Windows Weekly 882 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.

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Windows Weekly. I should warn you right from the start there's no Hall Oates in this show, there's just Paul and Richard. But they are in Seattle for Microsoft Build 2024. And boy, what a bunch of announcements. We'll start with the Surface PC announcements and talk about Co-Pilot Plus PC and then talk about well, you know, it's just a ton of stuff New Windows, new everything Coming up next on Windows Weekly. You don't want to miss this one. Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is Twit.

00:41
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thorada and Richard Campbell, episode 882, recorded Wednesday, may 22nd 2024. The Hall Oates story. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show where we cover the latest news from Microsoft, and we are in. Well, they are in Seattle Washington for the Big Build Conference. Left Shark here Richard Campbell from RunAsRadiocom, right Shark Paul Thurott from Thurottcom, and you're in the same physical space together. Is that uncomfortable at all for you?

01:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, that's nice, it's kind of fun. You know We've been bombing around different locations in Seattle and, you know, generally causing trouble Having a good time. Yay, there's a Mary Jo Foley around here somewhere. No, she's in the air now.

01:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, she's gone yeah.

01:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's too bad. I was hoping she might peek her head through that curtain behind you. Yeah, that would be great. I was going to ask her to actually but that would be fun.

01:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
A lot of people leaving today.

01:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, as soon as the keynote was over, basically. So I'm running a podcasting space here. I know I'm losing a couple of my podcasters tomorrow morning too.

01:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, microsoft kind of kicked things off with that surface announcement on Monday. Build officially opened yesterday, keynotes yesterday and today. And then what the great?

02:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
abyss.

02:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, there's talks until the afternoon tomorrow but it depends on what you want to go to right. Keeping of nothingness, yeah, yeah, just such okay, so it's.

02:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
so we can today, at this event we call windows, weekly, summarize the totality of a bill. Why don't we start at the beginning with Monday's surfacy announcements and this new Copilot Plus PC? I know, by the way, that there's a space after Plus, but not before it, so I'm thinking they pronounce it. You can tell me?

02:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Copilot Plus PC, pc yeah, not Copilot Plus PC. That is one of the many confusions that we will discuss, because you know there's a lot of fog of war to this. Yeah, that is one of the many confusions that we will discuss, because you know, there's a lot of fog of war to this?

02:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you wonder if the product is just Copilot Plus.

02:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are you sure the fog of war is not the Klana Kilty. I mean, I'm just asking.

03:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I haven't whiskeyed that hard this week yet I think Paul has. I got out early last night. Did you see the dive bar we ended up in last night? Well, the tavern you started at. I left from there and went to write my piece. Yeah, so a quarter quarter quarter quarter.

03:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What's the word I'm looking for? A block away, a block, thank you. We went to this little dive bar. It was about as seedy as you could be. There was a shaman who walked in with a staff with a human skull on the top of it. Oh my God.

03:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's excellent. It got weird Too bad. So you're drinking some thick blue liquor, you know if that happened.

03:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They, despite the look of this place, could make a paper plane. Oh Paper airplanes.

03:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
the look of this place could make a paper plane the cocktail.

03:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And Tatooine milk. It sounds like yes.

03:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It got weird.

03:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And you ran into a funny looking guy with long hair it looks like I'm looking at your Insta here.

04:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep. That's not the wizard.

04:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I didn't get a picture of the shaman Ia here.

04:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, that's not the wizard. No, I didn't get a picture of the shaman. I was afraid I didn't want to steal his soul this is clearly later in the evening.

04:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, somebody's more enthusiastic about this photo than others. He loved it Be quiet.

04:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a former twin employee, Alex Gumpel, who's now working in the TV station across from the space he works.

04:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, is that Cologne? Yeah, we were right across the street almost from there and up the street from his apartment, nice.

04:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, funny. What I thought was fascinating about the whole Co-Pilot Plus PC is like it's like they're afraid to say Windows on R yeah.

04:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, they not really mention that Well they mentioned the Snapdragon Elite right.

04:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They don't want people to think of it like that. I guess so because it has not gone well the previous times they've attempted it. There's some bad vibes to it.

04:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Here's the thing. So in the history of Windows, obviously there's been different ways to differentiate different versions. Whatever you know, we've had product SKUs for a long time NT Workstation, nt Server, yep, windows XP Home, windows XP Professional right, we still have Home and Pro today. We went off the rails for a while with many product additions for a few versions, but so there's that We've also had these kind of specialty versions of Windows right, like Media Center Edition, tablet PC, ultra Mobile PC, whatever. Media Center center edition, tablet pc, ultra mobile pc, whatever. So media center, yeah, I mean.

05:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So co-pilot plus pc I there's a lot of questions, you know. I I mean just feels to me like they're trying to force arm into existence and so, wrapping it in a co-pilot blanket, they think it's going to be better it's also a strangely limiting way to roll out exciting new features, because you have to.

05:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's going to be a 24h2.

05:51
Actually there's going to be two 24h2s, but let's not get too convoluted here yet yeah, and when you get a co-pilot plus pc, you will get 24h2 with additional co-pilot plus PC features that will never be made available to anyone else, and this is why I'm still trying to reconcile this to my brain, but I guess I'm going to say my educated guess at this point is that this will play out like Media Center and tablet PC. In the beginning you're going to have to buy a special kind of pc to get this stuff right and then at some time it's gonna be on everything.

06:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
yeah they'll just roll it into one, and part of that's going to be. The hardware is going to advance, so everybody's going to have that that's right.

06:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, exactly, that's just guessing, because they're not going to talk about that.

06:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, and like there's a question of could we get a snapdragon on a motherboard and build a?

06:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
pc with it. Oh, that is like I said. There are many questions. That is absolutely one of them, although not that Qualcomm has ever done socketed Snapdragon.

06:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's always been SoC directly on the board. Yep, this is a new world. We don't know, but the fact that Asus is making a machine gives me the possibility that Asus might make a motherboard.

07:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I don't know how these systems differentiate from each other internally, right, I think it was eight or nine of the top PC makers and Microsoft are all making their own computers based on this platform. Is there some common component to all of the motherboards and then some additional stuff that some companies are doing? We don't know yet, it just happened, we'll see. Anyway, this event was built, or a lot of people expected this event to be a Surface event, basically. Obviously, it was kind of a I guess we'll call it the Copilot Plus PC launch event. It was only Qualcomm, intel and AMD will eventually release chipsets, so we'll allow pcs to be called co-pilot plus pcs, basically. So I guess the ultra doesn't qualify. It does not. Interesting, yeah, so that the the differentiated there. The problem for the core ultra is the mpu, right, right, so the mpu has to deliver at least 40 tops to qualify that one. I think it was 13 tops, if I'm not mistaken. The Qualcomm current chipset is 45 tops. Intel has already said we will have a 40.

08:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, actually it's not even a Moore's Law problem. This is just a fabbing problem. Make a better fab you'll do good.

08:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So both AMD and Intel will deliver by the end of the year. We'll get to a bit of that in a moment, but for now, the first gen, the launch lineup is all Qualcomm-based, right, and it's pretty good support there, right? I mean, I think the first gen Qualcomm. Maybe there were two PC makers at the launch. There was only one decent PC based on the most recent chipset to date, which was Lenovo, I think X13, I believe.

08:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They did also mention the Snapdragon for devs, a little mini PC unit that thing's looking good.

08:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I think I'd like one of those. I do too. That might become my office, my home office computer. Just coming into this, I will say there was a lot of secrecy on Microsoft's part, for some reason. Well, I get it, but they provided the press with a bill of materials that did not include anything related to Windows at all, which was very notable. And then we showed up on Monday and they kind of revealed it to a room full of people, which they did not live stream. So we were all allowed to kind of live tweeted or whatever we did, right, um, and then they have. Then they, at the end of the event, announced to the world what they had done. And then, um, I think, well, no, I know you can. Well, no, I know you can, you can go watch the video now if you want to see the event and you've ordered one. Yeah, I ordered one, I literally. You sent me the screenshot. Yusuf Mehdi is up on stage and he says and you can pre-order it now at servicecom. Yeah, I thought. I'm sure there were people who thought I was joking when I said I was going to.

09:58
So the two Microsoft devices look good. I mean, they're as expected, right? No surprises there. The third-party PCs that they announced, you know very in quality I would say these are premium PCs, all of them. The base price is technically, I think, $999, but the cheapest one I'm aware of is an Acer Swift, which is $1050, I think. To start, minimum specs 16 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage, not enough of either? Yeah, and those are tied to the requirements of the onboard SLMs, of which there are up to 40. I know, it's just crazy. What's an slm? What an onboard small language model beyond device. Okay, okay, um, yeah, this is a weird thing. And then we'll get into some of the features. But one of the big ones, one of the controversial ones, also has its own pretty heady storage requirements. Yeah, so this is part of the differentiation and probably part of the excuse slash reason why they're not just giving it to everyone, because, well, because of all reasons, actually, I just remembered one. I have a little list of the people that Microsoft upset yesterday, the other day, and I forgot one of them. I'll just add that they upset everybody, but we'll get to that.

11:27
So, yeah, hour-long event, um, a bunch of ai features, like we expected. The big question we had wanted to answer was would this be enough to trigger a round of upgrades the likes of which we've not seen? Yeah, everybody needs to buy a new machine. Yeah, and I'm I'm going to say it is the goal. Yeah, I don't think they met that bar personally. They didn't show off software, they just gave you a lot of promises. Well, they showed off some features. This stuff is hard. I think you were the one who originally kind of said you know, ai is not a there's no killer app. There's a bunch of small things and, depending on your needs, depending on who you are, depending on the types of things you use a PC for, you might have seen something in that event where you're like oh, I have to get this thing right. And I think for people who are creatives, this might be of interest.

12:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Road Warriors, obviously, for the battery life, because there is just two things right there is the co-pilot features, but it's also Windows on ARM, which is battery life efficiency, quiet and a lack of drivers.

12:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
If you have anything esoteric, yeah, and what software will like.

12:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Look from the if somebody asks you, you're going to do a NET Rocks on Windows, on ARM. It's like it's going to be a two-minute show. It's like it runs.

12:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Thanks very much. Years ago it would have been, I guess, 2017 or whenever they announced the first version of this for 10. I said, you know, if this thing is successful, it will just be the most boring release in the history of mankind. Because it should just work. There should be no drama. I think they're mostly going to meet that bar, but there are always those people who have specialized devices of whatever kind.

13:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, it's a great question when you talk about that device which is like how do I print.

13:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, well, that stuff's all built in the basics, right, yeah, which should meet most people's needs. But, yeah, if you have a crazy 3D printer with specific software or whatever it might be, yeah, a scanner.

13:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, there's a number of things where you're going to bump into some issues. Yeah.

13:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But issues, yeah, yeah, but you know they're shooting for the mainstream with the first version and I think I think it's there for that audience. Um, I I actually do believe that the efficiency stuff, battery life, the relative silence we're going to get to that um will really appeal to people. That people have maybe looked over at the macbook air a little bit and uh said, you know, I I kind of like some of the stuff that's going on there. I'd like that Windows maybe.

13:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
One of the things the MacBreak Weekly team pointed out is these do have fans. I mean, how quiet are they?

13:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so I have good news there. I mean, the bad news is yeah, they have fans. By the way, they all have fans. This is 100% across the board. It's a personal embarrassment to me that I never thought to ask qualcomm or anybody about this.

14:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not just yesterday, but before yesterday, I spent five hours from the airs that they're emulating have no fans, so they really are silent. They don't get hot either yeah.

14:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So here's the thing. Um, the good news is I rrout, who formerly of Intel, who is now a partner in kind of an analyst firm, was commissioned by Microsoft to discover what was really going on with these computers and compare them to the Surface laptop for the tests, compared it to the previous gen Surface laptop and also to the MacBook Air M3. And I've known Ryan forever. I trust him as much as you can trust any human being. He's reliable.

14:55
This thing either kicked the crap out of or basically broke, even with the MacBook Air, on everything, almost everything. The one weird one was using Chrome. The web browser native version was more efficient on the Mac, but I think part of that has to do with it's been around for a long time and the Windows version is not. Also, this falls into that category we had talked about before, where it doesn't have to actually beat the thing, it just has to kind of play the game. You know, be in the ballpark, right, and it is in the ballpark, like you know. You know, no one's gonna sit there and look at chrome back and forth and say, wow, it's uh, loading those web pages 0.001 seconds somebody will, but we're just going to ignore them because they're silly, that's not.

15:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look, people buy it. People are shopping for Mac OS or Windows, yeah. And then they say okay, I'm a Mac guy, what hardware is there? I'm a PC guy, what hardware is there? They might say, I like the MacBook Air. What's comparable in a PC? And this would be fine.

16:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think there actually is a market of people who have had bad experiences on Windows and are starting to look around. There's a big market. This is an opportunity. Yeah Well, that's what I mean. This is an opportunity for Microsoft. Save them. We know you want these qualities that you like to see in the Mac. Do we have them over here?

16:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't think it has to beat it in benchmarks. It has to be comparable.

16:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah Well, as it turns out, it beats them a bit, it's much faster, but then you also question benchmarks full up anyway.

16:34
No, no, but that was the point of my. Conversations with Ryan over the past couple of days were very enlightening. In fact, I'm probably going to do an interview with him as soon as I can so he can kind of just you can all hear it from him, um, but he also has just sort of real world anecdotal experiences and he's like I never ran into any issues. So if you look at a macbook air and you close the lid and look at the very back of it, you'll see there's a, there's an area to vent heat at the back. It doesn't vent heat through the bottom, which is is one of the problems on a lot of PCs, because if you want to put it on a soft surface like a bed or a couch or something, that gets sealed off the battery kicks in, you get that funnel effect.

17:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, your CPU gears down. Yeah, all those things.

17:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The laptops. These laptops all do have fans. The Surface devices at least I can't speak to the third-party devices Very, very quiet. The Surface laptop, the one they're comparing to the MacBook Air and my God, did they compare it to the MacBook Air? Right? Someone should make a clip of just them saying MacBook Air, and I bet they said it 150 times.

17:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Once was a time where they never said their competitor's product name, and now they're saying it too much.

17:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We a time where they never said they're competitive. Now they're saying it too much. We get it. You want to beat this thing. Anyway, it bends exactly the same way as the MacBook Air. It does not have that problem. It's going to be fine. He has the DBA measurements under load, not under load, etc. He said this thing is silent. It does have a fan.

18:04
Fan that thin, it's got have a fan it does have a fan Fan that thin, like it's got to make noise. So, macbook or Mac people, apple people, will appreciate the comparison. As to the MacBook Pro and most of those people will tell you because it has a fan fans. Yeah, it comes on sometimes obviously in the load, but it's very quiet, yeah, and it's apparently landing in that area, okay. So very quiet, very, very quiet. So that's good.

18:26
I was not happy when I discovered this, for, whatever it's worth, I went into that showcase they had. Afterwards I picked up the laptop, I looked under it, I looked all around it. You don't see any dots or vents or anything. I'm like nice and I just presumed it was solid. I walked out of there and I thought it was no, no fan, and I was wrong. So that's.

18:46
You know that this is the thing I've been talking about, I think, for seven, eight, whatever months. You know, I'm waiting for that shoe to drop. I'm waiting for that day when some bad news comes out and ruins the whole thing. And we got right up to the launch day and I finally got that bad news and it was the fan and it did have that moment of doubt for me. But I think it's fine, I think it's going to be fine. It doesn't seem like that bad of news really. Yeah, yeah and yeah. But it was that kind of scary moment, right. It was like, oh, come on, really, you're going to ruin this on the day it launches. So, yeah, okay, so we should talk about recall, which is the controversial feature. Oh, so Microsoft Recall is a feature that will only be made available on these PCs, right? Copilot plus PCs. Well, it requires the minimums for a copilot. It is going to suck up a lot of storage space. I think the minimum is 25 gigabytes. You can configure it to do different amounts based on the storage you have. Obviously, it will stop doing it if you use up all the storage, etc, etc. It's opt-in, it's all on device. There's nothing going to the cloud or off the PC ever. It's protected by BitLocker, full disk encryption and this new Windows Hello biometric technology, ess, that they've announced for 24H2.

20:11
I get that people don't trust Microsoft. You are talking to someone who has, or I am talking, I guess, but you are looking at someone or hearing someone who very much does not trust Microsoft in some ways. But the way this was presented and the way they've described it and there's a lot of good information about it. I don't see any issues from a privacy perspective, but I also knew, as soon as they started talking about it, because I know my audience and especially guys in europe or whatever, where I was like, oh man, people are gonna freak over this. And the bbc published a very incendiary and, I think, a responsible article in the guise of let's let everyone just, you know, microsoft says it's no problem. And here's an insane person ranting about all the stupid things that could happen, with no evidence whatsoever, and apparently he didn't even look at the announcement because he has no idea how it works. And, um, you know, like privacy nightmare, no, like, and it isn't, it isn't, it just isn't. It doesn't mean that things can't go wrong. You know, obviously bugs, whatever, but the technologies they're using to protect this data are well understood.

21:12
I've been around for decades, proven, um, uh, do you trust Microsoft? That's up to you. If you don't, here's an idea. Don't enable it, yeah, it's going to turn it on. It's offered to you during setup and you have full controls in the system through the settings afterwards to you get, yeah, and you know, look, we all have things maybe that we do on our computers. It might be embarrassing. You can pause it. You can turn it off for specific apps, you can turn it off for specific websites. Those things will never be captured.

21:50
It's impossible for this thing to happen and for there not to be worries and complaints and freakouts, and I get that. This has been a sad but predictable overreaction. It reminds me of when they put Cortana on the PC, because we had Cortana on the phone, but not that many people had those phones. But when they moved it into Windows 10, I started getting people freaking out because they ran Cortana and said this thing wants access to my calendar. Like, yeah, it's a personal assistant. It has to have that. If you don't trust it for that, you can't use the product. That's what it's for. Yeah, and this is that, but maybe exponential Extra dumb, yeah, yeah.

22:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, just to recap, all the concern was oh, it's exfiltrating everything I do to Microsoft. It doesn't, it can't, it can't and it does not. It stays on device, right, all on device. And even if it, didn't?

22:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
it's encrypted. Yeah, I kind of would like a copy to be backed up to the cloud for me. Yeah.

22:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So yeah, by the way, don't be surprised if that happens. I met the guy who designed this feature and you'll be fascinated to know that my concern was that it wasn't full featured enough. Yeah, so here, full-featured enough. Well, for example, they're actually very serious about this, right? So let's say, you reset your PC For some reason, you have to go back to the default. That's all blown away, it's gone. There's no way to. Oh, you lose the recall volume, even on the device. You can't bring it with you. Wow, right, they're not doing anything screwy here. If anything, like you said, I, you might want that now. Granted this. That's a lot of data to go back and forth. We have ways to trickle that stuff. Yep and uh, yeah, I think multi-device recall is going to have to be a thing at some point.

23:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, people are going to want that, and I think they. But I think you're also smartly doing a minimum product now. Yeah, so the customers will ask for it that's right.

23:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and that's the thing they're going to get feedback and um will see. And, by the way, this feature's in preview. It's not even fully formed, even Copilot today, or what are we a year and a half into this on Windows? No, not that long, I'm sorry. Maybe nine months into Windows, it's still technically a preview.

23:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But it does feel like they're starting to deliver stuff. There was a lot of announcements of product, not ideas. That's right.

24:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so interesting stuff there's a lot of in all the expected places. There are ClipChamp features coming that will take on the MPU Photos app features right for all the expected things. And they did some really neat little consumery kind of demos of those features. They're all fairly obvious.

24:28
I think that my little concern here other than the issue I brought up earlier about why we're delivering it in this fashion is, I think we all expected to some degree that some AI features would be made available more broadly and that maybe it would work best this way. But if you have a GPU, you could still use it. Or if you had a CPU only, it would still work, but it would be slow. And they've clearly drawn this line where, look, we have this. Whatever list of premium AI features, these are going to require this kind of a device, very limited to Qualcomm right now.

25:08
I don't think this is going to blow the world away right away, but in the fall and for the holiday selling season, amd and Intel will have their chips and all the PC makers will support them, and with more devices, and then it's game on and we'll see. But we're still talking about I think Intel's wildest estimate was, within one year, 40 million what they call AI PCs, which includes a bunch that don't qualify for this Copilot Plus thing, which is not great. It's not a lot in the span of 1.4 or 1.5 billion Windows PCs in the world. Right, this is a slow boil, yeah, so I mean that's and, by the way, I think they hope it's going to go faster, but you know, but they're not, they know it's not, and, and that's the thing I, I know so many people at microsoft and also pc makers, and I think to a one, as you have these kind of private conversations, like you know, it's gonna, it's gonna take a while it trickle, and you know, we'll see how it goes.

26:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I just wonder about you know companies are going to roll over machines, right Like I'm going to go tap my IT connections and say, like how many of your employees are now asking?

26:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
for these machines? Yep, it's going to be very interesting because the hardware support is going to be everything. This is, yeah, and this is what I think. Something you and I kind of debate a little bit is what's the hurdle to get people or companies in this case to move to an arm based yeah. And how does it behave with active directory? Yep, I will say for that recall feature, it's fully controllable by it. With policy, it doesn't matter if you're using the entry ID or the I almost called it. Activate MSA, yeah, or Intune, right. Right, it can be managed. So if you want to roll out these PCs, whether they're Intel or ARM-based, and you don't want your users to ever see those features, you can turn them off. Interesting, yeah, and you don't want your users to ever see those features, you can turn them off Interesting.

27:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, what about the? So there's a compatibility? Layer right, I mean the issue for me with Windows and ARM was always well, I mean, when I first tried it, there were even Microsoft like the calculator wouldn't work, so I presume that all the microsoft apps are native leo, I'm excited to announce that calculator now works in windows 11 but I mean, what is the percentage of native apps, and how well does this simulation layer work? So that's going to.

27:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
obviously that's going to vary by people and what the apps they use, right? So microsoft put up pictures. I will say it's very interesting how many of these companies are supporting Windows on ARM right away. We had the announcement from Affinity today the guys, Affinity Photo, etc. Which is the app I use.

27:58
Adobe had a big announcement their whole product suite is going over to ARM. Obviously, all the web browsers, their office, is fully native on ARM. This is going to be a lot like the driver issue. Most mainstream users probably exist in a very normal mainstream space and most of those will have mostly native experiences. People like us are going to have esoteric problems. We're going to be the problems, but the good news is not so much for drivers but for software is they have a new emulator, um, that is dramatically more performant and like I'd like to benchmark something like autocad, because I'm going to presume they're not going to try and implement and this is another uh area for ryan shrub, because that's something he tested and he he said honestly, this is again.

28:43
It's like the Chrome thing. Yeah, would it technically underperform Chrome on Mac by some percentage that you can see in a benchmark? Yes, but in real world use, just using it. You don't think about it, it's fine, it works, it's fine.

28:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But that was key to Apple's transition from Intel was they had Rosetta to. In fact, they didn't call it an emulator. They call it a compatibility layer, which is nicer, and it worked and it made the transition very painless. So it sounds like Microsoft's doing this same thing.

29:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's exactly right and, by the way, you can go watch that presentation. If you pay attention, you will see. I don't remember who said it, but one of the people on stage said the word Rosetta without any context whatsoever, and I remember thinking to myself I'm sitting in a room with whatever a couple hundred people maybe, and I might be one of three who understood what he meant by that, because he just flew through it. It was like a very quick reference and it was one of, like I said, 150, 200 references to Apple Mac book back repair, and then Rosetta was one of them. And Rosetta was one of them. They couldn't stop comparing themselves to Apple over and over again. It was a little pathological.

29:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We get it.

29:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then the other thing that came up, I think a listener said does this mean a transition, like Apple's, away from Intel? To which I replied as long as there is a guy in Bengal who's selling dotis on the street using Windows, that he will be supported, right, I mean, you're never going to dump Intel PCs. Well we're going to get to Intel.

30:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We're going to get to Intel because there is a whole story there which is rather insane. Okay, but I would just say.

30:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's after the break. Yeah, rather insane, okay, but I would just say that's after the break.

30:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah yeah. The official company line is that we are going to look, we're going to have PCs from now. We have three different well, two architectures, really, three microprocessor makers. By the way, this time next year we're probably going to have five or seven because a bunch of companies's going to be others.

30:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Qualcomm had an exclusive, but I guess not.

30:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so here's the deal. Look, there are always going to be workloads for lack of a better term that are going to just kind of be better or only possible on an Intel or whatever x86 computer, gaming PCs, right, obviously, certain workstation class devices, et cetera, certain workstation class devices, et cetera, people who have very specific needs for hardware and or software that you know, whatever runs very well in that stuff. We cannot add a discrete GPU to one of these systems. So if you want the NVIDIA graphics, which they are highly optimized not just for games but for just the AI workloads in a workstation type scenario, that's still going to be a better option for a while.

31:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's exactly Apple's situation, right they?

31:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
don't have discrete gpus anymore it's gone right. Right, and that's, I would say, is the one. It's not an achilles heel, because most people don't need it, but it is the one little niggling concern, I think, for a lot of people like, oh man, but but wouldn't it be nice, like this machine richard has here has a discrete gpu, it's an rtx I can feel it heating up my hand over there.

31:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's how you know it's working and you know so but the M1234, they all have the GPU on the stock.

31:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right, right, well, and so does the Qualcomm chipset, obviously.

31:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But it just means there's no flexibility. It is what it is. I mean near as I can tell we talked about this there's I can tell, we talked about this, there's only one Snapdragon X. They've binned the different versions of it.

32:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That is everyone's feeling. I don't think you're going to get them to admit to that, but yes, of course there are different cores. The GPU is consistent, if I'm not mistaken across all of them.

32:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think it just means if the GPU fails, they scrap the chip and I could be wrong about that.

32:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know the MPU is 100% the same on each.

32:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, there are different core voltages, you know performance versus efficiency, and that's very Benny yeah Kind of behavior. Someone told me that these were certain revs.

32:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think these are. He said it was 22 watt part, Like that's so low. Yeah, you series, Intel is typical. There's a range now but typically was landed at about 15 watts. The P series they had briefly, for two gens 28 watts, and then the eight shares, high-end chips, higher-end chips, were 56 watts on the Intel side. Actually, I mean Intel goes down to probably eight, but on a U or whatever that does explain the fan.

32:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, these aren't super low power.

33:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah. So someone might look at this and say, well, does that mean that to get the performance of an m3 they had to amp up the wattage slash performance enough that you needed the cooling that to be active? And yeah, I mean, I guess it does right.

33:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But what's okay? Well, when I saw some question, is the downside of that sock design, yeah, is it the npu that's getting hot? Like what's getting hot? Yeah, like one of the things that's interesting when you have discrete is like it's very clearly the GPU, because it's over here.

33:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We know that's where the GPU is. I'm going to guess for most people it's actually just the CPU and it's because it's doing that emulation right, and I think that's why they had to land it a little higher. They're like look, what we want to do is get that u-series level of performance for productivity tasks.

33:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We need to run it a slightly higher because we're emulating right you know, and as you got rid of your emulation software, maybe the fan never kicks on and your pc gets faster in a way.

33:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah it's kind of a you know. Uh, it's the way apple would market it. Yeah, it's like you got a new mac in your mac.

33:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, so we'll see how it really now, you both said you want this qualcomm dev kit. In fact, I'm thinking I should too. This looks pretty sweet and it is the lowest cost way to get this elite and it's a.

34:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a pretty good value for what it is right. So, uh, they had a dev kit for the hcx gen, whatever I remember a year or half ago or not. Whatever it was. This is a based on the Snapdragon X Elite, so it's actually the high-end version of the chip, which I was a little surprised by. You get rid of the battery and you get rid of the screen. Yeah, I know, but I figured they'd go in plus because they want developers to target the lowest-end one, but they didn't.

34:37
32 gigs of RAM, 512 gigs of storage. By the way, these systems don't support Thunderbolt, but they do support USB 4. So it's type C. By the way, these systems don't support Thunderbolt, but they do support USB 4, so it's the same. 40 gigabit gigabytes of data transfer USB C, usb A, ethernet, audio, hdmi for video out, etc.

34:59
One of the many little digs against the MacBook Air was that you can connect up to three external 4k monitors at 60 Hertz. If you have a laptop or one of the portable devices, that means you can have a total of four displays running at one time without having to do anything screwy. So you know, the MacBook is MacBook Air is limited to two and they have a, a stupid mode where you can not use the display but you have to close the lid and you can have two external displays and it's like, guys, come on, but then again most people don't need that, so it's not necessarily a big deal, but you've got to throw it in when you can. This looks like a nice little box $900. I can't see me not getting one of these. Honestly, it's a knock right.

35:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'll experiment it with the Windows on ARM thing for a while, but I suspect I'm just going to load Linux onto it and run that home system. It's going to smoke.

35:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
My first thing, though. I want to get it on a laptop. I just want to make sure it works with devices when I'm at home and I use that Focusrite device to connect the microphone. I want to make sure it works with all the stuff I actually use at my desk. Yeah, I don't have weird requirements.

36:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I would turn that into a home assistant device that has open AI support directly in it and it would, you know, just be a monster for that, probably do image recognition on it for the cameras. It would be an amazing little machine it's got so much torque For for 900 bucks it'd be the best home computer you'd ever had yeah, yeah, I wonder if it must have fans.

36:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I imagine a little bit of a downside but it's got a fan on the side, it'll be in the closet. Yeah, yeah, one of the. I think it was the. What was it? The samsung device has it. They must be vents, but it has these two slits on either.

36:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, one slit on either side you know, I'll take the cover off it and just weld a big old chunk of copper to the top.

36:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We don't need no thinking fan this Samsung device. People were like is that an optical drive? It's like no.

36:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So when can I buy this?

36:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So you can preorder these, all the devices, now, at least the Surface devices, I think. Everyone, though, and everything's up here.

37:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I just pre-ordered one of those.

37:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, oh you did On the Microsoft site.

37:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, no, no, the pre-order comes from Qualcomm for that little NUC device, and it's not really a pre-order, it's a let us tell you when you can buy one. Okay, so just name and email address.

37:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
All the laptops it will be, we'll find out?

37:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, they will be. They're all coming out that day. I don't know if you noticed this when we were at the tavern last night, but Jared had one. Yeah, I know.

37:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, I've already heard from three PC makers. They're all having events that day. Okay, so they're all they're showing.

37:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, the one I'd get with the 32 gigs and the terabyte.

37:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But that's why this dev kit looks so good. It's, you know, half that.

37:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right. And the Surface laptop, when you put it head-to-head with the MacBook Air, price-wise comes in at about $200 under MacBook Air.

37:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Interesting, yeah, you know doesn't sound like an accident.

37:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, considering their fixation, yeah, so to get Prism and all of these features, prisms, the emulation area I have to have 22, 24 h2 is that?

38:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
is yeah, so they will ship with 24h2, okay, and the co-pilot plus specific features on top of that. Um, 24h2. I, lauren, my the guy, right? So news just contacted me a little while ago and said hey, 24h2 just went to the release preview and there you go. That's how that happens, right? So I, we, I believe everyone's going to get 24h2 in a couple weeks or a month or whatever it is. You know how they do things now. So it'll be some Tuesday of some month in the near future, but they're also going to update this thing over the course of the year. So when October comes, we'll be talking about 24H2 again.

38:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But this is the Win 11 24H2. It's not going to be a Win 10 24H2? Say again.

39:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Is there going to be a win 10 24 h2 paul? No, uh, no, they're going to keep on I think they're going to stand 24. Yeah, I don't know they'll add well, that's what they said. I mean, look it's windows they make stuff up.

39:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know, stuff just happened. We'll find out. I'm keeping a win 10 machine around just for the delight. Yeah, I am too actually.

39:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, same thing um, yeah, in fact I I just looked at it the other day to update it and I, you know, when I did all those updates on the whatever last tuesday I guess and I looked at I always look at do a winver and I'm like 22h2, how is this still on 22h? I'm like, oh right, that's windows 10, that's yeah, they're, they're stick, they're sticking to 22h2 all right, I want to find out more uh about this.

39:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh right, I want to find out more uh about this uh furor.

39:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You say everyone was mad. So everyone is mad. Microsoft managed to pee off everybody. It's awesome. It's incredible. We're gonna just take skill and stay like dark satya stay tuned.

40:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
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41:52
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42:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Microsoft, in their own special way, managed to really make everyone upset on Monday. It's amazing and I will say you know, if you watch the event, it was very surface heavy. I had heard from multiple PC makers before this event that they were invited there, that this was not a surface event, it was really about this platform and they were all doing it and we're all going to get equal billing. And then you sit through it and you're like what happened? And at the end it was like a throwaway, like here's a table full of other computers, all right, thank you, good night. You know, like, and there was a showcase. We went into which giant room with all the computers and it's. It was all surface computers. It was like a, it was like a Microsoft store full of surface computers.

43:25
And I'm walking through it and walk and I'm walking and I finally run into someone I know on the other end of this and I said what's going on with the? You know, with all this, like you guys have this little nook, you know, and it's all surface stuff. And this person said you have no idea how bad. I said it was like 60-40 split and it wasn't, it was 60-20-20. They said walk another 10 feet and there's more surfaces on the other side of us. They squeezed them in the middle in this tiny little area and they all had like two computers each and it was like this nothing, little. Why would we even bother doing that? Well, I could tell you, because two, three, three, three different people from PC Makers expressed their shock at the difference between what they were told was going to happen. And then you arrive and it's all one sided. You're not going up on stage, we're going to do videos from the CEOs, and it was all surface and no one was happy about that.

44:20
First, pc makers were very upset about their treatment. They were there to be part of this and they were really not. And not tell them until they arrived. Yeah, the worst one of all was Intel. Intel had people on site.

44:34
I had two sources tell me the same story. They're on site, they get badges from two different. I had two sources tell me the same story. They're on site, they get badges, they're ready. They were going to present on Monday.

44:40
On Monday, microsoft's like yeah, we're not doing that anymore. They took their badges away and asked them to leave. Walk them out of the building. Yep, Holy man, they were really mad. I can't imagine why released that day saying hey, we're doing this too. And oh, by the way, this other company says they got a couple of pc makers making a couple of devices. We have all the pc makers making all the devices and we are going to be there in time for the holidays and they, they kind of just took apart each one of the little claims that qualcomm is making and counted it with how much bigger they are. Um, they were not happy. So I never heard anything about amd, but I did notice during the day when keynote at build amd got a couple of shout outs and I'm thinking that might have been enough for them, because they're involved at a different level too with microsoft and having this other stuff going on because they were intel and amd also had chairs in the vip area.

45:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Okay at build, okay interesting yeah, that's really.

45:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean you talk about taking an ally and making an enemy of them.

45:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, that just sounds like bad planning. So if you're not going to put them on, why give them passes in the first place?

45:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Michael, so the issue is like from from the PC makers perspective, these devices are an alternative. They're. They're one of a. They're are an alternative. They're a type of device that has certain characteristics that I think customers are going to like. From Qualcomm's perspective, they're taking on Intel and AMD. They're not taking on Apple this is about them. And Microsoft's like no, this is all about the MacBook Air. And so Qualcomm.

46:13
You would think Qualcomm, the darling of the day, would be happy with everything. They're not, and this is something I haven't gone back and watched. But according to someone I can't tell you, who says they were all sitting there waiting to get the all the Qualcomm stuff and the keynote, they didn't mention the word Qualcomm or Snapdragon until 40 minutes into this event. This was a 60 minute long event. Wow, everything they talked about right now requires their hardware, required this significant investment on their part, and they were like nothing, wow, nothing. We got nothing. Like they couldn't believe it. And, um, they, you know. They put stuff up on screen where it said copilot plus PC, amd, intel, qualcomm, and it's like. They put stuff up on screen where it said Copilot plus PC, amd, intel, qualcomm, and it's like but we're the only ones doing this Right.

47:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And they were upset, and yet they pushed Intel and AMD out. Yep, like, if you're going to go in, like, what side are you on?

47:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
here. Did you see a Qualcomm executive on stage during the event? Not a bit. No, not once. They weren't there either. No, they also managed to upset NVIDIA. Nvidia makes GPUs that vastly exceed the 40 TOPS requirement for this type of PC. They have, I think, a graphics card that does 476 TOPS, which is over 10 times the requirement. Wow, and Microsoft is writing all these features just to a little stupid MPU that does 40 or whatever. And the whole argument there, which, by the way, I've also heard from NVIDIA customers. Right, people have these massive gaming orgs like excuse me, how come I can't get this? I spent $4,000 on this computer. My 4080 should be able to knock this out. Yeah, so it was kind of a unique thing. I thought I'd like the the event and I'm excited about the platform. I'm I, I ordered a computer. I I'm, I like, I love surface and I want that to succeed.

48:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You would have ordered an arm computer, whether they called it co-pilot or not. Yeah, that had nothing.

48:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, of course did you get the laptop or the uh tablet laptop, laptop.

48:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I want to do a direct head-to-head with the macbook air, right, yeah?

48:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
right, because you did yeah, you just did a review of the air, so yeah, yeah yeah so anyway, yeah, there you go.

48:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I walked out of there. I look my weird. The weirdness to me was how much surface there was and how little pc. And then I walked in the showcase. I started hearing from those guys and I was like, okay, this is not good. And then you start, they heard talk to someone from Qualcomm and I'm like, oh, my God, what's going on here? And you know, then NVIDIA pops up. You're like, yep, that's everybody.

48:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
At least an equal opportunity anger.

48:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah Well, the only one that I didn't hear about directly was AMD actually AMD, to my knowledge. I'm sure they were upset, but AMD seems happy, seems to happen, to kind of go along with whatever's happening. It's kind of a different vibe over there, so it's one thing if you say this is a Surface event, it's another thing entirely.

49:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
if you say we're creating a new category of PC called the Copilot Plus PC, that will be made by many people a platform.

49:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It was billed as Microsoft's vision for AI and devices. Wow, somebody blew it.

49:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Somebody blew it big time.

49:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, they forgot to say it was microsoft's vision for ai and microsoft devices. Um, so yeah, it was. I don't know. I I feel like a lot of this happened last second because, like I said, there were guys from intel that were literally like you have to leave it's a lot of this whole week.

49:31
That's been last second, yeah well, look I, at a vague level, without getting into the details, I can kind of understand that. Right, we haven't done this and we've. It's been a while. It's been five years, yeah, since they've done an analyst event. Yeah, there's going to be some learning and relearning. Yes, we'd call it. You know, ignite will probably go a little better. The next bill will probably go a little better still. We'll get there. But angering your partners I know all of them. I mean, that's the thing. Look, you have to go into this knowing Intel was not going to be happy because Qualcomm was ready. And how come we can't wait for the holiday season? What's the difference? You know that kind of thing, but you know, obviously they want to get stuff out in the world as fast as possible.

50:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They wanted this ahead of WWDC. That's what was important to them. But why wouldn't you make Snapdragon super happy? Because they're the ones who delivered you an event, a device, ahead of.

50:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
WWDC. I think for Qualcomm this was also there. We kind of think, in terms of the platform, is this the last-ditch effort for this platform? But I think for Qualcomm is this the last-ditch effort for them Because, like I said, there's going to be a bunch of people competing with them all of a sudden. So maybe we'll see, they'll be some. They've got a head start right now. Oh yeah, a very, very good head start.

50:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah.

50:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But what if there are versions of these things that are fanless next year?

50:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And there will be, you know, I would expect. So Qualcomm is using it's a four nanometer process. They were all samsung. Is they still samsung? Who's fabbing?

50:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
this, you know, yeah tsmc yeah, they moved. They used to every. I think everything they did before this was all samsung, uh, samsung rather um, but I believe they moved to tsmc.

51:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, but they're not getting because apple bought it all up the three node, three nanometer node.

51:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They're getting the which is also classic tim Cook right. He's historically done that Locked up a manufacturing path.

51:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The new story is that, jeff Williams. Their COO is in Taiwan right now locking up the two-nanometer chips from TSMC. So these other guys better find another fab uh, yeah well, there's lots of fabs under construction right now.

51:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The problem is tsmc knows this three nanometer node very well yeah, you hit the real point, which is it's the skilled operators, yeah, and they don't. They don't mysteriously appear, they're not effungible. You have to throw them and train them, and it takes time.

52:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And you know it's also been mutual with Apple. Apple has given them money to invent equipment to EUV process and all this stuff. So it is this synergy which is why TSMC is so nice to Apple. It's a hard thing to get into this business, so there may be competitors, but Qualcomm more than a head start At what point Qualcomm motivated to have China invade Taiwan. Do they have that power? Can they do that?

52:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know, I mean Microsoft, maybe I don't know.

52:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But the good news for Qualcomm is, after years of promising, over-promising and under-delivering, it looks like they finally we said this at the event like, well, we'll see mid-2024 if they can deliver what they've said, and it sounds like they have, I think, by and large they have.

52:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, Like I said, waiting months, I'm waiting for that one. Oh, it's not going to work moment and it hasn't happened. The fan thing is the closest I've gotten to it.

53:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You were waiting for. Their Scarlett Johansson moment is what you were waiting for.

53:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He didn't get the reference. He didn't get the reference. No, I got the reference.

53:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Open AI is having its Scarlett Johansson moment. Well, yeah, literally it is.

53:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Literally Picking the wrong lady to mess with. Yeah, exactly, oh, that's all right, though there are not a lot of people who have backed Disney into a corner ever.

53:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They had Sam Holtzman on stage.

53:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That awkward non being standing shuffler. Yeah, he did a big good appearance. I am not a robot.

53:41
Allman was at the surface event. Yeah, no, he was at the keynote, yeah, and you know, kevin scott asked him the hard-hitting questions about scarlet charlotte johansson. So there you go, that was no, um, so we did not. Uh, no, I mean, of course he did not. You know, I got a like an interesting kind of um awkwardness from both sides of that conversation, where they both need each other very much, yeah, and they don't want to. They really don't wish.

54:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They wish that wasn't true. Yeah, they don't want to make it. Yeah.

54:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, they don't want to make the other one mad.

54:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you know what Does that? Isn't that echoes of Intel and Microsoft for decades?

54:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, my Of course, yeah, yeah, it's a hollow notes story. You know that's what it is. Oh yeah, um, oh, I mean these companies have always kind of hated each other. I mean that's, you know part of the deal, that's, that's you know, that's uh, that you all, you know this friction so that's the downside of the part.

54:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
At this point, though, qualcomm absolutely at least in the pc market needs microsoft. I mean, oh my god, yeah, yeah, I mean uh, qualcomm has a good business in the phones but. But if you want to be in pcs, you need microsoft.

54:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm excited for this thing. I really am. I mean, I've been waiting. You know I want this so bad. I love the MacBook Air, but I want to run Windows and I, you know yeah, I know I could virtualize it on here. I want the actual keyboard that has the right keys and you know, I don't know. So I'm excited for this thing.

55:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've been waiting a long time yeah, and are you excited about the ai part of it? I mean seriously, does that rock your boat?

55:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
excited. Here's the thing. So that recall feature that everyone's so freaking out about, right? I? I think we've all had this experience where we kind of we could actually use this feature. Right, it's the, it's the pc version of. You walk into the kitchen, open the fridge and you stare at it for 30 seconds because you forgot why you were there. And then you're like what am I doing again? And I think, because of the way we do things out in the world, we have web browsers and apps and we have cloud storage, email and there are all these different things everywhere you forget where things are.

55:56
And literally the night before the event, I was trying to find a presentation. And you know, back in the day, when Microsoft tried to solve these problems with Longhorn and file systems and databases, it was all about metadata and the types of things people are not going to do, you know, whereas this just relies on AI to analyze things and you know their examples, I think make sense. You know where's that presentation that had the blue slide with the tree or whatever. You know whatever it is. And then it's like here you go, because this thing's doing.

56:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the first real practical use of AI.

56:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah.

56:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, everybody who talks to me says you know, I don't want to chat with an AI. I don't care if it sounds like ScarJo or not. What I want is the AI to take a bunch of documents and help me understand them, summarize them, search them. That's right, and so I think Recall is actually. I'm even thinking I want this is good, I want Windows.

56:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think this is right. So I think I actually come to think of it. I think you guys were both riding me a couple weeks ago about my whole like file system. Like what was the iPad? Right, the iPad doesn't need a file system, it doesn't need this. And it's like well, it does.

57:19
Because it's of get over that, because I have this anal retentive structure and folders and how I store things, because that's how I help myself remember where things are. I know where I. You know, I often have this thing if I forget something, like I always put my phone in the same place. So if I'm standing somewhere and I'm like where's my phone, I don't know, I don't remember where it is, I just know where I would put it right and that's where I go. So with this type of thing no, I mean, right, that's how my brain works. So with this system, uh, this will help. I think, the majority of people on mainstream and me, but you know, but it's aimed more at the people like really don't think, like I think they just don't think about this stuff. Why would they? And the idea is look, it's the reason we have recents in file experts Like here's the things you've been, that's like that was kind of.

58:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My point is we don't want files and in fact, longhorn that was the idea of Longhorn right, which never emerged. But you're not. You're not going to be document centric, you're going to be task centric, it's. It's kind of what Google promised with Gmail hey, don't worry about categorizing your email search, we'll just search through it and so this is very much like the recall for your whole life, as opposed to Gmail for your email.

58:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There was a. I can't do this, unfortunately I'm so busy right now. You know, obviously we're here and then flying home, and then the day after we get home we're traveling up to New York for like a long weekend. But I'm going to sit down at some point and go over this video of the event again, because there were striking parallels to the past, many of them including lots of references to Windows 8. You know, remember, we're reimagining Windows from the chipset to the, whatever the phrase was that Snowski's always used.

58:56
They said that almost exact same thing yesterday with this and it's like well, do you really want to remind people of that? But also the recall thing, my knee-jerk reaction, well, aside from knowing people were going to freak about it, was this is the problem they were trying to solve with Longhorn. But I think this time they're actually going to do it. You know, I mean, there was a brief moment there where it was like, yeah, this, what was that thing called the database file system, winfs? Yeah, yeah, which disappeared also. Yes, it was like, oh, this is going to make sense, this makes sense. Yeah, it does make sense.

59:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just hard to do.

59:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's hard to do. It showed up somewhere else.

59:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah. It turns out maybe the hard part was not keeping the data. The hard part was finding stuff in the data the needle in a haystack.

59:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And maybe that's what AI is so good at. The recall UI is very reminiscent of that timeline feature that debuted in Windows 10 and then disappeared later, and you get a vibe, like all those things I just said, like you think back to WinFS in Longhorn or you think back to the reimagining of the platform in Windows 8, or the timeline feature for Windows 10, it was like these were ideas that were always good in kind of a vague way, but we didn't have the technology to make it work. But now we do and I think now you see things where you're like, wow, this is reminiscent of something I remember but never worked. And maybe it is AI that puts it over the top.

01:00:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, and speaking as someone who's, you know, knocking on the door of dementia, uh me, uh, you know I'll be right next to you in the hallway standing at the refrigerator. I stand everywhere.

01:00:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I look forward to meeting you. I look forward to meeting you again every day. Who are you?

01:00:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
again. Oh uh, no, I know this cause my mom, because my mom uh has. I didn't even know she had alzheimer's and then the doctor said you know, she has alzheimer's and it's been very progressive. It's fascinating, she's very happy, but she can't make new memories. She has all the old stuff she remembers, but she can't make new memories. And I'm starting to feel like that, like what was the name of that? For some reason I can never remember the name of the kindle scribe. I don't, there's something about it, I just go it's that kindle, the big one, the one you write with. What's that name of that?

01:01:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
and there's certain I looked at that and called him brad. Yeah, why so? Like I only I only know a few people who look like you.

01:01:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're just going to be brad so for us boomers, I don't know, are you a boomer, paul? I don't think you're a boomer no, I'm not, but I'm I'm a boomer. There is a growing market. Uh, and I mean I'm being facetious, but there is a growing market for people, especially because we now have so much data.

01:01:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have 200 000 photos yeah, right, it doesn't matter how, how your brain works. I mean, there's too much data. You're exactly, exactly right. Yeah, it's, you don't have Alzheimer's to any of this. No, like this is a problem for all of us.

01:01:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but I, but I, you know, I bought the limitless pin. You know that's the same idea. By the way, they, they make a something called rewind for the everything that happens.

01:01:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You want a dash cam on your face.

01:01:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You want yeah, it's the right, the personal assistant who leans in. You meet someone at a party and they're like that's Bob, he's from whatever company Like. Bob good to see you again. How's your wife? What's your, how's your wife Stacey doing? You know like, whatever it might be, but you want it to be seamless, still afraid of squirrels world.

01:02:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah well, gordon bell, who just passed, uh, chief scientist at deck, uh, he created digital equipments of computers and so forth. Really brilliant guy. His wife, gwen bell, uh, had alzheimer's many years ago and he created the I can't remember he had a name for it the memetic or something. He used to wear a camera around that every few seconds would take a picture. He had this idea 30 years ago when the technology wasn't there and he but he wanted to record his life and he was very aware of this because of his wife. He wanted to record his life so that he could refer back to it we are. This, to me, may be the single. Yeah, I know ai is going to cure cancer fine, but I want to remember who I met yesterday. This is going to be the single most useful thing AI can do.

01:03:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is what we wanted from a digital agent. This is what an agent does it knows that a conversation about lunch tomorrow makes the calendar items. That's right and the reservation you see little hints in things.

01:03:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, gmail has this feature where it says you asked this question five days ago, never got a response. Perfect, you want to prompt them again? Perfect, right, like you see it everywhere in little bits, you know that's what a real assistant would do, right?

01:03:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A real assistant would remember everything for you, so you didn't have to.

01:03:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was just joking about a guy from so several years ago. I was at an event like this and I'm in the press room and this guy worked for Wagner and some came in and say hey, paul, I just wanted to follow up. You asked a question of whoever yesterday and here's the answer to give you an answer. And I'm staring at him. I just I didn't say anything. He's looking at me. He says what's the matter? And I said are you out of your mind? Let me tell you something. I've been dealing with your company for whatever it was at the time 15 years. I said no one has ever followed up with anything I've asked. I said you're not going to make it here.

01:03:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's not how it works this is not how it works.

01:04:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You're going to be promoted. Your job is to write down what I ask and then ignore it. Yeah, but yeah, that is what you want, right? You actually want that follow-up. I didn't ask the question not to get the answer.

01:04:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And, by the way, RIP Gordon Bell. Really amazing fellow.

01:04:22
I had the pleasure of interviewing him several times. He started the Computer History Museum down the peninsula here, or the Computer Museum, it was called. He was co-founder along with Gwen Bell Just really an amazing fellow who accomplished so much passed away on the 17th. He was in his 90s, I think. Yeah, he was 90. So, yeah, we should mark his passing because he was very, very important in a lot of this stuff, I agree.

01:04:51
Yeah, let me take a break because I want to show you my new PC that I'm very happy with, this portion of Windows Weekly brought to you by HP and Intel and the new HP EliteBook 1040G11. Yes, it has a co-pilot key Really awesome. It's HP's first commercial AI PC. It's got Intel Core Ultra processor designed with AI acceleration to empower your workforce, deliver exceptional performance, battery life and world-class security. And it's available today, which is something to be said for.

01:05:29
Interestingly, hp has done some really smart things with this EliteBook 1040G11. For instance, their SmartSense. They've had this for a while, but I'm blown away. Notice this is not plugged into the battery. I'm plugged into the HDMI, but it's running on battery because SmartSense, which monitors what's going on in the PC, automatically makes adjustments to energy hogging resources, so you get unbelievable battery life. Now they're saying 29 hour battery life. I haven't left it unplugged for 29 hours so I can't verify that, but all I can say is I've left it unplugged for days at a time and this thing works flawlessly, starts right up, it balances the battery, the fan, the processor, everything that's running to let you focus on what you're up to, and the PC, just it's there, it's responsive and it's amazing battery life.

01:06:30
It's great audio too. On this. You may remember HP acquired a Poly studio some time ago. This Poly AI-driven audio is incredible on this laptop Thin, it's light and it sounds amazing. Plus the Windows Studio effects on the camera. The Studio effects have automatic face framing. They do the eye contact thing where you're looking at the screen but to your Teams or Zoom caller it looks like you're looking right at them deeply into their soul. As a matter of fact, it's got adaptive dynamic voice leveling, so you don't need a standalone microphone optimal voice clarity based on the environment because it does background noise reduction and more. And of course, it has the co-pilot key, which means it also has has copilot, the AI assistant that automates your workflow by suggesting personalized optimizations and streaming for efficiency, using learning deadlines and personal productivity patterns to help you set priorities and manage your time effectively is what we're just talking about.

01:07:32
Windows 11 Pro on this guy. It comes with either the latest Intel Core Ultra 5 or 7 processor. I left out one of the things I most love about this it's got a beautiful 14-inch OLED display. I just don't want to buy a computer without an OLED anymore. I mean, they look so good, so good 5-megapixel camera. You've got HP Wolf security for business, locks it down and so much more.

