Windows Weekly 382 (Transcript)

Father Robert Ballecer: It’s time for Windows Weekly.  Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Filey attended the Windows 10 preview in San Francisco.  Will you like it, do they like it?  Are you going to get it?  Find out next on  Windows Weekly.

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This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley.  Episode 382, recorded September 30th, 2014.

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It’s time for Window Weekly the show that bakes all the Microsoft goodness of the week into a souffle and lets it fall like a flan in cupboard.  With me for the fall are the master chefs of Redmond themselves Mr. Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley in house.  That’s right they are here in San Francisco for the special Microsoft  Windows 10 now is it for TH.   Not Windows 9? 

Mary Jo Foley: 10 yeah. 

Paul Thurrott: A somewhat of a TH. 

Fr. Robert: Threshold was just such a good name. 

Mary Jo: Yeah he wanted it for Thurrott.  Yeah I knew that.

Fr. Robert: Of course.  That’s Paul Windows TH Thurrott.  From the Winsupersite.  He is the Guru the brain behind them.  And Miss Mary Jo Foley the mastermind behind ZD nets all about Microsoft blog.  Paul, Mary Jo thank you very much for being in house.  You’re probably a little tired? 

Paul: I am sorry what? 

Fr. Robert: How much of this information is actually making it through your exhausted brains right now.

Paul: It was something about souffle and then I don’t remember the rest.

Mary Jo: Cupboards.

Fr. Robert: All right now we’ve got to start with the obvious story in all of the Microsoft world right now.  Because there was a preview to which very few people were invited.

Paul: You’re talking about the MSN preview. 

Fr. Robert: Before we get into that let’s talk a little bit about that.  The MSN preview so one of the untold stories of today is that they’re deprecating Bing.  So the whole Bing branding is kind of going away?

Paul: I wouldn’t say they are deprecating Bing over all.

Mary Jo: No not all of it. 

Paul: I would say they are repositioning it.  Repositioning MSN I think is the way to think of it.

Fr. Robert: Mary Jo what do you think of that.  Because Bing they were really pushing.  They wanted Bing branding.  Now they are kind of pulling back.  They are saying Bing still exists, it’s still search, you still have Bing, you have Cortana.  But MSN is the environment that you live in.  That’s the ecosystem.

Mary Jo: That is what they are saying.  I had a lot of people ask me about that today.  The thing to remember is there’s 430 million people MSN.com every month.

Paul: None of them in the United State, by the way. 

Mary Jo: We don’t know them but there are other people.  That is a huge brand still.  Portals I guess, ask Yahoo it’s still a thing, right. 

Paul: Right sure.  Honestly the weirdest thing about this to me as an American is that they are using some brand from the past.  I see that a lot in the comments.  People say I’ll never use these now because of MSN. 

Fr. Robert: Which is kind of short sighted.

Mary Jo: Even though it’s the exact same app.  So all the things that were like Bing Finance, Bing Travel, Bing Weather those are all now MSN Travel, Finance.

Paul: Here’s a rationale for that, when I would write about this kind of thing for one of the books I would refer to these things as Bing content apps.  Just separate them from the Bing app which was obviously the search and then from like the Bing maps.  Which is not a content app it’s more navigation.  MSN makes more sense from a content perspective.  Just as a brand. 

Fr. Robert: But was that really the thing?  Was it just brand confusion?  Because I’ve been confused on what they’ve been trying to do with MSN, Bing and Live.  Because I felt as if they were trying to merge things but they were still trying to keep the brand strong.  In your mind does this make it clear about what each service does.

Paul: No.  But in a Monday Morning quarterback kind of sense I kind of understand where they are heading with it. 

Mary Jo: The thing they are trying to convey I think is that now with this new MSN.com portal that they just redid.  You’re going to be able to sign in there once and your preference are going to carry over into these apps.  That’s the idea.  It’s not like heres these MSN apps and heres MSN.com.  They’re trying to make the idea that this is one integrated thing now.

Paul: And they are, arguably.  So if you have configured favorite sports teams and sports in the sports apps either in the phone or on Windows.  Those things come through on the web now.  So they do integrate in that sense. 

Mary Jo: Top story.

Paul: Big stuff.

Fr. Robert: Lets go to the top story.  I mean let’s get away from the top story.  I think MSN was the top story.  Because that’s the thing that’s going to put Microsoft over the top.  It’s all about Windows 10. 

Paul: What’s this now?

Fr. Robert: Windows 10.  Not Windows 9, not Windows Thurrott, but Windows 10.  Both of you were at the preview.  This is a highly anticipated event at which Microsoft was to reveal the thing that was to put Windows back on.

Paul: You can see the backs of our heads there I’m taking a photo. 

Fr. Robert: You say this is your best side.  You were front row.  Was that because you just got there early or did they say hey.

Paul: No I actually elbowed aside Peter Brite and Alex Wilhelm to get in first.

Mary Jo: I saw you do that. 

Paul: Physically.

Fr. Robert: You tackled someone. 

Mary Jo: He did.

Paul: I’m a big guy so I can do that kind of thing.  Then I saved seats for Mary Jo and Ed just to further enrage those 2 other people who had to sit further back in the crowd.  Now everything I just said is true. 

Mary Jo: It is. 

Fr. Robert: These are how these things work.  So the next time we have one of these events I could just elbow my way in.

Paul: Alex bought me a coffee this morning too and I still elbowed him right in the kidneys.

Mary Jo: You still elbowed him.  Oh wow nice. 

Fr. Robert: All’s fair and Microsoft events.  Of the 10 preview what would you say the number one thing that you saw?  That will be important in terms of Enterprise?  Because this was an enterprise event.  This was supposed to reassure people is now your upgrade option. 

Paul: I think the teacher’s pet would like to answer this question.

Mary Jo: ME, me me.  Command prompt. 

Fr. Robert: Ok yes, tell me.

Mary Jo: They are redoing the command prompt so that you can do a lot of things you couldn’t do before like copy and paste.  It’s kind of like Notepad in a way.

Paul: Well you can do it today but it’s nonstandard.  So you have to bring up that window of command.

Mary Jo: But now it’s all integrated in.  And there is a great post that Raphael did on his blog within Windows if you want to know every little tiny detail about the new command prompt.

Paul: Somebody will. 

Mary Jo: Somebody will.  I’m just kidding about the command prompt.  Sort of.

Fr. Robert: I use command prompt all the time.  I have the icon on my desktop so that I can run as administrator every time I want to run it.  That is kind of important for those people who are running in the enterprise.

Mary Jo: It is. 

Fr. Robert: Because they use it all the time.

Paul:  I think of it more as a little kind of fine tune closing the loop kind of feature.  Something that’s been stupid about command prompt ever since there was a command prompt.  It was just non-standard in those ways.  You couldn’t select text, couldn’t copy paste etc.  So to me it is just one of the many things they are doing to fine tune and make things consistent.  On that note it’s a positive development.  I wouldn’t have listed it first but.

Mary Jo: This is someone who uses Notepad. 

Paul: Which is true, we’re driving here in the car going 80 miles an hour.

Mary Jo: On the 101. 

Paul: I don’t know I’m from Massachusetts.  She’s writing on Word Pad.

Mary Jo: We were writing our stories in the back of the car.  Because we had a driver.

Paul: She had Notepad on full screen with no word wrap on. 

Mary Jo: I put word wrap on afterwards.

Paul: What is wrong with you.  Then to select the text she’s using her finger.

Mary Jo: I know because my mouse is broken.

Paul: Oh right. 

Mary Jo: But I would have used my mouse otherwise.

Fr. Robert: Also she just wanted to show off the fact that she had a touch screen. 

Mary Jo: Yeah sort of.

Fr. Robert: What’s wrong with that.

Paul: That’s true. 

Mary Jo: No.

Paul: I just thought it was interesting.

Fr. Robert: Well how about this why is it called Windows 10?

Paul: Yeah well we wonder, because Windows 7, 8, 9? 

Fr. Robert: You’re really really tired. 

Paul: I thought it was funny, that tells you how tired I was.  The justification they used was that there were a lot of obvious names they could have gone with.  They could have gone with Windows 1, just Windows, Windows 9 was the next logical one.  But they feel like this is a monumental enough release which is actually laughable in some sense.  That this is a version of Windows the basic platform that will run on those little embedded devices, phones, small tablets, big tablets, PC’s of all kinds.  2 in one’s, Xbox 1 and that’s big and this needs to have a new.  It’s like skipping a grade.  When you’re really smart you move ahead. 

Mary Jo: Also, they didn’t really state it this way but they’re trying to distance themselves from Windows 8. 

Paul: Really distance, 9 was not distance enough. 

Mary Jo: Skip 9 and just go straight to 10.  They touched on this very briefly but this is the last major version of Windows they’re saying.  From now on the way they are going to update it is you’re going to get incremental updates on some regular basis.  If you’re signed on as a user on Windows.  That’s the way they are going to do from now on.  It’s not going to be every one or 2 years is going to be big bang Windows release.  That’s over now. 

Fr. Robert: But wait to say that is to say look we think we’ve got the formula down.  We think the kernel is stable, we think we get the performance out of the operating system that we want.  The only thing we have to do is tweak it.  Are we there?  Are we able to say look the engine is solid we’ve just got to change the body.

Paul: This is already and engine to use your terminology.  That runs on today, phone’s, tablets, PC’s all the way up to Microsoft Azure in the cloud.  So I think they have proven that, the core does scale already.  Which goes back to my original comments it’s sort of a bologne thing to say that this suddenly with this one because we’re going to call it something different it a major, major change.  I mean really this is a fairly minor update to Windows 8, I would say.  But I think they are trying to like you said to distance it from 8. 

Fr. Robert: So this is just all about getting away from the stink? 

Mary Jo: Somewhat.

Paul: Yeah getting upwind. 

Padr: Mary Jo I am going to call on your enterprise expertise here again.  Because we both know, we’ve talked about this on our respective shows that one of the biggest problems with Windows 8 was not the kernel.  The kernel is actually fantastic it’s more secure, it’s faster, it’s less buggy than Windows 7.  It’s been the interface.  The fact that the interface does not play well with the enterprise customers.  It’s not easy to deploy, It’s not easy to license and it’s not easy to upgrade. 

Paul: How dare you.

Fr. Robert: I know this is bold of me.  But let’s be honest.  I’ve been using Windows 8 on all of my production machine because it is much more stable.  I do a lot of video editing, it’s better for video editing.  I do a lot of enterprise deployments, I use Windows 7 for that.  Does Windows 10 now give that IT director who is looking at an enterprise, his SMB or his small enterprise, does it finally give him the assurance to say instead of buying a Windows 8 machine and deprecating it to Windows 7 I am going to buy a Windows 10 machine. 

Mary Jo: We only saw a very little bit of Windows 10.  Because this is still very early days, technical preview.

Paul: To be fair we also only saw very little bit of actual enterprise features.

Mary Jo: Oh yeah we did.

Fr. Robert: Wait, wait, wait this was an enterprise preview.  That’s the audience for this thing.

