Windows Weekly 410 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It´s time for Windows Weekly, Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley are here. We´ve got lots of news, Windows 10, we´ve actually got a release date we think for Windows 10 on phone, on desktop, even on Xbox. We´ll also talk about music to code by, Carl Franklin is here to play a little for us and to talk about what´s coming up next week at Build. It´s all ahead, Windows Weekly time next.

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This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, Episode 410 recorded Wednesday April 22nd 2015.

Music to Code By.

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Leo: Now let´s start the show with a little Windows 10, we haven´t talked about that in a while.

Paul Thurrott: It´s about time.

Leo: About time. What do you got?

Mary Jo Foley: This week we found out when we think the launch of Windows 10 is going to be.

Leo: Well we know it´s this summer.

Mary Jo: Well we know a little more now.

Leo: Could you be a little more specific?

Mary Jo: Thanks to AMD CEO Lisa Su we know more.

Leo: What she, she inadvertently said something?

Mary Jo: She was talking on the AMD analyst call and she mentioned with the Windows 10 launch at the end of July, blah, bla, blah.

Leo: Oh my. Oh I bet she´s getting a little spanked by now by Redmond, don´t you think?

Mary Jo: But now everybody´s trying to guess. Did she say it as though hey we know it is then or this is kind of the time.

Paul: Does she literally think July is the only month in summer?

Leo: That´s a big, even saying in Summer is kind of an advance on what they have been saying which was Fall right?

Mary Jo: It was yeah.

Leo: July would be really kind of early, yeah.

Mary Jo: So now this is setting off a wave of panic I would say because a lot of the testers who have been working with.

Paul: Mostly by people who have used the product.

Mary Jo: I was going to say people who are trying Windows 10 are like July? Wait a minute, that´s not that far away, especially for phone and the state of Windows 10 mobile on phones is a little rugged.

Paul: Rugged, wow.

Leo: Well at first it was no difference at all right, I haven´t played with the latest beta very much. I see holes in my home screen, it´s black with holes in it but that, you can fix that.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: It´s rough.

Leo: Is it? Well yeah that´s right, I remember I got that dialogue to sign up and I couldn´t do anything, yeah.

Paul: Mary Jo and I were talking about this and I think the consensus is something along the lines of they tend to overreact a little bit you know, they, the big problem last time was the traditional PCs weren´t served well by Windows 8 so let´s overreact and make sure we get that one right but we´re going to screw up tablets and possibly phones this time. I don´t think that was how they made the decision but I think that´s how they, it´s how it looks right now, anything can change but I think on PCs like a desktop type system not a desktop form but a system where you would use the desktop, a laptop as well, you know Windows 10 looks pretty solid, but on a tablet specially Windows 10 is kind of scary right now, it´s not really looking very good.

Mary Jo: So now the question becomes if this end of July date is correct for launch which I hear from my contacts it is, what does that really mean? Does that mean RTM? Does that mean there´s some big party and they have a launch? Does it mean any hardware is available at that point? So we don´t really know what the word launch means, but we think there is some kind of a milestone that is happening at the end of July and you know I guess I´m not as panicked even though I have yet to even install this test build on anything but.

Paul: That explains why you´re not panicked.

Mary Jo: But also, you know what we do know is what the did with the last build of Windows, Windows 8.1, and I think they did this with Windows 8 also, is they declare RTM and then they keep rubbing it right? They keep on making updates and fixes so, did they? Yeah okay so when you get your new PC the first thing that happens or one of the first things is you get all these updates delivered down to your PC all the things that they fixed and updated since they actually RTM the code right? I think that´s what´s going to happen again, they´re just going to keep rubbing, rubbing, updating, fixing. Whenever they declare RTM it´s still going to keep going.

Paul: And by the way I think that is going to happen again and keep going like that forever, I think that´s the plan.

Leo: These guys have been around for a while, it´s not their first time to the rodeo presumably they know when it will be ready and it would be a huge, I mean they can´t afford to release, this has to be good because well.

Paul: Does it Leo?

Leo: This is, a lot, don´t, is not a lot riding on Windows 10? It seems to me.

Mary Jo: Yes, a lot.

Paul: But actually if you step back and think about it, it has to be right for Windows 7 users, I think that´s job 1 and it should be job 1, because that´s the audience.

Leo: Just as Windows 7 was right for XP users people who had skipped Vista, this is the Windows 8 skippers.

Mary Jo: Yes.

Paul: But imagine for a moment that, and I really don´t think this is how they think of it but imagine if you would if they say we´re going to deemphasize how it works on a tablet or on a phone, we´re not going to worry about that as much, if it takes us 6 more months to figure that one out it doesn´t matter. I mean who are they really screwing over there? It´s a fairly small audience of people who already are Windows fan and or Windows tablet fans right, compared to say the several hundred million possibly close to a billion users who are on Windows 7 or an unsupported version of Windows XP. You know it´s a big deal for us I mean we care about the stuff. Mary Jo and I happen to use Windows phones and we like and we want it to be great on Windows 10 and all that stuff but I mean honestly what´s the fear here? What if they do get it wrong?

Leo: Are they absolutely, well. Phone I guess it doesn´t matter because well, I don´t want to be rude but.

Paul: But that´s true of Windows tablets.

Mary Jo: 3%?

Leo: Nobody really uses it.

Mary Jo: But yo know, the phone one at least there´s some built in delay right? So when Microsoft RTMs Windows Phones then who knows how many months we´re all going to be waiting for Verizon, AT&T and everyone else.

Leo: Are they compelled to release it all at once, have they kind of made such a big deal about that they don´t have a choice.

Mary Jo: They haven´t said that on the record actually that it´s all the Windows 10 variants that launch together because they´re so emphasizing this universal core, universal app idea I would think that would be the goal. Except for Hololens now right.

Paul: Yeah, 2 things, one is that I can´t find this but I believe they said that the intranet version would ship at the same time, as other versions of Windows 10 whatever, that really doesn´t impact this discussion too much but I believe they said that. The other thing is when you talk about what does it mean to ship in July maybe that means the core part of Windows 10 that is common across all of those versions and then that they kind of start releasing the actual productized versions of Windows 10 subsequently, maybe that´s what July

Mary Jo: I don´t think so.

Paul: No I don´t think so either but just as a possibility.

Mary Jo: It´s a theory but no.

Leo: No.

Paul: I actually don´t think that´s true but it´s a possibility.

Mary Jo: Here´s something else we know we haven´t really been bringing into the discussion but we do believe there´s going to be a summer release of Windows 10 and a fall release, like the major, more major releases right? So there´s going to be this thing let´s say the end of July and then there´s going to be another thing we think in October, there´s going to be another big, kind of update to Windows 10 with lots of little updates in between. Maybe it´s Windows 10 to OEMs and the launch is July and maybe October is when you start seeing the new PCs and all that maybe, but I still think they´re trying to hit back to school and if they are, it´s a lot.

Leo: Well the end of July is the back to school deadline.

Mary Jo: It is.

Paul: It´s kind of late for back to school honestly.

Leo: It´s late.

Paul: I mean a lot of times you see the back to school specials when kids are graduating from school which doesn´t happen in July, it happens in May, June. But better than October.

Leo: What if it is the end of July? What´s the time frame going forward now? Don´t they have to start doing gold masters and things? I mean when does that, what goes on next?

Mary Jo: Well they have to declare it feature complete.

Leo: That´s not happened yet, obviously. If it has then people have a right to get angry.

Mary Jo: I´ve heard people speculating at Build, next week they´re going to say this? I would be very surprised, very surprised.

Paul: There´s a bigger chance of the Loch Ness monster´s real than that´s going to happen.

Leo: Could they have been holding back versions that are much more feature complete? Well I don´t know why they would do that.

Mary Jo: I´ve actually heard people say that too.

Paul: By the way, that´s the kind of rationalization you use when the thing that holds power over you is seen as some intelligent all-encompassing boring type thing where they´re so much smarter than we are and clearly they´re holding something back and they´re going to just blow us away. I would love to believe that that´s true, I really, almost need for that to be true but I, that would be great but I just don´t see that.

Mary Jo: I mean it´s going to just be, I think the next thing that happens is you declare it feature complete, you stop, and maybe they have already stopped allowing anyone to add new code that adds the new feature and everybody is just focused on fixing it at that point right, and then you declare RTM, goes to OEMs, goes out to MSDN and TechNet and the Windows insiders I guess.

Paul: But still keeps getting updated and I think that´s the key and by the way, regardless of July, August, September, I don´t care what the date is, I really do think that´s a key part of this Windows 10 strategy that RTM is not the hard line milestone it used to be it´s really just one of many steps and it´s important for various reasons but really it gets improved past then and like Mary Jo said, they´ve done it before, they did it on phone, they´re going to do it if anything more with Windows 10 than they did in the past.

Mary Jo: I´ve had people ask me, who are business users, what about us right? So we can´t take this code that the call RTM if it´s not great but you know, how many business users on day 1 are going to be hey I want Windows 10 it just RTMed today, that doesn´t happen. I mean when a business, specially a bigger enterprise decides to move to a new operating system, there´s months of like planning, testing and testing your apps, they´re not going to rush out and.

Paul: Months of pretending we´re going to roll this out and they never roll it out, there´s all kinds of things that would prevent a business from actually doing this. Actually you mentioned earlier this notion of 2 releases of Windows 10 essentially in 2015, and if you think back to Windows Vista they did a business launch in, I want to say November, and then the consumer launch was probably February or whatever the following year and so there was some number of months between them. You know you might look at the Windows 10 launch this year as the opposite of that where the consumer one will go out first because we want to hit back to school and consumers are more willing and more used to this notion of constant updating because we see that all the time in our phones, and maybe by the time that second thing happens in October or whenever that is, that´s the version where they say if you´re in business now it´s okay to move from evaluation to actual deployment.

Mary Jo: Yeah, that sounds plausible.

Paul: It´s clearly never going to happen but it sounds logical.

Mary Jo: So I´d say to people who are saying there´s no way this is going to happen in July, that must be wrong, I think it´s right, and I think it is going to happen at the end of July and I don´t know again if this means like a big, formal kind of launch thing like they had with Windows 7 and Windows 8 or if this just means RTM, but I think that date is correct, based on what I´ve heard.

Leo: Wow, wow, wow.

Paul: Too soon.

Mary Jo: Paul is just shaking his head.

Leo: Paul, they know what they´re doing, don´t you trust them?

Paul: That, wow! Don´t I trust them? No!

Leo: Look this is too big, I´m not kidding. It would not be good to release prematurely. Somebody in the chat room says why don´t you just wait till it´s done and then release it?

Paul: Because it´s not 1979. Look I mean this honestly, I don´t mean this sarcastically, mobile first cloud first right? All of these Android apps and iOS apps and all that kind of stuff that Microsoft is doing, I think we may need to accept the very harsh reality here that it´s not actually not important that they get this right. That getting this thing out early will appeal to certain people, fixing it constantly will help other people but that the reality is the personal computing market, not for desktop computers and laptops and things necessarily but personal computing the mass market for personal computing has moved on from Windows so it might not be as important as we´re trying to make it sound. I mean I don´t really think that thing is core to the future of Microsoft. It´s core to what they´re doing right now, but it´s increasingly less core as we go forward.

Mary Jo: Yeah, as crazy as that sounds, I know. It is, it´s the third largest business that Microsoft out of 5 or 6 businesses.

Leo: Windows?

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: Yeah, formally number one right?

Leo: Formally number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten.

Mary Jo: The Office is number 1, and then Enterprise stuff like you know the cloud, Azure, data base and blah, blah, blah is number 2, Windows is 3.

Paul: Think about, we just, I can talk about this right, so Microsoft just did a, I´m sorry I´ve been traveling a lot, I´m a little out of it.

Leo: Can I talk about this asked Paul.

Paul: Mary Jo tell me can I say

Leo: Paul, you may speak.

Paul: When Microsoft, they did talk about this, so when Microsoft talked about the Office apps, the Office universal apps for Windows phone they also gave kind of a general update about Office, how they see office across devices because one of the confusing things that´s happening in Windows 10 is if you have a Windows 10 computer you could conceivably have 2 different versions of Office on there, you could have the universal apps which are essentially mobile apps and you could have the full desktop suite and they want to make sure that people aren´t confused by this. The positioning of the Office desktop application suite or Office as most of us think of it is A) the most powerful version of the suite of course but it´s also the one that kind of targets the smallest possible market because so few people need that kind of functionality right? Most people will be well served by the functionality in Word universal app you know Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. Some people may need Publisher that´s in the desktop suite, some people may need some of the more advanced features of Excel let´s say or of word and they, and Microsoft referred to them as authors, professional content creators, I mean, they´re sort of like the productivity version like Office productivity version of Photoshop users right? Where it´s a business, it´s a big business, but the slice of the personal computing market that needs that is actually very small compared to the broader market and I think that´s an interesting way just to look at Windows in general because when you look at the Windows desktop in particular yes there are some, today 1.5 billion people that use Windows PCs, there are some hundreds of millions of people using Windows 7 but as we move forward those numbers decline and the numbers of people using smartphones and tablets go up, you know and I personally need this stuff, I like it and I think a lot of people listening to this do as well but, I think, you know, 90 something percent of the people out there who have any use of a personal computing device do not need a full powered Office 2016 for desktop. They just don´t need it, and that´s Windows isn't it? Isn´t that Windows I mean, they just don´t need it.

