online with the phone that I had to take pictures with. So I did a NFC share where you bump the 2 phones together.  So it went from Windows phone to Android.  The Android phone was the one I was able to get online with and I was able to share a photo by the fact that both of them had NFC.  Obviously the transfer occurred over bluetooth or whatever.  But the point was they had NFC do that kind of bump bump thing and it worked, it actually worked.  That doesn’t happen a lot but I can assure you that now that these Apple guys have it, you’re going to see guys doing wrist bumps all the time with their stupid watches.  You know this is going to happen. 

Leo: People are going to say of course Paul doesn’t like it, he’s a Windows guy.  I think a lot of Android people said oh it’s just their Me2 thing. 

Paul: No I have an Android watch.  I don’t like that either.  That’s why I don’t think the Apple Watch is that interesting.  I’ve used a smart watch recently.  As far as the smartwatch goes I don’t think they announced anything particle from what’s available on Android.  It’s Apple so you know the devices will be beautiful and you know the software will be elegant.  And I know that I don’t want a watch.  At some point in the future, a year from now when Watch2 comes out or a few years from now when Watch3 comes out, you’ll see some innovations that make these things a little more desirable.  They’ll get smaller and thinner.  They won’t be as dependent on an IPhone.  They’ll be independent.  Remember when IOS or IPad or whatever it was.  The moment where this doesn’t require PC tethering.  It was like this is now just a standalone device.  That makes something like that much more useful.  I think that’s where Watch heads.  Until then it’s a curiosity.  I think for people who are going to work out and stuff these things will become interesting. 

Leo: I am curious to see if Apple has the clout and I bet they do to get the carriers in line.  Remember even though Google Wallet’s been out for a while.  Verizon wouldn’t put it on the phone’s for instance because they had their own wallet, ISUS. 

Paul: Well the wallet for the Apple device.  The way that Microsoft implemented wireless payments was the secure element was in the SIM.  Which means you need the wireless carrier to work with you.  Which means by the way that none of them did except for one supposedly but I am not even sure that ever happened.  It was Orange in France.  So for the past 2 years no one has come on board again to do mobile payments on Windows Phone.  It’s hard to tell because this is the way Apple does when it announces things it’s not always clear.  The way I took it was the secure element in IPhone 6 is in the phone.  Somebody just told me via email or via comments KitKat enabled it functionality as well.  Frankly when you want to do great things on a wireless network first thing you need to do is bypass the carrier because those guys hold everything back. 

Leo: Oh yeah what a surprise Verizon doesn’t want to use the Google wallet, what a shock. 

Mary Jo: The problem with these watches to me and I am somebody who does wear a regular watch still.  They don’t really do anything much that the phone can’t do.  So why not just use your phone?  I know people say you have to take it out of your pocket and it’s more intrusive.  But until they are really complementary to the phone I don’t want one.

Paul: You’re actually more right than you may realize. 

Mary Jo: Thank you sir.

Paul: In my experience with the Android.  Well no you’re right but you’re also right on a different level.  Because in my experience with the Android ware watch I would say not 9 times out of 10 but 7 or 8 times out 10 when you see something on the watch or you get a notification.  You look at it and it goes go to the phone.  I am sorry but that’s worthless.  The other thing is I wear a FitBit and this is like the Kindle of wearables.  It doesn’t get a day of battery life, it doesn’t get 2 days of battery life, it gets weeks of battery life.  Every once in a while I feel weird about it, I’ll just plug it into the charger to see because it’s been like 10 days and it’s like nope 36% used that’s it. 

Leo: Yeah but you charge your phone every day, what’s the big deal?  You just put your phone and watch next to each other on the bedside.

Paul: Yeah but we’re not robots.  What are we going to do take off all these electronics and plug them into different outlets everywhere? 

Leo: I already do that. 

Paul: Yeah but this is yet another thing to plug in and manage yourself.  And as Mary Jo just said and she’s right it doesn’t really add a super amount of extra value from what you’re already getting from the devices you’re already charging.

Mary Jo: A Fitbit is where I see a wearable making more sense.

Leo: Well all watches at least do the pedometer. 

Paul: But like I said this is smaller and it lasts for 2 weeks almost in a charge. 

Mary Jo: Wasn’t the last rumor we heard the supposed Microsoft Watch was more like a FitBit.  It was and less like the Android or something like that.  I actually thought if it’s like that and you say bundle it with maybe the Xbox and have some kind of a tie in that way.  To me that makes more sense than a watch that does exactly what my phone does.
Paul: I think my FitBit is giving me mercury poisoning or something.  It’s really excellent.  This kind of weird rash that I have.

Leo: No is that the nickel?  No that was a different one.

Paul: No that was a different one I have.  I know that’s a problem.

Leo: I’m a fan of watches.  But I agree they are not a necessity.  They are a luxury.  They are a add on.

Paul: I don’t think they become anything more than an add on.  But I do think they do get more useful over time. 

Leo: So what would Microsoft do?  They are watching this.  They’re looking and assessing.  They’re at somewhat of an advantage because they are the last to the table at this point. 

Paul: Oh I can tell you 2 things right off the top of the bat that they can do.  One of them I know they are doing.  The first one is cross platform compatibility.  When you buy an Android watch it’s Android.  When you buy an Apple watch it’s Apple.  You’re locked into those ecosystems.  The Microsoft one will be cross platform.  This is the new Mobile first Cloud first thing. 

Leo: Like the Pebble.  The Pebble is the only cross platform one I know of.  It works on Apple and Android. 

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: This is ironic because in the old days Apple always had to work with Windows because you were the small one and you had to work with the big guy.  Now Microsoft is in that position exactly.  They have to be compatible because nobody is going to buy one that will just work with a Windows phone.  The Watch market is a fraction of the phone market already.  What’s the fraction of 4%.  So it makes sense they have to be multiplatform. 

Mary Jo: I know Paul had heard October maybe.

Leo: Oh really!

Paul: I was going to say real quick though that they could do that I think would be attractive to a lot of people and they are doing.  It’s going to be more like a band and less like a watch.  In other words you’re not going to have a big circular chunk, it’s going to be more like the Samsung, whatever that one is called.

Leo: You know what happens with an Apple announcement, it’s really kind of interesting. I have to say I’m succored a little bit by this too.  It happened with MP3 Players, it happened with Smartphones we thought it was going to happen with watches.  We’ve seen everybody throw stuff against the wall now let’s see how Apple reinvents the category.  You know what this time I don’t think they did. 

Paul: I don’t think so either.

Leo: I don’t think there is anything in this new watch that makes me go oh finally they fixed that.

Paul: I don’t doubt they won’t have the best-selling smart watch by virtue of the fact that their ecosystem is full of people that like to spend money.

Leo: Oh I’ll buy it.

Paul: Because it works with the IPhone which is very popular in the rich markets where these types of devices would tend to sell better.  You were mentioning before the show I think China and Japan in certain markets where they see value.  The reason Apple has the Gold Version of the IPhone.  In certain markets people love that stuff.  I think it attracts that same crowd. 

Mary Jo: I think the thing on Microsoft that we’ve got to think about is what is the unique or the value add thing that they bring that the other people don’t have.  So if they just field a watch that does everything that a Pebble does or the Apple Watch.  Okay they aren’t really playing to their strengths.  The trick for us is to think about what are they going to make it tie too.  Or have uniquely that the other watches don’t have.  I am betting Xbox tie in is one thing, Johan Van Merle our friend who does some stuff around the peripherals for Windows Phone, he’s like maybe they’ll put those new MSN branded apps on the Windows Watch.

Paul: Interesting.  Use alerts and those things.

Mary Jo: That makes sense.  But the one thing I heard this week from a couple of my contacts is we might see kind of a more circumspect launch on this Windows Watch kind of a thing.  Maybe a very much smaller launch targeted at a very specific segment of the market.  Instead of heres our watch and it’s meant for everybody.  I think they are going to try to, that’s why I am guessing the Xbox tie in, Xbox Fitness.

Paul: See I would have guessed Health and Fitness if they were going to do that. 

Mary Jo: Yeah health and fitness.  So I think they are going to do something smaller, more targeted.   Just like they did with the Surface Mini where they took a step back and said you know what we have a product ready but that’s not the right product.  I think they may have made some watches and said we don’t have enough value add here and we’ve got to rethink what we are going to do for this product.

Paul: It’s going to get Minied.

Leo: What if they were mostly a Skype watch with mostly a camera and a picture and you just skyped with it?  I would love that. 

Paul: Also it could control your Xbox for those people who don’t have Kinect. 

Leo: The Apple watch works as a remote control.  Tim Cook says it will control your Apple TV.  That is a good use for it.  Smart Glass works through the WiFi.  In fact that worked great yesterday.  Because really the big story of September 9th was Destiny.  I forgot going to work.  I did the same thing.  So I fire up Smart Glass and I buy Destiny on my phone and it starts downloading on my Xbox 1 so when I get home I’m ready to play it.  That’s nice.

Paul: I do like that. 

Leo: I love that.  Mary Jo you don’t have to say yep.  I know you don’t care.

Paul: Okay let’s put this in terms of Windows.  Let’s say Windows 9 is going to ship on April 15th, 2015 just to make a date.  What if Microsoft pre-loaded your PC with this thing so on that day it would just kick off an installer and you would wake up and have Windows 9. 

Leo: You’ve got 9.

Mary Jo: That would be interesting.  That’s like the whole click to run thing they do with Office now.  While you’re downloading Office you can start using parts of it as it finishes downloading.  They’ve got that technology they could do that. 

