Windows Weekly 394 (Transcript)

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Leo Laporte:  This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, Episode 394 for December 24, 2014.

This Year's Best Moments

Hi there, Leo Laporte, your Elf on a Shelf, and it's time once again for our year end edition of Windows Weekly.  Grab yourself a giant mug of hot cocoa because we have got a lot of Microsoft news with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley.  Goodness, it's been an incredible year for Microsoft, kind of a life changing year for Microsoft.  We are going to kick things off with pretty much the topic for the first couple of months of 2014; who would be the new CEO?  Let's watch some speculation.

Leo:  We talked last week about Microsoft.  2013 was the banner year for Microsoft.  So much stuff, so much amazing stuff, but what is 2014 going to portend?  That's the question.

Mary Jo Foley:  I think that it's going to be another year of insanity.

Leo:  We know that there will be a new CEO, because we've been told that.

Mary Jo:  We do, we do.

Leo:  Do you think that a new CEO will change the company much, or will they pick somebody that is going to maintain?

Mary Jo:  Whoever comes in has to basically agree with what the plan is now that is in place because the board and the search committee is kind of backing the way they have reorganized the company into the one Microsoft and all of that.

Leo: That's going to narrow it down, though, a little bit.  Not everybody would necessarily sign on under those conditions.

Mary Jo:  And you know, there are all of these people speculating that maybe Bill and Steve will step down off of the board, and if that happens maybe that will allow for bigger changes.  But there has been no indication from anyone that I know that that is about to happen.  So yeah.  That's going to start the year off probably.  I bet they are going to name the CEO in January.  Not next week because that is CES timing, but I would say early in the year.

Leo:  Soon?

Mary Jo:  Yeah, soon.

Leo:  Who are our candidates these days?  I said Satya Nadella and Steven Elop are the insiders.  It seemed to me to be more likely than an outsider.

Mary Jo:  Allen Mulally is still in the running.

Leo: Generalissimo Francisco Franko.  It does not go away.

Mary Jo:  He's not going away.

Leo:  So he never stepped forward and said no like the Ford board wanted him to do?

Mary Jo:  No.

Leo:  Well that just fuels the rumors.  I didn't say no yet.

Mary Jo:  There was a crazy rumor the week of Christmas.  I don't know if you guys caught this yet, but the CEO of Hyundai North America abruptly stepped down and no one knows why.  People were saying what if they are going to pick this guy?

Leo:  Oh Hyundai, it's like a Ford, only cheaper.

Mary Jo:  Exactly.  The guy who it is, his name is John Krafcik, k-r-a-f-c-i-k, he actually is an engineer by profession.  So of course that started some crazy speculation. 

Leo:  We were talking the other day, I've been talking about this a lot lately, thinking about the idea of platforms and thinking about the history of Microsoft.  I had this discussion with Dvorak, who as usual kind of disagreed, but the boom of the computer industry in the 80's and 90's was almost entirely contributable to the fact that Microsoft provided a stable platform that developers could write to.  It was a known platform, you knew what you were writing for, you knew that they had a huge installed user base, Microsoft preserved legacy compatability all along for those 20 years, they really did a good job in that respect.  I guess it was 90's and 2000's maybe would be the right decades for that.  The world has changed, Microsoft has recognized that, in fact the Cloud is the new platform, is it not?

Paul Thurrott:  It is one of them.  I think mobile devices are.

Leo:  Yeah, I guess mobile.

Paul:  But I guess in many ways mobile apps are just front end online services.

Leo:  Yeah, Cloud.  It started with Amazon web services.

Paul:  It really is the Netscape thing.  I always go back to this.  I really didn't respect Mark Andreessen too much when Netscape was a thing, and he was talking about how they were going to reduce Windows to a buggy instead of a device driver on what we would now call a Cloud OS would run.  I think that there is something to that.  I think that the shock for Microsoft for the last 10 years is that that traditional plan that you were just talking about where they would respect backwards compatability and customers would just move along with them kind of came to a crashing halt.

Leo:  Exactly.

Paul:  It started with the Apple stuff, because here were these new platforms that weren't compatible with anything.  Things like that never took off before.  You can kind of argue about why and we can discuss it, but I think that was the big afront to Microsoft.

Leo:  It became very clear, there is this Enterprise Cloud, but there is a larger Cloud for everybody, which Google is promoting with Chromebooks of course, and I think that you nailed it Paul when you said that mobile devices are just a front end to Cloud computing.  Amazon kind of began this year with Amazon web services, the elastic computing Cloud, and SD storage.  Microsoft and Google both actually have parody now.  Microsoft was first.

Paul:  It's just funny how this technology, it's weird, it kind of subverts the historic strength of Microsoft because it makes the PC and the server less relevant.  When you can cheaply virtualize a server up in some Cloud service rather than in your own expensive data center that's actually a big benefit to customers.

Leo:  It's commoditized, right?

Paul:  Right, it makes that thing that was Microsoft's kind of bread and butter less viable.

Leo:  A lot of companies, HP, Rackspace, Google, they are talking about open stack now.  They are running on open source software.

Paul:  The thing is when you run stuff locally, the sort of backwards compatibility is important.  When you run it up in a service then switching between platforms isn't a big deal because you aren't doing the heavy lifting anymore.  

Leo:  In the same way that in the 90's and 2000's Microsoft powered an entire economy forward, the Cloud has done that dramatically.  A start up starts in these shared systems, they are cheap.

Paul:  Leo, Microsoft's slogan at one time if you remember was a computer in every desk in every home.  That kind of thing.

Leo:  Running Windows software.

Paul:  Running Windows software.  That must have seemed so forward leaning in the 1980's or whenever they came up with that.  That sounds ludicrisly old fashioned today.

Leo:  It does, doesn't it?

Paul:  A computer?  On a desk?  In my house?  Why would I want that?

Leo:  Isn't that amazing?

Paul:  That's amazing.  It is profound how big of a change that it is.

Leo:  No wonder why Microsoft is struggling a little bit with this.

Paul:  As it turns out.

Leo:  They are still making money.

Paul:  This quarter does show that they are still making a lot of money, and the way that they are doing that is by successfully transitioning the businesses that they can from on prim software to services.

Leo:  That's what I was leading up to with this ridiculously sarcuatis route, is what is the report card on that?

Paul:  I think that they are doing great in that transition.  To kind of step back a bit, Mary Jo and I write about Microsoft, but really we kind of write about Windows in the sense that Windows is the sense of everything, you know?  It's not anymore, and that is the weirdest transition of all.  Microsoft can still be successful without the Windows desktop being successful, but it is so weird because Windows was the center of it all for so long.  It was the catalyst for everything else that happened there.

Leo:  Huge change.

Paul:  So I think that we tend to focus on that stuff, maybe overfocus on it because it's been such a constant for 20 plus years.  But it's changing and it's hard.  It's a hard transition.

Leo: Do they break out the Cloud stuff Mary Jo?

Mary Jo:  They give you some very vague ideas.  Like they say that we've doubled licenses sold compared to the last quarter, but we don't know what the number sold was last quarter, so we don't really know, which makes it tricky.  The one number they did break out, which was interesting, was Office 365 Home Premium sales.  They are actually at 3.5 million subscribers for that now, and that is one of their Cloud services.

Leo:  That's actually pretty good.

Mary Jo:  It is.  That's actually very good.  What that one is is Microsoft selling to customers on a subscription basis the right to install Office 2013 on up to 5 PC's or Mac's.  

Leo:  That's the one that I have.

Mary Jo:  Yeah.

Leo:  And it's what, $10 a month? What is it?  I can't even remember now.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, it's roughly that.  It's $99 a year.

Leo:  You are talking some money here.

Mary Jo:  Right, but they did admit that one reason that that worked so well is that they have started cannablizing their non-Office subscription business.

Leo:  But of course.

Mary Jo:  It's not a big surprise.

Paul:  I don't know if you caught this, I don't know where this popped up, but I guess that the business version, the business versions, were now at a $1.5 billion dollar revenue run rate, and this is the fastest growing commercial product in their history now.

Mary Jo:  That's Office 365, the business ones.

Paul:  Yep.

Mary Jo:  Nope, I didn't see that number.

Paul:  They said that 1 in 4 of all of their business customers have Office 365 and 60% of the Fortune 500 have purchased Office 365 in the past year.

Leo:  So that's good, that means that that transition to the subscription model is working well.  If you say 25% have adopted this, that's for the first year?  I think that is good, right?

Paul:  I think so.

Leo:  That's very good.  That means that this new model for software, which is really software as a service practically, is suceeding.  That's got to be good news for Microsoft.  So is this kind of a stopping point for Windows being a subscription service?  I think that it is.  Microsoft has always wanted to do that.  They do already in Enterprise I guess.  

Mary Jo:  Yeah, the word Cloud means so many things.  If you talk about it as a subscription and you say what if we let you buy 5 Windows licenses that you could install on any of your family's PC's if you pay us, you know, $99 a year or whatever.  That's Windows as a subscription just like Office.  They could do that.

Paul:  I wish they would.

Mary:  Or you do something...

Leo:  Why Paul?

Paul:  I think this is the time where Windows is hitting a shortfall, and you have 400 million XP users that aren't upgrading anytime soon.  I don't think that it will help businesses per say, but you know, just making Windows more cheaply and easily licensable and providing that same benefit to families like they do with Office is just a no brainer.

Leo:  Remember though, I shouldn't be telling you, you should be telling me...

Paul:  Do tell.

Leo:  In the Windows world, I'm just saying that there is business and consumers, but in both cases I think the sense that you get is that you buy the computer with Windows and you don't upgrade Windows until you buy the next computer.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo:  So what am I paying for with a subscription, and why should I pay anything?  I already bought the computer.

Paul:  You are talking about devices that get upgrades for free forever, or for some periods.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, right.

Leo:  So how do you move from that model?

Mary Jo:  How do you move from it, or to it?

Leo:  Yeah, to the subscription model from the model that exists right now, or at least in my mind, that I don't buy Windows.  I buy a computer with Windows on it, and I don't buy Windows until I buy the next computer.  In fact I don't even ever buy it.  That's certainly the consumer mindset.  Is it also the business mindset?

Mary Jo:  Yeah.

Leo:  Except for the giant Enterprises where they are buying volume licenses and all of that.

Paul:  Well, there is another issue in business where I don't think that they want to disrupt operations.  One of the, we ran into the Surface stuff, which we will talk about later, where constant upgrades is a great idea, but constant upgrades that actually work and improve the reliability of the system is a much better idea.

Leo:  Much better, yeah.

Paul:  That's the thing.  Enterprise customers, business customers, these are the ones that would never upgrade until until SV1 in the old days and then got burned by service packs and didn't want to upgrade ever.  That's why we have XP.  It's a tough thing to get from here to there.

Mary Jo:  If you are a business customer and Microsoft says to you, okay, how about you buy Windows on a subscription?  It's almost like software assurance.  You tell us that you will give us every update and point release that you do in some set period like 3 years for software assurance, and that guarantees that you get everything.  That's another way that you come in.

Paul:  A lot of these already have that, don't they?  One of the issues that comes up with this XP expiration, which is the great story of our age, is who are these 400 million customers?  Who are these people who haven't upgraded?  I've heard from readers in my comments section in my articles, and they are like why does Microsoft care about these people?  They are not good customers, they are still running XP.  The thing is, I actually think that most of those customers are in fact business customers and are good Microsoft customers, and that they do have access to newer versions of Windows.  Not all of them, but some significant percentage through software sharing or volume licensing, and that they have not upgraded because they can't or they perceive that they can't because they have these legacy applications, or web apps, or internet sites, or whatever it is that for whatever reason doesn't work in a modern web browser or a modern version of Windows.  They are kind of stuck on XP for the same reason that people have always been stuck on old versions of software.

Leo:  They don't want to buy a new piece of hardware.

Paul:  I don't know.  I'm just speculating, but I wouldn't be surprise if a lot of those guys are what we call good Microsoft customers in the sense that they are paying for SA or volume licensing, but they just can't make that move.

Leo:  In the consumer space, and maybe the consumer space doesn't matter.  

Paul:  Those guys?  Screw those guys.

Leo:  Does the consumer space matter anymore?

Paul:  You are at home running XP?  Come on, seriously?

Leo:  That is probably most of them, right?

Paul:  Listen, you have got to come out of your cabin in the woods.  The 80's are over.  It's time.

Mary Jo:  I think it is a mix of those people who are just too cheap, like we've talked about before, and then there are those people who really can't move because of peripheral software applications that they have built, or people who have built apps that are dependant on Internet Explorer 6.  Like all of those people.  It's like you want to encourage them to move obviously so that they aren't going to be effected by a massive security issue once Microsoft stops updating XP, but I also kind of feel for them, it's like they are stuck, right?

Paul:  They literally are stuck.  I think that is the important part.

Mary Jo:  They are literally stuck.

Paul:  They not always running ancient hardware.  I remember back in the Windows 7 days when that was first coming out, one of the big concerns then was Windows XP.  One of the things that they did with Windows 7 is make sure that it ran really well on older hardware, and there were all of these stories about companies buying Windows 7 class PC's, and wiping it out, and putting Windows XP on it because they needed it for backwards compatibility hopefully.  Hopefully they weren't just doing it because they didn't want to train people on Windows 7.

Leo:  I like XP.  It's a good little operating system.

Paul:  I like that silver UI that you can put on.  It's nice. 

Leo:  Oh yeah, I do like that actually.

Leo:  Surface. Which is not the opposite of dive. Maybe it's the same, I don't know.  More updates.  You call it, Paul, the worst month ever for Surface updates.

Paul:  Well it's been so stupid.  I feel like a lot of positive things have happened with Microsoft over the past year.  This Surface lack of communication thing is like the whole Sinofsky era all over again.  I just feel bad about it.  It's so unnecessary.  They have really kind of shot themselves in the foot there.

Leo: So Mary Jo has wrapped it all up and explained to us all what the hell happened.

Mary Jo:  I tried, although today I found out that there are some things that I have to change in that article yet again.  

Leo:  Oh man, you just published it yesterday.

Mary Jo:  I know.

Paul:  Is it February yet?

Mary Jo:  Here is one of the reasons that it is so complicated.  Microsoft is updating 4 different Surfaces, or Surfi, or whatever we call them; Surface Pro 2, Surface Pro, Surface 2, and Surface RT, which they call the plain old Surface now.  Some of these are running Windows 8.1 and some are running 8.0.  I could imagine that this could become a little more complicated when they have update 1 come out.  So they are updating all of these things differently based on which operating system on which hardware you are running.  So not everybody gets the same set of updates across all of these devices.  Each one of these different configurations gets different updates.  So if you look at my list there are things that they updated on the Surface Pro 2 that are different from what they did on the Surface Pro that are different from what they did on the Surface 2.  We have gone over a lot of these on Windows Weekly, but the main thing to know about the Surface Pro 2 that I just found out today was that there was one firmware update that went out this month for everybody for Surface Pro 2 whether you got the faulty December firmware update or you didn't.  Everybody now supposedly has the same firmware update fix as of January on their machines.

