Windows Weekly 406 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It´s time for Windows weekly, Paul Thurrott is here, yes Mary Jo Foley is back from her trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. It´s going to be a great Windows Weekly, we´ve got a lot of parsing to do, stay tuned Windows Weekly, the reunion episode is next.

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This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, Episode 406, recorded Wednesday March 25th 2015.

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Leo: It´s time for Windows Weekly, the show where we cover the latest news from Microsoft. Paul Thurrott is here from Thurrott.com in his command center, deep within the snow, the snowy earth of Dedham, Massachusetts. I don´t know where he´s going.

Mary Jo Foley: He´s disappeared.

Leo: He´s disappeared. Wait a minute.

Paul Thurrott: I´m back.

Leo: As you see, filling in for Mary Jo Foley this week. Who is this person? Mary Jo Foley!

Mary Jo: I´m back.

Leo: Nice to have you back. Tanned, rested, relaxed. Welcome, we missed you terribly.

Mary Jo: Ah thanks. I heard you had some great guests in my absence.

Leo: You know, Dr. Pizza and Daniel Rubino, you know, the usual suspects, but, I have to say, and you know, we can now take the Mary Jo Foley portrait, featuring Joe Belfiore´s throat and retire it for another year, you may not take another vacation. But I have to say the Sways you sent were incredible, we looked at them each week jealously. Yeah, woe. What was your favorite part?

Mary Jo: Man, I have to say, I really loved being on the boat in Ha Long Bay.

Leo: That´s the one I want to do, I loved those pictures, yeah.

Mary Jo: It was a little chilly, it was like 65 but, and cloudy, but it was still really great. And going to Cambodia was amazing but not my weather. 100 degrees with 85% humidity.

Leo: Give me chilly, give me chilly.

Mary Jo: Yeah, me too.

Leo: But I´m going to contact you because I would really like to do the Ha-Long Bay thing. That looked beautiful.

Mary Jo: It was amazing. You would absolutely love it.

Leo: Oh man!

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: So we have world travelers on this show, between Mary Jo and Paul, they´re never in the country. They´re always gallivanting about the world! That sounds like fun. So welcome back, we missed you but back to work for you, understanding Microsoft´s evolving business model, it´s ever changing.

Paul: If you don´t mind, we´re not done yet congratulating Mary Jo Foley on being Mary Jo Foley, I would like to add that this first story came about because of Mary Jo Foley.

Leo: She came back from a beautiful vacation and immediately filed a scoop.

Paul: But here´s what´s amazing about it. This thing that, the event that is based on happened a week ago right? So when Chris Capossela gave this talk everyone wrote all this stuff about convergence you know, and including me, and then Mary Jo shows up like a week later and is like hey by the way, this is the real story.

Leo: OMG!

Paul: And then Microsoft actually wrote a blog post just kind of reexplaining it because it became a story again because of Mary Jo Foley. So, my point is simple Mary Jo, which is this, do not ever go away again, what is wrong with you? We need you.

Leo: And while you were away, stop reading the news.

Mary Jo: I did, I actually was very seldom online during that trip.

Leo: Wow nice. You can´t. There´s no internet on a boat on the Ha-Long River

Mary Jo: No, you can´t. There was no internet and in a lot of places nor t was kind of iffy. I did not read al these things but she I came back last Thursday late night, I started reading and this one just jumped out because we know Chris Cappossela, he´s the head of all marketing of Microsoft so I was thinking the guy must´ve had something to say.he was key noting convergence which is Microsoft´s business conference and he did have something to say, he was talking a lot about, at this conference about what it means for Microsoft´s evolving business model to have this component of services now that are free. Because everyone´s saying you know Microsoft has always made their money by charging for Windows and charging for Office and now suddenly they´re doing all the stuff with making much of office for iPad free and Office for Android free up to a certain point. And so he came on stage to explain, okay we know we´re giving away a lot of stuff these days but here´s how we are rationalizing this in our own minds and how we think about the fact that we can move from this freemium model to actually make money off of all these people. So that was the just of his talk and he talked about a lot of things that we´ve already talked about in the past on Windows Weekly, how Microsoft´s giving away more things free, how they think that they ultimately can upsell customers once they get them in, once they get you interested, and willing to try something like Office for iPad, then they think they can upsell you and get you to subscribe to something like Office 365 home, or Office 365 for business.

Leo: That´s what the freemium model is, isn´t it?

Mary Jo: It is, it is. Yeah, he basically went through this bit by bit and said here´s how we think we can do this, here´s where we see the cut off example with Office, when you get to a 10.2 inch screen we start charging you. And he really just laid it out in a very clear way that we hadn´t heard Microsoft execs really say to this point. So that was his key note and I read through the transcript and I said you know what he actually explained something that everybody´s wondering, how are they going to make money going forward, moving from software to services? And that was it.

Paul: Really, honestly, it was major news, not just because, we knew about their plans with Office and stuff but he was very specific and he even mentioned for the first time, I think that the free differentiator is based on the screen size much like it is on Windows although it´s a different screen size for Office. So once you get 10.2 inches you have to pay for Office, right? What that means is that as Office gets more feature packed on mobile platforms specially Android where there are 10.2 inch and bigger tablets and maybe will be on iOS much later as well. That won´t be free because those things get closer to being a pc and so now you need to start paying for it. And so that was actually really, really big news. It was kind of amazing and I did not catch any of this until Mary Jo mentioned it.

Mary Jo: Well you were kind of busy while I was gone, there was a lot of other news I noticed.

Paul: Yeah, I was not slacking off but I mean it´s interesting how that kind of cut to the chase.

Mary Jo: Yeah, the other thing he said that was really interesting to me too was, and this is something we´ve kind of felt happening but we haven´t heard somebody from Microsoft say this on the record, he said from now on going forward, we´re going to really make Microsoft the brand that we emphasize with our products and services instead of having like Xbox plus surface, plus Windows, plus Office, he said in the past we´ve had all these divergent brands and going forward you´re going to see us really emphasize Microsoft as the uberbrand and forget about all these separate campaigns that emphasize all the other sub brands, also very interesting and kind of brings together things that we´ve been hearing and makes a lot of sense.

Paul: Yeah and he specifically said that future Microsoft, I think he said Lumias or phones, specifically phones I think it was, would have a Microsoft logo on them as the logo, in other words, I think the current Lumias from Microsoft actually say Microsoft and don´t have the logo and what he was suggesting is that we´re just going to go with that logo, the brand, which is a new approach because if you think like how Surfaces I think Surface Pro 3 probably says, I should just look at it, surface, it just says Surface on it right, and I think the first version of Surface, the first gen had a Windows logo on it, and so presumably Microsoft devices will now emphasize that brand over whatever product brand, which is, itself a big change as well.

Leo: Is this rearranging deck chairs in the Titanic or is this a substantive?

Paul: No, this is branding Leo, this is really important. Actually I do think, all kidding aside, I actually do think it´s important because we do this too , I mean this podcast is called Windows Weekly, we get kind of wrapped up in these product brands and what Microsoft is saying going forward is that the important thing is Microsoft , on the enterprise side, the business side which is most of Microsoft’s business, they are not looking for a product to move to the cloud as you said, they´re looking for a partner and that partner is Microsoft, they want people to think Microsoft. I was a little surprised by the day that they had on the recognition of the brand, the Microsoft logo, the, you know the Microsoft store style logo that they have for Microsoft, consumer recognition was very high, I think it was 65, 67%. People would look at that and say that means Microsoft. In business it´s between 80 and 90% you know, so that´s actually helpful to them going forward because as Windows becomes less important, as the Office brand becomes less important, the server kind of disappears you know they rebranded, remember Azure? From Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure, um, it´s the Microsoft brand that´s important and I think that´s how the company sees itself going forward, not as these big pillars but as this one thing.

Leo: Do you feel like there´s some big move in the works that would make this all make sense? Well what if Microsoft acquired a cell carrier or something? What if.

Paul: Well, this may be tied into a lot of different things, for example, we have this story coming up about Microsoft striking deals with Android device makers to put Microsoft apps on those devices. Microsoft kind of recognizes that in the mobile world people are not walking around with Windows devices. It´s true on tablets, it´s true on phones specially and that in such a world, to get it´s, to push it´s vision for productivity, it needs people to think of Microsoft, and if they can get these Microsoft apps on devices, I mean, that itself is I think an important part of the strategy as well.

Leo: I guess what I´m saying is this feels like, first of all it´s great that they´re opening the kimono a little bit, I don´t know if, you know, we´ve ever been told exactly what they´re thinking but it does seem kind of incrementalist so there´s 2 interpretations, one is everything is hunky dory and so we don´t really make any big changes or the other would be.

Paul: Margins collapsing.

Leo: Yeah, the world ending, no.

Paul: Well we´ve been talking for a long time about how the world´s changed right? The mobile world.

Leo: Yes, and they need to recognize that.

Paul: Windows is dominant on PCs, it´s not dominant in mobile, in what we might call personal computers.

Leo: They were a platform that dominated but the world´s moved.

Paul: I think, who was it? COO Turner, Kevin Turner said last year at the World Wide Partner Conference that Microsoft represents 14% right? Was that the figure? Of personal computing now platform wise.

Mary Jo: Right, it was, yep.

Leo: Isn´t that amazing? From 99%.

Paul: Yeah, but so the difference is, but Microsoft has still consistently made a lot of money, you´ve seen things go downhill a little bit, but it´s not been dramatic. I mean at some point these things have to catch up to each other, and I´m not saying that Microsoft emerges as a much smaller company and that the floor is about to fall out from underneath them or whatever, but, I mean they´re not making these changes arbitrarily. They´re not giving out Windows for free, they´re not giving away Office for free because they, out of the goodness of their heart, they love humanity and you know, we don´t want to disadvantage iOS users or whatever I mean, yeah, I´m sure from a profit revenue standpoint that this going to have to catch up.

Leo: Are they going to rebrand Xbox to Microsoft box?

Paul: Microsoftbox no.

Mary Jo: No, I don´t think so. But I think because of his role, Chris Capossela´s role, he´s in charge of a centralized marketing organization now for the company and before last year they didn´t have that. Marketing was done by each of the divisions by themselves, they had different ad agencies, different ad campaigns and Capossella´s saying Marketing is basically reflecting where they´re going as a company now.

Leo: Which is great, they have a unified voice.

Mary Jo: They do, they do.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: And he said several times in this talk that he gave at Convergence that I can´t emphasize enough what a huge change this is for the company, when people are outsiders and they are looking in I think they say well that makes sense, one marketing, blah, blah, blah, this is just not the way things have been done ever at Microsoft. Giving away stuff for free is not in their DNA, to get people inside, to think that this is a good idea that ultimately it´s going to help them make money, that is a gigantic mind shift for people who work there, who´ve been there a long time. So I think some people say oh yeah, it´s just new words, you know, new wine, old bottles, whatever, but I really think it´s a very different approach for the company that they´ve never had.

Leo: Okay, yeah. And it´s great to hear articulated this is part of Satya Nadella´s reorganization of Microsoft and uh, I get, they´re trying things.

