Windows Weekly 845, 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 is time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott's here. Richard Campbell's here. He's in the Netherlands. We are going to talk about the newest version of Windows Insider builds a little bit of a mini rant about File Explorer. Why is it faster when it's full screen? Maybe it's the sammel. I don't know. We'll talk about that. Also, it's event season, more events coming up, but Microsoft, nope, they're not going to stream their September surface event. And then Paul's crush, [00:00:30] she's retiring. All that and more. Plus a look at Starfield, the hot new game on Game Pass. Next on Windows Weekly

(00:00:54):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thora and Richard Campbell. Episode 845 [00:01:00] Recorded Wednesday, September 6th, 2023. My NAS is out of date. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show we cover the latest news, Mike Top, and once again, the fabulous winners and dozers convene. I'll let you decide which is which. Paul Theat is here from theat.com. Hello, Paul. I want to be both. You can be both. Hello? Hello, Paul. He's in Macey, pa. [00:01:30] Is that where the escape murderer is or is that a different part of pa? No, but it's reasonably close to here. I mean, he's probably somewhere between here and Philadelphia. Well, that's the problem, Phil. You don't know where he is.

Richard Campbell (00:01:47):
If they knew where he was, he wouldn't be escaped

Leo Laporte (00:01:50):
Anymore. That is Richard Campbell, who is in Anyway, he's in the Netherlands. Hello, Richard. [00:02:00] Are you having fun? I think I called.

Richard Campbell (00:02:01):
It's the evening, so I guess I'm the dozer.

Leo Laporte (00:02:04):
Yeah, yeah. And together. I'm sure that's what dozer means. I don't know what dozer means. It could be a bulldozer, could be somebody who sleeps. It could be Ether. All I know is it's a playoff of Windows. And speaking of windows, what's up with everyone's favorite operating system? Huh? There is some stuff.

Richard Campbell (00:02:26):
There is some stuff,

Leo Laporte (00:02:29):
Yeah. So [00:02:30] last week I think I went on a fairly extended rant about the quality of software that is Windows today. Today I have a short update about that because Microsoft on Thursday released three new insider builds. Canary Dev and Beta Canary and Dev are not particularly interesting, mostly bug fixes. Canary got a couple of changes in settings, but who cares? Nothing major buried in the release notes for the beta build. However, was a note

Paul Thurrott (00:02:58):
About File Explorer, [00:03:00] which got some bug fixes. And you may remember, I voiced my opinion that File Explorer is hot garbage on a good day. And in the beta channel, which is going to be 23 H two, it's even worse. And this also, this is related, you would think so, and maybe originally, but it is related. Someone on Reddit this past week posted something that said, Hey, this is kind of crazy, but when I run file Explore full screen, it actually works faster, [00:03:30] which shouldn't happen, right? That's crazy. It's a bug. It doesn't make any sense. But a lot of people confirm this and it's because the UX is created today in Zamal Islands, partially tomorrow in 23 H two in, what do you call it? The Windows app, s d K. In both cases, those solutions were inadequate for their needs. So they had a custom tailor it to make the own special version for themselves.

(00:03:56):
And in both cases, this thing was really buggy and it doesn't work well. [00:04:00] So I can confirm that I don't green screen as much as I used to, but File Explorer still hangs the file. File copy performance is still terrible, but that's kind of been a longstanding problem. We talked about that, and this is what we're kind of sliding into 23 H two with, right? It's this is the, just to be clear quality of the work, this is not the release version. This is a beta version. This is a testing version. Right? Well, [00:04:30] to be as clear, I would say that they will be finalizing this test version as the final version any day now. And one of the problems slash just realities of Windows development these days is that nothing is really done. So even back in the old days, remember they would R t m some version of Windows, and there would be a month or two or three depending on where we were in history before it actually shipped, and right on the verge of this thing going public, they would say, Hey, we've released this big cumulative update, fixes, [00:05:00] bugs, whatever, minor changes.

(00:05:03):
That's kind of always been how things are done. The way things are done now is we get a preview update one month, we get a full update the next month. Those things go out in the past randomly, or not randomly, I'm sorry, but in tiered access to people who have known good systems, et cetera, et cetera. Over time, while that's happening, each month there's a new cumulative update. They could be fixes, they could be whatever in there. So you can't look at Windows 11 version 23 H two or any [00:05:30] version Windows these days as anything other than a slice and time. It's kind of a rolling target. So yeah, technically, yes, the beta channel is part of the Windows Insider program. It's testing. It's not the release version, but this exact code could make it into the release version only to be replaced over time, possibly every month going forward, because that's how they do things these days. So you don't like to see something as important as File Explorer be in such a sad state, but this is the company that [00:06:00] trumpeted the release of a new version of paint that had a new WIN UI front end, which was a bright white color with no dark mode support. Remember, they screwed up all the keyboard commands. We keep talking about this, and then they eventually fixed it seven months later. So do we celebrate that?

Leo Laporte (00:06:15):
Is it the tool? Is Zael the problem?

Paul Thurrott (00:06:20):
Is zael the problem? I'm curious what Richard has to say about that. Honestly, Zael is the problem, Leo or is a problem [00:06:30] that's actually maybe more insightful than,

Leo Laporte (00:06:34):
Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:06:35):
I mean am not being sarcastic.

Richard Campbell (00:06:38):
There is definitely an issue here with what's the development methodology internally for Windows apps right now? Because when UI seems to be in a state, Maui's certainly not mature enough. What do they use? What roll up a little M F C and go back to basics.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:57):
MFCs coming up again on this show. I love that you just said that. [00:07:00] So XML is a version of XML that's, in Microsoft's case, largely used to define user interfaces debuted in.net 1.0, windows forms in 2000. Is

Leo Laporte (00:07:15):
It just a text file format like xml and that's how, and then there's code that takes that and displays it.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:23):
Is that, so there's some cool stuff going on there. I don't want to totally sidetrack this, but one of the neat things about XML is you can have [00:07:30] partial classes to find partially in XML and partially in C, and they interact. And I think as a developer, that's amazing. The problem from my perspective with zael is that that very first version of XML in WinForms was we had a visual editor, we great, and then they switched to W P F and whatever came after. And W P F sort of had a visual editor, but it never really worked properly. And I bet if you polled W P F developers over time, most of them said, we never even used

Richard Campbell (00:08:00):
[00:08:00] That. There's no ML involved in, that's why it worked so great. Excuse

Paul Thurrott (00:08:04):
Me.

Richard Campbell (00:08:04):
Okay. I'm sorry. The anomaly is that wind forms had a great designer because nothing else has had a great,

Paul Thurrott (00:08:09):
Yeah, okay, I apologize. So I forgot that part of the history, but the promise was always that we are going to do this with Zamal. It never occurred and then they stopped talking about it. It turns out is

Richard Campbell (00:08:19):
Really flipping hard and Zamal is too flexible for its own good. It makes it essentially impossible to have a realtime parser of it.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:29):
Okay, I don't [00:08:30] disagree. But the issue is that the people who are working with XML who are making user interfaces, I mean today, in other words, you're one of those young kids I was ripping on last week. You're working on file spray, you're really excited. It's draw out first job out of high school, very exciting. But you are a visual person. You want things to be pretty, but you have to define this with software code. You have to write XML essentially. And the promise of the Zam l c divide was that you could [00:09:00] have designers working in a visual tool on one side expression back in the day or whatever it might be. And you could have developers working on the other side and you could together as a team, because software development was getting more sophisticated, the guy writing the code, the C sharp code we do in the backend, the guy writing the example would not be writing. He would hopefully be moving things around in a cute little program or whatever, and it kind of never developed that way. So you flash forward 20 years and I [00:09:30] happen to samble in my own stupid goofy way, and of course I don't do it for a living. That might be why maybe more because I approach it from a developer standpoint. To me it makes some sense. I don't know that it would from a designer standpoint or a

Leo Laporte (00:09:44):
Graphic artist. I mean there's no code in Sam or is it like salt code?

Paul Thurrott (00:09:48):
It's only code.

Leo Laporte (00:09:49):
It's okay,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:50):
It's XML code,

Leo Laporte (00:09:52):
It's it's xml, which is it's

Paul Thurrott (00:09:53):
Plain text text,

Leo Laporte (00:09:54):
But

Richard Campbell (00:09:55):
You can embed C in it. That's part of the

Leo Laporte (00:09:57):
Problem. Okay. There's all kinds of, [00:10:00] because I think of XML as a,

Paul Thurrott (00:10:05):
This is

Leo Laporte (00:10:05):
Setting a preference, almost a preference for settings file or description like C ss s where a text-based description

Paul Thurrott (00:10:12):
It is. But in AL'S case, Microsoft, honestly, this was very innovative for the day. I really do give 'em credit for this. They said, look, you could, in a Zael file, you define how something's going to look. Page in an app, here's a button. Exactly. And [00:10:30] you're going to say, here it is, these dimensions, it has these things, but you can also do things like name it. And once you've named it, you can access that from the C code by that name, which is just like BB work back in the day. But you can also,

Leo Laporte (00:10:40):
It's a UI design tool,

Paul Thurrott (00:10:43):
But you could literally, if you wanted to do all of it in C, and if you wanted to, you could do most of it in Zam, you still have to have C code at the backend to handle events and whatever.

Leo Laporte (00:10:53):
But so let's say I have a button and I want an action to attach to that button. Normally you put that in the code portion, but you could put it actually [00:11:00] in the ZAEL file description of the button.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:05):
Not exactly, but there are,

Leo Laporte (00:11:08):
I mean I've seen these interface design tool. Apple uses something very similar. And the idea is you design the interface, use a tool or write it by hand. If you're crazy and you've got this description of an interface and then it hooks into code.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:21):
Yeah. Mean not

Leo Laporte (00:11:23):
Website even. That's how

Paul Thurrott (00:11:25):
Exactly, yeah, you have JavaScript events hitting where you re insemination. [00:11:30] Yeah, it's exactly like that. But

Richard Campbell (00:11:31):
I would argue there's enough different ways to do that that it makes it difficult.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:35):
Yeah, they might've made it too versatile. Yeah, I agree with that. Anyway, newer frameworks and things like Flutter is a good example. That stuff is all together. They use a kind of hierarchy of DART code. They're

Richard Campbell (00:11:47):
Looking much more opinionated. There's a right way to do things.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:50):
Yeah, exactly. And it makes it in some that's better because it's like the Italian dressing choice in the supermarket there instead of having a hardness 17, it's like [00:12:00] you get this choice,

Leo Laporte (00:12:01):
This is Italian dressing. Take it or

Paul Thurrott (00:12:03):
Leave it. I mean, some people would see the advantage of the choice. Some people, I like

Leo Laporte (00:12:10):
Opinionated languages in general because there's one way to do it. And then there's things like Pearl where there's more than one way to do everything.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:18):
So Richard knows a lot more than I do. I'm sure what my descriptions of this are amusing, Tim, but Zael has branched over time so that the zael that's in uwp, that's in the Windows APPE used to get [00:12:30] it's in my way or whatever's also different from each other in some ways. And it makes it a little complicated, and they're working to sort of fix that now. But

Richard Campbell (00:12:38):
Branch is way too friendly. Frag,

Paul Thurrott (00:12:41):
Yeah. Okay. I'm just spit balling here. But anyway, all of this, what all of this means is as we move forward to Windows 11 now, and they're designing UI in what is essentially the Windows app, S d K, the visual tools are non in existence, and [00:13:00] you can see the problems. And there's a weird overhead in file export today because of the use of Zam Islands and now Windows app, S D K that I do believe ties back to saml. Honestly, I think you actually hit it on the head. I mean, if this thing was a win 32 c plus plus slash assembly language app as maybe it should be because of what it is, it would probably run a lot faster.

Richard Campbell (00:13:25):
Faster. And it was not that long ago.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:27):
I know, and it kind of begs the question, I sometimes [00:13:30] see these people, I can get everything done I need to do in Word 95. I'm just going to use that. And it's like, oh, don't be stupid. But then it's like I'm literally, well, I guess the Windows seven version of, or maybe even the Windows eight version of File Explorer, would that work? Windows 11, could I get that going? You

Richard Campbell (00:13:46):
The real issue here, which is you have no excuse for making this worse.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:50):
You really don't. Pretty big. But Windows 11 is part of a form of a function thing. I see it in the Windows [00:14:00] team these days that I don't like. And it's like, look something pretty. Look how pretty Pilot Explorer is. And it's like, guys, come on,

Leo Laporte (00:14:08):
Play devil's advocate and say, think about how this might happen is people want to do modern, flexible coding and they want to be able to separate the UI and the language, the text from the code base. They want to make it easy to design a ui. And [00:14:30] then it's that old model view controller way of thinking of code, which is by the way now I think often considered obsolete. But anyway, the idea of

Paul Thurrott (00:14:40):
Always hated it by go on. But the

Leo Laporte (00:14:42):
Idea was separate functionality into different arenas. Yeah, sure. And that's more modern. And I could see of course, is zamo related zarin or ZX just by accident. I guess it's not related

Paul Thurrott (00:14:53):
Twitter either. It's unrelated. It's related to X ml. It's

Leo Laporte (00:14:56):
Just X ml, X a ml. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:14:58):
Exactly. There is a [00:15:00] Zamal with a Z that Google uses with colon, I think

Richard Campbell (00:15:05):
Really necessarily not using at all, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:15:07):
But there is a Zamal with a Z too.

Leo Laporte (00:15:09):
We not, we're talking Z with an X because AML with a Z Google,

Paul Thurrott (00:15:13):
The Windows team itself is a little bit stuck because no one is really creating new Windows applications anymore anyway. No, well,

Richard Campbell (00:15:21):
They've really made it hard for you to consider how would you do it?

Paul Thurrott (00:15:25):
But the problem is they have to do it. So exactly. If

Leo Laporte (00:15:29):
They have to dog [00:15:30] food, any modern thing they're going to do, they have to dog food. Otherwise it's, we're still using c plus plus. I hope you don't mind. You guys use the new thing that doesn't play.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:43):
That happened for 20 years,

Leo Laporte (00:15:45):
By the way.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:45):
Okay. That's one of the reasons W P F never really took off actually.

Leo Laporte (00:15:50):
It's a Microsoft problem that they keep changing the tool set, right? That there's always the next thing.

Richard Campbell (00:15:56):
Well, I think you're seeing struggles between the teams to try and [00:16:00] unified the desktop development environment. It's gotten to

Paul Thurrott (00:16:03):
A point

Leo Laporte (00:16:03):
Where Google does the same thing. It might be a size problem.

Richard Campbell (00:16:06):
These are the normal issues of a large company.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:11):
And also we're dealing with what is essentially a legacy platform here. The hard computer science work is occurring elsewhere. Now. The days when Windows was the center of everything that we did all day long where the days when people working on the file explorer application or whatever, front end UI would be the [00:16:30] senior employees or whatever like that, the good people would be working on that stuff. So it's a weird thing. I mean, the form of a function thing is real. The disparity of tools, the incompatibility of tools with what people compared to what they want to do versus what they can do are real problems. They're experiencing the problems that developers out in the world would be experiencing, honestly, if anyone was even trying to do this stuff. And no one is so, I mean, for the most part, although I guess you could argue what's the real use case for [00:17:00] Zamal Islands back in the day or now the Windows app, s d k, you have a legacy app of some kind of desktop app and you want to modernize it. You want to put the WIN UI three front end on top of it, which by the way looks great. Those things do look great.

Richard Campbell (00:17:14):
Well, and that goes back older than that. It's WPF four. It's really Visual Studio 2010 that caused that, a calm based app with lots of M F C and they wanted to layer some pf. It's

Paul Thurrott (00:17:27):
Understandable. It's just [00:17:30] not

Richard Campbell (00:17:31):
Working well, but it's 2023 really, the first incarnations of that are 13 years old,

Paul Thurrott (00:17:38):
Right? Yeah. I don't mean to say, mark my words, this is going to be a real problem, but mark my words, I think this is going to be a real problem. I think the next few months are going to be,

Richard Campbell (00:17:48):
I think we're in a transitory period,

Paul Thurrott (00:17:50):
And this

Richard Campbell (00:17:51):
Will get cleaned up

Paul Thurrott (00:17:52):
With, it's like the dark age, and we'll see what that looks like. I mean, the problem is, of course, the ball keeps getting kicked around. [00:18:00] So now the next race, I'm sure as soon as a couple of weeks, now we're going to hear ai, it's all ai, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, yeah, but what about the things you never fix? But that's Windows, isn't it? It's the archeological dig of all the old UIs and architectures and all those things that are in there. You can go back and find the font dialogue from Windows 95. It's fun. And I don't know, the only hope for this is it's File Explorer. People actually need this, right? This has to work. It's going to create

Richard Campbell (00:18:27):
Lots of friction.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:29):
So [00:18:30] I hope they fix it. But to kind of wrap up everything, I mean, Leo ejected a couple of things there that were actually very insightful. No, they're probably not going to fix this before this thing rtms, not that that's a term anymore, and no, they're probably not going to fix it before it ships to the public. Will they fix it eventually? Yeah. History suggests they will eventually. We don't know how long that will take.

Richard Campbell (00:18:50):
It's all just an update cycle now through the cloud. There's no cost to them. It's just a cost to us,

Paul Thurrott (00:18:56):
Right? Right. We're going to talk a lot about antitrust [00:19:00] below and related to that is the unique situation in which there are win-wins when a company like Microsoft can disadvantage a competitor and advantage their own customers. And then they can make the case that the reason they had to do this was to do the right thing for customers. But unfortunately, a lot of my complaints didn't. Windows 11 these days, they're just hurting us. They're just advancing their own names at our expense now that the Edge links and all that stuff, and it's like, it's [00:19:30] too bad.

Richard Campbell (00:19:30):
It's too bad. Yeah. I think we thought that the switch to the cloud would be the much more adjacent to our needs, but every time you feed a rough spot, it's because the needs don't line up.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:42):
That's right.