Paul: It’s still Microsoft though. 

Mary Jo: So what they wanted to do was for this audience, for the 50 or so people there.  They wanted to say here’s what we are doing in the UI, it’s going to make this more palatable to people who know Windows 7.  That was like a really really big message today.  The first time if you’re an enterprise user and you saw Windows 8.  You were like what is that.  I don’t even know how to use that.  They kept showing us the desktop.  They showed us how you can run metro style apps in the desktop.  How you can use things in a more intuitive way with some of the new features that they gave us a little taste of.  This is exactly how they said it, with Windows 7 you’re a Prius driver.  With Windows 10 we want to make you a Tesla driver but we don’t want to make you to relearn how to drive.  So the idea is let’s make it cool, interesting and give you some really great features but let’s not make you do what you had to do with Windows 8.  Which was like ahhh what is that.

Paul: Yeah relearn everything.  Exactly.  Actually I would have to say, assuming it all works out as planned, and I think it will.  The biggest success of the release in many ways is the fact that if you were in fact that minority group who liked Windows 8.  Got used to Windows 8, maybe used Windows 8 on a tablet or 2 in 1, you can also make this upgrade and it will be very natural.  Because on those devices you’ll have not identical but very similar touch interfaces.  It’s an evolution of what was in Windows 8.  So here you have these completely different things, that was the big joke with Windows 8.  We have mobile and desktop in the same environment.   The Frankenstein monster.  But yet the Windows 7 upgrade, very natural.  Windows 8 upgrade very natural.  It’s not bad. 

Mary Jo: They made point of saying, We do have people who do like Windows 8.  We have that, they do exist, they’re out there somewhere. 

Paul: I am one of them.

Mary Jo: I know you do like it.  So they said we’re not abandoning touch.  We’re going to keep the things that worked with Windows 8.

Paul: They’re going to change some of them.  What you said is exactly right.

Mary Jo: They showed us an example of the charms.  They said the charms are going to change.  They’re still there, people actually like some of the swiping gestures.

Paul: They’re only on touch.  So if you have a desktop PC or a regular laptop or your using a keyboard and mouse, you’re never going to see the charms.  Which I think most people would stand up and applaud. 

Mary Jo: I did.  I clapped once, did you hear me. 

Fr. Robert: Death of charms.

Paul: Mary Jo tried to start a wave at one point.  It was embarrassing. 

Fr. Robert: She was really tired and she was hungry. 

Mary Jo: I was hungry.

Fr. Robert: They didn’t feed you did they? 

Mary Jo: No they gave us those little mini eggs.  They were super cute.

Paul: They were not very filling though.  They were really small.

Mary Jo: They were like eggs that were about this big.

Paul: Like quail eggs.  

Mary Jo: It was a quail egg on a little piece of bread with some black beans.

Paul: It was like an egg sandwich from a doll house.

Fr. Robert: Isn’t that like rule one of any major event you keep the press fed.

Mary Jo: Yeah kind of. 

Fr. Robert: A fed press is a happy press. 

Mary Jo: There was no champagne either. 

Fr. Robert: A drunk press is a happy press. 

Mary Jo: That’s a Nokia event, they always serve alcohol.

Paul: Then you write all these really nice things about their company, it’s interesting. 

Fr. Robert: I want to go back to this whole idea of Windows 10 as you said it’s finally that unified experience.  But what does that mean?  We know that it’s tiles on the surface.  We know that it’s tiles in Windows 8 for phone.  Windows 10 for desktop, they’ve modified the tiles, I can now have a tile on the desktop and I can resize it?  How does that work? 

Paul: You have tiles on a start screen, right, on Windows 8 and Windows Phone.  So in Windows 10 you’ll have those on a start menu alongside the normal things you would have in a start menu in Windows 7.  You can resize them.  You can do all the stuff you can do in Windows 8.  When you run those applications that are tiled which are those metro modern, immersive, Windows Store and now they call them Universal apps I guess.  They are still sandboxed but they don’t run visually in their own environment like they do in Windows 8.  They can run on the desktop now.  They can run windowed if you want them, they can run full screen.  They work and look like the apps.

Fr. Robert: Does that make it any less confusing?  Because right now Windows 8 the way that I have it on my laptop, I never go into the tiles because I don’t understand.

Paul: Because it’s so jarring and weird. 

Mary Jo: You don’t need them. 

Fr. Robert: Right I don’t need them but maybe if I had the ability to run a tile app as a window on my desktop, resize it just like I do any other window, maybe I start looking at tile apps.

Paul: It’s not just the ability to run an app like that but you also want it to integrate with the environment properly.  So in Windows 8 in the start screen apps can give you these notifications.  In Windows 10 they’ll do that on the desktop as well.  So if that’s the type of system where you don’t have touch, we haven’t conceivable seen this yet, but the mail app would give you little notification in the taskbar showing you how many unread emails you have.  Which is something that doesn’t work today, even when you can see the button for it in the taskbar.  Because when you run that thing it goes full screen.  They’re still separate.  So it’s a more integrated approach.

Mary Jo: I know you’re looking skeptical.

Paul: You do look skeptical.    What’s the block here?

Fr. Robert: The block for me is that in my experience tile apps have just been a disaster. 

Paul: The block is that their tile apps in your eyes. So get rid of that.

Fr. Robert: Well look at Skype.  The Skype tile app versus the Skype desktop app.  I would never use the tile Skype.

Paul: First up stop calling it tile Skype.  I think that thing improves to the point that the difference becomes less and maybe the desktop app would go away on this platform.  Same thing with Internet Explorer.  We don’t know for sure but it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that you really have one version of IE in this version of Windows depending on what type of system you’re running.  You don’t really draw a distinction today between .net apps, a WPF app, an Adobe Air app, a web app, a desktop app, these things are all just applications.  To the user they run in Windows or full screen or whatever.  They sit side by side, they have shortcuts and they all do the same thing.  So they’re just bringing these universal apps, these mobile apps into the desktop so they will just run side by side.  They will act and look naturally.  They are just apps.  Don’t think of them as tile apps it doesn’t matter. 

Mary Jo: The problem for you and for a lot of enterprises is that there haven’t been a lot of compelling metro style apps. 

Paul: Yeah name one.

Mary Jo: Well we like Bing apps that are now the MSN apps. 

Paul: Well yeah you use that for business.

Mary Jo: But even like MSN finance or Bing Finance.  It’s pretty good app.

Paul: Well the mail app is decent.  The Xbox music app is decent.

Mary Jo: If you’re somebody like me living in the desktop there might be a few of those that you might be like yeah I would use that if it could just stay in the desktop and not be dumping me out into the metro environment every time I click on one.

Paul: It’s hard to explain how separated these things are today.  But if you think about the alt+tab action.  When I alt+tab on my computer I can see metro apps, universal apps, desktop apps or whatever.

Fr. Robert: Modern apps what do we call these, ahhh stop. 

Mary Jo: Universal app we’re just going to call them that.

Paul: Yeah but they also have a special thing that’s just for Windows 8 apps.  So you do Windows key plus tab now you get the switcher interface.  The desktop does not factor into this thing.  This is just highlighting just how separated these 2 environments are.  So in Windows 10 those differences are what goes away.  That switcher thing is not going to be in Windows 10.  It’s just alt+tab. 

Fr. Robert: Ok that I understand.

Paul: In Window 8, there’s a snap for a desktop and then there’s a snap for the wider system.  So you can snap the desktop in half of the wider system and then snap apps within the desktop and it’s like what’s going on.  That stuff goes away, now it’s just a snap and it all works consistently.

Mary Jo: We should talk more about snaps. 

Paul: We will.

Mary Jo: Because snapping is something I hate and I never use every.

Fr. Robert: Really?  I use snap all the time.

Paul: I used it as recently as that speech so I could take notes while using Twitter. 

Mary Jo: You did?

Paul: Well actually I didn't’ take any notes.  I tweeted.  I tweeted in Tweetium.  Which is a modern app, a metro app whatever it’s called now.  Snapped and then I had the desktop on the left, I had One Note open but it was the desktop version of One Note. 

Mary Jo: You know why I don’t use it?  It’s hard to snap. 

Paul: It is hard to snap.

Mary Jo: It’s not intuitive.

Paul: Like I said there are 2 stat modes. 

Mary Jo: One thing they showed us today is this thing called snap view, is that what they’re called? 

Paul: Snap assist. 

Mary Jo: This is for people like me.  It gives you a view on your screen of the 2 things side by side and it lets you figure out I want to put this one here and this one here. 

Paul: Can we show you a screen?

Fr. Robert: Absolutely. 

Paul: Explain why this is necessary.  So you’ve decided you want to run this app side by side with something else for whatever reason.

Fr. Robert: As you can tell I have never ran it before, initializing now.

Paul: It doesn’t matter.

Fr. Robert: I’m in the UK for some reason. 

Paul: For some reason you want to snap this thing.  So you snap it.  The way it works today you get this blank thing, what is this. 

Mary Jo: You have to know to do that.  You have to remember to do it.

Paul: That’s ridiculous. 

Fr. Robert: The one doesn’t look quite right.

Mary Jo: What if you have another app before you want to see them.

Paul: The way this will work with snap assist is when you snap this it will then show thumbnails of the other apps that you can snap.

Fr. Robert:  So I don’t have to do this.

Paul: You never do this to leave the other half blank.  You are always doing the next thing.  Windows 8 is so dumb it doesn’t even give you a hint of what you would have to do to get that next thing up.

Fr. Robert: And in that bar for the apps it will actually show me everything?  It’s not saying just show me the universal.

Paul: I just screwed up your entire computer by  snapping the desktop.

Fr. Robert: I have snapped. 

Paul: Sorry about that.  You’ll discover later why.

Mary Jo: But that’s one of those little things.

Fr. Robert: Yeah it’s a little thing that really messed me up about Windows 8 which is wait are you selling me 2 different operating systems.

Mary Jo: I know, yep.

Fr. Robert: I don’t understand how can I have 2 sets of applications running on the same computer and they don’t play well with one another.

Mary Jo: There, there’s a snap.  We’re showing the video there.

Fr. Robert:  That actually makes sense to me.

Paul: Yeah so snap assist is nice because it gives you the visual queue that I think 99% of the world would need.  But they’ve also improved snap too.  Snap today is just columns, it’s just sort of verticals, left to right.  Now you can go back to Windows 1.0 and tile.

Mary Jo: It’s horizontal snaps.

Paul: You can snap things on top of each other, like we see here on the screen. 

Mary Jo: That makes so much more sense.  I might actually use that now. 

Fr. Robert: Let me do a question that requires wild speculation.  I know we never do that on the show.  But why wasn’t this how it was designed in the first place?  I am serious here.  This is not a throw away.  When we sat down with the original Windows 8 product team was it look we want them to use modern?  We need to push them to modern and we believe that if we give them good enough apps they’re all going to abandon the desktop?  It’s another way of asking is this backpedaling and saying okay you don’t want to use modern.

Paul: Can I swear? 

Fr. Robert: Swearing is perfectly normal. 