Leo: Yeah that’s interesting.  That’s one way to make everybody to buy the new version.  Alright we are going take a break.  A big story broke yesterday as well.  Bad timing!

Paul: Patch Tuesday. 

Leo: Yeah Patch Tuesday.  No it’s bad timing really there is no oxygen in the environment for anything during an Apple launch.

Paul: There isn’t anyone there to report it, even if it happened.

Leo: Everyone is busy in Cupertino.  This is a weird story Microsoft and Mojang.  We will talk about that in just a second but first a word from sharefile.com.  Secure files storage and sharing.  We don’t really mention the storage aspect of this but it’s absolutely true.  I synchronize my Share Files on my with a sharefile cload.  Then all the files I want to share are available on my Smartphone, on my tablet anytime I want it.  I really should call it Citrix Sharefile.  That’s the official name and I think that’s something good to keep in mind, it’s from Citrix and you know Citrix knows business.  It is designed to eliminate the bane of every security and IT guy in the world.  Email attachments, don’t send email attachments that’s a great way to spread viruses, it’s insecure.  The file you’re sending I don’t care what disclaimers you put under that email signature that is not private.  And Frankly now a days with the big files we are sending, presentations, the big PDF’s, the context and so forth, bounce backs are a real problem.  Sharefile eliminates all of these problems, very simply very elegantly.  Instead of sending an attachment you’re sending a secure link to Sharefile.  In fact I’ll show you.  I can actually do this because I use it every week.  I am going to use it today Wednesday is my big Sharefile day.  Once I log into my Sharefile account you’ll see because it’s automatically synchronizing all the files that I’ve recorded are there.  This is the folder for the radio network.  You see I have other folders as well.  All of the management is done for me.  So if I want to send a file, here is a spot I have to send off to the radio stations before the show on Saturday.  I check that box.  Now you could do this with an Outlook plugin.  If you’re using Outlook it’s even easier than this.  It looks just like an attachment but this is the web interface.  With the Web interface you can create the email account or say just give me a link.  Now notice some of the settings here that are really useful, email me when the item has been downloaded, require recipients to enter name in email before downloading, when the access expires, anything from a day, a week, a month, 6 months, a year.  I usually say never but let’s say I am sending them an ad that’s only really good for a week.  I could say hey that’s good for a week.  You can say how many times they can download it.  If you’re really mean you could do download it once.  Now what I am going to get you’ll see here is a secure HTTPS link.  If I paste it in you’ll see what they are going to get.  I put that link in the email.  They click the link and they get a branded page, it’s got my branding on it which is great.  It looks like it came from me.  A big button, they don’t have to sign up for anything.  All they do is click the download link.  They even know that they are getting a file and they know how big it is.  This 10MB file, that would be a bounceback on a lot of email systems.  I know it seems so small but that would be a bounce.  Never bounce, no one can see this along the way, it’s totally secure.  It’s Sharefile it’s really the best way to share a file in business.  I want you to try it free for 30 days in your business.  If you’re an IT director or a CIO or if you’re not give it to your IT director or CIO.  99% for the Fortune 500 companies use it.  Let me think about that, that means 495 out of the 500 use it.  I wonder who the 5 are who don’t use it are?  5 companies in the Fortune 500 have yet to sign up.  If you’re one of them would you do me a favor sign up.  In fact do me a huge favor when you do it click the podcast listeners button at the top of the page and enter the offer code windows.  Then Paul and Mary Jo will get the benefit of Chevron signing up for Sharefile.  Windows is the offer code, choose your industry too because it’s HIPPA compliant in the medical industry.  It satisfies SEC regulations in the financial services industry.  Everything from video, realistate, recruiting, marketing, legal.  If you’re a lawyer are you actually sending contracts, files and pleadings through the mail?  That’s nuts.  Use Sharefile today use the offer code Windows for 30 days absolutely free. 

Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, we’re talking Windows.  This is a big story that crossed the wire, and it’s from the Wall Street Journal so I think there’s some credibility.  Mojang, which is a small company about 40 people up there in the frozen north.  Where is it Sweden?

Mary Jo: Stockholm, yeah. 

Leo: They make a little thing called Minecraft.  Apparently Microsoft has been negotiating this for some time.  This has been going on for a while.

Paul: Can someone tell me why though? 
Leo: Mary Jo, should tell us why. 

Mary Jo: Okay I will.  I will tell you why and I saw so many on Twitter saying wow this is idiotic.  If you notice Microsoft's stock price today it was up.  So there are people who don’t think it’s idiotic. 

Leo: Wow the market likes it. 

Mary Jo: I think it makes sense for a couple reasons.  One it gives them a way to spend some of their offshore cash.  2 billion supposedly is the price.  The last time they did this was when they bought Nokia for 7.2 billion.  They want to use that cash that they have offshore. 

Leo: That’s a really important point because if they were to repatriate that cash they would pay U.S. taxes on it.

Paul: I will take some of it and move to Europe.  I don’t understand the problem.

Mary Jo: Me too.  Why not?  I saw people saying oh yeah but why are they going to do this they are getting out of gaming.  They should just sell off the Xbox.  You know what Satya Nadella made a point when he put his memo out in July about what are our priorities.  He said a big priority for Microsoft is building out the digital life category.  Biggest group of technology is in there is gaming.  Games and gaming so he wants to stay in that market.  Even if they someday get out of Xbox which I don’t see them doing anytime soon if ever.  They want to stay in gaming.  Gaming on PC, on phone, on Xbox and this plays obviously right into that as well.  I’ve got a nephew who is so so into Minecraft and I think people who haven’t seen Minecraft think oh it’s just a video game.  It’s just another kind of game except you don’t show people.  Not a dig at you Paul. 

Paul: Sounds awful, what are you talking about.

Leo: Anybody who has kids between the ages of 8 and 14 and I know you have nephews knows.

Paul: I told you my Minecraft story surely?  I heard weird music coming down from upstairs one time.  Probably a year ago now.  So I walked upstairs to find out what is this sound I am hearing and it’s coming off my son’s crazy looking game.  So I am watching this thing and I am like what is this.  He describes it to me and I am like I don’t understand do you shoot things?  Is it like a map editor so then you go in and blow stuff up?  He is like nope.  As he is talking to me this character goes flying by in space on the screen.  I said who was that?  He said oh that’s my cousin Harrison.  He said he is in here checking out my thing and helping me with this.  I was like you know what, have fun.  This seems really healthy and normal. 

Leo: I will describe it in a way that you will get.  Parents will get, adults of our generation will get, my generation and yours will get.  It’s Lego for this generation.  It’s Lego that they can play with their friends and family and even strangers all around the world at the same time.  They can build things.  When I first played with Mike very early on I thought this is weird.  It’s 8 bit graphics we can do better. 

Paul: Yeah what’s the point.

Leo: But that’s part of it’s major appeal.  That’s neither here nor there.  No one’s arguing the popularity of Minecraft. 

Paul: So what are the reasons here, Mary Jo said Microsoft has a lot of money overseas and needs to spend it.

Mary Jo: They want to get even more into gaming.  They also want to capture that group of people who are the next generation of coders.  I saw Simon Bison on Site World write about this today.  He’s so right, Microsoft wants to get into that group and get them kind of thinking about Microsoft as being cool and not Microsoft being a dinosaur.  So how do you do that?  You own a brand that is really important to that group.  It’s teaching them how to think about building things and that’s what you want.  Those are the people who are going to be the next generation of coders.

Leo: Let’s not forget, Steve Ballmer made this point when he bought the Clippers, I’m going to make money on this.  This is a profitable company.  They’re going to make their money back. 

Paul: Right but the wrinkle here is that Minecraft’s creator hates Microsoft.  With a burning hatred. 

Leo: Oh I am sure Notch will quit.  But they don’t need Notch, Notch hasn’t done anything with Minecraft in years.  All he is doing is floating around in his boat, drinking champagne.  Notch is not writing Minecraft anymore. 

Mary Jo: Right and Bloomberg had a story, a follow up on this.  They said they talked to people at Microsoft who said yeah if we get them, they actually said that Notch had talked to Microsoft and had been involved in conversations and that it was accepted that if and when Microsoft buys them he will leave.

Leo: Because you know what he also owns like 80% of the company.  He’s going to be a billionaire.  Even if he wanted to with all his heart.  You’ve got a billion dollars are you going to stay going to the office everyday and sit in front of a computer everyday writing code.  No!

Paul: That’s what Dr. Trey’s doing, Leo. 

Leo: We don’t know what Dr. Trey’s doing.  All we know is that he was not at the Apple event yesterday. 

Mary Jo: That’s right.  He was with me, he was shopping with me. 

Leo: By the way Xbox 1 is getting Minecraft real soon now.  I saw it.  Xbox has had it for years. 

Paul: I wonder if it will have to be remastered? 

Leo: I noticed Michael plays a lot of Minecraft on a PC.  Because it’s a Java program you can play it on a Mac PC.  But I’ve also seen him play it on the Xbox a lot.  When he is playing with friends he’s almost always on the Xbox, using Xbox Live.  This is good business.  It’s like people saying why did they by Bungie?  Because it’s a profitable company.

Paul: No but that made sense because that became an Xbox premier title.  It’s not as weird as Facebook buying Oculus Rift but it’s weird. 

Leo: Alright Paul recontextualize.  By the way Minecraft is out on the Xbox 1 already.  What if there is special in game content that is only available on an Xbox 1? 

Paul: Oh sure.

Leo: How many more Xbox’s do they sell? 

Mary Jo: Or what if you sell things like they do now they have the add on packs.  What if you sell them as a subscription. 

Leo: It promotes Xbox Live, it promotes Xbox 1.

