Windows Weekly 754 Episode Transcript

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott's here. Mary Jo Foley too. We barely got Paul because of course today's the release of Halo Infinite, and Paul has his review. Mary Jo Foley's very excited about a brand new version of Notepad. Yeah, <laugh> and, and a victory for users as Microsoft backs down on the Set as Default Browser button. It's all coming up with a lot more next on Windows Weekly.

Mary Jo Foley (00:00:29):
Podcasts you love, From people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:36):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley episode 754 recorded Wednesday, December 8th, 2021. Pleasure per gigabyte. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by AAI AAI powers and protects life online and is changing how we live, work and play. See how AAI is unleashing the internet of possibilities for the biggest brands in the world. Visit okai.com/ww today to learn more and by worldwide technology and Dell technologies with an innovative culture, thousands of it, engineers, application developers, unmatched labs and integration centers for testing and deploying technology. At scale, Dell WWT helps customers bridge the gap between strategy and execution to learn more about WWT, visit wwt.com/twi and by Andela Andela is a global talent network connecting innovative companies like yours with quality technical talent. So you have more time to focus on your core business. Visit anela.com/four-companies to schedule a complimentary consultation and receive a two week no risk trial with their vetted technical talent. It's time for Windows Weekly. The show we cover the latest news from Microsoft with Mary Jo Foley of ZD net fame. All about mike.com. Hello, Mary Jo. Hello you. Hello, Paul Thra is also here from thra.com. Good to see you. Paul Paul walnuts. <Laugh>. And today we're using a Microsoft product Skype because zoom has failed us. Ooh, yep. So are they just outta curiosity? Are they killing Skype and folding it into teams or is Skype gonna stick around? I ask you this a lot.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:32):
I know. And we ask them this a lot and they always say, no, Skype's continuing on for the foreseeable future.

Leo Laporte (00:02:37):
Good. Cuz we like it.

Paul Thurrott (00:02:39):
Yeah. Yeah. And, and they actually just announced it a bunch of new features for it. Remember they did once ago.

Leo Laporte (00:02:45):
Good. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. And we to take five minutes to figure out how it works, cuz we haven't used it.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:49):
I know I'm like, wait, how do we do this on Skype again? Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:02:52):
<Laugh> the wrong microphone.

Leo Laporte (00:02:53):
I suppose we should be using teams. But anyway, this is all, this is fine.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:57):
Haven't got that working yet.

Leo Laporte (00:02:58):
Yeah, this is fine. This is good.

Paul Thurrott (00:02:59):
I like the Skype UI. This is nice.

Leo Laporte (00:03:02):
So I came in late today and Paul said it's okay because it's a big day. What is going on?

Paul Thurrott (00:03:07):
It is well, we'll get, we're gonna get to that. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's it's well, a lot or at least a few important things maybe is the way to get to it and, and lots of little controversies today. So I think this will be kind of,

Leo Laporte (00:03:19):
I'm here for my briefing. Fill me in. Who wants to start Windows 11? Should we start with Mary Jo?

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:26):
Okay. Yeah. Remember how we've been complaining on the last few shows about how Microsoft's doing a bunch of things with edge, especially around making it hard to select other browsers. Besides if you use Windows 11. Well, they step back a little from the cliff last week.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:45):
Shocked as much as they, by the way now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:47):
Steve Gibson even reported this yesterday on Security Now, he was so excited. You can now, there's a one button default

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:55):
So it's not..

Paul Thurrott (00:03:57):
It's not a one button default.

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:59):
Also it's in the dev channel only. So that means it may or may not at some point ever become a feature. Right. Right. And the way that this was discovered is a little disappointing. Well, it's, it's interesting. Rafael found it in the dev building.

Leo Laporte (00:04:13):
Shoutout to Rafael.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:13):
It wasn't even called out, was not called out in the notes. Yep. And then when people talk to Microsoft and they said, Hey, there's this thing in the, in the, in the build that you guys didn't talk about, that makes it look like you're gonna make it easier with a button to select other browsers. You're like, yeah, we're experimenting on that and see, be based on user feedback, blah blah. I'm like, yeah. People hate the way you're doing it now. <Laugh> so you're stepping back from the cliff. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:04:39):
<Laugh> let's do it.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:40):
Does anyone.. Is, is there anyone on the show or Mary Jo I mean do either of you, are either of you running Windows 10 right now, not Windows 10. I mean Windows 11.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:49):
I moved both my ship machines to

Paul Thurrott (00:04:51):
Cause this is something I, I tested this change today. What I haven't had time to do is compare it to how it works in Windows 11. 10, sorry, 10. And I can tell you, is it, it's not what everyone hoped it was <laugh> so and yeah, so I'm gonna go off the, so what I'm gonna have to do is go off the top of my head here. So I, if you're out there and I'm describing this wrong, you know, sorry, you don't have to correct me. It doesn't matter. I'm gonna look it up, but, and I'm gonna write about it, so thinking back to Windows 10, you install all Chrome or Firefox or whatever. And one of the first things that browser asks you is would you like to change this to be your default browser? And you say yes. And then it loads the settings page, which is settings apps, default apps.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:36):
And, and in Windows 10, it has a list of, for some reason, like app types, you know image, program, movie program, web browser, you know, a few others, right? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, there's a little popup that comes up and it says, you know, we'd really like you to use that, do you sure? And just safe and secure and fat, blah, blah, blah, you say. Yeah, I'm sure I don't care. And then it changes Chrome fire proxy, default browser. For the most part, the, the one thing I wanna test is I don't think it changes everything, but it is a one click kind of, it's kind of a two click deal, but it, it, it changes most of the major associations to the browser, every choice. <Affirmative> I think the one off the top of my head that I believe doesn't change is PDF, but because you've installed a new browser and thus a new application that's possible to use for PDFs.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:22):
The next time you open a PDF on Windows 10, you'll get that you, you know, open with dialogue, which is like a Windows 8 style dialogue, by the way, still in Windows 10. And it says, Hey, which application do you want to use? And you can choose an application for just time. Or you can say, make this the permanent choice. And then that will switch to PDF. So there's still a little wiggle room, I guess is my point.

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:43):
Yeah. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:44):
So in Windows 11, the default version of Windows 11, you install the, the current version of the shipping version. You install Chrome or Firefox and says, Hey, would you like to install? Or would you like to make this your default browser? And you say yes. And it goes to apps to default apps. But that interface does not have that list of major app types.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:04):
Like whatever I said, pictures, video, web browsers, and a few others. Instead, it, it lets you search for a file or link type. And then it has a list of applications alphabetically on your computer and you can set defaults for them. So you have to kind of scroll down that's that's yes. Scroll down to Firefox. And then there are a dozen to 15, I'm gonna call them file types and protocols. They call them file types and link types, whatever. And this is things like HTM, HTML, PDF, S-HTML, et cetera, et cetera. Most of them are with documents. Some of them are actually image files like SVG or a V I F and things like that. Or maybe that's a video file, whatever, but it has a bunch of them and you have to go through one at a time. And the first time you change, one of them, it says, Hey, are you sure, really want you to use Edge?

Paul Thurrott (00:07:55):
And you're like, Hey. Yeah, I'm sure. And now, now you've changed one file and you have to manually go through every single one of those, but the tricky bit. And this is the thing I'm not sure of in Windows 10, for example, Windows 10 has like a news and information link on the, on the task bar, which is basically what the witch interface and Windows 11. I don't know, off the top of my head, but I, I, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that that still opens an edge. Even if you change all these things. I don't re remember. I, I don't cuz I never used it. I don't know. It's possible. If you do a start search and choose a web link in Windows 10, even after changing all of these or changing the default, it, maybe it still opens an Edge. I'm actually not sure, but what I am sure of is in Windows 11, it absolutely still opens an Edge. And that was the controversy.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:35):
Mm-hmm <affirmative> Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:37):
So Edge extractors third party browsers, I think brave and Mozilla, both implemented work arounds to this so that when you said I want this to be my fault, it changed everything to be your default and the outrage that occurred after that was Microsoft in a dev build now a couple months ago, probably or a month or so implemented a, a fix if you will, for this problem of theirs, which is, we're not gonna let these people, these companies work around this setting, right? We, we, we, we want widgets to open an edge. We want start search, open an, an edge. And the reason they gave to the public, which is not the real reason is for experience issue. We want them to have the best possible experience, but they really want as few to access MSN and big on the back end.

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:20):
Great. And that the, the change they made with this one button thing doesn't affect that at all in Windows 11. Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:09:27):
Right. That's part of it. So there's two, there's two big changes. So, or two big things. I, I guess when, when you see a screenshot of a, a thing that says set as the fault you, you think, oh, it's just like, it was in Windows 10 and it's not right. So if you're in the dev channel on Windows 11 and you install a Chrome or, or Chrome Firefox and it says, Hey, would you like to make this through the fall? You say, yeah, I would. And it loads exactly the same page that you see today in the stable verse, Windows 11, it's the default apps. So settings apps, default apps. It still has that thing where you can search at the top and it still has that list of applications. The difference is when you go to, I'm just doing it now, so I can look at it when you go to Firefox or whatever you installed, there is that button at the top that says set as default and you think, oh, good look, they fixed it.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:14):
It's, it's still multiple steps, you know? But when you click on it, it says, sure. We'd really like you Edge. Okay. Yep. And you say, I'm sure. Yep. Puts a little check box next to it. And then you can see what it's associated with and you know what, it's not associated with that much at all. No, it changes two or three of the file types. It doesn't change. You still have to go through the list and manually change. Most them, I would say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ish of them to Firefox or the browser of your choice. It really doesn't change that much. It basically cha I, I I've changed things here, so I can't tell for sure, but it changes HTM. It changes HTML. Yeah. That might, might be all of it. It's not too I took screenshots on a different computer, which is what I was looking for earlier. It might change..

Leo Laporte (00:11:00):
What happens when you change the HTML and HTM. Is it like, is Edge gonna still open a lot?

Paul Thurrott (00:11:10):
Not a lot. So for some so basic, I would say it's, it's, it's the two major file types, HTM and HTML. And it's probably almost certainly HTTP and HTTPS. Those are the two protocols we call 'em. Right. So that basically means, you know, normal web, you, you click on a link in an email program, it will open in your browser of choice. It doesn't change some of the things we think of as being kind of internet Explorer now, Edge file types like X, HTML, X, H, T you know, whatever, but PDF is not included as well. So I don't think that's really, I don't think the, the PDF situation is much different.

Leo Laporte (00:11:46):
No, I like using Edge for my PDF reader. I don't mind that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:11:49):
Mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (00:11:50):
Maybe that's what they're thinking.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:52):
The nice thing there is. If you do open a PDF, this I did test if you open a P no, actually, no, I did. I'm sorry. I believe if you open a PDF, it'll ask you at that point. It will ask at that point. Okay. I think first, I think first time you, yeah, I think so. And then you can set it as the fault, but what it's not gonna change is that stuff that Microsoft said that we're gonna block, right. It's not gonna change the stuff from start search. It's not gonna change the stuff from widgets, I guess Cortana might be included in this. I don't know what the full

Leo Laporte (00:12:18):
List is. A good compromise. Cause most of the web browsing gonna do will work. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:23):
I agree. I, I think this is this, like, let's take it as a win, right? Like they're not gonna change everything.

Leo Laporte (00:12:29):
That's all we're gonna get.

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:30):
They're not. <Laughs>

Paul Thurrott (00:12:32):
So it's a step in the right direction. I think this is something they had been planning to do for a while. I don't think this just happened. I, I, they've always intended to block that stuff in the backend where, you know, cause they wanna use Microsoft services. Okay, fine. I, the issue I have with it, and I'm just thinking of normal people here is mm-hmm <affirmative> even the Windows 10 interface was a little much in a way, right? Because it was yeah. Previous Windows versions. If you were using Chrome or Firefox or whatever, and you said, I want this to be a MI of all browser, you said yes. That was the end of it. There was no interface to bring up. It just did it. And now, or Windows 10, it brings you to an interface. We actually have to go.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:09):
Yeah. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. Nag me. Okay. I still want it. That's fine.

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:11):
Mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:12):
This one is actually still a step back from that because there is no main interface in default apps and settings. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> where you say I, this, you know, browser image, program, video pro, whatever those choices are. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> you, you have to go, you have to scroll the list, find the app. You just install. Remember the name. I know it's not hard, but I mean, you have to know the name of it and you have to go find it and you still, and you have to set it and you still get nagged. And then you still have to go through a list of file types and think some of them are weird. It's like, do I want to open an a V I F file with Firefox? I don't even know what that is. Like, what's a WebP file. It's it's do I wanna open?

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:50):
And if you don't know, if you don't know nobody, who's a normal user knows. Right. That's I'm saying, and that's what it means. And that's what they're counting on. Right. They're counting on this being confusing. Right. They want it to be confusing.

Leo Laporte (00:14:01):
Okay. So web key is what happens when you save a website? It saves it as a WebP. It's a web package. So do I want that to open and Firefox? Or is that kind of a bundle that I want to open an edge? I think what Microsoft's trying to, to do here is let you say for browsing purposes, I wanna choose my browser, but there's a whole bunch of other stuff. Edge does like PDFs. Right, right. That should just be for Edge until unless you express it otherwise. And that you can do onesy twosy. So, so this default button's gonna do 90% of what you do, right. Or a, almost a hundred percent

Paul Thurrott (00:14:37):
I think. Yeah. For, for basic web browsing, it's gonna be fine. And I do think that's, it's important and that's good, but I still, right. It's still a little underhanded. I, I really think what they're trying to do is drive Edge usage artificially so they can claim they have something, some number, some, it

Leo Laporte (00:14:51):
Still opens when you open a WebP

Paul Thurrott (00:14:53):
That counts, but we're not just using it to install Chrome anymore. We also use to open PDFs,

Leo Laporte (00:14:59):
Which is kinda what I wanted. Use your numbers. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:15:01):
No, I like, you know, I don't want install Adobe readers. So I like it. That edge opens PDFs,

Paul Thurrott (00:15:06):
But Firefox and Chrome also open PDFs. Why, if, if, when I, I want this to be the default, it didn't say default web browser. It's it's default. Right. I want it to be the default for anything. It could be the default for

Leo Laporte (00:15:17):
Yeah. You know, are they still blocking what Firefox did? Yes. Okay. And then Kev brewer asks, does the, does the behavior change in home and pro does it matter?