Leo: You know Microsoft´s caught a little bit too by the fact too that the interation for software in other respects is much higher, much faster, Android, you know new cycles all the time. This started in the late 90´s with a guy named Kent Beck who created a concept called Extreme programming and it took over, it was basically it´s the agile methodology and it´s what Mark Zuckerberg says for Facebook, he says move fast and break things and the idea is get a product out and then iterate over time, rapidly iterate because the tools allow you to do that as you get feedback from users and you see how they use it, you could iterate, you could improve it, it makes a lot of sense for web apps and cloud apps and that´s why Google´s constantly in beta, they´re saying in effect this isn´t the final version, we´re iterating, but it´s a little weird for an operating system because the whole point of an operating system is a steady platform in which to build.

Paul: The whole point of an operating system was. I think that by making Windows 10 work like a mobile operating system like a cloud service or whatever makes sense and that you know the only way that July makes any sense at all is if the backend of this is happening as well. In other words that we´re going to keep updating it over and over.

Leo: If you use Chrome OS you´re in that environment. Chrome OS is constantly updated, you don´t even see it but in the background maybe every morning you´re going to get a new version of that operating system.

Paul: This is tough because Windows, there´s a lot of legacy there, Windows will also update itself in the background a little bit but the truth is you do see it, and you see it in forms that are not always welcome, we´re going to reboot your computer you better start shutting things down and sometimes you have a chance to fix that stuff and sometimes you don´t. It´s the reason why on the Apple platform on the Mac they´ve added the ability for auto-save on documents so that if the system has to reset itself you´re not going to lose everything.

Leo: People don´t know but Apple is also pushing stuff out of fairly frequently, invisibly.

Paul: No it´s a big, by the way, I, we can´t understate the difficulty of moving something like Windows, this giant monolithic thing to this type of system.

Leo: If there´s anything that´s antithetical to agile it´s Windows you know, it´s a Titanic, it´s a giant ship, it´s the Exxon Valdez, I´m trying to think ships that haven´t sunk, I´m sorry.

Mary Jo: You´re trying to turn the big ship.

Leo: It´s a big ship. So it´s a, uh oh, something strange is happening to Paul. We´ll get him back in a second. Hey just as Paul´s reconstituting in the transformer, transporter, let us mention very briefly as the show began Google announced its official wireless solution. We´ve been hearing rumors that Google was going to do this for some time, they´re calling if Fi, F-I and it will aggregate connectivity from Sprint and T Mobile in a very interesting way, you have to have a Nexus 6 to use it, pricing is of course very affordable, we´ll talk a lot about this on This Week in Google next as we learn more about it but right now invite only, and it´s interesting they have one plan, one price, $20 dollars a month, you get talk, text, WiFi, tethering, and international coverage in 120 countries that´s $20 bucks a month and then $10 per gigabyte for cellular data US and abroad, and you just pay as you go. So $10 bucks for, $30 bucks for 3 gigs, $50 bucks for 5 gigs, that kind of thing, really kind of an interesting slice on mobile, you have to have, the big negative, you have to have a Nexus 6 which no one has. I have one so that´ll be very interesting. More details on This Week in Google. Paul´s back.

Paul: Sorry about that.

Leo: It´s okay. Paul´s traveling around rural Pennsylvania looking for a college.

Paul: I think there´s like an amish guy out there making butter and it´s powering internet connection.

Leo: No, you´re in part of the most beautiful part of the world, i love it out there.

Paul: It is pretty, it is.

Leo: Yeah, so gorgeous. Did you see the blogpost on Metro?

Paul: Yes.

Leo: I thought that was kind of interesting, well I guess you wrote about it.

Paul: Yeah, this is the type of stuff I live and die on, you know, how the sausage gets made kind of stuff, it´s very interesting.

Leo: And this was a guy who worked at Microsoft?

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: And he´s still there?

Paul: He was like a design lead on Windows Phone, no he works with Twitter now.

Leo: So he can tell the truth.

Mary Jo: Do we know who this is? He was on Reddit right?

Paul: Yeah his name is actually out there so one of the videos he links to it´s him giving a speech when he worked at Microsoft talking about some of the issues with you know, the phone interface it´s actually, I don´t remember his name, I didn´t use it in the article. Yeah his name´s out there.

Leo: So what´s, what did we learn?

Paul: Well long story short, you certainly can read the post I wrote but you could read the whole Reddit chat if you want to, I find this stuff to be kind of fascinating.

Leo: Me too.

Paul: My whole thing with Windows Phone has always been that the reason that I was attracted to Windows Phone in the very beginning was that it wasn´t just different right, it´s easy to be different, you look at iOS you look at Android and you say well we´re not going to be like that, we´re going to be different. But being different for different say is ridiculous, you know being different and being better to me is what attracted me to Windows Phone, the problem with Windows Phone is that a lot of the things that I sort of thought of as being better were not necessarily better for everyone and that´s why we´ve seen over the subsequent years Microsoft has had to scale back its plans for things like, integrated experiences with third party services, you know panoramic user interfaces and pivots and things like that because they´re just unfamiliar to users they´re not necessarily efficient for certain types of tasks that people want to do a lot. And if you´re a, let´s think of something really simple, we´re going to have a photos hub or a pictures hub where you can integrate the photos from all of your online services so if you have like Flickr, maybe you have Google photos over here and you have OneDrive, whatever, obviously the Microsoft´s stuff is going to be in there and there will be one in this case is was one close Microsoft partner that was Facebook in there. But these other services didn´t want to integrate their brands into this thing that didn´t promote their brand, why would they? It´s the type of thing that´s good for users but there´s no benefit for the services to do it. Why do I want to make it easy to use photos on our service and photos from another service? I want you just to use our service, you know one of the reasons that the monolithic mobile app that you see on iOS and Android has taken off is that those companies never forced or tried to force anyone to integrate into this system which was very user friendly or at least it potentially was, but wasn´t very brand friendly. So that stuff kind of fell apart over the years and the other thing too I guess is just you know like I said a lot of the things, I looked at Windows Phone specially before you could even use it yourself, you see a demo and you think wow this thing is really amazing they got it all right, and you know, they didn´t, they didn´t get it all right. Here we are years later and obviously what happened happened and so in some ways it´s more important now that you give people a familiar experience rather than an unfamiliar experience that may or may not be better, you know, because the first reaction that people have when they pick it up is what is this thing? Even if it is, you know, better.

Leo: Oh that´s sad to me, I think Windows phone would do better if it had the apps people want, I really do. I don´t know if it´s because it looks different.

Paul: There´s a lot to it, it´s not just that.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I think it´s true that it makes it easier on developers if Windows Phone looks like Android and looks like iOS right, because than it´s easier to make an app that you´re already familiar with how things are aligned but I feel like part of the reason to get a Windows Phone was that it was different and that you liked the differences and they kind of made the experience not so generic and cookie cutter. So now we´re taking that away because we need to try to get the app vendors involved and we think maybe if we make it easier to build apps maybe more will do it right?

Leo: Boy I feel like that´s such a capitulation I hate to see that I really do.

Paul: It´s a mix of things, I´m sorry go ahead.

Mary Jo: Yeah there are, there are. So much comes back to the hamburger menu.

Leo: It all comes back to the hamburger menu.

Paul: By the way I have zero problems with the hamburger menu.

Mary Jo: I don´t either.

Leo: So what does he say about the hamburger menu?

Paul: A bunch of things, one is why you would have such a thing, when it´s appropriate to have such a thing, and where you would put such a thing.

Leo: Because we´ve had our own internal debate you know we´re almost about to launch the new website.

Paul: The other thing he says, he very emphatically says a couple of times you know, people, this is not, we´re going to do this because it´s this way on Android, that is not the thinking. He basically said it shouldn´t surprise you to discover that there are great designers at different companies that have all arrived at the same destination because it is the right destination. You know you try different things and then what you realize is frankly we really do have to go this way. The hamburger menu makes sense for a mobile system, we have limited real estate, we have a lot of commands, we got to put them somewhere, you don´t want to to be something that the user taps on or clicks easily or by mistake, it has to be a little out of reach because it´s by nature it´s supposed to be for things you don´t need a lot, and not all apps should have it, something like twitter for example is a simple app, there´s only a couple a dozen commands on twitter so you don´t need a hamburger menu. But he said something like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, so what are you kidding me? He said this thing has thousands of commands, you can't, he said I challenge you to come up with a user interface that works better than this. We´re going to have a bunch of tool bars you know covering half of the screen? It doesn´t make sense on a mobile device. And then there´s issues around positioning and whether people use the phone with one hand or two hands and what does that look like, there´s been a lot of user research into that stuff and you know, it´s not some guy on a throne in the clouds making decisions.

Leo: Yes it is, we can now tell the truth.

Paul: Well maybe it is at Twit Leo.

Leo: Ha,ha,ha. I am sitting on a throne right now.

Paul: It´s like a cloud goes by.

Leo: So they don´t use the hamburger menu or they do use the hamburger menu for Office on mobile, for mobile they have to.

Paul: They have to, but here´s the thing, one of the things that I think actually scales pretty well and one of the things that is going to be successful in Windows 10 is this notion of universal apps where the UI, the user experience scales to the size of the screen and to the orientation of the screen, works whether it´s a touch screen or isn´t a touch screen maybe you´re using a mouse and a keyboard to interact with it, and if you look at the apps we´ve seen so far in Windows 10 like photos, outlook calendar and outlook mail, maps and a few others, where you can use it on a tiny screen like a four and a half inch Windows Phone screen, you can use it on a tablet, you can use it on a big desktop computer, with a 27 inch screen or whatever, as it turns out those apps actually scale pretty well so that, it´s not a miracle but it´s pretty impressive that that´s even possible. I kind of quibble around certain aspects of the Windows 10 UI like some of the controls and things like that but as far as the general theme of having it work across you know, very different kinds of devices it does seem like they´ve done something pretty impressive there and by the way it involves a hamburger menu, sorry, it´s part of it.

Leo: Who says they don´t like the hamburger menu, I mean why are we fighting this battle, is it controversial?

Paul: Leo here´s why, there´s a very good reason not to like the hamburger menu, and this is what you hear from all people who don´t like it and it´s this, I just don´t like it.

Leo: I don´t like it.

Paul: It really does or in the Windows world what you hear is but I liked pivots, I liked panoramas, I liked metro, you know whatever, however you want to say it, I mean there´s that.

Leo: Change is bad, you know I don´t know how somebody can get into the technology space and not like change but somehow somebody did get in who doesn´t like change. Because the technology space is about change and really the people who are on the cutting edge of technology I would think should embrace change, that´s kind of the only constant.

Mary Jo: I feel like Microsoft did so much to evangelize why metro was better design language, they were like this is why this is so much better than what iOS and Google have and everybody started getting on board like yeah it´s better and now it´s like hey we´re redoing metro design language.

Paul: By the way I could go back to the original stuff that I wrote about Windows Phone I was completely on board with everything, the one thing that actually set me off a little bit was, it was like Albert Schum and those guys on and on like lots of talk, designerly talk, they talked in terms of you know, you just don´t hear out in the normal world, it was all about design and design and design, it´s a good design it´s a good design and you know I asked openly at the time if this is such a good design why do you have to keep telling us that it´s such a good design?

Leo: It´s a bad sign.

Paul: It was over explained so much, it´s like you just don´t understand you heathen like if you just, there´s a reason there´s like a gutter on the side of the Windows Phone 7 screen like, this is like a design thing, and people are like, why aren´t you using the whole screen? And they would say because it gives you this emphasis where you can tell you know maybe there´s something over there, and they´re like yeah but why don´t you use the whole screen? I think there are things that are sort of, I don´t know what you call that supposedly good design but I think we as humans just look at something and say yes this is attractive, yes this is usable, yes this is whatever and I actually think that the way that they had to overemphasize or over explain the design was maybe the first warning sign that something was wrong.

Leo: I don´t know what to say now.

Mary Jo: Maybe we should get Carl, a little diversion.

