Windows Weekly 835, 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 and Richard Campbell are here. And of course, there's a lot to say. We're only in day four of the hearings on Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and it has been a blizzard of res revelations. Paul and Richard go through it. We'll talk about the weirdly returning moment three update. We've got some Xbox News that, and a lot more coming up next on Windows Weekly

(00:00:41):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thora and Richard Campbell. Episode 835 recorded Wednesday, June 28th, 2023. Sifting mud for Nymphs Windows Weekly is brought to you by Lookout. Whether on a device or in the cloud, your business data is always on the move. Minimize risk, increase visibility, and ensure compliance with lookout's Unified platform. Visit lookout.com today and by a c i learning it. Skills are outdated in about 18 months. Stay ahead of the curve and future proof your business competitiveness with customizable entertaining training. Fill out the form@go.acilearning.com slash twit for more information on a free two week training trial for your team. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show we cover the latest news from Microsoft

(00:01:36):
And Richard Campbell. He going to Microsoft next. Next week. Tamara. Tamara. Hey, Richard. Howdy. This advantage of living in Vancouver. You, you just up the road a a piece, two and a half drive, two and a half hour drive. Two if I don't care about the ticket. <Laugh> sounds like you got a little choked up when he said Microsoft there. Are you okay? Yeah. <laugh>, it's been a week. I mean, I feel I get the same way. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. Microsoft that's Paul Theat gets a little emotional when he talks about Microsoft. Unfortunately, that's his job. But, you know, yeah, these things happen. Theat.Com run as radio.com. We got the two, we got the best, the best in the biz. Have you been watching this hearing this Microsoft FCC hearing? What a story there. Oh, boy. I, you know, covering Microsoft as I do for a living and following their quarter results every quarter as I do, I have to say, the amount of information we've gotten here, it stands in sharp contrast. Yeah. What we usually get from this company, this is, I told Lisa last night, I said, don't put it in writing <laugh>. Well, no, it is astonishing. Like, so I went back and looked this isn't in the notes per se. It doesn't really matter, but I just went back and looked. So in the last quarterly earnings report, right, Microsoft had all these vague pronouncements about gaming and Xbox, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:02:58):
Gaming revenue overall was down 4%. Xbox content and services, but down 3%. They've never said what the beginning number was. So we don't know. Yeah. It's meaning those, those things are, it's doubled.

Leo Laporte (00:03:08):
It means nothing if you don't know

Paul Thurrott (00:03:09):
Xbox Hardware revenue was down 30%. Yeah. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you, if, if you look at the air post earnings conference call, Microsoft uttered the term, Microsoft executives added the term Xbox five times some version of gaming 14 times compared to over 50 times for ai, over 40 times for Azure, over 40 times for cloud, and over 20 times for Windows, by the way. Hmm. there's not a lot of information. <Laugh>, you know they said during conference call that Xbox subscriptions, which is the combination of Xbox Live and all the Game Pass subscriptions nearly reached $1 billion in the quarter. Not quite, but nearly. So that's almost a $1 billion business, I guess. And that's like in, in a quarter, like in a quarter $4 billion business. Okay. Sorry. So that's what they, but that's what they said, right? That was like, that was the, that was nothing. And then we get like one filing in this set of days of hearings, and it's like 118 bits of information that honestly are really interesting, I have to say. So it, it's interesting to learn more about this business. And so, on that note, I have to thank, I wanna thank the ftc. I mean, I hate you so much, but this has been a fascinating bit of disclosure that we just don't normally say to

Leo Laporte (00:04:19):
Be clear, this is the administrative hearing to decide whether this case goes to trial, whether the FTCs case has merit. And so it's decided by a single judge. Is that right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:30):
That's right. And you could throw it out.

Leo Laporte (00:04:32):
He's out listening. So they're talking to the judge mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And there's a lot, there's been a lot of discovery, obviously, and a lot of emails on both sides. Reviews lots of

Paul Thurrott (00:04:40):
Redactions,

Leo Laporte (00:04:42):
<Laugh>, right? Yeah. Well, that's one thing. The judge's letting them hide business information, you know, sales information, things like that. They

Paul Thurrott (00:04:49):
Are, but yet, honestly, there's so much information that has come out regardless of that. Right? Yeah. I mean, there's been some good hard numbers here.

Leo Laporte (00:04:57):
Apple learned this in the Apple Epic lawsuit that nobody wins in a lawsuit like this because of discovery. Yeah. Winning

Paul Thurrott (00:05:03):
A lawsuit's like winning

Leo Laporte (00:05:04):
An earthquake, there's no such thing. Right. <laugh> so much is revealed unusually embarrassing because I know what it is about executives and email, but they, they, they kind of dump on

Paul Thurrott (00:05:15):
I'll tell you, if I do have an earthquake in Mexico City, I would like to to win that one. <Laugh>. Yeah. If I could,

Leo Laporte (00:05:21):
Hey, I was wondering why that apartment was so cheap. Well, nevermind. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:25):
Right. I was wondering why it sways when a truck drives by <laugh>. Yeah. Anyway, so there's so much here. I mean, I, it, I kind of in the notes just blurted some stuff out. I it's in sort of an order, but I think

Leo Laporte (00:05:39):
You drive cuz I just, you know,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:41):
It's, yeah. But I gave you guys a link to a resource at game industry dub biz that just, they're updating it daily and they, they provide all these links to people that are writing about this stuff and, and all the various you know, information that has come out. So it's been really interesting.

Leo Laporte (00:05:57):
Is that, so that's your go-to for like, what happens? Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:06:00):
I just, right before the show, I just came across it and I was like, oh, this, look at this thing here. You know, here's a nice, they have a nice place a

Leo Laporte (00:06:06):
Timeline for all of this. You, you need, you need to use the web three as going just great time, you know, software, and you could really do something with this. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:06:15):
Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Wow. So anyway, I I, I didn't organize what I wanted to talk about here by date or whatever. I did it by kind of topic. So in the beginning, what I have is the FTC is terrible, and they need to be disbanded <laugh>. So we're

Leo Laporte (00:06:27):
In day, we're in day four, and we four, they're taking testimony from executives, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:06:34):
Yeah. Today we're gonna see Sya Nadella, we're gonna see the ceo, Bobby Soran, the guy that writes the CEO of a acquisition. Wow. <laugh>, whatever his real name is. I wonder,

Leo Laporte (00:06:44):
Is that his real name? Soran,

Paul Thurrott (00:06:45):
Because that's, no, I don't think so. That's how I choice.

Leo Laporte (00:06:48):
Oh, you call him that. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:06:49):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:06:50):
You mean Bobby Kig? Okay, now I guy,

Paul Thurrott (00:06:52):
Okay. <Laugh>, as I asked Brad to sw mean, do you think this guy's gonna show up on the stand? Does he actually take human form such

Leo Laporte (00:06:59):
A soman and Bobby blinking?

Paul Thurrott (00:07:02):
I get it. Okay. Like a blinking eye on the stand, you know? I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, he's not supposed to be that good of a guy. Any who? So <laugh> ftc, as you do, you hire expert witnesses. So they hired an econ economist, I think from Harvard, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and <laugh>, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. So he literally, when pressed by Microsoft's lawyers, could not explain why this acquisition could in any way harm competition. Whoops. And yeah. And it's one of the things that we've seen a lot in this case, this is something that's kind of happened over time, is like how you frame it. So, from Microsoft's perspective, honestly, it kind of doesn't matter. So if you, if you want to describe this market as being Microsoft and Sony, these two console makers, Microsoft loses every time, right?

(00:07:49):
Is that true? Did they win one time? No, they lost it every time. So the Microsoft though wants to phrase it as, well, actually, there's three companies in this market, and if you have three we've always come in third <laugh>, you know, so they kind of go back at like, this Economist was really taking this kind of view that like the market was just these two companies. And it's like yeah, but hold on a second. The gaming market is this giant thing. These companies are like some slice of it. There's, there's much more going on here than that.

Leo Laporte (00:08:19):
Right? But do you buy that the third console is a Nintendo Switch, really? I mean, well, it's Nintendo full stop, right? Like

Paul Thurrott (00:08:26):
Yeah, because what,

Leo Laporte (00:08:27):
What console? The, the we, what are you talking about? I mean, the switch is

Paul Thurrott (00:08:31):
Not that depends on the, it depends on the generation. Yeah. Well, because these days

Leo Laporte (00:08:35):
Are, these days it's, it's, I mean, it's Xbox and PlayStation. It's not Xbox, PlayStation and Switch. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:40):
Well, it's like I said, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how you want to

Leo Laporte (00:08:43):
Fill. Well, that's one of the debates, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:08:44):
Isn't it? If it's act. Well, and that's the, I think we talked about this at one point about antitrust. The, the, one of the vagueness of antitrust is that you have to define the market. Yeah. What you're describing, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and you could describe it in any way, you know, if you wanna say that Microsoft dominates the market for X 86 based operating systems. Yeah. They do <laugh>, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, is that the market that they compete in, really? Because that market only really includes Linux now, right? Yeah. You know, so yeah. Yeah. They absolutely dominate that market. So for the, for PE or for company or organizations like the FTC that are trying to make a point they could, they wanna point at something like Xbox Cloud gaming, which is game streaming, and say, that's a market like the uk as the UK did.

(00:09:31):
Yeah. And it is, it's a tiny market. If it's if gaming is, if you look at gaming as a pie, I mean, it's a, it's a slice of the market that's so thin. Like Apex doesn't even, you know, overstates <laugh>, like how much share that thing has by volume or by revenue. Right? It's just a small thing. It's tiny. So I thought that was kind of interesting. It was also, I guess an embarrassing, I've never seen an, I wanna see the actual transcript of this part of it, but the FTC asked so many stupid questions of Phil Spencer that he ended up having to explain to them how mergers work. Oh, right. Which goes back to the editorial I wrote a week ago where I said, the FTC does not understand what its role is in antitrust. And I used the example of the EU competition committed to Marguerite's vestige, right. Who wrote spoke very eloquently to this topic about a week ago. Well, sorry. She did that about a month ago. And I, this applies very much to the ftc. You know, she basically said, look, some people think that being a regular means that you just say no. Yeah. And it's like, no, it's more complicated than that.

Richard Campbell (00:10:42):
Yeah. The job, the job is to protect consumers. And that's a re it's, it's, it's the, it's for protecting consumers. Like that is the gig. Yeah. So tell me how the consum, you have to define the market to say, okay, these are the consumers, how would they be harmed?

Paul Thurrott (00:10:56):
Exactly. And I think that's how the FTCs case falls apart, because you really can't logically make that case.

Richard Campbell (00:11:03):
Yeah. I mean, the question is, does Judge Corley get that too?

Paul Thurrott (00:11:06):
Yeah, exactly. Because

Richard Campbell (00:11:07):
She's relatively new to the federal bench. Right? Right. But she's always worked in California and in this space. So I gotta think she, her experiences have been so totally focused on all these deals should go through unless they can demonstrate harm.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:22):
Yeah. Yeah. And the FTC is trying to make the point that all we have to do is introduce any little bit of doubt, <laugh>, you know, that

Richard Campbell (00:11:30):
Might work on a jury. I can't imagine that

Paul Thurrott (00:11:33):
Working on a judge. Right? I don't think so either. Yeah. if you guys aren't reading FOSS Patents, I strongly recommend doing, so. Florian Miller has been doing an amazing job of covering of, of covering this as well. But, you know, I, I think to me, the, the, the big kind of takeaway from the console market, the, the thing I, I, if you, we go back a few years, five, two years, five years, whatever mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you said, you know, what's the big difference between like Sony and the PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox? You know, I would've thought of these things as being very, very similar. Sony has pursued more of an exclusives kind of a strategy. Yeah. Which is, well, they,

Richard Campbell (00:12:08):
I think they always admire Nintendo.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:10):
Yeah. Right.

Richard Campbell (00:12:11):
That has all of their own titles that never sell 'em to anybody else. Yeah. And owns their own the market. It is interesting to think there's two Japanese companies in the video game business and one American company, and it is the American government going after the American company. Like,

Paul Thurrott (00:12:25):
Wait. Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah, I actually, I, this is sort of a, is even worth mentioning. It's sort of a sidetrack, but I've been reading a lot about the early history of the video game and early home computer markets and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the big mistake that Atari made was they never protected their initial console of VCs, the 2,600. Yeah. And so it, it gave rise to this notion of third party developers who were people not at Atari creating games for the system. There were too many of them. It created the video game crash of 1983, blah, blah, blah. Everyone kind of knows that history. Yeah. But in 1985 Nintendo wanted to come to the United States with what was gonna be called the Nest, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Richard Campbell (00:13:02):
I did, I sold a lot of them.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:04):
Yep. And learning from Atari, they said, well, we're gonna protect this thing. Yeah. And what, what we're gonna ensure is that only we release content for this device. Third parties have to come through us. Yeah. They get our seal of approval out it goes mm-hmm. <Affirmative>,

Richard Campbell (00:13:16):
They, and they controlled the developer kit. You had to Yes. Apply to get the developer kit.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:22):
Right. And you know, you could make the argument, they kind of rescued the video game market. I, I, I think it was always gonna come back, but

Richard Campbell (00:13:27):
Yeah. Inevitably. But they were the ones who did it. I mean, I remember working at Kiosk, literally getting pallet loads of NE's and just, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:35):
Oh,

Richard Campbell (00:13:35):
Same, same. Never got to unload the pallet. Just started handing them to go to the,

Paul Thurrott (00:13:39):
That. That's exactly right. Fact.

Richard Campbell (00:13:40):
As we go,

Paul Thurrott (00:13:41):
I worked at a ToysRUs and I got a call one day from a guy who said, Hey, I just came back from New York City and I saw this Nintendo. Now you gotta remember the name. Nintendo at that time meant like nothing. It was like, I think it was maybe did they make Donkey Kong and maybe Mario Brothers and Yeah. They had

Richard Campbell (00:13:57):
Arcade games. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:13:59):
They had, but they, they were nobody. So anyway, they had a video game system. This is what the guy said, I'll never forget this. He says, it comes with a gun that you can shoot at the tv, <laugh> and a robot that will play video games against you. And I said, sir, I think you're drinking. I've never heard of such a thing. That's crazy.

Richard Campbell (00:14:13):
<Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:13):
And then two days later, we got these giant cages full of these things in, and that's the what it was basically. Right? Yeah. But

Richard Campbell (00:14:19):
Duck Hunt.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:21):
Yeah. But the, the model that they created was the one we still have today. Yeah. Literally, they invented it. And it's, you know, this system where you have kind of some kind of control over the console, right? Yeah. So Xbox, whatever,

Richard Campbell (00:14:35):
It's the quality control, because in the end, you took a Nintendo game and put it in Nintendo machine. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So it's the Nintendo's fault if it socks.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:43):
That's right. That's right. So they did a good job at that, actually learned

Richard Campbell (00:14:46):
This because they allowed third parties and learned

Paul Thurrott (00:14:49):
From Atari was the

Richard Campbell (00:14:50):
Yes. Co. Coincidentally, my whiskey story ties into this. Oh my God. Stay I just giving tuned you full loop back. Stay

Paul Thurrott (00:14:57):
Tuned. Okay. And I'll also, I will also say coincidentally that the first third party video game company of all time was wait for it. Activision Group of four or five. I don't remember. Ex Atari. Oh. Yeah. I

Richard Campbell (00:15:09):
Had a division adventure, I think. Right? Was that from

Paul Thurrott (00:15:12):
Aternity? Well, pitfall.

Richard Campbell (00:15:14):
Pitfall. That's the the one big one. Yeah. What a great game.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:18):
They were tired of not having their games on the boxes, and they didn't understand why a game that made $2 million didn't give them a bonus or something. Are, are they

Richard Campbell (00:15:24):
The only independent gaming company that still kind of act very active, is still around? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:31):
I mean, they're all technically still around because there've been so many acquisitions and they just got

Richard Campbell (00:15:35):
Rolled up. It's the mark that they, people buy the brand.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:38):
Well, I shouldn't say, I mean, not the brand and,

Richard Campbell (00:15:40):
And the original bits, right? Like, if anything, Gabe New and Steam rescued a lot of LOFs software. That's right. Closed out companies and put 'em in a place where you can get 'em for a buck of piece

Paul Thurrott (00:15:51):
<Laugh>. Right. So I've lost track of why we're talking about this <laugh> so <laugh>

Richard Campbell (00:15:58):
Oh, so

Paul Thurrott (00:15:58):
Console. But this is really about consoles. Yes. No, this is, it's about exclusives. Right. So this is the thing. So I, I would've said a few, even just a few years ago, I, I never really, I I, I was kind of anti exclusives. Right. To me, I feel like games should just be out in the world. Like they should be everywhere, right? Yeah. And oh, it's

Richard Campbell (00:16:14):
Bad for consumers, it's good for the company. Right. Itself,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:18):
It's worked out great for Sony. It's worked out great for Nintendo. I still feel like Nintendo and Sony could have, could still now do better. I don't understand why Nintendo doesn't release all of their classic games on the iPhone and the iPad. I, it just makes no sense to me. You have this classic library of games that people still wanna play. Yep. But that's not, that's not the way they do things. So that's fine. Now Microsoft has some exclusives, right? We know Gears a war halo, et cetera, but they've been slower to that. I think their game studio buying binge has been based around kind of building up that exclusive thing. But one of the things that came out in this was that not only does, so Sony have exclusives that they only ship on their own console. They actually pay studios millions of dollars so that they will not ship their games on Xbox. Yeah. That is incredible to me.

Richard Campbell (00:17:11):
Well, I mean, isn't the root of this story Starfield, cuz originally Starfield Yes. Was gonna be a PS five only game. Yes. This was one of, of the revelations be Xbox only the game is, that's why. That's right. They bought, that's right. They bought

Paul Thurrott (00:17:22):
Yeah. They had Sony had successfully convinced Activision Blizzard to release two games only on Sony

Richard Campbell (00:17:29):
And really Bethesda.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:30):
Right. And be and Bethesda. Excuse. That's why they bought

Richard Campbell (00:17:32):
Bethesda. Yes. Right? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:34):
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Mix.

Richard Campbell (00:17:35):
Was it Xanax? Starfield,

Paul Thurrott (00:17:37):
Xanax. Which, Bethesda. Which, you know, see, this is how these things happen, right. Which owned ID software, which, you know, it's like this, you know, these companies are still kind of in there, you know they're maybe not the same as they were in the, in the past, but there

Leo Laporte (00:17:48):
Was testimony that because they were so concerned about Starfield being an exclusive with somebody, they bought Xanax.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:56):
That's right. To prevent that from happening.

Leo Laporte (00:17:58):
Amazing.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:00):
It is, it's amazing. It's astonishing to me though, that in this world, you can have a business practice that amounts to pain partners to not support a competitor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that's, that's o how is that okay, <laugh>, how is that not anti-competitive? That's crazy. Microsoft at one point, considered a strategy where they would outspend Sony so much that Sony would just go bankrupt. Like, they, they literally considered just doing that to Sony all the time, because they have infinite dollars and they could just buy up every game. And eventually they decided that was silly and they didn't do that. But because Sony is so predatory, they're like, how are we gonna, like how do we put a stop to this?

Richard Campbell (00:18:41):
Well, you make the Xbox a x $200.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:47):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:18:47):
Right? Sure. And yeah, and you roll out Game Pass with all of the titles, like Yeah. You can smash the market. Yeah. I, I would argue that's genuinely anti-competitive. That's dumping effectively.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:58):
Well, I would see now I would, I would take the pro Microsoft argument and say it's a, a, a razor blade model, Richard. It's

Leo Laporte (00:19:05):
I think it's a risk though, that the judge Yes. There's been a lot of,

Paul Thurrott (00:19:08):
You're right. I'm,

Leo Laporte (00:19:09):
I'm, there's been a lot of evidence that, you know, maybe supports Microsoft here, but the judge might well say Ollie is, are acting in your best interest in, and its damaging the consumer. I mean, that's the case, right? I

Richard Campbell (00:19:21):
Think there's, I think there's a strong case for the FTC coming out and saying, in America if the game is not available on all platforms, you can't ship the game. Yeah. Yeah. Which would by the way, be disastrous for Sony.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:31):
Oh, not just Sony.

Leo Laporte (00:19:32):
Lots of small

Paul Thurrott (00:19:34):
Independent game

Leo Laporte (00:19:35):
Developers who are developing for exclusives.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:39):
One of the, that's a lot of extra work

Richard Campbell (00:19:40):
Arguments.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:41):
Yeah. One of my big issues with this FTC thing is that there's all this clear abuse going on in the game industry, and this is like who you chose to go after. Yeah. I'll tell you, whatever comes out of this, if the FTC wins or the FTC loses, Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard. It doesn't, I don't think that anyone's going after Sony. No, I don't. That happens.

Leo Laporte (00:19:59):
That's one, by

Paul Thurrott (00:20:00):
The way. And that blows my mind.

Leo Laporte (00:20:01):
That's one of the conclusions I drew from so the four days of testimony so far. But is he worst? The worst?

Paul Thurrott (00:20:08):
Yeah, they're the worst. And, and why isn't anyone going after them Yeah. For this behavior.

Richard Campbell (00:20:13):
Yeah. Yeah. And what

Paul Thurrott (00:20:14):
They're, what they are doing is crazy. And I mean, I think it's inarguably illegal, but that's, that's just an opinion. We're, meanwhile what we're worried about is like, what might Microsoft do? Hmm.

Richard Campbell (00:20:26):
You know, but, but it doesn't this really speak to an administration that is anti-tech giant.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:31):
Yes. Yep. Yep.