Richard Campbell (00:19:43):
And all of these ad driven models are part of that problem because every time they try to use us as the product, it's bad.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:52):
Yeah. We also might've seen this coming when Microsoft started, I guess it started technically with Office 365 or [00:20:00] maybe business productivity online suite or whatever. It was this notion that back in the day, there was a gigantic partner ecosystem that would implement Microsoft Technologies on on-premises servers for customers, and it was kind of a middleman or whatever, but they would also do value added services on top of whatever Microsoft had. And one of the touchy issues of the past, several partner shows in July-ish or whenever that is, is this notion that Microsoft is taking on more and more of that responsibility themselves. And that's the entire [00:20:30] point of Microsoft 365. When you think about it, running exchange is hard, but who knows a lot about exchange Microsoft and the partner's like, Hey, we know a lot too, but they're getting kind of cut out of that and maybe they should see

Richard Campbell (00:20:45):
Is definitely shifting and the incumbents are having a tough time. There is space for them, but it's not the same.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:52):
It's hard. No, it's not at all the same. And maybe it's almost like a giant corporation buying the houses [00:21:00] in a neighborhood and then air being them out and like the house where now we pay rent to Microsoft and send it to some bank, and it's like, who is this giant corporation and why are all the rules different now? And it's too bad? I don't know, but we'll see. I always figured competition would solve this problem. And who knows, maybe if the max starts taking 20% share or something, they'll wake up, but

Richard Campbell (00:21:28):
But the repair window's shorter [00:21:30] than the buying window. So by the time you're annoyed enough that it's time to buy a new machine and switch,

Paul Thurrott (00:21:37):
They'll fix it. Someone in the Discord chat was saying, if it becomes too bad, you could just install a Windows subsystem for Linux and use a Linux file browser. And it would be an amazing thing if a Linux file brow like Nautilus or whatever running in virtualization under Windows 11 somehow actually worked better than File Explorer.

Richard Campbell (00:21:57):
Honestly, I love everything about that. You should make that video. It's [00:22:00] hilarious.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:01):
I'm so nervous that that might actually already be true. So I don't know. I've not tried that, but

Richard Campbell (00:22:08):
You could save it for April 1st, but I don't think you wait that long. I think you actually have a bunch of stuff you need to copy and they use better solutions would be a good idea.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:15):
Personalized Nautilus outperforms File Explorer on same PC by two 40%. Oh God, help me if that ever

Richard Campbell (00:22:21):
Threats. Threats says not April 1st. Sorry.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:24):
Exactly. I could see it. Anyway, so there's that. Microsoft did not announce this, [00:22:30] but they have a deprecated features page on Microsoft Learned for each version of Windows that's currently supported. And the version for Windows 11 noted just five days ago that they have deprecated word pad and will no longer be updating it, and they will be removing it in a future.

Richard Campbell (00:22:48):
Is that a pitchforks and torches moment? I mean, it's word pad. They went after Notepad. I'm sure there'd be some heads on Pikes, but word pad.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:58):
So I'm fascinated [00:23:00] that you asked that question because in my little world setting, people thought it was yes, it, and everybody said, oh, Mary Jo Foley's going to die. But it wasn't. It was just No, this is worried Pad not noted. And Mary Jo is not the only person who uses Notepad, by the way, people. But anyway. Well, the thing wrote about this notepad, and so Microsoft's response was, we'll just use Word, which is not free. Think about Notepad, guys. Sorry. Sorry guys. Go ahead. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt your flow. No, no, no. I don't want to mix things up here. We're talking about WordPad, not Notepad. Yeah, I know. [00:23:30] I'm saying that. I'm saying Microsoft said the replacement for WordPad is Word, which is not free. Oh, yeah. Well, yes, that's true. So there's a whole history here that I think is important to kind of understand, right? Word on the web is free, by the way, but you have to have a Microsoft account.

Leo Laporte (00:23:50):
But that's a web app too. You have to

Paul Thurrott (00:23:52):
Be online. No, a hundred percent. You can't click on a file on your desktop and have it open Word for web. Yeah, there you go. I agree with you. [00:24:00] You're right. But there's a lot of stuff going on with this. Right? Back in the day we had text files like Notepad, and we had Rich Text Files, which was right before Windows 95, W R I t E, and then WordPad and the Windows 95 till now. And on the Mac they have something called Text Edit, which does both, and actually I think does Rich Text by default. I could be wrong, but I think it does for some reason today we have rich text formatting [00:24:30] through things like markdown, and I don't understand not using something open that will always work, but people feel very strongly about Word pat on my site for some reason, which Amuses and saddens, right?

Leo Laporte (00:24:41):
Mark has not an exact equivalent because you can't do fonts, for instance, which you can do in R T F and a lot of email clients on the Mac as well as on Windows use R T F as their kind of better than in between h, ht M L and text, plain text. So I think that that's not a dead format [00:25:00] by any means.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:02):
Oh, all right. Plus it's think it's on Windows. It encumbered.

Leo Laporte (00:25:04):
Well, Microsoft Killing It

Paul Thurrott (00:25:06):
Owns it encumbered by ip, who owns it and whatnot. Actually, I don't know

Leo Laporte (00:25:10):
That. I bet no one. I bet that's why Microsoft doesn't like it.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:14):
Okay, maybe I don't know the thing, but it doesn't matter because the Word document format is open and anyone can use it, and you could create anyone. I could right now, I could do this. It's this simple. I could create a rich text editor. I made [00:25:30] my notepad thing, I could have it use rich text. This is very easy, et cetera, et cetera. So there are ways to get around this. The one weird thing I heard from readers, and I mean dozens of them, is that one thing that WordPad is apparently good at is opening corrupted word files, which word can't do, and then you can fix them and they're okay, I've never experienced that. Well, if it's true, well, if it's actually a need. [00:26:00] So for example, I'm positive that if I didn't do this, and I won't, but I bet you could Google fix a corrupted Word file and you would find 1 million online services that do this for free. So I will tell you in the back of the book, I'll be talking about this big digital decluttering thing that I just finished. And a big part of that was me looking at files that I created in Word in the 1990s. I never ran into one corrupted Word file. So I don't know who's having these problems, but I have a lot of old Word files and I didn't have problems with any of 'em. So they corrupt.

Leo Laporte (00:26:29):
There's easily, because [00:26:30] they're not plain text, it looks like Microsoft discontinued enhancements to the R T F specification in 2008. They didn't own it. It was created by Richard Brody, Charles Simony, and David Lubert of the Word team. So this is probably related features. New to Word 2010 or later will not save properly to R T F. So deprecating R T F solely because it doesn't support current versions of Word fully [00:27:00] is probably what's going on. I don't

Paul Thurrott (00:27:03):
Know.

Leo Laporte (00:27:05):
I don't know if they still own it. I don't know if they still own it. It's not clear. It looks like it might be an ISO spec now, but I'm with all the people. It seems like you don't think that that's a big deal. I think it's a big deal of discontinuing. I think it's a big deal. I don't use Windows.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:22):
I don't care. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:27:24):
No, I can tell

Paul Thurrott (00:27:25):
I'm

Leo Laporte (00:27:26):
Pathetic. Don't people who do

Paul Thurrott (00:27:28):
Yeah, don't care. So [00:27:30] the reason I don't care is because you mentioned it's a bigger deal in the Mac email program, and I'm sure you're right, it's just not really a big deal in Windows at all. It just isn't. So I don't

Leo Laporte (00:27:41):
Think we need more proprietary formats. I don't think Markdown does it all. I like markdown too, but it's not really very complete. R T F is

Paul Thurrott (00:27:53):
What most people need is how I would put it. I don't know why they

Richard Campbell (00:27:57):
Don't just throw R T F into an open source repository [00:28:00] and go, here you go.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:02):
Yeah, maybe they did actually. I don't know. But the outrage over this really kind of surprised me. And I'm used to my crowd. There're important antitrust issues of the day and big things happening. And this thing got 10 times as many comments from people as anything else had happened in the past week. And so it's one of those high volume, low value kind of articles because honestly, I know when I look at the metrics for the site, it won't [00:28:30] have gotten a lot of traffic. It will just have gotten a lot of comments. And so it's kind of one of those weird deals. It's like everything about Elon Musk is like that. It's like a lot of outrage and it doesn't amount to anything, but in any event, they're retiring. So I do think there's a couple of interesting things about this that people might want to know about, because actually, honestly, WordPad is actually very interesting today.

(00:28:51):
It's a sigle of nub on the side of Windows. But honestly, this was a big deal at the time when they went from WordPad, I'm sorry, from right [00:29:00] to WordPad in 1995, people don't remember this or wouldn't have cared because they weren't developers, but they actually released a source code for it, and they put it up on the Microsoft website and they created an M F C, thank you Richard Project so people could learn how to write this kind of a program. Because WordPad, the initial version of WordPad was an M F C program that used A, it's not M V C, it's like this, but part of the object oriented c plus plus [00:29:30] nature of those programs was this separation of UI and backend code all in code. But it was an early version of that kind of, oops, separation of data and logic.

(00:29:43):
So it was an example of how to write that kind of a program. And that was kind of a thing. The other thing is that over the years, WordPad has actually been used as a kind of punching bag for whatever was new at the time at Microsoft. And they were like, Hey, let's put that into WordPad so [00:30:00] people could see it and then developers could see it and say, this is how we could do it ourselves. So for example, I talked about the open Word document format that happened probably in the word 2010 timeframe. I don't remember. They added support for that to WordPad. So you could say, see, it's not that hard. We did it in WordPad. Word pads is a joke application. When the ribbon came out, the ribbon is something that developers could use themselves with the Windows, Vista, windows s d K, they added the ribbon to WordPad to say, see, you can do it yourself.

(00:30:29):
Now, they didn't tell you [00:30:30] it was going to take 11,000 lines of Samble, by the way, speaking example, because it does. Because when I was writing that programming Windows series and the Windows Anywhere book Everywhere book, I wrote a very basic version of an app that wasn't the word pad, but it was the word pad ribbon. Lemme tell you something that is a horror show. And maybe the example of why maybe Samble, they should have looked past SAML then. And that was, I mean, when was that 27? That was 2006, 2007. That should have been a warning sign for everybody. [00:31:00] Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:31:01):
Well, that was the original ribbon, but they also weren't going to give it to anyone initially. It took a year or two. They finally were beaten into, oh, by the way, I'm pretty sure that was Steven Sinofsky. That was

Paul Thurrott (00:31:11):
It, yeah. And by the way, that was the version of Windows where No, it wasn't. I'm sorry. No, it was, yeah, windows seven, sorry. Windows Vista was the one, they didn't give it away. It was in office. Windows seven was the version where they did give it away. And there were two UI in Windows that adopted the ribbon. One was, Nope, I keep Steve sending the [00:31:30] wrong app. One was Word Pad and the other one was, wait for folks File Explorer. Right Now, the difference was in File Explorer, because they knew power users were going to freak out. They actually minimized the ribbon by default in later versions of Windows. They moved to more of a command bar. They got rid of the ribbon, but there was a ribbon in there for a few versions. And if you open it up, it looked terrible. It's really not a good UI for some things. Anyway, so it has this kind of neat, rich behind the scenes secret life for developers [00:32:00] too, that it was always kind of a teaching moment, which I thought was kind of cool.

Richard Campbell (00:32:08):
Yeah, funny to retire it.

Leo Laporte (00:32:10):
Do you think this is, so I guess my biggest concern is, is this merely retiring word pad, which is fine.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:18):
Yeah. Nobody is.

Leo Laporte (00:32:18):
Or is it R T f? Is it an attack on R T F,

Paul Thurrott (00:32:22):
An attack on R T F?

Leo Laporte (00:32:24):
Well, I think Microsoft would like to get rid of R T F. The problem I would have with that is that R T F is what [00:32:30] we recommend. If you want to avoid the danger of word macros, you encode your stuff as R T F. And it's,

Paul Thurrott (00:32:40):
I don't know what to say to this. I mean, I don't think that Microsoft even thinks about R T F. I think that's

Richard Campbell (00:32:44):
More likely.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:46):
I think they looked and said, no one's using this thing. Let's leave it. I bet they haven't updated this in years, and they just finally waited until they some impression.

Leo Laporte (00:32:53):
They said there's nobody working on it, so we're not going to

Paul Thurrott (00:32:54):
Give it to, yeah, I think that's all it is. I wouldn't see it as some kind of a,

Richard Campbell (00:32:58):
It might've had to go through a security [00:33:00] review or something for the next versions of who are we going to get to do that?

Paul Thurrott (00:33:03):
Right. I'll be surprised. October rolls around and you see that list in 23. It might be as gone as soon as a month or two from now later. I mean, we'll see,

Richard Campbell (00:33:12):
I, it's not like it's going to burst into flames either. You still have WordPad, it's just not, presumably it won't show up in Windows 12.

Leo Laporte (00:33:18):
It'd be nice if somebody made,

Paul Thurrott (00:33:22):
Somebody did. There's

Leo Laporte (00:33:23):
Like a Notepad plus. Is there a worded

Paul Thurrott (00:33:26):
Okay kind of thing? Not yet. Yes, there. So if you go to Wikipedia [00:33:30] and you look up Word Pad, you'll find it's not very good because based on WordPad, but because they did open up the source code to this thing, there is, in fact, lemme see if I can find it. Something called Jart. J A R T E. Oh, well, there you go. A word processor for Windows that's based on the WordPad engine. And I don't know if it fixes corrupted Word files or whatever. It's no longer, oh, actually they're not updating it either. But there was this thing out in the world. [00:34:00] It was just a kind of a simpler, silly, honestly silly looking version of WordPad. I think it supported tabs. Maybe there were a couple of things. Word website, it

Richard Campbell (00:34:10):
Geo Cities vintage.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:11):
I think what you really want though. Yeah, exactly. I think what you're really looking for, if you're concerned with R T F is just a word, not a word processor. Although you could get like Abby Soft or whatever Abby Word or whatever that was called, probably does R T F. But you could

Leo Laporte (00:34:29):
Certainly, all the [00:34:30] Open Office clones do.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:32):
Yeah, I bet there are text editors that also do R T F, right? Because

Leo Laporte (00:34:37):
Well, they all did. I mean, that was the point. That was the Ling with Franca.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:41):
It's the same controlled Windows. The Notepad app I wrote actually uses the Rich Text editor. I just turned off Rich Text. I mean, so It'ss not that hard to do. There must be a million of them. So it's out there if you want it.

Leo Laporte (00:34:54):
Do you think the people who are complaining on your site use Word Pat or they just don't

Paul Thurrott (00:34:58):
Like? No, I don't think anybody do. Nobody use. [00:35:00] I don't mean that literally. I'm sure one or two have in fact fixed the corrupted file with it now. They'll never forget that. No, I mean, I get it, but no, no one is, I feel very comfortable saying, no one is using this regularly. That's ridiculous. Yeah, it's so out of date. It looks terrible. It works terribly. It's no longer compatible with Word like it used to be because gotten out of date, it just garbage. I mean it's shouldn't be there. It looks out of place next to everything else that's in Windows 11 today for sure.

Leo Laporte (00:35:30):
[00:35:30] And of course, there's nothing else that comes with Windows 11 that's out of date, looks terrible and

Paul Thurrott (00:35:35):
Is useless. It's time to get rid of

Richard Campbell (00:35:38):
One. It seems like an obvious intern project, like this is what you put interns on.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:44):
So one logical query here would be, well, why doesn't Microsoft add R T F to Notepad? To which anyone who uses Notepad says, you know what? Keep your hands off of my notepad. Right enough. You've screwed it up enough. [00:36:00] I feel like the stuff they did contrary to what they did to paint the improvements that they made to Notepad and Windows 11 tab support, the Win UI front end with light and dark support, they actually are using a new version of the Rich Text editor, by the way, as their text editor. Actually all that's great. And despite the modern stuff on top of it, this is also a hybrid app. There's some still kind of legacy c plus plus [00:36:30] whatever underneath the covers. It works fine. I've never run Notepad and thought, oh, you dirty dogs, you did it. You screwed this thing up. It works fine.

(00:36:37):
It looks good and it works fine. That's all you could ask for paint until about two days ago or whatever. Actually only in the insider program paint as of 23 H two, they will have finally done that for paint as well. I appreciate that. It took 'em a long time, but okay, that's fine. Could they have done that to Worded? Yeah, but I think they didn't because the usage wasn't there. The usage was [00:37:00] there for Notepad and Paint. Remember, paint was going away for Paint three D at one point. Notepad was going to leave Windows and be in the Windows store. Enough people actually use those applications, and it was so much feedback that they had to just leave 'em in there and actually leave 'em in there and make 'em better. Right. Perfect. I'm guessing because literally never come out and said anything about this, but too few people use it to bother. And to Richard's point, it probably does become a security problem over time as well, because they're really not [00:37:30] looking at it.

Richard Campbell (00:37:30):
Yeah. I wonder if there'll be enough outcry for them to consider doing something with it, even just putting an intern on it. But at this moment, they're

Paul Thurrott (00:37:37):
Just, oh, okay. I forgot a key part of the story. Leo mentioned upfront that Microsoft recommended people use Word and correctly pointed out Word is a paid tool. We kind of forget about the various machinations that Microsoft went through with regards to office and how it was presented to the world. But two, I would point out that I think play into this story are they used to have office [00:38:00] viewer applications. So if you didn't own office, you could download, I dunno if Word was one, I think it was, but I know PowerPoint was an example is, I don't know PowerPoint, but I have to open a P P T file. This will do it. I can't edit it, but I can look at it. So there was that, and then there was the Office mobile initiative of probably 2012 Windows eight, where they were going to have, they were going to migrate office to uwp and the same application would work on phone, would work on tablet, would work on full pc.

