Windows Weekly 911 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's here, Richard Campbell is here. We're going to talk about recall. It's finally here, but Paul says it's not so hot actually. We'll also talk about AI A lot of AI news. Apple Intelligence 2 came out today, Gemini Advance came out today and so did Copilot, Vision Interesting Plus. Fortnite goes five by five. I don't know what that means, but Paul will explain. Next on Windows Weekly Podcasts you love From people. You trust this is Twit.
00:41
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Theriot and Richard Campbell. This is windows weekly with paul thurot and richard campbell. Episode 911, recorded december 11th 2024. A back-end guy. It's time for windows weekly, the show where we get together and talk about everything going on at microsoft. You know, fortunately it's not just me doing all the talking. Joining us right now to my right Left. Left To my other over there.
01:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know what I thought I was going to see over there. It's Paul Therot. I don't know where you looked.
01:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
PaulTherotcom, and then there's Richard Campbell from RonIsRadiocom. Hello guys, Hello Leo, Mary Mary, you see I got my uh, the lighting of the official Christmas trees. Yeah, they're bottle brushes. It was the cheapest thing I could find Nice.
01:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm not going to last season, anyway, I think they look good.
01:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I wanted something small, cause I mean, I can't have a 10 foot tree, you wouldn't see nothing, yeah right. So, uh, I found these are the smallest I could find on amazon. We did a whole search. Nice, paul, I like how you've decorated your facility yeah, I've got my.
01:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What do I have? I don't have anything. What do you mean?
02:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
and of course if you live in madera park, as richard campbell does, a star suffices. Oh, look at that. Yeah, there you go. He's got the misty mountains in the distance. If you ever had to dump a ring in mount doom, I know where I, I think I know where I go texada island.
02:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Out there we had some snow on it earlier.
02:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It looks like there's still some that's beautiful, yeah, yeah. So, paulie, what I didn't do lead us into. Lead us not into temptation, but lead us into redmond.
02:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The latest news from temptations there without a doubt, we're going to continue the temptations later with richard at the end of the show. That's what the temptation, redmond being the minds of moria, that is halfway between here and more. Uh, mortar, mortar.
02:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think everybody knows Steven Sanofsky was an orc.
02:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No he was he was a wizard.
02:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, he was the wizard.
02:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's just a question Was he the white? Yeah, we don't know.
02:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Was he Saruman I'm not sure.
02:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, you know the the tail grew in the telling.
03:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's hard to say yesterday was patch tuesday, yeah, so yesterday there was at least one zero day in there, I think I.
03:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I thought I was gonna have the story to tell this morning where this build, this new update for windows 11, 24 h2, is not going out reliably because I have two computers. I wasn't getting like, no matter what I did, I was like looking for firmware updates. In one case installed a firmware update, I'm like all right, this is it, we'll not install. And then I realized I had put those computers on the dev channel and that's why they weren't in the build. So there's no problems. Actually I've installed it on several PCs, so, but yeah, so the final patch Tuesday of 2024.
03:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ooh, when you put it that way, it sounds monumental.
03:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I mean, it's the way I sort of think of this is this is the final or there's nothing final when it comes to windows versions? But I feel like this is what Microsoft wanted to get out in 24 H. Two, you know the remaining features that didn't quite make it. I can tell you that that bug in file Explorer, where the menu opens up and goes off the top of the screen, not fixed. That's hilarious. So I guess we're waiting on January for that one. But they've added the jump lists and start so that when you right click on an icon for an app that has jump lists, you'll see them there as well. The shortened form of the time and date display in the taskbar is on by default now, and that gets rid of the little bell icon for notifications because nobody uses it and it makes the time of day smaller, so it takes up less space over there.
04:34
Android file sharing, which I'm not. Whoa, was that true? No, I can't remember. I don't think. I've experienced it yet, but this works over Wi-Fi. So if you've connected your Android phone to phone link, you don't have to be connected to it. It will with a cable. It will just let you access the Android file system directly from file Explorer, so you can browse around and download files, whatever. So, and then some other less exciting stuff, but yeah, so this is kind of the final, you know feature set slice in time for the year. But as we're about to discuss, there's actually a lot more coming. It's kind of this year no, oh Well, in the Insider Program yes, but in Stable, no. So this is stuff that will start appearing in January.