Richard Campbell (00:20:33):
And, and also is Jap Japan, because they're well positioned with relation to con to con concerns around China. So you kind of don't wanna mess with anything Japanese while you're trying to get some other things done over there. Like the, I just wonder if there's some behind the scenes action here

Paul Thurrott (00:20:50):
From a Yeah, I agree with you perspective. This administration has a clear dictate to go after big tech. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. This is, but this is, the barn doors already open, the horses are gone. I don't understand. Oh,

Richard Campbell (00:21:00):
No. And, and its, the thing is, if you're gonna use the courts Yeah. Generally speaking, the courts look at the law, and then there's no law

Paul Thurrott (00:21:06):
Here. Yeah. Go after the biggest abusers, you know, for starters, I, I, Microsoft is competing in a market here in which there isn't a serial abuser. That serially, Abu serial abuser has complained that Microsoft might in fact use its own strategy against it. And it doesn't like that <laugh>. And somehow regulators and courts have said, yeah, that's a problem. That wrong what is happening? But

Leo Laporte (00:21:29):
Some, so what the judge though is, is not gonna be saying, I mean, he might be saying this in his head, but is not gonna be saying, oh, you know, my Sony's the problem here. He's gonna judge the case on the merits of the case. Her, her, so, sorry.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:42):
It's a woman's right.

Leo Laporte (00:21:43):
Sorry. No, thank you. I'm sorry.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:44):
No, you're, no, you're, no, no, you're right. And, and I but I think because that's not the case

Leo Laporte (00:21:48):
Before her is Sony's behavior. Know,

Paul Thurrott (00:21:51):
But here's the thing. So I don't know the numbers not the

Leo Laporte (00:21:53):
Sony, and I don't think, you know, I doubt she is doing what we're doing, which is saying, well, this is a case that Sony really brought.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:01):
No, I think actually, I think logically she should be saying, I

Leo Laporte (00:22:04):
Know, well, you and I know that,

Paul Thurrott (00:22:05):
But what's the argument? What's

Leo Laporte (00:22:06):
The argument? It wasn't, I mean, well, but it wasn't Sony, it was the ftc. And I think she has to act as if this is not in Sony's interest, that this isn't Sony saying, let's do something in our interest. She has to look at the case in the, in the merits of the case, right? Mm-Hmm.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:19):
Yes. And among the merits of the case is the fact that Microsoft competes in a market in which a serial abuser has run RHA over this industry and done everything it can to disenfranchise Xbox. Yeah. Where Mi, Microsoft's whole thing has been, look, we just want games to be everywhere. We're not even asking for all of our games to be Xbox exclusives. I mean, there will be some, of course there will. But even if like the all but the biggest Activision Blizzard games somehow become Xbox exclusives, that pie chart where you show how many exclusive each company has Nintendo and Sony is still way ahead.

Leo Laporte (00:22:54):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:56):
You know, it's bizarre to me that they do this so much and they're so concerned that Microsoft might do it with the two or three titles that have come up. See, see, they did it here. This is my, they did it

Leo Laporte (00:23:07):
Once. This is my question is, does, can the judge look at that as a whole? Or does the judge have to look at the FTCs specific filing against Microsoft to decide whether Microsoft is a problem? Can she say, well, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:23:21):
Yeah. Well, but that's part of the ev and Yeah, I mean, this is part of evidence, right? This is the, the point of this testimony. Right? Right. That you Right. See both sides of it. In other words, Sony says, yeah, look what they did. They bought this company and they made two of the games. One's a, one of which is a piece of crap Xbox exclusives. Oh my God. Can you believe how badly they're behaving? Yeah. But somebody, Microsoft says

Leo Laporte (00:23:40):
Somebody is not on trial here. Right? Or

Paul Thurrott (00:23:42):
No, no, no. But that's the, that's the testimony. I know that Microsoft says yes, but this is apparently very common in this industry. Look how many games Sony has made an exclusive, by the way, Sony has paid publishers, more publishers money to keep more games off of our console than we have paid publishers to keep them only on our console. Like, what are we talking about here? This is the way this, and there's simple remediation here too. It's like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> just say, you won't do that. Exactly. Exactly. To it.

Leo Laporte (00:24:09):
But okay. So, and I'm not sure how this kind of hearing in a civil case differs from, but you, you can't, as a criminal defendant say, well, but everybody else is doing it isn't a defense. Right. So I don't know if that's the case in this, it, it might be. It's, I don't either.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:26):
I mean, honestly, that's right. I mean no one has suggested this behavior is illegal in this courtroom. <Laugh>, right? Yeah. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:24:35):
It's, it's not, it's not an illegality issue, it's a antitrust,

Paul Thurrott (00:24:38):
But it, it's, it's, right. It's an issue. Well, it's basically just about educating people about way how this market works, right? Yeah. So Microsoft has tried to compete in its own way. I mean, good, bad, indifferent, whatever. Sony has done their own thing. They've obviously been enormously successful. You know, the net result is that Microsoft has come in third place. Microsoft knows it needs to make some changes. It's also missed out on some things. Right? It hasn't it doesn't have what my, I I forget, I think the term you used Yeah. Phil Spencer called it an, or an organic strategy for mobile. Meaning they really haven't gone after mobile. They've released a, a handful of silly games here and there. But you know, they, they, they've looked at acquisitions to solve this problem. It's, it's kind of the typical big company solution, right?

(00:25:22):
They actually considered buying over 100 different companies to try to figure this out. One of them was Square Enix, right? And one of the things they wanted to do with that company was get into Asia, cuz they also don't do well in Asia mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but but create a mobile native game pass offering, meaning native mobile games that you would download to your device and use as part of a subscription just like we have on PC and console today. That they, that's one thing they've considered that that's I not having, I mean, the problem with buying Square enix is they make final fantasy, right. Exclusively for person Sony. Sure. The final fantasy, the Call of Duty of video games mm-hmm. <Affirmative>

Leo Laporte (00:26:05):
Wait a minute, I thought Call of Duty was the call of Duty of video games. That was

Paul Thurrott (00:26:08):
My joke. I'll be right back. I apologize.

Leo Laporte (00:26:10):
Okay. Paul's leaving. I just, I worry about the, I, the it sounds like Microsoft's defense is, sorry, we have a, we we're doing this defensively, like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> well, we have to, your Honor, because these other guys are so predatory, we have to be predatory. And I just wonder if the

Paul Thurrott (00:26:29):
Judge, well, I don't think they would use that language <laugh>. Well, but I Isn't that kind what they're, which the problem.

Leo Laporte (00:26:35):
But isn't that kind of

Paul Thurrott (00:26:36):
What they're saying? No, by the way, it's, it's, it's literally what they're saying. But they can't say predatory, right? No, no, no. In other words, but

Leo Laporte (00:26:41):
I think they're trying to emphasize is the way it's done in this business, but I don't think that makes

Paul Thurrott (00:26:46):
It That's what

Leo Laporte (00:26:47):
I meant,

Paul Thurrott (00:26:47):
Legal. That's exactly right.

Leo Laporte (00:26:49):
And I'm wonder if the judge, I wonder what the judge's purview is, if she is allowed to say, yeah. You know, if you're gonna su succeed in this business, you have to be a jerk.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:59):
Well, <laugh> okay.

Leo Laporte (00:27:00):
No, but, and it's okay. Go ahead. Be a jerk. I don't think she's gonna do that.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:04):
The power of any particular

Leo Laporte (00:27:06):
Platform. She might say Sony and Nintendo are not on trial. Here you are. We should deal with Sony. Yes. But that's not the case in front of me right now. I is that possible?

Paul Thurrott (00:27:17):
We are competing in a market in which our competitors don't just release exclusives, but they literally pay companies not to release products for our platform. Right. Right. What we want to do is mostly release cross-platform games and reserve a couple of those games for ourselves, the biggest games called Duty, et cetera. We will have explicit agreements to bring, to always bring cross-platform to everybody, anyone who wants it. And they've done it. They've already proven this. They've, they've made those deals.

Leo Laporte (00:27:43):
So is their argument, we're the good guys here and you should

Paul Thurrott (00:27:46):
Let us, it's literally, we're the good guys. Yeah. Yep. Well, yep.

Richard Campbell (00:27:48):
And, and are also aggrieved in the sense that, you know, the, the line we bought Bethesda because they were, because this is, Tony was trying to pay them to make Starfield to pay us five exclusive.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:59):
Right. Right. Exactly. And now they Sony, a company that has paid other companies not to ship products on our platform, is now complaining that we are doing that with one gig.

Leo Laporte (00:28:10):
But again, the complaint isn't coming from Sony. You nine. I know it is, but it's not from the judge's point of view. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:14):
Well, it doesn't matter

Leo Laporte (00:28:15):
From the Federal Trade Commission. Okay. So she's not allowed to say, oh yeah, this is Sony's action. It's not sure

Paul Thurrott (00:28:22):
Microsoft

Richard Campbell (00:28:22):
Has, the FTC has to prove harm. Yes. And, you know, but

Leo Laporte (00:28:25):
It could be, there's no harm can prove. That's the question. I mean, it could prove harm absent any knowledge about Sony's. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:28:32):
I, we have to look at it kind of a net. So we look, if we wanna look at this really narrowly, just very narrowly say, does Microsoft only releasing Starfield on Microsoft platforms indicate some form of consumer harm? And you'd have to say, yeah, because they're not releasing a cross-platform. This game might have been cross-platform before. Right. And,

Richard Campbell (00:28:52):
And is expected to be an incredibly hot title.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:55):
Yep. So, so you're like, wow. Oh, there you go. We, and again, that's a perfect

Richard Campbell (00:28:58):
Concession to

Paul Thurrott (00:28:59):
Get, we have shown harm, right? Yeah. But that's not it. Right. It's bigger than this one game. Activision Blizzard makes all these other games too, and Bethesda xx, whatever we have. What, what do we actually do with our games? What have we done? The vast majority of games that Microsoft publishes are available. Well, that's not, actually, I can't even say that. I'm sorry. I, I that's not true. Actually, what I was about to say is not true. But the vast majority of games that we've gotten through big studio acquisitions, which is basically just semi max are still cross platformed. We haven't, we haven't taken the majority of them and made them Xbox, Xbox exclusives. We haven't done that. We have done a few.

Leo Laporte (00:29:41):
This is so tricky because there are plenty of other industries. You know, Ford does not make an F-150 for Chevrolet. Yeah. if every single Ford vehicle is exclusive to Ford, every, every single Chevrolet vehicle is exclusive. No, but that's

Paul Thurrott (00:29:57):
Chevrolet. But it's more co So we can't use that example because why not? There are third, they all use the same third parties creating content that goes to these platforms. Right. In other words, it's not it'd be like a windshield wiper maker, <laugh>, you know? Do they only supply, did, did Ford pay this windshield wiper maker some fee not to ship their windshield wipers on GM

Leo Laporte (00:30:19):
Would be a problem? I don't think so. I don't, well, that's, and I think you can make the economic argument that it's, it's costly and inefficient to make it for many platforms. So it's not unreasonable for something to be only on Xbox or only a PlayStation.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:38):
Right. That's a reason

Leo Laporte (00:30:39):
Economic decision <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:41):
Right? So Microsoft's central argument, everyone focuses on the big stuff, right? So the big the big thing here is Call of Duty. And the, and Microsoft has reached very explicit agreements with that. They've also been very explicit when they've talked about it and said, look, economically, it doesn't make any sense for us to restrict the access to this game. We wanna expand the access to this game. And they would do it in ways that Activision Blizzard on its own, has not done, including putting it on Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud gaming. Right. that's something Activision just has shown no interest in. They make plenty of money on this title. They, they like what they're doing. They, it's not, they're not interested in that stuff. Microsoft would be interested in doing that, but those things would not outweigh the money that they make for putting it on the PlayStation. Right. If the PlayStation is, if

Leo Laporte (00:31:27):
You really wanted a fair playing field, you would restrict the platform makers from making games at all. Sony shouldn't make games. Microsoft shouldn't make games. Yeah. Yeah. They should all be made by third party entities. Well, and then they could act economically in their interest, IR, irrespective of the platform makers. I, that would be the right solution. Right. But,

Paul Thurrott (00:31:49):
But that's not a solution to this case. This Solu, like you said, well, I agree. Is limited to,

Leo Laporte (00:31:53):
Right. I'm, I'm, but I mean, so that's the problem is Yeah. Is

Paul Thurrott (00:31:58):
All kinds of problems

Leo Laporte (00:31:59):
You have. Yeah. But you have kind of what, what is an untenable situation already. That's right. Which is that platform makers are also in the business of content.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:08):
Well, but this is, you know, we just talked about Atari briefly. I mean, Atari kind of invented, they, they weren't the first one with a cartridge that, you know, they weren't

Leo Laporte (00:32:14):
First game. Yeah. This is why Nintendo did what they had to do, cuz they had to protect their Well

Paul Thurrott (00:32:17):
No, but their quality. But they popularized this notion of we created this box that you buy and you put in your living room, and then we make these little boxes that you plug into 'em. Right. And you play those games. And, and that was, you know, they were like the

Leo Laporte (00:32:30):
Fair, there's a very

Paul Thurrott (00:32:31):
Famous, the Kleenex of that market. They weren't,

Leo Laporte (00:32:33):
There's a very famous antitrust case. The film, the movie companies owned the theaters <affirmative>. And, and, and this was similar. The theaters are the platforms, the content is the films. And it was a big issue because they had content exclusives and so forth. The courts decided that they should divest the theaters, that the movie companies couldn't own theaters. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Sure. I think that's a direct analogy to, but I

Richard Campbell (00:32:56):
Think there's a, but there's another part to this, which is that our market is evolving, right? We're going away from buying discrete games into subscription models. Right? The same, the same way that we've seen also in population and Netflix and Disney. And so if game, you know, gaming's headed this way, it would be problematic to put in regulation that impairs the evolution of a market.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:19):
Right? And there's also this notion of market size. Cuz you know, again, if the gaming market overall is this giant thing, I mean, what, what Slice is console gaming, right? Pcs, I believe by revenue have just surpassed console gaming revenues this past year or this year will but they're both eclipsed by a dramatic amount by game by mobile gaming, casual gaming, you know, that kind of thing. So when you have companies that primarily play in this console space, they, I'm sure they're looking well, you can see what they've done. Sony and Microsoft have both made inroads in PC gaming. Both of them have been slow to make inroads in mobile gaming. And that's where the real growth is. Microsoft's approach is very Microsoft centric. You know, when you're hammer, everything's a nail. We have a big cloud business. I wonder how we can get into mobile. Oh, I know. We'll do cloud gaming stuff, you know, well, that's how we'll do it. They don't do the organic gaming as, as Phil's Spencer said. I think they should. I think Nintendo should, by the way. I think Sony should too. And when you're a big company, one of the ways you do that is to acquire studios that do do that, right? Mm-Hmm. I mean, that's part of the strategy behind this Activision Blizz acquisition.

Richard Campbell (00:34:25):
I mean, mobile gaming from a business model is pretty problematic, right? It's a much more predatory business space. The game, you can't charge much for the games upfront. There's no concept of subscription model. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:36):
It's a different

Richard Campbell (00:34:36):
Thing. Yeah. Yeah. You're basically giving away the game and then psychologically manipulating people to pay for stuff that doesn't, that that makes them play more.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:44):
So it's okay. I'll give you,

Richard Campbell (00:34:47):
I mean, I would argue it's a, it's fine when there's a whole bunch of little companies making these horrible games, but as soon as there's a big company doing it, I'll give

Leo Laporte (00:34:54):
You an example. Activision Blizzard makes Diablo four, which is a very hot game, came out a couple of weeks ago mm-hmm. And I play Diablo four right at the front page. It says, you know, if you're really want the full experience, you need to subscribe to Microsoft Game Pass. Otherwise you won't be

Paul Thurrott (00:35:10):
Able to. This says Microsoft Game Pass. Really?

Leo Laporte (00:35:12):
Yes. Otherwise you won't be able to play against Head to Head. You won't see other players at all that you need to at least have a games with Gold.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:23):
Oh, I see. For the multiplayer stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, yes, you, I

Leo Laporte (00:35:27):
Thought were gonna say is, but, but the way they phrase it is, you could play all by yourself and lonely or Sure. Get a Microsoft subscription and things will be much better.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:37):
I wish I

Leo Laporte (00:35:37):
Did a screenshot of that for you.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:39):
One of the big pushbacks that it worked, by the way, these days I

Leo Laporte (00:35:42):
Got my Microsoft Game pass because of it. So it worked. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:47):
Okay. Well, one, one of the things that people have pushed back a lot over the past couple years is these like loot boxes and other kind of pay to win type situations, table blows.

Richard Campbell (00:35:55):
Eus been all over that game.

Leo Laporte (00:35:56):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:57):
Yeah. So you just said, you know, Richard was, I think, was talking about this notion that you get these games for free and you, they figure out these psychological ways for

Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
Things. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Paul Thurrott (00:36:06):
It's, it's weird when you have a game like Call of Duty or Diablo or whatever it might be, where you actually pay $70 for that thing and then get to pay, they still do that. It's not, so it's not even free up front. Now, of course, I think they justify that by saying, look, it cost a billion dollars, whatever the figure is to hundreds of millions of dollars to create this game. It's a slightly, you know, it's, it's more investment in like Flappy Bird or whatever. The

Leo Laporte (00:36:26):
Real argument is, you want this game, don't you? What will the market bear? 60 bucks. 70 bucks, no

Paul Thurrott (00:36:32):
Problem. Yeah. I mean, I, I, look, I was a big Call of Duty guy for a long time, and I watched, is this wrong? Makes

Leo Laporte (00:36:38):
That me sad when I hear you say I was a big

Paul Thurrott (00:36:41):
<Laugh>. Well, I can say you never know, but I'm looking into a no, I, I'll talk about that. Anyway, so there's a call of Duty in the beginning was really about it was a single player experience. It was like, they were, it was like you were going to war, and then they started doing multiplayer. And that got really big. And it was interesting. And then over time, they, they, they were like, oh, we could make more money if we ship like levels over time and we could do these like drops. And now we have like a seasons pass. So you pay 60 bucks for the game and 60 bucks, so to cover you for the rest of the, you know, the year. And then they saw like, what was happening with like, battle rail type games, like Fortnite.

(00:37:16):
And they were like, all right, alright, right. Here we go. Alright. So we're also gonna do, like, by the time you get like the modern day, like, call it what is Call of Duty, it's like this giant octopus of like different ways to spend money revenue streams. Yeah. And yeah, it's crazy. And that's, you know, I don't know, maybe that's a natural evolution. I don't know. But it, it, you know, anyone who plays Call of Duty today would be well served to go back and install the original Call of Duty and, and just see how horrifically hilariously different it is. Yeah. and how simple. That's true

Leo Laporte (00:37:46):
Of Diablo too. Yeah. The original Diablo

Paul Thurrott (00:37:48):
Station

Richard Campbell (00:37:48):
And, and there in and therein lies the real push for you to get online, quote unquote online. It's not to play with more people, it's for them to be able to pitch you offers constantly. Yeah. Geez. Yeah. And to have, and to have your

Leo Laporte (00:37:58):
Payment information can can't without online. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:38:01):
Without online and without a credit card in place. All of which you need to do to get Game Pass. So get all that done so that when I catch you in that Skinner box moment, exactly in that moment where you need to gamble, we have a card, you just have to click the button and it happens. I've got your money. I don't have to ask for a car. I don't have to do any of that. Well, so

Paul Thurrott (00:38:18):
It's

Leo Laporte (00:38:18):
Actually, it was a mutual benefit society cuz it was Xbox Live, by the way. But five bucks a month and I looked at it well for a few extra I could get, you know, anyway sure it's a mutual benefit because, you know, you know, Activision Blizzard knows Microsoft's gonna be maybe our owner mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, let's do something nice for them. And yeah, we can do loop boxes or you, you know, you can buy nice, you know, outfits. Mm-Hmm. And by the

Paul Thurrott (00:38:43):
Way, who makes Diablo,

Leo Laporte (00:38:45):
You know, who makes Diablo? Activision Blizz Blizzard.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:48):
Oh no. All I know is they make Call of Duty, they make other games. You say <laugh> <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:38:52):
Yes. Have you ever heard of World of Warcraft? It's a fun

Paul Thurrott (00:38:55):
Game. Yeah, vaguely. I mean, it sounds like a Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:38:58):
<Laugh>

Richard Campbell (00:38:59):
I gotta tell you, I've been hap I happily played Dredge beginning to end in 10 hours. Yeah. Wow. And immediately played it again. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:39:07):
Wow. I missed those days with games like that. But

Richard Campbell (00:39:10):
Yeah, just a good little story game. Whole self-contained, no multi-user, no loop boxes. Just a great story story.

Leo Laporte (00:39:16):
Diablo, and, and I think this is Diablo is crack. I mean, they're clearly selling something that oh yeah. Is it, it's like a slot machine and, and it's no, it's,

Richard Campbell (00:39:27):
This is this Skinner box, you know? Absolutely. Is the psychologist that, that taught us how this works. And

Leo Laporte (00:39:32):
I'm happily game been.