Paul: There´s been a lot of talk, I mean, you know I think for all of the praise that Satya Nadella has gotten for over the past year I mean, I look at a lot of it and a lot of it is just a lot of talk, and I don´t mean that to criticize the man, I mean there´s things you have to come out and, you know, talk it up, you know, a lot of it is just talk you know, and until you make specific actions your theories about strategy are just theories, and so, we´ll see how this goes for them and we´ll see, you asked about the Xbox for example, obviously they´re not going to rebrand it to Microsoft Box and equally obviously there´s like this really strong Xbox brand that includes a logo that people know and understand. And so, Microsoft devices are going to have Microsoft logos on them apparently, well what about the Xbox? Are they going to start using a Microsoft logo on the Xbox One? Probably not, you know, and so, we have to see.

Leo: And even if they did, kind of, so what?

Paul: Yeah, it doesn´t improve their position.

Leo: This is my question and this sounds, this is sensible, unified, blah, blah, blah, but putting a Microsoft brand on stuff, if that´s their strategy.

Paul: Well think of this though, remember one of the big complaints we´ve had in the past was Microsoft was too quick to throw the name Windows on anything right? And the first time they really publicly acknowledged that I think it was with Windows Azure where they said, you know this thing, even though obviously it was based on server essentially, you know optimized for the cloud etc. etc. is no longer Windows. It´s not like a version of Windows you run in a VM in the cloud, it´s more, it´s its own platform, and so, it´s just Azure. And so maybe they take it on a case by case basis but in the past you know, Windows Azure regardless of the merits, that would´ve been the name and that would´ve been the name forever because everything´s Windows.

Leo: So the freemium thing, you know, they make, that´s obvious, and you see there´s plenty of businesses doing this, this is the thing to do in mobile. So I don´t think he´s announcing something that nobody´s thought of, but it´s good to know that that´s where, that´s what their strategy is.

Paul: Okay so if you are a mobile game maker, my son plays this game that´s advertised on TV, I don´t know it looks like Farmville to me, whatever, he amazed me by knowing and not just the name of the game which of course he would know, but knowing the name of the game maker which I thought was crazy. Um, this is a new company right? This is probably 3 guys in their parents basement working out of someplace in Chicago or something.

Leo: Making 18 million dollars a day.

Paul: A day, yep.

Leo: On, in app purchases.

Paul: In a freemium model right? But that´s a new business. Office is a business that generated 4 billion dollars revenue every single quarter for like a decade. So moving something like that to freemium, I mean that would be like a car maker suddenly announcing hey we see these electric cars have really taken off but we´re going to give you this BMW, we´re just going to give it to you, and maybe you´ll pay to upgrade to a better stereo or a camera that looks backwards or something but, we´re just going to give you the car. You know it is kind of a big deal because it´s an established business that generated so much money.

Leo: Well but it´s an established business that looks like it´s about to falter, right? Isn´t this an acknowledgement that the world is changing?

Paul: Yes, but the old Microsoft would´ve ridden this one into the ground. In other words, that´s what I mean by talk versus action. It´s not enough to say the world is going into mobile, I mean I´ll kind of nod our heads, I think the thing that´s interesting about what´s happening now is they´re doing it. You know they´re taking those steps, I think someone like Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates would´ve had a much harder time taking these steps because they were the ones that rode Office and Windows 10 to the top.

Leo: If there´s one word associated with Microsoft is legacy, and that´s changing.

Paul: On that note I think this stuff is a big deal.

Leo: Yeah I guess all I´m saying is, is it enough?

Paul: Oh no, they´re screwed Leo but I still think.

Leo: I don´t mean to say that either but putting the Microsoft logo on everything isn´t going to, that´s not.

Mary Jo: You know, the branding part is part of what he talked about but I feel like the parts that were more interesting were how do you get to upsell people when you give them something free? That´s one interesting question they´re dealing with and one of the examples he cited was Office and he said you know we´re pulling more users in who´ve never been Microsoft users with Office fry pad and then we´re trying to show them the benefits you get if you´re willing to subscribe to Office 365, like what else you´re going to get. But another example he pulled in was by taking Microsoft products in the past weren´t always marketed together and making them something that´s a bundle that Microsoft might also have another way to upsell so he cited there the surface, he said well Surface Pro we are trying to show people why if you buy that device and you get the pen and the pen has that OneNote integration built in, how you start thinking, okay I bought a Surface and there´s this pen and that´s kind of cool, oh and if I click the top I can use this thing called OneNote I never heard of that. What is that? Let me play around with that.

Leo: And then they give it away free.

Mary Jo: They give OneNote for free, you buy the pen still, but it´s kind of that idea, then we pull them in.

Paul: It´s funny when you say it that way. It´s like, we´ve been working on this software for years, you can have it for free, by the way you got to buy the pen.

Mary Jo: There´s always an upsell thing for them right?

Paul: Apple´s selling a watch, we´re selling a pen.

Leo: I´m sure Microsoft´s doing this, talk to people who do this kind of a model, they may be a little disappointed when they hear the actual numbers. We interviewed on Monday the founder of Personal Capitol and I´ve interviewed Phil Libin, both of them have a freemium model, they give it away and then they hope you´ll upgrade to a more, to a paid.

Paul: Oh it´s got to be a tiny percent.

Leo: 5%. Typically 5 to 10% I hope Microsoft knows that number, right?

Paul: I´m glad you actually brought up numbers because some of the numbers Chris Capossela provided in that speech were very interesting to me. Microsoft has been saying for a long time that there are over a billion Office users, active Office users, that´s been the number for a while, over one billion. What he said, and I´ve never seen in broken down like this before, was he said that Microsoft sells about 70 to 75 million copies of office in a year which frankly isn´t as high as maybe I would´ve expected for a product that has a billion users or whatever, but that´s the number he said. And he said so think about we´re giving away Office now on mobile, iOS, iPads, iPhones and Android devices as well, and all of a sudden in less than a year, we have, the way he said it was 40 million more downloads on phones that previously weren´t running Office. It´s not 40 million copies of Office right because those downloads are split over 3 apps and so you know it´s 10, 11, 15 whatever million per app or something like that, but when you consider, so in the light of like a billion users, 10 million people not paying for Office doesn´t seem like a lot. When you consider it compared to 70 or 75 million copies of Office sold in a year actually well 10, 15 million is a pretty good percentage. And then, you know, you said 5%, so what´s 5% of 40 million of those people who will pay for Office, just how does this compare to selling outright 70 to 75 million copies of Office a year? I don´t know, but that´s the fundamental question. How do you take this thing that used to be one way and make a lot of money and now we´re doing this other thing a different way, how much money are you going to make? I don´t think it´s ever going to be the same frankly, but the question is how good is it going to be?

Leo: You know there´s a precedent for this, a fellow in the chatroom is reminding us that Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer and it was able to buy market share by doing that, in fact put netscape kind of out of business by doing that. The paid solution, but this is a different world than that.

Paul: Yeah, I would be very careful about comparing something today from something 20 years ago.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Alright let´s take a break, Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley back. We´re talking Microsoft, we´re talking Redmond and Windows and you mentioned, God the shocker, Microsoft on Android, we´ll talk about that in just a second.

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Paul: Windows Weekly, Paul Thurrott just fell over.

Mary Jo: I know, what happened there?

Leo: Are you okay?

Paul: What happened?

Leo: There was kind of a noise there at some point.

Paul: Oh, I realized I had not gotten any water so I rushed out to go get it, so that was probably the sound of ice crashing into a glass.

Leo: Oh good, the ice from the roof. you had so much snow, you had, does it cause problems with your roof?

Paul: Yeah, in certain parts of the world ice storms are just common occurrences in winter, and though we get very bad winters here we generally have a couple of days of warm in between storms where the ice you know melts of the roof at least you know you´re fine, and this winter that didn´t happen, for the first time in my entire life, and um, we had roof damage, the gutters were destroyed, we have ice and water and windows which we have to replace now, water damage in the house.

Leo: But the good news is the roof rats are dead.

Paul: Yeah, the cats have been kind of active.

Leo: Microsoft strikes a deal with, this is amazing to me, it started with Samsung, the Galaxy S6 will have OneNote and OneDrive bundled in, not the full range of apps that we thought maybe. Now they´ve been asked 11 more tablets will come with Microsoft apps, is it the same 2? What are they doing?

Mary Jo: So it´s more than just OneNote and OneDrive, it´s also Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype.

Leo: I guess Skype was on the Samsung as well, but that´s a big deal, that´s like the full, that´s more what I thought was going to happen. That´s interesting.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I think that´s what everybody, that was what was rumored to happen with Samsung, and so Samsung´s one of the 11 that they announced this deal with, Dell is one of the 11 for it, it´s Android tablets. And then the other ones were mostly regional OEMs in places like Germany and Russia and Canada. Yeah, it´s a pretty sweeping deal. These are going to be bundled when you get these out of the box, you´re going to have these Microsoft apps preinstalled.

Leo: This is the freemium model.

Mary Jo: It is.

Leo: And what´s the upsell?

Mary Jo: So the upsell, I think on this is.

Paul: Windows Phone?

Mary Jo: Yeah, Windows Phone. Or you have to sign in with a Microsoft account to use these right?

Leo: So you´re going to make an account.

Mary Jo: You´re going to make an account, you´re going to start trying it out, if you like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and you want more advanced features that aren´t available in the free version, you have to get an Office 365 subscription to unlock them.

Leo: And that includes Outlook right? They´re not bundling Outlook.

Mary Jo: Outlook is not in it, but the reason it´s not, Microsoft told us, is because Outlook is still in preview for Android and they said there may be opportunities going forward that we add Outlook to this too.

Leo: Interesting.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: So this is, echoes the strategy that we kind of guessed for that Nokia Android phone, what was it? The X that they were going to sell in the.

Paul: Oh the Nokia X yeah.

Leo: Yeah the developing nations, it was an Android phone with all the Microsoft services. But Samsung´s not going to not have Google apps or Google services.

Paul: No, they can´t. Not to get the full Google Android, you know installed. They also cam´t be defaults right, because those Google apps have to be defaults, so it´s not as good as the Microsoft Phone, but it´s better than nothing. The question I have about this has to do with the Android licensing deals Microsoft has right? They´ve only been rarely challenged in court, Microsoft actually hasn´t done very well when they have been challenged. I wonder if this ultimately replaces those deals, you know that some of those licensees might come back and say hey, we´ll put your apps on there but you have to get rid of this boloney cross licensing stuff.

Leo: Well didn´t Samsung and Microsoft bury the hatchet?

Paul: I think this is part of it, and I think they might´ve used that settlement as a template for these other deals, you know. so we´ll see I mean right now there´s no major OEMs on there other than Samsung at least not worldwide type hardware makers, you know they´re big in the Android world.

Mary Jo: The only one, Pegatron is on there, Pegatron is a pretty big original design company and the one that Microsoft did have a patent relationship with, so that´s interesting.

Leo: So to recap the history of this, we always, Microsoft has claimed patents on Linux which is the fundamental operating system behind Android and we always kind of assumed they were getting maybe $5 bucks a handset for every Android device sold. Then in discovery we learned last year that Samsung had paid a billion dollars per year. Samsung, a billion dollars . And then Microsoft sued saying Samsung has fallen behind on its payments and owes us.

Paul: Well Samsung stopped paying yeah.

