Windows Weekly 832, Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott's here, Richard Campbell's here. They're gonna talk a little bit about Apple's WWDC keynote, the Vision Pro headset, and some interesting news for Windows gamers who use Max plus the end of the line for Cortana. And Paul says, three months without an Xbox. His final report coming up. Next, podcasts you love

Speaker 2 (00:00:26):
From people you trust. This is tweet.

Leo Laporte (00:00:37):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Throt and Richard Campbell. Episode 832 Recorded Wednesday, June 7th, 2023, saturated by Fake Girlfriends. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by the a w S Insiders Podcast. Search for a WS Insiders in your podcast player, or visit cloud fixx.aurea.com/podcast and we'll include a link in the show notes as well. And thanks to AWS Insiders for their support and by Cisco Meraki with employees working in different locations, providing a unified work experience seems about as easy as herding cats. How do you reign in so many moving parts? I'll tell you how the Meraki Cloud Managed Network. Learn how your organization can make hybrid work work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit and buy Melissa more than 10,000 clients worldwide. Rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contacts data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records clean for free at melissa.com/twins.

(00:01:52):
It's time for Windows Weekly, the show where we get together and have a good time with Mr. Richard Campbell of Run as radio fame and.net rocks. Hello, Richard from Koch Whitlam. Hi there, friend on the edge. Good to be home on the edge of disaster, but still with us. Okay, yeah, Mr. Paul Throt, who is in, of course, mace, Pennsylvania and is under a cloud right now. Thanks to ontario throt.com and lean pub.com. Hello, you two. Hello guys. Hi. Our neighbor asked us yesterday if there was a fire nearby, and I said, yes, all of Canada is on fire. Canada's burning. I our hearts go out. And especially those of us up here in Northern California who will soon be, I have every reason to believe in the same boat. Golly, this pollution's really getting to me, you know, it's crisp and clean and clear in Mexico City, <laugh> and here that's a dirty and polluted. And because Mexico City is notorious for being one of the most polluted cities in the world, so just shows you, just shows you. Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:00):
That's, that's a little little outta dates. Is it?

Leo Laporte (00:03:03):
It's clean now. Yeah. They, they

Paul Thurrott (00:03:05):
Clean. I wouldn't say it's clean. It's a big, but they, they've actually, they've

Leo Laporte (00:03:08):
Addressed it. The emission controls help quite a

Paul Thurrott (00:03:10):
Bit. They just stop reporting it. There you go. It's Mexico <laugh>, but turn off all the sensors. The numbers are great. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:03:17):
So I'm gonna assume, I shouldn't assume, but I'm gonna assume that today. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this show's gonna be all about Apple.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:27):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, thank you. It is, is it?

Leo Laporte (00:03:29):
No, I was kidding. No, I was joking.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:31):
No, it's not gonna be all about Apple, but I think we should let's just talk about this a little bit, bec not, not about apples. We're not gonna run down apples enoughs or anything like that mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but we did that for

Leo Laporte (00:03:41):
The unknown, this three freaking hours yesterday on Mac Break Week. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:44):
You're off the hook. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry about that. No, but I think this is, there's a more interesting discussion to be had. I think you guys, can you hear that? Or is this just in my brain? No, because they're banging on my cell. That's fine. All right. So I like your,

Leo Laporte (00:03:55):
I like your coinage that this is developer season, developer conference season. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:00):
I think

Leo Laporte (00:04:00):
That's true, isn't

Paul Thurrott (00:04:01):
It? Right, Google io, Microsoft build, and then Apple WW C always kind of wraps it up and it's may, June, early June kind of a thing. It's very interesting to me to compare the presentations, right, the announcements, the things that they highlight, but also the way that they address their respective developer audiences. Right. And this is not exactly deep insight, but it is interesting to me that Apple's approach to developers is exactly what its approach to consumers is, which is you get everything from us, you get one version of everything you use that, whereas Google Wild Garden. Yeah. Yeah. It's you know, there's

Leo Laporte (00:04:40):
Something to be said to that. I'll be honest. Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:04:43):
Yeah, actually do, and do you know why, the reason I wrote this article was because I watched the developer keynote, like all of these companies have a sep, well, not actually, not Microsoft. So Google and Apple both have a separate developer keynote, right. Apple calls it the platform State of the Union. And literally within the first 60 or 90 seconds, the guy, whoever he is, I've never heard of him, but he described platforms as a combination of all language frameworks, tools and services, dot, dot, dot. And I paused it and I went back and I said, did he just say language <laugh> <laugh>? And literally he did, because Apple has language Swift. And I thought that's really interesting because that's because they're trying to put objective things, see behind them, right? Well, yeah. Right. Obviously they had a language before and now they've moved every, they're trying to move everyone to this new language. They have. It's

Leo Laporte (00:05:30):
Not really fair to say a language, because you can develop for Max in many languages,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:34):
But, but you can but from Apple, swift, right?

Leo Laporte (00:05:38):
No, but I mean, even Xcode supports Python and, and lawyers. No, no. I,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:42):
Of course, but nobody uses, nobody's creating an iOS app in Python. You know, like I, it's their their tools are all based around this one thing. Yeah, you could, but they don't, don't look at

Leo Laporte (00:05:50):
Flutter. I mean, this is,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:52):
See, this is No, no. That's part of the story. That's actually part of, that's actually part of my point. So flutter, Google is very much like Microsoft. They're in the same kind of boat. They have their native tools, native languages, native frameworks, native whatever. But they also have this cross, this cross platform stuff. You know Google and Microsoft are curiously identical in this regard. They're, they don't care how you do it, <laugh>, they just want you to do it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they want you to target multiple audiences. Apple desperately wants you to only target their platforms. They,

Richard Campbell (00:06:21):
And they, they tried this with the iPhone back in the day. Right. I mean, that was the great threat to Zamarin and, and phone cap in them when they said, Hey, if you haven't built it with Apple Tools, we can't allow it in the store. Right. And they then they mean they put that policy out there and then never enforced it. Yeah. And just, and it just sort of quietly went away. Cause this turns out that may have been aligned too far, even for Apple. It's a dumb,

Leo Laporte (00:06:43):
It's a dumb thing to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:45):
Yeah. It's a, it's a terribly dumb thing to do. But then again, apple, you know, has been ignoring PWAs for years and, but

Leo Laporte (00:06:51):
Apples using in the Carrot, not the stick. What they're really doing is saying, look, we'll give you all the tools for free. They've even, you know, got a free developer account now that let's you use developer beta. So you really, you're not even, you can really do,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:02):
That's brand new though, by the way. I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:07:04):
That that was it,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:05):
It was $99 a year until yesterday.

Leo Laporte (00:07:07):
They still have $99. But you could do a lot, but, and you always get X Xcode for free, and you can always get the phone tools for free. And that's the current, right? They, you don't have to use, you don't have to use Flutter. But why would you when you've got Xcode, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:07:21):
Oh, because Xcode is terrible. Yeah, actually,

Leo Laporte (00:07:23):
But actually, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:25):
And Xcode only runs on a Mac, right? I mean, it, it literally extends to like, you have to buy their product to develop software using their tools Right. To their frameworks and target their devices. That's how Apple wants that development. The

Leo Laporte (00:07:37):
Way Apple Divine's platform, which by the way, you can contrast directly to what Microsoft said. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and build. But the way Apple Divine's platform, there is no cross platform that makes no sense.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:49):
There is no cross in that. There is no cross.

Richard Campbell (00:07:51):
Exactly. Right. Yeah. I mean, that being said, they did include Unity in the list.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:56):
I'm sorry. They did what? They include

Leo Laporte (00:07:58):
Unity. Because Unity is, is the engine for the Vision Pro.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:02):
So you guys, listen, I I, I don't have to explain to you guys how Apple works, right? We need you until we don't need you <laugh>. Right. You know, the one, what's one of the only things missing on the Mac platform? A good game story? Well, how do we get that going? Well, I guess we're gonna partner for a little while. Well, the eventual goal is

Leo Laporte (00:08:19):
See Epic's re Unreal Engine, right? <Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:08:22):
Yeah. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:08:24):
But Unity. But they have to have something and Unity. Apple is really all in on Unity, as you said, until they're not.

Richard Campbell (00:08:29):
And, and I think they need to be, it's not the language, it's not even the platform. It's the 3D assets. Yeah. Unity stack of 3D assets is bar none. And that's, that's what you're going to,

Paul Thurrott (00:08:41):
If you're even a can't ignore it is

Richard Campbell (00:08:42):
What, you can't avoid this. It's, and I, and I went, I, they didn't put it at the bottom of the list. Like, I'm scrolling for a while before you finally got to Okay. Unity.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:53):
But here's the thing

Leo Laporte (00:08:53):
I should point out in the, was that it was very much a part of the Vision Pro discussion. They were very, they said it in the keynote, which means it was a, you know, it's a high, a lot of

Paul Thurrott (00:09:03):
Things are very well, it kind of, because it makes that platform viable and interesting.

Leo Laporte (00:09:07):
They want you to use Unity. That's for sure.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:09):
If you don't, if you as a $3,500 headset doesn't a, doesn't address what the $350 meta thing does. Right. You just look stupid. You have to. Right. So they have to, they had to do that. I agree.

Richard Campbell (00:09:21):
I agree. I, I didn't see anybody making comparisons to HoloLens with this at all. Oh, I

Paul Thurrott (00:09:25):
Always question. That was, that was my whole We did, because we did. Of course. And this is, this is part of the thing I move onto in a second, but like, lemme just, I just step back real quick. Cuz the one thing I just wanted to communicate about the Apple approach versus Google, Microsoft, it's very interesting because Apple, for developers, just like Apple for customers, is pushing simplicity, right? Just accept the warm embrace of Apple and everything's gonna be great, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, whereas Microsoft and Google are like, you have a million choices. Do whatever you want. You know, it's a very, it's an interesting thing. It literally is like simplicity versus choice. It's just, it's fascinating to me that this extends

Leo Laporte (00:10:02):
The definition of platforms that Microsoft used, which is a platform is something that the people who develop upon it make more money than the platform developer. Apple wouldn't ever say that. <Laugh>,

Richard Campbell (00:10:13):
That's true. I mean, I think that's Bill Gates's reference to ecosystems. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:10:17):
Apple says, we make the most money in the ecosystem. We're glad mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to share billions of dollars with our developers. They always talk. Sure. They're Yeah. But they're a trillion, 2 trillion almost. It'll

Paul Thurrott (00:10:28):
Share until we want a feature that you're making in your own app, and then we'll just steal it. Yeah. And then we'll kill. But yes, they're, they're a wonderful company. But we've got some,

Leo Laporte (00:10:36):
But from the user's point of view, I think that's a comp not a bad argument. I mean, the user says great. It's it's very clear. You know? I know. I don't have to think

Paul Thurrott (00:10:44):
It's simple. And

Leo Laporte (00:10:45):
If you're a developer you know, people develop for Twitter, people develop for Reddit, people develop for Meta and YouTube. They know they're building on somebody's platform and a rug that could be ya away at any time. But there's enough money there to make it. Well, I'll take my chances.

Richard Campbell (00:11:02):
I'm, I'm kind of stunned they didn't show off an app of any kind. Like they just showed the desktop and talked about stuff like they didn't

Paul Thurrott (00:11:11):
Know. Like, this is so

Richard Campbell (00:11:12):
Launch app. Like it's staggered by

Leo Laporte (00:11:15):
That. Well, you know what else? They never showed any executive from Apple, any personnel from Apple wearing it.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:21):
Well, by the way, the top executive wears glasses and that awkward do doesn't work, you know? No, but you can moment would've been that. Put

Leo Laporte (00:11:27):
The lenses in. They would have Tim

Paul Thurrott (00:11:28):
Cook. No, I understand you what you do, but I'm just saying you don't wanna do the live demo with never

Leo Laporte (00:11:32):
Showed Tim Cook wearing those. I don't think it was that. I think it's the Spooky ice. They really didn't want you to see Tim Cook's Spooky Ice.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:38):
Sure, sure. Okay.

Richard Campbell (00:11:40):
Was the Spooky Ice thing a good idea?

Leo Laporte (00:11:43):
It's, I, okay, so you wanna you didn't ask, you were

Paul Thurrott (00:11:46):
Addressing tell the concerns people have had with other things, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:11:49):
But I'm gonna tell you my whole opinion. Remember how everybody thought the Segueway was gonna change the way City Bill Gates said it was gonna change the way cities are. I

Paul Thurrott (00:11:56):
Thought it was going to, I thought that was a great idea.

Leo Laporte (00:11:58):
And what happened was, the single thing that killed the Segway is you looked like such a doofus cuz you were up there riding this platform. And I personally think, cuz we had sways, I loved Segways. Right. But yeah, the fact that you looked like a doofus was enough to stop that after Interesting. Has four or five of those issues. Because there's the goofy eyes. Nobody's gonna want that. The, I they showed a father taking pictures at the party of his kids going at candles. Dad, get out of the headset. He's got goofy eyes looking at them. You what's

Paul Thurrott (00:12:32):
With John Vader back there? And

Leo Laporte (00:12:33):
Maybe it's just me, you tell me. But I have a literally, I have a visceral reaction to strapping screens on my head. It bugs me. I don't want to do it. And I That's right. Think that I'm not the only one.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:46):
No, you're definitely not. Because if you weren't, this would've taken off already. <Laugh>, any

Leo Laporte (00:12:50):
One of those can kill this thing. Any one of those. Right. I think these are also

Paul Thurrott (00:12:54):
The excuses. It used

Richard Campbell (00:12:55):
To be the carrying the phone visibly with social unacceptable too. Sure. It just became compelling enough that nobody

Paul Thurrott (00:13:00):
Cared. Look, all I can say is if I see a video of Robert Scoble wearing one of these things in a freaking shower, I'm gonna lose my mind. Actually refer

Leo Laporte (00:13:07):
To that. They said there's no shower. Yeah. No shower possible. But I I, I really do think that there's a difference between looking at a phone and strapping your, your phone to your face is such a hostile Yeah. And a number of reviewers said it's a lonely experience. You're suddenly all

Paul Thurrott (00:13:26):
Alone. That's right. But we just came out of Covid and now you want me to isolate myself from the rest of humanity's isolating. It's kinda bad timing. You

Leo Laporte (00:13:34):
Look like a dork. You got goofy eyes. It costs $3,500. And the problem is people are saying, oh yeah, but wait for four years. That doesn't matter if this product dies. Yeah. There were successors to the segue that you didn't look like an idiot Too late.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:51):
I Yeah. Never even heard of

Richard Campbell (00:13:52):
It. Yeah. But the original iPhone two G was not a great phone. Sure. And you know, the phone that we all love was the four, right? Like that's the great

Leo Laporte (00:13:59):
Phone. Yeah. We say that now. But it was still, I mean, as somebody who well bought one immediately waited in line, he had one. It was a big improvement over anything that we had today.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:08):
Yeah. It was I, so this is, we are all in it. We're all, we're all in a bad place to opine on this mm-hmm. <Affirmative> because all of us know too much about the history of the industry and things that have come before. And all of our opinions are weighted by that. Well, and I think whether or not this thing is,

Leo Laporte (00:14:25):
It's a past because of that. Because people say, well, look what they've done in the past. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:30):
It's, yeah. I mean, it's just how many times can we be wrong <laugh> before, I guess what I'm saying, I'm not saying this is gonna be a smash success at all. That's not my point. My point is, I have used HoloLens. I have seen everything that this thing can do, and it colors my view of this thing just like the iPad. All my 10 years of experience with tablet PCs, and by the way, I used dozens of different tablet PCs colored my view of the iPad. You know, the it's, I just don't wanna make that mistake again. <Laugh>, you know, and I feel like if anyone could pull this off, any company could pull this off. It's mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Apple, that's all. I actually, I don't mean to say because we've all been wrong so many times. We're we're gonna be wrong this time. I don't mean it like that, but I, I, I think at some point we have to just wonder if this isn't, I don't know. Is this like a sub be challenging watch level of success? I mean,

Richard Campbell (00:15:28):
Part of what made the iPhone work is that you were buying it through your carrier. And so replacing it every two years, the carrier wanted to do that anyway. And you were paying by the month for your utilization. That's not how this headset works. And it's 3,500 bucks. True. V2 comes out a year from now, again, another 3,500 bucks.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:45):
I know, I know. It's it is a tough, it's a tough sell. But, you know, Apple's customer base is rich. They've shown a ver a a willingness to open their wallets and we're

Richard Campbell (00:15:54):
About to drop to find out how

Paul Thurrott (00:15:56):
Rich we are. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>, I saying, I, I, I, like I said, I just, I, I feel like any other company did this. It would be like, that's cute. We've seen this before. It's Apple though. They, they do have an incredible

Richard Campbell (00:16:08):
And Right. Everybody else is pulled back from AR and VR across the board. They lobbed in and it, I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:16:15):
By the way, not one two man, not one word about ai Yeah. In that whole, yeah. But you know

Paul Thurrott (00:16:20):
What? That's, that's, but that's Apple's playbook, right? Yeah. Yeah. Apple is almost never first to anything, but they kind of dive in when it makes sense for them and when they can make a big difference. Right. I don't, I, you know, I, we all know Apple's nowhere with AI and that's a huge problem. But of course, I mean, the whole world is talking about AI and they're like, Hey, remember this thing from four years ago? It's a little weird. I agree. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:16:47):
You know, I am old enough and I'm doing this long enough to no longer be concerned about reputational damage.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:53):
<Laugh> <laugh>, what follows that statement is gonna be amazing. <Laugh>. So

Leo Laporte (00:16:58):
I'm willing to call it as I see it, and, you know, I thought the iPhone was gonna change the world. I thought the iPad, actually, I was overhyped on the iPad. I thought it was be bigger than it was. I thought the Newton was pretty great. I got three of 'em in the cabinet right behind me. Sure. So I am not somebody who's just gonna poo poo something cuz it's new technology. But I just think this is dead on a rival

Paul Thurrott (00:17:20):
Wow.