Richard Campbell (00:39:33):
I'm happily pressing. Oh, you're banging away on the button, man. You're banging away on the

Leo Laporte (00:39:37):
Button. It's a fun game. I've played every one of them. And

Richard Campbell (00:39:40):
But now that you got game past, they wired that button to your credit card. So keep slamming.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:44):
So now we understand how gambling has taken over sports because it's happened in eSports first. Yeah. yep, yep. Anyway, this is the market that Microsoft finds itself in. Right? Things

Richard Campbell (00:39:54):
Changed. One wants to be further in, you

Paul Thurrott (00:39:56):
Know, it's, well, I mean, over 20 years ago they entered this console market. I mean, think about how different things were back then. Sega still made hardware. Yeah. Right. Sony has established itself obviously with the first PlayStation and then the PlayStation two was the biggest thing in the world. And Nintendo was always a thing, right? Nintendo's had a few missteps, but they've always had this kind of little slice of the market, not little. They've had a big slice of the market that is just kind of uniquely them. The Disney of video gaming, whatever it is. I, I, I don't, I I think Microsoft was still riding a, the Windows model works kind of high at that time. How can we apply this to video game hardware? They base the first one on a PC architecture. We'll bring in all, you know, the Windows PC game makers and they can put titles on this thing pretty easily, yada, yada, yada. But, you know, flash forward you know, 20 years plus it's, they've, you know, they're coming last <laugh>. So now

Richard Campbell (00:40:48):
One of the stories I really liked from this whole thing was this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that Koic threatened to pull Call of Duty from Xbox.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:54):
This, this is astonishing.

Richard Campbell (00:40:55):
Yeah. It's like I've never heard that before. Yeah. You talking about stuff that comes outta these trials.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:00):
So that actually ties into that that conversation me a little bit earlier where

Leo Laporte (00:41:05):
Save, save this if you would. Cuz I want, I, we need to take a break and this would be a good thing to make people.

Richard Campbell (00:41:09):
This will be the segue. Let's

Leo Laporte (00:41:11):
Do a little loo box for Leo. It's Leo's Loo Box Time. If you want that story, you're gonna have to stay tuned through this ad.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:19):
I've got a Patreon if you guys want to <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:41:23):
Yeah, sure. The podcast is free. Just attach your credit card and no salespeople will call. No. Our show today brought to you by Lookout. It's something you do wanna know if you are running a business, you know, business is really changed. And I think it's forever boundaries to where we work, how we work have completely disappeared. And by the way, when employees are on the move, your data and your your is on the move too. Whether on a device or in even in the cloud or across networks or at a local coffee shop. This is, this is the new world of work. And that's great. Your workforce loves it, right? But your IT security folks may be saying a yay, yay pity. The poor IT security folks. You know they have multi-point tools. They're legacy solutions. They're struggling to keep up with everything that's changing.

(00:42:20):
They need lookout. Lookout lets you control your data and free your workforce. You know, best of both worlds. With Lookout, you gain complete visibility into all your data, minimize risk from internal and external threats, plus ensure compliance. And by seamlessly securing hybrid work, your organization doesn't have to sacrifice productivity for security. Everybody wins, including it because it's set of a complex multi-tool solution. They've got a single unified platform lookout. It reduces it complexity and gives you and your team more time to focus on whatever else is coming your way. And believe me, there's stuff coming your way. Good protection. It shouldn't be a cage. It should be a springboard letting you and your organization bound into the future of your making. Visit lookout.com today to learn how to safeguard data, secure hybrid work and reduce it complexity. That's lookout.com. We thank 'em so much for their support of Windows Weekly. We really appreciate that. And you support us when you go to look at.com and and try it out. Try it out. Paul Theat, Richard Campbell Richard's off getting tea as he often does at this time.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:36):
My pixel fold arrived, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:43:38):
Oh wow. Wait a minute. Hold her up. Let's see it. You ordered that, huh? Or is it a review unit?

Paul Thurrott (00:43:45):
No, I ordered this. I wish

Leo Laporte (00:43:47):
Two that eight What is 1800 bucks?

Paul Thurrott (00:43:49):
Yeah. Not if everything all alter all in. It was like 1900 bucks.

Leo Laporte (00:43:52):
A lot of people are saying when they first get it, oh, it's not quite like I thought it would be like it's more square, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:43:58):
Yes, that's right. That's right. It's more like a duo. I don't, I I like the I didn't like the way the Samsung ones were so tall and thin. Yeah. I feel like the outside of this will be a more normal,

Leo Laporte (00:44:09):
It's a full screen on the outside. That would be almost like a phone. So it's just, it doesn't even look that thick actually. It looks kind of nice. Yeah. Now you saw Ron Amadio over at ours. Technica. I did his died in four days cuz it got a grit or something in the there's a little yeah. Space between the plastic screen protector and the actual OLED screen. Well I'm

Paul Thurrott (00:44:31):
Sure he didn't spend any of his own money on that, so No.

Leo Laporte (00:44:34):
Yeah, but you did on yours. So I want you to take care of I did. Yeah. I sure did. Yeah. Wow. I'm, I'm interested that you bought that.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:41):
Were you? Yeah, I I've never had any interest in a folding phone yet. And I think the, it was just kind of the, my wife has interest in a folding phone and I think the, but I

Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
Would thought, I would've thought the flip the would've been more her

Paul Thurrott (00:44:54):
Screen. I would've thought the same. But my wife said, no, I want the other. She wants a big screen. Well, let me, let me, let me give it a shot. And so

Leo Laporte (00:45:00):
This is really gonna be her phone if you approve.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:03):
Well, if we, yeah, I mean we'll see. He uses a Samsung whatever, ultra something, something.

Leo Laporte (00:45:09):
I don't, yeah, I have the Ultra We'll see 20,

Paul Thurrott (00:45:10):
We'll

Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
See 2 23, whatever the latest ultra is 23. 23. You know why? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:18):
It's interesting.

Leo Laporte (00:45:19):
I am in a conundrum right now because mm, I bought some and they're really nice. Deon Earbuds. Remember there was a Kickstarter, a company in Australia called Noura, and they were gonna make these earbuds. They were super high fidelity and had software that would measure your ear automatically like a hearing test. So they got bought by Massimo, which owns the Denon brand along with Polk Audio. And Barnes, Barnes and Noble. Bowers and Wilkin very similar. Anyway

Paul Thurrott (00:45:50):
Microsoft might have been part of that.

Leo Laporte (00:45:51):
De Deon released this neuron neuro earbuds. Now they call it the Deon Pearl. Personal listening. And I got the Pearl Pro. But the, to really use this earbud, you need the latest Apex Kodak. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. It supports not only Apex HD and low latency, but Aptex Lossless, which is very high bandwidth Bluetooth.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:16):
So you do like title and whatever

Leo Laporte (00:46:18):
Else. Yeah. And in theory you could have high Bitrate music. It's only in theory because I cannot find a, a single product that even though that's been out for a year, supports Apex Lossless,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:31):
Aptex Lossless.

Leo Laporte (00:46:33):
If you ever see one <laugh>, I

Paul Thurrott (00:46:36):
Mean No, can you say a product you mean, in other words you should doesn't do

Leo Laporte (00:46:38):
It phone. You would think the iPhone would know. It doesn't support Apex at all.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:41):
No, no. I actually, I wouldn't think, think that

Leo Laporte (00:46:42):
One. Would you think the Pixel would know You'd saying Samsung, Samsung,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:45):
Samsung

Leo Laporte (00:46:45):
Three does not Samsung 23 being on the Snapdragon platform. Would it supports,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:50):
I know Snapdragon supports it. I know they,

Leo Laporte (00:46:53):
They don't want pay the license for, they might

Paul Thurrott (00:46:54):
Have even

Leo Laporte (00:46:54):
Invented it. They don't want to pay the license for Lossless. So it supports I think hd but not Lossless. No, I'm not, I think it doesn't even do hd. Do you

Paul Thurrott (00:47:02):
Have to get, can you get like a DAC or something that does

Leo Laporte (00:47:04):
It? You can get a dak I guess it wouldn't matter. Yeah, FIO sells a thousand dollar DAK that does it. It's it's not just, it's not just a dak. It's a, it's like a

Paul Thurrott (00:47:14):
A So you have these headphones or Aird they, that, that won't,

Leo Laporte (00:47:18):
Won't, they work their best fine, but they won't do their best with, so I, I wanna review it, but I kind of want to find an Apex lossless device. Sorry, are

Paul Thurrott (00:47:27):
They, are they earbuds or

Leo Laporte (00:47:28):
Headphones? They're buds headphones. They make headphones too like that. So these are earbuds. They're really nice earbuds. It would be

Paul Thurrott (00:47:33):
Weird. It would be weird to put <laugh> to pair our earbuds with a really expensive home theater or like a home

Leo Laporte (00:47:39):
Stereo. Yeah, I was thinking of doing that. Buying a little Bluetooth s code.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:42):
But that might, that might be the only way to do it, right? I think.

Leo Laporte (00:47:43):
Think I have to, yeah, I think I have to. There are apex lossless, you know, standalone stereo.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:49):
I can't believe that no device does this. I wonder if it's a battery life issue.

Leo Laporte (00:47:53):
No, I think it's a license fee issue. It's fairly new. It came out last year. Yeah. I don't know. Anyway, I was just thinking that. So I'd love if you wanna do review of that phone for us. We would love that. Oh, he's got the new Richard, you might have missed this. He just got the new pixel fold. Oh yeah. From Google.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:13):
Yeah. The only issue is I'm surprised because,

Leo Laporte (00:48:16):
You know, we're,

Paul Thurrott (00:48:17):
If I'm <laugh>, if I'm not gonna hold onto this, I have to get rid of it before we go to Mexico next week.

Leo Laporte (00:48:22):
Yeah. You only have a a little time to return the next few

Paul Thurrott (00:48:25):
Days will be

Leo Laporte (00:48:26):
Will be telling his bo I'm still very suspicious of the durability of folding ole screens.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:34):
Yep. And I would be suspicious of anything hardware that Google makes, especially a V1 product.

Leo Laporte (00:48:39):
I have the Galaxy fold about a generation two generations ago. I have the flip phone, which I really liked but I never used 'em long enough to know if those OLEDs would hold up.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:49):
Right, right. No, that's a good concern. I, you, you, there are people like that guy from ours technically that have a problem on day one. There are people who have used them continually and have never had issues.

Leo Laporte (00:48:59):
Yeah. Ron might just have had bad luck, I think. Yeah. I don't know. I I am, you know, sometime next month Samsung's gonna announce the new fold and flip. Yep. I'll probably buy a flip. Oh, I, they are,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:11):
But I, I, I see. I, I think the little one is interesting too. I, I, they're not gonna be able to change the form. They, they're not understood to be changing the form factor on the big one.

Leo Laporte (00:49:22):
No, but on the flip flips,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:23):
They're

Leo Laporte (00:49:23):
Gonna have a bigger screen on the outside screen that's gonna fill. Yeah. I think that looks

Paul Thurrott (00:49:27):
Cool. I think

Leo Laporte (00:49:27):
That's neat. I know that looks like a good phone. I like it. I'll probably get that one, but I would love to know if you even a thumbnail Yeah. Review, you know, we bringing back hands on technology in the club and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, just to next time you do hands, are you gonna do hands on windows before you go to Mexico?

Paul Thurrott (00:49:42):
Yeah. We'll do one more

Leo Laporte (00:49:43):
Tomorrow if you wanna do a two minute, just like, it could be like a first look, not a real review, but, hey, got it. Here's what it looks like. Here's my thoughts. We would love that. Put that, we'll put that in hands on, on technology. Thank you. Sure, sure. I said, and part of it is, you know, we, we canceled all about Android. We don't have an Android show anymore, so Yeah. That's bad. Yeah. Just, you know, the audience had been going down for three or four years and I surprises, I wonder if it's a reflection on Android that interesting. Not that the mean Android's still like the best selling Yeah. Platform bestselling phone. But I don't, but phones have not been innovative for a while. Yeah. I think, you know, it's bad enough with iPhone users. I think they've kind of lost interest, but at least they're somewhat interested. But Android people, it's just a, it's a tool. It's a device. They don't wanna listen to a podcast. Podcast. So the issue,

Paul Thurrott (00:50:31):
Google addressed this during Google IO because someone asked them I don't remember who it was, but someone behind the scenes kinda said, Hey you know, it didn't seem like the Android stuff was all that interesting. You know, apple does this big bang thing every year, and they basically said, look, you know, apple ships new hardware every year with their OS and they only ship it to themselves. Right. So it makes sense for them to use that model. Talk

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
About platforms, <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Micro Google does what Microsoft's doing with Windows, which is like, they, everybody can use it. They have quarterly updates, they have monthly updates. They, they improve it throughout the year. So the Big Bang thing is like, it's, it's really more of a soft rollout. Like when Android releases Android 14 this year, it doesn't, doesn't make any, it doesn't make, no,

Leo Laporte (00:51:14):
There's no way.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:14):
Yeah. Nobody's getting it. No. You know,

Richard Campbell (00:51:16):
How many more cameras did you

Paul Thurrott (00:51:18):
Want? Yeah. Well, it doesn't matter. It's like, it doesn't, like if you're on Samsung, it's like, yeah, you might get it in the next five months, you know? Yeah. It's not, it's not like when you release iOS, everyone gets it immediately, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:51:28):
Phones. Yeah. Maybe it's a marketing thing. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:51:30):
Yeah. Phones have been slabs of black glass for 15 years.

Leo Laporte (00:51:32):
I think that's part of it.

Richard Campbell (00:51:33):
Yeah. How, how excited are you gonna be?

Paul Thurrott (00:51:34):
That's why I'm excited about this. Cuz it's two slabs of black glass

Leo Laporte (00:51:38):
<Laugh>. Yes. No,

Richard Campbell (00:51:38):
With a del with a delicate connection between them. It's very likely to fail

Paul Thurrott (00:51:42):
You and make and some, some weird plastic that bends. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:51:45):
Everything's gonna be fine. I would,

Leo Laporte (00:51:46):
I really am curious about it though. Thank you for getting it. 18 hundreds smackers. I

Richard Campbell (00:51:52):
Know. Yeah. That's a lot of money for it's dance.

Leo Laporte (00:51:58):
But they do have a, they do have a liberal return policy and they have good trainings. Yeah, they do. So Samsung really wants true, or Google really wants you try anyway. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.

Richard Campbell (00:52:07):
Alright. You gotta tell me the 30 revelation about Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:52:11):
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:11):
So your

Leo Laporte (00:52:12):
Loot boxes is about to open. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:15):
So tying back to the early conversation about markets and sizes of markets and whatnot. So one of the problems with the gaming market is because people will bring this up all the time. Like, so consoles like Xbox, PlayStation, et cetera, 30% Vig on top of the, you know, goes to the, the maker of the platform mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so if that's the case, how can you complain about Google and Apple charging the same arbitrary amount on their platform? And the reason is those mobile platforms are exponentially bigger than the console market. They're not, it's not even close. And gaming is, is disproportionately a big deal when it comes to mobile app stores. It, I don't remember the figures we're just, I'm just talking here, but some ad something percent probably of the revenues that go through at the mobile app stores is all games.

(00:52:59):
So it's a big deal. That's a much bigger market. But even within this small, the smaller confines of the console market, what you find is big publishers like Activision go to Microsoft in this case and say, Hey we want more money <laugh>, we want more of the money. We want a better revenue split. So they asked for 80 20 and they don't just give that to everybody, but they threatened to pull Call of Duty off of Xbox if Microsoft didn't agree. And obviously with a title that big, what are you gonna do? Yeah. It's exhibition Blizzard, it's Call of Duty. You're gonna say yes. So they do that. Sometimes It would be interesting to know if Sony has ever been forced to do that. I don't know. This, this is Sony's not on trial. We don't know. But that is an interesting circumstance, you know that that's how big Activision Blizzard is. You know, I think when, if Microsoft does acquire Activision Blizzard, the first thing they should go back is go back to Sony and demand an 80 20 split. You know we'll keep it on there <laugh> like we promised <laugh>. But like I say, I guess they couldn't force it if they already promised to keep it on there. But,

Richard Campbell (00:54:07):
But you knew this was guaranteed money, right? Like this game sells a billion dollars plus.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:13):
Oh yeah. No, it makes it, it hits a billion dollars faster than the biggest Hollywood blockbusters of all time. That's what's unique about Call of Duty in the gaming industry, how much bigger it is than Hollywood.

Richard Campbell (00:54:23):
I mean, it's interesting to justify now it's really hard for Microsoft to cry poor. Like that's a tough thing to do.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:31):
Well, well, I mean, so <laugh> Well, speaking of being poor, so one of the questions that came up during this these hearings was whether or not Xbox was profitable. I've long argued that Xbox has never been profitable. We do know because I actually, Phil Spencer said it in the context of these hearings, that the goal is always to make money eventually on hardware. Microsoft has never done that. Sony and Nintendo do make a profit on their hardware sometimes right from the be get go, which is astonishing. Microsoft's goal is to cost reduced over time and try to lose less and hopefully make money at the end. I think they would've done it with the Xbox 360, except for that red Ring of death issue they had in the billion plus you know, warranty recall. Well, we're not calling it a recall, whatever it was, a free warranty repairs.

(00:55:18):
But they've never done it. So Phil Spencer said, regarding profitability that Microsoft expects the business to be profitable, never actually said that it was. But he explained that the them coming in third, every single console generation is in fact what kicked off them buying all these game studios in this bid to make the business profitable. And, you know, it, it's Sony's predatory behavior in many ways is what led to this. Because Sony was outspending it on exclusives and was going further, like I said, by ensuring that certain games would not appear on Xbox.

Richard Campbell (00:55:54):
Yeah. I mean, this seems like an open and shut case, but this whole thing has been an open and

Paul Thurrott (00:56:00):
Shut case. I know, I know,

Richard Campbell (00:56:02):
Right? Like and I thought, and I did get the sense that, that Spencer forced this move to get in front of a judge because the judge will follow the law. And I suspect that, that they had a sense all along that the FTCs low on qualified people right now, and you throw in some general hostility to check giants. And so that's why the dumb was going on. But the law's law,

Paul Thurrott (00:56:24):
This is, it's a tough one. I I, I really do feel like big tech needs to be reg regulated. I really do. And I, I, and there, there were some movements afoot to retroactively mm-hmm. <Affirmative> remove acquisitions from big tech companies. The EU might try to take away double click you know what it used to be double click from Google. They're actually going after their ad business. Incredible. Yeah. There's been talk about taking away Instagram and WhatsApp from Facebook. Right. these are these are nuclear war type events. I mean, that's incredible. So, you know, we'll see. But I, just looking at this market in particular, looking at this case in particular, I, I feel like there's been this one super predatory company and they're not on trial. For some reason, <laugh> and I, and I don't understand it, and, and the, I know it's the FTC and not Sony, but we're basically protecting Sony. That that's, this is the harm because there is no consumer harm especially given the promises that Microsoft has made. He, Phil Spencer put up the sense that I will, I will swear in court mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that I will put out Call of Duty on PlayStation <laugh>. I will, I will. You know, I, I'm not sure what it is you want me to do. Yeah. I will do whatever you ask. Yeah,

Richard Campbell (00:57:34):
Yeah, yeah. It is, it is again, I feel like it's almost like hangover from the pandemic that Yeah. You lost a bunch of qualified people that actually know how to deal with this. Sure. And so there's sort of an irrationality going on, but it'll probably, we also, the best thing to do is get a judge involved.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:54):
Yeah. We

Richard Campbell (00:57:56):
But let's talk about the deadline. Cuz I think that's, I mean, it, we are Yeah. Recording this on the 28th. It's three days away.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:02):
So, yeah. So everyone has this, it's funny, like, I I always equate this with there were rumors a, a month or so ago that Samsung was considering using Bing as their search engine, right. On their phones. Yes. And everyone, everyone's an expert. The whole world said, wait a minute, Samsung can't do that. We know that. You know, one of the requirements of the Android license is that they have to use Google search mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, which I just would probably, first of all, Samsung is probably bigger than every other Android phone maker combined. Yeah. They don't, don't they have a, you don't think they have an 80 20 split. You're telling me they can't do little leverage. Yeah. Yeah. So we don't, no one actually knows. Right. So in this case, everyone, we all, we, we have all these facts. You know, we know that Microsoft's fiscal years ending on June 30th, like I said, in two, in two days.

(00:58:50):
We know that Microsoft has until July, I think it's 18th to sign this deal. And if they don't, they owe Activision some amount of money. I think it's, is it $3 billion or some, it's kind of some kind of a breakup fee, whatever the amount is. Billions of dollars. Right. So we know this is at stake and we know that if this judge allows this to actually go to like before a jury case, that can't start. That can't even begin. We can't even begin talking about that until the end of August. Right. Right. So we know these things. But here's the thing, <laugh>, when you start looking into this, you

Richard Campbell (00:59:23):
Being Dolly ak 3 billion is repugnant

Paul Thurrott (00:59:26):
Life. Yeah, of course it is. Incredibly rep. But, but, but think about it from, well, first of all, let's just say this. So the, this judge that is seeing this case today could rule on this as soon as next week. So it's not gonna happen this week. So that's one thing. But, but we're still ahead of that July, whatever. I think it's July 18th deadline. So if the judge throws out the FTC case, like we said last week, I think mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, Microsoft finalizes his acquisition and Well, what about

Richard Campbell (00:59:50):
The uk? Don't,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:51):
They can spin in the wind <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:59:56):
Suck at UK <laugh>. What would they do? Would they just withdraw from the market? No, no. That's ba I mean, I suspect what Microsoft's saying, they'll let 'em sue 'em. Hey, we're, we're going ahead with this. How would you like me to support your consumers?

Paul Thurrott (01:00:10):
Yeah, exactly. You tell us what you need us to do. Cause we're doing it.

Richard Campbell (01:00:13):
We're going ahead. Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:15):
Interesting. Yeah. So if you're actually concerned about consumers or whatever it is, competition, whatever, let us know and we'll figure that out. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we're doing it. I don't, I think, say screw

Richard Campbell (01:00:23):
The uk I think that July 18, this seems way more feasible then. Cuz if it was literally the next two days.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:29):
However, let's, let's say the judge says no, you know what? I think the FTCs made a good enough case. I think this needs to go to the full jury.

