Windows Weekly 910 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. Paul Thorat and Richard Campbell are here. What happened at Intel and what does the future hold? We'll talk about that. No insider builds last week, but Patch Tuesday is going to be a big one. Paul explains and then it's a trip down memory lane. Richard Campbell tells the story of Doers, which involves Thomas Edison, the father of JFK, and more. All of that coming up next on Windows Weekly Podcasts you love. From people you trust.

00:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is Twit.

00:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Theriot and Richard Campbell, episode 910, recorded Wednesday, december 4th 2024. Intel Outside. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show where we cover the latest news from Microsoft, episode 1, after 9.09. Featuring Mr Paul Theriot at therotcom hello paulie, hello leo, hello paul. And richard campbell from runnersradiocom. He's joining us from his home in madura park, where it is a beautiful day on the lake it's not true.

01:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's foggy, it's very foggy oh, it's misty.

01:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
See the islands yeah you know, there's a vision Pro background that looks like that. Oh, is it?

01:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you should take it. They stole it from my place.

01:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You've been. Sherlocked.

01:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's too bad. There's nothing really to talk about today, but we'll find something yeah we'll find something. So.

01:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Paul, you want to kick us off with the top story, the intel blockbuster news. Yeah, apparently they announced new gpus. Everyone's been looking forward to these and dear god, I'm just kidding. Who cares so um?

01:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what is the big news?

02:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, well yeah, apparently on sunday the intel board of directors gave pat galsinger a no-win situation you could retire or we'll just fire you so yeah, because he said he retired as of now, as of right now which usually is the sign right.

02:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A real retirement has a replacement in place, you know I have a cardboard box with all my things in it and I'm retiring Bye-bye. Yeah, exactly so this is actually.

02:31
I think it is kind of sad because Gelsinger was brought in just a few years ago. He is a designer, he's been there, he was under Andy Grove back in the day. He's an engineer, knows Intel's business and charted. I think I think the proper course which is separating this and this is what ben thompson's been talking about all the time on strategy, this integrated business into fab and foundry uh, but I guess it wasn't moving fast enough for the well, I don't think he's the one capable of doing it.

02:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a disruptor's play, right? Yeah, and really there's only two outcomes here for intel. Now she's one outcome, they get this yeah, you're gonna get dismantled.

03:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Are you gonna keep the name or not? That's it, he, he seemed to think that you know, intel was better together, right yeah?

03:16
but well, that's the wonder. Yeah, I think we're going to learn more about this over time. Um, I I don't think we've seen the full story here yet. I think Bloomberg somebody reported that this transition or this recovery was happening more slowly than hoped for. But yeah, I mean, Intel made some major strategic mistakes over the years that led to such things as Apple choosing know, Apple choosing ARM for its iPad, which you know that could have been an Intel business.

03:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Incidentally, we talked about this yesterday on Mac Break. What a brilliant move it was for Apple to say, hey, we got to find something besides Intel the same thing they did with PowerPC in years past. There was an interview with the chairman or not interview, it was his autobiography the chairman of TSMC who said we started this conversation in 2011 with apple.

04:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, I mean intel. That, from my perspective, on the windows side of the fence, the, the big intel crime which has been ongoing for 20 years, is ignoring repeated pleas from microsoft, mostly to create more efficient cpus for computers, to make these things at a time more device like. Yeah, they did, and that sort of proves my point. Yeah, um, you know I, the low power chips they made are and were, you know, garbage. So that was the beginning of an of apple's transition away from intel. Intel, you know, compared to the power pc consortium like the Motorola, ibm, whatever it was at the time was well done and the right move at the time. But then Apple saw that Intel wasn't keeping up with where it wanted to go. Yeah.

04:56
Look, Microsoft hasn't been successful.

04:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think Ben Thompson's analysis on this, that you needed the mobile market to justify the cost to modernize your fabs.

05:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, yeah, to go to an intel which is incredibly expensive.

05:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But they didn't really scale right but scale failed yeah, yeah they don't sell billions for that to make sense, yeah I, they, they, um.

05:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They tried to get it that. They had um wireless chip sets for a while. They had arm chip sets, by the way, for a while. They had ARM chipsets by the way for a while, which I think X-Scale might. Was X-Scale an ARM chipset or not? I don't remember, maybe not. You know they tried different things but it was always kind of half-hearted. You know they were always like look more megahertz. You know the biggest innovation that they've had in the past decade most likely was their, you know, move from two to four cores for the base core chipsets. You know, like um, which was nice because it didn't impact the battery life at all, but was not they only went multi-core back in 2000 because the p4 was such a disaster.

05:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Right, and it was the, the israeli mobile chipset. Their version of the p3 was outrunning the p4 anyway yeah, no, this is um, you know, that's where cordu came from right. So the the look.

06:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
At least they had something to fall back on. They own this little company in israel. They had a good new architecture. It worked, they got lucky. But you know, they got outmaneuvered by amd. With the move to 64 bits, yep, um were embarrassed by and enraged by the fact that microsoft adopted x64 and then they had to put it into their own chips, which you know didn't like to see that, um. But then the next 20 years happened.

06:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, they just haven't kept up, you know, and I the irony is the board probably cares more about Intel being kicked off the Dow than any of that.

06:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, I mean it is you gotta fire the guy who got you kicked off the Dow?

06:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, that's like, but he okay but was he or was it not his predecessor, or two right that led to this, I mean this is a few years ago, he adopted a mess right, and so maybe you guys will have a better example than I do, but the only thing I can think of that's like this, where one's proud big company failing in a big way IBM and they bring in a fixer.

07:04
Nokia with Steven Elop, yeah. And Yahoo with Marissa Meyer, yeah. And in both cases those did not go well. No, you know, yahoo was sold to Verizon. Could have probably succeeded as a smaller company, but didn't. And then Nokia, what?

07:20 - Kevin (Announcement)
happened to Nokia? Nothing, they're gone. So no, I mean they're still around, but who cares?

07:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So look, this is what happens. Sometimes you get disrupted, but you know, the parallels between Microsoft and Intel are super strong. Microsoft had this other thing to turn to when what used to be their primary business started stagnating and then declining, which was, in their case, the cloud. And Intel should have and could have made that transition as well, and didn't. And they weren't there for mobile and they're not there for IOT. And remind me what else is. That's everything.

07:53
So well but which is data center slash? Yes, I mean so I. Right now, Intel is still through inertia. The big fish in the smallest of platform ponds, there is the PC, and that market's not going anywhere. I mean, it's just sorry.

08:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Their approach, which is the vertical integration approach, makes sense because they started it. I mean, they basically invented this business back in the 70s and 80s. But vertical integration only makes sense if you are continuously innovating. Yeah, and the one thing you can't say about intel is they've been innovating is that what happens really?

08:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is they got out innovated? Is that really?

08:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
bottom. Well, because they haven't innovated at all. Right, they're really.

08:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Just keep on this I just said four cores. How is that not event?

08:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, so I uh no, just kidding uh, yeah, you could argue, they, they, the troubles go back to itanium, right? Yep, yes, and they were saved by the little.

08:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, israeli skunk works yeah the guys, the core guys well, first they were, yeah, they were forced by microsoft essentially to adopt that.

09:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, but dave cutler wrote his windows on windows paper that basically said this is the way, Yep. And that was the end of that debate.

09:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That was my entry into this world. Well, one of my entries, I guess, was in 1998. I went to what was then the NT 5.0 Beta 2 workshop in Seattle and I asked Yusuf Mehdi, who was on stage setting up or whatever at the time, before the show or before the event you know, hey, where's Dave Coulter and he was working on he said 64-bit stuff. It was like 64-bit stuff and at the time it was digital. What's the digital chip? Oh boy, I can't remember. Well, digital, before they were acquired, was where it had a 64-bit chip. It was one of a few that microsoft was looking at. I tamed them, I know is that the alpha like?

09:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
alpha that's it, yeah alpha.

09:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, thank you.

09:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, they can see all the nt before windows 2000 supported. Yeah, intel alpha power pc and power pc right with. Yeah, no it was multi-architecture.

10:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Even the software itself, the front end was multi-architecture. It was supposed to have multiple personalities. It was a POSIX environment, os2 environment, windows environment, and then, by the time it kind of came out, they were like, well, you know Windows, but yeah, it was always designed to be this thing, you know this thing. That was not what windows was. And then it became windows, but um I I, I don't know, I don't know what. There are too many missed opportunities here for intel um and too many times they got punished.

10:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Every time they tried to innovate right like the itinium was a train wreck yeah, but that was just a bad design I mean I'm with you, but you know, they, they that the other spin on this is every time we try and paint outside the x86 lines we get spanked for yeah yeah well, I mean one of the.

10:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know I I'm gonna get the story a little bit wrong, but at the time I there was a microsoft engineer who had gone to intel they were working on the Itanium stuff and they said, hey, how long do you think it will be before this will be small enough that we could put it inside a laptop? And they were like, oh, it's never going to be that small. They were like that will never happen.

11:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Why would you ever want 64 bits on a laptop? That's crazy.

11:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Why are we working on this, then? I don't understand. That should be the point right. The world at that time, they could see, was heading toward, you know, mobility, and that's really been the thing for Intel.

11:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's been a lack of mobility, or you know, their inability to how many companies failed over that right, Missed the switch to mobile and by missing that really missed the next generation of computing.

11:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, Yep, but yeah, this deeper point that thompson made about how much it costs to switch to extreme ultraviolet and that unless you've got a billion chips to sell, it's just not worth it, that's what tsmc did right, and that's what tsmc got, and then by winning that contract right.

11:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But see the big difference that? Well, not the big. One of the many differences is that intel was going to blame.

12:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Can you blame Apple. No, they went for the best chip they could buy.

12:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, yeah, no, they did the right thing. That's not the issue For Intel, though Pac Nelson's new plan. Like Leo, I believe it was the right approach for the company, given the kind of cards he was handed. The one issue I see that One of the issues I see is that intel would have been put in this position where they were partnering with their competitors. Right, for this thing to work, it's competing chip makers, designers would have to come to it to build their chips.

12:34
Um, that's not true of companies like tsmc, I mean, I guess it's technically true of samsung, but that's an awkward position. Like to be like hey m, hey buddy, how would you like to give us your designs and we could, you know, put them, we can make them for you. You're like, oh, I don't know, I don't, that doesn't sound safe, like you know. Like oh, no, this is a Chinese wall. I mean, it's just, maybe those need to be separate companies, right, and when you look at Intel as it is today and you split it into those two obvious halves, it's pretty obvious which is which has the bigger potential.

13:05
It's the foundry business, assuming they can get it right, and that's the company that you know, the part of the company that got the chips you know award and is the future of this thing. So there's a lot of talk now about getting the platform right, meaning x86, but that's a small thing. I mean fundamentally it's the bigger thing, meaning x86. But that's a small thing, I mean fundamentally it's the bigger thing is the foundry and I man so much investment, so much money and I don't know that they're ever going to get there.

13:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No. And so then the question is you got to, you're going to cut up the business. The question is are you going to do this, you know, in 1980s junk bond style, where literally just going to sell it off for parts or are you going to create? Is there some piece that's going to hang onto the name? Is the name valuable still?

13:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and, and what you're describing is not a technical discussion or issue.

13:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's just it's just business, you know a professional corporate finance CEO makes needs to take charge and make serious financial decisions about the assets that are left.

14:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm in this business or this industry because I care about technology, I care about the hardware and the software and all that stuff right. But because I mean I've been around for a long time, you have to deal with the company side of it. The business. I report on earnings every quarter for multiple companies. Business I report on earnings every quarter for multiple companies. And I can tell you just like kind of anecdotally, from my own perspective, you don't hear a lot from the board of directors unless something has gone horribly wrong.

14:32 - AI voice (Interviewer)
Those guys are like a shadow society Right Like, in other words, like the star chamber in the background.

14:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, but I mean for them to come out publicly, for you to actually get quotes from chair people. Yeah, oh you this something.

14:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Something has hit the iceberg, like it is. Just it's supposed to be the representative of the company. The board is supposed to hold their feet to the fire, and when something's gone wrong is the only time you're gonna hear from them.

14:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah exactly, so that's very interesting. Um, it's sad, I feel bad go either way.

15:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I've also been in a situation where it's like the board is backing the CEO on this move. We know it is controversial but we're with him yeah.

15:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is Gelsinger's replacement going to be able to save Intel?

15:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, there isn't one right now Hold on.

15:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We got Marissa Meyer on the line. What do you?

15:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
think Marissa, Could you find somebody that could? I mean, it seems like this is a done deal. Yeah, I know.

15:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, the question is what do you mean by save?

15:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, right. So I'm thinking about General Electric as an example, which was one of the biggest and best companies in the United States. In the recession, it started to collapse biggest and best companies in the United States. In the recession, it started to collapse. They brought in Jeff what was his name? But he, what he did is sold everything off. Yeah, ge is now called GE aerospace by the way they got. They sold off. Most of the divisions. Maintain just the aerospace division. Yep, and it's a. You know it's a shell of its former self, but it yep, uh and it's a. You know it's a shell of its former self, but it's survived and it's, and actually I think it's doing very well.

16:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So I well, and there are other divisions right, like I worked with ge's, uh with a team at ge that did steam turbines, right yeah, they did, locomotives, light bulbs, I mean, they were in. It was when intel intel could have been a ge right. They had a good ssd group, they had a good knuckle group. They sold it all off yeah right, because all of those things are low margin business or killed right, yeah, well, that's the whole thing is.

16:35
As soon as you turn it into a commercial product, then it's about the lowest price, and they've never been good at that. Their, their product is a high margin product, the CPU.

16:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Intel made two big moves this year that I think kind of previewed this situation. The first was pulling Foundry out and operating it as if it were a separate business. They would report those financials separately from the rest of Intel. That business lost several to tens of billions of dollars a quarter, by the way. But the other one was just I don't even know how to say this.

17:19
The other one was basically Pat Gelsinger saying look for this thing to make sense, as I see it, these two things have to stay intact, and I actually think that the future of this is what we saw when Qualcomm tried to acquire them and it was like no, no, no, no, no, we don't want that. And I think for the money focused people on the board, it was like well, hold on a second. Actually, you Actually, whatever. Oh, I'm sorry. The bigger of the two was actually when they wrote down all of the kind of like I forget what it's like real estate associated cost or just asset associated cost of all of their physical assets. So, in other words, they have all these fabrications. There's a huge cost of trying to upgrade these things or build new ones, but they also are sitting there not doing anything or not doing very much and they're losing value. Yeah.

18:11
So they wrote that stuff down in the quarter, which was one of the reasons why it looks so bad. But he did that in a very transparent and, I thought, responsible way. But I think it also sets it up for the future where, if they do have to divest, yeah that whomever doesn't get the debt. All the ingredients in place for the dismantling of the company, right, they did the x86 uh foundation or whatever with uh, with rmd and others amd yeah um, you know it, they're the whole time it's like no, no, no, we're not breaking up, we're not breaking up, we're not breaking up, while taking concrete steps to make that breakup more viable.

18:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So the only future I see for the name Intel is like arm. It's the owner of the licensing of the X86.

18:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So if you were to walk into a Walmart, I don't know, maybe not in the United States, but somewhere in the world, you would find a Polaroid DVD player United States, but somewhere in the world you would find a Polaroid DVD player. Polaroid does not exist really as a company, but it is a brand that has some remote value, and I'm sure they're sticking that name on little instant cameras now too, because what the heck, that's what they're known for. But I hope it's not that sad yeah.

19:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But what you know is to cameras what Intel is to processors. Right, they had the digital camera before everyone else, but it was going to eat into their film business, so they just code at least it.

19:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, kodak had this exact problem. Yeah, kodak was very late to the game with digital photography. For this reason, no, kodak was first to the game.

19:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the irony of Kodak knew it, they saw it coming oh well, but the business model didn't work.

19:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They had an innovator's dilemma.

19:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Innovator's dilemma. They made so much money in film and processing that digital just couldn't support them. But Kodak bought Ophoto. They had one of the first digital cameras. They were early to digital. It didn't save the company, but I think that's very different from what happened at Intel.

20:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Intel made too many bad choices. I this is the gelsinger.

20:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
According to thompson gelsinger, uh, when he the board was going to hire him, said look, if, if you want to, you know, split it up, you should get a different guy. I'm not your guy yeah, uh, what I want to do. And he gave laid out the strategy that we just talked about having a design arm and a fab arm, uh, but keep it all under the same roof. The board he says 100 supported it. I bet that.

20:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And I'm sure they work, that's all. I'm sure the numbers come in just, and then it's right and then three years go by and it's like, well, this isn't work, we haven't done anything. Yeah, yeah, they haven't. They talk a lot about hitting milestones, but I don't really see them hitting a lot of milestones as far as these new process technologies and so forth.

20:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think you're setting up for an activist board and for a financial CEO that's going to make some unpleasant choices. Now you get the.

20:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
PE guy. Now you get the guy who's? Going to split it up.

21:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, it's going to be interesting to get.

21:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Chainsaw Al Dunlop in there, yeah.

21:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right right, hey look it's going to be a chainsaw al dunlop in there. Yeah, right right. Hey look it's still firewood, right?

21:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, come on, it's worth something, but the other point here is the longer you go, the less that brand is worth something. Too right, so all the more. Remember, didn't?

21:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
well, didn't we have the story? It was a few months ago that qualcomm was looking at buying intel uh, last week they said yeah, yeah, they're just kidding. No, we don't want a lot of.

21:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But, by the way, this may smooth that to happen again. In other words, you know these smaller or you know these parts of the company which are by themselves smaller and more. You know edible or whatever. Um may make more sense for another company, right? I mean the foundry business by itself may make more sense for some smaller company um well, I remember when ibm was going through similar struggles.

21:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Dvorak, I said oh, this is over, ibm's gone. Dvorak always said no, no, the patents they own are worth, and I'm sure this is true for intel too. Yeah, make them worth something, no matter what, even if all the fabs and, by the way, they just got more than eight billion dollars from the chips act yeah well, they we say they, but they, they.

22:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, but listen that that part of the company might be too big to fail.

22:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That part of the company might become maybe it's a Chrysler was in the 1980s right, they built.

22:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
All they do is build. Yeah, the other people, yeah, the eight to 11, if you include the military part, well, actually you can't really clean them and it's to build fabs in the US.

22:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
right, it's almost eight plus three.

22:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, the seven point whatever is to build fabs in the United States, yes, and build and improve existing fabs, right. But they also got a military contract right which might actually be partially or mostly even about chip design. They would want those things to be built in the united states as well, but actually that might that one might benefit intel proper if you.

22:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, point being intel has assets. Intel is not going to dissolve into the ether.

23:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, there's something there, yeah, and they and they might be under different names, right, right that's what I have with ge.

23:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They have an aerospace division, they have a health division. Well, actually it's not division anymore, there's three separate companies.

23:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah yeah, which is also like good for reporting and good for a bunch of other things like this is the thing is.

23:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think a leadership finance guy has to come in and reorganize the company into the 21st century and, by the way, so in a PC market in which there are I don't know, I'm going to call it 250, maybe 300 million at most, units sold in a year, and Intel outsells AMD by what? Five to one, something like that. If you look at the part of AMD that is their PC business, which for a long time has been the biggest part of the company, but now they're making this push into cloud computing and, by the way, amd has their eye off the ball in x86 right now. Because of that, you have a company that is not Intel, sized not as we know it, but still a reasonably sized company with a reasonable future, et cetera, et cetera. So maybe, once you pull that part of it out, that thing could exist on its own. Um, but it's I, I. It's impossible not to believe that the biggest opportunity here is the foundry, because that, if it works, it could serve.

24:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So generally they're dated foundries and they're not used particularly efficiency Like. One of the problems with vertical integration is that you can tie up a foundry with bad design for quite a while, but if your foundry cares about making its own money, it just won't put you in the pipeline until you have a design that works. So you know integration works against you in that scenario. Yep.

24:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, this is a lot of unknowns here. The timing of this is rather incredible. It's not clear why they would do this right now.

24:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Happy.

24:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Thanksgiving.

24:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The other part of this is the money they got from the chip stack they don't actually have because they haven't delivered on what they said they were going to do. Right, like, and all of that puts more pressure on them as well. But the board's like we, you've gone to this length to get this stuff now, right, you're not making your, you're not making your, your milestones, you're not going to get the money.

25:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, okay, I, my understanding is that it was awarded like that. That was the announcement the seven point, when.

25:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But they, yeah. The awarding means you are now in a set of tranches based on milestones. We don't just hand write you a check for 8 billion bucks. It's like, okay, how much are you going to need to make this step? Okay, we'll give you that for the step. When that step's done, then it's the next step.

25:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, it's, it's tranche based, yeah okay, well, uh, they're screwed then because?

25:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
because they're never gonna make. No, they're never gonna hit those miles.

25:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're not gonna hit those miles. Since I there's been no indication whatsoever of them making any meaningful progress. Unfortunately and not that's I'm not trying to be unfair to intel, it's difficult and they, they were starting from very far behind and, by the way, tsmc didn't hit pause button and and say we'll just wait till you catch up. I mean, they're already talking about more efficient two nanometer processes at a time when intel is what are intel chips now? Seven, ten nanometers somewhere in there, somewhere, depending on the chip. But you know, I don't know they pushed push duv.

26:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
As far as I go, they need to go to extreme ultraviolet and those are expensive processes that need training on, and it makes sense to do that in the us. If you're going to go, commit to all that, commit to it on a new site instead of an old site. But it also makes sense to carve that off into an entity that has to live on its own, and so it gets a lot more efficient.

26:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I mean this was always the I mean I always have to compare this to Microsoft and they were going to be broken up by the government. Remember, there's the app slash office side and the window side, and you know what would that look like and you know a lot of people would see doom and gloom in that, but a lot of people like also see the opportunity. It's like well, hold on a second. Like now the office team can work with these other platforms and maybe the world changes now, because it's not office and windows don't have that lock on each other. You know, that could be true of the foundry, I guess I mean we'll see, but I I feel like the, I feel like the market's spoken on this, like.

26:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I feel like Can we call? Can we call the days of Wintel history? Is it over? I'm so interested to see the ads that Microsoft's putting on. All the big football games are ads for Qualcomm-based yeah, snapdragon, snapdragon, they say. The fastest computers ever made things like that. It's pretty clear, despite the flaws of Windows on ARM, that that's where Microsoft sees its future. Sure, I'm going to disagree with you that there are no flaws, despite the flaws of windows on arm, that that's where Microsoft sees its future.

27:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm going to disagree with you there. There are no flaws. So I, I look I. You could argue that windows and arm needs that marketing, that the safe choice is to buy this thing that sounds like a jet engine and has four hours of battery life, but at least it's compatible with that stupid game you have to play.

27:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But you know why your batteries weren't running down that yeah I mean.

27:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I there. This, this kind of shift, requires um some marketing.

27:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But on the other hand, I have to point out, though, if you're setting up a server, or even a gaming desktop, you're almost always going to look at amd first right, not intel right.

28:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, so I don't know whether you're a Ryzen guy or you're an RTX guy, right, okay, that's true Part of the debate.

28:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And actually somebody in the or an.

28:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Intel Arc B series guy now, because that's happened.

28:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Somebody in the I think the YouTube chat was saying well, if Intel's so crappy, how come they beat their technology? Whatever it was, ess beats fsr. Now, I don't know what any of that means, but I think it's a gaming thing.

28:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, that's ridiculous so I look, look. I don't know what this, this story, will be written, but parts of it already have been written.

28:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So one of the things I've been working on xess is so much better than fsr, says steven anderson okay that's fantastic.

28:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So anyway, yeah, and the Amiga is still the best gaming PC I get it. It's true. It is true, multi-processing in the 1980s Would have thought of it Incredible. Look, intel, a big part of their story is that they were big enough that they could just pay companies to keep using their stuff and not to use competitor stuff. And there's a big amount of inertia still occurring. And, by the way, so just this year we told the story about the qualcomm launch thing in may, back at build, and how intel had to be ushered off of the campus. Remember they showed up yes, they're being disinvited. They took away their badges and said you have to leave or we're calling security. Yep, it's so cool.

29:27
Intel has done everything they can to get in the way of Qualcomm and and AMD actually, but you know Qualcomm, since we're talking about it, they pre-announced Lunar Lake that week because of this. So like, don't forget, oh, and, by the way, intel about it. Like, don't forget, oh, and by the way, intel I mean Qualcomm's so proud that they're on like 20 something different computers. Well, we're going to be on a hundred and something different computers when, when the Ludley comes out later this year, and then they've spent all this time since then overspending on this garbage chip set.

30:00
That's super unreliable, the performance is terrible, doesn't match what AMD is doing, and stood up at IFA like they were the kings of the world and that whole thing came crumbling down. It's a nightmare. This is how bad Lunar Lake is. Meteor Lake suddenly looks pretty reliable. By comparison, it's pretty good, and that thing was a piece of crap. So this is a problem. And yeah, if you look, if the X64 is it for you and you're not ever going to think about it, okay, congratulations. I would say at least that the AMD Zen 5 stuff is fantastic. So that is there. It's a happy middle ground.

30:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Can I build a copilot plus PC with it? Yes, you can.

30:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can really. It doesn't have to be Snapdragon. Yes, you can, you can really. It doesn't have to be Snapdragon.

30:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, no, no, no, that's all changing. In fact, I've already gotten the first screenshot from someone, and this guy did have AMD, but we'll say an x64-based Copilot Plus PC where it's like, hey, congratulations, you get those features now. So that's actually starting to happen. Right, interesting, so that's. You know it's a slow boil but it's happening. You know Microsoft is I don't them advertising Copilot plus PCs right now. I get it.

31:09
But on the other hand, the people you need to convince aren't going to care about a Super Bowl or football at or whatever, because they're the two thirds to three quarters of your customers. That are businesses that immediately dismiss ARM because it doesn't work. With the one thing that maybe they care about, or the just general fear and uncertainty and doubt over a new platform. And we don't. You know we're going to make sure we always give our employees like an inch and a quarter thick Dell laptop with a removable CD ROM drive or whatever, because you know we've been doing that since the 1990s and they seem to work fine and so convincing those guys, that's the trick. Yeah.

31:47
I think. So we'll see. I don't, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what to say there. I think for most the people we're going to talk about this in my tip actually the people listening to the show by and large are technical and they're, you know, they're very set in their ways, you know. So it amuses me, but also distresses me, that we collectively, as a community, have spent the last I don't know 10 years or more wringing our hands over ARM. And how come we don't have ARM, and how come we don't have ARM? And then it finally happens and like, oh well, it doesn't run like this DOS game from 1997, I have to run right.

32:21
I have this really esoteric like serial hardware thing I do, or I'm a musician and I need this exact. It's like guys, come on, you don't represent the mainstream. I think for my wife, leo's wife or anyone's wife, or my brother, who's just a normal person, these things are categorically better. They just are. This platform is categorically better, but it does. Yeah, we need even though the support this year has been incredible hardware drivers and software natively, it's still kind of new.

32:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If it's not going to play Transport Tycoon from 1988, I'm not going.

33:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I hear you. For me, yeah, for me, it's like Half-life 2, but yeah, same thing.

33:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean all right let's take a little break. We're gonna. We have uh, this is called windows weekly, so not intel weekly.

33:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So well, no, but this is intel is uh inextricably entwined intel is outside now, isn't it? It's that's just interesting story. This next year is going to be crazy. I don't really.

33:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Because this year was so calm.

33:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, I mean in this, we'll see what happens.

33:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know, we'll see what happens, we'll see what happens?

33:33
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34:00
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36:01
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37:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was. I realized halfway through the ad there I was typing away with it up, muting myself. Okay, we enjoyed it, it was fun I actually using modern hacking techniques.

37:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I could tell you were writing a letter. You could actually tell what I was writing nice, no, nice.

37:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Those are some. Those are some highly trained ears, yeah what was I?

37:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
watching oh, there was a movie called conclave, where it's the. It's the papal conclave, where they're electing a new pope. And uh, they, they have the security guys blacking out the windows of the sistine chapel. They said, yeah, because hackers now can use lasers to tell what you're saying inside. It's true, by the vibrations on the glass, it's. I mean that that made it into a movie is hysterical to me. I guess it's a real deal. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry, I didn't know. I don't know what you were typing. I I have no lasers.

38:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I was in the Discord, the old report, now laser-free. Laser-free.

38:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Windows. What's the Windows?

38:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
news. Last week we didn't really have anything going on with the Windows Insider program. Thank God it was a nice week off. And then this week, just today, there was a new Canary build, which only has one kind of new feature, which is that I didn't know this wasn't the case, but Microsoft has loosened the rules of the Microsoft Store inside of Windows so much that you can pretty much deploy anything through it. But I guess if you had a Win32 desktop app, the updating would just happen. However, you updated that app, like outside of the store, but now they're supporting win 32 app.

38:58
Updating through the store, which is actually, you know, is probably the best and most efficient way to do this. Um, so that's something that will be happening, you know, in public, um, sometime in the future. Um, separately from this, microsoft had a post, not about anything new with the store that just happened, but rather all of the changes they've made to the store this past year. And, I have to be honest, this thing when it started as a store in Windows 8, as the Windows store was pretty sad, right, it was a great collection of farting apps and also apps written by what appeared to be children, but as far as high quality, you know that stretch from 2011 to 2012 between the beta and the final.

39:42
Like everybody at microsoft was whipping everybody they could find to put apps in the store people forget this, but at the, I want to say it in the store, people forget this, but at the, I want to say it was the consumer preview, which we would call a beta. It was something like that, maybe it was the least, I don't remember, but sometime that year, before Windows 8 came out, they had an event where they highlighted all the new apps that were in the store and they were all written literally by interns and they were sort of bragging about like it's so easy, even our interns can do this. And it was like guys, you're not selling it, you know?

40:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, if you could have had, like I don't know spotify, netflix, instagram. You know that would have been. Offer was win js apps, right, like that's what you were supposed to write. So yeah well yeah, you know the regular windows developers are going. I don't know what that is, the javascript people are like. I don't know what that is either.

40:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So yeah, yeah, right, right, I I appreciate what they were trying to do. They were opening the this new app platform to as many developers as possible yeah, well, really, they believe that javascript was the lingua franca.

40:42
It was the only language that mattered, and that's what they were pushing on in 2011, and by 2012, I mean you you look at the annual stack overflow survey of most popular programs, you're like I guess we got to target JavaScript, you know. And it's like, well, yeah, but those guys aren't targeting your stupid native app platform, they're writing things that run everywhere, right, which was the problem with that thing. So they, you know, they try. It's very similar to the Intel story we just talked about that. You know, terry Myerson and that team kind of picked this ball up and ran with it and they were given the you know the cards. They were dealt and they tried to do what they could to improve that over time. Also didn't work too well. But you know, here we are.

41:23
So it's many years or 12 years later, right, and actually the Microsoft store in Windows is in pretty good shape. If you haven't looked at it recently. Startlingly recommend it. One thing I do is because I review so many laptops. I have this install script, uh for winget that installs uh from the store or the the winget repository, depending on the app. But I always try to get the store version because of this quality, where they, you know they keep the apps updated and all this stuff. You don't have to have these separate routines running mostly about the controls.

41:48
Yeah it's, it's actually pretty nice. So, um, if you, you know, have all these separate routines running Mostly about our controls, yeah, it's actually pretty nice. So if you, you know correctly, sort of dismiss this thing ten, twelve years ago, I would just say, you know, maybe take a look at it again, it's gotten.

41:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're also pressing against a struggle that's happening inside of Microsoft about updates between consumer machines and enterprise machines too, because they've they've made too many flavors of things right Windows Update servers. Now they're trying to. They've deprecated that. They're trying to go with the business services through Azure, like it's a it's a big wrestling match and the store push is interesting. The question is, are they going after the enterprise market and you're going to complicate that as well or is it just for consumers?

42:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep.

42:27
So I would argue that the existence of when get for that you know can handle the store as a repository, suggests an interesting future for businesses where this more reliable mechanism occurs in the background and, you know, maybe can and should be used.

42:42
I, I, uh, microsoft has done something in windows at both Apple and Google have done with their respective mobile platforms, which is I don't want to call it componentizing, but kind of straight or not, moving things out of the core operating system and putting them into a different upgrade path, usually the store, but not always right. So they have these things. You know this is how you update these core os components outside of the every year feature update kind of a thing, right it's. You know the is how you update these core os components outside of the every year feature update kind of a thing, right it's. You know the the project reunion windows app sdk dismantling of uwp was a version of that where it doesn't make sense to have apis tied to a very specific version of windows, because now there are like six of them out in the world at any given time and you can't guarantee that those features are going to work everywhere etc so deploy sdks with infrastructure.

43:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a mistake, yeah right, right.

43:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So that was you know, every. All of the big three companies that make client platforms all arrived at the same decision, which was let's pull stuff out that we can and update that stuff outside by the way, the linux people had this nailed forever ago core is core, everything else is yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean my look, microsoft was basically play school compared to, uh, unix or whatever back in the day.

44:03
So they, you know, we came from different back. You know histories. But I think I'm trying to think if there's any exceptions. The big exception I can think of that's sort of an inbox app is edge, which, like Chrome because it's based on Chromium and like other web browsers, has its own kind of updating mechanism, right, for some reason, that one app is well, not, for some reason, it's, it's multi, it's cross-platform, right. So they don't update that one through the store.

44:28
And they also have this notion of like OS components, or you know, even the AI components that are part of CodePilot plus PC, that are updated in different places, sometimes through Windows Update, sometimes not, you know, I don't know. So it's a complicated little world we live in. But anyway, the store app looks like it's kind of a big goofy consumer looking thing. But, like I said, if you haven't looked at it, I mean honestly like it's kind of a big goofy consumer looking thing, but if, like I said, if you haven't looked at it, I mean honestly it's well, and it speaks to an interesting path, because it's another attack on potential exploit vectors too.

44:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know you could be locking your network down where the only way your machine gets updates is through the store, and that means that most malware is just not going to be able to do stuff. Yeah be able to do stuff. Yeah, there you go right, like there's some angles on this right that can help people in the future. But I just don't feel like there's been a coordinated message says, hey, we're trying to solve these big problems and so these tools are going to be focused on.

45:21
So this is tight, it seems like they just do this under, like they're fighting amongst themselves to achieve this without telling anybody.

45:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is what they're trying to find, trying to solve right, I I last week and we'll talk about this again in a few minutes I talked about the two sides of windows. Right, there's that foundational part, the back end stuff that started with nt and was server for a while and was pulled back in the client group under steven staskin is now part of azure. And then there's that clown car that does all the stupid new features. They throw out the wall and you never know what you're going to get and it's a nightmare.

45:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Lost the chat search boxes Yep, so-. Copilot on here? No here, how about over here?

46:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Please. I know 178 screenshots. Later I think we're going to change it again. So, yeah, so, so, yeah. So my last year has been great, but but I yes I because of Microsoft security push, now they're starting to kind of talk about that backend stuff a little bit more. I think one of the untold stories of 24H2, which gets undermined by all the reliability problems we've experienced is that they actually challenged the change, the foundation of the OS, pretty significantly. If you look at it just from the back end, this thing's Windows 12. Like, this is a new thing.

46:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a weird way to do it. Yeah, it's very strange and it's also experimental.

46:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This would be the first time they've done this. Yeah, usually a change like this is accompanied by a big UI change. Yeah, and this time they did the UI first.

46:50
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that's kind of interesting. We'll see what the you know what the next year brings, as we keep saying. But you know, patch Tuesday is next week. One might make an argument that the update we get next week, next Tuesday, will be the 24H2 that Microsoft was trying to hit you know for the, for the a bunch of people's Christmas is going to suck, yes, yes.

47:16
Yeah, the timing's tough because Microsoft typically is gone for the second half of the month, so they shipped this thing on the 10th and hopefully it doesn't isn't accompanied by all the problems we've seen over the past few updates, because it's been pretty ugly ever since 24H2 was finalized.

47:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So we'll see. No, it's a service pack, zero OS, in disguise, right Like that's what's really happening here, and we're having SP zero effects.

47:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yeah, so we'll talk about this in a moment again, but I had written this thing today about this duality, this kind of weird paradox of the Windows team, or teams, I guess Windows as a product. And someone said you know, you keep talking about how great the foundational stuff is, but we have always the stupid change Like you know, it's not a foundational issue in Windows 11 that when I open a menu in File Explorer, that it goes up instead of down and goes off the edge of the screen, and I can't see it. That's a problem in File Explorer. More specifically, it's a problem in the File Explorer UI which, for some reason, microsoft has been screwing with constantly for the past two years. So it's, it's the clown car, it's not the adults, you know, um, we could go through each one of the problems and kind of come to a similar um, uh, conclusion, but that's that's why. So I do think it's rather incredible.

48:45
We'll see fingers crossed and all that, but so far, despite all these big changes, under the covers seems like you know, it comes up, looks the same, works the same. But you know, updates actually will happen much more quickly in the future, which is fantastic. That means they promise that for many, many versions. I know that's always the thing. No review, um, no review, yeah, so anyway, um, it should be quiet for the rest of december, barring any reliability problems. We'll see. I'm kind of hoping that that issue I mentioned with File Explorer is actually fixed next Tuesday, but that might be a January problem. I don't know, we'll see. So there's that Microsoft, because Windows 10 is going out of support next October unless you pay for extended support, or they changed their minds again, or they changed their minds again, yeah, published an article about TPM 2.0 being a system requirement of Windows 11, which is kind of weird because Windows 11 came out like three years ago. Why are we still talking about this? Right, yeah, so I looked this up.

49:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They tried to make it a requirement when they put 11 and got so much pushback that they included the requirement.

49:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So here's what I found reading my own stuff and I had forgotten about this, which was in 2015,. Microsoft revealed the system requirements for Windows 10, right, for windows 10, right and at the time, what they said was, uh, tpm 1.2 or 2.0 optional. But one year after this system rtms, we're going to make tpm 2.0 a requirement, right? So they actually said that in 2015. So this was, uh, six years right before they actually did it in windows 11, but you might notice that they never actually did make it a 11. But you might notice that they never actually did make it a requirement. They never discussed this. I never found any instance of them saying, okay, this is what's going to happen.

50:38
There was a lot of stuff with Windows 10 where they said something like we're going to make Windows 10 a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8. If you have a product key, you'll be able to use that from a previous version of Windows. It will activate. You'll be fine. You can do a clean install of Windows 10, but that's going to work for one year. And then two years and five years and seven years went by and they never put a lock on that. They eventually did, by the way, but that just happened, I think last year, but for a long, long time they said something and then they didn't do it. You know, and I think the rationale there cause they'll never say this is that they really wanted to get people off windows seven because no one was using windows eight and those who were hated it, and they wanted to make windows 10 as viable for everyone as possible. So they didn't change the system requirements. They talked about it. They knew this was the right thing to do.

51:29
Tpm2 has actually been around since 2014,. By the way, it's not a new thing. The famous thing, or infamous thing about Windows 11 and the system requirements remember this was 2021, was that you basically had to have a eighth gen Intel core processor newer or the AMD equivalent. These are basically 2017 parts. I mean, tpm 2.0 has actually been sort of a shadow requirement of windows for a long time. So when windows eight one came out, windows eight had adopted something called what was it called? The connected standby, right? This was the device-like experience where you pick it up and it lights up and comes on. It doesn't really go into that deep sleep, but it also doesn't kill the battery and while it's sleeping it's still, your email's still going and you're doing all that stuff In 8.1, which and this is like 2013, 2014 timeframe they actually made it a requirement for of pc makers that you had to have tpm 2.0 in the device, right so even though it wasn't technicallya requirement for windows for you to make a new pc and sell it and get the certified for windows 11, you actually had to have tpm 2.0 right yeah and I, you can't

52:47
buy. You can't buy a motherboard without tpm2 on it. No, that's the thing, right? And so I I suppose that there is a world of pcs out there that have tpm. Whatever it's not enabled for some reason I know for a while their gamers would say, hey, I disable this because it slows the system down somewhat or something, and I guess I understand that.

53:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But uh, yeah, I don't know if it was true, it was blamed for a lot of things.

53:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know it's hard to say, it's hard to say so in Windows 11, 24h2 and in these co-pilot plus PCs, and now with this Windows Resilience Initiative, or whatever they're calling it, microsoft is starting to talk about this new bit, not a baseline, but these new security technologies that if you have a certain set of components, you have an even better or more effective security solution in the PC, and I would imagine that those things are going to become the baseline, you know, in some future version. Right, we talked about co-pilot plus PC becoming just PC, but they published this thing about TPM 2.0 and I thought to myself obviously they're going to talk about this new stuff. They don't. They're having the same conversation they had in 2021, but now they're having it with businesses, which is like look, you're gonna have to look at your computers. It almost, they almost certainly have tpm. Make sure it's enabled, um. And if you're using a computer that is so old that it doesn't have tpm 2.0, we're not gonna.

54:14
It's a decade old right, yeah that's, it's an old, we're not doing it and I I wish I like this language. I have to say I felt that at the time, in 2021, that some of these requirements were a little arbitrary, right, it felt like they were trying to get people to upgrade, like maybe we can goose pc sales a little bit, or whatever. Yeah, um, today it's a different story. It's three years later. There's really almost no excuse not to have a tpm 2.0, whatever in your computer you have it.

54:39
Justa question you have it yeah, that's the thing I mean. You know, for most people, you just, you have it like it's just there, right, and uh, they they referred to this as non-negotiable, which is such a beautiful term.

54:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We really mean it this time.

54:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I mean it wasn't called TPM in the beginning, but Microsoft started talking about this notion of a security chip.

55:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
that became TPM in 2003, right At the Longhorn PDC, I think right, yeah, it's the fallout of trusted computing, right, yeah, which is 2001?

55:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yep, that's right and all mobile devices have some sort of security.

55:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, that's the thing and and and you get this kind of consistent security and authentication experience. That involves biometrics and secure enclaves and whatever the security chip is called on different types of devices, and this is why we're going to have portable pass keys. And you know, this is like our world's going to get better, and it's weird to me that in 2024, we're still having this conversation.

55:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Just on the quote-unquote legacy platform. Right yeah.

55:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's the issue if you're using Linux, for instance. I mean, linux doesn't even in most cases pay attention to it. Right, you know, there was. I remember when it was proposed there was a kind of huge cry.

55:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is being done to prevent Linux? Yeah, because part of the one of the things you get with TPM is the secure boot process, and secure boot was going to not include Linux bootloaders, right, right, but we've solved that long ago. Solved this problem, of course. Yeah, by the way, the Microsoft of that day, yeah. I think they were a little antagonistic.

56:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think that might have been part of it. I think it might have been part of it. Oh, that's bad for Linux.

56:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, well, yeah.

56:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I can't think of any reason you wouldn't want t windows ain't done till linux can't boot. You know um, but that's not the world today. We don't live in that world anymore. What?

56:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
does amd? Do they have a pseudo kind of?

56:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
t. Well, they have a tpm and and they do amd and all three of the big chip makers have all adopted microsoft's pluton security chip set, which is kind of a superset of TPM 2.0. But it's something that has to be integrated into the SOC, right? So all the Copilot Plus PCs have that. It's one of the things that makes Windows Hello ESS possible, right.

57:01 - Kevin (Announcement)
Nothing wrong with that, and, by the way, they didn't talk about that in that post either.

57:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Why would they mention Pluton? It's kind of weird, but anyway. So we're going to head into like an interesting year, as I keep saying. So we'll see what happens when windows 10 goes down the line of anyone blinks. But I haven't written about this yet, but I saw a story on ZD about this.

57:23
There's a Microsoft support document that talks about installing windows 11 on unsupported PCs, and this is something. This is this was a uh compromising on a call that Microsoft made in mid 2021. So they announced the system requirements June timeframe. A lot of people looked at it and said, Whoa, uh, I get a lot of PCs that earns on seventh gen Intel. Like, surely this thing could run, uh, windows 11 without any problems, right? And sure enough, a lot of people have done this since then and Windows 11 runs fine as it would. It's the same thing as Windows 10, right? So Microsoft's compromise was like look, we're going to block that normally, but we're going to allow enthusiasts to work around it, right, and we're not going to do anything.

58:09
At the time, they threatened to put like a watermark on the desktop and then they never did, right. It was sort of like the Windows 7, 8 keys working to install Windows 10. It was like something they said, but then it was like eh, you know, don't worry about it. Yeah, Except that sometime in the past 24, 48 hours, that support document that's been around since June 2021 was updated to say we are going to put a watermark on your desktop now.

58:34
So, um, I don't know if this starts with 24 H two, or maybe it's some future update, but, um, there they are now once again threatening to put a watermark that says this PC is unsupported. You know, down in the corner, like you would have a, a watermark, a watermark, if you were running like an insider build or whatever. So, yeah, when I wrote the first version of the Windows 11 field guide, I had a tip about removing this watermark, but I never saw it. So, like, I knew where it was in the registry, but I never actually saw it appear, and so I actually got rid of it. It's not in there anymore. It hasn't been in there for a couple of years, but I'm actually saw it appear and so I actually got rid of it. It's not in there anymore.

59:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It hasn't been in there for a couple of years but I'm going to have to put it back.

59:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We'll see, I'm going to wait. I have a couple of PCs that are unsupported, so I'm going to look for that. But I think this is, you know, with this security push, that they're doing this like you should not be running this Like this is. You know, those are old, so we'll see, and we'll see if there's any pushback, et cetera, et cetera. But it was June yeah, june 2021,.

59:41
Microsoft kind of came back and said look, we heard the complaints, we're going to reevaluate these system requirements. And in August they came back and said, yeah, we're not changing anything, but we will allow you to do that if that's what you want. And I think they added that's when they grandfathered a couple of very specific systems. Like one of the ironies or hypocrisies, or whatever it is, of that day was that the Surface Studio had like a seventh gen or whatever, maybe even six gen chip, and they allowed that to install Windows 11, right, they made a couple of exceptions. So you know, we'll see, but I can't wait to see this watermark appear, cause I know it's going to be some reader or someone on Twitter or something We'll be like look at this thing that just appeared on my frigging computer.

01:00:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, if you don't have a TPM, two is it. Are you going to see it then? Yeah, yeah, that's part of it.

01:00:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're hitting a real issue, which is all this is well and fine right up until your machine doesn't work, right Right.

01:00:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but it's a little annoying. I think people you know there are a lot of OCD people in the computing world Did you miss that, by the way.

01:00:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I've never. What do you?

01:00:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
mean Give me and they're not going to like that little thing in the lower right-hand corner.

01:00:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, If it was Apple, it would animate, it would just bounce up and down. Can you see me now? Do you see me now?

01:00:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let me know, when this gets annoying, I don't know. All right, let's take a little tiny, teeny-weeny break. We've got lots more to talk about, including sliding PC sales. Love that. You're watching Windows Weekly, paul. You're watching Windows Weekly, paul, thorat, richard Campbell. Richard warned us there is a detailed brown liquor segment.

01:01:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Would you call it a magnum opus?

01:01:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Magnum of liquor. You know we've had a few of them where it's been about something else, and a whiskey yeah, I love that. This is one of those it's story time.

01:01:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a story, all right, get ready for story time Gather around the fire.

01:01:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
kids, Don't get that whiskey too close to the fire.

01:01:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're watching Windows Weekly. We thank our club members, by the way, for making this show possible. Seven bucks a month, ad-free versions of every show, access to the Discord Great hangs in there, lots of special events. We've got a Stacy's Book Club coming up, chris Markroth's photo segment. We are going to schedule a coffee tasting soon. Every night at 9 pm Pacific, midnight Eastern.