01:08:01
If you're a business and you're looking for laptops for your employees, this will adapt to your workers' personal needs and behaviors. They regain meaningful time and focus on meaningful work. You're going to love it. They're going to love it. Happy employees, happy business. Go to hpcom. Just search for the HP EliteBook 1040G11 to learn more today. Yeah, available right now. We'll also have a link in the show notes so you can just click that. That's the hpcom website and then you search for HP EliteBook 1040G11. This is really and let me just pull this up for you so you can see it fully I love this one's kind of cream colored. I just love the thin light. Great look, never gets hot. Very impressive. Thank you, hp, for they keep doing great laptops and thanks for supporting Windows Weekly. Paul Thorat, richard Campbell they are live from Seattle at the Build 2024 conference and on we go.

01:09:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I'm using an OBSBOT Tiny 2 for this.

01:09:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I have the OBSBOT Insta. No, no, I have the OBSBOT, but I also have the Insta360. Yeah, but I have the. Obsbot, I like it yeah.

01:09:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The main thing here this situation is get it far and away from us so the two of us can be in the shot. I love that all our stuff's built into the laptop so you don't have to carry it around. My bag gets heavy.

01:09:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My bag is heavy. I could see a song coming on. I have a heavy bag so let us let us continue on with news from microsoft. When I picked up my laptop, I shut down the end notes. Let's see where we are here.

01:09:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, microsoft 365 yeah, yeah, yeah, just a couple things, but a lot of the stuff we're going to talk about from here on out could be anywhere in the show notes because they're all kind of interrelated. But in the Microsoft 365 space the three things I pulled out, I guess Microsoft announced Team Copilot Not to be confused with Teams. Copilot like Team Copilot, so this is a team-based version of Copilot that will work across Microsoft 365 apps and services, so acting as a personal assistant for the team, if you will. It won't be out anytime soon. It's going to be in preview later this year but it will work across Teams.

01:10:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Planner Microsoft, but now you're going to see a Copilot entity in your meetings.

01:10:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, right, right, right, yeah, and you know you'll set them off on tasks, take notes, summarize, et cetera, et cetera.

01:10:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm thinking about the agent perspective of you know, and you've always had that person in your meeting. Yeah, that's the one who said oh, you said you were going to do this. Who's actually going to do it and when will it be done by? We were just describing the person sitting there taking notes, All the notes. So now this is the beginning of that the tool doing it in Teams.

01:10:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, that's good. A bunch of new Teams features. I don't Compared to everything else. It's like ugh, whatever.

01:11:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
For folks who are actually regular work, this is a lot of pain.

01:11:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I'm not. I am sorry. I didn't mean to discount, I didn't mean it like that. I'm just saying from my perspective you get this kind of fire hose of information. It's hard to I always you must too. Like a lot of the feedback I get from people is in the form of an exact question about a specific feature. Yeah, you know, like you'll say, hey, microsoft updated loop with whatever features. Like, yeah, but did they add this feature? No, I would have written that, just not that one you want, I guess.

01:11:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Sorry, they looked at it, thought you wanted it and they didn't make it. Yeah, they said no, In fact, we're taking it away. Yeah, not an option. Expect your license to be revoked at any moment.

01:11:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, there were a lot of announcements around Loop actually to that point. But Loop in kind of an interoperable sense, that'll be one of the sessions. Actually, I think two of the sessions I'm going to watch will be loop related. So there's some stuff going on there which I'm actually very interested in. And then Microsoft edge, the browser, is getting. This is going to start to feel really familiar because, you know, google and Apple soon are going to announce the exact same things again and again and again.

01:12:17
So we talked a little bit about, like chrome and uh, bringing slms to chrome and all the ai features help me write, etc. Etc. On the microsoft side, we have this real-time video, uh, translation feature. Right, and this is the idea is that you're going to be watching a youtube video, or whatever it might be, and it will support translating it. You know, from just a few languages in the beginning, but eventually all languages. Of course, we'll be doing Babelfish in real time, so you'll be able to watch a YouTube video that might be in French, let's say, actually, should I say French? Nope, french is not supported.

01:12:46
So, uh, let's say Spanish, and uh, it will translate it in real time to English, um, et cetera. You can also go from English to German, Hindi, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Right now, More languages coming later.

01:12:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Wow, so they didn't just go set a romance language? It would have been easy. I mean, they're really doing that's a bunch of hard problems all there. Yeah, there you go.

01:13:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not clear why they chose this exactly. Yeah, so you know, just kind of across the board, I spent a chunk of yesterday.

01:13:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
AI not as a product, ai as a feature, with nothing you already use.

01:13:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, we had gotten a bunch of materials up front. Like I said, wrote up some articles up front. Windows stuff happened, wrote a bunch of articles about that. And then you get up on Tuesday and they make all these other announcements and they start adding more content. You're like, okay, I got to cover this, I got to cover this. There's Um. So yeah, it's been kind of a. I think I wrote 10 articles yesterday. It's kind of a. That's a machine, kind of a tough. Yeah, I wrote 1.5 articles today, so it's catching up to me.

01:13:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's good you had a buffer. The average is today's not going to be good. The average is good.

01:13:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it would not be. You know, find that to be oh man, okay, uh. And then on the AI side, again, some of this stuff could be elsewhere A little arbitrary. Yeah, microsoft I think it was February or March, whenever it was they announced their five family of on-device SLMs. Right, there were three versions I think it was mini, small, medium. Different versions I think it was the smallest one, which is the one that could fit on a phone. Different versions I think it's the smallest one, which is the one that could fit on a phone. Right, a couple of different versions there.

01:14:22
This week at Build, they announced their first multimodal model, which is five vision, which does image input, and I think it does. It's just input, right? This is one of the tricks with AI. When you think about the language of AI multimodal, right, it means it's not just text, it starts literally multiple modes. I suppose you could have a modal video, audio. I only did video or something, but we tend to think of it as text, as the most basic. But multimodal could do two or more, right? So in this case it's image-based, but these are free, they're open source. Well, yeah, no, they are open source. I think they are open source. Right, they're open source. I think they are open source Run on device et cetera. So these are getting interesting. I mean, so you know, it's one day later. I'm sure someone has announced a better SLM, but at the time these are doing great.

01:15:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I just like that we're having small language models. The whole idea of this is. Rightizing is happening.

01:15:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
These are going to proliferate in a way that will feel like malware. Yeah. And it's weird because these things are humongous. It's like getting a bunch of day one Xbox game updates every day, but they'll be in the browser, they'll be on your phone, they'll be on your PC.

01:15:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If you have one of these, you can talk to your phone, but you can't do anything else with it because all the memory is a little busy right now.

01:15:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, exactly that's why we're already seeing these rumors next-gen phones, google, apple, et cetera Bumped up, bumped up big time. Yeah, and I imagine the NPUs will be bumped up too. Yeah, yeah.

01:15:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So that's that, and then what else? There was a big point that I think Satya made and so did Kevin Scott. It's like six times the performance for a twelfth of the compute cost.

01:15:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That was actually an interesting thing that I felt like maybe could have been highlighted even more, which was that it's not a good description. Yeah, because one of the big stories with AI to date has been just the sheer cost of it. Yeah, how are they going to make this make sense? And I think they're just trying to stay ahead of the carbon footprint of LLMs.

01:16:14
Apparently not doing a great job, as it turns out. Forget about SLMs but I mean just up in the cloud, much more capacity and much more efficient from a, or much more efficient, which saves money From a compute perspective. Someone had asked about how many times did Microsoft say the word co-pilot during the day one keynote. I don't know that answer, but I can tell you that it's a big number. In the truncated version of the book of news, which has since been updated 100 times across only 35 pages, ai clocked in at over 130 references One of my little takeaways for the show.

01:16:52
But a bunch of announcements related to GitHub co-pilot, which is now available in Visual Studio. We'll get to that in a moment. They are once again consolidating. This is, I think, the rapid release cycle of Copilot has caught, you know, branding changes and now they're going to consolidate the naming and presumably the availability of add-ons or the extensibility model for Copilot across wherever it appears. Now these things are going to be called I don't know if I get that right. Yes, they're going to be called extensions. Previously we had plugins and connectors, now they're all going to be extensions. You'll be able to create your own extensions using Copilot Studio or the Microsoft Teams toolkit for Visual Studio. Microsoft will use extensions to enhance Copilot across all of its endpoints. Of course, there'll be new actions, which are those things in Windows that allow it to work with the product, and new custom GPTs grounded to whatever.

01:17:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Did you notice they actually set a number for GitHub Copilots subscribers yeah, 1.8 million oh that's fantastic. Yeah, so it's what 10 bucks a head per month I have?

01:18:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
we've always talked about how this might be the ultimate example of a co-pilot, the best one, if that makes sense. Well, it's the original. No, but not just that, it's just so. It's so perfect for that audience.

01:18:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and it audience, yeah, and it does appear I this has been repeated throughout the show, but for most industries, making 18 million a month is pretty good. Yeah, and for this one maybe not. I mean github. Let's be clear. Github never made money right and then microsoft acquired when the re-reaction was all down. They never need to.

01:18:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think of github as infrastructure. You know, so this is like plumbing for the world. Yeah, if this is a tip jar or whatever you want to call it, where you know like money will, throw in and we'll you know.

01:18:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, I I think that there's many more things that GitHub could be doing and admit lots of people will pay for them. Yeah Right, I really need a really great bill of material system. When it comes to software log4j, like that's not a simple thing to answer across a larger organization and and managing projects on scale like but you know, you see them doing this with workspaces and things like. We're headed down that path where these are good products, right, that organizations will want to pay for. I think.

01:19:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Honestly, I think github go pilot at 10 bucks a month is underpriced you know, we've spent the past several years, uh, dealing with and thinking about OneDrive or other cloud storage integration with the file system. That's right. One of the little features we'll talk about in a few minutes, related to dev features in Windows, is Git integration with the Windows. Well, with File Explorer, and when I first saw that, what's the point of this? I mean, you can obviously replicate a repository from github down to your computer, work with it locally, sync them up, you know command line or use a graphical tool like visual studio, but they they're actually doing some kind of a smart push through in file explorer. We can look inside the folder that represents the repository and see where things are. They have columns and I don't know if you saw this the details view, where it will tell you when it was committed, what the notes were for that or whatever and it's not going to benefit my wife, but it's cool. I think GitHub, all the things would be my message there.

01:20:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, well, that's true, and one of the things about workspaces is this idea that it's not just for software developers. I mean, it is right now, but ultimately it's going to be a collaboration tool.

01:20:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, right, yeah, yep, yeah, I mean this is a yeah, this is a solution that was done originally for teams of people working on something together, a project, um, yeah, software coding based, but that there's all kinds of reasons now you insert this idea of a digital project manager, the nag part of running a project, yep, you know, and an intelligent assistant that can run on top of it and say, hey, yeah, this could you know.

01:20:52
This is something that could replace, like the base camp type products in the world and even stuff like notion, really sure and then, yeah, pump it in with the graph, so it's like somebody else has worked on this and they're over here.

01:21:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, like it's pretty compelling. Yep, um, we, charles lamanna, pop up for a minute there to talk about power platform and all the co-pilots in there too.

01:21:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have a on my list of post build tasks is I'm going to talk to Gary. Pretty done, gary, he's on the team. He's going to uh, he's going to assist me with this, cause I feel like I'm really behind on the power platform stuff.

01:21:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So it's well worth your time. It's an impressive product but you know, the reason is you don't work in a big company where you're building all these forms and things cause it's really an internal product it's also something microsoft has been working on for several years.

01:21:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So when, all of a sudden, this notion of co-pilots and oh, we're gonna make these things into agents and they're like, uh, we've been doing that forever. What do you mean? You know? So now they have this capability, they're spinning up um, that's become very important to people, whereas I don't know, five years ago, I don't know that many were paying attention to it, so that that power.

01:21:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
there was 8,000 people at that Power Platform conference. Man, people care yeah it's good.

01:22:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And then just real quick, just from sort of an educational perspective, microsoft partnered with Khan Academy, khan Academy, khan Academy, and they had the guy from Khan up on stage. Yeah, they actually had Khan Khan Khan. So they have like a K-6 teaching assistant called Khan Migo it's a great name. They're now on Microsoft Azure OpenAI service and they're collaborating and Microsoft is paying so that people can get free training through it. They're bringing it to educators and students and anywhere in the US.

01:22:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yep, like right away I'm thinking, oh, canada should have that too, although they'd have to be hosting it up in Canada for that to be fair. Right, but the idea that you can do drills with your students using the software and then have it reported back you know, summaries reported back to the teacher, so the teacher gets a spectrum of what about privacy, richard, though?

01:22:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean. What if the students don't want those things back?

01:22:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think students could give a crap. Their parents might be freaking out. You know the parents also trying to get an education. I'm kidding, but yeah, I think it's really interesting to start. We've always separated the two Right Right, Like to really have tools that the teacher can build curriculum, the tools helping them build the curriculum. They can generate work plans from that curriculum. It can actually be enacted through the software as well. The students get to work on those individual work items and then the results are aggregated back to the teacher.

01:23:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and they don't have a name for this yet, but they're working together on a new version of that Phi 3 model SLM that's being trained on Khan Academy's educational content. So there you have a grounded SLM specifically for math problems and other education. So you have that conversational engine.

01:23:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now you get into learning differentials. You know some kids have a tough time learning, so the fact that the software would be very capable of presenting it in a different form is tuned to an individual student's capabilities. So ultimately the teacher is able to measure the student's aptitude more than their ability to work with an interface in the 1980s.