Leo:  Right on daddy-o.

Paul:  How confident do you feel about that one?

Mary Jo:  I don't feel that confident.

Paul:  You said that kind of hesitantly.  I don't know.  It seems like something that you should be able to say confidently, but...

Mary Jo:  We've heard so many different iterations of this story, right?  At first it was some people were getting one patch and some were getting a different patch, and some people were also getting things called hardware updates, which I found out today were just driver updates.  

Leo:  That's not hardware.

Paul:  I know, how disappointing.

Mary Jo:  Yeah.

Paul:  I was just staring at it.  It's like waiting for toast to happen.  Maybe the hardware will just change in front of my eyes.

Leo:  My screen resolution has doubled.  

Paul:  My Surface Pro got thinner.

Leo:  Thank you Microsoft.  It's a miracle.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, so anyway, the good news is that we are almost done with January, so at least the January updates are done.  There should be some more February ones coming.

Leo:  Oh wow.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, the one thing that did not get fixed in this month of updates, because I have had people ask me about this, was that there was a Micro SD card issue for the Surface Pro 2 and I believe that none of the updates that any of the updates that anybody got fixed that.  

Paul:  What is the issue?

Mary Jo:  Something to do with battery life I believe, or when you have the Micro SD card in somehow your battery drops to zero I'm thinking?  

Paul:  Whoa.

Mary Jo:  I can't remember exactly, but I bet somebody in the chat room will.  But yeah, whatever that Micro SD card was, if I could find that in the article. I've wrote so many articles on Surface updates this month that I can't even find all of my articles.  

Paul:  It's so hard to write about.  It's like, okay, I thought I covered everything.

Leo:  Where's the little search doggy when you need him?  Ruff, you look like you are looking for articles.  Can I help?

Mary Jo:  Where's Clippy?  I want my Clippy.

Leo:  I need my articles.

Leo:  Please, if you have a question for Paul, Mary Jo, or Daniel Rubino for Windows Phone Central, raise your hand and we'll send you the microphone. Say your name and who you work for or where you're from. Anything that would help us understand why you're here.

Jeffrey Harmon: I'm Jeffrey Harmon, I have my own software company doing Windows 8 and Windows phone apps, as well as some business software and during the day I also do database development and web development. So I'm wondering with the rapid release of new versions of Windows, how's that going to affect- I know small devices are now free but they're still charging for the large devices. How's that going to affect them charging for a newer version because you know, free software versions don't matter too much. But in paid software 8's you pay for, updates are free, and when 9 comes out you pay for it. If they're releasing everything in 6 month cadences, it's hard to charge for that big gap because there are no longer any big gaps.

Paul: I sort of talked with them vaguely about that kind of thing this week and they don't have a direct answer yet. I think this is still kind of up in the air, but they're obviously aware of that.

Daniel: Yeah, even with Windows phone. Right? Windows phone 9, they would have to- There's also a lot of legal complications going in there.

Paul: Right. Imagine is there going to be a point where they're going to charge for a Windows phone update? Which is kind of an interesting question. And then it's like, well does it require a dual core processor or a quad core processor? Maybe there will be some dividing line. So I can't answer that question.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I don't know... I don't think we know.

Paul: I think it's up in the air. But they're aware of it. If you asked Microsoft this question, which I actually kind of did, there's not going to be an answer like, oh yeah you know this is how we're doing it. I think they're looking at how Office 365 has been accepted by consumers. Obviously it's not a big leap to think about a subscription version of Windows where that replaces the you know, you pay for x versions or whatever.

Daniel: And Apple charges for their updates and people do it.

Leo: Yeah, that's true.

Mary Jo: They still pay. Maybe they'll go to the fake Windows 365 by the time Windows 9 even, maybe.

Paul: Right, that wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. And you know, you think about how Office 365 works. Kind of liberal licensing, which I think is really the future. The way Windows works now, you buy a copy of Windows and it's tied to that PC. That's so antiquated, you know.

Daniel: Yeah, Office 365 is really kind of awesome. I don't know, I really like the model they did for that.

Paul: Yeah, I do too. But I also run into people who say, I don't get it why would I want to pay for this thing every year?

Daniel: Because they don't have 5 devices.

Paul: Yeah and that's fair, that's absolutely fair. Leo, what are you doing?

Leo: Nothing.

Jeffrey: And one correction on Roslyn, even though its compiler as a service it's actually a local service. It's not anything cloud-based. It just means that a developer can actually call into the compiler and get information about the code. That's what they're referring to for that. Normally it's compiles a black box, you put code in, binary comes out.

Paul: Got ya'.

Mary Jo: Right, thanks.

Jeffrey: And actually the new version of C# is Roslyn there's no more-

Mary Jo: Right, the C# 6 is Roslyn.

Paul: Is Roslyn, and is open source right?

Jeffrey: Yeah, that is open source.

Paul: I'd love to see C# make the leap and become the cross platform language. It's so clean.

Leo: Pass the microphone around, yes sir?

Audience member: Just a quick comment, there actually were 2 sessions on Type Script.

Mary Jo: Oh there were?

Paul: There was?

Audience member: Anders gave an update on it and then right after that there was a session on developing a large scale application using app Type Script.

Paul: Did you go to the Anders Type Script session?

Audience member: I did not, but it's on the schedule.

Paul: I actually met Anders at the show for the first time. And Leo often references the Delphi Superbible and so I was able to tell him that I go back a long time with his stuff. You know, that I was a Turbo Pascal guy, Object Pascal, Delphi...

Leo: Was he at Borland?

Paul: Yeah he did all of this stuff. So it's kind of interesting if you follow the progression, C# is in many ways kind of the C-based successor to Object Pascal. You know, in some ways.

Audience Member: He's a very bright guy, and he is very well spoken.

Paul: Yeah, he's a genius and a really nice guy. So that was kind of neat.

Leo: Thank you sir, any other questions for Paul, Mary Jo, and Daniel? And say who you are and what brings you to Build.

Paul: And we know that Australia is the 3rd world country.

Leo: Don't be mad.

Mark: Okay, so would you believe my name is Mark as well, from Australia.

Paul: Oh you are from Australia, are you serious?

Mark: Yeah.

Daniel: Nailed it.

Mark: Mary Jo are those Cooper's beers there?

Mary Jo: Yes.

Mark: Good choice, good ones. I'm just curious with all of these changes lately at Microsoft, how much of that do you think is Satya's vision and how much is it the Board's vision is executing? And the second question is how long do you think AdLab will stick around?

Mary Jo: And the other part to your question is how much of it was Steve Ballmer? Right?

Daniel: Sure, yeah. Absolutely.

Mary Jo: I talked to Somasegar, who runs the developer division about the decision to do .NET as open source this week. And you know, I saw so many people Tweeting and saying, see that's Satya. It wasn't, it was Ballmer. And somebody told me it was Ballmer who came up with that plan and Satya was the one who pulled the trigger on it, but it was Ballmer.

Paul: You know, it's like when the new president gets elected and the economy suddenly does great and they take credit for it. But you know, the factors that contributed to that occurred previously. It's a little more nuance.

Mary Jo: Even Office on iPad, right? Like so many people said, Steve Ballmer would never have let that happen. He was the one who made it happen first before Windows.

Paul: The other thing to think of is, you asked what, the board versus Satya? Is that how you said it? The fact that Satya was essentially picked by that special part of the board team tells you that these guys are all in line. So there's almost no delineation between was it there idea, his idea that kind of thing. Because they're kind of on the same page across the board, we would have to imagine.

Mary Jo: Yeah, to some degree. I mean there's some descent in the board.

Paul: Of course, there will always be. But they're not going to pick the guy that completely disagrees with everything they want to do.

Mary Jo: Right, the guy that wants like to sell Bing, sell Xbox. Okay let's get him.

Paul: Tony Bates is gone for a reason. You know?

Leo: Thanks for the question, Mark. Moving on, anybody else have questions for Paul, Mary Jo, Daniel?

Paul: I can't believe he's from Australia that's hilarious.

Daniel: You have a gift.

George Roberts: Hi everyone, I'm George Roberts from Chicago Sir Twist on Twitter.

Leo: Hi George.

Mary Jo: Sir Twist.

Leo: Sir Twist. Are you a developer.

George: I am. Windows, Windows phone.

Paul: I'm so sorry. Go on.

George: I'm going to ask sort of an opinion question here, but Windows phone has been making a lot of gains everywhere else but the US. So what does Microsoft need to do to get Windows phone above 10% in the US?

Daniel: Well they need a hire me and then give me a lot of money. No, if I knew that answer I would- I mean I don't think anyone knows. It's the problem in the US is those 2 year contracts lock people in.

Paul: Isn't it interesting that in the United States, not necessarily uniquely in the world but one of the few countries in the world, where the iPhone has huge market share? You know, when you look at the overall worldwide picture it's 80%, 17 or 14% or whatever, and then the rest is Windows phone mostly. In the United States, iPhone is like 50%.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Daniel: Yeah.

Audience member: The price of the iPhone in the US is the same as-

Paul: Is the same. Yeah, because-

Audience member: In Europe it costs like 2 times as much.

Paul: Right, so I think the moves in the United States to get rid of the subsidized smart phones, which is occurring right now and a lot of other things that are going on. You know T-Mobile, which is a very minority position in the United States is changing policies for international calling and international data-

Leo: And growing, as a result.

Paul: Of course, of course. And these are the types of things that trigger change, so we'll see. But the United States is hard because this market is so skewed toward Apple.

Daniel: Yep.

Paul: One of the best things about coming to San Francisco for Build is you walk around and everyone has a Windows phone.

Daniel: Yeah, and I've actually noticed over the last two years, that has dramatically change. I remember Build 2-3 years ago and Windows phones weren't seen as much. Now, I see it all over.

Leo: I've got to commend Microsoft for sticking with it because I think 8.1 is really starting to look like a very competitive platform in almost every respect. The only respect you could say it's lagging in is ecosystem. I won't even say apps, I'll say ecosystem. And of course, when you come into a market like the US where there's an entrenched ecosystem of iPhone and secondarily, Android, that is a speed bump. Maybe less of a speed bump in other countries where; a) Nokia is a better known brand and better beloved-

Daniel: That's an issue right there, too. Is Nokia doesn't really mean a whole lot in the US, which a lot of people don't understand.

Leo: Nokia was due but not anymore.

Daniel: Well even so, with Symbian. I never saw Symbian, I've never touched it. So Nokia doesn't have that reputation here, whereas like in other countries, just the name Nokia people will-

Leo: It means smartphone.

Daniel: Oh yeah. So there's that tide that they really really have to fight against.

Leo: And I would guess that you don't have people who have highly invested in Android or Apple ecosystems so there's less of a disincentive to move to a Windows phone. Maybe also, they're buying their first smartphone more than we would be, and as a result, they're less worried about whether FourSquare is on it or not.

Paul: Tell me if you remember this conversation because I don't remember what the context was but somebody said when you look at Windows phone usage in the United States, it's largely centered in the middle of the country.

Mary Jo: Oh really?

Paul: Because in those markets, are not necessarily super interested in the trendy you know, bright white iPhone thing. You can buy a $99 phone or $69 phone and get it off contract. It's kind of interesting and I sort of like that aspect to it in a way because I feel like that is a computing for the rest of us kind of thing.

Daniel: It's a hipster phone.

Mary Jo: It kind of is, which is weird, right?

Leo: I guess that peer pressure is influential in this. Or what looks cool. YamZamen in the chat room says in the Netherlands people actually buy it because it's Nokia.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Because it's Nokia, right?

Daniel: Yeah, that's a big thing. That's why everybody was worried about the acquisition like, what's going to happen.

Paul: I was always fascinated by Nokia and when they picked up Windows phone I was really excited by that because it's got kind of an interesting quality to it because it's foreign and it's unknown. It's different, and Nokia just has not been a factor in the United States for a long time.

Leo: I think you watch. I think that there is a growing awareness, partly because of Nokia's ad campaigns, they've been very good, of Windows phone and I think Windows phone 8.1 is going to be a tipping point. That's my prediction.

Mary Jo: They've got to figure out the retail experience though, right?

Leo: It's gotten better.

Daniel: It's better but you could still talk to a Verizon employee and they'll be like, yeah but this doesn't have Instagram on it. So there's the reality and then there's the delay and they're still fighting that.

Leo: What major apps are going to be missing when 8.1 comes out? Not Instagram.

Daniel: We're still waiting on FlipBoard.

Leo: I don't think FlipBoard is that important. What about Sonos? That would be a deal breaker for me.

Paul: Throw out 3rd party apps...

Daniel: Yeah but there's a really good 3rd party app called Phonos and Sonos actually did a survey recently with their own customers asking, not only do you want this phone app, but what do you want in it?

Paul: Right. Ultimately, here's what I want in it: I want what's in the iPhone app. So stop asking and just make it.

Mary Jo: Well that's where Marc Whitten went to work is Sonos, right?      

Leo: I truly think this is going to be a tipping point. I think that a year from now we're going to look back and say, boy that really was the water shed event.

Daniel: It's going to be Cortana.

Leo: And I say that as an outsider who uses Android. I was with the iPhone since 2007 and this is the first time I'm looking at it and going, you know? That's reached parody.

Paul: Did you say you were an iPhone user since 2007?

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: The year that the iPhone came out?

Daniel: With no apps...

Leo: Man I got in line to buy that iPhone, with no apps but no one else had apps either.

Leo: Well, we are here in the midst of an XP— (mumbles over the word apocalypse) X-pocalypse — how do you call — what do you call this? Windows XP-AGEDDON.

Mary Jo: X-pocalypse.

Paul: X-pocalypse, I guess.

Mary Jo: X-pocalypse.

Leo: X —

Paul: XP-OCALYPSE.

Leo: XP — and I've got it here —

Paul: Ocalypse.

Leo: — is dead.

Paul: Yep.

Paul: Those look like the freebie — the cheapo Microsoft Store ones from —

Leo: Yeah, they are.

Paul: — campus.

Leo: You — you nailed it! How did you — how did you know? It has that —

Paul: Because I've bought a lot of software there, Leo. (Laughs)

Leo: — that big sticker says —

Paul: The sticker they get — yeah.

Leo: "Microsoft company store purchase. Not to be sold. Purchased by (employee number, which is conspicuously blank)."

Paul: Yep.

Leo: We've blanked it out for purposes of exposition. See there? So — gosh. You know, it says right on the box, this is the best version of Windows ever, and —

Paul: You know what it also says on the box, is —

Leo: What?

Paul: — if you have a PC with Windows 95 on it, you could use this. And that is crazy.