Paul Thurrott (00:15:29):
No, I don't believe so, but I havet. Don't no, I actually tested this on arm if that matters to anybody. But no, I, I don't know. I can't imagine it it's different. Okay. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:38):
No. So I'm gonna play devil's advocate here for a second, because I was thinking about this the other day. <Laugh> why does Microsoft have to let you use a browser other than edge? I mean, Windows, is there operating system?

Leo Laporte (00:15:52):
Well, there's this little thing called the EU.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:54):
Well, Chairman Mary Jo.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:55):
Seriously tell you no, I'm being serious here because Windows doesn't have a monopoly on operating systems anymore, right? No,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:03):
But that's not. Okay. So first of all, you can define markets in all kinds of different ways. 

Leo Laporte (00:16:10):
We did get in trouble for buddling back in the 90s, right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:12):
I know, but this is a whole new world. Like the, if you, it's not the dominant operating system anymore. And,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:17):
But its not,

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:17):
They can point to <laugh>. I feel like.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:20):
Hold on it is the dominant operating system on computers,

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:23):
On desktop PCs.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:24):
When Microsoft got hauled before the DOJ in 1999, Macintosh had 5% market share. Right. Do you know what they have today? Eight. So

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:33):
I know, but the way people look at market now is operating systems. Like they put phones in there, they put everything together.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:40):
I don't, you can define the antitrust. Regulators can define a market, however they wish. And one of those markets it's desktop computers and Microsoft. Absolutely. As a monopoly.

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:50):
Okay. And I would say since it's their operating system, why can't they say the most used app in their operating system should be ours. And I, I don't like this, but I could see, oh boy, how they go down this mental rabbit hole and justify doing what they're doing.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:06):
They literally were hauled before antitrust <laugh> before the government,

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:10):
Like two decades ago. Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:17:11):
United States, the EU

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:12):
Two decades ago,

Paul Thurrott (00:17:13):
Russia. I mean, because of this exact crime.

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:18):
Two decades ago.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:18):
Nothing has changed. <Laugh> it's the same crime

Leo Laporte (00:17:20):
Maybe Paul it's time to push the envelope again. Let's just

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:24):
That's what they're thinking.

Leo Laporte (00:17:25):
Let's just prod and see what happens.

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:26):
That's totally what they're thinking everybody, this is what they're thinking.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:29):
Well I believe, I think what they're thinking, getting towards. So look at, at some point you say personal computing is not just computers. In fact, computers are the smallest percentage of personal computing stuff again today because of smartphones mostly, but also tablets. And whether other, other devices mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah, fair enough. But right. But you can also set a default browser on those other platforms. So the, the, that precedent was set because of what happened to Microsoft. I mean, if M Microsoft, yeah. They may be playing this game where maybe they won't notice because they get bigger problems with Google and Facebook and apple and whatever else. Yeah. Fair enough. But that doesn't mean that what they're doing now is not wrong. <Affirmative> and probably is still legal because you could define that market as well. You do have, this is the monopoly you do have, it might be the monopoly market.

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:17):
Yeah. I, I believe they believe the world has changed and they're not gonna get taken down by any antitrust regulators because of this. I do believe this. I've heard, I've had people say this to me. Okay. So, so <laugh>, so they're, they, they think

Paul Thurrott (00:18:32):
Let's bring Apple. Let's just talk about Apple for a second. And this is something Leo will know better than I cuz I don't use a Mac every single day. However, right. My understanding and based on my limited experience with the Mac is yeah. If I install Chrome or edge on the Mac mm-hmm <affirmative> it says, do you wanna make this default? You say yes. And that's the end of it. It's the fault. Yeah. That's right. Macintosh has 8% market share. They, I mean, they're the company that could get away with that. <Laugh> not Microsoft. Right? Right. Yeah. So, but they don't do it.

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:01):
Like I said, I'm playing devil's advocate here because I would like, I would like Microsoft to feel like Edge was such a good browser that it could compete fairly in the market there you ago. What they're, what they're doing with edge lately is making it not the best browser.

Leo Laporte (00:19:15):
That's right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:15):
Driving people away from it.

Leo Laporte (00:19:17):
That's right.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:18):
Right. That's right. In fact, the argument I even told about maybe six months ago, you, you could have made the argument. It, it is Edge. Is that thing they said it would be mm-hmm <affirmative> Google Chrome without the Google tendrils everywhere. Without all the tracking that sounds appealing. It does, you know then they add shopping load and stuff. I mean, I, some people look at the features I've complained about their adding to and said, I don't, you know, what's the big deal. I like that stuff. Yeah. Or I can remove it if I don't want it. I can disable it. Okay. Fair enough. But this stuff they're doing to make it really difficult for normal P people to use the product they chose. Yeah. Is, is, is user hostile at best and is probably, almost certainly illegal.

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:03):
I don't think it's illegal, but I think it is user hostile and I don't think they care.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:06):
I'm gonna find out, I think.

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:08):
Yeah. You know, who do you think is gonna bring 'em up for antitrust on this though? I'm curious. Cause Edge has what's the Edge's share. No, wait what's Edge's share of the browser market. Is it like 5% or something?

Paul Thurrott (00:20:19):
That's not the, the issue is an Edge's share it's it's Windows share. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:23):
Microsoft, but that is how they're gonna defend it. I feel like that's

Paul Thurrott (00:20:26):
The EU brought this change to Android. The EU made them have a balance screen. Yeah. I remember

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:32):
The ballot didn't do anything go into the system, but it was a joke. No one ever did it. Right. The browser ballot ended up being a joke,

Paul Thurrott (00:20:40):
But <laugh> no it's what do you mean? It's there?

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:43):
It's it's there, but no one ever uses it. Like it's

Paul Thurrott (00:20:46):
You have to use it before you use Android.

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:48):
I just mean it didn't change the share of browsers. It did nothing but

Paul Thurrott (00:20:53):
That's but that's because by the way, in the perception of the public Chrome is the best browser. Right. That's why. Yeah. That's why it didn't agree. If by the way, if Microsoft was hauled before antitrust courts all over the, the world, then they had to change this and everything changed. Yeah. And edge had 90%, 65% to match what chromes used to share on, on on Windows. Fine. The use the, the, the popule is spoken, you know, but that's not what they have. They're they're doing this to increase that usage. That's that's the illegal part. That's the bundling. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:28):
You know what, what the sad part is for them, not for us, but for them is they're doing all these things to try to increase usage and meanwhile, hitting themselves in the foot. Right. At the same time, as they're like trying to lock you in, they're making edge worse.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:42):
The not any thinking person, apprised of the steps they've taken. And the promise is the they've made to block the work around would think, okay, this must be a really crappy browser. <Laugh> cause

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:55):
I mean, they

Paul Thurrott (00:21:55):
Have to force why we

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:56):
Use it, forcing it on people.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:57):
I know. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. You know? No, it's crazy. It is a weird combination of 

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:03):
I'm just so like I said, I'm playing, I'm playing devil's advocate here because I want the ability to choose my own browser and make my own choice on the default. I do. Yeah. One thing that surprised me a lot. This is tangentially related here to, to this announcement last week. So when this all came to light last week about Microsoft adding this new button to let you select a default browser, I was watching some of the people who work on edges on Twitter to see how they were gonna react. Right. Yeah. Right. And so I I've always thought the edge team must be embarrassed that Microsoft was doing this because it's, it's like showing that they don't think the browser can win on its own merits. No, that's not that wasn't the reaction. They were mad. They were mad about it. And I'm like, oh wait,

Paul Thurrott (00:22:47):
Wait. They were mad because they, it easier to set. Another manager is the do.

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:51):
Yeah. And I was like, oh, so wait. And they, and I saw people saying stuff like I'm biting my tongue. I'm not gonna comment on this. Like I'm steaming, but I have thoughts what? And I'm like, oh, interesting. So I, I always gave you guys the benefit of the doubt and I thought you wanted to compete on your own merits, but maybe that isn't the case. Or if you do have an argument, why this is a bad idea, you should say it publicly. Cuz I'm curious why

Paul Thurrott (00:23:14):
You think it's bad. What they can't point to is some apple platform, some Google platform, some Linux version where you can't do this. They can't say, well, those guys, you know, even apple made this possible on the iPhone, which right. Was a step note thought they would ever take. And they think

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:33):
They're a little, they're kinda forced. Right? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:36):
I don't know if they were forced. I know why they actually, I don't believe anyone planned. No.

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:41):
Does anyone actually users the browser a different browser? Well,

Leo Laporte (00:23:45):
Iphone, it's an interesting situation because yes you can, but you're still gonna use web kit because what apple does do behind the scenes that's right. Is forced you to use their engine. So yeah. Even if you're using Firefox, you're using Safari's engine regardless. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative> apple. I think that that's an interesting kind of apple, slight of hand they're playing there.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:06):
Yeah. I agree with you Mary Jo, that they, they don't think this will receive the attention they don't. I, I, I I'm sure they're playing that game. They are, but I think that receive attention from regulatory bodies. You know, I've said this before. I mean, this is it's user hostile, you know, and I, and I don't, it's like an company when, when, when or not insurance, a car company, like when, when is a car company forced to go to the expense of adding airbags to cars, when the cost of all the lawsuits mm-hmm <affirmative> is adds up to be more than the cost of just implementing the airbags, they don't do it outta the goodness of their heart. They're forced to do it. You know? So in this case it's like, well, okay, we're gonna gonna make a few people at said about this, but we're gonna earn more revenue from whatever stuff happens on the back end between, you know, edge MSN and Bing or whatever.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:54):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, we're trying to grow this Bing business for some reason. Which never seems to have taken off MSN. I dunno what the <laugh> what the, of the, but you know, the problem is the Microsoft is a data driven company, right? We talk about this a lot. They're really into telemetry. You always hear about this. What you don't see in telemetry is the other side of the equation. You don't see the disgruntledness in people like us who know what's happening and you don't see the confusion in the face of the normal human being. It was no idea why this is so terrible and didn't this used to be easier. And this creeping feeling that like, what is this thing that came up that I didn't, I, I specifically wanted, I, I used Chrome. What is this other thing? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and the effect that that might have over time and how those people might just, when the next time comes around to upgrade a computer, they might say, I'm just gonna get a Chromebook or on Mac or something. I, I, you know, it's, you can't put numbers to the, and that's the thing I think they're overlooking is the psychological impact that this has on people that use their platforms. They're, it's very easy to see up down revenues or traffic or usage or whatever. It's very hard to see that you're making someone upset.

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:04):
You know, they'll be fun if we could ever though, you know, it would be fun on if we could ever sit in a focus group that they do, cuz you know, they do millions of these, right? Where you put normal users for Windows 11 in a room and you suddenly make edge pop up, even though go Google Chrome is their browser and see what people do. <Laugh> yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:25):
By the

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:25):
Way, do they notice one first

Paul Thurrott (00:26:28):
Thing? There's the, the Beatles documentary, right? Leo, have you watched the whole thing?

Leo Laporte (00:26:31):
No, I'm about halfway through. I've watched

Paul Thurrott (00:26:33):
This I'm there's no spoiler here. I, we kind

Leo Laporte (00:26:36):
Of know what happened. I think so. It's okay. There's a

Paul Thurrott (00:26:38):
Rooftop concert. Yes. These guys get on top of a roof in London with a really loud PA system and they just play the first six or the rocking is six songs on the, the album they just created and they get shut down by the box. Everyone stops and looks up at the street. Yeah. The cops come, they're freaking out. They got 30 calls, 30 calls in minutes from people complaining businesses on the what's all this noise from these. And then, but they interview all the people in the street, nine outta a 10 of them like, oh my God, that's the Beatles. This is amazing. I love this. This is, I love that's Paul McCartney. I can tell his voice. They love it. And then every once in a while there's an old person's like, so it's like, they got 30, they got 30 complaints. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:16):
They probably made 3000 people ecstatic that day. There are people in the street are like, I wish they would do this every day. This turn this doer city into a place of fun and happy. Not kidding. And you don't, you don't usually get that, that feedback. It's really hard to get, you know? Yeah. The complaints are simple. <Laugh> you know? Yeah. So from the, from the cops perspective, they have data that shows 30 people complaints. We got, we complain. We have to shut this down. What they don't know is the 3000 people <affirmative>, we're rocking out to a free concert, the street and loving every second of it. <Laugh> that's a really, you gathered that feedback, boy. That's a good, thank you for working the Beatles into this.

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:50):
That's great. I know. Good analogy. Nice way to segue into that. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:27:55):
No, but I mean, that's the thing I it's, you know, data in isolation doesn't mean anything. That's right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:01):
Yeah. Right. You

Paul Thurrott (00:28:02):
Know, you gotta measure grunt gr yes. The gr counts as much as disgruntle. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:08):
Don't you also wonder like what got to them that they even thought about putting this button in there, right? Like they were dead set against this. Like something happened, right. Either somebody warn them.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:20):
That's the thing. So actually think back, I've said this a couple times now in the show <affirmative> on the day or the week of the Windows 11 launch, we had a virtual briefing and people ask questions. Right. And the question came up, Hey, you've got this crazy interface for changing the default browser. And I I've said this multiple times, again, this is just it's anecdotal. I accept that. But, and it's was off the record in the sense that I can't tell you who said this. I mean that, so it doesn't matter who said it, but the person or people that we talked to and you were, there were confused by this reaction. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and our, our point was not to make this harder for people. We're absolutely gonna take a look at this. And I took that to mean they were gonna do something like they have now done in this button. I don't think that this is a new reaction to something from November or, or whatever. I think I do. This was I

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:09):
Do. Okay. Well <laugh> I think somebody, somebody maybe in the EU said some, Hey guys, no. Nope, Nope.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:18):
<Laugh> all right. Well, whatever the or it looks the screenshot, what it looks like is they've addressed the problem, but this remote,

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:26):
I just, I just am saying, I wonder what made it happen? That's

Paul Thurrott (00:29:29):
All every three months or so in the Windows 10 timeframe, there would be like, this privacy thing would happen and they'd be like, listen, guys, we're listening to your feedback and we're gonna make it more transparent. And they kept doing this. They did this again. And again and again, you know what they never did was make it possible to do the thing. Everyone was asking for. Stop tracking me. <Laugh> I just give me a switch. You can bury it wherever you want in the UI, but gimme an on off switch where you don't collect any data for me ever, they should have done it because no one would ever the percentage of people that would do it, they could have

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:58):
Hidden it. Right. I

Paul Thurrott (00:30:00):
Know. Yeah. No one, no one would've cared, but they, in what I called, I called it privacy theater. And that's what this is, this is set default theater. Look, there's a button. It looks, it looks just like the button we used to have. It does the same thing. No, it doesn't <laugh> it's not the same button. Yeah. So there's a button. Although I guess we gotta like,

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:19):
Like we started out by saying if alls 90% of the times when yeah, no, no. Right's I'm using the browser. I'm happy. I'm like, okay, you can take your 10% and do your little bison thing over there, but

Paul Thurrott (00:30:32):
Soon you can find it. Right. So like I said, yeah. Think of your mother. I think of my mother. Any normal human being, you just install Chromer or Firefox. Yeah. Do you wanna make this to the fall? Yes. I want anyone who's listening to the show right now to go to settings apps, default apps. And tell me how a normal person would set the default browser from that page. It is, you have to really know what you're doing to us. We're technical people. We get it. I've done it a million times. So even as I describe it, I'm like, yeah, what's the big deal. Go find Chrome or whatever. It's it's actually kind of a big deal. It is

Leo Laporte (00:31:07):
A lot easier too. Right? I mean, that's the point?