Mary Jo: I can’t believe I am talking about gaming on Window Weekly.  This is a first.

Leo: No more than that.  You’re convincing Paul that a gaming company is a worthwhile purchase.

Paul: Of the benefit of a game.  But can you shoot things?

Leo: Yeah you can. 

Mary Jo: No.

Leo: Yeah you can.

Mary Jo: Oh yeah the zombies.

Leo: What do they call them, you’ve got the creatures that come in the night.  There are zombies but there is another group.  You can tell I don’t play a lot of Minecraft.

Mary Jo: Aren’t they zombies? 

Leo: Creepers.  Thank you.  People are doing a lot of amazing stuff in Minecraft.  I think this is a franchise.  Paul you would never say anything is weird if they went out and bought some other game franchise company and said we’re going to make them part of Microsoft.

Paul: No that’s fair.  I think the problem is the disconnect between the simplicity of Minecraft and the graphical and processing powers of the Xbox.

Leo: Yeah because we don’t get it.  But that’s the appeal for some reason.  I don’t get it either. 

Paul: I get it.  Minecraft is a game that would be easy to implement on a smart phone.  On a very low end platform.

Leo: Yes because Notch did basically write it himself.  I don’t think he thought it would be a hit.

Paul: There are popular Xbox Indie games what is it Meat game, Super Meat Boy, that have 8 byte type graphics which are fine, they are fine.  There is nothing wrong with them.  I know Minecraft is a phenomenon.  It’s just that we’re moving forward with Call of Duty games that have the budget and special effects of a major Hollywood movie every single year.  And then it’s like this game is like the biggest thing in the world.  It’s fascinating.

Leo: It is the antidote to that big stuff.

Mary Jo: I wonder because I have a lot of nieces who do Minecraft too.  It’s a way to get girls into this stuff. 

Leo: Yes, girls love it.

Mary Jo: Not all the girls, some girls want to do shooter games not everybody does.  But building stuff, building cities yeah they want to do it. 

Leo: Michael who is a 11 plays with his 11 year old friend Bridget they love it.  They play together, she’s at home, he’s at home.  They’re on the Xbox, they’re talking, because you have the Xbox Live and the microphone.  It’s their social.  They have a playdate online. 

Paul: Right there’s nothing wrong with that.  If anything that is like Facebook for kids.  In the sense the reason Facebook is so cool to me is that it allows me to keep up with friends, cousins and other people I know who aren’t nearby that I don’t see every day.  But yet I get to have an understanding of what’s going on in their lives.  Like this is a way to do that.

Leo: I am wondering why they didn’t buy Twitch.  Did you think Microsoft was bidding for Twitch? 

Mary Jo: Yeah I bet they were.

Leo: Amazon got it.  I bet they were too.  It’s interesting, it does run counter to the notion that they might be trying to spin off Xbox.

Mary Jo: It does to me although when my boss at ZDnet saw that rumor come across he was like they are beefing up the Xbox so they can sell it off.

Leo: Well that could be. 

Mary Jo: But I don’t see it that way. 

Paul: They’ve been really clear that they aren’t doing that. 

Mary Jo: And Wall street wants them to dump the console not necessarily the service.  So this is more a buy to build up the service than it is the console itself.  Then there’s Hadoop, guys there’s Hadoop too. 

Leo: Is there Hadoop in?

Paul: In Minecraft?

Mary Jo: I bet there is going to be some Azure connection.  Hosting Minecraft on Azure.  Using big data to process the results.  Who knows?

Leo: Paul just think of all the great Photoshop pictures you’re going to be able to post on your blog from now on.  Weird Minecraft maps.  You’re just going to have so much fun. 

Paul: Yikes. 

Leo: Enough of that.  It’s just a rumor but it did come from the Wall Street Journal which is a little bit.

Mary Jo: Yeah I bet it’s going to happen.
Paul: You think so?

Mary Jo: Especially since Bloomberg is hearing it too. 

Leo: Although we thought for sure, it was more than rumor Google, Youtube buying Twitch no doubt about it.  Then something went wrong in the final due diligence and boom Amazon’s got them.  But they are in play.  I don’t think they were in play.  I don’t think Notch really wanted to sell Minecraft but I think along comes a guy with a 2 billion dollar check and he’s going hmmm.

Paul: I was going to say I don’t care what if you want to sell or not sell.  If someone shows up offering 2 billion dollars for anything you’ll give it to them. 

Leo: MSN, I got an email the other day from somebody who said you keep recommending last pass but you know it doesn’t work at MSN.  It’s like what?  You’re using what?  I don’t like use a browser I want to use MSN for my Internet.

Paul: MSN software.  By the way you can still download that right now. 

Leo: It’s still around?

Paul: Yeah.  I don’t think anyone is using it per say. 
Leo: Well this guy was.

Paul: Right well I am sure there is a handful of people.  But yeah you can find the software still if you want it.  But that’s not what MSN is. 

Leo: What is MSN?

Paul: That’s a good question Leo. 

Mary Jo: Especially after this week it’s a good question.

Paul: MSN has evolved or devolved however you want to say it of the years.  Obviously it started out as the Microsoft network which was Microsoft’s online service to take on AOL and Compuserve and so forth back in the Windows 95 days.  It briefly was an ISP type thing, it was a content service.  Remember Mungo Park and all those kinds of things.  Actually Microsoft still does some things like that. 

Leo: What was Mungo park?  It was an interactive website where people were actually going someplace and I think it was in Africa.  I think they were doing interactive things on the web.  In a way before that sort of thing was super easy to do, like we can do now.  But it became over time the predecessor to Windows Live.  Meaning the part of Microsoft that did their online service’s and their online applications like messenger.  Messenger started out as probably Windows Messenger, but it was MSN messenger, became Windows Live messenger over time.  But then they went with the Windows Live brand.  They wanted to bring it back into the Windows fold.  At that time I think that’s where MSN started listing a little bit.  MSN at that point became a Netscape style web portal or like an AOL style web portal.  If you go to MSN.com what you get is a new, celebrity news, weather, that kind of stuff. You can sign in with your Microsoft account but to us here in the United States MSN is a brand from the past.  But what we don’t really understand in certain parts of the world for whatever the reason MSN is in fact pretty popular.  In fact it is in the top 10 of Web destinations in many countries.  I think the figure that Microsoft gave me if I remember correctly was somewhere north of 450 million active users of this web portal.  It’s probably that people have it as their homepage or whatever.  To everyone’s surprise Microsoft this past week announced that they are rebranding some of their products and services that used to be under Bing as MSN products and services.   For example we’ve talked a lot in the podcast about the incredible Bing content apps that were part first of Windows 8 and then now part of Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.  Bing News, Bing Sports, Bing Travel, Bing Health and Fitness, Bing Food and Drink.  I’m missing a few here, Weather.

Mary Jo: Finance. 

Paul: Bing Finance which is being renamed to Money or something.  Those apps are going to be rebranded as MSN apps.  Actually the MSN part is going to be emphasized in the apps.  They will just be News, Sports, whatever.  But I think the reason for it is they can have a web presence for this stuff at MSN.com.  If you got to preview at MSN.com now you can see it.  What that means is every one of those apps which are frankly pretty amazing.  And today at least for a short time now are major selling points I would say for Windows and Windows phone.  They all have unique integration capabilities.  For example in the news app you can choose which news sources you want.  You can have news alerts and you can follow news stories and things like that.  I’ve actually have programed it with company names from the tech industry so I can follow that kind of thing.  Health and Fitness works as you would expect.  Health devices including the fitbit I am  wearing so you can track nutrition, weight, activity and exercise.  This is a way to have that functionality on the web.  So previously it was only available on these apps, now it’s available on the web.  Starting later this year they will be available in mobile app form on IOS and Android as well.  Of course that’s going to freak some people out because it’s always contingent.  They can’t stand when Microsoft does anything that’s not a Windows.  But I would just tell you and I think Mary Jo would agree if you’ve ever used these apps they’re fantastic.  Getting them out to more people via the web and again on these other platforms I think makes lots of sense. 

Mary Jo: They had a whole dedicated team under Bing called the Bing App X team, for application experience.  Their job was to show people that you could build metro style apps like Windows store apps that were really cool and useful and not just really simplistic and kind of lame.   So they did that and they built them for Windows phone and Windows.  Now that same team is the one that’s courting them to IOS and Android.  I believe those apps are written in HTML.

Paul: Yeah they were at least in the beginning.  I was just going to say something to that effect. 

Mary Jo: So that should make it at least in theory fairly easy to move them over.  The rebranding is kind of odd although you just made it make a lot more sense, Paul.  When you said it was because of the commonality of MSN page and then the apps. 
Paul: Yeah because I don’t think this would make a lot of sense on Bing.com. 

Mary Jo: I wouldn’t, no.  I like this thing that they call the status strip I think at the top of the page where they have Outlook and Xbox.  You can just go right into your apps there and you can even go into Facebook or Twitter there too. 

Paul: Yeah Leo if you can mouse over Outlook and just hold it there a second.  It has a fly down.  It’s kind of a neat little front end to your Microsoft stuff.

Leo: What it strikes me as, this is a portal which is kind of an old school way of doing things.  Although a lot of people my age like portals.  But then if you’re going to use a portal it’s kind of an introduction to Microsoft services and others because Facebook is on there too.

Paul: Right. 

Leo: It really feels like this is a way to get people into the 21st century a little bit.

Mary Jo: It’s like Yahoo now.

Leo: It’s very much like my Yahoo. 

Mary Jo: It reminds me of Yahoo a lot.