01:01:52
I've been staying up late and coding with the Advent of Code and some of our great coders in the club. It's just a great hang, a great social experience. I agree with Paul. I do it because I like having some friends in the community around the geeky stuff we love. If you like that and you want to support us and you want us to keep doing what we do into the new year, we need your help. Just go to twittv slash club twit. Twittv slash club twit or scan the QR code in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. There's Richard. I don't know why the qr code is there. It is there. It is upper left hand. Thank you. I'm a lefty, so it's, for me, the right. Nobody's perfect leo, nobody's perfect.

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01:05:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Sorry, maybe not, maybe not um, yeah, it's been, you know it's been a year, I don't know.

01:06:06
So last week we talked about I think it was was Dell and HP, you know, published their result, their financial results for the quarter and I think in one of those cases, for their fiscal year, one to 3% growth, you know, lenovo, 3% growth. They were doing great, you know, comparatively speaking. And so I went back and looked, because these things don't always come out at the right time or at the same time, but Gartner and IDC had both weighed in on the quarter earlier and when you average those numbers as I do not very good 1.5%, you know pretty much confirming what the PC makers are seeing. And I think the big story here is just we've been waiting for the, you know, this kind of upgrade bump to happen and we're still waiting, and it looks like now they're saying late 2025, which, of course, is when Windows 10 goes out of support. So we'll see, but as we said, I think, last week, you know, these AI, slash, copilot plus PCs, you know, haven't triggered much of a, least of all in the business side of things for sure.

01:07:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think that's why, you know, last year was a year with the financial concerns were sort of pushing on, maybe by extended warranties hold off on new hardware, on new hardware. This coming year I can almost make the case again.

01:07:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
but uh, you know, hardware does start to fail as it gets to a certain age. I bought more computers this year than I bought in 10 years yeah I know, you know personally yeah, I'm a freaking weirdo. I don't know what it's about. But um yeah, pcs are tough. I don't think most people like them. I think most people think see them as a work related thing right.

01:07:53 - Kevin (Announcement)
It's not like a fun thing for most people right, it's for us.

01:07:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean like we play games or whatever, maybe or uh, but I mean almost, you know, like if you're doing facebook on a pc, I mean you're old, you know like it's, you're not really that's a really good time.

01:08:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, yeah, that those times have gone yeah, I mean I I write software code.

01:08:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not very good software code, but I, you know, I use the pc for things that are not really possible, or particularly yeah, you don't want to do your coding on a phone or tablet I can't, even I don't want to. I don't want to buy an. Uh, like a, I'm trying to think of something small, like I don't even want to buy something small on a, on a phone.

01:08:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I want to like there's always a bigger screen. Remember that.

01:08:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I think like the bigger the purchase, the bigger the screen. You know like if I'm gonna buy like a plane ticket, I want to have a desktop computer with like yeah, 27 I've been doing in my uh late night live coding.

01:08:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's on a 55 inch, it's giant yeah, yeah you want to see everything yep

01:08:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
so icons the size of your fist, exactly I want yeah, I want, I want this to be like a one-to-one. The icons, like the round icon, should be the size of my head yeah, and if it's a person's face.

01:08:59
It should look like the same size as my head. Yeah, so yeah, that's me, but I don't know anyway, um, yeah, I think you know. And look, this is kind. We were just talking, or maybe hypocritical. We were just talking about reliability issues with Intel chipsets of recent years. You know PCs. By and large they were a lot more reliable than they were for a long time. So I think we're in a word spot where they last longer. But people still have this knee-jerk sort of memory of like oh, it's terrible doing a new computer or upgrading a computer, I don't want to touch it, you know yeah and they kind of just go to it when they have to.

01:09:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Um, and lots of folks, when they, when they, when you're doing your your it thing, you're like, should I get a new computer? It's like now that you're committing to considering that let's wipe, and let's just wipe your machine as is, because I bet you, if we just flushed and rebuild like new yeah, I know i've- gone through this with my wife a lot actually, where she's like oh, I don't know what's going on.

01:09:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's really slow and I'm like it might be the 127 processes that are starting up every time you get your computer, because I don't know you install spotify and of course it just added itself like I ranted about this on uh twitter x, whatever the other day. Like I want to live in a world where that never can happen. Like I want to. I want it to. I don't want to run teams of the Xbox app as two examples, and have them just add themselves, like now you must want to run us all the time.

01:10:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And you want all of our notifications all of the time. Oh, you shut all the notifications off. We had an update. All your notifications are turned on again. Thank you, I think most of the time, oh you shut all the notifications off.

01:10:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We had an update all your notifications are turned on again, thank you. I think most of the people who run these apps are like, oh god, what is that? And then they turn it off. But now it's running with your pc every time you boot up and it's like guys, nobody's like you gotta, you gotta ask people that stuff, but anyway, uh, yeah, there's all kinds of reasons why your computer goes south, but uh, and by the way, that's. This is another. This is an unproven hypothesis, but another reason why ARM is so important is a lot less legacy cruft, and there's a very good chance that these things will be more reliable over a long period of time I got to say.

01:11:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
one of the things that's been tough with moving to Pixel 9 is getting all the notifications set correctly again.

01:11:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's the toughest thing of moving to any phone.

01:11:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I try to turn all notifications off. You'd be amazed how much software is really sad that it's notifications are turned off. Every single time you click on it, all of them, all it's saying I have notifications turned on. Don't you want to hear from me?

01:11:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I do Duolingo every day and it's always like come on, man you want notifications.

01:11:23 - AI voice (Interviewer)
Come on, we'll give you some points. You know We'll give you some points you know.

01:11:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And it's like stop, just stop. I don't need, I got enough, so I go through, I do the reverse, which is not efficient. But of course I hate myself. This is the way I do things. I leave it the way it is and then I turn them off one by one, right? Until in the end.

01:11:40
I have nothing running and I can be. I don it. Yep, like it's always like ping and you look and you're like you. Google photos says you have a memory from 2016? Die, die in a fire like seriously what do you like?

01:11:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
seriously, that's actually the best tip of a tip for mobile users is turn off notifications well so, but it's harder than you think.

01:12:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it is, it's incredible, like and, by the way, windows, this is a problem too, so the big windows um notification.

01:12:13
Turn off notifications? Well so, but it's harder than you think. Yeah, it is, it's incredible. And, by the way, windows this is a problem too. So the big Windows notification everyone would have seen unless you turned off OneDrive is it will pop up and be like hey, you have a memory on this day and you're like that's fascinating. I hate that thing. I hate it. I hate it so much and I review it was all day long, right? So I need.

01:12:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I need the checkbox of never interrupt me again.

01:12:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's. This is not a thing in windows. This is windows. So the problem with this notification is windows has options. You can click on that notification banner and one of them is like just never show me a one drive notification again. You do not want to choose that. Actually, if you use one drive, there might be things happening you want to know about. You actually have to go into the app and find the notifications thing and setting and just turn off that one kind of set notification, which, by the way, you can do in mobile with a lot of apps too. And what am I doing with my life? Again like, why am I spending this much time on this? Have you seen your?

01:13:02 - Kevin (Announcement)
that's I, yes, I know, yes, I know, yes, I have uh, speaking of unmanageable messes, um yeah, anyway, all right.

01:13:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So we talked about what do you with pc sales? Terrible, okay, dax, dax, yeah, so, oh, this is so sad, well it is nobody used it, obviously yes yeah, the reactions to this, this, this is very typical for our community or for our world.

01:13:25
Um, they're all over the map. You know there are people like, oh my god, I use this every day and you're like really, oh, what's wrong with you. You know there are people like, oh my God, I use this every day and you're like really, oh, what's wrong with you. Or you have like the people like, well, it must not have been very good. I've never even heard of this. Like, okay, I have heard of it, I have tried it.

01:13:45
I've always been fascinated by this idea. Into a dock, keyboard, mouse, big screen. It becomes sort of a computer. There's a desktop environment.

01:13:53
But my issue with decks aside from the basic latency, performance issues was always this needs to come from Google, right, this, this needs to be a feature of the operating system, you know. So I appreciate the work that went into this. I sort of see what you're trying to do here. I like it. But this should be coming from Android and it hasn't to date. By the way, they're working on that right now. So we talked about these rumors about Google maybe switching Chrome OS to Android a little bit last week and that might be part of it. Uh, there, there, uh, you have two devices. Yeah, I have two devices here now that have a little bit of an Android desktop environment. If you want to enable it, with a taskbar and a start menu looking thing and floating windows, and, okay, maybe on a tablet or a bigger device, this might make some sense. So it is coming to the operating system, but separately from this.

01:14:42
Samsung, of course, has this partnership with Microsoft, so the phone link stuff is built into their flagship phones. Now you don't have to download the app, you can open phone link on your computer and they'll just kind of sync up and they kind of work and they have additional features that aren't offered on other phones. And basically what Samsung is saying, and I don't know that this is the full story, but they are. They feel that they don't really need dex anymore because of this phone link thing. So if you have a windows pc, you can access your apps from your pc. You can obviously do the messages and phone stuff, all this stuff, through your computer if you want to but that's not what dex was really.

01:15:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it's not that's my thing.

01:15:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like it was kind of exactly what it was.

01:15:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what it is, yeah, yeah the idea was you would have a monitor and a dex dock and a keyboard and a mouse at the office A monitor, a Dex dock, keyboard and a mouse at home, and it became a computer as soon as you docked your Samsung device on either place.

01:15:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the dream right that you have this one device, One thing that does multiple things. Right, we barely ever.

01:15:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have lots of things yeah, nobody ever wanted. This, I think yeah, nobody ever wanted this, I think, yeah.

01:15:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I mean, 10 or 15 years ago I was flying on a plane, I had a I think it was a Palm TX or something like that, or Sony something that was a Palm device and one of those little folding keyboards and you put the thing on like a little connector and I'm typing away and the plane bumped and the phone, like one millimeter off, the thing froze up. I lost whatever I was working on, right. So I was like, all right, I'm done, that's it. I've been trying. You know, jerry Pernell used to always have those Windows C remember the handheld PCs the size of a keyboard, like short screen. Love that stuff. He, like me, he spent a long time trying to, you know, find that hybrid device that you know made sense. He actually did a lot more than I ever did, cause I was was always really disappointed. But at the time I wrote an editorial called, uh, the right tool for the job, you know, and my whole thing was like, look, I'm a big guy, I can carry a laptop, a tablet and a phone. It's, it's okay.

01:16:44
Each one of these does something really well, I'll just use them for what they are, so it'll be fine you know, I'll be happy, yeah, and it has been fine, it's worked fine, um, but yeah, I mean I still, but I still get it like. I get it like. I understand the appeal. You know it would be cool if you had a phone and you got on a plane, as an obvious example, and there was a screen and you could you plug it or whatever it does, connect somehow you have like a virtual keyboard on your, your tray or whatever, and your stuff is there and you're, maybe you're online, and that I, I like it.

01:17:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like the idea maybe this is the microsoft thin client, though they just yeah, maybe that's what you want, it doesn't. I mean it doesn't have to be nut sized. It could be a phone, it could be anything, yeah that's true, yep, yeah, no.

01:17:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, there's a Windows 365 app for your phone. I mean you could do that. I can't tell you, it's been a while, but several years ago I was at probably a Microsoft Ignite or similar conference and someone showed me their phone and how they had remote desktoped into their PC and it was like these stupid little icons, tightsy. I was like what is wrong with? How much time did you spend on this? This is ridiculous. But look, it works. No, it works. One pixel. Yeah, it works. It's a start menu and everything. No, I get it, but like I don't know. So anyway, like I said, I like it. I like it conceptually, but I think the first step is it has to come from the company that makes the platform right.

01:18:05
Yeah, that makes the platform right. Yeah, so you know, okay, I don't know, it's an interesting idea, but it's over, so that's happening. So I think January is the timeframe for that. It's pretty quick, so it's going away.

01:18:23
So much for that. Yeah, sorry, this one is incredible to me. So you may recall, I think it was back in October Microsoft lashed out against Google for what they called a shadow Astro turfing campaign against them in Europe, where they tried to get a bunch of European cloud vendors to rise up and complain to the European commission and Google actually came back with a pretty good response to this. So, like, everything we've done has been public I'm not sure you mean by shadow campaign, but it's been kind of an overt campaign, frankly. But anyway, there's still, you know, whatever? Just kind of not in keeping with the whole. Brad Smith Kumbaya, you know, vibe we've had for 20 years now, and this week there was a similar complaint. Same woman, by the way, deputy general counsel for Microsoft.

01:19:17
On LinkedIn because that's where you post things said hey, remember last week when Bloomberg published a story that the FTC was investigating us for antitrust violations? Remember that? Yeah, that's how we found out about it. We read about it in Bloomberg. They have never contacted us about this, they've never served us with a legal filing of any kind, and when we went to them to ask about it they were like, yeah, we don't have any comment on that so interesting? So here's the thing.

01:19:49
So they have accused the ftc of ethics violations using their own internal ethics rules. They've asked the ftc inspector general to investigate. They'd like to know what's going on, because when bloomberg and then later the new york times and I think also the financial times all report, citing multiple sources, the same exact thing, this could only come from within the FTC. No one else would know about this. So they believe that this is part of a campaign from what they call FTC management read Lena Kahn to leak information about investigations to convince companies to try to do the right thing. I guess. And apparently the guy who is the what do you call it? Inspector General of the FTC publicly complained about the rising number of these incidents under this agency's current management.

01:20:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's Lena Kahn kind of acting unilaterally.

01:20:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the thing we can't say, that we can't. It's Lena Kahn kind of acting unilaterally. This is the thing we can't say, that we can't actually say Lena Kahn. They'll say FTC management. I don't know how that you could prove this Like. In other words, imagine there's an investigation, right, and they come back and they're like look, yes, it's pretty clear, someone or someone's within the FTC leaked information about this investigation publicly and other investigations, apparently not just this one. But how can you prove it was her right? Unless you find emails or something, or you find witnesses who say, yeah, no, she used to stand at my office door all the time and be like did you leak it to Bloomberg? Yet Unless you have that, it's just kind of speculation but not helping matters. I think you know Lisa Kahn. I don't know if you know this is a little controversial.

01:21:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, she's probably gone, although it's funny, she's definitely gone. Jd Vance really likes her, so I don't know?

01:21:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I don't know if she's gone actually I think she's gone.

01:21:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, is that clear?

01:21:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, anyway, so this, this is, uh, this is interesting and it's also like a really aggressive in your face kind of accusation. Right, it seems like a weird thing to say, unless you were pretty sure this was what was happening, but uh, but apparently the FTC is right the times and the financial times, yeah, it's, it's yeah, bloomberg was first, but then, yes, there were others who cited their own sources.

01:22:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
right, there were others who cited their own sources.

01:22:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, that's enough to make it real I could imagine the new york times sitting there be like just just wait for someone else to publish and then we can go live with you.

01:22:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I don't want to be first. Don't want to be first, yeah don't want to be first what an interesting story. I did not realize that they've. The ftc has not confirmed it right.

01:22:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
well, so apparently when there's an internal investigation in the ftTC, they don't have to make it public. Right, I didn't put this in the article. That makes sense. But apparently when there is information that goes out in the public and a company has been accused of something, the company has the right to come back and say okay, now you need to let me know what's happening. And they're like we don't have anything to say. It's like okay. So we read in Bloomberg that you were investigating us and I was just curious. You know, can we get a rough idea of what it is? We did wrong Nothing. No, okay, I'll just keep reading Bloomberg.

01:22:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I guess I mean it's kind of a weird, it's a weird situation. Well, it also probably makes no difference, because we're only two months from an inauguration of a new administration and that's going. I throw everything out. I don't know about that, though.

01:23:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, I know, I know that's, yeah, I will see Right. I mean I I feel like a lot of the anti-strut, anti-trust stuff will stick. You know well, unless you're Apple but contending factions, big tech's terrible.

