Windows Weekly 837, 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, wink Weekly. Paul Thora, Richard Campbell are here. And the big story, of course, victory for Microsoft over the ftc. Tune in for the details. Next, podcasts you love

Speaker 2 (00:00:16):
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:26):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thora and Richard Campbell. Episode 837 Recorded Wednesday, July 12th, 2023. A small internet boutique. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by the AWS Insiders Podcast. Search for AWS Insiders in your podcast player. Or visit cloud fixx.oria.com/podcast. We'll also include a link in the show notes. And our thanks to AWS Insiders for their support and by Brook Linen Summer is in full swing. And Brook Linen is here to help you swap out winter warmth for easy breezy comfort with their award-winning sheets and home essentials. Visit brook linen.com today and get $20 off plus free shipping on orders of $100 plus with the code windows And buy cash. Fly cash fly delivers rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods, and 30% faster than other Major CDNs. Meet customer expectations 100% of the time. Learn how you can get your first month free@cashflow.com.

(00:01:39):
It's time for Windows Weekly, the show. We cover the latest news from Microsoft, and hell, there is hell Yeah, there's news. Heck yes. I don't mean to be profane with us from Rena's Radio. Got the mug. Get the T-shirt. Hey, Mr. Richard Campbell. He's in co whitland British Columbia. Yeah. To his left. I'm his right. My left. Mr. Paul Thora, who is in Mexico City at the moment, enjoying a beautiful day in the in the city. And he's a great, it is a beautiful day. Of course it is. He's from Tho Rock and the, and the occasional burst of storm troopers. <Laugh>. Yes. It's yeah, we get rain every day and I guess we get storm troopers once a week. I don't know. Nice. So far. You know, it's been okay. It's not a bad ratio. Yeah. So yesterday breaking news judges San Francisco, the Amazon Astro for Windows 11 went generally available. Yeah, I know. It's been a big day. <Laugh> oh, I'm sorry. The other story, the other story we have now I'm very confused because we've been reporting on this trial. This hearing, this hearing was, I did not realize I should have read more closely merely on the injunction Right. To prevent from that the FTC filed saying they, they better not do this merger before we have ruled the administrative judge will be hearing the case in August.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:04):
I, I strongly recommend to everybody who cares about this to go and read this ruling. It is beautiful. It's brutal. Yeah. Yeah. And the best line, I'll just, I'll cut right to the chase. This is, I just love this. There are despite the completion of extensive discovery in the FTC administration proceeding, including the production of nearly 1 million documents and 30 depositions, the FTC has not identified a single document Wow. Which contradicts Microsoft's publicly stated commitment to make pol Call of Duty available on PlayStation and parenthetically on Nintendo Switch. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:39):
Yeah. But this is just on the injunction. This is not on mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, this is not the final ruling, which comes in August, is the theory that well, they're gonna go ahead and do the merger and then let the FTC do what they want in August. Or

Paul Thurrott (00:03:54):
I does this

Leo Laporte (00:03:55):
Theory, this kind of get over kind of like, well, will the administrative judge in August look at the San Francisco Jug Judge and say, well, yeah, clearly there's no merit to this and just throw it out. I don't understand why people are saying it's over.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:07):
There is a growing, well, it's, so it's over asterisk. Right. I would say that this ruling sets the stage to the end and the end being, they acquire Activision Blizzard. Right? Like

Leo Laporte (00:04:19):
Before, before August. They could do this July 18th. They do it right

Paul Thurrott (00:04:23):
Now. They could literally do it today.

Leo Laporte (00:04:24):
The drop dead dates July 18th. Yeah. Because that's the then, so they were, they'll probably do it in the next week. So here's, here's

Paul Thurrott (00:04:32):
What's

Leo Laporte (00:04:32):
Going on. And the uk and then they go, what? Screw you uk? You can't have any.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:37):
Yeah. So I, I can't remember how this came to light, but there are, there is a possible planet, Microsoft, to just consummate the acquisition despite what the u you know, in other words, we, if we get by the ftc, we're just gonna do it. Right. And the UK can figure it out. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:04:53):
Obviously, furthermore, and then they can, they

Paul Thurrott (00:04:55):
Could find them and they'll just protest the fines and like, go around and start, let drag it out. Cuz that's what happens. It's

Leo Laporte (00:05:00):
Correct. Yeah. Ftc, I mean, apparently Microsoft FTC was worried about this, which is why they asked for the injunction saying, no, no, no, you cannot

Paul Thurrott (00:05:08):
Do the merger. I I described this as the antitrust equivalent of a flight risk <laugh>. Right. You know? Right.

Leo Laporte (00:05:16):
Right. That makes sense.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:18):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:05:18):
But it's not, it's not the final final though. That's what's weird. It's, but

Paul Thurrott (00:05:23):
The ruling makes it very clear. All of the discovery is shown. There's

Leo Laporte (00:05:26):
No reason to stop the

Paul Thurrott (00:05:26):
Merger. Yeah. This judge tore the FTC a new one. Right. any future judge that looks at this case is gonna have to look at that and say, I could you please explain why this is wrong? Oh, you know. Yeah. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:37):
So

Leo Laporte (00:05:38):
Even though it's technically not precedent setting, you feel like it is, so

Paul Thurrott (00:05:42):
Let's put, I guess the way understand, say it is the FTC has pushed forward a, a case to block this acquisition literally on the merits of Sony's argument. Right. Which we now know to be baloney only what they have said publicly, cuz they just don't want it to happen. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that they are worried that Microsoft will pull call of duty from their platform,

Richard Campbell (00:06:05):
Even though they have no nonsense, no evidence of that. And in fact, in fact, contradictory evidence to

Paul Thurrott (00:06:09):
That. That's right. Tons of it. Tons of it. So I, I've always found it bizarre. I've said this many times that a US regulatory agency would protect a company from Japan over an American company buying another, another American company. And that's aside from all of the, this doesn't change the structure of the video game industry and the slightest kind of stuff. It certainly doesn't change the relationship of Microsoft, the Sony and the console market. Which is I guess the concern. You know, Sony spent a lot, has spent a lot of time and money keeping Xbox down as much as possible. In fact, I think that's potentially legal behavior when they go and pay publishers not to go to Xbox. You know, that kind of thing. We can debate that, that's fine. Whatever. But that's the FTCs case. So that was just pro well proven. It was just ruled to be in wrong. It's just not true. And it's, we all know that we're all logical people. We can, we can look at, we can see what's going on in the world. We know it's not true. Now we, we have a federal court well, district court ruling that it's not true. So we have a little bit of precedent here. And I, there's a of things in

Richard Campbell (00:07:17):
That Microsoft forced, right? Like, what I appreciate is that this was Brad Smith's plan. That's right. Was to force them into this. So get the ruling to just stop the postponement.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:26):
I don't know if I can find this quickly, but there's also language in this ruling that talks about how the FTC has had over 18 months to do this. Yeah. And when Microsoft came and said, we gotta get this going. We've been trying to do this forever. Right. The FTC tried to block it, and the judge said like, you had 18 months to investigate this deal. Yeah. You don't need any more time. No. You know, I, I'm paraphrasing.

Richard Campbell (00:07:54):
No, it's a point. But you're getting to a point of bad faith. Like if it wasn't a federal agency mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, if it was another entity mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the judge would go, are you crazy? This, this is bad faith. You

Paul Thurrott (00:08:03):
18, you are wasting the court's time. Yes.

Richard Campbell (00:08:05):
Yeah. Exactly. S to the point where it's like, who's getting a share of the 3 billion? Like, what's going on here?

Paul Thurrott (00:08:10):
I know,

Richard Campbell (00:08:11):
I I, you, you seem desperate to get 'em over that line.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:14):
So this is not victory played balloons in confetti quite yet, but this is a major victory. And there are, we all know there are two regulatory bodies that have tried to block this. This is a major defeat for the only one of those that matters. No offense to the uk. But it is, I think telling that literally that day, <laugh> like that day, now I know they stepped it back a little bit, but the uk cma the competition market authority came out and said, you know, we're we're willing to renegotiate. And this, this is to the point that the EU competition competition com competition commissioner made back in May when she compared the way that the EU and the UK had handled this kind of regulatory stuff. It's like, some people believe that your job is just to stop things from happening. It's like, no, your job is to do the right thing for competition and consumers mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And it is it's

(00:09:10):
What the UK is trying to do now is what it should have done all along, which was, we can't pass this unless you make some concessions. Let's talk about those concessions. And now that's what they're saying. And it's like, guys, you know, I, you could have done this months ago. Yeah. You could have done this months ago. It's a lot like what the FTC tried to do there in June mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and just drag it out. They just, you know, in other words, foot dragging so that the, that date comes and goes. And the code two companies say, eh, forget it. You know, is is, it's just so, it's so insidious, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:09:43):
Okay. But is there any, are you gonna look back in a year and say, look how horrible that merger was for the, for us as consumers, or

Paul Thurrott (00:09:54):
Maybe for Microsoft, this is a minority report and I cannot rule on a future crime <laugh>. But I, no, but here's what I'll say. And I, I think this is

Leo Laporte (00:10:01):
Important. Mean, it's kinda a merger of two big entities to make one even

Paul Thurrott (00:10:05):
Bigger entity. Yeah, it sure is. It's

Leo Laporte (00:10:06):
Bigger entity that's not as big as the other entities that are already in the

Paul Thurrott (00:10:09):
Space. That's right. It's, they're two big entities, but they're not as big as the, but that doesn't mean we should

Leo Laporte (00:10:12):
Ha allow the agglomeration of all of

Paul Thurrott (00:10:15):
These. Sure. It does. It, it, it absolutely means we should not allow, not, we should not block it <laugh>. That's not reason to block it. That's not how the law works. I look, we can sit here and sort of be like, you know, to my mind, I don't feel that it's fair for a couple big companies to, you know, and it's like, that's cute, but that's is what happens. No.

Leo Laporte (00:10:32):
Okay. So, you know, okay. You're right. The law says it has to be a monopoly. It's not a monopoly. So it's not, it's not, they're not using their monopoly power to enter a new market or anything like that. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:43):
But to answer your question,

Leo Laporte (00:10:45):
But to answer is

Paul Thurrott (00:10:46):
This bad? Let answer your question. No, that's the point. No, I wouldn't think so. It absolutely is not. No, it, it's not. I mean, look, there might be things that happen in the future where we go, oh, you know, but you gotta kind of step through the stuff. The most important are all of the deals that Microsoft made with its competitors to bring key games, especially Call of Duty to their platforms too. Right. Microsoft's claim that all we want to do is make these games more broadly available, is a fact because it benefits them. Yeah. You know, Microsoft, well,

Leo Laporte (00:11:15):
And game passes a whole is an effort to make more games available to more people for longer.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:21):
Right. Right. So it's

Leo Laporte (00:11:22):
The third way to keep old games alive.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:24):
The third biggest market for video games is consoles. That market is starting to fade, by the way that came out in the court documents. The second biggest is PC games which actually I think surpassed console in

Leo Laporte (00:11:39):
Dollar, in fair amount in in number of units. What?

Paul Thurrott (00:11:44):
Oh, I don't know. I look, I'm, I'm, I'm, look, I can't, I'm sorry. I can only speak, I don't really have the exact statistics on this stuff. This is just stuff

Leo Laporte (00:11:50):
It surprised me to hear there are more PC gamers than there are console, but, okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:53):
P console gaming is a small market. I guess so, but there are 1 billion something PCs in the world. There are 20 million Xbox Series X and S. It's, it's, it's, it's not exponential, but it's a tiny comparative market.

Leo Laporte (00:12:05):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:06):
The biggest market by far in video games is mobile.

Leo Laporte (00:12:10):
Yeah. And that's

Paul Thurrott (00:12:10):
Obvious. And Microsoft has zero position in mobile. Right. They have a tiny position in pc, and they are in last place in consoles. If Microsoft should through some strategy, and by buying companies somehow beat Sony in the console market, they are still a tiny part of the overall slice of gaming. And by the way, not that this necessarily factors into the legal decision that would go into allowing this. Sony is one of the most belligerent abusers of a market that has ever existed. The, the behavior that came out during this whole episode is astonishing, and I think needs to be looked at by regulators. Yeah. They had the FTC should be moving on from this and onto anti-competitive practices by Sony. Exactly. That should have been the takeaway from this. Yeah. But looking beyond that, and I think that the, the important part is, is it's not, Microsoft is economically, you know, driven to do the right thing, you know, if you will, and make the, keep these things on arrival platforms, that's cute.

(00:13:13):
But Microsoft is legally required because they have these agreements now to make that happen. So that's a completely different story. Will Microsoft release Xbox exclusives out of Activision Blizzard in the future? Yes. But you know what? That's the other, that's that slice of the pie thing. What does it look like? The number of exclusives on PlayStation five, the number of exclusives on Nintendo Switch, the number of exclusives on Xbox Series X and S. They can never keep up. They will ne they don't have enough games that they could make exclusive for that they'll never, they'll never compete on exclusives. So their best strategy is cross-platform. Microsoft wants the console market to die. They have to be realistic about it. It's not going away. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> not anytime soon, but it would be better for them. They're the only company in this business that loses money on every console they sell that came out during this. It would be better for them if they could follow their, their most tried and true high margin business model, which is software and services and just make it available everywhere, which is exactly what they've done with their biggest business office. Right. All Microsoft cares about is selling more cloud and yes. Games run on clouds. It all ties into this. So you

Leo Laporte (00:14:22):
Satisfied the business argument?

Paul Thurrott (00:14:24):
I think so, but

Leo Laporte (00:14:25):
Let me, there's a little analogy.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:27):
You're a gamer. You're gonna take it from the gamer perspective.

Leo Laporte (00:14:29):
Yeah. From the gamer. There's a little analogy here that I think Richard might appreciate. I know you will. Paul <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:35):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:14:36):
There's a, from, in 1896, a little beer company was founded in San Francisco called Anchor Steam Beer. They used a steam brewing process no one else does. And many consider them maybe the first craft brewery in, in the United States. I mean, this is interesting. 1896 about eight years ago, they were bought by Sapporo. Now th this is a San Francisco landmark beer. Just a classic. Yesterday Sapporo announced they're putting him out of business. It's gone. Oh. Interesting. We have a little brewery over here called Lani, wonderful Craft Brewery. Good friends of mine started it. They're happy cuz Heineken purchased them a few years ago and they are a hundred millionaires. Right. But I'm concerned the same thing will happen. Yeah. These big companies don't have

Paul Thurrott (00:15:23):
The same I know. But

Leo Laporte (00:15:24):
This is incentive to produce small craft beers. Yes. I wonder what's gonna happen to independent gaming if you have five giant companies dominating.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:35):
I just, so Okay. Couple things cuz you're, you've set off a million things in my brain. Now you want some

Leo Laporte (00:15:41):
Beer for one. I know, but okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:42):
Yeah. So, no. So look these aren't these, we not, Microsoft's not buying a bunch of crap beer brewers. They're buying one of the biggest video game makers on Earth. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Leo Laporte (00:15:53):
Only, but their size alone means that it's gonna be hard to compete against them. Maybe not. I don't know if you're an well

Paul Thurrott (00:15:58):
Compete against them, where, I mean, like Right. In other words

Leo Laporte (00:16:02):
They're just gonna be so dominant video that I'm, here's my real fear. But there's

Paul Thurrott (00:16:06):
Gonna see,

Leo Laporte (00:16:07):
See of a bunch of first person shooters and MMO RPGs. Yeah. And we're not gonna see the innovative

Paul Thurrott (00:16:15):
Okay. Listen, there are two companies that, that we're talking about here. Microsoft, which owns Xbox and Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, which owns Xbox has a tremendous independent game studio called Idea at Xbox. They have been pushing this forever. Activision Blizzard does not <laugh>. So I listen the, the, remember you gotta go back to the beginning of this late this thing was announced in January, 2022. In late 2021. All this news came out about the horrible workplace sexual discrimination abuse stuff under Bobby Kotick at Activision Blizzard. And the Big Hope, remember upfront before we sort of addressed all the regulatory stuff, we thought, you know, and also before Microsoft <laugh> had the wrong problems with this we, we said, you know, Microsoft's gonna clean this up. Right. We look at the way Microsoft was such a good steward to Minecraft.

(00:17:04):
A a product that has expanded sure. Cross-Platform by way. A Java product. A Java product. Yeah. Although, yeah, there's a obviously there's a non Java version too, but their stewardship of GitHub, which has been incredible. We can look, I, I, you know, the FTC tried to make a big deal of this, but we can look at their active, their acquisition of XX Media, right. Which is Bethesda. And you can say, oh, look at this. They bought this Game studio, this game studio's hundreds and hundreds of games and they made two of them Xbox exclusives. Oh, this, oh, that's so sad. Like, I, like if you,

Leo Laporte (00:17:39):
There is, by the way, I'm just thinking there is a business precedent. Cuz the f was it the ftc I think it was the FTC blocked for a long time T-Mobile Sprint merger cuz it would then reduce us to only three carriers. Only three in the us And they, and they were able to get in concessions that made Dish the fourth carrier, which is kind nutty. I I don't, so there's a precedent. You don't want it too much consolidation in a market.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:01):
No, you don't. I, but there is, it's also,

Richard Campbell (00:18:03):
There's a schism in gaming, right? Like Yeah. Bottom line is, if you want to make a game that actually utilize the PS five or an Xbox one s mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you need hundred million dollars in a team of 318 months to bust assets to actually utilize that. That's right. But there's another market that's always existed that is the mobile gaming in the small game development is that it

Leo Laporte (00:18:23):
Exists. That's true. I mean, you could develop a game for the iPhone

Richard Campbell (00:18:27):
Sure. Yourself. Single Single,

Leo Laporte (00:18:29):
Yeah. Small

Paul Thurrott (00:18:30):
Group. Yeah, you could, but actually a lot of money speaks a lot to what, but that's what you were just talking about. So when the iPhone debuted everybody and anybody had a fair footing on this store, look, flash you Bob on the street. Could you could th Yeah, exactly. Today that has consol, if you go and look, there's not a lot of indie stuff going on in the top 10 at down the, there's

Leo Laporte (00:18:48):
A lot of crap like Ebony and

Paul Thurrott (00:18:50):
Yeah. And, but, but more to the point that market has expanded such that there are like a billion whatever games in there. And, and really what you face is a situation where it's really hard to get Apple's attention because them promoting you is the only thing they can put you in front of all those eyeballs. Right. In a realistic fashion. And thus, yes, an individual can still create their own game on a phone. Right. It's a real, it's

Leo Laporte (00:19:13):
Possible. But you're not gonna, you might not see another Call of Duty. You

Paul Thurrott (00:19:16):
Almost certainly, it's just like lottery ticket. Like you might win.