(00:38:30):
[00:38:30] The office team gave up on that really quick because UWP was a too, but those apps were free. You didn't have to have an account and you could view Word app. So I think over that kind of continuum, there were other solutions for just viewing things where we don't really have that today. Most people, I don't know what the figures are, but if you buy a new computer retail, you're going to get word on it. It will complain. But the truth is you can [00:39:00] use it to edit actually without an account. Actually, I don't even know that it ever stops you. It just complains a lot. So there's a thing that's there that will let you view this stuff if you want it. So in that rare occasion, you're not a word user maybe, or you're not an R T F guy, but you have that file. Honestly, most of us have that thing. That recommendation was silly, but it's not in Windows. It's not a big deal,

Richard Campbell (00:39:29):
If that makes sense. [00:39:30] It doesn't seem like a big deal, but we'll see. We're not everybody.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:36):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Maybe there's a rich text enthusiast community that I'm not aware of on the side

Richard Campbell (00:39:44):
Microsoft's about to find out about.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:46):
Yeah, that's how these things go down. And then speaking of Notepad, and I've been complimentary, of the updates they've made in Windows 11, I will once again compliment [00:40:00] Microsoft for adding a feature that I added to my own Notepad app four years ago, by the way, which is the ability to auto save text files. And I think this is perhaps overdue. I think this is kind of in keeping with the notion of what happens when you store documents in the OneDrive in particular, but in the cloud in general, in your access.

Richard Campbell (00:40:22):
This is a modern metaphor. Remember that was a compelling thing about OneNote was, oh, you don't have to say That's right.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:28):
It was

Richard Campbell (00:40:29):
Just there.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:30):
[00:40:30] Lemme tell you how many times I hit Control SS in OneNote over the years, right? Just like muscle memory. I can't style myself. Yeah,

Richard Campbell (00:40:38):
Keep you alive.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:39):
So I'm curious how that works. You'll be able to turn this off if you don't like it. I could picture myself doing that. It's kind of like the tab, feature notepad where you control N to get a new window, but it gives you a new tab. Now by default, you can flip that back if you don't like it. So I think this is the right way to do things. I think Autosaving is one of those kind of customer friendly features [00:41:00] that will save someone's bacon even if they don't realize it's happening and it's the right thing to do. And for those people that overthink things or people like us and they want to shut it off, you can. So no problem. Right?

Richard Campbell (00:41:11):
And you'll be angry when you lose data.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:14):
I'm always angry when I lose data. I think 50% of my anger comes from losing data. Data. My

Richard Campbell (00:41:21):
Boss, and

Paul Thurrott (00:41:27):
I'm sorry, and they're also updating the snipping tool. [00:41:30] And these are both happening in the insider program across channels. So it's not clear. I'm thinking not necessarily shipping in 23 H two, but by the time that's out, we're all going to have these. I bet. So snipping tool is a smaller update. They're combining the capture bar across screenshots and video captures. And well, I should say that combining the functionality of those two things, for people who don't want to have the app running but want to do a screen or keyboard shortcut just to make it happen, it will just bring up the right thing [00:42:00] each time. Instead of bringing up the app and you switch. So eventually print screen by default or, well, that happens today, of course, when Key plus shift plus SS will go to a screen snip automatically. And then winkey plus Shift plus R.

(00:42:13):
These are also easy to remember. We'll automatically bring up the toolbar for screen recording and start recording. Not a big thing. Memorize them now. Yep. It's almost time for a keyboard shortcut update because it's a lot of stuff. It's a big thing. Yeah. [00:42:30] Always wonder what the Windows queue is for. And then if you thought I wasn't outraged enough, no, actually this one, no one said, no one ever. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Well, this one I'm actually not sure what's happening, but on the outside it looks bad. So Microsoft has been sending out emails to OneDrive customers, and there are two features in OneDrive that this impacts this change. So there's something called an album [00:43:00] and there's something called a gallery. And I had I to go look at OneDrive on the web to even understand what that meant, right? So if you go to onedrive.com and oops, okay, Chris, I stupidly just did this and now I have to do a two F A.

(00:43:20):
Okay? If you go to OneDrive on the web, he says again, and you go into, seriously, if I could in on you, I would. [00:43:30] I just did it and it made me sign in again. And it's like, this is Microsoft. Anyway, I'm sorry. And you go to photos, right? Photos kind of has this unique view, right? It's different from the other, the files that you have in OneDrive. So when you go to photos, you get by default, it's a gallery view, and a gallery is a combination of things. It's memories. So recent trips on this day, those things, if you allow OneDrive notifications, you'll get these every day. Actually, an album [00:44:00] is something that you create where you put things into, although OneDrive can create 'em too. So on this day for September one was created by one Microsoft on September 1st, 2023. It has 368 photos on it. And those photos are going to start counting against my storage twice because of a change Microsoft is making. And you're like, wait, wait, what? It's doing this automatically. So it's like [00:44:30] I

Richard Campbell (00:44:30):
Encourage you to upgrade by eating up all your disk space by creating memories.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:36):
So I have questions as one would, now, I guess I'm going to guess I'm just going to make some guesses here. One, I don't think it's going to apply to the ones that Microsoft creates, right? That wouldn't be fair. That would, Microsoft is literally just throwing stuff at you so you can use up storage space and send more money to 'em. That doesn't make sense. However, these things are also a unit of sharing. And that's I think, part of the problem. And I think this might be the hint at what's really going [00:45:00] on here, where if you have an album, you create an album and you share it with everyone, maybe you guys went on a trip, it's a couple of groups of people, whatever it is, and you're like, Hey, I want to share all my photos. And you do it through a gallery, I'm sorry, it's an album inside of the gallery. Microsoft will say, well, you got to pay for the storage for those photos twice. And I think the reason might be related to security slash the fact that this thing has to exist twice. It's not a pointer. And there's a great amount of outrage from people. I don't understand this. That's just one file. It doesn't matter how many people you share it [00:45:30] with, they're all accessing the same file, and they're probably

Richard Campbell (00:45:33):
Not

Paul Thurrott (00:45:33):
Under the hood. If that's true, you're right. If it's not true, I think Microsoft needs to tell you, Hey, just so you know, this is going to count against your storage. Right?

Richard Campbell (00:45:44):
Well, the real question is, can you count three times if I create two different shares,

Paul Thurrott (00:45:48):
Right of the same? Yeah, I know. I don't know. So it's not clear from the email we've seen, I've not gotten it myself. I haven't reached out to Microsoft yet. I'm kind of hoping they come clean on this. But [00:46:00] it could be double dipping on storage. I hope not. But Microsoft, I don't remember when some number of months ago, started adding your outlook.com based attachments against your OneDrive storage where it wasn't before. And people kind of freaked out about that because part of the deal was you didn't do that. And things change. And this is changing. And we know about Dropbox Drop there, unlimited plans. We know this stuff is expensive.

Richard Campbell (00:46:27):
These things, somebody, the reconciliation on storage and figured out how [00:46:30] much some of this costs. I would argue that the double-dipping on OneDrive represents lazy coating.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:38):
There you go.

Richard Campbell (00:46:39):
They could be doing this with a restricted pointer. Maybe it has right. Privileges by default, which you almost never want to hand out anyway. So what if you just defaulted to read privileges and it didn't double dip?

Paul Thurrott (00:46:52):
Yeah. Don't, we don't have enough information. So someday soon, I would assume there's going to be a help article up on Microsoft Learner, wherever [00:47:00] that we'll probably go into greater detail and then we'll know and we'll see. But

Richard Campbell (00:47:03):
Only after the pitchforks and torches come out. How

Paul Thurrott (00:47:06):
Hard. Yeah, so I was joking earlier, but you know how my knee jerk reaction to things? Normally I'd be freaking out over this, but honestly, I'm like, let's give 'em a second here. Because A, it's not happening right now. It's not right away. I think it goes into effect next month or in October.

Richard Campbell (00:47:21):
I think you'll get a reflux from, this is even a little too dumb,

Paul Thurrott (00:47:25):
Even for Microsoft. Let's see what they say. I mean, I'll get the tomatoes ready, but let's [00:47:30] just see what he says first. Oh

Richard Campbell (00:47:31):
Wait, they're always ready. How about that?

Paul Thurrott (00:47:33):
Yeah, exactly. I'm always next to a bushel. I don't know why. So we'll see. But that's been the other, I would say WordPad and this OneDrive thing, were the two big outrage moments this past week on the site. And I get it. I get it to a degree, degree, but actually in both cases I'm like, you know what? I don't think this is as bad as you think.

Richard Campbell (00:47:53):
And if it's, it's going to be quickly fixed because that's dumb.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:58):
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. And it will look [00:48:00] terrible when Reddit catches wind of it or whatever. It's not going to go well. So we'll see. And that little bit of sunshine was our Windows segment not as bad as last week, right? It's not going to be this way every week, is it? I don't know. That's up to Microsoft. It's up to Microsoft. I don't make the news. I respond to it. We are going to cover the Microsoft Surface event September 21st, [00:48:30] streaming it, Yahoo. Oh, actually they're not

Richard Campbell (00:48:34):
What?

Paul Thurrott (00:48:35):
They're not streaming it. I know. So Mary Jo reached out to me yesterday and she said, Hey, what do you think of this? And if you go to event, I think it's event.microsoft.com, if it's not, it's microsoft.com/event. And there's a big thing. Come here to hear what we have to say or something like that. And I literally started, lemme see, which it's event Microsoft Do. It's microsoft do com slash event. It says, join us to see what's next. Oh boy. Watch the full event. [00:49:00] Yay. Watch the full event. Watch it. Yay. So that's actually different than it was yesterday. But she reached out to them and they said, we are not streaming this.

Richard Campbell (00:49:11):
Yeah, I

Paul Thurrott (00:49:11):
Know. Seems too

Richard Campbell (00:49:13):
Dumb for words.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:15):
It might be changing day to day. Literally, someone pasted it in. So Kevin past in what it said, yes, they said tune in to hear, tune in an announcement from Microsoft not to watch the live event streamed. It doesn't say that. Yeah. [00:49:30] I don't know what to think. Anyway, Mary Jo reached out to Microsoft and they said, we are not streaming this. Okay, that's they blank. We're not.

Richard Campbell (00:49:41):
So maybe it's published immediately post.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:44):
I love that. This says, actually that's a good point. It says 1:00 PM That's not the live event. The live event starts at 10. Ah, there you go. So it's already changed. Tuning at one to see. There you go. So now they're explaining it. They're recording now. I actually know how long [00:50:00] I'm going to be there because I'll be done by one. Okay. Okay. That has

Richard Campbell (00:50:06):
Literally, this might be a cost saving measure. It's just cheaper to do it this way. Streaming costs money.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:13):
I think it is the windows. It's the Windows 11 File manager, file explorer. There have already been three versions of it. So there was the announcement they did via email. There was the change they made yesterday. And now there's the change apparently they made today. So here we

Richard Campbell (00:50:29):
Go. Yeah, [00:50:30] man, this feels like a budget thing. Like they said, oh, we're going to do it like this. And somebody said, well, you're only going to do that with VAR service here. Are you going to pay for that? And they're like, oh, okay. Well we're not going to do it like that. We're going to do it like this.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:40):
Yeah, we can stream this live event. Or we could do the AI stuff. Anybody.

Leo Laporte (00:50:47):
I don't know. Come on. They've got the money. It must be more that they're afraid. Panos, Panay will drool and they want to be able to edit that out before they stream it. Something like that.

Richard Campbell (00:50:57):
Maybe they just want 'em to walk in the crowd again.

Leo Laporte (00:51:00):
[00:51:00] That's exactly what they're afraid of.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:03):
I'm going to bring some mace to this event just in case, but alright. Anyway. So last week we talked, are you

Richard Campbell (00:51:09):
Actually going?

Paul Thurrott (00:51:11):
I'm actually going,

Richard Campbell (00:51:11):
Yeah. Okay. So you're going to New York for the 21st.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:15):
I am.

Leo Laporte (00:51:16):
Yay. Well, we'll here all

Richard Campbell (00:51:19):
I'll be in Australia, so I'll wave.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:22):
Yeah, God for you. I mean that's going to be like two o'clock the morning,

Richard Campbell (00:51:25):
The 12 hour

Paul Thurrott (00:51:26):
Difference. Yeah, it's terrible. Alright, so [00:51:30] last week we talked about the various, we talked about event season, the Microsoft event we just talked about. The Apple event obviously is coming up soon. The Google event is coming up in early October. I think I mentioned, just because hardware, oh, I F A just occurred. Honestly, not much came out of that, unfortunately. It really is

Leo Laporte (00:51:46):
Event season, isn't it? Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:48):
But there's more. We've forgot some. So also Amazon is holding their annual devices event on Eptember. They 20

Leo Laporte (00:51:54):
Outstream. And you have to,

Paul Thurrott (00:51:56):
Yeah, I'll actually, I'm going to watch that one live, but remotely, but I will be able [00:52:00] to see it at least, which is kind of cool. But yeah, you're right. Don't

Leo Laporte (00:52:02):
What they do.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:05):
And then Microsoft is hosting a second event after the special event about OneDrive and AI on October three. Wow. That is kind of interesting too, because I would've thought this suggests maybe there's enough going on with OneDrive that they're not going to just make it part of the big thing. Although OneDrive, Jeff Teer is part of it. Microsoft 365 commercial, I'm [00:52:30] guessing they will at least mention some of this at this special event, but they're going to have a separate event of the room. So that's kind of cool. Or potentially cool. AI could have used AI during my digital decluttering. Please do not copy files that are exactly the same no matter where they are. But anyway, we'll see what that does. And then this just happened. I got an email from someone. It's true. If you go to where Paul, if you go to Ignite microsoft.com, you can register now for an in-person Microsoft event that occurs [00:53:00] November 14 through 17 in Seattle. This will be a, well Richard probably knows more. I don't know what you can say, but it's not as big as previous ignites. They've ever done an Ignite in Seattle. It's not as big of a place. They usually do it in Orlando or Los Angeles back in the day or wherever. They might've done it in the past. Dallas, whatever.

Richard Campbell (00:53:19):
Yeah. They did Dallas or did it in Well, the original IGN

Paul Thurrott (00:53:24):
Chicago. Forget about that.

Richard Campbell (00:53:26):
They Atlanta.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:27):
Yeah, Atlanta. Exactly. You need a place with a [00:53:30] of hotels. Right? A lot space.

Richard Campbell (00:53:31):
And I think they chose not to be in Florida,

Paul Thurrott (00:53:35):
Which I agree with. Although going to Seattle means it's not going to be as big of a show, so it's going to be hybrid. But if you want to register for that now, if you go into Seattle, it's $1,525 a ticket. You can buy three, get one free. It's a Crazy Eddie Sale on a Microsoft event. Microsoft Ignite.

Richard Campbell (00:53:54):
I do expect to be at that event.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:57):
I would like to go to that event. I've not heard about that one, but

Richard Campbell (00:54:00):
[00:54:00] Well, internet lies Next question, which is there a press component or not? I'm going there as the podcast guy.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:05):
Yeah, so there was not a press contingent for Build, which happened back in May, although that was also a hybrid event. Right. Smaller than Ignite. I would imagine It's possible they'll do that for Ignite. I hope not. I would really like to go to this, the Microsoft special event that I go to in a few weeks will be the first live Microsoft event I've been to since November 9th, 2019, [00:54:30] which is by far the biggest gap in my entire adult life. It's just bizarre. Almost four years. It's crazy.

Richard Campbell (00:54:40):
And you're just going to take the train up there, I imagine.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:43):
We're going to drive because my wife's coming too. And actually we'll see Mary Jo, and we're going to stay a couple of nights and do some sushi and whatever. So

Richard Campbell (00:54:52):
Yeah, of Panos. So situation normal, probably. Hey, I'm just hoping there's a device [00:55:00] for me to buy. I'll be excited.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:01):
I think there will be. Yeah, I do. I really Do you think there'll be Windows 12? I think it's an outside chance. I think the way they will frame it is there are AI advances that are coming soon, and there are some that are coming later, and some of that will be Microsoft 365 more broadly, but some of that maybe they will have, I keep hoping they'll have that conversation. I feel like we know what is going to be in Windows 11 as far as AI goes, and [00:55:30] that it's not that impressive. It's possible there'll be an update to that, that will make it slightly more interesting. But yes, the big thing is 12.

Richard Campbell (00:55:37):
Yeah. If they're doing neural processors and all the new machines, they've got to have an OSS to go with it. It could happen. I hope it does.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:45):
I hope so too.

Richard Campbell (00:55:46):
Yeah. I dunno thing about it goes together.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:50):
Yeah,

Richard Campbell (00:55:51):
But I mean the whole thing, you've been, certainly your writing the past few months, everything seems very Russian haphazard inside of that [00:56:00] company right now,

Paul Thurrott (00:56:01):
And certainly in the part of the company that I deal with, although thanks to ai, I think that has extended out to the rest of the company too, right? That whatever OneDrive we just mentioned, but Microsoft 365 more broadly. I bet if you went back a year and looked at their product roadmap, they had some idea of what they were going to be doing and then they didn't

Richard Campbell (00:56:26):
For the first time as C E O made an announcement, everybody copilot. [00:56:30] And for the most part, it looks at the whole company has. That's something that Steve Ballmer never did. We were used to it from Bill. Bill did internet tidal wave. He did trustworthy computing. He could tell the whole company Pivot.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:45):
So he did actually, right? That's the story that he did. And I think that was the late last year, November, something like that timeframe where he keeps talking about that language translation back and forth thing, and [00:57:00] that opened his eyes and we got to do this everywhere. And I think that's when all those product teams are like, oh, I guess we're doing something different. I mean, obviously the Windows team whiffed the hardest on that one. Not, I don't know. I just don't think, think it's too early. But they wanted to get something for this coming year and they came up with what they came up with. I don't,

Leo Laporte (00:57:22):
I want to take a little break. You're watching or listening to Windows Weekly, Paul Ott in Macun and Richard Campbell in the Netherlands, [00:57:30] right? As we went to press, so to speak, what does a podcast do? Go to press, go to tape, go to SD card.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:41):
We're going to be using tape for the rest of our lives.

Richard Campbell (00:57:43):
Go to MP three.