Leo: Let´s get Carl.

Paul: Carl give us some good news.

Leo: We´re going to take a break while we get Carl, and I guess the people who get Carl, will be getting Carl, while I take a break.

Our show today brought to you by Lynda.com, we love Lynda. Apparently LinkedIn loved Lynda too at the tune of what was it? 1.6 million dollars. Don´t worry, fear not, the Lynda.com you love is only going to get better and better and already 3,000 on demand articles, videos really, video courses. I´ll tell you why I call them articles because just to say the video it´s so much more there´s worksheets, there´s study guides, there´s transcripts so you can search through the videos to find exactly the part you want in it, almost every area of technology, of business, of creativity. If you´re a curious mind, if you like to learn, if you´re a problem solver, maybe you just need to get you know an improved job or get some recognition at your current job. L-Y-N-D-A.com. We use Lynda.com at Twit to train our editors here, I use it at home, the photography courses are remarkable, Photoshop the new Photoshop just came out, Lynda will have courses almost right away because they work with the publishers to make sure that the training is available day and day. You´re going to learn from top experts, people like my friend Ben Long who is a great photographer and a great teacher, Bert Monroy who is the king of Photoshop and also a wizard, Ben is learn to be a better photographer which is so awesome, he also does the foundations of photography for the photography 101 series, you´ll learn about composition, exposure, all the basics and then as you get more advanced portraits, landscapes, street photography, travel photography, I got to take that one before we take our vacation, time lapse shots, Ben has a great one on Macro photography, he´s not the only teacher but let me just use this as an example, this is the, his course on introducing the practicing Photographer, it´s kind of an if you wanted to make a living doing this as Ben does, here´s what you need to know. Choosing a camera, looking at light as a subject, using a small reflector for fill and on and on, compositing street photography and all of that. Now, wouldn´t you like to be able to watch this entire course for free? Well you can when you go to Lynda.com/Windows, we´re going to give you a free 10 day trial, for 10 days you have the run of the place, everything, all 3,000 what is it 3,497 courses? The new Lightroom just came out, of course the new Lightroom course is out, Chris Orwig´s course for creative cloud folks but notice they do too one for the stand alone Lightroom one for creative cloud. I love that. Photo retouching, color correction, download the tutorials and watch them on the go, you get access on your Android, or iOS device as well. Playlists of course as you want to watch, customize your learning path, share it with colleagues, team members, they have business courses too, resume, building communication, negotiation, data analysis, boy that´s a hot topic, if you knew how to do that I think you could get a much better job let me tell you. L-y-n-d-a.com Lynda.com/Windows, 10 days free waits for you, you can browse around accounting fundamentals, up and running with Excel, up and running with Tableau, I don´t even know what that is. Access, essential training, you´re going to love it. Lynda.com/Windows, try it today, you´ll love it.

Leo: Alright, let me see. I´m going to press the magic buttons here and lo and behold someone has appeared in between Paul and Mary Jo Foley. It´s Carl Franklin. Hi Carl Franklin.

Carl Franklin: Hi Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: Hi Carl.

Carl: Hi Paul, I´ve always wanted to do the Brady Bunch thing. How are you?

Leo: Do you want to introduce him or shall I?

Mary Jo: I will. We´ve had Carl Franklin on the show before, I think it was a year ago.

Leo: Was I here?

Mary Jo: Yeah remember the bourbon brothers.

Carl: You were here.

Leo: Oh I was drunk. I remember that.

Mary Jo: Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin.

Leo: Oh! Oh yes sir!

Carl: This show is brought to you by an almost empty bottle of Blanton´s.

Leo: I say son, you know, you know how to drinks, alright.

Mary Jo: Yeah remember they were the dot net rocks guys, they have a podcast called dot net rocks, they have other shows too like a tablet show and Carl does more than that though, he´s also very knowledgeable about visual basic and I think he´s Microsoft mvp still right? Connect?

Carl: Yep. For Connect, yes.

Mary Jo: Regional director also?

Carl: And most of the C sharp developer these days.

Leo: Wow, that´s saying a lot.

Carl: Well, okay, I don´t want to go down that rabbit hole, VB contributed a lot to programming, as we know contributed a lot to .NET it just fell out of favor mostly because of Microsoft being C programmers you know they thought of VB as sort of an afterthought I think.

Leo: That´s kind of a shame.

Carl: Mostly with code examples and keeping up in technologies.

Leo: With VB you know, that´s a shame.

Carl: Yeah.

Mary Jo: But we thought it would be great to have Carl on for one reason, because Build is next week and you know it´s all about developers and who better than a developer.

Carl: Oh first I got to say something to Paul, Paul, for the best shoofly pie in Lancaster, you want to go to Dutch Haven.

Paul: Nice, nice.

Carl: DutchHaven.com you can even order, I have no affiliation with them, I don´t even like shoofly pie, I´m just telling you that´s the place.

Leo: You´re taking advice about shoofly pie from a guy that doesn´t like shoofly pie.

Carl: No, no I don´t eat it, I can´t really eat like that, but I have and I´ve had it from dutch haven and it´s.

Leo: Yum, yum.

Carl: That´s where the Amish go.

Paul: The right place yeah.

Leo: Ride up in your buggy.

Carl: Alright so Build.

Mary Jo: Yeah Build, so we´re trying to figure out, what do you think

Paul:What is Build? Could you explain that to us please?

Carl: Yeah I can actually Build is what the PDC used to be for, the Professional Developers Conference for future looking technology coming from Microsoft. Whereas TechEd was, now Ignite I think TechEd was about current stuff, more IT than developer but still current stuff. Okay.

Leo: Good news this year Build´s all about Connect, I´m so excited.

Carl: Yeah in a lot of ways there´s a bit, you know Hololens and stuff

Leo: I was joking.

Carl: Well you´re right though, I mean Hololens is the connect.

Leo: I want Hololens.

Carl: Yeah, good stuff. Well I think that it´s very likely that we´re going to see more cross platform stuff announcements at Build and here´s why I deduce this, it´s just my opinion that you know November last year Microsoft announced the .NET core frame work being open sourced powers web apps using ASP.NET libraries, going to be open sourced on Windows, Linux and Mac OS. What does that mean? You know that means clearly something´s up in the cross plat Miguel de Icaza from Xamarin who championed the Mono project he was once reviled by Microsoft specially the Windows operating system division. He´s one of the 3 directors now the .NET foundation which is independent organization that existed, foster opened development and collaboration around the Microsoft .NET developer framework so in an interview with him in the register last November when this announcement came out, I think you can see the tiny URL.com/Miguel on .NET dot NET, he says that Microsoft´s opening of the full .NET framework gives a nice read only benefit to the community, it´s very much tied to Windows has lots of other dependencies but the .NET core is very much open for porting and that´s all based on PCL or portable class libraries which make it possible to go from platform to platform and that´s why Xamarin is so successful, because they have these PCL basically wrappers that talk to Android and iOS so they can do cross platform development, so I know there´s stuff going on there, I think you´re going to see stuff coming out but I have no idea what it´s going to be. For IOT and devices you guys already touched on this a little bit on Windows 10, but they´ve already announced that Windows 10 will be free on certain size devices right? They´ve already shown us a couple of their own hardware platforms, I expect to see more of those. Not only that but for around $150 bucks I know you guys talked about the Windows PC on a stick, you search for Intel compute stick $150 bucks, it´s got a quad core Atom processor, 2 gigs of ram, 32 gigs of flash, has room for a full size USB 2 port, a micro sd card slot, WiFi, bluetooth, graphics and audio are also built in, basically is a stick with an HDMI plug like a Chromecast or something but it´s a full PC. So I think that, and just to put that into context Google and Asus are teaming up on a sub $100 dollar dongle called Chromebit that´s due out this summer and that promises to turn a TV or monitor into a Chrome OS based computer, so it says a lot about where Microsoft wants to take Windows I think that all these small devices and IOT stores, I think that´s going to be a really big one at Build.

Mary Jo: What do you guys both think the giveaway´s going to be at Build? Like what´s your guess you know there´s always something good.

Carl: I have a wish.

Paul: Is the Hololens the wish?

Carl: Of course that´s the wish.

Mary Jo: That´s not ready.

Carl: Yeah I know but that´s the wish you know but I´m so excited to see what that

Paul: I don´t see that, I bet they let people buy it at every cost, I bet that´s how that works.

Carl: That´s probably more like it, I´m hoping they just have prototypes to play with at the show that would be enough for me.

Paul: I think that´s important yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I bet that, yeah.

Paul: I bet they give away Surface 3.

Mary Jo: Yeah they should give away Surface 3.

Carl: Surface 3 man, that would be great although, have you guys talked about the Surface 3?

Mary Jo: We have on other shows yeah.

Carl: Yeah, it´s like a what a $400 dollar base line price Surface but for me I need the pen and I need WiFi, I need more storage and stuff so by the time I got to get one out for me it was like $900 bucks a thousand bucks which is still better, yeah still better but. Oh as far as Hololens, I did hear from someone close to the project that the experience of Hololens for real is pretty much exactly like what you see in those videos, those videos were´t doctored in any way.

Mary Jo: Yeah we got to try the Hololens.

Paul: Yeah we did use it.

Mary Jo: Paul and I did.

Carl: Oh great.

Paul: Back in January yeah, it is, it´s a, and I went in almost not mocking it but just expecting it to be terrible and walked out a true believer like it´s actually really pretty amazing.

Mary Jo: Yeah it should be good.

Paul: Leo´s looking through a box of animal crackers.

Leo: But it works.

Carl: Oh Leo by the way I would be honored to create a new theme song for you, there´s a trove of metal heads who frequent the studio who´d be honored to bang their collective heads for Twit.

Leo: It´s a, it´s completely, we´d take it if you make it, we´d take it. We should say that you do a lot of interesting musical stuff as well.

Carl: I do yeah.

Leo: Including music to program by.

Carl: Yeah music to code by, it really all starts with, and I´m going to go deep here, Abraham Maslow´s hierarchy of needs, which has been in the news a lot lately but it´s been around for a while and some people talk about.

Leo: WiFi, we´ve added wifi to the bottom line.

Carl: That´s number one actually.

Leo: Pyramid´s a little taller than it used to be with Maslow. We have WiFi and then all that other happiness, satisfaction crap.

Carl: Right, yeah so at the very bottom of the level that everybody needs is basic needs, food, sleep, shelter and WiFi. Then we have safety needs.

Paul: Not in that order.

Carl: Being and feeling safe, both being and feeling because those are 2 different, social needs love and belonging would be level 3, level 4 esteem needs positive self-image that kind of thing, level 5 is self-actualization and Maslow called those experiences peak experiences but this other guy comes around in 1990 writes a book Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, how´s that for a pronunciation, it´s an Americanization I know.

Leo: I actually interviewed him.

Carl: Really?

Leo: When Flow came out yeah.

Carl: Oh great.

Leo: And I couldn´t get his name right either.

Carl: Yeah, he just says call me Mehay that´s alright. It´s Michael basically.

Leo: He´s awesome and Flow is an awesome concept.

Carl: He was inspired by Maslow and he developed this idea Flow which is you probably have said before, it´s like a state of mind where you´re doing an activity where there´s constant feedback and it´s very pleasurable and you sort of lose yourself in your environment.

Leo: We´ve all experienced it or I hope you´ve experienced it where just, it could be playing tennis, it could be programming, where you just kind of, you´re in the zone is another way.

Carl: In the zone, yeah and musicians get this a lot as you said, sports, gamers get this a lot, on the dark side, gamblers.

Paul: I´m always in that mode, please continue.

Leo: Gamblers yeah, that´s why they gamble.

Carl: Right, gambling yeah it´s very much a flow activity, it might not be good for you, but your money flows out of your wallet pretty fast I´m sure. Developers have a particular problem with flow though and that´s distraction, so this is what we were talking about, I was talking with Mark Siemen on .netrocks getting into the zone, this was at NDC last year and he talked about the particular challenges developers have, also there´s a sort of a fallacy that being in the zone is automatically more productive, it´s not. There are so many ways you can get distracted you can get pulled out and it´s actually downright addicting, it can be, so we have these distraction problems you know specially the better you get at what you do the more often people come to you with questions, problems, whatever and the more interruptions you have. So managing your environment is a really good first step to contain yourself. Also we talked on this podcast it was great about how what we used to do, I used to do as a developer when I was younger is rack myself, all nighters right? Up to 4 in the morning, which is great for flow.

Leo: You don´t want to stop, everything´s going, the balls are in the air, you can´t drop them.

Carl: Exactly, great for flow but not so good for the rest of your life so, he has some suggestions in terms of getting into and out of you know, when you want to be in control, of it which is really what inspired me to do music to flow, music to code by rather.