Leo: You couldn't because it was such a pig.

Paul: There's no way that could have been good advice —

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: — even in 2000.

Leo: Yeah. "The smartest Windows ever. Capabilities that put you in charge. Make your experience your own." That's for the home version.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: So what do you think?

Paul: Those were the days, Leo.

Leo: Has the world come to an end?

Paul: Leo, when they launched Windows XP, there was a Gateway cow in Times Square in New York City.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Wow.

Paul: That's a fact.

Mary Jo: You have a good memory. Yeah.

Paul: That's a fact.

Mary Jo: I remember that. Yep.

Leo: You actually have a lovely requiem for Windows XP, but you have to read it backwards.

Paul: Well, the ones at the bottom are the first ones I posted.

Leo: That's what I'm saying. You have to scroll up. In fact, you have some of the things we were just talking about.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: "Windows XP — your computer will be faster, more reliable. Starts faster than any previous version."

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: "Also runs your programs more quickly and reliably." Unless you're using a Windows 95 machine.

Paul: It was amazing.

Leo: Was it?

Paul: No. (Laughs)

Leo: No.

Paul: No, it was —

Leo: "With Windows XP, DOS is gone for good." Well, except that setup is in DOS. But other than that ...

Paul: By the way, a million people wrote me to tell me, "You know that's not really DOS."

Leo: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Shut up.

Paul: To which I said, "You know, you can just relax." (Laughs)

Leo: Shut up. It's Twitter.

Paul: I mean, settle down.

Leo: Steve Ballmer, in an internal email to Microsoft employees, July 2001: "I want everyone to upgrade to Windows XP Release Candidate 1 today."

Paul: By the way, that email included the instructions for how it was going to happen, and it involved — you walked by the receptionist in whatever building you work in, and they will hand you a disc.

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: And then, you will install it on your computer.

Leo: Wow.

Paul: And if you need help, here's how you get support from — the local IT stuff.

Leo: Wow.

Paul: Like, they — they actually made everyone upgrade.

Leo: They were serious.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Wow. Here's a picture of the long and winding road. Steve Gugenheimer, July 2001: "From the Windows perspective, this will be an open bar."

Paul: (Laughs) Yeah, we need more open bars.

Leo: "Anyone can plug in." (Laughs) What is that picture of? That's very blurry.

Paul: So that was — it was the sidebar, and it was a — it was actually, like, an MSN type — kind of thing, but this was, like, an idea for a future version of Windows, like Longhorn.

Leo: Right. I — and they never really gave up the idea of those green hills, blue sky —

Paul: Oh, they love the — they love the road. The road goes ever on.

Leo: The road not taken. The road goes ever on. Here's another one. "Imagine the future. As a user, being able to access services and local capabilities seamlessly."

Paul: Yep.

Leo: Was that really — was that really brilliant writing in 2001? Was that, like, really a crystal ball?

Paul: Yeah. I mean, today, we just do it without thinking about it.

Leo: Yeah. In fact, Windows — Microsoft says they're a services company.

Paul: But yeah. 2001, sure. Sure.

Leo: Early days of the cloud.

Paul: Windows XP had a way that you could sign in to your .net passport, which was what became Microsoft account, and now that's integrated right into the OS. It only took them 15 years. (Laughs) So it's weird, I mean, how XP was the beginning of a lot of different stuff.

Leo: A quote to Jim Allchin on a couple of things. Hiding features from consumers, not a good thing. Not good for the industry. "The industry needs Windows XP. It's designed for choice." And then — anyway, "R.I.P., Windows XP.," writes Paul Thurrott yesterday. XP — actually, was it midnight tonight — or last night — that the expiration was? Midnight California — or West, I guess Seattle time.

Paul: Yeah, I went down on my bunker last night just in case the planet exploded.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: You know the irony of this all is that yes, there was a massive —

Paul: (Laughs) Yes, there was.

Leo: — exploit that affected almost every user of computers in the world, and it was on open-source software, not —

Paul: By the way, seriously? Thank you for taking the pressure off, open-source.

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: Because it's like — it's like you get into a drunk driving kind of a problem the night that Gary Bucey does the same thing, and now no one cares about you anymore. All they care about is Gary Bucey. You know, it's so weird that that happened right then. You know? Nice.

Leo: So I didn't know this, but thanks to our chatters, the picture — the Bliss wallpaper, the green hill wallpaper —

Paul: Yep.

Leo: —  is Napa.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: It's right around the corner from here.

Mary Jo: I think Alex took a picture.

Leo: That's what I see when I go out my door every single day.

Mary Jo: That was —

Paul: The guy that took the photo threatened to sue me one time.

Leo: Really?

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Oh, sheesh. (Laughs)

Leo: Really?

Paul: Yeah, really.

Leo: Why? Charles O'Rear?

Paul: Because — yes. Because I took a picture — I'm sorry; I didn't take a picture. I reprinted a photo of him standing in front of that photo.

Leo: Oh, awesome.

Paul: And — yeah. Because I — I was writing about the background of it — you know, of the picture. This was years ago. And he told me that that was owned by whatever publication it was in and that I couldn't do that. And I told him, "I don't know if you understand how" —

Leo: Fair use.

Paul: — "fair use works in the United States, but of course I can do that."

Leo: Fair use.

Paul: So I told him he was welcome to try to sue me.

Leo: He was a National Geographic photographer?

Paul: Yeah. Great photographer. Apparently, he's a little bit of a [makes a dismissive noise], you know. (Laughs) Kind of a jerk.

Leo: He's cranky, a little cranky. You know, this is in Carneros, for those who are familiar with the area. I know exactly where this is. We — we go there all the time. There's — the Carneros Inn is right by there. That's —

Paul: So now that thing is covered in vines.

Leo: Vines, yeah. It is. I bet you you could not find that now. He took the picture in '98.

Paul: Actually, the picture of it now, it looks the same.

Leo: Oh.

Paul: It just had — you know —

Leo: It has vines on it.

Paul: — the vine stands, yeah.

Leo: Yeah, I would guess they'd be wine or grapes.

Oh, look at this. Did you actually drive over there to —his Look at this. Look at this. Alex Gumpel drove over, and he saw it and he took a picture. This is what it looks like just a few weeks ago. And you're exactly right; it's got grape vines on it. Not quite the rich, cloud-laden sky, but —

Paul: Right. Nice try, Alex.

Leo: It's that hill. You can see the mountain in the distance and all that. Yeah. Wow. That's —

[Alex Gumpel speaks in the background.]

Leo: He said he wanted to go there and watch the sunset last night. (Laughs)

Paul: Alex's idea of a romantic evening is somewhat off. (Laughs)

Leo: He's a romantic, but it's a weird kind of — weird kind of romance there.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Wow. That's neat, Alex. I'm glad you have that picture.

Paul: That is cool.

Mary Jo: That is. That's nice.

Paul: That's good.

Leo: It's right [unintelligible]. I know exactly where it is, yeah. I — we drive there all the time. That's so funny.

Paul: By the way, over the years, I — this would happen at speaking engagements, tech-eds, and things like that. I had been approached many, many times by people who claim to know exactly where that was. It was in Ireland; it was in New Zealand —

Leo: Right.

Paul: China.

Leo: See one green hill, you've seen them all.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah, that is covered with — with vines. That's — you know, that's pretty much all of Napa. Because that is great grape-growing area baby. That's Pinot. That's your Pinot right there. Mmm mmm mmm.

So no word at all about any issues — I guess it's a little early. Or is it? I did — I had in my mind, in my imagination — I might have even said this out loud, the idea that there were hackers just poised, just waiting with their fingers on the —

Paul: Yep.

Leo: — on the figurative button to launch these exploits into the wild. They'd been saving them up, and they just thought, Well, the best time to do this would be the day after Microsoft stops releasing patches because now, we can — nobody's going to fix it.

Paul: Hasn't happened yet.

Leo: Hasn't happened, oddly enough.

Paul: That we know of.

Leo: It does — you know, I mean, even a zero day takes a little while — it's not really zero days. It's a few days.

Paul: This is more like, going after the zeroes that are still running Windows XP. I —

Leo: How many people is that?

Paul: Up to 450 million of them, right?

Leo: Geez.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: If there are 1.5 billion Windows users — which is what Microsoft says — and you look at the net market share data for usage, about 450 million.

Leo: Wow. I notice nobody doing a Twitter reverse tribute to Clippy in Office 2003.

Paul and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Mary Jo: I saw a couple of Clippy ones somewhere.

Leo: Oh, did you? Okay. Good.

Mary Jo: And I.E. 6 also. End of life, end of support, right?

Paul: Let's not forget that Windows XP had the Clippy type dog, right? The search dog.

Mary Jo: Yeah. Right.

Leo: I hate the search dog!

Paul: Hate it so much. Now, I remember ranting about this at the time because you could turn it off. It was the first thing — one of the first things I did when I installed XP. I hated seeing that thing.

Leo: Hate the search dog!

Paul: But as part of disabling it, it would — they animated the dog walking away and then looking back over his shoulder at you as if to make you feel bad that you just turned it off. You know?

Leo: Isn't that awful?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: It's terrible.

Leo: He kind of — he sighs deeply and then —

Paul: Yeah. Right.

Leo: — his ears and tail hang, and he —

Paul: I disappointed the digital dog in XP.

Leo: Awwwww.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Awwww.

Paul: That — by the way, that was on by default in Windows XP Professional.

Mary Jo: Was it really?

Paul: The version that went out to businesses, yes.

Mary Jo: What? (Laughs)

Leo: Oh, it was. It was on in everything. It was on everything.

Paul: It was on everywhere, yep.

Leo: We had to make that dog unhappy.

Mary Jo: Was that the same dog in Microsoft —

Paul: Remember, in the beginning, they were going to have weird little differences between Home and Pro? Sorry.

Mary Jo: Sorry, Paul. Was that the same dog in Microsoft Bob, or not the same dog? Remember that dog?

Paul: Basically, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, looked very similar, yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah. Same dog. Yeah. (Laughs)

Leo: I am — I decided to wear a black armband —

Mary Jo: Nice.

Paul: (Laughs) Nice. It looks like one of those things you see around sushi.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: Like a [unintelligible].

Paul: Like your arm is, like, a piece of uni or something.

Leo: (Laughs) That is actually seaweed. Very good.

Paul: Leo is like a Battleship Uni. Like a Battleship sushi.

Leo: (Laughs) Just slice it here and here.

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: It's going to be tasty and delicious.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Did — Bill Gates's wife, Melinda, was the product manager for Bob.

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: That's right.

Paul: So now you — you know how people are rewarded when they do something great at Microsoft.

Leo: You get to marry the boss.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Look at that.

Paul: Oh, my God.

Leo: Look at that. So —

Paul: It was the only way they could get her off of Microsoft products, you know?

Leo: (Laughs) We've got to get you out of here.

Paul: (Laughs) The person responsible for Bob must never do anything again.

Leo: "Quick, Bill! Take her away! Take her to Carneeros for the weekend!"

So — all right. Well — it's, I think, interesting to note that Paul and I started doing this show in the XP era.

Paul: I know.

Leo: This show —

Paul: Arguably, we've been in the XP era the whole time, Leo. I mean —

Leo: Yeah, for 500 million people.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: I wonder when Windows 7 surpassed XP usage. It probably wasn't — I mean, XP was — I mean, Windows 7 was only really in the market for three years, so it probably wasn't that long ago; but it's interesting how it — what it took, you know, for that to happen.

Leo: (Laughs) I'm sorry. My —

Paul: "I have no feeling in my left arm."

Leo: I'm losing blood flow.

Mary Jo: (Laughs) The answer to your question: 2011, according to —

Leo: Wow.

Mary Jo: Bing.

Paul: 2011, yeah. Very late.

Leo: That's how long. Because Vista, you could write off.

Mary Jo: Windows 7 surpasses XP.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: That's still only a couple years. I mean, Windows 7 probably came out, what, in 2009.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: So it only took a couple years.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: But that's how long XP was number 1. I mean, it's amazing. Vista never did it.

Mary Jo: And then — yeah. We have to remember XP was really two operating systems that were both called XP, right? XP Service Pack 2 really should have been called a different operating system.

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: Because it was. But they called it XP anyway.

Paul: They would have — yeah. Service Pack 2 was sort of necessitated by the trustworthy computing stuff, and Microsoft halted development and all that kind of stuff. And I think — had it not been for that, they would have called that something else, and it would have — yeah, would have been a new version.

Mary Jo: Hmmm.

Leo: (Sighs deeply)

Paul: It's still a long time. I mean —

Leo: Yeah, pretty amazing.

Paul: Still, it's probably, what, 11 years since XP SP 2?

Leo: Very, very amazing. What a — what an interesting — what a long, strange trip it's been.  

Leo:  Ah, Windows XP, we hardly knew ye.  Well, this was the year that Windows XP died.  It was also the year that for the first time ever Microsoft released a new version of Office, not for Windows first, but for the iPad.  Let's take a look.

Leo: In fact, Office for iPad was just updated and it has only been out for like a week or two and already there are updates. I expect more, and that's great.

Paul: Right. Office Mobile for Windows phone, never updated. You can't because it's part of the OS.

Leo: Right, that's a disadvantage.

Paul: It's ridiculous.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: That's a very good point. Speaking of Office for iPad-

Mary Jo: But maybe that's going to change... That was kind of the hint at Build, I thought.

Paul: I'm just expressing hope, certainly things are going in the right direction the same team is doing them all now. I do think it's interesting that all of the other parts of Microsoft are getting updates pretty regularly. I guess we'll see.

Leo: Office for the iPad, a few more little tidbits.

Mary Jo: Yeah, so this was kind of cool: The Office for iPad engineering team took to Reddit to do an AMA this week, which is very uncharacteristic of the Office team. And they talked about a few things that people found surprising. The one that everybody wrote about that wasn't actually surprising was-

Paul: Sorry Mary Jo.

Leo: I see some smiles on Paul's side. Pauul...

Paul: I leaned on my keyboard and it flipped up in the air and it split into two pieces.

Leo: How did we miss that?

Paul: I have the keyboard- I'm sorry to interrupt - The keyboard that magnetically connects to itself so after it landed back on the desk it actually slapped back into shape. So it actually separated and then reattached.

Leo: So it was a magic trick?

Mary Jo: It was.

Paul: I'll just not touch the keyboard while you talk.

Mary Jo: Don't touch that keyboard. So the thing that everybody wrote about from this Reddit was, guess what? Guess who approved the iPad version of Office coming out first? It was Steve Ballmer, not Satya Nadella. Which is what we've been telling everybody.

Leo: See that's good, that's cool.

Mary Jo: We've been telling everybody on this podcast that for a while. They said they did not use Amarin to build the app, which some people thought they had and that it was actually a native app. I like this one, did your work on the iPad version delay Mac Office? They said no, and also said they can't tell us when that's coming.