05:17
I would think that's coming up there's a lot more, and I you know this year, I think one of the big stories of the year in my space, anyway in our space is that it was a very chaotic year for Windows updates and, based on what I'm seeing just today, that's absolutely going to continue into 2025.
05:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean part of me is just like. This was 24H2, which was this incredibly big bite Even without the Copilot Plus PC thing and the whole arm thing, like even you took that off, this was still going to be. It's still a mess, I agree 100. Then you add arm into the equation and all the whatever deal they actually cut with qualcomm and just made it hard. I gotta think at one point there were three deployable branches of 24h2, which is two more than you should ever ever, ever have, and three more than microsoft can handle with any reliability.
06:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So yeah, I agree 100 what would that set?
06:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
the dev channel, the, or I mean what are the three different?
06:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
what? No, he meant he doesn't even mean the insider program, he means just in stable.
06:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So yeah, so how does that work? Oh, there's one for enterprise pilot plus PCs. No, okay.
06:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Normal PCs and then AMD, intel, x, whatever you want to call it, x, 64, copilot plus PC.
06:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So yeah, it's starting to look a lot like Linux.
06:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's. I don't know what it's looking like. It's looking like the. You're walking back with a giant plate of spaghetti and you trip and it lands all over the place and every once in a while you still find like a little more of it somewhere else and that's what the year has been like.
06:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So, yeah, it's a combination of technical and political issues, right yeah, which you know.
06:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I guess, is classic Microsoft really. In some sense, I think the issue here is twofold. I mean one is this notion that Microsoft's biggest customer base by far is business customers, who don't want any of this crap. And two, windows, just in general, is a mature one might say legacy desktop platform and really should not be updated to this degree. We understand what people use Windows for. It's optimized really well for that kind of thing, and man, they just can't stop throwing stuff at it. They are feeling around for what their relevance is too right well, for that kind of thing, and man, they just can't stop throwing stuff at it.
07:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, I think they are feeling around for what their relevance is too right like that. Yeah, this is no longer the focal point of microsoft and so, in some ways, a little more freedom and it's also a different team right, well, freedom.
07:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Freedom is like, uh, home alone, like the parents have left and they forgot something, you know. In other words, it's like a lack of parental or adult supervision. Yeah, we could call that, which I guess we could call it freedom, but also trying to be positive here, man.
07:51
Yeah, okay, um yeah. So I don't know, you know, I I uh, at the end of the show I'll have some of my a little bit of a year end recap stuff. I think there might be a little bit more of it still in the middle as well. I mean, this is going to come up next week and in the future, but I'm looking back at this year and it's like I can't believe what has happened here. I had some guy on one of the social networks write me and say you know, as someone who supports whatever number of desktops, these changes.
08:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean it's really hard to keep up with the help calls and blah blah. I'm like, yeah, I have a 1200 page book about this subject. I believe me, I understand your pain. It's like it's not, it's not even possible to stay up on it. So lots of folks, lots of sysadmins holding 11 out.
08:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, right, right, like that's the reality which kind of makes okay, that that's an actually another element. That makes this a little strange, honestly, because you could argue up until now that and especially with 24H2, which, as we discussed last year, has some architectural changes under the hood that make it superior in some ways, especially from sort of a security footing to its predecessors that they've arrived at this thing. That was maybe the vision all along, just to give them a little bit of credit they don't deserve. But whatever, and this is when the, the businesses are going to start, um, migrating over to windows 11 and mass yep, this is the time to stabilize and slow down, and there is just no evidence of that. You know it.
09:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It boggles no, and as I no, recognizing the system in Mantra is change is good, you go first.
09:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, you're right, we're both going to jump out of the plane together and then they push you off.
09:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're not going to go to 11 until 24H2 settles down and you keep looking over there going settled down yet and you know what Not settled down.
09:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That would be a great sign to have in an IT admin's office. If they had offices anymore which would be like this one doesn't go to 11.
09:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know I might have to make that yeah, it's a.