Leo Laporte (00:57:44):
MP three. As we went to MP three, ignite was announced, or registration opened up, right? Have you talked about that or is that my Yeah, I did. Yeah, you did. Oh, well then let's move on. Enough about these events. Who cares? [00:58:00] Let's talk antitrust. The most important subject of the day.

Richard Campbell (00:58:03):
Oh yeah. When I go through the list earlier in the day, it's like, where's Paul going to rage? Well, there's some rage right there. Here

Leo Laporte (00:58:14):
Comes the rage.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:16):
We're working to get the medication right. Give me a second. It's interesting. I also look at, as I kind of construct the notes, I go chronologically, but then I arrange 'em by topic. So it's interesting to see them [00:58:30] kind of break down. And speaking of breakdown, no, but last week I think there was kind of a Microsoft 365 and AI component or cloud and ai, whatever it was this week. There's a big antitrust component, and it's just kind of a weird set of coincidences, I guess in some ways it's just the way the world's going. I think Big tech is heading toward an antitrust reckoning, which is long overdue. Most of it will come from the EU as we know and is, but there's stuff happening in the [00:59:00] United States as well. And we'll get to all that. But the big thing with the D M A and the D M C in the EU is they have come up with a formal list of all the companies that are legally considered gatekeepers in their terminology. These are the giant platforms that kind of fall into different buckets like oss and app stores and online services and whatever. And in the Microsoft space, obviously the EU [00:59:30] and Microsoft are going back and forth on teams. Microsoft 365 bundling. I think we talked about that just last week.

(00:59:37):
But Microsoft also has their online services. And one of the things that made the list was binging, little pluck, Bing. Hey, for binging. Woo.

Richard Campbell (00:59:48):
It's just an honor to even be in the

Paul Thurrott (00:59:50):
List

Leo Laporte (00:59:50):
To be invited.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:52):
So Apple, Amazon, Microsoft with binging and some European company too, that [01:00:00] they're all contesting this designation. Apple

Leo Laporte (01:00:02):
Says we don't have 45 million messages. Users

Paul Thurrott (01:00:06):
In the eu. Yeah. Yeah, I think they do actually. I think they probably do. Anyone could do napkin math on that and arrive at the fact that they have 10 times that many. But it's okay. I don't care about Apple. Apple can do whatever they want, but Bing is an interesting one, right? Binging has what, 3% usage share worldwide, something like that. Two to three. It's not very high. Do they reach that 45 million threshold?

Leo Laporte (01:00:30):
[01:00:30] It has to be 10% of EU population uses it.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:34):
Yeah. So they may not. So the thing is, what's interesting about antitrust, this came up, I should say. What's interesting about antitrust, this go round, this wasn't the case back in Microsoft versus the d oj, Microsoft versus the eu, is that there're actually kind of the argument here is we're not as big as you think we are, right? It's weird to watch them argue that we're not powerful. So [01:01:00] this came up in the FTC hearing with the Xbox we lost. We don't even compete. I don't even know why we make this hardware. We are a complete waste of time. And Xbox uses everywhere what it's like, they have to make themselves look horrible to beat this thing back.

(01:01:19):
That was what Apple was doing with the iMessage thing. Amazon's doing it. I don't remember Amazon's point, but Microsoft's doing it with B. And maybe in this case, they have a [01:01:30] case to be made. We're actually not that big. But this is also coming on the heels of a big splashy AI reveal for binging and really pushing binging again for the first time, possibly in 10 years, right? I mean, it's been a long time. And that blockbuster report from the Wall Street Journal that was like, Hey, remember when Microsoft said every 1% was like billions of dollars? Well, guess what? They haven't even gotten 1% extra users. Their user base is exactly the same as [01:02:00] it was in December last year. And Microsoft's like, no, it's not. It's you're not counting these people. And now the EU comes out and they're like, oh, you're too big. And they're like, oh no, we're not with Tiny. We didn't even make 1%. You read the journal.

(01:02:15):
And so I think we're going to see more of this, and it's a fascinating defense, the marketing, especially a company like Apple, right? On and on and on, how wonderful they are, and all the switches and the wonderfulness of their [01:02:30] ecosystem, and they're like, oh, no, no one uses this. And it's like, then why don't you support R c s Dick? It's like, what are you doing? Anyway? It's funny. It's funny. So what I've seen so far is hilarious. I can't wait to see what comes next. I think we're going to see a lot of this.

(01:02:48):
And then I think it was last week, I'm losing track of when things happened, but we talked about this little blurb that Microsoft put in the release notes for a Windows Insider build that I think went out to Dev at the time where as they put it, system [01:03:00] components would no longer open Microsoft Edge. They would open your default browser, which is where everyone's been asking for ever since they stopped doing that. And this cuts the heart of that. One of the weird problems of Windows 11, which is when you go to search highlights, or if you go to a widget story and you click on it, even if you're using Chrome or Firefox, whatever you use, it opens an edge. They're doing it again with the Windows copilot, which is not, they solve the native app problem by not making a native app. It's just an instance of Edge.

(01:03:30):
[01:03:30] They're really trying to drive you to edge into all the sites that they have and all of the advertising thats behind it. They want a little piece of that pie. They're going to stop doing that in Europe to meet the needs of the, I think it's the D M A the gate, it's the Gatekeeper law, whichever one that is. I confuse the two. And it doesn't go in effect until March of next year. So the Deb build, I mean, this might be something that happens in Windows 1123 H two timeframe, but it probably won't be October, but it will happen, right? So it's coming this [01:04:00] week. The C e O of Zoom was appearing at a tech conference that I had never heard of, but it doesn't matter. And he said, someone asked him about, how do you feel about this? They're only doing it in the eu.

(01:04:12):
And he says, maybe you should ask the F T C. The idea being that if this is fair and the right thing to do in the eu, isn't it fair and the right thing to do everywhere? And by the way, if you're going to build all these connections into Microsoft 365 to its Slack and other companies integrate, and it's [01:04:30] this wonderful world of Kumbaya, whatever we're singing around a campfire. I mean, we want that everywhere. Why would you only do it? Why would you make separate versions? Yeah, but it makes me think of Windows N Yes. As it should, I guess, right? And the fun statistic to the end versions of Windows, and these are the ones that pulled out the middleware components of Windows, the media player, but also the Messenger app, and ie, [01:05:00] was it io? Well, IE. Was separate. It was a browser ballot. Remember, you could choose your browser. Yeah, I did choose. It was like spin the wheel and see which one you get. Oh, Firefox. But anyway, so nobody cared about those things. I don't know the exact numbers, but you had a choice as, yeah, I'm sorry. So I could get the one with everything or the one that's stripped down where I click on things and an error comes up. I think I'll go with the everyone version. How does that, the ever version.

Richard Campbell (01:05:27):
But you get to an interesting point, which maybe a recurring [01:05:30] theme in this whole conversation, which is there are ways to comply and to concede that have no impact on your business whatsoever, really.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:40):
I love that you just said that. I literally wrote an editorial about that. So one of the fun things that's come out of Microsoft in recent years, we think of it as the Satcha Nadella era, but actually in this case, this started with the end of Microsoft's initial D O J antitrust trial, which was belligerence, belligerence, belligerent, belligerent. It didn't work. Bill Gates cried, [01:06:00] stepped down as ceo, E o bomber stepped in. Why are these guys still, they're going to break up the company, not like what's happening. And Brad Smith arrived and he said, guys, you know what you got to do? Be nice. See what they want. Make a deal, make the deal, and just do it. And so Brad Smith, which

Richard Campbell (01:06:15):
Knew, and we found out years later, had Gates given an inch during those hearings,

Paul Thurrott (01:06:21):
They still almost settled, and he gave almost nothing. They were this close. I think it was four five, wanted,

Richard Campbell (01:06:27):
Wanted

Paul Thurrott (01:06:28):
It, and it would've gone away. [01:06:30] So Brad Smith has been running the show from the Legal Sense Rights General Counsel. Now I think he's a senior vice president today, but he went Vice, no, he's a president. Oh, no president, sorry. Vice Senior Vice President. That's right. You're right.

Richard Campbell (01:06:45):
Wacky.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:46):
He's the friendly face right in front of Activision Blizzards saying, guys, guys, guys, whatever. Everyone can have the games. Everybody

Richard Campbell (01:06:52):
Can get along.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:53):
We'll make every concession you want. When the EU came down with Teams, the most successful Microsoft [01:07:00] product in two decades, I don't know, long time, he was like, yeah, we'll just strip it out. It's like, we'll just do it.

Richard Campbell (01:07:07):
Okay,

Paul Thurrott (01:07:08):
Thanks for asking. I don't know why we didn't think of it. And so in this world, it's kind of an interesting thing. Do they just give away the farm? But the thing is, if you actually look at the agreements they make, Microsoft never loses, right? There's no version.

Richard Campbell (01:07:22):
No, this is the point is you need the press piece. Both sides need the press piece where they say, [01:07:30] yeah, we're complying. That's fine. What they do is totally separate from that.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:36):
It's astonishing. And so I stuck to the EU thing, right? The teams Microsoft 365 bundling. But you could do this with Activision Blizzard as well, right? It's fair to say that this meets the letter of the complaint from Slack, in this case, the letter of the complaint from the EU in this case. But it's [01:08:00] also fair to say that Microsoft is pretty good. They're doing okay. They

Richard Campbell (01:08:04):
Have a playbook for how to respond well to this.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:07):
Yeah,

Richard Campbell (01:08:09):
The ears, I can tell the others just haven't learned,

Paul Thurrott (01:08:13):
Right? And I think this also speaks to, actually, yes, this is a hundred percent true in both cases. Think about Activision Blizzard for one second, and my argument that cloud gaming is not a market and doesn't mean anything. And Microsoft has said that repeatedly, but what their action is, is to say, you know what? [01:08:30] We're going to meet your demand. We're just going to give it away to everybody. How does that sound? And they're going to pay us. We're not getting paid. But if this thing was important, they would never have done that. So in the case of now flip it over to Microsoft Teams and 365, and they're like, you know what? We're going to let people not have teams. We're going to charge 'em two euros less per user per month. If they do that, that's fine. Knowing that, and this is the argument I made about this a couple of months ago, that Slack and Microsoft 365 are teams I should say, [01:09:00] are technically not competing in the same market. I mean, yes, they're both collaboration solutions with a chat component aimed at businesses. But Slack largely targets or as popular with startups and smaller businesses. And Microsoft is, the 365 is largely popular with enterprises. So given what I just said, if you were a small business, you might be like, you know what? Yeah, I'm going to save two years a month. Nice. But those enterprises, they're like, whatever. Nothing's changing. And that's where all the money's coming from. They didn't really give away anything.

Richard Campbell (01:09:28):
No, and the reality [01:09:30] is, as soon as you use Slack at any meaningful point, you have to buy Slack enterprise anyway. And it ain't two bucks per person per month.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:36):
The other thing they're doing though is they're allowing third party integration into Microsoft 365. So instead of open this meeting in teams, it'll say, open this meeting. And you could, if you've configured Slack, that's what you chose. You can do that. And as these companies grow and eventually become enterprises having that single source cheaper cost, et cetera, et cetera, because you don't want to pay for Microsoft 365 and Slack Enterprise, [01:10:00] you would just want to pay for Microsoft 365. Oh, it's only two Euro more a month. How much is Slack enterprise a month? Oh, yikes.

Richard Campbell (01:10:06):
A little more, a little bit

Paul Thurrott (01:10:07):
More. A little more. Yeah. And that's what I mean. In other words, present a friendly face, smile, do a lot of handshaking,

Richard Campbell (01:10:14):
And make sure that all of the answer, the

Paul Thurrott (01:10:15):
Concerns

Richard Campbell (01:10:16):
Are we responding favorably to these changes

Paul Thurrott (01:10:20):
And still win. And I got to tell you, people have different feelings about this guy. He's a genius. This is so smart. [01:10:30] So these two antitrust challenges over the past 12 months, he's handled both, I would say, in a very similar fashion. Neither has resolved. So we'll see what happens. But if and when Activision Blizzard happens, I can assure you it's not because of Phil Spencer. It's going to be because of Brad Smith.

Richard Campbell (01:10:47):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:48):
So smart

Richard Campbell (01:10:50):
That for a moment.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:51):
Yeah, crazy. It's weird when the parallels just kind of pop out, you can kind of see them. Speaking of parallels, [01:11:00] Google Next Week City is going to face off against the D O J in an antitrust trial in the United States. Does that remind you of anything's? I think it starts today actually, doesn't it? It's next Tuesday. Next Tuesday. Okay, next Tuesday. So here's the thing. Google could have settled this. Google could have done the Brad Smith thing. Should have, should. I think they should have. That's my take. Google's version of Brad Smith is someone named Kent Walker. [01:11:30] And Kent Walker believes that he wants to put Bill Gates in a chair and let him s slobber over himself for 19 hours and look like a jerk instead of just being conciliatory. He wants Google to do what Microsoft did back in 1997 or whatever that was.

(01:11:45):
I think this is a mistake. Literally, the problem with, there's so many pros. Antitrust is one of those topics. It just explodes outward. But let's just talk about product bundling and doing things that could help consumers and could harm competitors. These [01:12:00] two sides of the coin coin, the kind of paradox, if you will, of antitrust Google is Kent Walker. Google is literally arguing. The reason that Google search is so popular is because it's the best search engine in the world. And honestly, objectively, that's not wrong. I think that's true. But its competitors would say, okay, but you've also forestalled competition because you see the search results. You see the search queries, you can see that people are going to a lot of travel sites. [01:12:30] Now, maybe Google's not travel site. Maybe when someone searches for Expedia, France, you should go to Google Flights, France instead.

(01:12:39):
And that's what they've done. Amazon does the same thing, right on that. The Amazon basics came out of this, Hey, a lot of people are searching for U S B cables, should we make our own? That kind of thing. So when you control the market, it lets you do things like that. It lets you artificially promote your own services over those of third parties who are paying you for this. [01:13:00] That enough had the advantage of having Gestalt to know these are the products you should make. But then also, yes, no, yeah, I mean the parallels between this and Microsoft and the 1990s are very clear. So like IE versus Netscape, and we integrated IE into Windows to what make it less reliable and secure to what argument was. It wasn't the cap feel we wanted the whole OS to restart.

(01:13:29):
So [01:13:30] you can do things that are like eventually I, I would say, won on the merits. And what I mean by that is that I eventually was a better product than Netscape Navigator. However, in the beginning, they did a lot of nefarious things like paying PC makers not to include navigator by giving them charging less for Windows if they also included office and doing all these terrible things that Microsoft did. So it's possible to do both. And Google has done both with internet search, I'm sure they've done [01:14:00] both elsewhere. The EU has at least three ongoing investigations into Google right now over this kind of thing. But when Kent Walker comes out and says, all we did was create the best product we could and let the market decide, and I know there are people out there, yeah, yeah. And it's like, okay, the problem is they own 90, what is the number? Six, five, whatever, 90 something percent of the market. They control it. They're it. If you look at OSS market share on desktop, [01:14:30] things like Mac, oss, and Linux actually are measurable. When you look at on these services, binging and whatever else is out there, they're just,

Richard Campbell (01:14:39):
Everything else is other.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:40):
They're nothing. They're nothing. So unfortunately, when you have a monopoly, which is what that is, a, you have to play by different rules, but B, your behavior that was fun and scrappy and whatever when you were a little guy is illegal because now you're acting, you're maintaining, preventing innovation from a company that could come [01:15:00] up into the world, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, here's the thing though. What's the little asterisk that everyone knows this, right? What's the asterisk in this argument? OpenAI, right?

Richard Campbell (01:15:09):
Yeah. There's finally a threat to search.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:10):
Microsoft argued in 1997 that even though there weren't a lot of oss out there, they talked about, by the way, I swear to God this was part of it. B o S was a competitor at the time. It wasn't just the Mac. They talked about Linux. Everyone kind of laughed, but they're like, look, this business is dynamic. Things change all the time. Something's [01:15:30] going to come out of somewhere and it's going to hurt us. And you might make the argument that they were right. It took a while, but the thing that came out of nowhere was the iPhone, right? And mobile.

Richard Campbell (01:15:39):
And Android that actually took meaningful market share became people's primary devices.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:45):
So were they, right? I mean, it's part of it, right? And Google's argument will be, Hey, look, people are trying to make the same product. We make binging and they're not doing very well, but someday something's going to happen. And even though you're saying that our behavior is [01:16:00] preventing future innovation, it's still going to happen. It's like Jurassic Park Life is going to find a way, and they're right. I mean, eventually every giant falls eventually. But it is interesting just as this things go into trial, AI is out there and Google actually is going to do fine. I think even people who were critical of Google back in February, March, whatever, would probably admit that they're doing great. They're going to be right there and it's fine. But [01:16:30] I think it might've behooved Microsoft maybe to make the point, maybe wait until this September, or you came out a little early, maybe.

(01:16:39):
So here we are. Microsoft did this huge explosion of AI stuff. Bing went nowhere, nothing. They got nothing out of it. And now this trial's going to start and Google's going to say, look at Bing ai. Look what they did. See open ai. We couldn't stop that. And you know what? That's an argument to be had. You have to include that into [01:17:00] the conversation. So this is going to be awesome. There are hundreds of people testifying, including executives from Google and Apple, for example. We sort of think, we know that Google pays Apple between eight and 12 billion a year to make sure search is the default on iPhone. By the way, another example of monopoly maintenance, something that a small player like DuckDuckGo or whoever could never even afford to contemplate doing. It shuts 'em out of that huge market. [01:17:30] But maybe we're going to find out exactly how much they pay. Maybe it's 18 or 20, maybe it's gone up. I don't know. But no one,

Richard Campbell (01:17:37):
When you talk about the real damage that happened through the antitrust case with Microsoft back in the day, it was the email discovery. It was the nasty language about crushing competitors.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:47):
Well, and the way that it contradicted there, we were just doing it to help the customer thing. Jim Hin, and not just Jim Alch, I can't the name of everybody. Everyone. It was like you were waiting. They just asked him a question, [01:18:00] let him, he goes, oh, interesting. I'd like to submit document number, whatever into evidence. This is, the email was all caps, a lot of swears, and you were going to kill somebody. Could you read it to the court, please, Mr. Elch, that stuff's hard. They should have seen that coming. That was really poorly done, right?