Richard Campbell (01:00:36):
Then we're in trouble. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:37):
Well that's, that's part of the, that's part of the scheduled discussion. So everyone knows like, oh, I guess Microsoft's gonna lose all this money. Does Activision just walk away? No, actually, you know, they can renegotiate this. Right. I mean, this is an, it's a merger tech. They can renegotiate it. So it might make, I I think actually, I think it would make more sense. Microsoft. Look, has Microsoft shown itself to be serious about this acquisition? Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. At the, at the 11th hour, they are defending themselves in court. They have flown at all their highest level executive biggest guns

Richard Campbell (01:01:05):
Involved in this. Yep. And, and forced this case in the first place. Like this is all a play to do it. Seriously. This is, yeah. So good faith negotiation by definition.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:15):
Right. So Activision could be remain as it is. It could get another 3 billion if that's the figure. And it could continue on its own if it wants or, or just wait it out and you'll get 70 billion <laugh>. Yeah. You know so I, my guess is they re renegotiate and they try to write it out and see what happens. Right. And, and, and by the way, the way you handle that negotiation is to say, look, we're still gonna pay you this fee if it doesn't work. Yeah. It's just, we'll just roll out the date now in other, let's forget about the date, but we're gonna keep fighting this. It's, we're spending a ton of money on this, by the way. We, I hope we've shown we're really serious. And if it Yeah. Look, if it, if it fails in the end, I mean we'll, we'll of course we'll give you that money.

Richard Campbell (01:01:57):
I, I also wonder about what harassment lawsuits and so forth are waiting or have been sort of put aside if Kotek was gonna step down, that if he's standing in place. Well, you know, that's why Bobby wa is, you know, urgently. Yeah. Bobby had it out. Sure. Yeah, sure. Let me take the billion and run. Yeah. Yeah. And so really this deal got going through probably exposes to some other ies That's

Leo Laporte (01:02:20):
Interesting. That's a really interesting point I couldn't even think of.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:23):
I mean, he's a, he's a good guy and a clean guy. I don't, I don't,

Leo Laporte (01:02:26):
You know what he should do. I think this is a great strategy run for president. Then he can pardon himself.

Richard Campbell (01:02:32):
That's,

Leo Laporte (01:02:33):
There you go.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:33):
It's a great

Leo Laporte (01:02:34):
Strategy.

Richard Campbell (01:02:36):
Self pardon? Self pardon's. Not a thing. I do not live in your country, but I know that much <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:02:42):
It's not a part, it's not a thing yet. Richard. I

Richard Campbell (01:02:44):
Think it's pretty clearly outlined <laugh>. Think there's some folks who wrote that down just saying,

Leo Laporte (01:02:49):
Pardon me. Pardon you. We

Paul Thurrott (01:02:51):
Amend those things. We can amend those things.

Richard Campbell (01:02:53):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I I'm sure you can get 30 something states on board be great

Leo Laporte (01:02:56):
For people who don't know. Activision Blizzard had a horrific Yes. Climate for, especially for women, but for, you know, anybody who wasn't a white bro. And Kodak was absolutely new and was involved and there'd been lawsuits

Paul Thurrott (01:03:14):
That guy, he's winning

Richard Campbell (01:03:15):
The original. That guy. He's winning the original bros.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:16):
Yeah. I was gonna say he has been involved in that. Look him up. He's been there since the, almost the beginning. Yeah. He's been there forever.

Leo Laporte (01:03:21):
You know, I have to say, I, I just finished, you told me for a long time to read this, the, the Doom book. Yeah. and, and it, you're right. It was a great read. It's incredible. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And in fact, I've now downloaded and installed Doom on my Nintendo Switch. And

Paul Thurrott (01:03:35):
That's what it does. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:03:36):
It makes, makes you wanna play those games again. And Quake and all of that. That's and I understand why it's a boys' club, cuz that's who gamers were back, you know, in 1992. There were women.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:48):
Yeah. They were living in a dorm room, essentially on pizza and a

Leo Laporte (01:03:52):
Diet coke. Yeah. It was, it was a

Paul Thurrott (01:03:53):
Frat. And they were up all night living together,

Leo Laporte (01:03:54):
Joel. Exactly. Yeah. And so I could see how it got that way. Right. And I also I'm strong believer that adding other people with other experiences, women people of color and so forth to the team, makes a better game. Makes it more diverse. That's makes it a better game.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:13):
It's certainly a more diverse group of games. Yeah. Right. Over overall, however you choose to do it.

Leo Laporte (01:04:17):
And by the way, Blizzard's problems with Diablo four. There were, I've read articles about how, you know, some of the characters were really a little bit, and they had women in on the team who said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't do that. Right. Right. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And they, they really had to tone it down a little bit.

Richard Campbell (01:04:36):
Yeah. That is, they we did that show, we did a show on this topic on Net Rock specifically about, it's not that you test your stuff with a diversity of people, it's that you need diverse development

Leo Laporte (01:04:46):
From beginning. Right. But I also understand how, how that didn't happen because Yeah. But, but gaming's changed, you know, more than half of gamers are women now. It's not Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:04:55):
Well, and they're trying to be better, but there's a lot of of recovery to be done.

Leo Laporte (01:05:00):
Yeah. It, it, it it's, it was how it started. And, and so it's deeply ingrained in it. And I think they're, you get the feeling that people like Carmack and Romero, that's, that's the how they think it had to be done. Right.

Richard Campbell (01:05:15):
That's Well, and they, but they've also stepped back. Well, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:05:17):
They

Richard Campbell (01:05:17):
Have For Cody, you step back too.

Leo Laporte (01:05:19):
Yes, I agree. New, new, new

Richard Campbell (01:05:21):
Go, new generation. That's, that's different.

Leo Laporte (01:05:23):
You know, we're Brianna Wu's gonna be on Twi on Sunday, and of course she was one of the focuses at Gamer Gate. So I'd be very interested to talk to

Richard Campbell (01:05:31):
Her about all of this. She knows the whole story. I I've read a bunch of her stuff. Like she went through a lot.

Leo Laporte (01:05:36):
Poor was unbelievable. Really? Yeah. So she had to move. Terrible. I mean, yeah. And she's, she's what I hearing this day. Call of Duty is horrific. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be a woman. Oh, yeah, yeah. In this situation. Like,

Richard Campbell (01:05:46):
God, why would you play

Leo Laporte (01:05:47):
That game? What's wrong with the planet? You know, it's, it's terrible. But she's a serious gamer. There are a lot of women serious gamers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And even in the day, Stevie Case, who was a Ramiro's girlfriend for a long time. Yep. Beat him playing to him one time. Beat, beat <laugh> famously. And and women would come. I remember there was one anecdote where they wanted to do a quake tournament for women. Yeah. And Ramiro said, or CarMax, somebody said, oh, yeah, well, you get maybe 50 people. They got 1500 signups. <Laugh>. And it's because the industry really thinks it's this, you know, this bro culture. Sure. They think they knew who plays these least used to. Yeah. I hope they've learned. Yeah. They're pockets of resistance. Sure. Wow.

Richard Campbell (01:06:29):
All right. Yeah. We did, we did FTC in an hour, I think I called it. That

Leo Laporte (01:06:32):
Wasn't bad. Not bad. So you think next week maybe it'll be before the show. Oh, wait a minute, yo. Yeah, we're doing a show. I, so now there's the 4th of July in the United States. You may not know about us. Yeah. But Richard, but we

Richard Campbell (01:06:45):
Do. I do. It's a loud noise. It's a loud noise. It happens.

Leo Laporte (01:06:47):
Yeah. Blow some stuff up to celebrate. Yeah. The fact that we kicked the English out. Actually, we sent 'em up north. I

Richard Campbell (01:06:53):
Think we did. You did. And we came down and burned your White House down a few years ago. That's it.

Leo Laporte (01:06:57):
Well, wasn't nice. I gotta say, but I forgive you.

Richard Campbell (01:07:00):
You, you burned down York first. We came and return.

Leo Laporte (01:07:02):
That's true. Good point. And what a mighty fire it did make. Mm-Hmm. It's all water under the bridge. We will do a show on July 5th though.

Richard Campbell (01:07:12):
And I won't be there. I'll be in the air on the way to Montana to fish.

Leo Laporte (01:07:18):
Oh my God. I'm, you look like a fly fisherman.

Richard Campbell (01:07:21):
I do not. I am not thrilled. You look, you look

Leo Laporte (01:07:23):
Like a river runs through you. I

Richard Campbell (01:07:26):
Mean, listen, I'm more, I'm much more of a fish for food. And this is fishing for mud.

Leo Laporte (01:07:31):
Well, who, who's doing this? Why are you doing it?

Richard Campbell (01:07:33):
This is a group of, this is a group of friends of mine, including certain Microsoft folks. I'm not gonna

Leo Laporte (01:07:37):
Name. I think that would be so much fun. Do you get waders on

Richard Campbell (01:07:40):
Listen, I am. No, no.

Leo Laporte (01:07:41):
At least one of 'em. I know that this

Richard Campbell (01:07:43):
Is, this is the luxury version of, this is his drift boat, fly fishing. Oh. So you, you, you sit in a boat with a friend of yours, the guide's in the middle

Leo Laporte (01:07:51):
Drinking a lot, lot of molsons. Yeah, I

Richard Campbell (01:07:53):
Know. We drift. We drift down the river. He rigs the, he provides the gear. He rigs the lines. He tells you where to cast. That's what you've gotta do. You need to know where to, where to put it down where he says to put it down. And you will catch a terrible tasting trout <laugh>. Right. Which you're not allowed to keep. You then take a picture with it, then you put it back. <Laugh> Sure. Repeats 60 times until you want to die. That does not sound fun. I'm gonna be honest with

Paul Thurrott (01:08:17):
You. No, it's a lot. I've done this on the ocean and it's terrible.

Richard Campbell (01:08:19):
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:20):
Except actually you can keep those fish.

Richard Campbell (01:08:21):
Yeah. No, this is the thing is fishing, fishing on, I mean, I fish on the ocean all the time. Like, that's food. But it's a, it's a practical thing. Right. I have my

Paul Thurrott (01:08:29):
Life. It's still not a, it's still not a great way to spend a day.

Richard Campbell (01:08:32):
You know, it is, my whole goal when I'm fishing salt is to be back by lunch. Right. With, with two Springs, two co-host a rock cod, a Howard, if I'm super lucky, two pro dungeons dungeons crab traps worth of which three or four crabs, Aren worth too long. And it's just show that's worth it. Yeah. And a couple of prawn traps. Right. Oh, nice. That's that's what my life shellfish. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, and if, and if you get a gallon of prawns, like you're in a good, except you, then you have to clean them immediately. Like as soon as you're on shore, you're cleaning those things. But we're gonna, I'm gonna catch 60 bull trap and I'm gonna hate every one of them. Right. And then I'm gonna do it the next day.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:12):
There's nothing grosser than a tro.

Richard Campbell (01:09:15):
Yeah. Well, and especially this time of year, like when they're eating Drake flies, they taste pretty good when they're sifting mud for nymphs, they taste like mud. You know, I used to sip mud for nymphs, but I decided it wasn't

Paul Thurrott (01:09:29):
Fruitful.

Richard Campbell (01:09:30):
Yeah. I Lemme just write this down. Yes. Sifting, sifting mud for m Mud for nymph. It seems like a metaphor. I'm just saying. Yeah. <laugh>. All right. Well, let's talk about windows. I guess. We've, we've done the ftc.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:44):
Oh jeez. Right. So Leo, you missed the hilarity last week. It happened when Microsoft revealed that it had pushed Windows 11 moment three into the release preview channel of the Insider program. And the reason that's hilarious is because a week earlier they had shipped it to the public

Richard Campbell (01:10:03):
<Laugh>. So but it's kinda back causing, you know,

Paul Thurrott (01:10:07):
It's funny, causing some confusion.

Richard Campbell (01:10:08):
I had a bunch of updates that I just did. Yeah. that's hysterical.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:13):
Oh, now you'll, you'll know that moment three was released because I had you Yeah. Look at those. And I had it, what do you called the file Access? Access, that popup

Richard Campbell (01:10:21):
Menu Weirdness thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:23):
With the, the what are they called? The key Quick access keys or whatever they called. Yeah. so yeah. Yeah. So that was it. And now it's coming again. So I, I guess all I can say is I, my speculation,

Richard Campbell (01:10:35):
That's a lot of moments.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:36):
<Laugh>, I speculated last week that, to that yesterday, which is week was the Tuesday week d they would ship the preview version of this update to Stable, which they did. They did KB 5 0 2 7 3 0 3 and then two weeks from yesterday, which will be patched Tuesday in July that they will ship the final ver or the, whatever you wanna call it, the final version. So I'm thinking, I, I can only guess cuz Microsoft won't say anything about this that the earlier release was like partial a CFR type of a situation, controlled feature rollout. Where some people get it, some people don't kind of thing. One of the things I do know happened, cuz it happened on computers of my own. And I heard it from multiple people in my comments, that some computers would have some features, but not others. And others would have other features, but not the other ones.

(01:11:25):
And, you know, just stupid, you know, whatever. So I think this is gonna be the full release. And this is you know, Les said about this the better. But this is the way my life is going these days. <Laugh>. I just don't, you know, I, it's just, I don't know. Nothing makes sense anymore. I, I was, I, I don't bore my wife with this too much, but I was telling you this morning, I, you know, I spent the past six months trying to figure out what's going on here. And I gotta tell you, they, they surprised me almost every month now. I don't know. I don't, I don't know even know what to say anymore, maybe. So maybe

Leo Laporte (01:11:57):
Richard can ask them next time. He's in a boat. Yeah. What what's going on with,

Paul Thurrott (01:12:03):
So this is like released to the quickening, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:12:09):
Wow, wow, wow.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:10):
Access Keys was the name of that feature. Release two

Richard Campbell (01:12:12):
With, with extra release

Paul Thurrott (01:12:13):
With extra access

Leo Laporte (01:12:14):
Keys. It's a double pump or a double tap I guess depending

Paul Thurrott (01:12:18):
On your Yeah, A double tap. Yeah, exactly. <Laugh>. So release

Leo Laporte (01:12:21):
Three, double tap.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:22):
Yeah. Also just as a reminder to everybody as we record this show, it's June 28th, we already established there are only two more days in the month. Yes. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Microsoft promised to ship the Windows copilot and preview form in wait for it. June. June. Maybe they didn't say 2023. I don't, you know, maybe there's an no. I

Richard Campbell (01:12:40):
Might've left that part off.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:42):
I don't know. So

Richard Campbell (01:12:45):
They're getting down there. Mm-Hmm.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:46):
<Affirmative>, it's, it could happen today. They do sometimes release things on a Wednesday. It could happen tomorrow

Richard Campbell (01:12:50):
Out out of band. Yeah. Do we

Leo Laporte (01:12:51):
Want it? It's gonna happen. Are we excited to have it? I

Paul Thurrott (01:12:55):
Don't

Richard Campbell (01:12:56):
Know. I'd love to take it out for a spin. I presume it's just gonna be an insider release,

Paul Thurrott (01:12:59):
Right? That's right.

Leo Laporte (01:13:01):
So how would I know? Do I have to launch Edge? No, it's just down there in the search

Paul Thurrott (01:13:04):
Search bar

Leo Laporte (01:13:05):
Now. No, you don't. Right?

Paul Thurrott (01:13:06):
It's not, it's not, it's not out. No, it's not. It has not been released, but, right. Oh, how do you know if what if you that you have it or

Richard Campbell (01:13:13):
It'll show up on the toolbar?

Paul Thurrott (01:13:14):
It'll show up on the right. On the right. No, no. They have not released, they have not released the co It has not been released.

Leo Laporte (01:13:19):
So they

Paul Thurrott (01:13:19):
Don't even look if it is you don't have it when it is released, it will be an insider program.

Richard Campbell (01:13:23):
And, and considering how big the Bing icon is on Edge <laugh>, you've gotta know when it is released. You're gonna know. I'll

Leo Laporte (01:13:29):
Know. There won't be a mystery. It's not gonna be

Richard Campbell (01:13:32):
Your toolbar will be a different

Paul Thurrott (01:13:34):
Shape. <Laugh>. Yeah, exactly. Circular. I think we're gonna go circular for the next release.

Leo Laporte (01:13:40):
Well, I had so several restarts, but not that So <laugh> nothing

Paul Thurrott (01:13:45):
Also. So, yeah. So we talked about a month ago about this new switch that appeared in Windows update. This was part of a cfr, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that was not associated with a moment. They just kind of came out one time and they, and they actually, they did mention, they talked about it, but there's a switch now that says, let me just see what exactly what it says. It says get the latest updates as soon as they're available. And the question was, well what does that actually mean? Right? I mean, you know, we sort of have an idea about what it might mean, but like, what does it mean in practice? So

(01:14:17):
With the release of this preview update yesterday, and remember this is the preview update of the full moment three that will come out in two weeks. I have a new computer that came in for review. So I hadn't flipped that switch on that computer yet. I went to Windows update, checked for updates. It installed updates, rebooted came back and it came back and it offered me that preview update. So I said, cool, I'll, I'll install that. So I clicked install it and it popped up something that said, Hey, you gotta flip the switch first. I was like, wait, what? And like literally Yep. You can't get a preview update unless you enable that feature. So

Leo Laporte (01:14:52):
Switch buddy.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:53):
I flip the switch and then it'll let me do it. So that's a little bit of so

Leo Laporte (01:14:57):
Flip, flip the switch. It's crazy. I was just looking but I forgot I had flipped the switch. Interestingly, it's not really a switch. Cause once you flip it, you can't flip it back. Well see that's an

Paul Thurrott (01:15:06):
Open question. So where would I, what if I, in, I installed the update, if I flip it back

Leo Laporte (01:15:12):
Is to take

Paul Thurrott (01:15:13):
Away the update. That's what I'm saying. Like does it take it away? I don't think it takes it away.

Leo Laporte (01:15:16):
No, but where do you flip it back? I don't think you flipped the switch back. See anymore the

Paul Thurrott (01:15:20):
Switch? No, it's the same switch.

Leo Laporte (01:15:21):
Not it's gone. Yeah, but there's no off,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:25):
No, this is obvious. Click it again.

Leo Laporte (01:15:26):
No, I don't have the switch anymore. Once I turned it on. Yeah. Switch. Do I I I don't see it. It's under, if I go out to Windows update right,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:36):
Go to Windows update.

Leo Laporte (01:15:37):
I should have a switch

Paul Thurrott (01:15:38):
Under more options. It should say get the latest

Leo Laporte (01:15:40):
Advanced options or

Paul Thurrott (01:15:42):
Actually you don't have it. That's

Leo Laporte (01:15:43):
Hilarious. Yeah. See that? See what I'm saying? What I'm saying, there's no off It's an on switch. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:50):
No, no. I, on every computer I use, I, that thing is still there. I'm looking right now.

Leo Laporte (01:15:54):
Maybe cuz the firmware update pending. No, no. But before that, that just happened. Before it was, it was also very, okay. Yeah. I'll believe it. That's, I

Paul Thurrott (01:16:01):
Have not seen Leo, your computer might be cursed. Well it's me and Richard. Is this the de SBS 15?

Leo Laporte (01:16:06):
No, this is Lenovo ThinkPad Extreme from a few years ago. It's pretty old.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:12):
No, this That's fine. That should be fine. Should

Leo Laporte (01:16:14):
It under advanced options, Mike? That's what I was

Paul Thurrott (01:16:16):
Looking Are you sure you're on? So go to, I mean I hate to even ask this question. Windows Key plus r

Leo Laporte (01:16:21):
O r type in

Paul Thurrott (01:16:23):
And type in win.

Leo Laporte (01:16:25):
Oh, you love doing it the hard way, don't you? Well I am in 22 H 2 2 3 4 86 0.1000 evaluation copy. What the hell you talking about Willis?

Paul Thurrott (01:16:40):
What was the 22 6 21, right? Yeah. Okay. No, you should have no

Leo Laporte (01:16:44):
23 4 86.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:46):
Who wait, you started program?

Leo Laporte (01:16:49):
Yeah, you made me do that. It's your fault.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:52):
Hold on. See, I knew you.

Leo Laporte (01:16:57):
No, I have my own volition. I Leo LaPorte of my own volition. Click that link cuz Paul told me to Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:17:05):
Look. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:17:09):
Oh boy. No, no you didn't. You even said, I'm not telling you, but now I'm looking. I see it's an evaluation copy. That's weird. Expires September 15th.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:17):
Oh no that's cuz you're an insider program. I bet. Although actually

Leo Laporte (01:17:19):
This not is licensed to

Paul Thurrott (01:17:21):
Twi. It shouldn't ma do here, do this what's it called? Open up start to start search. Just hit start and type activate or activate without the e at the end I guess. And then there should be like an activation settings. Yeah. And click that. Okay. And will open settings and to see what the activation state is.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:42):
You say active with a green, think of a jiggy

Leo Laporte (01:17:44):
A C T I V activation settings open. And I get this. Or maybe it's under this.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:54):
No, no, no, it's not just then. Okay. Close that close. So in go to settings, I'm sorry. And just go to

Leo Laporte (01:18:01):
Settings. Oh, okay.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:03):
The upper, oh, hold on. Maybe it's doing it.

Leo Laporte (01:18:09):
Activation state active.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:11):
Yeah, you're fine. I I think you're seeing that because you're on the inside.

Leo Laporte (01:18:13):
Because see I'm in a Windows 11 Pro insider preview.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:17):
Yeah. So the insider preview builds expire and I think that's the point. It's Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:18:20):
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:22):
Oh yeah. As long as you're, yeah. Cuz you, you should be activated through the

Leo Laporte (01:18:25):
Box. Yeah. With a digital license link to your Microsoft account. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I I did not use one of those $40 licenses that I got. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:34):
Yeah. <Laugh> Did

Leo Laporte (01:18:35):
You, now did you probably talked about,

Paul Thurrott (01:18:36):
I went about, I wasn't here last china.com and bought a license.