Paul: By the way I didn’t invent this phrase but for those people who are freaking out about the MSN thing for whatever reason because we all have the tendency.  If I don’t see it out in the world it’s not popular.  Because you in New York experience everything the whole world experiences, or you in San Francisco experience everything that the whole world experiences.  It’s not really how it works.  Someone said online I think on Twitter, the way to think about this is Bing is Microsoft’s Google.  MSN is Microsoft’s Yahoo.  In that sense this move actually does make sense. 

Leo: They aren't going to eliminate the Bing name are they?

Mary Jo: No.  They’re not, I asked them that.  Because that was my first thought.  I was like wow I think they are rebranding Bing as MSN or something.  They said nope we’re not.

Leo: That would be nuts.

Mary Jo: A lot of people were say oh they are doing this so that means they’re selling Bing off.  Nope they’re not doing that either.  Don’t read too much into it.

Leo: I’m surprised they didn’t go all in on Bing. 

Paul: Originally they did.  I went back and looked at my notes because when Windows 8 launched this was it, it was Bing powered.  These apps why are they Bing apps, they are Bing powered.  I want to say in the original, I don’t remember the exact sequence of events but I think originally in Windows 8 there was a Bing app.  Just one Bing app.  That was the say they sort of did it.  Then they started coming up with these content apps.  So then they had one for news, finance, sport and one for weather I think.  Obviously there was a Bing maps as well.  Which will retain the Bing identity.    I don’t remember really how it came about but some of those things, like are you doing a Bing search for news is that what this app is?  That’s not really what it is, what it is, is Microsoft getting out of the content game.  Because Microsoft isn’t producing this content.  They don’t hire reporters to write news stories. 

Mary Jo: They used to though.

Paul: Yeah they did.  But now they are paying for an aggregating content from high quality news sources like the Associated Press, Loiters, New York Times, etc.  It’s easy to explain the news parts of it.  I don’t really know the news sources that are or the information sources that will be in like Health and Fitness.  But those are the organization in those fields who are well regarded.  Each one of those are kind of nice like that.  So it’s a way for normal people to get high quality information in those categories and not have to do a lot of the work themselves.  Mary Jo and I spend a lot of time or do spend a lot of time looking at very specific kinds of news.  We have our own ways of going about that.  But most people just want to know what going on.  I think these apps do a fantastic job of doing that.

Leo: Weren’t they hiring a lot of people to do Bing news and sports and all that?  That’s gone?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Well they got out of content.

Leo: That lasted about a month. 

Mary Jo: No, a couple years maybe.  I think they were hiring them around when Windows 8 was being launched so I think they had them for a couple years.

Leo: I think you’re right, yeah. 

Mary Jo: I think they still have a few people doing news, right Paul?

Paul: Possibly.

Mary Jo: They are like doing certain kinds of content but not like competing with news organizations.  More like complementary content I guess. 

Paul: It’s not their focus.  Microsoft will do a good job developing software that will let you read the news.  Microsoft is not necessarily where you want to go to get the source of the news.  So this kind of makes sense. 

Leo: It was to polish up those apps to make them beautiful and good looking.

Paul: They are, they are beautiful.  In fact the very first thing I ever said to those folks when I talked to them after the initial batch was released was these things are gorgeous are you going to release this framework so that other developers can make apps that look like this.  They were like oh no we never really thought about that.  There’s still nothing to that end, not that I am aware of.  But I think that would be a cool thing they could do as well.

Leo: You caught me in the middle of a sandwich, hold on.

Mary Jo: It’s alright. Sorry.

Leo: Could you keep talking.  Sorry.

Paul: Yeah the point is if you want to see what this stuff is like you should go to preview.msn.com and check it out.  You can make that your version of MSN.  Sign in with your Microsoft account.  I wrote an article that explains what each one of those services/apps that provides that’s unique in terms of integrations.  So you can find out that kind of stuff.  When I wrote the Windows 8.1 book instead of describing every single feature in these apps that’s what I focused on when you go into the Health and Fitness app you can connect your information up to Microsoft Health.  You can create a fitness goal like I want to lose 50 lbs in the next 6 months and I want to exercise.  It will tell you how much you need to exercise, how many calories you can consume.  You can keep track of all that stuff.  You can put in your height and weight and all that kinds of stuff.  Each one of the apps has things like that.  Sports has your favorite teams and favorite sports.  So you can see news just about that stuff or you can see general sports news. 

Leo: Let’s talk hardware.  Surface Pro, is there anything new about the Pro? 

Paul: Yeah mine came up lame today.  For the first time in the early in the summer.  I have heard from a few people.  This is the situation you hit a power button and you wait nothing happens, you kind of tap on the keyboard and nothing happens and you’re like what’s going on here.  Then you have to do that thing where you hold down the power button and volume up for 12 seconds which is really like 40 seconds.  But you eventually get it back.  But it’s a weird thing that happens to this machine.  It happened remember that month before it was publicly released and they issued like a firmware fix for that.  I’ve had a few people say with the most recent firmware update this has happened.  I kind of took note of that and then just today I went to turn it on and I was like what’s going on here.  So I don’t know if there’s another problem but when there is a firmware update we get it.

Leo: Would you not recommend this hardware for people given these problems? 

Paul: No actually I still really really like the Surface Pro 3.  It’s incredibly portable, it’s incredibly powerful.  It’s an actual PC, it’s good as a tablet. It’s the type of thing that’s wonderful to take on a plane because it has a built in kickstand and it’s not humongous.  If the person in front of you puts the seat down it doesn’t matter.  I still really really enjoy it.  It’s kind of a tough love thing.  But yeah it’s weird.  To be fair this is only the 2nd time this has ever happened to me.  Hopefully it’s not a new thing.  It’s been reliable overall.  They did release this firmware update, actually you may know because we talk about it every month.  Every patch Tuesday they release firmware updates for all Surface models.  Not every single one gets a firmware update every month.  This month was unique in that only Surface Pro 3 got firmware updates.  I think there were 4 or 5 of them.  One of them appears to fix the long standing WiFi problem people have been reporting.

Leo: Which they fixed once before and now they’ve fixed again. 

Paul: Possibly twice before.

Mary Jo: They’ve fixed it a few times. 

Paul: 3rd times a charm as you know with Microsoft.  This is one I can honestly say I haven’t experienced since the general availability of the product.

Leo: Paul by now I would be throwing this thing against the wall.  I don’t understand your patience. 

Paul: No I haven’t had the WiFi problem.  This is one of those things I’ve heard people complain about. 

Leo: You’ve had other problems but not that one. 

Paul: No I just had this problem the startup problem but I haven’t had this problem since June.  Since before it came out.  My experience by in large has been very positive. 

Leo: So don’t be deceived by all these reports then.

Paul: No, no I don’t mean to discount anything people have complained about I am sure people really are seeing what they are seeing.  Some people said this firmware update made their machines run cooler which is a particular issue on the I7 versions.  I don’t have such a machine so I can’t really say how that works.  I am curious now about how this thing will work.  I am going to turn it off and turn it back on. 

Leo: So you were able to get it back? 

Paul: Yeah.  You might recall back in June I think this happened to me when I went on a trip to Colorado.  The machine hadn’t come out publicly yet and they were promising a fix.  I woke up one morning in the hotel and it was the only machine I traveled with which is so wonderful unless it doesn’t come on and I couldn’t get it to come on and I was freaking out.  When I got to work I had to borrow a laptop at work.  I contacted Microsoft and they explained to me the secret handshake that you’ve got to do and that will always bring it back.  It does and it did at that time and it did today too.  As long as you know the trick, you’re good to go.

Leo: Anything else about the Surface Pro 3? 

Paul: No that’s about it.  I haven’t mentioned of the HP laptop.  We were all excited back in July when they talked about 191.

Leo: It’s not really 200 bucks? 

Paul: Yeah so HP just put their preview page up for it and it’s 300 dollars not 200 dollars.  Which is still a really good deal for that kind of hardware. 

Leo: Here’s a lesson on how to disappoint people with a 300 dollar price.  Say it’s 200 dollars for a while and then.

Paul: I have a theory though.

Mary Jo: Paul I wanted to ask you about this.  Remember the place that we heard this price was at the Worldwide partner conference when Kevin Turner held it up and said yeah this is coming.  I remembered some people said he was talking about 2 different laptops from HP.

Paul: Yeah the HP Stream that was just announced is a 14 inch device.  It looks a lot like their Chromebook.  A slightly different processor but really similar, same price.  The thing he held up looked like an 11 inch mini laptop.  So it’s possible there’s an HP Stream coming that will be an 11 inch version for $199.  I guess if you’re looking for a company that can communicate even worse than Microsoft I think we may have found it.  Given all the excitement over the 200 dollar laptop I think they might have said by the way we’ve got 2 of these things and one of them is 200 bucks.  If that’s the case.

Leo: I think that is the case.  Because as I’ve looked I’ve seen both. 

Paul: It looks great. 

Leo: It’s only 100 bucks.  Come on it’s Windows 8 and everything. 

Paul: I have a 300 dollar laptop that looks like a tank from East Germany in the 1970’s.  It really is fine.  This machine the 300 dollar Stream is a beautiful looking machine.  It really is attractive.  It’s nice.  That’s notable. 

Leo: Let’s take a break when we come back the Verge says Microsoft’s dropping the Nokia and Windows Phone branding.  I don’t know what that means. 

Paul: Virtually everyone is saying that.  The Verge reporting.  I have a slightly different take on that. 

Leo: I want to get your take.

Mary Jo: Yeah we should, we don’t have it in our notes but we could add it. 

Leo: And there is other Window Phone news.