01:23:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Whatever they do, we're gonna go get them. And then, uh, there's people who say, including the president-elect, yeah, but they're american. This is the defense that tim cook's used. It's the events google's using right. Trump actually said google scares china. That's a good thing. Uh, the defense is hey, these are strong, big, great american companies. Don't you like america?

01:23:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, I mean maybe they cheated to become dominant, and I think that's something they appreciate. So I don't know, we'll see. Now, I didn't say that I I said it. I was thinking so, um, you know, we'll see, we'll see, we'll see um, I bet it's, I bet it doesn't matter.

01:24:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's important to make the distinction between actually filing a case and investigating internally yeah, and I'm sure they investigate a lot of stuff internally. It's not necessarily important yeah, fair enough.

01:24:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, there's been a lot of action at the ftc over the past two months, for some reason, so yeah, it's like trying to get everything done clear that yeah, it's like the final days of the third reich over there, like I don't know what's going on. It's like exactly, um, yeah, it, it's a little strange, but anyway, I this not just the way the FTC is handling this, which I find a little odd, but also just Microsoft's response. I mean, yeah, that is interesting.

01:24:39
It's a weird way to yeah, it's just a weird, I think rising above it has worked for them for a while, but now they're getting a lot more um, you know, uh, oversight, not oversight. But you know our agencies are looking at them. They finally gotten through all the big google and uh, apple complaints like what's la? Oh yeah, microsoft remember those guys. So they still run.

01:25:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yikes, you know, like, like, yeah they're doing great smarting over the whole blizzard thing because they really did show their butts with that.

01:25:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, that's another example of like. Historically, I don't believe this has ever happened, not one time. But they lost and historically, the FTC drops their internal case. This one time they're like no, we're going forward with it and it's like what are you doing? You didn't just lose, you were embarrassed, what are you doing? You were. You didn't just lose, you were embarrassed, Like what are you doing? But I don't know, I don't uh, I don't know. Anyway, so kind of strange. Um, I normally wouldn't report on Spotify wrapped, but like YouTube music, like Apple music, they do this year end wrap up thing and this year is actually pretty cool. If you're a Spotify user, you should go look at this. There's a, there's a a bunch of stuff, but one of them is a personalized podcast about your year using that nope notebook lm product that google has.

01:25:59
So it's the two, the two hosts, and they're like hey, paul, you had a great year. You really listened to a lot of blah blah, like it's it's really interesting. Um, it's, it's, you know, three to four minutes long, it's, it's really interesting. It's it's you know, three to four minutes long. It's not a big thing, but you obviously get the playlist. You get the thing with you know.

01:26:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Apple just does a slideshow with all that content. It's kind of a cool idea to turn it into a podcast. All about you.

01:26:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's only the podcast. There's only one part of it. There's a whole. If you have, if you use Spotify, definitely look at the app. You use spotify, definitely look at the app. It's crazy how much there is and there's all these animated things going on and whatever, but like it's fascinating. First of all, I think the notebook lm stuff is pretty cool. It's surprising how good it is. And then to listen, it's short.

01:26:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like I said, I wish you posted yours, because I don't use spotify so I don't know.

01:26:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I don't actually use it that much either. So they were like, they like, like man, you were killing it in August, you know it's like, yeah, I have a friend who shared a playlist with me so I could add some songs to it. So I actually did listen, but it's like there's some song by the Pretenders that I actually can't stand, that they're like oh, you're like, this is one of your favorite songs. Like you listen to it, I'm like oh, it really isn't um, but it's, but that's how I fixed a playlist.

01:27:12
Yeah, yeah, yeah no, but it's um, it's, it's. I think people are gonna like this a lot you know, oh yeah, there'll be there'll be versions of people, because it's all about you. That's what I mean. It's. It's kind of neat. It's like two people talking about you, about me, and not the way they would normally talk about me, like in a kind of a positive way. Yeah, yeah, they're like. My podcast would be like but you said you know like they're like.

01:27:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In august you said that and then in september you said we should do use notebook lm to make the best ofs for all of our shows. Why don't we think of that? It's a lot of data.

01:27:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't know how you do that. It's a lot of munging for sure.

01:27:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's why we ask our audience to go to twittv, slash best of and submit your candidates for the best segment from the year.

01:27:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, kevin was asking about this and I was like dude. I don't remember what I had for breakfast. How?

01:28:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
am I going to remember what happened on a show they really kind of have to go through?

01:28:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
the whole. I don't remember anything, but anyway, I can't.

01:28:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Kevin, this is the last time. Next year we'll have Notebook LM. Yeah, there you go. Thank you, Make it easier.

01:28:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Paul and Richard were really clicking in 2025.

01:28:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Really Seriously.

01:28:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it really is like that. It's fascinating.

01:28:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Remember Mitch Waite. He wrote just sent me an email.

01:28:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Of course I remember Mitch Waite.

01:28:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Was he your publisher too? No, well, a little bit Published a lot of computer books.

01:28:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He did the Delphi Superbible right. That was Wakewood Press right there you go. So he contacted me. The first time he contacted me was to write a book about Windows Millennium Edition and I was like I think I'm going to pass on that one.

01:28:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Great guy Really got into birding and I think, uh, I think he's pretty much semi-retired or retired he sent me an email, um, I just I just read it actually uh, saying that, uh, because I interviewed him uh eight years ago to talk about his, he has an apple one and he wants to sell it. Oh, geez, uh, he, he decided not to do. He decided to do a private sale rather than a public auction, which other people have done, but, by the way, those apple ones working apple ones, selling for hundreds of thousands let me ask you a question, though.

01:29:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Can you? What kind of ai are we talking about on these things like what's the tpm?

01:29:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
there's, no, there's not a co-pilot plus bc I'm sorry, zero, zero zero one anyway. He. He said somebody had taken the interview I did with him and fed it into Notebook. Lm, I could actually I wonder if I could play a little bit of it. He says two people discussing me in the third person, which is hysterical. That's awesome yeah.

01:29:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's what it does, right, that's what it does. I mean how they talk about it like it was an event or whatever.

01:29:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah. He says it's an excellent example of where ai is going here. I'll play a little bit of it.

01:29:53 - AI voice (Interviewer)
So you sent me uh this really fascinating collection of articles and interviews about, uh, this guy mitch weight. Yeah, you're clearly interested in, uh, I guess, the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship and I mean I know it's crazy.

01:30:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It bugs me a little bit.

01:30:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It almost sounds like they're making fun of us no, but you know what, if you listen, the thing, the thing that would get old here is if you listen to 10 or 20 of these, you'd be like man. They like everything exactly the same.

01:30:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you know like everything is great yeah there's a real but, but.

01:30:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But when you first hear it it's like, oh my god, that sounds like people yeah, you know?

01:30:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, what that is. It sounds very much like people that's why the sample is good, the, the subscription not so much yeah, still great idea on spotify, for spotify to turn your you know your end summary into a super easy for show.

01:30:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It has become plumbing right. This is a way for you to think you care about a brand that should just be serving you music and not bothering.

01:30:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a really good point. They don't want to be plumbing, nope, right and it's a race to the bottom their animated um feed would disagree with you, richard.

01:30:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Why would you not want to be bothered all the time?

01:31:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
you, you want to turn on notifications. You really do.

01:31:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you know what we're just gonna turn. You know, I was listening, was listening to Richard Campbell talk about notifications and I just thought he's such a smart guy. I wonder why he doesn't turn on notifications. You know, notifications are a really great thing.

01:31:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, mary, what do you think about notifications? I love notifications. I don't know why we don't all use notifications. Actually, did you say OpenAI is gonna put advertising in? Uh, yeah, you know this was coming right like. Uh, well, look I people are like oh, it's certification, you know it's like well, look, I think it's online service. Yeah there are two models here right free ad support paid. I mean now I pay for open ai, so I guess I won't see those ads, right?

01:31:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would hope so. You know those are the worst subscriptions when you pay for open ai. So I guess I won't see those ads right?

01:31:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would hope so. You know those are the worst subscriptions, when you pay for and still have ads. Yeah, but I I don't have a problem with this, I guess. No, we're assuming they do it right if we can get somebody to buy. But here's the thing if you thought google was unethical about when it comes to like advertising and following you around the internet, you know we've all had that creepy moment where you search for sneakers or something, and then that was the only ad you got for the next six days, or whatever I can assure you open ai every time we go to lunch.

01:32:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I would say a random word in his car when we went.

01:32:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, just just by lunchtime it was in his facebook. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's unbelievable right.

01:32:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I've been looking at radial arm saws.

01:32:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right You're like hey Bob, what do you think about radial arm?

01:32:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
saws, I really like radial arm saws.

01:32:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Richard seems to have a really positive attitude about them.

01:32:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Become the challenge to come up with an original term. You've never said to them before, just to see if they can find an ad for it. Yep.

01:32:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They can. So OpenAI is going to make Google look like the Amish. When it comes to that kind of thing, they have no morals whatsoever.

01:32:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're going to miss Google. I'm telling you.

01:32:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Google's going to be the good old days, so we'll see what happens, but man, I don't know. Open AI and ads it's like it makes me a little nervous. You thought it was bad when they're ripping off New York Times stories. Wait till they're ripping off New York Times stories. Wait till they're ripping off New York Times ads. And then did you guys follow this? The browser company came up with a video where they did three or maybe four demos of features that will most likely be in this new AI browser that they're calling.

01:33:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Nia, so this is not.

01:33:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Arc right. Yeah, this is the successor to Arc. You know the simpler Well. You know the simpler Well, you know, actually it's simpler, yes, but to me this is a lot like Arc Search, but for a desktop right. It will probably have traditional browsing capabilities. I'm sure you'd be able to load web pages and do that kind of thing, but I have to say I feel.

01:33:45
First of all, I think the ideas they have are good. They look interesting. I like the idea of turning the mouse cursor into a prompt, basically especially in 24H2, because you can't see it anymore. But they'll fix that, I'm sure, and they're thinking around it. But I also look at this and I think to myself they make it this case that you have to have re-architected this web platform the way that they did for this to make any sense. But I'm like I don't know, I could see google adding this to chrome. You know, like I, it seems like the type of stuff that we're gonna see other browser makers do as well. It's it's maybe a more integrated way of doing. Instead of the side by side thing like microsoft talks about with the co-pilot, pain and edge or whatever. It's more of an integrated approach.

01:34:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, that a lot of. I think claude announced it was going to do something like this. I think even opening.

01:34:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I see lots of things like this, so auto browsing is what they're calling it for yeah, which is auto browsing, is let me, what is it called?

01:34:46
an arc search? It's called something like that. It's called let me browse for you right, browse for you, or something. So yeah, I mean, yes, I like the idea that you've. It's a little bit like recall. You know, in in windows where you are researching a gift for someone, you have multiple tabs to amazon open whatever it is, you've looked at different versions and then you write your wife or whomever. You say, hey, I, hey, I was looking at these things, tell me which one you think is the best gift for my sister or whatever. And it uses the information it has about your browsing history to know that you were looking at these things and it makes a list for you with all the URLs. That's pretty cool. That seems like a reasonable.

01:35:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So what we're watching, the computer's doing the actual clicking and moving around.

01:35:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The purple cursor is the computer, the AI or whatever. Moving this thing around. That is wild. Yeah, basically it's automation, right? In other words, you probably have to train it to do this one time and then it sort of knows how to do this type of thing. And this is the promise of computers, right, that it will make these kind of tasks easier. It's kind of interesting. They're a quirky company.

01:35:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I will watch with interest. There's a huge amount of upset going on, of course, because if you go to the browser, the Arc browser subreddit, everybody's peeved Freaking out. Yeah, Because it looks like they're abandoning Arc. I don't I don't.

01:36:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, yeah, it's a power user tool. We said this before. Right, there's this. Uh, I love arc, I use, yeah, I yeah. That's what happens. There's it's um one out of ten people, whatever the number is looks at it goes oh my god, where's this been all my life? Yeah, and the other 90 percent are like there's a.

01:36:29 - Kevin (Announcement)
That's only one out of 10. There's a lot of change here. That's exactly the problem.

01:36:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's very strange. So it depends. It depends on what you like. I mean, they say they're not getting rid of Arc and whatever. Maybe they could add this functionality to Arc as well and have kind of a power I'm gonna keep using arkin, unless until it becomes, abandonware.

01:36:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, there's no reason not to. I mean, all right, let's take a break. Uh, we've got our xbox segment coming up, our brown liquor segment, a whole lot more. You're watching windows weekly with paul thorat and richard campbell our show today brought to you by veem I just saw. Veem is now valued at triple its valuation. They just took a big investment, now worth $15 billion.

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01:39:40 - AI voice (Interviewer)
you too don't they, so I looked this up during an earlier ad and it was like under maintenance.

01:39:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm thinking, oh man, I'm not gonna be able to. No, it's back, it's back, oh good. So my, my numbers are fascinating. Um, okay, so yes, so microsoft, microsoft xbox, like spotify, I guess, does a year in review. This thing will be available through sometime in january. This is where you find out if you have a video game addiction, I guess and yeah, I have had ugly. You know results in the past, but now things are a little different Things are.

01:40:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You took a year off.

01:40:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I took a year. I took a year and a half off, really, I mean, other than you know whatever, but so, uh, yeah, things look a little different than they used to for me, so and then, is this yours or is this just? Yeah, I'm looking at one that one that's in the shot is generic. I just look mine up now. So, um, I apparently played 80 hours of video games this year that's nothing.

01:40:34
It's not I know, I know, but for me that's a lot, cause last year, I can assure you, it was like two hours, um well, 10 hours, or whatever. But uh, 14 games preferred platform PC Interesting. Wow, join the mass. Uh, busiest month was November, and I think that might've been because of a little indie game called color duty, black ops six, uh, in which I have prestige, by the way.

01:40:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay.

01:40:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Congratulations. That's thank you. It's.

01:41:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a personal uh anyway, uh, so he's back.

01:41:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Baby, I'm back not really, but um, I'm trying to make top achievement rush hour. I don't know what that means. Okay, I guess it's because it's a an achievement that only a few people have gotten. I don't know number Number two game Shenua's Saga Wall Blade 2. Okay, doom Eternal. That doesn't surprise me.

01:41:26
I've also played Stalker 2, tomb Raider, rise of the Tomb Raider, tomb Eternal, in battle mode Hell Let Loose, which I hated. Doom and Doom 2, the classics Quake 2. Yeah, I did a lot of classic. I'm surprised, oh, classics quake 2. Yeah, I did a lot of classic. I'm surprised, oh, because this is xbox. I bet I've spent more time in half-life 2 than most of these games. Resident evil 2, flight simulator flight simulator 2024 very good, um, anyway, it goes on from there, but, um, yeah, kind of, it's an interesting thing. And then there's a personal message that's not personal at all from Phil Spencer. So you got that going. I was subscribed to Xbox Game.

01:42:02
Pass.

01:42:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not that personal?

01:42:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not at all personal, it's impersonal. Hi it's Phil, hello Paul. So this is like I guess this is a Game Pass statistic. So I was on Game Pass the entire year. I have had 88 lifetime months on Game Pass. Wow, I know Most of those 77 of those didn't play a single game. 29 games played over Game Pass. 4,800 minutes on Game Pass. I don't know what that means. 9,500 lifetime I don't know what that means. Okay, points earned. I don't care about that.

01:42:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is a risky you're playing too many games yeah, I feel like this is a risky thing to tell people, so in 2022.

01:42:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I saw this for an intervention yeah, that's what I know. I looked at. I looked at my year in review of 2022 and I was like, oh, I might have a problem.

01:42:56 - Kevin (Announcement)
I don't remember the numbers but I think you could find stimulated your year.

01:42:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It might have been, it might have. It was definitely part of it where I was like yikes, that's good. Um, yeah, it's not good. So yeah, anyway, it's live.

01:43:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that's there, if you're so inclined um, you want to know your dirty little secret, yeah video habit, game habit.