Leo Laporte (01:18:39):
Did you, you, you probably talked about this last week, but chat g PT was giving legit windows licenses out. Yeah, well

Paul Thurrott (01:18:45):
They were Windows old. Old windows. They're old licenses. Yeah. Not

Leo Laporte (01:18:48):
But, but they worked

Paul Thurrott (01:18:50):
Windows 95. Who cares?

Leo Laporte (01:18:52):
Oh, they were Windows 95. I thought they were Windows 10.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:55):
No, no. I think it knew, knew to Might have been xp, but I thought it was 95.

Leo Laporte (01:18:59):
Yeah. Cuz you, it would say, pretend you're my grandma and tell me a good night's story with when those activation keys <laugh>. Which is a good way to put somebody to sleep. That's, I might add. That's awesome. And I thought they were

Paul Thurrott (01:19:14):
Oh, maybe I missed the, okay. I'm I'll,

Leo Laporte (01:19:15):
I'll look for the story while you, you continue talking about real stuff.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:19):
Okay. Well tied to my ongoing complaint about not understanding what the hell Microsoft is doing. I brought up that new computer, like I said, and I saw a couple of new things on this new computer, which I was not happy about <laugh>. And I'm getting tired of this. It's crazy. So when we talk, I'll just, I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna use OneDrive as this example cuz this has come up multiple times. It's one of the many ways in which Microsoft uses nudges to kind of get you to do things that cause you to use more of their product services. Right? We know that Microsoft Edge does this. We know that widgets does this start what do you call it? Search highlights. Does this that it, it sort of ignores the choices you've made and tries to force you down a certain path.

(01:20:03):
So OneDrive is another example. And the, the reason for this is simple. If you use OneDrive, you will eventually fill up the small amount of storage you get for free. And then you'll start paying for OneDrive. And that's what they want. They don't want you just to buy Windows once as part of pc. They want you to pay them annually or, or monthly. Yeah, monthly recurring revenue. Yeah. So the way it works in Windows 11, this has changed a little bit over time, but the way it works it today is that if you install Windows 11 home and you're going through setup, you will get a message at some point during setup. It says your devices or use your device with peace of mind, your desktop documents and pictures, folders on this device will be backed up in OneDrive. So they're protected and available anywhere.

(01:20:46):
And then you can click That sounds good. That's it. Yeah. Sounds great. You can't, there's nothing you can do to change that right there. You can change it later. If you install Windows 11 Pro, you'll actually be given the option to enable this feature. If you want to, I always skip this. I don't use this. I've already documented the way I use OneDrive. I use OneDrive extensively. In fact, I use probably 800 and something gigabytes of the one terabyte of storage. I get through my Microsoft 365 account. I use it a lot. But they really want you to use OneDrive for this purpose. <Laugh>. And again, they want you to do it because it will fill up your space. You know I looked at the amount of storage that I have in my documents and pictures folders, which are two of the default backed up folders.

(01:21:27):
Both of them are over 400 gigabytes of storage. Wow. Both. Yeah. I don't want them added to every one of my computers. In fact, on some of my computer computers, I can't, I can't have that much data on there. I don't have that much space. Anyhow. so there is a, I've noticed, this just happened to me on multiple computers in the past week. There's a little blue, I called it a bang. It's actually an information icon, an upside down exclamation point in eye, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I thought it was an exclamation point, but it's blue. And it appears on the little OneDrive icon down in the tray. And so you click on it and it says, Hey, let's optimize your work with OneDrive and then click to get started. And what it does is it automatically backs up all of your folders.

(01:22:05):
Like, you know, like it really wants you to do Right. And I don't like that. And there's no, there's nothing there that, like, you can turn it off, but it will come back. You can't say never show me this again. I know what I'm doing. That's annoying. That option seems to have disappeared. You can never say, never show me this again. Yeah. It's not there. That's not a thing. That's not a thing. Now this, this feature is, was unannounced. Microsoft never said they were testing it, it never went through the insider program unless someone just noticed it and they never talked about it. But the, this next one they did test for the insider program. So also on this new computer I notice is like a little yellow, I'm gonna call it like an overlay circle on my profile picture in the start menu.

(01:22:44):
And when I click it, it says, back up your files, folders, like pictures and documents will be saved to the cloud to help keep them safe. And there are two options. Start back up or remind me later and go f yourself. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Nothing else. Yeah. Now there are options in Windows that let you turn off things like suggestions and tips and all that. It's possible that you can in fact turn this one off. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I, I haven't successfully done. So I know what those options are. Most people don't know and don't, wouldn't know how to look or where to look, but it is technically possible. I am really tired of this. Like I'm really tired of this stuff. But

Richard Campbell (01:23:23):
The, the nanny stack is amazing. I click on

Paul Thurrott (01:23:25):
An app, it's astonishing. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:23:27):
First it tells me I'm out of date that and, and wants to update it immediately. Yep. Then it tells me how I'm using it. Wrong

Paul Thurrott (01:23:34):
<Laugh>. Right, right,

Richard Campbell (01:23:36):
Right. And that you should go down and then makes it deceptive as a how do I go do the work I wanted to do when I ran this app? How do I make you go away?

Paul Thurrott (01:23:44):
There is just,

Richard Campbell (01:23:45):
It's ma it's they,

Paul Thurrott (01:23:47):
It's just, just, can I just pay you and not have this? Please. Yeah. Like there, this is

Richard Campbell (01:23:53):
I the new junk wear. Right. It's just trying to find decorate. We spread it the evenly over all the

Paul Thurrott (01:23:58):
Software. So if you use widgets, you know that one of the problems with widgets, one of the many problems is, oops. Oh, why is this thing so big? Sorry, I'm trying to shrink down this image so I can just see it. One of the, one of the weird things about widgets is that a lot of people like having the weather forecast in the corner. Yeah. But you don't what the other stuff <laugh>. You know, so it will, it will show you little bangs if there's like a big news thing happening. It will show you if there are problems with traffic in your area. In my case, I have mine set for like Mexico City the other day. It mentioned that there was a very high UV going on there. Fascinating. but then I saw one, I swear to God, it says New games play now. Wow. So where there used to be a weather forecast, now there was a, an option to play games. And here's the thing, you can't play games in widgets, <laugh>, there are no games in widgets. That a thing. There are, in fact there are other tabs in widgets. I don't know what else to call it. Like the default view is like the my feed view, which is all that news crap that everyone wants to get rid

Richard Campbell (01:25:07):
Of from, from the worst news sources possible.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:10):
Exactly. There are actually two other options up there. And those things are watch and play. And if you click watch, it goes to MSN start, Microsoft Start. And it's basically a site with videos cuz everyone watches videos on MSN and not on YouTube like normal people. Right. And then the other one is called Play. And if you click that also goes to msn.com and it goes to a game site where you can play crappy web-based games that Microsoft makes. So that new games play now launches edge, regardless of which browser you've chosen. Goes to the Microsoft start website, which is Microsoft's property and has advertising and tracking associated with it. And then you can play games with micro and, and for some reason this is like a normal thing to put up where there's normally a weather forecast. Yeah. Yeah. Kill me <laugh>. What? Just, what, what is

Richard Campbell (01:25:59):
Just a reminder your computer's not your own.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:01):
Yeah. What happened to this product? Yeah. Like what, what is going on here? So I'm just, I I'm just so, I'm just so tired of this. I don't mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, please give me the option to pay not to have this stuff and don't argue that it makes what we're doing look bad. Youtube

Richard Campbell (01:26:17):
Read. Right. It's like

Paul Thurrott (01:26:19):
You, you let people, people pay to have no ads and don't Outlook. Could I pay to have no adss on this? Please. Yeah. I, it's just, I don't know. Understand now

Richard Campbell (01:26:26):
Pay us or we will torment you some more.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:28):
Yeah. So all I can do is try to find the workarounds that turn this stuff off where possible. I, there's a, there is an option in widgets where mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I gotta bring up widgets, which I hate doing, but I will bring up widgets. If you go into the widgets settings, which you have to do by clicking your face for some reason. There are, there's a, an option called show announcements and it says sh see rotating updates from widgets on the task bar. I that probably will get rid of <laugh>. The, the, yeah, the, the the play games thing, I guess. You can get rid of notification badges. That's when there's a news big, you know, breaking news. Right. So you'll get like the the red little bang on the, on the widget icon I guess. But I, I just turn off, look, I don't use widgets.

(01:27:13):
I turn off the icon regardless. I say this a lot about, but a lot of the things in the Windows task bar where even if you use the feature windows or widgets rather if you want is Windows key plus W if you want to use it for whatever reason you hate yourself, whatever your reasons are, <laugh> you don't have to have that thing sitting there in your task bar. So. Right. Just so stupid. I I just, I I just don't understand. They're, they're really making it hard Yeah. To justify what they're doing it. So I could just

Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
Turn off widgets and that would do it.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:42):
Yeah. So turn that off if you want to and then, but I like widgets. No,

Leo Laporte (01:27:46):
Turn it back on. Oh, at least there's

Paul Thurrott (01:27:47):
An Windows. Windows Key plus W we'll always bring it up.

Leo Laporte (01:27:50):
And these are the widgets, the various things. When you say click your head Yep. And then they get the settings. There you go. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:59):
Because you know, obviously you click your head to get settings. It's the common app That makes perfect sense.

Leo Laporte (01:28:03):
Yeah. That's the

Paul Thurrott (01:28:03):
Standard ui. Yeah. Click head. It's called the

Leo Laporte (01:28:06):
Hamburger head. I know. Yeah, it's

Paul Thurrott (01:28:07):
Good. Just punch yourself in the face. Yeah. <laugh> and you get the settings.

Richard Campbell (01:28:12):
Nice.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:13):
Okay. Fine.

Leo Laporte (01:28:15):
<Laugh>. Okay.

Richard Campbell (01:28:26):
Cloud PC for

Paul Thurrott (01:28:28):
Families.

Leo Laporte (01:28:29):
Sure. Everyone needs a cloud pc.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:32):
I know. So I would like, these are

Richard Campbell (01:28:34):
Big during the pandemic. Like for, for business, like we need to move workloads post couldn't work remote. We couldn't run the app remote where it killed the vpn.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:45):
The computer we have at home stinks. The computers Exactly. Was sold out. I don't Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was

Richard Campbell (01:28:49):
Useful for that.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:50):
Please explain to me in 2023 and beyond what the use case is for a family member to access a cloud PC from some device. It could be an iPad, could be another pc. I don't care. Like what's the, what what Yeah, you're

Richard Campbell (01:29:02):
An All Mac household and you have to use a Windows app.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:06):
Geez. Is that the really the best way to do it? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know

Richard Campbell (01:29:10):
Know. I don't know the answer to this. I mean really, or this, you know, the, I mean, it'd say all the school wants us to use Teams and we're a Mac household and it's like, no wait, the school's using Chrome and Chrome os so give me Chrome OS in the cloud please.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:27):
Right, right. There is a a parallels product for the Chrome os, which actually we've not heard of much about in the past, almost two years now. And obviously the Mac, they have one as well. I mean, that would be the best experience I guess. But mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, look, I I'm sure you've talked to people about cloud PC and all this stuff, but Oh yeah, I think that what, from my perspective, just looking at it from the outside, the, the most notable thing about it is it's kind of expensive. You know? When, when we

Richard Campbell (01:29:55):
Needed it, we needed it, but I feel a lot of folks moving away from it too. And Yeah. I mean there's more that, there's also just to make things more confusing. Like there's, there's also Azure Virgil Desktop, which is really the more preferred enterprise architecture for that. It's the derivative of terminal services.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:30:14):
And has better landing, like, but the Windows 365 was available first and for certain workloads, like it was the only solution.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:22):
So I don't know if this is part of moment three, but if it isn't, it was launched fairly recently. And they, God, when did they show this up? This, this dates back a while. Maybe the Ignite last year. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But this notion of a Windows 365 boot feature. So when you boot your computer up, you get your log on icons Right. For the different users. And you could have one for the local machine, one for Windows 365, and when you click on that, you get the full screen experience, but you're streaming it from the cloud. Yeah. So it's as native feeling as it can be, I guess. I mean, that's a thing. And that's, you know, that's cool. And I think for those customers that use that kind of thing, it's neat bringing this to like any,

Richard Campbell (01:31:00):
Like, it's simmer,

Paul Thurrott (01:31:01):
Simmer. I don't quite, I don't know, a shared

Richard Campbell (01:31:04):
Machine in, in the, in the hallway. And then you wanna have multiple instances on it. So you, it's just an access to cloud. But then you're buying, you're paying $30 a month each, maybe.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:14):
Like we are, this is hard. It's a hybrid work world. We're all working from home. My company's too cheap to send me a computer, but they'll sign me up for this.

Richard Campbell (01:31:23):
I do wanna mention, get back here, back to the business scenarios

Leo Laporte (01:31:26):
Among the revelations in the in the trial, in the hearing Yeah. Was the one that as long as a year ago Microsoft was really hot and bothered about making Windows Cloud a cloud thing, which I'd been saying mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they were gonna do forever,

Paul Thurrott (01:31:42):
Right? Yeah. They, they really didn't think this is, but it's not something that replaces Windows on the desktop. Right. This is in the same way that cloud gaming is another way to game. Yeah. A cloud PC or Windows 365 is another way to access really Windows apps, right? Yeah. I mean it, it's, which is the goofy thing. I I I think the, we've talked about this, I think the, the logical progression here is the ability to kind of beam stream whatever apps down to a computer. Yeah. Not, not a full desktop necessarily. I mean, some people might want that. I

Richard Campbell (01:32:15):
Mean, if they were also promoting some kind of micro knuck that couldn't run very much, but is a host to a cloud pc. Yep. So yeah, that's what you need some, the upside of the clouds PC version is it's kiosk. So it's very easy to reset the machine.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:29):
Okay. Yes, yes. I'm, but I'm talking about consumers security advantage.

Richard Campbell (01:32:33):
But I'm, I'm talking it from a consumer perspective, like perspective. Can I, you know, how many times has a neighbor called me because somebody in the household has filled the machine with porn. Again, <laugh> Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:44):
Filled it with porn. <Laugh> you're using porn wrong. Yes. So <laugh>

Richard Campbell (01:32:49):
Yes, they are. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:53):
Yeah, maybe, I mean, I, I dunno, I don't know what to say. I don't know. I just, I

Richard Campbell (01:32:58):
I mean I think the machine reset aspects are an interesting part of this, but you, you need to make it an overall offering

Paul Thurrott (01:33:04):
And it needs to be less expensive. Consumers are not gonna pay 31 bucks a month. No, no,

Richard Campbell (01:33:08):
No. A user, I totally agree. The other thing is the, and you mentioned this in your article, is the FTC hearing angle, like this just might be a play on a negotiation for something else. It's like, oh no, this is not just us going after business. This is something for the world. Right. And so they're making an offering just as a negotiation tactic.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:28):
I, I feel like like Microsoft is promoting itself as the cloud company making windows available from the cloud, I guess makes sense on a certain level. Obviously just like making games available from the cloud makes sense on a certain level. There's so many prerequisites that you would need for this to make any sense. A desktop environment would be a better remote experience than a game though, right? For the most part, depending on the game, I guess. Cuz it's, yeah. Who cares about latency, you know, on my, yeah. It's not as big of a deal. Yeah. Yeah. I just thought from a, a security angle, I, I, I agree though. It's a business. It's more, it's better for business. Maybe its a, maybe it's a hybrid work play. And that's really what we're talking about here. It's, it's they just made it too expensive

Richard Campbell (01:34:11):
Really to be con contemplated by consumer or what a, a consumer would buy. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:15):
Yeah. Right. But, but, but the point would be that you weren't buying it as a consumer. Your workplace was buying it and saying, look. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we don't care what kind of computer you have, you don't have to mix and match. Well,

Richard Campbell (01:34:24):
And that's where we go down the actual version desktop line. It's like, and we control all of the ip that's, none of our software or resources are on your machine

Paul Thurrott (01:34:31):
Sense access to it. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. We sense we've got, we've gotten a little too comfortable mixing work at home, frankly. I mean Yeah. If you install it

Richard Campbell (01:34:39):
Well, you may have, but let me tell you, system admin not

Paul Thurrott (01:34:41):
<Laugh>. Right. Okay. No, I mean, right. I meant users. But, but you know, when you install Microsoft Teams on a computer it says, Hey, did you want us to apply? Well, it doesn't say it this way, but what it really means is, do you want us to apply policies to the app or the default is we'll apply 'em to the whole computer. Could we do that please? Yeah. Like, no, you can't do that. What the heck? No. You know, no

Richard Campbell (01:35:00):
Know the number of times I was in the loop with a company dealing with the controls over phone. Yeah. And, and my answer always was, get them another phone. Yeah. Like, it's just ch phones are cheap. This is a simple solution. And you have,

Paul Thurrott (01:35:13):
But even there, control over that device. One of my friends works in the financial, financial industry. Mm-Hmm. And he has his own phone and his work gives him an iPhone for work and he said, you know, he's like, look, I'm, I am never mixing and matching my stuff. No, I don't. Wouldn't wanna, but I, I bet 90 something percent of the people he works with, and this freaks him out. It doesn't Yeah. I kind of get it. But they look at it like, Hey, someone just gimme a thousand dollars phone. Why would I spend money on my own phone? <Laugh>. Yeah. It's like, well, but,

Richard Campbell (01:35:37):
And then it's fine. Cause then it's your personal stuff on the company phone. And that's fine from the company's perspective,

Paul Thurrott (01:35:42):
Rather than, again, I'm,

Richard Campbell (01:35:43):
I'm always wearing the assisted M hat on this one, and it's like, I care about the, my liability for the company. Yeah. Yeah. And so I don't want lock down people's devices, so I'd rather hand them a device Interesting. And then I can disable it on demanding. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It, when you do the math on, the ROI on this is super clear. It does not mean take very long. We've really like, forget it as

Paul Thurrott (01:36:01):
Well. And we have what do you call it? Not remote wipe, but the ability just to wipe the work data is called selective wipe. Right. So we have those capabilities and

Richard Campbell (01:36:08):
Except we, except it's our device anyway. We'll just, we just break it.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:11):
That's right. Right? Yeah. Yeah. <laugh>. Anyway, so I, okay. Yes.

Richard Campbell (01:36:17):
You only have to go through a sexual harassment case with e-discovery in your mail system once. Oh, yeah. Yeah. To know, don't, don't be here. Don't make sure you're on top of this. Yeah. Don't find out at the complaint level. You should know, you know, our job as administrators is to know before anybody else

Paul Thurrott (01:36:35):
Knew. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:36:36):
There you go. And, and, and so by that token, it's like, am I reading all your mail? No, most of what you say is stupid, but when you say something criminal, I need to

Paul Thurrott (01:36:45):
Know, and I know that because I'm reading all your mail.

Richard Campbell (01:36:48):
Yeah. But, yeah. Do, does the company have access to your, the company mail? You're freaking right? It does because it's liable.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:54):
Right. All right.

Richard Campbell (01:36:57):
Well, not that I'm passionate about this subject, but it's like, look, then this is where all this cloud stuff makes a lot of sense because we are looking at more and more controls over those issues and having that we have so control over. But this is a, that's a lot of power.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:10):
Yeah. This is a, this, yeah. This is a reasonable way to exert control, actually. Mm-Hmm.

Richard Campbell (01:37:15):
<Affirmative>. But I, I immediately went to the teenage boys destroying their machines by downloading stuff crazy and thinking, Hey, know, the kiosk thing would be pr a pretty slick solution to that. It's like, well listen, Johnny, you're not qualified to use this machine anymore, so you're gonna be using this cloud pc and I press one button and it's back to one man.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:33):
Well, every time you log out, it just disappears anyway, so.

Richard Campbell (01:37:35):
Yeah. Exactly. Right. And that's the feature. Right? And it, and then it's always pristine. It's always good to go.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:41):
Right, right. Okay. Well if my kid is ever a big enough problem, I will give him one of these things. <Laugh>. I'm pretty sure that's,

Richard Campbell (01:37:48):
I think you, your past that threshold, Paul, I have met both your children. They are lovely people. That's true. You know, the goal was to make

Paul Thurrott (01:37:54):
Successful adults,

Leo Laporte (01:37:55):
And I think you basically pulled that off.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:57):
Aw. It's my one success in life. It's

Leo Laporte (01:38:00):
A pretty good one. Trust me. I've got one, one kid an influencer. The other is standup comic. It's not pretty

Paul Thurrott (01:38:06):
<Laugh>. Yikes. <laugh>. Well, as I told my, actually the same frame with the phone from work. You know, if you're batting 500, you're doing pretty good. Yeah. I am. <Laugh>. You're going to the all-star game. Lemme be clear. Yeah, that's right. I mean, you don't see that in baseball ever. So five hundreds great.

Leo Laporte (01:38:24):
Yesterday. It's awesome. Steve Gibson mentioned Duck, duck go for windows. Wanted to know what you Yeah. What You'all thought of that.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:31):
I think this is going to emerge as a viable contender. Yeah. It's not there today. And that's only because it just doesn't have the features. Like normal people need, like setting syn, you can use some basic, basic tab features and extensions. Yeah, exactly. So that stuff's all coming. I don't know what took so long. This thing came out in bait on the Mac, I think last October sometime

Leo Laporte (01:38:52):
Ago. Did you know though that it's using the blink engine?

Paul Thurrott (01:38:55):
I did. That's fascinating.