Richard Campbell (00:19:20):
Yeah. Well, you know, if you, but if you talk about the top dozen games out there that, that are billion dollar games, none of them are new. Right. The industry has function this way for a long time. Yeah. It's too expensive to make these games to take any

Paul Thurrott (00:19:32):
Chances. This is that's right. And listen, it's very interesting with technology that there will be these brief interludes that kind of change the way things are normally. So for example, like Hollywood and these big blockbuster movies, right. For a long time, the only entities that could make movies were these gigantic corporations. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> thanks to technology. Individuals can make movies. Now, they don't go out and compete with Tom Cruise in a multiplex, obviously. But it's kind of fascinating how there's been a just a, they've just brought this kind of thing down to normal people. Like a, what do you call this? So I can't think of the right term. But that happens with tech all over the place. It happens in gaming. There are indeed, you know, individuals can still make it, can still do this. But I, and,

Richard Campbell (00:20:19):
And it has happened recently, like, I would argue the first Breakthrough Game, the last Breakthrough Game, not from the big conglomerates that has become huge. It's Fortnite. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that's six years ago. So, I mean, if a game is hot enough, they Epic formed Epic around it and so forth. And they had a bunch of other titles. But the reality is that was a breakout game. It wasn't even original. Right. They were copying from Pub G, but they turned Yeah. It turned into a hit. That's right. Like

Paul Thurrott (00:20:46):
This game, that game was originally about building things. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:20:49):
And it turned into a shooter. But the point

Leo Laporte (00:20:52):
Being,

Richard Campbell (00:20:53):
The conglomerates move slow, it leaves room for Agile creative people to make great

Paul Thurrott (00:20:58):
Things. All right. But let's, we should go back to Leo's original example. We should just remember here that Anchor Steam did not have to sell the company. Right. They chose to do that. You know, when you make a company, oh, your goal that's right. Is to make money. Somehow you could sell it by, like for example Sam Adams was a craft brewer. Yeah. And now they exist in this weird nether region between big beer and craft, because they're huge. But they're Right. They're not as huge as Budweiser. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which is owned by in depth. Now

Leo Laporte (00:21:28):
There's an even closer analogy. Royo was founded by three Finnish college kids. Yeah. In and they

Paul Thurrott (00:21:36):
Owned by thousand three Sega. Now

Leo Laporte (00:21:37):
I think 20 years later, they sell for a billion dollars to Sega. But

Paul Thurrott (00:21:40):
That's the, but that's always the point, right? Yeah. When you form a company, the idea is to make money. And if one of the ways you can cash out big time is to be acquired. Right? Right. So there are people on the side. So this people, which doesn't, which doesn't

Leo Laporte (00:21:53):
Then the next three kids from Finnish University to start their company. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:58):
Actually it does. Cuz it's like, we could get rich, which could be rich. We be written aro. Mm-Hmm. We could be the next Romeo. Yeah. you obviously, I mean, you're kind of looking at it from a, like a personal standpoint. It's like, I feel bad as a fan of craft beer that this thing doesn't exist anymore. It's almost like saying, I feel bad that my indie band became really popular and sold out <affirmative>. And it's like, you know, like, I don't like r e m anymore. Yeah. Because now they're on the radio's

Leo Laporte (00:22:20):
Steam guys. But you keep coming to that, that business thing. But I'm not gonna get any more Christmas beer, Christmas ale. And that's

Paul Thurrott (00:22:26):
Sad for me. Think there's me, there's always more. There's always more. There's

Richard Campbell (00:22:28):
A though, there's more demand there. Somebody else is gonna make it.

Leo Laporte (00:22:30):
Well, that, that's what add think saying in irc, you know, a beer. Yeah. The brewers can just go around the corner and start another one and make Yeah. A better version of it. So that's a good point. Gaming is not quite so easy to, to do, but depends on the game. Depends on the game. Yeah. Market. I, I'll tell my personal point of view, I, I am a addicted fan of this game created by a tiny scrappy little company called Heim. And and it's just a small group of developers. They made a lot of money selling it for 20 bucks for the last they came out in 2020 during the pandemic. And I think they, they really capitalized on that. I don't, I would hate for them to be bought by Epic or ea.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:13):
Yeah. But they would love for them to be bought. They would

Leo Laporte (00:23:15):
Be, they would be happy. But it's a good

Paul Thurrott (00:23:17):
Not, that's not, I mean, you can't, we can't, antitrust law can't be based on the fact that there's a fanboy out there that loves his little company.

Leo Laporte (00:23:24):
I just, it's, here's where this is a problem. It's not pure business. Yeah. These are works of art and so okay. But I mean, honestly, the people who created it get to sell it. Of

Paul Thurrott (00:23:34):
Course. But we're not talking, but we're not talking about icu. We're talking about Activision Blizzard. They're one of the biggest

Leo Laporte (00:23:39):
BL world I know. They don't make anything world. It's a

Paul Thurrott (00:23:40):
Different, and by the way, the entire time they were steamrolling in the industry and dominating and doing whatever they were doing, all kinds of indie games are still being made. Right? No,

Leo Laporte (00:23:48):
No. And there are

Paul Thurrott (00:23:48):
Horrific sometimes about,

Leo Laporte (00:23:49):
And frankly, you could argue Bobby Kotick should not get Dollar one.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:53):
Oh my God. I mean, that's obviously the worst part of this whole thing. Yeah. I, I think anyone would agree to that.

Richard Campbell (00:23:58):
But, but the, he's Yeah, he, but this gets him out. No, it was a way after.

Leo Laporte (00:24:03):
No, he's on the board. I think he stays

Paul Thurrott (00:24:06):
Okay. But he's, he's, he's not,

Leo Laporte (00:24:07):
He's

Richard Campbell (00:24:08):
Operating, he's not running anything anymore,

Leo Laporte (00:24:09):
By the way. Okay. The second, the other part of this is, yeah, the FTCs probably gonna appeal. In fact, we'll probably get news any minute now that they

Paul Thurrott (00:24:16):
It could, except for one thing. So if you read a lot of the analysis of this in the morning, the overwhelming trend you're gonna see as legal experts think these people have no case. Oh, this should never have been brought, should never have been brought. They should never have done this. You are, this is a fool's errand at this point.

Leo Laporte (00:24:31):
I have to say

Paul Thurrott (00:24:32):
That you're

Leo Laporte (00:24:32):
Right. It could happen when you read these stories, I'm saying this not to you guys, you know, you know this. Yeah. But to the audience, always consider there is a, sometimes a subtext, which is see that damn Lena Con is over aggressive. Correct. And she keeps losing. And so this is why you shouldn't regulate big tech. So there is definitely

Paul Thurrott (00:24:54):
A group of way though,

Leo Laporte (00:24:55):
People who don't, who don't want her to succeed, cuz they want big tech does succeed.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:59):
To that point though, that's very interesting because there's a real political thing there. You could get into. There's an, there's sort of a feminism thing you could get into if you wanted, right? Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. But honestly, I, I think the argument to, if I'm not gonna look at, you know sexuality or, or race or demographic or political party, if you look at what she has done, she has done potentially irreparable harm to the US government's ability to regulate big tech because she has chosen the wrong targets and is lost. You

Leo Laporte (00:25:32):
Can make that argument. You bet.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:34):
And I wanna be really clear, there

Richard Campbell (00:25:35):
Is a need, there is a need for

Paul Thurrott (00:25:36):
Regulation. Absolutely. Keep talking about this. But if you do it poorly,

Richard Campbell (00:25:40):
You cripple the ability to do,

Paul Thurrott (00:25:42):
But the, the, the, the point I made in dec, probably December, 2022 when the FTC said, we're gonna block this was you got, I'm sorry. Explain this to me. You've got Amazon, apple, Google, and meta running rough shot over these markets, harming competition, harming consumers, and you're gonna go after this. This is where you're taking your stand. I, that to me was the stupidest. I I, you've, you've got these belligerent monopolists, or at least dominant market players that are obviously doing harm and you're gonna go after this. Yeah. I, it just never made sense. It doesn't make sense today. And if they do appeal, I, I, they're they've jumped the shark.

Leo Laporte (00:26:24):
Yeah. I think that's fair.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:25):
They're not paying

Leo Laporte (00:26:25):
Attention. Yeah. I think you're right. Right. I think that's fair. They,

Paul Thurrott (00:26:30):
I I

Richard Campbell (00:26:32):
They only spend a half hour on it. I think we're fine. Everything's fine. We're fine.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:35):
<Laugh>. Okay. But we should like, so we should, okay. So I, I, I see this as a major legal win for Microsoft, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. I do, because I have been saying exactly this thing for the past 18 months. It is personally pleasing to me to see a judge write a beautiful written thing that agrees with me. Right. Actually makes some mistakes in there. You know, he's

Leo Laporte (00:26:57):
Nobody smarter. Isn't person there one issue though that her son works for Microsoft?

Paul Thurrott (00:27:01):
Yep. Yep. We can, all these things we can point to, but I think the two, that's

Leo Laporte (00:27:06):
A little bit concerning that she did not recuse herself, but okay. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we have a judiciary. That seems a little bit,

Paul Thurrott (00:27:13):
I mean look, compared to this Supreme Court, this is

Leo Laporte (00:27:16):
Yeah, I know.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:17):
I mean, I don't know what this is skipping school. So the FT C, like you said, could appeal. Right? So that's interesting. I hope they don't, I don't think they have the standing or whatever, but whatever the UK CMA has, like I said, kind of said, eh, just kidding guys. Maybe we could renegotiate. Now they're talking. That might require a new investigation. Same argument the judge made against the ftc. Are you kidding me? Come on. We know what your problem is. Just see what Microsoft's concessions do. And if you can meet a in agreement, can we just meet in agreement? Seriously, you look ridiculous. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and then there's that wild card, right? Microsoft could, and I don't expect them to. Microsoft has been very friendly to all parties here, including by the way, Sony, which is crazy mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but and said, look, we're gonna work with you. You know, but Microsoft could say, I'm sorry, we're going through with this. It's gonna be a lot harder to unwind this thing after we've already done it. Yep. And and they could just say, screw it, you know, we're gonna do it. You can't stop us. You know, you could try to come back later and take it apart, but you can't stop us. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and what,

Leo Laporte (00:28:19):
And they get a fine potentially from the uk or

Paul Thurrott (00:28:22):
Who can say, I don't know, who cares?

Leo Laporte (00:28:24):
<Laugh>, all these things are possible. They're all appealable. Like, we could, you want to drag out legal games, let the corporation.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:29):
Yeah. But here's a little thing. I I find that this is fascinating, and I don't think this has been written anywhere or discussed. The, the, the big holdout here the whole time has been Sony, right? Sony is tr trying to protect their little, you know, empire they have in consoles. They've been terrible this whole time. They have pretended that they're afraid that Call of Duty will not come to their future consoles or future versions of Call of Duty won't come. The thing is, Microsoft has offered the deal. They offered Sony to multiple companies, and they've all accepted the only one that has into Sony. In fact, Sony never even responded to it. So if Microsoft were to acquire Activision Blizzard today, they could say, you know, <laugh>, we never, you guys never agree to this. So well, I guess we'll see what happens.

(00:29:13):
Like, it would, it would be fascinating. I don't, I, and I'm not suggesting they should or will take Call of Duty away from Sony, but when you, you could make the case for exclusives starting to happen on the Xbox and things coming first to Xbox, and we only make it available on our streaming service and not on yours. Because if you would just sign the damn thing a year ago, we would've given you everything. And I think the situation be a little different from a negotiation standpoint after they've been so belligerent and then been shown to have been lying the whole time. Mm-Hmm. yeah. Really, Microsoft should be filing complaints to the FTC for serious behavior. I, I agree. In fact, but Microsoft shouldn't have to, the FTC should be investigating the first, I, geez, I know. Everyone should ev all the eu, the uk, everyone should. It is crazy. But I guess know what, they need a complainant. I guess they need a complain. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. The EU always acts when a company complains. Yes. To some degree. They don't always invest. They don't always, typically, it's typically only when a European company complains. But either way. Yeah, that's a good point. Actually, I got a funny story about that. When we get to the Amazon thing. There's a, there's a really good EU kind of point in there. Well, let's do the

Leo Laporte (00:30:26):
Amazon thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:27):
Okay. So am So we know that the, the EU has in recent months passed two well, we'll call them anti-big tech laws. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right? And they are specifically worded so that they're very clearly going after specific companies. Right. Right. And and basically what this is about is size of market gatekeeper, yada, yada, yada. So Amazon is the first big tech company to legally, legally challenge one of the two laws.

Leo Laporte (00:30:56):
It's a vop, right? They say it's a

Paul Thurrott (00:30:58):
Vop, a a very large online platform. That's right. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:31:01):
And

Paul Thurrott (00:31:01):
Amazon's trying to say, that's not us. We're not a vop. This is, this is, I, I, I don't know why this wasn't more, I found this hilarious myself. I don't understand why other people aren't calling on this if hypocrisy, but Amazon says, if that VOP designation were to be applied to Amazon and not to other large retailers across the eu, Amazon would be unfairly singled out and forced to meet onerous administrative obligations that don't benefit EU consumers. Oops. As it turns out, a large European online retailer called Zalando that no one here in the US has ever heard of, has in fact been designated as a vop. And that company is suing the EU <laugh> because they too do not want to be in this. So what is your point? You're only doing this to Europe, you know, to American companies? Oh, absolutely. No, we're not. This is

Leo Laporte (00:31:48):
The, this is the best headline from the register. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> obscure, internet boutique, Amazon <laugh>, Susie, you for calling it Ave nine

Paul Thurrott (00:31:58):
Platform <laugh>. That's right. I don't always like their headlines. I find them to be a little too much. Ay, sometimes. Yeah. That's a, that's a good one. That's a good one. <Laugh>. Yeah. Obscure online. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:32:08):
I mean, that's beautiful. They, they do make the point that there are European retailers. Amazon's not dominant in the EU as it as it is in the us Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:16):
Well, that, but that's actually, that's the interesting thing about this law. Th th this law is not going after the dominant party in any given market, which is kind of how we think about Monopoly. Right. Obviously in antitrust, it literally is setting up a situation in which companies that meet some bar are under a higher level of scrutiny, which in, in the United States, we typically wait until their monopoly. In some ways this is I know more proactive. I don't know. But yeah, in other words, it it, like we, we acknowledge that the world has changed. There's not gonna be a company typical that maybe that dominates a given market. Sure. Maybe there are just a bunch of big companies. They're really big and they're bigger than all those little, you know, boutique company, the actual boutique companies. No. And now

Richard Campbell (00:32:56):
You get into car telling and collusion. You know, they,

Paul Thurrott (00:33:00):
Yes. There's been plenty

Richard Campbell (00:33:00):
Of FTC investigation between Boeing and Airbus as a duopoly.

Leo Laporte (00:33:03):
Sure, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:33:04):
Yeah, yeah. We call this the, the Japanese model <laugh>, you know. Well so,

Leo Laporte (00:33:09):
But if

Richard Campbell (00:33:09):
You call it tsu, it sounds cool.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:11):
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:33:12):
Right. I help you.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:13):
I, I have to say, I actually, and, and, and it's not like the eus bar is particularly low, right? No. You have to be big to, to, to apply as a vop you have to be a big fricking company. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And by the way, to your point, Lee, you should appreciate this, given the argument you made earlier, bigger company should be held to a higher level of scrutiny. Sure. Because of their ability to cause harm, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:33:39):
Right.

Richard Campbell (00:33:39):
To crush markets.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:40):
Right. It just makes sense

Richard Campbell (00:33:41):
And harm and harm

Paul Thurrott (00:33:41):
Consumers. So yes.

Leo Laporte (00:33:43):
One of the disconnects is that this DSA is about disinformation, right? Oh. And, and keeping com companies from spreading illegal content, but in response to the Amazon filing, the EU pointed out selling stuff counts that content can be co can be products that you sell. And so they want the hold Amazon to hire a standard for things like counterfeiting and so forth. Amazon,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:16):
We've done a good job for Amazon, but for Amazon and the other big tech companies in America, the bigger issue is not is the dma. Right. The That's right. The

Leo Laporte (00:34:26):
Other, so that's what we should make clear. This VOP thing is about is, is really aimed at social media, which is why Amazon says, but, but you're on it. <Laugh>. We're not social media, you know? Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:38):
I, you know, yeah. I mean, that's interesting. I mean but I mean, how broadly do you want to define social media? I mean, are Amazon product reviews a form of social media? Well,

Leo Laporte (00:34:50):
And Amazon, even though, you know, they would like you to think they're a retailer, the one of their biggest businesses is advertising mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and the DSA is absolutely about advertising. So, yeah. I, I think this is, I understand there argument, but I think that the EU is probably right to include them in the op.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:09):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I look the, the US has outsourced antitrust regulation to the eu for the most part. They're not going after the companies that matter the most. I think any of us who care about equality and fairness or whatever, however you want to describe it, are hoping something happens over there. The problem with the EU is that they're very quick to rush to a decision. They're very slow from a legal process for that decision to turn into something that actually matters in the real world. And they

Richard Campbell (00:35:35):
Typically just toss out fines. And these companies can afford the fines.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:38):
Yeah. They don't need to. And then those fines get rescinded many times or reversed,

Leo Laporte (00:35:41):
We should print out, which is

Paul Thurrott (00:35:42):
What

Leo Laporte (00:35:44):
Microsoft per se is not a vlo P, but Bing is Avelo. <Laugh> a very large online search engine. I

Paul Thurrott (00:35:53):
Mean, that's

Leo Laporte (00:35:54):
Amazing. Linkedin

Richard Campbell (00:35:54):
Is a vop,

Leo Laporte (00:35:55):
Right? Linkedin,

Paul Thurrott (00:35:56):
AOP also. That's right. Compared to the market leaders in their respective markets.

Leo Laporte (00:36:01):
Here's the, if you put link, here's the vop, and they included Alibaba, which is also primarily retail, right? Amazon, apple booking.com. Yeah. Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping. Didn't they close Google shopping like eight years ago? The EU thinks it's still probably it's

Paul Thurrott (00:36:18):
Google. So yes,

Leo Laporte (00:36:19):
Get technical Instagram, I would tell Instagram, LinkedIn, as you said, Pinterest, or as you say Pinterest. That's true. Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, w Wikipedia. Yeah. That interesting. Those bastards, <laugh>, those guys make me crazy. Well, but I think that's the point is not that this is a saying, this is not an accusation that you're screwing up, but that just that you, you reach more than 15% of the, of our EU population with your stuff, and we wanna hold you to a high standard, which

Paul Thurrott (00:36:48):
By the way, is perfectly reasonable. Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:51):
I, this isn't, this isn't prosecution. This is No. In fact, in fact, you come

Paul Thurrott (00:36:56):
Under our,

Leo Laporte (00:36:57):
Our rules,

Paul Thurrott (00:36:58):
This is an interesting retort to the very, the, the claim I would've made too, right? That the EU from a regulatory, from a antitrust perspective, has very specifically attacked US companies, which granted are dominant in big tech. You know, big tech is all American, pretty much. But it does feel like a little bit of anti-American, whatever. And then you look at this and you're like, well, actually, I mean, obviously Americans are still, you know, the dominant thing in there, but there are European companies as well. And I think that's, I, that shows me that this is healthy, you know, or it is one of the things that shows me this is healthy.

Leo Laporte (00:37:36):
They'll have to have transparency reports. I mean, I think all of this is, is not a bad thing. It's, I think telling that Amazon does not want to have to do any of this. I

Paul Thurrott (00:37:46):
Think Amazon's gonna be on the vanguard of a series of pushbacks from big tech. No, it's by the way,

Richard Campbell (00:37:52):
But it's great to do this. This is how you, this is how this actually becomes stable when Amazon loses. Maybe the rest of 'em will go, okay, well, we're gonna lose anyway. I guess we gonna live

Paul Thurrott (00:38:00):
With it. Say, we didn't really, we, we sort of skirted around this one earlier with the Activision Blazer stuff, but there is an issue with big tech being emboldened by the FTC losing mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and I, and you know, it, it, these things are not contradictory. Like, so when I say something like, I believe that Microsoft should be able to acquire Activision Blizzard, and here's why I believe that big tech needs to be reigned in and held to a higher level of scrutiny. There are some people who maybe they're not sophisticated enough to understand what I'm saying or why those things are not contradictory. Right. Those are both logical into my mind. Right. But that whatever, that's an opinion, obviously, but they don't contradict each other. Right? Not at all. Microsoft is not dominant in gaming. And this doesn't change that Microsoft is dominant in other markets, by the way. And I, yes. The US should look, maybe look at Azure. Mm-Hmm. Maybe it should look at the Microsoft 365 and office stuff and, and, and the teams bundling that Slack. Slack is upset

Leo Laporte (00:38:53):
About don't be.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:56):
Yeah, exactly. You wanna

Leo Laporte (00:38:58):
Write 12 articles tomorrow,

Paul Thurrott (00:39:00):
<Laugh>, but but I, and this is the point that Margarite vestige pronouncing that Right? Said in May, which is you, these cases is individual. You have to approach each on its own merits. The goal is not to say no. The goal is to evaluate each and see what can be done, if anything, to reach some kind of a compromise that makes this make sense. And if no, then you say no.