Paul: I almost Tweeted that during the show and then I decided to hold off on it.  Because that’s not really what that says.

Leo: See that’s why we tune in because we want to know what the experts say.

Paul: Well no this is someone who can actually read a piece of paper. 

Leo: That’s good enough it makes you an expert.  Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley are here.  Our show today is brought to you by IT Pro TV.  It’s funny I am talking more and more to TWIT viewers who have signed up for IT Pro TV and are thrilled with it.  It is a way to polish your IT skills or maybe get the IT skills and get a better job.  I know a lot of people who watch TWIT love technology but they’re not working in technology and they say boy it would be really cool if I could get into it.  The key is getting those skills and maybe even more important getting that piece of paper that says you have the skills.  They call them the certs, the certifications and there is no better way to get those certs than IT Pro TV.  Tim and Don the founders of IT Pro TV were trainers.  They were teaching people how to do this stuff for years.  They saw what we did on TWIT they were big fans of the screen savers and they said what can we do to make it easier to get the certs, To get to learn.  They created IT Pro TV.  They use the same tricaster, they use the same microphones.  They have a beautiful studio.  They broadcast 30 hours a week live with live chat room.  So just like us you can get in there ask questions and participate.  IT Pro TV is a great solution for anybody who wants to learn and get the certs.  Whether it’s A+, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, CCNA,  Security Plus, they even have Linux Plus certifications now.  So you can learn anything.  Windows OS 10 Lenox.  You can get a better job.  It’s fun to watch, you can watch on your computer, your tablet or they also have a ROKU app.  That’s really nice because it means you can have it running in the house all the time.  There’s Don and Tim.  This is the video on the IT Pro TV site explaining what they are doing and why they started IT Pro TV.  It really is fantastic.  They have a special deal.  If you’re fans of Windows Weekly and you go to itpro.tv/ww.  There they are they’re such geeks.  You can get a big discount.  Let me tell you before I tell you what the discount is.  With IT Pro TV you get those 30 hours a week live, you get many many courses.  100’s of hours that they’ve recorded live.  It’s cheaper than going to an IT boot camp, it’s actually comparable to buying one book.  It’s interactive.  They have measureup practice exams before you take the real thing.  That’s worth 79 bucks just by itself.  They also have a virtual machine sandbox lab you can use with any HTML5 browser. If you don’t have Windows Server or you don’t have Clients or if you’re afraid of messing up your work network.  You can set it all up in their virtual lab.  Mess it up all you want and it really is cool.  Here’s the deal, normally 57 dollars a month, 570 dollars for the entire year. You’ll get 30% off for the life of your account. That means it’s less than $40 per month. You buy a year, it’s $399. I mean that is a great deal! Just check out how much it costs if you study for these certs at a technical school. And you’ll see, wow I’m saving a lot of money. Plus 30% off. Itpro.tv/ww for the introductory tour. There’s lots of free content so you can see what they do. When you decide to buy use the code WW30 and get 30% off. It pays for itself because you’re going to get a better job; itpro.tv/ww.

Paul’s laughing! Wait a minute, I’m sorry he’s reading his Family Circus comic for the day.

Paul: It’s funny you mention Family Circus. I bug people about that.

Leo: You are in the Family Circus. That’s your life, Family Circus. The unfunniest comic ever written.

Paul: I used to live in Phoenix where Little King, is that the guy?

Leo: Yea, King.

Paul: I was just laughing at my own internal joke. I saw an Android website where this is the lead headline: the best calculator apps for Android. That’s some hard-hitting coverage right there. That’s good.

Leo: I’ll make a note of that. I need some good calculator apps.

Paul: Because you know, I’m going to spend time on the calculator apps.

Leo: Doesn’t every phone have a calculator app?

Paul: I mean seriously. I like the light on this flashlight app better than the other one.

Leo: The ten best flashlight apps. Windows Phone, let’s talk Windows Phone. By the way Windows Phone does come with a calculator, ladies and gentlemen.

Paul: Yes, there’s also some nice flashlight apps built in.

Leo: Yes there are. No need to suffer.

Mary Jo: So there’s been a bunch of rumors about how Microsoft is going to get its branding house in order since they brought Nokia in. There’s been talk, I think Evleaks was the first one who was talking about this saying there was a whole schedule that Microsoft had. Where they were going to phase out the Nokia brand. And of course a lot of people outside of the U.S. said that’s going to be suicide because outside the U.S. that brand is huge. And it still sounded like that was the plan. He was saying it was going to be 18 months after the close of the acquisition and it was going to be through December 31, 2015. I think they had a plan of a staggered roll-out. So today, a site that I didn’t know called geekongadgets.com say they have an internal document from Microsoft that says Microsoft is going to hide the Nokia brand from all their products starting this Christmas season.

Leo: Didn’t they say that already?

Mary Jo: No, kind of.

Paul: Actually here’s the thing. If you go in and look at this document that I’m assuming they’re publishing it in full and it’s not just a page of something bigger. What it says is as part of a phase transition, we will drop the manufacturer name from product references during the holiday campaign. The holiday campaign is an advertising campaign. So does that just mean they’re not going to say Nokia in ads? Or does that actually mean they’re going to remove the Nokia name from actual products? I think it’s the ads.

Mary Jo: Maybe if there are phones though that come out this holiday season, they might just be Lumia not Nokia.

Paul: Maybe they will but I’m not entirely sure that that’s what that says. In other words, I don’t doubt that Microsoft is going to drop the Nokia name over time from these products. We know that they’re using the Lumia name instead of Nokia of the apps which makes plenty of sense. I like that they’re keeping the Lumia name; I think that that’s also smart. But I don’t look at this and say this is conclusive proof that this is happening. I look at this and say you know you could read this a couple different ways.

Mary Jo: Yea.

Leo: And this comes from your years of parsing…

Paul: Of being able to read, Leo. Of my Dedham Public School education actually doing something positive for a change.

Leo: I can read! says Paul Thurrott! But, okay a couple things. First of all we’ve talked about this several times. Microsoft did in the purchase agreement retain the right to use the Nokia name through 2018. For years. But, Nokia does continue to sell phones, right? They’re selling their own low-end phones.

Paul: Microsoft does.

Leo: Nokia doesn’t sell any phones at all?

Mary Jo: No.

Leo: Oh, they can! In a couple of years they can?

Paul: They can start again. Those will be new.

Mary Jo: That will be in 2015, I think.

Paul: By the way, you’ve got to be insane to enter the phone market.

Leo: I don’t think they will but next year they could. And if I’m Microsoft, I want to kind of wean people off of that name to avoid brand confusion. And they should.

Mary Jo: And there’s a company still named Nokia, right? That’s a whole different company now that has maps and Telco stuff. It doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to have that brand now because there’s a company named Nokia that’s a different company.

Leo: The only argument is that Nokia, not so much in the U.S. but all over the world, is a very powerful brand. That’s the only counter-argument to it.

Mary Jo: It is. Yea.

Paul: Are they though, anymore? It’s like Sears.

Leo: What good is Sears? Everybody knows it but what does it mean?

Paul: They’ve been a big brand for a long time. But I don’t know.

Leo: Nokia’s a big brand, isn’t it?

Paul: It’s fading quick.

Leo: We got a couple of German visitors. That’s a powerful brand in Germany. I don’t think Microsoft may be quite as powerful a brand. Certainly not if you’re buying a phone. I don’t know.

Paul: They have to walk…

Leo: I swear to God I saw a Nokia phone in the Star Trek movie. There is a Nokia phone in the future. Right? Am I wrong?

Paul: Nokia phones used to be, they were so unusual. You’d see them in movies.

Leo: Captain Kirk had a Nokia phone. Remember he… okay, I’m just saying. So we know there has to be a Nokia in the future.

Mary Jo: It’s out there somewhere.

Paul: We also know the PowerBook computer is going to save us from aliens.

Mary Jo: That’s right. There’s another thing on this guy’s post though. Geek on Gadgets says furthermore the document also reveals Microsoft’s going to take away the Windows Phone logo. And just start using Windows instead of Windows Phone.

Paul: It doesn’t show us that part of the document though.

Mary Jo: It does not show us that part, right. Michael Gillett who is a long-time Windows watcher. He has a new blog called piptell.com; he I think a week or so ago was saying I think Microsoft is going to drop the phone off of this. And it’s just going to be powered by Windows. Windows Phones powered by Windows or something.

Leo: Why not?

Paul: So it’s a Windows Phone with a small P.

Mary Jo: In a way this makes sense, and in another way a lot of people are like this is going to be super confusing because Windows Phone, no this is not Windows. I don’t know.

Paul: Well it sort of is.

Mary Jo: It is, it’s going to be more and more like that, right? As they go towards the one Windows.

Paul: They have a serious brand problem here. I actually think the Windows name is one of the biggest problems with the Windows Phone.

Mary Jo: And you know what, the Windows brand is just in many ways just like the MSN brand. It’s a very much more loved brand outside the U.S. than inside the U.S.

Paul: Really?

Mary Jo: There are countries where people think it is a huge and very valued brand. And Microsoft has all kinds of studies showing this. So they’re keeping it. In a way, Windows still is Microsoft. So it would be tough to totally drop that and get away from that.

Leo: To be fair, the chat room is pointing out that the Nokia phone in Star Trek did go off a cliff. Whoops, in Hebrew apparently.

Paul: This is the new Star Trek?

Leo: This is the new Star Trek; that’s the young James Kirk driving a Corvette with a Nokia phone which he then drove off the cliff.

Mary Jo: So maybe there is no future.

Paul: So James T. Kirk killed Nokia is what we’re saying.