Paul Thurrott (00:31:09):
It's still extra steps is my point. Yeah. Yeah. You don't see that button when you go there. You have to go find the browser first. Yeah. That's all. Look, it is a step forward. Like I said, it's a step forward. Yeah. And now that we've spent like 30 minutes on this one.

Leo Laporte (00:31:23):
No,

Mary Jo Foley (00:31:23):
I think this is really important. It's I like that. I like that. We're talking about this because a lot of the assumptions I had about why they might have done this in the first place and why they're undoing it. Like, I keep thinking about this. Cause I, I don't think they ever intended to change this. When they told us they were would take it under consideration. They just say that to us, you know, like that. Oh, shut the press. Tell 'em that. Okay, good. Let's go. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:31:46):
Well, they heard from somebody maybe just howling users. Maybe, maybe that was all it took. I mean,

Paul Thurrott (00:31:52):
People wrote, I mean, I wrote about it. Other people wrote about it and then by the time we got the chance to have the briefing, someone said, Hey you implemented this crazy interface. I mean, it it's clearly the anti-US what, what are you, what were you thinking? And it was like, oh, like what are you talking about? We didn't mean anti-US we love our users. Yeah. We'll look at it. You know? Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:32:14):
All right. That was the first line of the rundown. <Laugh> I know we lead, I don't mind. We get to the lead a story coming up, but we'll get to that in a moment. First

Paul Thurrott (00:32:27):
It's more than one huge story coming up. Lots of huge stories

Leo Laporte (00:32:29):
Stay tuned for the excitement. <Laugh> but first let's talk about our sponsor Akamai. It's I'm reading the world's longest book. James missioners, Hawaii and Akamai has used quite a bit in the pigeon, in the book. And every time he says it, I'm going, I know Akamai it's it's in Hawaii. It's means kind of like cool. When it comes to the internet, it means, well, a company that's changing how we live, work and lay by powering and protecting life online. If you wanna be on the cutting edge of innovation, you wanna be operating at the edge of the internet, you know, and this is one of the things that's really changed in in modern times. Nobody can get you closer to the edge, closer to your users. That's why you wanna be there. Right then AKA I cuz Okai has 10 times the number of locations of the nearest competitor, 4,000 points of presence all over the globe.

Leo Laporte (00:33:27):
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Leo Laporte (00:34:25):
Their proximity, their scale helps developers build better apps and put experiences closer to their customers. And of course, with Okai, you get the industry leading zero second SLA, and 100% platform availability there. You, they're not afraid to stand behind their commitments. They've got you back. All AAI backed SLAs include time to mitigate quality of mitigation, time to alert, notification, time to respond. These are all commitments to you from Akai time to access a mitigation resource and individual TMM SLAs based on specific attack vectors. And in other words, Akai keeps your digital experiences closer to users than anyone and threats farther away. And they commit to it with Okai. You can provide the best possible experience for your customers, customers. What does that mean? Well, they get content. They get apps, they get sites. They get the video they need without lag without interruption, without latency.

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Even during unexpected traffic spikes, you as a provider can prepare for spikes and demand and optimize resources to provide the best experience for your customers. You'll be amazed at optimize unparalleled performance. And I love it because you'll always be just one network cop away from 85%, 85% of the world's internet users. Okai gives you the power to innovate right at the edge, your logic, your functions, they're deployed and active at the nearest proximity to your end users. You're getting the fastest end user experience around the globe. It's AIMA makes it easy to build right at the edge using JavaScript. So you can innovate in real time and you get low latency access to data for custom code at the edge. Okai can optimize your API traffic delivery for edge applications too. Look, I know, you know, Okai, I know you know their reputation and, and you don't really have to just take my word for it. Listen to this, this, even with how respect I have for Akamai, this blew me away. Akamai is trusted by all, all top 50 global media companies, all top 20 global e-commerce companies, all top 50 global telecom carriers over 500 banks globally, including the top 25 in the us and 22 of the top 25 in EMEA in the, in Europe and the middle east in Asia.

Leo Laporte (00:36:45):
I mean, that kind of says it all ized there powering and protecting digital experiences in a way. No one else can 10 times locations of competitors for the fastest customer experience available. You're getting the leader in CDN video delivery, web performance, DDoS protection, web application firewall. It's just no one can compete with Okai when it comes to setting you up for success and scalability online. So do me a favor. Check out okai.com/ww. Learn how Akai powers and protects life on online. Give your customers the best possible experience online and see for yourself what life with AAI is all about AAI, akai.com/ww. It's Hawaiian for cool aai.com/ww. Thank you, AAI for supporting Windows Weekly and thank you, Windows Weekly listeners and viewers for supporting us. Make sure you use that address. Akamai.Com/Ww on we go to line two of the show <laugh> Yeah. New dev build out. Yeah. Is this one of the top? Is this one of the big stories?

Paul Thurrott (00:37:58):
No, not big as, no, it just had, this just happened before we started. I mean, I, it doesn't deserve too much attention other than the fact that they added some new features, which, you know, it's been kind of slow moving in recent months, but I don't know what use there anything you want focus on here? I don't, yeah, I don't know if this,

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:18):
So I think the biggest feature in today's build is this thing called voice access, which I thought when I first read their blog post was just a rename of voice typing. So voice typing is the ability to go into a text box and use your voice to type text, right? Dictate basically. But voice access is more than that. It's very confusing in my view, in how this was written, but it's an additional accessibility setting where you're gonna be able to use voice to actually control your PC. So, you know, to right click, to open an app to switch apps, you're gonna be able to do by voice. And it's not, it it's not meant to be just for people who need it for accessibility. It's meant to be for anyone who wants to use their voice to control these features. So it's, it's not going to replace voice typing. I asked them that and they said, no, it's gonna go alongside voice typing, I guess. And together these two things are supposed to let you do a lot more with voice input than you can do currently with Windows.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:23):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:25):
So I thought, I thought that one was interesting. The other ones, I didn't really care that much about like spotlight, desktop pictures, you know, that you can rotate through. That's

Paul Thurrott (00:39:33):
Good. It's kind of fun. You know, they have unlock,

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:36):
The pictures are nice. Yeah. The, the pictures are super nice. They are

Paul Thurrott (00:39:40):
The big one to me is the widgets update. You know, the oh yeah. If you, if you look at widgets and Windows 11, which is news and information and Windows 10, it's like what, what's the big problem here? In Microsoft's view it's the location <laugh> that this thing appears on the task bar. Yeah. So they're testing, putting it over on the far left of the task bar, which is where the start button should be. And they're bringing back the the weather, you know, forecast, display that used to be in the task bar. So it's kind of a regression in, in Windows 11, but I mean, honestly I think most people would probably mistakenly click on this a few times and then figure out how to get rid of it. You know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:18):
That's my guess. My, and I, I sound like you lately, I'm being like such a snarky sarcastic <laugh>, but I'm not, I'm like, oh yeah, they're putting, they're putting the weather widget over there, right? Yeah. Because they know that that's where the start button was and that's where people's muscle memory is. So you're gonna go over to the far corner and you'll be like, oh, cool weather cool on it. And then you're like, oh wait, this isn't the weather, this, this widget

Paul Thurrott (00:40:40):
Thing, inadvertent usage, you know, <laugh> that's why they killed media center. Remember they found out most people clicked on it, one star what it was and closed it. Yeah. Now they, now it's like, <laugh>, we're designing Windows to, to work in that fashion. It's crazy. But yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:56):
Yeah. but anyway, yeah, they moved that and, and they also made it easier if you are somebody who wants to use WSL from the store, because it's, it's a store app now to actually install it more easily. So they're adding some commands. Right. So that's useful for people to install

Paul Thurrott (00:41:16):
It from the command line, which is kind of the typical way. It will actually install the store version though.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:22):
Not the probably right. And you could have these more granular settings, like install it, but don't immediately open it. That kind of stuff will be possible. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:33):
Yep. So Leo, for the next story, do you have some sort of a, a trumpet sound effect? I do. I do. Should I trumpeting

Leo Laporte (00:41:41):
Video? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me, let me get my my trumpet sound out so we can we can give

Paul Thurrott (00:41:46):
It, cause this is it's is the ultimate burying the lead? I would say

Leo Laporte (00:41:50):
It is. Yeah. I wish you'd warn me cuz it's gonna me a second to get this here. Yeah, no, that's okay. I'm

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:54):
I'm hyper into a paper bag right now, everyone. So just, you know,

Paul Thurrott (00:41:59):
So you know what? Get a drink or something or I should,

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:02):
I was thinking about having a beer right now, just so I stay calm throughout the next segment. All right, ladies

Leo Laporte (00:42:07):
And gentlemen, let's get ready. It's time for the next segment. Oh, oops. Wait a minute. I said <laugh> lady. Oh, I put a space in there. No, I don't wanna do that. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready. It's time for the next segment. Come on baby. Come on. I'm talking to you. Here we go. The next segment. Man computers. Just

Paul Thurrott (00:42:33):
Kidding. This is like landing a plane on instruments. Can't live with them.

Leo Laporte (00:42:36):
You can't live without 'em. I tell you, I swear. All right, go ahead. Just do it cuz I, I give up. All right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:43):
So we knew this day was coming, but we weren't sure when or what form it would take, but Microsoft announced yesterday. They're updating.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:52):
We know this day.

Leo Laporte (00:42:56):
Oh there, they're sorry. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:58):
That was perfect. You're updating notepad for Windows 11, everyone. Okay. So

Leo Laporte (00:43:06):
What, what does it need? What more could it

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:08):
Need? Nothing. It needs it's perfection

Paul Thurrott (00:43:11):
Itself. It does need one thing by the way. All right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:13):
It got dark.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:15):
God. Dark mode support is huge. Oh my

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:18):
All right. For all you love dark mode. I am a, I am not a dark mode person, but for all you who care it now is gonna have dark mode. I agree. That's a,

Paul Thurrott (00:43:25):
That's a good, it's like an eyecare issue more than a like, no,

Leo Laporte (00:43:29):
I think it is, especially for those of us. So people like night hours.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:33):
It's one of the reasons I use word now

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:35):
Hates it. I hate dark mode. I can't, it hurts my eyes. I, it really, really is bad for my eyes dark. That's right. Oh yeah. It really hurts my eyes. I don't know why maybe others would you the opposite? Yeah. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> agree. I know most people want dark mode. You're gonna get dark mode. What else? It's didn't change. They didn't change a lot, which is what I loved. They said we wanted it to be more modern, but still familiar. Thank goodness. Right. they're changing search and replace in it. Right? So that how does it work now? What's a new thing. So actually I never used search and replace.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:13):
So I, this, this is intriguing to me because the two, they didn't do a good job of showing the interface changes. They, they showed the basic interface. It kind of looks the same. There's a little a gear for settings, but the, the status bar at the bottom's the same with the word count and all that. Okay. Fine care, whatever. No, it's good. But there's a, there's a menu missing. Right. and I always, when I implemented notepad myself two or three times a co couple years ago, I was always kind of confused about what went into edit, what went into format, why those were two different menus format, I think is the one that's gone now. So it's like file edit view. Control H is how you do finding replace. And it just is a historical. I don't know, not for people are interested in this kind of thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:02):
When I went, I, what I wanted to do when I created this app was use the exact dialogues that Microsoft used they're in the system. I mean, why not use them and way back in the day when.net was new and C sharp was new and Windows forms was the thing. They came up with this interface to access that low level type of dialogue. What I can't, I can't I've forgot the name of it, but and there was a toolkit for doing it. It disappeared at some point and there were unofficial ways to do it. But, but basically I ended up just implementing my own interface because it's just not generally available. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and it is fascinating to me that they've updated this app and they had, they Chan they shouldn't say they had to, I'm sure Microsoft can access this stuff, but they actually changed that UI and they didn't do it to, there is no like new win UI, three UI for this. They created something unique of their own. It looks modern and it's fine, but it's just fascinating to me, cuz that was one of my stumbling blocks when I did my own notepad. And that, that is one of the things they changed as well is very, is maybe not coincidental. I thought that was interesting. So there,

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:12):
There a settings page for notepad. No like dedicated settings page. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:17):
No. And that's why I think the format edit thing. I wanna see how those new menus look because no, there is no settings. You you can format things like word wrap is one of them. Fonts obviously brings, well, not fonting one. What else? What is in there? There's not too much in the way of settings. Well font is a setting could say font is a word wrap is a, a format <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative> maybe word wrap and font are in settings. I'm not really sure. Yeah. Yeah. View is like a zoom level, you know, sta whether the status bar is on or off. I don't, I'm curious how they've yeah. Divided things up, but yeah, yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:57):
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Right. So I've, I've had a few questions from people about this. Yep. Because I, I am the unofficial or maybe the official notepad spokesperson in case anyone didn't know that the queen,

Paul Thurrott (00:47:13):
I think is right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:14):
So I had, I had a reader ask me, does notepads still allow you to print with this redesign? Yes, it does. I have never printed from Nopa in my life. I have never printed from Nopa before, but 

Paul Thurrott (00:47:25):
Oh, by the way, implementing print also a real major pain in the, the

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:29):
Butt. So they kept it. Oh really? You, you can, oh wow. It's really hard. You can print. And people are a little bit confused about which version of Notepad is this, because remember last year they said there's gonna be a store version of notepad. Right. And then you still get this notepad that's built into Windows 11. Well, it turns out the Windows. This is my understanding based on some conversations today window, the one that's built into Windows 11 is updated through the store. Right. So, okay. They did not commit to bringing these new changes to the Windows 10 version of notepad. They didn't say they will do that. Or won't they didn't say anything about that. Right. But this version and that they updated yesterday is the one that's bundled with Windows 11 and that is updated through the store.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:15):
That's what's going on there. I haven't gotten the update yet. I've been looking for it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not. And I looked in the store. I figured that's how you would get it. It