Leo: Every programmer I´ve ever seen, specially here because they´re all in open environments, cubicles, wear headphones, that´s job 1.

Carl: Yeah.

Leo: But what´s in those headphones?

Carl: Right, what´s in those headphones? It´s very rare actually that people listen to anything with lyrics or anything that´s greater in tempo than about 90 or 100 beats per minute, that tends to be a very special person that can block out all that kind of noise, but most of us, there was actually a study here, I put up a link to it, that linked baroque music that it´s about 50 to 80 bpm with focus and concentration.

Leo: I´ve always listened to baroque music when I wanted to think.

Carl: Yeah but the problem is not everybody likes classical music and so to some people it´s like you know and whatever, not everybody likes classical music. So I mean, I was brought up in the seventies, you know listening to great grooves and stuff like that. Absolutely, yeah.

Leo: Kenny Rankin, you poor pathetic soul.

Carl: Actually as a musician specially as a jazz musician people really look down on sort of soft jazz you know and I never really liked soft jazz, I like the traditional hard stuff but I like the groovy stuff too, like people say my music sounds like Steely Dan a lot and that´s because they´re really good at making that kind of music you know. But they were just imitating other people so.

Leo: So we´re listening to Music to code by right now right?

Carl: Yeah, go ahead turn it up a little.

Paul: I can only listen to instrumental music.

Leo: And if you feel like writing a tight loop, maybe something with kind of a wild framework.

Carl: This is 80 bpm but the challenge here was for me to make something that first of all lasts a long time and I picked 25 minutes for a reason I´ll tell you in a minute, but you want it to be something that gets familiar quickly so it loops but it can´t be boring, it also can´t be distracting you know, so it´s a fine line and I had to kickstart a campaign and I interacted with my backers to say hey what about this, what about this, and I got feedback, a lot of the feedback was oh that snares, just too distracting, got to turn that down or those drums or that sound that´s off on the left or whatever, yeah thats very distracting, take that out. It was more about taking stuff out than it was about you know, what to put in. So but I came up with this great album of three 25 minute pieces, I´ve since done 2 more, so those are all available in 4 minute samples are available too. Oh and the 25 minutes thing came from the Pomodoro technique, so this is a technique of fine management.

Leo: Is that a technique for making tomato sauce?

Carl: Well it´s funny, yes, it is Pomodoro, but it´s basically the timer, kitchen timer that looks like a tomato.

Mary Jo: Oh yeah.

Carl: Yeah, exactly so the idea is that

Leo: You did the kickstarter for this didn´t you?

Carl: Yeah I did, yeah it was successful. I started by setting a goal of $7500 dollars and I think in 30 days Richard Campbell was the one to make me hit a 10 grand.

Leo: That´s fantastic.

Carl: Let me tell you something, it´s weird because it´s the most lucrative musical project I´ve ever done and it´s mostly successful when people aren´t listening to it, that´s when they like it the most. So you know it´s kind of, I had to take a lot of stuff out but you know in the end it´s not music for listening, it´s a productivity tool.

Leo: Yeah.

Carl: So as the Pomodoro technique basically do things in 25 minutes increments, take 5 minutes to reassess, there´s a lot of developers using this already so they really like the fact and here´s the funny thing, the response has been unbelievable, like real results, people are tweeting I can´t believe how time is flying by when I´m listening to this stuff and coding.

Leo: I´m going to tell Steve Gibson about this because he actually does this with music that he´s selected, I can´t remember what he uses but he would love this, because that´s exactly what, he´s coding.

Paul: Probably not Slayer.

Leo: Not Slayer, there´s a Music from the Hearts of Space which is a wonderful website and a channel, there´s some talk in that, you can do it without talk, and I don´t, it´s not specifically for encouraging flow. This is the most perfect example of this I´ve ever heard because it´s just.

Carl: Well that´s what it´s designed for you know, it´s designed to be long running, it doesn´t get in the way, it never comes to the forefront of your consciousness and yet it´s not something that you are entirely bored by either.

Leo: Yeah, yeah. Nice.

Mary Jo: Nice, yeah are you going to bring any handouts for Build?

Carl: Yeah actually I´m going to bring a bunch of cds and hand them out, so corner me somewhere and I´ll give you one, for now you can go to MTCB.pwop.com and check it out there, Music to code by, mtcb.

Leo: And there´s a sample track there you can hear you know, what it sounds like.

Carl: Yeah, every one of them, if you go to the store, the download now or whatever, go to the store, every one of them has a sample, all five of them, there´s 3 on the cd then there´s an extra 2, but yeah I´ve been reading the comments, someone, Steve Smith was saying how he, there he is, right there, he´s saying how he had these kids, little babies and in the NICU and putting this music on calmed them, another guy says it calms his dog, his dog who´s like pacing and then sits down for the 25 minute, and then for 25 minutes he´s pacing again chasing his tail, there, that´s strange how it happens.

Leo: That´s great, wow.

Mary Jo: Very cool, nice.

Carl: Yeah it´s a surprise to me too Leo, I don´t understand.

Leo: Well I´ve always listened to baroque music because I like classical music so I have a massive collection of baroque, I mean literally, a massive collection of little known baroque stuff.

Carl: Wonderful.

Leo: It is, it´s nice but it is a little bit more foreground than this. This is soothing, I might fall asleep to this, my only fear, it´s so relaxing.

Carl: Something a little bit slower would probably put you to sleep, this is.

Leo: What is it 75?

Carl: Latest one 5 was 75, the first one is 60, that one you´re listening to is 60.

Leo: But you´re saying you can give us some heavy metal for the show.

Carl: Oh yeah, I do all kinds of music.

Leo: Well I´m looking at the stuff behind you in your studio and it´s obvious you play quite a bit of stuff, looks like so you record there?

Carl: Yeah it´s a beautiful world class facility here, you want me to show you the rest of it?

Leo: Yeah.

Carl: Alright, here we go.

Leo: Is this yours?

Carl: Oh yeah.

Leo: Oh man.

Mary Jo: I´ve been in there haven´t I Carl?

Carl: Yes, you have. So there´s the drum sets, some more amps and stuff and then we have a piano over here.

Leo: .Net has been very, very good to me, look at that.

Carl: That´s my diner booth right there.

Paul: I was going to say it looks like a diner, yeah.

Leo: So many programmers are musicians, there´s just some natural you know mathematical ability and music just seem to go together.

Carl: I´ve actually talked a lot about this, yeah there I am, I think that it´s not only the abstraction you know and the ability to work with abstractions which music is a huge abstraction over what we don´t really know but musical notation specially also practicing an instrument. If you practice an instrument like piano or guitar or whatever, you have to produce music, like producing an app, it´s a big picture, but you also have to zero in on these little technical details. You know, practice a run, a scale, or something that isn´t big picture at all, it´s a little technical detail you know, doing a little test harness or something or writing a routine, you know, honing those technical skills is critical but at the end of the day you have to zoom out and see the whole thing as a piece of music.

Leo: It´s nice stuff. So Music to code by, mtcb.com is that right?

Carl: .pwop.com P-W-O-P

Leo: .pwop.com

Carl: pwop is the name of my studio and it stands, it´s not an acronym, it´s actually the sound of a four head slap.

Leo: Ha, ha, ha, pwop, oh my God.

Paul: I love it.

Carl: It´s usually accompanied by it´s brother dop.

Leo: Cool.

Carl: That´s what it means.

Paul: It´s good.

Leo: Cool jazz baby.

Carl: So MTCB.pwop.com

Leo: Listen to the quiet storm, Carl Franklin, coming at you, beautiful Wednesday afternoon.

Carl: If you use this for things that are inappropriate I don´t want to know, so don´t email, you don´t tweet that please.

Leo: You could, you could. A slow jazz moment, yeah baby.

Carl: Well you know it´s about focusing right so.

Leo: Digging the fine sounds, Carl Franklin. It´s good, I like it, it´s very vocative.

Carl: It´s pretty cool yeah.

Leo: The podcast also, let´s not forget that, give you a big fat plug for a great show .net was it .net radio?

Carl: .netrocks

Leo: .netrocks, rocks and rolls.

Carl: We´ve done 1100 some odd shows now, we have been doing podcasts before there was podcasts so, 2002 is when we started.

Leo: Really? Wow, we should´ve called you to help defeat the podcast troll. You had prior that´s alright.

Carl: Podcast troll?

Leo: Oh you don´t even know about him, don´t worry about it now, he´s been defanged by the US patent and trademark office.

Carl: Yeah I don´t really have a lot of advice for people except you know, be early, that´s probably the best advice I can give. Be the first to do something and you got a pretty d¡good shot at it.

Leo: I´ve never understood the success of Twit, this show and the other shows, they´re really just people talking about stuff, but I think because we were the first, very early on, people grew attached like baby ducks.

Carl: Yeah, there´s some of that.

Leo: Now we can´t lose them.

Carl: Like maybe sloths maybe.

Leo: Can you, we should talk, we´ll give you credit whatever you want but I would love something. Paul and Mary Jo should really give you the specs. Somehow I don´t think Mary Jo is exactly the heavy metal rocker type.

Mary Jo: I´m not a metal head.

Carl: You would be surprised.

Leo: Really? Something we don´t know about Mary Jo?

Mary Jo: I think Carl plays, I´ve heard a lot of Carl´s music and it´s really interesting and good and I think he could come up with something easily.

Carl: Yeah I definitely would love to contribute there

Leo: You know these guys, you know Visual Basics so I think that´s pretty much all you need.

Paul: I´m thinking the intro to romeo delight by Van Halen something like that.

Carl: Alright.

Leo: I do know many programmers that does listen to heavy metal, I don´t think Miguel de Icaza is listening to a light jazz, I really don´t.

Carl: You know, it depends, some people can work with people screaming at them, I can´t even think with people screaming at me.

Leo: No, I can´t, but some people can, so it´s to each his own but.

Carl: Maybe it depends on your childhood and how much screaming you had to endure as a child you know, or how much you did I don´t know, but anyway, again this episode brought to you by an almost empty bottle of Blanton´s.

Leo: We´re just going to wake you up, with a little bit here, this is what Paul´s looking for. Chucka chucka chucka.

Paul: This is the ringtone on my phone.

Leo: Is it? Really? I have a Roxy music song is the ringtone on my phone and every time I hear Avalon for some reason I think the phone´s ringing and I jump up.

 

 

 

Paul: Were just going to wake you up for a little bit here.

Leo: This is what Paul’s looking for. Chugga, Chugga, Chugga.

Paul: This is the ringtone on my phone.

Leo: Is it really?

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: I have a Roxy Music song as the ringtone on my phone. Every time I hear Avalon for some reason I think the phone’s ringing, I jump up. I had to stop doing that.

Carl: Avalon. It’s like a Pavlovian response.

Leo: Yeah it is. Love that.

Carl: Yeah.

Leo: That’s kind of that, that style isn’t it.

Carl: Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of slow and groovy, yeah.

Leo: Wasn’t anything like early Roxy music. But that’s a – that’s a conversation for another day.

[LAUGHTER]

Carl: Yeah, wow. We could go down that one, too.

Leo: Are you going to come up after Build and join us in the studio? You’re welcome to if you’d like.

Carl: I would love to, sure! Yep.

Leo: So May Day. It’s a special edition of Windows Weekly - not next week but the week – uh, there is no show next week, because you guys will be busy, building ...

Paul: Oh right. Like what are you talking about, Leo? Oh yes.

Leo: Yes. But the following Friday, May 1st, Paul and Mary Jo will be in the studio. Please, we are sold out.

Paul: Mary Jo mentioned that we were going to be in Petaluma last week and I said “Did you have a stroke, what are you talking about?”

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: No, no Paul, the stroke is all on you my friend.

Paul: Yes, yes,

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: Why do I taste copper?

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: We’re going to have lots of beer, the studio will be full of people. Uh so don’t just show up kids, cause we won’t be able to let you in. We really are at the limit, uh fire marshal limit for this studio

Carl: I know you guys talk about beer a lot, right. You, Mary Jo, right? You guys?

Paul: Yeah

Carl: Like a craft beer thing going on and Leo, I know you’re a bourbon guy.

Mary Jo: Yeah

Leo: Yeah, well I got a pull, I tell you what, I’ll share the Lagavulin with you if you want.

Carl: Hey there you go

Leo: Or the bullet. I got a little bullet behind me, I got some good stuff and then, let them drink the beer.

Carl: Wow, well you know you, I’ll tell you what you should do, you should get Richard Campbell on this show to give you a lesson in scotch. Because he could go on for hours and you’d be loving it. Every little detail you need to know about all the ways different kinds of scotch are made and where they make them.

Leo: It’s fascinating isn’t it? Beer is like that too.