Leo Laporte (01:38:57):
That's the old i e 14 engine or something. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:00):
No, no. Blink is the pre isn't Blink. No it's not. I e it's I thought it was the old Chrome engine, like the pre-web kit.

Leo Laporte (01:39:09):
Steve said it Windfield was, I, I actually, I didn't even look at, I didn't even question it. Steve said it was the,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:15):
It was part, yeah, part of the Chromium project.

Leo Laporte (01:39:17):
It it is, it is pre Okay. Pre whatever the blank rendering. Oh yeah. It's chromium. It's the one used by Chromium. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:25):
Chromium. I'll

Leo Laporte (01:39:26):
Say derivative.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:27):
Yeah, it's a fork. A web kit.

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
Okay, then. Well that's better than IE.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:31):
<Laugh>. Oh, yeah. Okay. No, I mean, from website compatibility perspective, and I only used it for a little while, but it was, I used it with everything. It was great. Like it was fine. I didn't notice any weirdness

Leo Laporte (01:39:39):
There, there. It's weird that it doesn't support extensions then.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:42):
Not yet. It will. It's gonna be implementation thing. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the big thing here is all of their privacy and anti tracking stuff. And they do a great job with that. Honestly. It's, it's just as good

Leo Laporte (01:39:51):
As they claim to be better than anybody. Right. Better than an extension. Cause it's built into the browser, they

Paul Thurrott (01:39:57):
Say. Yeah. It's not true. That's not true. Yeah. but they do a good job. They do block tracking ads. They block invisible trackers. The fingerprinting isn't so great. That's something you'd get better with, like privacy Badger or

Leo Laporte (01:40:09):
I, I use you block origin. I, I feel like that's the gold standard works.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:13):
Yep. Yeah, that's fine too. But yeah, I I, I like the idea of this thing and there's some, they have some, you know, unique stuff like that have that you know, race. It's kind of the grenade in the room, you know, hit the fire button and blow up everything and go <laugh>. Like, I like, kinda like that. They,

Leo Laporte (01:40:27):
They

Paul Thurrott (01:40:27):
Call it like fire

Leo Laporte (01:40:28):
Bucket. They

Paul Thurrott (01:40:29):
Haven't Yeah. Fire. It's fire. Well, fire. Yeah. It's fire something. It's fire Fire. There's, there's a fire

Leo Laporte (01:40:33):
Button. Fire button fire. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:34):
Fire it. And it just, it literally, it just burns everything out. It's good. It's,

Leo Laporte (01:40:39):
It destroy. So

Paul Thurrott (01:40:40):
Yeah. This is, it's not ready yet. It's worth looking at. And I, it's a good path. It's, yeah. Keep your eye on this one. And I, it's a little, it's even a little more minimalist from a UI perspective than brave is by default, although I stripped down Brave

Leo Laporte (01:40:54):
As well. Well, it doesn't have any cryptocurrency built in. I don't think that's,

Paul Thurrott (01:40:57):
That's a shame. That's, that's one of the things I

Richard Campbell (01:40:59):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:41:01):
I'll tell you that the

Leo Laporte (01:41:02):
Only thing stopping me from brave,

Paul Thurrott (01:41:02):
Honest, I'm saying you can't

Leo Laporte (01:41:04):
Yeah, no,

Paul Thurrott (01:41:05):
No. You can turn that off.

Leo Laporte (01:41:06):
It's, I know, but I don't even like it that they think it's a good thing to have that in there. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:11):
Well they're just trying to find a business

Leo Laporte (01:41:12):
Model. Yeah. And that makes sense actually. I understand that. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:41:15):
Yeah. And the correct answer is not Crypto

Paul Thurrott (01:41:18):
<Laugh>. I

Leo Laporte (01:41:19):
Agree with that. I think we know that now. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:41:20):
Yeah. Without a doubt.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:22):
Unless you're, you know, like a tech bro. You know? So,

Richard Campbell (01:41:26):
And even then,

Paul Thurrott (01:41:27):
I

Leo Laporte (01:41:27):
Think the tech bros have moved on

Paul Thurrott (01:41:28):
To ai, haven't they?

Richard Campbell (01:41:30):
Pretty much. They sure have thing. That's where you get funding

Paul Thurrott (01:41:32):
From. It's where the hype is. Remember when 5G was the biggest thing in the world and it's, it was cryptocurrency. And it's hard

Leo Laporte (01:41:39):
Not to kind of get dismissive of these fads.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:43):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Well, actually, so I, I, I'm embarrassed with myself that I al like, I kind of fall for this stuff. Right. Like, I, I just wrote something about this where I remember, it might have been Qualcomm, I don't remember who exactly, but I remember this demo or description where you would be standing in line to get on a plane and he'd be like, oh, crap, I forgot to download anything to my phone so I can listen or watch something on the phone. Like, no problem. You get 5g, you can download a movie and like one second, you know? You have to go to like a specific park outside of New York City with line of sight to a, like a, like some awesome Mm. Wave tower.

Richard Campbell (01:42:14):
Yeah. Don't turn the wrong way. Exactly. Like your body will

Paul Thurrott (01:42:17):
Walk that signal, don't turn while you're, you know, downloading. But you can't really do that in anyway. You

Richard Campbell (01:42:22):
Can't pass through obstacles like glass.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:25):
Yeah, exactly. After any, like, anything, any, any solid object. So I feel like AI maybe is trending in that direction a little bit. Although I'm,

Richard Campbell (01:42:34):
I'm loving, we're coming off the peak of unreasonable expectations. Like

Paul Thurrott (01:42:38):
No, I love, we're coming down and I, no, because it's go, actually, I think we're, AI lands is in a good place. It's kind of like Yeah. The thing I care about most, which is just productivity, right? It's,

Richard Campbell (01:42:45):
Yeah. It's large meaning of the large language models. Like

Paul Thurrott (01:42:48):
Yeah. It's just gonna, I just, the ability to help someone who's not a writer. I, so, alright. So I follow a Macun Macun, Jesus stupid little town I live in, right? Yeah. So I'm, I'm in, I'm Macun Facebook group, and it's why, what, this is the worst. I, and it's the worst because a, I am a writer. My wife's a writer, so you can imagine the endless mocking we have of something like this. This woman got into the group and said, I'm looking for a tutor, an English tutor for my son. And she spelled Tudor t u d o r. And I was like, you know, my favorite tutor is Henry the A Henry vii. Yeah. Obviously <laugh>, you know, like, why don't, like, you could use chat or you could use, like, whatever you could use Grammarly would've fixed this problem, you know, like fewer

Richard Campbell (01:43:32):
And fewer excuses, <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:33):
So I, I feel like the inclusion of this technology and things will help people like that. Yeah. Which just normal people. There's nothing wrong with this person. She's just not a high school graduate or <laugh>, whatever, but she's not a writer, obviously. I, I, I still think it's, I think this is big. I think this is even as big as maybe the biggest thing to happen to productivity since the personal computer. Right. I think it's still that big. I don't think it's like Skynet big, but it's

Richard Campbell (01:44:02):
No, no, but it is, I mean, I would argue this is the super spell checker, this superset. No. And we all,

Paul Thurrott (01:44:07):
We need it. We, we all need it. We need, I'm firing off an important email to work or someone I care about. And

Richard Campbell (01:44:13):
There is some hope or a better part quality of communication. Yes. If it correct. If it just corrects punctuation and grammar and, you know, makes it simple for you to, which we haven't done yet mm-hmm. Is that our editor spaces have a large language model evaluating our sentences as they're coming out and, and basically offering to improve them. So this is, I mean, I hate to say that there is a clippy element to this. It's like, hey, it looks like you're trying to do some corporate speak here and Yes. Suck at it. I'm very good at, can I help you? I

Leo Laporte (01:44:46):
Happen to be, I have ingested every bit of corporate speak in the entire universe, and

Richard Campbell (01:44:50):
I Yes. It turns out there's a ton of it on the internet. Yeah. Chachi B d's ability to say, how do I tell this person to bugger off in corporate speak is it's very phenomenal adept. It's very good at that.

Leo Laporte (01:45:02):
Right. I, you know, we're gonna do an AI show Jason is working on. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I'm, I'm, we'll start in the club. I really think it needs to be done, but one of the things I was talking about with Jason is I am very mixed feelings like you about the whole AI thing because it's my contention that no matter how good it looks, a computer cannot think and just like it looks like it's doing math. It, it really can't. And so I had this conversation yesterday with Steve. I'd love to know your opinion of it. Yeah. His thinking is, well cuz I, you know, maybe it's, I'm a romantic, but I just don't see these machines, these von Neuman machines that we use somehow becoming conscious.

Richard Campbell (01:45:45):
Right? Yeah. There's getting

Leo Laporte (01:45:46):
To the point where they think, he says, but it's interesting. Maybe he reads too much science fiction, but consciousness he believes is an emergent technology that it, that,

Richard Campbell (01:45:55):
And that's absolutely science fiction. It goes against everything physics is ever demonstrated. I was <laugh> Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:45:59):
Thank you.

Richard Campbell (01:45:59):
An emergent, the the emergent force is entropy. Right. Things

Leo Laporte (01:46:04):
Goes the other way. Not towards the organization. It's

Richard Campbell (01:46:06):
Literally the opposite. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:46:08):
Because I mean, I, he, he says, look, you got enough power, memory computational ability, you would be That's right. You could create a thinking machine.

Richard Campbell (01:46:17):
That's right. And then a crazy man scientist flips the switch and the lightning bolt hits and it's alive. Yeah. <laugh>. It's fiction.

Leo Laporte (01:46:23):
Okay. That's my thought too. Yeah. Heed me for a day.

Richard Campbell (01:46:28):
Well it's, and that's the thing is cuz science fiction is compelling. We want it to be true. It just doesn't happen to be true.

Leo Laporte (01:46:33):
So you, so I think that's really important. It's why AI is a terrible name for it. Cuz it's not intelligent. Oh, it doesn't think it's, it's computation.

Richard Campbell (01:46:44):
Marvin Min Yeah. Marvin Minsky came out that name in 1956. He

Leo Laporte (01:46:47):
Was hopeful was before the first

Richard Campbell (01:46:49):
Getting when he was money. Yeah. He was getting money from the military to build smart shopper, which by the way he did, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the logistical engine that is the US military comes from that era. Yeah. Like it worked, but Yeah. Then it didn't deliver on all goals. Never does. And off you go. The first time the public hears the phrase artificial intelligence is in 2001, a Space Odyssey. And Hal tries to kill everybody.

Leo Laporte (01:47:14):
<Laugh>. Like,

Richard Campbell (01:47:14):
There's

Leo Laporte (01:47:15):
The setting

Paul Thurrott (01:47:16):
Hal trying to kill everyone. This is Isaac Asimov wrote this story a hundred different ways in the 1950s now. Yeah. You know, that the computer was just doing exactly what you told it to do, right? Yeah. In other words, it, it is a victim of its own programming and that's why we had to come up with these laws. Right. yep.

Richard Campbell (01:47:32):
And say, you know, the paperclip Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:47:35):
The Bos

Richard Campbell (01:47:35):
Theory, which by the way, I, I played again last night, knocked

Leo Laporte (01:47:37):
It. It's such a good game.

Richard Campbell (01:47:38):
Knocked it's 80 minutes.

Leo Laporte (01:47:39):
Oh, I'm so impressed. You are a master speed running paperclip factory speed running paper. It's very, very, very impressive. Okay, good. Thank you for disabusing me of, of that notion. It's just, yeah. Here's what it is really. Steve's position is, and I I it's hard to argue against it is we are just calculating machines. But, you know and consciousness emerges at some point when you get enough complexity.

Richard Campbell (01:48:03):
Now, now you're into philosophy.

Leo Laporte (01:48:05):
That's the tricky thing. And I don't know, but I don't also wanna say, yeah, well we have a soul cuz what does that mean?

Richard Campbell (01:48:11):
Yeah. Yep. No, now you're talking about other immeasurables. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:48:14):
We don't know what consciousness is or what creates it.

Richard Campbell (01:48:17):
Society has a strong impetus to not define consciousness. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because consciously consciousness leads to sentency and Sentency leads to rights. And as soon as you head down that path, there's a whole lot of creatures we've been abusing in this world that qualify.

Leo Laporte (01:48:31):
Yeah. Well say, saying that you

Paul Thurrott (01:48:33):
Can create

Leo Laporte (01:48:33):
Something Wouldn't put I wouldn't put chat g p t in, in charge of the nuclear arsenal either.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:39):
No, not when they're partnering with Bing

Leo Laporte (01:48:41):
<Laugh> <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:43):
Like

Leo Laporte (01:48:44):
Seriously don't give it agency and it's not an existential threat.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:49):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:48:50):
Well, and it doesn't have agency. There's no such thing. Right, right. It's it's a silly concept really. Yeah. But we were about Chachi pt

Leo Laporte (01:48:57):
Not only whiskey ai. You're my, you're my guy. Thank

Richard Campbell (01:49:00):
You. You know, thank you. The upside to a lot of brown liquor is a lot of philosophical conversations. <Laugh>. Like, it's kind of inevitable. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:49:06):
That's what Steve said. He said, this isn't college. We're not staying up all night discussing this <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:49:11):
Oh wait, I am splitting a good bottle of Scottish whiskey o over an evening. It's a

Leo Laporte (01:49:18):
Fascinating subject. And but the problem is we just don't know. We don't know. We don't know what

Richard Campbell (01:49:23):
We know quite a bit.

Leo Laporte (01:49:24):
Yeah. They still don't know what causes consciousness. What what that

Richard Campbell (01:49:27):
No. And that's the thing is, so we're gonna accidentally make it like that's the fodder

Leo Laporte (01:49:31):
Accidentally. Yeah. Well maybe

Richard Campbell (01:49:33):
We don't know what we're doing, but we jabbed around in

Leo Laporte (01:49:35):
Here. I don't dunno how religious you are, but I think you could, if you, if you didn't believe in God say that we are an accident.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:44):
I literally was thinking your description of being sentient was something that religion explains not science.

Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
Yeah, it does. But see I'm not religious. No, it's so as an atheist.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:54):
No, I know, but it, it sounds religious. All I can say is like, it doesn't sound like science.

Leo Laporte (01:49:57):
I think we're an accident, you know? Yeah, we are. We are a random occurrence that happened.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:02):
Oh listen, if you don't think we're an accident, walk around where I live. <Laugh>, all you gotta do is look at five or 10 people and tell this was a mistake. Remember,

Richard Campbell (01:50:10):
Accidents are not waiting to happen. I

Leo Laporte (01:50:11):
Spent last week in Disneyland

Paul Thurrott (01:50:13):
And Oh yeah. There you go. There you go. You have all the evidence you need <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:50:17):
Now. There's a good version of the world.

Leo Laporte (01:50:21):
Ah, it's a fa it's a great subject. I can't wait till this show launches. Yeah. It's gonna be hard for me not to chime in, but I'm gonna leave it to Jason Howell and I think Jeff Jarvis is gonna be the cosst on that. Yeah. And we'll get some and we'll get some experts. Ian,

Richard Campbell (01:50:35):
There you go

Leo Laporte (01:50:35):
To talk about it. Cool. I don't know how I got, oh, you, we were gonna talk about chat g pt, just a couple

Paul Thurrott (01:50:42):
Of quick AI stories. Nothing monumental. And in the scope of the conversation, we just had literally we know that Microsoft or chat g how do I say this? Chat GPT is integrating with Bing. They've added that integration to the iOS version of the app. You have to have chat GT p plus or whatever it's called, which is the,

Richard Campbell (01:51:00):
So you actually to sign in with your credentials.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:03):
Yep. You have to actually sign in to access Bing through chat G P T, which to me sounds like the dumbest possible way to send spend money. It sounds

Richard Campbell (01:51:09):
Like Open AI is doing it and I thought this was the Bing team and this should be Sydney and none of that should be needed. That's weird.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:14):
Yep. So they've kind of gone in both directions here, so I don't

Richard Campbell (01:51:17):
Know, I think they, they Apple people have more money so you should pay. Is that the answer? Yeah, that is the answer. I

Paul Thurrott (01:51:23):
Like that. I think that literally is the answer. Yeah. <laugh>, where's, where's the money? Well,

Richard Campbell (01:51:26):
Listen, I mean, I've done the math for how big the operating model for GPG four is. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I still am in the camp that they may turn that thing off, I think's costing them millions. Yeah. And that you need to sign a lot of customers. So I'm looking for how many places are they trying to squeeze? $10, $20, like everywhere they grab cash. Cuz it's gonna take a lot of paying customers to pay for that thing and for certain workloads. And I'm looking at like, GitHub copilot three works really well and costs a lot less. Right. Right. Like now I can't get anyone to admit whether or not GitHub copilot is paying for itself yet, but I think it's getting there. There's a lot of people who signed up for that. It's a very valuable product.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:07):
Was it I I think it was the opera Aria AI I think was using Chate e p t 3.5, if I'm not mistaken. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I'm sure that price <laugh> Yes. Was the primary. No,

Richard Campbell (01:52:17):
Totally. And sufficiency. Yeah. Right. Stop, you know, we're not looking for God in the machine anymore. We just wanna get our work done and this is a, an effective language. Par Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:52:28):
There you go. And then you just combine it with what, you know, in this case, well this is chat g p but you know, you combine it with Bing to get web results and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, whatever quality, but <laugh>, you

Richard Campbell (01:52:38):
Know. But pretty consistently when I've worked with machine learning models, there is this tendency to build the, build the largest one you can, and then recognize how much resource it's consuming and then dial it back and find a point where it is sufficient. Right. And say, well this is, this is the practical point. So

Paul Thurrott (01:52:56):
Every time I test any kind of ai, whether it's chat, c b t, this Bing chat bot, the Aria ai, whatever it might be. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I ask at the exact same question, which is the question that Microsoft's use of Medi asked Bing chat back in February, the very first thing he did was he said, Hey, my family's going to a wedding in Mexico City, which I perked up at and can you make me a five day itinerary from Mexico City? So I asked it the same question every time. The reason I do this is because I know Mexico City really well. Yeah. So I know if this is a good itinerary or not. And some of the common mistakes I see again and again and again are they will structure a day and Mexico City is the biggest city in North America. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's the second biggest city in all of the Americas. And they will tell you to go to two places on the furthest corners of the city on the same day. <Laugh>. And that's how I know this thing is not intelligent. Yeah. That's a terrible day. Do you have any idea what the traffic is like in Mexico City? You can't, you can't do this

Richard Campbell (01:53:47):
Two in one day in the morning we went to the bakery over here. Yeah. Then we spent the rest of the day in traffic.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:51):
Yep. And this is pretty consistent. It it's, it, it it's, it can see the lack of intelligence, frankly. Yeah. I mean, so that's something I look at. It's just, it's a perfect if, you know, you have to know the place to make, to know whether or not that makes sense. But,

Richard Campbell (01:54:05):
But that's true of all data, right? I mean, how are mean when you No. Which, once you know the details on something and you read something, you see it's incorrect and it's like, well, every everything else I didn't know the details on. Is it also incorrect?

Paul Thurrott (01:54:16):
Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, you have, that should make you question everything. Exactly. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yep. Yeah. So there's that <laugh>. Okay. Nothing big. I, I didn't,

Richard Campbell (01:54:24):
But I'm excited to see Scha out in the field again. Cause he, we kind of stayed close to home for quite a while. I mean, clearly going court, his mandate You mean going to court?

Paul Thurrott (01:54:35):
Yeah, he's going, he's going court. He might be there. Oh no, this is specific time. So he is gonna be there late in the day, so, okay. It'll probably be after the show's over. But he appeared on Freakonomics the podcast mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And they asked, you know, talked about all kinds of stuff. Mostly ai. Right. And I, I don't hear much new out of him. I've heard these stories before. You know, he tells the story about the thing that made him flip his brain a little bit on AI was a poem translation. You know, he's from India where they have multiple languages and you basically hear a poem in one language and then translate it to the other. And if you translate it back from the beginning to the thing you started with and it's right then, you know it's correct or something like that. But see, I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure that's ai.

Richard Campbell (01:55:16):
I No, that's, that is a language tokenization engine, which by the way is the innovation here.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:22):
Yeah. I, I, I, yeah. So I, that makes me a little, that was that, that one always kind of rubs me the wrong way. Yeah. they asked them literally about fears about the human race and, and he kind of had that conversation that we have about technology, which is that any wave of technology, I mean, we're not talking personal technology. It could be like no steam engines or, you know, whatever it is back in the day. You know, the hope, the goal is to benefit mankind, but they're always, you know, bad things too. There

Richard Campbell (01:55:51):
Are always consequences along the way.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:53):
Yeah. And I guess the end of the human race would be kind of a big one. But <laugh>,

Richard Campbell (01:55:57):
You gotta, yeah. The, the Leite smashed up the first steam operated looms cuz they were manually operated rid looms. But nobody talks about what happened after that. Which is that they repaired those looms, they trained those guys to use those looms. And the cost of clothing went down so much that everybody got to buy clothes. Yeah. And the market expanded massively and far more people weren't.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:16):
Yeah, exactly. A

Richard Campbell (01:56:17):
Hundred percent. Yeah. Right. And then, then AI's not taking your job, a smart person using AI is, I

Paul Thurrott (01:56:23):
Told you my tweet. Right. Like, I want the Onion to write an article called, we interviewed the one guy who lost his job because of ai Yeah. <Laugh>. And he is like, I wasn't really trying to, I

Richard Campbell (01:56:32):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:56:33):
I wasn't really doing that much. Yeah. so he didn't, he didn't really say anything profound. He kind of confirmed some of the stories we've heard that seem Semitic or

Richard Campbell (01:56:42):
<Crosstalk>. And he Yeah. And he's so careful to not make news. Yeah. Until he wants to make news. And then he does it in his own format with his own press releases and and so forth. He's not going on anybody else's show to make news that he runs the second largest company in the world for crying out loud.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:57):
Yep. Yep. Yeah. He was, yeah. I'm sure he was prepared for this <laugh>,

Richard Campbell (01:57:01):
You know. Well, I mean Yeah. He's very polished. I, I remember him as the bing guy with hair. That's right. Right. Back in the day. But this po this chrome polished guy. I mean, his first year was rough. Then he went to CEO school and he's been very good ever since. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:57:16):
Yeah. Yeah. That's when I, that's when I called him fresh meat. He still had hair <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:57:23):
But yeah, no, he doesn't, he doesn't move the needle intend unless he intends to move the needle. And honestly, every time I've ever had a chance to encounter him, yeah. He's in character at all times. I've never seen him. He

Paul Thurrott (01:57:35):
Might be,

Richard Campbell (01:57:35):
I'm not gonna say let his hair down cuz he can't do that. But you know, he,

Paul Thurrott (01:57:38):
He might literally be, you

Richard Campbell (01:57:40):
Know, and I have other friends in, in leadership there, but I do get to see that. Right. But he's not an old friend of mine, so I don't get that opportunity. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure he relaxes with somebody. Sure. It's held on me.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:54):
Right. So not, not much there, but if you wanna listen to, you know, Freakonomics, whatever.