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:23):
Is. Yeah. I don't even wanna look. I'm a little.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:27):
Okay. Well is it, you have to

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:29):
Be on the dev channel, right? It's in. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:31):
So you want, you wanna worry about this for months? That's good. That's good. I, I would like it just for just a see, and I'm curious what it looks like to me is that thing I I've said before about some of the other apps and Windows 11 and whether it's true or not kind of doesn't matter, but what it looks like to me is a, when UI update to the existing app, you know that the UI that

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:52):
You, the rounded corner stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mikah backgrounds for people who care about that, Mikah, you know, which is some material building

Paul Thurrott (00:49:01):
Material, Sergeant this is like

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:03):
A different Mikah, whole

Paul Thurrott (00:49:05):
Different MiKah. What Micah, like Eisen glass, it's a, a material, if you will, for these,

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:14):
They call it a material. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:16):
<Laugh> so I believe this one is like the, the one that originally shipped was called acrylic and acrylic had some translucency to it. I think this has less translucency. I think it's kind of a, almost like an opaque style material that matters. I don't know. I don't care. But now I'm curious, I kind of wanna, I'd like to do a w UI update to my app and see if I can replicate this thing, you know? Yeah. Make it just like Microsofts. Yeah. Why not? <Laugh> yeah. Then, then

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:48):
What <laugh> right.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:52):
Has other mine, mine has other improvements that Microsoft, I, I appreciate them finally getting a dark mode. I already support that. Yeah. But not, not literally dark mode. I mean, I support the ability to change the color of the text and the background. So you could have a dark background with light, you know, gray text or something if you want. But yeah. I'd like to do official support for dark one. I think that's cool. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:16):
Yep. Hmm. So yeah, I, I was very scared when I saw the blog posts pop up yesterday, but then I was read it and I was like, wait, are you happy? It seems like, you know what? It seems like they understand they shouldn't muck a lot with notepad, which is great that they understand this. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:32):
And by the way, I, so I use notepad and paint every day. And I have to say the way they treated the paint refresh in windows 11 is disgraceful. So this is a, again, like a win UI front end to the existing app. It does not support dark. So it's like this bright beacon of white light when it opens the keyboard shortcuts are all screwed up now because they've completely changed how the menu works. So like alt F doesn't open the file menu. I don't think ever. Maybe sometimes, but it doesn't always work. You can't do like file save as like, I that's something I do all the time, because now there's a side menu off of save as to let you choose different file formats. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, that's in the save as dialogue. You don't put it in the freaking menu. Like what? I don't, I it's. Yeah. I just, it makes me crazy. They've they've really ruined paint for me. Well, not ruined it. I do still use it, but they've made it harder to use. And that's tough on me cuz I use, like I said, I use it every day. So I was nervous when I saw the Nopa like Mary Jo, but I looked at what they did. I haven't seen the app itself, but it looks, it looks okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:33):
You know, they need to understand your role. Here is the equivalent of mine with Nopa. You're the keeper of paint and they need to understand, they do understand

Paul Thurrott (00:51:41):
It. They, they, they have treated Nopa respectfully, cuz they respect you. And they've treated paint like a <laugh> you know, on the street, you know, just couldn't care. Less like yeah. Was leaving it in there. You don't like you want dark mode. Yeah. You're not getting dark mode.

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:56):
Hey, at least they got away from paint 3d that, that you gotta look for. Happy little happy linings. By the way,

Paul Thurrott (00:52:02):
There was a horrible moment, a little, a period of six months or something, paint 3d was gonna replace paint. It was, I remember that. I dunno know people remember that, but the intention was paint was going away. Yeah. And yeah that was no. And I

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:16):
Always was scared that I was scared. That was gonna happen. A notepad like one day they'd be like, and we're doing Nopa 3d and that old notepad is just gonna go

Paul Thurrott (00:52:24):
Like, this is it's gonna be all jam code now. Hope you're hope you like to write in code

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:30):
And, and yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:33):
Yeah, no, it looks it's me. The new, the notepad refresh looks. Okay. I mean, we'll see, I think it looks okay. The keyboard shortcuts. I think that's an important thing and a text editor to my mind, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:43):
We'll see. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:47):
Okay. Okay. Was the the big story?

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:52):
Yeah, that was gonna be the lead today.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:55):
<Laugh> first story was the big one. That's a big one. This next. One's kind of a big one too. Yeah. Oh, well what is go fire. Fire went ready. So let's see. How do I explain this last week? We talked about the bill. They released that day. And Mary mentioned that at the bottom of the thing, they, there was some language in there about how they could update this thing before the next version of Windows 11. So I went back and I reread it cuz I kind of, I was like, yeah, I saw that. But I, but the, the thing, and this is the thing Mary Jo and I were talking about before you arrived. I, I have it in my head and I think this is the thing everyone does these days. They, you have this idea and it becomes a fact <laugh>, you know, and I'm doing my own research, you know we, I, I was convinced that someone said that they would update Windows 11 stream, you know, that not that there was a schedule, but that we're gonna test these updates and we're gonna implement them over time.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:51):
And then a year from now we're gonna release a feature update. And that feature update would, you know, be a cumulative update that would combine all of that stuff. We already did plus some new stuff and that, you know, whatever that, that's the way I perceived it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but the thing is, if you go back and look at what they've written, they've never actually said that publicly. At least not that I found. And so when I looked at this blog post, I realized this is the first time I think that they publicly acknowledged that they could do this and this is how they wrote it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> these dev builds dev is I'm adding dev, but because the thing they're referring to as a dev build these builds are, are also not matched to a specific release new features. I gotta pull this thing over and OS improvements form these builds from these builds, sorry, could show up in future Windows releases when they're ready and we may deliver them as a full, as full, oh, I can't even read as full OS updates or servicing releases.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:45):
Interesting. A full OS update. I love Microsoft. They always mix the language and everything hilarious. <Laugh> so that's fine. A full OS update is a feature update, right. That thing they're releasing once a year now, so we have Windows 11 and then next year we're gonna have something. I don't know what to call it, but windows 11, probably 22 H 2 22. Yeah. Right? Yep. We'll be the, and there'll be a feature update that updates you to that version. Right. And then a servicing release this various word terms for this, but we'll call this like a cumulative update. It's a yeah. An update to the operating system. Monthly update, whatever mm-hmm <affirmative>. So I wrote a post where, and I, unfortunately, the way I wrote it, I was a little too definitive. I wrote, let me find it. <Laugh> Microsoft confirms it will update Windows 11 before October, 2022.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:32):
Right. And I quoted that exact quote. I just read where Microsoft to be fair. It says, yeah. Could in may not will, but it, it, because it matched my expectations. Like I said, I did that human thing. I think people do, which is you know, my opinion become. So I apologize for that. But my understanding literally was that this was gonna happen. So it, it, when I saw the confirmation, I took it as a confirmation. Yeah. Mark hatch, Hackman, Hackman, Hackman. You say that Hackman? Yep. Hackman PC. Yeah. PC Mac, good guy. Had a, a, a, a lengthy kind of a Twitter stream today. And he cited my story and he talked to Microsoft, I think, and basically the long and the short of it is that MI he says it doesn't appear to be correct because Microsoft and then Microsoft changed the wording of the post after the fact.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:23):
And I was like, wow. So I looked the language they used in the build they released today. This is what happened just before the show started. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and that quote, I just read is identical between last week's build and this week's build, they actually didn't change the language there. I think he, he might be referring to a different part of the post mm-hmm <affirmative> and that's not, I guess that's not super important to the conversation, but I, it is, I guess, to, to clarify what Microsoft said and not to put my own <laugh>, you know, worldview on top of it. Microsoft did for the first time confirm last week that they could, and I think probably will. And I think Mary Jo would agree with that update Windows 11 before next October, meaning that the features they're testing right now in the dev channel, some of them or all of them, or whatever, some combination of them could appear in the stable version of Windows 11 sometime in the next eight to nine months or whatever.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:15):
It's right. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I, to me, and this is the way I wrote it, they would never do this before the end of the year. Right. Windows 11, just they're gonna be off for most of December. This is something you start looking at in early 20, 22. In fact, we're gonna see 12th gen what, what I'll call still call use series Intel chips and the PCs based on them appear at CES first week of January. And those computers will start appearing in, you know, February, March, April, whatever it is re to assume that if they're going to do this, that the timing for the first of what could be the only, or several of these kinds of updates might be time to that. That that's my opinion. That's not a fact mm-hmm <affirmative> but but regardless of what I've superimposed on top of this, I, I guess, because I can't find any other reference to it that this, this does represent the first time they've confirmed that they could do this to be me as Microsoft is <laugh>.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:14):
Yep. I think that's right. I think we, like, at first you're like, oh, they're gonna do one feature update a year. So everything that's in the dev channel right now is gonna have to wait to of the fall. Right. But that now we know that's not,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:28):
That's true. That's a long way to go. It is to fix an OS that has a lot of holes, a lot of regressions, right. From Windows 10 a lot of weird little problems, you know? Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:40):
Yeah. The reason reasonable. Yeah, I do too. I think, I think it's very reasonable to assume some of this stuff, especially fixes and maybe some features will come in the form of a cumulative update before next fall. Oh, by the way, the reason,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:55):
Yeah, go ahead. Nope. No, not right. I'm sorry.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:58):
No. Okay. The reason there's such sticklers about talking about when is the feature update and how often because of the support life cycle. Right? So they don't wanna say there's two, like they can't call the thing that comes out. If there is a thing in the spring, a feature update, cuz that'll screw up the whole support cycle clock, right. They have a set amount of time. They support these releases and they have announced the extension of the support window for Windows 10 and for Windows 11. And the thing they don't wanna do is trigger this before it's supposed to kick off because that'll drive it people crazy. It's a,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:38):
It's a little exercise for everybody. Yeah. I think it's possible. They've already done this. I think they've already added features to Windows 11 that they started to, but lemme make sure that's true. <Laugh> yeah. I think paint is an example of this, right? When Windows 11 first shipped on October 5th, didn't it just include the old paint.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:00):
Yeah. But do you, do you call paint part of the OS, even though it it's bundled with it, but it's an app. Well, I mean

Paul Thurrott (01:00:06):
I, well, notepad, they're testing that now that's something that could appear. Yeah. I

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:09):
Consider app. I still consider that a separate

Paul Thurrott (01:00:12):
App. Okay. But I mean, you know, that might be

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:15):
Yeah. Maybe that's what they're thinking. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:17):
Yeah. Maybe more specifically we know that over the past year or two, Microsoft has tested other ways of updating the system right. Broadly. Yeah. That there's a range of ways now, but that it used to be, you know, Windows updates of whatever form, cumulative updates, future updates. And then on the far end was the store and the store would update apps. Yep. Now there are these things in the middle <laugh>,

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:41):
You know, sort of like pack, right. Is that what they call those feature packs? Yeah. Feature, experience pack. Then there was gonna be this system update pack thing, which I think they talked about in a blog post, but then they pulled it. I don't think it worked. So who knows what's in that they, they would never say what that was supposed

Paul Thurrott (01:01:00):
Be. I think, but I think the point of all that stuff is regardless of the details, regardless of the specifics is to do what other platform makers are doing. We talked about this, you know, update the system without requiring you to install more virtually operating system. Yeah. You know? Yep. Yeah. And, and mm-hmm, <affirmative> get that stuff out of that monolithic update chain, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative>, I mean, Microsoft just released a project where you, of the the Windows app SDK and the whole point of that is to deliver features to developers that aren't tied to a Windows version. Yeah. Microsoft will do this in the O OS itself deliver features that aren't tied to an OS version. Of course. Yeah. Now I I'm saying it like, it's absolutely happening. I'm sorry I keep doing it, but I, I,

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:41):
Yeah. I think you're right. It's to be that they're gonna do this. Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, they can't, they don't wanna be definitive just in case. For some reason they can't won don't do it. And then people will, will be writing blog posting. They said they were gonna do this and they didn't. Right. So they're just hedging their bets. Right. <laugh> that's what

Paul Thurrott (01:02:00):
I think. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:01):
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:04):
So we have exhausted the subject

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:08):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:02:10):
Well, Leo, I think, you know, we could call it

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:12):
Update gate oh, update gate,

Paul Thurrott (01:02:14):
But yes, we should move on. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:02:22):
Yeah, I think we could I'm I'm looking at the rest of the show. It's so hard to do timing with you guys, cuz I know one line,

Paul Thurrott (01:02:30):
The size of the notes does not equate the size and time. No. That

Leo Laporte (01:02:34):
It takes to discuss. So I'm looking for things that will set you off.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:39):
Well that's it for setting me off? I, I would say most of the rest of this is good news or indifference as far

Leo Laporte (01:02:46):
As I'm concerned. Right? Well this would be then a good time to pause. Cuz I, I, I wanna make sure you, you know, I have time for every, every little thing in this fabulous show. And I also wanna make sure that we give do consideration to our fabulous sponsors in this case, worldwide technology and Dell technologies WWT. You've heard me talk about before many times big fan, we went out to St. Louis and visited them right before COVID and we just blown away by their advanced technology center. WWT built this because, well, I don't know, did they build it because they're at the forefront of innovation or did they build it because they wanted to be. And now are at the forefront of innovation. They work with clients all over the world, transforming their businesses with enterprise technology.

Leo Laporte (01:03:40):
And it really is the heart of this operation, the ATC, because it's a research and testing lab that brings together all the latest technologies from all the OEMs. There's more than half a billion dollars in equipment there. And the engineers at WWT can use it to spin up proofs of concept, to test products, to see how products integrate with one another. And it's all for your benefit. In fact, I'll tell you how in a second, you can even use the stuff at the ATC. Well, I'll tell you now why keep it a secret? The ATC offers hundreds of on-demand and schedulable labs free to anybody. Who's a member of their, and I'll tell you how you can join that platform in a bit. But just to give you an idea with just Dell technologies alone, there's Dell's VX rail, cyber recover solutions, there's power store, power, flex power, scale power, max there's unity, there's data protection center.

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There's IDPA. These labs represent the newest advances in primary storage. And I'll actually never get when we went to the labs, there was this whole rack, beautifully lit rack with Dell storage solutions in there. And it was gorgeous. I thought I would like that from my, from, from my house. Other labs in the advanced technology center represent the newest advances in all the things you need to know about in business these days multi-cloud multi-home dark architectures security of course, networking of course primary and secondary storage, data analytics, AI, even methodologies like DevOps. It's all in there. And it's all available to you. With ATC. You can test out products and solutions before you go to market. Before you install them before you even buy them, you can access technical articles, expert insights, demonstration videos, white papers, hands on labs, all the tools you need to stay up to date with latest technology cuz know is power.