Paul: Code sharing, though right? I think that was the big news is that these things were co-developed.

Mary Jo: Right. So Office for iPad and Office for Mac are being developed from the same core.

Leo: That's what takes a while, by the way is that what you do is you back off and start from scratch. And then you write the tools that are going to let you do that and the libraries and all of that stuff, and that's a year. Then, you can get to work on the actual app. So that explains a lot.

Mary Jo: It does, actually. It explains why we haven't gotten a new Office for Mac yet and why we haven't seen Office for iPad until now, that does explain a lot. They were asked about when are you going to add printing and they said yeah we know it, we need to; It's coming in its due course. That's all they would say on that. Office for Android tablets is coming too and yeah they just kind of said, yeah we're going to do a lot of updates and we're going to listen to what you guys want and will put that into the update. A few people asked will there be any chance that we can get a version of Office for iPad that has more functionality, but does not require Office 365 and the answer of course, was no. So yeah it was worthwhile. It was a good Reddit and I thought they did a good job.

Leo: And we saw a picture of what we thought looked like an Apple store, but in fact is the lab where they have the iPads.

Mary Jo: Yeah, that's cool.

Leo: That's a lot of iPads.

Mary Jo: It is. On Microsoft campus, who knew?

Leo: Yeah, it looks like the Apple store.

Paul: That is funny.

Leo: It's pretty cool. I love 'ask me anything's' because for some reason, people are more candid. They know they can't be too cagey on those things or they'll get just ripped apart.

Paul: They'll get torn up, yeah.

Leo: So it's great, I love it when they do those and that's their second one I'm told. They did one earlier.

Mary Jo: Oh did they?

Paul: Yeah, the Office iPad team did one.

Leo: I think so, let me look back here. Ian says they did one in July. Oh I'm sorry, that's the OneNote team. Pardon me.

Mary Jo: No that's alright, it's probably still a related team though because it seems like everybody who is working on Office for Mac or Office for iPad are together.

Leo: Right. I love those Reddit. You know, we're developing a Reddit show. We're going to call it Reddit Nation. We'll sit there, drink beers, and read stories from Reddit; It'll be great. We are actually working on one, I just feel like Reddit is so cool. We've had Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders on twice and have had the other guy on once. I just feel a real kinship with them and now that I don't have to protect Dig anymore, I can go all in on Reddit.

Daniel Rubino: Yeah and I don't even do selfies now just holding my phone, I think it's a little strange to carry a stick around and do it but I find it fascinating just from the sociological trend thing, it does become the norm.

Leo: I have always felt like it's very self involved like look at me look at me but it's really- The most liked pictures on Instagram are always selfies. If you're a beautiful person people want to see you.

Daniel: Right, yeah it helps if you're good looking.

Leo: Yeah I try not to do too many selfies. I keep them down to a minimum.

Father Robert Ballecer: Of the 10 preview, what would you say was 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 that Windows 10 is now your upgrade.

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

Mary Jo Foley: Me!! Command prompt!

Fr. Robert: Yes, tell me.

Mary Jo: They're redoing the command prompt so that you can do a lot of things you couldn't before like copy and paste.

Paul: You can do it today but it's non-standard. So you have to bring up the Window command button.

Mary Jo: Right, but now it's all integrated in. And there's a great host that Raphael did in his blog within Windows. If you want to know every little tiny detail about the new command prompt, somebody will.

Fr. Robert: I use command prompt all the time and I have the little icon on my desktop so I can run as administrator every time I run it but I mean, that is kind of important for people who are running in the enterprise because I use it all of the time.

Paul: I think of it more as a little kind of fine-tuned, closing the loop kind of feature. Something that has been stupid about command prompt ever since there was a command prompt that just was non-standard in those ways. Couldn't select text, couldn't copy and paste etc., so to me it was just one of those things they're doing to fine tune it and make it consistent so on that note, it's positive development. I wouldn't have listed it first but you know.

Mary Jo: Someone that uses notepad so you know.

Paul: This is true. We're driving here in the car going 80 miles per hour and she's writing-

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

Paul: Notepad fullscreen with no wordwrap on, what is wrong with you? And then to select the text she's using her finger.

Mary Jo: I know because my mouse was broken. I would've used my mouse if I could have.

Fr. Robert: Also she just wanted to show off the fact that she has a touchscreen. What's wrong with that?

Mary Jo: Yeah, sort of.

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

Paul: Because, what was it, Windows 7,8.9?

Mary Jo: 7.8.9.

Paul: The justification they used was there were a lot of obvious names 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 almost laughable in some sense. -That this is a version of Windows, a basic platform that will run on those little embedded devices, on phones, on small tablets, big tablets, PC's of all kinds, 2-in-1's, Xbox One. That it's that big. It's like skipping a grade. When you're really smart, you move ahead.

Mary Jo: And also, they didn't really say it this way but they're trying to distance themselves from Windows 8, right?

Paul: Yeah, 9 was not distant enough.

Mary Jo: Yeah skip that 9 and just go straight to 10. And also, they touched on this very briefly but this is the last major version of Windows, is what they're saying. And from now on, the way they're going to update it is you're going to get incremental updates on a regular basis- If you're signed in as a user on Windows and that's the way they're going to do it from now on instead of every two or three years them having a big bang Windows release. That's all we know.

Fr. Robert: Wait, wait. To say that is to say, we think we've got the formula down.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Fr. Robert: 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 and the only thing we have to do is tweak it. Are we there? To that point where it's like, the engine is solid we just have to change the body.

Paul: Well this is already an engine, to use your terminology, that runs on - today things that are like phones, tablets, PCs, all the way up to Microsoft Azure in the Cloud. So I think they have proven that the core of the OS does scale already. Which goes back to my original comment, which was this is sort of a bologna concept to say that suddenly with this one- Because we're going to call it something different. -It's a major major change. I mean really, this is a fairly minor update to Windows 8 I would say but I think they're trying to, like you said, distance it from the Windows 8 release.

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

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Somewhat.

Paul: Yeah, getting upwind.

Mary Jo: Did you know that you aren't supposed to use a Bluetooth mouse on a plane?

Paul: Yes.

Mary Jo: I did not know that. I tried to use mine the other day on the plane and I was-

Fr. Robert: They told you to shut it down...

Mary Jo: Yes they did.

Paul: Mary Jo's on the Do Not Fly list now.

Mary Jo: I am and I'm like, oh no now I'm going to have to use touch.

Paul: It's pretty much like you when the guy was trying to light a snake on fire, like the same catgory.

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

Paul: She's got a mouse! Half of the plane would've gathered in the aisle like, a mouse?

Mary Jo: Well you know what I did? I shouldn't admit this because then I will be on the Do Not Fly list. So I just put it on my lap and was still using it.

Fr. Robert: Well it's been proven by the TSA that if they can't see it, it isn't a security risk.

Mary Jo: Right, that will work.

Fr. Robert: Just wait until they figure out that if you actually puncture your laptop, the LiPo batteries, you could actually burn a hole through the hall.

Mary Jo: Don't be saying this, you know what? We actually won't be able to carry our laptops on anymore.

Fr. Robert: Especially if you have a uni-body and you can't remove the battery so now it's like I just can't come on the plane I'm sorry.

Paul: One thing I learned recently is you know how they give those safety demonstrations on the plane and they talk about how if this thing happens and the oxygen mask comes down, make sure you do yourself first and then do your kid. You know how much oxygen they have for you? A minute.

Fr. Robert: I know, I know.

Paul: So it's like you're not flying to Seattle with this mask on your face. If they don't fix the problem- Well the pilots have more probably several minutes of air. -You just have a minute, or maybe two. But they have to fix that issue pretty quickly.

Fr. Robert: I think the emergency procedure for if the masks drop down is you actually elbow everybody else out of the way and then you've got a full 3 or 4 minutes of life before you pass out. Windows Weekly, giving you the skills you need to survive.

Paul: And apparently, fooling people on an airplane that you aren't using a mouse.

Mary Jo: I know.. I just am appalled that I can't use my mouse on a plane.

Fr. Robert: Let me ask a question that calls for wild speculation, because I know that we never do that-

Mary Jo: Never.

Fr. Robert: -On the show, but why was it that this was the way it was designed in the first place? No, seriously... This is not a throw-away. If we sat down with the original Windows 8 product team; was it, look we want them to use Modder. We need to push them to Modder and we believe that if we give them good enough apps, they're all going to abandon the desktop. So that's another way of back peddling and saying, okay you don't want to use Modder-

Paul: Can I swear? Is that okay?

Fr. Robert: Swearing is- Alex, you've got the jump line right?

Paul: I actually heard back from Steven Sinofsky when I originally offered this up as the reason for this and so many other problems with Windows 8, which was: How come Windows 8___________? And the rest of the question can be whatever, you can ask this question in regards to anything in Windows 8 and because this was Steven Sinofsky answering, the response was always, "**** that life." And so he wrote me back whenever I Tweeted this or whatever I did and he said, you know it's funny... I'm just looking over the planning documents for Windows 8 and I don't actually see that as a reason for that anywhere.

Mary Jo: Oooh.

Fr. Robert: Those are the super secret documents.

Paul: Yeah. The reason is because yes, Windows 8 was unique for many reasons. Not just because of the combination of two operating systems into one unholy mess. But also because for the first time Microsoft really took kind of a no prisoners approach to Windows where in the past they always offered you the option to go back to the old way of doing things you know? When they improved the start menu in Windows Vista, you could get a Classic start menu for the Windows whatever. They always offered that way to kind of go back, even in Windows '95 you could run Program Manager if you wanted to, it was your show. So Windows 8, they thought they had the answer. And part of their rationale that I will defend is that they felt like they were so far behind they thought that if they could move decisively it would be the right thing to do and actually, on the surface that seems like the right approach but they took such a tunnel-visioned way to do it. They really just ended up upsetting most of their most important user base, the enterprise.

Mary Jo: Right. And developers. If they hadn't taken the hard line with the developers and then kind of wavered- Was HTML 5 the right solution or the .net and they kind of made the .net community feel unwanted. So people didn't build metro style apps. Then they were like, oh now we don't have any compelling apps to give people a reason to go to the metro stuff.

Paul: Yeah, this just came up on last week's show and I don't remember the exact figures but I had been looking at the microsoftbythenumbers website for completely unrelated reasons, and they have facts about number of apps made, sold, and downloaded between Windows and Windows Phone, they had them separated in their own little tiles but the Windows Phone numbers are dramatically higher than Windows and some people will say, Windows Phone has been out twice as long, and okay fair enough. But actually I think it's because Windows people have a choice. And most people have simply chosen not to go to the store. Or they've looked at the store and said, what is this? Weird Fisher Price apps, and it's just like what the heck? And they just don't see the value in it. I remember early on having a discussion with someone about Metro at the time and you know could Office work in this environment, what would that look like? And I thought to myself there's no reason why you really can't have a professional app in this environment. And here we are, years later and we still don't have many good examples of complex-

Mary Jo: There's a couple... Microsoft built a CRM app that's pretty good, it's a metro style one.

Paul: Yeah, OneNote is in that territory..

Fr. Robert: Even that, you figure that if they really wanted to push that ecosystem, they would've made OneNote and Lync phenomenal as apps. They would have made those ones be the things that make you say, that's why I want to use the-

Mary Jo: OneNote is good.

Paul: OneNote is I think, the one that maybe gets it.

Fr. Robert: You think so? You'll like OneNote better on the desktop.

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

Mary Jo: OneNote metro still is not that bad.

Fr. Robert: But I mean, not that bad is not the same as oh that's why I choose this.

Paul: It is also perhaps noteable that it completely usurped the normal navigation and user interface of a metro app to provide its own...

Fr. Robert: So OneNote as an app was perfect because it didn't act like an app.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: So let's move on to another topic. So I have something to say to the Wall Street Journal....

Mary Jo: Are you going to swear again?

Fr. Robert: We might need a dramatic close-up because this could get personal.

Paul: I think you eluded this essentially when we were talking back there. But when you move 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. The side-effect of that... And we don't know how they're going to work with Windows 10 - And I'm not saying they're going to go back down again but essentially if you have the same hardware the next one runs better, the performance is better. There are other improvements around this system too, like battery life and other things so you see advantages there too. Windows 7 class hardware, Windows 8 class hardware obviously is going to run this thing fine. I don't think we have to qualify that do we? Unless you're running Surface RT then you're screwed but I think Windows 7 and 8 will be fine.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Fr. Robert: And what if Microsoft were to say something like if you buy Windows 8 PC now, you get the automatic upgrade app.

Mary Jo: That's what they need to say.

Paul: Okay so one of the big rumors leading into this event was that Windows 10 would be free and then when it came to Windows 7 they refused to talk about pricing. So that kind of makes me wonder how this came up. When you go back to Build, and you listen to Terry Myerson talking about how they're bringing the start menu back to Windows and they're going to bring floating metro universal back to Windows he described it would come as a coming update to Windows 8. Now we've done the pedantic semantic thing around that. But it's interesting, I sort of feel like that rumor came from something that was true. And when you put those two things together, it almost suggests that he was kind of saying that. You know Windows 10 is to be treated as a kind of update to Windows 8. So if you're on Windows 8, you're just going to get it possibly as an update. Like a very natural update. Now Windows 7, you may have to pay for it or they may change their minds on that. I

think they are really not sure yet how to handle this.

Mary Jo: Yeah, and I'm sure they're wanting to at least make some money off of this right. So if Windows 7 ends up being completely free, that would be kind of crazy.

Paul: Sure. I'm just wondering and thinking that these things might be tied together.

Mary Jo: Officially today we're targeting by mid 2015-

Paul: Oh they said mid 2015?

Mary Jo: Yeah, that's what I heard. What did you hear?

Paul: I just heard later in the year. I'm sure you're right though.

Fr. Robert: So but that's when the street gets it. So when do manufacturers get it?

Mary Jo: Earlier than that.

Paul: Certainly not afterwards.

Mary Jo: Did you hear? They're going to  bring WinHEC back.

Paul: There's more than a WinHEC there's going to be several WinHEC's.

Fr. Robert: Right, it's not like one big thing anymore. There are several of them.

Mary Jo: A lot of people don't remember WinHEC. Windows Hardware Engineering Congress. It was the best.

Paul: Yeah, it was the best. When you think about if you're making a new platform- Typically Windows but not always Windows. -And you're going to disclose information about this to the outside world, you would start with the low-level driver writer type, or the hardware guys. Because they're the ones who are going to be making the devices and PCs and things that run the system so they were always first. That was WinHEC. And then you'd have a PDC for regular software application developers and then you'd have TechEd obviously, then there you would show off the business features there and then have an event where you'd show off consumer features. But it would always start at WinHEC and that's why it was so cool. You could go there and find out early on what they were going to be doing. It was were we would see the hardware accelerator graphics that would be at longhorn. Remember at the time they were going to be able to scale the apps, you'd be able to take an app stretch it out and scale it manually. WinHEC was cool though.