Richard Campbell (01:58:00):
Well, and I, I, I amci what the most important thing to me is that's, I think it's the first time he's really put out a mandate to the whole company.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:08):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:58:09):
You know? That's right. That's very much This

Paul Thurrott (01:58:10):
Is <crosstalk> wave.

Richard Campbell (01:58:11):
Yeah, exactly. This internet tidal wave. This is Yep. Trustworthy computing. This is the equivalent.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:17):
This is one. Yeah. 100%.

Richard Campbell (01:58:18):
Cause Bomber never did one in a decade. Ballmer never did one. That's true

Paul Thurrott (01:58:22):
<Laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:58:22):
That's true. But not that he could, but, you know, you know, it's just a realization. It's like, yeah. It hasn't been a thing. And, and it's also interesting to think that Satch has been in charge for 10 years now. Like he's, he's now been in charge as long as bomber was. Right. We just forget.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:36):
Right. Let me look at the stock price. I feel like they've done a little better. Little,

Richard Campbell (01:58:39):
Little bit. Yeah. You know, <laugh>, the funny thing about tech companies is put pit tech people in charge. Yep. I don't know how Tim cook's pulling it off, but, you know, that's, that's the interesting

Paul Thurrott (01:58:49):
Truth's. Definitely. He's definitely the steel baller of that company. I know.

Leo Laporte (01:58:51):
Do you think engineers make the best managers? Is that

Paul Thurrott (01:58:55):
Your Depends. You know what, actually we might, you might've just explained it, Richard. Cuz Microsoft is an engineering company. Yes. And they, they need an engineer running the show. Apple is really just a, a marketing lifestyle kind of company. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:59:08):
That may happens to make a bunch of hardware and now they have the hardware guy in charge. But it's always, you know, the problem is that a visionary doesn't surround themselves with other visionaries. They're surround themselves with executors. And so when the visionary is removed it, the next person in line is inevitably an executor. Right. Can they transform themselves in the visionary? I don't know the answer to that so far. I would say no.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:29):
I would say even Steve or Tim Cook has not done that

Richard Campbell (01:59:32):
Totally. Without a doubt. Right. And I think he just, Beit is first Newton in that vision Pro <laugh>. I really do. I think he, I think he forced that thing into the market too soon. It's, it's not good enough. He's not an ecosystem builder, but Apple is in any way. Yeah. and you should weigh this, that

Leo Laporte (01:59:49):
Problem. I actually, I don't think you're wrong, but I think I should also point out that the Newton was a preliminary step in the, it took him 15 years into the iPhone. I mean, I think

Richard Campbell (01:59:58):
Totally agree. You

Leo Laporte (01:59:59):
May well say the vision pros is what what will eventually the merge as someone,

Richard Campbell (02:00:05):
But No, but nobody but Jobs didn't pick up the iPhone. And so you remember the Newton

Leo Laporte (02:00:08):
We made. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:09):
I was gonna say that's only true if you, if you believe that there are people in the company who held onto the stream and then

Leo Laporte (02:00:16):
Led in No, not necessarily space. Because for instance, in order to do the Newton, they needed a very low powered low energy usage chip and they created arm. Yeah. And without is no

Richard Campbell (02:00:27):
Iphone. And they good touchscreen.

Leo Laporte (02:00:28):
They created a touchscreen.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:29):
Well that, but they looked, they looked at Intel though. They looked at Intel for the iPad too. Yep.

Richard Campbell (02:00:34):
You know, well they were trying, I mean, but it is a, a path. I mean, I'm not unhappy that Apple's made this step. I think you don't buy it for them. Yeah. I don't have to. I No, I won't. And I, and I, I can't believe they're not controlling narratives. Stop comparing it to Quest <laugh> and start compelling it to HoloLens and Magic Leap.

Leo Laporte (02:00:52):
Not even that. It's because those are both failed products. You don't wanna compare it to that either. Well

Richard Campbell (02:00:56):
Then Aaron lies a problem. Right, right. And yet they don't wanna call it a vr. Slightly

Paul Thurrott (02:00:59):
Better than

Richard Campbell (02:00:59):
That. Yeah. We don't wanna call it a VR product cuz that means it's a quest, but it's not really an AR product except kind of, and all the other AR products has failed. Like why are you in this market? You guys are typically smarter than this. Well,

Leo Laporte (02:01:11):
But the Apple believers will say the iPod was, you know, leap but mp3, head of other MP3 players weren't popular. No, they popular. Popular. But it wasn't until the iPod, they weren't popular to the iPod

Richard Campbell (02:01:24):
Degree. No, but that's not because the iPod haven't popular. Itunes made it popular and the 99 cent made it popular. It was a business model. Yeah. Maybe the jobs lied about that made the difference. It was

Leo Laporte (02:01:35):
A better UI though. I mean, I have an MP3 player back here that you really would jump want to use?

Richard Campbell (02:01:40):
No, I, I bought the Diamond Rio, the, the Diamond Rio to be sold. Sure. Oh. I

Paul Thurrott (02:01:43):
Think I've owned every single one of those. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:01:45):
We all have, right?

Richard Campbell (02:01:46):
Yeah. Yeah. We're that kind of geek. Alright.

Leo Laporte (02:01:51):
I love this. Just, I'm saving this recording for when the Vision Pro is a massive hit. Oh yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:01:56):
Of course. I love Delio. You don't have

Leo Laporte (02:01:58):
To. Cause

Paul Thurrott (02:01:58):
I can assure you that everyone else else's this podcast will remember the smallest utterance.

Leo Laporte (02:02:04):
No, I don't, I think, I think I'm more on your side, Richard.

Richard Campbell (02:02:08):
I'm also thinking that this was really a, I I would've thought this was a pitch to developers because you Well, it is

Leo Laporte (02:02:13):
Ecosystem and they just released

Richard Campbell (02:02:14):
An that part except for that part where Apple's so hostile to

Paul Thurrott (02:02:17):
Developers. I was gonna say, but that's what HoloLens was too,

Leo Laporte (02:02:20):
Right? Yeah. They, you know what, they can be hostile in some ways because they make developers so much money. Right.

Richard Campbell (02:02:26):
Right. If only when they do, but they've only done it once.

Leo Laporte (02:02:29):
If you wanted to make money and you thought the Vision Pro was gonna be, you know, Alex Lindsay made this point yesterday on Mac Break Weekly. Yeah. Maybe they're only gonna be a hundred thousand or a million sold. But you know, everybody who buys one will buy every possible app

Richard Campbell (02:02:43):
Because Yeah. Both of them.

Leo Laporte (02:02:44):
Yeah. Well, no, there's quite, you know, there's many, there's already five or the day that SDK came out, five or six developers started posting,

Paul Thurrott (02:02:52):
But it's not, it's not 1983. So a product that sells hundreds of thousands of units or a million, it doesn't even register today. Yeah. And in the volume of Apple's ecosystem, you're an Apple guy.

Leo Laporte (02:03:03):
No. An Apple knows that they can't make a million. That's the problem. They can't, the the, they can't get the screens. Right. So they know that I think this is, this is a very risky I agree bold gamble that there will be a market for something and that you have to take that first step before

Richard Campbell (02:03:24):
That. Yeah. The real question is when do they make a v2? Is it better not be next year?

Leo Laporte (02:03:28):
They're saying next year for the v2, low lower cost, and there'll be a even lower cost V3 either next year, late next year, early, early in 2025. And I think that they're gonna keep ma look, they can afford it. They're gonna keep making these for at least, you know, five to 10 years. And then they may do what Microsoft did with HoloLens. How long did they do HoloLens for? Well,

Richard Campbell (02:03:50):
Hololens, it HoloLens is not over having talked to the HoloLens guys who saying Well, they cut the budget. What they're doing is waiting on hardware. They've said it point blank. It's like we're waiting on hardware. Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:04:01):
Right. Well, I'm not buying one. That's all I'm saying.

Richard Campbell (02:04:08):
I, I'm, mine's sitting over there and Yeah. And I'm pretty, it has been charged in a long time.

Leo Laporte (02:04:12):
Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:04:13):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:04:14):
I have a Quest Pro in my office. And I have a Google Glass somewhere. Yeah. We buy them because we have to I, I may end up eating my words and buying a Vision Pro. Who knows.

Richard Campbell (02:04:25):
Yeah. The Quest two is a great headset. Yeah. And it's relatively useful. It's cheap. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (02:04:32):
Anyway. Xbox. Xbox. Let's do Xbox. Let's do Xbox.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:35):
This is just non Xbox gaming because we already talked about all the Xbox. Yeah. Literally nothing else happened with Xbox this past week. And the stuff we just talked about,

Richard Campbell (02:04:43):
The FTC overwhelmed everything that you, but I wonder if they actually suppressed their feed. I, while this was going on.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:49):
I would've, frankly,

Richard Campbell (02:04:50):
Microsoft does

Paul Thurrott (02:04:50):
That. Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of the Quest meta launched something announce something that I think is actually pretty smart for the, those customers which has been a Quest Plus. So it's a VR subscription service and if you have a Quest two or Quest Pro VR headset you'll get two VR titles through the subscription every month.

Leo Laporte (02:05:10):
And are you gonna do that Richard?

Richard Campbell (02:05:13):
Well, after you get past Beat Saber, what is there? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:16):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:05:16):
I have a Quest Pro. I paid 1500 Schmuckers for that <laugh>. So you know, seven bucks a month isn't a big

Richard Campbell (02:05:24):
Yeah. Not a big deal. That's

Paul Thurrott (02:05:26):
So to look at if you have one. But I don't think I'll do it. I'm not saying you should have one.

Leo Laporte (02:05:28):
I don't want, you know what's funny, and this is my basic objection to all of this stuff. I don't wanna put that thing on my head.

Richard Campbell (02:05:36):
Yeah, you, I

Leo Laporte (02:05:37):
Really, it's like, oh, do I really wanna,

Paul Thurrott (02:05:39):
I still listen, I, I I would do this. I, I can picture doing this for certain things I use mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I, I always use this example. It's not a game, it's just it immersive travel thing. Yeah. Where it, it seems like I'm in Paris or wherever and I can experience that thing. I I still think that is super compelling.

Leo Laporte (02:05:56):
You know, when I, we were in Rome walking through the Peloton Hill, I had this epiphany that probably the next time I go I will have some sort of augmented reality. Cuz what I really wanna see is what it looks like now. And then push a button and see what it looked like then on top of

Paul Thurrott (02:06:10):
It. That's exactly right. And that

Leo Laporte (02:06:12):
Would be

Richard Campbell (02:06:12):
Mindful four or five different times you want to see it, right? Yeah. You want to see it as it was being built. Yeah. You want to see it at the height of the Ram Empire. You want to see it as the galls burn it. Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:23):
And you also that see what things are you want just have overlays and say, this is what this is. And you learn more if you want

Leo Laporte (02:06:29):
To be fair. That's the same market for tourist Segway tours. You know, there's not a massive Segway market

Richard Campbell (02:06:36):
Just with a higher concussion risk

Leo Laporte (02:06:38):
<Laugh>. Well, there's not a massive

Paul Thurrott (02:06:40):
Segway market. If you have something on your head, it might be the

Leo Laporte (02:06:41):
Same, but it's a great way to get a, around a town and you want to take it, you know, tour of it. So,

Paul Thurrott (02:06:45):
No, it's good for museums too. I I use that dinosaur skeleton example where you Yeah, that's cool. It's great with the screen and you see the dinosaur what it might have looked like, not just skeletons.

Richard Campbell (02:06:54):
And you get that built for phones first because everybody's got a phone. That's right. And then it's not that big of a stretch to make it work for an AR headset.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:02):
Yeah. Yep. Well, if only there was a company that had a phone and an AR headset.

Richard Campbell (02:07:07):
Nobody. Nobody.

Leo Laporte (02:07:11):
What else?

Paul Thurrott (02:07:13):
I'm sorry.

Richard Campbell (02:07:14):
What's

Paul Thurrott (02:07:14):
Dylan? Remember when Stadia was still a thing?

Richard Campbell (02:07:17):
What's Stadia? What's

Leo Laporte (02:07:18):
Stadia? I don't remember. I don't remember that. No,

Paul Thurrott (02:07:20):
I feel bad. Stadia. I

Leo Laporte (02:07:21):
Feel so sad. I still have my stadia. I couldn't control it. I know,

Paul Thurrott (02:07:25):
I You mean that beautiful, elegant Bluetooth controller? Yes. <laugh>. So still think I wish there's some still there's a key innovation there. I wish Microsoft would figure out which is the controller connects to the service separately anyway. So when Stadia was still a thing, Google shut off this notion of game previews on YouTube. This was gonna be one of the kind of integration points they were gonna do. And then Stadia went away and we all forgot about everything related to Stadia. But they just announced something, or no, not announced. There was a report in the Wall Street Journal suggesting they might be releasing this YouTube component anyway, and it's basically gonna be a way to kind of preview games through YouTube.

Richard Campbell (02:08:06):
Hmm. I, I gotta admit, like I'm a let's play guy. Like I learned about Dredge watching a favorite YouTuber play it enough that, and there's some days I watch the Let's play and then I don't want to play it at the end. It's like, I've seen it

Paul Thurrott (02:08:19):
Story this time either. Well, either way, you've, we've, you've gotten to the goal, right? Yeah. Which is to find out if this game is any good.

Richard Campbell (02:08:24):
But it's amazing when you watch a whole game and go, now I want to play it.

Paul Thurrott (02:08:28):
Yeah. I mean, back when Red Fall came out and it was, everyone was saying what a big, terrible piece of crap it was, I decided to check it out. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And there's different ways you could, you could buy it. You could spend 70 bucks. That's a terrible way to do it. Hmm. if you subscribe to Game Pass, you could just download it to your console at PC and try it that way. But if you subscribe to Xbox Game Pass, ultimate, you could stream it from the cloud, which I is what I did, because that's the lowest friction way to try it. Right. And it was terrible. And so I never have to play it again. So actually I, I don't know. You have to

Richard Campbell (02:08:56):
Ute my machine with it.

Paul Thurrott (02:08:57):
Yeah, it's a good idea. It's, it's a lot like the cloud PC thing we were talking about, right? Like, just give it a shot and say Nope. Nope. So I don't, apparently Google's kind of confirmed they're experimenting with new stuff. They have nothing doing else, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But it's possible.

Richard Campbell (02:09:14):
Stadia is not not quite dead.

Paul Thurrott (02:09:15):
Well, stadia is quite dead <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (02:09:17):
Yeah. It might be, it might be a fla, you know, who knows the reasons this, I think what they'll probably do, it might be only pining for the fjords.

Paul Thurrott (02:09:23):
<Laugh>. Well, another, I think I, I mean, I'm just guessing we can only guess how they would do this, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But if you can somehow play a, a game demo somehow streaming over the cloud through YouTube. Yeah. It's not hard to imagine. There would be links at the bottom, you know, purchase on xbox.com. Yeah. Purchase on playstation.com, purchase on steam.com or whatever. You know, like, they'll probably do something like that. So That's interesting. Love it. It is interesting. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative> this is this is maybe

Richard Campbell (02:09:45):
It's good to seeing new experiments going on and, and you apparently cloud gaming's important enough to protect, so maybe somebody should do it.

Paul Thurrott (02:09:52):
You know, one thing we've lost and obviously this is good for all games, in fact, it's probably not good for a lot of games, but back in the probably very early nineties, that kind of share room model started where you mm-hmm. <Affirmative> got the first part of the game for free. And if you loved it, you could throw money at the company.

Richard Campbell (02:10:06):
Would that, that was doom, right? Doom Fortune

Paul Thurrott (02:10:08):
Three levels. Yeah. yeah. So that was a kind of an interesting model. And it would be interesting if Microsoft, which has all this cloud streaming stuff, could go to their game makers and to their partners and say, look, we know you don't want to get into cloud gaming. We know you don't want part of Game Pass for whatever reason, but what do you think about we let people play without downloading mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, we're gonna stream it. Just some party of game so they could experience it and then they could it however they buy it. You know? I think this is, I think this is a good idea. Yeah. Not crazy. Yeah. Love it. I'll see. We'll see what comes of it.

Leo Laporte (02:10:44):
All right, let's we're gonna go to the back of the book soon, which is the tip of the week. Yeah. We are the pick of the week. The run is Radio of the Week and the Brown Liquor of the Week, which this time is green. Okay. I don't know what that means. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:10:57):
Well, I'll tell you.

Leo Laporte (02:10:58):
Okay. But first, as they say and showbiz a word from our sponsor and not just any old sponsor, our studio sponsor, our kind of banner sponsor for the year ACI Learning. Who is ACI Learning? You may say, well, it pro I know you know them. They've been our trusted sponsor for Can it be a whole decade? Yes. Since 2013. Providing engaging and entertaining IT training to many of you. Now part of the ACI Learning Family IT Pros capabilities continue to grow impressively with their highly entertaining bingeable short format content with over 7,000 hours and counting to choose from. With an astounding 30% of ACI learners being MSPs managed service providers, ACI Learning is dedicated to supporting your MSP team through any challenge. Msps prefer ACI Learning's Practice Labs where you can test and experiment Before deploying new apps or updates without compromising your life system, try out your skills on virtual Machine labs with multiple instances of Windows server and desktop clients on your Mac os, Linux, iOS, and Windows platform.

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Paul Thurrott (02:14:28):
Yeah. So a couple weeks ago there was a story, I think it was Weston Digital was entering the market for Xbox Series X N s storage expansion cards. Previously it was only Seagate. Those Seagate cards are now actually much bigger than it used to be from a storage perspective, not as high perspective. And they're on sale this week at amazon.com. So the one terabyte version, which is normally $220, is $150. And the two terabyte version, which is normally $360, is $280. So probably should buy the market for such a thing. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:15:03):
Do you open it up to put those in?

Paul Thurrott (02:15:06):
No, it just plugs right in like a cartridge. Oh, there's just a slot for it? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:15:09):
Ah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick it up right now. Where did you in the back, where do you get that at? At amazon

Paul Thurrott (02:15:14):
Amazon.Com. Yeah. Okay.

Richard Campbell (02:15:18):
Easy one. Yeah. More storage. Good. See now you can install Red fall and not I know <laugh>. I saw it and you just gonna remove it again afterwards. You know, at least you can't.

Leo Laporte (02:15:27):
Every, every game now is close to a hundred gigabytes, isn't it? I I mean, they just get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Richard Campbell (02:15:31):
So big. Terrible. Yeah. Well that's the thing, when you're looking at a terabyte drive and saying that's eight games. Yes. Nine

Leo Laporte (02:15:37):
Games. Yeah. That's it.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:38):
And the fact, so I

Leo Laporte (02:15:39):
Have a terabyte in my machine

Richard Campbell (02:15:42):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Right. And now throw two more on, and you know, that's more games.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:46):
Yeah. You don't have to worry about it so much. But

Richard Campbell (02:15:48):
This is the point with that cloud streaming thing is that I know in order to install this game, I have to uninstall something. Right. And then I installed the game and then it's terrible. So now I immediately uninstalled it. I'm angry. I uninstalled the other thing.

Leo Laporte (02:15:59):
Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:16:01):
Game Pass is great, but you have to download the games. Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (02:16:04):
<Affirmative> these, I mean, these are twice the cost though, of the same capacity, not for Xbox. Right. Why is that? Because it's faster.

Paul Thurrott (02:16:14):
Cause they decided to go with this. Well, yeah, they, they, they, they have a system where they test these things for certain performance characteristics. Yeah. But the real issue here is they used a proprietary form factor mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and didn't just make it a standard ssd. Yeah. So,

Leo Laporte (02:16:27):
And it plugs in via the ex USB port? Or is there a special

Paul Thurrott (02:16:31):
Portfolio? No, it's, there's a slot for right in the

Leo Laporte (02:16:33):
Console. Oh, okay. I must, I must, I must, I'm gonna buy a ter, I can't really justify.

Paul Thurrott (02:16:39):
My Xbox isn't plugged in. I'll show it to you. Oh, look at that. It's this thing. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:16:44):
It's says special expansion port. Oh, it's probably's

Richard Campbell (02:16:47):
Your Xbox right there. So you know where it is. You just haven't plugged it in. <Laugh>. Why

Leo Laporte (02:16:51):
Did you do that? For

Paul Thurrott (02:16:52):
How many months? Dust. I haven't used it in three months. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:16:54):
Yeah. Wow. Wow. I,

Richard Campbell (02:16:58):
It's interesting that it's in reach, but it's still not plugged in. Just tempting

Paul Thurrott (02:17:01):
Yourself now locking me. You know, so you

Leo Laporte (02:17:02):
Haven't actually booted your Xbox in three months

Paul Thurrott (02:17:05):
To, to help me. Not like it. I put the Clippy thing. Oh. Can you see a little Clippy guys on there?