Paul: It sounds like our show is actually starting to come together as we speak.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: It’s going to be a lovely, lovely show. And what time are we starting, do you know, is it 2:00 PM Pacific?

Paul: I thought it was 2.

Mary Jo: 2 PM

Leo:  2 PM Pacific. 5 PM Eastern time. 21:00 UTC. You can watch live.

Paul: In a couple of weeks or whatever it is, because I know it’s not next week.

Leo: It is next week, its next week, a week from Friday.

Mary Jo: It’s a week from this Friday

Paul: Ah, what has happened?

Leo: And I’ll show you all my Apple watch. It’ll be fun

Carl: Oh great.

Mary Jo: Good, come up Carl it’ll be fun

[LAUGHTER]

Leo:  You better not

Carl: Alright should I bring a guitar, that the question

Leo: Oh please

Paul: Yes

Mary Jo: Oh yeah

Leo: Bring whatever. You know, people should bring their instruments – and their guitars

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: Bring your device.

Leo: If you have a device, if you’ve got a black bag full of instruments, whatever it is you have. Bring the Pappy Van Winkle and we’ll be here.

Carl: I actually have some of that. There was a, I swear to god, it’s the hardest bourbon to find in the world right. And a friend of mine who’s a distributer called me a said I’ve got 4 bottles of pappy van winkle, a 23, a 15, and two 10’s. I bought ‘em all.

Leo: I would have too and I’m not even a brown liquor liker

Carl: My wife was like I don’t even want to see that receipt. I don’t even want to see it. Let’s just say Christmas was really good that year. I still have the 23 that’s not even touched. It’s up in -

Leo: Those numbers are the barrel numbers right?

Carl: Years.

Leo: 1923? Oh!

Carl: No, no, no, Number of years aged.

Leo: Oh! It’s not like wine.

Carl: 23 years old. S

Carl:: Nice.

Leo: So you save the old stuff.

Carl: We can talk about orphan barrel too, which is my new fascination.

Leo: Mmm. Well I’m not going to bring out any of my bourbon you got to be –

Carl: Oh ok

Leo: You got to be – but I’ll have it here if you, if you –

Well let’s -

Carl: Well, I’ll try to find something locally

Leo: Oh there’s great stuff all around

Carl: Yeah that’ll be a lot of fun

Paul: Yeah definitely come up. We’ll talk to you after – you know, separately – how to make that happen, too.

Carl: Alright.

Paul: Yeah, yeah.

Carl: Sounds great

Paul: Mary Jo, has your power gone out?

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: You know what just happened? It was so sunny here a minute ago and it just got pitch dark out.

Leo: If you see if you see a giant Pillsbury dough boy outside your window, run!

Mary Jo: Like what just happened? I think it’s going to pour.

Leo: Oh my God. Oh my God. Mr. Franklin thank you sir.

Mary Jo: Than you Carl.

Leo: Everybody must go because you know .net rocks I’ve heard that yeah. Everybody must listen we have a lot to talk about this year. There was a couple of years we didn’t quite know what to talk about.

Leo: It’s great you hung in there for the 1100 episodes. Yeah, yep. Good job

Carl: Well thanks, thanks for having me on.

Paul: Thanks Carl. Appreciate it.

Leo:  Uh, let’s dissolve his camera.

Paul: Well see you in couple weeks or whenever.

Leo: I’ll see you next! Next week Paul!

[LAUGHTER]

Carl: Ah I’m melting. I’m melting.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: It’s sometime in the future.

Leo: He’s disappeared into the ether. Alright NEXT week.

Mary Jo: I have to turn on some lights.

1:05:00

Leo:  Alright well while Mary Jo turns on lights. And Paul just hangs in there

Paul: Paul will discuss the meaning the time.

Leo: The meaning of time. Let me talk about cooking. Is that alright with you? Wit chu? Have we sent you a Blue Apron box? We ought to. Oh you’d love this. So the name Blue Apron comes from the famous Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. The apprentices wear blue aprons and I think it’s just an apt name for blueapron.com although it really wasn’t designed as a cooking school, as designed for people who love food, for people who love to cook or want to cook, but don’t have the time to amass the ingredients and plan the meal.

Blue Apron will send you incredible meals, ready to cook, not cooked! Everything’s fresh, nothing frozen. All the ingredients come directly from local farms. They are fabulous, they’re healthful, 500-700 calories per serving. So yummy you’d never know. Cooking takes about ½ hour, the shipping is free, the menus never repeat! And it’s about $10 a meal, which is amazing. They have, they have Blue Apron for two and Blue Apron for families. So, you know I think Blue Apron for 2 is so romantic, you know you could cook here and make an amazing, delicious meal.

Uh, by the way, accommodating your dietary preferences and rigid delivery scheduling preferences. You don’t want to come home to a blue apron box that’s been sitting there for a week but they won’t do for to you.

The refrigerated boxes do keep the food delicious and fresh and you’re going to make an amazing meal. I want you to go to blueapron.com/twit to get your first two meals absolutely free. Let’s see what’s on the menu this week. Sirloin tip steaks with new potatoes, asparagus and radish hash.

One of the nice things about this, you get a beautiful colorful page recipe card with illustrations and instructions. There’s online tips and techniques so you can know exactly how to do the things they’re talking about. It is a cooking school you just won’t know it. And once you’ve cooked it once, you’re going to know how to do it. And will do it again I promise. I’ve been cooking a lot of the stuff we got originally from Blue Apron. How about Laotian Larb Gai with sticky rice, peanuts and mint. You may not know what Larb Gai is, it’s actually one the best known Laotian and northern Thai dishes in the world but it’s incredible.

Chicken vegetables, sticky rice which is like my favorite thing in the world. Uhh! Make it! I’m just getting hungry looking at this. Dukkah-Spiced Salmon. Harissa-Glazed Heirloom Carrot Salad. Three Pea and Barley Miso Ramen. Asparagus and Ricotta Sandwich. Great meals, delivered to your door. So yummy and at a great price, less than $10 each. It’s like eating in the world’s greatest restaurant and you made. It. You will impress, I guarantee you, the honey in your life. Blueapron.com/twit get your first two meals free.

We’ve converted a lot of the people in the twit family to Blue Apron. Denise Howell uses it all the time. Um, Jason Howell uses it all the time. I guess if your name is Howell you have to do it

Paul: I was just thinking that, any other Howells?

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: We’ve been cooking them. It’s funny when we get the Blue Apron – we get Blue Apron boxes sent to the studio pretty much every week. We kind of have a little auction we bring it to the kitchen, say alright, who wants to make the Harissa-Glazed Heirloom Carrot Salad this week, with Date Molasses and Spinach-Almond Couscous? You have never had anything so delicious than this.

Paul: I don’t know, I just ate at Applebee’s.

Leo: Yeah, yeah right.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Sure whatever you say. You can, by the way, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but all these recipes are also online. And look what they send you, heirloom carrots, not just reg – not grocery store carrots. Heirloom carrots. Oh man, I want to make this. So Mary Jo you could actually go online and get the ingredients and make this yourself without a Blue Apron subscriptions but let me know if you want me to –

Paul: Well you know Mary Jo is an accomplished chef.

Leo: Well exactly. But anybody could with this stuff. Alright, well it was fun having whoever that guy was, Carl.

Paul: That guy. That not-Richard-Campbell guy.

Mary Jo: That Franklin guy.

Leo: Franklin, Ben Franklin. Yeah, yeah. No that was really cool. Yeah, I’m going to get some of that music cause it sounds kind of neat

Mary Jo: That was great.

Leo: Yeah I guess we’ll see him again on Friday. How many other people – are the louder mad twins going to come?

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: I actually don’t know. So our plan was when we got to Build, we’ll see who’s going to be around on Friday and try to figure that out

Leo: Well just text us cause well need to have a big enough table. And well put up microphones for everyone –

Paul: Yeah well definitely do that

Leo: But 2pm yeah, 2pm it’s going to be fun. 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, 21:00 UTC. May 1st, May Day.

Paul: You know some people are actually going to leave on Friday. So well yeah well figure that out.

Leo: You know the day after if you guys want to stick around were going to do the first edition of the new Screen Savers Show which we’re launching May –

Mary Jo: Ah! You guys brought that back. That’s cool.

Leo: We’re very excited about that. We’d love for you to be a part of that.

Paul: I got to fly back early that morning

Leo: You got to go back? Alright. No problem.

Paul: Well, I’ll be back for one day and then I going to Chicago the next day

Mary Jo: I know, I’m going to Chicago the next day.

Leo: What’s Chicago?

Paul: Ignite.

Mary Jo: Ignite. Another Microsoft show.

Paul: I don’t know. I don’t know.

Leo: OK.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: Its good stuff.

Mary Jo: Sorry

Leo: Whatever. Whatevs. Um is there a new build of Windows 10 Mobile I think there was. Did I imagine that?

Mary Jo: No, you did not.

Paul: Uh basically.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Are you just tired of the whole topic?

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: Um, actually I’m actually kind of getting there. This build doesn’t have any new features. It’s just bug fixes. I mean honestly, given the state of the OS it’s probably welcome at this point. Microsoft talked briefly about the universe lapse for Office and so presumably this will be the Build well be able to get those on, but I didn’t see any - I installed it on two phones - I haven’t seen any new features so I assume that that claim is true.

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: Although it is working now on some of the phones that were bricked. Forget being bricked right?

Leo: Oh how do I unbrick?

Mary Jo: Uh good question?

Paul: Uh well the way you want to unbrick is to use the recovery tool which has been fixed too.

Leo: And with the recovery tool put the newest edition on.

Paul: Well actually with the recovery tool you go back to one and then

Leo: Oh you go back to 8-1. Oh

Mary Jo: Yeah they had to change the recovery tool right? They had to issue a new version I believe?

Paul: Yeah it was blowing data down on the phone too quick so I guess on low-end devices with not much ram

Leo: Oh

Paul: It was actually

Mary Jo: 520, 525 yeah

Leo: Oh interesting

Paul: Yeah

Leo: That makes sense

Paul: So not the big problem you had with the 1520

Leo: No that’s a fast phone.

Paul: Yeah but

Leo: I think that was just a bad phone so I don’t know. What’s the deal with Cyanogen?

Paul: What is the deal?

Leo: So, so is, so Microsoft - so to go back a little in time – uh, Cyanogen which was started as an alternative ram for Android phones. You’d have to root the phone, put a new recovery on and then you could install CyanogenMod. Um, they kind of got some legitimacy when they started coming out on the OnePlus One phone, in fact it made the OnePlus One a great phone, I was a big fan of it. Uh, then the CEO said, “Were going to crush Android,” which is a little strange but ok.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: It’s a not just biting the hand that feed you it biting the rest of the body.

Leo: Swallowing the whole thing

Paul: Yeah

Leo: Then there was a rumor that Microsoft – false rumors its turns out – Microsoft was going to pump some big bucks into cyanogen as an investor. That did not happen right?

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: But apparently they are in bed a little bit right?

Mary Jo: Yeah Microsoft and cyanogen signed a partnership where cyanogen going to include and distribute some of Microsoft consumer apps and services on their coming Android distributions.

Leo: Similar to the Galaxy S6 where I’m getting skype and one drive and one note – that kind of thing?

Paul: More than that

Leo: More than that?

Mary Jo: Yeah let’s see, I’m looking for the list here. It’s Skype, OneNote, Outlook, the Bing services, Office and OneDrive.

Leo: Oh that’s quite – that’s pretty much it.

Mary Jo: And it sounds as though on different devices you may see different versions of those services or not all of those services on every device. It’ll be surfaced where it’s appropriate. But still they’ve signed this partnership and Microsoft is building custom versions of theses apps for cyanogen.

Leo: Interesting. From the point of view Cyanogen, if you’re going to kill Android, uh, you need to get away from the Google apps and the Google services and you need a replacement. I don’t know if this heralds a move away from Google apps to Microsoft apps but it could? But you’d have to have a store, that would be the key.

Paul: That’s just another part of their mobile strategy, you know it’s – they’ll probably announce this year more deals with device makers that make you know Google play devices too, you know I think this is just kind of covering the bases.

Leo: Microsoft would have to do some serious effort to replace the Google services. There’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff. There’s Maps, there an app store.

Mary Jo: I know, the app store, I mean what are they going to do with that, right?

Leo: Yeah, and by the way, and that’s why the European Union is going after Google in that regard is, if you Google apps, if you want the app store which you need, you have to take the whole kit and caboodle.

1:15:00

Paul: Well you know what does cyanogen do now for an app store?

Leo: They use Google apps.

Mary Jo: Yeah

Paul: Ok.

Leo: So when you install cyanogen you also install the Google apps.