Paul: I actually heard back from Steven Sinofsky when I first originally offered this up as the reason for this and many of the other problems with Windows 8.  Which was how come Windows 8, blah blah, whatever the rest of that question is.  It doesn’t matter you can ask this question about anything about Windows 8.  Because it was Steven Sinofsky this answer was always BEEEEP.  It works with everything.  So he wrote me back whenever I tweeted this or something, he goes it’s funny I am just looking over the planning documents for Windows 8 and I don’t actually see that as a reason anywhere.

Fr. Robert: Those are the super-secret documents. 

Paul: Windows 8 was unique for many reasons not just the combination of 2 operating systems into one holy mess.  But also for the first time Microsoft took a no prisoners kind of approach to Windows.  Where in the past they always offered you the way to go back to the old way of doing things.  When they improved the start menu in Windows Vista you could get a classic start menu for the Windows 2000 start menu.  They always offered that kind of way to go back.  Even Windows 95 you could run program manager if you wanted to it was your show.  So Windows 8 they thought they had the answer.  The one thing I will defend that they did, part of the rational that I will defend is that they felt like they were so far behind that if they could move decisively it would be the right thing to do.  Actually that on the surface sounds like a great idea or the right approach.  But they took such a tunnel visioned way to do it.  They just ended up upsetting most of the user base and their most important user base the enterprise.

Mary Jo: And developers.

Paul: Everybody.

Mary Jo: If they hadn’t taken the hardline with developers and then kind of waivered about.  Is HTML5 the solution or .net.  They kind of made the .net community feel unwanted so people didn’t build metro style apps.  Then they were like oh we don’t have any compelling apps to give people a reason to go to the metro style.

Paul:  I don’t know the exact figures but I had been looking at the Microsoft by numbers website for completely unrelated reasons.  They have facts about number of apps made, number of apps sold, number of apps downloaded between Windows and Windows Phone and they have them on separate little tiles.  The Windows Phone numbers are dramatically higher than Windows.  Some people will say well Windows Phone has been out for twice as long.  Okay fair enough.  I actually think it’s because Windows people have a choice and a lot of people have simply chosen not to go to the store.  Or they’ve looked at the store and said what is this stuff.  It would be like weird Fisher Price apps, what is this.  They just don’t see the value in it.  I remember early on having discussion with somebody about Metro at the time and Office, could Office work in this environment.  What would that look like and everything.  I thought there is no reason you can’t have a professional app in this environment.  Yet here we are years later and we don’t really have any good examples of complex apps.

Mary Jo: There’s a couple.  Microsoft built a CRM app that’s pretty good. 

Paul: One Note is in that territory. 

Mary Jo: Dynamic CRP. 

Fr. Robert: You expect that.  You figure if they really wanted to push that ecosystem they would have made One Note and Lync phenomenal as apps.  They would have made those things to make you say that’s why I want to use that.

Mary Jo: One Note is good. 

Paul: One Note is the one that maybe gets it.

Fr. Robert: You think so.  You don’t like One Note better on the desktop.

Paul: No I do.  I use the desktop version. 

Mary Jo: One Note Metro style is not that bad. 

Fr. Robert: Not that bad is not the same as oh that’s why I would use it. 

Paul: I would say it’s notable that it completely usurped the normal navigation and use of the metro app to provide its own. 

Fr. Robert: So One Note as an app was perfect because it didn’t act like an app. 

Paul: So let’s move on to the next topic.  Yes sure.

Fr. Robert: When we come back I want to talk about how normals would see Windows 10.  Right now we’ve been talking about geeks who have been lamenting for the longest time that Windows 8 isn’t good for enterprise, Windows 8 isn’t good for IT directors, Windows 8 isn’t good for those people who actually want to get stuff done.  But let’s talk little bit about what will Windows 10 what we used to call Threshold has done for the rest of us.  Can we do that?

Paul: Sure.

Fr. Robert: But before we get there I want to talk a little bit about presenting things. 

Paul: Don’t look at me. 

Fr. Robert: We are all about presenting things here on Windows Weekly but the question is do you have a good way to present your great idea.  Your next big thing, the thing that’s going to break you out of anominity and make you super star famous on the internet.  In order to do that you need a site.  You need something that’s going to make it look beautiful.  You need something that’s going to make it easy for you to get your ideas out to the people.  Ladies and gentlemen that’s all about Squarespace.  Now what is Squarespace?  Squarespace is your one stop shop.  The easy way to get your next idea, your portfolio, your great content onto the internet without having to worry about programming, without having to worry about hosting, without having to worry about registering that perfect domain.  Because they are a one stop shop, the place you go to get your ideas known.  I’ve used Squarespace personally over the last couple of years.  In my real job I work for an organization that’s not known for it’s love of technology.  But they need to be out there.  So when I am dealling a lot with these organizations, smaller groups they don’t have a lot of tech sauvy people in there.  So I have to give them a solution that they can update on their own after I’ve set it up.  It’s not going to be word press, it’s not going to be blog, it’s not going to be a website that I created over the weekend, it has to be something where they can just type, post and be good.  That’s all about Squarespace.  Some of the reasons you’re going to love Squarespace is that they are always improving their platform.  This is one of the things I like about them the most.  Even though they are good they never stop and say we’re good enough.  They are always making it better.  Things like more and more templates, more defined templates, more refined templates.  They have 25 beautiful templates for you to start with and they recently added a logo creater tool.  Which is a way for you to create a unique identifier in the internet.  Even if you don’t have the budget for a graphic designer.  It’s also easy to use, incredibly easy to use.  If you want help Squarespace always has a live chat and email support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  But you’re not going to need it because they also have a forum that let’s other Squarespace users tell you how to solve the problems that you’re having.  Also they have a completely redesigned customer help site for easier access to self-help articles.  They also offer you ecommerce.  This is especially useful if you run a non-profit or if you run a small group that wants to do fund raising.  You don’t have to go out and buy a big ecommerce package if you have a Squarespace package that’s eligible for ecommerce.  It will be included and it’s just that easy.  It also starts at 8 dollars a month so it’s not going to break the bank.  That 8 dollars a month includes a free domain if you sign up for a year.  One of the things you developers will really appreciate is that it’s mobile ready.  You don’t have to design a different site for a phone, for a tablet and for a desktop, Squarespace will automatically adjust your content so it looks right on each device.  Laptop, desktop, Iphone, Android phone, tablet it’s always going to look it’s best when you use a Squarespace.  Even the code, if you’re a coder, looking at their code.  The back end makes you feel safe.  Knowing that these people actually know what they are doing.  It’s not just jumble spaghetti code.  You can look through it and realize these people have put in the time, the effort and the money into making your site look right.  Squarespace also includes hosting so again you don’t have to worry about buying yourself a domain, then a host and then a backend and then designing a front end.  It really is a place to go even if you don’t know anything about programing to get known.  So here’s what we want you to do.  We want you to try Squarespace to see maybe it’s the perfect solution for you to get your idea, your portfolio, your project up and running.  Start a 2 week free trial with no credit card required and start your business today.  When you decide to sign up for Squarespace make sure to use the offer code Windows to get 10% off and to show your support for Windows Weekly.  As a special promotion for Windows Weekly audience members Squarespace is giving away a full year of it’s most premium level service valued at more than 288 dollars to a randomly selected member of the TWIT army.  Just tweet Better Web Sites for all with # Squarespace with Window along with @Windows Weekly to be considered.  If you currently have a Squarespace site then post your site URL to and we might talk about it in a future episode.  We thank Squarespace for their support of Windows Weekly.  A better web awaits and it all starts with your new Squarespace. 

We were talking about normals. 

Paul: Were we.

Fr. Robert: Yeah kind of.  We are geeking out over what Windows 10 offers us in the enterprise world.  Don’t feel left out.

Mary Jo: You know I am the most normal one here out of the 3. 

Fr. Robert: So you’re the normal, give me the normal impression. 

Paul: I agree with that.

Fr. Robert: If we invited the entire world of normals to come and sit down in the preview what do you think the one thing that they would be the most excite about?

Mary Jo: Well I think that snapview thing, actually would be one.  It just didn’t look as scary as Windows 8.

Paul: Yeah I think that’s a big thing.

Mary Jo: When I saw Windows 8 for the first time I just remember being like wow that is going to take quite a long time for me to master.

Paul: I just laughed.  I was like this is so excellent, you guys are so stupid.

Mary Jo: I showed my mom Windows 8, I remember this still.  My mom who is 78 and uses a Windows PC.  She looked at it and she goes you’re not going to upgrade me to that right?  That’s like so much harder than Windows 7.  That’s what normals thought. 

Paul: Actually I think that’s the big revelation over the past couple of years.  Because I thought the people who read our stuff by large are not necessarily normal people.  Like regular non-technical people.  I thought anyone technical could wrap their mind around this and make it work for them and then be efficient and productive and so forth.  You get a lot of complaints from people who are kind of stuck in whatever way of doing things that they are stuck in.  But over time you start to hear from the normal people.  I hear from family members, I hear from friends. I just use the same stories over and over again.  I always think of my friend who called fairly recently and said so I just got a new PC and it has this Windows 8 thing on it, so I can put Windows 7 on this right?  He just found it to be very frustrating.  I think that was the normal reaction to Windows 8. 

Mary Jo: They wanted it to be easy.  That’s why they made it look the way they did and if you had a touch tablet it was easier to use than if you had a desktop machine or something you were trying to use it on an existing machine.

Paul: It was for the new stuff.

Mary Jo: It was.

Paul: But then if you had a tablet and you were touching the screen all the stuff you knew about Windows didn’t work well.

Mary Jo: Didn’t work anymore. 

Paul: And they have these little tiny UI things that you’re trying to hit with your finger and you can’t.  So it was kind of not right for anybody.  Really not optimal for any situation.

Fr. Robert: Ok let’s talk about that, not right for anybody.  So the popular knowledge is that well make it more like Windows 7.  People liked Windows 7 so make Windows TH, we thought it was going to be 9 but now make Windows 10 like Windows 7 and everything will be good.  But from what I’ve heard this isn’t Windows 7.  Maybe that’s not bad.  Maybe this is not make it like Windows 7 it’s make it work like or better than Windows 7.  Is this better?

Paul: Yeah, yes.  Even Windows 8 was better than Windows 7 in ways that people never appreciated because they never gave it a chance.  Windows 8 actually has tremendous improvements on the desktop side alone.  To the things like the storage subsystems and so forth.  People see the tiles and they stop paying attention.  It’s like no, no, no, I don’t care, no, no!! They stop listening. 

Fr. Robert: So was it a perception thing?  Because I saw this with Vista.  I actually used Vista, I was happy with Vista. Once I turned off user access control and all the junk that was automatically enabled on Vista it was actually a decent operating system.  I felt the same way with 8.  Once I could automatically boot into the desktop and never have to see the tiles I was perfectly happy.  I thought it was a great OS.  Was this just a perception thing? 

Mary Jo: No it wasn’t just a perception thing. 