09:51
It's a pretty good name for it, like a t-shirt slogan or something yeah, as we close in on people actually having to pay for extended support for 10, you know, late next, then we're going to find out what we're going to really have a meet. We can have an excuse of a show that this is this. One doesn't go to 11. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cause the other play on this and I think this was part of the whole Snapdragon event was is there an excuse to shift hardware? Is there hardware that I need to make my workers more productive? And it'll come with 11. In fact, you won't have a 10 option Right. Come with 11. In fact, you won't have a 10 option right. There you go. Yep, and that's the other angle on this. It's like I'm not going to migrate any of these machines. I'm going to buy new. My tens are going to phase out as they're replaced.
10:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I I suspect lots of organizations will do that actually or are doing that. Um, maybe not so much on arm, although we're going to talk about this and kind of what I'll think of what I think of as the second segment but, um, regarding arm, I I the pushback I always get um on arm is from it admins, it's from people who support these organizations that often have kind of esoteric needs, as I think of it, um, and I'm not talking about, you know, know, custom apps or whatever I mean they're. They're maybe in manufacturing and they have specific hardware compatibility requirements, et cetera, et cetera. But I I think that a lot of the change that comes in organizations actually comes from, like, c-class executives who are like, hey, this is thing called a MacBook Air and it's awesome and you're going to support it.
11:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know that kind of thing. That was the old iPad story. It's like I will be using the iPhone too. Right, I mean figure it out.
11:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, you have to figure it out Right. So there there are these guys that are sort of um, guys is maybe the wrong term with people in the it space who are kind of resistant to change, and and for good reason. I complimented them last week, I think. But then you've got the decision makers who are saying, hey, that's fun, but we got to move on. So I think the pushback against ARM in the enterprise such as it is is in some ways misguided. Guided Because when you think about the things that are important and that's true whether you're an individual or a business with multiple machine or multiple groups of people, whatever the Qualcomm based PCs solve a lot of problems with reliability and security and you know performance and all that kind of stuff. I mean it's, it's yeah. So we have this one app and manufacturing over here that doesn't work, great. Well, you could leave Bob on that stupid Intel computer and put the rest of us on. The modern thing you know is something that could happen.
12:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I just I, I think I don't see arm in the enterprise yet.
12:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know? No, I don't either. I'm just, I'm just trying to rationalize it. You know, I yeah this, not even on laptops, not even mobile. Well, but I think this is how it happens. I think what happens is someone in a position of decision making power finally comes down and says guys, you got to figure this out.
12:52
These things are way better yeah, I think you're right, I have multiple review units and that are brand new to me, since I've been home from, uh, mexico city. Uh, none of them are snapdragon based. I don't remember the exact number, but this meteor is one meteor Lake, one lunar Lake, at least one AMD, two, maybe two AMDs, whatever, and, and they're varying degrees of whatever. But one thing they all kind of share in common is they don't always come right on. And the little eye thing for windows Hello, look, does this little bug eye thing. And then it's like hold please, or whatever. It says waiting, waiting, and then it just fails, you know, and then you have to type in your pen to get in, and that never happens on snapdragon computers.
13:36
So, like I get it, they've made some steps forward, but it's still x64, it's still got all that cruft and um, and I'm still seeing a lot of the same problem. So, yeah, I hear you, but you know, if you like fan noise and you want to heat up your bedroom at night, I mean, yeah, an intel computer is great, we got a machine for you. Yeah, we have a bunch of them. Actually, this is a lot of them. So we'll see. You know, cs is coming up. Um, obviously, talk to them. At some point it's going to do a gen 2 on their snapdragon x stuff. We'll see what happens, but we're into december now.
14:04
So the whole idea of this was maybe a six-month deal has got to be over so I I I was at a press event yesterday in new york and I was talking to someone else who does what I do, and this is someone I trust, and I don't want to say their name because I'm not sure if this was something they want out publicly. But they have heard now that Qualcomm's exclusivity arrangement with Microsoft has actually been extended.