Leo Laporte (02:17:10):
<Laugh>? He's saying, I thought you might wanna play a game, but maybe not. Yeah. Xbox.

Paul Thurrott (02:17:16):
I'm good. Thanks.

Leo Laporte (02:17:16):
Wow. Okay. That was tip one.

Paul Thurrott (02:17:23):
Yes. And then the app pick Stard today released tape Desk Scapes 11. Mm-Hmm. This is just the new version of the dynamic wallpaper utility. It's only 3 99 works in Windows 10 and 11 allows you to have basically animated dynamic background. So it could be a video, an animated image, or a static image that you can apply animated effects to. So mm-hmm. Not one of the major <laugh> startup utilities, but you know, if people like to personalize their desktop or whatever,

Richard Campbell (02:17:48):
How is it with different resolutions?

Paul Thurrott (02:17:50):
I would never put this on my computer, Richard. Why would I know

Richard Campbell (02:17:52):
That? Okay. <laugh>, you know, I was thinking about that perfect video I have of a sunset.

Paul Thurrott (02:17:57):
Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:17:58):
And I putting that as a background.

Paul Thurrott (02:18:00):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:18:01):
So does it, this is what, this is really Apple you know, the Apple TV started this, but this is your, this is not your screensaver, it's a desktop.

Paul Thurrott (02:18:12):
No, it's on your desktop. So windows. Well, that's, well, that's

Leo Laporte (02:18:14):
Gonna kill performance, isn't it?

Paul Thurrott (02:18:16):
Well, but we have GPUs and stuff now, you know. Yeah. So, million years ago when Windows 95 was still a thing, I was walking through Best Buy, and I walked by the row that the aisle that had the row of all the computers with the Windows 95 had that cloud desktop. Yeah. And there was a, there was a moment where I thought the clouds were moving on one of the computers. And I stopped and I looked back and it wasn't, I just invented it with my brain or whatever, but at that moment I thought, you know, actually Cool. Kind of an animated background might be kind of interesting. Yeah. And then they did it in Windows Vista. I think it might have been part of Ultimate Extras, but it was called, was it called Dreamscape? Hmm. That sound familiar to anybody? It was something like that and it just didn't really take off, you know, it, it's, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:18:57):
So I haven't used Object Desktop in a while. I Dream

Paul Thurrott (02:19:02):
Scene,

Leo Laporte (02:19:03):
It was called Dream. I love Stard Doc and I love Object Desktop. Yes. And I love Brad Sams, who is now there. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (02:19:10):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:19:11):
I don't think Brad's listening. So I'm gonna just say in the back in the day when I used object Desktop, it would make my machine less reliable.

Paul Thurrott (02:19:20):
Stable. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:19:21):
Yep. Is that still the case? So,

Paul Thurrott (02:19:23):
Well, so the problem with that kind of thing is it, it, it has to have some way to reach into Windows to do that work and have that make sense, right? I mean, it's, this is not an, this is not something Microsoft documents. Right? Like, they don't want people replacing the ui. Right. So I don't use that kind of thing myself. You know, you get a, you know, my case is kind of special because

Leo Laporte (02:19:45):
Well, you don't want it. I'm always running

Paul Thurrott (02:19:46):
Screenshot and documenting thing and I can't Yeah. I gotta have, I have to do, I have to be stock look

Leo Laporte (02:19:50):
Normal for you. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:19:52):
So I can't really try this stuff other than to look at it or whatever. I will say <laugh>, it's whatever it's worth with Desk Gameses. I had to drag this out of Brad today. He never, he never came to me and offered it. He never said anything about it. And I was like, Hey, what's going on with this thing? He's like, oh yeah, it's just a minor. You know, we're doing this today. And I was like, okay, so send it to me. So I,

Leo Laporte (02:20:14):
He's not a good marketer, is he? You know? No.

Paul Thurrott (02:20:16):
He probably is, but he doesn't, he doesn't actually doesn't abuse our friendship. Yeah, that's good. Use the way to put it. Good for him. And yeah, so people exploit me, please. <Laugh>. Well, people sometimes, like, I'll, I'll write like, I'll a new version of Star 11, you know, one of the big ones like Star eleven's big, right? Groupie's big, right? So I'll write this up and like, oh, is you're colluding with your friend at Stard Dog. And it's like, I've been writing about this for years and it has nothing to do with

Leo Laporte (02:20:37):
It. Yeah, me too. I've been recommending it for years, but I Yeah, but he doesn't, I'm kind of a purist. I don't want to install a lot of background stuff. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:20:43):
Yeah. That right. Actually before I got, before I started at storage. It's funny you say that. My, my tip today was gonna be about using task managers to get rid of stuff running at Startup <laugh>. And I think a lot of people don't know that this is happening, but what they, but even those that do know might not sort of think that much. You need to look at that over time because <laugh> stuff keeps getting added to it. Yeah. And I, I used this tip on hands on Windows the other day, so you'll see that in July or something. But, you know, if you're not gonna use Microsoft Edge, for example and you're gonna use in different web browser be sure to go into there and, and stop Ms. Edge from running automatically when your computer starts. There's absolutely no reason for that to be running in the background. You

Leo Laporte (02:21:24):
Know, you know, that's one thing Apple does well, and Microsoft could probably do, which is anytime anything installs a startup Yeah. Pop

Paul Thurrott (02:21:33):
Pops something up and say, says

Leo Laporte (02:21:35):
This is, you know, gonna be a background process.

Paul Thurrott (02:21:38):
You know, why they don't do it? Because most of them are from Microsoft <laugh>. They're actually their biggest depend. I'm gonna

Leo Laporte (02:21:45):
Bet that Apple does not pop that up for anything Apple does. It's only for third parties. I'm al I'm almost

Paul Thurrott (02:21:52):
Certain that could be, that be lot. So for example, if you run the Xbox app on purpose or by mistake, that thing will start up all the time going forward. Yeah. That's part of your bottom.

Leo Laporte (02:22:01):
Yeah. I really, that really bugs me.

Paul Thurrott (02:22:03):
Yep. I don't like

Leo Laporte (02:22:04):
That kind of thing. And you can uninstall it and it's still gonna run. You

Paul Thurrott (02:22:07):
Can get it outta there. But that's my point is you should go into Task manager has a startup app view. You should go into there every month or so. Just look, you can sort it by what's enabled and what's not enabled.

Leo Laporte (02:22:16):
Yeah. See what's creeped into

Paul Thurrott (02:22:16):
Your machine. Yep. And I I, I don't think a month goes by where I don't see something.

Leo Laporte (02:22:21):
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Fair enough. Very good advice. So I guess you got two tips today, guys. Yeah. Thank you for the double tipper <laugh>, double the tips. What's coming up in run as Radio?

Richard Campbell (02:22:33):
Mr. Richard k I, I hinted about the show last week cuz it's, it's one of the killer shows. I mean, Sammy Lejo is one of my favorite security guys. He's, al always has the ability to scare the snot out of me. He's worked on some extraordinary problems over the year, but that was not the show we did. This one was a conversation about updating servers. So the big point that Sammy made was that the primary vector for malware today is unpatched servers. It's no longer phishing. So M F A has been successful enough that impairing phishing is a strategy for propagating malware that now it's up the, it's it's server updates. And what's, what's the problem with server updates? Well, once in a while, certain vendors push out updates that cause problems. And so most it shops take their time with updates. They evaluate them, they run 'em in a test environment. You don't work on 'em all the time. And the issue now is that it's taking long enough to get all those updates that you're seeing exploits take advantage of those servers not being updated. And so the conversation we ended up having was about what's the higher risk an unpatched server being exploited versus a patch server disrupting work. I mean, either way you have a work disruption, it one is much easier to fix than the other.

Leo Laporte (02:23:50):
The episode 8 86 comes out today, Sam

Richard Campbell (02:23:57):
Sammy Lejo. All right.

Leo Laporte (02:23:58):
I'm ready. Green Brown Liquor.

Richard Campbell (02:24:02):
Green Brown Liquor. We're talking about Green Spot today. And I've already done the whole segment on Irish whiskey and we had some fun with it. But I left off a part and as I dug into Green Spot, and we'll find out why later I realized that I'd forgotten to talk about how bonding worked in Ireland because it doesn't work. It never worked that way anywhere else. And it doesn't work that way in Ireland anymore. But Greenspot is made by a group called Hel and Sons and Mitchell and Sons goes back literally 200 years. Wow. The Mitchells were quite prolific. You know, Catholicism they love naming their eldest sons. Robert. There's multiple generations like that. There's a lot of Robert Mitchells running around, but they're not, weren't whiskey makers. They had a bakery in Teahouse in Dublin. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:24:45):
That's hysterical.

Richard Campbell (02:24:47):
<Laugh> Now Teahouses back in the day also served wine. Yeah. And now we get to the real point, which was because they were buying a lot of wine. They had wine barrels. Oh, wow. And so they got, by 1887, they got into whiskey bonding. So whiskey bonding in Ireland was when you brought the barrel to the distillery and they filled it with new make. And then you store the barrel under bond, which means the duties aren't paid until you open the barrel. And so you have to make a deal with the government. You allocate a space to the, with the, with the, the bonding holding area there, all of the barrels are labeled and you pay a fee when you open the barrel. Hmm. And so Mitchell and Sons bought new make from Jameson, and they would put it into their wine casks that they were getting because they ran a teahouse.

(02:25:38):
And then as they, as the barrels aged, and they became, they tasted good. If they had been aged seven years, they would mark the barrel with a blue spot. If it was good at 10 years, they'd mark it with a green spot. And if it was 12 years, they marked it with a yellow spot. And it was 15 years, they marked it with a red spot. That's where the names come from. Primarily they were buying both wine and fortified wine, which we now know is like Sherry and Port. And so those are very good things for aging new Macon. And so they made pretty nice whiskeys that people really liked, but they never distilled their own whiskey. And they're not the only ones. I talked about red breasts in the Irish segment as well. Gimley never made their own whiskey. They bought Jameson, you make and barreled it themselves.

(02:26:26):
Now, if you remember the, the, the Irish story, I mean, this is, this is Mitchell and Sons doing very well, selling their spot, their spot whiskeys. About by then mid 1960s when whiskey sales are at their lowest point is when Jameson Dism merges with cork distillers and becomes the Irish Distillers group. And they consolidate these distilleries. They shut down their old distilleries and they build a new one called the New Middleton Distillery which was an operation by not 71 full swing in 75. And that was also the point where they said, we are no longer going to allow external bonding. And the reason was that the part of the reason they believe that whiskey had fallen out of favor is that these bonding shops were cheating. You never knew what you were gonna get. Yeah. You have to pay the duty once you opened the barrel, but nobody really knows what you do with the barrel after that.

(02:27:16):
Mm. So if you're adding more new make to it, or you're cutting it with something else, like that became problematic as to what you were actually making. And I'm never, would never accuse the spot whiskeys of doing this, but there were many bonders back in the day. And so the unreliability of whiskey was part of the problem. If you recall when we were talking about why this Scottish whiskey ascend, it's because they got very good at making consistent, reliable product. And this is what the Irish were struggling with. And in this early seventies, the Irish distill tried to correct this. Now there was a big outcry because there were some very good folks like Gi Emily and Mitchell and Sons who made excellent whiskey. But their ultimate solution was to say, okay, we'll do the barreling now at the distillery, because at this point you're not buying wine in barrels anymore.

(02:28:05):
Anyway. So the barrels are becoming a problem. So barrels will now live at the distillery, but we have an exclusive license to that. And that's how it works to this day. Michelin's son still sells spot whiskeys, but they provide barrels. The barreling is done at the new Middleton distillery. It's aged there, it's bottled there, and then they exclusively sell it. So it's a very different business model. And I am, I'm most somewhat remiss when I did the Irish part, the conversation about this where I just said, Hey Irish distillers bought up all these brands. They didn't, they created licensing agreements around them. And so it operates in a, in a somewhat different style where Michelin sons is a sole distributor, but also has a direct influence over it. Because the other thing that Michelin sons does is they have closer relationships with certain wineries that go back for a century or more wineries like Leoville Barton, my favorite out of Bartow. Lovely wine and love

Leo Laporte (02:29:01):
Leoville. And,

Richard Campbell (02:29:03):
And generally speaking, you don't see these very often, but they still make additions of green spot that finish in wine casks. So the, a normal production of green spots splits a given malting, really the new make from Jameson into bourbon and sherry casks. And then after a certain period of time they combine them and will do a finishing stage for a couple of years in a wine cask. And Leo Barton is one of them, and that's a Bordeaux. They also work with Chateau Montena, which is Zinfandel. And the reason I brought this up is this year they started making addition an addition based on an Okanagan distiller winery called Quales Gate. Ah. And so they do a two year finish in Quales Gate Pinot Noir barrels to make a fairly distinct version of Green Spot. And so traditional green Spot, which doesn't have a, used to have a 10 on it, it used to be a 10 year.

(02:30:00):
You'll notice that the current modern green spot, which is about $50 a US does not have an age Appalachian on it. It's because it's actually a combination of seven and 10 year old and they don't want to put a seven on it cuz people don't like that number. <Laugh>. there are special edition green spots. Yeah. There are special edition green spots that are 10 years old, and you'll see the number on them when it's only 10. But the, these wine finished versions go back to the original Michelin sons versions of their whiskeys by adding this finishing step in wine cast, it makes it kind of special. And the fact that one of them is a Canadian one, I think is very cool, except that it's only available in Canada.

Leo Laporte (02:30:42):
So it's interesting because it sounds like the, a barrel and the aging is more critical to the quality and flavor of the whiskey than the actual distilling of it. Or is that not for

Richard Campbell (02:30:54):
The most part that's true because you always, you know, it's a clear wi it's a clear out spirit when it comes out of distill. Yeah, yeah. Now, and there's lots of conversations about the role of the mash bill, the different grains and this style of distillation. And as we know with Irish, that's, they do almost anything. They use the coffee still. They'll do finish and pot stills. Famously Jameson is pots distilled. And so all of the spot are pot distilled as well, very similar to the the Scottish style. But the distilling definitely is more flexible and how high you distill it to. And then once you cut it down to before you barrel, it has a lot to do with the effects in the end. This alcohol is a solvent. Yeah. And you're using that solvent to extract flavors from oak.

Leo Laporte (02:31:41):
Good. I get it. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:31:43):
Right. Yeah. And so the different barrels all play a role because bourbon barrels are only ever used once by American bourbon. They're relatively inexpensive and they're very plentiful. And because bourbon distillers put their bourbon into barrels at 62.5 degree percent A B V, typically the whiskey distiller puts it in at 64.5. So they're pulling a little, they're pulling a little harder on the wood as well as extracting some of those bourbon flavors. Yeah. Sherry Casking is coming even lower. And so they extraction levels are higher. They pull more flavor that way. Straight wine cast whiskeys are very rare because the alcohol levels are so low in the wood, long aging in them isn't good. Which is why you see them typically being used as finishing casks one or two years at most. And often the first fill with whiskey isn't the best version of that. Yeah. It's subsequent uses of those casks that make the most flavorful whiskeys. So it's a complicated game. But those mixed barreling are also a ability to make a consistent flavor that by having a choice of barrels all with different flavors in them, you get to the flavor profile that your customer is expecting. That's really the art of modern whiskey is to get to those consistent flavors.

Leo Laporte (02:33:04):
Very interesting. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:33:07):
So all of those wine variants are about a hundred dollars. If you can find them both the le I I looked up Leo VBar Barton and Chau Montelena on Total Wines. And I could find 'em for about a hundred bucks. The regular Green spots' 50, unfortunately, the Quail Gate, it looks like it's British Columbia only. It's even the Ontario Whiskey. Bo or Ontario Liquor Board doesn't have any. So you gotta come up here if you want one.

Leo Laporte (02:33:31):
<Laugh>. We we have quite a bit of the Leoville or Leoville

Richard Campbell (02:33:35):
Barton. As the, as the Bordeaux.

Leo Laporte (02:33:37):
The Bordeaux. Yeah. We like the Bordeauxs. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:33:39):
And some, so you might wanna grab the green spot of it. Cause a great, what a great way to finish a meal. Interesting. Drink a little Luo bardo at, at dinner and then finish with the whiskey. That's cool. Yeah. I like that.

Leo Laporte (02:33:49):
Very cool. Yeah. Thank you. Mr. Richard Campbell always loved the Brown Liquor, aka green Liquor spot on the show. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Thank you. You'll findRichard@runasradio.com. That's where the run as radio podcast and the.net rock podcasts live. And of course, he's here every Wednesday except for next Wednesday when he is gonna be out there with a big fish in Montana.

Richard Campbell (02:34:12):
More than be Warren than one.

Leo Laporte (02:34:13):
Yeah. Boy, boy. Big fishy. He doesn't want eat. Yep. Mr. Taste

Richard Campbell (02:34:18):
Like mud.

Leo Laporte (02:34:18):
The, well, you know, it's cuz they're sift in mud for nymphs.

Richard Campbell (02:34:22):
They sift muds for nymphs. That's true.

Leo Laporte (02:34:24):
Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, I would say the mud isn't the problem, it's the nymphs. But you know, that's just me.

Richard Campbell (02:34:30):
It's also how we fish them too. You use a nymph rig, which is the sinking rig Yeah. To pull 'em up. But I'm in the mud. But when the, when the, but when the Drakes are breeding, then you use a, a Drake fly and you pull 'em off the surface. Listen, they taste much better.

Leo Laporte (02:34:41):
What is happening when Drakes are breeding,

Richard Campbell (02:34:44):
When the Drakes are breeding,

Leo Laporte (02:34:45):
You use, the very first person I go to is Paul thro thoro.com. <Laugh>, T H U R R O double good.com. Become a premium member, get all the great stuff he writes. It's really you do such a good job. And of course his books don't forget are@leanpub.com, including the Field Guide to Windows 11 now with Windows 10 inside and just like a, just like a engine block mailbox, you just stuck like a virus of some kind. Windows 10 right in there. And the new one windows everywhere, which is all about the, the history of Windows through its languages and development. Really good stuff. Paul. Thank you Richard. Thank you. Thank you Paul. It's just you and me next week. Unless you wanna bring in somebody, we should call Mary Jo every time. I ask her, she says no.

(02:35:35):
Right. So you'll be happy to hear. She also says no to me, but <laugh> I'll I'll see what I can do. It'll be kind of fun. Anyway, we'll be back here. We do the show every Wednesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 1800 utc. You don't have to watch us live, but if you feel like that we stream the live production of the show audio and video as we do with almost all our shows at Live Twit tv. If you're watching Live Chat, live in our irc open to all you need to use a browser@irc.twit.tv. If you are a member of Club Twi, of course the Club Twit Discord is open to you. And there is great stuff happening. This for Thursday, tomorrow on the Club Twit Discord, Stacey's book club at 9:00 AM She's doing I think a a, what I've heard is a very good sci-fi book from Emily Neitz.

(02:36:23):
I interviewed her on her last book. It's called the Terraform, the New One and Big Deal. We're gonna have Hugh Howie on tomorrow at 1:00 PM Pacific, 4:00 PM Eastern, the author of the Silo series. So even if you haven't read the book, if you've watched the Apple TV plus series, which is quite good, it ends tomorrow or d after tomorrow. Hugh Howie in in the conversation with Aunt Pruitt in the club Twit stage tomorrow at 1:00 PM we're doing more club twit stuff. Paul does a club twit show, hands on Windows. We have Hands on Macintosh with Micah, Sergeant Scott. Scott Wilkinson has brought back home theater geeks for our club members. When we started the club two years ago, we said, look, our shows are free, are gonna maintain will, will always be free. But there, you know, with podcast advertising dwindling with audiences shrinking more and more we're dependent on the club.

(02:37:19):
And so it makes it possible for us to continue to launch new shows. So Jason Howell will be launching an AI show yesterday. He had a kind of a round table discussion with the club members about what might be in that AI show. Keep watching for that. If you're in the club, if you're not, get out free versions of all of our shows, special shows we don't put out anywhere else like the upcoming AI show. And access to the Club Twit Discord. Seven bucks a month. That's nothing that's less than one, one glass or green spot. Seven bucks a month. Just, just go to twit tv slash club twit and, and feel good knowing you're supporting what we do. If you want to see Twit continue join the club TWIT tv slash club twit after the fact, you get on to man versions for free cuz they're ad supported at twit tv slash ww. There's a YouTube channel also ad supported where you can watch the show. And probably the best thing to do, club member or not is subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That way you'll get it and you'll have it and you'll know whenever you're in the mood, you can hear Windows Weekly. Thank you Paul. Have a great time in Montana. Richard, we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Yeah, have a great 4th of July, Paul. Thank you. Coming Tuesday and we will see you next time on Windows Weekly. Bye-Bye.

Mikah Sargent (02:38:40):
Hey there, I'm Mikah Sargent. Look, as a geek myself, I feel it's only fair if I admit something we can be kind of hard to shop for. So what do you get for that geek in your life who has everything already? Well, a Club Twit gift subscription, of course, twit podcasts, keep them informed and entertained with the most relevant tech news podcasts available with a Club twit subscription. They're gonna get access to all of our podcasts, free exclusive outtakes behind the scenes and special content. And I love this exclusive shows like my own HandsOn Mac and hands on windows from Paul Thora, as well as the Untitled Linux Show. So purchase your geeks gift at twit tv slash club twit and they will thank you every day.