Richard Campbell (00:39:22):
Yeah. It's, look, look for potential harm to consumers and mitigate That's right. One of the mitigations can be blocking the merger, but so that would be the inferior one,

Paul Thurrott (00:39:31):
Right? I don't mean to keep going back to the activation ion thing, but so many people are like, well, what if, yeah. What if, I mean, like, what if I, I can't, we can't really regulate. What if <laugh>? Nope. You know, was it the,

Leo Laporte (00:39:43):
I just said Microsoft neglected to bring its time machine to the trial <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:46):
Yeah, exactly. Well, I keep using the Minority report thing. I'm like, we can't prosecute a future crime here. Yeah, no, that's fair. But they, but again, I, I just to, I really think this is

Richard Campbell (00:39:55):
Well, is more <crosstalk>. Why are you staring at what ifs when you could be dealing with known harm?

Paul Thurrott (00:40:00):
Right. And, and that's the thing, I think the thing that's unique about Microsoft, right? For example, when Google bought DoubleClick, a lot of people said, but what if, and they were right. You know, I, with Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, they have set a bunch of parameters by which they will operate here. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they have, they've really made important concessions. This one is locked and done. It's, it's this. Yes. Like I said, there will be exclusives right here and there. Yes, there will be things. Oh, so you told you so that people don't, like, I get that, you know, but I, by and large this is for a deal, this size. There, there are so many uncertainties here. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I think that makes this case unique in the history of, in antitrust regulation. I, I, I mean, at least in technology I'm not an expert in, you know, <laugh>, whatever the broader world, obviously. But I, I just think I, I just, it, it's, it's, I I, I just keep saying the same thing. It just doesn't make sense to try to block this other than I just don't want it. I hate

Richard Campbell (00:41:02):
<Laugh>, you know?

Paul Thurrott (00:41:04):
And a lot of people feel that way. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:41:06):
Or yeah. Or I need to score points politically, you know, it's not, well, wouldn't the world video against,

Leo Laporte (00:41:10):
Actually, this is an interesting question. I don't know if it is true, but would the world be a better place if there weren't giant companies? But there were a bunch of, you know, a hundred million dollar companies instead of trillion dollar companies

Paul Thurrott (00:41:21):
Out there. So unfortunately, companies are invented by humans, and we have bad nature, and that world cannot exist. That's like a Star Trek dream. We,

Richard Campbell (00:41:29):
And they're also

Leo Laporte (00:41:29):
Utopian fantasy. Like everybody, every town, town, we have all the, all the

Paul Thurrott (00:41:34):
Things you

Leo Laporte (00:41:35):
Need.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:36):
A community has agreed that we are gonna have one general, or, you know, two general stores. Yeah. Two of these stores. And two of these

Leo Laporte (00:41:41):
Stores. You should go down Main Street and get your video game from the artisanal video game maker.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:46):
We're gonna call this place Utopia. And then what's gonna happen is the owner of one of the stores is gonna come to the other one and say, Hey dude, I'm gonna give you a hundred million dollars

Leo Laporte (00:41:53):
To close down <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:54):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because that's what happens. So would the world be a better place, maybe

Leo Laporte (00:41:58):
Even taking human nature out of it? Yeah. I, and this was, to me, this was an interesting point about the Vision Pro that Apple's making only a company with worth almost 3 trillion with huge amounts of cash and willing to take 10 to 15 years to develop a product. Could do this. Right now, the artisanal VR helmet maker down the street's not gonna make the Vision Pro.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:21):
Let, let me bring that one closer to home. For this purposes of this podcast there have been only two company, well, there's a couple of I'll say two companies that have made major investments in cloud streaming for games. One of them has exited the market, <laugh> leaving us with Microsoft, the other one. And then you've got these other companies like, you know, Nvidia, it's got a little side business with GeForce. Now there are other kind of cloud streaming businesses. We just learned about all of them. Cuz Microsoft made a deal with every single one of 'em. Right? Right. So here's this company that through a, a, a, a series of decisions and successes and failures and acquisitions and whatever else has, has gone existed for 40 whatever years, whatever it is, and is now in a position where they can afford to do this work and have decided to do this work that no one else is doing.

(00:43:11):
Are we going to deny them the, a very kind of American success story nature of what they've done and say, no, this market may be important in the future and we don't want you to dominate it. That is the exact opposite of innovation and what we should want companies to do. I I would argue that's consumer harm. Yeah. Right. You're, you're blocking innovation. Microsoft started with, it was two men in Albuquerque. It was, it was the ultimate mom and pop shop. They operated over a dry cleaner on a, in a strip mall. And they, they had dreams of success because they were gonna sell programming languages. And that company has turned into something completely different, and it's completely better bigger, sorry. And part of it was because of some right. Series of decisions that were made. They didn't always make the right decisions that were setbacks too, but they got to this place. And I, yeah. I mean, okay. It's not, is it not fair that some small company that has neat ideas about cloud streaming can't compete against Microsoft? I, yeah. I guess on some level it's unfair, but Microsoft doesn't have to do what they're doing and they're doing it.

Leo Laporte (00:44:18):
I just feel for the artisanal nerd helmet makers down the street, I think they

Paul Thurrott (00:44:23):
Never gonna get chance. Chance. Unfortunate. You know, I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. <laugh>. I, listen, one of the best games I played over the past 10 years was, I believe, I hope I get the name right. It's Fire Watch. Right? You've played this.

Leo Laporte (00:44:33):
Yeah. Yeah. You're a fire, you're you go up in a tower. Fantastic.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:36):
Yeah. Fantastic. What was

Leo Laporte (00:44:37):
That a, was that an indie, like okay. It

Paul Thurrott (00:44:38):
Was it Yeah. Indie game. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:44:40):
Yep. Yeah, all the back. Anything that it, games are so expensive that anything that's really innovative, it's just like the movie industry. You know, you're gonna see mm-hmm. A million Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Right. But every once in a while, somebody make a small film about

Paul Thurrott (00:44:55):
Yeah. Well, but Marvel is that thing too. So the comic book industry was a, whatever small size it was. It's true. In the seventies, eighties. That's good point. It's tiny. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then it was acquired by Disney.

Leo Laporte (00:45:04):
But there's still graphic novels and they're great graphic novels out there. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:07):
Right. It doesn't too, no one, it doesn't, it doesn't prevent that stuff from happening. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that, that's the thing, like, if you, like, in other words, like you were talking about craft beer. If you're a craft beer lover and you don't, you don't even have to live near San Francisco or whatever. Like you could be in any other state, you know, anywhere in the world. Here's the thing, there is an incredible craft beer movement happening right now. Yeah. There are new companies coming up all the time. Absolutely. In my lifetime, I've seen some come and go in my, when we lived in Boston that, you know, that I love. So I mean, yeah. I, we all have this kind of nostalgia for something, whatever it might be. I'm gonna talk about some tech nostalgia later. And the companies, I loved Commodore, right? Agon tar, you know, and they're in name only you know, you feel bad just what happens.

Leo Laporte (00:45:52):
It's the world. Yeah. Yeah. All I

Paul Thurrott (00:45:55):
Wanna Tar was only, what, three years old and they were bought by Warner Communications. I know,

Leo Laporte (00:45:58):
I know.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:59):
I mean, so, you know, that was a million years ago.

Leo Laporte (00:46:01):
Well, really, if you're successful, you're gonna, the sooner you know, the bigger you Yeah. More successful you are, the quicker you're gonna get snapped up by some giant conglomerate, which, you know, makes me beg the question, where the hell is the giant podcast enterprise that's gonna buy us

Paul Thurrott (00:46:17):
<Laugh>? Yeah. I knew that's what this was. Really what you're really saying is what, what It happens to you. What about the Wordal is never gonna come outta your mouth again.

Leo Laporte (00:46:27):
What about my,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:28):
Tell me the last

Leo Laporte (00:46:28):
One. What about my wallet? I knew it. No, no. Yeah. Just kidding. Those days, <laugh>, if they ever existed or long Gone, Spotify's already fired half of the people that, you

Paul Thurrott (00:46:39):
Know, and that's the funny thing about this, isn't it Podcast, so it, it, the Warner Communications, just to beat that one to death, then sold Atari and lost money on it. Yeah. Because the video game market crashed. Timing

Leo Laporte (00:46:50):
Is hard. I wanna

Paul Thurrott (00:46:51):
Say five years later, right? Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:46:53):
It's hard. Yep. All right, let's take a break. Come back. It is called Windows Weekly. So we do have some Windows News Yes. Coming on. Yes. We do. <Laugh> just a bit. Yes, we do. It's about Microsoft and this is a huge story, so I'm, I'm glad we spent some time with it. Our show today brought to you by a w s Insiders. It's a podcast and it's a great podcast. A fast-paced, entertaining, insightful look behind the scenes of Amazon Web Services, AWS and cloud computing in general. It's not your typical talking Heads podcast like we do. Oh, no. It's much better, much, much better. It's a high production value, high energy, high entertainment show full of captivating stories from the earliest days of AWS to today and beyond. Hosts, Rahul Supermanium and Hillary Doyle dig into the current state and the future of AWS by talking with the people in the companies that know it best.

(00:47:47):
Rahul is a veteran AWS pro with over 15 years of experience managing more than 45,000 AWS instances. So he knows what he's talking about. In fact, he's very well known for pushing AWS pro products to their limits and for believing AWS is truly the operating system of the future. AWS Insiders is a show that's full of opinions, takeaways, and untold stories about the challenges, innovations, and the mind blowing promise of cloud computing. Brand new season just came out some good stuff in there. The first episode was great, filling the cloud talent gap. I was fascinated by episode two, or I guess three of the new season. It was the third one, right? Yeah. It's the one about Moderna, right? Moderna creators of the one of the mRNA vaccines that pretty much saved us a couple of years ago was a big user of AWS and the Cloud. So Rahul and Hillary talk to Moderna's, director of data engineering and cloud architecture to talk about that intersection. I think that's fascinating. Search for AWS Insiders in your podcast player, or visit cloud fix.oria.com/podcast cloud fixx dot a u r e a.com/podcast. We'll also include a link in our show notes at Twitter tv slash ww. You can just click that link And our thanks to AWS Insiders for their support. Alright. Right. We are back Paul Thora, Richard Campbell and there is Windows News.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:24):
Actually, before we get, I just, real quick, I just, this is just got a semi-personal thing, but a duplex announced last week that they were shutting down. And so I know the guy who runs the company and Ellen, he's from <laugh>. He has a, a tough international name. So I'm probably not pronouncing this right. I always have to apologize, you know, but Mendo he has served I think an incredible role in first the Windows phone community and then in Windows.

Leo Laporte (00:49:52):
Oh, you used, cause he was their numbers for years. I remember now the night was familiar

Paul Thurrott (00:49:56):
And when this happened? Yeah. Yeah. When this happened, I, I wrote, I have been using their survey data to report on the relative use and shares of back in the day, windows phone versions, windows phone device versions windows version service PCs for, and then I looked it up and literally since January 20, I don't even know the year 2015, sorry. When we started throughout.com that first week I had a story based on their data. And I I, I've enjoyed that. He's done some interesting contributions outside the space explicitly.

Leo Laporte (00:50:31):
He's, what was their business originally at Duplex? Sounds like they're an, a

Paul Thurrott (00:50:35):
Agency. Were, it was a way for ads to get into apps. Right. Ah, and so it was Windows phone apps, and then eventually became the, the metro style apps that kind of built off of that for the for big windows. Right. And you know, that kind of business has, has fallen in recent years. So last,

Leo Laporte (00:50:51):
Alan never got merged in with the big players, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:50:53):
They never Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:50:54):
That's right. Never. He said he's Lithuania. Alan Lithuanian Mandvi. You guys are terrible. Mandvi. It's easy. Mandvi just like it's spelled Mandvi. No, I'm terrible

Paul Thurrott (00:51:04):
At that kinda stuff. Thing I, I can barely say Bob. I <laugh>. So anyway, I just, I, he's a really good guy. Oh. And I hope he lands on his feet and I just, I'm sure he will. I always found that data to be incredibly useful and relevant and Well, and he, he jumped

Leo Laporte (00:51:20):
Into Windows phone right at the beginning. Yeah. And there was his mistake, obviously.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:24):
Well, but you know, you take, sometimes you take a big bet and it doesn't work out.

Leo Laporte (00:51:27):
Yeah. Hey, I jumped into the podcast early earlier on. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:51:32):
It worked. Come on. It worked out. Come on.

Leo Laporte (00:51:34):
Come on.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:35):
I know you scrapping by, but a roof over your head.

Leo Laporte (00:51:39):
This, this whole podcasting thing's. Never gonna, it's never gonna take off. It's a No. I love the, actually, I love the medium and, which is good cuz at this point, that's the only reason I'm still doing It's cuz I love it. Yeah. But I think the medium will survive, you know, our downturn his mistake, I guess was tying so tightly to windows Mobile. Did, was he able to transition over to Android? He went to gaming. Yeah, gaming. Okay. I

Paul Thurrott (00:52:05):
Just, you he was in

Leo Laporte (00:52:07):
A niche. He was in a very narrow niche.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:09):
Yeah. You play, you play to your strength and Yeah. Look, you could be a, a player in a small market and still do very

Leo Laporte (00:52:13):
Well. Oh no, that's the fine and neat. And fill it, right. That's the, that's the key. Yep. That's always the best way to do a business. His,

Paul Thurrott (00:52:20):
His primary business was not anything I was involved with. It was just that he used the information they gathered for good <laugh>, you know for very useful purpose. Like, and, and it was all these arguments, well this doesn't represent, you know, a lot of corporate machines, blah, blah, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I hear you. But it's, it's fascinating to see the relative size of it most recently, like Windows 10 versions versus Windows 11 versions out in the world is how I would describe it. Like, you know, normal aor it's like any survey. No. It doesn't necessarily represent every single person. We get it. But I thought it was a representative slice and it was always a good number of PCs or devices. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:52:58):
Yeah. You know, it's funny cuz I got the email today from Adobe of all people to tell me how big ads, how big sales were on, on Amazon Prime Day yesterday. And it's always

Paul Thurrott (00:53:13):
Funny that I got the same email.

Leo Laporte (00:53:14):
Adobe is the one that's doing those numbers, by the way.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:17):
Right. We have all these market researchers out in the world and Adobe <laugh> is, I, I think the same thing when I get this. Yeah. Yeah. Why is Amazon not talking about this? Well, I

Leo Laporte (00:53:25):
Don't, I don't know if they want to. I, I should mention it was the biggest prime day ever. Yeah. In 24 hours. 6.4 billion with a b. Yeah. In sales.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:37):
What were they described as a by the register? Amazon

Leo Laporte (00:53:41):
<Laugh>, the small boutique, the

Paul Thurrott (00:53:42):
Boutique

Leo Laporte (00:53:43):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, small internet for take. They're not big 6.4 billion in one freaking day. And of course today is day too. And I have a feeling, by the way, it might be similar

Paul Thurrott (00:53:55):
It's also not a bad result for what is essentially inventory dumping, you know? Right.

Leo Laporte (00:54:00):
Right. I bought, I bought razor

Paul Thurrott (00:54:02):
Blade worst

Leo Laporte (00:54:02):
You do is right. Tell, I said, oh look, the Mach threes are down to a buck 61. That's a deal. And I bought 'em. Yeah. I'm sure they're dumping it cuz it's an older blade. Yep. But

Paul Thurrott (00:54:12):
Whatever you need it, it's fine. It's a win-win.

Leo Laporte (00:54:15):
And look how

Paul Thurrott (00:54:16):
You can be okay with that. I

Leo Laporte (00:54:17):
Didn't shave it. I am,

Paul Thurrott (00:54:18):
I'm glad you're gonna be able to shave again. You look a little

Leo Laporte (00:54:20):
Rough. You know, it's weird cuz I, so I'm, I'm thinking cuz I've tried a lot of different single blade and I wanted to go back to the old fashioned, you know, single blade you put in the thing and you screw the bottom and, you know. Yeah. They cut my face. A classic. The classic. Right. But they're recyclable. They're not plastic. There's no plastic. All this stuff. Get

Paul Thurrott (00:54:42):
That, that single blade thing. You could probably just sharpen that and use it for

Leo Laporte (00:54:45):
It's a terrible shave. It's awful. Yeah, of course. So I went to the wire cutter and they said we've tested them all. This is the best one is the Mach three. And so that's why

Paul Thurrott (00:54:56):
Hilariously, that is what I use. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:54:58):
<Laugh>. It's

Paul Thurrott (00:54:59):
After trying Harry's and all the other things. Harry's,

Leo Laporte (00:55:01):
I, everyone goes on advertiser Scholer, Dave Club all of those by the way, I hope Scholer Dave isn't retiring anytime soon. And sure. You know, I hate

Paul Thurrott (00:55:13):
It. I'm also glad that the the women's Razor Venus was not the top choice <laugh>. Cause I would feel weird using that. But, you know, little

Leo Laporte (00:55:19):
Pink thing. Yeah. It's funny though. Manufactured by what the biggest

Paul Thurrott (00:55:25):
Of

Leo Laporte (00:55:25):
Course, consumer Yeah. Product company in the world. Gillette. Yeah. So there you go. Sometimes the biggest is the best.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:35):
Gillette is a good example of the Xbox model. Right. We're gonna lose money on the razor, but make money on the

Leo Laporte (00:55:40):
Blades. On the blades. Yeah. That's why I bought it.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:41):
And that's why they make all their money. Those, those things are so expensive. If you go to cvs, theys under lock and Key.

Leo Laporte (00:55:46):
Yeah. They lock 'em up.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:48):
Yeah. This is, we're talking about razor blades here.

Leo Laporte (00:55:52):
<Laugh>. And by the way, Jeanette Gillette is owned by p and g. I mean, they're a p and g company. So it is a, oh, there's always

Paul Thurrott (00:55:57):
A bigger fish

Leo Laporte (00:55:58):
Peak conglomerate. There's always bigger. There's always a bigger fish. A bigger fish. Lemme write that down. That's good. Did you just make

Paul Thurrott (00:56:02):
Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah. Just you heard it here

Leo Laporte (00:56:04):
First. That's good. Wow. Yeah. Alright. Windows

Paul Thurrott (00:56:07):
On Tuesday. Yesterday. this is gonna be the sarcastic headline. Microsoft released moment three for the fourth time <laugh>. We've kinda go, kinda going back and forth on this. It's a little

Leo Laporte (00:56:19):
Confusing. That's Hysteric goal.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:21):
I know, I that's that's a lot

Richard Campbell (00:56:22):
Of moments.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:23):
Yep. Yep. I would say, I think it's fair to say that Microsoft Release schedule, well they they act like it's totally transparent and obvious to everyone has, has been very muddled and weird and, and my understanding as should've

Richard Campbell (00:56:38):
Explained over

Paul Thurrott (00:56:38):
Months. Yeah. Yep. So this is the second, I will call it public sta slash stable release of moment three and the fourth overall because of the preview releases that preceded them. I, I, well, I guess we'll put it this way. It's the, the complete version of mo moment three as much as it can be, although, you know, Microsoft, right. So many times after a moment, some key feature actually gets released on some future Tuesday. So, and when you make that a

Richard Campbell (00:57:05):
Moment, four, or is it really gonna make a moment 3.1.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:08):
So I wonder, given the timing, cuz these are basically quarterly mm-hmm. <Affirmative> if moment four go forward in time is what, October, right? Maybe moment four equates to 23 H two.

Richard Campbell (00:57:19):
Yeah. I must be getting close

Paul Thurrott (00:57:21):
Maybe. And tied to that, by the way, is this news today that there is a new Canary build and now Canary is the one I've sort of said no, I've explicitly said Yeah. 12, maybe, maybe, maybe this is 12 mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But, and here's the interesting thing. They actually switched the, the way that they the build branch that it's in to from, lemme see if I can get it over from RS pre-release to Zn release, which means this is not Windows 12 yet. Right, right. Unless Windows 12 is gonna come out this fall somehow <laugh>

Richard Campbell (00:58:01):
Seems unlikely.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:03):
Yeah. It just seems extremely unlikely.