Mary Jo: So they're bringing that back and it's going to be in March. And they're going to begin talking to OEM's more intensely starting in March. So that means the OS will be very close to being-

Paul: I would say before that happens there will be a consumer release so that would probably be early 2015, I've heard January. It will include the phone version and so maybe that's when the Surface guys are going to get the good news.

Mary Jo: Or the bad news.

Paul: They're going to get news. Either way.

Fr. Robert: Wait wait wait so the May 2015 date is going to be across all platforms?

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

Paul: We know April is the developer release, it's Build. So they're having another Build.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: So we know early 2015 for consumer, we know April for developer but beyond that-

Mary Jo: Well and we know that sometime very soon for Server and the Management tools...

Paul: That's right. That's this year though.

Mary Jo: So I think that will be in TechEd Barcelona in late October. So those are the dates we know and can extrapolate from.

Paul: They could release the next version of Server and just say we got rid of the Start screen and get a standing ovation.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: That would be all we need to know.

Fr. Robert: How do you run a Server without the Start screen?

Mary Jo: Tiles? Tileworld.

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

Fr. Robert: It does sound awesome. Because unless you're just running one server in your data center you've got racks and racks of virtualizors. You aren't going to have an at-a-glance view of every server that's there.

Paul: But what I'm describing is so pretty.

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

Paul: And by the way does not require a start screen on the server. Just a thought. If only there were a way to instrument a server and get information back from it. Anyway.

Fr. Robert: No one's figured that one out yet.

Paul: Maybe someday.

Mary Jo: So that's pretty exciting that we kind of have the-

Paul: I hope you're right about the mid thing.

Mary Jo: We have to go back and listen to the- By the way the video is available on Youtube now.

Paul: So what I would say 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 not ship in October, which is the worst time ever for releasing a product like that. And you know back to school actually starts kind of in June doesn't it?

Fr. Robert: I have to say this, I'm actually excited for Windows 10, I like Windows 8 and I think Windows 10 will replace the remainder of my Windows 7 desktops.

Paul: Sure.

Fr. Robert: But why now? Why do this event now? If we're talking about doing a mid 2015 release, this seems far off, especially if they're not giving you a lot of specifics to have a special event.

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

Mary Jo: I agree. And if you're a developer this is not a traditional developer's preview. And this still can give you some ideas already about how you're going to structure your app.

Paul: Right. There will be new features that are not exposed.

Mary Jo: Right, a lot of the API stuff will be in there and yeah, it'll be interesting.

Fr. Robert: Is that it? Windows 10 is in the bag? I'm sorry no, Windows Thurrott is in the bag? I think you should make a pact on this show it's always Windows Thurrott.

Paul: I know, what is this thing you keep referring to?

Mary Jo: When the event started today we were like what do you guys want to use as a hashtag like as we tweet this and nobody could think of a hashtag so I used wth. People were like what are you doing? I'm 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 outside, they gave you like a nametag that you put on your shirt and they had this little stack of cards, which they give you one and on the card it says Windows 2015. So of course, everyone was like huh, wait a minute... So we walked into the room and we're like are they telling us the name of this thing is 2015?

Mary Jo: People were like taking pictures of it.

Fr. Robert: So was it deliberate?

Paul: It was deliberate, it was the wifi password.

Fr. Robert: So there are a few people at Microsoft who understand that this has to be a little tongue and cheek.

Paul: Yeah, they're pretty clear on- Yeah, I would have to give them credit for that.

Fr. Robert: And is this the new Nadella? The whole idea of we're going to tell you more quickly, we're going to let you have input. We're going to make you make us-

Paul: Well here's how I think of this. Myerson today sort of eluded to this, he didn't go down this path too far but in the world of today, Windows is kind of the minority platform compared to mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. In that world, Microsoft is going to put it's mobile apps and services on all of these popular platforms. They're going to do it sometimes before they do it on Windows. And that's going to  upset some people sometimes but that's just the reality of the situation. In that world, how do you retain the crowd of people that still cares about Windows and how do you make them part of the process and all of that kind of stuff. 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 sooner than the full featured version.

Fr. Robert: Let's be honest, it's also, how do we appease people that we really cheesed off?

Paul: I think there's bad news there depending on your point of view but there's good news too. And I think the way they're doing this is correct, I think it's good.

Fr. Robert: And if they want to find out more information of course, they have to go to the winsupersite. You've got a great blog post up.

Paul: Mary Jo also has her own, allaboutmicrosoft.

Fr. Robert: But now we have to get to the really important part of the show, this is the part that I think every week actually saves lives. Beer.

Paul: Of course.

Mary Jo: I was like, what are we talking about?

Fr. Robert: We don't have a dock but I slightly remember that we don't have a beer of the week.

Paul: We should mention that when you're in San Francisco, obviously there are great breweries here but when you're 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've never been there it's on Mason st. down near the convention center. They have an incredible beer list. Mikkeller is- There's two brothers. One who's last name is Mikkeller, one who is his identical twin, who makes beer under evil twin. So there's Mikkeller and Evil Twin Beers and there's some of the best craft beers in the world. So this bar has I don't know, 30-40 beers on tap and each beer is served at the correct temperature and the beer list tells you what temperature the beer is served at.

Paul: It's the real deal.

Mary Jo: I made Paul go there yesterday.

Paul: Yeah I went kicking and screaming.

Mary Jo: We both got off the plane and were both so tired and I was like, you know what we need? We need a beer.

Paul: Yeah, and she texted me and said I saved you a spot at the bar and I was like yep thanks.

Mary Jo: So yeah we had a couple of beers there yesterday.

Paul: The only other place I saw Danish beer was in Europe a couple of summers ago we went to Brussels. We went to a brewery that was unbelievable and I thought we're never going to get this in the United States then we 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 it just went right over my head. I'm like alcohol, I get alcohol that's about it. What is this beer? What is unique about it?

Mary Jo: Well this bar has all kinds, but there's like really light ones, sours-

Paul: I'm just going to say between the two of us, we had sours, we had wheat beer, like an abby quad. This is another area where the United States often falls flat but they had five kinds of bratwurst there. Really good.

Mary Jo: We had a few different ones, but they just had so many good ones.

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

Paul: Yes.

Mary Jo: Mikkeller. It's a great place and 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're more of a wine crowd.

Paul: They are such losers.

Mary Jo: We were in a cab line waiting and Paul just yells at some guy with a badge, you're wasting your life! And I'm like Paul stop!

Paul: It was a slogan or something that was like, program your future or something like that.

Mary Jo: It's like a .net conference.

Paul: 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 called This Week in Oracle with Paul Thurrott.

Paul: 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. I think those guys understand and that's why they call it a job.

Fr. Robert: App of the week.

Paul: I was going to say we have this preview you can download tomorrow and so I think the app of the week has to be the Windows Technical Preview which will be available starting tomorrow. You can't sign up today but starting tomorrow sometime, preview.windows.com and you have to sign up for the Windows sign up program and then you get access to the bits. You can upgrade from Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Leo: Wow, that was a bunch of stuff, Windows 10 I think is going to be a very big story in 2015 there's no doubt about that. Even before the end of the year we had an update for Windows 10 and an update that caused some concern. Let's watch. We have had a busy week, much to talk about.

Paul: Yeah, the past couple of weeks have been crazy. It seems like it kind of started with that San Francisco trip and it hasn't let up.

Leo: Wasn't there an event in San Francisco this week? A cloud event right?

Paul: Yeah, man if you thought I was unhappy about going to San Francisco for the Windows thing, you can't even imagine what I would've been like for this thing.

Leo: Was there any important news out of that?

Paul: Yeah but it was all enterprise related. I have part of this as my enterprise pick.

Leo: Alright we can save that. Normally Mary Jo likes to cover that stuff. When she's not here we really like to stick to things like Call of Duty.

Paul: Yeah we are going to discuss Call of Duty.

Leo: But let's start off with the Windows 10 Technical Preview. An update got pushed out.

Paul: Right, I had heard that this was coming late in the week which would've been great timing for me and then all of a sudden it just kind of happened yesterday. So whatever, I started downloading it on my PCs and everything, and they pretty much telegraphed the main features that are in there and all of them are in some way incomplete in their current form so the notification center- Actually I just noticed my notification center has notifications finally.

Leo: Yeah, so that was one of the things that they really tabbed in Windows 10 but it didn't work in the first one.

Paul: Yeah, because of the way that the Windows releases were staggered before, the actions center, the notifications center debuted first in Windows phone and Windows phone 8.1. And so the version we see in this build is an early version. It only has application and system notifications and there's more stuff coming later. It's really basic looking, there's not much going on. It's just a plain white panel and you can clear all of the notifications now that I'm looking at it. I'm curious to find out if I click on an email if it will go to the actual email. It does not. And so-

Leo: It's not fully wired up yet.

Paul: Yeah. I would say that's the one actual major new feature that's in there. I mean there's some other things, like animations in the windows which I find kind of annoying. There's the starts of some other windows phone features, battery saver, storage sense but in some ways the most interesting thing going on with this build is how we're going to be updated going forward. And they provided some details about how that process is going to work and how it can work in the future. And I actually don't know that I linked this in an intelligent way, but in the article that I have that is about Microsoft delivers first update to the Windows technical preview. There's a couple of graphics in there about what they call rings and it kind of works the way Chrome does. Like how there's a kind of canary branch of a ring as they call it. They have an operating system group ring which is like the next set of users that get built internally to Microsoft. And then they have all of Microsoft. So there's these three rings that are internal to Microsoft that determine how quickly people within these rings get builds. And then outside of Microsoft, at least for the consumer/client version of Windows, they're going to have- Well right now they have a Windows insider's ring. But there's going to be a fast ring and a slow ring and by default everyone is on slow but if you want to get the updates as they're released- And it's not clear whether this means individual features or completely new builds, but you can switch that too fast and you'll be on a slightly faster track than you would be otherwise. So I think this is a look at how they're going to service people in the public when this thing goes live in non-preview form. Because obviously some businesses are not going to want to deploy Windows updates immediately and this will give you a little clue of how that will work.

Leo: Satya Nadella in the news. He didn't speak at that Cloud conference on Monday did he?

Paul: Actually he spoke at Length.

Leo: He did?

Paul: Yes. He was arguably the biggest part of it.

Leo: That's interesting.

Paul: It is interesting. Because he came up through that part of the company and his comfort level with this stuff is very high. He was a major part of that, yeah.

Leo: And nobody asked him about raises or anything like that?

Paul: Actually somebody did ask him about raises. Well I'm actually not sure that it happened in the context of this thing. It's not actually in the video so it's possible it happened somewhere else. I just read this thing where someone jokingly asked about raises.

Leo: We found out he doesn't need a raise. $84 million in salary bonus and stock grants.

Paul: Yeah. You know what the most interesting thing about this is to me is that the money he was paid to stay at the company while they were looking for a CEO.

Leo: Oh what's that?

Paul: $13.5 million.

Leo: Don't leave. We may have something for you.

Paul: Imagine this conversation. Somebody walks into your office and says hey Satya we're looking for a new CEO and I'm not saying you're the guy but you're on the short list, we just want to make sure you don't go to Google or something while this is happening. And so if we give you $13.5 million, you just continue doing your job for the next six months.

Leo: Oh let me think about that- YES! Six months! Now his salary, base salary is a little less than a million dollars, so not so great.

Paul: But that's just this year. Starting next year it goes up to $1.2 million. He gets an annual cash incentive based on performance of up to $3.6 million and then an annual share of $13 million. It's not the $1 thing that Steve Jobs was doing.

Leo: That was always a lie anyways. As you can see, that 919,000 that he made this year is pennies- Chicken feed. Like 1% of his total. It's always the stock that you should be interested in.

Paul: And the biggest part to the outlay to Satya Nadella is $59 million as part of a one-time stock round. But he has to hold onto that until at least 2019.

Leo: Ah. Do you think he asked for that raise?

Paul: No I think he let karma take its course.

Leo: Now we know why he says you should all do what I did. Maybe you'll get $84 million.

Paul: I will never have $84 million Leo.

Leo: But that's okay. Let me tell you something, he's the CEO of Microsoft.

Paul: Actually in my article I kind of tried to drive that home and I think we've talked about this a little bit. Satya Nadella just by uttering something in public around TV cameras and microphones can change the stock price of Microsoft and thus the fortunes of millions of people in ten seconds. There is an awesome responsibility there. More long term he's running a company with over 100,000 employees who are all looking to him for direction and leadership and to make the right decisions for the company and for their futures and the futures of their families as well. There's an industry out there that is built around Microsoft as well. I mean, this guy is as powerful and has as much responsibility as many world leaders. More than many of them. Can you work the drive-in this weekend Mr. Nadella? It's a little more serious than that. It's just something to put it in perspective. And there's another thing that I got from Business Insider I think. If you think that's a lot of money, Tim Cook, first year at Apple: Over $300 million.

Leo: Right. You can't blame Microsoft's board when CEO salaries are so crazy and out of control. You can though, I think and we probably should as a nation, start questioning these enormous CEO salaries because I mean this is something relatively new.

Paul: Right and by the way I would put the money that sports players make into the same category. I feel like it is outsized based on what is happening here. The other thing, by the way is- I didn't actually write about this but if you look at the FCC filing, Satya Nadella was given that $13.5 million just to stick around. They gave that kind of money to other people too for the same reason. They also gave that kind of money to a lot of people to stick around during the CEO transition specifically because them not doing so would have suggested to the outside world, and to investors that something was wrong at Microsoft. So if you're like an Amy Hood, the CFO of Microsoft or any of the other people in the executive team, you are handed in the single digits of 10's of millions of dollars just to stick it out for the year.

Leo: That's pretty amazing.

Paul: And they justified it by saying there's obviously intense competition out there for these people and this is the market value for these employees.

Leo: What do you think  that conversation is? Like well how much do we have to give Satya? $13 and a half million. How much do we have to give Steven Elop? And then Steven's cheap we'll give him 8. Where do they get these numbers? Like oh yeah, I'm thinking Tony Bates, we don't really care if he leaves do we? Give him a couple million.

Paul: Tony could you go grab some coffee while the big boys talk?

Leo: And it's not something that is part of the normal life of any other humans in the world. We only pay the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful person in the world half a million a year. Admittedly, there's an upside to when you're president- 8 years- But there's some downsides too.

Paul: Yeah, the whole thing is insane to me.

Leo: Don't you think you could get someone to run Microsoft for let's say, a million? Could you get the best person, I guess would be the question.

Paul: Right that's a good question.