Fr. Robert: Alright FIGHT!

Paul: No it’s important that the way you experience the system matters.  In other words I could list out the top 10 features in Windows 8 that aren’t in Windows 7 and how they impact everybody.  Honestly it doesn’t matter if you’re moving your mouse around and the charms come up.  It’s like ugh I just don’t want this. 

Mary Jo: That’s why I say it wasn’t just perception. 

Paul: Even in Windows 8.1 you can bring up the switch interface with the mouse, you can bring up the charms with the mouse.  You still get this little it’s eeking its way into your system.  People don’t like that.  I get it. 

Fr. Robert: Because I still regularly work with Windows 7 machines.

Mary Jo: Me too.

Fr. Robert: One thing that transferred back, I got so used to hitting the Windows key, typing the first letter of my app and then hitting it.

Mary Jo: Yeah for search.

Fr. Robert: I started to do that in 7 and I was like oh it doesn’t work the same way.

Paul: It does sort of. 

Fr. Robert: It does most of the time, not always, I’ve had some really bad things come up. 

Mary Jo: Before we saw this today a lot of reporters and people who had been writing about it had said this Threshold thing is going to be Windows 7.5.  But it’s not that actually, and it’s not Windows 8.5.   I think it’s a true hybrid of Windows 7 and 8 in a way that I wish they had done that in the beginning.  I wish that had been Windows 8.  But it’s not like we’re going back to Windows 7.  Because there are things that are going to be more advanced than 7 and there are things that are going to be better than 8.   Maybe we should call it 9. 

Fr. Robert:  So in the chat room we’ve got Elimu who said, and this is a sentiment I hear a lot, which is look users are just upset because they jammed 8 down your throat. 

Paul: Yes.

Fr. Robert: Which I agree, I think they did.

Paul: I do too.

Fr. Robert: But that’s not always a bad thing.  If Microsoft has always worried about jamming things down users throats we would still be using Windows 3.1. 

Paul: Microsoft is not in a position where they can win.  Microsoft got a lot of flak 10 years ago because Apple was doing things on the desktop that they weren’t around hardware acceleration and transparent effects and all that kind of stuff.  So Microsoft put all that stuff on Windows Vista and everybody hated it.  They hated the fact that those features required a higher brand PC than they had and they couldn’t use their integrated graphics card.  They can’t win either way.  I would move it past that.  Obviously there are going to be new features in every release.  They’ll evolve the start menu even moving from Windows 2000 to Windows XP I’m sure people hated that start menu when it first debuted.  So they gave you a way to go back.  That’s the difference, that’s the jamming it down your throat bit.  They didn’t give you a way to go back on Windows 8.  That’s what people resented.  It’s arrogant and insulting to do that to users. 

Fr. Robert: But Mary Jo isn’t it arrogant and insulting to then say okay we’ve listened to you but this new iteration this is it.  We’re not moving anywhere, we are going to evolve from here, we are not back pedaling any more than we have.

Mary Jo: The thing that they’re not getting a lot of credit for, and it sounds really trite to say it, but listening to customers this time.  Because when Windows 8 came out, they say they listen to customers I don’t know who those customers were, I don’t know how much they listened.

Paul: Let’s just call that what it is, that was baloney. 

Mary Jo: So they said that but this time.  We asked today did you guys already show this to a lot of customers?  They’ve been out on the road since February showing people under NDA and changing it based on what they said.  So they went to enterprises and they said what don’t you like about Windows 8 and they showed it to them and they changed it.  That’s pretty good.

Paul: In many ways you’re kind of hinting at what might be the single biggest change not just to Windows but in everything else they are doing.  Which is, they came out with whatever they came out with today, and they are going to provide this preview release tomorrow.  We’ll all look at it and there will be other stuff in there that they haven’t talked about that will be interesting to see.  This thing is very early on and it’s going to change.  But it’s going to change in ways that are impacted by people giving them feedback.  Somewhere out there, there is a guy, women, some person who will say hey why don’t you and no one at Microsoft would have thought of it.  It would have never made it in but because of the way they are getting feedback now that kind of thing can actually impact Windows and other products.  They’re doing this with everything.  The reason that’s important is because people, I can already see it, they are already complaining.  What do you mean they’re not talking licensing, they’re not talking 32 bit versus 64 byte, what about ARM all these questions.  It’s like guys seriously here’s the real answer, I don’t think they know the answer.  They are literally putting this out at a much earlier point that they ever had and this is the new way they do things.  Is this what you want, no, let us know what you want. 

Mary Jo: That is something, people say oh they’re capitulating, they’re back tracking.  It’s good if they’re back tracking if that’s what people want. 

Paul: Sure.  There was a very hard line road that Windows was going to take and it freaked out a lot of people.  The desktop is going away, the touch is the future.  There was a significant portion of the user base that was like what are you doing.  They got really nervous about it.  The first thing he said today, the first line I think out of his mouth he mentioned 1.5 million people.

Mary Jo: Billion. 

Paul: Oh yeah, right.  He mentioned that a vast majority of those people are using Windows on a non-touch traditional form factor computer.

Fr. Robert: Which I have to say I really like having a touch computer but I don’t use it all that much. 

Paul: They are for one thing.  I go up to one and I go like this and then I say oh I can’t touch it.  A little scroll type a thing or like the big metro buttons that you see you want to tap them. 

Fr. Robert: I use it a lot when I am flying.   I love that, that’s great.

Mary Jo: This is off topic but did you know that you’re not supposed to use a bluetooth mouse on a plane?

Fr. Robert: Yes.

Mary Jo: I didn’t know that.  I tried to use mine the other day on the plane.

Fr. Robert: Did they tell you to shut it down?

Mary Jo: Yes they did.

Paul: Mary Jo is on the do not fly list now.

Mary Jo: I am.  I was like oh no that means I am going to have to use touch.

Paul:  It’s pretty much like you and the guy who was trying to light his sneaker on fire.  You all are in the same category.

Mary Jo: It was.  I was questioning the flight attendant, when did this happen.

Paul: She’s got a mouse.  Half the plane would have gathered at one end of the hallway before someone was like a mouse?!

Mary Jo:  You know what I did, I shouldn’t admit this because I will be on the do no fly list.  So I just put it on my lap and was still using it. 

Fr. Robert: It has been proven by the TSA that if they can’t see it, it’s not a secure device.  Just wait until they figure out that if you punctured your laptop to get the batteries you could actually burn a hole through the hull. 

Mary Jo: Don’t be saying this, we won’t be able to carry our laptops on anymore. 

Fr. Robert: They will only let you carry on a unibody where you can’t remove the battery. 

Paul: One thing I’ve learned recently is, you know how you always get the safety demonstrations on a plane and they talk about if this should happen.  If the oxygen mask comes down make sure you do yourself first and then your kid.  You know how much oxygen they have for you?  It’s like a minute.  You’re not flying to Seattle with this mask on your face.  If they don’t fix the plane, the pilots have more, they probably have several minutes of air.  Maybe 2 minutes but it’s a low figure.  They have to fix that issue pretty quickly. 

Fr. Robert: Well what’s the emergency descent, you get it down below, Alex you’re a pilot, 14,000 feet?  Get it down below 10,000.

Paul: Alex you’ve probably had to do this before since you’re an unsafe flier. 

Fr. Robert: No I think the emergency procedure is if the mask’s drop down you actually elbow everybody else out of the way and grab air masks.   Now you’ve got a 3 or 4 minutes of life before you pass out. 

Mary Jo: We are recovering this just for future reference. 

Fr. Robert: Windows Weekly giving you the skills you need to survive. 

Paul: And apparently a way to fool people on an airplane that you aren’t using a mouse. 

Mary Jo: I am just am appalled that I can’t use my mouse on the plane.  Why not?

Fr. Robert:  The big question is would you use Windows at 10,000 feet.   During an emergency descent. 

Paul: Of course because now they have the Surface that’s been certified by the FAA.

Fr. Robert: I had a train of thought here and it was derailed by that answer.

Mary Jo: We should mention some information about the insiders thing because this is related to them listening to people too.  So tomorrow on October 1st you can go to preview.windows.com and you can sign up.  I think you can even sign up today.  To be in the insiders program.  That means if you do that you’re going to be able to download the Technical Preview tomorrow and you’re also going to be asked by Microsoft to send your feedback on things that you see as features.  So they did telemetry before with Windows 8.  They said yeah telemetry we are gathering all this information and we are using that to shape the product.  I am making air quotes for people who can’t see that.  This time I think they are actually going to use the feedback because they are going to flight different features to different groups. 

Paul: Well if you have ever seen a user voice type thing. 

Mary Jo: And they are going to actual listen to what the feedback says instead of saying yeah we saw your feedback. 

Fr. Robert: But what does that mean?  What could they do with the feedback?  You’ve kind of seen the preview what still can they bake?

Paul: That’s not really the point.  In other words you and I aren’t going to come up with obviously they are missing this one key feature.  What I am saying somebody out there, some key person, random is going to say oh.  Because every once in a while someone will come up with this thing, in retrospect is so obvious. 

Mary Jo: You know what else they are going to do.  They are going to say let’s give Paul this view of how the charms work, let’s give Mary Jo this one.  Not just us but 1,000’s or millions of people and then let’s see which one people like more.  We’ll do that.  So that’s new.  They didn't’ do that before.  I think they’re still going to have send a smile or frown thing.

Fr. Robert: So this is like the survivor theory of upgrading your OS.

Mary Jo: It is but why not? 

Paul: You’re going to vote the feature off the OS.

Mary Jo: I feel like in a way you have to do that.

Paul: I want Wordpad to go away please.

Mary Jo: But not Notepad.

Fr. Robert: I want to bring back Flippy.  If I can get enough of my tribespeople to bring back flippy.  Let’s settle this once and for all.  We actually have an audience full of normals right now, I don’t think we have a camera on them.  1,000’s of normals in the audience right now.

Paul: Severals.

Fr. Robert: If we could have a show of hands of who thinks just hearing about what we have talked about now, that they are sold on Windows 10.  That it’s time for an upgrade, raise your hands.  That’s at least 400 people. 

Paul: It looked like 75%.  Just eyeballing it.

Mary Jo: I think so.  There are going to be some haters, there are. 

Paul: Yes you’re right.  There will also be legitimate disagreements too.  Not just I hate change. 

Mary Jo: If you are somebody who uses Windows 8 on a touch machine and you like the way it works now and you’re like oh I don’t want all this.  But here is what we don’t know, we don’t know what the ARM version is going to look like at all.

Paul: This is a gray area.

Mary Jo: All we know after today, no desktop is going to be in that version, they basically confirmed that.  Because they said when we asked about the phones they said well obviously.

Paul: Well put it in a different way you asked about ARM specifically. 

Mary Jo: I did.

Paul: And they went off on some weird side track about the phone.  You, I and Ed all looked at each other because that had nothing to do with what you asked.

Mary Jo: So at the end of the presentation today we had a little Q and A.  I asked are you going to be able to upgrade every existing ARM phone and device to this new operating system.  They said most of them.  That’s all they would say.  So we don’t know about Surface II or Surface RT.