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And in your business, it's all about your business strategy. It's not about the technology for technology sake at all. It's how it's gonna support you in what you wanna do in your business. Members of the ATC platform can access all of the resources of the advanced technology center anywhere in the world, time of the day or night, it's all there for you also while you're there, do check out all of the events and communities, WWT sponsors, lots of places you can learn about technology trends. Hear the latest research and insights from their experts. Speak to your peers. It's just a, they've really created something remarkable. What, whatever your business need WWT can deliver. Scalable, tried and tested tailored solutions. WWT brings strategy and execution together to make this new world happen. If you wanna learn more about WWT, the advanced technology center get access to all those free resources. It's easy. Just go to wwt.com/twi WWT, worldwide technology.com/twi create a free cat on the ATC platform. And you're in. You could, you could do it right now. Wwt.Com/Twi. We thank of so much for supporting Windows Weekly. And we thank you for supporting windows weekly by using that address. That way they'll know you you heard it here. Wwt.Com/Twi. All right. Time for the windows and arm segment.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:09):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:07:10):
<Laugh> you said something funny. You surprised me. You said you tested out this browser thing on your windows on arm, arm machine. Is that, are you suddenly using it and loving it?

Paul Thurrott (01:07:22):
No. <laugh> what I, so after last week's sh no, after the events where Rafael had pointed out that this set default button was there, I realized I needed to, I, I couldn't remember which computer had the dev channel on it. And sometime last year I put the dev channel on this windows 10 and arm PC, because that was the only way you could get X 64 compatibility. And I wanted to see what that was like, but I left it on there too long. And it went into Windows 11 at one point, and now it's stuck on Windows 11 dev channel. So I updated it to the latest build and then I tried it there and it was the one that I found first. What I, what you don't see is on the tops of both these <laugh>, which, where that goes the desks or whatever the table, the shelving. I, I had stacked all my computers and I was going through one by one to figure out which one was on the dev channel. And that was the one I found first. So I do like the computer though, by the way. It's it's the HP, I think it's called the HP elite folio.

Leo Laporte (01:08:23):
Well, that's be, it's a beautiful, you've talked about this before. I mean, it's really pretty. It's just, if it's it's slow, I don't pleather clad. Yeah, yeah, no, I almost bought one cuz it's expensive.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:32):
It's a, it's a gen te computing experi what I say for the

Leo Laporte (01:08:35):
CEO's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And, and he, or she's not in a hurry. No, it's a

Paul Thurrott (01:08:39):
Nice computer. No, I don't mind it. It it's it's you know, Hey this

Leo Laporte (01:08:43):
Just so this

Paul Thurrott (01:08:44):
Just in yeah. This so Qualcomm had their big annual wait a minute. No,

Leo Laporte (01:08:47):
I have to interrupt. Oh, I'm sorry. Buried the lead breaking news. And I'm hoping Chris Capella's gonna wear this. Well, no, <laugh> the ugly Microsoft sweater is out. Oh yeah. It's mine. Sweeper.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:01):
Yeah. So Rafael actually pointed this out to me very early on and I was it's considered get it's $75

Leo Laporte (01:09:08):
It's yeah, but it's a benefit, right? It's a benefit. It's always sold out by the time I learn

Paul Thurrott (01:09:13):
About it. Yeah. I could have, I could have got one, but I'm, it's like, I'm not paying 70 bucks for this thing.

Leo Laporte (01:09:19):
My hairs a

Paul Thurrott (01:09:20):
Lead again.

Leo Laporte (01:09:21):
Look at that mind sweeper. And it's a Christmas tree. Yeah. It's the, I guess I'm guessing he's gonna wear this next week. I have a feeling we know now I would think what the wardrobe will include. Yep. All right. Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. No, no. Qu something about Qualcomm snap dragging

Paul Thurrott (01:09:39):
Qualcomm this past week. I guess it was last week. This week. I don't remember. They just had their annual events. So they announced all the new snap dragging processors, you know, they, you know, they did the renaming scheme. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:09:47):
This was the event where they we revealed that they had a deal with Microsoft for exclusivities.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:53):
Yeah. So here's here. This is, is what's weird. We know that earlier this year, Qualcomm bought Nuvia specifically because they make arm based PC processors and they were gonna, their own PC processors have never amounted to anything. And so they were gonna deliver next generation systems based on this in these chip sets. And then later in the year they said, eh, we're not gonna be able to sample these until the end of 2022. So you won't see them in new computers until 2023. We thought, geez. Okay. Problem is 2023 is like a year and a half away. So, you know, over a year away. And what do you do? Are we gonna let the existing, you know, chip sets kind of sit there and gather dust and the answer I guess is no. So they are now on their third generation snap and eight CX, which is what they eventually arrived at with their own in-house chip set.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:47):
This is the chip set that Microsoft based their own. I think it's the, is it the sq one chip set I think is based on the eight CX, you know, for their service products. You know, I, it's hard to know what to think about this, right? It it's, it's obviously it's just a, an evolution of the existing stuff. So how good could it be? It is based on five nanometer technology by the way. So that's a first for any PC chips at cool. But you know, you hear things like 85% faster CPU performance and 64% faster. I'm sorry. That was CPU GPU performance than their previous gen PC chip. It's like, okay, but what's 85% of zero <laugh>, you know, it's like, it, it, I don't know what to make of it. I haven't used one yet. I'm I'm, I'm happy to see what happens.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:34):
I don't think we're gonna see a lot of PCs based on this chipset, frankly. I think that any PC maker, that's still holding out hope that this somehow is the future of the PC. I think we've already, we debated that last week. I think. We'll probably wait to see what the new stuff looks like. So I think the diehards, you know, Le P probably that's all, we'll probably release one each or something. And maybe, I dunno, I think Samsung's got one out in the market now as well. Maybe they'll do something. I don't know. But this to me is just a holding pattern, right. Until yeah. The real stuff appears. And then my God listen to the language it's like always on always connected PCs, extra frame, system level performance, speed, and efficiency. Multiday battery life, AI accelerated features, lightning fast 5g, slow as asses.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:21):
I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Truly mobile light and fan list windows, laptops, right? I mean, this is what we've had along. So yeah, whatever, I don't, I, I assume nobody is super excited for this thing, but no, but you know, we gotta keep the hope alive, you know? So we'll say <laugh> happy. No, I mean, I'm happy. They're continuing with it. I, like I said, I think it doesn't matter what the outcome is, as long as the PC platform overall improves because this happened. Yeah. Whether it happens with Intel AMD and or QUM, I couldn't kill less. It it's good. It's good for the it's good for the industry. It

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:57):
Doesn't matter. In some ways, cuz windows Onar still is not really ready for prime time. I would say so. Yeah. What's another year.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:05):
I mean you thought windows 11 was complete. <Laugh> let me show you windows 11 on arm is the last time I ran it. There were a lot of windows programs that just wouldn't run on. Onar at all. It's it's not bad. It's just, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:18):
64 bed emulation. Is there at least now 64 bed

Paul Thurrott (01:13:21):
Emulation. Is there 11? That helps a lot. Yeah. Right. It does. It doesn't answer all the problems. I mean, you gotta remember it. This is possibly two, maybe even three years ago. Yeah. Let's say two years ago to give 'em the benefit of the doubt. They were talking about core I five level performance, you know? Right. They never said what generation cor five, like gen three, cor five maybe. Yeah. it's it, it does not in any way match what you can get from an Intel processor today or an AMD process. It just doesn't, you

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:52):
Know, so no. And battery life, come on. You gotta make that real or the there's no advantage of using windows on earth.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:59):
Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:01):
I know. Tough love guys, but it's true.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:04):
<Laugh> well look, I, like I said, I, I, I'm glad they're advancing the platform. I think the real same jump is gonna come if it ever comes with this Nuvia stuff. So we shall see by the way, to give you an indication how exciting windows and arm is to everyone at Microsoft just this week. They finally like seriously think about how many years it's been released a native version of the OneDrive client for windows and arm in preview. Right. See, anyone can get it if you want it, you can get it. It's also available for M one Mac users. So it took them a year to deliver it from the M one Mac. When I first tested M one, I, I, I think it was a, I guess I got a Mac mini about this time last year, the only big issue I had was, well, you know, being a Mac was OneDrive sync was really slow.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:51):
Like there was something wrong with it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative> and some people, depending on who you hear from some people, like, I don't know what you talk about. I don't have any problems. And other people like, thank you. This is a huge problem. But there is now a native arm client for OneDrive on both windows and Mac. So if you want that, you can get it. And then I, I don't know what to think about this. I, I <affirmative> the FTC following the UK has sued the block, the acquisition of arm, the company by Envidia. And this one's curious because this is kind of a competition issue and it's going in kind of the opposite direction you might think, or, you know, when you think about it, because Envidia is based in the United States and our arm is based in the UK <laugh> and they're stopping an American company from acquiring a UK company, you think you'd want to bring that into the country.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:41):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but I think the reason is there are so many companies that rely on arm for their own designs, you know, apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Qualcomm, you know, whatever mm-hmm <affirmative> they're afraid that our Invidia might change the licensing terms, the prices, et cetera. They they're worried about it being anti-competitive. I think there are ways around that, but I don't an expert in this area, but there you go. I don't know who like what company is there on earth that would be okay to purchase arm that everyone would be okay with. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:16:12):
I have no idea wondering that

Paul Thurrott (01:16:13):
Too. Well, it's owned by SoftBank, right? Right. By the way, which is based in Japan. <Laugh> so like what? I dunno. Yeah. I dunno. It's just interesting. So we'll see what happens there, but arm, you know, arm doesn't make their own chips, but they do design the chips sets that become the basis for the chips that's made by Qualcom Samsung and apple and all those companies. So I dunno.

Leo Laporte (01:16:38):
It's innovating just to hear you talk about it, to be honest with

Paul Thurrott (01:16:43):
Business. Yeah. Well then I'm not doing something wrong. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:16:47):
No innovating is bad. Innovating means you're sucking the life out of me, Paul. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:16:52):
There you go. Yeah. Well, I just, I just don't know what this say. I'm not sure like, oh, but like literally I don't understand who, what I don't mean who, cuz you can't really say who for a company, but what company could purchase arm where everyone would say, oh yeah, no, that's good. <Laugh> you know, like what, what is it? What is it you want? The thing

Leo Laporte (01:17:08):
Is they're owned now by SoftBank. So it's not like some wonderful company owns it. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:14):
I know. And, and SoftBank wants to unload it. So that's even worse. So somebody seems should acquire a legal agreement between Envidia and the licensees that they would never change. Yada yada, always

Leo Laporte (01:17:26):
That yeah. They said that I think it would make people might be considered making Vidia too powerful. I mean, I think if they owned arm

Paul Thurrott (01:17:35):
Invidia makes graphics processors that they can't even sell right now. Cause they can't get component. Like

Leo Laporte (01:17:40):
What, what is yeah, but they make some amazing stuff and they're in a lot of areas. It's not just GPS for gaming and Vidia is in you know, autonomous cars. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:17:52):
Everywhere where arm is too. It makes it almost kind of makes sense. Oh it was a good synergy.

Leo Laporte (01:17:56):
I think it's a, the funny thing is of course it's a part stock part cash deal. And the stock has been going up so much that it's now a $75 billion acquisition. And I think frankly in video's probably going who? That was a close one. <Laugh> I mean it started

Paul Thurrott (01:18:13):
Whole price. It was on, it was around 50,

Leo Laporte (01:18:15):
Wasn't it? No, no. It started like a 25, 25. Yeah. I but the stock kept going up and up and up and it's now worth 75 billion. That's a, a lot more probably than it's than arm is worse.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:27):
Yeah. It was. Where is it? Let's see the price, right? Yeah. 40. It was, I think it was 40. It was 40 billion.

Leo Laporte (01:18:34):
Well, no, that was the set. That was again, after the stock went up. It's I remember this only because I said, I remember predicting, oh, they're they're gonna spend like 30 billion for arm. And people laughed at me and they said, no, it's not worth that. And I think it probably isn't that, but it, because of the value of the stock kept going,

Paul Thurrott (01:18:53):
Oh, that tiny acorn has turned into a beautiful tree

Leo Laporte (01:18:57):
And then their English don't, you know, there's concerns cuz arms and English company and they don't want to, you know, export their well, the

Paul Thurrott (01:19:02):
UK government has also tried to block this because the national security reasons. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:06):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I think Poland is gonna win <laugh> isn't it isn't Poland. The one that said you can't do it. Somebody it's so silly. It's so

Paul Thurrott (01:19:16):
Silly. They should give it to the Swiss. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:19:18):
Yeah. Yeah. Give it to the Swiss. Who could anybody be better than SoftBank

Paul Thurrott (01:19:25):
<Laugh> yeah. Well that's true. You don't want like a, I don't know. I don't know. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, you know, or Intel? No, it's like, oh, entities. Right, right.

Leo Laporte (01:19:41):
Anyway. It's it's it's over. I mean, it's really over, I don't think it's gonna survive any of these challenges. So

Paul Thurrott (01:19:47):
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think that's the, the final step.

Leo Laporte (01:19:52):
Hmm. <Laugh> I don't know why, but for some reason I remember reading that Poland actually said, no, you can't <laugh> I don't remember. I might be Poland draws the line. Yeah. Yeah. That's it it's over. And has stepped in and saved the world. <Laugh> Microsoft 3, 6, 5.

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:14):
Yeah. So the first item I have to say thanks to the discord folks for bring it to my attention. They're so good. Last week. Yeah. So when we did our Q and a, this thing came up and they said, what about this other thing Microsoft's gonna do to increase prices? And I didn't even know about this. So I started digging into it and there's this partner program they announced I guess earlier this year called the commerce experience, CE sounds like goodness, right? Commerce who's against commerce. Well, what they're doing with this thing, really putting rather onerous terms on Microsoft partners, you know, who are the lifeblood of Microsoft people who are in the cloud solution provider program, they're saying they're giving them all these new terms under this where they're, they're liable for a lot of things that their users are gonna do.