Richard Campbell (00:58:05):
I would think 2024.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:06):
I would bet money on that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I only mentioned that because, you know, my understanding of how they release things is obviously just, I mean, all I can do is pick at the little bits of data they provide and guess, I guess

Richard Campbell (00:58:21):
Well, and, and clearly all of this is in flux. Like they're playing with, how do we do updates? How we know. Oh, a hundred

Paul Thurrott (00:58:26):
Percent. And the reason is, but

Richard Campbell (00:58:28):
Your instinct on Canary was interesting because it sh you know, logically every new feature show up in Canary first.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:33):
Right,

Richard Campbell (00:58:33):
Right. And then into the insider.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:35):
I I I, you, you've said this a few times and I, I will tell you that when I read the Microsoft blog post, and I'll, let me just go look at it mm-hmm. <Affirmative> it says this is the

Richard Campbell (00:58:47):
Patch Tuesday update.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:48):
No, it's the dev thing. So lemme just, why can't I find it? I can't find anything. That's why, oh, here we go. So under what's new in build, in this build, this is a canary build. Right? Right. This is the, to your point, this is where features should appear first. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the first thing that's new are the addition of new features from the dev channel. And I read that and I thought, <laugh> what Richard? No, I thought, Richard, this is the point he keeps making <laugh> new features should appear first in Canary. But this Build ELs adds several features that appeared first in Dev. Right. That drive backup and restore improvements dynamic lighting, et cetera, et cetera.

Richard Campbell (00:59:28):
Now, one would argue maybe that's still, cuz it's 12 and now it's validated itself in 11. And so they're like, okay, we'll take

Paul Thurrott (00:59:33):
That. That's exactly right. So if you are gonna introduce new features into Windows 11 today, and you intend to release Windows 12 whenever mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Windows 12 will include those features. Right. I they, they're obviously pass through. So that could be, that could be, I I could I argue that maybe that supports my contention that this is,

Richard Campbell (00:59:51):
You know, it doesn't, doesn't stop. Like now the Venn diagram gets interesting. Yeah. But,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:56):
But whatever, you know what the look

Richard Campbell (00:59:58):
Point is those four steps, they're not in order. That's right. They're

Paul Thurrott (01:00:01):
Just not. That's right. And one

Richard Campbell (01:00:02):
Of them's a

Paul Thurrott (01:00:02):
Branch. That's right. And all we can do is speculate. We could speculate all day long. I I do. I've turned it into a career, unfortunately. <Laugh> mm-hmm. <Affirmative> you know, whatever. But anyway, so moment three is out. So if you're on Windows

Richard Campbell (01:00:14):
11 and when you see out, you mean again, <laugh>?

Paul Thurrott (01:00:17):
I do. I do, I do very much mean that you will be getting it, it will come to you through Windows update whether you want it or not. If you were on Windows 1121 H two that version of Windows 11 will exit support in October. Right. Tied to the two year anniversary. So that's an interesting conundrum for some people, because I've heard from several people who are like, look, I'd like, obviously I wanna be on the latest version, it won't give it to me. You know mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and so that will be interesting as that gets closer. And I just kind of vaguely and I, and anyone who's all of us has been around a long time, I think. So we'll all appreciate this, is this notion of you know, windows versions and support time life cycles and how you've gone from this 10 year thing to this very vague thing in Windows 10, where it was like, this will be supported for the lifetime of the hardware.

(01:01:05):
And it's like, what, what does that even mean? I don't think they understood what it meant. They were making it up as they went along to Windows 11 where they talk about this thing that is continuous innovation, which is really the issue around moment three and everything else, which is they can just update this thing at any time. They feel like it mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and they have, you know what is, I mean, it's, it, it's an interesting thing that a a new, a major Windows, like 1.0 version of a Windows release is only supported for two years.

Richard Campbell (01:01:34):
Yeah. You know, but it, but then it would also fit with what we're seeing in Dev, you know, what you're seeing in, in office. Yeah. Like, versions don't persist anymore. They are constantly updated and occasionally numbers are declared.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:47):
Yeah. I, I, I, to me, there was a very clean and good goal to get us down to the fewest possible Windows versions. It was good from a support perspective, because Microsoft really only needed to release X number of patches. Right.

Richard Campbell (01:02:03):
I mean, staying with 10 and just using the four digit numbers didn't make life any better. You made a lot of versions of Windows.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:09):
No. And that's why it changed again, I think. Right? Yeah. I mean, I, you know, the irony of Windows 10 was that there were, there were at one point more versions of Windows in market supported Yes. Than at any time in Microsoft's history. Yeah. And that was the exact opposite

Richard Campbell (01:02:21):
People. Oh, no. And, and cis admits were just ripping their hair. Like it was not an easy time.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:24):
Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, I absolutely, this system is set up so that we, we stopped thinking a little bit about major releases maybe, and we have all these other things going on all the time, and I get that mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. but it, it, it makes the Windows Insider program very confusing as usual. Yeah. And the illogical nature, nature of features appearing on a, a lower step of the scale you know, is always frustrating for whatever reason. Yeah. But

Richard Campbell (01:02:52):
It's just your nose, I think your nose is correct that Canary is a branch, it's an off side thing. Yeah. Yeah. Unless, we'll see, the only way we'll know more is the next time.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:03):
Yeah. And, and I, I mean, I suppose it doesn't make sense, but maybe Canary, I, I can, I can't even talk to this, you know, it doesn't matter. I, I, it's not even worth spec. I unfortunately, everything I say, oh, on this topic has to be speculation. Yeah. It's, I I, it's really easy to fall in this rabbit hole. It's not worth it. I know. It, it's, it's,

Richard Campbell (01:03:21):
It's wonderfully conspirator.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:23):
Yes. I try, I really try hard not to be that guy. Yeah. Microsoft has turned me into a monster, so, I'm sorry, <laugh>. Anyway, so moment three is out new. Canary Build has some stuff from Dev. The most interesting thing for people, if they care about this stuff, and you should, you're watch <laugh>, you're listening to this podcast, is back at Build, Microsoft talked about bringing AI to the Microsoft store and in two major ways. One was gonna be using AI to summarize reviews, which I think is a great idea. I talked about how Google does that in Google Maps. If you look at reviews they'll pull out quotes, you know, key quotes that kind of capture the essence of a destination, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this place has the best fried hoggies I've ever had or whatever. I think that's stuff smart. And the other one is something I don't quite understand, which is this notion of bringing in AI Hub to the Microsoft store, where you can find AI apps in a specific part of the store. And that's what's available in this new Canary Build.

Richard Campbell (01:04:15):
Well, yeah. Especially when you realize AI is just a pair of letters you can attach to virtually everything. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:04:20):
Yeah, exactly Right. This is Windows Weekly, now powered by ai.

Richard Campbell (01:04:24):
Yes. Ai far no problem.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:26):
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. That's good. So we'll see, you know, we'll see how that evolves. But I, I have a feeling like the copilot that we talked about last week in windows, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which, you know, sounds like a good idea. What you always learn more about things over time. I've been talking to Rafael about this thing. I couldn't get this. I, I did all the tricks that I talked about to get this thing to install, but on a fourth computer. Right. And I could not get the co-pilot to appear. So I went to Ralph and I was like, cuz he's the one who uncovered how you do this in the first place. I said, I don't know what I'm doing wrong here. I've done this. I I've done this Exactly right. It worked, done three other computers. And he said, did you Microm, did you update Microsoft Edge? Whatcha are talking about <laugh>? No. What, why,

Richard Campbell (01:05:09):
Why would I go to,

Paul Thurrott (01:05:10):
Because it's an instance of Microsoft Edge. And I said, oh, okay. And so I did, and I updated and it, and the second that Edge updated, and, you know, it reboots that icon appeared in the, in the task bar. Right. I, it literally appeared and it had an animation. It actually flew in from the bottom and kind of bounced a little bit. And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. And so, in the same way that the Well, no, this is the, the copilot. So copilot, what you come to understand is an instance of Microsoft Edge. So we have found yet another way for you to use Edge, even if you've chosen another browser, you can now use Edge unknowingly side by side with Chrome or whatever your favorite browser is. Right? Right. Is really just a wrapper to a bunch of crap up on Bing.

(01:05:51):
That's all it is. <Laugh> with a little bit of information about a couple of Windows features, it's really not much. And that kind of, it's like a wire, wire wire, you know? And I think there's a very, an even better possibility that whatever this AI stuff at Microsoft Store is gonna be the same thing. It's like, seriously, it's just a curated list of apps. It's the Yahoo of ai. Is that what we're looking at here? <Laugh>? Yeah. You know, of ai. Right? It's brilliant. Anyway, yeah. So I love Windows. You wouldn't know it from the way I was talking for the past 10 minutes, <laugh>, but it's always the question is, windows love you back. Right? That's, yeah. I have to say, yeah. It's, it's felt like a one-way relationship for a while. That's for sure. Yeah. And speaking of one way, <laugh> mm-hmm.

(01:06:35):
<Affirmative> Amazon announced, which I found, found kind of amusing that the Amazon app Star in Windows 11 is now generally available. Now they, the way they phrased it was for developers, right. I've had people come to me and say, I feel like it. This has been out for a while, to which I would say I feel like it's been in preview for a while. Yeah. so back in speaking of things Microsoft says, and things go differently. When Microsoft announced Windows 11, version 22 H two, they actually, let me, let me go back. I'm sorry. It was further than that. When Microsoft announced Windows 11, one of the key features, in fact I would argue it was one of the marquee top three features, right? Was Android app compatibility. Right? then Windows 11 shipped in October that year. 2021, not 2022.

(01:07:26):
It was nowhere to be seen. Mm-Hmm. it arrived in preview forum in February, 2022, only in the United States. This is 18 months ago. And it's kind of been in preview ever since. And so when 22 H two came out last October, so 2022, Microsoft announced, you can look it up, folks, they said this out loud. They were over 50,000 apps in the Amazon app store for Android. I looked at this thing repeatedly, and by the time I wrote the Android apps chapter for the Windows 11 field guide, I think in March or April of this year, there were approximately 57 apps, something like that. It was a very small number of apps. Close. You could count 'em, you couple of zeros. Yep. But back in October, Microsoft said there were 50,000. Wow. So when Amazon announced that this, this was generally available, of course I installed it on whatever PC I was using at the time.

(01:08:18):
And it doesn't have the preview moniker anymore. So, fair enough. Progress. and there's a lot of apps in the store. In fact, I can't count, I can't say it's 50,000. You can't scroll that long. I mean, it can't, who could count like that? But yeah, no, I say finally this thing has a, a ton of apps. Absolutely. So if they finally met this promise of 18 months ago, oh no, I'm sorry, sorry, that's nine months ago or whatever that was. Here's the thing. So if there are 50,000 apps mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, there are maybe seven or eight that are any good. And I don't mean seven or 8,000, I mean seven or eight, right? Like, I challenge you to go look at this list. If you could find it anywhere, it's a bunch of crap. And it's, I don't know if it's Amazon's fault, I don't even, I don't know where to put the blame, but I feel like Microsoft has done a good job with virtualizing Android through the Ws windows subsystem for Android.

(01:09:14):
And it's clear that this thing would fly if we could somehow get Google in there officially. Right. And there are obviously side loading workaround type things, and I'm probably gonna look into the this soon cuz it's a little frustrating. But I think the idea of Android apps on Windows makes as much sense as Android apps on Chromebooks. Right. that there are certain apps that are just not coming to Windows, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and this is good. It's kind of win-win, right? From a developer's perspective, you should, they don't, they all won't, but you should make some small changes. So it works with big screens and yada, yada, yada, keyboard, mouse, whatever. It's I think that Amazon is trying to ensure that that's happening and that's maybe what took so long on the 50,000 apps, whatever. Right. but now have, have you been using Phone Link?

(01:10:04):
Yeah. Well, on and off and again for the book mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and your phone Link ex, I, I'm, well first of all, why are you asking me? Just cuz because in terms of for consumers getting access to Android apps in your PC phone, link's a hell of a solution. Okay. So that this is the problem. So phone link, there are three tiers of Phone Link, right? Right. There's phone link on the iPhone, which is garbage. There's Phone Link, Android, which is the one Android I use Broad. Okay. Yeah. <Laugh>, it's, yeah. Sorry. It doesn't do as much Android, really. No. Yeah. It needs Android. It doesn't do almost anything. Yeah. Yeah. At least it installs quick. If you use Android, nons, Samsung, Android you get a pretty good experience. There's actually, I would, you know, a dozen or so functions and it does all the big stuff you want.

(01:10:45):
Your recent photos are there phone calls and text messages, you know, in both directions. Phone notifications, you get access to the media on your phone, but you can play through the app blah blah, blah. There's a lot of stuff, right? If you have a Samsung a recent Samsung flagship, you get additional functionality, including the ability to virtualize the entire operating system in a single window that looks like a phone or individual apps, which is really cool. And this is another way to get a single Android app on your computer. And in that case, this is a Google app, right? Of course you're streaming it from your phone. So your phone has to be right there. You know, we can talk about lag latency, whatever, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's, you know, yeah, that's good. The, the problem is that's a small subset.

(01:11:26):
Well man, maybe it's not small. It's a subset of the overall audience. Right. Right. You know, if we just pretend 50 50 iPhone Android, okay, this 50 percent's gone and then Samsung does dominate. You know, the Android market, I don't know what their percentage is for you should share, but that's overall, the reason Samsung's in number one is because of all their AER funds. Right? So this is a limited market for Samsung flagships. So it may only be 20 or 15%, I'm just making up numbers, but of the, the number of people who could use phone link and access their phone will get the full experience, right. I guess is what I'm trying to say. So there's a tiered experience mm-hmm. <Affirmative> if we could bring Vir well, I guess am emulated virtualized, I guess it's technically virtualization the subsystem, and then you would run the apps on the computer. So I, what do you call that? I guess it's a, it's a real app running in a virtual environment. And it was Google Apps, right? That would, I think that would, I think that'd be great. There were some apps that you know, developers are just never gonna bring the windows, like I said. Yep. And there are I think there's a neat use case for little utility apps. They don't have to look like a Windows app, right? They can be like a little phone app. There's nothing wrong with that. Do

Leo Laporte (01:12:38):
I a little utility install these from the Windows store? Do I have to download the Android app store to do

Paul Thurrott (01:12:42):
That? No. You have to download the Android app store, and then you have to install the apps from that store. Okay. And then interestingly, you also have to update them from that store, which makes sense. Yeah. It's just that the experience is completely different from that of the Microsoft store. So with the Microsoft store, when you in install apps from there, this happens seamlessly. Like you can go and check for app updates, but you'll just get 'em, no one ever pops up anything and says, Hey, there's a new version. Well, that's not it. Okay. Single dig percentage of the time. For some reason they might say, Hey, there's a new version of this app. Like, if you run an app, they'll say, look, you gotta get the new version. Like that might happen, but for the most part, we're not talking dialog boxes and stuff. The Android apps,

Leo Laporte (01:13:21):
It's the, it's the, it's the Kindle, I mean the Amazon app store really, right? It's this one.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:26):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So if you, if you, you look, I can't see exactly what you have there, but if you click on the Kindle app for example, it, what it should do is bring up the Amazon app store entry in the store. Cause you have to install

Leo Laporte (01:13:35):
That first, right? Yeah. But the store itself is the Amazon app store.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:38):
That's right.

Leo Laporte (01:13:39):
Yeah. So the Amazon app, I'm app store in the Microsoft store, but that I install the Amazon app to get this

Paul Thurrott (01:13:44):
Store. It's a, I'll

Leo Laporte (01:13:46):
Tell you why I'm talking about it

Paul Thurrott (01:13:47):
Scenario <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:13:49):
Yes. People, you know you probably heard of this thing called Threads That Meta launched a week ago. What is that? No,

Paul Thurrott (01:13:55):
Never heard of it. Yeah. Is it like a sewing app? Me and a hundred million of my friends.

Leo Laporte (01:14:00):
Yeah. Close personal friend. So there is no desktop application for it. That's right. The workaround is to use the Android app on Windows.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:09):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:14:10):
So I'm How do you do that? Well, I'm, I'm looking to see, but I've seen people say they do. That's not, it's not, is it not not Lean Android App Store?

Paul Thurrott (01:14:17):
Pretty sure it's not. I don't know that for a

Leo Laporte (01:14:18):
Fact. I'm gonna look, I'm installing it right now

Paul Thurrott (01:14:20):
Just to, I suspect it's gonna be a side loading situation.

Leo Laporte (01:14:23):
Maybe

Paul Thurrott (01:14:23):
That's what, by the way, I, I like, I, whatever anyone thinks the threads, the thing to understand about this app is that it's terrible and Mark Zuckerberg needs to go to help <laugh>. No, it's that it's actually pretty great. It's incomplete. It's pretty great. I love it. It's it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Is it needs, it's just, it's in an incomplete, it's in a Windows 11 state. So eventually there will be a, a full featured web version of that will serve under the desktop or perhaps desktop versions. But yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:14:48):
They, they say they they're gonna do that, but it's, I just,

Paul Thurrott (01:14:50):
Yeah, it's early days. Yes, it's

Leo Laporte (01:14:51):
Early. It's early days. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:53):
Anyway, point, are you on

Leo Laporte (01:14:54):
Threads by the way?

Paul Thurrott (01:14:56):
Yep, I am. I'm, yeah. Same as on Instagram threat. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Leo Laporte (01:14:59):
And Richard, what are you on Threads

Paul Thurrott (01:15:01):
Rich Campbell. Okay. it's just that you'll find if you install a bunch of Android apps via the store, it's gonna get a little chatty. You get it keeps asking you, Hey, did you wanna update this app? Hey, do you wanna, this, it's like, it's, it's such a different experience from the Microsoft store. It's a little off-putting to me. But the big problem of course is Google. So

Leo Laporte (01:15:22):
Will it, will it update by itself? Or do you have to manually do that each time? So,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:28):
You know what it's possible since this general availability release came out that they've changed it. But the la when I wrote it, when I wrote about it for the book back in March, you had to, you couldn't do anything to stop it from doing this. That I, that I found mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I found it to be very chatty in a bad way. It'll get better. Like,

Leo Laporte (01:15:47):
And this, this is not a, this is a non-trivial install, I'm finding because you have to install the Windows subsystem for Android as well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So

Paul Thurrott (01:15:56):
It's taking a while. And actually you also, if you weren't prompted for it, you already did it. But you also have to install a Windows virtualization compo Wow. Optional feature. And that requires a reboot. So,

Leo Laporte (01:16:09):
Okay. Well, I'll be back in five minutes.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:11):
Yeah. <laugh>, it will happen. You want to talk about edge? Lets, no, let's, let's pause

Leo Laporte (01:16:18):
For a moment. We'll talk about Edge in just a moment. But first I would like, if you don't mind mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to mention a fine sponsor. And all our sponsors are super fine, but this is super, super fine. You may not think to look at me that I make my own bed, but I do. In fact, this very morning I was very happy cuz I put on my brook linen sheets. Oh, I love the brook linen. We're gonna have to get more though, because, you know, I only have one set and so I alternate it with another company and it's just not the same Brook linen. Oh. Sleeping during the summer, especially when it's hot, we're having a heat wave right now can be difficult to say the least. Whether you're trying to nap after fun in the sun, or you're just struggling to stay cool at night.

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(01:20:04):
Plus free shipping brook linen.com. B r o o k L i n e n. Get it. Brook linen.com promo code again, windows $20 off on orders of a hundred dollars plus with free shipping. I love these sheets. Could not recommend them more highly. They are fantastic. Brooke Linen. Don't forget the offer code windows, by the way. Very important. We thank him for their support. Now, this time it's only Richard. Oh no, Paul, Paul just came back There he is there. I you know, I mute myself and turn off the camera, but what you missed was me laughing out loud when you said it. I know. I don't look like the kind of guy who makes my own bed. <Laugh>. I look like the kind of guy who might have a butler. You know, James the bed. Make it. No, no. Was it, was was Admiral, which Macquarie who said you should make your bed every morning.