Paul: They literally did say most of them.  That’s how I took that though, in their heads ARM meant phone.

Mary Jo: But I said devices and phones.

Paul: I know you did but what I am getting at is everything they said was about phone and nothing to do with Surface ARM tablets.

Mary Jo: That’s true. 

Paul: Which makes me wonder on many levels whether the SKU we now think of as phone becomes the tablet SKU. 

Mary Jo: It is. 

Paul: But they think of it as phone.

Mary Jo: I know they do. 

Paul: When he said most of the devices what he really was saying was, because he mentioned carriers.

Mary Jo: He did.

Paul: He basically was saying, just like with Windows 8.1 or actually Windows Phone 8.1 most of them, the vast majority of the devices are getting the upgrade but some of them aren’t.  He meant phones.  He meant basically because some of these devices didn't’ sell very well that the carrier won’t support the update.  It was phones.

Mary Jo: It was. 

Paul: It was so bizarre how he answered that question. 

Mary Jo: I know. 

Fr. Robert: I want to talk about that one platform because you say that it’s actually gotten better with the Windows 10 preview.  But before that I want to address something from the chat room, Bob Sakimano in the chat room has said he has spent the last 2 years convincing his users that Windows 8 was really okay.  It was the way to go.  Do it, it’s a lot of pain right now but you’re going to appreciate it in the long run.  Now he’s got an egg on his face.  I am thinking this is probably going to be what a lot of IT people say. 

Paul: I don’t see that.

Mary Jo: I don’t either.  If you learned how to use Windows 8, Windows 10 is going to be even easier for you to use.

Paul: I use Windows 8 by in large on this device on a Mac, no on a non-touch type device, mostly.  My desktop computer and ultrabook I normally use.  Even a Surface Pro 3 which I would travel with normally and I will after this trip again.  Even though there is touch and I’ll do those occasional touch things, for scrolling when I am reading and so forth.  But interact with it as I do on this device, trackpad, mouse actually and the keyboard.  So learning those skills in Windows 8 is not going to hurt you going to WIndows 10. 

Mary Jo: I agree.

Paul: I think there’s a really natural progression that’s occurs if you did move forward and the beauty of Windows 10 is if you didn’t there’s also a natural progression if you skipped a version.

Fr. Robert: Ok so what about that?  Windows 8 users who bought new hardware obviously will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 and if Microsoft is smart they would make a very easy upgrade path.  Windows 7 machine users you’re probably going to tell them to buy a new machine?

Mary Jo: No.

Fr. Robert: No not yet.

Mary Jo: I also asked about that.  I said are you going to allow everybody to upgrade.  What’s the compatibility going to be like?  They said mostly people will be able to upgrade.  The guideline is we want people to upgrade so we want to make this compatible.  There’s nothing in the hardware that is going to be limited by the operating system.  They also said as far as apps go that they will be mostly compatible.  They can’t promise 100% because there’s always going to be one or 2 that it doesn’t work.  And then it’s like you said all of them.  I think the goal is to make it whatever you have now is going to be able to run Windows 10.  Unless you are running really old hardware then.

Fr. Robert: Flamelord is saying the Wall Street Journal has said if you were planning on buying a Windows 8 PC don’t.

Paul: I have something to say to the Wall Street Journal.

Mary Jo: Are we going to swear again?

Fr. Robert: Can we have a dramatic close up here.  Because this could get personal.

Paul: No I am not going to say it, I am better than that.  The point is, I think you alluded to this essentially when we were talking back there.  When you moved from Windows Vista to Windows 7 the system requirements went down.  When you moved from Windows 7 to Windows 8 again the system requirements went down.  Now we don’t know how they are going to work with Windows 10, I am not saying they are going to go down again.  Essentially if you have the same hardware the next one runs better.  The performance is better, there are other improvements in the system to around battery life and etc.  You see advantages there as well.  Windows 7 class hardware, Windows 8 class hardware obviously it’s going to run this thing fine.  I don’t think we need to qualify that in any way unless you’re running Surface RT then you are screwed.  Windows 7 or 8 I think you will be fine. 

Mary Jo: I agree.

Fr. Robert: If Microsoft were to say along the like if you buy a Windows 8 PC right now you get the automatic upgrade path.

Mary Jo: Yeah that’s what they need to say.

Paul: One of the big rumors leading into this event was that Windows 10 now would be free for Windows 8 users.  Now they never said that in fact they refused to talk about it.

Mary Jo: They refused to talk about pricing or licensing at all.

Paul: Which kind of makes me wonder how this came up.  Except for one thing, when you go back to build and you listen to Terry Myerson about how they are going to bring the start menu back to Windows and they are going to bring floating metro app windows to Windows.  He described as you recall as a coming update to Windows 8.  Now we’ve kind of done the simatic thing around that.  It is interesting I actually think that rumor is based on something that is true.  When you put those 2 things together it almost suggests that he was kind of saying  that.  Windows 10 is going to be treated as an update to Windows 8.  So if you’re on Windows 8 you’re going to get it possibly through Windows update as a very natural update.  Now Window 7 maybe you have to pay for it, maybe they will change their minds on that.  I think they really are not sure on how to handle this. 

Mary Jo: They want to make some money off of this.  So Windows 7 if that’s completely free that would be kind of crazy.

Paul: Yeah they aren’t a charity organization.  I am wondering though, I think these things might be tied together. 

Mary Jo: I think you’re right.

Fr. Robert: Caffeine free Dave in the Chat room is saying whether or not he should pull the trigger on buying a Windows 7 laptop.  I am thinking, because I have seen the offers from Dell, HP and Toshiba.  None of them actually offer a Windows 7 laptop.  They offer a Windows 8 laptop that they’ve installed Windows 7 on it for you.  So if you buy a laptop now even with 7, you’re buying an 8 license which means if it is an upgrade path you should be able to get the new upgrade.

Paul: You both have the same laptop.  You both have what is a traditionally form factor device with a touch screen.  You might even just sort of blurt it out well I don’t really touch a lot.  I bet you kind of do, it’s just becomes another thing.  It’s natural, you don’t even realize you’re doing it.  It doesn’t matter if it’s only on a plane or only when you’re reading something or if it’s only in certain circumstances.  I really do feel like that completes the picture a little.  It makes it better.  Like I said I miss it when it’s not there.  So I would say to people honestly if you’re already going to buy a new computer, if you really need a new computer, and it has to happen right now.  If you can go for the Windows 8 one with touch if you can do it.  Because that will give you a better overall experience.  Even if you don’t believe that to be true.  If you don’t believe that to be true, at the very least it’s not going to harm your experience.  If you never touch the screen who cares. 

Fr. Robert: The price difference, once you start getting into to higher end models the price difference of adding the digitizer is almost negligible now.  So why wouldn’t you get it.

Mary Jo: Why not get a Windows 8 PC and downgrade.  Wouldn’t you have downgrade rights if you really want to use Windows 7 right now.

Paul: Right I guess the only reason would be what if it’s literally only going to be an update for Windows 8 that’s free.  In which case you would want to have Windows 8.

Mary Jo: Well then you would have the right to upgrade on your PC because you bought it with Windows 8? 

Paul: Right but what I am saying why go through the effort. 

Fr. Robert: Now this is a great time to talk about what my personal favorite topic is, anytime I am talking about any Microsoft product and that’s licensing.  Of course at this preview they spelled out how licensing is now going to be crystal clear, completely understandable even to the lay person and it’s just going to be one thing.

Paul: Right if they did I nodded off during that part. 

Mary Jo: No pricing no licensing discussion today yet.

Fr. Robert: But doesn't’ that have to happen before enterprise signs on?

Mary Jo: It does.  But this isn’t an enterprise signs on thing, this is enterprise take a really early look. 

Paul: They just admitted they’ve been talking to these guys on the side for a long time.  They may have already signed on the enterprise. 

Mary Jo: I am sure they are testing that.  They are probably saying to them what would you pay.

Paul: To be honest pricing is really not a concern for enterprise.  They are already in a service cost.

Mary Jo: They are in a volume licensing deal. 

Paul: They are sub streamed into the service agreement every time. 

Fr. Robert: But if you could make them fix it?  If they called you up and said Paul, Mary Jo we need you to tell us how to run licensing for 10 and we want to make our enterprise customers happy.  What do you do?  Do you say you have to have 2 skews that’s it.  Not 40 skews.

Paul: In fact while we are going nuts why don’t we have a skew.  Why even have skews. 

Mary Jo: Enterprise wants a lot of stuff that everyday people don’t want. 

Paul: Right but you can sell a product that in retail form has those things turned off and would require you to know the system and find them and do it.  I would rather just have a version.  It’s the one thing about the Mac that I think makes sense. 

Fr. Robert: That’s actually something I’ve been finding.  I do another show here on the TWIT network called Know How.  We do a lot of How to projects and I do a lot of stuff with Windows.  The funny thing is I use a lot of my old machines.  I am only now realizing some of them were crippled by being the home premium and I have to do upgrades.  I am just thinking you know what why didn’t you just include all of this in the beginning?  You weren’t really going to make any more money and it would make it a lot easier for me to turn on features later on. 

Paul: Reminds me of when you go and buy a car and there are these dealer options they can add in, it’s kind of just a way to gouge you.  The skew stuff came out of Office because those guys saw great success at one point probably 10 years ago having multiple skews.  You’ll notice the mainstream normal way to get Office now is through Office 365.  There are no versions of Office, it’s basically pro plus.  You get whatever you get with Office 365.  You don’t think about that stuff anymore.  I think that’s just another example of complexity and putting the illness on the user.  It’s stupid and people resent you for that.  Now I want my own computer with work, what do you mean I can’t sign into the domain?  That kind of thing, it’s ridiculous.

Fr. Robert: What if they did that?  I love 365 and that it’s the 99 dollars a year, you get all your applications plus you get that crazy large amount of storage, and sky drive. What if they said you know what Windows is now part of that package?  99 dollars a year you get all your applications automatically updated along with your OS.

Paul: Maybe.  We talk about it a lot.  Somebody in one of the questions mentioned the platform as a service, is that how they said it.

Mary Jo: Yes.

Paul:  You know, yeah, maybe.  Obviously the key to the Office 365 license is how liberal it is, you know?  Five PCS, five tablets, unlimited on the Handcent apps, and extra storage; you get all of this stuff and it's like a no brainer.  So if they could do something like that it would be a real no brainer, right?  People are accustomed to acquiring Windows with a new computer.  That's how they get it.  They don't think of it as a Windows Version, but as this is the one that comes with this computer.  It's not really a normal act for a normal person to upgrade to a new version of Windows on a computer.  We do it, but it's not a normal consumer thing.

Mary Jo:  I never do it because, like I said, I'm the normal one here.  Whatever I get on my PC is what I keep on my PC.

Paul:  That said, obviously we do that with smartphones, though, and tablets.  Those are different, simpler devices.  The problem with the Windows upgrade is if you let somebody, my grandmother, my mother, whoever, do that and it doesn't work then there is no Apple Store to go to that is going to fix this problem for you.  It's a problem.  