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:05):
And maybe they are to an extent, but under this CE program, which is meant basically to try to get partners, to sell customers longer term contracts, they like Microsoft. Doesn't like it. When you pay for office per month, they want you to pay for office per year. At least if not every three years. Right? And they give you guarantee is like the price won't go up. We won't change the terms if you do that. But now they're saying to partners, we really want you to make this a thing and they're taking away the idea of a, of a one month subscription. Well, they're not taking it away, but they're saying, if you wanna continue to do one month, we're gonna charge you 20% more. Then you would pay if you did one year or three years. So if a, if a customer cancels a contract and you're halfway through the partner has to keep paying until the renewal date.

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:00):
Like there's all these kind of crazy terms in there. And obviously partners are not happy about these new terms. And there's a change.org petition. There's a of complaints in the forearm saying, Microsoft, what are you doing? Like it's a pandemic. Has anyone told you this? Like people are kind of strapped for cash and you're putting out all these new terms to try to get them to pay a lot, a lot more into the future for your subscription products, like office dynamics, Azure, all these things. So yeah, it was a real thing. And thanks to the discord for telling me about it. I wrote about it this week. Microsoft gave me a NABI boiler plate quote saying, yeah, it's good for everyone. A

Leo Laporte (01:22:38):
NABI sounds like an award. I thought you got like a statue, the boiler NABI show

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:45):
<Laugh> yeah, no, they give you this thing. Like, yeah. It's everyone's benefit. Like this is gonna be great that we're doing this and it's meant to help, you know, guarantee consistency, blah, blah, blah, your eyes glaze over. But basically it's to try to get partners to sell longer term contracts to customers. That's what's going on here. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:23:06):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you can afford to pay annually, it's cheaper anyway. Yeah. You know, for individuals or whatever, it's better to do that if you can.

Mary Jo Foley (01:23:16):
Yeah. But during the pandemic, some people said I had no choice to go monthly. Like I was strapped for cash small

Leo Laporte (01:23:22):
Because there's people on both sides of that debate. Like there's people who want the perpetual license for hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Yep. And then, and then people who say, I can only give you it eight bucks at a time.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:33):
I think the thing that kind of destroys the argument against this is we beat the pandemic. So what's the problem. Oh yeah. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:23:39):
Sure. It's over right. Maybe

Leo Laporte (01:23:41):
You've heard is something a little something. My aunt to call Ohn. My friends. You

Paul Thurrott (01:23:48):
<Laugh>. We did it.

Leo Laporte (01:23:52):
Ah, you know, when I was a kid, I learned the Greek, the ancient Greek alphabet. And this is the first time that's that's

Paul Thurrott (01:24:01):
Been useful. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was the villain from the transformer

Leo Laporte (01:24:07):
Omega man or something. Yeah. Yeah. No alpha beta Gama, Delta, exon Zeta, ADA, theta ETA, capital Lambda, moon, Nu. And then by the way they said, we didn't wanna use new because it's confusing. It's not the new coronavirus and we didn't wanna use, see cuz no one can say it <laugh>. Yeah. So they skipped right to which no one can say either cuz they, you know course. I mean course they don't teach ancient Greek anymore. Which you know, I got a bone to pick about that. Don't

Paul Thurrott (01:24:35):
Even teach handwriting anymore. Why would they teach ancient Greek <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:24:41):
I took one week of ancient Greek in college before dropping it. It was like, that's funny. No. many people subway. You never know. You never know. Well it, like I said, finally came here. There you go. It took a while, but there it is finally came more people are getting the rounded corner office update. That's not

Paul Thurrott (01:25:01):
The name by the way. No

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:03):
It's not. That's my name. That's my name for it. <Laugh> what

Leo Laporte (01:25:07):
Do you call? What

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:08):
Do you call that? Yeah. It's the windows 11 visual

Paul Thurrott (01:25:11):
Refresh or something. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:13):
Yeah. So they made, they made a version of office where it looks better to use with windows 11 rounded corners. Just probably some of that Micah stuff. Who knows? I don't know, like all the stuff I don't care about. Fluent things.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:26):
I think it's be beautiful.

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:28):
It's gorgeous. It looks it's beautiful. Right? So more and more people are getting it. I'm having people email me saying, did you know there's a new version of office though? I'm like, yeah, it's around a corner office. I know. Yeah. There's also a different ribbon display option on it. And that's about it. Feature wise from what I can tell. Right. Different

Paul Thurrott (01:25:47):
Ribbon display. Talk to me.

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:49):
Yeah. Some people are seeing a I think it's a collapsible ribbon. Is that right?

Paul Thurrott (01:25:55):
I don't know. No, they already, it, it already collapsed. I I, what I was thinking about this, it was simplified ribbon. I would love the simple, the

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:02):
Access toolbar is now concealed to make room for a simpler interface, but it can be revealed

Paul Thurrott (01:26:08):
By a right click on the office ribbon or by clicking on ribbon display options. Well, okay. Hold on a second. First of all, I think the reason it was it disappeared is because there's no more room up there. They've they've cluttered. That title buyer area was so much junk auto hate the document search bar, the premium features little announcement thing. Like you almost can't grab the top of it to drag the window. You can't it's

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:30):
Like no space. No you can't. I know.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:32):
Yeah. That's funny.

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:33):
Yeah. Okay. So it's, it's a somewhat different ribbon, I guess, look and feel on it. I don't know, because I try to not look at the ribbon. It makes me sad.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:42):
I collapse by default. That's why I was yeah, because just to make it, you know, simpler looking or whatever, right?

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:48):
Yeah. But yeah, if you see this, you're supposed to be getting this. It's not a surprise. I've had people go, oh, I don't think you guys reported this supposed to be new. No, it's not new. We know it's coming. It's just taken a while. And I think only

Paul Thurrott (01:26:59):
Percent, right. They started rolling

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:01):
It out. 50% of people have it now. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:04):
And, and yeah, sometime in the past week they accelerated the rollout. Someone told me it was 100% rolling out, but I don't, I didn't see any language to that effect.

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:13):
No, I know a lot of people, a lot more people are getting it. I'm not sure when the end date is supposedly for the rollout, but just if you see it, that's, what's happening. You're getting an intentional re refresh on your office. This isn't a big brand, you know, we've been hearing like there's a whole different version of office. Like at one point we were hearing PWA like that they were redoing office. This is not that this is not that

Paul Thurrott (01:27:36):
No, you don't have to dive too deep into it to realize it's the same thing. But the, the it is, you know, the surface level. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:43):
Looks a little nicer. Different. Yeah. Yeah. That's all. That's all I wanted to say on that.

Leo Laporte (01:27:52):
Okay. Okay. Well, if you're sure, because you know what that means

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:58):
I do. I

Leo Laporte (01:27:59):
Do. So I got up yeah. Or maybe it was when I was going to bed last night, you know, and I have one of those devices I think it was an Amazon echo, but Google does too, where they put your calendar up, like your big appointment for the next day. And my all day appointment for today was halo. Infinite ships.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:20):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:21):
<Laugh> and I think it was like, it said all day halo and I thought maybe this is a hint. I should

Paul Thurrott (01:28:25):
Go to work. I wish it had been all day. Leo. I wish it had been,

Leo Laporte (01:28:29):
Have you have you today's the day. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:31):
So it didn't appear until 11:00 AM PT. Yeah. Or maybe it was 10:00 AM PT 1:00 AM. I think it was 1:00 PM. E T oh unfortunately. And they really, the thing they really screwed up unfortunately was they did let you preload it. So when that time arrived, you could, oh, you're download, download baby. You're downloading. And to answer the question we got last week if you have the multiplayer beta installed, you install it from there and it becomes halo infinite. And then you do get those choices. Like I said, in the one app where you can go between campaign and multiplayer. So that is the way that works. It takes a long time to download. It's not particularly big, honestly, for a, a modern, triple a shooter, but the capping, the downloads cuz the entire planet is trying to play this thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:17):
Here's the good news. I did have, I got an, the beta last week and for the campaign and it is it's awesome. It's it's is it? It's awesome. Yeah. It's awesome. Oh boy. The way I would describe it's hard to explain like, like a, like the way a game feels is kind of a weird thing to talk about, but if you're like say you're a college duty player and you see, oh this is this thing called battlefield. Like I might wanna battlefield or maybe, you know Fortnite happens like, oh, I wanna see what's going on in Fortnite. You know, the problem switching between shooters is the feel of these games is so different. You're completely disoriented when you jump into a different one and that can be true between different call duty versions as well. I mean, I, when I went from black op four to the remake of modern or the new version of my lot of warfare, modern warfare felt so different.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:04):
It was like playing an alien game. It was just, it was weird. Like it didn't didn't feel right. Halo, there's a familiarity to it. I mean the first three halo games are some of the best games I've ever played. My entire life. Huge, huge, huge games, replayed and replayed at multiple times. Every one of them. It's familiar on that note. So it's, it looks, you hear the music swells and you're like, oh my God, this is amazing. It's halo. But the, the, the feel of the game and, and the imediacy at which you just immediately understand how everything works and you just playing it and there's no, like how does the, you don't think about how the control work it's astonishing. It is the tightest most well age shooter I've ever seen. It's amazing. Wow. Better than call a duty. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:47):
Yeah. That's great. That's your game call a duty. You are you gonna give up call duty for halo? Infinite. We'll see. So here's the problem I have. I, I, I know. So I, I got early access to it. I did not finish it. Right. And then at some point on Tuesday I went into play and it says, oh, this game needs an update. I'm I cool. And it's like, there's no update and I couldn't get in anymore. And then I went and looked at the documentation they gave me and they, they told me this was gonna happen. I just didn't see it. So I didn't, I couldn't play it for the past day and a half. And then I, when I, I just downloaded it for the for the show, when I start the can and paying again, I have to start it over.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:24):
It's I don't even get credit. What I oh, so I didn't get any achievements or anything. Yeah. So that, that now I'm glad I didn't get like three quarters the way through it. It's a big story. And I don't wanna give any spoilers, but I will say this I never finished halo four or five because I hated those games. I, they were terrible. And I actually had no idea where the story went. And I think it's important for anyone who plays this. Well, maybe it isn't actually, it's interesting because they kind of jumped the shark with halo over the past two games. And like in halo, four Cortana was breaking down at the Cortana in the game is the AI companion of the main character. It's just like real life. Yeah. Falling apart. Yeah. Well in halo five, this thing comes back and she's the villain.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:11):
And she, she like, she goes to enslave in humanity at the end. She's poised to take over the earth. I told master. So when ha I don't know what he was thinking. You have to, so no, it's okay. You have to. So it's like, well, how do they rectify this? I don't want to ruin how they rectify it. Cuz actually, who knows, maybe there's more going on later in the game, but they rect. It is if you've ever watched a TV show or, or whatever, maybe a where that now they have to make a sequel. And it's like, what did they do in the last one? It's like, you know what? Let's just pretend it didn't happen. It's a, and they basically, they just, they don't ignore it, but they basically there's like, there's like a one like the replacement for Cortana issues. A one sentence explanation for what happened. And it's just like over no I'm evil. Bye. Yeah. No, it's crazy. Like it's, it's it it's but it's he's kind of cute. Isn't he? Mary Jo, he's just, he is so

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:02):
Excited about, I can't believe he said he might replace call of duty. I was like, what?

Paul Thurrott (01:33:07):
<Laugh> well, well, by the way, call duty replaced halo for me. Like that's yeah, yeah. Before I went to call of duty, I that halo was it, you know? So is it infinite or is it really finite? Should it just be halo? Fine. It's actually incredibly finite. So it takes place. Most of it takes place on a, a new ring world. Right. And it looks just like the other ring worlds of Kristen has to. But it's beautiful. And remember, you know, a year and a half ago, whenever you, but the August last year, you and I watched that event where they were gonna like launch lunch. Yeah. Looked like the old one. And we were like, man, this looks like garbage. Like what's going on? It does not look like that. It looks amazing. Okay. It's it's awesome. Awesome. And you can play it on game pass, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:33:47):
This is the big deal. This is the Microsoft calls it the most accessible version of halo that might have been the wrong word to use. Cuz you hear that and you think it's accessibility. It's the most broadly available version ever. So most halo games only cared on console. And only on specific versions of the console too, depending on when they were released halo two eventually did come out on windows Vista. And I don't remember the most re I don't think the most recent ones ever came out on PC, but this version is simultaneously available on Xbox one, Xbox series X and S PC, both through Microsoft store, steam, Xbox game pass. And you can stream it over Xbox cloud streaming if you have Xbox game pass ultimate. So it's just an incredible swath of platforms that you can play this game on.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:35):
And I have not tried it on the PC yet. Actually I should try it on the PC. I think I will eventually do that, but I just I wanna get caught up to where I was on the, on the console on the Xbox series X, at least it looks it's fantastic. It's just beautiful. Woo. And by the way, like the new, the new call of duty game, you launch it, you go into multi-player and it looks like a last gen title. It's like muddy and bland and it's, and it, I don't know what's going on. And then you launch this thing. You're like, here we go. It's it's

Leo Laporte (01:35:03):
Gorgeous. So no major bugs, cause this has been a problem in the game industry for the last few years. Just bug first

Paul Thurrott (01:35:10):
Releases. Yeah. I can't promise that there there's look, you know, multiplayer by the way. I should also say multiplayers free and it's I thought it was gonna be free until the game shipped. It's apparently it's just free. It's free. So yeah. So anyone could do halo, multi halo, infinite multiplayer

Leo Laporte (01:35:23):
Without buying anything.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:25):
I believe so. That's what they were saying today. So yeah. That's interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:35:29):
How, how do they make money on that

Paul Thurrott (01:35:32):
Volume Leo and

Leo Laporte (01:35:34):
They must have, but they were gonna have advertising in it or, or maybe it's gonna be fortnight style where you buy 

Paul Thurrott (01:35:39):
Goodies. Well, there are seasons and you know, they're gonna do all that stuff. I'm not really sure. That's a good question. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:35:46):
There's I now see now I'm tempted cuz I have, I bought the master chief collection. Yeah. But I don't want to hold, go buy a, I mean, I, I guess I'd have to buy the whole thing or use the game pass, but maybe I'll just play the multiplayer except I'm so terrible. I,

Paul Thurrott (01:36:02):
I really like the can I, I, I, I have a hard time getting into camp, like single player campaigns these days, like that new modern warfare game, I eventually did go back and play it like after the pandemic started, just cause I wanted something to do. Black ops, cold war. I never completed it. Vanguard I've started it. And I might eventually do that. I kind of like the world war II stuff, but like I absolutely will play through this. Like this is the first single player campaign of any game I've legitimately been interested in and I don't even know it's been a long time. Wow. Yeah. Needto it's really, it's really neat. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:36:38):
I'm glad, you know. Good, good. This is, you know, they put a lot of stock into this. They a lot of advertising and,