Richard Campbell (00:17:20):
Step too far.

Leo Laporte (00:17:21):
They went to, and I, I understand what happened, which is they'd committed almost a decade and, and what must have been at least, I mean, I'm thinking 50 to a hundred billion in the development. Do you

Paul Thurrott (00:17:33):
Think this ego plays any role in this? Like, this is a legacy product for Tim Cook Navy. It's not as

Leo Laporte (00:17:37):
Much ego. Yes. It's partly that, but it's also, Hey, we're over. We're, we're all in because we have no choice. I think it's too hard for them to say, yeah, this isn't going anywhere. This made sense five years

Richard Campbell (00:17:48):
Ago. So how long they sat in the boardroom three months ago. Right. And said, do we do this now or not?

Paul Thurrott (00:17:55):
Well, you know, they all said no. Right. Tim said, well, no, no, no, here's, that's the rumor. Here's

Leo Laporte (00:17:59):
The story. The story is the design team said you cannot release this. Right. And Tim Cook overruled them.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:06):
Interesting. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:18:08):
So I think the design team was right. <Laugh>, although it's interesting because they had Alan Dye and others from the design team demoing it. So I think that they wanted to share No, no, no. We're all unified behind this. They've showed it now to more than a hundred journalists, not me, but a hundred journalists, including some of ours. And of course, and I even warned people before this, you're gonna hear these raves <laugh> because it's, you know, VR technology's cool, you know, we all get excited about it when we wore the HoloLens for the first time, or the Oculus for the first time. It wears off quickly. What's interesting to me is there are still quite a few journalists who are agreeing with my premise, which is this is a plus technology, a plus delivery. They really executed on a product no one wants. Now maybe I'm poisoned because I look at this thing and I actually, my gut goes, oh, I do not want to strap a screen under my face. Yeah. And that may, that may be me. And so maybe I'm poisoning the well here. But I just, I've been very negative on this and I'm willing to do that. And I know in three years, if it's a success, people will, you know, show this video over and over again. That's fine. But, and, and I'm not trying to Yeah. Piss in your corn flakes.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:24):
Not mine. It's not mine or anybody.

Leo Laporte (00:19:26):
But I think it's, it's important for the tech press to be as honest as we can based on our experience. I

Paul Thurrott (00:19:33):
Think there's a lack of perspective though, right. And the, like the younger guys who would be doing the YouTube stuff and blah, blah, blah, whatever, they were not trying out HoloLens. They, they don't have that kind of background. Sure. they can get a little bit wowed by the new shiny bobble thing. You can't really trust that kind of opinion. But I find myself not trusting my own, you know, because that's

Leo Laporte (00:19:54):
What I'm saying is trust yourself. Cuz I don't think I, I

Paul Thurrott (00:19:56):
Was blown away by the, the HoloLens technology. The initial version had that field of view problem we talked about a lot at the time. They, I, I don't wanna say solve it. They improve, they've made dramatic improvements with v2. And by the way, that was four years ago <laugh>. So, and

Richard Campbell (00:20:11):
Now what? And what they're saying pointblank is we're not gonna make another one until the tech's good enough. And the tech's not enough.

Leo Laporte (00:20:18):
I even question whether that tech will ever be good

Paul Thurrott (00:20:20):
Enough. Which is a cute out, I mean, I I, they brought the

Richard Campbell (00:20:22):
Version to the army and the Army said wasn't good enough. And

Paul Thurrott (00:20:24):
That's where was where you went? That was the real version three, right? Yeah. I mean, I feel like with HoloLens, and this is true of a lot of technology, a lot of products that come out in personal tech. Everyone who made a degree, it was cool. We weren't really sure what anyone would use it for. Let's throw it out in the world. You never know. Something will stick, you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and they found some little niche kind of markets and, and whatever. But as a consumer product, it's it's a tougher sell. And at, at $3,500, I've owned several cars that costs less than that. I mean, it's it's a particularly hard sell.

Richard Campbell (00:20:58):
Yeah. And it's a and it's a long-term buy. You're gonna want years out of it. And yeah. And so iterating, it's gonna be difficult.

Leo Laporte (00:21:04):
My only point is that it's possible for a product to actually, you know, we can all agree that someday this, you know, these lightweight, something you're wearing right now, Richard will become a great reality device.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:16):
Spec the contact lens. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:21:18):
Or well,

Paul Thurrott (00:21:18):
Whatever that kind of thing. But the

Leo Laporte (00:21:19):
Technologies are not there. They, they'd have to be invented. And I think by that time, we were all given up on this category because of clunky products like this. So there's the risk. I know. We,

Richard Campbell (00:21:31):
We put the Newton behind us. We did for the iPhone.

Leo Laporte (00:21:34):
And I, you know, I've likened the,

Richard Campbell (00:21:36):
We get over clunky products pretty fast. Yeah. This

Leo Laporte (00:21:38):
Is mine. This is the Newton, the iPhone took 15 years after the Newton. Sure. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:43):
Well, and the Newton followed things that were very basic, but were similar like Mr. Wizard or whatever that thing was called, the little clam shell devices. You could put your calendar in there and have your contacts and

Leo Laporte (00:21:52):
Stuff and Yeah. I I have to say there's a clip somewhere of me holding up a Newton in 1994 saying you had fulltime internet connectivity and a phone to this. You got something. So Sure. It was clear

Paul Thurrott (00:22:02):
When I Are you saying an internet communicated device? A phone Exactly. In an iPod.

Leo Laporte (00:22:06):
I saw the vision in 1994. Yeah. Took up 13 years to get to that point. But I think the Newton

Paul Thurrott (00:22:12):
Was sometimes that's how like it takes sometimes it does.

Leo Laporte (00:22:14):
Yeah. And it could be this is the Newton for whatever comes

Paul Thurrott (00:22:18):
Of this market. Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:22:19):
And if they do come out with spectacles with ar, I'll be the first in line to buy 'em. I think that's a great product.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:25):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:22:25):
Can we talk about the M two Ultra? Because that internal GPU is an interesting shot at Nvidia.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:33):
Oh my God. Of

Leo Laporte (00:22:33):
Course. Apple's got a problem, right? They, they want to, they told us they'd release a Mac Pro. The Mac Pro to me means PCI slots. Yep. They have PC four slots that you could put a graphics processing unit into or multiple. Right. You can't with these new Apple silicone chips. So they have to demonstrate that the GPU built into the silicone is gonna be as good as any third party. Yep. And

Richard Campbell (00:22:57):
Prefer preferably better because it's gotta, you're not going across the box upgrade it being part of the chip set. Is it powerful? Right. Like it's of advantage by doing this. You can

Paul Thurrott (00:23:07):
This buy a new one. Yeah. It's, this is the Apple way. It's the perfect Apple product.

Leo Laporte (00:23:10):
I I, I don't have enough expertise in that area to know whether that's what pros want with a Mac Pro. I think it's a minor product for Apple. I think the Mac Studio is the much more

Paul Thurrott (00:23:20):
Important product. That's right. That's right. Oh, that

Richard Campbell (00:23:22):
$2,000

Paul Thurrott (00:23:23):
Versus seven and up. Yeah. And

Richard Campbell (00:23:24):
They, the they Air 15. That's the most beautiful computer made right now. Like holy Yeah. I've bought one instantly. That's gorgeous.

Leo Laporte (00:23:30):
Yeah. I'm getting a Tuesday. I'm, and I don't even need it cuz I have an M two 13 inch

Richard Campbell (00:23:35):
Right there. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:23:36):
But, but I've,

Paul Thurrott (00:23:37):
I've wanted I disagree. Leo. You do need it. <Laugh>. Yeah. Well

Leo Laporte (00:23:40):
I unfortunately my daughter needs a laptop, so she's gonna get the yeah, the M two.

Richard Campbell (00:23:45):
Well, I'd love that. The fully loaded Mac Pro is 12 grand before you buy a monitor.

Leo Laporte (00:23:50):
Yeah. Yeah. And

Richard Campbell (00:23:51):
Keith five 12, that's a

Leo Laporte (00:23:52):
League one of our IRC folks did a comparison between a loaded Mac studio and a loaded Mac Pro comparable, not loaded, but comparable. Right. And the Mac Pro is several thousand dollars more.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:02):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:24:04):
Just for the,

Paul Thurrott (00:24:04):
This is the headroom that this is for Lucas film. Right. You know, for Pixar or whatever. It's not for guy doing, making web art <laugh>, you know, or, or YouTube videos or t these

Richard Campbell (00:24:15):
Are the new Spark stations basically.

Leo Laporte (00:24:17):
There is one thing though that I think should have you all trembling in your boots.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:22):
All right. I can't wait. <Laugh>, I hope it's avatars put out legs. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:24:27):
Notice they didn't even do that. Right. If you do FaceTime and the vision thing, you just get a picture, like a FaceTime picture. Yeah. Like your screen is on the wall and that's not gonna, that's no improvement. No. they, and they didn't announce this, but it was announced later in a, in a track have created using wine, a compatibility layer that allows you to run direct next to all Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:24:49):
I get that. Down games. Yeah, that's right. To me. So

Leo Laporte (00:24:52):
That's maybe the most important thing from the point of view of, of gamers and, and Windows gamers.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:56):
Yeah. And certainly

Leo Laporte (00:24:57):
For us Mac users, that's good news.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:00):
This is the hole in the Mac, right? Is the, the, the games strategy. So this is, yeah. This is a step to addressing it. This is the, the bootcamp <laugh>, you know, of for gaming or something like, let's get this into the back door. I don't know. I don't know that wine has turned Linux into a viable windows app running, desktop operating system. So games are a little more complicated I guess. We'll see. But Apple putting their weight behind it is gonna help for sure.

Leo Laporte (00:25:30):
Anyway. Yeah. That, that's the only thing that could rock anybody's boat. I think everything else is is more ecosystem play. Right. It's apple for apples and the rest of us can kind of ignore it. Although, do you as a Windows user, do you do lust for the 15 inch MacBook Air?

Richard Campbell (00:25:48):
A beautiful computer is a beautiful computer man.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:50):
Yeah. I like the computer. Yeah. It's a hardware thing. I don't wanna run Makos.

Richard Campbell (00:25:53):
Yeah, that's, you're exactly right. You know what I dug out, I'm cleaning out the office cuz things are, are are afoot. I found my old Shiba Ultrabook first generation. It's like fourth gen intel in it. I remember that. Yeah. With the, with the edges so sharp. You could Julianne carrots with it. Right? Like just a beautiful machine. Yes. Then I fired it up, realized it was on the insider building and had to win 11 on it. That look God what? Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:21):
<Laugh>. I actually thought of you, Richard, when they did the 15 inch Mac Booker and I was like, Hmm. I don't know. Yeah. You could run Windows 11 on arm.

Leo Laporte (00:26:32):
Oh, I'm, look, I'm immediately putting parallels on it and Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:26:36):
And, and, and it's loaded. It's $2,000 Canadian. Like, I have a tough time buying a good quality Windows laptop for that much money. It's like, when did the Mac become the inexpensive option?

Paul Thurrott (00:26:48):
It's a, if you look at Yeah. Premium laptops. It, it, it hits at a good price. It's, it's a good price for that.

Richard Campbell (00:26:54):
Yeah. Three K is ba in, in Canadian dollars is basically what I'm looking at for any decent, you know. Right. laptop. That's all the surfaces. That's a top tier HP Spectra. Like That's true. That's what you're looking at. So suddenly you look at the air and you're like Two K. Holy man. I don't know if I'd use it anything, but I would pet it

Paul Thurrott (00:27:13):
<Laugh>. I know, I know. Yeah. That's like curious amount of time choosing the color <laugh>. Yeah. You know, that kind of thing.

Leo Laporte (00:27:20):
Well, I dunno. Well, as somebody who bought the midnight blue of the previous version Sure. Don't, it's fair. It's a fingerprint magnet. I had to put it in a case. Yeah. Because otherwise it just looks so it's always smudged. Yeah. So I bought the silver one. Lisa bought a Silver MacBook Pro and I thought, you know what, that's a nice, that's a nice kind of almost a retro thing now to get a silver laptop. So I'll have it next week and I'll I can you can look at

Paul Thurrott (00:27:43):
It. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious about sharing the

Leo Laporte (00:27:45):
Thing. There's, there's an interesting psychology thing. It's 3.3 pounds, but because it's so big, people say, see, you seem so light.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:52):
Well, by the way, so 3.3 pounds for a 15 inch laptop is light. 3.3 pounds is very typical for like a 14 inch laptop. Yeah. 3.7, 3.9 for a 16 is not uncommon. So 3.3, that's actually light. That is light for that size.

Leo Laporte (00:28:07):
And I will put Windows on it immediately.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:11):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:28:12):
You know what I found? Life Hacker tell me if I got ripped off last couple weeks ago, I should've mentioned it. Life Hacker had a deal. 40 bucks for a Windows 11 license that you could use on three different machines.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:22):
I just saw that. Yeah, that's a good price for that. I don't understand three computers though. I don't know where that comes from, but that's true. Well, I

Leo Laporte (00:28:28):
Need, that's true because of emulation, right? So I need a license for my Mac as well as a Windows machine. I don't know, I just, I thought 40 bucks. I'm, I just bought it cuz I don't need it, but I bought it <laugh>. I could use three licenses. You could use three licenses.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:44):
Yeah, yeah. Yep. You got enough you can put on the Mac.

Leo Laporte (00:28:48):
Yeah. Mostly it's for the Mac. Cuz every PC comes with a license, so.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:51):
Yep. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:28:53):
I have enough facts. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:28:53):
You could build, you know, buy a knock or something or build your own computer. It's, you know, it's a good price. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:28:58):
I have things I run in Windows on in emulation.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:01):
I mean, legally one license is 1 99. I know.

Leo Laporte (00:29:04):
I thought 40 bucks. I even if it's just one, it's fine. I paid, yeah, I paid 130 something for my and it's pro, by the way, for my Windows 11 license. For my vm. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:29:13):
No, I, I just saw, I, I think I saw today it was 50 if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, I saw something about that.

Leo Laporte (00:29:19):
So my, so that's legit. Microsoft's doing that, huh?

Paul Thurrott (00:29:23):
I don't know that. I don't know what it is, but it's <laugh>. I think it's over. It's legal. Like it's legal.

Leo Laporte (00:29:28):
Yeah. I don't think Life Factor would do

Paul Thurrott (00:29:29):
It if it, it's not like it's not from Microsoft or anything.

Leo Laporte (00:29:31):
Yeah. Yeah. It's some special OEM thing.

Richard Campbell (00:29:35):
Well, and we can go to more joyful news like the Death of Cortana. I'm excited about

Leo Laporte (00:29:39):
That. Oh my God. Poor Cortana. Yeah. Both guys are really upset. <Laugh>. So, I, before I just before we do, actually,

Paul Thurrott (00:29:50):
I just ran Cortana on my PC for the first time just to kind of remind myself and I can't say that I'm gonna mourn. Its passing. I,

Leo Laporte (00:29:58):
Let me, let me take a little break so we can get an ad in. And then the death. We'll have a little f Should we have a little funeral,

Paul Thurrott (00:30:04):
Little, a little

Leo Laporte (00:30:05):
Wake, a little, a little. Grab a whiskey for Dold. Turn

Paul Thurrott (00:30:08):
Into one of those New Orleans things where it's really a party with trombones and it's

Leo Laporte (00:30:12):
A, yeah. An umbrella going up and down

Paul Thurrott (00:30:15):
A Cort march.

Leo Laporte (00:30:17):
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The host, Raul is great. I'm gonna try his last name. Raul Suman, I'll just call him Raul and Hillary Doyle. They dig into the current state in the future of AWS by talking with people and companies that know it best. Raul knows because he's a veteran AWS pro, 15 years of experience managing holds on to your hats. 45,000 a w s instances. He knows how to push AWS to its limits and he's clearly, you know, a believer in the power of aw w s the operating system of the future. He calls it AWS Insiders is a show that's full of opinions, takeaways, untold stories. That's the three things I want about the challenges, innovations and mind-blowing promise of cloud computing. Couple of episodes you might be in the season two just came out the first episode, filling the cloud talent gap, how to staff your cloud team solutions to defining, retaining, and leveling up cloud talent.

(00:32:10):
What else there was? So episode three was great mo it was all about Moderna and the m mr RNA vaccines. I didn't know this. They had moderna's director of data engineering and Cloud on, but Moderna very much used a w s in the development of the Covid vaccine. Fascinating story. Search for AWS Insiders on your podcast player. Or just visit the website, cloud fix dot ora a u r e a.com/podcast cloud fix.ora.com/podcast. You know, you see it if you're watching the video, it's in the, in the lower third here. We'll also put a link at Twitter tv slash ww in Theos for this episode. And of course, you can search for AWS insiders in your favorite podcast player cloud fix.ora.com/podcast. Thank you AWS insiders for supporting Windows Weekly. I bought, I was so in on Cortana that I bought the Harmon Carden. But

Richard Campbell (00:33:14):
You got one, huh? Oh yeah. I lo I I was gonna get one of those, but

Leo Laporte (00:33:17):
Never somewhere I should find it. The thing I liked about it is you would, it

Richard Campbell (00:33:20):
Could sit beside your Newton.