Leo: Whatever fallen behind, stopped paying, you know. They want to repossess Samsung.

Paul: So Samsung and Microsoft came to an agreement, we don´t know what it is but to´s impossible to think that this has come out of the whole cloud, this is obviously part of that deal so, it´s interesting that they´re doing this with other companies, um, you know, we´ll see, when and if Microsoft´s patents are challenged in court and if they continue to fall apart the way they have at least so far, this may be how they redefine their relationship with these hardware makers, which is to enter into this kind of a deal which frankly.

Leo: You mean in other words forgo the $5 bucks or whatever per handset? That is a lot of money.

Paul: It´s a lot of money but it falls into that category we were talking about earlier where your business is changing. I don´t think that this patent license thing is necessarily sustainable simply because of the challenges that have existed so far have damaged Microsoft pretty badly so, I mean we´ll see but, I wouldn´t be surprised to see this the start of a different kind of deal on Microsoft´s behalf which is we´ll get our apps out to the world and maybe we won´t have as much money coming directly from just you selling computing systems.

Mary Jo: You know I hadn´t really thought of the connection between those 2 things until you just said that. I did with Samsung, I didn´t with like Pegatron and Dell, you know, but it kind of makes sense also because last week, in my catch up reading, I saw that Microsoft signed 2 more Android patent deals but they don’t call them out as Android patents deals. One was with Melco which is the company that´s a parent to Buffalo and the other one was Fuji Xerox, and Microsoft said they were renewing cross licensing patents deals with those 2 complies. But when I asked them is this an Android patent deal they declined to comment in both cases.They said we´re not saying what kind of patent deal it is, but before when they did strike agreements with those 2 companies they were Android patent deals specifically.

Paul: Right, they´ve always been very proud of these deals.

Mary Jo: Yeah, they love to put pressure leases out saying we signed patent deal with and Android vendor.

Leo: Because that bolsters their arguments against others who are not yet paying license fees.

Paul:These smaller companies that don´t want to spend the rest of their lives in court you know. Let´s just pay, pay in court fees.

Leo: So all we can do is speculate, we don´t know what the deals are, we don´t know what the patents are and they have never revealed even what they are right?

Paul: Well some of them have come out in court.

Mary Jo: Some came out in documents.

Paul: And they´re exactly as you know, ridiculous as you think they are, I mean most of them are pretty.

Leo: Do we know what the term is? I mean are they about to runout? What is the term on these things? I don´t even remember, 16 years? 27 years?

Paul: They´re all fairly recent, the one I can recall that did stand up to challenge was related to exchange active sync, which is probably the moment where Google stopped supporting it or whatever but you know, that was the one that has withstood the legal challenge so far.

Leo: Design patents are 14 years.

Mary Jo: The ones they just renewed with Melco and Fuji Xerox they were from like 2007 and 2009 so that, they renewed them recently.

Leo: Let me just tell you, if you´re trying to figure out patent terms, it´s very handy, the United States Patent Trademark office has an excel spreadsheet, a patent term calculator that you can use.

Paul: I hope that the spreadsheet is in a proprietary old Office format and not an open XLM format.

Leo: No, it´s excel, it´s an XLM. Last updated last year. It must be complicated. So, um, we could only speculate what is going on here, but that all sounds sensible, yeah well what else would they do right? It all sounds sensible but it also speaks to that freemium model if we can get more people using Microsoft services, more people trying Microsoft Office maybe we can convert some of them.

Paul: I still, look I´m not into math, I´m not good at it, I still look at these big numbers and I just wonder when does this start to make sense? I mean, maybe Mary Jo might know at the top of her head some single digit number of millions of people are paying for Office 365 right? Something like that.

Mary Jo: The home and personal ones is 9.2 million total subscriptions they´ve sold but we don´t know how many of those are paid. Sorry, I´m wrong, those 2 are paid.

Paul: Those are paid, okay.So, I mean in an average selling price of I don´t know $80 dollars, $85 dollars a pop multiplied by what you just said, under 10 million, you know, it´s not like a, it´s not a billion dollar business you know that´s all I´m saying. And so, I just wonder, when or if it becomes one.

Mary Jo: You know, here´s the argument, and I´m also not good at math, funny we´re both writers. But here´s what they say, they say in the past we´ve sold you Office for, you know, however many hundred dollars per copy, once. And sometime you upgrade it every few years, sometimes you don´t upgrade it for a really long time. Now if we convince you to subscribe for let´s say $75 dollars a year to one of these Office deals, we´re going to get you every year. And there´s not going to be a chance for you to say no because if you do stop paying us, you´re going to have to get your documents out of OneDrive and you´re going to have to do a lot of things that if you want to continue to edit them right?

Leo: People tend to continue to pay, much more than they would go into a store and pay $400 dollars.

Paul: That´s fair although I have a very hard time, this is morally or whatever you want to say with Microsoft’s changing business, there´s something very clean and honest about saying I have made something and I am going to sell it to you and you are going to pay for that thing. If the future of Microsoft´s business is you subscribe to this and, uh, then I kind of forgot you were paying it, that isn´t as clean or as honest to me.

Leo: I´m with you but you are buying updates you know it´s kind of the volume licensing model applied across the board right?

Paul: Yeah, but if you look at the broader market for the types of people that would be, just people I guess, people really that are using Office, I guess the argument here is that the vast majority of them don´t need the features that they´re paying for, they could get by with the free stuff, even on the Windows you could run the mobile version of Word and Excel and that´s probably enough for most people. The amount of storage they would need in OneDrive would not exceed the 7 or 14 or whatever they´re giving away for free now, ever, and so.

Leo: That´s why you get a 5% conversion rate on freemium models, because most people go yeah, this is good.

Paul: Right. I mean look, I´m a professional writer and I barely use any of this stuff but I, honestly for me, this sell for Office going forward, the reason I would get it is, I mean I´m sort of a PowerPoint user and I can argue that I use some of the features but honestly the big one going forward is something that didn´t exist when they invented Office 365 which is this, free unlimited storage on OneDrive, because now I´m starting to pump a bunch of stuff into OneDrive and that´s valuable to me, so $99 dollars a year for the family.

Leo: You´re really not paying for Office, you´re paying for OneDrive. Really, the truth is.

Mary Jo: That´s the trick right? We´re assuming Office is standing still and staying the same but it´s not going to. They´re going to keep adding new things, try to upsell you, right? So OneDrive is an example, um they´re going to come up with other apps, you know if you´re a business customer they have things like Delve which is that new Pinterest type application, you know boards you can pin things to.

Paul: Somebody dies a little inside every time we call this Pinterest by the way.

Mary Jo: Just trying to remind you it´s called Pinterest.

Paul: You´re right.

Leo: Sway.

Mary Jo: Sway, and right now a lot of those things are free, all these new apps they´re are coming out with free, but they´re going to keep throwing new things out there, whatever sticks i going to be like hey, you want an Office next year? You´re going to have to pay for this or that. I think that´s how they´re going to do it, and the question is, is it going to be compelling to somebody like me who is a note pad user?

Leo: It´s hard for me not to think of this as a hail Mary I got to be honest with you.

Mary Jo: It is, it is. But what choice do they have?

Leo: They have no choice, and I think it´s a credible hail Mary, it´s not too far fetched.

Paul: Right.

Leo: I´m with you Paul, but if you think about it from a business point of view, from Microsoft´s point of view, it´s a lot easier to account for a steady stream of revenue than big bumps every unpredictable amount of time, they much prefer volume.

Paul: You know you´re right, the thing is those big bumps were really big. This company made a lot of money

Leo: Oh yeah, but that was another problem, for me the consumer that was too big, I walked away from the boxed version of Office, I wanted it but couldn´t afford.

Paul: Yeah, sure. I just think it´s funny Offoce 365 is actually a tremendous deal, I also recognize that most of the stuff you get most people don´t r early need you know. It´s kind of funny now that you´re throwing around a little bit of money every year at something and you´re getting by the way 5 free copies of what is essentially Office Professional Plus, a product that sells for like $479 dollars at retail, I mean it´s a crazy value.

Leo: But do the math because I bet, I mean they know, they´ve done the math, if you upgrade every 5 years, what´s 5 times 75? You´re spending more money and in the consistent way that they and they know people there´s another, so I think, I understand why they´re doing it, I understand as a consumer why people are not going to be happy but we´re the rubbers the road is do people need it? Or they´re going to be very happy using free alternatives and there are lots of them.

Paul: And by the way, those free ones are getting better.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I mostly use Office online these days.

Leo: Which is free.

Mary Jo: It´s free, the OneNote version of that is really good, Word is fine, Excel is okay for basic needs, I don´t do macros and things like that, so yeah they´re making it better and better and it´s kind of a chicken and egg right? You don´t want to make it too much better because then no one will ever upgrade. But I don´t think they´re in danger of that, the people who need the really advanced features of things like Excel and Powerpoint, they´re business customers, they´re going to upgrade.

Leo: You know what they need? They need the Bill Gates internet memo. They need somebody to say this is, to understand where the world is headed because this is an ugly transition.

Paul: By the way that memo exists, it was written by Ray Ozzie about 10 years ago, and nobody listened.

Leo: Right, he saw it coming, he knew.

Paul: Yeah he did.

Leo: That was his thing, collaborative software, on cloud software.

Paul: And by the way that´s exactly what OneDrive is now, OneDrive is essentially his legacy. Yeah, this guy saw this coming and nobody asked.

Leo: You can see I mean there´s lots of examples of companies that you know, you can see this coming it doesn´t necessarily mean you can make the transition. If your business model is shrink wrapped software, moving into a platform, a cloud platform.

Paul: What is Kodak today?

Leo: Yeah, they knew, Kodak saw it coming, Kodak was very clear, they made the digital transition, they did everything right.

Paul: You know seeing a tsunami coming is not necessarily very helpful.

Leo: Kodak´s problem was that the profits in developing and film and printing it were far higher than the profit in digital photography and so they didn´t have a business model.

Paul: It´s funny, you know I think Office does have a future, a viable future, a good future, I still wonder whether it´s ever going to hit the levels that it did.

Leo: I don´t think it has a viable future, I don´t. Well isn´t business, Okay, but really, I´m a consumer so I don´t think consumers really need Office.

Paul: I think there´s a natural need for this kind of thing in education and giving it away in education and then making business´pay for it later isn´t actually a bad strategy. I think Office has a role there.

Leo: So many schools are going with Google.

Paul: I know and that´s the thing they have to encounter but something like Windows, you know, Windows is obviously fantastic on PCs, and it hasn´t done as well, I happen to think it´s fantastic on phones, I think if they had taken the Phone OS and turned it into a tablet thing that could´ve been more viable than what they did but, you know it kind of doesn´t matter because that stuff hasn´t taken off in meaningful way so, you know, the whole, a lot of what we talked about kind of falls into the same category you know Microsoft brand is what matters not Windows, the deals with these Android device makers, getting the businesses and the services and products out to the platform where people actually are, is more important than pushing a dead horse.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Perhaps.

Leo: You know it´s a great case study in business. So few companies have made the transition, there are some I think, and I´ll be honest.

Paul: I wonder what we could equate this to? Like what business changes? What companies have successfully navigated from dominance in one market, the world changes and now they´re dominant, it would be like if standard oil was the, you know, the number one and only car manufacturer in the world today or something . What do you even compare it to? I´m not even sure.