Paul Thurrott (01:36:44):
But they clearly benefited from the year. Like, you know, I can't even imagine what this might

Leo Laporte (01:36:48):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> a year ago. Yeah. You need to do that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> sometimes and, and I think there's a such pressure to deliver on these AAA titles and yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:58):
Yeah. This is a big one and, and it's, you know, and look, it enters a world that is very different from when, when halo first launched. I mean, if you would ask you wanna have a conversation about like console shooters. I mean, it would've been like golden I right. You know, that would've been the end of it, you know? Right. they sort of, and by the way, you know, the, the matchmaking capabilities I think was at halo too, actually a multiplayer became the matchmaking capabilities in Xbox live gold. Like that's halo is so influential it be parts of it became Xbox live, you know? And they're used by all games or by, you know, any game that has multiplayer. I dunno. It's I dunno. It's great. I, I, those first three games are unbelievable. ODST is also very good that halo three ODST halo four, you know, like they, they kind of lost me, not kind of, they lost me this game. It's like, oh yeah, here we go. Like, this

Leo Laporte (01:37:53):
Is, this is here we go, baby. They all,

Paul Thurrott (01:37:55):
They're making a point of it too. It's like, remember in other games you could sometimes play other characters or wasn't always master chief. No, no, no. You are playing master chief and yeah, you you're gonna save the universe. That's what you're doing. <Laugh> you know, it's like, we, we're just going back to basics here. And I, I kind of like, I think that was smart. Nice. But you should bone up on the, what happened in the last games just to see how they handled it. <Laugh>, it's, it's actually kind of comedic because it it's it's like the voice of Cortana, as you might know, from your phone or your windows PC back in the day. And <laugh>, she's like this insane AI trying to take over the earth at the end of halo five. And it's like, what the heck with it? She's like

Leo Laporte (01:38:33):
Glad in the port.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:35):
Exactly. Yeah. It's except she screams and she's like insane. It's

Leo Laporte (01:38:39):
Great. See, I think I'd much more interesting to have an evil robot than a benign robot who cares about benign robots really let's get some

Paul Thurrott (01:38:48):
Evil in there. There's almost like a, it's almost a little love story in a way, because you know, Astro chief is a cyborg who is made to be like a super soldier and, and she's kind of in his brain, this girl. Yeah. They kind of, you know, wow. They, they go through those, see Mary Jo, what

Leo Laporte (01:39:04):
You're missing. See, see the fun you're missing.

Mary Jo Foley (01:39:07):
You know, I think the reason Cortana's evil now is cuz she's mad. She's been demoted at Microsoft.

Leo Laporte (01:39:12):
She's mad about that Harmon card thing. I, she is. So

Mary Jo Foley (01:39:16):
She's still holding a

Paul Thurrott (01:39:17):
Grudge. I'll reveal the two jokes I put into my little preview of the game, which is I, I wrote the back, I wrote the backstory. I just told you how Cortana was you know, was cracking up as an AI. And it was, you know, mad because they killed windows phones. So she decided to take over the earth <laugh> and then the other, the other one I wrote was there's a new of Cortana in the new game that they call the weapon. But I said Microsoft didn't wasn't brave enough to name the improved version of Cortana. Alexa <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:39:46):
Is this in your review? On the, on the website? It's

Paul Thurrott (01:39:49):
In my, the first write up the preview. Yeah. I guess it's really good

Mary Jo Foley (01:39:54):
Cortana burn right there. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:59):
Yeah. And then other stuff who cares cuz it's not halo. <Laugh> so Xbox cloud gaming, right. Is the feature that used to be project X cloud, which is the feature of Xbox game pass ultimate that let you stream a collection of hundreds of game that are in game pass to mobile devices and other devices. And one of the things Microsoft has been doing, I sometimes, no, I guess in conjunction with the developers of the games is adding Xbox, I'm sorry. Xbox touch controls as an overlay on a mobile device. So instead of having to connect a controller, you've got controls kind of over the game on the screen and you can, you know, use them with your fingers. And depending on the game that sometimes it's really easy. And sometimes that's really hard requires the developer to do some work. But Microsoft has now added that functionality to over a hundred games, which is kind of incredible. And 20% of people that use Xbox cloud streaming actually use touch controls exclusively. So in other words, they're playing a game on a phone and they're, they've never used a control. They're they're just playing games that have touch control. So it's kind of cool.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:05):
And the other thing we knew this was coming, but the other, the other story

Leo Laporte (01:41:11):
No more. Are we done? We with

Paul Thurrott (01:41:12):
Master chief? Yeah. It's gonna make the line cause I don't care about this stuff. <Laugh> so sometime I think it was early this year, Microsoft and Sony announced a partnership where Sony was gonna look at developing a next generation game service on top of Azure. And I described that at the time, like Microsoft could lose in video games and still win because if Sony wins their, you know, stuff will be running on Azure. It's cool. And there's a report in Bloomberg that says that, that this new service is coming soon. It's basically gonna be a combination or a merger of PlayStation now and PlayStation plus PlayStation. Now for those who aren't familiar and I'm not super familiar, but is their version of Xbox live gold. It's that kind of $60 a year thing that you pay mostly to get multiplayer? Same thing on Xbox and then PlayStation plus is the service that predates Xbox game pass.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:00):
And it's basically it's actually a lot like project X cloud. It's a way that you can stream games. Is that right? Yeah. Stream games not download them. That's the difference between Xbox game pass and PS plus, and there's some form of backward compat ability to, they don't have the huge library that Microsoft does with regards to backward compatibility, but it is a way on a plays station for PlayStation five to play some library of PlayStation games over the internet. So they're gonna basically merge those things. There's gonna be three tiers. One of them will have, <affirmative> a library of classic plays to original PlayStation PlayStation, two PlayStation three and PSP games, which is kind of cool. And that, that's the one I think that close most closely maps to Xbox game pass ultimate. But we'll see, they don't exactly line up today. I think Sony obviously is looking at what Microsoft is doing here and saying, yeah, you know, maybe maybe this is the right approach for the future. So they're gonna release their own version as well sometime soon. We'll see if it runs on Azure. I hope it does. There you go.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:09):
ILO. I can't remember if I mentioned halo. It's really good. Is it infinite? That's the question? It is. Well, it's <laugh>, it's the name? It's the name? It's like so many marketing things. It's it just is. Yeah. Little exaggeration back

Leo Laporte (01:43:21):
Of the book coming up, we survived the Xbox segment, Mary Jo, hello and a halo, a lot of halo box there, halo in there. Hey, it was supposed to be all day. That's what my calendar said. All halo, infinite all day halo all, all day, day, all day. But

Paul Thurrott (01:43:41):
No, just totally not playing it while we're doing this podcast. Don't work get, oh, look,

Leo Laporte (01:43:45):
Eyes,

Paul Thurrott (01:43:46):
Look at his eyes. See like lights flashing on my face and

Leo Laporte (01:43:49):
See that's what happened to our band. What's right there. <Laugh> You know, actually my view would happened a Zoom's band with who knows it could be massive downloads. How big was the download?

Paul Thurrott (01:43:59):
It's hard to gig say because you have to download, you have to update the, the main app first, which is the multi-player app. So I wanna, I bet it was, it wasn't as much as you would think. I think it was in the 50 to 70 gigabyte range. Something like that much as you think. Well, no, in Mo like lot, like some games are over a hundred hundred 25. Oh my God. That's what I mean on a we joy per megabyte basis. I think it's a good value. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:44:25):
Pleasure per megabyte. Exactly. Our show today brought to you by ELA. This is really a cool company doing something very, very interesting. And, and the kind of the, the thing that when I was talking to them, that kind of made it click for me is, is the line. I was talking, I think the founder who he said brilliance is evenly distributed and is distributed. Brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. And I thought, you know, that's that's really a good point. Glo, when you're talking about global, it's also good news for you as a company. Andela is a global talent network with the mission to connect brilliance with opportunity. Your company is these day is expected to move faster than ever before to stay ahead of the competition. You've got lots of priorities to manage. How are you supposed to find the time to both build and onboard an amazing engineering team that will get you where you need to go.

Leo Laporte (01:45:24):
And that's where Anela is here to help. But it's also doing a really good thing for the world. I love it. Andela is the world's first network, connecting innovative companies like yours with top tier vetted engineers. So you have more time to focus on your core business. Why Anela while Anela is committed to your success with their combination of expert technical recruiters, proprietary matching algorithms, they connect you with developers who are the best in the business, enabling you to accelerate productivity, drive revenue and scale your business. You'll be very impressed with the quality of the developers you get. And again, this is, this is that brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not many of these developers all over the world. Can't, you know, get jobs that are measure are up to their skills. And you know, this solves the problem because you need them and they need you.

Leo Laporte (01:46:21):
Now, I want to assure you, Adela has a very rigorous vetting process. Their hiring process is quick and efficient, but maintains the highest quality admission standards to ensure they place you with really good top quality engineers at scale L in today's hiring a competitive hiring environment. Hypercompetitive dare I say, companies that limit themselves to local hires are really at a severe disadvantage. And we really learned something. During the pandemic, you don't have to be on site to do a great job with ELA. You can tap into a pool of highly qualified talent from around the world, cut your hiring timelines down for months to days, you'll ramp up fast because of course, ELA understands that companies, you know, have to do more with less. They have to consistently justify ROI to the stakeholders. When you hire Nella engineers, you can expect they'll be efficiently onboarded, and they'll be ready to deliver value for your team within days.

Leo Laporte (01:47:15):
It's truly easy to integrate that into your team. And they're very smart because they understand part of the, one of the, you know, drawbacks to global workforce is the time zones. So all Nella engineers have at least five hours of overlapping working hours with the rest of the engineering team. You know, maybe it's not all eight hours, but five hours guaranteed. That's pretty good. Engineers are not just part-time support. They are fully embedded into your organization. That's important if you go to ELAs website and, and look, you'll see a lot of re is Mindshare. For instance, they partnered with Anela. They needed 10 new digital experts, including data scientists. I mean, this is high level stuff, machine learning, specialists analysts, and of course, software developers. This is a quote from the executive director and head of business intelligence at Mindshare quote, as we continue to enhance the synapse platform to value is very important.

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
Anela is a good partner in helping us identify the right talent fit for different purposes. There is a great talent pool out there. If you have somebody like Anela, who can identify it, onboard them, get them to you and have them integrated embedded into your company with a minimum amount of trouble, huge benefit to you. It's time to tap into a wider talent pool. Stop competing with major tech companies for the five engineers down the street spend less time interviewing brilliance is evenly distributed opportunity. Isn't visit anela.com/four-companies to schedule a complimentary consultation. You can even get a two week no risk trial with their vetted technical talent, a N D E L a andela.com/four O R companies, a N D E L a.com/four companies. Thank you, Adela for supporting windows weekly. Thank you for supporting us by using that address, cuz I think they know that that's us when we send you there back of the book time, Paul throt it's your turn. Yeah, for tip

Paul Thurrott (01:49:29):
Of the, I have multiple tips and multiple picks, but I'll try to get through this quickly. I think last week Microsoft announced teams essentials, right? $4 per user per month, I believe you know, whatever, <laugh> 10 gigabytes, a cloud storage, you know, whatever. So, and we have our theories about why they introduce this and yada yada yada. But I actually think they introduced this in part well in part to anti or antitrust answer antitrust concerns, but also in part as to upsell people to something that I think is a better value. So $4 per user, per month, $48 per user, per year really right. Is reasonable for teams. But if you pay a dollar more, you can get Microsoft 365 business basic, which is $60 per year. So I we'll call it $12 more a year. And there were significant advantages to using the team stuff is basically the same, but you get teams meeting recordings with transcripts team, breakout rooms, outlook, calendar integration, and team and team.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:40):
Sorry, you get a terabyte of cloud storage versus just 10 gigabytes. You get the email calendar and all that stuff through Microsoft 365 single sign on with that account to Microsoft 365 apps and services, multifactor authentication, you know, auditing and reporting administration support features 99.9. Well, it's a two nines <laugh> of, of uptime guarantee, which is huge, but better than zero nines. I mean just for the storage, it's worth a dollar per month, a terabyte of storage for $1 a month more, you know, to me it's just a better deal. So if you're looking at throwing Microsoft money at Microsoft and only want to throw a little bit of money I would consider Microsoft 365 business basic over Microsoft teams essentials. Okay. my second tip, I hope I brought this up in the past. Cause every year this really bothers me.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:28):
It's December, right? So we're starting to get Christmas cards. And if you celebrate Christmas and you send out Christmas cards and those Christmas cards are a postcard, basically that is like photos of your family with a cute little saying on the back or something, please, dear God, <laugh> do this for me. All of the friends that we have out in the world, they all live around the world. Literally not just our in the country, but in other countries, send us pictures, send us cars that have pictures of the kids. Yeah. And no pictures of them. No, I know. I hate

Leo Laporte (01:51:56):
That trend. I agree with you guys. We wanna see you do I don't care about your kids, frankly.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:01):
No, not to be a jerk about it. No, I, I, I don't mind seeing the kids, but like your kids are not your entire life. A lot.

Leo Laporte (01:52:07):
I people do that. They just put the

Paul Thurrott (01:52:09):
Most people do it or the cats. It makes me crazy. Yeah. I'm with you. Yeah. Pets

Leo Laporte (01:52:13):
Please. I only put cats. Sorry. Sorry guys. <Laugh> ISS. Is it only SRA on your Christmas card? It is. I think you're right. I remember

Paul Thurrott (01:52:22):
That's a theme card, but you know, we have we know what you look like,

Leo Laporte (01:52:27):
Mary Joe, we don't need

Paul Thurrott (01:52:28):
Pictures. You do. Yeah. I see. I do see you. There are people I don't see ever, you know, the card arrives. I'm like great. I haven't seen these guys in 50. Oh good. Two pictures of kids that look sort of, you know, my favorite

Leo Laporte (01:52:37):
Cards are the, are the ones where it's like a whole slice of their year. Like everything, pictures, all kind. I want that. I want an update. I want the

Paul Thurrott (01:52:45):
Newsletter. Are you gonna love my card then Leo? <Laugh> no

Leo Laporte (01:52:48):
People mock that, you know, this is a hard year today. The Thra fam this year, the Thra family went through a few up and a few. Oh no, no, no. I love that. Well, I don't mind that though. I like that. People do mock that, but, or, and include pictures a little trip tick, right? No, I'm with you. I'm with you.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:08):
I just can't stand it. I, the first cards have come in and every one of 'em so far is like pictures of kids I've never met. Yeah. You know, <laugh>, it's like, that looks a little bit like the guy I know, but you know, I don't know. I don't, I don't, I wish people

Leo Laporte (01:53:20):
Are far too proud of their children. Just knock

Paul Thurrott (01:53:23):
It off. No, no. It's fine. Look, add the I'm not saying the kids can't be there, but, but I wanna see you too. You're a family. I didn't get a, I didn't, I'm getting a card from your kids. I want a card from you.