Mary Jo:  The other thing that we think is coming with Windows 10, it's hard not to call it Threshold anymore, but Windows 10...

Paul:  Or Windows TH.

Mary Jo:  Right.

Paul:  I really latched onto that in the 24-36 hours that that was a viable name.

Mary Jo:  And we think that that is going to adapt to the SKU, I mean to the hardware, right?  Different things are going to be turned off and on.  It's going to know, oh, I'm on a 2 in 1, or I'm on a clamshell laptop.

Paul:  Yeah, and you, if you want to you can override that just like today in Windows 8 if you want to for some reason go into the Start screen on a desktop or a non-touch computer you can make it do that.  

Mary Jo:  Yeah, we didn't talk about continuum.  

Paul:  We will, we will.  We will.

Mary Jo:  Am I going out of order?   I'm sorry.

Fr. Robert:  I'm with you, I don't have to worry about upgrades.  In fact, every time Windows comes out with a new patch I just buy a new laptop.  

Paul:  That's what normal people do, yes.

Fr. Robert:  There are hundreds of laptops under my bed right now.  I don't want to be bothered by upgrading.  Please.

Paul:  No, no, that's not the point.  The point is every time you need a new computer you buy a new computer and it has whatever version of Windows it has on it.  By the way, that is the example of how disruptive Windows 8 was because at some point during that couple of years that Windows 8 has been on the market my sister, my parents, my friend Chris, and whoever all were like I will just buy a new computer like I always do every 3, 4, or 5 years.  Then they were like what is this, and you get that reaction.  It's a delayed reaction because they decided not to buy exactly in October 2012, they bought last year or this year and now they are really upset about it.

Fr. Robert:  I have been trying to upgrade my parents to 8 and they keep wanting to go back to 7.  

Paul:  Yeah, that's not the reaction you want your user base to have.  I do this all of the time; when you make an upgrade of any kind, an Office Suite or any application whatever it is, you go back and use the old version.  When you start missing stuff that you are used to now and you don't even realize you care about that's how you know that that is a good upgrade.  When you go back to an older version and you are like ahhhh then you've failed.  You as the operating system maker have failed.  That's the exact opposite of what you want.

Fr. Robert:  I think that we can all agree that Windows Thurrott is pretty complicated.  As the story develops Windows Thurrott is going to take some time to get through.  But you know what is not going to take some time?  You know what's not going to be complicated?

Mary Jo:  What?

Fr. Robert:  Sharing files.

Mary Jo:  Really?

Fr. Robert:  Yeah.  That's a segway by the way.

Mary Jo:  I figured.

Fr. Robert:  Anyone who has had to do sharing of files in an actual business, in an enterprise; it's not just a matter of syncing up.  You want something that is going to allow you to know whether or not your colleagues are getting the information that they need to get.  That's why here at TWiT we recommend that you use ShareFile by Citrix.  Now what is ShareFile?  It would be easy to say that ShareFile is just another way to get files to your colleagues and to the people who make decisions, but it's not.  It's a different way of sharing that information.  In businesses we are constantly sharing pieces of data that we need to make sure that other people are getting and we also need to make sure that we can keep the revisions and keep the security on the files the way that we want it.  That's what ShareFile by Citrix lets us do.  In essence it's a way to make sure that the files are not just exchanged securely but also that you know who has actually read that document that you just sent them, who has actually opened up the file that you told them that they needed for the next meeting.  In the Brick House whenever we need to share a time sensitive document we use ShareFile because we don't just want to let someone accidentally delete something from a folder and then watch it desync or delete from every other folder from every other user's computer.  That's sort of the old school way to do it.  We are just more advanced than that here at TWiT.  With Citrix ShareFile you can send files of almost any size, which means no bounce back.  You don't have to worry about emailing an attachment and worrying if someone's mailbox was big enough to accept it.  ShareFile automatically syncs so that you and your team will have the most updated materials across all devices, and you can use ShareFile from almost anywhere; from your laptop, from your tablet, and from your smartphone which allows you to access, to edit, to share, and to request files on the go.  You are probably asking yourself, why wouldn't I just use one of those other sync file services?  There are plenty out there to choose from.  ShareFile is different.  I think the best way that I can look at it is rather than to say here is a big pile of information, a big pile of books, you are creating a curated library of data and you are making sure that you know who has looked at what at what time.  That's the thing about ShareFile; it's not just a big mess of data, it's curated, secure, premium data.  Was that dramatic?  What that a good pause?

Paul:  Fantastic.

Fr. Robert:  Here's what we want you to do.  Actually here is what Leo wants you to do.  Leo wants you to try ShareFile.  If you've never used something like ShareFile, if you've never used a curated data syncing service then give it a try.  You can try it free for 30 days with no obligations if you sign up today.  Just go to sharefile.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and enter WINDOWS, that's W-I-N-D-O-W-S just in case you can't spell it even though you are watching Windows Weekly.  Remember, visit sharefile.com and type in the code WINDOWS to share your love with TWiT and Windows Weekly.  We thank Citrix and ShareFile for their support of Windows Weekly.  Now what were we going to talk about?

Mary Jo:  We were going to talk some more about the features.

Fr. Robert:  Features?  I like features.

Paul:  So we should actually address some of the enterprise stuff that they talked about, although it was very vague.  I'm very eager to look in to some of that stuff.

Fr. Robert:  That kind of bothers me because the whole idea was this enterprise preview and now you are telling me that the enterprise preview was very vague.

Paul:  So yeah, so Microsoft mentioned the MDM, meaning the mobile device management, capabilities and vaguely noted that in this release you would be able to use their MDM solution which is essentially Windows Intune / System Center to manage today's Windows 8 devices, you know, the mobile half, Windows RT devices, and Windows Phone.   Non Windows devices can also be managed this way, IOS and so forth.  They are adding that capability to the desktop and also to the headless devices that will come in the future, the Windows IOT devices.  It's not really clear how that is going to work.  They will still offer the granular Group Policy / Active Directory based management, but they are going to allow this as well.  I think that what this does is allow a different, I guess technically in some ways it's not necessarily an enterprise feature, but it opens up management possibilities to smaller businesses that can't handle or would never do Active Directory / Group Policy.  It also allows enterprises to mix and match, you know, whereas today they would have to have only mobile devices managed by these non-Active Directory type methods.  So not a lot of details there, but I'm kind of interested in that stuff so we will look at that.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, after the event was over they put up a blog post.

Paul:  They did, one that explains it?

Mary Jo:  Windows for Your Business Blog.  It talks about a couple more of the enterprise features that they did not talk about during the event.  So they talk there about the fact that you are going to be able to not just side load apps anymore if you have custom apps for your business but there is going to be a way to go through the store and get those apps.  That's one thing.  They said there is going to be some new security and identity capabilities and they talk a little about that.

Paul:  Yeah, they mentioned that.  They literally said the word identity once.

Mary Jo:  They did, but this talks about they are adding some new functionality for theft and phishing prevention specifically.  They are not getting in to a lot of details on that yet because it is under the hood stuff and maybe not all of that is going to be in the preview because the preview is so early.  They are also going to have a way that Enterprises can decide to block these monthly, or however often, updates.  They are going to tie that somehow to Windows Server Update Services, WSUS, so that you as an administrator can say, you know what, I don't want to get this pushed to me every single month when you guys have new stuff.  I want to choose when I push these features out to my users.  There is going to be some level of control for users that a lot of Enterprisers were worried about.  They were saying, whoa, I don't want everything that is going to be pushed to me every month; I'm not ready for that.  So there is going to be a way to kind of dial that back.

Paul:  Yes and no.

Mary Jo:  So yeah, so all of those things are coming.  If you look on blogs.windows.com you can see this whole list of things that they just put up after the event.  We will hear more about that I'm sure after people start getting their hands on the bits next week or this week.

Fr. Robert:  Hands on the bits.

Paul:  Hands on the bits.

Mary Jo:  Hands on the bits.  An old reference, right?

Fr. Robert:  That's an old programming thing.

Mary Jo:  I know, right?  Hands on the bits.

Paul:  Hands on the bits.

Mary Jo:  So yeah, all of those things are coming.  And then this thing we talked about, Continuum.

Paul:  Right.

Fr. Robert:  Yes.

Mary Jo:  So Continuum is not in the build that people are going to get tomorrow.  What it is is a way that Microsoft is building into the operating system detection for whether or not you have a keyboard built in to your device or not.  If you take the keyboard off there is going to be a little kind of dialogue box that comes up and it gives you a back button right on your taskbar so that you can start using that.

Paul:  In other words it asks you if you want to go into Tablet Mode.

Mary Jo:  Right, do you want to be in a Tablet Mode?  Do you want to be able to use that to go back and make it more intuitive as a user?  Hey, that's how I should interact with this now.  When you put the keyboard back on it picks up where you left off.

Paul:  I think they call it Keyboard Mode.  I can't remember.

Mary Jo:  Keyboard Mode and Tablet Mode or something; I forget.

Paul:  I think so.  I'm not sure.

Mary Jo:  They showed us a little preview of that even though it's not going to be in the preview.

Fr. Robert:  So how does this work?   It knows what is connected to it and reconfigures itself?

Paul:  Yeah, so in other words, do you remember the fundamental disconnect in Windows 8 where you have these 2 environments side by side?  But then we have these devices that are 2 in 1's that kind of give you the best of both worlds.  You can use it like a tablet or you can use it with a keyboard.  That presents its own problem because on a traditional computer you are going to use it like a traditional OS.  On a tablet you are going to use it like a tablet, you are going to touch it.  But what about this thing that can do both, right?  So now they give you the opportunity to go back and forth between what are essentially two modes, a Tablet Mode and a Keyboard Mode.  That's one of those ones that is not in there but they want to get feedback on it and make sure that they are doing it the right way.  Maybe that appears in the consumer build or whatever next year.  I think we need to talk about a schedule.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, right.

Fr. Robert:  Yes, okay, so that now we have talked a little bit about the features that we can expect to see when Windows 10 finally makes it to the street; when will Windows 10 finally make it to the street?

Mary Jo:  So they actually said officially today that they were targeting mid-2015.

Paul:  Oh, they said mid 2015?

Mary Jo:  That's what I heard.

Fr. Robert:  What did you hear?

Paul:  I didn't hear that.

Mary Jo:  What did you hear?

Paul:  Later, just later in the year.  I'm not saying you are wrong, I just didn't hear it.

Mary Jo:  I heard mid-2015.  

Paul:  Did they?  I just didn't hear it.

Mary Jo:  I thought they did.  

Paul:  I'm not saying they didn't.

Fr. Robert:  But that is street release.  So if the street gets it mid-2015, then when do the manufacturers get it?

Mary Jo:  Earlier than that.  There is a WinHEC.  Did you hear that?  They are bringing WinHEC back.

Paul:  Well, no, there is more than a WinHEC; there are going to be several WinHECs.

Fr. Robert:  Yeah, it's not one big thing anymore, it's sort of like make your own fare.