Leo Laporte (00:33:22):
Yeah, exactly. It's probably back there. I'll have to look at my, in my clo Dr. Leport, it was good looking closet of technology oddities. Yeah, yeah. You tapped it on the head, which is a very, you know, like little pat and it would give you a fact. It was like a Snapple bottle cap. Just tap it on your head and you get a little factoid. That was it. I love it. That's my highlight right there,

Richard Campbell (00:33:44):
There. That was the feature. That's the only feature you used. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:33:47):
Never use it on the desktop. So they killed the Harmon card and sing it turned into just a Bluetooth speaker. They've killed it pretty much in every form. This is the final nail in the coffin.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:00):
Yes. Well, yeah. They killed the mobile apps a couple years ago. They've been kind of stepping back for it from a while. When Windows 11 came out, it was Cortana was deprecated, remember? Yep. and now they've announced that they're gonna end support for some time this year. They haven't given a date, but yeah, I mean, of course, like I, it's just on the way out, but I, you know Microsoft has been busy kind of crapping on Cortana since they came out with this AI stuff. Remember this Sacha Adela interview where he, he said all that stuff, <laugh>, that

Leo Laporte (00:34:28):
Was, we know, that was just

Paul Thurrott (00:34:29):
Cute, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:34:31):
But wouldn't this be an opportunity to put chat g p t into Cortana and make it somehow useful?

Paul Thurrott (00:34:37):
Yeah. So this is a, this is a marketing exercise. Cortana as a brand failed. So they have to go forward with a new brand because no one has heard of Cortana and those who have No, it's a failure. By the way, most of the people outside of the United States never even got a chance to use Cortana. That was a big issue in Windows phone when Windows phone was one of the most popular phones in Europe. They couldn't even use Cortana. Right. It was just, the whole thing was just kind of mismanaged from the beginning.

Richard Campbell (00:35:00):
Well, and and it was a Halo brand in the first place. Yeah. Or an oversexualized digital bot. Yeah. Right. Like it was a mistake from the outset.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:09):
Yes. Right. A lot of well, the other companies will still make these things are busy working on other voices. You can have men and women voices and all this kind of stuff. But the only, the only thing I find a little odd about all this is that it's very clear that the co-pilot technologies we'll see in Windows or Microsoft 365 or whatever are kind of the next gen version of what Cortana was. Right. I, I had an editorial in a, a newsletter where I was like, you know, comparing the marketing of Cortana back in 2014 or whatever year it was, 13, with the way they're marketing co-pilot and Windows today. And it's, the parallels are kind of amazing. It's almost exactly the same languages, language rather. And I I, it, it kinda, it's a little frustrating. You know, Cortana was the future and now AI is the future, so suck it up everybody.

(00:35:59):
We're moving forward. <Laugh>, you know but Cortana also I think suffered from the fact because it was a kind of a failed brand. Not something they could slap a dollar sign in front of. Right. They couldn't charge for that. You know? If the people who liked the Cortana brand, you know, why don't issues, it's kind of a cool brand, you know, because if they tried to, you know, charge you for it, it would, people would've said, what are you talking about? We're not paying for this thing. That's ridiculous. I think this is, I think this is for a number of factors. We're just gonna walk past it, right? We're gonna pretend this never happened. So there are things in Windows 10 that made sense on Windows phone that just didn't make sense on the pc, like live Tiles and Cortana, right?

(00:36:38):
I mean, Cortana, when you're on your phone, it kinda makes sense. You might want to talk to, interact with it. I, that said, I I will say it's a little strange to me and I look through some of the demos to make sure I wasn't missing something. When you use copilot in windows, it's 11 coming soon. It's, you're typing into the computer, you're type, you don't talk to it. Right? Right. Naturally the most natural language is speech <laugh>, you know, and, and, and in that way, assuming they don't do it, I mean, I think they will eventually, if they're not gonna do it right away, add that capability. It is kind of a step back, isn't it? I mean we, we are just at the point now where you can have conversations with these assistants and ask follow up questions without, you know, having to prompt them again or whatever.

Richard Campbell (00:37:22):
Yeah. I I think this whole genre is gonna have to be rethought. I mean, and part of the problem here is that, and we're starting to see more stories the line.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:31):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:37:32):
These large language models cost a lot of money to operate. Right. Like, I don't think Microsoft wants it make it too easy

Paul Thurrott (00:37:39):
To use. Yep.

Richard Campbell (00:37:41):
Because the, they're not charging for it enough yet. Like part of me wonders if chat if G P D four will even make it cuz it's so massively expensive and three and three five.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:53):
Yeah. It

Richard Campbell (00:37:53):
Seemed to be good enough for certain verticals.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:55):
So this is, yeah. This is something Microsoft is very careful not to discuss right now and it's getting a little weird. I noticed a <laugh> an incident last week where Frank Shaw, the communications director, Microsoft lashed out at the information, which is a highly regarded online publication that's paid only for outing the price of what this the Microsoft 365 co-pilot was gonna be. And he went to town on them for that. And because what they were writing was inaccurate and blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But I, I kind of chatted with Mary Jo about it and I'm like, I think that's the price <laugh>, you know? Yeah. I think

Richard Campbell (00:38:30):
He probably nailed

Paul Thurrott (00:38:31):
It. I think they got the price. And this is the thing they don't want people to talk about right now. Let's just get excited about the capabilities you know, we'll talk about pricing later.

Richard Campbell (00:38:41):
Well, and they, and they need to because they're gonna need millions of users Yes. To be paying monthly. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:47):
There's all this stuff that goes into this. You know Envidia just became a trillion dollar company. Yes. And, and Vidia, who just a goofy little graphics card company for PCs has turned into the next dollar company through the grace of God, you know.

Richard Campbell (00:39:01):
Well, again, they, they thought it was going to be NFTs. It turned out to be LLMs. Yep. Yep. But they're still a majority of their sales. Like I looked at the late, the latest quarterlies, like they're still mostly selling graphics cards for bcs. Right. And this is the data center's right behind, like this

Paul Thurrott (00:39:17):
Follows my

Richard Campbell (00:39:18):
Will be data center.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:18):
Yeah. This is my theory about, you know, the, this is the the wag the dog kind of thing, right? Like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they're sailing on the promise of ai, just like Microsoft sailed for 10 years on the promise of the cloud. And now we're hoping to do the same with ai. Right. This is, this is how Wall Street works in a way mm-hmm. <Affirmative> as if there's any way to explain how Wall Street works. But it is a lot of speculation. A lot of, you know, we we're looking for little thing, you know, you, you warn about the future and the whole thing. Not nose dives, but there are certain little phrases you can use and just send. So Soaring and AI is

Richard Campbell (00:39:49):
The

Paul Thurrott (00:39:49):
Biggest one.

Richard Campbell (00:39:50):
The current one. Right. It's the one just happens to be the current hype one. Yep. It's, it's a cycle. Right. We've seen it before and it, and it is a time for folks in our situation to take a step back. It's like, don't get caught in the hype. Yeah. It is hype. That's why at least I left know the difference

Leo Laporte (00:40:07):
While you were talking about that. I just went outta

Richard Campbell (00:40:09):
Session <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:10):
You refused to discuss it. I, I don't, don't get, you're gonna trigger I'm refusing myself from this conversation. I wanna get triggered. I'm ab I'm above the hype <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (00:40:18):
Well, I'm, I'm doing my best to resist it while still exploring this stuff because it, you make bad decisions. I mean, you know, when you're pulled in the hype, and I'm also, you'd also look at the reasoning and I, Microsoft's reasoning's completely sensible. They need to sign millions of customers. Why are they starting with their largest M 365 customers for co-pilot? Right. It's the best chance for success. They're gonna, they, they'll push it out to dozens of different departments inside of these big organizations and one or two of them are gonna resonate on it. And that will be the talking point. Yeah. Right. They, they, today you need a win today.

Leo Laporte (00:40:56):
Google updated Bard to be better at coding. So

Paul Thurrott (00:41:00):
They're

Leo Laporte (00:41:01):
Paying attention to this, you know mm-hmm.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:02):
<Affirmative>. Right.

Richard Campbell (00:41:04):
But, and then, and the GitHub co-pilot scenario is a really great scenario cuz it's a narrow data set. Right. Right. And it works well. It's a skilled operator to use. Yeah. It, it's one of the ones that can work. Well, I just dunno how many others there are.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:16):
I must, do I have this in, I must have this in here somewhere. I'm forgetting what I put in the notes, but I, I think the promise of the Windows 10 or 11 co-pilot specifically is going to be based on what happens with third party plugins. Right. That's what's gonna make it exciting. Yes. Because you look at the list of features they announced, it is nothing <laugh>. It's nothing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's like, I'm gonna use, like, I'm gonna chat with the computer to figure out how to use dark mode. Are you kidding me? Well, you,

Richard Campbell (00:41:42):
The problem you got with Windows co-pilot is you have to look at the Windows app suite, you know, the thing that nobody uses, they go get office. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:41:51):
There's a risk though, that looks a lot like Bixby when you say, oh, gimme a Spotify playlist or

Paul Thurrott (00:41:58):
Be in dark. Is is there a way I could make the computer a little darker? Or, or like, I'm just gonna use the, it's like I keep referencing Zurk in these kind of parer based games from the seventies, but like seriously, like you have to trigger the exact right word. Oh, oh, oh. We have, we have dark mode. I'm so glad you used that word. You know? Mm-Hmm. it just doesn't seem smart to me.

Richard Campbell (00:42:16):
I am an amaz of pussy. Little passages all alike.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:19):
Yes. Clug,

Richard Campbell (00:42:21):
<Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:22):
Open the mailbox. It's dark.

Richard Campbell (00:42:25):
It's dark. You're in danger of being eaten by a groove.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:28):
Right. I used to draw maps, you know, to follow along and Richard

Leo Laporte (00:42:33):
Dis disappeared in a greasy puff of smoke

Paul Thurrott (00:42:35):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:42:36):
That's like, we never saw him again.

Richard Campbell (00:42:38):
Never see it again.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:39):
<Laugh>. yeah. So I look, there's some cool stuff there for sure. I mean, you can drag a do document on it says you want a summary. That kind of, that's neat. That's really neat. It is neat. But we're really talking about two or three very specific features and I think the, like any platform, I mean the thing that makes this exciting is other companies are gonna build off of it and create things that might be exciting to you personally. Right. So we'll see how it goes. Launching a Spotify playlist, whatever.

Richard Campbell (00:43:04):
But, and it's, the thing is, if I'm a successful company, you're basically asking to hijack my UI with my plugin. Like, is is that in my best interest?

Paul Thurrott (00:43:13):
You're oh you were talking about Windows phone now because that's <laugh>. Exactly. The

Richard Campbell (00:43:18):
Now if I'm a, if I'm a, if I'm a subscription based product like a Spotify, I don't get a crap what UI you use, that's fine. Sure. Right. As long as I make my money more users more better

Paul Thurrott (00:43:27):
By the way, that's, they're gonna pay. I I'm fascinated that you just said that because the other example they used was what? Adobe cc. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I mean both of the things they showed that were third parties were subscription

Richard Campbell (00:43:39):
Services had to be subscription services because otherwise I want you and my client Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:42):
Smart. Yep. I could tell you my.net pad's not going in there. Screw those guys. <Laugh>. I, I don't even know what that means. I'm not sure where <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:43:54):
He's

Paul Thurrott (00:43:55):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:43:55):
He's starting to, he's starting to say random phrases.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:58):
<Laugh>. I know. Just, I'm just talking Now he's got hallucination. Exactly. I invented hallucination, sir. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:44:05):
Somebody I saw this morning. Of course more and more companies are saying we're gonna let go of five more percent of our programmers cause we're gonna use

Paul Thurrott (00:44:15):
Co-Pilot. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:44:16):
And somebody, oh my God. That's, that's like saying we're, we don't need any more programmers. We're gonna use Stack Overflow. We, we got it, we got this handled. Yeah, we're

Paul Thurrott (00:44:23):
Good. I need desperately for the Onion to write an article. We, we interviewed the guy who actually did lose his job to chat G P T and it turns out he is kind of a loser. <Laugh> <laugh>. Like it's like, this is Bob. Bob actually didn't do anything <laugh>, you know, he was that guy just kind of coasting every day.

Richard Campbell (00:44:44):
Yeah. I don't know the, the lady, the lady's excuse. Oh, teams. Really another consumer teams. Really

Paul Thurrott (00:44:53):
Remember in 1999 when Microsoft came out with Windows 2000, the thing, you booted the thing up and it said Windows 2000 powered by NT Technology. And we all were like, oh god damn it. Yeah. You know? So I think what they need to do is just get rid of Skype, make consumer teams the thing and say powered by Skype technology. Because here's the thing that's sad about the consumer version of teams. Actually there's a couple things that are sad about it. One, no one knows it exists. Two, when they run into it, nobody wants it. It's in Windows 11, nobody cares. Three and this is the most amazing one. It's actually pretty damn good. <Laugh>. And that's what really stinks about it. Teams for consumers is the lightweight version of teams that everybody kind of really wants. It's sky. The problem is no one uses it. Yeah. So you're just talking to yourself, you know,

Richard Campbell (00:45:45):
And, and I mean, and Aaron has a real issue, which is the only time I ever run into this version of teams is when I click on it by mistake. Cuz I don actually need to

Paul Thurrott (00:45:52):
Use teams. Here's what they should have done. They should just

Richard Campbell (00:45:54):
Make it Skype.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:55):
They could have just fixed it. Right. Exactly. Here, I don't know how you release this product and have it not the first time you click on it by mistake, say, Hey, this is replacing Skype. Click yes to have us import all your Skype stuff. Your other friends can keep using Skype. If they have it on their phones or whatever they use Skype for, it will work. It's just gonna work. They didn't do that. Yeah, they did not do that. And it's astonishing to me, we're closing it in two years. Liz. I I've never heard of any plants to do that. And I, this is, I don't wanna call it the most Microsoft thing ever, but it's so perfect that Microsoft would do something like this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it just doesn't make sense. It's so Microsoft. They, they could have, they should have just replaced Skype.

Richard Campbell (00:46:35):
Well, because the last versions of Skype are not bad other than

Paul Thurrott (00:46:39):
They actually Skype is good too,

Richard Campbell (00:46:41):
In fact, but they're saturated in fake girlfriends and, and other and nobody's else has got one running. And when you ask someone to turn it on, it's like, please stand by while I patch for an hour. <Laugh> Sure. You know that. Wait a minute. That's, wait a minute. I'm not gonna, the actual

Paul Thurrott (00:46:56):
Skim over saturated by fake girlfriends. I know what you're talking about,

Richard Campbell (00:47:00):
But is that a feature? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:04):
No, it's a byproduct. <Laugh>.

Richard Campbell (00:47:05):
Yeah. A it's a byproduct of neglect by the backend of the backend services have meant the bit by bit the various exploiters find ways in to get access to accounts and they start messaging people on mass to see if they can get a hit.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:20):
The only thing that gets hit worse by this than Skype is PayPal. How many times have you gotten like the fake invoice and then you go to report it and it comes up with like fake U URL doesn't work and then you just can't do, like, PayPal just doesn't care.

Richard Campbell (00:47:32):
There's nothing to like that. Just delete the mask. Don't even delete, just delete it. Don't worry about it. Oh, the fake M 365 account messages are awesome too. Like lots of those and those all seem to make it through the filter, right? <Laugh>, Microsoft supposed to

Paul Thurrott (00:47:43):
Run. Yep.

Richard Campbell (00:47:45):
Yeah. It's it, it is an interesting situation and it and it, the alternative is basically given to Zoom cuz Zoom seems to own the consumer market quite

Paul Thurrott (00:47:56):
Well. Yeah, that's right.

Richard Campbell (00:47:57):
Although they're Jack, their price is up now and the free services are getting tighter too.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:02):
Although in

Leo Laporte (00:48:02):
Certain, in certain circles being saturated by fake girlfriends might be a feature they could promote.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:09):
Yeah. It's called Instagram. Oh yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:48:10):
That's right.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:11):
Okay. I, I remember that place you used to go to look at photos.

Leo Laporte (00:48:15):
Oh man, is it awful?

Paul Thurrott (00:48:16):
Remember, remember it was about photos. Actually people now are like, I don't even know what you're talk, I don't think it ever was about photos. I'm pretty sure it was always about shopping short term. You know, short form video it

Leo Laporte (00:48:25):
Every other picture

Paul Thurrott (00:48:26):
Now it just adds Exactly. Pretty much.

Richard Campbell (00:48:28):
Yeah. Yeah. And

Leo Laporte (00:48:28):
For me, and I'm sorry to say this, and I think it's my age, it's all ed Medicine, like every ad, like, I'm starting to feel like, is there something wrong with me?

Richard Campbell (00:48:38):
Sure. Are you trying to tell me something? Are you, what's this about? <Laugh>?

Paul Thurrott (00:48:41):
I'm sure it's a, how do you know I need this? And b <laugh>? Yeah. I it's, it is, yeah. It's terrible. Well, this is the unification thing, right? This is, this is what happens, right? Yeah. wow. Look at we have an audience. Let's ruin it, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:48:56):
Thank you. Jeez. Plus a bunch of people. I don't follow.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:01):
I know.

Richard Campbell (00:49:01):
Even better.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:02):
No, I, I, it's astonishing to me how useless. And, and the thing that when you post a lot

Leo Laporte (00:49:06):
Instagram, I see a lot of photos from you. So you, you

Paul Thurrott (00:49:09):
Have an opinion. No, I li I like the idea of it. Yeah. Right. So I,

Richard Campbell (00:49:13):
But you, I think you post good photos, you post pictures of trains. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:17):
That's always, no, no. I'm, I'm looking, I'm on message. Pictures

Richard Campbell (00:49:19):
Of cocktails, I, pictures of food. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:21):
That's it. It's pretty much my wheelhouse right there. Yeah. yeah. But I, but what I get in return is not a lot. Right? Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I'll see occasional post from your wife, for example, or and a couple family members use it. But like, honestly, it's mostly what we just described. It's a, a lot of scrolling to get by and, and when you get, when you get past the fold where it's like you've seen all the posts and now it's just sponsored nonsense. Just ads.