Paul: Oh so problem solved.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: You know, unless, oh I see.

Leo: You, yeah, problem solved unless you say, “I hate Google and I want to kill Android.”

Paul: Well you could install the Amazon app store.

Leo: Oh that’s worse. But that’s how Amazon handled it right. Amazon’s AOSP. It’s a pure, it’s a pure open source implementation. So that’s how they handled it.

Presumably if cyanogen got enough cooperation from Microsoft - they’d need a lot! You’d have to write a lot of core services. – Uh, they could turn their back on Google. That would be a very interesting play.

Mary Jo: It would.

Leo: There’s no evidence that that’s the case though.

Mary Jo: I mean they’re definitely teaming up to take on Google, right? Like that’s the message here, so.

Paul: Yeah, yeah. Just like Microsoft and Yahoo teamed up to take on Google.

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: Not just –

Leo: Uh, sure.

[LAUGHTER].

Leo: Wow, Did we, did we – was I hearing you last week – yeah were we talking about that, by the way? The Yahoo deal?

Mary Jo: Yahoo deal. I think we have some new –

Paul: I think it’s coming up.

Leo: Coming up. Before that though. Let’s talk about office.

Mary Jo: Yeah I feel like we’ve talked a lot already on the show today about universal apps. Like what’s next for office universal. So I think we could skip that.

Leo: Are we still on track to, for instance, here’s why I’m interested. Once we get the new website up and the new API for apps I would like to find a XAML, I think a XAML developer that could do one app that would run on – to me, I would love one app that would run on Windows 10, Windrows mobile 10, and Xbox. That’s still on track right? I’m not smoking –

Mary Jo: Nope

Paul: That’s what next week is all about. Or whenever the Build is happening.

[LAUGHTER].

Mary Jo: You’ll be there, its next Wednesday, my friend.

Paul: Mary Jo’s going to spend a lot of time just pointing me in the right directions.

Leo: Paul, Paul.

Paul: No, no, it’s over here turn around. Turn around.

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: I’ll just, I’ll dangle a pen loop and you’ll follow along.

Leo: There is one stip- you know one of the things you get with the Google apps on Android is mail. Uh, Outlook now is, right? Microsoft now has Outlook or is it coming? They have it on iOS.

Mary Jo: As of today in fact. Is this a complete or is this something different? It’s a complete as could be that’s Microsoft’s been tweaking and its Outlook for Android it’s in the Google Play Store, today. And it’s no longer a preview version.

Leo: Let me get it. Downloading now.

Mary Jo: Go get it it’s there

Paul: Yeah it’s a solid app. Yep.

Leo: Is it like Outlook for the desktop cause if it is I’m not getting it.

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: It’s like Outlook for iOS.

Leo: No a complete was great. I liked it a complete

Paul: Yeah that’s what it is a complete. Although it’s been updated significantly since the purchase. Yeah.

Leo: Well but the basic UI is the same? Looks like it is.

Paul: Yeah. I think they’re all starting to look the- yeah

Leo: Yeah

Mary Jo: They I mean they all have the customizations a bit for the underlying operating systems but if you put right now the coming version of Outlook for Windows phone, that app, next to Outlook for Android and Outlook for iOS, they’re starting to look more alike, which is what Microsoft wants.

Leo: And moving in the direction of more – Android is the hamburger as opposed to the –

Paul: Yeah, the pictures that are showing now are the tablets so it’s not as, kind of clear, but I don’t know if they have a phone version,

Leo: they have the complete swiping thing which I really like

Paul: Swipe trashers which are customizable, which is kind of nice.

Leo: Calendars in there. Im downloading this right now. This looks great.

Mary Jo: Its free. Another good thing.

Leo: Yeah were just showing the table

Paul: I don’t know why it’s just tablet.

Mary Jo: Yeah it says right on the top though, for phones and tablets, I believe.

Leo: Yeah compatible with all my devices and boy, I have a lot of Android devices. So, um. Good. Coolio.

Leo: Well what else is going on in your lives? Your micro-softy lives.

Paul: I mean, we can, kind of maybe, move along to the SharePoint Exchange stuff. They updated OneNote on the web. Actually one case it was literally OneNote on the web got spell checking. Uh, they added something to Bing, image search where you can save an image right to OneNote which is kind of a nice integration feature. And they updated Sway, but I mean these things get updated fairly often, I mean just kind of going through the minutia of them isn’t super interesting, but if you’re using either of those things you know they’ve been updated. I think the bigger news here is the SharePoint Exchange stuff.

Mary Jo: Yeah so at Ignite which is the week after Build, Paul, in Chicago,

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Paul!

Paul: So like a month from now.

Mary Jo: Yeah not a month away. It’s about two weeks away. Microsoft’s going to be talking about the next versions of SharePoint Server which they call SharePoint Server 2016 an Exchange Server which they call Exchange Server 2016. Now the thing you need to know is the Exchange Server 2016 ships in 2015. It’s going to ship by the end of this year. But SharePoint Server 2016 which was also supposed to ship this year is now shipping Q2 2016. And Microsoft announced last week they are pushing back the date for SharePoint Server 2016. Though they didn’t really say why they’re pushing it back. They just said, “you know what, we’re not going to have it out this year but we’re still going to show you it at Ignite and we’re going to talk about it and we’re going to share more about the feature set and what the goals are in terms of mobile and cloud and compliance and reporting, but right now we’re not even going to get you the test build of that until December or so of this year.” So, yeah, SharePoint’s running later than we thought, Exchange Server 2016, I think some people already have this now on private preview but, uh, it’s basically, Microsoft is going to be updating document collaboration and some of the search capability around as well as the basic API’s around calendar and mail and contacts so it’s just going to be getting some of these incremental updates to get it to feature parody what exchange online. But bother of those things are going to be very big at Ignite so were going to hear more on that.

And then, we should mention the customer lock box too, I think. Uh, at RSA yesterday, Microsoft talked about this new feature they’re adding to Office 365 and to Exchange Online by the end of this year. It’s basically like a notification feature, is my understanding, so if you’re somebody who, for some reason, has some problem with Exchange where Microsoft actually needs to go into your account and look at customer data to fix it, they can’t just do it. And they won’t just do it. This is going to be, they have to give you written or the mailed notice or however they give you the notice, so you have the right to refuse, or not, um allowing to Microsoft to access to access your account.

Leo: Uh you mean that you didn’t have that before.

Mary Jo: I know I was surprised too! O was like did they just do that before? They just wandered in.

Paul: No I think people were just calling in support and realized in the course of support someone who works at Microsoft is now looking at my customer data or my internal data.

Leo: One would think there would be a moment during that call in which theyd say id like to access your customer data.

[LAUGHTER] 

Mary Jo: By the way

Leo: By the way.

Paul: Sure

Mary Jo: But this gives you an extra level of protection now and your administrator will hear from Microsoft and say, “Hey if you want us to fix this we have to look at your customer data. Do you want us to? Yes or no?

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: This is appropriate. And this is responding to the overall concern of customer privacy going on right now.

Mary Jo: This was a good, good news thing. Yep. So, that’s it for Office.

Leo: Let’s talk Bing, then.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: Finally

Leo: Finally I’ve been waiting

Mary Jo: Finally

Leo: Uh, when last we visited the Microsoft-Bing alliance uh, we, uh they were –

Paul: The shakiest of plans.

Leo: Yahoo had said we’re going to extend the talks for 30 days. And we speculated a lot on what’s going on. Are they not making enough money from the deal you know? Microsoft gives Yahoo search but uses Yahoo’s cell – overture – ads, I don’t its complicated. It’s a revenue – you know, some short of revenue sharing. So, what did they end up doing?

Mary Jo: Um so we knew already that they had renegotiated the deal and that there had been some changes made as to how much of Yahoo’s backend search is now going to be powered by Bing. On the desktop it had been 100 percent and on mobile I guess it had not. But now it’s, I think 51 percent is going to be powered by Bing and Yahoo has an open, kind of um, option to get somebody else to power the other 49 percent, if they think it makes more sense. Now who is the other person? Its Google alright, I mean who else is going to do that, right?

Paul: Right

Mary Jo: Yeah, so we don’t know how that’s going to work or if anything around antitrust would prevent that from happening. We don’t really know what it means that they are untethered from the Microsoft agreement in that way now. But what came to light this week that’s kind of interesting that we didn’t know last week was um, I’ve been asking around alright now that they’ve renegotiated the deal, can either of them get out of the deal before 5 more years, because this was the 5 year point in the 10 year deal. And it turns out, yes they can. Either of them can get out of the deal after this October and all they have to do to get out of it is send a written notice to the other and say “Hey were done,” and give them four months heads up and then the deal is done.

Paul: By the way to put that in perspective, for me to leave my gym I had to go physically.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: So these guys could just send a letter on their won.

Mary Jo: Right

Paul: You know

Leo: So they got that going for them

Paul: Well, that’s actually very interesting. I mean that’s actually in many ways the most notable part of this deal.

Mary Jo: I know, it is in a way. Although, again, you have to ask yourself, if you’re Yahoo and you say, “Hey, we don’t want Bing to power us any more”, what is going to power the backend of our search?

Paul: We don’t have search, that’s all.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I mean either you get Google or you have been secretly building your own search capabilities in the background which we think is what’s been happening. Um they’ve been continuing there own search engines in some way, at least for mobile and maybe in other areas. Or they have some other –

Leo: You know I don’t think they could do too much in secret because one of the things you have to do is crawl the web and web crawlers are not invisible. You see them

Mary Jo: They’re not secret

Leo: In fact I can look at my log and see what web crawlers have visited unless they’re doing it under by do or something,

Mary Jo: Yeah I think they were continuing I think they have the right t to hold on to a number their own internally developed search technologies, even when they did that agreement with Microsoft. So how the question is, do you kind of step up that work? Um, do you just do mobile and not desktop? They have a lot of options but the question is how many of these really make sense because running a web search engine, it’s kind of running a cloud data center it’s not for everybody and it’s not for people who don’t have deep pockets right?

LEO LAPORTE Right. I’m really wondering – if Yahoo is a content company do they even need search?

Paul: By the way, that’s a fantastic question or is it enough to just be able to build on top of someone else’s basically commoditized back end which is sort of what they’re doing right now. I’m actually reading a book about Yahoo now and I’m desperate to find the answer question what the hell is Yahoo you know basically I this was the fundamental question facing the company when Microsoft tried to buy them, when they, you know, uh, do they need to settle? People have gone back and forth about this I think it was Carol Bartz who decided let’s just get this deal done with Microsoft and get it done.

Leo: For historic reasons we think of Yahoo as search engine but that’s historic. And of course when Marissa Myer became CEO the question was is she going to make them a content only company or is it going to be a services company like Google is?

Paul: And of course there’s like a portal company like Yahoo or I don’t – I’m sorry like AOL – I don’t know what they are, I don’t think that they know what they are. This is part of the fundamental problem.

Leo: Well I feel like –

Paul: I mean, no one looks at them like a technology company there’s no platform that Yahoo has that people are building off of.

Leo: I think that Myer must know what her strategy is, what her goals are. How long has she been CEO?

Paul: A couple of years. Two years. I would hope so.

Leo: And it sure looks like they’re a content company, let’s face it. Not a search company. Now ad sales is critical but you put ad sales –

Paul: You know, Netflix is not building an internet services company, they fly on the back of that stuff, I mean that’s what Yahoo should be doing.

Leo: Yeah, interesting. That may be the source of this conversation with Microsoft –

Paul: We don’t know, remember part of this deal is that if Microsoft doesn’t deliver certain results, you know they pay Yahoo extra. Like there’s a minimum guarantee on payments. Um, and we don’t know what those have looked like over time, I don’t think. According to the book I’m reading now, the first, at least the first three years of this deal, Microsoft had to pay them extra because they weren’t delivering enough. This is completely unsourced, I can’t speak to the veracity of that but I think part of the problem from the buyers perspective I think was that they weren’t getting enough. I think another part of the problem was they weren’t able to control their own destiny enough and do more of the advertising on top of, uh, the search results and so I think she probably accomplished both.

1:30:00

Leo: You know, Kara Swisher is the only one who really knows what’s going on

Mary Jo: I know

Leo: inside

Paul: I think that she knows so much

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: I think she knows more than Marissa Myer knows what’s going on.

Leo: Although at some point Kara’s going to wonder gosh is this really what I want my legacy to be? I was the person who knew what was going on inside Yahoo. Like really? I was the person who knew what was going on inside AOL?

Paul: Does she know what Yahoo is? I would appreciate that answer.