Leo: Thank you, chat room for that link. And now this entire podcast will be taken down by J. J. Abrams. I have to tell you, I am always nervous when it’s a gadget blog I have never heard of.

Mary Jo: Same.

Leo: They could make stuff up. They often do.

Paul: Well the Windows brand thing that Mary Jo was just talking about has been making the rounds.

Mary Jo: It has.

Paul: So it would be very easy to draw some credence to this other thing by saying oh by the way it also says this! And we all know that’s true. I think like Mary Jo; there’s a certain amount of sense to dropping the Windows Phone thing. Because right now they are and they seem like two different things. And I think it does make sense to make it one thing at this point. So I think we’ll see that soon when Windows 9 becomes Windows. That’s just a guess though. I think they should do that.

Leo: Yea, it makes sense. Branding is tough.

Mary Jo: It is.

Leo: It’s really tough. And there’s these companies that spend big bucks with consultants and research and studies and there’s still no clear right answer. Look at Apple. Apple has named the watch a watch. There’s an Apple logo which can’t be reproduced on anything but Apple hardware… watch. Its name is watch. Or maybe square, because Windows…

Paul: When you look at it on their site, it literally says watch at the top.

Leo: So they didn’t make that up. It wasn’t like Tim Cook’s great idea. They hired consultants. They paid lots of money for that.

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: Yep. They all do that, right? Remember when Microsoft was trying to figure out how to brand Bing? They spent millions of dollars; they had all these tests and multiple trademarks. They came up with Bing. Kumo was a choice.

Leo: Well that’s another issue. You’re in a global marketplace now so words don’t mean the same all over the world. So it’s tricky. And you have to get the website.

Mary Jo: And you have think about how it sounds in different languages. I kumo’d it!

Leo: Bing is actually pretty good.

Mary Jo: It’s not that bad.

Leo: Except, it sounds like a little toy-like. And so in America and in English, it sounds like it’s not serious. But of course, does Google sound serious?

Paul: That’s right.

Leo: We live in a weird world. AT&T is going to have the 830. What is the Lumia to get these days? Now that my 1520 is dead.

Paul: You need a matrix based on wireless carrier. And the problem with the 1520, trying to replace that or a 1020 for that matter, is that there isn’t one that good. The 820 is more of a mid-level device not a flagship device. They call it the affordable flagship. But it has a 10 megapixel camera as opposed to a 21 on the 1520, and a 41 on the 1020.

Leo: I feel like they’re not going to sell any more of those super-megapixel phones.

Paul: So, I’ve heard that they are. And that we need to be patient.

Leo: Oh, good. Because look at what Apple made a lot of hay on the camera in the new iPhone.

Paul: I don’t know, Mary Jo if you see this kind of thing. I have grown a little distraught lately at the reactions that everything gets these days. Nokia, Microsoft announces these two mid-level phones and everyone’s freaking out and what about Verizon? What about AT&T? I still need something to replace my Lumia 920. The Lumia 920 is like two years old. They’ve had a 1020 and a 1520 since then.

Mary Jo: I think they’re just saying it’s the end of my two-year contract so I’m in the market and I want a used phone. I want a flagship.

Leo: Isn’t this the big quarter for buying phones?

Mary Jo: Right before the holidays, right?

Paul: I think we’re going to see new stuff by the end of the year on those carriers.

Leo: We know the 830 will be on AT&T because Steven Elop said so.

Mary Jo: And T-Mobile, too right? Somebody from T-Mobile tweeted at the end of last… yea, T-Mobile as well. So that’s good.

Leo: Yea, I think you’re right.

Paul: The 735 is going to be on Verizon according to Daniel Rubino over at Windows Phone central. Those new phones that come into the U.S. wasn’t what I was told, but great. I’m glad to hear that. Good, so that’s good. And again, if you’re waiting for the high-end thing, I get it. The 1520 is perfectly viable today. There’s nothing wrong with it. Some people think it’s too big; that I understand. What we need basically is the 930 which is the international version of the icon on AT&T. I would love to have that on AT&T. And so we’ll see what they do. I think we’re going to hear about something very soon.

Mary Jo: The rumor is the successor to the 1020, right? So something with a super-duper camera maybe.

Paul: Yea.

Leo: Ah, interesting.

Mary Jo: But I haven’t heard that first-hand.

Leo: What about this Blue phone?

Paul: Daniel Rubino again had tweeted something about this the other day. This Blue phone is now available on Amazon for $89. And he ordered one and reviewed it or you know kind of did a hands-on thing with it. And if you’re familiar with the low-end Nokia phones available today, you know there is a 530 that replaced the 520. And that phone is garbage. This is comparable to that but better in almost every conceivable way. And it’s super cheap, $89 to start with no contract.

Leo: It’s the Win-Junior.

Paul: I know it has a silly name. But if you go to Windows Phone Central and see what he wrote about it, the camera quality is decent for what it is. The build quality is excellent. And a much nicer phone than the 530 in the same price range. If you’re going to compare it to the 635 which on no contract is closer to the $125, possibly the $140 range. The 635 is a bigger screen, slightly better specs. But they’re actually pretty comparable according to Daniel which I would trust.

Leo: While Apple is eschewing the low-end, it looks like the real roundhouse or sweet spot for Microsoft is in these low-end phones.

Paul: And that’s where they’ve seen success.

Leo: Nothing wrong with that.

Mary Jo: Nope.

Paul: When you make Windows Phone in this case or Windows available for free on low-cost or low-end devices, you’re going to get those devices. And this is one of 20 or so that are coming out year.

Leo: There’s nothing wrong with that. And so Microsoft will continue to make mostly high-end featured phones as Lumia’s. And then there’s a big market…

Paul: You’ll see a few. You won’t see as many because they just don’t make as much sense for this market. Obviously Microsoft, as they do with Surface, they need a showcase for what’s possible with Windows Phone. They also need volume and let’s face it market share really does matter. They need numbers, too.

Leo: It’s very interesting. It’s a much more fragmented market than it used to be.

Mary Jo: Yep. I’ve asked a couple times recently, so are you guys getting out of the flagship space and leaving that to OEMs? Are you just done and only focusing low or mid-range? They keep saying no.

Paul: Right, me too. I met with them to see the 830 and the 730, 735, and I said look I’m sorry I have to ask because people are going to bitch and moan about this. You are going to have follow-ups that are actually high-end phones, right? And they’re like well we’re not talking about that today. And I’m like no, I get that. But you are at some point? And it was like, oh of course. It was silly to even ask. I’m like you understand that I have to ask because people freak out about everything. People freaked out about the MSN naming thing we talked about earlier. People freaked out because these phones were not high-end phones and that’s what apparently they want.

Mary Jo: The people we talk to on Twitter are the people who want the flagship phones. That’s our audience.

Paul: Oh I want one too. I look at the 830 and I think actually as a phone, this meets my needs, I think. I mean I’ll have to spend actual time with it and take my own photos and all that.

Mary Jo: It’s nice and thin though.

Paul: Actually I thought about this later. We talked about this last week. You have an Icon, don’t you?

Mary Jo: I do.

Paul: Yea, so an Icon is a fairly large phone. It’s big and heavy and thick. Especially compared to your 8X. The nice thing about the 830 is it’s that basic, it’s literally that design but thinned down. Not exactly 50%, but it’s so much thinner and lighter. And those two phones, the new ones, the 730, 735, and 830, they’re so light it’s almost silly. And if you have any background at all with Nokia devices, you know going back to the 800 and 920 or whatever; a lot of these phones are dense and heavy. These new ones are not like that.

Leo: There’s a little risk too though. Doing low-end stuff. Windows Phone Central also has a review of the Yezz Billy which they saw at EFA.

Paul: Another great name for a phone by the way.

Mary Jo: Named after Bill Gates.

Paul: Throwing random letters together.

Leo: Bill Gates. They said it’s terrible, underpowered. That’s the risk also, is that when there’s crap out there and people try it, they might just assume oh these Windows Phones are awful. That’s why Microsoft has to make flagship phones.

Paul: By the way, last Saturday I set out to do a bunch of errands. And among those errands was to visit T-Mobile and AT&T and kind of figure out what I want to do in the future for a wireless carrier. I walked into the T-Mobile store and I literally walked into the store, a woman helping a guy buy a phone. And she said it actually, for the same price over here, we have this Windows Phone you may want to look at. And he said what’s this? And it was a 635. And the guy said this is only whatever it was, the price $99 or $129. And she said yea. And he said yea, I’ll take this. I was like what is this alternate universe I just walked into? I was like sign me up, I love this place!

Leo: I love T-Mobile. I am a very happy T-Mobile customer. And you know I’m going to London in two weeks. And I went online to say what’s going to be the international plan. There is no international plan.

Paul: Well you can pay more to get 4G coverage.

Leo: Can you? Because you only get 2G. It’s unlimited 2G for free.

Paul: Which by the way, I used it in Spain the whole time we were there.

Leo: It works fine, right?

Paul: Yea, it worked fine.

Leo: And unlimited international texting which frankly is the most important thing to me.

Paul: And the cheap calling without doing anything. Literally just bring the phone, you don’t do any switches or airplane mode. You just bring your phone.

Leo: So I looked and I couldn’t find, because I thought what if I want to buy a 4G package.

Paul: You can.

Leo: I didn’t see that, I’ll have to look.

Paul: You may have to talk to someone. You can.

Leo: I don’t want to talk to… I should go to a special group for people who don’t want to talk to people and only want to talk to; wait a minute. Their phones, here we go, we have it. Here is that special group, thanks to Microsoft.