Paul:  None of this is going to be tied to that.

Mary Jo:  A lot of people don't remember WinHEC, Windows Hardware Engineering Conference.

Paul:  WinHEC was the best.

Mary Jo:  It was the best.

Fr. Robert:  They had really nice parties.  I remember that.

Paul:  When you think about when you are making a new platform, typically Windows but not always Windows, and you are going disclose information to the outside world and so you would start with the low level device driver writer types, the hardware guys because they were the ones that were going to make the devices and PCs that would run the system.  So they were always first.  That was WinHEC.  Then you would have a PDC for regular application software developers.  Then you would have TechED obviously and you would show off the business features there.  Then you would have an event, whatever it might be, for consumer features.  It always started with WinHEC, and that was why WinHEC was cool.  You could go to WinHEC and really early on find out about what they were doing.  It was where we would see the hardware celebrity graphics that were going to be in Longhorn.  Remember at the time that they were going to scale the apps; you were going to be able to take an app, and stretch it out, and scale it manually.  Of course that never happened in the OS, but yeah, WinHEC was cool.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, so they are bringing that back and it's going to be in March.  So that is kind of a clue, right?  They are already talking to OEMs, but they are going to be talking more intensely to them starting in March so it will be very close to being baked.

Paul:  Yeah, so I would say before that happens there will be consumer release; I would say early 2015.

Mary Jo:  They said early 2015 for the consumer release.

Paul:  January I've heard.

Mary Jo:  So that's the one that is going to run on ARM.  

Paul:  And will include a phone version, right?  So if you are waiting then maybe that's maybe when the Surface guys get good news.

Mary Jo:  Or the bad news.

Paul:  They are going to get news either way.

Fr. Robert:  So this May 2015 date, that is across all platforms?

Mary Jo:  So May 2015, no.  May 2015 is a rumor.  We've heard mid-2015.

Fr. Robert:  Mid 2015.

Paul:  We know April is the developer release; it's built.

Mary Jo:  There is another build in April.

Paul:  We know early 2015 for consumer, we know April for developer, and beyond that we just...

Mary Jo:  And we know sometime very soon for Server and the management tools so I think that's going to be TechED Barcelona.  That's my guess.  In late October.

Paul:  Yes, that's an obvious time.

Mary Jo:  So those are the dates that we know and can kind of extrapolate from.

Paul:  They could just release the next version of Server, and just say we got rid of the Start screen, and get a standing ovation.  That would be all they need to do.

Mary Jo:  Here it is, Threshold Server.

Fr. Robert:  How do you run a server without a start screen?  I don't understand that, it's impossible.

Mary Jo:  Tiles?

Paul:  Interesting.

Mary Jo:  Tile world.

Fr. Robert:  It's that special stop bash type thing.

Paul:  The goofy thing is that I distinctly remember talking to those guys the first time they showed it off and I was like, oh, come on.  I don't remember who it was, but somebody from the server team said, no, you don't understand, we are going to be able to make all of these great little in tile status update things.  It's going to be like a dashboard that will show you the health of your server and it's going to be awesome.  I thought, okay, that does actually sound awesome.  I don't think there has been a single tile made that does anything.

Fr. Robert:  No, it doesn't sound awesome because unless you are just running one server in your data center, you've got racks and racks of virtualized servers, you are not going to have an at a glance view of every server that is there.

Paul:  But what I am describing is so pretty.  

Fr. Robert:  It is pretty.  But what would have been pretty is if there would have been a tile view that I could run on a Windows ED client that showed all of my servers.  Now that is actually useful; that I would buy.

Paul:  By the way, it does not require a start screen on the server.  Just a thought.  If there was only some way of instrumenting a server and getting information back from it.  Anyway...

Fr. Robert:  Nope, nobody has figured that one out.  

Paul:  Someday, someday.

Mary Jo:  That's pretty exciting that we kind of have the road map.

Paul:  I hope you are right about the mid thing.  I didn't hear that.

Mary Jo:  We will have to go back and listen to, by the way the video is available on YouTube now of today's presentation.

Paul:  So what I would say though is that regardless of the exact date the thing that they have to hit is actually hit in time for the back to school season.  Like actually hit it, not ship in October which is the worst time ever for releasing a product like that.  Back to school kind of starts in June, doesn't it?  It really starts early.  Back to school starts when school ends.

Fr. Robert:  I've got to ask.  I'm excited by Windows 10.  I actually like Windows 8, but I think Windows 10 will probably replace the remainder of my Windows 7 desktops.  But why now?  Why do this event now?  If we are talking about a mid-2015 release then this seems far off, especially if they are not giving you a lot of specifics, to have a special event.

Paul:  That's the point.  You will see this in other areas soon.  It's not just Windows, but Microsoft is opening up earlier than ever before and is giving people a real chance to impact a product more than ever before and I think that is the big deal.  They really screwed a lot of people over on Windows 8.  They did.  They want to make sure that they get this one right.  I applaud that; it's smart.  

Mary Jo:  I agree.  And you know that if you are a developer this is not a traditional developer's preview but this can still give you some pretty good ideas already about how you are going to respond.

Paul:  I can't wait for Rafael to get his hands on this thing.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, how are you going to restructure your app?

Paul:  There will be new features that are not exposed that he will point out.

Mary Jo:  A lot of the APS stuff will be in there.  It will be interesting.

Fr. Robert:  Is that it?  Windows 10 is in the bag?

Paul:  Is that it?

Fr. Robert:  No, I'm sorry, Windows Thurrott is in the bag?

Paul:  Windows TH?

Fr. Robert:  I think that you should make a pact that on this show it is always Windows Thurrott.

Paul:  What is it this thing that you keep referring to?  It doesn't make any sense.

Fr. Robert:  It's Windows 10!

Mary Jo:  You know, today when the event started we were like what are you guys using as a hashtag when you are tweeting this?  Nobody had a hashtag, so I used WTH and people were going like, what are you doing?  I was like it's Windows Thurrott.

Paul:  By the way, I don't often give Microsoft credit for having a sense of humor, but when we signed in in the outside they gave you a name tag to put on your shirt and then they have this little stack of cards which they hand you one.  On the card it says "Windows 2015" and so of course everyone was like, huh?  So we walk in the room and it was like are they telling us the name of this thing is 2015?

Mary Jo:  People were taking pictures of it and going it's the name!

Fr. Robert:  Was that deliberate or was someone just not thinking?

Paul:  No, it was deliberate.  It was the Wi-Fi password.

Mary Jo:  It was the Wi-Fi password.

Paul:  Funny.

Fr. Robert:  So there are a few people at Microsoft that understand that this has to be a little tongue in cheek because Windows 8 was a mess.

Paul:  They are pretty clear on that, yeah, yeah.  I would give them credit for that.

Fr. Robert:  And is this the new Nadella regime?  The whole idea of we are going to tell you more quickly, we are going to let you have more input, and we are going to make you make us make Windows better?

Paul:  Here's how I think of this.  Nadella today eluded to this, he didn't go down the path too far, but in the world of today Windows is kind of minority platform compared to mobile devices and smartphone platforms, and tablets.  In that world Microsoft is going to put its mobile apps and services on all of these popular platforms.  They are going to do it sometimes before they do it on Windows.  That's going to make some people upset, but that is just the reality of the situation.  In that world how do you retain the crowd of people who still cares about Windows and how do you make them part of the process?  I think this is how you do that because those MSN apps are going to be available on IOS and Android, Office is going to be available on Android soon with a very full featured version.  

Fr. Robert:  Let's be honest, it's also about how do we appease the people that we really cheesed off with the last release.

Paul:  A lot of which are the people spending lots and lots of money on Windows, like Enterprise.  I think there is bad news there depending on your point of view, but there is good news too in the way that they are doing this.  It's correct,  I think it is good.

Mary Jo:  I agree.

Fr. Robert:  Now if they want to find more information of course they have to go to the Win SuperSite.  You've got a great blog post up.

Paul:  Mary Jo also has one.

Fr. Robert:  Mary Jo has one on All About Android.  But now we need to talk about all of the...

Mary Jo:  All About Android?  Hey.

Paul:  Windows.

Fr. Robert:  We have an Android show, I'm sorry.

Paul:  All about Microsoft.  Wait, it's all about Microsoft.

Fr. Robert:  It's all jumbled up here.

Mary Jo:  It's always all about Microsoft.

Fr. Robert:  I've got the schedule in my head.  It's always about Windows.  What's this Android thing that I'm speaking of?  I'm speaking in tongues.  I love you Jason!

Paul:  You know, the last time a Jesuit priest was speaking in tongues...never mind.

Fr. Robert:  We got suppressed.  It was 1776, that was bad.  Now we have to get to the really important part of the show.  This is the part that every week I think is what actually saves lives.  

Paul:  I agree.

Fr. Robert:  Beer.  

Mary Jo:  Oh, yeah, I was like what are we talking about.

Paul:  Let me bring up my untapped. 

Fr. Robert:  We don't have a doc, but I slightly remember that we need a beer of the week.  If we don't have a beer of the week then the show is just not complete, right?

Mary Jo:  It's not the same.

Paul:  We should mention that when you are in San Francisco and you live in this area obviously there are great breweries here, Laguna and so forth, but when you are in the city of San Francisco...

Mary Jo:  The place to go everyone if you love craft beer is the Mikkeller Bar in San Francisco.  If you have never been there it is on Mason Street down near the convention center.  They have an incredible beer list.

Paul:  This won't be the pick, but it's actually really good.

Mary Jo:  Mikkeller is two brothers, one whose last name is Mikkeller, and one who makes beer who makes beer under the name Evil Twin.  So there is Mikkeller and Evil Twin beers, and they are some of the best craft beers in the world.  So this bar has about, I don't know, 30 or 40 beers on tap.  Each beer is served at the correct temperature so the beer list tells you what temperature the beer is served at. 

Paul:  This is the real deal, it's amazing.

Mary Jo:  I made Paul go there yesterday.  

Paul:  Yeah, I went kicking and screaming, let me tell you.

Mary Jo:  We had both gotten off the plane, we were both so tired, and I said, you know, we need a beer; let's go to the Mikkeller Bar.

Paul:  She texted me and she's like I saved you a spot at the bar.  I'm like, yep, thanks.  

Mary Jo:  He was right there, yeah.  

Paul:  I saved the seat, thank you.

Mary Jo:  We had a couple of beers there yesterday.

Paul:  The only place that I had ever seen Danish beer was in Europe.  When we went to Brussels a couple of years ago we went to the, I forgot the name of the brewery, I'm losing my mind, never mind.  Anyway, we went to a brewery and it was unbelievable and I thought that we were never going to get this in the United States.  And then you come to San Francisco and here it is.

Fr. Robert:  Now you were on Padre's Corner not too long ago, and you tried to explain to me the different types of beer, and I just went alcohol, I get the alcohol and that's about it.  What is this beer?  What is unique about it?

Mary Jo:  Well they...

Paul:  It's all kinds of different things.