Leo: I think you could have gotten Satya for a million. The guys a lifer, for all intents and purposes. So he gave an interview on CNBC on Monday. I don't know if you saw this but he addressed the karma question: Should women ask for a raise? He said, no they should trust in karma. He said, I was completely wrong in the answer I gave because I basically took my own approach to how I've approached my career and I sprung it on half of humanity and that was insensitive. I gave a generic answer based on, quite frankly, what I believe and what I've practiced in living my life. In other words, he's saying, I never asked for a raise. I trusted it to karma and I thought, well if you're faced with bias in your career what should you do?

Paul: Sure.

Leo: He said though- And I think he sensitized. Because he said, how would they feel by sort of getting the advice that says, be passive. In the face of bias the last thing I want anyone to be is passive. He says I was naive thinking of my own personal experience versus understanding I'm speaking to women who really really want to make sure that people like me are making it easy for them to be able to participate in the workforce fully. So I think that's a good answer. He does say something that- You know he's talking about the Cloud. Because I guess he was there for the Cloud event and I guess that's why he did CNBC. He said something towards the end though, he said we want you to use us when you just want to save any file, any document, any artifact of yours and then have a natural way for us to monetize as you use more of it in the commercial context. CNBC's John Fort said, kind of the fremium model, which a lot of startups in Silican Valley have latched onto but Microsoft has always been fond of getting paid for the software it spends so much time and money developing, he points out. Nadella responds, oh well we've always had fremium. Sometimes our fremium was called piracy.

Paul: Yeah. So by the way, the use of the word commercial was interesting and this is something Mary Jo and I have talked about on this podcast. This is a recent addition to the Microsoft flex account. When someone from Microsoft uses the word commercial what they're really saying is business. What they mean is business software. And if I'm parsing that sentence correctly, it almost to me, sounded like what he was saying was, we're okay with individuals or consumers using our free services but what we're hoping for is that when they use some businesses that those will be paid you know? It seems like that is almost what he just said there. So in other words you as an individual please, use Outlook.com, it's free. Use OneDrive it's free, use Internet Explorer, Bing, MSN, Office.com and all of that kind of stuff, it's all free. But when you're at work use Office 365 that costs something. Use Windows, pay for Windows at work. It sounds sort of like that's what he's saying.

Leo: Yeah, I think that is what he's saying. Use it at home and then when you get to work you pay for it.

Paul: Because- And well again, I don't mean to read too much into it. But a lot of the Microsoft Mobile First Cloud thing is sort of controversial in certain circles and I guess the thought here is people want to use what they're comfortable with. And so if people get used to using Microsoft's stuff, even if it's on an iPad or an Android phone or something, when they get to work they're going to say hey I used this thing I'm used to it. Do we have this thing? And maybe it will be on a Windows PC or a Windows tablet or something but they'll stick with Microsoft Solution, and in that case will be paying for it, or their workplace would be paying for it. I sort of wonder if maybe that was what he was getting at there.

Leo: If you listen to the show you're so far ahead of the rest of the world.

Paul: I know.

Leo: So we've been saying probably for months that Microsoft was going to drop the Nokia name and just be Microsoft on the phones. And it's a big news story this week- I didn't even do it. I've been filling in for Mike Elgan on Tech News Today. I figured everybody that watches TWiT knows this. But not everybody in the rest of the world.

Paul: Yeah, you've got to cover it just to be clear but yes they're going to continue to call their smart phones Lumia and yes they're going to drop the Nokia it will be Microsoft alone soon.

Leo: Yeah, but we knew that was going to happen, although they have the right to use the name. It was part of the agreement.

Paul: For years and years. It was a crazy amount of time. But of course they need to go with their own brand. They can't keep using Nokia name. We've already seen it, all of the apps turning into Lumia apps, it's already happening so. It's good.

Leo: We just queued the $79, what was it the 530? I can't remember. It's cheap and it's got the colorful back so it's great for kids. But it still says Nokia on it.

Paul: Yeah the current generation, the 830, the 730, 735, and the 530 are going to be it I think for the Nokia branded phones. This is the end.

Leo: This is the end. What is replacing the Lumia 1520?

Paul: Oh God Leo, I don't even know. There have been so many rumors about- Well first of all the 1030 has the 40 something megapixel replacement for the 1020, which I would love to own. The 1525, 1530 type device, sure. The thing about the 1520 though is honestly, today that thing is still very modern from a hardware spec perspective.

Leo: Absolutely, everyone else is just now releasing their phones of that size.

Paul: So I don't think there's any reason to replace that one yet. I actually have a bigger issue with the 1020 because it is under-powered. Especially for the size of the camera and sensor it has.

Leo: It's almost two years old too. It's pretty old.

Paul: Yeah, not quite a year and a half.

Leo: But that was the first pure view of the 41 megapixel phone.

Paul: Yeah, the only one they've ever made with that kind of camera. And it's just getting long in the tooth. Really slow performance so...

Leo: Can it go to Cyan or Black? Is it up to date?

Paul: Actually the one I have is on Cyan right now. Yep.

Leo: Okay so right now the Nokia brand is on the phone so you've got the company, Nokia, the kind of phone, Lumia and then you have the number. They're going to put Microsoft where it says Nokia or they're just going to-

Paul: They actually haven't discussed that yet. I think that announcement is actually going to be very soon and so I think what they're going to do is literally have the word Microsoft be there, hopefully not Microsoft Mobile.

Leo: There's not that much room on the back  of these.

Paul: Somebody made this comment to me about the state of Windows phone which was, you walk around the world with a Lumia somebody sees it and asks what it is. I've often had people see it and ask if it was the new iPhone. And then you hit them in the head a couple of times and say, no that hurt right? Because that's a Lumia. I don't think people understand Nokia here in the US. They don't understand the term Lumia but if you said, no this is a Windows phone they'd go, okay. I don't necessary know what one looks like, but that makes sense to them I think. I almost wish they would put Windows phone on it you know. But I don't know. Microsoft is trying to push- You know, the Surface has Surfaced.

Leo: Yeah. And reluctantWPguy again makes a good point.

Paul: You should just get him on the show he could replace Mary Jo.

Leo: Well in the US the Nokia brand maybe doesn't carry a lot of weight but it sure does in Europe, the Middle East, Asia. That is a huge brand, is this a mistake for Microsoft to drop that? Well  I don't know. They're going to continue to use the Nokia brand on the candy bar phones, you know the dumb phones. But I think with the Lumia line-up they need to go with their own.

Leo: It's a Microsoft thing.

Paul: For better or for worse, it's theirs now.

Leo: I'm really tempted to order this Master Cheif collection of Halo, it's every map ever.

Paul: Did you look at the specs on this thing? This is a 40 gigabyte download.

Leo: I did see that yeah.

Paul: But here's the kicker. On day 1, which is November 11 in the US.  You will need to download another 20 gigabytes of additional content.

Leo: Whoah..

Paul: Now the way they described it was that you would be able to start playing the campaign immediately but I think some of the online stuff is actually going to require this Day 1 update. But 65 gigabytes of stuff...

Leo: So now you know why I put a 2 terabyte drive in my USB port. I don't worry about that. I really wish that they had the forethought to make the hard drive something you could just unplug and replace with a bigger unit.

Leo: You can't, that's right.

Paul: I don't understand. This thing is the size of my Volkswagon. Why isn't there a drawer or something that pops out. I should be able to say, Xbox hard drive out.

Leo: But think about it, you're getting every version of Halo right?

Paul: Well all of the versions that had Master Chief so 1, 2, 3, and 4. All of the multi-player maps across the release as well as the PC version.

Leo: That's got to be a whole lot of maps, right?

Paul: Yeah and then there's something called Spartain Ops. I don't recognize it it's like a co-op like thing that consists of like 10 episodes or something. That's not even coming, it'll be another download coming in December. So this is like some massive historical document.

Leo: That's exactly what it is. I mean I'll be playing versions of Halo that I played on Tech TV.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: I'm going to buy it, $60 I mean, come on. It's like a buck per gigabyte. It's a good deal.

Paul: Yeah but now I'm out of space so I have to make a decision on whether or not I want to attach a hard drive to this stupid thing.

Leo: Because you've got Modern Warfare coming too.

Paul: Right so that's the other one.

Leo: Just the Kevin Spacey files alone are going to be gigabytes.

Paul: Yeah, 25 gigs of Kevin Spacey skins. This one's funny because there are so many different versions of this game and it's not as bad on digital but if you were to go into a store and actually look at the versions, it's like this crazy number of additions you can buy that all come with special weapon packages and brass- But the one you want-

Leo: Which one do I want? There's atlas pro, there's atlas limited... You could spend $130 on this game!

Paul: You go all the way down to the bottom, and digitally there's two versions of this game. There's a $100 version- Which is the one I get. Because the truth is for me, I do go through the single player campaign I like that but I then spend the next year playing this game online.

Leo: Right this is your game.

Paul: And in the past like two or three years you would buy this season pass that was $60. So it was kind of like buying that game again but it got you whatever the- I think it was four drops of DLC content multi-player maps and they did like Extinction and the whole Zombie thing and stuff like that. And this is basically a way to pay up front for all of that stuff in a package.  So this is the game, all of the digital stuff you get in the higher end physical packages and then the DLC content over the next year. So basically what I've done is committed myself for the rest of 2015 to what I'm going to do on Xbox One.

Leo: So forget Halo, you're never going to play Halo. So I love that this has got Kevin Spacey in it, that is just bizarre. And it looks-

Paul: It looks like a futuristic Top Gun.

Leo: Is this like a movie? Is it a game?

Paul: I know. I think this is one of the canned in between-

Leo: This is a cut scene I know but still.. Let's see if I can tell. There's the Golden Gate Bridge.

Paul: There are elements of other games in this like Titan Fall.

Leo: That's the House of Cards Version of the game with Kevin Spacey. Oh I can't wait. This is clearly going after people who are House of Cards fans.

Paul: I know.

Leo: A whole new demographic for Call of Duty.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: So it's still going to be a shoot 'em up but Kevin Spacey will show up every once in a while? I don't understand.

Paul: Well he'll be a part of the single player campaign.

Leo: Is he a good guy or a bad guy, I don't know.

Paul: I think he's probably a bad guy.

Leo: It'd be fun to play Kevin like you play the dog.

Paul: Yeah yeah.

Leo: So we're not going to gamers for another six months now. You're going to go back down into your hole.

Paul: Well what do we got? We've got about two and half weeks to three weeks.

Leo: Cards of Duty somebody said. House of Cards of Duty.

Paul: Oh and the other thing is, Call of Duty if you pre order it digitally, you can play it before it comes out physically. You get 24 hours, double experience points.

Leo: They want to push people towards digital don't they? If I were at Gamestop I would be pissed.

Paul: Obviously the only problem with digital is if you don't like the game you're kind of screwed because they're impossible to resell.

Leo: But that's why they want to do it.

Paul: But my God not having a disc in this thing...

Leo: I don't buy discs anymore, in fact I realized it was such a pain in the butt. I bought a game I can't remember what it was, probably- It was a disc, it was the first or second round of games and I realized you could download and even though I already had the disc coming, I bought the download.

Paul: Yeah, bought it just to send it back.

Leo: And that was the last disc I will ever buy.

Paul: The only disc that has ever been in my Xbox One was a Blu Ray movie and I just put it in there to test Blu Ray playback.

Leo: I have Blu Ray movies but I don't think I've ever put one in there.

Paul: No, I never actually watch Blu Ray's so. It's important to me that I buy every version of the Star Wars movies that has ever been made. So I do have the Blu Ray version.

Leo: Yeah but do you watch them?

Paul: No, I do not.

Leo: You just look at them on the shelf. Somebody's pointing out actually a very good point. That Frank Underwood in House of Cards unwinds and there's several times this happens during the show, he plays Call of Duty.

Paul: That's right. That's true, maybe that's why they reached out to him. There was an interview where he was like this is what I do in real life so I do it in the TV show. That's interesting, I've never made that connection.

Leo: I've been meaning to get Kevin back on the show and this would be a good excuse. The release of Call of Duty.

Paul: Hopefully he does his imitations.

Leo: The game of politics-

Paul: He actually- Speaking of Star Wars. He did the great SNL Star Wars thing where it was like Walter Matthau is Obi-Wan Kenobi and stuff.

Leo: What's a Chewbacca?

Paul: That's so awesome, he's just so great.

Leo: But it's clear that Microsoft is pushing you towards digital content. You get 24 hours advanced play.

Paul: Microsoft does certain things around digital stuff- Office 365 is another version where it just becomes a no-brainer. Obviously there will always be people who just refuse to do that kind of thing.

Leo: Well for various reasons. Resale value, I don't have a fast enough internet connection, etc., etc. Do you have to put the same amount of content on your hard drive if you have the disc? Yes. It still has to copy to your hard drive. It just becomes a key.

Paul: Xbox 360 was optional, you could just play off the disc. Although, I'm not sure about Xbox One.

Leo: I don't think you can. I'm pretty sure- It never gave me an option.

Paul: Well I've never used the disc so I have no idea how it works with a disc. If life goes right, I never will.

Leo: I'm telling you it's the end of physical media but nobody believes me. Let's start off first by saying hello to Paul Thurrott, birthday boy! He is 48?

Paul: I think I'm at the point where I'm not necessarily celebrating this anymore.

Leo: Yeah. Wait until you're 57. 60's, knock knock knockin' on Heaven's door. Happy Birthday Paul, you're celebrating. Happy Birthday.

Paul: Thank you.

Leo: And you know how Mary Jo celebrated? She went to Barcelona.

Mary Jo: I toast you from Barcelona Paul Thurrott.

Leo: Not even with beer!

Mary Jo: No with water.

Leo: Mary Jo Foley is at Tech Ed in Barcelona and reporting there. It's a little later in the day there I think it's 7:15pm.

Mary Jo: It is.

Leo: Good to have you both. It was fun just doing Call of Duty Weekly with Paul Thurrott but you know what? He did Enterprise, he did Codename and he even did beer.

Paul: I did. Very respectful.

Leo: He did all of the things. Not as well as Mary Jo Foley.

Paul: No, no. No one was claiming otherwise.

Leo: Chat room is going to great pains to make sure that I tell you that they said Happy Birthday Paul.

Paul: Thank you guys.

Leo: So are you doing anything for your birthday?

Paul: I am. Oddly enough- Actually Mary Jo will appreciate this. When we were in DC, Rodrigo Gabriella opened one of the shows. And I told my wife about this, I thought they were fantastic.

Mary Jo: They were.

Paul: Downloaded a bunch of their music and I decided to see if they ever come by Boston to buy tickets and so we did and that's tonight. Actually now that it's happening tonight, I'm like I wish it wasn't tonight. But we're going to go out for sushi beforehand and then go see those guys. My wife and I are going.

Leo: Well that's nice, you should do something. It is painful as you get older to celebrate, you don't want to celebrate.