01:24:00
I'm sorry they say you're not a dreamer richard, you know I, I do a half a dozen trips to high schools every year really just for you technology careers and so and, and I spent a lot of time with those teachers too, like, and I don't envy their job. It is so very hard and part of my motivation is, you know, it's one thing to go stand in front of a you know a thousand, 40 or something, 40 something years old who paid a couple of grand to be there, like they're pretty motivated listeners. Yeah, try it with a pack of 14 year olds. Man, right, like that's hard work, work, if you can light a 14 year old up.

01:24:36
You've done something in a system with no money. Yeah I can't do. It's just desperate and they're baffled that I volunteer for this. They have that we'd like to compensate. It's like listen, I get paid plenty. Like you don't need to pay me for this. I am better for doing. These days I get lovely notes from some of the kids you know and once in a while you light a kid up who's never heard of some of a thing he'd want to do in his life until you know we talk about technology good for you.

01:25:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's awesome, richard. Good job, I got one of those.

01:25:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Come I got coming on those coming up next week. On tuesday we're pine tree and just a nice group of teachers, and it's like it is an exhausting day, oh yeah, but boy, it's a rewarding one. That's hard, it's hard work.

01:25:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And they do it every day.

01:25:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And they do it every day. You're damn right, they do, and it's like I can do it for a day and then I need a nap.

01:25:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
My oldest- sister is a high school teacher and she's it's just spiraling. You know, this is the way the educational system is terrible the fact that they're going in a system that's really been weakened.

01:25:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We should be spending more on this. Teachers should be better paid, but if one of these mega corporations is going to cough up the pennies from their perspective to run this system, khan's been doing great work, building incredible curriculum that motivated individuals can go jump into and learn from. To just make it surface to any teacher who wants to teach better can use the tool. Good on them, man. Make a difference. It's not going to change the bottom line for Microsoft.

01:26:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
As long as the school boards and the city councils don't say, hey, we don't need teachers anymore, we got this oh that will happen.

01:26:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You still need the humans.

01:26:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I know, you know, that's coming.

01:26:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, well, and it's. The thing is like I'm hoping that they're producing results back to teachers so the teachers know how to optimize their time for the challenges the individual students have. But that would be the reward that the base teaching is automated. Right, and now you can deal with exception teaching.

01:26:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, this is what we talk about with AI everywhere. It's like you can focus on the actual job, the hard part.

01:26:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and that's when I went and read all the material on this. I'm like this is how you take the 80% out so that you can do wonders with the 20.

01:26:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, it's super rewarding for a teacher, you know to actually be able to focus on the kid.

01:26:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, they want to give that kid the attention they just don't have the time they have to take care of the 80. That's fair, right, you know. But if we can take care, if the tools can help take care of the 80 and the 20, get a benefit, we all get a benefit. We want public schools to work because we need educated buyers. Yeah, and voters should be good too.

01:27:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, educated voters would be really nice.

01:27:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That'd be something.

01:27:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're watching Windows Weekly with the Mother Teresa of Tech here, mr Richard Campbell and Paul, that'd be something. You're watching Windows Weekly with the Mother Teresa of tech here, mr Richard Campbell? Thank you, yeah. And Paul Thorat, I don't know You're the father Cogman, I don't know who you are, but we'll find you a role. I think maybe Rumpel of the Bailey Rumpel of the Bailey Rumpel of the Bailey Windows Weekly, paul Thorat, richard Campbell and you, you great Windows dozers and winners. On, we go with the show. Let's see Time to talk about developers, developers, developers.

01:27:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, this is fascinating to me. You're excited. No, this is fascinating. We're sitting there in the audience of Monday's event. We're talking about Windows 11 and 24-H2, but it's not really because they have these special features that are only for co-pilot plus PCs. Pavan Davaluri all of a sudden says this term and keeps going. Much like the Rosetta comment Windows co-pilot, runtime. I'm like what was that? What did you say? Runtime? Last time we talked about a runtime, it was probably the Windows runtime, winrt with Windows 8. And the fundamental debate over whether this was native code or not. Native code. It's just Windows. All this nonsense.

01:28:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Right, net is a runtime right, it has a runtime, but it also has a framework, and this seems more like a framework.

01:28:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is absolutely not a runtime, so there was no information about this on monday and uh yeah, none, and I was desperate to find out something about it and this was what we were talking about a while ago about it.

01:28:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If windows was really going to be the hub, that you'd need a framework to allow these apps to pull in.

01:29:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So it is yes, and so I. I don't like that. They call it a runtime and you could read they published now a bunch of information about it. Absolutely not a runtime. There's no runtime involved, right? What it is is a library that has APIs. There is a set of AI frameworks that it works with, like DirectML, onyx, etc. It supports tool chains like Olive and the ai toolkit for visual studio code, but the thing I'm focusing on here is the, the apis, right, the windows co-pilot library.

01:29:36
And on tuesday, sacha dadella mentioned this and he referred to it in the context of win 32. Um, he's been ceo now enough that I'm already getting tired of the stories he keeps repeating Ten years. But one of his first experiences at Microsoft I've heard the story so many times now was at the so-called Win32 PDC back in 1993, I think it was when they were launching NT, and he equated the Windows Copilot runtime and or the. What is it? The Windows Copilot runtime, I'm sorry, to Win32, right? Or maybe the Windows Copilot library, which is maybe the thing that is closest to that?

01:30:18
And yeah, I guess in the sense that the Windows 30, win32 API was a library of APIs you know, functions you could call as a developer in a specific language. Yeah, I guess it's sort of like that, but then it gets vague and it gets weird, right, so it's going to work across. This is how they described it. In other words, there will be APIs for Win32. Makes sense, but it doesn't, because I don't think it's what people think. That means Web apps and the Windows shell. How are those three things related? What do they mean? By each of those things.

01:30:56
So here's my guesses. I don't actually know how one extends the Windows shell. I'm going to guess it's a COM-based interface type of thing. But let's forget about that one, because that has never been mentioned since that one throwaway line. I'm just going to not worry about that. But Win32, I will bet my retirement on. There are, no, there are not going to be Win32 APIs and that's going to be it. I think this is really tied to this WPF thing, that when they talk about desktop and even Win32, I think they I know it's ridiculous. I think they actually mean that. I know it's NET, but I think that's what they mean. I think they're throwing out Win32 as like a be-all for just desktop. The web app bit we have to kind of guess there. But I think these are going to be the types of JavaScript APIs you would access from React Native there was a wrapper that was made a while ago the types of JavaScript APIs you would access, like from React Native.

01:31:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There was a wrapper that was made a while ago, where you could access Win32 functions from Well, to basically take your Win32 app and give it the hooks to make it so you could deploy it to the store. Yeah Right, and it was basically a way to modernize a Win32 app without rewriting it. Are you talking about not-Symbol Islands? No, no, that's a different thing. Okay, but it is along those lines. There was a code name for it.

01:32:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so this thing is not coming out until June and unless something has changed since I wrote the article and announced it, there wasn't really any information about the actual details. But I doubt any of this is native code. I know people still seem to care about that for some reason. I think these are going to be higher level abstractions in the form of functions and whatever languages it makes sense to target NET languages, obviously like C, sharp and JavaScript. I guess We'll see.

01:32:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
A way you could look at Wasm as a technology like that. It's a way to wrap JavaScript up, yeah, but think about it from the perspective of in a perfect world, every application has its own instance of Windows right, so that you can't interfere with each other. There's no driver, no DLL, hell no. Malware doesn't work because it has no ability to call. This is what they try to do with Windows 10X, and then you immediately turn it off because you had that one app right.

01:33:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Did you catch the 10X? Not a reference, but the allusions to 10X?

01:33:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yes, We'll get to this too. Yeah, so the idea that we stick a wrapper around existing software to give it that effect that you're basically intercepting everything the software asks about other apps at other spaces and lying to it as well as presenting it to the system as a well-behaved common citizen of the system. And then you add in the copilot extensions. It gives an interface so that the LLM has an understanding of what the application's capabilities and can send those commands in and get results back from it. That gives you a common set of interfaces for creating this hub of windows co-pilot across all software.

01:33:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm going to divert here slightly, because you've just reminded me of something that I think is kind of important which is that, uh, stevie Batiste, a year ago, of course, talked about orchestrators and how windows, in many ways, is the best ideal. Yeah, what are the interesting problems with the AI stuff in Windows specifically right, let's stick to Windows here is that you have these capabilities that are in the operating system that Microsoft is exposing to developers through these. You know they specifically called out things like creative filters, portrait light, eye contact, teleprompter, portrait blur, voice focus. These are things from Studio Effects. They're making these available to developers to put into their own apps Under the covers. These things, in this case, I actually know how they work. They target the MPU. So if you have an MPU and this does not require a 4D TOPS MPU, but if you have an MPU, you can access this functionality, and if you don't, you can't.

01:34:51
But a lot of the features that are AI-based, whatever they might be background photo blur, blah, blah, blah, whatever can probably work across a CPU. If you need it, it could work across a GPU. Sometimes. That's going to be better. It could work against an MPU. It's going to be better to work against an NPU. The thing is, what you really need is an orchestrator to look at the tasks that has been requested, examine or already know the quality of the system, know where it is in its state at the moment, because maybe this thing that would be very efficient on the GPU, but the GPU is getting hammered. Does it make sense to push it over to the NPU slash CPU, right, you need an orchestrator, yeah, or coordinator, yeah, but I get it.

01:35:29
No one has discussed this concept at all. No, and in many ways I think, when they talk about a co-pilot plus PC, they basically pushed off that decision, so to speak, because they're just saying look, here's the set of features we're going to have. They're only going to run on the MPU and it has to be this kind of an MPU, right, and they've just given up on that. Not given up, they're not doing that yet. To me, the orchestration of this, that should happen under the covers. This is not something an app should have to do.

01:36:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, no, like back in the day. This is the responsibility of an operating system, right.

01:36:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The old school version of this is that one of the big advantages that WordPerfect had over other word processors in the DOS days was they had all these printer drivers and they had to write them specifically themselves. It was in WordPerfect, and Microsoft's argument eventually was like look, we have a platform called Windows. We think those should be in Windows and they should be available to all apps. We think those should be in Windows and they should be available to all apps. And there's a pushback in the beginning against this kind of thing, just like there was when they added the networking stack at one point, or whatever.

01:36:35
You're disrupting a market, right, you're disrupting it, but you're doing it for the benefit of mankind, so to speak, or whatever. And I don't want to see Adobe saying all right, we're going to. This is like runs best on Netscape Navigator. Adobe is going to say runs best on NVIDIA GTX, you know whatever. It's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The idea is you should have this stuff and the system should decide to orchestrate it where those things go on the fly, and also with the knowledge of what the various capabilities are and that you're essentially saying I have these, needs you figure out how to best serve them.

01:37:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And, towards the end of day, one keynote Kevin. Scott talked about direct ML and he really gave the sense that it was equivalent of direct X.

01:37:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But for those kinds of computation. Okay, so maybe that's where that orchestration took place.

01:37:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
At the minimum. It says no matter who's NPU, there should be a direct, a direct X ML that understands it.

01:37:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, because you want to abstract it at that level. You don't want apps to have to write to specific. Do I have this process? Do it this way.

01:37:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's what direct X was for for GPUs, so maybe DirectML is that for NPUs, but you're going a step further and talking about an overall orchestrator.

01:37:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Literally, because if someone said to you what was the point of Windows in the beginning, and they would say GUI, and it's like yes, but it's also this thing, this abstract.

01:38:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But what GUI really did was abstract the drivers for all the ways you interacted with the machine, and now there's the vice versa. They'd also abstracted how the code was run. I mean, that's where DLL hell comes from. Where is it? It would load chunks in the memory that multiple apps could use.

01:38:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There are examples of technologies that undercut that benefit of the windows GUI. So, for example, you have AMD with what's Radeon, and you have Nvidia graphics, and they both have their own solutions for anti-screen tearing. You, you have NVIDIA graphics and they both have their own solutions for anti-screen tearing. You know upscaling blah, blah, blah and it's like yep, that's cute, we get it and we understand the need, but realistically this should be happening at the operating system.

01:38:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It sounds a little bit like the containerization of everything. And we're in a container. Kubernetes is the orchestrator. You're saying Copilot should be the orchestrator. My concern is that it sounds also a little bit like Electron, where, hey, just bundle Windows with every single app you've got. Well, yeah, that you don't want.

01:38:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, we're going to get to the 10x container thing in a moment, because that actually came up this week and I was again. So many parallels with the past at the show, it's very strange. But so many parallels with the past at the show, it's very strange. But I think the theme there is AI is making it possible to do the things we've been talking about but failed at before. Anyway, to this, like Windows on ARM. Yes, yes, yes, I mean what's? The problem how does?

01:39:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
AI help Windows on ARM.

01:39:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't understand that Because of the MPU. So the Achilles heel of Windows on ARM is basically compatibility and to date performance, but most of the code written to this platform is written to x86, not to your platform. So what's your little shining star here for six months Actually longer, because Intel is not going to match them is the power of the MPU. You come into this market from the side, you've got these skills around efficiency and whatever, and that's great, but really you landed at the same time AI landed, and guess what we need for AI? Yeah, you know we need MPUs. Yeah, so it's just good timing. I mean, it's very interesting. Anyway, a lot of the features that they showed off for co-pilot PCs have related APIs, functions, whatever they refer to these things. This is very strange. I read this at first as no code. I'm like nope, that can't be possible. So you go back and reread it. That's not what it says. They describe it as no.