Leo: I don´t think, I mean there´s so many counter examples.

Paul: Oh yeah, failures are easy to find.

Leo: And what´s interesting is this is not unique to Microsoft this is happening to the giants in this sector like Google and Facebook and Apple, they all have to reinvent themselves, they´re all you know, moving. Google´s doing moon shots trying to find new business´.

Paul: You probably saw this today, there was a story in the New York Times about how Netflix, Google plus and I don´t know what other service, Amazon prime, are now not the up and coming challengers to the status quo, they are the status quo.

Leo: They move so fast.

Paul: Now there are other video services challenging them and it´s going to be goofy stuff that sounds silly to us now just like Netflix sounded goofy to HBO like oh yeah sure, anyone can stream video in the web but you can´t make content like we do, uh oh!

Leo: Yeah, nothing to worry about there.

Paul: You know, so, the world changes.

Leo: Okay, so, I´m trying to think, you know word processing is not the place to put your flag in the sand because people who do.

Paul: Leo, as a writer, I could not disagree more.

Leo: But your needs are simple, and most are. Maybe in a law office if you´re doing pleadings and you need special revision tracking, but this is small market. That´s a vertical, excel on the other hand, is superior to any other product out there.

Paul: Still a vertical though.

Leo: Well yeah it´s a vertical but it´s a big, to finance it´s a big vertical.

Mary Jo: And every kind of business uses excel.

Leo: We use excel, and Lisa will not, she´s tried Google´s sheets and she´s like, nah, I need excel.

Paul: it´s cute.

Leo: I need excel, I need pivot tables.

Paul: It has squares, it´s good.

Leo: But, what else? Are there other analogs to that, because I think you have to say email and word processing, we give up. We give up! There´s no way I can invent a word processor that´s going to make people buy a shrink wrap box. Period!

Paul: I don´t think there´s any software that would make people buy a box, even Adobe software is going to be all online.

Leo: It is, creative cloud. Adobe by the way has made this transition, to subscription, I´m not saying to success, to subscription, and because of the nature of professionals who use Adobe, I mean anybody who´s paid for Photoshop is just as happy to pay a monthly fee.

Paul: Around $800 bucks for one version versus $99 dollars for everything. So maybe Microsoft should´ve priced itself out of the market and then this would´ve been an easier transition.

Leo: Well there´s also not as much competition, you can´t do Photoshop in the cloud very well yet.

Paul: I think I´ve made this observation on the show months, a couple of months ago, but you know, yo go back in the clean pc stuff I´m doing, you go back to Windows 7 and you put Office on there, you´re going to browse around there, you do your stuff. Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, you know quite frankly after a while it doesn´t really matter. Microsoft just put Office 2016 in preview for a Mac and I don´t really like the Mac per se, but honestly you kind of boot into it, you run Office, it works and you get on with your life, there´s a web browser and it´s the same kind of stuff, like what´s the difference? At some point this stuff used to be so burningly important to people who are tech enthusiasts is the least interesting part of the whole equation. You know we´re all wrapped right now with Windows 10, we´ve got 25 Windows 10 stories to burn through here and the truth is at the end of the day what does this change for us as users?

Leo: Is Microsoft word the front page of this century?

Paul: Ha, ha, the front page. No, that´s like calling the, Facebook the AOL of something.

Leo: Well, we did. Well it´s looking more and more like that isn´t it?

Paul: Did AOL have developer shows I don´t remember.

Leo: Probably did. Alright, you said Windows 10, you said the magic word. I have upgraded my phone now, not the Lumia 1520 but I have upgraded the 635.

Paul: What do you think? A little early.

Leo: Yeah, and I chose fast track, I now understand what you´re talking about the fast track and the normal track or whatever, slow, do they call it slow track?

Mary Jo: Slow ring.

Leo: Slow ring. So I chose fast, because I like to live on the edge.

Paul: It´s not that much of an edge.

Leo: There´s hardly any edge there.

Paul: Yeah, it´s a dull edge, maybe that will change.

Leo: We spend a lot of time with Ed Bott on Twit on Saturday, on Sunday talking ablaut this licensing thing, this giving away Windows, this making pirates whole and you had the story and a lot of people did this not so fast pirates.

Paul: Mary Jo did you catch this little bit? This is one of the few things that happened while you were gone.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I did.

Leo: This is WinHEC India or whatever-

Mary Jo: WinHEC China right?

Leo: That´s right, China.

Paul: Well the thing is, you know Reuters, the reputable news source right, interviewed Terry Myerson the guy who runs Windows, and I look at their story, I look at what he wrote or what he said to them over the phone and I think, it sounds like he just said we´re going to give amnesty to pirates.

Leo: Ed´s take on it was that the lawyers got a hold of it and Microsoft said whoa, Terry! Eli Gould came in there and said what are you doing?

Paul: Okay so maybe we´ll know that story someday or not, I hope that´s what that was because I´d like to think that Terry Myerson who I think is a good guy and wants to do the right thing, does want to give this thing away. That he wants to get everyone on Windows 10 for very practical reasons, right? That they don´t have to ship all these stupid versions of software updates for every single supported platform because there are 13 of them now, it´s really hard to keep everything updated. And if everyone would just get on Windows 10 we could all move forward together.

Leo: Yeah, that makes sense.

Paul: I don´t think there´s anyone.

Leo: It´s Kumbaya.

Paul: Maybe there are, the world is terrible but, I´m trying to imagine someone out there in the world saying you know, I paid for Windows screw those guys, you know that kind of thing, I mean who pays for Windows? You just get Windows, you buy a pc, you don´t buy Windows, I think getting these guys upgraded is the right thing to do.

Leo: But you know, uh, who he´s talking about really is China.

Paul: Yes, where the vast majority of Windows usage is pirated, right.

Leo: Because you´re absolutely right, most normal Windows users in the U.S., Europe and so forth, they don´t buy Windows, they get it with a new machine that´s when they upgrade, they´re covered.

Paul: My very first personal experience with Windows, I was a user and Windows 3 had come out, I went down to the computer shop, I knew the owner and I said listen I got to get a copy of Windows 3 to just check it out of my wife´s computer and he said yeah it´s like $79 bucks or whatever and I said I don´t buy Windows, nobody buys Windows, I just want to look at it. Nobody seriously uses this thing.

Leo: He also, Ed mentioned you know, the hole in the wall system integrators who install one copy of Windows on 20 machines, I can´t imagine that´s really a big problem for Microsoft.

Paul: The way products are activated today.

Leo: Anyway so what happened is after Terry gave that interview at Reuters, it was qualified, what he said was qualified.

Paul: Heavily qualified. You might say it was contradicted.

Leo: They said, well you´ll be able to upgrade Windows 10 but it won´t make it genuine.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: So, right. Which means nothing has changed. Because the only thing that´s changed since Windows 7 is that the ability to download an actual working ISO of Windows is now easier. But, if you don´t have a product key to activate it, the existence of that ISO doesn´t help you. Unless you want to run it, for you know a limited amount of time or whatever. So nothing has changes is what I got out of this.

Leo: So you think you´ll upgrade Windows 10 and then 30 days later you´ll get a notice that said this isn´t a genuine copy of Windows as you would expect.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: And if you don´t have a serial number you´re out of luck.

Paul: But, here´s the thing. I mean China is obvious a special case but, you´re giving it away for free to Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows phone 8.1 user, whatever versions, I mean come on, really? Just give it away, I mean for the first year I really, this should be like the companies that want to bring their profits from overseas into the country or the immigrants who want to come into this country, we need to have like this temporary amnesty program and just let this happen for a little while, suck it up, and then we´ll make sure everything is legitimate going forward. I think this is the right time and place to do the right thing with regards to the pirated versions of Windows, but they, they apparently are not doing that.

Mary Jo: You know where I think the confusion was, because I was looking at the original Reuters story and what Myerson said to them was, we´re going to reengage with hundreds of millions of users of Windows in China, he didn´t say that the pirates when he said that, and if you read the rest of the announcement made at WinHEC in China they also talked about working with a lot of the OEMs to have a kind of like centers where people can go and have assistance with Windows 10 and have people get them on board and upgrade their machines to Windows 10 so I think these were 2 separate statements.

Paul: So you think this person, the reporter completely misunderstood?

Mary Jo: I do.

Paul: Because these censors in China that you´re talking about are like when they send letters to the known felons and say hey you want a free boat? Come down to the police station and pick it up.

Mary Jo: No, no. They said they were going to work with companies like Lenovo and Tencent, as part of their announcement. I think they did so, I think what happened was there was kind of like this leap of faith here like oh they mean they´re going to give pirates amnesty which I don´t think Myerson ever said. He said we´re going to upgrade everyone who´s genuine and non genuine to Windows 10, but he never said to genuine copies of Windows.

Paul: When you upgrade 9 genuine, I mean.

Mary Jo: It´s like, why would you do it, right? I know. I think if you really, really look at what he said, I can see that he I can see that he, what happened here, how this happened here.

Paul: Microsoft employees live in kind of a bubble, and they speak in acronym, speak in their own little language, and they use their own terms and it´s very plausible that he might´ve been speaking in a way to him that made plenty of sense and that the woman or man or whoever wrote the story, is just not speaking his language, took him at face value in normal English.

Leo: That´s why you guys are so good, you speak Microsoft and you can parse what you´re saying. You know Microsoft does need somebody.

Paul: Who can communicate?

Leo: Yeah, well no but it can be an internal person who just says, Terry now you need to go and say, let me clarify what I said because that wasn´t what I meant.

Paul: Microsoft people, you know it´s like, they still talk about schedule pluses right? Which are the all encounter meetings invites, they talk, they use terms like the bio break when they need to go to the bathroom. Guys, seriously!

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah, well they should never send a Reuters reporter to cover a Microsoft event.

Mary Jo: No, that guy can forget Microsoft, I think it was that guy. So anyway I think it was just kind of a convoluted message and like you guys are saying, why even bother upgrading somebody to a non-genuine copy of Windows 10 right?

Leo: You can do it but why make a point of it?

Paul: This is so good I´ll pay for it!

Mary Jo: Yeah, maybe that´s what they´re hoping, maybe they´re saying you know the whole upsell argument again like we´re going to give them Windows 10, they´re going to like it and then maybe we´re going to have a better chance of upgrading them, I don´t know.

Leo: I´m with Paul though, if you´re going to do the freemium thing this is part, this would be a sensible part of that.

Paul: Yeah this is the cross over point. The other, I mean the other approach which I think would be less effectual specially in China but, would be to say, okay this version of Windows in non genuine, click here to upgrade you´ll get a discount, we all know it´s free for the first year but maybe at that point we´ll know what the actual cost of this thing will be if you were to buy it and maybe you´ll get it for half off, 2/3 off or some amount, but i actually don´t think that will change a thing in China. As soon as you put a dollar sign or a whatever sign, they don´t, they´re not listening anymore. Okay so that´s one of 25 stories about Windows 10.

Mary Jo: Exactly.

Paul: What else we got? What else we got?

Mary Jo: We have a lot more Windows 10.

Leo: Let´s go to break and then you can do a whip around. A Windows 10 whip around. Because I want to talk about sleeping right now.