(01:20:57):
Right. First thing when you get up, you says, because then that way you'll accomplished something. And he says, you, you then have this sense of accomplishment going into the day. And I thought, well, that's clever. And I tried it and it, he's right. It's like you just, it's a good way to start the, it's like you've done something just a sense of you feel productive. Sense of order. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I was gonna say that sounds like a low bar on accomplishments, but, okay. Well it is. That's why it's great cuz it's an easy thing to do. Yeah. Takes a minute. Yep. but I, I just thought it was gonna, I mean, I make a cup of coffee in the morning. Does that qualify? No, that does not qualify. <Laugh>. That does not qualify. It was it was Navy Seal and Admiral who said this in 2014 at a commencement, Admiral McRaven at the University of Texas, Austin, shall I I play it for

Speaker 5 (01:21:51):
You. To me, basic seal training was a lifetime of challenges. He's a

Leo Laporte (01:21:54):
Seal

Speaker 5 (01:21:55):
Crammed into six months. Yeah. So here are the 10 lessons I learned from basic seal training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life. Every morning in seal

Leo Laporte (01:22:06):
Training nice and behind.

Speaker 5 (01:22:07):
My instructors who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they'd do was inspect my bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers would be pulled tight. The pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack. I

Leo Laporte (01:22:24):
I do not do it. Right. It was a

Speaker 5 (01:22:26):
Simple task. Yeah. Mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. That seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that we were aspiring to be real warriors. Tough battle hardened seals. But the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over. So if you make your bed every morning,

Leo Laporte (01:22:50):
There's more

Speaker 5 (01:22:50):
Wait. You'll have accomplished the first task of the day. This is it. It'll give you a small sense of pride and we'll encourage you to do another task. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and another, and another,

Leo Laporte (01:23:00):
And another, and another.

Speaker 5 (01:23:01):
And by the end of the day, that one task completed Yeah. Will have turned into mini task completed. See, making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter.

Leo Laporte (01:23:11):
Thank you Admiral McRaven.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:13):
Leo. I've been married for 33 years,

Leo Laporte (01:23:16):
<Laugh>. And

Paul Thurrott (01:23:17):
Every single time we change the sheet on the beds. Yes. The bed. Yes. My wife stands on one side. I stand on the other. Yes. And we pull the sheet up and she never pulls it up all the way. And I would say, Stephanie, they gotta, it's gotta be even. And then I, I say, and then I say, then she starts gonna the back of the, I'm like, where you going? I said, how long is it overhanging on that side? And she says, whatever number of inches. Cuz it has to match. I just,

Leo Laporte (01:23:40):
That's why you should do it yourself. I just this by yourself.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:43):
I just had this interaction yesterday. The Oh, this is the

Leo Laporte (01:23:47):
OCB way. This

Paul Thurrott (01:23:48):
Has never been fixed. <Laugh>, you know. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:23:52):
I don't be a, a source of marital strife. Maybe you should

Paul Thurrott (01:23:55):
Just, oh, I agree. This, this needs to be done correctly. <Laugh>. I

Leo Laporte (01:24:01):
You hospital corners Paul.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:04):
Oh, well no, I mean, I'm not

Leo Laporte (01:24:05):
That good. You're not that crazy.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:06):
Listen, I, I want it to be, the sheet needs to be at the right height. It needs to be even across the beds. And there overhang has to be identical on both sides. Reason, simple things. It's reasonable standard.

Leo Laporte (01:24:17):
Lisa and I disagree only on one thing and usually I just make the bed. And that way there's no disagreement. Yeah. But I like to, you know, you have the sheet, my beautiful brooklynn sheet, and then you have the blanket over that I like to fold the sheet over the top of the blanket. Oh, nice. Crisp pulled,

Paul Thurrott (01:24:32):
Fancy,

Leo Laporte (01:24:33):
Fancy. Just a little bit under the pillows. And then the bed spread over the top of that. And I tuck the bedspread.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:39):
I'm, I'm not gonna waste your time to explain why I don't do that, cuz I have a very explicit reason. But I will say this guy that just spoke, the difference between him and us is that he was working with a cot <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:24:51):
You could very easily, it's a lot

Paul Thurrott (01:24:53):
Easier reached from both sides. It's a lot easier bed. I making a, if you had to meet my standard and go to both sides of the bed to match the distance that this thing was, this would take forever. And by the way, actually still takes forever cuz my wife still doesn't listen to me. But, you know, you got

Leo Laporte (01:25:08):
All of this a perfect example of how little Paul wants to talk about Microsoft Edge

Paul Thurrott (01:25:14):
<Laugh>. So, no, I, you know, look, I'm gonna throw, I'll throw the dog a bone here. I complain a lot about Edge. But this is a good feature. And they just added it. It's, it, it's not tied to anything. It's not coming in some future release or whatever. But Microsoft has rolled out spam notification blocking, right. Spam notifications are those things that often pop up from sites you've just visited for the first time. They're spammy. They pretend that you have a virus when you don't, you know, that kind of thing. Right. So they're actually blocking this. They're using, you know, back in the day we would've called this heuristics. Right. I'm sure these days they're gonna call it ai Artificial intelligence. Yes, definitely. Yeah, of course. But they are going after this in a way that I think makes sense. They're also removing notification privileges from websites that do spa send spammy notifications. So in a way they're probably creating a, an allow a block list rather that Edge will use globally. So if we know that this site is, is junky and is doing bad things, we won't let 'em even pop this thing up.

Richard Campbell (01:26:17):
Well, and most of the messages I get are about me renewing my office 365 account, changing the password and so forth. <Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:26:25):
No. Okay. So, alright. See, I was email addresses. Okay. I was, I was totally gonna try to be positive about it. But now that you've said that, I will say the cynical part of me says, this will do nothing to stop the rampant pop-ups and Windows 11 that have nothing to do with anything and are for products or services I'm already using or whatever.

Richard Campbell (01:26:41):
Right. And don't generate an icon on the task bar. Don't, and, and don't have an entry in the task manager. They're just mysterious. Oh. And they're not, they're not listening to my mute. All sound settings and Yes,

Paul Thurrott (01:26:53):
Please, please. So, yeah, so I, as Windows not

Richard Campbell (01:26:56):
Frustrated at all. I feel real good.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:58):
It's funny. It's not funny at all. I don't know why I said that. Back in the early, no actually late nineties and then I guess early two thousands as well, Microsoft was working to integrate internet Explorer ever further into Windows. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> there was a, a Windows 98 release center. It was the first one and the second one, it was literally gonna replace the shell with ie. Yep. And all of the links were gonna be single clicks with double or with the blue underline, just like you see in the web. There was the active desktop stuff, of course, yada, yada y mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they really stepped back from that. Of course. And of course there were antitrust issues as well. Yes.

Richard Campbell (01:27:29):
But part of me wonders, they were doing all that just to show, oh, this not anti tried stuff. The software

Paul Thurrott (01:27:34):
Works 100%. They were mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. It's, this is totally integrated. It's not a separate product. Yeah, a hundred percent. But if you think about what's happening in Windows 11, right? Where Edge comes up when whether you want it or not, edge will come up when you look at Widgets. Edge will come up and start search or start Yes. Search search highlights, edge will, and the Edge is now behind this feature. Everyone seems to want Windows copilot. Right. It's edge. It's edge. You could argue, and I've just invented this on the spot, so maybe I'm arguing that maybe Microsoft is once again going down this now it's edge, but web browser integration strategy again, that

Richard Campbell (01:28:08):
Everything is edge.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:10):
Well and more and more is edge. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I mean, more and more of Windows is being subsumed by edge. And that's a, that's a choice. <Laugh> choice of two evils right there. I don't know. Anyway, it is kind of interesting. Anyway, this new feature's great. I don't want to, I don't want to jump on it. Yeah. It's it's a good idea. And it's,

Richard Campbell (01:28:27):
You excited about it?

Paul Thurrott (01:28:29):
Well, excited is, I don't get excited, Richard, but it's <laugh>, but it's good.

Richard Campbell (01:28:33):
Yeah. I I am unhappy about the Knuck.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:35):
I am too. Yeah, I know. So I've owned, this is the Intel small form fact. So small form factor computer. I've owned three of them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I owned a six gen eighth gen and 10th gen. The 10th gen by far was my favorite. It was, I mean, perfect great little machines. Leo will remember this cause I'm sure I talked about it at the time, but some August some three years ago or something my house got struck by lightning, actually, the lawn in front of my house. Wow. 12 feet away from got struck by lighting. I was standing there on the porch when it happened. I thought the world had ended. It was a nuclear attack. It was the loudest, brightest white thing that I've ever seen in my life. And we, in the new house the previous house, we did not have a whole house surge projector like we did in Dedham. And we lost our Sonos soundbar. We lost various electronics. But one of the things that went down was the Knuck. And I did everything I could to bring that thing back. And he

Leo Laporte (01:29:28):
Just, it's the worst.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:30):
No. Anyway, unfortunately. So what the way I learned about this story is I saw a headline that said Intel is exiting the PC business. And I went, what? Because of course you hear that and you think,

Leo Laporte (01:29:41):
Oh wow.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:42):
You know? Right. I mean, where does your line go?

Leo Laporte (01:29:44):
What <laugh> great processors.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:46):
Yeah. Intel's presence in the PC market was smaller than Microsoft's <laugh>. So it's gotta put that in perspective. So the not, it was not a big seller, but it was an excellent line in many computers. They had standard kind of productivity models that were basically a laptop and a box. Right. From a component perspective, they came in kit form in full form where you could add your own ram and storage. They were expandable, they were game ver gaming class

Leo Laporte (01:30:08):
Computers. Was it originally designed as a, a reference design? Cuz plenty of other people make these now and we'll probably continue to make them right. Mean,

Paul Thurrott (01:30:17):
I really don't know. I mean with, with Surface I felt like there was this explicit kind of discussion about why we're doing this and, and I don't know that the

Richard Campbell (01:30:26):
Rep is signed mantra. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:28):
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I,

Richard Campbell (01:30:30):
You don't, you never get good instructions like that from Intel. The best times.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:34):
Yeah. I love these products. I, I, I feel bad about this. This

Richard Campbell (01:30:37):
Not the one literally sitting behind me here on the

Leo Laporte (01:30:39):
Upstairs and I've, I have this mirror cat from System 76, which is Oh nice. A Linux Knuck. And, but it's not a Knuck. I mean it's, it's the same Well

Paul Thurrott (01:30:48):
It's it's a small form fact thing to computer Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:30:52):
Size. And I'm sure they'll continue to sell it just cuz Intel Intel isn't right.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:56):
Yeah. And like in the comment section for the article I wrote about this, a bunch of people have kind of chimed in with, well these, there's this other thing that's good too. And, and that's cute. You know, there are other ones. The thing I liked about it though was it came from Intel and we don't do this a lot anymore, but for a long time if you had an Intel based pc, one of the bits of advice is you should, you should get their installer updater for all of the hardware components in your computer. So it's kind of separate from Windows update, but it's, you, you, you want it from the, the maker, you know? And that was how you updated that thing. And I always thought that was pretty great. You know so it was ki it was whether they intended it to be a reference design or not, it was a computer made by the company that makes all the chip sets in there. And it was the, you know, you, you kind of had that implicit understanding like, we're gonna get the best drivers and, you know, all that kind of stuff. I back

Richard Campbell (01:31:45):
In, in this strange loop days when I was mostly teaching scaling websites. I took six of them and put 'em in a rollaway bag with all the networking gear so I could basically carry, you know, a load balanceable web server and test rig. Sure. I, I called secondary inspection cuz that's what the T s a called it.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:02):
Yeah. You know, I, I so I did a Microsoft Mobility roadshow where I traveled with not a dozen devices, but I bet it was 10 or 11. Yeah. And it, I I, I brought him in a big army nap sack thing, whatever you called it, a duffel bag. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I, I'll never forget going through the security on the first day. Cause I, I took off from Providence and then went around the country and then came back. But the thing went through security, you could see go, the guy looks up at me and he looks down and he's like, he's like, come here <laugh>. He goes,

Richard Campbell (01:32:31):
What deal

Paul Thurrott (01:32:31):
Is that? He goes, he unzips the bag and he goes, all right, why do you have so many computers <laugh>? I'm like, I need the battery life. I,

Richard Campbell (01:32:38):
Yeah. So I, and I learned there was no way to take that bag apart. That wouldn't get secondary inspected at all, so I just leave it together. Right. You put your clothes through first, your regular lap through, through second. Right. You put this thing through last and then you,

Paul Thurrott (01:32:52):
And then you just know.

Richard Campbell (01:32:53):
Yeah. You, you could see the reaction on the guy's face when he goes, blah. It's like, okay, see my bag, now we know what's gonna happen. Right. It

Paul Thurrott (01:32:59):
Looks like a bunch of cluster bombs, you know? Yeah. Like <laugh>. But

Richard Campbell (01:33:03):
My rule has always been be excited to show him what's in the bag. Like, wait until you see this bag. It's the best bag ever. That's, that wears him out fast. <Laugh> like, just like, all right. You, you know what? Bad guys aren't excited to show you their

Paul Thurrott (01:33:17):
Stuff. Yeah, good point. Yeah. You're like not putting your hat down a little lower as you go through you. No,

Richard Campbell (01:33:22):
No, that's bad. Those are the good old days. But yeah. Miss you Knuck.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:27):
Yeah. Too bad. It was a great great idea. The the name wasn't great. No. The name wasn't great. And then you find out what it means. You're like, what? The

Richard Campbell (01:33:37):
New

Paul Thurrott (01:33:38):
Computing, I mean, what does that mean? Yeah, no, I, it's like, guys, what are you doing? But it was whatever, you know what it beautiful little computers. I really liked them.

Richard Campbell (01:33:45):
So a classic implementation of them is sized for a a hundred mil visa amount. So you literally bolted it on the back of the monitor.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:52):
On the back of the monitor. That's exactly beautiful. Perfect.

Richard Campbell (01:33:54):
And that, and that's what it felt like a next unit of compute mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Right. That it was just part of the screen. Right. That's exactly right. Cause the average consumer points that the screening calls the computer anyway, so you might as well well put it there.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:03):
<Laugh>. Yeah, good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There're all are alternatives. You know, like, so

Richard Campbell (01:34:10):
Whatever, there are plenty of third party implementations.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:12):
So I'm curious your take on this Richard I thought someone was joking when they told me about this on Twitter and Microsoft is renaming Azure ad ad standing for active directory, which mm-hmm. <Affirmative> a little bit of a naming confusion to that too. But anyway, to intra Id intra being a new family of, I don't know, like security monitoring, network monitoring and IDE identity services. Right. I guess that would be the way to put it. Hmm.

Richard Campbell (01:34:43):
Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:34:43):
So you're, you're old school. You've been around, I'm old

Richard Campbell (01:34:45):
School. I've been aware of this name for a while. They're finally making more noise about it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I would also speak to Conway's Law systems tend to reflect the teams that are building it. Right. There is clearly reorganization inside of Microsoft around security. And by the way, there needs to be and so, I mean, they're leading with a, a d for no other reason. And that's something that people know and you, so they have to pay attention to this, otherwise you wouldn't. Right, right.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:14):
Yeah, I mean, I, this is is a little bit like the, the worries over artisan game makers or whatever where, you know, like it's, it's, it's, the past is going away. Right. Which

Richard Campbell (01:35:27):
Is not true. This is bundling products, the products that people are using into a tighter bundle to make it a little easier to use. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:35:34):
So for example, <laugh>, so active directory debut as you know, in Windows 2000. But one of the goofy historical facts of Windows 2000 is that it was powered by NT Technology. Right. That was how they said goodbye to the past. Right. So it, you know, enter ID powered by Azure AD Technology, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's it's like, oh boy, we're saying goodbye to the past.

Richard Campbell (01:35:57):
Yeah. At the same time, the other identity products that Azure's had, the B2C products and so forth, have not done well and have problems. So yeah, the, that Conway's Law reference is saying, Hey, you've been trying to straighten out identity for a while. It looks like there's a new team that are gonna do work on this again. And so the rebundling is about showing ownership that all anybody worried about anything identity related goes to a new this one place. Why they have to keep creating new random five letter names. I don't know. I mean, I would only say, well, you know what I'd say in favor of intra mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, at least it's not fabric. Right. <laugh>, like now you're using a name that you already have a product called, but now it's something completely else. Sure. Like the upside to making a new name is at least it doesn't confuse you that it's something else.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:42):
Fair enough. Yes. I guess yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:36:47):
Yeah. So yeah, it's mostly re on the a d side.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:51):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:36:52):
It's just a bunch of renaming on the, but the reality of course is Microsoft has had a serious identity problem that has everything to do with Legacy.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:00):
Is that a, is that did you say it in purpose is in an ironic way that they have an identity problem? Yes. <laugh>

Richard Campbell (01:37:08):
In so many ways, but yes, I'm talking about the, the, I'm sorry. You know, anybody who has taken an existing Microsoft Services account and signed it up for Office 365 has to send it into the tenet item as hell of, depending on what service you're logging into. Yes. You may or may not get something, and let's not even talk about how some software, when you do that, propagates that identity onto Windows and changes your Windows identity in the process. And isn't that hilarious?

Paul Thurrott (01:37:34):
Yeah. <laugh>,

Richard Campbell (01:37:35):
They've been steadily fixing those problems, or those problems are just not trivial. And they, I mean, I, I think I'm one of the owners of one of the earliest accounts in Microsoft that may or may not have a country associated whatsoever. Oh, that's neat. Being, being a Canadian and knowing I have several accounts that are US associated and several accounts that are Canadian associated. And the two cannot mix. That's right. Like, it's, these are all the kinds of problems that we encounter.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:58):
Well, you're also, I mean

Richard Campbell (01:38:00):
And I'm not

Paul Thurrott (01:38:01):
Adopter, essentially, right? I mean Yeah, you're

Richard Campbell (01:38:03):
Right. Yeah. I know it's space in general. The, in the MVP group mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, all of us have identity problems at Microsoft because we were beta testers, because we had MSA accounts Yeah. That then became a D accounts, like, and then, and again, so there's like a couple of thousand of us, and who cares? But I

Richard Campbell (01:38:22):
Yeah. Yeah. This is the story you've got here is the least painful part of what ENT intro's really talking about <laugh>, which

Paul Thurrott (01:38:27):
Is the, oh, the stuff is horrific. Yes. This is

Richard Campbell (01:38:30):
Way till you see the rest.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:31):
This is the only part of it that I care about. So I don't even, yeah. I look, I look at the rest and I'm like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not ever dealing with this.

Richard Campbell (01:38:37):
But for, I mean, the, you talk about from an IT perspective, the core issue is how do I have guests into my Azure and M 365 tenants and every product done it differently, and it's, and it's nightmarish. Yep. And so the idea that they could come to a coordinated solution is, is compelling. Like, that, that, that would be nice. All right. All right.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:01):
Right. Appreciate a semi positive spin on this.

Richard Campbell (01:39:04):
Yeah. I mean, they are addressing a problem as a real problem. They're not just making you trouble for each other. Right. And, and I, you know, bring up the other I implications around the fact that it is a new team tackling stuff. And so and

Paul Thurrott (01:39:17):
I think that makes it easier to say goodbye to the past. Yeah. So the thing that little kind of in the back of my brain bothers me a little bit to them is just clean sheet, fresh start May overdue. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And,

Richard Campbell (01:39:29):
But they can't mean that's one of the problems, right? Identity. Oh, that's

Paul Thurrott (01:39:32):
True. True. I'm sorry. Cannot, cannot, I mean, I'm from a brand, sorry. No, they're not changing the product. Sorry. No, they're literally not changing the product. Right. Sorry. And they can't, I meant from a, I, I, I, well branding perspective.

Richard Campbell (01:39:42):
Yeah. They, the rebranding helps, the reorganization helps. I mean, it's this naming strategy and what they're doing here is as much for the rest of Microsoft as it is for the customer. Yep. Right. It's just to remind everyone, Hey, it's a new day.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:55):
Yeah. The problem is, this stuff's been around for a long time, and there's lots of references to it out in the world.

Richard Campbell (01:40:01):
Well, had a doubt. And, but also a number of VPs have dashed their careers on the identity rocks of Microsoft. Yeah. Right. So, I don't envy the next guy coming up, but he, he's, they, let's face it, if you can crack this nut, you've cracked one of the most difficult nuts in Microsoft. So I hope I, I wish him well. Our lives would be better if they succeed.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:23):
I desperately want to use the phrase speaking of nuts and Microsoft <laugh> this next story.