Paul: Don't want to call attention to it.

Leo: I think it's actually how you were brought up. Mary Jo in your family were birthdays a big deal?

Mary Jo: Yes. They were a big deal.

Leo: So it's always a big deal for you and if somebody doesn't do anything for your birthday it's like you're let down.

Mary Jo: Yeah it's true.

Leo: Paul and I obviously come from flinty New England stock.

Paul: By the way, I'm not joking when I say this. I got up this morning in my usual half-conscious state, walked downstairs, walked into the kitchen and my family just exploded into this Happy Birthday thing and I was like, what are you doing? I thought it was tomorrow.

Leo: So in your family birthdays were not the big deal that they were in Mary Jo's.

Paul: Well they were a big deal for some people I guess. But I just don't- I don't know whatever. You can't buy me a present for my birthday, I buy everything I want.

Leo: Exactly, what are you going to get us geeks?

Paul: You aren't going to surprise me with something.

Leo: Honey I got you an iPhone 5s, oh thank you. Here's your Nokia 1520.

Paul: Yeah, I got one of those, thanks.

Leo: Thanks, that'll make two. Get you a bow and arrow or something like that. Get you something you don't have. Daddy we thought you should take up archery.

Paul: That's a good idea, gotta start somewhere.

Leo: Exactly.

Mary Jo: I think you don't have your own beer growler.

Leo: I was at- We were doing a web redesign and were using a great little company out of Austin called Four Kitchens. We were in their kitchen and it was just like 14 people or something like that, you know- Web designers. They have a keg in their kitchen, not just a keg in their kitchen. They have a refrigerator with two beautiful taps and up to two different beers in their kitchen.

Paul: So the taps are on the outside of their refrigerator?

Leo: Yes.

Paul: Oh that's nice.

Leo: And they have software, some sort of Nexus 7 Android software that not only monitors the beer as it flows and tells you when you're out. It takes unflattering photos of you as you're drinking.

Paul: Alright, so now I want to resend my earlier statement. There is something you could get me that I haven't already bought myself.

Leo: What's that? This beer fridge?

Paul: The beer fridge that holds two kegs.

Leo: You should have a two keg beer fridge.

Paul: At least the two keg connection.

Leo: The funny thing is they said that sometimes they get two kegs of beer but sometimes they get a keg of Kombucha and a keg of beer.

Mary Jo: Oh, nice.

Leo: See, Mary Jo likes that.

Mary Jo: I do love Kombucha.

Paul: What is Kombucha?

Mary Jo: It's a fermented beverage that's very healthy but it has a tiny bit of alcohol in it like maybe 1% and it comes in fruit flavors.

Paul: Are you playing a Vuvuzela over there, Leo?

Leo: Giants in the world series! Game 7. Sorry. So you're in Barcelona for Tech Ed which, on one hand people might say, that's a long way to go but on the other hand one of the great cities in Europe.

Mary Jo: Yep. I've always wanted to go to TechEd Europe and so I did finally end up getting to come. And this is the rumored last TechEd Europe. They may be changing their format for doing this kind of event going forward. So it's nice to get to come to my first and last TechEd at the same time in Europe.

Leo: Do they do it in English?

Mary Jo: They do it in English. Most of the speakers are from Redmond or partners of Microsoft too are from English speaking countries but the delegates are from everywhere. The people who are at the show. It's very international. You hear every language being spoken pretty much in the halls. So it's fun all of these people are Windows Weekly watchers too and we don't always get to meet them at TechEd US because most of them wait and go to TechEd Europe instead. Yeah so we're at the big convention center here in Barcelona.

Leo: How many people do you think are there?

Mary Jo: I think somewhere just under 10,000 so it's fairly big.

Leo: Wow, so what have you learned? I mean is it stuff you already know?

Mary Jo: I'll tell you how they kicked off the show which was interesting. They had a keynote whose two main speakers were Joe Belfiore who is on the Windows team and the other speaker was Jason Zander who is head of engineering for Azure. There was Windows 10 talk at the show and there was Azure talk at the show. Those were kind of the kick off themes. They talked about some new services they were launching on Azure this week. They have a new batch service, you know like batch processing but in the Cloud so a lot people were very interested in. It was funny because they were trying to make batch processing really exciting with demos, kind of hard.

Paul: Paper cards just to give the visual.

Mary Jo: No there were no paper punch cards. And they also talked a lot about Office 365 as you might expect. And they had some interesting announcements there around things they're doing to add some of the- No longer Windows InTune. -Just plain old InTune device management capabilities to Office 365 directly which is interesting. So the theme was a lot of stuff about the Cloud, a lot of stuff about Office 365 and then some of the sessions here are really digging into the stuff that IT Pro's really care about which is the next version of Windows Server and the next version of System Center. There's a lot of talk about Hyper V and all of those meaty enterprise topics that IT Pro's love. So that's kind of the gist of what's going on this week here. How's that? A short summary.

Leo: Nice.

Mary Jo: Yeah Windows 10 was interesting because Joe Belfiore got up there he admitted most of what I'm going to tell you guys is brand new. If you've been following Windows 10 you've seen that we launched the first public preview we had an update to that. But then he got up there and demoed a couple of very minor things that were new like the ability to snap apps side by side in multiple monitors not just move the apps between the monitors but actually snap them. He said that would be coming in an update at some point fairly soon. And he also said at the end of the keynote that the continuum- That new capability where if you're keyboard is connected or disconnected the OS just knows and it acts appropriately. -That will be available to people who are in the insider program either by the end of this year or early next year. So earlier than a lot of people thought. And he talked about In-Place Upgrade, that Microsoft's really working to make it easy if you're on Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 to just upgrade in-place to Windows 10 when it's done and you're not going to have to reinstall your apps they think. Even your 132 apps, your modern apps will just carry over, and your settings, files, data, everything will just carry over. That's their goal and what they think they can achieve by the time the operating system is done. So that's good and so we learned a few little things like that about Windows 10, nothing startling or huge that those of us who are following it very closely didn't know.

Leo: Yeah. Are you glad you went, though?

Mary Jo: I am, I am glad that I went. Not just because it's Barcelona but that aside, it's good to come here and hear what some of the other contingencies care about and what people are interested in. It feels like a much more skeptical audience at TechEd Europe. They only applauded once during keynote. You know what they applauded for?

Leo: What?

Mary Jo: Command Prompt in Windows 10. That got like rousing applause. It did.

Leo: The presence of Command Prompt in Windows 10?

Mary Jo: They were showing the new abilities that we saw like cut and paste inside Command Prompt they really loved that. That was a crowd pleaser.

Leo: We've got a really good terminal program this time around.

Paul: This has happened in the past, remember? The first time Microsoft did Server Core, the first time the shut off that. Which is command prompt interface basically. TechEd audience at the time exploded into applause. We like things to be difficult so normal people don't do them.

Leo: Wow. Yeah that's right, it's like job security for geeks.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah they were trying to show the IT Pro audience things that they thought they would really like so they were focused on things like security, Azure Single Sign On for Windows 10, all of the things that they would be more in tune to than the pure start menu or something like tiles. So yeah, they were appealing to that kind of audience so they really focused on that.

Paul: It may be notable because TechEd US was the same. No major On Prem Server announcements at the show. I mean I'm sure there were sessions or are sessions-

Mary Jo: There are. Yeah.

Paul: But just as with TechEd in the US, Azure, Office 365. Interesting.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I got to talk to Mike Neil who is one of the main guys on Windows Server here and we talked a little bit about what they're thinking around Cadence for Windows Server. That was kind of interesting because they're building the code base alongside the Windows 10 Client folks. But they're not going to update the Windows Server Codebase as fast, obviously because who wants their Server updated every few weeks or days. He told me that the next preview of Windows Server for people who are in the test program should be sometime early next year. So that's around when we think the Consumer preview is going to come out so that's actually very fast for Windows Server. He said, all of the things that we've already heard about it like changes to Hyper V, Powershell, a lot of things around software defying networking and all that goodness that folks like that would love. Things that make it cheaper to deploy server uncommodity hardware. That's the big focus with this release. They're still not telling us the name of the next Windows Server. We're still calling Windows Server Next.

Leo: That's a good name.

Mary Jo: That will not be the name. So yeah, that was kind of where they were at with everything. I'm trying to think if there was any other big things. They announced some new services around Internet of Things on Azure, a Data Factory Service for people who want to combine different data sources, like Sequel Server On Prem and No Sequel and be able to use those things in tandem and be able to come up with business insights quicker. So all of these things, not Call of Duty, not any of the fun stuff.

Leo: However, I should point out that Paul did write an article that has this whole list of TechEd announcements.

Mary Jo: Nice.

Paul: And the important part of that article is that I have my own photo of Barcelona at the top of it.

Leo: That's his photo ladies and gentlemen.

Mary Jo: Nice work. Oh, one thing I forgot.. Office 16, we found out what the release target dates are. That was actually kind of a big deal. That's the next version of Windows Client Office and also Office Servers. We found out that's going to be in the second half of 2015 which is slightly later than we thought it was coming. Although, I'm betting early second half. Maybe even June or July. But that's the official word now is Office 16 is around that time.

Leo: June or July.

Mary Jo: That's my guess. They're saying second half of calendar 2015.

Leo: This next one is so small there's not much to talk about Windows 10.

Mary Jo: No we're done.

Leo: Okay thank you very much. The most audacious release in the history of a platform says some guy named Thurrott.

Paul: Perennial Microsoft cheerleader Paul Thurrott. So why would I say such a thing? Because I've been around a while. Leo.

Leo: You've seen it all.

Paul: I kind of have seen it all. And people will always point to things, Windows '95 is an obvious one, Windows MT, huge one. Windows XP where they combined consumer and business into one thing. Very big things. And of course there are people who would point at Longhorn, which never happened. Which I would say is the shuttle disaster of Windows or whatever. It was the worst thing that ever happened. The reason that Windows 10 is a big deal is because of this thing they've been saying all along- Where I've been shaking my head saying, this isn't a big deal. -It's that they're bringing together, essentially a single platform across such a long range of devices. Imagine if Longhorn had really happened. If Microsoft actually took that PowerPoint presentation that was complete bologna and turned it into an actual living, breathing, working Operating System compared to what they're doing with Windows 10 that would have been nothing. Because that OS only targeted old fashioned traditional computers. The potential exposure to customers and device types was fairly minimal by the standards of today. Windows 10 targets everything from Internet of Things like little sensor type devices, like little nanobot type things, through all of the small screen devices like phones, tablets, small tablets, big tablets, and 2-in-ones, laptops, ultrabooks, blah blah blah. All the way up to PPI type things. It's really like the full stack. And their universal apps thing is not complete bologna I get that it's a step down a road toward a developer being able to target all of these things in one wack but we don't know the full story there yet. What I'm being told is this is in fact, a much bigger jump in that direction than maybe we've been lead to believe. This is clearly the biggest deal in the history of Windows. It's really not even a debate.

Mary Jo: Wow.

Leo: Wow is right. Do you agree, Mary Jo?

Mary Jo: I'm not as convinced I don't think,

Paul: I said, it's not even a debate.

Leo: It's through, I'm Tweeting it right now. It's got to be true.

Mary Jo: The part I think when I think about Windows 10 that I think is really big is the change- Well two changes. The change in the way Microsoft is doing the rollout itself and releasing to customers these incremental updates on a regular basis and they're going to let people test different features at the same time through flighting. I think that's a really big deal. And the part that we don't know a lot about yet. And the fact that they are actually taking user feedback into account in what seems to be a real way. So far we haven't seen them change any features of Windows 10 because of the user feedback but I think if and when they do, that will be a big deal. And also the fact that they're even in the forms talking to people, instead of just writing a 3,000 word blog post and saying, hey this is the way it is, that's a big deal.

Paul: This isn't just a different team of people or a different company, this is like a different species. By the way, I think the important point though- I write this thing and a lot of people are like, oh Paul put down the pom poms. It's not about like, oh they put a start menu back so you're doing like a touchdown dance in the backyard. It's not about like a desktop laptop version of Windows. In that note, Windows 10 is just another version of Windows any version of Windows is a big deal. My point is that it goes out- You know Microsoft has to address the market for these other things. So you have Windows phone, which wasn't Windows. Not really, it's like this other thing. If they could make these things all one thing if you will, in platform you know, addressable by developers in a simple fashion. That in fact, is a really big deal.

Mary Jo: It is, and they're going to get quite a ways along that path with Windows 10 like with the common app store. We weren't sure that was going to make it into Windows 10 but they actually are going to have one app store by the time this thing is out. Windows phone, Windows, and probably Xbox too will have a common store by the time Windows 10 comes out. That is a bigger deal than a lot of people give credit for. We also do believe that they're going to let developers put 132 apps in the store and not just links to the apps.

Paul: That is happening.

Mary Jo: It is for sure?

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: We knew it in that blog post that got pulled but we haven't seen that yet, right?

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: I think it's the goal and the plan but yeah, there is a lot of stuff they're doing very differently under the covers. Not the stuff that's so much UI specific but things like letting people log in through Azure Active Directory instead of having a Microsoft account. They confirmed this week, by the way at TechEd that is in fact, happening. Those kinds of things make a big difference to a lot of folks who didn't want to go the Microsoft account route or wanted to do something through Azure Active Directory in a more centralized single sign on fashion. So yeah, there's a lot of goodness under the covers.

Paul: It's fairly amazing and I think the reason- To use the word audacious, is because it's a Moonshot. Taking Windows 8 and fixing it is great and is the right thing to do and is customer-centric and it's all that wonderful stuff. But it's this other stuff... The background under the covers. The sort of broad support of all these different platforms is what makes it so much bigger than that and makes it such a big big deal. I write about this stuff for a living so I'm going to write an article about the start menu, I'm sorry. This is my life, it just is. But I think there are more profound things going on here than just- The command line just got cut and paste with Control V, it's neat and fun but there's this big thing happening. Much bigger.

Leo: Yeah we get distracted by the UI stuff.

Paul: It's easy.

Leo: A couple of questions I have for you, this big thing is primarily an interest with enterprise though right?

Paul: Well not necessarily.

Leo: Microsoft stuff I use is Xbox and Office, and I guess OneDrive is going to be a big part of my life. But I don't use Windows really. Is this for me too?