Paul: No offense taken.

Leo: Well, I had a very good night´s sleep last night. In fact I have been having a good night´s sleep a lot lately because thanks to Casper. Casper is the craziest idea you´ve ever heard of, crazy like a fox. Casper is s place you go to buy mattresses on line, now wait a minute, you may say I need to lie on my mattress, I need to sleep on it. Well you can´t really sleep on it in those mattress showrooms I might point out, you might 5 minutes before they start giving you the stink eye. Last time I bought a mattress, before Casper, that´s exactly what I did, I lay on it, in my street clothes, with my shoes on, said yeah this´ll do, and I hated it, when I got home I hated it! Casper gives you a hundred days to sleep on it, a hundred nights. And then if you don't like it you can return it. They have to do that because you're buying online. Now, there are a lot of advantages to buying on line, chiefly cost. These are American made mattresses. They're really great. They come in a box that is small! Which is, for apartment dwellers, a great thing. Mary Jo Foley could actually get a bed, a big bed in your apartment because you could get it in! I actually got a Casper mattress for my son who lives on the third floor with nine other students at CU Boulder. He needed a mattress and we had sent him a queen and he loves it! He loves it! Comes in this little box that you see here. The Casper mattress is very, very comfortable. Now they have a scale that I think will help you understand. Um, if you go, oops I slid into something else. Ah look, see, you could actually ship a mattress on a bicycle! Free Currier shipping in New York City! (laughs) On a bicycle! Five days in the US, two days in Canada. That's your Casper mattress, I am loving it. Vertically integrated, horizontally optimized. A really nice combination of memory foam and latex gives you firmness, but support, but comfort. I don't recommend playing golf on it as this young woman is, but honestly if you have any issues they've got great support and the price is right. You get a Casper mattress $500 for a twin, $950 for a king size. Here's the firmness factor. Somewhere in between a cotton ball and a shiny diamond, you'll find the Casper mattress. The Goldilocks standard of just right. I have to actually say it, that is actually absolutely true. Casper is marvelous. Now we have a deal for you, $50 off if you use Paul and Mary's code WINDOWS at Casper.com/Windows. Casper.com/Windows. Great mattresses, made in the U.S. Really comfortable, easy on the back. You're going to love your mattress, and if you don't you've got one hundred days, and if you don't they'll take it back no questions asked, no charge to you. Free delivery, painless returns. You don't have to lie down in a show room. Get to know your Casper mattress at Casper.com/windows and use the promo code Windows for $50 off. Direct to you means you really save at Casper.com.

Leo: We're talking Windows 10. Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott. During the show last week, Mary Jo, right as the show is on everybody is downloading the new version (laughs) of Windows 10. I know you're not a beta tester.

Mary Jo: I'm not.

Paul: They announced it right in the middle of the show.

Mary Jo: Man, Really! (laughs)

Paul: Pretty funny, yeah pretty funny.

Leo: Um, but one thing we learned, no Spartan browser, no project Spartan in there.

Mary Jo: Yeah, even though they said there was going to be, no.

Leo: When are we going to see Spartan? They don't have a lot of time to test it!

Paul: Next month.

Mary Jo: No they don't!

Leo: Is it really coming out this summer, and what does “this summer” mean?

Mary Jo: I know, they said this summer.

Leo: Could be September 19th.

Paul: Well, late September, Leo. Yeah.

Mary Jo: It could be, it could definitely be then, and probably will be towards the end.

Leo: Even if it is September, times are getting short to get Project Spartan out into the world, don't you think?

Mary Jo: Yeah, yeah. Although right now you can test the guts of Spartan. You can test the rendering engine, because it's the same rendering engine that they-

Leo: Oh, alright.

Mary Jo: -that they have available on their website and through IE 11. Uh, so that's gonna change. We'll mention that in a minute.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: Oh, alright. They've tweaked their browsing strategy?

Mary Jo: They have, they have. Yeah, so I guess we can just talk about that now.

Leo: I'm looking in order I guess we.. Bill 1041 came out to the slow ring now, and they did iSOs, they didn't have iSOs last week, so they can now get an iSO.

Mary Jo: Right, yep, yep. And so they announced this week that, originally the plan for Spartan was that both Spartan and IE 11, the two browsers on Windows 10, would have both rendering engines in them. So both of them would have this new edge rendering engine and also Trident which is MS HTML rendering. But now the new plan is, Spartan is only going to have the new engine, and IE 11 is only going to have the old engine. So this is good news for people who are worried about Microsoft doing the whole two browser thing all over again, and it was going to be really confusing. So now if you're going to use anything other than the desktop version of Windows 10. So Windows 10 on mobile devices, on very small tablets, you're only going to get Spartan on those devices. If you are a user of Windows 10 desktop, which means, all on one desktop, PC's, and many laptops, you are going to get both IE 11 and Spartan, but IE 11 is almost never going to be used. That's only for legacy purposes, enterprise apps that have been developed specifically for IE. It's going to be very much ,kind of, the legacy browser even though it's part of the OS, it's just gonna be there and you're not gonna to use it a whole lot. So they're definitely moving for, they said, that they've been testing this new engine and they feel like its working correctly with more and more of the web. And so they're gonna change that strategy and they feel confident about that. So I think that the idea is, we're all saying “Oh wow, we can't test Spartan, we can't test Spartan”, but people have been testing Spartan through the channels, at least on the rendering side, and they know it is working. We just haven't seen the UI in a build of Windows yet. So, you know, the things like you know, is the URL bar on the top or the bottom? We haven't seen those in a public build, we've seen them in some leaked builds. So, I actually don't worry to much about that.

Paul: (laughs)

Leo: (laughs) Alright good, that's good news!

Mary Jo: Don't worry! Famous last words.

Leo: Well, Browser is kind of where the interface to the-

Mary Jo: Yeah, it is.

Leo: -outside world, it's kind of an important part. These days-

Mary Jo: It is.

Leo: -maybe the single most important part in an Operating System.

Mary Jo: Yep, I agree, I agree.

Leo: What else, let's see. One Windows, is it really One Windows? This is about the.

Paul: This is one of my pet topics. You know, Don Box did a great speech at WinHec, and basically outlined what I've been saying all along, which is One Windows is not a new thing, it's more of a progression or an evolution of what they've been doing before. With Windows 8, the Xbox One went out was based on Windows 8. The Xbox 360 was based on a previous version of Windows antique kernel running on Power PC, which was messed up, but whatever. You know they, Windows phone was based on Windows 8, you know. Windows 10 is sort of One OS. And it's really not One OS, it's One core OS, One app platform, and of course One store, that will work across all the back. I mean honestly, this is an evolution, not a completely new thing. And even within the Windows as we think it for personal computing devices, there are going to be some very sharp differences. You know, something like Service Hub, which will have a customized UI of its own kind. PCs and tablets which will have their own UIs and will transform depending what the device is doing at the time. And then the Windows 10 Mobile OS, which will have its own user experience as well based on the user experienced Windows phone. And so, you know, these things are all the same, but different. You know and it's not, in some ways, I think its important for Microsoft to push this One Windows concept, but on the other hand I think it sort of undercuts the fact that, you know, we're not doing exactly the same thing on all of these devices, it's not always exactly the same. (Sighs)

Mary Jo: Sigh! (laughs)

Paul: You seem discontent.

Leo: Now is the winter of our discontent. Made glorious summer by the Hamburger button.

Mary Jo: (laughs)

Leo: So-

Paul: The Hamburger button.

Leo: -This is the debate we're having internally, by the way.

Mary Jo: Are you really?

Leo: Yeah. And we decided against the Hamburger button, although...

Paul: Yeah, I actually think the Hamburger button makes plenty of sense.

Leo: I think so too. But testing shows it does not, so explain what you're, what's going on.

Paul: Oh okay. So, you know, especially Mobile OS on smaller screens, where real estate is at a premium, you need some way for the user to go and find uncommon commands. But you don't want them up there just taking up space in the screen.

Leo: Right.

Paul: So in the Windows phone, for example, we have these app bars. I think it was Windows phone 8, they allowed a mini version of the app bar, we could only see like a little ellipsis in the corner, and you would tap that and a menu would come up and you could access those commands that normally would be basically hidden. And so, I think the one area where the Hamburger, well there's two areas where I think the Hamburger button makes the most sense. One is it works pretty well consistently across different screen sizes and orientations. So it works on PCs, it works on mobile phones. And two it's familiar. Um, people-

Leo: It's in Chrome for instance.

Paul: -understand it. And I think that's actually, because-

Leo: Here's the Hamburger button. They call it a Hamburger. It's three lines so it looks like, I don't know.

Paul: It's a menu, is what it is.

Leo: It's a menu, and I think people know in Chrome when it's on the far right, that's going to give you the Chrome menu. Let me show you what we decided, and this is the first time anyone has ever seen, and it's not much, but kind of what the Nav bar will look like on the new site. We decided on More instead of a Hamburger button, when it's full screen and there's room for it. But when you, it's mobile responsive, so when you get to a certain size it becomes-

Paul: Ah, it becomes the..

Leo: -it has to because there's no room.

Paul: So by the way, that's actually a very good implementation of this kind of a thing.

Leo: It's a compromise.

Paul: And as it turns out, Windows 10, the reason I wrote this article is because they're documenting the native control in the Windows 10 SDK that provides exactly what you showed. And it's got it's own name, it's not called a Hamburger button. But, it literally can work exactly the way you just described it, or demonstrated it.

Leo: That's mobile responsive, that's how things are, you know.

Paul: Yeah, it's, that's the right way to do it. That's good. Um, you know in Windows 10 apps, if you think about an app, like Xbox Music, which hasn't yet been updated, or the Photo's app which has, or the Maps app, that pane, that kind of side bar, can be displayed like you just showed, in a full screen on a PC sized display, but on a mobile device, where it's maybe portrait orientation or whatever, you don't want that thing displayed.

Leo: Here's uh John Constantine's Tech Crunch article from a year ago “Kill the hamburger button, it's evil!” And a lot of this, you know, a lot of user testing. Now this is-

Paul: Well-

Leo: -maybe nowadays people are used to it. But for a long time-

Paul: Yeah, I-

Leo: -people said, nobody knows what that is and no one clicks on it.

Paul: So the thing is, I honestly think that people now do understand it-

Leo: I do too.

Paul: -and that's kind of what puts it over the top.

Leo: Yeah

Paul: You know, I think that's what does it.

Leo: Yeah

Paul: But then, the people hate this thing!

Mary Jo: Oh man!

Paul: They hate it with a burning passion!

Leo: Isn't it funny!

Mary Jo: They do.

Paul: Yeah, and they can't even explain why, they just hate it.

Mary Jo: I know. (laughs)

Leo: I think it's fashionable to hate it now.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Um, I love what we do, which is, we reuse human text, until we can't. You know?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah, that's a good idea.

Mary Jo: Yep. Microsoft's been using the three but, dots.

Leo: Three dots.

Mary Jo: Dot, dot, dot.

Leo: As does Android.

Mary Jo: I don't think that's, I don't find that as-

Paul: That's the part-

Mary Jo: -as recognizable.

Paul: That's right, and I think that's why we're going to the Hamburger button, right.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I know, but people, you're right, people hate it. Hate, hate it.