01:40:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm sorry, I'm going to sneeze. No code effort. There's code, but somebody else is writing it for you.

01:40:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, like no code effort. I mean, what does that even mean? I guess, weird. I guess it means that the API, the, the, the functions you're calling, whatever are obvious. I don't know what that means. I mean't know, like, um, you know, like the, a lot of the win 32 api is incredibly obtuse, right it's. It's ridiculous, and especially today, like we're so much higher level than that we it's it's hard to even look at that and understand it. So they don't explain it. I, I don't know what that means. But no code effort, access to studio effects, um, okay, I don't know what to tell you. Okay, so we'll see what that means To me, because I've been so involved with this notion of what is, or will there ever be, a native app platform on Windows.

01:41:19
Again fascinated to see this week Microsoft reveal that their recommendation for creating native apps and I put that in quotes because I don't think any of this is native is Windows Presentation Foundation, wpf. Wpf, the technology that debuted I guess it was technically 2005 or 2006,. Yeah, with Windows Vista, this is the thing that used to be. Apple, this is the thing that got booted out of Vista. It got booted out.

01:41:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It became NET 3.

01:41:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You wanted nothing to do with it in Windows 8. And it's just been sitting there on the side and the issue, as Richard knows better than anybody, there's just a big class of NET developers who knows this thing and loves it and gets work done. And they've written apps and it works. And it's work done. And they've written apps and it works. And there are complexities to it. For sure, I've struggled with it, but it's a lot more sophisticated than a lot of people realize. So here we are, almost 20 years later. Call it 20 years, right. Yeah, yeah, it's back baby.

01:42:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And that's fascinating. It never really went away, but it didn't have a lot of focus.

01:42:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Part of the problem with it is it hasn't been updated in meaningful ways to address the modern UX capabilities of windows in recent years. Right, and so they're actually doing that work. Now they're I don't know how this this is one of the things I've saved a video for I'm going to watch is they're integrating it with when UI three, which is the current I guess we'll call it what a user experience framework, user interface framework, yep, so that you can add modern looking UI to an existing app, which is probably the most common scenario here. Or, if you think anyone would ever do this, create a new native app, so to speak native, again, strong term, but a new windows only app maybe is the right way to say it Based on WPF with XAML. And when you I three, it's like what are you talking about? It's like a Frankenstein's monster. So what do you? Come on? You're in this world, this is you. Talk to me.

01:43:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, remember we've got the Maui wrapper, which is supposed to include them all and WPF was sort of a weird cousin in that. But it looks like they're moving WPF more to the center of it.

01:43:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's incredible. I can't think of anything that's ever happened like this.

01:43:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, I think that the struggle for native client apps is real. Ask me how many people are still building WinForms apps, man, with the new WinForm SDK, which has been modernized for NET Core.

01:43:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Both these technologies WinForms and WPF to me were for a while mostly community supported and WinForms, I think, still has kind of that vibe, but WPF has moved right back into the center.

01:44:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Look, Microsoft's not building anything with WinForms anymore, but they are building stuff with WPF Studio for this day still built with WPF, right and then there are some things built in WinUI as well. So the fact that they're pulling those two together, it says we're concentrating our ability to build native apps on Windows. What'll be interesting to see is what the next generation of Microsoft products support.

01:44:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I guess in some ways this is the I don't want to say NET, but I guess the NET client app version of the Windows App SDK, where it's a way to take. You have existing apps that you've written in this technology and you want to update them with the modern features that are available today.

01:44:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think they want to consolidate a team right One group of people, to build a native client technology and so make sure that the folks who've worked in WinUI their work moves forward, and the folks who worked at WPF their work moves forward.

01:44:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And maybe we'll have a unified thing in the end.

01:44:54
There's so much work that has to be done here. It's kind of. They have some basic examples that I think kind of highlight the issue. But when you think about WinForms one, one of the big issues moving those apps forward, which they mostly have solved, was the high DPI stuff. Those apps had a hard time visually scaling to these massively powerful displays we have. When you think about WPF, the issues are related to things like OS theming, this idea that we have dark mode and light mode in different colors and we have accent colors and so forth. So you've got this 20-year-old app framework and it's like I guess we're going to dust it off and we're going to add that stuff.

01:45:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They've been updating it, but you know, arguably it hit its peak in 2010 with Studio 2010. Yeah, and it got somewhat improved from there, but Maui's strength is in the mobile right.

01:45:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's mobile.

01:45:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
yeah, it's a new version of Xamarin Forms and it's good with iOS and Android. It has not done well on the Windows side yet, so this energy seems to be fixing that.

01:45:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is an issue we see with Flutter as well. They did a bunch of work over a few years to update it for the desktop and it looks like now, with Flutter, they're moving forward with more of a web app model and they're doing Wasm and they're doing all this, and I think that's how that's going to go and they're up against the same problem.

01:46:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They killed it in the iOS and Android space. They wanted to get on the Dexos space and it's hard, it's just it's too optimized for that, that kind of thing.

01:46:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I think with MAUI there are apps in Windows that you are kind of like mobile apps, make something like the calculator app very easily with MAUI. But when you want to make something like Microsoft Word or something complex like a graphics package or something, you need that kind of density that you can get with WPF. It's not optimized MAUI for that kind of app and I think there was a little push for a little while to maybe we'll go in that direction and I think now it's more like just be true to your school, kind of we're gonna focus on the thing.

01:46:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But whatever native client developers you still have left, you should take care of them because they are out numbered. Oh my god. You know it is incredibly hard to justify a native app in an enterprise workspace. Right, because web apps are ever. We've got web servers, everybody already has a browser, security context is set, updates are automatic, like there's a lot of reasons you build a web app.

01:47:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I put aside a bunch of videos from last September. November Microsoft made about React Native and I was curious that there wasn't new news here about that. But those videos make it very clear that the future of new desktop app development on Windows is actually web, Because the reality is that most mainstream apps don't want to just be on Windows. You want this thing to run everywhere and those capabilities are actually pretty impressive. Depends on the team. Yeah, it depends on the needs and all that stuff. But there is a huge market of apps that exist out in the world that aren't going anywhere. They're just not leaving. We're never going to get past it. So you want to give them that ability to move forward. So the Windows app SDK addresses that need for UWP, which is now gone, and for desktop apps as well to some degree like literal Win32 apps, and now we have WinUI being added to WPF and also other modern Windows capabilities, so they're addressing it there. I suppose we'll call that a NET app. I'm not sure We'll see. I don't know the answer to that yet.

01:48:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah.

01:48:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Very interesting. Okay, I know that one. I beat that one to death. I want to talk about that way more than the team stuff. Want to talk about that way more than the team stuff. Um.

01:48:30
So, uh, visual studio 2020 22 17.10 is here. Big thing there is integrated github co-pilot, which is amazing. Um, they started first in, uh, visual studio code right, that was. That's been there for a little while. Um, there's also, uh, the general availability of visual studio code for education, which, I have to say, is kind of appealing to me.

01:48:47
I'm not a professional programmer. I'm looking at this thing like they have all these built-in courses for Python and other web languages and so forth. It's free, obviously, visual Studio Code, but this looks like an awesome little product. I'm actually going to play around with this myself. I think this is really cool, so that's out now. I'm actually going to play around with this myself. I think this is really cool, so that's out now. Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 has a bunch of other stuff going on there. They have better support for what is it like? A WinUI project? That was always something that was a little screwy, but you can do a NET app or a C++ app if you want to create a new app in that environment. That's in there and stuff. But GitHub Copilot obviously is the big thing there, so that's out. I wonder if we're going to get another major version of Visual Studio. Speaking of that, that is an excellent question and I don't know the answer to it.

01:49:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, we know we're going to get a new version of NET in November. Right, the new version of NET in November Right, we are due. Last version was 22. That's been a while. The previous version was 19,. So you'd think there'd be a 25. Yep, but usually if they're going to have a 25, you'd think we would have heard about it. We would announce it in the fall.

01:49:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
By the fall right, I agree there was a bunch of NET stuff, net 9 stuff, especially show as well, but Still six months out from shipping. It's pretty early, it's all over the place. Dotnet, aspire, I believe, is GA One of the revs of it. Yeah, they're moving very fast on Aspire. There's a bunch of stuff there. You want to target AI. There's a bunch of stuff in that To the tune of C Sharp is going to support a tensor data type. Microsoft's going to meet you where you are there, as they always do. So I just had Mads and Dustin on the show.

01:50:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, that's great. Yeah, they're the best C sharp, uh, the C sharp gods, yeah, both both of them.

01:50:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, yeah, the last thing to me that's very, very interesting that is one of those it's going to sound a little esoteric was with windows 11, 23 H two Microsoft added a bunch of developer features to windows 11. In fact, they're installed whether you're a developer or not, so you'll see dev home on your computer and it's something most people what is this thing? And it's kind of a dashboard for developers. It's got utilities, it's it's got a kind of a graphical subset of Winget where you can go and get like developer tools and kind of automate. That. It's the beginnings of a. It's a YAML based Winget, app based app configuration service, mostly for businesses right now. That I think might be the future of Windows backup. We'll see what happens there.

01:51:22
But one of the cooler things was this dev drive feature and what this let you do was create an REFS resilient file system based partition on your drive that would run faster than NTFS. And for developers this is great because you want your you know where you're building your code to run on the fastest possible system. So flash forward to now. Now we're talking about 24H2. So flash forward to now. Now we're talking about 24H2, there's a bunch of updates to both DevHome and then also DevDrive and the DevDrive. Let me jump right to this. This is crazy. So DevDrive apparently there's been an update to RFS. There's an update like a feature called system file sorry, file system block cloning. This delivers instantaneous file copies and way better performance than even RFS, especially with large files. So in 24-H2, when you create an RFS drive, you're going to be able to turn it into this new version of RFS. It's going to be super fast and I'm actually thinking you know what? Maybe they're going to fix Files Explorer after all, this is how they do it, right, you never know. I love your optimism. I know they are adding that git uh functionality to file explorer, like I said. So you're looking at a like a replicated uh github repository and file explorer folder view and you put it into d demo and you get those headings um for all of this stuff. Really, you know status, commit messages, current branch, etc. That's cool, like I think that stuff's cool. Pseudo come into terminal.

01:52:48
This is the ability to elevate one command rather than run an entire domain line. Don't run it in a super user context. It's weird. It's unfortunate there wasn't another operating system that was doing this forever and showed why that would be valuable, but we invented it. So here it is in Windows. But we invented it, so here it is in Windows. And then some other stuff related to DevHome. They're bringing some power toy utilities into DevHome just outside of power toys which is actually pretty cool Things that devs will use, yep, you know some Windows customization stuff, et cetera, et cetera. But I still think forcing this on everybody is a little controversial. But I don't care, I like this stuff. Yeah, it's good for me, but I think for most people it doesn't matter. It sits there, no one uses it Awesome.

01:53:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And here we go, there we go, there we go.

01:53:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There we go. You know what that means. If you say there we go, that's when I appear and say the back of the book coming up and just a burst of sulfur like Mark.

01:53:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Mark, like I said, mark Penn, there we go.

01:53:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually, before we get to the back of the book, I do want to mention how grateful we are to our Club Twit members, who make this show and all the shows and everything we do possible. Club Twit is something we started about two years ago a little more than two years ago but as soon as Lisa realized, uh-oh, uh-oh, advertisers they're getting a little weird. They really want to know more about our audience than we're willing to give them and things like that. So we still have a wonderful bunch of advertisers. We can't charge them as much. Many of them have fled to platforms where they have better information about you and so forth, like Spotify. So we realized and actually I've always thought this was the better way to do this we need to get your support. If you like what you hear, if you listen to one or two shows a week, I think $7 a month is very reasonable. If you listen to two shows a week, that's less than a buck a show and you get so much more than that. You get ad-free versions of all the shows. You get access to the Discord, which is more than just a place to chat about the show that's on the air. It's really a community of Club Twit members, wonderful people who talk about all kinds of things that are fascinating. You also get, of course, additional material that we don't put out in public. You get the video, for instance, for Paul Thorat's Hands on Windows, micah's Hands on Mac, same thing, untitled Linux Show, home Theater, geeks with Scott Wilkinson.

01:55:29
We do events in the club that are club members only. We did a watch party a couple of weeks ago from the LaPorte House. We all watched a movie together. That was fun. I made brisket. Couldn't figure out how to send the club members the brisket, but it wasn't very good, so you didn't miss anything. We also have Stacey's Book Club coming up in about three weeks. Well, a month, let's say a month. Anyway, lots of events, great people, a great hang. We don't have a golf course, but everything else. It's kind of a country club for geeks and if you're not yet a member, can I invite you personally to join? We'd love to have you. $7 a month. Visit twittv slash club twit. There are also family plans and corporate plans. Twittv slash club twit. And we sincerely, from our heart, I thank everybody who has already joined the club and I welcome you into that esteemed group. I should give Paul a little more time because he's been guilted. He's been guilted into writing his tip of the week.

01:56:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm hobbling Apparently. I've been told I mail it in a bit on this show.

01:56:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, also, the last part of today's keynote was Julia Lewson, yeah, I was surprised to see come out. Was David Weston in there? That wasn't David Weston, nobody. Did he get in? No, it was not't. Don't think so. No, they um, uh, who was with him was the one of the chief security guys. Um, uh, I'm not sure where did I put that. I wrote it down john lambert.