Richard Campbell (01:40:30):
Did you, did you desperately want to

Paul Thurrott (01:40:32):
Really Well, yeah. And I, then I just did <laugh>. Yes.

Richard Campbell (01:40:34):
There you go. Now

Paul Thurrott (01:40:36):
Pretty much gives in all his wants and needs. I think so. I know I'm, I'm a baby, but are you guys familiar with mark Lukowski? Mm-Hmm.

Richard Campbell (01:40:45):
<Affirmative>, you

Paul Thurrott (01:40:46):
Guys are, so this was a, I don't know who he's, yeah. He's a member of the original NT team who came over from Deck. He's one of the smartest guys ever met. He's volatile <laugh>, I guess I would say as a lot of geniuses can be. Right.

Richard Campbell (01:41:01):
I, I would call him Gatien. Okay. Right. Oh, interesting. Like, he worked very well in Gates', Microsoft, the same kind of in intellectual, stormy.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:10):
See, there is a, there is a, an infamous story that when he went to tell then Microsoft CEO O Steve Bomber, that he was leaving the company to go to Google. That bomber threw a chair into the wall and then went on a profanity lady tirade, which I think, by the way, that

Richard Campbell (01:41:28):
That was, that was a tempered glass wall.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:31):
Oh, it went through it. It exploded. Yeah. I was gonna say, I thought it went through it, but then it was like it was a wall. Yes. Right.

Richard Campbell (01:41:35):
Yeah, it was a wall. It was a dividing wall for, for for Steve's office. And yeah, it shattered.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:42):
So I'm gonna give you the clean version of his rant, which is F-ing Eric Smidt, who was the CEO I guess, of Google

Richard Campbell (01:41:49):
At the

Paul Thurrott (01:41:49):
Time is an effing, I can't say that word, screamed at him, but I'm going to effing bury that guy. I've done it before. I'll do it again. I'm gonna effing kill Google. Google isn't even a real company. It's a house of cards.

Richard Campbell (01:42:01):
Wow. Yeah. And, and that's 20 plus years ago, pretty close since the beginning of bomber being ceo.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:10):
It was almost, yeah, I think it was like 19 ish years ago. That's exactly right. So Schmidt went on to work for Google. I forget, actually forget what part of the company at that time. But he was there for a long time. He left briefly to go to VMware and then came back to Google where he has led their kind of ar XR efforts. And in a very John Akian move, he has just left the company and has decided to burn the bridges on the way out and tweeted publicly that the recent changes in AR leadership and Google's unstable commitment and vision weighed heavily on my decision. Some people are speculating. He might be going to Apple, by the way. I don't know if that's true, but he, Apple's,

Richard Campbell (01:42:51):
Apple's grabbed up a bunch of good AR people, like it's where the AR action is right now. So I've seen some HoloLens folks have moved.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:57):
Yeah. Well, it's definitely not at Google,

Richard Campbell (01:42:59):
So it's gotta be better than Google for that. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:02):
So I, I would say I've been kind of down on anything, vr, Mr. Xr, ar, whatever you wanna call it mm-hmm. <Affirmative> because I just don't, I just don't see it bursting into the mainstream or whatever.

Richard Campbell (01:43:16):
No, but I'll tell you this also, he didn't join Google again. He was an Oculus when they got acquired.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:24):
Okay. But he would let, but he, he did just leave Google.

Richard Campbell (01:43:26):
So he left Microsoft to go to Google for a few years, and then he was off doing some other things, and then he ended up at Oculus. Oh, I'm sorry. And then, okay. And then oh, wait, no, Facebook bought Oculus and he bailed then.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:38):
Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, I guess the point is, for, for whatever reason, for some number of years, this guy, who I think is, again, one of the smartest people I know mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I, I have to feel like he must be onto something <laugh>. Yeah. Like, he really feels strongly about this stuff, and I think he's gonna, well, no, I, based on what he has said publicly,

Leo Laporte (01:43:55):
Also a very high level executive to say that senior director of

Paul Thurrott (01:44:00):
Arian, he was, he was one of the key guys on the NT team. And in the sense that the quote from, I'm gonna, I'm gonna paraphrase this, but I think it was Dave Cutler who said, NT is so big that no one can keep it all in their heads at once, but Mark comes closest. Hmm. Wow. It was some, something like that.

Richard Campbell (01:44:19):
Yeah. You think he'd know better than BIM Ridges like this, but he very much was. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:44:23):
He's, like

Richard Campbell (01:44:23):
I said, an

Paul Thurrott (01:44:24):
Engineering guy. He's very he's very hot-blooded.

Richard Campbell (01:44:27):
Yeah. But

Leo Laporte (01:44:28):
I mean, the words Google and unstable kind of go together. I,

Paul Thurrott (01:44:32):
They make for an excellent headline later. He's not wrong.

Leo Laporte (01:44:35):
<Laugh>. So,

Paul Thurrott (01:44:36):
So,

Richard Campbell (01:44:36):
And I would argue like Google really is struggling right now. Finally, they're, you know, the cash cow is somewhat threatened by these large language models and Yeah. I don't think they have the answer.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:45):
We look at this guy's face, if you saw him looking at you like that in a bar, Ooh, you would know that the next thing, the next thing coming was you getting punched in the face. Yeah. I'd

Leo Laporte (01:44:52):
Also guess that he made his bed this morning. I'm just saying

Paul Thurrott (01:44:56):
<Laugh>,

Richard Campbell (01:44:57):
He looks like a bed maker. Looks like a bed

Paul Thurrott (01:44:58):
Maker. We can all agree. Most, most people in the industry are kind of on the same part of the ADHD spectrum that I am.

Richard Campbell (01:45:04):
So, but also, he was a distinguished engineer. Like this is a high-end. Yeah, yeah. Individual contributor. And I Oh, yeah, yeah. See, which means he's, this is, he tries to avoid leading people in the first place and actually asks for a

Paul Thurrott (01:45:15):
Reason. So I'm sorry. You're right about Facebook and then what became meta, because when he, yeah, he went there, I actually wrote a news story about, at the time, he was, he went there to help them start an operating system, and he is an operating system, you know, architect

Richard Campbell (01:45:28):
Like from the beginning. So,

Paul Thurrott (01:45:29):
But, but when that, this was before anyone knew what, like, what would Facebook need an operating system for mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, now we know it's for, for the ocular, you know, for the ar, vr stuff.

Richard Campbell (01:45:38):
Yeah. Scott,

Leo Laporte (01:45:39):
His guy though, gets around

Richard Campbell (01:45:40):
And he got the right guy.

Leo Laporte (01:45:41):
He's been on a few, I mean, yeah, you might think his employment history shows some instability.

Richard Campbell (01:45:48):
Yeah. And yet he, this is one of your, those 10 x guys, 10 x divas, and you'll pay the price. He's worth it. Yeah. Cuz he makes million.

Leo Laporte (01:45:54):
Well, that's the thing. He probably gets offered millions and millions.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:56):
He's gonna burn, bright's gonna burn fast. And he's like, MacArthur, you know, he is good for the invasion. And then I didn't have today it's time to let him go,

Richard Campbell (01:46:03):
You know, but Yeah. And he and has burnt very long. Like, he's not 20.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:07):
Well, that's the thing. So you were talking about, you know, careers and whatever, you know, he came with Dave Cutler to Microsoft in what, probably 9 89 I think was a year or whatever, but Dave Cutler's still at Microsoft. What? Hell

Richard Campbell (01:46:17):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:18):
And that doesn't make any sense.

Richard Campbell (01:46:19):
He's 80. He's, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:46:21):
80. So, I mean, and, and

Richard Campbell (01:46:23):
Apparently is a walking HR violation. Like he's surrounded by people to keep him out of trouble. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:46:27):
Right. Yeah. They'll let him talk to the press.

Richard Campbell (01:46:29):
But there's also, he, I mean, he's still a remarkable genius, and he, oh my God, he also,

Paul Thurrott (01:46:34):
Yes, of

Richard Campbell (01:46:34):
Course. He also carries a gravity that only the only other person I knew that carried that kind of gravity was like Jim Gray and Bill Gates. Yeah. When he says, you should do something, everybody just does it.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:45):
Right. So I think that you know, Lukowski, I guess is one step down from, but he is in that rarefied air. I mean mm-hmm. He, oh my God, I, you know, his, his credentials are unimpeachable. Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. It just, so

Richard Campbell (01:46:58):
And so, in some ways it's like you know Ultragen creates yet another storm is kind of the, the headline. Yeah, that's right. But

Paul Thurrott (01:47:06):
Carmack left meta, he also did this little burning bridges thing, and, and you know,

Richard Campbell (01:47:11):
I, I thought his letter was fairly graceful, but he did indict Zak. Yes. I mean, yep. He, I think he called it the largest waste of money he'd ever seen in his life.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:19):
Yeah. This is a guy who, you know, built his life on being as efficient as possible. Yes. And, and then went into this pit of inefficiency. Yes.

Richard Campbell (01:47:25):
It's like,

Paul Thurrott (01:47:25):
And it must've driven him insane. Just like me. Literally, the bed makes me insane. Literal

Richard Campbell (01:47:30):
Bales of money. It's the same exact to a furnace. Insane. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:34):
And there's only difference being billions of dollars. Yes. All right.

Richard Campbell (01:47:37):
<Laugh>, those are big bales.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:38):
<Laugh>, we have a surprising number of dev topics. This week's kind of weird.

Richard Campbell (01:47:45):
Yeah. I'm not, I'm looking forward to it. Like how luxurious to me.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:49):
Yeah. So a couple weeks ago we talked about Microsoft introducing new C Sharp capabilities into Visual Studio C

Richard Campbell (01:47:55):
Sharp

Paul Thurrott (01:47:56):
Dead Kit. I almost said Doc Code for some reason. Code, which is their kind lightweight code editor as opposed to the full

Richard Campbell (01:48:01):
Visual, not kind of, that's what it is.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:03):
Yeah. Well kind of lightweight, I think is what it's getting out there. But it is more lightweight than Visual Studio for sure. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Richard Campbell (01:48:10):
Well, one's an ide, one's an editor. They're different. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:13):
Yes. Different, different ways of program, right? I mean, and speak to different groups of, you know developer types and et cetera, et cetera. I think. Exactly right. I think so. For those who don't know. So Net Maui is the successor to Zarin forums, which is a product that came to Microsoft as part of Zarin. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that acquisition, Miguel Deza, et cetera. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And, you know, it's messy in different ways, but the, the big point of that product when it was outside of Microsoft, was we're gonna take c and t net, we're gonna bring it to a cross-platform developer product. Right. the original version, well, or at least by the time Microsoft got it supported, creating like one project to create apps that would run on the iPhone, Android, and Windows phone, I think, whatever. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Windows Mobile or whatever. We Windows phone probably. Windows phone obviously died. And, and Microsoft at one point kind of contorted it into supporting Windows modern apps, like Metro style apps or uwp whatever.

Richard Campbell (01:49:05):
Uwp.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:06):
Yeah. So Aui expands that. There's a lot of other improvements. There's some good things there. It's still a little messy in my opinion, still a little un mature as well. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:49:17):
V it's a, it's sort of a V 1.1 almost.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:20):
It's almost a V zero point

Richard Campbell (01:49:22):
<Laugh>, you know, they got it, they got it done. But there's, it's a lot of moving parts. Unifying all the, cuz you, you realize that under Maui's also the wind form stack, the w w pf stack. Yeah. But that's the, by the way, menu UI stack.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:34):
This is why this is so fascinating. Right? Yeah. So they Zarin not Zamar can also, so they do all the mobile stuff still. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they do some ties and stuff, which is a little goofy probably for smart devices like TVs that no one really talks about that much. Windows apps, Mac apps, right. Through Catalyst. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Cause it's the way they bring those mobile apps forward into the desktop. This is a Visual Studio product. Right. So this sits in Visual Studio along desktop workloads, like those things you just said. Windows Presentation Foundation, windows Forum also win 32 apps and CPL C plus plus mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and Universal Windows platform apps. Right. by the way the replacement for U W P, which is called, not Project reunion, but called what? The Windows app, s d k mm-hmm.

(01:50:21):
<Affirmative> is not a workload in this product. You actually have to go into the, you know change the settings and add some things to get that in there. So this was more of a formal part of Visual Studio than even the most modern way to create what I'm gonna call Native app, you know windows apps. And now they have pulled it into, I'm not, they have, they're not pulling it out of Visual Studio. Right. Cuz it's not a visual studio. Right. Cuz the solid audience will wanna do that. But they're making it possible. I've not looked at this yet, but to create Maui apps, which are cross-platform Yes. In Visual Studio Code, which is cross-platform. Right. And also also Open Source. That is fascinating. Why, I mean, it's, I, because I would've, I don't know what the logistics are, the politics inside of Microsoft, but it seems to me <laugh> that there are these two sides and they do two different things. And I would've thought that the Visual Studio guys would've said, no, this is our thing. This, well, you need us to do this. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:51:17):
I mean, the API teams run on their own. They wanna run as many surfaces as possible. And so they're incentive to do this. Studio is typically the first home for all of the stuff. The first time you see new features in.net so forth that goes there. But there are other users

Paul Thurrott (01:51:30):
No, no. There are, there are far more other users. That's the point. Yes. So for Visual Studio, full Visual Studio has an audience of some mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Millions, you know, whatever, million,

Richard Campbell (01:51:39):
Millions and growing by the way, it's

Paul Thurrott (01:51:41):
Okay. But it, it's millions and it, it is very specific workloads. Right. They're not all Windows. Then in fact, arguably most of 'em are not Windows, but most

Richard Campbell (01:51:51):
Of them, most these days, most deploy to Linux even though they develop on Windows. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:56):
But it grew up in the way it grew up and it is what it is. It's a big id, you know, that kinda thing. Visual Studio Code was a recognition of a lot of things. But one of the most important ones for this discussion was this notion that there are far more developers out in the world that are not target targeting Microsoft workloads. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> traditional Microsoft stack workloads, including, you know, frankly do net. Although net has since gone open source and, you know, whatever fits into that world very well. Yeah. Yeah. I, this is, it's almost an ideological thing here. It, it's very interesting to me that this is happening. Cause I think this speaks to the, the reality that there's a bi an even bigger developer base out in the world that is not on those traditional Microsoft stack Yeah. Products and services.

Richard Campbell (01:52:35):
Well, and I would argue that one of the gateway drugs to an I D E Yeah. Is, I, you know, I think ides all suffer from the same problem, which is that there been a lot of new ones. I would argue Ryder is the newest. And so they have a reputation of being your dad's dev tool. <Laugh>. Yeah. Right. That's, I would argue in favor of them, you know, as somebody who's clearly a dad.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:57):
And also I grew up using this tool and, and,

Richard Campbell (01:53:00):
And

Paul Thurrott (01:53:00):
I think that's a big part

Richard Campbell (01:53:01):
Of it existed before the ID existed. That's was Right. Excited when it emerged. That's right. Because now we didn't have have to roll cause

Paul Thurrott (01:53:06):
It solved the problem on staff. You also didn't have to use completely different environments to target different languages and Yeah. Yeah. You could actually solve the problem today to, I would say to younger developers who do not grow up in that world. I mean, I'm sure Visual Studio looks like a hairball, you know, like a

Leo Laporte (01:53:22):
What experience? Dead.

Richard Campbell (01:53:24):
No. Pad

Leo Laporte (01:53:25):
Plus. I mean,

Richard Campbell (01:53:26):
They roll their

Paul Thurrott (01:53:27):
Own, well, no, no,

Richard Campbell (01:53:27):
No. So Studio Code and they compose all the pieces together to get the dev stock they

Paul Thurrott (01:53:32):
Want. It's not what they use. Instead it's what are they targeting instead? Yeah. Because Visual Studio came open to world that you would be targeting Windows. Right? Yeah. And and, and it's, it, it still has that

Richard Campbell (01:53:42):
And still struggles to shake that CRT off. That's right. Like it is hard to deploy to other platforms.

Leo Laporte (01:53:46):
You couldn't argue that Turbo Pascal was the first id. I mean, I think of an ID as as, I mean a few features that are unique to an ID is I guess code completion co syntax

Paul Thurrott (01:53:58):
Coloring also actually a piling

Leo Laporte (01:54:00):
In the editor. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:02):
But you need a Yeah, no, the point was you didn't have to go to the command line at the time to shoot

Leo Laporte (01:54:06):
Yeah. Kas in the editor.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:07):
Right? Yeah. But I actually, so Visual Studio Code IDE is almost the wrong term because it's not just an i it is an id. I mean it is cuz it does all this things. I

Richard Campbell (01:54:16):
Wouldn't argue Code is an ID in the sense that you have to

Paul Thurrott (01:54:19):
This, you can, you can compile. Yeah, exactly. You can't use

Richard Campbell (01:54:21):
It. You can make it into your Devvin environment. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:54:23):
Right. But that can't, that's exactly

Richard Campbell (01:54:24):
Right. That's,

Paul Thurrott (01:54:24):
It's but Visual Studio full Visual Studio expands beyond the, that kind of turbo pascal notion of a, an ID because it is to developers, what office was to productivity where you bring in multiple things into one place and can do it all from in there. And, and the simplest example being they used to be a separate product called Visual Studio, a separate product called Visual c plus plus separate product called at one time Visual, j plus plus, whatever mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, these things all are available in one thing. They're not separate apps running, doing their own thing. And that makes sense because, you know, back in the day you might wanna write a component and what else's make something up Visual Basic, and then access it from a program that you wrote in c plus plus or whatever. Well

Richard Campbell (01:55:06):
Know the other thing is the way Studio was built, you could bring new languages into it and F Sharp being great example of it.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:11):
Yep. It's extensible and it, you know, it's big.

Richard Campbell (01:55:14):
So Yeah. And, and he comes with a lot of features for free. At the original time I encountered Don Sign back in the day was when he was writing a paper saying, Hey, I'm experimenting with OCaml and I love using the video Visual Studio for this, because I get an editor to Debugger Yeah. A project manager. Like all of those things are there. I

Paul Thurrott (01:55:31):
Know, but it's so is, I mean, that's the thing. That's what's interesting though, because a lot of those things are coming to Visual Studio Code. Yes. Optionally mm-hmm. <Affirmative> as add-ins are exactly of the terminologies. And it, it, it as, as more and more of what's useful from Visual Studio, full Visual Studio today gets pulled into this product. I, I wonder if there's this, you know, this is almost like the rebranding of Enter id. It's like, are we, does this, does this other thing at point some point kind of go away or at least be de-emphasized? Well, I

Richard Campbell (01:56:01):
Would argue it puts pressure on co, on Studio to be better.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:06):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:56:06):
Okay. Right. Because there are alternatives is, I mean, I I still feel like turning code into a large scale project managing development tool where you have to pull all the bits in is a pain in the button. Certainly hard on juniors where Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:21):
And I know they're pretty simple

Richard Campbell (01:56:23):
Templates in Studio to make that quick.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:25):
It makes it eventually as complex as fully Visual Studio, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But, but, but the point of it is, the base of the product is not that. So you don't have to use that stuff. Right. You know, when you bring it, when you bring up Visual Studio, you're bringing up, you got the solar No, no. They, it's a battleship.