[Voices]: Okay everyone, we’re here to talk openly about our relationships. Who would like to begin? Jake? Feel betrayed! Anyone else? Clay? I guess I was expecting too much. I’m a spontaneous guy and it seems like when I’m ready to go out, she just can’t keep up. So everyone was expecting more from Siri. She doesn’t understand a single thing about me. We all saw the commercials. Her hanging out with celebrities, acting all cool and stuff. I want to, you know, be a part of stuff. Same here. But when I ask her of something, it’s the same old story. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Noodles, noodles! Do you guys understand that? She doesn’t! She got them from me. Oh we get them from this guy but not from me. That’s not fair! Look at him! Blaine, it just seems like I have to think of everything. Where’s the spontaneity? An occasional suggestion would be nice. Well actually I’ve heard that Cortana does that. I’ve heard nice things about Cortana, too. When were you planning on sharing that? I’m here to help you with your relationships, not end them. I want to end my relationship. If you jump from one relationship to the other, you’ll never grow. Cortana does that; she grows with you. She picks up on your likes and adapts to you.

Leo: This didn’t air on TV obviously.

Paul: I think they’re chopping it up for TV.

How do you know so much about Cortana? Well, I just… Lina, is there something you’d like to share? I’m sorry, I do not understand.

Mary Jo: Oh, that’s cute.

Leo: This is really good. That’s a good ad. And of course it’s a Microsoft ad for the Lumia 635. Notice, Lumia, no Nokia on that ad by the way. I can read too, you know.

Mary Jo: You’re not the only one.

Leo: Okay, we got to move here. Xbox.

Paul: Alright, we can get through this really quickly because it’s not Call of Duty. So, this month…

Leo: Ooh, don.

Paul: Ooh, don. Xbox One is heading up to 29 markets this month. Some of that’s already happening. It’s already happened. It’s happened over the course of the month and so some of these, six or seven of these, were countries they were originally going to launch last holiday season. Then they pulled back in August or September. Now it’s finally happening. So it only took about a year. But Xbox by the end of this month should be basically in most of the markets you can get a PS4 in. So it will be even more embarrassing when we don’t beat the PS4 after that.

Leo: It’s not numbers, Paul. Just keep saying this over and over. It’s not market share.

Paul: Really? Because I think it is. So, as you know, they have a new system update for Xbox One that comes in every month. So people are in the preview program and are getting early access to the October version of that. Which includes major improvements to the snap interface which drives me insane currently. I’m really looking forward to that.

Leo: Yea, snap doesn’t work well for me. And I want to use it for the NFL because I want to snap…

Paul: I fumble every time I use snap. It makes me crazy and I can tell looking at this, this is going to fix that. And so that’s good. There’s a bunch of other stuff but most of it is not that dramatic. The media player app, which is terrible, is going to get DNLA support so it’s not just USB. That’s nice. For me, that’s most of it. And what else? Mary Jo has an Xbox One star in here.

Leo: What, how did that happen?

Mary Jo: I just saw it, it’s not mine. I guess there is a small, quote small number of customers who are reporting excessive amounts of noise coming from their Xbox One consoles. Microsoft is replacing them.

Leo: Wow.

Paul: Are they replacing the ones that are too big for my living room?

Mary Jo: Yea, definitely.

Paul: Because I have that problem.

Leo: It’s too big for your living room?

Paul: It’s huge. My Volkswagen was smaller than this.

Leo: No it’s not. By the way, on my Xbox One, I don’t hear anything. It’s quiet. I love my Xbox One. It’s sitting right there under my curve screen TV and my stereo system in the rack there. And it looks gorgeous and I’m very happy.

Mary Jo: I don’t know how many elicit; they’re just saying the console is too loud.

Leo: Somebody has a big fan blade.

Paul: Where do you see this?

Mary Jo: Kotaku?

Leo: Kotaku; actually that’s a reliable gaming site.

Mary Jo: See I don’t ever go on gaming sites. I don’t even know how to say that word. But they’re saying that if you’re having…

Leo: It’s P-interest, Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: Exactly. Go to support.xbox.com and you can request a replacement if you’re one of those small number of people.

Leo: They’ll have my Xbox when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Paul: Have you filled up your internal hard drive yet, Leo?

Leo: Nope because remember I bought a 3 TB external drive.

Paul: Oh okay. Do you know how close you are to filling it, then? Because I think I’m at like seven.

Leo: Yes, because when it first boots up it doesn’t see the external drive. And that green bar goes ooh. And then, it says oh no, you have 2.9 TB left. And I go, thank you! It’s so nice. Just buy an external USB drive. It recognizes it; you don’t have to do anything. And it’s all there and the games get saved. And you know, games are big. Diablo was over 20 GB. Destiny is 18 GB. These things are massive.

Paul: Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Leo: By the way, I’m never going to buy another disk.

Paul: This is like when Apple added retina displays to devices and all of a sudden the games went from like 15 MB to 1.9 GB. This crazy jump.

Leo: But I am very happy. I played Diablo nonstop for three weeks.

Paul: Wow.

Leo: Love it.

Paul: Now is Diablo like a Call of Duty game? Because I don’t recall.

Leo: I feel so sorry for you, Paul.

Paul: But is it like Call of Duty?

Leo: You’re missing out on all of these, there’s Guacamelee. Play Guacamelee. Was it Daniel Rubino who told me how good that was? It’s one of those indie-games. Just so fun. Apparently somebody in the chat room is saying that Destiny which came out yesterday cost half a billion to make. You talk about how expensive movies are.

Paul: The opening cinematic is like the beginning of a Star Wars movie. It’s really impressive.

Leo: Apparently they made it all back in the first day.

Paul: Oh yea?

Mary Jo: Wow.

Leo: When I play Diablo 3 because I play it on the PC all the way through last year. And it’s so beautiful. There’s so much detail, so much art. It’s so big. I have to say, it’s a brave new world. Alright, oh I’m sorry.

Paul: We can skip the other stuff.

Leo: You asked Google for more search concessions. Apple announces new iPhones. Who cares? And you said the real star of the show, Tim Cook. But wait a minute, did you watch it where he touches Bono?

Paul: Oh, dear God. I think there could be a really funny video made of the most awkward moments ever in an Apple keynote. Like 27 were in yesterdays. From Phil Schiller’s horrible jokes that fell flat on everybody, I kept thinking okay I’ve now seen the most stilted fake moment I’ve ever seen in a keynote. And then Bono and him pretended to have an impromptu conversation about… that was so awful. What is wrong with that? Never do that again. It’s terrible.

Leo: Well it’s now a meme. It’s now a meme all over the place.

Paul: It’s like E.T. and Elliot putting their fingers together.

Leo: That’s exactly like… ouch. And now they’re making a steeple. I don’t know what they’re doing.

Paul: It’s so terrible. Please don’t make me…

Leo: That is weird.

Paul: Cringe-inducing.

Leo: It’s so cringe-inducing. And Tim Cook was so, he was so happy.

Paul: Goofily happy! I should say Tim Cook had his, last June Phil Schiller let out that can’t innovate my ass comment which was very telling about his actual perception. Tim Cook had that moment yesterday where he finally announced his own product. And he actually didn’t just cheer it, he ran out pumping his arms.

Leo: I think that’s what it was, exactly.

Paul: Wow, this is the weight of the world coming off this guy’s shoulders. I’ve never seen anything as off as that.

Leo: It was very clear.

Paul: It was very interesting.

Leo: We watched him. We had a camera crew down there and we watched him leaving the event signing autographs.

Paul: Was he like visibly shaking?

Leo: He was floating. His loafers were three inches off the ground. And rightly so. Tim’s been underneath Steve Jobs for 10 years.

Paul: Well it didn’t help that he announced it with one more thing thing. But, you know whatever.

Leo: That was a way of a nod. It was a nod. See, the Apple fans love that. We all went, he said one more thing!

Paul: Of course they do. If you try to get out of Steve Jobs’ shadow, evoking Steve Jobs is not necessarily the smartest thing to do.

Leo: You can’t ignore Steve.

Mary Jo: Oh c’mon. You’d love it, Paul. Wouldn’t you? I would.

Paul: No.

Mary Jo: It would be a nod, like hey we’re still around.

Paul: I have to think he would do it ironically. We’ll cross that bridge when it comes.

Leo: I can’t see Sacha hopping around on the stage. I can’t wait to see Ballmer’s first Clippers game.

Mary Jo: Oh I know, that’s going to be crazy, right?

Paul: Sports Center is already awesome enough. But they’re going to have top ten Ballmer moments on Sports Center.

Leo: I could see Steve throwing a chair on the court. I could see Steve running on the court, hugging a player.

Paul: The best day will be when they play the Mavericks and him and Mark Cuban can go at it. That’s going to be the best. They’ll throw beer at each other. It’s going to be awesome.

Leo: I can’t wait.

Paul: It’s like watching monkeys fight in a cage at the zoo.