Paul: And people will say, people will say, you know, if you're right handed, you're holding the phone it doesn't matter how big it is, your thumb can't reach the upper left corner of the screen very easily, or at all. And what they're saying is, “I need to use two hands to hit it”, to which I reply, “right”! It's not supposed to be something you hit by mistake. Its, the stuff that's in there is not the most common stuff you need, that's why it's there.

Leo: Yeah

Paul: And on a mobile device, why the upper left corner actually might make the most sense, because you're holding it in your hand.

Mary Jo: Hmm.

Paul: Yeah, I just, I find the whole notion of this debate to be fascinating, um. I usually, technical people usually have a really strong opinion about almost anything, right?

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: And you would think, I would think. I mean, I look at it like I should have some really sharp opinion about this and the truth is, like I just...

Leo: Yeah, because you're kind of a designer. You have this heritage.

Paul: I have to, for me, what I keep falling back on is, it's consistent. It just works the way people expect it to. People understand it. You know, one of the problems I had with Windows 8, was that those edge wise, were non discoverable. You would discover them by mistake. You didn't know what you just did to cause something to trigger, and now you couldn't repeat it. It was like the absolute worst kind of UI. Whereas I think this kind of UI, which they actually use in the current version of Xbox Music and Xbox Video, to do what you just showed-

Leo: Right.

Paul: -to kind of collapse and expand the pane of commands, you know, like additional commands. It's fine, people get it.

Leo: The smaller the issue, the bigger the debate.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: It's well known.

Paul: For example, we all know how to pronounce GEFT, so let's just move on!

Leo: (Laughs) The less it matters, the more heatedly people will-

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: -fight over it.

Paul: Leo, you ignorant slut. (Laughs)

Leo: (laughs) How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? That's what I wanna know.

Paul: Well, your theorem is fundamentally flawed because-

Leo: What a comedian eh?

Paul: -in Ecclesiastes 12:15 it says clearly....

Leo: Oh boy.

Paul: (laughs)

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: Um, yikes.

Leo: So, uh tablets, are tablets, and what is the cut off for Windows 10 desktop and for Windows 10 for tablets, what are we gonna see? No one knows.

Paul: I honestly don't think we know exactly.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: So, I mean, I'll pose this as a question to Mary Jo, like what do you think? We know that Windows 10 mobile can only be on devices up to 7.99 inches.

Mary Jo: Yep, right.

Paul: But what if you wanna sell an HP Stream 7 next year, 2.0 version. It's running Windows 10. Does that thing come with Windows 10 Mobile? Does it come with Windows 10 Desktop, whatever they call that? And could it come with either? Could Windows 10 Mobile run on Intel, or is it only available on ARM platform devices? How do we break down this stuff?

Mary Jo: Right. Um, so-

Paul: These are not usually answerable questions by the way.

Leo: (laughs)

Mary Jo: -they are not, but we do. I am pretty sure Windows 10 Mobile will run on Intel and ARM based small tablets.

Paul: You're right. I think you're right.

Mary Jo: Um, but Microsoft has, they've said it will run on small tablets. I think in some slides at some various shows, they've said Intel and ARM. But you, Paul, you had a thing, I remember, I've read so many things when I came back. But you said something about Windows 8.1 purchase, no, Windows 8.1 with Bing is on a mini tablet, that you're going to be upgraded to Windows 10 Desktop, not Mobile.

Paul: That's right, that's right.

Mary Jo: And a lot of people don't realize that I think. So if you have that particular SKU and you're one of the people looking for this free upgrade, you're not going to get Windows 10 Mobile even though you're on a very small tablet, you're going to Desktop.

Paul: You can't, you don't even get that choice.

Mary Jo: You don't even get a choice, why?

Paul: It's because of the way it's licensed. Windows 10 Mobile is not something you can buy as an upgrade. If it were then you would be able to get it. You can only get it on a device, and it's serviced differently. And this kind of goes back to the One Windows thing, where it's not really One Windows because these things are different. And I think a lot of the people with HP Stream 7, just to use that as the obvious example, because the way I understand it is a year from now most likely that would come with Windows 10 Mobile.

Mary Jo: Yep. In the future when you get a brand new SKU-

Paul: A new one. Right.

Mary Jo: -it will be the mobile one.

Paul: I mean I think we would all agree that kind of device, even an 8 inch device frankly, would be probably better served for most people, for it not to have a desktop, even as an option.

Mary Jo: Yeah, right. Yep.

Paul: You know. It shouldn't even be there.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: I do think that HP Stream 7 2016 edition, whatever, will be Windows 10 Mobile based, and will be Intel. But those guys who bought it this year you know ninety-nine bucks right it's cheap.

Mary Jo: Yep

Paul: Uh, the desktop is really tiny, you get little, you know you can't- (laughs)

Mary Jo: Yep

Paul: -You can't do anything that stupid. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: It's very hard to see if.

Paul: Yeah, it's a very strange kind of thing and then, and then that like I mean, PCs like the ones that we're using today, traditional laptops, desktops, whatever Windows 10 desktop makes plenty of sense. For most small devices, Windows 10 Mobile makes plenty of sense. I think this area in the middle is the interesting part though to because-

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: -Service Pro 3 with continuum in tablet mode and you unclip the keyboard and now its like a tablet OS and then you clip it back and it's like a PC OS. Um, how people react to that functionality and how well it works, is going to do a lot to determine how successful Windows 7 is.

Mary Jo: Mm, 10?

Paul: Windows, what did I say?

Mary Jo: 7

Paul: Yeah, whatever.

Leo: 7, 10, what do you care, what do you know?

Paul: 7, 10, it's some number and uh.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Some number-

Leo: Some number (laughs)

Mary Jo: -but not 9-

Leo: Not 9

Mary Jo: -anything but 9.

Paul: (laughs) Yes it's not 9. Uh, so we'll see.

Leo: Well, cause there's a choice? I mean will you be able to look at an 8 inch tablet and decide?

Paul: Well, the breaking point is 8 inches and so if you have an 8 inch tablet-

Leo: (laughs)

Paul: -you get Windows 10 Desktop. You just do.

Leo: Oh okay, there's no choice.

Paul: I mean you could run it in a tablet mode, everything is full screen, but the desktop is all there. And that tablet you could dock, you could plug in a keyboard and it would kinda turn into a computer, like a PC.

Leo: Right.

Paul: Um, but I don't think most people want to do that and so I actually, I just, I sort of wish Windows 10 Mobile was more broadly available I think is the, maybe the big point here. It apparently will be.

Leo: (Sighs)

Mary Jo: Another sigh. (laughs)

Paul: Confusing, it's confusing.

Leo: (Laughs) No I love this show because I learn so much.

Paul: Really? Cause all we do really is raise questions. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: I know, it's like, do we know the answer to this? No, we do not!

Leo: I think we do know something about the usage of a Windows phone.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Where did this come from?

Paul: This is from the site Adduplex, you know, every month comes out with the usage stats. This is not Windows usage compared to Android iOS, it's usage of the particular phones in the Windows phone ecosystem. Then not a lot changed this month, you know, it's 96. something percent Nokia/Microsoft devices. A huge percentage running on Windows 8, a Windows phone 8+ which is actually pretty good news from an upgrade perspective and, by the way, very different from what we've seen in Android. Um, low end phones rolled, there isn't a phone on there that's, at least world wide, that's a high end phone that's in the top 6 ever. And there aren't any phones sold over the past two years that are high end phones that are in the top ten at all. And so, you know, Windows phone usage by a large is low end devices. And, related to that, Microsoft just released a new (laughs) low end Windows phone. Seventy bucks. That's cheap!

Mary Jo: Yeah, wow. You know-

Paul: Yeah

Mary Jo: -you haven't tried it have you?

Paul: No.

Mary Jo: No.

Paul: No, the last three phones that they have announced, the 430, the 532? 432, I don't remember the numbers anymore, whatever they are. Um, no I have not tried any of these.

Leo: I like the one they sent me, the what is it, 636?

Paul: 635 is a good one, yeah.

Leo: It's not, I mean it's not , I mean it's a low end phone-

Paul: It's missing a couple of things. I know if you got the, my understanding is there might be a new version coming with one gig of ram. Um-

Leo: I'll have to look, I don't know-

Paul: One of the problems, some of the proximity sensors missing type stuff like that missing basic sensors that are missing. This new low end phone is the first Microsoft/Nokia device to have a truly abysmal like sub 5 megapixel camera which is just unprecedented.

Mary Jo: Hmm

Paul: But I guess you have to save money in some ways. But I mean it has a gig of ram which is smart and 8 gigs of internal storage, not 4, which is really good. But I mean the main camera is 2 megapixels you know, that's crazy for a low end device.

Mary Jo: Hmm, yeah.

Paul: That's never happened before.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: But you know you have to save money somewhere.

Mary Jo: Yep

Leo: Shall we move on to more of WinHec China tidbits?

Paul: (Laughs) Oh man, this is like a back to back all me-

Mary Jo: Yeah

Paul: -(laughs) I'm sorry.

Leo: All you Paul!

Mary Jo: I can do, I can do the first one if you want.

Paul: Go for it Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: Yeah. So Don Box, we mentioned him earlier in the show, he's a guy who's been at Microsoft forever. He's a distinguished engineer, and he's been kept totally in the dark from us lately. I think for the past like four years even.

Paul: Yeah

Mary Jo: He, he moved over to the Xbox team and we never heard from him publicly again and now they're starting to let Don Box speak again, and this is great, because Don Box always says a lot of really great tidbits when he talks and he shares a lot of things that we need to know, and somebody has to say them. One of the things he said at WinHec China when he was talking, was that Microsoft has come up with a replacement term for Metro style apps. You know how they couldn't use the word “Metro” anymore and we were calling them Metro styles, then we started calling them Universal apps, but Don said at WinHec China, that they are going to be called Windows apps. Which I've heard a lot of people hating on this idea too but, you know what, Universal apps in the Microsoft world they mean Windows apps, that's what it means.

Paul: Yeah

Mary Jo: It doesn't mean Universal apps going across all platforms it means apps, Windows Store apps that are just for Windows. So they are going to call those Windows apps, he says, and they are going to call what we've been calling 132 apps, Windows Desktop apps. I actually like this naming convention. I know there are going to be haters for it, but now at least we have a way of referencing this when we talk about it moving forward. So lets hope Don is speaking for the whole company when he said this-

Paul: (Laughs) Well-

Mary Jo: -but he did say this publicly.

Paul: Two things I would just add is um, one uh, the actual app platform he referred to is, as you kind of eluded to, Windows Universal apps, right, to differentiate them from truly generic Universal apps.

Mary Jo: Right

Paul: Um, he also very specifically described 132 apps as, you know, desktop apps again and again as legacy, as we still-

Mary Jo: Yeah

Paul: -support this on-

Mary Jo: Yep

Paul: -desktop PCs only, because you know we have to when there are decades of, you know, background there and all that kind of stuff but, you know, just to be clear because people like, “oh the Metro model thing failed and we're moving on”, and it's like, not exactly. Like everything else in Windows 10, this Windows app platform, the Windows Universal app platform is really just an evolution of Metro, of modern. It's really just the next gen of that. It is an evolution, it's not a new thing, it's not “yeah we're going back to the desktop” you know, for all the desktop orientation of what Microsoft's been talking Windows 10. His talk you can go see it for yourself on channel 9.-

Mary Jo: Yep

Paul: -Very, very much DE-emphasizes the desktop. I mean it's spoken to as something we're bringing along because we have to but we're not advancing it we're not doing more with that, it's all Universal apps or Windows apps.