Richard Campbell (01:56:41):
You get the 7 47 and there's the cockpit. Right. It's That's right. For new developers, I think very intimidating.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:47):
I think I, I guess all I'm trying to say is code is obviously a very, a much more modern product and is, you know, maybe it's showing itself to be architecturally capable of doing a lot. It has things

Richard Campbell (01:56:58):
We've accessibility model.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:59):
Yeah. It really does what makes sense. So an IDE as opposed to that's you said an ID is exactly what you said. Okay. So it is, you know, back in the day, developers would have to write source code in an editor. Yeah. You go out and you'd compile it. The, they would drop down and they would compile it and link it, and then they would run it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. In the early days of Windows, you would have to do this from a command line and dos run Windows and then run your app, look at it, say, oh, crap, I did something wrong. Exit Windows, go into your, you know, go into your editor. Sorry. and yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's a, it's a thing that solves a problem. Mm-Hmm. And that problem is what I just described, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Visual Studio solved the problem that we have all these different ides for different languages for the most part. I guess let's bring 'em all into one foundational product that, you know, more

Richard Campbell (01:57:47):
So than consistently found a place where developers want something. Like, Hey, I want to make it easy to deploy, to manage my source code in GitHub. There's an extension for, you know, use

Paul Thurrott (01:57:56):
The word, you might argue the word there. I just want, you might argue that VS code is more powerful than Visual Studio. This is like saying an electric

Richard Campbell (01:58:05):
Car would be a better

Paul Thurrott (01:58:05):
Word. It's, it's an electric car compared to a pickup truck. <Laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:58:10):
Yeah. I mean, my argument is the, the IDE comes with a set of pre-configured things so that you don't have to decide, you don't have do anything. Okay. The debugger, the source code manager, the, the Cloud's Fair Cloud deployment, as long as it's Azure, it's all about, and

Paul Thurrott (01:58:24):
The Visual Studio Code is a roll your own. And you, it can be as simple, simple, complex as you want it. Yeah. Yeah. There are advantages to both approaches. I, I feel like overall Visual Studio Code feels is, I know it is, but it feels more modern. It's more, yeah. And, and

Richard Campbell (01:58:39):
I mean, it, it's certainly newer. It does not have <laugh> 30 years of legacy attached to it. That's right. Which studio has, but

Paul Thurrott (01:58:49):
Increasingly it's benefiting from some of the good stuff that came out of all that experience. Right. Without, without bring it all the IntelliSense stuff, the C shop stuff that just happened, which is optional. And then this thing, which I dotnet mai whatever, but this is this is, well, dotnet Mai is is fairly new. Is extremely new. You know, it's interesting. Like this is a visual

Richard Campbell (01:59:11):
Studio thing Maui shipped in the past couple of years. And so it's, it is relatively fresh. It's really a.net thing. Right. It's, it is really what it is. And so you don't even have to use studio or Studio Code really if you don't want to. That's that's right. It's just, and

Paul Thurrott (01:59:26):
Use Redline if you wanted to actually,

Richard Campbell (01:59:28):
And in my, the first C Sharp I wrote was a notepad.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:31):
I Yeah, I yeah, of course. And, and I, so I like the way that net Maui as a net part of the net family mm-hmm. <Affirmative> kind of thematically makes sense alongside Visual Studio Code. Yeah. Which is itself open source. You know, it's, it's, it's this, it's this new, it's like the new Microsoft <laugh>. Yeah. You know, like they almost go together. I know it came out of another company, but that company was designed around bringing.net to cross platform like it

Richard Campbell (02:00:00):
To more platforms. Yeah. That's

Paul Thurrott (02:00:01):
The same. It's in the, it's

Richard Campbell (02:00:02):
In the same, and Aui also, Maui also represents not just refactoring Examiner Farms, but trying to consolidate ZL as a whole. Yeah. Right. Think they, they fragmented ZL pretty heavily for a variety of reasons. And this is supposed to be the unified UI stack that Microsoft lost their way in. Yes. The UI stacks have, even though having some of the best ones because they were so

Paul Thurrott (02:00:24):
Fragmented Zale's last stand.

Richard Campbell (02:00:26):
Well, trying to get Zael back to what it originally intended to be.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:31):
Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. I knew you'd have something to say about this <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (02:00:36):
I mean, I'm definitely on it and I mean, let's face it, this, the machine I'm on right now has both studio and code and they both have roles for me. Right. The bottom line is when I want to make modifications of the run as site to go into the project in studio, that is the run as site that checks my code in through GitHub and deals with all my Azure credentials and does all those things for me is compelling. It's great. Yeah. When I need to edit Jason files or write some Heaven Help. You want Visual Python

Paul Thurrott (02:01:03):
Code. Of course. Code. You want, you want lightweight. Yeah. There

Richard Campbell (02:01:06):
Is no project there. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:08):
Yeah, exactly. There you go. Just

Richard Campbell (02:01:10):
Knows I don't want Anaconda. So that's

Paul Thurrott (02:01:12):
Actually, you know, code that, that might be the simplest way to describe it. You know, that Visual Studio is oriented around projects Yes. Solutions that could have multiple projects even. Yes. But Visual Studio Code is either you're opening a file or a folder.

Richard Campbell (02:01:25):
Right. And what they, when they added the dotnet dev kit, they at least gave you ability to view into those bigger projects and stuff now. Like they understand files

Paul Thurrott (02:01:33):
Part of Yeah. Part of it is a, a solution slash project view. I don't remember how they called

Richard Campbell (02:01:37):
It. And that's been partly because customers are complaining. I really like code, but yeah. This is thi this thing I'm working on is a solution and has multiple projects and there's just no way to do that in Code. It's all separate folders. And now I have a, a giant external build process and da da da da da da. And it's like, hey, that's something that studio just, just fine. Right. And so, alright, we'll give it to you over there that I would not want to try and set up a solution from Dev Kit. I would rather set it up in studio and know my dev kit people could work on it. Yep. Like, one would argue that the net dev kit piece that just came a little while ago is so that the guy working on the Python side of this app is still part of the solution.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:18):
Okay.

Richard Campbell (02:02:21):
Cuz Right in Python inside a studio is they very, very difficult.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:24):
Although I think, if I'm not mistaken, Python is a top level workload in Visual Studio. I think. I never use it, but I I think it is. Yes. I'm

Richard Campbell (02:02:32):
Sure it, except unless you try and hire Python people and they're like, you want me to work where?

Paul Thurrott (02:02:36):
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I think that was, and that was the same thing. So web web devs Right? You like, you wanted me to use Visual Studio. I I use a, a text editor and a command line.

Richard Campbell (02:02:45):
Well, and it's, and why be a barrier like building these bridges so that you, so that your ex exact, exact existing effective developers in studio aren't being crushed on. And the new devs you bringing in that come in with a larger diversity of tool interests, but can live in code, can at least all speak the same project

Paul Thurrott (02:03:03):
Link. Okay. We gotta move on from this. This is <laugh>. This is too much stuff. You guys love talking about this stuff. I love it. Me too. I know. I can, I can feel it. I can feel the audience walking away. Yeah. Okay. More dev stuff. Okay. Well we can, we can skim through this. Right? Let me look. What do we got here? Yeah, mostly super. So dev box, which Microsoft announced at Build last year mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is now generally available. The interesting thing about this to me is like, this obviously came out of stuff Microsoft was doing with windows 365 and yada yada. And we, and we were lived in a world, you gotta remember that you, over a year ago, where there were serious component shortages and people couldn't get PCs out to their devs. And so Microsoft said, Hey, let's get this thing up in the cloud and we can have these dev environments in a cloud-based PC that can be configured before you get there. You turn it on, it's just there, it works great, yada yada, yada.

Richard Campbell (02:03:58):
It's also a great way to control your source that Yeah. Okay. It's not on, especially when you're using, it's never local developers and things. Yeah. It's never local. Be local.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:04):
It should never be local, but Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:04:06):
Yeah. Well, it's not always possible. So we were doing this with terminal services back in the day. Like, you wanna be unhappy. That's a good way to do it.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:12):
Yep. Yeah. Anyway, it's out. It's they support more powerful configurations if you want it. I think. I feel like this thing is very expensive. And I also feel like maybe there's less of a use case for it today than it was a year and a half ago. But

Richard Campbell (02:04:26):
The, the folks that I know that are concerned about the security side of things aren't worried about the price. There you go. They, that's they, they've decided that the security is that concerning. Right. Okay. That's how do it.

Leo Laporte (02:04:38):
So

Paul Thurrott (02:04:39):
That's, that let's, we can skip Rasberry prior

Leo Laporte (02:04:41):
Cares. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:42):
So, and then GitHub announced, we talked about this coming, but the public beta of Pasky authentication, the theory here being that passwords are already terrible for security. Like, and they're gonna do away with passwords over time so that public beta is available.

Richard Campbell (02:04:58):
Yeah. And I, I've been using UV keys for my GitHub account for ages. It just makes me also use a password, which seems selling.

Leo Laporte (02:05:04):
Yep. I use SSH and

Paul Thurrott (02:05:07):
As I've been

Richard Campbell (02:05:08):
Public,

Leo Laporte (02:05:09):
Public keys. Well, it's nice cuz I can check in, check out and all that stuff from the command line without typing a password or anything. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So

Paul Thurrott (02:05:21):
I can we to X Xbox, let's

Leo Laporte (02:05:23):
Do some Xbox stuff. Why Not

Paul Thurrott (02:05:26):
Only, only a couple things, but both of these are very interesting, I think. So I've been writing a series of articles on kind of tech nostalgia, right? Like it's gonna be, it's video games and early personal computing type stuff. And I've been, to make this make sense, I'm doing a ton of research and looking into references I can provide to people, like books you might wanna read, documentaries you might wanna watch emulators you could use to use this software today on your pc, et cetera, et cetera. And it was just a weird kind of timing. But Microsoft, well, through the Xbox Wire blog actually a third party digital Eclipse announced that they're gonna release a series of what they call interactive classic video game documentaries on the Xbox Series X and S and Xbox One. Now the, what these things are is it, it's, well they'll probably all be a little different, but you, the idea is you can play the game, you can play the original game, you can play different versions of the

Leo Laporte (02:06:21):
Game. Oh, how interesting.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:22):
You can a modern version of the game that will be unique to this package. But they also have all this awesome material where you get to meet the developer. There's interviews, they talk about how they did things, how it changed over time, et cetera, et cetera. It's really

Richard Campbell (02:06:34):
Proper cashing in on nostalgia. Like that's

Paul Thurrott (02:06:36):
Absolutely, yeah. But what's appears to be a high what

Leo Laporte (02:06:39):
On the Xbox. It's not just watching a documentary. It's, you can play the game.

Richard Campbell (02:06:44):
You're also playing the game. I I love the

Leo Laporte (02:06:46):
Association. Yeah, yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:06:48):
Then it's not just nostalgia, it's also history. Cuz you can That's right. Can learn it.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:52):
So, but for me personally, and I'm really into this stuff, and like I said, I've been writing about it, this is like lands right in the middle of what I'm doing because the first game is Ker, which is a classic Apple two game created by Jordan Mechner, who also wrote Prince of Persia, another classic game. I had already earmarked him in his games for my series because he has written two books, the Making of Ker Teka and the Making of Prince of Persia, in which he documents how he created those games. And of course those games are classics. If you wanna play them today, there are modern version no, there's a modern version on Steam, which looks kind of goofy. It looks like kind of animation style game, like a, like a cartoon. But there there's something called Ker Classic, which you can download or buy, I think on iPhone and iPad and Android, which is basically a port of the original game.

(02:07:42):
So it looks like the Apple two version. Hmm. I think that is so cool. So this is whole, this kind of, it all kind of is coming together here. You know, it's kind of neat. I didn't ever thought I would have like a news article in this series, but I think this qualifies because this is, this like lands right in the center of this stuff. So this coming interactive documentary on Ker Tech is amazing. And I can't wait to see what the other ones are. What a good idea I think this is. Yeah. Yeah. Really neat. Really, really. It's

Richard Campbell (02:08:08):
A Persia on Steam is the full five game bundle for nine bucks. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:08:13):
Yeah. I mean, listen here, the, the thing that's fascinating about the best cla a lot of classic games, like when you go back to the early eighties, late seventies, whatever, it's astonishing. How many of them are still fun today? Yeah. You can find fun games I play, you wanna play throughout history, right? Yeah. You know, doom Quake and whatever from the nineties. But it's astonishing. And I think it literally is tied to the fact that these systems were so limited that the people that wrote games. So it had to be super creative. Yeah. And it just forced them to, you know, bring up more in themselves. And I, it, I I have been well gonna, oh, we'll get Winning Gate. We're gonna get to this soon. I've been playing a lot of retro games lately. It's, it's really kind of interesting. If I were to point at the single biggest problem I have with Xbox, I would admit that this is probably a problem elsewhere. It's just that I'd play on Xbox. It's online toxicity and this is other people playing in a game with you who are behaving badly often through their actions, but also often through their words. And so, one of the things that I've been doing now forever, and I know I haven't played on Xbox in a few months, but is I mute globally, everyone's microphone at the Xbox level. I, I don't go into a game and ever hear anyone else because everyone else is terrible. Yeah. <laugh> it just terrible game would

Richard Campbell (02:09:31):
Be great, except for the other players.

Paul Thurrott (02:09:33):
Yep. It's like France would be great if it wasn't for the French. So, but this is a, this is a problem. Microsoft has talked a lot about fixing this problem over the years and has done very little about it. Although there was, there was a period where they were, they made a real effort at one point. But anyway, it's fallen by the way. Said again. So Microsoft announced today they're gonna bring a voice reporting feature to Xbox. Hmm. And the idea here is what you're gonna be able to do is someone has said something terrible and you press a button and it record captures the last 60 seconds of gameplay, which will include this inappropriate in game. Right. stuff. And you can report it to Microsoft and then they will you know, go after these people. Right.

Richard Campbell (02:10:15):
X dash cam.

Paul Thurrott (02:10:17):
Yeah. Yeah. That's presumably

Richard Campbell (02:10:20):
They have a machine learning model for actually parsing this. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (02:10:23):
It's totally

Richard Campbell (02:10:24):
Ai, it's no human ai. It's, it's impossible to do otherwise. Cause that's a lot of clips that are about to land. Like, that should be pretty astonishing.

Paul Thurrott (02:10:33):
Sure. I mean, this is like the, the guys that would have to look at reports about child pornography, whatever. Awful. Yes. Cause they, they, they're just the most, they just need so much, you know, help with therapy and Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:10:45):
No, like anybody who works in, in, in, in EMT space, like it's

Paul Thurrott (02:10:50):
All awful. You just, you see everything awful.

Richard Campbell (02:10:52):
You see horrible things. You see everybody at their worst and goodness knows when you're, when you listen to the stream that comes outta video games, you are hearing people at their worst.

Paul Thurrott (02:11:00):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:11:02):
Yeah, yeah. But we can fix that. Just record.

Paul Thurrott (02:11:05):
It looks like, it looks like we're trying. I I welcome any effort to prevent online or to at least fix, help fix online text.

Richard Campbell (02:11:13):
It's gonna, I just think it's gonna be a lot of clips. Holy man.

Leo Laporte (02:11:16):
Yep. I think, listen, the

Paul Thurrott (02:11:17):
Best clips are gonna, they're all, you know, they'll all be on YouTube, right? The, the funniest clips that we're reporting

Richard Campbell (02:11:23):
Xbox Dash cam,

Paul Thurrott (02:11:25):
Check out this guy.

Leo Laporte (02:11:26):
Yeah. But I wonder what they're gonna do. I mean, what are they gonna do they warn you and then kick you off or,

Richard Campbell (02:11:33):
Yeah, let's see. I mean, there's plenty of mechanisms around all of that. Mostly focused on, on cheating and hacking, right? Yeah. You're gonna get a three strikes kind of thing. But a

Leo Laporte (02:11:42):
Lot of teenagers on there. Young teenagers are just jerks. Right. And what do you,

Richard Campbell (02:11:46):
But when you're being hurting each class,

Leo Laporte (02:11:49):
It's a teaching moment. Dynamic. It's a teaching moment. It

Paul Thurrott (02:11:50):
Is. Yes. And it's all, it all falls nicely under what is already in the terms of use. So there's no a question here.

Leo Laporte (02:11:56):
Good

Richard Campbell (02:11:57):
Point. Just a question of making it co cut cheap enough to force.

Leo Laporte (02:12:00):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay kids, let's take a break cuz the tips of the week coming up the app of the week and the Brown Liquor Pick of the week All ahead. But first it's time to talk about cashflow. You are listening to this show. Most of you. Thanks to cashflow, our c d n our Content delivery network. One thing you know, we learned very early on a lot of people are learning. Users don't hang around viewers don't hang around for videos that buffer shoppers will abandon shopping carts on e-commerce sites that are slow. Gamers will leave bad reviews if the latency is high. That's why you gotta use cashflow. Customers expect and deserve a faultless experience when engaging with content on any device anytime, anywhere in the world. Building trusted CDN relationships since 1999, cashflows held a track record for high performing, ultra reliable content delivery for more than two decades now.

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They pioneered the use of TCP n a cashback way back in 2002 more than 20 years ago. And that's an innovation. Most CDs are just now starting to build on cashflow. Calls it q o e Quality of experience. It's the single most critical metric when you're serving content simultaneously to a large global audience. And frankly, your delivery stack can be your secret weapon. With cashflow, you get ultra low latency video streaming that deliver video to more than a million concurrent users. Lightning fast gaming deliver downloads faster with zero lag glitches or outages. Mobile content optimization. So you get automatic and simple image optimization for your website so it loads faster no matter what device. Casually the only CDN built for throughput, delivering rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods, 30% faster than other major CDNs. Plus, you'll never pay for service overlap again.

(02:14:13):
You get flexible month to month billing for as long as you need it. Discounts for fixed term. Once you're happy, design your own contract when you switched to cashflow. That's what we did because we've been using cashflow now for more than 10 years. I think more like 15 years. 3,500 clients in more than 80 countries. Organizations consistently choose cashflow for scalability, for reliability, for unrivaled performance. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you. Cashflow learn now you can get your first month free@cashfly.com. How many times have you heard me say it? Cash fly Bandwidth provided for Windows Weekly by Cash. Fly at C A C H E F y.com. Thank you. Cash. Fly now to the back

Paul Thurrott (02:15:02):
Of what was the, huh? What was the company again? Cash

Leo Laporte (02:15:04):
Fly. Can have I said that enough. Cash fly. Maybe if I spell it for you. C A C

Paul Thurrott (02:15:10):
H E. Stephen Wright joke. You know, I drove across the country and there was one cassette stuck in the player and I can't remember what it was. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:15:19):
Love Stephen Wright. Is he still around? Is he still performing?

Paul Thurrott (02:15:21):
Oh yes. Oh yes, yes, yes.

Leo Laporte (02:15:23):
Very funny guy.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:24):
Yeah, he's great.

Leo Laporte (02:15:26):
Paul Throt, speaking of funny guys, let's do your back of the book, book pick of the week. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:32):
Tip of the, we'll just stick with the Xbox slash game theme. Back in Microsoft back in March, Microsoft dropped its $1 Game pass trial offer. It replaced it with sort of a goofy new friend referral program, which everyone hated. And so now it's back. So if you haven't sampled Game Pass, you can now try it again for a dollar. So that's available. It's available at where it's available. Where's that? I'm sure Xbox on it. Where wherever you get your Xbox stuff, it's there,

Leo Laporte (02:16:01):
There

Paul Thurrott (02:16:02):
Xbox.Com. So if you wanna give that Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:16:04):
That's a good place to start. Give it a

Paul Thurrott (02:16:05):
Shot.

Leo Laporte (02:16:06):
Yeah. Log in with Xbox. Xbox X. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:16:09):
And earlier I mentioned the retro stuff. My most recent entry was about the in television, which was my first video game system. Also my first computer, interestingly because I bought the computer adapter for it and I taught myself basic on it. Which is hilarious because this thing had such a low resolution screen. I think it was like 20 columns by or something. It was like, it was just not a lot of text. Yeah. Big all caps. It was so limited that they only could afford four characters for every basic command <laugh>. So, no, it was just the fun was, the fun thing was you could plug in a game cartridge and you could write code that would access the sprites in the game and use them in your own goofy little programs. Oh, that's, you Couldn You couldn't use them without the cartridge.

(02:16:51):
It was just for learning it, whatever. But by far my favorite game on in television was NHL hockey. Nice. Because if you could board check the guy just right, he'd go over the boards. <Laugh>. All right, I'm gonna, I'll give you, so my, my brother it took me only a short while to figure this one out, but if you think about a football field as being like horizontal lines mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and the, the yard markers or vertical lines, you could move your quarterback up to the top of the screen. So his head went against the top line, but his arm was kind of even with it. And his legs were still in the field, so he wasn't outta bounds. And he would throw the ball and the ball was white, just like the line, right. So you couldn't see it. He didn't know where it was.