Richard Campbell (00:49:45):
Yeah. Hundred.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:46):
No, it's, well, it's, it is ads, but it's also like the non-ad things are for some reason, 100% amateur sports videos for me. And I just, geez, guys, this is not why I'm here. Is that why I'm here?

Richard Campbell (00:49:59):
All these products are the, all these second generation social media projects are eating their heads. Like they're just unraveling

Paul Thurrott (00:50:06):
Across the board. It really bothers me.

Richard Campbell (00:50:08):
It couldn't happen to a nice bunch of folks. <Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:50:11):
I don't feel, I don't, I don't feel bad about meta. I just feel, I wish, I wish some regulator would take this thing away and have it just go back to being what it was, you know? God forbid. But

Richard Campbell (00:50:20):
Yeah, I don't think there's any, there's no one. This is,

Paul Thurrott (00:50:22):
You're just gonna listen. I'm the, or we are, I guess all the original generation people who complained about MTV not being about music. That's exactly what this complaint is. It's exactly the same.

Richard Campbell (00:50:33):
Remember the History channel was about history. How

Paul Thurrott (00:50:35):
Strange. Yeah. Oh, God,

Leo Laporte (00:50:36):
Right? Bravo used to be about I don't, I don't know what Bravo was about, but I know it is, but about,

Paul Thurrott (00:50:40):
It was about Westerns and turn of classic movies. Pretty much.

Leo Laporte (00:50:44):
Yeah. Yeah. Tech, tech TV used to be about tech. Weird. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:50:51):
Time for the Windows Insider stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
Yes.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:54):
I'm gonna have to wear noise,

Richard Campbell (00:50:55):
Because I finally dusted off that old Samsung and saw that I had insider on it. And now I'm, I,

Leo Laporte (00:51:00):
I should pay. And I wanna know, because I, as you remember, last week, I turned on insiders on here. You're

Richard Campbell (00:51:04):
Still patching. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:51:05):
No, it's done. It rebooted three times or something, but it's <laugh>. I wanna know, what do I have? What do I got? Wait, are

Paul Thurrott (00:51:11):
You serious? You haven't gotten in still?

Leo Laporte (00:51:13):
No, no. I got it. It's, it's done. Oh, okay. I'm

Paul Thurrott (00:51:15):
Sorry. <Laugh>. No,

Leo Laporte (00:51:16):
It's

Paul Thurrott (00:51:16):
Done. So what do you want? You want, you must be on beta.

Leo Laporte (00:51:19):
Yeah, I was on Not, okay. I can't remember.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:23):
You're not on Canary.

Leo Laporte (00:51:25):
No, but I'm on the next one up, which I guess is beta, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:51:28):
Well, dev is the next And then Beta.

Leo Laporte (00:51:30):
No, I don't think I'm Dev. I must be beta.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:32):
I think you're beta.

Leo Laporte (00:51:33):
If I did system win X, let's see here.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:39):
So the, if you go into settings and go to, it's actually in the first part of settings. Yeah. Yep. System put down the bottom.

Leo Laporte (00:51:45):
Oh, no, no, that's right. I am running, oh, let's press a button here so that you can see it. I am running Windows 11 Pro Insider Preview.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:55):
Yeah, but it doesn't say the

Leo Laporte (00:51:56):
Channel. Is that a thing? So

Paul Thurrott (00:51:57):
Go into go to Windows, update on the side, and then go to Windows Inside.

Leo Laporte (00:52:03):
Pardon? Can you put my screen my htm I screen into the I don't know what you've got set up over in cameras seven and eight. That's not what I want. I see 22 H 2 2 3 4 71 1000 Windows feature. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Experience Pack. None of

Paul Thurrott (00:52:27):
That. Yeah, you're still in system, right?

Leo Laporte (00:52:28):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:52:29):
Yeah. Don't, yeah, go on the left. Click on Windows update.

Leo Laporte (00:52:32):
Oh, well, no, just to tell you what track I'm on, right? Okay. Yeah. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:52:36):
Yes, and this will tell you the truth.

Leo Laporte (00:52:38):
I'll tell you, I'm on Windows. I'm on Windows Insider Program. I am on Dev.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:43):
Oh, no.

Leo Laporte (00:52:44):
<Laugh>. No, that's, did I blow it?

Paul Thurrott (00:52:46):
Probably. It's probably fine. No, actually, you're probably in a good place because

Leo Laporte (00:52:51):
Wait a minute. It says that newer Build is available in Windows Update.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:54):
Yeah, this is, we're gonna talk about that build in a second. There's something interesting going on there.

Leo Laporte (00:52:57):
Okay. I'm waiting. I'm listening.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:00):
So Dev and Beta will have access to a new version of Microsoft Paint that finally adds dark mode. This thing, goodness, that they, I know, two years later. Wonderful. I don't know that it's gonna fix the complaint I had about Microsoft Paint. Remember, you bring up the the info box and you have to resize it, and it doesn't let you enter and get out of it, and it, and whatever. I, I, I doubt it fixes that, but it's at least not gonna blow your eyeballs out if you use Dark <laugh>. So that's, that's actually, I'm sorry, that's coming to Canary and Dev, not Devin Beta. So I don't think everyone gets it right away, but once you have this new build installed, maybe it doesn't matter if you have the new build installed, you should check for updates. You'll be able to get that.

(00:53:36):
So that's good. There have been by my Count five builds since the last time we talked, holy Dan, two to dev each two to Canary and one beta, I think is the total, if I'm mistaken, not mistaken, but nothing much going on in Canary. However, dev has gotten some interesting stuff, Leo, so you'll be able to get some good stuff going. So in the latest build, there is a new home view in File Explorer which is, they're, they're basically turning it into, I'm bringing up File Explorer, like I can see it, which I can't, but they're basically turning it into the view you get, if you go to like onedrive.com and you have kind of a carousel at the top with places to go in recent files and all that kind of stuff, it's, it's sort of the view you get in the, what's now called the Microsoft 365 app, for example.

(00:54:24):
Hmm. that's, that's okay. You know, so it's more of your past files and Yeah. Just get starting point. And the emails are le are sprinkled in there too, so it's sort of a, it's just this is what you've been doing lately Yeah. Kind of view. Yeah. it's sort of what they were trying to do with this new start menu in Windows 11. We have that recommended section, which is an ill-advised combination of recently installed apps as well as recently accessed documents or whatever. I think the micro, I think the closest analog is probably onedrive.com or maybe the Microsoft 365 app. Right. that's cool. That's fine. The previous bill, they, the one you're probably on <laugh>, no one can hear what I'm hearing, right? It's, it's, it's drive me insane. Just you. Yeah. Good, good, good. It's just keep in my head. I, I hear it.

Leo Laporte (00:55:10):
I was just getting my screens back

Paul Thurrott (00:55:12):
<Laugh> so I can show No, I, I'm talking about the bang, the banging I can hear. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:55:15):
I don't hear any banging. No.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:17):
Yeah, no good.

Leo Laporte (00:55:18):
So go ahead. Tell me what I got.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:22):
No, I was just gonna say the, there's all so stuff going around with going on that with File Explorer tabs, and there's a gallery view that try, this is the view that is available in the Photos app. So if you're in a folder full of photos, you'll get like this nice view, you can scroll through with the date on the side, et cetera, et cetera. That's kind of cool. But I have to room

Leo Laporte (00:55:41):
Cut from my memories.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:42):
You sure do. <Laugh>. So actually, if I'm, I'm mistaken, and I think that might be the new, this is kind of a new camera roll integration occurring here as well. So you can click a button in the silver. This,

Leo Laporte (00:55:55):
This I am, I have like two terabytes or something on

Paul Thurrott (00:55:59):
Onedrive. Yeah. But you're assuming that Microsoft knows anything about what,

Leo Laporte (00:56:02):
When I first turned on the computer, it said OneDrive is down.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:07):
Good. You go. You gotta, you gotta reauthenticate. Yep. Yeah. As usual.

Leo Laporte (00:56:12):
Oh, oh. Need access to the prior app. That's a nice feature. You can download Photos, legacy

Paul Thurrott (00:56:18):
If you Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:56:18):
The old one, if you want the old

Paul Thurrott (00:56:19):
One. So the old Photos app had a different layout, but they also like kind of a basic video editor built in for some reason, <laugh> now we have Clip Jams. We don't really need that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's much better than the old thing, but,

Leo Laporte (00:56:32):
Oh, this is interesting. It has a iCloud photos over here on the sidebar. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:37):
Yeah. That's been there for a little while.

Leo Laporte (00:56:39):
That's very generous of them. Mm-Hmm.

Richard Campbell (00:56:41):
<Affirmative>

Leo Laporte (00:56:42):
Mention the other guys. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:56:43):
Cause you know, 50% of the people did access this thing, use an iPhone. Right. So this is a way to get those photos in. That's why Sure. Without requiring the direct access, you know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:56:52):
I'm install that. That's cool. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:57):
So there's some good stuff you, you should be able to see. Also, one thing that's, you'll you'll have to have a PC that takes advantage of this, but there's a lot of PC peripherals and PCs, if they're laptops, gaming laptops that offer dynamic lighting. So you might have dynamic lighting, the keyboard, you have like razor mice that offer this, that kind of thing. Yeah. they're actually gonna, they're moving dynamic lighting as a, like a formal feature. Windows 11 in settings. It's something that all of these makers of these devices are gonna latch into and let you control that stuff instead of through Windows, rather than using like the custom UI for it. So

Richard Campbell (00:57:28):
You it with a bunch of little apps, you know, although if you bought all Logitech gear, Logitech consolidates all that in their hub, which is a little more sensible. I'm, I'm wondering about bias lighting, like that's becoming hipper to stick e I have that Rgbd

Paul Thurrott (00:57:43):
Have it behind like you would have in a home. Exactly. Yeah. I I think that's gonna be part of it too. Yeah. It's a little bit like the presences sensors, like, so Microsoft is moving, or has already moved presence, sensing into settings. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative> there's nothing in Windows that can take advantage of it, but third parties do it, like, by, by, by which I mean PC makers. And the idea there is that you walk up to your computer, it senses you coming, so it wakes up. And that way, if you're using Windows low facial recognition, that happens immediately. Right. Whereas today, you kind of have to sit down in front of it, maybe even have to turn it on and

Richard Campbell (00:58:13):
Poke, poke at it a bit Yeah. To get it to react.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:17):
Yep. So they're starting to move stuff into settings and kind of formalize it as part of Windows. I think that's a good idea.

Richard Campbell (00:58:22):
Yeah. No, it's great. It's, it's great. It, and like, what's fascinating is they don't have a product in this. They're literally running software Yeah. To support their ecosystem. What a concept

Paul Thurrott (00:58:30):
This is. Yeah. In sharp contrast to his, a baloney new feature in Windows, it's like, yeah, here you go. Like, this is stuff people are actually already using. Let's bring it into Windows mm-hmm.

Richard Campbell (00:58:38):
<Affirmative>. And let's make, make it a little easier,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:39):
Actually reach out to hardware makers and say, Hey, we're doing this thing, you know? Yeah. And then they, they integrate with it, so that's good.

Richard Campbell (00:58:45):
Yeah. And just know it's already there. You're not gonna have to walk people through installing software. You're not gonna have to support it. Just give us a driver. Here you go. Thanks for playing. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:52):
I mean, today, if you, you know, buy a new like ThinkPad and you're like, and think Pads might some of them do have, or maybe most of 'em have this present sensing, sensing technology built in. You have to go into Lenovo Vantage. You have to know where to look. You can play with it there, but now this, you know, make it part of Windows. I

Richard Campbell (00:59:07):
Mean, you have to wonder if this was enough tech support calls to Microsoft, where they kept saying, you have to call the vendor. Sure. And making people angry to finally say, Hey, you know, if we build this bit, then we can provide support for

Paul Thurrott (00:59:19):
It. So each, okay. So those two features. And then a third one, which came up back when I reviewed a computer called the HP Dragonfly Pro, which uses an a MD processor that takes over power management for you. So it doesn't matter what you do in power management, it just ignores it. And the idea is, we know how to do this. We're gonna do it for you dynamically. There's no way for us to control the Windows ui. So we can't help there, but we have our, you can turn it off if you want, but you'd be stupid to do that because this computer has kind of I seven level performance, but it also gets 11 hours of battery life. It actually works. Like it's great. So no one should ever turn this off. But they went to Microsoft and said, Hey it'd be kind of nice if you know, <laugh>, this was just, we could do, make this work something we can do. Yeah. And that is gonna be something you can do in the future. So that's coming. And I feel like this present sensing stuff, this dynamic lighting stuff is maybe part of that same set of conversations they might have had with PC makers who are still their most important partners on the client. Right. So it's,

Richard Campbell (01:00:19):
Yeah. Now this was, this is kind of the kinder, gentler tech giant thing, right? Yeah. Like, yeah. And, and, and the Windows team trying to figure out how to do stuff that the ecosystem's gonna benefit from. Like,

Paul Thurrott (01:00:30):
Actually,

Richard Campbell (01:00:31):
Like, I mean, nothing more. One of the more complicated things just going down the list of what are we getting the most calls on, right? It's this thing, let's make it go away.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:38):
I, I just thought of another one, but I can't think of the name of it. There's a feature coming to Windows that has to be supported by a BC maker, because it's part of the display technology that works a little bit like Ole Works, you know, with ole, if the screen is, if that part of the screen's black, there's nothing, nothing has to light up. It's become, it's black, they just turn it off. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And they're doing a dynamic version of that where you can have H D R just where the video's playing, but not in the rest of the screen or whatever, you know. Wow. that, and that's something the hardware, you know, the, the PC maker has to have that hardware and the PC has to support it, and normally would have to create a like a, an app or a utility or some kind of control. It, it's like, Hey, could we just put this into Windows? And they're, they're putting it into Windows. Yeah. so no, no one's listening to Microsoft's customers. They're listening to Microsoft Partners. It's a, it's a very important distinction here. <Laugh>, you know. But anyway, it's happening. So that's benefits all of it. It's good.

Richard Campbell (01:01:31):
Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:35):
So anyway, that's most of what's happening in the Insider program, I guess

Leo Laporte (01:01:40):
What's important, get all head up about

Richard Campbell (01:01:42):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. No, but in your case, vision Pro <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:01:47):
I know.

Richard Campbell (01:01:49):
Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:01:49):
Well. But you are gonna see, so once you get this build installed, which hopefully will happen before we're done, but we'll see these things take a while. You will have a more modern version of File Explorer that actually has a bunch of new stuff going on. So that's actually kind of interesting. Cool. Cool. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:02:04):
All right. Well, let me let me push the button then. Yeah. And we could go

Richard Campbell (01:02:08):
And go. Could go wrong.

Leo Laporte (01:02:10):
What could possibly, I love updating my machine during a show. I just think there's something about it's

Richard Campbell (01:02:14):
The best.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:15):
Yeah. And I think it's, it's honestly, at this point, it's a tradition.

Leo Laporte (01:02:18):
<Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:02:19):
You know,

Leo Laporte (01:02:20):
Tradition, tradition, open Windows update. Yeah. I thought I was in Windows Update, but, okay. Check for updates and then it's gonna

Paul Thurrott (01:02:31):
Say, come get the new

Leo Laporte (01:02:32):
Build. There's, well, that's what's weird cuz it's said there's a new build. I know.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:35):
I don't, this process is a little dodgy. Yeah, exactly. If, if you know it, there's a new build, just let me click something and get it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:02:42):
You know, just

Paul Thurrott (01:02:42):
Get it. Because sometimes you, you'll come here and it'll say you're up to date <laugh>. It's like, they just told me there was a new build.

Leo Laporte (01:02:48):
Yeah. And this is all, cuz I have joined the Insider program and flipped the switch. Get the latest updates as soon as they're available. Yeah. I don't even need that anymore. Right. Cuz I'm in the beta check. Right, the

Paul Thurrott (01:03:01):
Beta. That's well yeah, that's probably true. Yeah, that's

Leo Laporte (01:03:04):
Yeah. True. That supersedes see this, right. <Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:03:09):
It's so frustrating. Classic.

Richard Campbell (01:03:10):
You're in the loop.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:11):
<Laugh>. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:03:14):
It's still don't worrying. Don't worry. Alright. Right. Well,

Richard Campbell (01:03:16):
I won't, there's always an update. I

Leo Laporte (01:03:17):
Won't hold down the <laugh>, hold down the No,

Paul Thurrott (01:03:19):
It's okay. It, it's just, it's it's

Leo Laporte (01:03:21):
Irritating. It's just irritating. Just All right. Spinning, spinning, spinning

Richard Campbell (01:03:26):
Workspaces for

Paul Thurrott (01:03:27):
Edge. Yeah. So at Build, Microsoft showed off a brand new version of Edges, a beautiful new ui, and they just released a new version of Edge this past week and it does not have that new ui. So <laugh> that's Microsoft again. Classic Microsoft. I, yeah, the only way to see it today is to install the beta version of Edge and then turn on some flags and you can get the grounded UI in the floating tower. But

Richard Campbell (01:03:51):
It sounds like you basically need an M 365 account to use this, cuz you need one driver to get

Paul Thurrott (01:03:55):
Workspace, you need

Richard Campbell (01:03:56):
A a d like it's, it's an enterprise product

Paul Thurrott (01:03:59):
Feature, essentially. The workspaces feature. Yeah. So I was kind of hoping there was gonna be more stuff to this release cuz they've been, you know, in addition to the new UI stuff, there's the ability to pin the edge sidebar to the side of Windows, like the window sidebar used to be. Right. Is coming. That didn't seem like a particularly exciting feature until about a month ago when they added all that Bing AI stuff to the Edge sidebar. Now it's like, oh, actually a lot like the co-pilot feature we just were talking about, it could be the sidebar over the side where it can access image creation, chatbot you know, the create functionality. We can create letters or emails or whatever. Right. Honestly, having that pinned to the side of the screen, that's actually, that's interesting. Yeah. So that's, none of that's there. So all that exciting stuff I just mentioned. Not there. The only new feature is workspaces. Like I said, it does require an a d account. I don't understand why workspaces can't be brought to consumer Microsoft 365 accounts or whatever, but yeah. Okay.