Leo: That's all you have to say?

Mary Jo: That's all on that item, we have to say.

Leo: Developers, oh no, wait a minute, uh edge gestures-

Mary Jo: Trackpad.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: So these two, these two go together.

Leo: -Track pad and Edge gestures, new UIs in Windows 10.

Paul: This has been amazing to me, and you know what, I don't know why this is amazing because I see this everywhere. Universally, virtually universally, everyone hated Windows 8, right? Except for one thing, those people that didn't. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: And so, in Windows 10, they're changing all the edge gestures and the precision track gestures, um,which are related right. And the reason they're doing that is because the functionality you see when you do things on the edge of the screen is different because they've gotten rid of the UIs that used to be in Windows 8, so Windows 8 had a switcher UI for switching between apps, it had a charms UI for accessing system menu items essentially. And then it had that UI to accommodate the ellipsis thing we were talking about earlier where there were app bars but they were hidden by default Windows 8 which is (laughs) just a crazy way to do it. You know imagine if you ran droid for the first time and it came up as a blank window and there were no tool bars at all and you were wondering where is the save button and where is all the stuff? Oh, we hide them by default, it's hilarious. And to display them you have to know the special code which would be, if you have a mouse you right click it, or if you have a touch screen you swipe it from the bottom of the screen. It's all changing in Windows 10. And you would think, and I should say there are associated gestures that go with the track pad as well that are all changing for the same reasons. You would think that the world would just celebrate this, that there would be people partying in the street, that we have banished the witch that is Windows 8, and you know what the truth is, no. There are people who really liked how Windows 8 works with regards to tablets especially, and they think that whats happening with Windows 10 is a step back and a mistake and they want Microsoft to go back and put charms back in and put the edge gestures back in and they want it to work the way that they're used to. And I am fascinated by this because I just spent the last three years dealing with just Windows 8 hate. I hate hate it from all corners. And now of course what comes out of the wood work is some people like the way it works. Of course they do (laughs) like that should be surprising. Mary Jo, you look like you just saw something horrific. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Me?

Leo: (laughs)

Paul: (laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs) I'm having all these weird Skype things happen right now. (laughs)

Leo: Oh, it's not what he's saying, it's just. Well you look great Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: I'm seeing everything pixelated-

Paul: It was like a uh-

Mary Jo: -Sounds like a robot

Paul: -it was like when someones reacting in a part and it kind of freeze frames it's like...

Leo: Yeah! (laughs) It'll get better, as they say, it gets better! And, or Skype-

Paul: Oops, she's gone. (laughs)

Leo: -Skype crashes! (laughs)

Paul: (laughs) Just kidding!

Leo: Or doesn't!

Mary Jo: Um, yes.

Leo: How's that? Better?

Mary Jo: No, kind of.

Leo: No. It's probably you, but it could be me! Is it me? It's not you, it's me. Can we just be friends?

Mary Jo: It sounds better now.

Leo: (laughs)

Mary Jo: I don't know what's happening. (laughs)

Paul: (laughs)

Leo: Um, of course people are going to raise holy hell aren't they when you change the gestures and everything, that's going to make people nuts.

Paul: The thing is, not very many people are using the system (unintelligible)-

Leo: Or even know they exist, right?

Paul: Yeah. And like I said earlier, they were non discoverable not that that matters if you've discovered them and you like them-

Leo: That's the problem.

Paul: Yeah. I look at Windows 10 and it makes sense. Um-

Leo: I really like Windows 10. I love the notification bar, the I, I'm just loving it.

Paul: You know, but-

Leo: It's so much better.

Paul: -I think it is better for the majority of people and you know with Windows, if you think back to Windows 8, and I the stuff I have said about Windows 8 I mean, Windows 8 to me was kind of hilarious because it was so weird that a company as conservative as Microsoft would do something this nuts, and they were clearly barreling down this track at 900 mph and all we could do is hold on and let it happen and so my advice at the time was Windows 8 is kind of inevitable, you better just get used to the way it works and we can complain about it and then eventually we can buy these third party utilities that can effect some of it and that's a good thing but you know it's, you can't really fight reality, you know. And then of course with Windows 10 um, they're changing it because everyone complained about Windows 8, right, but not everyone because like I said some of these people, I don't know, they really missed the way Windows 8 worked it's interesting. I guess there are fans for everything.

Mary Jo: (laughs)

Leo: Developers, developers, developers.

Paul: (laughs)

Mary Jo: Where have I heard that before?

Leo: I felt a little balm-er moment come over-

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: -me there. Windows 10 SDK is now available, that's good news.

Mary Jo: Yep. That was kind of a surprise even um I think a lot of people thought we weren't going to see that until build.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: Um, so this is a preview version of the Windows 10 SDK plus some other Windows 10 developer tools came out earlier this week, and you can use them with the latest Windows 10 build and Visual Studio 2015 CTP6 so people are starting to poke around in the SDK to see what's in there. There's a lot of things for developers in terms of how they can um kind of collect information on what users are seeing and some of the adaptive UX stuff. So a lot of the early bits that people need to start writing the apps now are there, and people can start building things for Windows 10 when it's out later this summer. So that's good.

Leo: That's good.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: As your app service, that's gotta be you.

Mary Jo: It's me, yep.

Leo: It's you.

Mary Jo: It's me.

Leo: New as your apps service.

Mary Jo: Yeah so this is an even “new”. What Microsoft's doing is they're taking three of the existing Azure application development services. They're taking the thing that's called Azure websites, they're taking Azure mobile services, and they're taking Biz talk services which are the Biz talk application integration services which they have now, and they're combining them now into one development service. The good news for people is it's going to cost the same as just Azure websites does now, so they're reducing the price. And you can use it to build all kinds of apps. Web apps, mobile apps, business apps, what they call logic apps. So, it's just meant to make things easier and cheaper, supposedly, for people who want to build apps that run on Azure.

Leo: Good!

Mary Jo: Out of this week as a trial-

Leo: Good!

Mary Jo: -I think.

Leo: Take that Facebook!

Mary Jo: Yep. (laughs) Yeah, take that!

Leo: Take that! Azure.

Mary Jo: (laughs)

Leo: Uh, let us take a break. Come back with the back of the book, because we're almost done!

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: Did you have any good beer in uh-

Mary Jo: Mostly bad beer but-

Leo: Really! Oh good!

Mary Jo: -one very good one I'll tell you about on the-

Leo: Really! So you were in Vietnam and Cambodia right?

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: Thai beer is supposed to be good, I don't know...

Mary Jo: Eh, you know all these beers are very light lagers-

Leo: Yes, yeah-

Mary Jo: -because they are meant to be with really-

Leo: -it's hot!

Mary Jo: -spicy food in hot climates.

Leo: Yeah!

Mary Jo: So there's nothing that fantastic about them.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: You're not gonna get chocolate porter (laughs)-

Paul: (laughs)

Leo: -in Da Nang.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: No one would drink it!

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Leo: Paul Thurrott, time for your “tip of the week” my friend. What, why are you shaking your head?!

Paul: (laughs) Sorry, I had all of this stuff running and I...

Leo: Oh. Mary Jo's gone so I think you have to take over this show.

Paul: She's gone.

Leo: Well, we'll call her back. Somethings going on with the.

Paul: So last week Microsoft added One Note, sorry, One Drive integration to Xbox Music which I'm sure we discussed in the show.

Leo: You mentioned it, yeah, where you have all your music there. You were prescient, you were prepared!

Paul: Yeah, so that was kind of cool and so since then I've been experimenting with how this works and it actually works really well but there's a neat feature with Windows phone 8.1 that had been there already, in fact it was, it's easy to miss when I initially saw Microsoft discussing this I misunderstood what they were saying but if you had an Xbox Music pass in the past you could synch your playlist on Windows phone so as the playlist was updated, those updates could come down to your phone, meaning you could keep them offline so if you were in a plane or whatever you could listen to them. So that feature has been updated to support One Drive based music as well. So instead of just going into a playlist and selecting the song just selecting the whole playlist and saying you know, let's bring it down to the phone and I'll have it on the phone, you can actually check a box in settings, this is kind of hidden, that will keep that thing synched so that as it's updated the new songs will also be synched to the phone as well. So it's mentioned in an article here. But basically go and look at the playlist, go into settings, by the way using that tiny ellipsis menu we were mentioning earlier, hit the ellipsis, settings, and you'll see the box for keeping that thing synched up and so that's kind of a neat thing to do if you're using a Windows phone like I am. And Xbox Music. And then the software pick this week is Windows 10 build, (laughs) however you say this, 1041 which shipped last week to the fast ring people, only in upgrade form, but is now available to slow ring folks but also in iSO form and so I had spent some time last week investigating and then starting to write a tip about how you could use the upgrade files that Microsoft gave you to create your own iSO and do these clean installs off of an iSO. But the more I got into it the more I realized this is a really temporary solution, it's not worth the effort, and then sure enough exactly a week later they released the iSO so if you've been holding off to do the clean install because you couldn't before now you can, just grab the iSO available for free from the Windows website.

Leo: Yeah, that's the easiest way to do it I guess. Especially on multiple machines if you have the iSO you just put it on a USB key or something.

Paul: I find it so much, I mean for the uninstalls especially-

Leo: Oh yeah, you want the

Paul: -you want the clean install you don't want to do the upgrade.

Leo: Yeah, yeah. Well in fact I use the iSO to get started and then I've been doing upgrades since then.

Paul: Yeah, but if you haven't done it yet you can start.

Leo: Yep, it's the best way. Yeah you need it actually.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: Code name pick...ooh Mary Jo Foley I hear a sigh. She's back!

Paul: Uh oh.

Leo: Uh oh!

Paul: I see a connection problem.

Leo: I see.

Mary Jo: I'm back, uh, do you guys see me okay?

Leo: Yeah! Just quickly talk fast. Give us a couple of code names before you fail.

Paul: (laughs)

Mary Jo: I know, I keep losing my Skype connection and I don't know why!

Leo: Well they thought you weren't in town so they turned off your internet.

Mary Jo: I think that's it.

Leo: Yep.

Mary Jo: Yep, I think

Leo: The, the super came in and turned off the heat and the internet.

Mary Jo: (laughs)

Paul: Hey, first day of spring, the heat goes off.

Leo: (laughs)

Mary Jo: That's crazy, yep.

Leo: Yep.

Mary Jo: Um, first pick of the week is both an enterprise pick and a code name pick. Double win. The code name is Tuva, t-u-v-a.

Leo: Mm.

Mary Jo: What is Tuva? Does anybody know?

Leo: Well, yes.

Mary Jo: A place?

Leo: Roooooaaaarrrrrrnnnaaaarrrooooowwwwwwaaaaeeeerrr

Mary Jo: (laughs)

Leo: It's where the Tuvan throat singers come from.

Mary Jo: Aahh, you were doing that at the start of the show.