(02:17:28):
So he would run the guy straight down the field in the middle of the thing. The, the game would scroll with that guy and then he would run up to the top of the screen, catch the ball, which you couldn't see, and then run it in for a touchdown, you know? Wow. And it had that classic and television noise generating, like, you know, for the cloud noise <laugh>. Yeah, that was one of my favorites. Anyway, so the actual app pick is something called Nostalgia, which I believe is the only decent in television emulator you can get on the pc. I, I should mention from sort of an ethical standpoint that all of the intellectual property associated with television is still owned by a company. I'm having trouble lock this one down, but I believe it's Blue Sky Rangers, which was the name, the name of the team of the original developers of the games.

(02:18:12):
What this means is that they're actually pretty cool about this. They will allow you to download the ROMs for the system, which involves like the kernel. There's one for the computer, one for the in inte voice graphics was one as well as all the Game ROMs, all of which, like the Atari ones are hilariously small, like two to eight K, like they're nothing. As long as you own the hardware. So the idea is if you have an int television and you have the cartridges for the games that you are downloading, they will have, they have no legal issue. They'll give you the ROMs for it. Well, they won't give 'em to you. You just have to Google 'em. They just won't sue. You'll get 'em. They just won't sue. They won't sue you. Now, I, I mean, I think we all understand anyone could do this.

(02:18:51):
And for purposes of what I'll call journalistic endeavors, I did do it because I wanted to take those screenshots for the, for the article. But it's, you know, I feel ethically, I gotta just mention that. But yeah, the in television, oh my God, is literally my favorite. My favorite game was Night Starker, by the way. But <laugh>, it was a great game too, but there was so many great games and when you go through the list, it's, it's sort of incredible. I also note that my greatest journalistic endeavor was that I was able to contribute to the original and television fact. My name is still there, along with my email address, 1993, which is from an I s P in Phoenix called Net something. I already forgot it. Netcom, I think. And that was because I was able to buy some it shrink wrapped, never opened games that a lot of people didn't even know had ever been released because this company in Phoenix had become, had bought at auction the pro the remains of a giant electronic store from California.

(02:19:53):
And it had all these classic video games and boxes that had never been opened. And so I would buy 'em for a couple bucks a piece and sell 'em on actually on Usenet, if you can believe that through a o l, which is a dial-in service at the time, because people in other parts of the country and the world didn't even know these things existed and suddenly could buy a pristine copy of this game, you know, as if it was 1983. You know? So anyway, that's my, my little, my little role in the, in television history or whatever.

Richard Campbell (02:20:24):
So, good stuff. You know, I think our memory of these games are still superior to the games themselves. Absolutely.

Paul Thurrott (02:20:28):
Having, we guarantee you played, having, having played, having played Nights starker this week. I might disagree really?

Richard Campbell (02:20:33):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (02:20:33):
Really? I'm, I'm just Okay. It's still, everyone still holds up. I'm not saying they all do, but that one does.

Richard Campbell (02:20:39):
Okay. Yeah. All right.

Paul Thurrott (02:20:40):
It's a good game.

Leo Laporte (02:20:42):
Richard. Run as radio, what's coming

Richard Campbell (02:20:44):
Up? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> this week's show published yesterday as usual talking to Johann ar Widmark, our, one of our favorite deployment gods and once again, visiting Windows 11 deployment. The pressure is on for IT folks to get their offices ready to move to 11 since in theory ten's gonna go outta support in 2025. And so I've been talking to internal and external people. Well, what's the appropriate way to migrate when you're talking about hundreds or even thousands of seats? So it's one thing to talk to Aria Carley who works on the up on Windows update itself. It's like, here's the tools as we recommend them. And then to go to a guy down in the weeds with the companies like Arwin Mark and say, so what are you doing? And he'd bringing up the problems with a classic tool called Microsoft Deployment Toolkit which has been working great for years and years, but has some problems with Windows 11.

(02:21:35):
And so they've now got an open source version of it. They call the friends of M d t to help you with with those particular cha challenges called PS app deployed toolkit. So there are many choices, obviously, to doing deployment. And I'm just trying to get to the most of them so that folks have all the tools in front of them as they're running down that clock. Where here we are halfway through 2023. It is not a lot of time you're gonna need to have a plan or you're gonna be coughing up 50 bucks a seat for each of your Windows 10 machines to continue to work. Yikes. Yikes. Yes. That's the usual. I mean, I, my gut still says they're gonna push that back. I know. Cause some big companies are gonna go Nope. But can't guarantee that. So you need to get prepared.

Leo Laporte (02:22:16):
Ah, Mr. Mr. Campbell, do you have a a, a pick of the week for your brown beverages?

Richard Campbell (02:22:22):
I, I've gone back my roster of whiskeys that taught me something like when I was, you know, getting into that space of learning more about the industry and so forth. Whiskey

Paul Thurrott (02:22:33):
Tells a lot of things. It teaches everyone something. <Laugh>

Richard Campbell (02:22:36):
Teaches all something, you know, sometimes it's how quickly can you run to a toilet? Yeah. this particular whiskey is made by a company called Smooth Ambler. Now what's unusual about Smooth Ambler? Well, smooth Ambler is in West Virginia and a lot of people believe that it can't be considered bourbon if it's not made in Kentucky, which also makes the question like, why do we only wanna make whiskey in Kentucky at all? It's clearly not true because Jack is in Tennessee and is arguably the definitive bourbon, even though it's not called a bourbon because it does break the rules of bourbon where Smooth Ambler does not because the FDA regulations around bourbon say in Amer. Yeah. But what's key to Smooth Ambler, which is key to all whiskey makers, is water source. And Kentucky is a popular place to make bourbon. Not only because it has the grains, plenty of growing land there, but it has very soft water in its rivers.

(02:23:29):
Mm. Because of the limestone cark that mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Kentucky sits on. Well that Cark extends east in into West Virginia and the Green Briar River, it benefits from that as well. And it's extremely soft water and it is what, where Smooth Ambler gets their water from that. And to me that was a surprise. I had believed for a long time. You sort of thought, ah, Kentucky's where you make whiskey, what are these Western Virginians doing? And their old scout to me is what a, it's one, a very rare creature in the sense that it is a cask strength bourbon. Mm, I like that. That's unusual. Typically comes in at about 53.5. It is a high rye bourbon, which is to say it's 60% corn, 36% rye, and 4% malted barley. That's a fairly low amount of barley, but that's fine. But a very high amount of rye. So you are getting a pretty spicy poke at you at your throat there, peppery

Paul Thurrott (02:24:21):
Punch.

Richard Campbell (02:24:22):
Oh, yeah. And it'll, it'll come at you <laugh>. It's relatively the

Paul Thurrott (02:24:28):
Drink this, and I'll come at you rye is, is rye. Can be rye, can be harsh.

Richard Campbell (02:24:33):
Yeah, can, yeah. The kind word is spicy. And then, I mean, it's still a majority corn, which also is a requirement for being a bourbon has to be 51% corn. They are strictly column still no pastel. Good barreling. They're classic American toasted oak barreling. Typically five years, very common. No coloring, no filtration. They make a relatively small amount, and so sometimes it can be hard to find, but when I see it I will buy a bottle and it is inexpensive, $40. So well worth keeping on the shelf. For me. It's a whiskey I turn to when somebody who's a bourbon fan says, the only good bourbons are made in Kentucky, and then I'll pour you an old scout.

Paul Thurrott (02:25:15):
So what did you call it? The the limestone.

Richard Campbell (02:25:19):
Limestone cars. Cark

Paul Thurrott (02:25:20):
Cark. Yeah. So the interesting thing is that also continues east into all of Pennsylvania. And you, I dunno if you remember this from when you stayed with me, but our water is very soft as well. Yeah. And we treat it actually at the house level, so maybe you wouldn't, but it's a, it's a, it's a big problem for pipes and <laugh>, you know, things like that. I don't know why they don't fix this at the you know, municipality.

Richard Campbell (02:25:42):
Water, water, water, water, water processing and the can water treatment, right? Yeah. The

Paul Thurrott (02:25:44):
Can often. Yep.

Richard Campbell (02:25:46):
This is what, you know, what actually happened to, happened in Flint, Michigan, is that they refused, they changed the chemistry of the water by changing the source and didn't adjust it cuz it would cost money. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (02:25:55):
So what they don't, for some reason they don't, I would imagine it's one of those shortsighted things where people like, I don't wanna pay the taxes to, to fix that, but then they have to spend all this money bringing water filters into their houses. That's, and salt and whatever the nonsense. But I guess what I was, I guess what I was kinda leading to was this, there we have a lot of craft distillery action in my area mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and I wouldn't so surprise me to discover that there are some excellent Pennsylvania whisks bourbons, whatever that Mm. Are, you just are not discover that. Just, I I I mean, I'm I'm not saying you have to visit, but I,

Richard Campbell (02:26:28):
You're, you're never there

Paul Thurrott (02:26:30):
<Laugh>. Well but I think I, I, there's the great possibility, right? I mean, I think the entire state is built on limestone.

Richard Campbell (02:26:37):
Yes. And it, and it is a, a key part to, to making good water. The, the bigger issue being manganese and iron in the water makes water bad for distillation. Like it does, it blackens things and it, and it really is disruptive on the flavor. Interesting. So you'd rather have a little limestone scale than you then have manganese or iron poisoning effectively.

Paul Thurrott (02:26:58):
Right? Right. Huh? Yeah. I don't know a lot about it. I, coming from Massachusetts, I was confused by the notion of soft water. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:27:05):
And, and understanding

Paul Thurrott (02:27:06):
Why

Richard Campbell (02:27:06):
Wouldn't you? Yeah. What, what's the big deal? And understanding all of this is treatable. It's just costly and you're trying to make the best price product you can. So you have to pick a place to make your distillery. You pick a place with an inexpensive water supply and ready access to grain. Why?

Leo Laporte (02:27:20):
Okay. Why is soft water better for making bourbon?

Richard Campbell (02:27:25):
Well, for making for any distillate needs soft water. Oh. Because the things that make water hard, you know, minerals. Minerals, yeah. Irons, those kind are really bad. There's always, there are some minerals that are good. Some minerals are bad. The specifically bad ones are what they call the blacks. So manganese and iron be the most concerning. They just taste bad. They make the water better. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:27:44):
And you couldn't just soften

Paul Thurrott (02:27:46):
It. My issue is that absolutely

Richard Campbell (02:27:48):
Can, it just costs money. You need a lot of water,

Paul Thurrott (02:27:50):
But when you wash your hair, you never, you feel like you never rinse out the soap. Yeah. That's hard water. Yeah. Cause it has that weird kind of effect. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:27:56):
Yeah. Yeah. But soft water doesn't taste as good in some respect. It depends what's in it, I guess. Iron soft.

Paul Thurrott (02:28:01):
Some people like it, you know, mean some people prefer

Leo Laporte (02:28:03):
It.

Richard Campbell (02:28:03):
Well, yeah. Completely distilled waters really not good. Know. The crazy thing is yeah. Companies like Coca-Cola who make their product everywhere have massive cleaning systems to get their water down to to completely distilled, and then they add salts back in. They add, right. Yeah. Right. That's Desani. Right, right. Desani is literally additive capacity.

Paul Thurrott (02:28:23):
It's short for des sanitized.

Richard Campbell (02:28:25):
Yes. We have sanitized the water and then Desani his juris specifications.

Paul Thurrott (02:28:28):
Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. That's funny. It it makes it sound, it sounds exotic. It's just gross.

Leo Laporte (02:28:32):
Yeah. <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (02:28:34):
So yeah, the, the, the sort of romantic notions of the distillery up in the hills, it's got more to do with getting access to my water.

Paul Thurrott (02:28:39):
I was pictured, it was like a mountain brook and some guy was out there with a water, you know, a jar just collecting it. Yeah, sure. Bringing it down to the co plant or whatever, one

Richard Campbell (02:28:47):
Bottle at a time. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:28:48):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:28:49):
It takes more water than the amount of liquid in the bourbon. Much more, much more, much more. Because

Richard Campbell (02:28:54):
A lot, lot of it's boiling. Yeah. Boiled off, evaporating off and, and part of the cooking process and part of the excess.

Leo Laporte (02:29:00):
Yeah. Okay.

Richard Campbell (02:29:01):
Don't get me started on what it takes to make blue jeans, because my wife's in that trade, and if you want to see some nasty fls. Really, really? Oh, it's unbelievable. Yeah. That's why, that's why China makes most of the blue jeans these days. They don't care where the effluent goes. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:29:13):
Yikes. How about just, we don't wear, well, I don't wanna hurt your wife's business, but what if we don't wear,

Paul Thurrott (02:29:18):
This is like the only pants I wear. She'll be all right. Like, what? You I'm

Richard Campbell (02:29:21):
Not that far. She's very much in the business of trying to clean that process up. Hey, look,

Paul Thurrott (02:29:23):
It's no pants or blue jeans. That's, it's your choice. But I <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:29:27):
Well, in that case, really, I don't have, I don't have a single, I used to have course as a kid that's not, had nothing but done gross. Sure. But I don't have a single pair of blue jeans

Paul Thurrott (02:29:35):
Anymore. I mean, I, especially since the work travel has stopped for me, for the most part. I mean, I even when work travel was a thing, honestly, most of the time I would just wear jeans. I, I don't know. It's kind of gone by the wayside.

Leo Laporte (02:29:45):
A lot of blue jeans. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:29:48):
Well, I worked with some startups that were trying to do chemical reprocessing of blue jean

Leo Laporte (02:29:53):
Affluent effluent. Yes. Wow. You know, don't you find such a great word, stiff Paul and kind of uncomfortable and

Paul Thurrott (02:30:01):
No, no, I never washed them, Leo. It's fine. Oh <laugh>. No, I actually,

Leo Laporte (02:30:06):
The more you wash them, the softer they get. But they, but there's that,

Paul Thurrott (02:30:09):
That's so, and if you dry them and use less soft, you can Yeah, yeah. No, it's fine.

Leo Laporte (02:30:14):
It's

Paul Thurrott (02:30:15):
Fine. Okay. They have different grades of these pants now too. You can get like the softer kind to

Leo Laporte (02:30:18):
Go. It was, but in my youth, that's all anybody wore is blue jeans or army surplus sailor pants, which is a kind of a contradiction

Paul Thurrott (02:30:25):
Choice. Yeah. But Well, but at that time you could wash blue jeans and lean 'em up against the wall because they were living. You could like a you could.

Leo Laporte (02:30:31):
That's why

Paul Thurrott (02:30:32):
I don't like it. Literally. I mean, that's not Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not like, it's not like that.

Leo Laporte (02:30:35):
Not don't like that anymore. It's not like, plus they kinda smell funny. And maybe it's that affluent. It's the blue jean effluent.

Paul Thurrott (02:30:41):
You might wanna revisit blue jeans. I think you'd be surprised.

Leo Laporte (02:30:43):
Really? And they fit well and stuff. Yeah, they've evolved. Sure. They're soft. They're not like, yeah, I know they're made of cu but

Paul Thurrott (02:30:51):
It, they're still blue. I mean, you know, most of 'em are still blue. You can get different colors, but

Leo Laporte (02:30:54):
They're dunes to me anyway. They're

Paul Thurrott (02:30:57):
They are dungee. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. They're not, they're not like corduroys. I'm not asking you to wear Flints.

Leo Laporte (02:31:03):
I like corduroy. That's soft. <Laugh>. All right. All right.

Paul Thurrott (02:31:07):
I thought those corduroys were stiff at the time, but,

Leo Laporte (02:31:09):
Okay. You should wear sweatpants. If I were you and sweatpants never stood up. I would just wear sweatpants. All

Richard Campbell (02:31:16):
Who says I'm wearing pants at all.

Leo Laporte (02:31:17):
Okay. Nevermind. That's enough. That All right. That is the Pantless Richard Campbell run as radio.com. That's where you'll find the podcast run as radio and net rocks. And I love it that we'll, you'll find him here. You got a conference coming up in the fall?

Richard Campbell (02:31:35):
Yep. first week of December, dev intercession and the Azure Data Conference along with Azure and ai. Where's it gonna be? It's going to be in the Swan Do and Dolphin Hotels in Orlando. Nice. And we have keynotes from Eric Boyd and Arun, who now leads the data team and Jessica Hawk and Scott Hunter.

Leo Laporte (02:31:55):
Very nice. Hunter.

Richard Campbell (02:31:56):
Nice. Yeah, very good.

Leo Laporte (02:31:57):
The other Scott, as we, where do people, the Scott, if they gonna run his radio, can they find out more?

Richard Campbell (02:32:01):
They'll find it there. It's on the, it's ads with discount links. You can also go to dev intersection.com. Awesome.

Leo Laporte (02:32:08):
Paul ot, his latest book is an ato, A tour, a nostalgic tour of the history Windows, windows everywhere. And of course he's got the Still Got. And I just saw a recommendation from somebody who says, if you use Windows 11, you gotta have Paul TH's field guide to Windows 11. Yeah, I see.

Paul Thurrott (02:32:25):
Every once in a while someone will say something like, I didn't think I was gonna learn anything, but I did.

Leo Laporte (02:32:28):
Oh, that's, there's so much

Richard Campbell (02:32:30):
Unexpectedly useful.

Paul Thurrott (02:32:32):
Yes, it's nice. I mean, yeah, exactly. I mean, given the

Leo Laporte (02:32:34):
Source <laugh>, it includes the fill guide to Windows 10. And it's available along with Windows everywhere@leanpub.com. Of course, Paul's website is thora.com, T H U R R O T t.com. And become a premium member there. And you can see some of those nostalgic posts early and lots of other great stuff. I'm a premium member. Proud Premium member. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Richard. Thank you. Appreciate it. We do Windows Weekly every Wednesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 1800 U T C. You can watch us do it live, the production. All of our productions are streamed. Live at Live twit tv. There's audio and video there. If you're watching Live Chat with us, live at IRC twit tv. Of course, if you're a member of our club, you can chat with us in the Velvet Rope section. The Club Twit Discord, which is all the Green Room.

(02:33:30):
The Green Room. It's a lot of fun. A lot of great stuff going on there. Not just chats too we have shows. Paul does HandsOn Windows in the club. We've got Micah Sergeants hands-on McIntosh Scott Wil Wilkinson does his home Theater Geeks. We have the Untitled Linux Show, the Giz Fizz Stacey's Book Club. And coming soon, like I think coming tomorrow for the, for the first beta version of our new show, all about ai, Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis will be hosting that with guests from all over the AI industry. That is another club exclusive. We do those because club members pay for 'em. Club members pay for a lot around here. Frankly, we're, we're just breaking even, which is good. But we don't have deep pockets. So <laugh>, if you wanna see these shows continue and you love what you see and you want more, become a supporter, that's the best way to do it.

(02:34:27):
As I said, you get ad free versions of all the shows. You get access to the Discord, you get special shows. We don't put out anywhere else. There are a lot of benefits. It's just $7 a month. I think that's a great deal. To find out more, go to twit tv slash club twit twit tv slash club twit. Remember, or not, you can get shows at our website, twit tv slash ww for this one. There's also a YouTube channel, which has even more ads. Not that we see any of that revenue, but <laugh>. If you go to Club Twit a rather twit tv slash ww, you'll see a YouTube link there. It's also links to your favorite podcast players. Or you can just enter Windows Weekly in your favorite podcast player and subscribe. And that frankly, is the best thing you could do for us and for yourself, cuz that way you'll have Windows weekly. Whenever you're in the mood and the mood, you sometimes the mood strikes you. You just, you just gotta have some Windows weekly and then you'll have it. You see, you'd be right there on, I haven't heard someone rant about Windows updates in a while. Is there a <laugh>, is there a podcast like that? Hey, we're so glad you listened. And we hope you'll come back next Wednesday for another thrilling gripping edition of Windows Weekly. Thanks everybody. Bye-Bye guys.

Scott Wilkinson (02:35:40):
Hey there. Scott Wilkinson here. In Case you hadn't heard, home Theater Geeks is Back. Each week I bring you the latest audio, video news, tips and tricks to get the most out of your AV system product reviews and more you can enjoy Home Theater Geeks only if you're a member of Club Twit, which costs seven bucks a month. Or you can subscribe to Home Theater Geeks by itself for only 2 99 a month. I hope you'll join me for a weekly dose of home theater. Geekitude