Richard Campbell (01:04:55):
Yeah, I don't know why we, I can understand the AAD D account, which is not that hard to come by. And you can have one. Essentially the OneDrive for business license is the one, like that's Yeah. Not a small thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:05):
That's right.

Richard Campbell (01:05:07):
That needs a, that means an administrator.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:09):
Right, right. So yeah, you had another way to Cal collaborate, I guess. You know, this is my, this is Microsoft. This is the, the little bit. Okay. The, the other thing I didn't say in that story about developers, the developer story part where Microsoft and Google address their markets a little differently than Apple does. Apple requires its developers to meet them where they are. Right. Google and Microsoft will meet you where you are. And this is a great example of that in a user. Even if you're doing the weather, it'll meet you. Yeah. Yeah. You are <laugh> Patrick Delehanty for sharing that little yes. I would like to upgrade. Thank you <laugh>. Someone should have have said, you know what, we're doing this right now, <laugh>,

Richard Campbell (01:05:50):
And you know, I could imagine setting up a workspace for.net rocks related links, right? Yes. Like,

Paul Thurrott (01:05:56):
Yeah. You, you collaborate

Richard Campbell (01:05:57):
Products and stuff.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:57):
Yeah, yeah. People collaborate in different ways. I mean, it's, it's okay. I I do feel like at some point we're, we have too many ways to do things. Yeah. You know but

Richard Campbell (01:06:07):
But isn't that the Microsoft way?

Paul Thurrott (01:06:08):
Right. It is the Microsoft way. It's not

Richard Campbell (01:06:10):
Truly done until there's six ways to do it. The three of them will shoot your foot

Paul Thurrott (01:06:13):
Off <laugh>. Right, right. I just, I was, I'm reading a book about Commodor right now, and one of the great quotes is like, you've heard the phrase shoot yourself in a foot with Commodor, they put their foot in their mouth first, then they shoot themselves in the foot. <Laugh>. God. Yeah. I thought that was pretty good. Some are related trigger warning for this show. Thanks, Ilana for that. Yep. Sorry, sorry. <Laugh>, it's a phrase. I didn't invent the brave. It doesn't mean anything. So I, as everyone knows by now, I'm sure, like I use, recommend the, the brave web browser. I have

Richard Campbell (01:06:48):
One in my workstation. Switch over to Brave, I yell at you about

Paul Thurrott (01:06:50):
It every day. Okay. <laugh>, so the one area that I would say Brave is behind, and this is an area that doesn't matter to me too much, is on the new UI stuff. Right. So we just mentioned, I just talked about this edge sidebar, whatever, sidebars are kind of all the rage right now with browsers Chrome. I know. Well we're, there's, there's this ongoing thing at Microsoft especially, but also elsewhere about this notion of doing things side by side. Right? This is the dual screen devices. They, they did and didn't do like Neo. It's the split screen feature in Microsoft Edge. Where's like, we need another way to split the screen up. Yeah. Obviously Snap is one of those many ways, multi-screen is another way, obviously. But this notion of like, you, you're, you're doing some big work over here, but you might have this little thing over here.

(01:07:34):
Maybe you wanna keep track of a, a live sports game. Maybe you're taking notes while you're watching a video or maybe, you know, but who, who, whos, but it doesn't matter. But a lot of different things. And I, I feel like this part of our world is like almost obsessed by this right now. Mm-Hmm. And even Brave actually has a little sidebar thing, which I turn off immediately so I don't even know what's in it. But Brave is generally speaking behind on the user facing kind of UI fun stuff that Microsoft Edge is really into goo. Google is a little bit into with Chrome, if you're really into the stuff, get Aldi, Vivaldi is a, a very safe web browser that is just all about customization. I find it to be a little much about customization. Anyway, to show you how behind the Times Air brave, just this week added support for vertical tabs <laugh> featured that other browsers have had for a long time. So,

Richard Campbell (01:08:22):
And I mean, the upside to that is we have more horizontal real estate than vertical real estate. So moving the tabs vertically Yes. Actually consumes more horizontal real estate. I cannot

Paul Thurrott (01:08:31):
That makes sense. Agree with you more. But I, here's here's the caveat to that, because I, I literally started writing a little screen about that very topic. I'm like, you know right. As we're all moving to taller displays, you're telling me we're gonna use more, you know, horizontal real estate or whatever is

Richard Campbell (01:08:45):
We got a lot of horizontal real estate man. Like these,

Paul Thurrott (01:08:47):
These double,

Richard Campbell (01:08:49):
But here triple wide

Paul Thurrott (01:08:50):
Monitors. Here's the thing. So if you move the tabs to the side, you can get rid of the title bar. Right? Right. So you, you now you have more space.

Richard Campbell (01:08:58):
You save some vertical space.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:59):
There you go. You can also collapse the tab bar so that it's just a row of icons. Right. And then you, you don't lose any ver horizontal space. So you kind of, you can mouse over it, it pops out. You kind of get the best of both worlds in a way. So technically, I suppose in a world in which you do have taller displays if you have a single display and you have a browser there, you could have more space overall by using this feature. I can't stand it <laugh>. So, and I have tried when Edge sorry.

Richard Campbell (01:09:28):
You want to like this? I

Paul Thurrott (01:09:29):
Wanna like it, like I, there, there's some kind of muscle memory thing with me where I go to the top of the window to see and use those tabs. And I, I even things like control tab, which switches between tabs. Yeah. I find visually or just mentally awkward for some reason when it's on the side. I don't know how to explain it. I, it's,

Richard Campbell (01:09:49):
You know, I, I tend to binge blogs. Yeah. Like on Sundays. Yeah. In the afternoon I'll go, it's time to do my.net rocks reading. Right. And I've got a huge list of bookmarks and so forth. And I found that the bookmark manager and rave is pretty great that I can just fire to that and just right click Open tab. Open tab of open 50 60 tabs or so. And then just work your way through it. Yeah. Read one after the next, close them make a note, shuffle it over or whatever. There's this thing

Leo Laporte (01:10:14):
Called rss. I don't know if you've ever heard of it

Paul Thurrott (01:10:17):
Listening <laugh>, it doesn't work.

Richard Campbell (01:10:20):
Latest mangled. It mangled post

Paul Thurrott (01:10:23):
Post ai. The RSS is gonna be the big thing. Yeah. No, I, I use

Leo Laporte (01:10:27):
An RSS reader subscribed all my blogs and I don't have to get tabs

Paul Thurrott (01:10:31):
In my browsers. Somebody asked me, you know, how do I, how do I keep my browser bookmarks or favorites up to date between browsers, you know? And I was like, what are you, I don't, well what, what are you talking about <laugh>? But, but no, but the point is everyone works different way.

Leo Laporte (01:10:45):
Probably does that, I would guess it

Paul Thurrott (01:10:47):
Vol probably does, does so many

Leo Laporte (01:10:48):
Crazy things.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:50):
There's a, like Microsoft Edge, for example, I can't stand the way they handle history. It pops up, it's like a weird little mm.

(01:10:58):
Floating panel thing. And it's like, what is, what is this <laugh> look, you know, I want to go, I go into the menu, I go up to the thing I want click it, I get back to the thing I lost. Like that's it. I don't, I don't need like a whole UI for this. Yeah. It's just a list, you know. But everyone works differently. I mean, I use I use RSS and I use I have like a momentum homepage replacement that I just have, you know, half a dozen or a dozen links that that's, you know, and I leave my browsers. I have pin tabs and a set of browser tabs that are just always open. What we all do, you know, whenever we all do stuff differently, it's just that the way I do it is, is right. So <laugh> and then we have continuing the bad news.

(01:11:41):
Last week we talked about h HP falling off a cliff. This time Dell is falling on top of them and hurting them further. So Dell, I, I dunno, like I've been complaining about this for a few weeks now. I, I guess every week one company does some weird quarterly report on some bizarre date scheme. But Dell is seeing the same problems as everyone else. So Dell 578 million of net income, a drop drop of 46% year over year on revenues of almost 21 billion, a drop of 20%. Their PC business, the client solution group posted revenues a 12 billion to drop of 23%. You recall at E c I believe the number was 27, 20 9% drop in the same rough time period, although we're moving forward now. So it's kind of an overlap thing. But in Dell's case, Dell's kind of interesting and this is weird cuz you would think Lenovo would be like this with think bed, but they're not. The vast majority of their PC revenues are, are the business market, not consumers.

Richard Campbell (01:12:37):
You know, I'm always surprised these guys don't just remind you of their 2019 num numbers. Like the pre pandemic numbers. Yeah. Because it's back to that. Right. Well, and its, it's just, you know, it's sort of that acknowledgement. Like right in 29 they're talking about, hey, revenues of 20 billion, you know, and a 570 net. Sure. And in 2019, it was revenues of 24 billion. Right. Right. Like which I get, maybe that's the issue is that if that number was lower than it's like, Hey, we're back to

Paul Thurrott (01:13:09):
Yes. Point

Richard Campbell (01:13:10):
19 numbers.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:11):
You have to wonder if they're worried about that being the case that we, we kind of plateau at a point that is lower than pre pandemic. I don't think anyone wants that. The thing that's most striking about the Dell results, honestly, cause I just care about the PC stuff, is how little information there was. Like, it was just nothing. They just nothing. And that business is over half of their revenues. Yeah. It's their biggest business. And there was no information about it.

Richard Campbell (01:13:39):
But the COO did a good job of making happy noises about it. We executed well against a challenging economic background.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:45):
Oh, well, here's the thing. So actually Dell beat expectations. Oh, nice. They're doing great. Know. Yeah. You know, so this

Richard Campbell (01:13:52):
Is most about setting low expectations.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:54):
That's the key. Apples did that, they actually got in a little bit of trouble. So I guess somebody broke their NDA on their numbers and published the results. Can't sandbag. So they had to go live with it. They had a halt trading. Yeah. And when they came back, the, their stock shot through the roof. Yeah, it worked.

Leo Laporte (01:14:11):
Yeah. All right. Good play. Well this episode of Windows Weekly, brought to you by Cisco Meraki, oh, you know that name. They're the experts in cloud-based networking for hybrid work. And man, hybrid work is happening. Whether your employees are working at home at a cabin in the mountains, on a lounge chair at the beach, or even in the office, a cloud managed network is gonna give them the same exceptional work experience no matter where they are. You really want that. You really do. I mean, it does, you know, otherwise you, you know, inconsistent results, it's bad. You may as well roll out the welcome at too, because hybrid work, whether you like it or not, is here to stay. It works best in the cloud. And by the way, hybrid work has perks for both employees and leaders. Your workers can move faster, deliver better results with a cloud managed network.

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While leaders can automate distributed operations, they can build more sustainable workspaces. They can proactively protect the network. That's actually a big issue. Meraki commissioned an IDG market pulse research report, and it highlighted the top tier opportunities in supporting hybrid work. I was kind of surprised to read this. H hybrid work is a priority for 78% of C-suite executives. They, they know they need to do this. And you know what? I think they want to drive collaboration forward. They of course, need to stay on top of productivity and security. They understand the challenges. In fact, security is a big challenge. Id g raise the red flag about security, noting 48% of leaders report cybersecurity threats as a primary obstacle to improving workforce experiences and moving the workforce offsite in some cases always on security monitoring. That's one of the things Meraki brings to the table.

(01:16:00):
And, and it means your cloud managed network is actually better. It's better It can use apps for Meraki's, vast ecosystem of partners, turnkey solutions built to work seamlessly with the Meraki cloud for platform asset tracking. I mean, it's really a great platform. Location analytics you can gather insight. This is very valuable to how when employees are in the office, how they use their workspaces. You, you can actually create a smart space where environmental sensors can track activity, you know, see where the hotspots are. That's really useful for staying on top of cleanliness. It's also great for hot-desking because you know exactly what the usage patterns are. So you can allow employees to reserve workspaces, for instance, based on vacancy employee profiles, even in high security restricted environments. You can have them book in advance and then you can allow them only entry only in that time window.

(01:17:00):
Time-Based door access mobile device management, of course, is key these days. And you can integrate devices and systems so that can manage, update, and troubleshoot company owned devices even when the device and employee are at a remote location. All this is enabled by the Cisco Meraki Cloud platform. It lets you turn any space into a place of productivity. It lets you empower your organization with the same exceptional experience no matter where they work. It's Meraki in the Cisco suite of technology. Learn how your organization can make hybrid work, work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twi. M e r a k i, you know, Meraki, you know, cisco meraki.cisco.com/twi. Let me thank 'em so much for their sport of Windows Weekly. Back to the show. Okay, gentlemen, you've, you've put it off. Log enough. Let's talk box. How do you pronounce that? Box? Box. Box. Box. Sh, box X Xbox. You have been going through Paul and I admire you. A real season of depre deprivation and renewal. How's it been? <Laugh>? Oh, you're muted, sir. Unmute your Mikey phone.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:22):
Sorry. yeah, I, so I've been trying to break my call of duty addiction, and one thing I've noticed about myself is that when I travel for work or for whatever, I don't miss playing video games. Like, I, I could be gone for three weeks in Europe back when we were doing home swaps or in Mexico now. And I don't really ever think about playing video games, you know, and I, I, I picked up play, well, I've been playing video games my whole life, right. I'm, I'm one of the original generation. We had Mattel and television when I was, whatever, 11 years old or something. But I've always been into video games, right. When I started writing books, the guy who got me into writing was talking to me about how he would use this as kind of a like a, a way to reward himself. He got a chapter done in a book or something. You could play a little bit of Castle Wolf Science 3d or whatever it was. And yeah. You know, whatever. So something I've done, I, I don't think that playing games has gotten in the way of writing. I, you can, you can see what I do. It's all out there on the web, so whatever. But, but

Leo Laporte (01:19:24):
Sure, you can quit at any time. It's not Im impacting your life in

Paul Thurrott (01:19:27):
Any way. Well, I was, I was hyper productive when we were in Mexico back in March, I got that book published. I thought I was just gonna get like a tiny part of that done. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can keep this going. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:38):
I often think that when I'm playing a game, like, what could I be doing with this <laugh> these many hours? Yeah. I

Paul Thurrott (01:19:44):
Always thought, is this a memory? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:46):
I always thought with the, you know, that the, that guitar Hero game, I thought if I put the same amount of time, it's actually learning the guitar,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:54):
Learning the guitar <laugh>, I'd

Leo Laporte (01:19:55):
Probably be able to play it.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:56):
I also, I, I don't know if this is, I don't know how weird this is for, for other people, but there are, I have, I've played these multiplayer levels in Call of Duty so many times. They're real places, my brain, so Wow. I know my way around Washington, DC and Paris and Boston. Yeah. And I know my way around these levels in the same way. And it's, I I don't know that that's healthy. Right. I got the

Leo Laporte (01:20:18):
Point with Val Heim where I really felt like, you know, that was that Viking building game I was addicted to. I spent, I think I spent more than 600 hours in it over a period of a year. Right. It was during Covid. And so, you know, it was my kind of quarantine.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:30):
Yeah. Listen, we all get a pass for that.

Leo Laporte (01:20:31):
And I, I gotta the point where I felt like it was actually my second life. Like, yeah. I had a life here and this plane and a life in Valhalla, and it was very, I had that probably the same epiphany that you did, Paul, that Yeah. This is

Paul Thurrott (01:20:45):
Becoming part, I don't know which one was more repetitive, my real life or my fake life. <Laugh>, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:20:50):
<Laugh>. And I wasn't doing as a refuge. I was happy, but it just, it became, it was so fun. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:57):
I, well, fun is an interesting word. So, in my case, I think this is actually like an a d h D thing for me. Like, I'd say you know, the if I fail doing something, I can do it again and maybe succeed. And if I succeeded doing something, maybe I could succeed even better the next time. Like, it's like I'm just gonna do this thing over and over and over again. And different people will be in the game. So, slightly different situation. I don't know what it is, but anyway, I just,

Richard Campbell (01:21:25):
But it's a variation on improving your time in, in running laps. Yes. And yeah, I, I know folks that fish like that. That's right. You know, where it's like, I'm, I'm hunting this particular steelhead in this particular stream day after day after day, and like Right, right.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:40):
So for us, we'd look at that and say that, that sounds terribly boring. Just like my wife would look at the screen and be like, I don't, what do you, what? Why do you do this? Like, I don't know

Richard Campbell (01:21:47):
Why. I know I had a friend who like, who didn't feel like he had a good mountain bike ride if he didn't have to carry pieces of his bike home. <Laugh>, there you go. Like that. That was a good day for him. That's a little too

Leo Laporte (01:21:56):
Far. Okay. But

Richard Campbell (01:21:57):
A little intense. Yeah. Sometimes he's carrying a clavicle too. But you know what I gotta

Paul Thurrott (01:22:01):
Do, if I can get outta bed without throwing up my back, it's a good day. Yeah. You

Richard Campbell (01:22:04):
Progress.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:06):
So, yeah, I, I, I came home, I was helped too, because when we came home, we had one week before we, we had to move and that was horrific. And then I moved and that was, it's, you know, you don't just move and you're done. It took weeks. And, and so that helped. Right. So I think that helped me get it through it. So I did, I have played a few games. I I've been playing games on the pc. I tell you, the cure for video games is to play Halo. That will solve your problem nicely. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:22:31):
Why

Richard Campbell (01:22:32):
Halo on the tc?