01:43:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not that, it's pretty much, yeah, microsoft, so why shouldn't you? That's right, um, and it is december suddenly november gone, like that. You know that's how it happens, um, but that means we have more xbox game pass games across all the platforms to look forward to, and the big one, of course, is that new indiana jones game, uh, which is coming when pretty soon. I want to say, do we have the date?

01:43:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It says first half of December here, right, yeah, somewhere, yeah, sometime soon.

01:43:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I, so I'm sure. Well, I'm not sure. I suspect this game will be pretty good. Maybe I've only seen one shot of his face in the game where I was like, yeah, that looks like Harrison Ford. The rest of them have been like we're going to market with that. To me it looks a little off. It is coming to the PlayStation 5 in 2025 at some point Blah blah blah whatever.

01:44:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ooh, it's pretty Is this Unreal Engine? Probably is.

01:44:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's got to be, that's the future.

01:44:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
right, that's the way things should be, but when they show his face, it's like I don't know a lot of it. A little uncanny valley there he is that's sort of? Uh, it's not though right like I.

01:44:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
To me that doesn't look like him well, maybe they don't have the rights to his face no, they definitely do I would not go for that. He's notoriously cranky about those things. Yes, so oh they didn't use.

01:44:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, that's fascinating. Why would they make a game with those?

01:44:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
okay, well, because he's wants millions, right yeah, but how do you do it without him suing?

01:44:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
that's you know yeah, well, so you're close enough, indiana jones, no, no look, if you saw the steve jobs movie and that actor, michael fassbender, looked nothing like steve jobs, right. If you could watch that movie and be okay, michael fastbender looked nothing like steve jobs, right. If you could watch that movie and be okay with it, you're gonna love this game, but I, I don't. It's beautiful, it looks great.

01:45:07 - Kevin (Announcement)
Maybe and maybe it's a good game. It's being uh built with the id tech engine oh, we tech interesting.

01:45:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, so that's the.

01:45:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's a doom engine or quake engine, yeah, quake, or whatever they call it now.

01:45:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, huh uh, would you, kevin, as long as you're uh googling things, I started, I feel, like joe rogan here. Would you look up? Uh, just asking questions is harrison ford licensing? Uh, this or?

01:45:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
is?

01:45:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
he says they did not like someone it looks like bill paxton so what they did was they found, they found, they found, like bill paxton. So what they did was they found.

01:45:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, they found like bill paxton is passed, I know so there's a state, but maybe it was like a state that they probably found like a guy who was his stunt sort of looks like him.

01:45:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, in the 1980s and they were like hey, uh, you need money right um, so they did not license his likeness.

01:45:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's why yeah yeah, that stinks feels like you should really no, I do, I just yeah, but I bet he just said no, and there's nothing you can do when he's right if he says no.

01:46:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He says no he says no and you really want to do it.

01:46:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I can see him saying no, I think to me this is the problem with the game. It's like just to look like you see his face like I don't know all I see is articles saying indiana jones great circle nails.

01:46:18 - Kevin (Announcement)
It's harrison Harrison Ford impression and why does he look so real and stuff like that really but the opposite of your well, I I will just say to anyone watching this you're seeing the video.

01:46:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, do you think this looks like him?

01:46:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
at all. It doesn't look like him at all. No, I don't think so, you know, yeah, it's kind of sort of like him.

01:46:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, exactly, you see that tv all the time, right, they say, well, sort of well, it's like the uh mark hamill or luke skywalker character that was in um that uh was it and or whatever tv show that was, oh yeah it's like, yeah, it looks a little bit, you know, like sort of you just have to suspend disbelief and go with it that's the thing, the mandalorian, when he comes in, yeah like if I wanted to suspend disbelief I'd play like atari 2600 baseball.

01:47:02 - Kevin (Announcement)
Like I don't understand, you know, like I mean we have, we have the capability you know, we don't make it look exactly like this guy, like I don't have the means I think people are more nervous about uh, troy baker, uh using, or troy baker imitating Harrison Ford's voice.

01:47:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I can see that there's Bill Paxton. He's a good voice actor. We'll see.

01:47:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know who does a great Harrison Ford voice, by the way, is Mark Hamill. Oh yeah, Listen to his imitation of Harrison.

01:47:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ford, it's beautiful. The question is are you playing the game because you want to look like?

01:47:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Indiana Jones. Oh yeah, I bet he listened to listen to his imitation of harrison. Yeah, sure, the question is are you playing the game because you want to look like indiana jones? Are you playing the game because?

01:47:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:47:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's because I want to be indiana, jones, you don't you don't look at yourself while you're doing it, just yeah I wonder how long it'll be before you could have your own image, your own likeness.

01:47:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's right like that.

01:47:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That would be kind of cool.

01:48:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's definitely a path we're on if you're a sports fan like one thing I've been calling for for easily 20 years is, instead of the terrible announcers that are always on tv, you could tune into like an alternate audio channel where it's maybe like local guys, like basically podcast guys, and you could find one where you're like oh my god, I love these two guys or whatever it is, and they're hilarious and it's funny and or interesting whatever, and I don't understand why we don't do that, like we have that capability too, but you know there's this.

01:48:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's one of the games that's popular on youtube, world of warships, which is a play to win, pay to win, play to free to play game. Okay, and one of the popular youtubers on is an older guy who's ex-navy and and is notoriously crap at playing these games, and so they actually by the way, that's the role I'm gonna have in retirement yeah, so you know, when you play the game, your ship captain says things to you about what it sees and so forth, and so his voice was put in there.

01:48:58
Except everything he says is wrong. I love it and people love it right like I love it. You know that's the kind of thing you want, is the voices that make you happy doing the things you would want them yeah, you know that airing character with them yeah that's brilliant well, uh, there are other games, I'm told, coming this month, but who cares?

01:49:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
uh, most of them are just this one. Um, there's a new forza motorsport coming on, uh, today. Actually it's out today, so that's good. But then, uh, the rest of these, I'm like, yeah, maybe I don't know, but I think the big one is, uh, indiana, which is the ninth, by the way, when it comes out. So, what is that? Tuesday, monday, monday or Tuesday? So there you go, cool, cool. What else we got, oh, yeah, so I don't want to use the term crash in this context, but Flight Simulator 2024 has not gotten off to a great start, unfortunately. Nice, off to a great start, unfortunately. Um, microsoft uh released a like the first major hot fix, uh, for these problems, I think, a week or 10 days ago, whatever that was. They've since released a bunch. I love this quote. It was like the, uh, the guy, the guy in charge of flight simulator, said that, uh, they have increased reliability above 99.999. Oh, and also we have two other big patches planned.

01:50:22
So, apparently, for the other 0.001 I guess I don't know, but okay, fair enough. Um, I think the reliability comment had to do with the online performance, not the actual game itself. But, um, the week that I think we yeah we will see um a hot fix this week, some, some time, and then the week next week there's going to be a like a really big patch. But, um, for now what they're doing is freezing, um, uh, previous gen flight simulator add-ons from working in the new game, because some of those are causing problems, and they're going to allow people to individually enable them in time, but for now they're just going to help with the reliability. Just kind of stop that, Because obviously people spend a lot of money on this stuff. They want to bring it forward if they can, but apparently the engines are different enough that it's causing some issues, so they'll get there.

01:51:16
I did try it, Uh, I tried it. Actually, I tried it two ways. I tried it with uh game, uh, cloud gaming, which is streaming, and I tried it with uh installing it locally. I will say this thing beats like the hell out of a PC Like uh. I have those AMDs and five laptops that run like call of duty, black ops, six full res, high to ultra high specs, etc. This thing brings those laptops to their knees. Like it is, it's a brutal.

01:51:46
Yeah it's actually, it has pretty serious requirements, so I could say that being a problem. Nintendo is expected, sometime by the end of its fiscal year, which ends in March, to surpass the sales of the DS with the Switch, making it the best-selling console it's ever made, and I don't apropos of nothing. Sony said hey, by the way, we've sold 150 million PlayStation 2s, right, so we actually have the best-selling console of all time, 154.02 million units to be specific. Uh, okay, like no, sorry, that was for the DS. Um, I think what they're trying to say is, even if the Nintendo switch beats the DS, it will still be in second place. But we might've talked about this last week, I can't remember. But the uh, the switch will be in market for the rest of the year and maybe longer.

01:52:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So how many people are still buying playstation two?

01:52:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
none, zero, yeah. So, um, yes, the switch is going to come out ahead, but it was it's kind of like just came out of nowhere. It's like, hey, remember us, we also make a.

01:52:55
We made one that was really popular, remember popular three versions ago yeah, I mean, uh, I don't know what the I don't remember the number for the ps4, but I know the ps3 sold, you know, 88 somewhere in there, 89 million. Um, ps4 was probably better, probably 120 somewhere in there. And then you know, they just announced ps5 numbers. I don't remember they're good, given you know where we are in time, but um could very well end up being the uh, the worst selling playstation of all time. So they're like yeah, we used to be, you remember, we used to really uh yeah, but we're selling.

01:53:31
It's like tens of millions still right yeah, come on, I know so it's kind of a weird thing to come out of 65 million playstation fives, and we'll call it the worst selling yeah, so I haven't.

01:53:44
I haven't written this up yet, but I just wanted to mention, if you're into game preservation, which seems to be like a big thing all of a sudden, right. So we know that, uh, good old games, gogcom is doing their own kind of initiative and they're certifying older games to run on modern hardware and they're doing the work to make that happen, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of other work occurring in this area. One of them is like the classic original versions of Tomb Raider. There are open source products or projects to bring that stuff forward to modern PCs.

01:54:17
There's also one for the original Medal of Honor, which had two add-ons as well. The Medal of Honor team was what went on to make Call of Duty. They left that company and then made the first Call of Duty and then probably Call of Duty 2 at least, and there is an open source project that just hits some major milestone where you have to own the game but you can buy the game for like 10 bucks on you know gogcom or whatever, and then you can run it through their installer or their uh front end and it allows this game to play on modern hardware.

01:54:52
And I I gotta say like I I think that kind of thing is really cool, that's really neat so it's always good Nostalgia drive on gaming.

01:54:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah Well, I, but I also think it's all that nostalgia drive on gaming.

01:55:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, right, well, I hope. But I also think it's kind of important, like I, these are good games, like they're still fun to play and, um, it's neat when there's a company like valve that supports that. They do like Half-Life and Half-Life 2, and they do these anniversary editions. They, you know, bump up the graphics and they do all this stuff. There's a project to bring ray tracing to Half-Life 2, for example, which is I'm really looking forward to. But it's neat to see the community kind of take control of this in a way where they have to, like where things have just been abandoned. Or there was a story where the original Unreal and Unreal Tournament 1, the OG versions are just out there and free, like they're just you know Epic's like yeah, just go nuts. Like we're not going to after you, you can do whatever you want with these. I think that stuff is kind of cool.

01:55:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So no, I think it's, and I think it's smart too. It's like how do you really be loyal to fans even though you have nothing left to sell them?

01:55:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
right, right, exactly. Yeah, that's the thing, like these companies kind of move along, um, and there are people like but hey, uh, this is still a good game, like I bet there's a lot more of this to come. I know Atari is doing a lot of this work. They're buying up companies, like they bought most of Intellivision, for example.

01:56:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Part three of Half-Life 2. Anyone yeah?

01:56:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, I'm hoping for news there. So we'll see, we'll see, we'll see.

01:56:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, we're going to to prepare ourselves, gird our loins for a lengthy brown liquor segment.

01:56:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What does this mean? Do I have to do? I need to go get a drink. What's going to happen?

01:56:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
we might I know I'm gonna have one I'm just gonna watch with interest how about that?

01:56:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
oh it's, oh you're doing, you're going off script if you get ever, ever get out like whiskey.

01:56:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Year in review from the whiskey makers of the world. Yeah. That'd be good, wouldn't it? I feel like you're liver called.

01:56:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
My favorite's out of the past year.

01:56:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It has some problems.

01:56:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We'll be back with more of the back of the book coming up in just a bit. On Windows Weekly with Paul Theriot and Richard Campbell Our show this afternoon, this evening, this morning, depending on when you're listening brought to you by US Cloud. Us, do you know them? They're the number one Microsoft Unified Support Replacement. Actually, if you've been listening to Windows Weekly for the last few months, you've heard a lot about US Cloud. It's pretty exciting what they did. I had a great conversation with them a couple of weeks ago. They couple of weeks ago. They're the global leader in third-party Microsoft Enterprise support and they're very popular. They support 50 of the Fortune 500 right now, partly because they save a lot of money.

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02:01:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Time for our back of the book. Let's kick things off with paul thurott's tip of the week. It's been a couple of weeks since I've mentioned steven snowsky's book, so I'd like to just mention it again so I was.

02:01:19
I'm I probably reread this book like six or eight times now. It's kind of amazing. But, um, in the section about windows 8, he makes a reference to something that I, I have to say I, uh, I really associate with um, mostly because he actually mentions me in this section. Um, which is a little bit like the thing when richard was out and I was like it's kind of weird being me sometimes like I'm reading this book and I'm like yeah, yeah, and then like oh, what? Then he talks about me for a second. I'm like, oh, that's weird.

02:01:47
But, um, during the windows 8 time frame, um, they got a lot of complaints, you know, as they would about windows 8, and a lot of them were coming from this group of people that are, the people who are listening to this podcast, the people who read my website, like these kind of like technical experts who can't stand for anything to change because it kind of undermines their expertise. So, like you know, you move the cheese and like now I'm not as important as I used to be. What are you doing? And I don't know if we ever talked about this, this, but there's a term for this group inside microsoft. There was at the time called the basement, and it's based on a, a scene from the, the, the least of the diehard movies, which is the one with jason long, where they go to this wizard. You know the, the, the super technical guy that is played by uh filmmaker kevin Smith, who lives in his mother's basement, of course, even though he's like 45 years old and it's you know, it's, it's it's like this thing that Microsoft, like any tech company, has to deal with.

02:02:50
Like your most passionate fans are the ones who know the most and are more invested in the product than anybody and do not want anything to change. You know, it's kind of a weird, it's almost a paradox. You know, it's like I see this in the, the pushback against windows and arm. I just I, I saw this, uh, uh, I I don't know if I talked about this early in the show, but I just saw this online. You know, know, it's like wanting and wanting and wanting this thing to happen. Then it happens. You're like, yeah, but you move the cheese doesn't do this one thing.

02:03:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's like, it's like guys come on like I was.

02:03:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I had this kind of interaction with this guy on twitter the other day or today about how terrible windows and arm is. I'm like what are you talking about? It's great. He's like well, there's no software. I'm like I, here's a website that lists like 11 000 apps that are run native. What are you talking about? He's like well, it doesn't have this interface I need for this musical instrument I use in a recording studio. And it's like okay, so you're not talking about a computer, you're talking about a specialized device that like. You know like one thing you need.

02:03:55
Yeah, it's like, guys, here's the thing you have to kind of step outside of your little bubble. You know like and and and admit that you don't represent the mainstream. You know, like I. I just I wish we could get past this. Like I, I. I find that a lot of my interactions now are just people who are like I just crap on this thing. That's what I do, it's my job. Like I just don't like things. And it's like dude, like I would like to think, like when I rant about something, you know it's fun, but it's also pointless and a waste of time. You know like it's. It's like spinning wheels for no reason. You know, like I, if you have, if you're so technical or have such a specific need. I bet you have two computers. Yeah, you know, just keep one for that.

02:04:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you can keep it on the edge.

02:04:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And it also. I also feel like the people who complain the most about things are the ones who have used those things the least. You know, like the people who just show up and like I would never buy anything from Apple makes you know. It's like, well, have you ever tried anything that they make? No, I would never. I would never. Well, what are you talking about?

02:05:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know why are my qualified for an opinion?

02:05:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Years ago, my friend's wife. I have a friend who lives in France and his wife's, you know. I opened the whatever think pad I had at the time and she's like oh she goes, windows is is terrible. I can't believe you use windows Like so many problems are so buggy and you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like when was the last time you used windows? And she's like I don't know, like six, eight years ago. I'm like your opinion is useless. Like what are you like? What are you talking about? Like I like, okay, I mean, so maybe it was terrible then. I don't know that. My tip is almost like just mental health, like we got to get past this because it's just you're preventing forward progress.