Richard Campbell (01:18:18):
This is why you don't go to trial because e-discovery discovery, because they're through all that email, and

Paul Thurrott (01:18:23):
You'd think they'd learn after all these years. Not to put it in writing. I know it's crazy. [01:18:30] I'm writing a series about tech nostalgia, and Chuck Petal is a big player in the late, mid seventies or early eighties because he invented the 65 0 2 8 bit process that was used in almost every home computer ever made. And no one remembers this Moss technology, right? The impetus for this chip was that Motorola had the 6,800 process, not 68,000, right? But the 6,800 an eight bit processor, Intel at the time was like 80, 80 was their chip. And these things were three $500 a piece. And he was like, we could [01:19:00] make this for 25 bucks. Why aren't we doing this? And he made the 65 0 2 25 bucks, but he also made something called the 65 0 1. You don't hear about this a lot. Pin compatible with the Motorola, 6,800. So Motorola sued, and because of what happened with that, he had made a point of never making sure you don't have anything from Motorola when you come in here.

(01:19:25):
We are not cropping what they're doing all clean. They went to trial and some guy, [01:19:30] he was just a designer, he was an artist. They were like, do you have anything from Motorola? He goes, yeah, we have all these documents I made. They're all just artist pictures. He didn't even know how Chips worked. And they were like, great. So they had to pay half a million dollars to Motorola and then just cancel the chip. And he is like, from that day on, he is like nothing in writing ever, ever, ever. There's a great video with him, the Computer History Museum. I think it's a four hour interview, which they're doing with a lot of people from that era, which is wonderful. And he is a character, but [01:20:00] that whole story is beautiful.

Richard Campbell (01:20:03):
I should have burnt the tapes kind of thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:05):
Exactly. He's so plainspoken. He takes a phone call during the interview. I love it. He does not give one crap. It's classic. Yep. Classic. Anyway, yes. Do not leave a paper trail idiot. So

Richard Campbell (01:20:22):
You said, well, a digitally searchable one.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:25):
Yes. This Google trial could be fascinating. I am [01:20:30] praying to God that on Monday night at 11, hands down, I don't just settle because I could imagine this happening, honestly. And

Richard Campbell (01:20:37):
Even when the discovery, when this stuff was going on in the late nineties, news was not as sensational as it is now. Are you insane? Do you know how these people make money? And this stuff's going to come out every minute of every day in discovery for the next few months.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:56):
The paper Treasure Trove that came out of that trial [01:21:00] is astonishing, unbelievable. The stuff that came out of the Microsoft F T C hearing back in June. Yeah. Oh, just break my heart. It's so good. This is going to be amazing. Apple, epic. I mean, every single one of these. Yep. Oh, every time. Every time. Do not hear your soul to the world. Just don't do it. Send

Richard Campbell (01:21:19):
Everybody popcorn because they're going to need it.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:22):
I can't wait for this to start. I just go on vacation. I wish they'd stream it on YouTube then we could have some fun. But course should be on the, remember we're [01:21:30] like when the ads nineties, when after OJ the Menendez Brothers and all this stuff, it was always what they call it, court tv. Court TV should be on court tv. Court TV should come back to, it's still around court tv. It's not, it's called something different. It's like CI or they probably have the Desperate Housewives of the Supreme. Well, it's like m t. They don't do live court things anymore. They just have cheap true crime documentaries that should be caught in podcasts, right?

Richard Campbell (01:21:53):
Food Network doesn't talk about food and on and on and on.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:56):
Yeah. But HD TV is

Richard Campbell (01:21:58):
Post truth world, my friend.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:00):
[01:22:00] Anyway, so yeah, lots of antitrust stuff. My favorite regulator of all time, although Steely Neely was pretty close, Margarite. Oh, you had such a crush on Margarite. Still do, but we still does. But did he? He's a pretty cute guy too. I don't know. He's easier to say his name. Let's put it that way. That's true. She's

Richard Campbell (01:22:24):
Such a

Paul Thurrott (01:22:25):
Badass. She really is. Great. Yeah. I'll have two things to say about her [01:22:30] in a second, but she's bidding for a new job at the European International Bank, like a bank. That's her bank. So she's one of the favorite. It could happen. And if so, the person who's stepping in her shoes now will remain until the next elections. But she could be back. I'm holding out. I might actually sabotage her. Can vote against, vote against Margarite.

Richard Campbell (01:22:50):
Margarite, stay where you are. Save us. Save us.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:54):
One of the standard complaints you hear from certain circles in the US is notice that the EU is only going after [01:23:00] American companies. There must be a little bit of xenophobia. Am I right? It's like two things. Actually, most of the big tech companies are American. That's not their fault. We're the Godzilla stomping around in their backyard. Two, if you look up her record, she went after a lot of European companies and did some amazing things, and I don't know the details a lot of these, but there was a company that acquired another company without going through the regulatory process, and she forced them to unwind it after the fact and won. Wow. Yeah. So look her up. She's [01:23:30] cool and a beautiful woman. And I

Leo Laporte (01:23:33):
Would

Paul Thurrott (01:23:34):
Handsome, consider

Leo Laporte (01:23:35):
Handsome,

Paul Thurrott (01:23:37):
Consider big life change.

Richard Campbell (01:23:38):
Things are going to happen. That's

Leo Laporte (01:23:39):
Fine. I wouldn't mind living in Brussels. That's all I'm saying.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:45):
Actually,

Leo Laporte (01:23:46):
I think the other maybe way to think of it is, for some reason the EU seems to be able to make laws where here in the United States, we're having a little

Paul Thurrott (01:23:53):
Trouble

Leo Laporte (01:23:54):
Making laws of any kind, but one regulating. Well, we

Paul Thurrott (01:23:57):
Also have a regulatory body in the FT C that has chosen [01:24:00] the wrong targets, right? They've had two high profile losses. In fact, that's one of the other stories. I mean, F T C apparently met with Amazon behind the scenes to go through a couple of e-commerce related antitrust abuses. Amazon literally offered no concessions, and they could announce their lawsuit against them as soon as next week, and they actually might seek to break up the company. Anyone else? Remember again,

Leo Laporte (01:24:25):
Why would you do

Paul Thurrott (01:24:26):
This? They're so stupid. They're just

Leo Laporte (01:24:29):
Stupid. It's interesting [01:24:30] that Amazon just said, yeah, no, we're not going to, we're give you anything.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:34):
Well, that's what Microsoft said to see

Leo Laporte (01:24:36):
In court.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:37):
Yeah. That didn't work out. Yeah. We'll see. So we'll see what happens there. And then this one just happened when we were starting, I didn't even have a chance to look at this, so I just linked to the Reuters story. But Google has apparently reached a settlement in a class action suit alleging that the US version of the Play store violated federal antitrust rules by overcharging customers. The action was brought by over 30 US states, 21 million [01:25:00] consumers, and we'll see what the conditions of that settlement are. Maybe everyone gets a little check or something. But Google, of the many differences between Google today and Microsoft back then, they speak to a market of billions. Microsoft spoke to a market of low hundreds of millions at the time. The damages are so much bigger. And Google also faces several antitrust suits right now. Us, you and probably elsewhere. It's hard to even keep count. [01:25:30] It is amazing how many regulatory bodies have found issues with the way that they do business, but they're just building the best product they can. That's what they do

Richard Campbell (01:25:41):
Best search engine Engine you possibly could

Paul Thurrott (01:25:42):
Have. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:44):
Yeah,

Richard Campbell (01:25:45):
I know.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:46):
And I think that is, is that everything? I think that's all the antitrust.

Leo Laporte (01:25:51):
Alright. You know what that means Coming up.

Richard Campbell (01:25:54):
Everybody needs a ride. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:25:56):
What they need. They know

Leo Laporte (01:25:57):
Everybody. Where's my Ro Cohen [01:26:00] Xbox coming up back of the book, coming up some brown liquor. I want to talk Starfield. You are watching and listening to Windows Weekly. Have you played Starfield yet?

Paul Thurrott (01:26:14):
No. I noticed there were no Nazis or zombies and

Leo Laporte (01:26:18):
No zombies. Aliens. Mostly space pirates, A lot of space pirates. Ridiculous number of space pirates.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:26):
Interesting. Well, okay, so I guess in this period of space, it's kind of like the, [01:26:30] I don't know, 16, 17 hundreds at sea

Leo Laporte (01:26:34):
We're exploring. Let's just put it that way. But I did. I was pleased. It was on Game Pass, and actually I spent an extra $31 to get early access. So I've been playing all weekend. I'm a fan. What do you think?

Paul Thurrott (01:26:47):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:26:47):
That's, it's no Skyrim. Oh, it's no

Paul Thurrott (01:26:50):
Skyrim. It's

Leo Laporte (01:26:50):
Not Skyrim. It's supposed to be Skyrim in space. Kind of same.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:55):
I like that. Your review is three stars.

Leo Laporte (01:26:58):
It's a little disappointing. It's cool. [01:27:00] There's interesting stuff. They made some unusual choices, I think.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:05):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:27:06):
Well, for instance, you fast travel everywhere, so it's just a bunch of scenarios that you fast travel to, which by the way was the worst part of Skyrim is going.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:17):
I got to run into another town.

Leo Laporte (01:27:19):
So obviously they listen to people.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:22):
I don't know. It's like the hyperspace.

Leo Laporte (01:27:25):
Yeah, everything's, you go where you want to go. Tao City, I'm there. That's it. [01:27:30] That's it. It's the world of

Paul Thurrott (01:27:31):
Star Trek and Star Wars.

Leo Laporte (01:27:32):
Yeah, there's some cool stuff to explore. It's really cool.

Richard Campbell (01:27:35):
I would also argue that when you're talking about Elder Fall, like the Skyrim five, it's 10 years old now. You don't remember what it was like when it was

Leo Laporte (01:27:44):
Released. That's a good point.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:46):
That's

Richard Campbell (01:27:46):
A good point. It went through a bunch of dlcss. It went through Aton, modding. It's a different game.

Leo Laporte (01:27:54):
Well, I played Skyrim in the early days. I did not play all the elder games, but I played Skyrim in the early days. [01:28:00] I liked Fallout too, and a lot of people didn't like that. Anyway, but that's not what we're here to talk about.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:05):
No, it actually it is. Oh, that's fine. This is right in, there's

Leo Laporte (01:28:09):
A lot of, I did have a question. So I'm playing on the Xbox. If I had a Windows pc, I'd play on the Windows pc. I think the controls would be easier. So I'm going to ask you as a Mr. First person shooter, it's very hard to aim with a controller. The thing goes, Hey, hey,

Paul Thurrott (01:28:28):
Hey. This was an argument I made [01:28:30] in, well, 2001 when the first Xbox came out. This is an interesting idea. We're never going to be able to play these games that I like to play on this console

Leo Laporte (01:28:40):
So much easier.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:42):
Well, I would say it's more precise. So one of the things that happened, because by that time I was the keyboard mouse guy, use the mouse. You can look around with the mouse and you can move forward and move in whatever direction with the keyboards and then you can fire, and it all kind came together. [01:29:00] Honestly, getting to the point that actually makes sense to you from just a physical perspective is takes some time. It's actually very difficult to learn that, especially for a fast moving three D game. But you do of course over time and then the Xbox comes up and you're like, oh, I'm playing with a Fisher-Price toy. What is this? So the thing that happened, I would say, and it didn't really come true on Xbox, and I would say more broadly, until the 360, which launched as a great console for three D shooters or first person shooters. I know there were things like goldeneye and Nintendo. I don't need to hear from [01:29:30] everyone. I know there were things, but for the most part it was the Xbox 360 that kind of formalized this for working. I just think they made a good system for that to work. Even Mouse look itself was something that John Carmac came up with John Romero because they had this real three D space and it's like in doom you would fire forward. But if it was a bad guy, they would actually, the shot would there.

Leo Laporte (01:29:53):
There's some actually hardcore doomers who don't like mouse look, say that's

Paul Thurrott (01:29:59):
Cheating. I'm sure. Of course [01:30:00] there are. Yeah, of course there are. That's cheating. So, okay. It wasn't there in day one. It's fair enough. So there was something that arrived with Quake. I think it was the initial version of Quake was the first game to have mouse look, I believe. But actually, I don't know what they did, but they made it such that first person shooters could make sense. There's a bit of assistance going on there, right? This auto aim, I just

Leo Laporte (01:30:23):
Soft it by gain difficulty to very easy, and then I slowed down. [01:30:30] There's a slider for the speed that you're aiming at.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:34):
So I just think that the call of duties of the world used designed the game to work properly on console from day one and and they work great. They always did. And by the way, I think I talked about this sometime in the past month, there's a further simplification to be had that a controller user would scoff at just as a keyboard, mouse user would scoff at a controller, which is, I played Call of Duty mobile, remember I said, and one of the goofy, and I did use a controller, but that's [01:31:00] beside the point because it doesn't change this. One of the goofy things about that game is of course it's touch first. If you face a bad guy, you just shoot him. You don't have to press anything. It just does it for you. I like it. And that's very off-putting if you're used to, you know what I mean? I wanted to talk to him first. Yeah. But as the controls system's simpler, what you're

Leo Laporte (01:31:21):
Saying, you just go,

Paul Thurrott (01:31:23):
No, there is aiming. As long as you're pointed at them,

Leo Laporte (01:31:26):
Pointed

Paul Thurrott (01:31:27):
At 'em, you're not always firing. You're not sitting there. Seriously. [01:31:30] I'm spewing bullets everywhere, but if you are moving in a circle and you do face a bad guy, your gun will start shooting. Boom. Yeah. So it's just a way to overcome shoot, to kill. Yeah. It's a further simplification. So honestly, in games like Call of Duty, which I did play straight through from 2005 until this year, controller works great. It works great. The complication occurs when, I think it was this past year actually, I think it was this most recent game, Activision for the first time supported Multiplay, not [01:32:00] just console. The console where we're on uneven playing field, but also console the pc. So you're in games always tough. Yeah. Now I believe the way they do the matchmaking is that the PC player is supposed to be on a controller because otherwise we could never keep up with these guys. They're aiming in a precise way that we just don't, it's impossible. They're using the mouse. Yeah. I

Richard Campbell (01:32:23):
Dunno that every PC player's expected to run into a wall first before they stand.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:27):
That's how I play. I can't [01:32:30] stand up and demonstrate this, but I had a friend back in the nineties who was like, I'm the doom guy. And he would walk into a wall, walking into a wall, and then he would make it through the door. And that was because with the keyboard, it was very rough. That was kind how you would kind of aim for the door, but you would hit the wall next to the door, right? Yeah. Which I always thought was pretty funny. So maybe, I mean, you played it so long, you're probably also used to it. You can move the cursor, the site gun site slowly and well. Okay. Actually near defense, Leo, I was talking to Brad [01:33:00] about this and Brad's been playing. He plays, no, not Fortnite, he plays Warzone now, but he's played all the Call of Duty games and all this stuff, and he actually said the Achilles heel to this game is when you have to fight someone with a gun, it's something wrong.

(01:33:14):
It seems not to work. I haven't played. I can't. But yeah, so you might be just right. It may not just work Well, okay. I mean, it's fun to explore. It's fine. I'll play it for a while. I like it. Well, hey, it's great. That was game Pass, right? I'll ignore myself. I didn't have to pay for [01:33:30] it, really? So that's a good ecosystem. It's a good idea. Now do you think Sony's looking at it, there is no PlayStation version and saying, see, I told you Marguerite Stiger. So we'll see how big of a deal it is. I feel like Starfield entered in a place where they couldn't win, meaning it was never going to be good enough to live up to the hype, right? Yeah. I think it was Phil Spencer had said something, which I thought [01:34:00] was honest. I love that guy, but whoever said this, I thought this was nonsensical. This will be the least buggy game that this studio is ever published. Like, dude, stop. It's just

Richard Campbell (01:34:10):
Screaming out to the gods of ves and

Paul Thurrott (01:34:12):
Armies. Don't be hubris. Yeah, exactly. It's pretty stable. I haven't had any issues. I haven't seen any big showstoppers. Well, we talk a lot because you and I witnessed this live together, but the horrible late stage reveal of Halo Infinite and then they delayed [01:34:30] it for a year and that thing still came out. Horrible shape. Lots of missing features to this day is not quite where it probably should have been two years ago or whatever, but is getting there. I think the goal for, what are we calling this again? Starfield. Starfield. Sorry. I almost said Star Drive. Sorry, I just, I get it wrong. Every time it starts something, the game, they couldn't do that, right? You've got to ship the game. It has to be the game. It doesn't mean they won't improve it and they will. They've said that

Leo Laporte (01:34:58):
They've already started downloading and

Paul Thurrott (01:35:00):
[01:35:00] Matches. Yeah. Welcome to the Xbox Console, the place of 80 gigabyte updates. So enjoy that part.

Leo Laporte (01:35:09):
I want you to play it a little bit just to tell me if I'm wrong or Brad's wrong about the shooting thing. Because an a adept first person shooter guy,

Richard Campbell (01:35:17):
I have it on my radar to take it out for a spin by Christmas

Leo Laporte (01:35:20):
On the pc,

Richard Campbell (01:35:20):
But only on the

Paul Thurrott (01:35:21):
Pc. Only on the pc.

Richard Campbell (01:35:23):
It turns out you have to stay home for more than a week to actually bother. No,

Leo Laporte (01:35:26):
I really want to plan on the pc and I think it would be great on the pc, but [01:35:30] it's Linux. Find

Richard Campbell (01:35:31):
Reason to buy a

Leo Laporte (01:35:32):
Pc. Well, I, it doesn't work on the Oh, you don't have a pc? I have a pc. I don't have Windows.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:38):
It'll try. I'll put it on a PC where I'll have the storage, but I will use the controller and I

Leo Laporte (01:35:44):
Can do that. Fair enough. I'm just curious. It's one of those, it's more fun than No Man's Sky, which I had high hopes for as well. Procedurally generated universe and all that. This has a lot. Boy, it's amazing how much content they put in games these days. I mean it's [01:36:00] filled with nooks and crannies.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:02):
That's great. Well

Richard Campbell (01:36:03):
How much of that content is generative too, right?