Leo Laporte (01:53:35):
And by the way, just a tip one year, look at the, look at the the picture you you're sending at with a, with a fresh eye. One year a family, we knew sent out the card and it was just something weird about the picture looked like the father's leg had been amputated. I don't know it was Ben back behind him or something. And we thought, oh my God,

Paul Thurrott (01:53:56):
I literally, so what happened? Quality? There's a, the card we got, I guess was yesterday is friends of ours back of Boston and three photos. They're all terrible, terrible photos. And it's like, guys, I <laugh>, you couldn't. Do you even look at the thing? I mean, what? I don't know. Yeah. Just

Leo Laporte (01:54:14):
Yes. Have aunt pers gonna start a Christmas card vetting show. I think <laugh> next anti photography. Let's just take a look at some of you. I got ones. Good friends love them. But the picture picture is literally a thumb. Yeah. Is like a thumbnail. It's and there's all this ERY around it. Like you have lots of room <laugh> why are you putting a, a postage stamp size picture on there? I can tells very

Paul Thurrott (01:54:39):
Upsetting setting. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:54:41):
Anyway. And for most people it's too late. By the way, Paul, this advice, I,

Paul Thurrott (01:54:44):
I know I, every year I probably do this every year. Do it. It makes it November next time. Yeah. I'll stick to the tech from now one. Yeah. All right. So <laugh>, as far as app picks, I have several if you are upset with what's going on with the Microsoft and, and edge and all that stuff there were two big updates this week that might be of interest Firefox 95 added a new form of sandboxing called R L box. It's specifically to designed to prevent and we'll see how well this works, but it's designed to prevent zero day protections sorry to protect against zero day vulnerabilities. This is an interesting approach. I'm not a security expert like Steve Gibson, but basically it's a new way to do sandboxing, cuz I apparently one of the problems with browser sandboxing is that if you can infiltrate one of the sandboxes in gives you access to the others.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:30):
And this is a, a different form of sandboxing, whatever sounds, sounds like a good choice. Vivaldi 5.0 also came out across desktop and Android. The only big, interesting thing there to me is actually on the Android side, if you're familiar with Vivaldi, you know, you can have a second row of tabs for tab groups. They've added that on the mobile side as well. So that's kind of cool. Fences four arrive just today. This is a start product supports windows 10 and 11 has a windows 11 style UI. This is a, a, a system by which you can have basically what looked like virtual is virtual folder type areas on your desktop that could have applications that can have folders. It could have documents and so forth. You can customize 'em however you want all kinds of different ways to customize 'em.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:15):
The big feature this time is a feature called peak and peak is basically it's like windows key plus space bar. And it brings up your fences on top of the application you're using. That means you can access those files and folders and all that kinda stuff. So maybe you wanna drag a, a file from there into, you know, Photoshop or whatever you're working on. So that's kind of cool fences as always is 9 99, but you can also get it as part of the object desktop suite, if you wanna do that. And then I should mention, and I didn't mention this earlier, but halo infant that came out today, we should talk about that for a few more minutes. Yeah, I've been waiting

Leo Laporte (01:56:47):
For the,

Paul Thurrott (01:56:48):
I, I dunno,

Leo Laporte (01:56:49):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:56:51):
Available multiple platforms. There's all kinds of stuff going on there. So what are you, are you like,

Mary Jo Foley (01:56:56):
Are you like gonna go work for the halo team or what like happen? No,

Leo Laporte (01:56:59):
<Laugh> you'd like to no, it's kind a boy's dream come true. Yeah. All right. Mary Jo, you're up. It's your chance to to spin this a little bit differently here, a little, a little less halo, little less halo, a little more enterprise baby, little more. Hodoop

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:18):
All right. So my enterprise pick of the week, number one is halo. Infinite. No it's

Leo Laporte (01:57:25):
Would

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:26):
Secured core servers are here. Ooh, you've heard of secured core PCs. Microsoft's talked about that a lot around trust platform, module TPM, two secure boot. Well, you also can have these same features built into servers. Microsoft's been talking about this for a number of, of months, but as of yesterday, you now can actually buy this running either windows server, a ver a variety of versions of windows server or Azure stack HCI, which is another variant of Microsoft's cloud platform. They've got listings catalogs up for, for windows server and Azure stack HCI. There's like there's at least like 45 different products from HPE, Dell, Lenovo AMD, N E C, that can run windows server and qualify as secured core servers. And there are four different SKUs from a H P for Azure stack HCI. So if you're, if you've been interested in this technology, Microsoft said, if, if if you believe in the promises of things like TPM to and secure boot, and you understand that if you, you could secure your servers with these kinds of technologies, you possibly could head off some of the more common ransomware exploits that have been out this year.

Mary Jo Foley (01:58:50):
Maybe some of the, the exploits are on cryptocurrency and crypto mining. They're saying you should take a look. So as of this week, you can

Leo Laporte (01:59:01):
Take a look qu servers, you might enjoy it. You might but that's not all, that's

Mary Jo Foley (01:59:08):
Not all. We were talking about antitrust at the beginning of the show today, and we were saying maybe what they were doing with the browser and windows could be grounds for problems. Well, there's a more imminent ground for problems for Microsoft right now. In April they announced they were buying nuance. Remember the medical transcription technology company, it's their second biggest acquisition in the history of Microsoft. Originally they expected this was just gonna be a very perfunctory approval us, and it would close by the end of this year. And then on the last earnings call, they said, well, maybe not till early next year. Well, now we may know the reason why this is delayed a bit. Reuters had a report this week saying that the EU antitrust regulators are digging deeper into the Microsoft nuance acquisition and sending questionnaires to rivals and clients about how Microsoft's acquisition of this technology could negatively impact them.

Mary Jo Foley (02:00:09):
So this is a pretty big deal because Microsoft is counting on nuance to be a major driver of their cloud revenues in the coming years. They've talked about it not only affecting healthcare part of their business, but any, any part of their business, where they sell to industry, because they feel like some of the ambient technology, the, the AI technology, the note taking capabilities and transcription could apply to any industry and would be very important for them for growing the cloud business. So I'm not saying that's not gonna happen. It's not like the Nvidia arm thing, but the fact that EU is digging in a little deeper is a little bit concerning if you're Microsoft. So stay tuned for the next chapter on that one,

Leo Laporte (02:00:56):
Stay tuned for more. It's a cliff hanger. Do you think they'll, do you think they'll be told not to acquire? I,

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:04):
I don't really see how this negatively affects the market, although you've gotta wonder again, which companies have complained. There's somebody who's complained obviously to

Leo Laporte (02:01:14):
Spur. It's funny because it's probably Amazons Salesforce. Nuanced was the big fish that swallowed up all the little fish. Right. They were the only, so there really aren't a lot of people in that Phish yeah. Area,

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:28):
No dragon. Right? All the, they own

Leo Laporte (02:01:30):
Own dragon technology they bought learn and house B. No. Did Microsoft bought learn?

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:35):
Oh yeah. Did they? Yeah, they did

Leo Laporte (02:01:37):
Microsoft bought learn, but there really aren't like any, any, as far as I know the only competition comes from companies like Google, you know, with their own text to speech mm-hmm <affirmative> engine. So I, I can't imagine really why this would be a, a problem they're already nuances already killed the market, basically. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see. We'll see. Doesn't we gotta protect those guys. You never saw merger. We didn't want to dig into pretty much. Let's do you know what I often say when I'm at the bar, I wish I had a beer that tasted like a Christmas tree.

Mary Jo Foley (02:02:14):
I knew you thought that. Yeah. That's why, you know, it's the holiday season. I have a lot of holiday beers coming up, but why not start with one that actually does use a Christmas tree in brewing <laugh> wow. There are a lot of breweries doing this. Now. It's not a one off thing. A lot of breweries are going out and getting spruce tips. Oh. And they're adding it to beer. That's all

Leo Laporte (02:02:36):
You gotta do is use gin.

Mary Jo Foley (02:02:38):
Yeah. And right. You could, you could, well, there's a,

Leo Laporte (02:02:41):
There's a a, you know, Greek wine Renna, which to me tastes like turpentine. Yeah. It's like made out of, but, but I guess if it were just kind of a clean Piney scent, does it taste like pine? What does it,

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:00):
Yeah, the one I've had a few of these, the one I'm making my pick is from grim in Brooklyn called super spruce. So this one, I love the name. Very, very Piney, very like re Piney. They also add salt to it and they do some, I think they age it in Oak or on Oak. It's only for, so it's almost like a goer style beer because of the salt. But definitely if you don't like the taste of pine in your beer, you are gonna hate this. But then there are other people who love the taste of pine and resin in their beers. Especially if you're a west coast IPA drinker and you're used to that, then you you're gonna live it. It's definitely a love hate relat with these Bruce tip beers. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:03:44):
Interesting.

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:46):
Yeah. But a lot of breweries are doing this now around the holidays, you see many different types of spruce tip beers. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:03:53):
Spruce tip beers. Well, it's festive.

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:56):
It is. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't

Leo Laporte (02:03:59):
Come up with like a halo inspired beer, please. You know, come

Mary Jo Foley (02:04:02):
On. I thought about that. I thought about something with halo and infinite. But <laugh> just fell short. All I could think of was Beyonce's rendition of halo. That was, but that has nothing to do with your halo.

Leo Laporte (02:04:15):
I <laugh>, I literally have no,

Mary Jo Foley (02:04:19):
Mike Sergeant will know exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:04:22):
I knows. Cuz I both Paul and I are going, I've never Nope. Sorry. I watched the know

Mary Jo Foley (02:04:29):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:04:31):
I love the way you walk into the room, body shining, lighten up the place. And when you talk, everybody stop, cuz they know, you know, you're the master. Just what you, that's not the words. Master chief <laugh> yeah, that should be the words you had me a hello.

Mary Jo Foley (02:04:48):
See Mike, as in the, in the discord, I like the Beyonce reference. See, I knew he would. I knew, I knew I'd have a fan, but he's because he keeps sharing his name and he thinks for talking about him. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:05:03):
Okay. Kids

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:05):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:05:07):
I think we can wrap this up. So oh this just end. What? Hello. Infinite came out today guys. Oh my God. All day today. Hello. Infinite day. I should have worn my master chief outfit. Oh, you know, you buy a master chief costume and you don't get that many opportunities to wear it. And I miss the, I miss the big one, obviously

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:26):
Better than you guys wearing a Cortana costume. That's all I'm gonna say. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:05:31):
Yeah. That got a little weird over as the games

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:33):
Progressed that get a little Rey. Yeah. I they've dialed look at images was like, Ooh.

Leo Laporte (02:05:38):
Oh yeah, she was sexy, but you can't do that anymore. That's not okay. It was never okay. Actually it was never okay. But it's really not, certainly not in the time frame. And they made these games. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you everybody. We do windows weekly of a, a Wednesday around about 11:00 AM. Pacific 2:00 PM. Eastern 1900 UTC. I mentioned that. So you can tune in and watch us to it live. Cause it's fun. It's a party next week. I think Chris Capella. Yes mm-hmm <affirmative> yes. So all that breaking news that Chris gives us, you're gonna wanna watch that live is stream is@livedottwi.tv. There's audio and video. You can fire that up. If you wanna chat with us@ircdottwi.tv, that's the free and open IRC channel. We do have a discord channel for club members only, but the club has some real benefits, not Mary Jo Foley. Did a fabulous ask me anything with last Friday, right? Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:06:41):
Yep. Thanks to aunt. Aunt did

Leo Laporte (02:06:43):
A great job. And so that's available for club members on the TWI plus feed and there's some really good ones coming up that you can attend live or listen to on the twit plus feed, I guess rethought. The main reason people would join the club is for ad free versions of all the shows. And you do get that too. So it's a, I it's a triple threat, seven bucks a month gets you a lot of value. It's month to month cancel at any time. It's easy to cancel. We don't hide that. What else can I tell you? We'll just go to club TWIs website, twi.tv/club tweet, and sign up today. It really helps kind of even out the ups and downs of this business, the tunes of fortune. And it's a great way to show your support. Thank you. We got a really excited.

Leo Laporte (02:07:26):
We got our first corporate membership, 300 people in wow. Yeah, it's really it really wow. We were thrilled. Let me, let me give them a, a thank you cuz they deserve a little bit of credit for this. I'm going back. Is it Microsoft? No, it should be. Microsoft. Was David Hickman. Did it, thank you, David. He works for a company called resource management concepts, RMC web.com and they're providing free, odd, free access to the Twitter network for their it and cybersecurity force starting out through December of next year. So they bought a whole year. Wow. We do have a discount. That's also@thepagetwi.tv slash club TWI. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. What else? You can get shows you don't have to watch live. Cause of course it's a podcast. You can get shows on demand from our website, twi.tv/ww.

Leo Laporte (02:08:30):
There's a YouTube channel, dedicated windows, weekly, all the videos are there. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast client and you'll get it automatically. That way. The minute it's available, leave us a review, please. Five stars would be nice. If you like the show, let it let the world know. Paul thra@thra.com. That's his website. He's writing all the time. He's also got that book, the fields guide to windows 10 available@leanpub.com and Mary Jo Foley is at ZDNet. She writes all about microsoft.com. Are you? I can't remember now, do you do not tech Republic got sold back to somebody else? Yep. But you're still in red ventures. We're red ventures still. Yep. So red ventures for some reason sold tech Republic, but they kept everything else. Okay. Good. All right. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Mary Jo. I can't wait till ugly Christmas sweater week. Next week. We'll be wearing our Minecraft sweaters and until then have a wonderful week. We'll see you next time on windows weekly. Bye-Bye what the hell was that? It's my controller. Is that the Ru is that the rumble from your controller? I think it's halo

Speaker 4 (02:09:43):
And oh my God.

Speaker 5 (02:09:47):
If you find yourself talking to those virtual assistants in your house quite often, or maybe you can make your light turn on and off with the touch of a button. Well, smart tech today is the show for you. Join Matthew Cassin and myself. Mike is Sergeant every week as we talk all about smart stuff and the fun that comes along with it,