02:05:47
I don't know the world would be such a better place our world, our silly little world if rm was a first class citizen. That was a viable alternative. X64, if things. If you could just evaluate those things, they're on that path. I mean they really are on that path. That's the thing we should be celebrating what happened this year, I think in my space.

02:06:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It emulates amazingly well.

02:06:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah and it, but increasingly, yeah, it is so well that you don't know know what's happening. That's the kind of the point. Yeah, and I just you know, I use this thing for days at a time. The battery goes forever, the performance is fantastic, I have multiple instances of visual studio and browsers and whatever going, never have any problems. And then I get on my site and someone's like I would never use this thing, it's a piece of crap and it's like but your computer sounds like a jet engine what are you like what?

02:06:38
what are you defending?

02:06:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
yeah, no, it's like it. That's the old um liberace line. I was crying all the way to the bank yes, nice, you know what? You don't have to use that machine because I am and I'm kicking your butt, maybe that's what my computer needs is a candelabra.

02:06:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There you go.

02:06:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I wish my brother, george, was here anyway.

02:07:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, speaking of windows on arm, um, a couple weeks ago, maybe mid, I don't remember sometime in november, uh, google quietly finally released google drive for windows on arm in beta or in preview, whatever they're calling it. And this is the first or the only rather major blocker for me, and I've been using it ever since. It's fantastic, and I have started transitioning all my stuff back to it. I cannot. I'm so happy you're gonna d1 drive yourself.

02:07:30
I am yep and I I I can't wait to see how much your machine pleads that you use one drive yeah, so actually this will be something good for me to experience, because one thing I never did in the past was like uninstall or dismantle one drive, and I might actually try that. Um, we'll see, although you know I still use one drive for some things.

02:07:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Um, but yeah, just working this office breakdown on you because you're not using one drive and you're forced, so actually that's yeah.

02:07:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So that's actually an interesting thing. In my experience, if you don't have one drive or you know the circumstances, they've gonna work, it won't. They will not work. Yeah, that's true, you will not auto save. That's a limitation microsoft built into the product on purpose to be anti-competitive, but anyway why did you say that sentence in one breath?

02:08:18
that's pretty epic, but but I don't use OneDrive, I don't use Office, so who cares? So anyway, google has now made this available to Workspace users as well. So if you have a business account, you can use Google Drive on Windows and ARM. And what a weird little configuration that is. Huh, a Windows 11 on ARM PC plus Google Workspace. Who are you?

02:08:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
What are you doing, man? Can I interest you in a Chromebook?

02:08:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, exactly, anyway, so it's out, yes.

02:08:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I can get that now. All right, I think the ongoing saga of you being one driverless is going to be like we're going to call that 2025. Yeah.

02:08:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, I did it for the first half of 2024, but then Windows Unarmed Snapdragon happened and it was just like the mob. You keep pulling me back.

02:09:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're back? Well, I'm back.

02:09:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Now I'm leaving again.

02:09:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Leave the gun, Take the canola.

02:09:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So far so good, so far, so good.

02:09:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, let's talk about Run as Radio, mr Richard Campbell.

02:09:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, one of my favorite shows of the year about run as radio mr richard camp. Well, one of my favorite shows of the year I've been doing. This is the sixth one of these that I've done. Nice with rick klaus and joey snow. Uh, this one we're calling is that their?

02:09:27
real names. Yeah, yeah, if I'm going to do a christmas gift show, I should do it with klaus and close. Wow, yes, very funny. These are the two that make the podcast patch and switch. These are the two that make the podcast Patch and Switch. Both Microsoft employees Known them for 20 years now, and a few years ago we were talking about making a show about how hard it is to find a gift for a sysadmin and that turned into a very popular show, so I try and get it out around the Thanksgiving time frame. We got this out this week Because it's a show you share with your loved ones. Say here's the gifts. And it's become a competition between the three of us too. We literally keep notes all year round on gadgets and then we literally this show is just round robinning between the three of us. You know which fun.

02:10:13
Oh, and each of us has a cheap one, each of us has an expensive one, each of us has a cheap one, each of us has an expensive one, each of us has a horrible one. Like you name it, like I pulled out, my horrible one was baby's first vlogging kit, oh God.

02:10:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, it's horrible.

02:10:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh my God, what is happening?

02:10:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Baby needs a blog. Yeah, baby's got new shoes, baby needs a blog.

02:10:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh God, that's amazing yeah.

02:10:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But anyway it's super fun for us to do. I think you get the laughs from it. But it really is a pretty good list of you know 30-something things that maybe your tech family member that you cannot buy for might like.

02:10:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, very nice, very handy Fun show Runnysradiocom.

02:10:54 - Kevin (Announcement)
Yeah, those guys are great, by the way. Yeah, they are great. I can't believe that's their real names.

02:10:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I thought those were like pseudonyms. Those are not. That's their names.

02:11:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's wild, it's increasingly ludicrous as they hit middle age. But honestly, klaus and Snow they're great Holiday gift guy.

02:11:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Alright, you said you have done some research. You?

02:11:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
said, and it's not like I set out to cause trouble.

02:11:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it just comes to you. So I remember I mentioned last week that my son, Lisa's son, who likes drinking Coke with his mixed drinks, had found the Klonak Kilty and was drinking Klonak Kilty and Coke. So I said why don't you just use that malibu rum? I think you'd like it better, frankly yeah, exactly, captain morgan, maybe yeah, I actually went through the cabinet trying to find a whiskey but there was like angel's envy and lagavulin.

02:11:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There wasn't anything that I wanted to mix with coke, you got to keep a bottle of red label or jack around. Yeah, that's what I was looking jack and coke. You got to keep a bottle of red label or jack around yeah, that's what I was looking. Jack and coke is legit man, that is a nice drink.

02:12:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's just like a crown and ginger, yeah, it's also good for babies just kind of put it up around their gums if they're teething, it's fine yeah, you know, and two fingertips bye-bye

02:12:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
but you have found something really unusual that might actually go very well with coca-cola well, yeah, maybe I don't, you know, this is probably, this is probably a mixed drink whiskey. So I found this in the shop and it made me sad, so I bought it because, carrie, you know, as soon as they put the word smooth on a whiskey, you should be concerned well, the to combine Caribbean and smooth.

02:12:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the thing I don't. What is Caribbean, smooth scotch?

02:12:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
so the rum it's a rum, finish right what does that mean?

02:12:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
what is this?

02:12:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
what you have to explain what that means. Well, and now we get into why the story got a hand, because I've talked about doers before and I never, but I didn't really tell the story of doers. And it is a blended whiskey and blended whiskeys have what's called marrying cast. So let's start at the beginning. So this is from Dewar's, and John Dewar is one of the most famous blenders of the industry ever. Born in 1805 to a poor family, he falls in with a wine and spirit merchant by 1828 as a 20 year old uh, from a family relation guy named alex mcdonald. So they're selling wine and spirits and he's so successful at it, within a few years he becomes a partner. They renamed the company mcdonald and doer and then he, you know, nine years after that, in his 40s, he breaks with a partnership to form john doer and sons in perth, scot Scotland, specifically focused on whiskey blending. He was head and neck for combining whiskey together, and I got to remember this is the mid 1800s. Single malts are not really a thing, certainly they're not sold specifically, and people don't tend to age for a long time. Barrels are more for storage than for aging like that sort of pattern hasn't happened, and so the whiskeys that are coming out of the barrels are quite harsh, but, and so whiskey blending was a way to try to take the edge off. But more importantly, the coffee still had happened over in ania's, coffee over in ireland had made this column continuous still. That meant distilling grains became cheap, and those grain distillates were a lot lighter. They weren't as harsh as the barley-based barreled malt whiskeys, and so blending, which was the most popular form of making whiskey then and, by the way, is now today too that's still 90% of the market was a combination of both grain and single malt whiskeys, and this is what John Dewar figured out and so made a better tasting whiskey by blending it. He called it Dewar and Sons because he had two sons, john Alexander and Thomas, who were at times literally kids, behind the counter at his blending shop back in the day.

02:14:57
Now the whiskey industry changes. In 1860 with the Gladstone Spirit Acts, which act because the main thing it did with blended whiskeys is it allowed them to be stored under bond. So what the heck am I talking about when you're when in back in those days, if you were going to blend whiskeys you had to buy the barrels, and when you bought the barrels, you had to pay the tax on them, and so what you now have was expensive inventory because you'd already copped a bunch of money, you haven't sold it yet. But with the Gladstone Act you are now allowed as a blender to have a bond house. So in behind your retail outlet you have a warehouse with specific rules around it, and only when you take the barrels out of there to sell them do you now have to pay the tax on it, and that sort of breaks open the business and business kinds of takes off. For whiskey.

02:15:42
Then Whiskey was doing all right locally but wasn't particularly popular in the rest of the world until 1870. Because in 1870, there was a Phylloxera infestation in France. So this is a microscopic sized aphid that was common to American wine grapes, and some clippings had come from America back to the UK. This is the Victorian era. They were big on this, unaware that this aphid existed. It infected the wine grapes in the UK and then made its way to continental Europe, and so between 1870 and 1880, wine is essentially wiped out in France, and that also includes cognac, which was the popular spirit at the time. Wine and brandy and cognac were the big sellers. It's what the fancy drink was, and suddenly it becomes rare. Now it's not like. These stuff is stored in barrels for a long time as well, so it doesn't disappear overnight. But as the wine production disappears, which means the brandy production is disappearing, those barrels become more and more precious and the price goes through the roof. And so whiskey popularity takes off hugely in the 1870s.

02:16:59
By 1880, john Dew, john dewer seniors passed away. His sons take over and it turns out they're a dynamic duo. So john alexander is the meticulous one, he has the education, he's running the facility, he's all about the blending and actually starts to get into making their own whiskey. So he hires a master distiller and so forth. But Tommy, tommy is the marketer and so he tries to make it he first.

02:17:24
His first gig, leaving Perth, is to go down to London to try and make some deals. Both those deals go completely sideways. But he doesn't give up. He stays down there and he gets into a pattern where he starts going around bars in London asking for doers and if they don't have it, he sends a salesperson there a couple of days later to get it to get something sold. So he sort of starts pumping up the sales and pumping the sales and starts to travel, connecting with different people in different parts of the world, to the point where in 1891, andrew Carnegie yes, that Carnegie who knew Tommy sends him a letter and they have a copy of this letter where he recommends sending a cask of Dewar's to the recently elected Benjamin Harrison, president of the United States, which Tommy does to much fanfare and creates a huge stink in America about it because why is he drinking Scottish whiskey instead of good American whiskey? But you know, all press is good press and Dewar's takes off in America.

02:18:23
Tommy figures out that this travel thing is good. This is literally the guy they came up with the term Bon Vivant from. He then goes on the road for two years, traveling country to country. He'll actually write a book called A Ramble Around the Globe about it Experiencing whiskey in different places and promoting doers. He comes at one of the first highballs for whiskey the whiskey highball is what he calls it, which is just whiskey and soda, not a big deal Meantime.

02:18:51
Back in Scotland, john Alexander, the more serious one, has now gotten the very first royal warrant to supply blended whiskey to Queen Victoria, which they've maintained to this day, and by 1896, he's built a distillery called the Aberfeldy Distillery, which still exists to this day.

02:19:11
One of the reasons they built the distillery is that Dewar's is growing so rapidly that they can't buy enough barrels from other distillers to maintain production. So they need to start making their own to some degree, and Aberfeldy is its own legit distillery with its own brands unto itself. But off the thing goes. And of course, john Alexander being contemporary in the late 1800s. The location for the distillery is based on an excellent water source, the Pilty Burn, and it's right on the train line, so that barley is coming up from the lowlands being made into whiskey in the highlands and then being transported back down again Meantime. Tommy makes friends with Thomas Edison and makes the very first promotional film for whiskey in 1899, called it's Scotch. This is also when White white label is released, which is to this day still Dewar's bestseller, the least expensive one, and in 1899 with that new edition they sell a million gallons of whiskey.

02:20:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Whoa, that's a lot in those days, yeah.

02:20:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And they're also spending 20% of their profits on advertising which was unheard of. It was almost considered insane to do so. They make a lot of swag you can find in the of their profits on advertising which was unheard of. It was almost considered insane to do so. They make a lot of swag you can find in the museums and things like doers, ashtrays and calendars and flatware like all kinds of nutty things.

02:20:31
Of course, now it's the 20th century, so the wars start up and in world war one, as things get a little, dewars merges with one of the other large whiskey blenders, james Buchanan. So there was three big blenders at the time Dewars, buchanan, which is the guys who make black and white, and Johnny Walker. So now Buchanan and Dewars merge together. Of course they're shut down during World War I and then, as they just get restarted in 1919, then U prohibition. Of course doers was huge in the us, so they take a big hit. But they're well funded and the combination of buchanan and doers means as, as other distilleries get into trouble, they start buying them up.

02:21:10
They buy, or pulteney, parkmar, uh all the alt mar distillery, and then during, as things get worse, because it's the middle of prohibition, they ultimately merge with johnny walker and sons as well. So all three of the big blenders are together and they merge into what becomes the distillers company dcl, so they're all under one roof. Uh, john, they, they don't get to see the post-prohibition because john alexander dies in 29, tommy in 1930. But their nephew, john Arthur Dewar, takes over and in 1933, when Prohibition ends, the US sales agent for Dewar is one Joseph P Kennedy. Yes, that Kennedy, jfk's father, right, that's right who, knowing that Prohibition was about to end, had positioned a shipload of doers off the coast of the us, so that hours after, omg the the bill, the the law passes, the ship arrives and they have doers.

02:22:12
Yeah, uh, on the land.

02:22:14
Uh, they used to call blackjack, right blackjack kennedy yeah, six years of booming sales until 1939 with the beginning of World War II, which shuts everything down again. After the war they come roaring back into the 50s. By 1962, they had these numbers. Doers are selling almost 7% of all the whiskey in the world, two and a half million gallons a year. Their number one customer is the US. The UK is number two. Of course. Whiskey goes through a massive modernization in the 1970s. That's when they stopped using malting floors and they switch over to steam and all those sorts of things to increase operational size. By 1980, dewar's is the number one selling whiskey in America Scottish whiskey of course and they're at four million per year.

02:23:01
In 86, dcl and Guinness merged together, become the United Distillers Group. And then I found this story that in 1987, a ship archaeologist found the shipwreck of the SS Regina. It sank in Lake Huron in 1913. There were cases of doers on board intact. And then of course we've told the story before. United distillers merges grand metropolitan in 97 to become grant, become diageo and the uk regulatory group is uncomfortable with how much of whiskey is owned by diageo and so diageo makes a deal and spins off doers to bac, along with Aberfeldy related to distillery Altamore, craig Alachi and Royal Blackla and Bacardi already owned Macduff. So Bacardi now had a decent portfolio of whiskey, independent of Diageo, to comply with regulatory needs, to diversify just a little bit. So that brings us more or less to today and there's no point in talking about the distillery because Dewar's doesn't have a distillery. So that brings us more or less to today and there's no point in talking about the distillery because Dewar's doesn't have a distillery. That's Aberfeldy. It's talk about blending because we've you go looking around for things about blending. It's not that big. They always show like a picture of a guy with a lab coat and a couple of bottles and it's like, listen, they make a lot more blended whiskey than that. How do they do this at scale? So let's go through what blending actually is.

02:24:22
And normally blending, even going back to the early 1800s when this really kicked off, is the combination of both single malt and what's called single grain. The single in this case means single distillery, not one type of grain. Now, of course, in single malt whiskey, because of the Scottish rules, that is only barley yeast and water. That's the rules. And distilled with pot stills from a single distillery. Single grain whiskey is made from any combination of grains. So it may be malted barley or not, it could be rye, could be corn, could be wheat, could be any combination thereof. And recognizing that Scottish whiskey rules are so strict that it has to be barley water yeast in a pot still, if you do barley malted barley water yeast in a column still, you still have to call it single grain whiskey right. Only a single malt is done with a pot still and there's normally barley in every kind of blend. It's not just single malt, there's usually some in the single grain too. It's inevitable. But the main thing is that typically they use column stills because they're cheap.