Mary Jo:  This bar has all kinds of different styles too.  There's a really light Berliner Weisse, they have sours, they have...

Paul:  I was going to say that between the two of us we had sours, wheat beer, we had like an Abbey Quad...

Mary Jo:  You had that giant sausage thing.

Paul:  This is the other thing.  Let me explain.

Mary Jo:  I watched.  I did not even touch it.

Paul:  This is another area where the United States often falls flat.  They had 5 kinds of Bratwurst there.

Mary Jo:  They did.  Bratwurst, sorry I just called it sausage.

Paul:  It was really good.

Fr. Robert:  You just insulted an entire group.

Mary Jo:  I think I did, yeah.  But we tried a few different ones, yeah.  They had Beer Geek Breakfast which is one of the most awesome beers ever, but yeah.  They just had so many good ones.   I don't even know what to make the beer pick of the week because there just so many good ones.

Fr. Robert:  So the beer pick of the week is the bar.

Paul:  The bar.

Mary Jo:  The bar maybe, yeah.

Fr. Robert:  Next time you are in San Francisco you have to stop by McMichaels?

Mary Jo:  Mikkellers.

Fr. Robert:  Mikkellers.

Paul:  I was going to say, if you are a beer aficionado this is the stop.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, this is a great place.  It's so close to the convention center.  Even though Oracle World was in town this week we avoided most of the Java geeks.

Fr. Robert:  They are more of a wine crowd.

Paul:  They are such losers.  

Mary Jo:  It was funny, we were in a cab line, and Paul and I were waiting, and Paul just yells out at some guy with a badge, "You are wasting your life!"  I was like Paul, stop.

Paul:  Seriously.  It was a slogan, it was something like program the future.

Mary Jo:  It's like a Dot Net conference.  I'm sorry, but it is.

Paul:  Program the past.  It is except it's irrelevant.  It is so pointless.

Fr. Robert:  By the way, this is the perfect time to announce that we are releasing a new show on the TWiT network called This Week in Oracle with Paul Thurrott.

Paul:  Right, right, right.  I'm just going to drink.

Mary Jo:  This week in Java.

Paul:  Right.  I'm going to hit a data source with Java and then I'm going to kill myself.  It's just whatever.

Fr. Robert:  Now that I've just insulted half of the developers on the planet.  But it's cool.

Paul:  I think that these guys understand that that is why they call it a job.

Fr. Robert:  Wow.

Mary Jo:  I know, wow, right?

Fr. Robert:  Alright, well I thought we were just talking about beer, not drinking it, but app of the week.

Paul:  I was going to say, we have this preview that you can download, so I think the app pick of the week has to be the Windows Technical Preview which will be available starting tomorrow.  You can't sign up today, but tomorrow sometime, we don't know, preview.windows.com and you have to sign up for the Windows Insider Program.  Is that the right name?  Then you get access to the bits X64/X86 only; you know Windows PCs and tablets.  You can upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Fr. Robert:  So beer and Windows 10, what more can you want?

Paul:  Right.

Mary Jo:  I know.

Fr. Robert:  So before we go, Paul, we have a couple of options of branding for the next version of the next version of Windows OM that we want to run by you.  

Paul:  Okay, nice.  I like it.

Fr. Robert:  Wait, did you just make that?

Chad:  Somebody sent it in.

Mary Jo:  It's awesome, Windows TH.

Fr. Robert:  I like it; it's radiant.  This is nice.

Paul:  Alright, so this picture leaves out the best part of the photo which is the oysters that I'm eating.  This was actually I think at one of the last TECs that they had at one of the last builds, and I was with Lon Zing when this picture was taken.

Fr. Robert:  This one is okay, but the black and white, the artistic airbrushed one is better.

Paul:  I'm seeing some new site branding here.

Fr. Robert:  I think actually that that is not bad.  That could be the new WinSuperSite.

Mary Jo:  I think that it could.

Fr. Robert:  When you talk about Android you can use that too.  

Paul:  Windows TH, I get so excited about that.

Fr. Robert:  Folks, this bit of craziness has been Windows Weekly of course with Paul Thurrott, again the brain behind the WinSuperSite or as we now know him as Paul Windows Thurrott.

Paul:  Paul Oracle Lover.

Fr. Robert:  Oracle Lover Java User Thurrott.

Paul:  Right.

Fr. Robert:  What's going on at the site?  Is there a new project other than of course Windows 10 that they need to drop by and see?

Paul:  I can't remember where anything else is anymore.  It's going to be Windows 10 for a little while, let's put it that way.  Obviously between the stuff I haven't been able to post yet today and getting the build tomorrow I think that you can rest assured that the next few days are going to be heavy on that kind of thing.

Fr. Robert:  Well you are going to have to start digging through the preview.  You are going to have it installed tomorrow.  

Paul:  Oh yeah.

Fr. Robert:  And it will be story after story after story.

Paul:  No one asked, but they didn't make this build available to anybody ahead of time.

Fr. Robert:  Really?  If they are going to have it tomorrow you would think that they would at least send you home with it.

Paul:  No, we knew that wasn't going to happen.  I don't remember, but whenever this came up first, this September 30th day, I remember at least you mentioning it to me and I said that I had never heard anything other than early October for the build.  That hasn't changed, and it was weird.  So when they announced that the date was September 30th he was still saying it was October.  It was weird because obviously they had the event and then it was why don't they just give us build?  Because they hate us, I don't know.

Fr. Robert:  All you got were little sandwiches and no USB key.

Paul:  11.5 hours of air travel, 45 minutes in a room, and no code; perfect trip, perfect.

Fr. Robert:  I think that you can file a grievance.  You did get beer and you got to make fun of people.

Paul:  There will be more beer in approximately 5 minutes.

Fr. Robert:  That's Paul Thurrott at the Paul Windows Thurrott SuperSite.  

Paul:  That's Windows Thurrott.

Fr. Robert:  That the Windows Thurrott SuperSite.  And of course, Mary Jo Foley from All About Microsoft, CDNET's blog.

Paul:  Not All About Android?

Fr. Robert:  Not All About Android.  Anytime I hear all about, I just want to fill it in with Android.  That's just my thing now.

Paul:  Why is that?  Is that a thing?

Fr. Robert:  We have an incredible show here on the TWiT TV Network, run by I can't remember who, but...

Paul:  Yep, that doesn't sound familiar.

Fr. Robert:  It sounds a little bit familiar.  It's one of them that sticks in your head.  

Paul:  I can't, Sarah Lane?

Fr. Robert:  It may be Sarah Lane, but, of course...

Paul:  Is there a castle freak behind us, what's going on?

Mary Jo:  Yes, I think there is.

Fr. Robert:  We have a weird setup here in the Brick House.  There is actually 40 people behind this wall, it's like a little sweatshop.  Jason is actually a half a mile away, he is just really loud.

Paul:  I don't know if you can hear the microphones, but it sounds like when a squirrel is going to town with a nut.

Mary Jo:  It does, yeah it does.  It definitely does.  I was wondering what was back there the whole show.

Paul:  It's like a little squirrel going to town.

Fr. Robert:  He's actually got a little bowl filled with wrappers and the cellophane candy.

Mary Jo:  Oh, that's it.

Fr. Robert:  It's one of the allures.

Mary Jo:  I believe that.

Fr. Robert:  Of course you are going to be going through Windows 10 line by line, you are going to be showing people what the preview looks like.  What do they need to go to other than All About Windows?

Mary Jo:   All About Microsoft.

Paul:  Microsoft.

Mary Jo:  You are having a little problem with my site name.

Fr. Robert:  All About Microsoft!

Mary Jo:  Dot com.

Fr. Robert:  Dot com, a CDNET blog.

Mary Jo:  It is.

Fr. Robert:  I'm so fired.

Paul:  Do you need Java to view your website?

Mary Jo:  Yeah, I think you do.  What else am I going to be doing?  Well, I'm not going to be going through the preview as detailed as these guys, but as a normal person who is afraid of Windows 8...

Paul:  Your feedback is far more important.

Mary Jo:  My feedback may be good.  Then my other big thing is that I'm going to TechED Barcelona at the end of October.  When they start talking about Windows Threshold Server and System Center Threshold...

Paul:  And Intune.  It's going to be some good stuff.

Mary Jo:  And Intune; I think that I'm going to be right there.

Paul:  You know, we never touched on this, but one of the things that Microsoft is doing, and I'm assuming this is going to be part of 10, is that they are extending those MDN capabilities to apps, to data, and to user identity.  Those are 3 areas that the other competitors in that space don't hit on.  They usually only hit on 1 or 2 of the 4 major categories.   We have had device management for a long time through EAS and Intune now, but I think that you are going to see a lot of that stuff there.

Fr. Robert:  That's actually huge.  That idea of persistent identity through devices.  I can't stress enough how big of an advantage that would give Microsoft.  There is finally a reason to have a Windows Phone and a Windows tablet.

Mary Jo:  And a reason to buy Office.

Paul:  I think the Xbox live games on Windows were already a reason, but I see what you are saying.

Mary Jo:  What about Minecraft?

Fr. Robert:  You mean Microcraft?

Mary Jo:  Microsoftcraft?

Fr. Robert:  Micromine?

Jason:  Hey Paul, we got an update?

Paul:  Yes, now with the oyster, nice.

Mary Jo:  That's awesome.

Fr. Robert:  This is not...

Mary Jo:  It should be that little mini egg thing.

Fr. Robert:  This will not end well.

Mary Jo:  No, it will not.  There are going to be more modifications.

Paul:  That day ended great.  That was like an MSDN party on top of that hotel in Las Vegas.

Mary Jo:  Oh, was that that party?

Paul:  Yeah.

Fr. Robert:  The chat room is fast.  They can make anything you need immediately.

Paul:  That was some time ago, though.

Mary Jo:  It was.

Paul:  I can't remember, but...

Fr. Robert:  By the way, Alex, save those because those are seriously some nice graphics.  You should consider using those on the SuperSite.

Paul:  Those are, those are actually really nice other than that I am in them, but yeah.

Fr. Robert:  Don't forget that we normally broadcast Windows Weekly on Wednesdays at 11:00.  This is a unique time because of the event in San Francisco.  You can find this at the Show page at twit.tv/ww, Windows Weekly.  There you will find not just all of the episodes, you can download previous episodes, but you can also find a place where you can subscribe to our RSS feed which means you can get Windows Weekly automatically on your device of choice, your iPhone, your Android phone, your tablet, Mac, PC, desktop, laptop, or whatever it may be.  If you want to stream it to your high definition TV that's the place to go.  Also, don't forget that you can find Mary Jo Foley at the All About Microsoft website.

Paul:  Thank you for visually assuring that that was what you meant.

Mary:  Allaboutandroid.com.

Fr. Robert:  It's a pretty long episode, so allaboutmicorosoft.com.  Paul Thurrott at the WinSuperSite.  Until next time, I'm Father Robert Ballicer probably forgetting a whole lot of stuff, but how do we end this show?

Paul:  You just say goodbye.

Fr. Robert:  Goodbye!