Leo: Well “amaawl” in our chatroom pointed us to an article from January of last year by Kara Swisher on <re/code> talking about search technologies called Fast Break and Curveball that Yahoo was working on. So uh, I don’t, you know, I don’t – Yahoo’s like Google as an advertising company. Um, unlike Google they sell their advertising against their content. They currently sell advertising –

Paul: They also sell against other people’s content. I’d high-five you if I was right there.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: So, um, I don’t know there’s a lot of conversation right now about this cause, yeah, once you been CEO for three years, you know you pretty much need to –

Mary Jo: Yeah

Leo: Fish or cut bait.

Paul: Actually, if you’re at Yahoo you pretty much need to move on, that’s usually the time you get rid of them.

Leo: Time to fish or cut bait. Yep. Alright, uh, boy we’ve exhausted that topic. Microsoft closes its open source subsidiary

Mary Jo: Yeah this is just a very quick mention, um, Microsoft had this subsidiary they called Microsoft open technologies it was a wholly owned subsidiary that they started 3 years ago and last week they quietly announced, well, it’s funny, what they quietly announced was that they were folding it back into the company but what they’re really doing is shuttering it. And they’re not laying off the people who worked there, they’re giving them a chance to find other jobs inside the company I believe but year it but the reasons they’re shuttering it is kind of intermeeting. When they started this just 3 years ago, open source was still not widely accepted by Microsoft management and they were kind of like one of the bastions of open source at Microsoft, but now every division that the company is doing open source. They’re open sourcing code, they’re working with GitHub they’re working with Docker. They’re working with all kinds of companies that they didn’t work with in the past. So you don’t really need a wholly owned subsidiary that’s separate now

Leo: Well, the fact as you pointed out in your article Microsoft doesn’t say they were closing it. They say were absorbing it.

Mary Jo: Yeah. “Absorbing it.” They’re closing it guys. Anyway

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: It’s like embracing it and extending it.

Mary Jo: It kind of is. Yeah

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: “We’re absorbing it.”

Mary Jo: Its good news that they don’t need it, uh, to me. There is good news piece here and it’s now Microsoft is embracing open source and in fact almost mandating open source inside the company. Um, so you don’t really need somebody who’s a champion that’s outside the company now.

Leo: Right. Uh, new Creative Cloud version of Lightroom came out yesterday. Lightroom 6. Um, I’m excited, I downloaded it immediately and I think Microsoft folks might be thrilled because there’s a Surface Pro 3 mode.

Paul: You know I don’t quite get how this is possibly only for Surface Pro 3 but apparently if you’re using it with the keyboard, Ligthtroom works as it does anywhere else. It looks like Lightroom has all the same toolbars, etcetera. But if you remove the keyboard, which I take it to mean a type cover but also perhaps a key board on a dock system or whatever, and you’re using it as a tablet, it switches into a tablet specific mode where it’s touch friendly controls and browsing and light editing and so forth. Yeah.

Leo: That’s awesome. I think that’s –

Paul: Interesting.

Leo: That, that pushes me to buy a Surface Pro 3. I think there would be a lot of photographers who up to now have purchased Macs.

Paul: I only use Photoshop like this but Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator all have, well, they don’t actually, like specific Surface Pro 3 because they work on other high dpi displays too, but – they have Surface Pro 3 specific features which also work on some other Windows computers where they adapt to the device in some way. You know for Photoshop it’s about the high dpi screens, it bumps up all the UI elements so you can actually see them. Uh, too much in my opinion but whatever, it works it’s there. But now I think the Lightroom one is the most aggressive of those. It’s pretty cool

Leo: Adobe makes a Lightroom for iPad but it’s not nearly as, you know, it’s not the full Lightroom functionality. It syncs up via collections over the cloud, um, but I think for a lot of people the idea of a touch tablet, to go to do the triage so I come home with 3000 pictures from my trip or the wedding shoot and I flick through them, I say this this, this, this, this. Very quick in touch, touch is a very natural way to do it. You can zoom in it’s a great screen

1:35:00

on the Surface Pro 3 so you’re getting a very accurate reproductions of the photos. I’m not sure how you get the photos in there because you don’t have a huge amount of storage but, yeah but I don’t know about that, I’ll have try it. But it tempts me I got to say. Uh, and then I could do some simple adjustments with the pen. Wow. I really like that. So it does use the pen. But you haven’t’ tried it yet, I don’t know.

Paul: No but its, yeah of course it does, I mean yeah its touch or the pen.

Leo: That bundle is great deal, the photography bundle is awesome the Photoshop and Lightroom for 10$ a month is a very good deal. I’m – I’m boy – interesting. I’m a big Lightroom guy as you can tell. It’s all about the Lightroom. I love it, I love it. Well you’re probably Photoshop guy right?

Paul: Yeah I use Photoshop all the time

Leo: Yeah. Cause you’re a designer more than a photographer. I don’t know I shouldn’t put words in your mouth

Paul: I’m an actor and an entrepreneur.

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: He plays guitar.

Leo: He’s Donald trump ladies and gentleman. And you’re fired! Microsoft is making an announcement it’s going to make an Apple watch, a version of PowerPoint so I can advance my PowerPoint slides by tapping my watch. Hallelujah!

Paul: That’s basically, that’s almost exactly what they announced.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: So, yep. Yeah why not?

Leo: Bout time.

Paul: The thing is –

Leo: Apple responded immediately by saying, “We’re doing that for Keynote, too.” Which is funny.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah, so no surprise here. A lot of people buy – if you do a lot of slide talks and stuff – buy clickers or something so they can advance –

Paul: Yeah, there are phone apps you know, we talked about that recently. The Office Remote.

Leo: That’s right, that’s right. So Office Remote on the Apple watch. All 5 of you can enjoy that.

Paul: Basically. And the cross over between people actually on an Apple watch and would be doing a PowerPoint presentation is perhaps small, I don’t know. On their iPhone. I don’t know.

Leo: I’ve heard that Beyoncé does a lot of PowerPoint.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: I’m not kidding

Paul: Could be.

Mary Jo: That gold watch.

Leo: I must have misheard.

Paul: Here’s what I’m thinking for the next album.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: Slide 1 of 47

Leo: I’ve prepared a little presentation for you.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Yeah. Um, I am actually, I downloaded the Outlook for my Nexus 7. You know there might be a reason – on the Android - why they show the table thing, it really is very tablet-centric. It’s perfect on a tablet.

Paul: It works great on a phone, I have it on my Galaxy S5, too.

Leo: Oh ok. Microsoft is doing a good job both on iOS and now on Android of these mobile apps, I think they’re quite good and these acquisitions have been strategic and smart.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Um, what do you think, do you have the Android version of Outlook, you said?

Paul: Yeah, yeah, so I, last week I looked at what was available from Microsoft on iOS and not surprisingly it’s like, you know, 50-something or whatever apps but it’s kind of amazing.

Leo: Huge, yeah.

Paul: Its actually pretty close on Android as well, there are many, many apps – uh, Microsoft apps – on Android and the thing that’s interesting about Android and this probably plays into that cyanogen story from before, is that Android, being more open is also more extensible by third parties and so some of the things that Microsoft can do on Android, it can’t do on iOS. So we see things like lock screen replacements and I used the next lock screen that Microsoft makes, it’s fantastic it’s got different modes for when you’re at work when you’re at home, on the road, you can launch apps from you can check your calendar, you can do text messaging. It’s got all this stuff that’s built right into the lock screen. Um, but you know it’s one of those things you got as a Windows phone use I sort of didn’t really ever want to look this closely, you know, like I have I mean, I have test phones and I have Microsoft apps on them and I don’t really, I don’t use, sit here and use Android and iOS every – week – actually I do use iOS every day. But I don’t use them as my primary device and I have a bunch of Microsoft apps on here but, you know we’ve talked about in the past the Microsoft Account app which is a really nice way of doing two factor authentication where you don’t have to type in code, you know you just accept it on the phone and, that’s an Android only app at this point.

Um, it’s just, it’s kind of amazing that the one piece that’s missing on phones is the new office apps. Right now they still only have the Office Hub single app like we have on Windows phone but soon we’ll have full blown Word, Excel and PowerPoint, in addition to OneNote and One Drive which already – I’m sorry, OneNote and Outlook which already exist.

But you know I – me, honestly for being in the Microsoft ecosystem, uh, it’s not quite parody. There’s a few things on iOS that are unique to iOS. There are few things to Android that are unique to Android. I want to saw there are a few things on Windows phone that are unique to Windows phone but there aren’t that many unfortunately anymore. You really can get a full blow Microsoft experience on any mobile device right now. It’s pretty amazing change just from even just like a year ago.

Leo: It is.

Paul: Every single device on this table just buzzed me.

Leo: Hm, must be time. Time for your meds, Paul.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Time to book your tickets

Paul: It says, “You got to go, you’re traveling next week buddy, what are you doing?”

Leo: We should all go to Sydney to welcome the Microsoft store in Sydney. Ah, Sydney is a great city Do you know where in Sydney?

Mary Jo: Yes we know, Westfield Sydney on Pitt Street Mall.

Leo: Cool. Next to the Sephora, right there.

Mary Jo: Yeah, and near an Apple store, I believe, as well.

Paul: Sure

Mary Jo: First Microsoft brick-and-mortar store outside of North America.

Leo: Oh I didn’t realize that, wow.

Mary Jo: Yep. And now there’s rumor I saw on Neowin today, Brazil might have the second, somewhere.

Leo: Don’t they have a big piracy problem in Brazil, am I wrong? I thought Brazil was a big Linux country?

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: I think they are big Linux country.

Leo: I think they are. They have a big open source community.

Mary Jo: I think they are actually but I think they also big windows phone – I believe, I mean um – well, big, bigger than 3% but maybe not that big.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Biggish

Mary Jo: Relatively big.

Leo: Good, alright. Uh, let’s see well clean up some of the details and go to the back of the book, let’s see we’ve got an update for Xbox?

Paul: Yeah, I haven’t fully written the – I’ve written the May system update. So the May system update were going to get on Xbox one is now in preview testing so if you’re in the Xbox One preview program you get that. The big one in my mind is, finally, support for mirror cast, meaning that if you’re using your Xbox One to, kind of, do everything on your HDTV you have now wirelessly display a Windows phone, a Windows device, an Android phone, or a tablet, uh, to the screen through this one device you already have.

Or if you’re going to look at it, kind of, from a more cynical standpoint you could say, “Look I just created a $500 version of a $29 dock or whatever but you know, you don’t have to switch your HDMI inputs, it’s, it’s a nice thing to have. It should be –

Leo: You know, it’s good, mirror cast is important to support I think

Paul: Yeah and you know I haven’t look at this one as much, it’s little tougher now cause I’m traveling but Microsoft is talking up the Xbox app for Windows 10 and I believe has updated it and will be updated through the store so if you’re on the preview you be able to get the new version of it and I think the big new thing in this release is game DVR for Windows games. Um, and that’s about all I can say about that.

Leo: How would that work?

Paul: That’s a good question, Leo.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: I’m not really sure

Leo: Would you have to have the app running?

Paul: Yeah, so you would be able to, in other words, the point behind game DVR is something awesome just happened in the game and you want to take a clip of it.

Leo: It’s awesome on Xbox, you do it all the time. It’s an Xbox verbal command.

Paul: As I recall the way they explained this back in January, this should work for any game, in fact it should work, it could work outside of games, as well. Basically where you say, “Oh I want to record that,” however you make that happen, and then you can go back in time a certain amount of seconds and get a recording of some excellent thing that just happened on a game and post it to a social network or – or, I should say to their, you know they have a built-in service as part of Xbox Live and then from there you can save it to a social network.

Leo: I guess if you could do it on an Xbox, you could do it on a PC.

Paul: Yeah

Leo: Yeah. Alright so before we get to –

Paul: I’ll look at that.

Leo: Yeah would you please? Thank you.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Would you? But you are going to get on an airplane soon?

Paul: That’s what I hear.

Leo: Build is coming. When does build start? Monday?

Paul: Two weeks from now, Leo.

Mary Jo: Wednesday!

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: Next Wednesday, Paul.

Leo: Next Wednesday, so a week from today, so that’s why we won’t be doing the show Wednesday, we’ll be doing it on Friday at 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern on May 1st. You’re having a meetup on Thursday right?

Mary Jo: We are. Thursday night if you’re in San Francisco. Paul, be there please. 5:30-8:30 at a bar called the Irish Bank. You don’t need to rsvp, you’ll see us. We’ll all be there.

Paul: You’ll see us.

Leo: The Irish Bank Bar, what a name for a place.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: Yeah

Leo: And then we are sold out for tickets for our live show on May 1, um, I’m sorry to say it was very popular item but –

Mary Jo: That’s good though.

Leo: But we will stream it live, you can watch it live, and it sounds like were going to have a lot of fun. And then there’s going to be a beer event.