Paul Thurrott (01:22:34):
It's, yeah, because it's, the new version is on the pc. Well, they're all on the PC now, thanks to Xbox game Pass. But because it's not a great game. And we, with Call of Duty, I really, for whatever reason, whatever addiction it had, I, I wanted to do it and do it and do it. And with Halo, it was like, I kind of had a struggle. Like, I had to kind of force myself to do it. It's like this monotonous ser like imagine you're, you're on some Ring World thing and it's like, oh, we have to go destroy these three towers. You gotta do one at a time. And there's things that happen in between them. And like, doing each one is so tedious that like, you do the first one and you're like, ah, that's enough for today. I just can't. It's, this is like work. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, it's, it's not entertaining.

Richard Campbell (01:23:12):
You're at, you're at that point.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:14):
Yeah. So that helped <laugh>, it actually helped. It was also an interesting opportunity to go back and play some older games. I hadn't played a while. Again, thanks to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Right. So, you know, doom three is in there. That's amazing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> return to Castle Wolfenstein. I played some of the newer Doom Game actually Minecraft Legends, which is New Quake two, you know, stuff like that. So it was kind of, it, it was just like, it became, I think it became a little healthier,

Richard Campbell (01:23:40):
Sort of a rereading of old books too. Yeah. Go explore that story again.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:44):
Yeah. Right. It's not, it, it, I've, I've done this stuff enough that it doesn't, there's no surprise coming. Right. So it's just an entertaining thing I can do for a little while. I have played so little video games. So honestly, in the past two, well, three months it's kind of astonishing. I, I think this is the biggest breaker, gap, whatever you wanna call it. I, I mean, possibly since I was a child, I can't, I've just, yeah. It's amazing. Wow. Yeah. So it's been interesting. I have not plugged in my Xbox console once since March. I guess second probably was the date. Wow. Paul. It's fine. I know. I know. But it's fine. Like, it's good. It's fine. Have you

Leo Laporte (01:24:25):
Been more productive?

Paul Thurrott (01:24:27):
No. Has your relationship with That's the interesting thing. Your family improved the, the <laugh>? No, I can't stand those people. I, the, the <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:24:34):
So there is no benefit. Has your sleep improved your physical fitness?

Paul Thurrott (01:24:39):
Nope. <laugh>, there's no benefit. Get back to, to your gaming. Well, so the one when I was away, I got that book done and that was like a, almost a manic period of productivity. Yeah. I, like I said, I moved, I mean, there's a lot of that kind of stuff. I, no, I, but it's, it doesn't matter. Like, it's fine. Like, I, it, it's, yeah, I didn't care. Cancer, you know, I, I don't mean to say like I did all this awesome stuff, but like but I also, I better, you felt better. Yeah. Yeah. Did you? Yeah. It feels better. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I feel like my relationship with Call of Duty was unhealthy.

Richard Campbell (01:25:10):
Yeah. So the, the always, the question then is, is it actually stopping the interaction or is it the fact that you had control, like the empowerment is I decided to do this, I did this. That's a win. Regardless of what it may have been, it's like, yep. I was looking at kicking my cocaine habit, but the hell with that call of Duty. Right. I ditched that one, one instead. Sure,

Paul Thurrott (01:25:28):
Sure. I don't, I don't know what to say. I mean, I, I think it was, I mean, I, maybe I made it a little too easy for and now it's wait, you do the right

Richard Campbell (01:25:39):
Thing. You put the thing in a box, right? Yeah. Like, that's the way to go.

Leo Laporte (01:25:41):
Helps you know, by the way, very good technique. Move to Mexico.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:45):
There you go. That helps too. And leave the Xbox home. Right. Do you guys do you ever watch the show Yellowstone? Have you seen the show? Love it.

Leo Laporte (01:25:53):
Watched every episode of 1923.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:55):
Yeah. Okay. So we're, we're

Leo Laporte (01:25:56):
1883. The whole thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:57):
It's, it's insane. So we're binging the, the original series. So I think we're in season four. Great. Yeah. And there was just a scene where they, the guy, the main, the the patriarch, the Kevin Costner character gets up in the morning. He just got, you know, got back from getting shot. He's all hurt and stuff, and he's gotta, he wants to ride his horse, you know, and he was describing to some kid, he just said, he's like yeah, you can just sit there and watch tv, I guess. I'm gonna go do stuff. And he's like, I feel, I feel like if I don't go do something, that's when I die. You know, like a shark <laugh>, you know? And, and I think sitting here playing video games is just like a, a really unhealthy way to spend time

Richard Campbell (01:26:31):
Shark. And

Leo Laporte (01:26:33):
Yeah. I, I celebrate this Paul. I think this is great. It's, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:26:38):
It's interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:26:39):
I, I do think in my way for certain people can become very addictive. Like any, any dopamine hit sure. You, you become focused on it.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:51):
Right. And I don't mean to say I won't play video games, or I'm not going to blame. I, I haven't a lot of games You

Richard Campbell (01:26:56):
Aren't playing video

Paul Thurrott (01:26:57):
Games. I am. You, I'm not playing a lot for sure. But I mean, you know, like one thing we'll talk, well, we can talk about it right now. So Red Fall came up recently bombed, you know, and I, at the time I said, be bombed cuz it's terrible. It'd be because it's terrible. It's absolutely true. And I know that because I played it. And the reason I played it is because I subscribed to Xbox Game Pass and I got to play, well not for free, but as part of my subscription, we already paid for it. I streamed it. And it's freaking terrible. <Laugh>, you know, it's a really bad game. And now I know, and I didn't have to go spend 70 bucks on it or whatever.

Leo Laporte (01:27:27):
So is this all by way of saying we're not gonna do an Xbox segment anymore? No,

Paul Thurrott (01:27:31):
Not at all. No. I think this is still very important. I'm still gonna play games, you know, here and there, but I think it's just gonna be less less time. From personally,

Leo Laporte (01:27:40):
Just wanna warn you, you might be tempted at some point to play a game in the browser called Universal Paperclips.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:47):
<Laugh>, okay. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:27:49):
It's about ai. So it's kind of timely. I see.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:51):
Oh, it's okay. It's in my wheelhouse.

Leo Laporte (01:27:53):
That's good. You might, you might enjoy it. But again

Paul Thurrott (01:27:57):
It's, well you have, now you have to,

Richard Campbell (01:27:59):
My record time is 80 minutes.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:01):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:28:01):
That's right. I forgot you're a universal paperclip genius. Yeah. No, I play table it all. You know, you

Richard Campbell (01:28:08):
Can, you, you first couple times you play Universal Paperclip, you'll play it overnight.

Leo Laporte (01:28:12):
That's right.

Richard Campbell (01:28:13):
But if you start really working on the math around things, you can get your time down. Anything under two hours is good. 80 minutes just means I got

Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
Lucky. So Paul, you, we've talked about this game before, but you've not played it yet.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:24):
No, I've not.

Richard Campbell (01:28:25):
Don't

Paul Thurrott (01:28:26):
<Laugh> do it.

Leo Laporte (01:28:28):
<Laugh> I think don't. So it is a great way to kind of l it's based on Nicholas Nick Bostrom, who is problematic. I understand. Nick Bostrom was a, a Oxford philosophers one of his thought experiments, which is if you told an AI that his job was to make paperclips and didn't give it any constraints, eventually it would consume the entire universe just to make paper, clothes, paper clothes. And that's what this whole game is. And I think in some ways it's, it, I mean, look, it's just a, it's just a kind

Richard Campbell (01:29:06):
Of a, I like thought consuming the universe on occasion, but

Leo Laporte (01:29:10):
It's kind of fun to play. Yeah. it is, it is. I feel like apparently down right now, decision problem.com I guess because everybody, as soon as I said this, there it is, <laugh> said, let's play it again. It's one of those things you play and then every once in a while you just bring it up again.

Richard Campbell (01:29:27):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:29:28):
And it starts by making just one paperclip and then another. And so far

Paul Thurrott (01:29:35):
It's, you're on the back call of duty. I mean, I don't know if the graphics get better on a computer. No, they don't. No, no,

Leo Laporte (01:29:41):
They don't. This is it right here. Eventually you will make enough money that you can buy an automated paperclip. You don't have to tap it forever. Sure. And then eventually AI gets in the picture and it gets a whole heck of all you get like

Paul Thurrott (01:29:55):
Gofundme thing going to help

Leo Laporte (01:29:57):
Find that thing. It's great. Yeah. Paul,

Richard Campbell (01:29:59):
Do yourself a favor. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:30:00):
Gonna buy an Auto Clipper look at

Richard Campbell (01:30:01):
That. Use your fancy mouse to automate repeat, click. So you can just hold it down over make paper clip.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:08):
What I'll do is I'll learn JavaScript and then it'll use those skills to program this page to work better.

Richard Campbell (01:30:12):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Clearly we need to roll out Deep Mind Play Universal Paper Club.

Leo Laporte (01:30:17):
It is it is Genius Game. It was created by a guy who actually teaches game design at a, I can't remember which university, NYU, I think. But it's, it's, I think you should play this. It will, in some ways it will sanitize you. It will suck. There are no, you know, there's no no Nazis or zombies or anything. There's, it's just you.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:37):
Yeah. That's disappointing. But I, you know, I'm, I'm open to the fact that there are games that don't have those things. Like I get that sort of theoretically. Yeah, it's okay.

Richard Campbell (01:30:47):
Yeah. My reward game has always been Kble Space program. Yeah, that's a great game. You can pick it up for an hour work mission and then put it back down again and come back to that mission later. And

Leo Laporte (01:30:57):
It's similar because you're cr you're building, you know, it's one of those environmental things where you're creating stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:31:04):
I, I call it a gardening game, right? Yeah. Like your, essentially like, except your garden is a space program,

Leo Laporte (01:31:09):
Right? Are there adversaries? There's no attacks or bad guys.

Richard Campbell (01:31:13):
Oh, no, just, just gravity. Just

Leo Laporte (01:31:15):
Gravity's. Gravity

Richard Campbell (01:31:16):
Is your adversary. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:31:17):
Yeah. Continuing on with the Xbox segment, which Richard and I have successfully derailed completely <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:31:29):
I accept that challenge. What else? It's okay.

Leo Laporte (01:31:31):
What else you got Pauly?

Paul Thurrott (01:31:33):
So when the Xbox series X and S launched was it three years ago, almost three years ago one of the little controversial deals was Microsoft would support storage expansion, but only through proprietary cards. And at the onset they announced that there was one partner, Seagate. And you can actually do USB storage, remember too. But that only works with older games. If you wanna play x the, the newest games, you have to have either internal storage, this new kind of storage. They were kind of expensive and it was only one partner and it was kind of weird. And then more were coming and more never came. But now we actually have a second partner for this Western Digital. They have I think two, two or three cards as a 500 gigabyte card for 89.99. And there is a, sorry, that's not true. It's 79.99. The Seagate version is 89 99 and then there's a, a one terabyte version for 1 49. So and it's a Seagate also has a, a two terabyte version at 3 99, which is now less expensive at 2 79. So the prices are starting to come down. There's still only two companies, but at least there are two companies. And this is a particular problem for the Xbox Series s. These are

Richard Campbell (01:32:46):
Still ridiculously expensive. You can buy two terabyte s s D for 120

Paul Thurrott (01:32:49):
Bucks. Yeah, I know. So one, this is one thing Sony did, right? Sony, I mean, you have to meet some certain Yeah. Performance characteristics, et cetera, et cetera. But Sony lets you put a, like a, an m two card into their console and expand it that way. So that's one thing. So

Richard Campbell (01:33:05):
It went from a monopoly to a duopoly, right? Here's your 10 bucks back.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:09):
Yep. This is like Apple additional Ram pricing basically. You know, it's like double what it should be, but at least it's there is my point. So call it And

Richard Campbell (01:33:20):
Procr,

Paul Thurrott (01:33:21):
Yeah, I'll call it something. I dunno. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> <laugh>. And then Microsoft announced a, a new Minecraft game today. But the interesting thing about it is, or an update I should say. The, the Trails and Tales update to Minecraft with it now Minecraft is available for Chromebooks for the first time. And wow. Yeah. You have to have a fairly recent book, the bedrock

Richard Campbell (01:33:44):
Edition of Minecraft.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:33:46):
Admittedly this game is written in Java and it was supposed to run everywhere the whole time.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:51):
Yes.

Richard Campbell (01:33:51):
This is not the Java versions. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:33:53):
The difference. This is not the Java Rev versions,

Richard Campbell (01:33:54):
This is Microsoft's. Oh, right. Had to run on Chrome os that's not gonna run Java. Right,

Paul Thurrott (01:33:59):
Right. Well, <laugh>, well, I dunno I'm not really sure how this works. I mean, I assume this is like, it's a native installment. I know there's a Linux going on there. I assume that has something to do with it. You have to. Oh,

Richard Campbell (01:34:10):
Pretty good. That might be the workaround, cuz you could on, on Chromebooks, you can run a Windows or a Linux subsystem

Paul Thurrott (01:34:16):
Effectively. Yeah. So it's,

Richard Campbell (01:34:18):
It's a new system.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:18):
Probably. Probably that, yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that's only 20 bucks. It includes the Android version for Freeze. That's cool. So if you're in that ecosystem there you go. So that's kind of interesting. We talked about Red Fall already and it's terrible. It's still terrible. It looks like it was written with quake two graphics, which were impressive for the day and are no longer impressive 20 years later. So

Richard Campbell (01:34:40):
Yeah, quake, it was impressive in 1998. Here's my question,

Paul Thurrott (01:34:43):
<Laugh>. Yes. Here's a new game. Is

Richard Campbell (01:34:45):
This an example to the UK CMA of Sea? When we do exclusive titles, they fail anyway, so, right. Let's put the

Paul Thurrott (01:34:56):
Blizzard. Jesus. Well this an early example of Microsoft butting into Sony because when they went to this bedrock edition, they started going cross, cross platform. So they were letting people on different platforms play together in minefield and minefield in Minecraft. And the only company that said no was Sony. Sony <laugh>. Although they eventually, they, they eventually bought it, but yeah they were, yeah, cuz that's, you know, that's how they're, they're terrible. Okay. and we also already talked about this the wine-based toolkit that Apple has coming in the next version of Mac Os that will help games that were designed for Windows be either play or be poured more easily to the Mac. They're pitching important as,

Leo Laporte (01:35:34):
As a way to test your Windows game to see if you, if you

Paul Thurrott (01:35:37):
Could put it, bring it. But I think statistics,

Leo Laporte (01:35:39):
I think you maybe could just use it as an emulator and like proton on Linux and play 'em.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:45):
I, I, again, I, I know in the Microsoft world there are a lot of people can't stand Apple for all kinds of good reasons, but I listen, the hardware is incredible. Their er, chip, setss are unbelievable. Are the best. Yeah. This is boy, it's very interesting. So this is the, the holy grail, I think the missing link, or whatever you wanna call it on the Apple platform. I thought it was a little goofy during the keynote that they had a death stranding demo. I know it's like the director's edition or whatever, but I literally just got that game for free through the Epic game store and Windows. Yeah. Chiming. It's a four. Oh, it's not exactly, yeah. They had coach

Leo Laporte (01:36:23):
On stage, Kojima's son, the designer. So yeah. That's, you know,

Paul Thurrott (01:36:27):
Big on virtual stage, right? I mean, yeah. That, that, who knows? He

Leo Laporte (01:36:30):
Was actually there. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:31):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So that's cool. But, but again, I, I, but it, to me, it served to highlight how behind the Mac is, right. More than make it look advanced. But whatever, that's just a, that's a, this is perhaps a surmountable problem. I'm gonna find out, right? That this that this chips that could run direct X 12 graphics on the s o c in real time of dedicated gpu. Yeah. I mean, I, that's, wow. This is a powerful chip. So, and you said that, you said this is your article and it's exactly the right message. The thing they should have shown is Diablo for Yeah. Right. If they had shown Diablo flow running on a Mac, the world would've erupted. Like that's a big

Leo Laporte (01:37:09):
Deal. And in all probability, DLO four is not a, a very

Paul Thurrott (01:37:13):
Demanding, I know. It seems like something that could run wrong. Totally. Right? They could have done it except, you know, blizzard. Well, I think it's the company that made it. I, I, I'm sure they would've if they could have, right? So anyway it, it's, it's interesting. It's worth noting if, if you're kind of holding off on the Mac because of this well, you should still hold off. It's gonna be a little wild. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:37:32):
And your next story is another reason to hold off. It's bad news for,

Paul Thurrott (01:37:36):
Well, I don't, so, okay. Is it, I mean, so this, right, this is the thing. So Amazon just announced they're killing the native app for Luna on Windows and Mac to focus on the web-based version of the app. And does that mean Luna's gonna be going away soon? Is this the first little obvious chip there? I don't know. I mean, obviously why would I know that? But I will say Luna and Stadia, when it was a thing, both had the same advantages, which is they had this custom controller that worked directly with the service. It didn't go through the device necessarily. Oh, it could. And they had low latency and it was good. And so now that Stadia is gone, Luna's kind of the one that works the best for this kind of thing. It would be sad if this went away. Amazon doesn't kill things haphazardly like Google does. I mean, you know, we'll see this is, this

Richard Campbell (01:38:22):
Looks like cost reduction does. It's tough to maintain that software. And if you, so the, oh, the other argument is the web app's good enough? Let's save some money. Yes. See,

Paul Thurrott (01:38:31):
Use the web. I'll be fine

Leo Laporte (01:38:32):
Enough if the web app's good enough, I'll be fine. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:34):
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. So,

Leo Laporte (01:38:37):
I mean, maybe that's really the bottom line at this point. And thanks to W A s m web sm

Paul Thurrott (01:38:42):
Well, we can have one client, this is the whole beginning discussion we had. It's like Apple wants native and Google and Microsoft will do native if you want it. But really cross platform is, is the way, and one of the,

Richard Campbell (01:38:54):
And Plam would work for everybody, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:38:56):
One of the major ways you do that is Yeah. Web app. Yep.