02:25:24
They make a lot of alcohol quickly. You only have to distill once. You can get up to 90% right away. It runs continuously. You don't have to clean the pot still and rerun it. It's a very rapid process. Depending on the blend, you'll often have just pure grain alcohol, just cut with water, combined with malted whiskey. That's it. A fancier version is let's just get that grain alcohol and age it in barrels as well. It depends. It's not required.

02:25:53
But how do they actually make a blend? How do they come to this product? How do we get to Caribbean smooth here? This is when we get into the master blender rather than the master distiller. And the master blenders are constantly evaluating barrels of whiskey. Mostly they smell them because you can't taste that many. I was reading one master blender's notes where he said on average I will smell 200 different whiskeys in a day and taste five. So it's mostly about the nose and they're looking to categorize these different barrels right and they have access to a lot of different kinds of whiskey. So one of the reasons that Dewar got into making blending whiskey when he did, having been in the business for a decade already, he had good relationships with a lot of distilleries and so he's able to get access to those barrels.

02:26:42
So the core main categorizations for the various flavor profiles are what they call core malts, or defining the overall character of the blend. Then there are flavoring malts, or what they call top dressings, which have special aromatic properties, a particular scent they want, a particular taste they want. Those would be the flavoring malts. And then there's the third category, known as packers, or the fillers. That really make up about half and that's just the malts. Then, on the grain whiskeys, these are typically distilled high and in the 80, 90% range which is normal for a column still, and then they cut them down to water, with water down to 40% or so, typically to use again also as a filler, although they tend to have some of their own flavor as well.

02:27:25
But if you're going to make this stuff at scale, you have to have some organization. So the blenders go through the barrel houses and they mark up the barrels, typically with chalk, as to how they're going to categorize them in a core, a flavor or a packer, and then, when it's time to make a batch, they send barrelmen in to retrieve the barrels into the blending facility. Okay, and remember that every barrel is different. Effectively, even if they've come to common flavor profiles, the actual ABV, the amount of liquid in each of the barrels, it's going to vary, and so they are bringing together hundreds, potentially even thousands of barrels at a time to put into vats. So these barrels are dumped, they pull the bungs from them, they roll them onto a dumper which is basically a channel, allows the whiskey to flow out of it, it's filtered for debris and then flows into these blending vats.

02:28:16
And these blending vats get big. A small one's a couple of thousand liters, a big one's 200,000 liters, which is 53,000 gallons in the measures of the oppressors. But remember the scale here At 200,000 liters you're talking about 260,000 bottles at a batch. So this is a big scale that we're dealing with here so often because you don't know what the variations in the barrels are going to be. They actually do this by weight. So they'll pull a core malt group, so a hundred barrels at a time, so maybe 20,000 liters, and they're all be dumped and put into the vat and they're looking at the weight to know that they've reached the appropriate number of barrels when they stop. And then they'll go and pull some flavoring malts and then the packers. Another interesting effect that happens is you're filling these things and sometimes these vats fill from the bottom, sometimes they fill from the top. The volume changes with temperature and humidity, but the mass does not. So they actually have a scale built into these gigantic vats so they know by the weight how full they are.

02:29:20
But the whiskeys tend not to mix the layer up because they're slightly different from each other. They have different densities and so many of these vats have mixing systems. There might be paddles off the side that move back and forth. There might be impellers, little screws that push the liquid around. Air bubbling's done as well, where they literally putting uh holes in the bottom that blow air through the system all to try and mix them, and they're using a lot of different whiskey. Up to 20 different single malts might go into a given blend and as many as five different types of grain whiskey in different combinations, because grain whiskey is so much cheaper and you notice that blends cost less that the depending on the whiskey. You can have as much as 80 percent grain whiskey to 20 percent malt, but these days that's been flipped in some respects high, and blended whiskeys can be as much 70 percent malt, 30 percent grain.

02:30:15
The challenge here is making the same whiskey year over year. The point that you're making a blend is because you found a flavor profile that people like and you want to keep selling it, and you're using all these different barrels from all these different distilleries. Sometimes those whiskeys are going to go away. They don't have any more of the 12-year left and they only have some 10s, so you have to get back to the same flavor profile with each addition. It's very challenging and you got to admit these blenders are incredibly talented, like their noses are astonishing to be able to find all the pieces of what's going to make their blended whiskey.

02:30:46
To actually compile them together, that vat, for a couple of weeks to sort of, it's part of what they call the marrying process. To sort of let them sit for a while together before going into marrying casks. So now that you've got it mixed together in a vat, put it back into barrels to marry. Traditionally these casks are older casks. Casks they consider inactive as they've been used enough for aging. Older casks they consider inactive as they've been used enough for aging. There's not a lot of flavor coming from it now. But in contemporary times they're doing more, what they call active barrelings. The finishing period or the marrying period is as little as three months, as much as two or three years. What really happens is that they sample from these barrels to see how they're evolving and if they're not evolving anymore, no point in leaving it sit in the barrel any longer. Get it in the bottles where you can sell it. But part of marrying in barrels is the fact that the barrel, even if it's not adding flavor specifically, it does have that pressure, temperature, humidity interaction with the whiskey. So you're breaking this multi thousand liter vat into 250 liter barrels again and then letting it sit for a while and they're all going to go through a little bit of time before you're going to put them back together and bottle them. So, and that also is affected by what was the time of year, if you're only going to do a three month age and it's summertime, it's going to have a different behavior than a three month in the wintertime. So hence they go a little bit longer, a little bit more complicated, which brings us back to the Dewars again.

02:32:25
So Dewars has their white label, their original, famous. You can buy it almost anywhere. It's about $20 US, easy to come by. There's the 12 year old for $23, which I mentioned a couple of years ago, july, and then it goes up from there. There's a 15, a 16, an 18. Recently they started making these things called the Double Doubles, which last time I looked was a hamburger. But okay, I think also again you've got Dunkin' Donuts too. It's kind of like Tim Hortons the way they make their coffee. But the Double Doubles are doubles, are again finishing active barrels. So the double double 21, finished in oloroso sherry. Double double 27, finished in paulo cortano sherry brass and the double double 32 in the pedro yemenes sherry cast. So they're using active casting for their marrying process. But those are expensive whiskeys in the 21, 60 bucks, the 27 is 180. The 32 is over $500. But those are all older designs.

02:33:24
This smooth line and there's a few of them started in 2019, starting with this Caribbean smooth, so six months of a Mary in a rum cask we don't know which rum casks and then, a couple of years later, they made a Portuguese smooth, so finished in a port cask. A Japanese smooth, so finished in port cask. A Japanese smooth, so finished in a Minasera oak cask. That's the Japanese oak. And just recently with a French smooth which is finished in Calvados cask, so that's apple brandy from France. So here we go.

02:33:54
I've already opened this. I've had a few sips of it. I've debated strongly how I really feel about this. It's an eight-year-old, which means the youngest thing in here is eight. That includes the grain whiskey. The green whiskey was barreled for eight years before it was put in, so the noise is pretty harsh, which is funny for a 40, but it's only an eight-year-old. There's a lot of grain whiskey in this pretty pale color. It's not bad on the mouth, like that's kind of nice, but there's really no real sweetness from the rum and then it finishes poorly like this.

02:34:27
That's why you want to put some coca-cola in there after trying this a few times, you can see where the bottle's at and you know, while writing this, you know I'm not gonna waste whiskey, this stuff, this thing.

02:34:40
I mean you can. You can buy this from a total wine or a bevmo for 25. What's the point of it? You know what you can also do. You can buy a doers 12 for, yeah, three dollars. Yeah, I don't get it. What's the point? I think it's hip to do special finishes in blending these days Active finishes. This is an active finish. It's just not a good one, but it's active.

02:35:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's an active. So, is Dewar's like the 12-year. Is that pretty good? The white label.

02:35:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Dewar's 12 is my go-to. You're kidding? Oh, all right, when I'm just going to drink a blend A, I've already had two single malts and so you're drinking copier fluid. That's a safe bet. Yeah, I started getting into Dewar's 12 during the pandemic, when it was easy to come by, and it's just very drinkable. It's just a nice whiskey, right, yeah?

02:35:30
I always thought of it as a kind of a decent everyday kind of yeah and there's nothing wrong with white label, but for $3 more, the 12 is a big jump, that's the one to get. And then the 15 is $40. And again it's so much more. The sweet spot seems to be the 12. And this is $2 more than the 12?

02:35:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't do it, don't do it, save yourself. Save yourself. Drink as well. I want to drink rum.

02:35:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I like rum.

02:35:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like rum.

02:36:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I drink rum. I like rum, and there are. I like rum. I like. I like eggs.

02:36:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There are good rum, finish whiskeys like balvini arabian cask?

02:36:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
oh, interesting. Well, vini makes one legit, right, and I think I've even mentioned it on the show before, right, like that's a, that's a, there's nothing wrong with a rum. Finish it's cool if it's done well, right. This is not that one, this I think is this is hip and stylish, right the labeling the word smooth just screams to me. This isn't good.

02:36:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's also notably created by their previous master blender. It's like the Pat Gelsinger of doers.

02:36:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, it's so unfair.

02:36:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's the 12.

02:36:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah.

02:36:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like the Pat Gelsinger of doers the 12 is so unfair oh that's the 12.

02:36:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, the 12 has been around a little bit longer. The new master blender who's a woman, by the way has done this smooth line and she had hits with the double doubles. Those are the original smooths, but they're pricey.

02:36:57
Yeah, Right, and so this was an expensive bottle yeah, it's well as soon as you, especially that you know that that 32, which is 500, yikes, I think it's a 30 year old whiskey. That's a bargain for a 30 year old. Yeah, I guess, huh, and so I think they, I think she was pushed by production to make an inexpensive version, and that that's where you get Caribbean, portuguese, japanese, french.

02:37:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh well, I'm glad you know what.

02:37:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This has been a nice little tour through the backwaters of I got I drilled into the whole blending thing, because I hate the pictures, when you ever talk about blended whiskey, of a guy in a lab coat, you know with two little bottles is like holding it up to the light Like you light, like you need to make 150 000 of these like get to work. It's really actually impressive what these guys could do.

02:37:46
It's an impressive machine yeah, so I mean, those little pictures you're seeing is someone who's trying to get to a flavor profile but then to actually produce it at scale it's a huge task and it's an interesting machine it's like when mcdonald's makes breakfast.

02:38:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's supposed to be like food they have, like scientists in a lab it is.

02:38:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's actually just you know they're like it looks like bacon is. Uh, it's all that.

02:38:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But what if I had waffles around my sausage and egg? I am thrilled.

02:38:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's a weird yeah I'm thinking and let's build as the bread of the sandwich.

02:38:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What are we thinking?

02:38:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, um guess who burke found the thomas edison, the first commercial for whiskey. Yeah, it's scotch, this is from 1898, let me scotch, but perfected it's scotch, let's play it for you. I guess there's no sound to it. No, we're a long way from talkies.

02:38:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's a guy jumping around in the kilt assume they hit him with a baseball bat there's another, there's three guys jumping around for this guy we've been drinking scotch uh, pretty

02:38:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
sure the guy with the mustache is Tommy Dewar. Wow, what a character he was.

02:39:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A character Can you imagine being the guy they made up the phrase bon vivant? Yeah, this is the guy I cannot. He is definitely bon vivant.

02:39:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm mal vivant.

02:39:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He knows how to do a jig Scene vivant. This is hysterical. So thomas edison was a buddy, yeah, and said, hey, there is a great museum uh in perth, the old uh doers with all of tommy's.

02:39:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
These guys became very famous. They became the sheriff of the town and all these sorts of things like they were given titles. There were important people to that part of uh of of scotland and so they built great museums around all this stuff. So all of his letters, a lot of the crazy things that he did, and his book, they're there. Have you, uh, have you been to the distillery to alberfeldy? I have been to alberfeldy, um, and it's, it looks cool, it's a nice distillery and so, and they modernized very well, but they've kept some of those common elements.

02:40:04
It's not my favorite whiskey in the world. It's nothing. It's a spay. It's nice right, right, like you can't go too far wrong. There's other things I'll choose from there. Um, doers have a lot of respect for because of the original blends. It's the majority of whiskey. They are super consistent, uh, and there's usually a bottle of doers 12 around, but when I saw this thing on the shelf, it's like I got to talk about this and I got pulled into this whole narrative, right, which you know it's what happens.

02:40:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The history of doers is very interesting.

02:40:30 - Kevin (Announcement)
Yeah, yeah and by the way, it wasn't blackjack uh, that was his, uh, jfk's father-in-law, blackjack bouvier.

02:40:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was.

02:40:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, it was just joe kennedy and yeah, and just to be clear, when microsoft said this is for the doers, they weren't referring to this doers yeah, different doers, different doers.

02:40:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's to the doers yeah, that family thank you so much, richard campbell. We love these brown liquor picks of the weekend. A little story on the side. You'll find richard at run his radiocom, including his sysadmin christmas episode with rick and joey.

02:41:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, that's episode 961 I love how dubious you are about their names with rick and joey. If that is their real names, claws and snow are they in the witness protection program? What's going on here?

02:41:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
anyway. Uh, you should rename yourself rudolph, and then I'd believe it, you know rudolph claws like really you can also find dot net rocks there. Paul thurot is at thurotcom. T-h-u-r-r-o. Double goodcom. That's that. Become a premium member and then you can get all the goodness inside all the juice, uh. Or buy his books at leanpubcom, including windows everywhere and the field guide 2011. Now, with uh back in you put it back in all of them?

02:41:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
not yet no, not yet gonna gonna put it back, I'm gonna. I have to see it first. I gotta make sure it's real. Uh, rudolph claus, was that the uh terrorist who attacked atlanta?

02:42:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, no, wait, no, he was. No, that's a different one. Good enough, anyway. Uh, we do this show every wednesday, 11 am pacific 2 pm eastern time, at 1900 utc. You can watch us live, thanks to our club, on eight different platforms. Of course, club members watch inside Discord if they choose, but there's also YouTube, there's Twitch, there's Kik, there's X, there's LinkedIn, there's Facebook and there's yes, even TikTok. So watch live if you want, but after the fact, you can get a copy of the show at twittv slash dub dub, uh, or on youtube. If you go to twittv slash wwe, there's a link right there to the youtube channel. Great way to share clips. In fact, please do share clips. That helps us promote the show, uh. And then, of course, you can always subscribe in your favorite podcast client, uh, which is uh, maybe I don't know Pocket Cast, overcast, apple Podcast, google Cast, whatever Pocket Cast, definitely I'm a Pocket Cast.

02:43:03
I like Pocket Cast. Yeah, Easy to subscribe.

02:43:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I like Pocket Cast because I have a soul, but you know you can choose something else. I have a halo actually? Yep, you sure do.

02:43:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's see what else. Oh, tomorrow we're going to have a special for the club members. Micah Sargent is going to interview Emily Forlini, formerly Emily Dribelbus, about her life and times A little. Ask Me Anything that's coming up on the club tomorrow afternoon. Yeah, we're doing more club stuff. I code at night Micah's doing some interesting crafting stuff in his crafting corner. We have a book club, all sorts of stuff. Join the club. That's all I could say. You'll see it all. Twittv slash club twit. Thank you, paul, thank you richard, have a wonderful uh afternoon and evening and we will see you next week. You're gonna stay.

02:43:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'll still be at home and mcungee and madeira park yeah, I'm stuck here through the holidays like a jerk Well.

02:44:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll ship you off that Snapdragon. I gotta get off my duff and send it to you before you leave.

02:44:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Thank you guys. The fog hasn't gone anywhere, so it's still just a foggy day up here.

02:44:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, beautiful day in Mad Park. All right, have a great week. We'll see you next time on Windows Weekly. Bye-bye.