Leo Laporte (01:36:06):
That's always. Some of it is. Some of the drops are obviously, but the world,

Richard Campbell (01:36:12):
The primary plots are not.

Leo Laporte (01:36:14):
The quests are not. Yeah. Okay, interesting. This is

Paul Thurrott (01:36:19):
Completely, it's not my thing. The

Leo Laporte (01:36:22):
Tutorial quests and I'm now

Paul Thurrott (01:36:23):
Like this, but

Leo Laporte (01:36:25):
It's not your, there's no national

Paul Thurrott (01:36:26):
Games that are like this.

Leo Laporte (01:36:29):
I like dead [01:36:30] redemption actually. I thought that was a good game.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:31):
Yeah, there was a game before that called, I think it was called Gun, which was kind of similar. It was a western thing and there was a main quest, but you could go off and side Quest and it was up to you how much of the game you wanted to experience. And I think I actually finished that one. But the bigger games, the G T A games, the Red Dead redemptions, what was, someone mentioned it earlier, the scroll, what was it called? The kind of a Dungeons and Dragons kind of thing from nine years ago. Not Skyrim, [01:37:00] but something else. Rim, I don't know. Anyway, there's a whole list of these things and different genres, but I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:37:07):
You need Nazis. I understand.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:10):
I like sneaky things. I like to put a bomb on something where you teleport and hit it and blow up and I can hear you out of the corner. That's

Leo Laporte (01:37:16):
A combat first game. This is a combat second game. It's an exploration game first. Leo,

Paul Thurrott (01:37:22):
I wanted to think I'd read a

Leo Laporte (01:37:23):
Book. Know? I know. And actually I'm still, Heim's to me is still the perfect game. So it shows what I know. I dunno.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:30):
[01:37:30] That's why actually even a game like the Assassin's Creed games over time. Yeah, those pretty good. They a little, but they got tedious to me. The first one I actually finished. They were pretty The second one. Pretty. Yeah. But I think they got bigger and more open world. And after the time I'm like, I'm just running around. I'm like, you spend your whole day running around and I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm running through a market. I'm disrupting chickens. What is this game? I don't know. But people love that stuff. So people who love to disrupt chickens.

Leo Laporte (01:38:00):
[01:38:00] Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:38:02):
People. Anyhow, alright, so actually since we just talked about it, so Starfield came out early access, late last week. Microsoft this week announced the first set of games for September that are going to go through Game Pass across PC console and Cloud and Starfield. I'm going to get used to that. Starfield is one of those games, and actually there aren't that many. There are only three for this drop. There'll be more later in September. But Starfield September 6th today is available [01:38:30] on day one with everyone. And early access was what? Friday? I think. Last Friday?

Leo Laporte (01:38:36):
Yeah. Yeah. I played it all weekend, but it came out on the fifth or the sixth. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:38:43):
I think it's today. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:38:44):
I think Is that today? Oh, it is today. You're right. It was at midnight. I mean,

Paul Thurrott (01:38:49):
So okay. By

Leo Laporte (01:38:51):
Now you should have had at least 12 hours under your belt.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:53):
That's right. Exactly. I used to do that with Call of Duty. Yeah. Set up till three [01:39:00] o'clock in the morning with my kid.

Leo Laporte (01:39:01):
This lies of P looks kind of interesting. I was tempted to look at that one as well.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:06):
Fives of pie.

Leo Laporte (01:39:07):
It's not pie, it's just P. Just

Paul Thurrott (01:39:09):
P. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:39:10):
P. Okay. It's a souls like game. Anyway, I'm getting good vibes. My feels are good on the game pass. It's worth it.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:22):
Yeah. I hope to take more advantage of it. I get kind of bogged down in classic games right now,

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
All that nostalgia.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:30):
[01:39:30] I just, God, it will consume you. There was a good quote about nostalgia, but Oh, it was Judge. What's that? The comedian, the guy was a PC guy in those ads with the Mac and the pc. John.

Leo Laporte (01:39:42):
Yeah, John Hodgman. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:44):
He said, I think he said that, what did he say? Nostalgia was a cancer or nostalgia would consume me or something like that. He had some quip about nostalgia where I was like, yeah, he's

Leo Laporte (01:39:51):
Probably right. I like Yogi RA's nostalgia. He said Nostalgia ain't what it used to be. That's the best. [01:40:00] What else? Prop

Paul Thurrott (01:40:02):
Or whatever. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:40:03):
He was a king of that, wasn't he? Yeah, he was. Let's see, nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:11):
So good. Even one of those would be great. But he has a million of

Leo Laporte (01:40:16):
'em. Oh, a million of them.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:18):
So sometime in the past month, the show I commented about the pending demise of an Xbox app that was called the Xbox Console Companion, which is a stupid name for an app. But among [01:40:30] the various things, remember back in the Xbox 360 timeframe, we had Xbox Smart screen I think it was called, or heck was it called Something like smart screen. It was like this idea that you would have a console, or I'm sorry, a tablet and you could beam the thing you were doing up to the TV that has the Xbox on it. You had a Windows phone maybe back in the day. So we had that kind of app and we come forward to Windows 10 11. Now we have an Xbox app and the Xbox app is a front end to your game library, an Xbox not on the console [01:41:00] but on the pc, and then a way to go and select games from Game Pass and do that kind of thing.

(01:41:05):
But we actually lost a couple of things with that. And one of the things we lost, which was part of the console companion app, was the ability to access the screenshots and video clips that we made while playing games on the console. And that was the thing. I always downloaded it and used it for that purpose. It was wonderful for that. And that's gone or it's going to be gone. And so I was like, it's weird that they're getting rid of this because this is a need. [01:41:30] Is there a place in OneDrive where this stuff is? Where do I access this? And the answer is, you can access it on your console. You could copy them to a U S B drive if you want. You could share them and maybe, I don't know how share works in the Xbox, but you could share 'em. But there is no way on the PC right now to access the stuff that you record on your console. And I think that's a huge mistake and a missing gap. It's a gap. So apparently in the Xbox Insider program and the alpha and alpha skip head rings, which are the really early ones, [01:42:00] they're testing a new option to automatically upload all of your game captures from your Xbox to OneDrive, which is exactly what I want. It will obviously take up your space,

Richard Campbell (01:42:11):
Talk about mowing through that a hundred gigs.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:14):
But I mean for me, the reason to do this would be maybe something funny happened and I wanted to share it with someone, which is, I

Richard Campbell (01:42:20):
Mean the right thing to do is have it an automatic with a set pool. It's like, okay, you get 20 gigs roll, the oldest ones off as new ones come in.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:28):
There you go. Yeah. They don't currently let you upload [01:42:30] four K video clips, for example, that would blow away your stores instantaneously. But it's important that they have, this is kind of a missing feature, so I'm glad they're adding that. So that will come eventually. The Xbox inside a program, unlike the Windows one actually moves pretty quickly. So even though it's an alpha now, I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't appear by the end of the year, early next year it will happen. They tend to churn through the channels pretty well unlike Windows. So there's that. Microsoft just released the latest [01:43:00] system update, the September update for the Xbox Series S, X and S and Xbox One. And the key feature there is the previously announced native integration of Twitch streaming. Nope, sorry, that was last year. What am I talking about? Is the native integration for Discord. So you can stream live gameplay to Discord instead of just Twitch, which was the thing they had because they got rid of Mixer, which was their thing. It's seven 20 P limited 30 frames per second. But if you subscribe to Discord, nitro, I don't know what that is, but I assume [01:43:30] it's 10 bucks a month or more or something. Is 10 80 p 60 frames per second

Leo Laporte (01:43:34):
Discord. Yeah, we have a Nitro server. When I saw this, I thought it said to one person on Discord, but you can stream,

Paul Thurrott (01:43:42):
Can stream to a Discord server to a

Leo Laporte (01:43:44):
Server. So I could stream. If you

Paul Thurrott (01:43:46):
Go through direct message and I think that would be the one.

(01:43:50):
Oh, going to do that. I'll do that. I'll scream also going to have my failed attempts to kill space pirates. Yeah. Xbox voice reporting. [01:44:00] This is the feature we talked about sometime in the past couple of months and weeks I should say. And this is an example of how quickly they move. Remember this was the toxicity response and people can report people who are swearing or being racist or whatever they're doing in whatever terribleness and Microsoft will allegedly act decisively. There's been no evidence of that in the past, but it's coming and some other stuff. But those are the two big changes there. Discord and voice reporting. We talked about Game Pass and [01:44:30] Starfield and then, oh, Xbox Series ss, Microsoft. And this is maybe the first time I've strongly disagreed with Phil Spencer, but then I also made the comment, maybe he knows more about the business than I do, but there's no plans yet to do a mid-season refresh of the consoles.

(01:44:46):
For example, a Xbox Series X replacement that was actually four K all the time at 60 frames a second or better all the time I think would be enough of a step up. It would need a lot more storage, but no plans [01:45:00] for that. But they did release a new interim version of the console, which is an Xbox series ss, which comes with a terabyte of storage. It's not more powerful in any way, but it is in Carbon black, not white like the normal series S. So it's probably more powerful because of the carbon black. So I'm not technical enough to know, but it looks better. So they're still selling the normal version for 2 99. The carbon black version is, I believe a hundred bucks more, right? No, actually it's only 50 bucks more. So there [01:45:30] you go. 50 bucks. If we're going to

Richard Campbell (01:45:30):
Go all pure 4k, they'd have to get put an eight terabyte drive in that machine.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:35):
That's true. Yeah. I think Microsoft's hoping maybe we won't make consoles by that point. We hope.

Richard Campbell (01:45:42):
Well, according to the emails.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:44):
I know. I know. And then finally, I'm sure there are some Steam deck fans out there and Lenovo is going to release their own kind of version of the steam tech called the Legion Go. It's a gaming handheld October 6 99. [01:46:00] It has these two kind of trigger handle looking controllers, sort of like the Nintendo Switch. You kind of break 'em off and you can put 'em together and that kind of a thing. It will work with Legion Go Glasses, which they announced at I F A this past week, which are three D. It allows graphics and three D space kind of thing. I don't know. I don't know.

Richard Campbell (01:46:28):
Do we need another one? These, [01:46:30] I mean Steam Deck has steam, right? That's its big

Paul Thurrott (01:46:34):
Advantage, right? And I feel like that was the point. Let's do the hardware companion to steam, right?

Richard Campbell (01:46:41):
The idea that we're just going to make hardware.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:43):
Yeah, the steam thing is interesting because they support Linux, right? It's not just Windows and the Steam Deck runs Linux and the Steam Deck is not a proof of concept, but kind of a statement that this kind of thing is possible. And

Richard Campbell (01:46:55):
Linux is a good gaming platform.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:56):
And Linux, yeah, it's a low profile compared to Windows. It's not as big and heavy and [01:47:00] resource intensive and yada yada. This

Leo Laporte (01:47:03):
Looks like a bigger screen. Is it? It's pretty big. Maybe not. It's just the way they're shooting it.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:10):
Where's the, what is the, no, no, sorry. 8.8 inches. Yeah, it's 14 res. That's good. 25 60 by sixteen hundred, a hundred forty four Hertz. Refresh rate oh seven is the The ais R,

Leo Laporte (01:47:24):
Right, so it's a little bigger. It's a little bigger. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:47:27):
A little bigger. A MD Rising [01:47:30] based 16 gigs of Ram terabyte of storage.

Richard Campbell (01:47:33):
It's under the nine inch limit. So Windows is free for them.

Leo Laporte (01:47:37):
Good point. Yes. Interesting. So they don't show anybody using it as a Windows pbc?

Paul Thurrott (01:47:45):
No. I mean, right.

Richard Campbell (01:47:46):
That's some little icons right there.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:48):
Yeah. Fun thing to travel with. Bring a Bluetooth keyboard, the mouse or whatever.

Richard Campbell (01:47:53):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:54):
I don't know. This is not my thing, but I get it. I get why people,

Richard Campbell (01:47:59):
You play Star Field [01:48:00] on it. I wonder.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:03):
I don't know. I don't actually not You can. You can poorly, no,

Leo Laporte (01:48:06):
They should in the trailer.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:12):
Maybe this is the way we're going to get three D games into the Xbox kind of virtual reality games into the Xbox ecosystem. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:48:22):
De Novo also showed an update to their two ed screen laptop at efi. I think

Richard Campbell (01:48:29):
The new yoga.

Leo Laporte (01:48:30):
[01:48:30] The new yoga,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:32):
Yeah. Somebody must be

Leo Laporte (01:48:33):
Buying that. Somebody must be buying that. Otherwise,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:36):
I rereviewed it and I was like, I get it. Someone said something like, the world's not ready. And I'm like, I just think the device isn't ready. I think the world is ready for a two screen laptop. Honestly, Richard travels with a second screen, right? I mean, this is

Richard Campbell (01:48:51):
Where to put it beside the other

Leo Laporte (01:48:52):
Screen. But also you don't want to type on the second screen, which is the kind of, well,

Richard Campbell (01:48:58):
I think you get a Bluetooth keyboard.

Leo Laporte (01:48:59):
Oh [01:49:00] yeah, of course you could.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:01):
Well, and it comes with one too, actually. Oh, it does? No, there are different, listen, there's a million little origami configurations you can do. Choose your poison. And that's the Italian dressing thing. Again, maybe there are too many for factors. The ironic thing about that Yoga Nine Eye is that it's weakest configuration is when it's like a laptop. It just doesn't work well as a laptop. And it's goofy because your choices think about the screens are like [01:49:30] this, so you can put the hardware keyboard down on it and the half of the screen remaining acts as a track pad, which drags it. Doesn't work very well. But the bigger problem is because of the way Windows works, and maybe this will change in the future, that second screen doesn't disappear. So if you opened a window down there or you later open a window that always opens on that screen, it goes onto the keyboard. You don't even know it's there. So it's kind of a weird thing. And the other choice is you can type just on the screen, the bottom screen, take the keyboard off, and [01:50:00] you can plop your eight fingers down. It becomes a keyboard, a virtual keyboard and track pad. And then it's typing on an iPad, which I got to tell you is a rather tedious experience on a $2,500 computer or whatever. And it works, I guess, but not

Richard Campbell (01:50:17):
It is promoted as the new laptop experience. The question is, are you ready for a new

Paul Thurrott (01:50:22):
Laptop experience? Yeah, I think they'll get it there. I think it is going to require some stuff from Windows too. I think Windows [01:50:30] needs to adapt to This came up with Par management. Remember with HP where they had done that a M D laptop, the Dragon Flight Pro this past summer, and it just completely bypasses whatever was in Windows, and it does on the fly modifications of the power management plan as needed. So someone said, well, what happens if the user goes and finds power Management says, we'll put it on balance. They said, well, we'll put it on balance, but we just ignore it. And it's like, okay, because we just do better. You [01:51:00] can go into HP's app and turn it off if you want, but their response was, we talked to Microsoft and they're going to make a change to Windows. So something will, these things are going to happen. I think Windows will get more sophisticated to support these new use cases or whatever.

Richard Campbell (01:51:15):
Well, and then really new form factors.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:19):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:51:21):
Well,

Richard Campbell (01:51:22):
All.

Leo Laporte (01:51:22):
What an exciting Xbox segment this has been. Thank you Paul. Thank you. We will.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:29):
I should have more rants [01:51:30] for Xbox. What makes

Leo Laporte (01:51:31):
Me ran?

Richard Campbell (01:51:33):
I dunno how you get angry at Xbox. You know they're none of the market there. They barely make it.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:38):
I can see if I can do this without breaking something.

Richard Campbell (01:51:42):
What's

Leo Laporte (01:51:43):
He doing? What's he doing?

Richard Campbell (01:51:44):
Look at that Ford neglected machine.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:46):
I can't be mad at you.

Leo Laporte (01:51:51):
There's our thumbnail, ladies and gentlemen.

Richard Campbell (01:51:54):
You don't love it enough to plug it in.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:58):
It's all done. Covered into [01:52:00] an inch of dust.

Richard Campbell (01:52:01):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:52:02):
That's his s, his series Ss. I

Paul Thurrott (01:52:04):
Love you too much to kill you with electricity.

Richard Campbell (01:52:07):
I leave you there collecting dust.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:10):
It's coming from,

Leo Laporte (01:52:11):
What are you working on? On Hands-on Windows. Paul, anything exciting coming up?

Paul Thurrott (01:52:15):
Yeah, so I'm trying to remember what we did last time. It's been a little while. We're doing the next recording next week. This will be, we're talking October now by this point, but I'm going to go through and talk about that stuff. We talked about the Restore [01:52:30] OSS app settings thing. I think that would be kind of a fun thing. We're going to do Windows copilot soon. I know I did a show on what's new in 23 H two. I'm having a hard, oh, I did the final, I did my clip champ wrap up, which is

Leo Laporte (01:52:45):
That's really cool. I remember they said that yesterday in the editorial meeting and I got so excited.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:53):
I did a three-part series on clip show. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:52:55):
Don't list you. I know everything you'd ever want to know. Now you might be saying to yourself, where can I get this [01:53:00] fabulous show? Well, I'm sorry to say you have to be a member of Club Twit, but there's nothing wrong with that. Seven bucks a month, you get ad free versions of all the shows and you get shows we don't put out in public. I mean, there are some public versions of Hands-on Windows, little every one in four or five little teasers. But if you want the full thing, it's just kind of like Thout Premium. You got to subscribe. And not only do you get all of that, you get access to our wonderful discord [01:53:30] where we do things like play games, chat about tech, chat about the shows, all our hosts go in there and visit from time to time. We've got some great events coming up tomorrow. Sci-Fi Day, an will be talking to John. No, I'm sorry, Scalzi next month. That's going to be exciting. John Scalzi this month it's Daniel Suarez, the author of Demon and Freedom, TMM and Killzone, and a whole bunch of other great books along with a newlywed. [01:54:00] Hugh Howie, the author of the Wool series. Hugh is just back from Burning Man where he got married. Unless he's Josh. Unless he's Josh and me. So that'll be exciting. That's 2:00 PM tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:14):
A lot of people get married at Burning Man. The question is, are they married after Burning Man?