Richard Campbell (01:39:00):
You know, the CMA was protecting the burgeoning cloud gaming market, so That's

Paul Thurrott (01:39:04):
True. Well, it's sad they didn't get there quick enough to save Luna. Those slow moving jerks

Richard Campbell (01:39:09):
Clearly.

Leo Laporte (01:39:11):
Yeah. Real

Paul Thurrott (01:39:12):
Makes you, Sony came out this past week and said, you know, cloud ga me is kind of tricky. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like no one's,

Leo Laporte (01:39:21):
You know, what people haven't addressed, and it may be the real reason for all of this is the server time is expensive. I mean, they have to run pretty hefty GPUs in the cloud. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:39:31):
You're on Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:39:32):
Yeah. That may be the real cost,

Richard Campbell (01:39:34):
Right? Think, I think all these vendors are going through what they're spending on cloud right now and saying like, are we making this back or not? You know? And, and it's true of the chat G p t allergy G B T four stuff. It's true of a whole bunch of services. I think the, the, the bean counters are in charge at that moment. They've been counting the beans and you've been spending more money. You thought

Leo Laporte (01:39:56):
Probably that combined with lower usage than they expected. And the thing is, you have to overbuild, right? So maybe spiky usage is really the problem where it's low usage most of the time, but then Diablo four or something comes out and everybody wants to play it,

Richard Campbell (01:40:11):
And you're loaded up

Leo Laporte (01:40:11):
And you have to have enough Xboxs in the cloud to support those people.

Richard Campbell (01:40:16):
But this is the correlation with the PC market decline. We are post pandemic. Yes. And people are playing fewer online games. Yep. Full stop. By

Leo Laporte (01:40:24):
The way. We're seeing that in podcasting too, incidentally. Sure. Spotify just laid off hundreds of podcast employees. Our audiences for all of our shows is, is down by 10, 20%. I don't know what you're experiencing, Richard. You might be a little protected because you're offering something that's so specific to enterprise. The,

Richard Campbell (01:40:42):
The just admins, the system admins. But I, I'm with you. The numbers are off a bit. Yeah. Maybe 10%. But, and I think

Leo Laporte (01:40:48):
That's, that's the, that's the same thing we're seeing across the board. It's the end of the, the end of the, the beginning of, I You also think the weather's getting nice, weather's nice headed out and from, from a point of view of podcasting. But this is probably true also of gaming.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:01):
See, my, there's a lot more context usage to this stuff has not cha Well, I stopped playing video games. Look

Leo Laporte (01:41:05):
At, at this guy. He's the source of the problem.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:08):
No, but that literally has nothing to the pandemic, has nothing to do with it. Like, it, it, like, my, my, you my listening time or whatever on podcast has not changed in the slightest. I still listen to those things the same times and places and right lengths of time as I always did, because I go to the gym most days and when I'm driving in the car, whatever it is, like, that's, that's my time When you listen, I get ready in the morning and I'm shaving and stuff. I throw in a podcast. Like, I, I I'm a little confused at that. Stuff's timing. I changing. I is are people suddenly going back to work that I'm unaware of? I, I feel like, you know, we go to cities and these office buildings are all empty. So, yeah. I, I, I feel like this stuff, you're, I think podcasts are better placed than video games because video games you're dedicated and have to do it. But podcasts are things that people can do in those,

Leo Laporte (01:41:54):
Well, podcasts maybe as a category, but individual shows, including this show might be suffering because, you know, yeah. I'm still listening to Windows Weekly, but not as much. Cuz there's all these other shows and I'm sampling other things. I think there's such an array of content out there right now, and so many things to attract your attention that every kind of, you know, thing, content consumption, including video games is fragmented more and then, and probably suffering as a result. I don't know. I'm just thinking the fact that you're not playing Call of Duty. Yeah. You may say, well, I'm an outlier. Well, this is

Paul Thurrott (01:42:30):
Something I did for me. Right. Like, I

Leo Laporte (01:42:31):
Understand, but maybe, maybe you're not such an outlier in, in, in the sense that maybe there's other people thinking you're not really to cut back on this gaming. It was one thing for me to play $600 of Anaheim in Covid. I haven't, I haven't touched Val Hunt. Every once in a while I fire it up and I go, yeah. Yeah. And I play for a little bit and stop. I think times have changed. I, I haven't visited my animal crossing town in, in months.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:58):
Oh my God. It's gonna be like a nuclear warhouse over. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:43:00):
They're all dead webs and roaches. They're probably all dead

Paul Thurrott (01:43:03):
<Laugh>. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:43:05):
No, but I really think killed There is something going. You killed the Tamago. <Laugh>. Yes. My Tamagotchis dead. Right.

(01:43:13):
all right, let's take a break. And then we have the back of the book. Wonderful. Back of the book coming up. I think a lot of good stuff for you, Paul throt throt.com. Richard Campbell run radio.com. We'll even find out what's coming up on run as radio. But first word from Melissa, our fine sponsor, Melissa, the address experts. They've been doing it longer than we've been doing this show, let's put it that way, since 1985. And now more than 10,000 people use Melissa for full spectrum data quality. They are, in fact, I would say the leading global data quality, identity verification and address management solutions provider. Big news from Melissa. Congratulations. Once again. G2 has named Melissa's Clean suite and Data Quality Suite a leader in the 2023 data quality and address verification Spring report. Also, momentum leader and high performer <laugh>.

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Paul Thurrott (01:47:44):
Yeah. So one of the persistent, sorry, I literally have smoke in my throat.

Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
I like the ladylike roof way that you coughed,

Paul Thurrott (01:47:54):
<Laugh>. That's, that's all I can, mustard,

Leo Laporte (01:47:58):
Lace,

Paul Thurrott (01:47:58):
Sanchi. You can really

Leo Laporte (01:47:59):
Breathe sleeve and you can just whip it out. Anyway

Paul Thurrott (01:48:01):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:48:03):
What was I

Paul Thurrott (01:48:04):
Talking about? So, one of the endearing problems I've, or enduring problems I've had with Google is that they don't offer as seamless a way to sign in as Microsoft does. One of the really neat things about a Microsoft account is you type in your username, hit enter code, gives your phone and go. You never, you never use your password. In fact, you can turn off passwords. It's nice. So Google's finally moving to pasky. This is gonna be a modern sign-in solution. They did it for their consumer accounts last month, and now they're starting to roll it out on workspace, which is the paid accounts. Right? I have a Google Workspace account. That's what tara.com is. So I've been dying to do, this is my primary account and I don't have it on my account. I've done what I have to do in the admin console. But it's still not available. It's one of those things that it's rolling, rolling up. Jarvi

Leo Laporte (01:48:46):
Can be so disappointed cuz he's, he really wants this. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:49):
Yeah. As well. Maybe he has it. I, you know. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:48:51):
I'll ask him.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:52):
It's starting. So it just started a day or two ago. I, I've checked, I just checked while you were doing the ad. I, I, I really, really want this. So anyway, it's getting there. It's gonna be a more seamless, how should

Leo Laporte (01:49:02):
I check? Just log out in my workspace account and try logging

Paul Thurrott (01:49:05):
Back? Well, first of all, who, who admins your workspace account?

Leo Laporte (01:49:08):
Oh, Russell.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:09):
Okay. So you should ask him about it. We, you should have gotten emails about it. They explained what you have to do in the admin console to enable this feature. Oh, okay. Okay. I'll check. Then you can go to us. Yeah, you can find out. So that's happening. It's not for me. It hasn't happened. Maybe it's happened for you. I don't, you know, I don't know. I'll ask. This the second tip I actually mentioned on a show probably a month or two ago. And then the thing I said, it was coming, it never came. And it is here now. And this says I lit this. Speaking of things, I've been checking again and again, not every single day, over the past month or so, almost every single day. And Microsoft, as you probably know, offers downloadable ISOs. If you just type in or search, download Windows 11 i o you'll get to the Microsoft page that offers that. You can download the ISO directly if that's what you want, or you can download the what's it called, the media creation Utility or media creation tool. And that will create, it will download the i o and then blow it onto a u sb key or a DB drive if you're living in the 1990s. And you can use that to install Windows 11. Right. And everybody's time

Leo Laporte (01:50:12):
Ever to do this. We've always recommended this so that you can fix problems. You want a boot disk.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:17):
So usually, I, I should say, not usually forever. What Microsoft has done is when a new version of Windows comes out, like Windows 1122 H two, they update that page. So you get the new version of Windows 11, and then time goes by, right? And Windows 1123 H two will come out sometime later this year, and there'll be a new version of the I S O. But for the first time ever, well, the first time since Windows eight x or at least Windows 10, they've actually updated the I S O so that it includes everything that they've added to Windows 11 since 22 H two through, it's not moment three, but it's everything B right before moment three. So that, that update, that put the check mark in windows update, we can get updates really quick. That's the latest thing that's in there. So it's a, it's like an updated version of the installer.

(01:50:59):
It literally just went, well, I don't know when it literally went live, but I, I literally noticed it just a couple days ago, finally went live at least for me. And, and I, in my article, I explained what to look for cuz there's a V2 in the name. If it says v1, that's the old version. That's the original 22 H two on the download file name. If it says v2, it's the new version. And so they finally did it. And I just updated all my install media and all that kind of stuff. And in my world, this is exciting. You keep

Leo Laporte (01:51:26):
It around. Yeah. Really <laugh>, you keep that around a boot disk with the latest ISO on it for

Paul Thurrott (01:51:31):
Always Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:51:32):
For maintenance purposes. Installation, you get a break machine.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:35):
Yeah, I mean, I, I, yeah. So I have a I have all kinds of reasons for this. So the, the big one for me is the laptop I use for screenshots. I, I need this to be as clean as possible. And so you have to go through this update, this process where you update everything and you have to, you know, HP support, you have to update that stuff is update all the apps in the store. It's kind of a pain in the butt. So using winget and the utilities I talked about a couple weeks ago, I've been, I've, I've, you know, kind of spin up part of that process. This will just get the whole thing. I can use this as the base install, and it's just like less to do just to bring this machine up to date. So it's kinda, it's just a nice thing to have because Microsoft has been updating Windows 11 at such a clip. Yeah. we're, you know, it's kind of out of date all of a sudden.

Leo Laporte (01:52:15):
Yeah, yeah. Can you, are there tools you can go into an ISO and, and, and clean it up take out stuff? No. You

Paul Thurrott (01:52:23):
Really? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:52:24):
There are.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:24):
Oh, okay. Yeah. I, I I feel like I'm gonna get to that. I, I, I, the book is still not done. Like the Windows 11 book. The Windows 11 book will never be done, honestly. But once the, because, you know, it keeps changing, moving Target. Yeah. Yeah. But I, but I feel like once it's done from like a content coverage perspective, one of the things I do want to do is go in and address these kinds of issues. Like here, like, here's some third party utilities you can use to fix the Windows 11 star menu or whatever. And the thing you just mentioned, there's tools like Tiny 11 and others that let you really modify the base install is s o and install a smaller kind of cleaner version. Yes.

Richard Campbell (01:52:59):
Love

Leo Laporte (01:53:00):
A clean I s o.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:01):
Yeah. There's some interest in that stuff too. Sure. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:06):
All right. Alrighty. I'll

Paul Thurrott (01:53:07):
Get there when Windows 12 comes out.

Richard Campbell (01:53:09):
Nice. Now let's

Leo Laporte (01:53:10):
Talk this one the best. 49 minutes and 23 seconds you can spend <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:53:16):
Wow. Wow. It's a long show.

Leo Laporte (01:53:19):
As radio

Richard Campbell (01:53:21):
Sarah Young is a cloud security advocate at Microsoft. My, for her first time on the show, she's an absolute live wire. Wow. And we had a, you wouldn't expect a security product to be that quite this much fun to talk about, but we were really addressing the issue that a lot of folks have where, you know, post breach, when they get a, when they've been attacked, you go back through various logs and you can see the evidence of the hack. You know, they typically take months or from the initial breach to when an actual ransomware attack would be visible to the operators. And so this sentinel is is a seam tool being security information and event management. It's really about consolidating all of the logging that's going on throughout your organization and through all these different tools to try and give you a view that a, that a breach may be occurring.

(01:54:14):
And Microsoft provides, you know, in the, in the Azure and M 365 space, a ton of tools like Defend for Endpoints, defend for identity, defend it for cloud. Like there's a lot of them. And each one of them has useful information in it, but none of it gives you an overall view. So really it's about bringing together all those sources so that you can a, take a baseline, say like, what does normal look like, and then have the tool help you to say, Hey, this is abnormal. So maybe it's a place to look and perhaps to interrupt a breach in progress rather than to wait until the bombs have gone off. Yes.

(01:54:50):
And that's I think that's why we went as long as we did, is there was a lot of pieces about how you fit these bits together. Where the processing makes sense. It Sentinel is charged by the ingress source. So the more different places you're pulling data from, the more it's gonna cost you. So there's a lot of pre-processing you can do to lower those costs. And there's good tooling around all of this. So it's worth taking the time and, and really exploring it. You no, nominally you already own it, right? If you, if you're operating in Azure, this is a product you have access to. It's really about how much you spend on it. So it's mostly first putting in some hours to to help it help you understand what's going on.

Leo Laporte (01:55:30):
Fresh off the podcast griddle, run as radio episode 8 83. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> run as radio, by the way. Sorry,

Paul Thurrott (01:55:39):
2, 2 15 aqi here today.

Richard Campbell (01:55:42):
Right now. Oh, nice air.

Leo Laporte (01:55:43):
Oh, don't go outside. Yeah. No, no. That's well above fat fatal <laugh>. That's not good.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:49):
2 75, and then that's one

Leo Laporte (01:55:51):
Under 102. Whoa.

Richard Campbell (01:55:53):
And 200 is, yeah. People with respiratory problems need to stay in. That's,

Leo Laporte (01:55:58):
I don't,

Richard Campbell (01:55:58):
And you shouldn't. And you, and

Paul Thurrott (01:55:59):
You, my son, so my son is in Rochester. He sent one from early to three 19.

Richard Campbell (01:56:03):
Nice.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:05):
Three 19. I'm like, do you spontaneously implode if you walk? That's a lot of stuff. How does that work? Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:56:10):
So what we've done you know, in the past we've got air filters everywhere and, you know, we seal up the place, run the the HEPA filters, which suck the smoke out and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and just don't, don't emerge. Holy cow. I know. That's crazy. Horrible. That's really bad.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:29):
I mean, I, I long for the clean, fresh air of Mexico City, as I've said, <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:56:34):
That's

Paul Thurrott (01:56:34):
Amazing. By comparison. That's weird. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (01:56:36):
Sir, that's you need a, you need a drink. So fortunately we, we think we have someone here who can recommend

Richard Campbell (01:56:42):
<Laugh>. I, you know, now that we've done the whiskey series, and I seen they're beginning to be polished on YouTube. Yes. I see. We're putting the

Leo Laporte (01:56:47):
List up.

Richard Campbell (01:56:48):
Yep. The first, the first one's up. But they, there's still more to come. And I hope some of these others come in because Oh, they will all

Leo Laporte (01:56:54):
Come the story promise. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:56:55):
I'm gonna talk about one distillery today that is a Scottish distillery is Glen Merani. Love

Leo Laporte (01:57:01):
Them.

Richard Campbell (01:57:02):
Because I think now that you have that foundation, I can go poke on the details of what makes Glen Merani such an unusual distillery, even in a, in a land of unusual distilleries. I mean, starting with its location, it's far up to the north. Nominally it's a highland whiskey, but they're almost at the, or knees, they're so far north. The, when I went up that way, you, you go to Inverness first, and then you can drive about a half hour north out of Inverness to get to the Dalmore, which is a lovely place. And I talked about their weird stills. And, you know, some of the aspects of the Delmore, the Glen Murenge is another 20 minutes further north, just past the, it's the village of Tain, although officially it's called the Royal Berg of Tain on the door, knock Firth. So that's a, a bay of water that faces into the North Sea <laugh>. Huh. That's

Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
Incredible. The Royal Berg of

Richard Campbell (01:57:57):
The Royal Berg,

Leo Laporte (01:57:58):
Dun North. I I'm listening to a wonderful podcast series about the decline of civilizations. And he's talking right now about how the Romans just could never get into Scotland. They were just too vicious. <Laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:58:12):
Well, this, this is, and you're literally talking about the area of the pics. Yes. This is where the picks live. Yes, yes. And they, and there's a Romans that named the picks, and then they built a wall. Yes. That's Adrian's wall. That's, that's it. Adrian's wall <laugh> are gonna

Leo Laporte (01:58:27):
Go, they call picked has, you'll be glad to know exactly the same etymology as picture, because these, because of the war paint these people, I think they paint themselves blue, as I

Richard Campbell (01:58:37):
Remember. They, that's the famous one. And but the big evidence from the picks is it's a sandstone part of the world. And so they carved a lot of stone, and they were into all that sort of the Celtic knots. All of that comes from the picks. Yeah. Cool. And in fact, the logo of Glamorene is this a piece of a an interlocking swirls from what's called the CAD Bull stone, which is more than a thousand years old. That is so cool. The, the picks predate the, the Viking invasion. They appear to have been associated with the Kelts overall. They do like the zts, they're standing stones, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that particular part of Scotland was a bit of an unruly part. So there's, yes, there's evidence of, as opposed the liquor, the nicer, cleaner parts, Palmer, Scotland, that was just, you know, civilized and whatever.

(01:59:33):
So there is evidence of liquor being produced in that area, going back to the Middle Ages, mostly in documentation about crime, right? Illegal mm-hmm. <Affirmative> booze making in one form or another, and lots of records of that. The, the formal distillery comes in 1843 when a fellow by the name of William Matheson buys a farm and its adjacent brewery, and wants to convert it to become a whiskey distillery. Now, he hasn't got a lot of money, so what he does is he buys two huge copper gin stills. Now gin in the traditional fashion that in the, in the Potstill fashion, it was typ is typically distilled from grain with the botanicals right in the pot. And but in modern fashions, even in that time in the 18 hundreds, they were starting to do high distillation of gin. So distill the grain separately, and then soak it in the botanicals.