Paul: Yeah, the point is that Windows is underlying all of the platform work that Microsoft is doing. So even you, as an Xbox user will be running Windows 10. You'll be running- I don't want to call it Metro. -But a metro 2.0 type user experience. That OneDrive stuff, better integration into Xbox One would be wonderful wouldn't it? So now that you've put up all of your photos and videos and whatever, you can access that stuff from your Xbox One. These underlying platform changes will benefit everybody and will ultimately benefit people who aren't even using Windows because they'll appear in Microsoft's mobile apps and services on other platforms as well. As far as who benefits from this one Windows thing obviously enterprise but also developers. You know you give them a much larger target audience with one trajectory. That's when developers think, oh yes now that makes sense. I think the biggest tragedy of Longhorn is that's when Microsoft lost developers. That's when that happened. That was the whole chicken egg problem. They kept changing it and changing it and by the time it came out it was too late and they had moved on and no one was listening anymore. This is a chance to get them back with a vision that actually makes sense and isn't arbitrary whereas Windows 8 was kind of arbitrary. It looks like manage code, it's not but don't worry about it. A single developer environment, a sort of single target, a single set of SDK's, a common platform is I think, a big deal.

Leo: I'm intrigued by this. I think this is a thing Microsoft must do in order to survive and to continue going forward and succeed. I think it's the right direction. How did this happen?

Paul: Right. Well- By the way, Mary Jo do you watch the Charlie Rose interview with Steve Ballmer?

Mary Jo: No I just read excerpts from it.

Paul: It was very interesting. There were not a lot of apologies there. He does agree that Longhorn distracted them but there was not much they could have done about that and that they lost out of mobile as their result.

Leo: And he was there in the Longhorn era. What was he doing?

Paul: He was the CEO. What he blamed it on was Bill Gates had been #1 and Steve Ballmer had been #2 for the previous 20 years or whatever. They switched positions essentially. Steve Ballmer became CEO and Bill Gates was reporting to him. This didn't go over very well, they lost a couple of years to this and they argued all of the time. And that's when Longhorn happened. He said, it's not the why for Longhorn but it's a big part of how that kind of thing happened.

Leo: Ballmer said this? That they argued all of the time?

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Wow, I've got to watch this. Wow.

Paul: And so basically, this is what happened when they were both too distracted. Obviously those things calmed down and they moved on and they fixed Longhorn eventually, but the damage had been done.

Leo: Who can forget the weekend that Mary Jo spent in Sweden? I forgot all about it already but fortunately we have a recording to show that she was actually there! Windows 10 Tech preview and user feedback tell me all about that.

Mary Jo: Oh where to dig in on that?

Paul: I'm just going to say this is Mary Jo Foley's fault.

Mary Jo: It is.

Leo: Why is that?

Paul: She started this all last week. The complaining. And now...

Mary Jo: Wait, I did? I think I was the only person who wasn't complaining about what happened.

Leo: What did they do?

Mary Jo: Let Paul talk about One Drive because this is a new version of Windows 10 Tech preview out as of last week and they've made some changes that some of the more power user type people are not that happy about. I'm going to let Paul weigh in on that and then I'm going to weigh in.

Paul: Okay so not that happy about this.

Leo: Can I  just say, remember this is a tech preview. This is not a released version of Windows by any means.

Paul: Yeah see but that's actually the problem. In other words, the first two preview builds of Windows 10 have been very high quality, very stable, very recommendable to even normal people and this third one, okay. So it's kind of a regression from a stability standpoint. But they quietly- And by quietly there was no warning that this was coming but they introduced a major change to OneDrive so if you were coming at Windows 10 from a Windows 8.1 prospective the first couple of builds of Windows 10 worked just like 8.1 did and the third one did not. The outrage is not that they made that change, although that would certainly generate a certain amount of grumbling. It's that they explained themselves and said, yeah we're not fixing this. This is the wait it will be moving forward. There will be improvements to it but it's never going back to the way it was. So that's the problem, it's not that it's a beta build and we're over reacting. It's that Microsoft is fundamentally changing the way that OneDrive works in Windows and not for the better. So we could go very far into the weeds but the short version that I'll try to make is that when you think of OneDrive's sync clients you're basically talking about three different operating systems. Mac OS 10, Windows 7, Windows 8.1. Mac OS 10 and Windows 7 work the same way. You sign into OneDrive, it says, do you want to sync all of your OneDrive to the PC or do you want to pick which folders to sync? Obviously in these days 1 tb, 10 tb, eventually unlimited storage, some people power users who are actually uploading stuff to OneDrive like I am, are going to have to pick which folders to sync. So the problem with that is if you have three folders in OneDrive and you have different things in them you try to sync one from file explorer in Windows or from the Finder in Mac OS 10, you'll only see that folder, you'll have no access to the other locations. In Windows 8.1, they had a more elegant, and for some a more complex system, where they didn't ask you what you wanted to sync. What they did was you logged into your Microsoft and it would automatically sync placeholders for everything so it would look like everything was there. What you were really seeing was little thumbnails and metadata files for things that were up in the Cloud. So if you double-clicked them it would have to open it. So if it were a huge file it might take a long time to open. Or you could arbitrarily mark files and folders for offline use. The problem with this system and I think this is an issue that Mary Jo has experience. Because those things appear in the file system, you think they're there. And so maybe you get on a plane or are in some other kind of offline situation, you double-click on that Word document and it's not there it's in the Cloud but you can't get to it because you're offline. So people complain. But the other issue here that I think is the main issue is that placeholder files aren't free. So if you have 1 tb of files, depending on the makeup of those files in the Cloud, the amount of space that those placeholders could take up on your drive could be tens of gb. If you have 2 tb, 3 tb it's going to be even more. So we have this weird situation where Microsoft on one hand is offering unlimited storage in OneDrive to everyone who pays for Office 365 and on the other hand, they're selling really low-end devices that have 16gigs of storage, 32 gigs of storage. And it's conceivable that you, the new happy owner of the HP Stream 7 tablet that has 32 gigs of storage, you log into your account play with it for a little while play with it upload a few games and go to bed. Next time you turn it on it says, you have run out of space. Because while you weren't using it it was downloading all of the placeholders. And it filled up all of the space in your drive. So those were the problems. The placeholders take up space and normal people didn't realize that the placeholders weren't the files.

Mary Jo: Yep. I'm the normal person who they built this feature for. I was telling Paul when everybody was flipping out that they made that change to OneDrive, I'm the person who got on a plane without realizing the file was in the Cloud, I tried to use it offline and no.

Leo: So you got bit.

Mary Jo: I got bit. And I'm not the only one, you know I always say this and you guys laugh but I'm the normal user in this case-

Paul: No we recognize you as the normal one.

Mary Jo: And so I'm actually kind of happy they made this change, And I'm not one who has a ton of OneDrive files but the ones I have are documents that I want to work on when I'm disconnected and I'm always left kind of scratching my head. I understand there are ways they can make it more apparent with shading or some kind of visual cue. But I also know that Microsoft is trying to make the way they support different services common across all platforms so that they can update the files for iOS the same time they do for Android as the same time they do for Windows 7, 8, and 10. So I understand why they're doing this-

Paul: And for OneDrive Business.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: If you really want to go into the weeds on this we could easily spend two hours on this. Remember that Microsoft has these two different services. OneDrive for Business and OneDrive are completely different. They're not always going to be working to integrate these into one engine. If you use OneDrive for Business today on Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or whatever it's even more dumb in the sense that if you choose to sync that to your PC it's all or nothing. So right now I think you can have 1 tb in OneDrive for Business because they haven't upgraded yet, if you had 1 tb of files in there and sync that thing on your PC it's going to download 1 tb of files and if you don't have the space, it's not going to work.

Leo: Let us get back to Sweden Mary Jo Foley is there for the big TechDays. Shaping the future. I think it's techdays.se is the website. And there she is, shaping the future.

Mary Jo: Yes, shaping the future.

Paul: She's like a mime.

Mary Jo: I am.

Leo: The future, it's in wide-face.

Mary Jo: Yes, so we have some people who want to ask questions so I'll just read them to you guys and tell them what they want to know.

Leo: Okay, perfect.

Audience member: Yes, my question is how important is the Surface as a device that Microsoft sales compared to what kind of infuser it is for the rest of the industry for other companies to create tablet-like devices.

Mary Jo: How important is it to Microsoft or to the industry?

Audience member: Is it more important as a device that Microsoft sells?

Mary Jo: Okay, I see what you're asking.

Leo: We could kind of hear it actually.

Mary Jo: Oh okay good. So what he wants to know, is the Surface more important as a money-making device for Microsoft or is it more like an inspiration, like an innovation, right? Am I explaining that well?

Leo: Well it is close to a negative billion dollar business.

Mary Jo: Right, well Microsoft, we believe, has been losing money with the Surface but we don't know that for sure because they won't say how many Surfaces they've sold. We know they took a write-down of $900 million on the Surface RT, the one that-

Paul: That was like a year and a half ago.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: Well, you're digging yourself out of a billion dollar hole.

Mary Jo: You are, you're digging yourself out of a hole. But are they going to keep making Surfaces? Do they think it's important enough to the company as an inspirational device, something that really showcases Windows? Good question, right? I mean, Nadella hasn't been that bullish about hardware.

Paul: Oh I thought he had explicitly addressed this today.

Mary Jo: He did but I feel like the fact they haven't rolled out any more Surfaces since the Surface Pro 3 may indicate something. I don't know, they can't-

Leo: They killed the Surface Micro.

Mary Jo: Right, the killed the Surface Mini, or at least postponed it. So I don't know.

Leo: We've been asking that question since the day that they came out with it. But it was a significant risk for Microsoft to go into the PC business, they had never done that before.

Mary Jo: Right, it was.

Leo: Against their OEM's, competing against their OEM's.

Paul: That worked out great, I don't think anyone got upset with them or anything so no worries there.

Leo: Well your being facetious, obviously. But here we are a couple years later, it's not like we lost a lot.

Paul: Actually Leo, on that topic... Here we are two years later, and Microsoft had to release $0 Windows Licensing to counter-act the Chromebooks that every single one of their partners has released since they made Surface. So I think that ultimately, we could credit Surface with $0 Windows Licensing.

Mary Jo: Interesting.

Paul: It's kind of an obvious cause-and-effect thing right there.

Mary Jo: Okay let's take another question. Okay, favorite feature so far in the Windows 10 preview that hasn't been in any other Windows version for Paul Thurrott.

Paul: Well I wouldn't call this a favorite feature because my favorite is in Windows Word and other Windows versions but in the newest build, one of the features they released that I think will be a big deal for typical users, which is most people, is that Snap Assist feature that is now enabled. So when you snap a window, it actually works and didn't in the previous build. And then it throws up thumbnails in the other side of the screen so you can pick whichever application you want or hit escape and it goes away, which takes you back to your normal view and then you can automatically snap two things side by side. And you may recall in Windows 8, when you snap something, you'd get a blank screen and it was unclear as to what you had to do. You had to go to Start, choose another app and it would snap after you did that. So that kind of thing isn't a major new feature but it's one of those things that will impact everybody that uses it so it's kind of a big deal.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I don't know if you remember, when you were away one time and Dr. Pizza, Peter Bright from Arstechnica was on the show and I said on the show, I think the snap on Windows 8 is so broken and so terrible and he just like flipped out. I'm like it's just so hard to use, it's difficult to figure out how to make is snap in an easy way. I know how to make the gestures snap but you have to think about it too much and Snap Assist does take that away, like the part that makes you go, what the heck am I doing again?

Paul: Right.

Leo: Now, I haven't used it yet but the feature that draws my eye is the multiple workspaces thing.

Paul: Multiple desktops, yep.

Leo: I have used that for years in Linux and I use it in OS 10 and I find that a really nice way- It's a little better than snapping, especially with full-screen apps, it kind of goes hand-in-hand with full-screen apps. -To have multiple full-screen apps open. I haven't used it yet and don't know how well it's implemented but I'm looking forward to that.

Mary Jo: Yep. Anyone else here in the audience?...

Paul: What about you, Mary Jo?

Leo: Yeah did she say a favorite?

Mary Jo: Well I'm not running tech preview because I for one, don't have a PC to put it on and I don't really have the time since hearing how unstable things are becoming.

Paul: Well let me walk you through the setup of a dual boot system while we sit here and you're in Sweden so first-

Mary Jo: No I don't want to do this. I know my place here, and my place is not to be a tester for the tech community. I'll be a tester on the consumer preview because I'm a consumer.

Leo: So you used a Surface Pro 3, were you ever tempted to buy one?

Mary Jo: I didn't really care for it that much..

Leo: Even with the lap ability?

Mary Jo: It wasn't lappable, no I tried to balance it on my lap but it kept falling off. Maybe I have short legs, I don't know how to explain it but I much prefer the clamshell laptop form factor still to the Surface. I just find the Surface a little too tippy and not lappable enough because I type on my lap a lot. I know that's unusual.

Leo: You actually have a really great Windows laptop, the same as I use, the Acer S7.

Mary Jo: It is great. So yeah, I don't have a favorite but I do like the idea of Snap Assist a lot because I always thought Snapping was too hard. So what else, another question, it can be anything.

Leo: When does the beer start? You're keeping me from the beer.

Mary Jo: Yeah. Guys, anything? I think they're just tired, it's been a long day.

Leo: Yeah, they don't have to ask anything if they don't want. Let's take a look at the audience one more time in beautiful Stockholm, they're celebrating a joyous day at the Microsoft Tech-Day event. Let's get to the back of the book, you ready to do that, guys?

Mary Jo: Let's do it.

Leo: And thanks to everybody in Sweden, and thanks to the fella who set this up. Because it really looks great, I think with the tech, all around.

Mary Jo: Michael Ardenberg.

Paul: Is he there? Let him say hi.

Mary Jo: Yes. Come on over.

Leo: I think we exchanged emails, right Michael?

Michael Ardenberg: Yes we did, nice to talk to you finally.

Leo: Nice to talk to you, and nice job! You did a great job setting this up, I can't believe how good it looks. 10x better than Paul.

Michael: Thank you, I was actually going to ask Paul if he would like to come over here himself sometime and visit the world's largest land party here twice a year.

Paul: Yeah, I would be happy to.

Leo: Oh what game do you play?

Michael: Oh we play everything, it's 16,000 people coming together twice a year playing games for four days.

Paul: Yeah I could do that. I do it with a slightly smaller crowd up the street and it's more like 6 or 10 guys, but yeah sure.

Leo: Thank you Michael I really appreciate your help.

Michael: Thank you.

Leo: Well that's that for this edition of Windows Weekly the best of 2014. I'm out of cocoa and we're out of clips. It was quite a few of them, but what a great show? Don't you really appreciate the work that Paul and Mary Jo do to keep us up to date about what's going on in Microsoft and maybe more importantly to explain what it all means. We've got a lot more for 2015, one of our most successful long-running shows it just keeps getting better and we are really glad you continue to watch. I hope you'll tune in Windows Weekly is every Wednesday 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern time, 1900 UTC every Wednesday. Please watch live if you can, otherwise get on-demand versions that are available everywhere you get your podcasts including our own website twit.tv/ww. You can also use our TWiT apps to listen to any of our shows live or on-demand after the fact. Thanks for joining us in 2014. Here's to a happy, healthy and full of cocoa 2015; we'll see you then! Goodbye.