Leo Laporte (01:54:20):
Yeah, if you get married at Burning Man, does it count? If

Paul Thurrott (01:54:24):
You can survive Burning Man and want to be with the person you went there with, you guys are made

Leo Laporte (01:54:28):
To be together. That's a heck of a test. [01:54:30] Also coming up, Lou Mareska fireside, Chet John Scalzi, as I mentioned, Anthony Nielsen, our AI guru, Renee Rich, you'll be visiting in November. Jeff Jarvis, docs and I are going to do the old farts fireside chat in December and when we're still voting. I

Paul Thurrott (01:54:48):
Love him. I really like that guy's. Great. I had met him virtually back in December

Leo Laporte (01:54:53):
When we did. I'm sorry, Paul, you have to be over 60 to join us. No,

Paul Thurrott (01:54:56):
No, I'm not asking. I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to be included. I'm just saying

Leo Laporte (01:55:00):
[01:55:00] You assume you will. Okay, fair enough.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:06):
Anyway, when I qualify for Medicaid, we can talk, but I really enjoyed him. He's a great guy, but

Leo Laporte (01:55:11):
Good. Yeah, he's really good. It'll be a lot of fun on. We also have Stacey's book club. Stacey Higginbotham is sticking around for the book club. In fact, they're voting, I think right now on which book. So get on over there. If you're a club member, if you're not, go to twit tv slash club twit and join that. Money, as you can see is so important. We [01:55:30] didn't have any ads this week on the show. You may have heard some ads inserted after the fact, but that means revenue's way down and it's really important to keep everything going. We need your help. I hate to beg, but sometimes we got to twit TV slash club twit. And now without further ado, how about the back of the book and Paul RA's tip of the week?

Paul Thurrott (01:55:58):
Yeah, so I'm going to combine the tip [01:56:00] in the app picks this week because they're the same topic basically. And I don't know how anyone does anything, right? Everyone has their own processes for this stuff. I'm kind of interested to see what people have to say about some of this, but I just concluded a round of digital decluttering when we moved to this apartment. Someone asked me a question at some point back in May-ish, and I wrote, you know what? When I get done with the physical decluttering, we had all this junk we brought forward to here. I'm going to get into the digital decluttering. And then we went to Mexico in July, and [01:56:30] when we got back, I started. So we're about five weeks from then. And I've actually written, I expected to write once or twice, but I had to wrote several articles and I went through the whole process and did not to spend a half an hour on this. But basically what I have is the things that matter most to me are my personal photos. And I have active work documents. Well, they don't have date back at all, but they're things I'm working on now. But then I have archives of both. So I have all the photo scans from the sixties, seventies, [01:57:00] eighties, and nineties. I have whatever. I have all this stuff and they're in different places. So a lot of it's up in a na. I have here now I have all my work documents. Were in OneDrive and my photos

Leo Laporte (01:57:11):
Mean you started this in 2019?

Paul Thurrott (01:57:14):
No, no, no, no, no,

Leo Laporte (01:57:16):
No. The first from,

Paul Thurrott (01:57:18):
No, I mean it's the same. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:57:20):
It says February, 2019.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:24):
Okay. It's tagged the same way. So back in 2019 I Oh you. This series based photos collection at [01:57:30] that time. Yeah. So that was

Leo Laporte (01:57:31):
The recent one. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:33):
So what what's happened since is that I have, in addition to things that are organized, like my photos or my work documents, I have these archives that are partially organized and then I have all these giant lump folders of, it's just loose stuff that need to be organized. It was hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes spread across three different locations. So over a series of weeks, I actually organized it all. [01:58:00] I did it. I thought this was something I was going to do for a little while, give up on because I'm never going to finish it. And then four years from now I'll look at it again and actually finished it. So in finishing it, I kind of learned a few things about this. There's the obvious stuff. Your important data has to be spread about different locations, geography matters. It doesn't matter if you have two NAES in your house, if your house burns down that you lose both NASAs, that's stupid.

(01:58:25):
It doesn't matter if you have one cloud service and one na, I think you need to have two clouds because [01:58:30] someday you're going to wake up and Google's going to be like, sorry, you had a picture of your kid in the bathtub and now we think you're a child pornographer. So you're not getting it anymore and you don't want to go through that. So replication is important. Geographical diversity is important, but that's all kind of obvious. These kinds of tasks are daunting, literally. And I was talking to Richard about this, the network latency problems, just moving stuff around. So a few of the things that I did that I think are important are I figured out a way to [01:59:00] work with files locally and if it was OneDrive stuff, it means I synced it down, sunk it down, synced it, synced it down to a laptop, a machine, whatever.

(01:59:09):
So it was always available offline. I wasn't dealing with a cloud thing or a web thing or whatever. If it was NA based, I copied it down, same thing, did what I needed to do and then put it back where it belonged, that kind of thing. So that was actually kind of huge and that was one of the first things that got me going. But once you start working with stuff locally, you can start using local tools. So we talked about the Explorer rant I had last [01:59:30] week came out of the horrible problems I've had just with performance and reliability of File Explorer because of all these huge files and things. So I started using something called Directory Opus, which I think I talked about last week, which has a nice side-by-side view, very similar to file manager from Windows three X back in the day, or very similar to Windows Snapped whatever, really good filtering and finding and yada yada and better file copy performance winder, which is kind of a classic.

(01:59:58):
This gives you that graphical view. [02:00:00] I saw the picture, the folder. I love that. So if you're familiar with this tool, you'll know that when you look at a hard drive or a folder structure, whatever it is, and you have a bunch of big files, you're going to see big colored squares. And the goal in my case with photos or documents, because photos, those would be videos would be to have no big anything in there. You want to see a bunch of little tiny things. And so you can kind of bulk remove some of the big stuff you don't need. I had redundant copies of [02:00:30] Windows eight behind the scenes videos from back in the day or whatever they were, and you pull that stuff out and that's just a huge chunk of it. So it's really nice. I have backup copies of every book. I've written over 30 books. I've got all my books, I've got all of my work documents now going back literally to 1993. I have all photos are all there and organized correctly, yada, yada, yada. You run it and then you have to look for duplicates. And that's where I didn't use this as much as I thought I was going to, but duplicate Cleaner pro is [02:01:00] something to look at.

(02:01:03):
We're finding, in other words, you have the same version of some backup, which was a problem I had. I would pull down backups from one source and compare 'em to this other thing. I'd be like, wait, these are the same, and why do I have 17 of them? So that kind of thing is useful. I'm going to be looking for new na, my NASA is out of date and unsupported now and slow is anything and I hate it and I can't wait to get a new one. And I'm curious what people think about that. Probably going to be sonology. [02:01:30] And then I'm going to move on to the final stage of this process, which is I have one bin left of paper that needs to sorted and scanned and then removed. And I just went through that last night. So I haven't written about this yet, but I was delighted to discover that this is not as big as I thought it was, and a lot of it I could just throw away. There's a lot of crap in there. So I will have a final round of that scanning and I might actually be done with this. I think I might be done forever. [02:02:00] Yeah, I know. I can't even believe I'm saying those words. You won't, don't worry. You're supposed to be specific. Well, I don't know where else it could be. I think I have hit every storage device imaginable. That's amazing. Yeah, I think I'm done. I think it's done. Richard probably has good ideas on Anas. This is the one I use

Richard Campbell (02:02:17):
From sonology, the 1522. It's a great device.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:20):
Oh, just love it. It's

Richard Campbell (02:02:21):
Pricey. But I mean the chassis is one thing. It's the drives you put into the map and [02:02:30] now that where the house is all but sold, I may not do another show there or might be one more. I get to relay out a network. I love that. And then it's like, well, how much tank do I want to put in? Right.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:42):
Let me ask you this. I went through a series of things over the years, and I know you've been talking about taking down your last ad server or whatever. I had a Windows server infrastructure for a time. I had a rackmounted Windows storage server with a terabyte on it, which at the time was unbelievable. That dimm [02:03:00] the lights every time it fired up and was unbelievably hot and hot, loud. But over the years you can sort of see these things going down like Windows server became a thing. I went through every version of that. I think I had every hardware version of that, a lot of HP stuff in the house at the time. After they went from that too. I think it was called Windows Essential Server, which was, it

Richard Campbell (02:03:26):
Was really small business.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:29):
We

Richard Campbell (02:03:29):
Did front

Paul Thurrott (02:03:29):
As [02:03:30] stripped down sort of home server ish.

Richard Campbell (02:03:32):
And I think this synology really fits into that role. Plus it also has, then it has its own packages. So the one I rely on now is the M 365 backup. So normally our working file set is living in M 365. It's consistently synced into a local drive. So if my accounts got cut off for whatever reason, we have that local store on this analogy. And then the other part of it is when [02:04:00] it's working perfectly and you're super comfortable with it, you can start playing with the darker elements inside of it and make yourself angry and frustrated.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:08):
And it's

Richard Campbell (02:04:08):
Really quite good at that.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:12):
I dunno if I should even say this. I'm considering something that's crazy, but I think it's going to resonate with a certain portion of the audience, let's put it that way. And that is this. And this ties into all the subscription cost things and all that stuff that's going on in the world right now. I am thinking about getting a sonology nest, [02:04:30] but I'm also thinking about getting two of them. I'm thinking about putting one in Mexico and having them kind of talk to each other. They're a little content where they replicate. Yep,

Leo Laporte (02:04:39):
That's what I do.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:41):
And at that point,

Leo Laporte (02:04:42):
That's your offsite.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:44):
Yeah. That becomes something interesting, right? Yeah, that's an interesting

Leo Laporte (02:04:47):
Strategy. Plus then you have it in Mexico because that's

Paul Thurrott (02:04:49):
What I mean, two houses.

Leo Laporte (02:04:51):
I have one here. What I did is when I upgraded, I put the old one here, you don't have to have duplicates. So this is your first, so you'll have a second some day down the road Anyway,

Paul Thurrott (02:05:00):
[02:05:00] So I was so afraid you were going to be like, you're out of your mind. You're like, no

Leo Laporte (02:05:02):
Literal, no, no, no. I have one here and one at home. And they back up. Interesting.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:06):
They sync.

Leo Laporte (02:05:07):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:08):
We'll see, I mean that's a further step, but I mean it's easy

Leo Laporte (02:05:12):
Short term set up. Synology is set up to do that actually.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:14):
Yeah. Okay. Alright. Alright.

Leo Laporte (02:05:16):
It's called hyper

Paul Thurrott (02:05:17):
Backup and it gets you, that might be the direction.

Leo Laporte (02:05:20):
It's really good.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:21):
I really need it to work better over the network though. The thing, I was talking to Richard this before we started, the thing that really bugs me, I don't know if this is a Windows thing or it's just [02:05:30] the reality of the physical nature of this setup, but there's no way for me sitting here at a computer to remotely access the files on the NAS and work with them locally so that SS M B or the cable or the wireless God help you or whatever it is, is ever involved. It's always just happening there because it would've been a lot easier to triage what I think was 200 and something gigabytes of loose document unsorted nonsense or whatever it was. If I could have just done it there, it [02:06:00] would've been really neat to run the winder stat or something to locate the biggest files for get rid of that crap. Then you can do it over the network. It's just so slow. It's horrible. This was a fix for that.

Richard Campbell (02:06:14):
And definitely going wired makes a big difference and obviously you can boost up your bandwidth. Ultimately. There's lots of

Paul Thurrott (02:06:22):
Choices.

Leo Laporte (02:06:22):
So one little tip, you probably know this, but synology naming convention is a little weird.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:30):
[02:06:30] It's a little weird. I think they put, they put words in a blender and they spew 'em all this one's going to be sense J three.

Leo Laporte (02:06:38):
So DSS is Dick's disc station. They also have RS for racks rack station. The first digit or digits is the number of drives it can support. Now notice this is a five bay, but the number is 1522 plus. I was going to say it

Paul Thurrott (02:06:51):
Says 15.

Leo Laporte (02:06:53):
That's because there's an extender that you can add that would give you an additional 10 drives. So 15 is the max, you know [02:07:00] how many are in it because it's a five bay and then the next two numbers of the year, so this is last year. This is 2022. There are 2020 threes. And then plus is their performance line, which you want versus their value line only because it has a better processor. If you use Plex, it does transcoding and all of that.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:20):
You can do things like buy additional ram and it helps with that kind of stuff. I

Leo Laporte (02:07:24):
Do this, most of these have a slot or two underneath. Now you can put an MDOT [02:07:30] two drive in there for caching small files. So a lot of small files, it really speeds it up. I usually do that. Some of them you can add ram nowadays, they come with a pretty hefty, they're much better than they used to be. Really kind of low powered.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:46):
Now you want to transcode four K.

Leo Laporte (02:07:48):
Yeah, they're pretty good. Yeah, they're getting

Richard Campbell (02:07:50):
Some. And my instinct, whenever you have a chassis like this is you're only going to change it once. So loaded.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:56):
Yeah, I did see, I think it's qap, but one of the other [02:08:00] vendors actually has an HT M I out on some of their NASAs and you can plug it right into a smart TV and then use the interface, just access whatever the videos are directly. And I was like, that's actually kind interesting. Maybe if that was

Richard Campbell (02:08:13):
The primary and a camera server not that different. Right? Yeah. That's a duty for a NAS as well these days. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:08:20):
That's interesting.

Leo Laporte (02:08:24):
Yeah. I personally think Synology is better than qap, but QAP does have some nice, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:08:29):
No, I [02:08:30] pretty much settled on this analogy just based on everything I've read.

Leo Laporte (02:08:34):
Tune apps has had some security issues.

Richard Campbell (02:08:36):
It all comes down to you got to learn your device.

Leo Laporte (02:08:39):
Yeah, there's quite a bit. D SS M, their network softwares.

Paul Thurrott (02:08:43):
So you guys both basically do something like this? Or how do you access your, what's the primary interface? Your files are on a network, so you can,

Leo Laporte (02:08:54):
They're

Richard Campbell (02:08:55):
On an SS B share.

Leo Laporte (02:08:56):
Yeah, you could share. Yeah,

Richard Campbell (02:08:58):
Just

Leo Laporte (02:08:58):
I usually just log in. [02:09:00] I know because I don't, but if I ever needed it, there's also direct connect on all of these. You can also bring it and then sit it next to your computer and hook 'em up together if you want to do fast transfers or set it up for the first time,

Paul Thurrott (02:09:11):
That kind of thing. Yeah, and that's the other thing. So for some reason that's all U SB three something. For some reason it's never pushed to the Thunderbolt.

Leo Laporte (02:09:19):
Yeah, it's not, I know it's

Paul Thurrott (02:09:20):
Weird, but that would add

Leo Laporte (02:09:20):
So much cost that would be useful, right?

Paul Thurrott (02:09:22):
If I could have pulled one of the drives out my NA and used the U SB interface and put it on my computer and just access the files that way just [02:09:30] for file copy purposes, I absolutely would've. But that was not a, they

Leo Laporte (02:09:34):
Also support gigabit ethernet, and they're even as an add-on for 10 gigabit if you think you might have, I dunno, in Mexico, I think you have a lot of speed. Mexico it does not do wifi. I mean, you'd have to have some sort of wifi.

Richard Campbell (02:09:50):
Yeah. I keep flirting with 10 gig more of the house, but only flirting so far.

Leo Laporte (02:09:55):
Yeah. I think for this, it's one of those things [02:10:00] that you're trickling to it anyway. It's just running all the time in the background. I run sync thing on it, so it has a copy of all of the sync thing folders I do on all of my systems, but there's a lot of software in the DSS m I mean there's a ton of software. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:10:20):
I've never used one.

Leo Laporte (02:10:21):
You can put a web server on there. It's fast enough to do it. No JSS containers.

Richard Campbell (02:10:27):
Yeah. Container runs on it. Yeah, [02:10:30] you can take it whatever direction you want to go in. It does a lot.

Leo Laporte (02:10:33):
Richard's obviously the guy to listen to. Don't listen to me. Richard's the expert.

Paul Thurrott (02:10:36):
No,

Leo Laporte (02:10:37):
But I have used these for

Paul Thurrott (02:10:38):
Years in this space already. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm interested.

Richard Campbell (02:10:43):
But what I like about it's, there's a bunch of different levels to use it at. You could just use it as an N SS M B NA share. You can use any of the native packages to provide a bunch of services like D H C P D N S, your Azure backup, stuff like that. And then if you really want to get into the nitty [02:11:00] gritty, you fire up a container or any of the docker tooling and you start running containers on it for specific services you want.

Leo Laporte (02:11:06):
Yeah. And there's a lot of third party app support too. So I think it's become the default, frankly.

Richard Campbell (02:11:17):
It is the modern version of the home file server that Microsoft made

Leo Laporte (02:11:21):
Years ago. Unless you want to get a PC in a free NAS and do it all, roll it yourself. I think that's the best way to go.

Paul Thurrott (02:11:29):
You don't want me doing that.

Leo Laporte (02:11:30):
[02:11:30] You loved the old Microsoft Windows server. I did. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:11:36):
I did. Although it was

Richard Campbell (02:11:38):
Highly automated, it had a lot of good wizards. It really held your hand through a lot of stuff.