Leo: It's kind of a weird quinky-dink, I was!!

Paul: (laughs)

Mary Jo: It is! So-

Leo: (twilight zone song)

Mary Jo: Tuva-

Leo: It's like near Tibet I think.

Mary Jo: -is, oh is it? Okay.

Leo: I think so.

Mary Jo: Huh, interesting. Tuva, according to some tipsters of mine, is a code name for that Windows server 2016 Nano server that we heard some leaks about a couple of months ago. So the Nano server is a very stripped down variation of Windows server that's made um, what do they say, made for the modern web or something. That it’s going to not include roles as part of it and that it's meant for people to use kind of in a minimalized way. So all I know now that I didn't know then is that the code name for that is Tuva. So that makes me believe that leaked sligh deck, that told us there's going to be a Nano server, is in fact valid.

Leo: It's in the Russian republic it lies just in s-

Mary Jo: Is it? Oh! Interesting.

Leo: -in south Siberia. But yeah, it's the-

Mary Jo: Interesting.

Leo: -Tuvan throat singers come from there.

Paul: The Tuvan homeland.

Leo: Yeah the homeland of the Tuvs. (laughs)

Mary Jo: Tuvs! (laughs)

Leo: I don't think that they're the Tuvs.

Mary Jo: (laughs)

Leo: I just made that up.

Mary Jo: (laughs) Okay, good! (laughs)

Leo: It's the geographic center of Asia. Yeah.

Paul: Wow.

Leo: Yeah. I'll play some Tuvan throat singing when you do your beer pick.

Paul: (laughs)

Mary Jo: Okay. (laughs)

Leo: Do you have an enterprise, uh, oh you have a second code name. I'm sorry.

Mary Jo: Yeah, that was the enterprise/first code name pick. And the second pick is just a pure code name pick of the week. It's called Project Milky-way. This is another gem from the WinHec China sligh deck. Neowin is the one that I saw publish this. Project Milky-way, there is a slide that says “The goal is to “delight” users by keeping their mobile devices updated with the latest release within 4-6 weeks of when we release it.”

Paul: Oh!

Leo: Neat.

Mary Jo: Um, as we know, as Windows phone users, this has not always been the case. Microsoft releases stuff, and we get it months or years later. So we're hoping that this Project Milky-way is a way Microsoft is trying to put a little more pressure on the mobile operators maybe and the hand-set makers to say “It would be really good if you guys would do more frequent updates. We are going to make them available more frequently, we hope you will make them available to users more frequently.

Paul: That's hilarious by the way, but I'm sorry. (laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah. (laughs)

Leo: They were going to call it Project Snickers but uh, they...

Mary Jo: Exactly.

Paul: Just the notion that after all these years we're going to work on the good intentions of the wireless carriers is.

Leo: (laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: We know better than that.

Paul: That's amazing.

Leo: We know better than that.

Mary Jo: Maybe that's why it's like, Milky-way, like something sweet that you would love to have happen but.

Paul: That's something that we're never gonna reach.

Mary Jo: (laughs)Yeah, but that could be it too.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: (laughs) Aspirational.

Leo: So I was hoping you would do a delicious beer from southeast Asia but...

Paul: But there are none. (laughs)

Leo: Instead I give you-

Mary Jo: Well first I-

Leo: -some delicious singing from southeast Asia.

Mary Jo: Good, yeah.

Paul: Oh jeez. It's not quite Van Halen, but it's in the same category.

Leo: See he's doing the thing. It's coming out of his mouth whatever that is, that sound. She's not impressed. (laughs)

Mary Jo: (laughs)

Paul: That's incredible.

Leo: It's moving isn't it? I think you, think you find it, uh, truly uh, I actually got lessons in the Tuvan throat singing some years ago. Didn't work out. I was hoping for a second career. Anyway, moving on, lets talk beer.

Mary Jo: Okay.

Leo: Beer me!

Mary Jo: So uh, I'll first tell you a quick beer story from trip on my vacation. There was a Windows Weekly listener, I think I told you guys before I left, who said “Hey, my brother has a brewery in Ho Chi Mihn City-

Leo: Oh neat!

Mary Jo: -that he just started.

Leo: Oh cool!

Mary Jo: And we went to it-

Leo: Yeah!

Mary Jo: -we found it!

Leo: Yeah!

Mary Jo: And it was unbelievable. It's like up a really narrow stairway it was hidden away and they have this amazing set of craft beers that they're making with local ingredients like coffee from Vietnam, they made a coffee beer.

Leo: Oh, neat!

Mary Jo: They made stuff with mangos, and it was so amazing. It was like you were in an American craft bar in Ho Chi Minh City. It's called Pasteur Brewing, if anybody ever goes there. Fantastic! Um, but my beer pick of the week is back from the United States, and it's an honor from Dr. Pizza, who I heard filled in for me last week with a tea pick of the week? Is that true? He had a tea pick?

Leo: He did. The Dot your T's, a very fine Burgamot taste-

Paul: Nobody was (unintelligible) proud of that moment.

Leo: -Earl Gray.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: (laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah. So I thought we'd go back to the beer pick-

Leo: So we fired him. (laughs)

Mary Jo: Fired! (Unintelligible), you're out of here!

Leo: (laughs)

Mary Jo: No beer pick!

Leo: You are outta here!

Mary Jo: (laughs) Beer, listen my beer pick-

Leo: You violated the spirits and the letter.

Mary Jo: He did, he did! Beer pick is Pizza Boy Brewing, a real brewery in Eerie, Pennsylvania that makes amazing beers and I had a sour of theirs called “Eternal Sunshine” recently. And you know its spring supposedly now so why not drink some sours, which are fantastic. Very citrus-y if you like citrus-y, lemony flavors. And Pizza Boy Brewing is starting to get their beers more into New York now, so if you're here visiting you can find them a little more easily.

Leo: I love the name.

Mary Jo: I know, Pizza Boy. It was so good. It's like one of these names, you're like hm, is it supposed to go with pizza? No, it is not.

Leo: It's not.

Mary Jo: No, it's just a very nice sour.

Leo: Alright, wow.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: 97 is the ranking on uh, what is it what site is this?

Mary Jo: Is that Rate Beer?

Leo: Rate Beer, wow!

Mary Jo: Yeah, so it's very highly ranked.

Leo: That's about as high as, I've never seen anything higher than that.

Mary Jo: Yeah, yep, it's very delicious.

Leo: Well, Mary Jo and Paul, I think we've come to the end of this very fine episode. (laughs)

Paul: (laughs)

Mary Jo: (laughs)

Paul: I know when I'm being dismissed!

Leo: (laughs) You my friend-

Mary Jo: (laughs) Get out of here guys! (laughs)

Leo: -Now wait a minute, before we go though um-

Paul: Yep.

Leo: Something coming up! You're going to be-

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: -in town right?

Mary Jo: Mhmm

Leo: Tell me about that.

Mary Jo: We're coming for Build.

Paul: What are you talking about? (laughs)

Leo: Build, Build!

Mary Jo: Build.

Leo: Is Build next week?

Mary Jo: No.

Paul: Ugh, no.

Mary Jo: No.

Paul: No, no.

Mary Jo: Not until the end of April.

Leo: End of April, okay.

Paul: I've been blocking this one out.

Mary Jo: I know.

Leo: So-

Mary Jo: It's coming up.

Paul: Not that I don't want to go but-

Leo: -It's normally-

Paul: It's usually on top of Ignite so-

Leo: Yeah, you well, you-

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: -first you-

Paul: I have-

Leo: -must destroy then you can build.

Paul: -I don't think, I'm going to have to go right from one place the another.

Leo: Where's Ignite going to be?

Paul: Chicago.

Leo: Aye, well it's on the way.

Paul: It's on the way, yeah (laughs)

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: Thank you-

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: It is on the way home but still you know what I'm saying is this is ten days of travel.

Leo: (Sighs)

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Well-

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: What-

Paul: Yes.

Leo: That's on a Wednesday, and you want to be at the events during our normal broadcast time, so we're thinking we'll move you to maybe Friday?

Paul: That would be the correct time.

Leo: Would Friday afternoon work for you guys, would you be able to get up here in time to do a live show?

Mary Jo: I believe I could make it happen.

Paul: Yeah, I mean, uh yeah I think so.

Leo: Alright I mean we've got some time to figure it out.

Paul: Yeah, I think that's the current, that would be the current plan I guess right.

Leo: Well I think we'll swap in before You Buy, which is currently recorded Friday afternoons, and put you in. And that way we can have a party.

Mary Jo: Yeah, that would be fun.

Leo: So, and golly knows this is going to be the ah huge deal.

Paul: Yeah, it's-

Leo: So we want to get you in.

Paul: -it is really big.

Leo: Yeah, in fact, bring up anybody you can grab along the way.

Mary Jo: We will.

Leo: We'll have, we'll do, it's been fun!

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: And I'll have to plan a trip so I'm not here. But um-

Mary Jo: (laughs) Right, you haven't been here yet.

Paul: (laughs) No, (unintelligible) Germany.

Leo: (laughs)I have missed them all and I'm not going to miss this one.

Paul: That's true, yeah, yeah.

Leo: Because you gave me a heads up I will make sure to be here, I don't even work Friday and I'm going to come in just for you.

Mary Jo: Oh no, that's right.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: Yeah if the excuse is, Leo's not here because he doesn't work Friday, you know we'll be uh-

Leo: (laughs)

Mary Jo: I know.

Leo: It's my day off, you are asking me to come in on my day off to talk about Windows-

Paul: Sure-

Leo: -and I'm going to tell.

Paul: I think it's going to be a great show, there's going to be a lot of.

Leo: No, I'm excited.

Paul: Oh.

Leo: I'm very excited.

Paul: Yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of fun stuff.

Leo: And I would like to reiterate, I am so far really liking Windows 10, I cannot wait to hear more. And I can't wait to get it on all my Windows PCs. So my friends, we do Windows Weekly normally Wednesdays, that's 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern time. Mark Zuckerberg permitting.

Paul: (Snorts)

Leo: (laughs) 1800 UTC. Um, and uh, we’ll be back-

Paul: (whispers) Zuckerberg.

Leo: (laughs) Zuckerberg, I outta... He was very, you know, you should thank him. He wrapped right at 11 so we could do this show.

Paul: That's true.

Leo: He did not run long. He was precise and on time, he was less than an hour. We will actually be covering tomorrows Keynote which will be more interesting. That's going to be the Oculus Rift Keynote. F8, yeah, that will be more fun. Ten o'clock tomorrow morning Pacific time. Thank you Paul, thank you Mary Jo. Paul Thurrott's at Thurrott.com. That's three T's a U, couple of R's and an O.

Paul: Don't forget the number 4.

Leo: (laughs)

Paul: (laughs)

Leo: Number 4.

Paul: (laughs)

Leo: We love Paul and we love Paul's new site, Thurrott.com. Everybody should go there. He's @thurrott on the Twitter. Mary Jo Foley is at AllaboutMicrosoft.com. That is the place to go to get the latest Microsoft news. She's also @MaryJoFoley on the Twitter. Thank you guys, we'll see you next time. Welcome home Mary Jo!

Mary Jo: Thanks.

Leo: On Windows Weekly.