Leo: Hey, we’re going to do the back of the book in just a second. We’ve got tips, tools, tricks, and beer all waiting for you. But first a word from Square Space. The secret behind some of the best websites in the world including our own inside TWiT blog, Square Space is a hosting platform. So they host your site. They also do the software that sits on top of your site to give you an amazing experience. Second to none. Your site will never go down, which is awesome. It’s everything you need. They start you with 25 templates. Now first of all, that’s not really the right word for what you’re starting with. It’s just a starting point and then you get to completely make it your own. But the beauty of these templates is all the hard work behind the scenes has been done. Mobile-responsive, so they look great on all size screens. Ecommerce on every one of them. State of the art HTML5, CSS; it’s the best. These guys know what they’re doing. If you should run into a problem, their customer service is the best. And it’s not outsourced. It’s from their offices at Square Space headquarters in New York City. So it’s really great. Complete analytics; they have apps for tablets and phones that make it easy to post. To measure analytics; they even have a little app on the website that you can use to design your logo. Great for photographers; they have an app, a portfolio app, that lets you pull the pictures from your site to present them to your client. I could just go on and on. But here’s the thing, you can try it free. You don’t have to listen to me, just visit squarespace.com, click the Get Started button. You get two weeks free, you don’t have to give them a credit card or pay them anything. If at the end of the two weeks you say you know what, this is pretty good. By the way you can completely import all your data. Every day you can have a different template. And then some. But if you decide to buy, use our offer code WINDOWS. You’ll get 10% off. Pay as little as $8 per month, including a free domain name when you sign up for a year. Squarespace.com. Just do me a favor, click that little Get Started button and try it today. I think you’re going to like it. If you decide to buy, use the offer code WINDOWS. Square Space is the better place for your next website. Paul Thurrott has the tip of the week! Paulie?

Paul: So today I just have two software picks, tips. Skype for Windows Phone got a pretty major update today. Three new things in there. The big one is location sharing. So this works via a Bing map. Sometimes people will be communicating on Skype on the go, and they want to say meet me at the, where are you type of thing like you would do on a phone. And this gives you a way from right inside the app to pinpoint your location for the other person on a Bing map. And then they can use that to get to you. That’s kind of a cool deal. The other two aren’t huge deals. Picture saving, meaning that if someone shares a picture with you, you can save it to your shared photos folder. And then chat notification management, meaning that if you’re in a chat with someone and you’re not in the app, typically you’ll get those toast notifications at the top of the screen. That can get annoying. If you want to turn off the chat notifications on a chat-by-chat basis, you can do so now in Windows Phone. And that’s for Windows Phone 8.0 and 8.1. You can get it at the Windows Phone store. The other one is kind of a fun one. You know, as Microsoft is going to move Windows forward, they’ve taken away some of the aero effects that we used to get in Windows 7. So Windows 8 has flat windows. They got rid of the Windows shadows and that kind of thing. There’s some people who hope they’ll bring some of that back in Windows 9. I don’t know about that. Our friends over at Stardock have created a new $5 utility called Shadow Effects. Which brings shadows back to Windows 8. But it actually does more than that. It makes shadows even better. So you can have colored shadows, like red or blue, or green. You can have shadows that are bright and vibrant or white, misty shadows. And they can emphasize in ways that were impossible even when we had shadows. Which window is in the forefront in a way that is visually excellent? I grabbed this one this morning. It’s funny, I never really missed the shadows. But I wanted to check this out. I like Brad and all their stuff. I was looking at this and this is kind of a cool utility. If you’re not sure if you want it, you can trial it for free for 30 days. So you can find that one over at stardock.com.

Leo: It’s $5 probably, right?

Paul: $5, yes.

Leo: They’re smart because it’s just shadows.

Paul: It’s just shadows but it’s also just $5.

Leo: You get the best of both worlds. You pay a little money for shadows. Enterprise pick of the week. Let’s delve into that with Mary Jo Foley.

Mary Jo: Nice Segway there. Delve is the enterprise pick of the week. So Delve, we’ve talked about on the show a couple times. It’s kind of like flip board for Office 365. You see all these cards as the interface. I have a picture if you want to see what it looks like, on my site. And it brings together all the different people and documents and relationships that you have. And that you give it authorization to see. So say somebody sent you something and you save it in one drive. Somebody sent you something and you save it on your PC. And then you’re in a meeting and you’re like, oh where did I save that? Delve goes out, finds it, and brings it all together in a real cleaner, easier way for you to find. So the reason it’s a pick this week is Microsoft is now starting to roll out for Office 365 users. So almost everybody who has an Office 365 business plan, not the Home or the Personal. You do not get it unless you have Small Business or Small Business Premium. Pretty much everybody who has a business plan is going to get this by the start of 2015. The people who are going to get it first are those who are in the first release program because they’ve elected to try stuff out early. Then the big plans will get it; the E, the A, and the G. The academic plans. And then finally Small Business and Small Business Premium. So it’s starting to roll out this week and it’s going to take them a few weeks. But you’re going to start seeing Delve if you’re an Office 365 user on the business plans.

Leo: Wow, that’s a cool idea. And it does it all automatically. It pulls it all in. That’s a good idea.

Mary Jo: Very cool.

Leo: Your code name, are we code naming?

Mary Jo: Yea, we’re code naming. So this was a really awesome little find I had before Microsoft pulled it off the web. Somebody, one of their partners accidentally or didn’t know he shouldn’t have done this; he dumped all their code names for the next two or three releases for CRM onto the web. He posted a road map slide that has like here’s what we’re going to do this fall. And here’s what we’re going to do in the spring next year. I called it Code-Name-appaloosa. There’s so many code names here. There’s like eight new dynamic CRM code names. The big one to know in the immediate term if you’re a Microsoft CRM customer is vega. And so they’re using constellation code names right now as their theme. And vega is the next major release of CRM on Prem. And CRM online, both. It’s going to be coming in the fall of this year, according to this road map. It’s going to support 29 new languages and supposedly support quote any device. So they’re really taking that whole cloud-first-mobile-first thing another step with CRM. The other interesting thing I saw is they’re adding power BI into a CRM web client as part of this release too. So if you’re into dynamic CRM and you want to see what’s coming, go check out that slide.

Leo: And who isn’t?

Mary Jo: And who isn’t? I agree.

Leo: Libra, vega, hydra, electra, corina, quorvus, speaka, and taurus. That’s amazing. It doesn’t matter if the code names leak out. The road map may be more important.

Mary Jo: At the end, I’ve got a second slide from the road map that lists features coming that also wasn’t supposed to be on the web. But luckily, I snapped it right up.

Leo: Nothing like it. Let’s do some beer.

Mary Jo: My beer pick of the week, so I haven’t done an IPA in a while. And I’m going to do a pretty nicely hopped one this time. It’s from Ballast Point.

Leo: By the way, the beer advocate is doing an internet slowdown.

Mary Jo: So Ballast Point grapefruit sculpin IPA; so Ballast Point makes this really awesome basic IPA called sculpin. And now they have one that has even more grapefruit. When I drank this, I was like wow. It’s like having one of your fruit servings in a beer.

Leo: Now with more grapefruit.

Mary Jo: It is, it’s so delicious. They make really great IPA, a basic good IPA. It’s 7%, but this one just takes it up a notch if you’re somebody who likes the grapefruit. I don’t know if Paul would like that one. Probably not.

Paul: Actually the hoppy grapefruit thing is clearly a natural byproduct of whatever ingredients are in there. Because that’s pretty common. I like the quarter mile IPA from my favorite brewery; it has a citrus.

Mary Jo: I like the citrus.

Leo: It’s tangy. Ballast Point brewing company grapefruit sculpin IPA. Mary Jo Foley is at allaboutmicrosoft.com and is eating at blog site. And posts all the time. If you want to keep up on what is happening with Windows, you got to read Mary Jo. Allaboutmicrosoft.com. Paul Thurrott, if you want to know how to use Windows, what’s the inside scoop, he’s got that. At the super site for Windows, winsupersite.com. And of course his books, too. You’ll find a list of links to all of them at windows81book.com.

Paul: I need to write a Call of Duty field guide. How to get the dog, chapter two. Dogs are man’s best friend.

Leo: A lot of games now you have a companion. Destiny, you have a little…

Paul: You notice that Destiny has the same kind of companion, the same sort of little intelligent floating star.

Leo: It follows you around. It’s convenient. It’s called the exposition cube. It’s very useful.

Paul: I need one of those.

Leo: Storyline bot. Over here, quick, walk over here! Let me tell you why you’re shooting these people. I don’t need to know, I just need to shoot them.

Paul: Thank you!

Leo: Thank you! You know this is an alien race that’s taking over the world, right? Yea, I don’t care. Nazis, aliens, zombies, I don’t care. Give me a gun.

Paul: Are there grenades?

Leo: Not yet. That’s in the future. You know, they really did a disservice to people because the ads make it look like Starship Troopers.

Paul: Yea.

Leo: And it’s not. It’s a game. It’s a shoot-em-up. It’s a first-person shooter. But the ads…

Paul: It’s a first-person shooter, but it’s like an RPG light as well.

Leo: Right, there’s a little RPB. And it’s certainly online gaming.

Paul: You can’t leave the thing sitting there. Because it’s an online game.

Leo: Yea, sometimes I like to get up and pee. But then you come back and you’re dead.

Paul: No you come back and you’re just signed out. And you lose progress. I don’t like that.

Leo: No, I had that problem with the beta because I really didn’t want to play all the time.

Paul: Leo, seriously. What is wrong with you? Do you need to go to a doctor?

Leo: Yea. Thank you for joining us. We do Windows Weekly Wednesdays about 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern time, 1800 UTC. Please tune in and watch live.

Paul: By the way, can I do something that I’ve never done?

Leo: Please.

Paul: Can I make a podcast title suggestion?

Leo: I’m writing it down right now.

Paul: This is from Steven Sandhoff on Twitter. And he said this much earlier in the show. But he said you should call it snarknado.

Leo: Deal. Actually every episode is snarknado.

Paul: I thought that was pretty good.

Leo: I was just going to call it ooh don noodles. Thank you for being here. We do make on-demand audio and video available at our website, twit.tv/ww. But you can also get it online, you know use a podcast app, or go to the Xbox music store, or iTunes, or wherever you get your shows. We’ll be there, just look for Windows Weekly. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Mary Jo. We’ll see you next time!