01:56:57
Okay, so it's lucent and lambert, which it was interesting, talking about the secure future initiative. And you know, one of the biggest things I noticed when they were talking about it is that they said quite specifically this represents a culture change in Microsoft, oh boy, oh. And the industry, oh boy, oh boy. They were specifically talking about the developer issue and that they're attacked by Midnight.

01:57:19
Blizzard, who they called out by name and said by the way, whenever you hear the word Blizzard, you should think Russia, because it is about. They were saying pretty deliberately like this is not, um, these, these are not just hackers, right, this is they, these are state actors. And then, and that's their business, and they said if the total value of what they're threatening was a country be the third largest country by gdp in the world, wow, like it's big business. Yep, yep, so they, uh, yeah, so they did dress midnight blizzard quite square on and say like this was the goal, and so they. And their answer, of course, is no passwords. Yes, because passwords are strings and developers do bad things with passwords. Yepure, future initiative Right.

01:58:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Anyway, you had a tip. Yeah, two quick tips. One's related to what you just said. So we forgot to discuss the security stuff that was announced this week Big security push on Windows 11. One of the features we didn't discuss for the Copilot Plus PCs those are all secured core PCs, meaning they all have a Microsoft Pluton security processor in them. This is something Microsoft had created in tandem with AMD and Intel years ago. It has not really spread anywhere in the industry Like they're on surface PCs, but that's about it. So this is part of the spec. You have to do this.

01:58:44
David Weston, who stands with, I would say, mark Rezinovich and maybe one or two other people as being the few left who kind of understand Windows at a very deep level. You know, back in the day we had people like Mark Likovsky and Dave Cutler, obviously, but still there, still there, somehow, still there, but it was discussing the importance of all this stuff. So there's a bunch of stuff. So I mentioned this thing. It's called Windows Hello, enhanced Sign-in Security, which is a more secure biometric. It eliminates the need for passwords. This is part of the spec for Copilot plus PCs. Anyway, there's a whole list of stuff they're doing there and my tip, such as it is, is to download something called the Windows 11 security book, which is they actually created before the show. In fact, they created it last year, but I believe it's been updated with all this new stuff and it's just a 80-page book about all the different security technologies in Windows 11. And part of this push to actually secure Windows. So worth reading.

01:59:50
Also worth reading if you're interested in these new Qualcomm-based Snapdragon X laptops. I mentioned Ryan Trout earlier and he created a report where he compares, like I said, the Surface laptop to the MacBook M3 and also some other laptops. You can download this for free from his website, which is Signal65.com. I put a link to it in the show notes. I think it's about 29 pages long, if I'm not mistaken. I'm surprised I don't still have it up in my browser, but it is. This will answer your questions If you're interested, but you're not sure. And how does it actually match up? Et cetera, et cetera. You're going to want to read this paper. It's fantastic.

02:00:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that was a well done last minute, Thurot.

02:00:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Good job. I thought we were going to run out of time.

02:00:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We're over, there's no question, but oddly enough, I blocked this room for an extra hour, just in case. Oh you're smart.

02:00:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's do a quick run as radio.

02:00:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Not my first rodeo yeah, you know what you're doing. You know what you're doing. Yeah, ah, this week's run as radio, which is with the schmuck as soon as we made. When we made this show, I gotta tell you we were just killing each other like it was very funny. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's really a good, good fun when we kept waiting to get the shepherd's crook.

02:01:11
Yeah, you know, because we were just fully off the rails, like I'm pretty sure I tweeted out of this. It's like two old guys complaining about windows, like that's right. But we were really talking about is, uh, they the fact that the windows 10 uh, leaving primary support got moved. It it was April of 2025. Now it is October of 2025. And that sort of offered up the idea of is it going to move again, and that's sort of your decision as an administrator right now. You know, here we are in May, right, you've got. You know, you've got a little more than a year.

02:01:42
Yeah, well, it's like do I talk to my CFO about playing per seat extended support? Do I go without support or do I start migrating to 11? Because 11 adoption in the enterprise is poor, although the justification for not adopting it, which for a long time was like group policy, didn't work properly, like there was some serious issues. They've essentially been resolved, but you know admins, they like putting stuff on a shelf and just leaving it there. So it's like nope, 11's not going to work, put it away. Although I think we also got to the point where it's like most enterprises don't do every version of Windows, and it's been very easy lately to go from XP to 7 to 10. And so your instinct is I skip 11 and wait for 12. So that's basically where we went with the show. It went a little long, because it always goes long when we're talking. It was a fun conversation.

02:02:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know anything about that. Runnusradiocom. Now, Richard, you are in the land of plenty when it comes to whiskey. Oh, I have some of this at home.

02:02:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I'm in Washington State, there's a few local whiskeys but that thing I go particularly eccentric for. Well, somebody was tormenting me about Woodinville again because I wasn't particularly generous to Woodinville last time around, but I did go dip into American bourbon. This time around I'm going to Eagle Rare, which these days is owned by the Sazerite Distillery, which is Buffalo Trace. Right, but the origins of it are amusing to me because it's not an ancient whiskey like these others. It didn't deal with prohibition or anything like that. No, it was invented in 1975 by a fellow by the name of Charles L Beam. So he was the great nephew of the Jim Beam and the Beam family shows up everywhere in that area.

02:03:32
And in 75, you know, it was a tough time for whiskey. That's the disco era. And the highball was hot, right, it was the Cuba Libre. It was lighter drinks, right, you needed to be able to dance a lot, and so, and whiskey's really suffered. Going through the 80s you see a lot and so, and whiskeys really suffered.

02:03:47
Going through the 80s, you see a lot of distilleries getting mothballed, shut down. The Irish industry shut down a lot, and so did the Scottish, and so at the time Beam worked for Seagram's at the Four Roses distillery, although at that time it was called the Old Prentice distillery, and Seagram's is the one, when we talked about Four Rosesoses, that kept messing with Four Roses to the point where it had a really bad reputation, until Diageo buys up in 2000 and revises everything, and so it's and it's not called Eagle Rare by accident. It was a competitor to Wild Turkey and so they deliberately made it 101 proof 50.5. Same as Wild Turkey and called it Eagle Rare. And I sent a link in the in the notes there, leo, if you want to pull that up, I found a copy of the ad from 1979. Uh for, uh for how they were selling eagle rare, where they used the line carve the turkey pour the eagle, that's not too competitive, wow yeah it's a little on the nose that's great

02:04:51
and of course, turkey at the time was the most popular bourbon in in america, in the world, really. So, uh, that's this. If you did no mistake, this was a targeted product, yeah, uh, and uh, it didn't. That didn't hardly displace while turkey and that while Turkey was still widely consumed. But then Sazerac acquired Eagle Rare in 89.

02:05:12
And we talk about Sazerac Distillery, but at the time Sazerac was only a liquor distributor. They were based in New Orleans, right, and all those bourbons come down out of Kentucky down the river to New Orleans. And there's apocryphal stories like Elijah Craig invented real bourbon because he was in Bourbon County, so that's why that was that was the name on the side of the barrel and he had a barn fire that caused his barrels to be charred and so his corn liquor changed flavor, right, I mean again, apocryphal, like nobody really knows if any of that is true. But there is a Bourbon County in Kentucky and arguably that's where the name Bourbon comes from. So when Sazerac was starting to grow in the late 80s, as the market was starting to shift again, they started acquiring distilleries that were distressed, and so they were able to. They acquired the Eagle Rare brand. There was also another brand called Benchmark. It was made by Beam as well. They there was also another brand called Benchmark that was made by Beam as well. They acquired them both and they of course didn't have a distillery. So they made a deal with some other Beam family members, parker and Craig Beam, who ran the Heaven's Hill Distillery, which is in Bardstown, south of Louisville, and they were producing from there, although to distinguish it from the normal stuff that was produced in Bardstown, it's actually labeled as from New Orleans. And if you are into collecting old whiskeys and I am not, I drink whiskey, I don't collect it you will find labels from 1989 to 1992 that actually say Eagle Rare made in New Orleans. It's not true, they were made in Bardstown, but that was the distinction there. But Sazerac started by now, got into distilleries and by 1992, they bought the George T Stag Distillery which is in Frankfurt, east of Louisville, in a little bit drier, warmer area, and this is what is now known as the Buffalo Trace Distillery and that's they relocated the Eagle Rare brand there. They also acquired many others Weller, eh, taylor, elantons, pappy van winkle, you know and they standardized their stills like we don't really talk about the stills at stas, right, because it's not particularly interesting part of the story.

02:07:15
They make all these different brands. They pretty much narrowed them down to three mash bills, so three different uh grain combinations, always corn first, and then, in the case of mash bill one and two, it's some rye. The 1 is a low rye, 1 below 10%, and then barley, and then the number 2 is about 12% to 15% rye with barley, and then finally, the number 3 is the one with wheat, and so Weller, papio and Winkle use the wheat where Blandon's and Elmer T use the high rye one and our eel rare falls into the low rye or mash bill. One version of the whiskey, the 101, the original which was started back in 75, was discontinued in 2005 after 30 years. They started making a 90, so 45% typical spirit level In 2000,.

02:08:02
Sazerac also produced a thing called the Antique Collection, which is all their high-aged whiskeys, and that was a George T Stagg at 137 proof, the Sazerac Rye 18-year, the WL Weller 128 proof, the Thomas Handy 125 proof and of course, an Eagle Rare 17. So a 17-year very hard to come by, still at 45% Bottles. I've seen going for more than $1,000. Don't do it. You want the Eagle Rare experience? Buy the 10. It's 40 bucks and it is a nice bottle of bourbon, not too spicy. The lye is low on it, 10 years old, so it's got a good age on it. It's got a nice color to it, infinitely drinkable. Nothing bad to say about Eagle Rare at all, but it's just one of those many whiskeys that has been drawn into that huge facility at the Buffalo Trace Distillery. But it has a great origin story going down to the other regions of Kentucky.

02:09:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Very nice, Very nice. Ladies and gentlemen, with that we wrap up our coverage of Build. Thank you, Emma.

02:09:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We send.

02:09:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wichita Campbell home and Paul Thorat home to a wonderful marriage. They are not married, they just like each other an awful lot. Uh, paul thurott is at thurottcom t-h-u-r-r-o. Double goodcom. He also publishes books, windows everywhere, which is more about developers and and and languages as it applies to windows history. Uh, he also has, of course, the field guide to Windows 11, which will be updated constantly to cover all of this new stuff.

02:09:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I can't wait. Oh, I forgot to tell you what, remember I had to update like 670 icons because they moved the damn copilot thing over to one end of the taskbar.

02:10:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know one of the things.

02:10:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I noticed during that presentation on Monday what happened, Paul they moved it back.

02:10:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh no, on that presentation on Monday. What happened, Paul? They moved it back. Oh no, you had the old screenshots, didn't you it?

02:10:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
doesn't matter. They moved it back. I think they're screwing with me now. I think they're screwing with you, Paul.

02:10:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're screwing with you Well support Paul and his work by going to loonpubcom. The poor man, the poor, poor man. Richard Campbell lives at runasradiocom. That's where his two podcasts, dot Net Rocks and Run as Radio, are, and, of course, always filled with great stuff. But Run as Radio this week especially good If you want more Windows Weekly. A second dose, in effect, with the two people who are sitting in your living room right now. In fact, it's even better without that Leo guy I got to say.

02:10:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Thank you. You should be here with us, man, you would have a good time.

02:10:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I bet it was fun. I bet it was fun. I'll be listening and wishing. We will be back, of course, next Wednesday, as we are every Wednesday, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm. Eastern time, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live at youtubecom slash twit slash live. We stream the live show so that you can watch if you want the freshest version. If you're in the club, of course, you can watch in the discord and chat in the discord at the same time. We love it if you do both. Frankly, After the fact, on-demand versions of the show available at twittv slash www. Paul puts copies on his site to therotcom. There's a youtube channel dedicated to the video, youtubecom slash windows weekly show and and you can subscribe in your favorite podcast client, which is, frankly, the easiest thing to do and guarantees delivery of the freshest episode every week right to your device. And who wouldn't want that? So are you headed home today, guys, or what's the story?

02:11:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Tomorrow for me, thursday for you, friday for me. I get to drive back right, that's right, just over the bridge or whatever. Yes, cross the border through off the ferry With the border wait, it was about seven hours coming down. Oh, you had to wait seven hours. No, no, you had to wait seven hours. No, no, that's also taking the ferry and the drive and stuff. It was an hour at the border. I guess I could have done it in six. But you know what I didn't have to do Go to an airport.

02:12:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's nice, and you know what. Two or three hours at each end of the airport. You might as well just drive.

02:12:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, no kidding, and honestly I like my car. We're 90 minutes from the airport, so you got here in half the time. No, I have had a friend who intended to fly from Vancouver to Seattle to come to the MVP Summit, so I dropped him off at the airport and then picked him up at SeaTac.

02:12:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That is a flex, if ever there was one. Paul, you're going back to Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. All right, richard, you're going back to BC.

02:12:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'll be home next week, yeah, before the insane European run.

02:12:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Crazy summer begins.

02:12:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's going to be a whole June's going to be madness. You will feel for me, I promise.

02:12:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We'll see you both next week right here. See, that's the easy thing. You know where Richard is, right here Every. Wednesday there you go, Thank you. Richard, thank you Paul, thanks everybody for joining us. We'll see you next time on Windows Weekly.