Paul Thurrott (02:11:43):
But I also stripped it, I mean, a lot of stuff that was built in for normal people, like automatic backup of your pc. I never used any of that stuff over time. I used it the way you're describing. It's basically just file shares, right? The big file share

Leo Laporte (02:11:54):
Storage. Look, if Steve Martin could set it up, you could set it up. That's okay. He asked me, I told him, get a synology, [02:12:00] and I thought, I'm going to be hearing from this for years. But no, he figured it all out. That's great. Yeah. Good. It's usable. Oh, is that it? Is that the whole thing? I should be

Richard Campbell (02:12:18):
The

Paul Thurrott (02:12:18):
Combo I tried to convince. Condense five weeks

Leo Laporte (02:12:22):
Into. I love it. It's a great series. It's a great series. Lots of good stuff in there. Now it means it's time for Richard's run [02:12:30] as radio plug. Yes, indeed. Oh, and you've got a good one. Oh, I'm excited.

Richard Campbell (02:12:37):
I got Troy Hunt on the show. I officiated his wedding last year.

Leo Laporte (02:12:42):
Did you? Oh, you're friends. Oh, neat. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:12:45):
Yeah. We've been friends for a long time since he's

Leo Laporte (02:12:46):
The the, have I been pod guy?

Richard Campbell (02:12:49):
He's the have I been pod guy? And I really didn't want to talk to about have I been pod because it's been done, right. So this was really the show. He's in this crazy spot where both [02:13:00] the black hats and the white hats care a lot about 'em. Right. The best way, if you're a black hat to know you've really succeeded at a hack is if Troy Hunt validates

Leo Laporte (02:13:08):
It

Richard Campbell (02:13:10):
Because check the data against his own stuff. All stuff he has that have a opponent and tell you what's going on. And the thing you dread, and we talked about this on the show, is when you see Troy tweet out, Hey, anybody got a security contact at x, Y, Z company? That's never good [02:13:30] news. It means he's obviously got some evidence of a breach. He's been trying to reach out to them and he's finally frustrated enough that he's talking in public about needing to reach them. And this is really the basis of this whole show is this, what's the responsible way to report a security breach like that or a data theft? Some of it is depending on where you live. If you're living in the EU and you're subject to G D P R, it's pretty clearly outlined there about what [02:14:00] you're supposed to do and the consequences for not doing it in other parts of the world.

(02:14:04):
It's not as clear or well-regulated somewhat of a state by state thing in the us, but it's also what's right to your customer and ultimately what's good for your business. And unfortunately, an awful lot of the time ignoring it's not that bad of a strategy if a little immoral. So we kind of went around this whole conversation and one of the big parts that comes out of this, and it's true a lot in CIS admin life [02:14:30] is like, this ain't up to you. This is a conversation at the business level ultimately that says, how does this company going to talk about breaches? And sometimes you need to initiate that. Sometimes this C F O might initiate it is certainly when it comes to cyber insurance these

Leo Laporte (02:14:48):
Days

Richard Campbell (02:14:49):
You've got a C F O signing cyber insurance that has stipulations related to system admins that don't even know about it. You have to have M F A turned on it. Your insurance is void. And often there are reporting criteria [02:15:00] for breaches in your insurance policy. So it's worth digging all that up and actually surfacing it and talking through what to do. The biggest thing here is you don't want to be making those decisions while you're in the middle of a breach.

Leo Laporte (02:15:13):
Yes, good point. And freaked out. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:15:17):
And a little stressed, right? And everybody going a little nutty. So it's useful to do the sandbox work, to just work through the table of what we would do, who we get called, when do we escalate. [02:15:30] And that's where we got to in the overarching conversation, just like, here are the steps you want to take. These are the conversations you need to have. And more than anything, you need to plan because if you don't have a plan, you're going to have a tough time.

Leo Laporte (02:15:40):
Well, you get great people. This is a must. Listen. Breach reporting with Troy Hunt, show 8, 9 6, run as radio.com. Wow. Awesome. Let's booze it up. I'm sorry, did I say that? How about a discussion of fine [02:16:00] sophisticated brown liquors?

Richard Campbell (02:16:04):
Well, I got some fun today because I got the bottle.

Leo Laporte (02:16:07):
Ooh, look at that. That's pretty.

Richard Campbell (02:16:10):
So my friend Remy, who I'm staying with right now,

Leo Laporte (02:16:13):
It looks empty, Richard, is that how it comes?

Richard Campbell (02:16:15):
Slightly? Wounded bottle

Leo Laporte (02:16:18):
Did look empty. That happened lightly used. Oh, there's a little bit, A little

Richard Campbell (02:16:22):
Bit there.

Leo Laporte (02:16:23):
A little bit. This

Richard Campbell (02:16:24):
Is the old Perth 23. Nice. And we enjoyed it earlier this week [02:16:30] and I thought, this is a cool whiskey. I'm going to read up a bit about it. And I'm pretty used to reading up about whiskeys. And so as the story unfolded before me, I thought, wow, this'll be fun to share with all of you as well. So obviously it's about a whiskey, but ultimately it comes down to a group of people. And most of the time when I tell stories about whiskey being made, it goes back to the 17 hundreds and the 18 hundreds. But this story starts in 1982. It is a modern [02:17:00] whiskey story. So back in 82, John Murray and Co was a company founded on the Isle of Mole. Isle of Mole is the big island just west of Obon on the west side of Scotland. And they were not making whiskey, they were making whiskey LA Cure.

(02:17:18):
Their original product was a product called the Colomba Cream named after Sink Columba, who was from the Isle of Iona, which is a little island just off the west of the Isle of Mo. And this [02:17:30] is in the sixth century. And he was one of the monks that brought Christianity to Scotland. And so that's Colomba Cream. And after a few years of selling that, John Murray and CO we're starting to make a couple of other lcu creams. And so they moved and they moved to Perth, Scotland. Now Perth is due east of Mul. It's almost all the way on the east side of Scotland, and it's one of the oldest cities in Scotland. This is where, [02:18:00] and always this just becomes a story of Perth. It's kind of a love story about Perth. This is north of Edenberg. There's been people living in that area, clearly identifiable at least 8,000 years into the Mesolithic period.

(02:18:12):
There's about 50,000 people in the city today. This is where SC Abbey is, as in the stone of sconce or the stone of destiny, which we talked about on a past show around Obon. This is where that stone used to live was in the Abbey near Perth, and it's right in the southeast [02:18:30] corner of the Highlands. In fact, one would argue it's at the beginning of the lowlands and through much of the 19th century in the 18 hundreds, it was the blending capital of the whiskey world. This was the place where barrels came to get blended into special editions of all kinds. And so John Marion co were making several different laurs as well as starting to experiment with making whiskeys. And then in 2005, they got a knock [02:19:00] on the door by a group of really experienced whiskey folks. Now, a bunch of these were for the Morrison family and the Morrison family of the former owners of Beau Moore, Glen Garrick, and Ian, which they sold the Suntory in 1994.

(02:19:16):
So they wanted to buy into the business rather than buy it out because they thought they could expand it into a larger range of products. And they liked Perth. So by 2008, they were making a special range of whiskeys. [02:19:30] They called the celebration of the cask. So they don't have a distillery. They're just producing whiskey by buying casks from other places and doing custom bottlings. And they actually bought the old Perth band. And that's what's on this particular bottle is they bought this in 2013 from White and McKay, another old school long-term whiskey maker, and they relaunched it as a blend. And this is a 20 threes. That means the youngest thing that was blended into this bottle is 23 years old. And by 2014, they [02:20:00] renamed the entity into the Morris and McKay. So Morrison is actually the folks that used to own Bomar and the others, the McCain name comes from Peter McKay, who's another old school whiskey guy. And he actually used to work at the original Perth distillery that's been closed for years and years and years. That's why they wanted the brand. And so this particular bottling that I have here, it's not made anymore. This is from the early aughts when they were just dabbling with making [02:20:30] their own versions of whiskey. You

Paul Thurrott (02:20:31):
Killed a unicorn.

Richard Campbell (02:20:32):
Yeah, it's kind of a unicorn.

(02:20:36):
It's from a small set. It's a 45%, but they have a new old Perth line, and I included the link in the show notes there for old Perth whiskey co uk. They have other old Perth variants. The reason I tell the story is because it's absolutely apparent to me that this group of folks are moving down the path of starting to make their own whiskey again. There's [02:21:00] folks that used to make whiskey and got out of it because the money was just too good. And there's other investors. There's a lot to it. And this particular whiskey is an interim step from a group of folks who are headed towards making new whiskey. And that's exciting to me that it's not just legacy. It's not just the old companies doing the thing, but that they make new whiskeys as well. You look at the color on this, this is a Sherry Casking. The rumor is that this actually [02:21:30] was bought from Macallan. They don't admit who they're getting it from, but it's clearly a space, maybe a little hint of peep the tiniest amount, but it's a pretty sweet sort of rich smelling whiskey. So no upfront

Paul Thurrott (02:21:48):
I'm like, what happened? He's

Richard Campbell (02:21:50):
Drinking course. Why

Paul Thurrott (02:21:51):
Do I hear lip smacking? What's happening? So no

Richard Campbell (02:21:55):
Upfront burn at all, just sort of fills the mouth with caramel and then it goes down [02:22:00] and it just sort of heats up on the way down.

Paul Thurrott (02:22:02):
I want this now. You describe it so beautifully. Hello. I think next time you have this live on a show, you have to make sure we also have it. Yeah,

Richard Campbell (02:22:09):
I delivered three bottles.

Paul Thurrott (02:22:10):
I don't know.

Richard Campbell (02:22:11):
I remember my friend Paul, when I poured him his first Avalara bun, he sort of sank back in the chair, this is my jam.

Paul Thurrott (02:22:23):
And then Leo Golum started to pull it toward him. He was going to steal

Leo Laporte (02:22:27):
It. My precious, my precious,

Richard Campbell (02:22:30):
[02:22:30] If you can find one, and they're very difficult to find now, coming in around 200 us. When originally bottled and sold, it was less than a hundred dollars, but it's been a few years. I would say how much I enjoy this one. I would take any one of the new additional old Perth's out for a spin. There's no reason to be too snobby about sink malts. You know what I like in whiskey? Tastes good [02:23:00] and this stuff tastes good.

Leo Laporte (02:23:01):
I've always loved Sherry Cask whiskey too. Yeah. My favorite is

Paul Thurrott (02:23:07):
Sherry cask nomad. Fantastic.

Richard Campbell (02:23:10):
Just regular drinker can around. So I mean, there's a bunch of different lineages now coming from this group of folks. You can call 'em bottlers, but I think they're headed towards being distillers again, and I'm excited to see 'em do it.

Leo Laporte (02:23:23):
So right now they're buying the beginnings from a Macallan or someone like that and then putting them in.

Richard Campbell (02:23:29):
They're buying casts [02:23:30] from other distilleries and they're assembling their own additions essentially.

Leo Laporte (02:23:34):
We've talked before, I mean the aging in the cask is really what gives a whiskey it's

Richard Campbell (02:23:38):
Character what it's all about. And you can always debate, did they age it at the original Rick Room or the Rick Houses of that accelerator? They take them to their own place and they've been starring them there and then they put 'em

Leo Laporte (02:23:50):
Together.

Richard Campbell (02:23:53):
This is all relatively recent. So for this to be a 23 year old, they didn't get by it [02:24:00] raw. They had already been at whatever distill was

Leo Laporte (02:24:03):
Possible. They haven't been around that long. Yeah, yeah. Haven't

Richard Campbell (02:24:06):
Been around that long. But you see the mechanisms taking place to slowly assemble a team to start making a new whiskey. And heck, they may even be doing it, but considering they're not going to want to talk about it at a minimum three years to be able to make anything. But really it's eight years.

Leo Laporte (02:24:22):
So if I started today and I got a bunch of mash and whatever else did you, and I did my thing, [02:24:30] you'd say it's probably at least three and more likely seven years before you'd get a bottle of something.

Richard Campbell (02:24:37):
Yeah. Scottish, the Scottish whiskey rule say it has to be at least three old to even be called whiskey, and you're probably not be that happy with that product.

Leo Laporte (02:24:45):
I mean, still it in a day. I mean, it doesn't take long to make it. It's the aging, it's the

Richard Campbell (02:24:50):
Thing, right? Yeah. Three days to ferment, a full day to distill, you're going to spend a week getting it to a point where you can put it in a barrel.

Leo Laporte (02:24:59):
Now

Richard Campbell (02:25:00):
[02:25:00] You're doing this for personal consumption, and I do not recommend this for, because this entire practice is highly flammable and people have blown themselves up and not survive the process. If you get small barrels, so you get a five gallon barrel, a five gallon barrel, because the contact ratio of the raw liquor to the barrel is so high will pick up flavor fast. There's a case for you can make whiskey fairly quickly that way. Is it going to be good whiskey? That's an excellent question. [02:25:30] When you talk about buying a used sherry cask, which is 500 gallons is a massive expensive barrel I have to buy from Spain. Your contact ratios are a lot lower, and so now you're talking about eight and 10, 12 years to get the kinds of flavors out of it that you're looking for.

Leo Laporte (02:25:50):
Wow.

Richard Campbell (02:25:52):
And you only laid up one if something goes wrong with that barrel. If it's sours, it's big cracks. Yeah. So you really should buy a dozen. [02:26:00] I know you're looking for a hobby.

Leo Laporte (02:26:02):
Do you shake it up every once in a while, stir it up

Richard Campbell (02:26:06):
When it's the small ones, they recommend that they give it a little term, but when it's the big ones, they're a bit tricky to pick up.

Leo Laporte (02:26:12):
Well, we were at the way, this was a wonderful tour when we were in Kadi, Spain. We went to a sherry producer and it was just wonderful to go to the barrel house. And I think they do turn them, but they have a whole, I mean, there's row upon row of [02:26:30] giant barrels. It's really very cool. And he said they put, the older ones are on top, so it's easier to get to the younger ones.

Richard Campbell (02:26:43):
The week of the show of October 18th, I will be in Porto.

Leo Laporte (02:26:50):
Oh, nice. Where

Richard Campbell (02:26:51):
Court is from. So I'll see if it can't arrange

Leo Laporte (02:26:54):
Fun.

Richard Campbell (02:26:56):
One thing I've learned about going to Porto is that 20 year old ports are very [02:27:00] cheap there, so I usually load up the bag with those. But

Leo Laporte (02:27:04):
Yeah, that's a decent age. That's old enough.

Richard Campbell (02:27:07):
Nothing wrong with a 20. Nothing

Leo Laporte (02:27:08):
Wrong with a 20. Yeah. Very, very nice.

Richard Campbell (02:27:16):
The story I discovered this week, just having a few drinks of the old Perth 23 and finding out where it really came from.

Leo Laporte (02:27:22):
Yeah, I think that's part of the fun of it, isn't it? It's not just a,

Richard Campbell (02:27:27):
It's true

Leo Laporte (02:27:27):
Wine too. It's about the story [02:27:30] of it.

Richard Campbell (02:27:31):
And then again, now these days I get a chance to share that story.

Leo Laporte (02:27:35):
Yeah, that's right. Very nice. Well, thank you as always, Richard, for your stories of the old good old days. I think I have a picture of some Sherry barrels here. Lemme see if I can, I was looking for 'em. They're big. They're big. This was a wonderful producer in Spain and [02:28:00] we got to taste it and Oh, it was incredible. Yeah. Here's one of the barrel rooms and you can see, see there's Ana beautiful stuff. Oh, that's the earliest stages of it. And then it gets older and older as time goes

Richard Campbell (02:28:26):
By. Time goes by

Leo Laporte (02:28:29):
And darker and darker. [02:28:30] Just like

Richard Campbell (02:28:30):
Whiskey One barrel kind of place, huh?

Leo Laporte (02:28:33):
Oh my goodness, my goodness. It was, I guess they're a big producer. I don't know. But by the time we got to the old stuff, delicious and I can imagine using that barrel. Then after you take the sherry out of it for a whiskey, you'd have something. Well, thank you Mr. Richard Campbell. He is in Almar Netherlands next week. Where will you be?

Richard Campbell (02:28:59):
Either Coquitlam [02:29:00] or Deer Park? Not really sure. It's going to be the final days of the move, so I might be camping in the old place or setting up in the

Leo Laporte (02:29:06):
New. All right, well, it's back to Canada anyway, but the easiest way to find Richard is to go to run his radio.com. That's where his podcasts run his radio.net rocks live, and of course here every Wednesday for Windows Weekly. Mr. Ott is@ott.com, T H U R R O, TT and subscribe. You get Thro Premium, you get all of that extra content. Some of it made it [02:29:30] into his books, the Field Guide to Windows 10, field Guide to Windows 11, and the newest Windows everywhere, which is kind of about the history of Windows through the developer's eye. Is that an accurate way to describe it, Paul? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:29:46):
It sounds like the type of thing that would not be of interest in non-developers, really. It's, but it's

Leo Laporte (02:29:51):
Just really good stuff. Microsoft

Paul Thurrott (02:29:53):
Responded to whatever was happening in the world at the time and Windows became different.

Leo Laporte (02:29:57):
Yep. Windows everywhere. [02:30:00] All you needs do is go to lean pub.com and you can set your own price and get a copy of it. We do Windows Weekly every Wednesday right around 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern, 1800 U T C. Our summertime is not for two months, but I know some of you are going, or rather, we don't leave it for two months. We're still in summertime. Some of you'll leave it sooner. I will always give the UTC time so you can figure out what time to listen if you want to watch live. [02:30:30] The live stream is at twit tv slash live. There's audio and video there. If you're watching Live Chat Live, IRC is open to all at irc twit tv. You can use your browser. You can also, if you're a member of the club, join us in our club Twit Discord. We'd love to see you there after the fact. Everybody can get a copy of the show ads supported at twit tv slash ww. There's also a YouTube channel devoted to Windows Weekly. Best way to get it subscribed, and you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. [02:31:00] Use your favorite podcast player and you'll be set. That's it for our show today. Thank you for being here, and we'll see you next week on Windows Weekly. Bye-bye.

Scott Wilkinson (02:31:11):
Hey there, Scott Wilkinson here In Case you hadn't heard, home Theater Geeks is Back. Each week, I bring you the latest 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 [02:31:30] Club twi, 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.