(02:00:34):
Now, this is at the period where the coffee still has been invented. The coffee Andrea's coffee over in Ireland had to come up with this column still in the 1830s. And this is where you were, became much easier to make a 90% pure spirit, which was really good for gin's. You do that, then you soak the botanicals in it, we pull the flavors on it, then you cut it with water gin. But Matherson hasn't got that kind of money. So the reason he's able to buy these giant gin stills cheap is they are flipping over to column stills. So he's gonna make these into whiskey stills. And they call this a feature. Actually, these stills are enormous, and they still, well, they don't use the original ones anymore. They have made every still replacement, still in the same form factor. They're over five meters tall.

(02:01:18):
That's like 17 feet. These are massive machines. They call 'em the giraffes. And in fact, every year they celebrate World Giraffe Day. And World Giraffe Day, if you weren't aware, is June 21st. So and that's the only thing they have to do with giraffes, per se. Part of the side effect of being in a sandstone area. All that carving is that actually the water's quite hard there. And normally when you're, when you're doing distillation, you want very soft water. We like limestone, not sandstone. So in the early days of whiskey manufacturing in that part of the world one of the tasks you did in the off times every each year was you climbed inside these giant stills with a ch with a hammer and chisel and scraped the lime scale off of the stills of, obviously in modern times, they have water softening equipment.

(02:02:07):
So they don't have that much problem anymore. Also, because it's a distillery's been around that long, they have clear records of where they converted from direct heat to steam heating of the stills, the modifications they made to the coils and stills, you know, to decrease that risk of explosion by not having open flame where you're boiling off alcohol. Funny like that. But they were part of that revolution as part of James Watts steam stills and so forth. And in fact, with Glimmer, Angie, they were the very first distillery to confer to steam back in 1887 by the end of World War ii. The Mathson family was getting on in years. And so they sold the distillery to McDonald and Mirror. These folks had been, been buying barrels and bottling to sell into the US for many, many years. They, in fact, they're part of that organization still exists.

(02:03:06):
They make the whiskey known as Highland Queen, fine Old Scotch, which you still buy today, although it's made a totally different way today. They make it with blending of Ardine rather than being made from Glen Merani. So McDonald Mu bought it because they were making their money. They were the buy largest buyer of Glen Merani at the time, blending it into their own whiskeys. And they found that a good business. So they also, at that time, bought Glen Moray and ABAG down in the alley. The but otherwise, the facility's not massive. They have 14 aging buildings. There are 10 Dun buildings. Those are the, the dirt floor racked by three style building. That's their main aging facility. They also have four rack rooms where they actually go higher. And all 14 buildings literally are right along the ocean.

(02:03:56):
So part of their aging effect is exposure to salt. The salt waters right there. It's may, you know, maybe 50 yards away from the, where the buildings are through those early days they mostly sold to the us. They'd done very well in, in the US markets. And so when prohibition came along, things were bad for them. Now remember, this is still at a time when you primarily shipped whiskey by barrel rather than by bottle. And so once the barrel houses are full and you can't sell enough barrels, it makes no sense to run the stills anymore. And so in 1931, they actually shut down. They mothballed the facility until prohibition ended in 1936. They didn't know how long there would've been <inaudible>, but they did. But the side effect of that, of course, is they got a five years worth of aging in.

(02:04:42):
So they were basically able to go rip straight into business ex except then, you know a year a couple of years later, Hitler invaded Poland and everything got complicated. And so now there were shortages of barley. So really they didn't get into full swing again until the nine, until 1948, where they were finally producing more whiskey. They were in the 1920s. They were very much a blending whiskey maker. That's was, that was their business being owned by McDonald and Mirror was part of that. So they didn't worry about making single malts until the 1970s when single malts became hipper. And so then they went down, starting to make what they called the sign line and, and tried a few different experiments that went fairly well for them.

Leo Laporte (02:05:23):
I have to say, I have a soft spot for Glenn Merani. My first whiskey that I tasted that wasn't kind of classic was their Portwood aged mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Glen Miran. And it was amazing. I was in a movie theater that's, and one of my buddies handed me a flask <laugh>. And I, and I said, what's this? He said, Portwood age baby.

Richard Campbell (02:05:41):
Yeah. So good. It's good stuff. No choice about it. Yeah. they had one of the very first, the, the earliest tours that I know of that anywhere from the 1990s was Glen Finnick, but Glen Merani had theirs 1994. So they're right from the beginning as well. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:05:55):
That's probably about when it, when that happened to me. <Laugh>.

Richard Campbell (02:05:57):
Yeah. In 2004, the McDonnell Mu sold Glen Merani and Art Bag and Glen Mare to LV m h, that's Louis Vuitton. Moet Hennessy. They

Leo Laporte (02:06:12):
Own it, it all baby.

Richard Campbell (02:06:13):
Yep. They own quite a bit in conjunction with Diagio. And, and that's really when Glen Merani, they, I mean, it's, it's L V M H, so they're gonna pivot towards sort of luxury brands. That's their shtick. And they became a bit of a, of a, of a laughing stock inside of the whiskey industry as a whole. Because one of the things that happens when you're involved with Mode in Hennessy is you have access to a lot of weird tasks. And so they got big on doing aging and wine casts and cognacs and so forth. So they made all kinds of interesting whiskeys that that way. But in the meantime, they'd also made a deal to buy a lot of American bourbon casks. And in the, in the eighties there was bourbon wasn't selling that well. And so they actually signed agreements with both Jack Daniels and Heaven Hills, which is in Bardstown Southern Kentucky to that they basically wanted exclusive rights to all the barrels.

(02:07:07):
This agreement's changed since then. But they pretty much age everything in American Bourbon, at least initially. And it's because of this agreement to buy tremendous numbers of bourbon casks. So they're, they're kind of known as the wood wizards. Like they, they experiment with way more wood, different types than most whiskey distilleries do. Their core range, this is probably the one you encountered starts with what they call the original 10. So this is a, a pretty straight up bourbon aged whiskey from that barrel agreement that they've made with Heaven Hills and, and Jack to to just aged 10 years in bourbon. They, again, their distillations are very, because their lis are so long, the stills are so big, they have a lot of reflux. So sulfurs are largely pulled out. There's a lot of copper involved there. So you kind of get a light, very mild bourbon, or a whiskey that then is aged in these bourbon casts for 10 years.

(02:08:02):
So it picks up a lot of bourbon character. And some folks complain that's a, it's a bit harsh that way. But then they did these core variations. So after you spent 10 years in bourbon, if it's, if you're happy with it, you put it in a bottle and call it original 10. If you're not, then you put it into other barrels. Ah. And so glamor, Lasanta has that 10 years in bourbon, but then they put two years in sherry casks and then bottle it. And the Quinta Ruben is 10 years in bourbon, and then four years in port barrels. And then the fourth of what they call the core ranges is when they call Nectar Dior, or, you know, gold nectar. Oh my God. Which is 10 years in bourbon and then two years in Saturn, Cass. So that is a white dessert wine.

(02:08:47):
Very sweet. A delicious. Yeah. Yes. I, I don't mind Saturn. I find the whiskey a bit odd. My Is it sweet? It is. It comes up a little sweeter. Yeah. It has some funny notes in it. It's kind of perfumey not what I generally look for in a whiskey, but some folks like it. So those are the most common. And those are generally the ones you're gonna find. They have another range called the Prestige Range, where they're doing much more traditional whiskey aging again, almost exclusively in bourbon ca. But that's your 18, you're 24, your 20 fives and thirties. Pricey. Hard to find. That's the prestige range, huh. And this is again, the effects of lvmh. They made, they've made these things, they're called private editions. They've only done 10 versions of this. The last one was in 2019, which they called Alta which is Celtic four Wild because they used a wild yeast <laugh> and they actually used car ca bull barley.

(02:09:44):
So that is barley from the region of the north, huh. Of Scotland, which is not generally good barley growing territory. Like it's very odd and but unique. And that's what people like. I have a thing called all these companies are experimenting. And that's, and, and, and Glen Rey more than anybody, this latest set is of distiller, the latest set of stills and wash backs. They build, they've spent a lot more money on 'em cuz they put in a lot of cooling and temperature controls cuz they're gonna experiment further. And so they're sort of arming themselves with an experimental laboratory. Again side effect of L V M H. They have this thing, they're called a legend collection. You will see the legend collection in airport duty free. So they've literally made a set of whiskeys designed to be sold in duty free. So they're found nowhere. And mostly they are bourbon and then different kinds of wine castings. And all of them I find somewhat suspect just because wine's alcohol level is so much lower, the texture inside of the barrels are different. You can't put a solvent in there for very long and not really pull some harsh flavors out. But, so they're tricky ones to buy, but it's the reason they sell 'em in airports, people will pay too much there. There's knowing you like

Leo Laporte (02:11:02):
Never buy your whiskey in an airport.

Richard Campbell (02:11:05):
Well, and especially, especially when it's whiskeys that are made specifically for airports, airport whiskey, find they, they almost never have an age on them. Yeah. Cause they tend to be very young and they say

Leo Laporte (02:11:15):
On the label duty free

Richard Campbell (02:11:17):
<Laugh>. That's it. That's literally how they're built. It's like buying

Leo Laporte (02:11:20):
Sushi in a supermarket.

Richard Campbell (02:11:22):
It's buying sushi in the gas station. Right. So knowing you like a cast strength. I do.

Leo Laporte (02:11:28):
I Leo cast strength.

Richard Campbell (02:11:29):
Yeah. So there are relatively few cast strengths in Glen Murenge, but one edition comes from their limited range. It's called A Star again, another Celtic word for journey. Yeah. and that's a cast strength buck 52%. The last time they made it was 2017. The time it was a hundred dollars. Today, if you can find one is about 200 bucks. A purely aging bourbon cash. Yes. That is the one

Leo Laporte (02:11:51):
Iation this week though.

Richard Campbell (02:11:53):
No, the one I pulled up is the one I like the most, which is the Quinta Ruben 1450 $5. Spent 10 years in bourbon, four years in port. They originally a few years ago made a 12 year old that I just don't think was as good. The 14 year old is better. 46 A B V, which is kind of the magic number for very drinkable whiskeys. This is a winner. Like he can't go wrong. Right. Yeah. Like you, you, you, you'll be ha this is probably what your friend had you taste. Yeah. Be for exactly that reason. It drinks super nice.

Leo Laporte (02:12:26):
It was so long price. It was so long ago. I wonder if it was before the L V M H acquisition that in 94 you say

Richard Campbell (02:12:34):
That was 2004.

Leo Laporte (02:12:35):
2004. Yeah. I feel like this was prior to that.

Richard Campbell (02:12:39):
Yeah. So it might have been one of the others, but they, all

Leo Laporte (02:12:41):
I remember is portwood aged was the the thing. Yeah. That was new to me. And boy it was delicious. But this, I think this might bring back fond memories. Aham much. I'm gonna try it <laugh>. Yep.

Richard Campbell (02:12:52):
Yeah. I get nothing bad to say, but the Quinta Ruben, it's the one I of all of the glamor energies is the one I picked first. Just cuz it'll, it won't make you sad. It looks a good drink.

Leo Laporte (02:13:00):
It won't make you sad. It's a pretty bottle.

Richard Campbell (02:13:02):
Yeah. This is the, this is the rebranding. This is again an LV H thing. Yeah. There's a more traditional bottle styling, but you see the little waspy waist on it. Yeah. The flair at the top. Yeah. And the new and the new text. They've kept the car logo style, which is good. Oh yeah. No giraffes in sight. I'm happy about that. Yeah. But yeah, very modern. So none

Leo Laporte (02:13:21):
Of their older styles are still around. Huh?

Richard Campbell (02:13:25):
All of them are tricky to find. Yeah. You won't find them in a BevMo or a total wines. Yeah. You can find them in specialty shops. And there are definitely premiums. I think they're 25 goes for $5,000 if you can find it. Wow. So

Leo Laporte (02:13:40):
Wow.

Richard Campbell (02:13:41):
They just you definitely have to, they're the one you just pulled up, the 18, that's the classic glamor energy look. Yeah. Right. Yeah. The text to the top, you know, the age. Yeah. this

Leo Laporte (02:13:52):
Is I think closer to what I probably what I had.

Richard Campbell (02:13:55):
That's very much a classic. That's a, that eighteens a straight bourbon casking. Okay. They didn't do anything else for it, which is their, which is their usual.

Leo Laporte (02:14:02):
Yeah. Yeah. I could taste the port. I was so surprised. It was like, what the mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, what the heck? What have you done to my whiskey? Glenn Merani though, still pretty good. Even though they've been sold to the luxury brand.

Richard Campbell (02:14:17):
That's what they've had 20 years of that if things were going badly. Yeah. I guess they wouldn't be doing as, as well as they are. Yeah. But they, they are, you know, the trick, the trick with any of these is to know what, what do you like le know I tend to be more of a traditionalist. Mm. And they make a line that appeals to a traditionalist. Yeah. Yeah. Right. If you want to go exclusive, they make a line exclusive. If you're buying stuff in airports, they make a line for that just for you. So

Leo Laporte (02:14:40):
They make a line just for you.

Richard Campbell (02:14:43):
They have a choice. And that's you know, that's good branding really. Yeah. The good news is you

Leo Laporte (02:14:48):
Don't have to paint yourself blue to try it.

Richard Campbell (02:14:50):
You can just, no, you really don't

Leo Laporte (02:14:52):
Go to your BevMo. The Kinta Ruben, 14 years old, they have a link on their website to reserve bar. I don't know if that's uk only, but yeah, maybe I

Richard Campbell (02:15:05):
Found, I found it in BevMo for $55. Nice. And they'll deliver Nice. So, you know, you can get it in the US at least I likemove my, my nice liquor stores here in BC Have

Leo Laporte (02:15:15):
It. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:15:15):
And so it's off and on my shelf.

Leo Laporte (02:15:17):
Yeah. The closest I can get it is Pic Chi Lacot, California. I didn't even know

Richard Campbell (02:15:23):
Chillo.

Leo Laporte (02:15:24):
I have no idea.

Richard Campbell (02:15:26):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:15:26):
Where they're talking about <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (02:15:29):
That sounds like a Pennsylvania place.

Leo Laporte (02:15:31):
Project Chillo, prospect Chillo or Palm Point Drive, south Fernandina Beach. I don't know where these places are

Richard Campbell (02:15:40):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:15:42):
But I, I could go there and get it. Maybe I'll go to BevMo. That's a little easier. Paul thro thero.com. Lean pub.com for the field guide to Windows 11, which includes Windows 10 and his newest Windows everywhere. Really good reading. You can also, of course go to his website.com and subscribe to the premium edition and get a lot more of great articles along that line. Always a pleasure, Paul. I ho I saw that you said it's now, what is it? 3 58?

Richard Campbell (02:16:10):
3 83 82.

Leo Laporte (02:16:13):
You know what only goes to 500

Richard Campbell (02:16:16):
<Laugh>. I know, I I was in Beijing when it hit hit 800. That was not a good day. Oh geez. The paint was peeling off the taxi cab. That was Yeah, I can feel it in my throat. It's not great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:16:29):
Wow. Yeah, and get the animals in. Don't let them outside just as bad for that. We we're 76. The roof not wearing mask. <Laugh> 76 is a little more normal. I'd like Yeah, 76 is high for around here. We're usually under 10. 10 Fresh Air Mexico City's probably close to that right now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well stay safe, Paul. We appreciate it. But of course Mr. Richard Campbell is@runradio.com. And you can hear all his stuff there. And you got a conference coming up in a few, in a few months, I think. Yes. Yeah. December 1st week of December in Orlando. Okay. All right. And we'll be, we'll be advertising now shortly. Good. We'll talk about it when it happens. We do Windows Weekly every Wednesday around 11:00 AM Pacific. 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 1800 utc. That's when we record it.

(02:17:17):
You don't have to be here for that, but if you want to, there, there is a live stream at Live dot twit tv, audio or video. Neil, you know, the one advantage of watching live is you can chat with us live. Irc.Twit.Tv is open all, there's also a discord for our Club TWIT members. They're kind of the the stadium Club up above. If you want to join us there, seven bucks a month, that's a lot cheaper than the Stadium Club, let me tell you. And you get ad-free versions of all the shows. You get, shows we don't put out anywhere. That list is growing Hands on Windows with Paul Throt, just one of them. You also get access to a great social network, the Club Twit Discord, which is full of fabulous people. If you want to join the club, we'd love to have you.

(02:18:00):
It makes a huge difference to our bottom line. It keeps people employed, it keeps the lights on. TWIT TV slash Club twit. We always offer on-demand versions of the show after the fact add supported. So anybody can get 'em at twit tv slash ww. There is also a YouTube feed dedicated to Windows Weekly. And of course, the best way to get it would be subscribe in your favorite podcast client club members, get a special URL that's dedicated to them for the ad free feed. Everybody else, just go to Twitter tv slash ww and you'll see links to the major podcast clients, but also on RSS link or search in your podcast client for Windows Weekly and subscribe. That's the best way to get it. So you don't have to even think about it. It's just there for you. Thank you everybody. Stay safe, Paul. Stay. Don't breathe if you can help it. <Laugh>. We'll see you next time on Windows Weekly. Bye-Bye. It's

Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent (02:18:57):
Midweek and you really wanna know even more about the world of technology. So you should check out Tech News Weekly. The show where we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. It's the biggest news. We talk with the people writing the stories that you're probably reading. We also talk between ourselves about the stories that are getting us even more excited about tech News this week. So if you are excited, well then join us. Head to twit.tv/tnw to subscribe.