Mary Jo: Yep

Mary Jo: We’re doing a beer podcast.

Leo: Oh, fun.

Mary Jo: At Ignite, the next Microsoft show which, uh, the beer podcast is on Sunday May 3rd, and it’ll be available later. I’m doing it with these Microsoft guys, Joey Snow and Rick Claus, and they do a show on Channel 9 called Patch and Switch. So we’re going to talk all about beer.

Paul: Oh good

Mary Jo: And we had a contest, we talked about it on the show here last week and if you won and you’re going to get a free ticket to that, I’m going to be DMing you very soon on Twitter and telling you, you won.

Paul: That sounds, uh, very violent.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: DMing you!

Mary Jo: And then, this is great, we, Paul and I are going to have a Windows Weekly meetup in Chicago May 4th, you don’t need to rsvp, its 8pm to 10pm, at a place called Pork Chop on Randolph Street in Chicago. So just come.

Paul: I hope it’s exactly what it sounds like.

Mary Jo: It is.

Leo: Pork chop?

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: I saw this place and I thought, this is your kind of restaurant Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: I know. It’s all barbeque, southern, I mean Chicago barbeque and craft beer and lots of whiskeys. It should be a nice place

Leo: Joe will be living on coleslaw and beer.

Mary Jo: They have catfish. I eat fish

Leo: Oh catfish. Catfish is good.

Mary Jo: And corn bread.

Leo: Mm, that sounds real good.

Paul: That sounds like the Russians are trying to break into my bunker.

Mary Jo: Uh oh.

Leo: Tap tap tap

Leo: Well we’re almost done here so let the Russians in.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: And let’s start with Paul’s tip of the week.

Paul: So last week, although it seems like longer, cause of, I have an ongoing problem with time apparently. Um, I wrote, I wrote about and then talked about, kind of an examination of free alternatives to Microsoft Office and then actually since writing that I’ve been using them more often. And the two that I’ve used the most are Office Online and Google Docs and in both case you could actually do a few things to make them work a little more like you know a real downloaded, you know, kind of offline version of Office. And in the case of Office Online obviously it looks and works like Microsoft Office but there’s not as much to do. But you can of course pin that to your task bar and kind of access it like an app of sorts and it works pretty well like that.

Google docs it pains me to admit this, is actually more sophisticated in the sense that you can configure it to work offline. You can also, you don’t have to do this on the Microsoft side but you can also change the style sheets and so forth to make to documents look exactly like documents you’d create in the latest version of Microsoft Word so I’ve kind of written up how you can do all that stuff. If you were so inclined, and don’t wish to pay for Office.

And then the software pick of the week is Halo Spartan Strike, and so this is the second in, I guess what is going to be a series of top-down Halo games so something like a triple-A Halo Spartan first-person title but it’s a mobile game and the first game was called Halo Spartan Assault. It probably came out about, I’d say over a year ago, a year and a half ago. And that game came up for Windows phone, and Windows, Windows, you know Windows modern at the time.

For the second game they’re releasing it on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 of course, but also on Steam which is the kind of rival PC-based gaming service [DOOR BELL] and more painfully on iPhone and iPad and concurrent with those releases they’re releasing the first game on the other platforms as well. So if you’ve never played them and you want to play them on iPad you can buy a pack that has both games at a reduced price. And I figure familiar with first Halo Spartan Assault, Spartan Strike is going to look very similar. It has, you know, new weapons, new ships, new environments and you know, new enemies and things like that but it’s basically the same type of game, it’s just kind of more of it.

And the first game was fantastic and so, I actually did install this on my iPad which of course by doing that I’ve now not actually played it that much because I don’t actually use the iPad that much but I wanted to see what it looked like and depressingly it looks exactly like it does on Windows. So, um if you do have such a device, congratulations, you can play Halo now.

[TALKING IN BACKGROUND]

Leo: I’m sorry, I’m just talking to uh, I’m just talking to – this is so weird I’m talking to somebody at our front door right now

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: Great

Mary Jo: Whoa.

Leo: “Yeah, I can’t let you in from here, I’m at work, but Michael should have his key.” That is just weird.

[TALKING IN BACKGROUND]

Mary Jo: That is weird.

Paul: That is very strange

Leo: “Ok, see you later, love you bye-bye.” One more thing to bother you

[LAUGHTER]

Mary Jo: Although it’s kind of good security-wise, right?

Leo: Isn’t that wild?

Paul: Imagine, you’ll be doing that on your Apple watch soon.

Leo: Any minute now. Mines coming Friday by the way,

Paul: Oh that’s actually very quick

Leo: I’m surprised

Paul: Did they contact you to tell you that or – ?

Leo: Not yet, I’m looking, I got, I’m refreshing the Apple store regularly and it says preparing for ship.

[1:50:00]

So I have a feeling that means, now I haven’t gotten the text, usually I get a text by now but we’ll see.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Hey this just coming in from the Wall Street Journal former HP CEO Carly Fiorina plans to announce her presidential bid.

Paul: So, by the way I’d like to talk about that because she is possibly the dumbest person I’ve ever seen in my entire life and the notion of her running for president is laughably dumb.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Well its interesting because her statement is “The republican slate, there’s so few people running for president that I thought I’d throw my – “

Paul: I could just like kind of slip in and no one would notice.

Leo: Hat into the ring.

Leo: So she’s apparently

Paul: That woman is an atrocity and I –

Leo: Well ok I guess you won’t be endorsing her for president.

Mary Jo: He will not

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Dumber than Sarah Palin? Yeah for good reason –

Paul: She’s about in the same category actually, pretty close, pretty close.

Leo: Wow

Paul: Yeah, no she’s not smart.

Leo: Interesting. You’ve had some personal experience with her I take it

Paul: Yeah but I more recently I’ve seen her talking about politics and it makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out but anyway.

Leo: Ok

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Actually, Halo Spartan Strike – something we can control – um, do you want to do the enterprise pick of the week, Mary Jo Foley?

Mary Jo: I do. The enterprise pick of the week is a new technology Microsoft announced this week called Azure Service Fabric. So, if you know what Microsoft’s been doing in the cloud with Azure, you know they’ve got IaaS infrastructure as a service and PaaS platform as a service. And almost everything they’ve been doing lately is about hosting Linux and hosting Windows Server on Azure, that’s the Iaas part. That PaaS part they’ve been really quite about and this is what Azure Service Fabric is all about. I call it, kind of for short hand, PaaS 2.0, that’s what it is. And Microsoft, at Build next week, Paul, again, its next week. Uh, they’re going to be delivering a developer preview of Azure Service Fabric to people who are there. They’re going to be having a number of sessions about it. They’re going to be throwing it off. It’s a layer in the cloud that is going to let you do, uh, develop your applications in the form of micro-services that can communicate through API’s, so its related to what they’re doing with containers and Docker, it just is, kind of, them revamping how they’re going about trying to get people to write cloud applications from scratch. So expect to hear a lot more about this next week at Build.

Leo: I like it. I like it.

Mary Jo: Yeah

Leo: And our code name of the week.

Mary Jo: Code name of the week is one we’ve had before, it’s “Athens.” And Athens, we had thought was the code name for Windows for IoT, Windows 10, I should say, for IoT and in fact that’s what it is. Athens is Windows 10 IoT for small devices. This is the version of Windows 10 that’s going to be on Raspberry Pi and other small devices like that for the maker community. I believe, I’m just guessing this by the way, no one’s told me this, I would be very surprised if people who attend Build don’t get hands-on time and maybe even a Raspberry Pi device with this Build next week.

Leo: That would be so cool

Mary Jo: I think that’s what they’re going to do  

Leo: It’s not expensive its $35, it’s not like we’re talking about a big expenditure.

Paul: You want everyone to have that

Leo: Heck yeah. What a good idea. That’s so exciting.

Mary Jo: And so far you haven’t had this skew, this Windows 10 IoT skew available to people in a public form. If you want people to start developing for this, you get them the board, you get them the bits, and you say, “Hey, go wild.” So I think we’re going to hear about Athens next week, also.

Paul: So, I know you know this, but you do know that Athens is an overloaded term. That Microsoft used it previously?

Mary Jo: Yes I do. They’ve used it a couple times right?

Paul: Yeah the one that I’m thinking of is Internet Mail in news which was the predecessor for Outlook Express was code named Athens. Back in, I don’t know, the late 90’s maybe?

Mary Jo: Yeah wow ok. I think they’ve used it couple other ways too but this is the new Athens.

Leo: We’ve also just learned that the rapper Waka Flocka Flame is going to be running for president.

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: Now, by the way, that guy, he’s smart. I support that guy

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Uh yeah.

Paul: Wow

Leo: Wakka Flocka flame.

Paul: Good look at him

Mary Jo: The more the merrier.

Paul: I think the crazy eyes are a nice touch.

Leo: Would it be President Flame or President Flocka Flame?

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Or maybe he’d be, informally it’d be President Waka Flocka?

[LAUGHTER]

Paul: Oh that’s great.

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Finally! Now you know why we all drink a lot of beer. Mary Jo Foley with our beer pick of the week.

Mary Jo: Ok. This might be my best beer pick of the week ever.

Paul: Ever?

Mary Jo: Ever. Because Paul is going to turn his nose up because it’s an IPA but look at the label. Look at the label of this beer which is called Karben4 Brewing Fantasy Factory.

Leo: It is a cat riding a unicorn with a ray gun!

Mary Jo: Where have we seen this before? This little cat?

Paul: Well actually where we saw it before was here but where it was stolen and used elsewhere –

Leo: Where’s it from? What is it? What’s the story?

Mary Jo: So Microsoft has been kind of been circulating these stickers that have a ninja cat on a unicorn holding a flag that has the windows flag on it. I would say it’s this cat on this unicorn, pretty much.

Leo: I’d say this is prior art?

Mary Jo: I might say that, but what’s cool is one of our listeners of Windows Weekly, Jay Hack, he said, “Hey have you ever had this beer?” And he shipped it to me from Wisconsin where the brewery is and he said you wait til you see the label and yep there it is. I even have – the bottle – I’m just saving it – it’s like – yeah!

Leo: Ninja cat. Holy –

Paul: So, this is actually pretty good beer is what you’re saying.

Leo: She hasn’t tasted it she likes the label

Mary Jo: It’s an IPA, I think it’s an IPA that you’d like.

Paul: I just had Goose Allen IPA and I loved it

Mary Jo: I know and you liked it.

Paul: I loved it Mary Jo knows this, we joke about IPA’s, I actually like IPA’s it’s just most people screw them up.

Mary Jo: I think would like this –

Paul: The problem I have is the kind of cheap crafty beer effect you get with really hoppy effects and so forth, it’s just overdone.

Mary Jo: This is not that. If you can find this beer, it’s more on the malty side, less like hops – um, more balanced, more malty-er beer. It was very good. I, this is an thempty bottle.

Paul: A lot of those beers are like chewing on rocks.

Leo: It isn’t exactly, by the way, a copy the ninja cat riding a unicorn

Mary Jo: It’s facing the other way, for one.

Paul: I think the point is this beer came first. The ninja cat unicorn thing that is ripping off the design.

Leo: And there is no rainbow in the Microsoft version.

Paul: Right

Mary Jo: Except the rainbow

Leo: Right, it’s completely different

[LAUGHTER]

Leo: Yeah actually now that you mention it

Paul: It’s completely different

Leo: It is completely different

Paul: Completely different. That so funny

Leo: For one thing that’s a boy cat, the other ones a girl cat

Paul: As you can plainly see

Leo: So we don’t know if its good beer but we love the label

Mary Jo: No the beer is good

Leo: Oh good. Fantasy Factory from Karbon4 Brewery in Wisconsin

Leo: Paul: is at thurrott.com that’s where he hangs his hat these days. And his fine Thurrott mug.

Paul: And I’ll be seeing you next week in Massachusetts because I’m not going anywhere.

Leo: He is resisting the notion that somehow he’s got to get on an airplane next week and Wednesday is Build. Don’t forget their special event on Thursday at the Irish Bank Bar. And of course Friday, May 1st we’ll be doing a live Windows Weekly, 2pm, it’s not going to be this next Wednesday, its Friday, 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, 21:00 UTC. Mary Jo Foley will be with him, his partner in crime. She’ll be in the studio where we’ll be drinking beer. You can find her most of the time though when she’s not at Rattle and Hum, at allaboutmicrosoft.com and on the Twitter @maryjofoley. Thank you guys, great show! I cannot wait to see you out here.

Mary Jo: Thanks!

Paul: It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be – however many weeks that may be

Leo: Whenever that may happen shall be wonderful. Well Waka Waka Flame to you all, have a great day, well see you next time on Windows Weekly!