14:27
So there are um, yeah, so there are. There are rumors that NVIDIA, media tech, uh, even AMD, um, are working on designs for PCs, arm based designs, uh, arm holdings has talked and well, has expanded into PC reference designs that they want OEMs to use as well. And you know, we'll see. This is just one person you know. Like I said, I trust but I don't know. I have never heard anything about this directly myself.
14:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So I don't know.
15:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I will say that, even if it is just Qualcomm for whatever amount of time, there's no doubt in my mind that what they did this year is borderline magical. I believe it might have been handed down by aliens, I'm not sure.
15:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are you being?
15:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
facetious. No, it's that good. I find it painful to not be using a Snapdragon computer. Wow, wow, yeah, I mean I just do. I love everything about them.
15:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you'll be happy to know. I've sent the lovely dev kit on its way to you. Oh, thank you, santa will be bringing it. Okay, nice, you have a chimney.
15:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know we have an electric fireplace, that's fine, we'll drop it in there. Just drop it in there, just drop it on that. Yep, I wouldn't leave it there, but there's some kind of weird exhaust thing to it.
15:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know, just shove it into the tube. No, so you have a choice. Obviously, you have Intel laptops and you have Snapdragon laptops and for you, the choice is clear.
16:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it was a problem in Mexico because I had these devices to review before I left to come home and I had a hard time not using the Surface laptop that I brought. And it's a problem now because I'm back and now I have a bunch of them and you know I it's. You know how do you like? You know you use something that just works. It's silent, the battery life is forever, and then you turn over here and you get punched in the face and you're like I wonder which one I'll use tomorrow.
16:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know like, but are there things you can't do with it that you can do with intel?
16:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, um, so one of the big one of the other trends I discussed this past year I think is notable for this year is that the newer x86 um chipsets from intel and amd uh, well, more specifically, I guess maybe the graphics chipsets that are integrated are actually good enough to play triple a games now, and that's kind of amazing. I think that's kind of a game changer. Um, this is an area where polcom has advertised a lot, but I don't think they've really lived up to it. It's a, it's a very unreliable experience.
17:04
I did just install Half-Life 2, which is a 20 year old game, by the way on the Snapdragon. It plays fine, like, it looks beautiful, like it's full res, whatever, everything's on high, but you know it's a 20 year old game, like I mean whatever, but it's running in emulation, seems to work great, works with a controller, et cetera. But as far as playing like the latest call of duty or whatever, it's not, I wouldn't even try. That's ridiculous. So maybe they get there eventually, but that's not for everybody. I mean as far as just general productivity, what I would call mainstream, you know, pc tasks, it's, it's right there, it's great.
17:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and the compatibility is only going to get better and more and more stuff is going to be compiled for arm anyway, like it's just going to become part and your normal CI CD pipeline will include an arm build.
17:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, this is the. I mean when I referenced the basement last week, I think it was, and you know you hear from someone else social media, you know I'm like. You know, intel's dead X 86 is terrible. I'm gonna go past this. And he's like, well, and then some guy will name like an app, say, well, this, this is like the, the thing that proves you wrong. It's like this app. So I have to look up the app. I've never heard of it. It's some kind of an, an audio studio app that you know professional musicians or right recorders use, whatever. I've never even heard of the thing. I don't remember the name and I'm like, yeah, I mean I guess we could just abandon the platform because this one app that nobody uses doesn't work. Or here's an idea maybe the makers of that app could port it to arm and then it would just work better. How does that sound? I mean, you know we'll get there I think it's the point.
18:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, and you know, of course, you bring up an audio video app because it gets into all of those wacky drivers that often this software pokes down into ring zero and it's quite. It's not going going to emulate. Well, it's going to be problematic.
18:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And there's a, so this will come up in my app pick this week, I think. Let me just check. Yeah, one of the things about windows and arm is that Microsoft has very stringent driver requirements there and companies that are in that space have a hurdle, you know, there as well, not that they're trying to make it harder than them, but they want this stuff to kind of respect the platform.
19:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know and do the right thing and we also see microsoft taking control of drivers in general these days more and more because it's just not. They get the tech support calls so they're highly incented. Just make sure there's a reliable reference driver that works every time, even if it doesn't have every feature it might even have a security component to that decision you know, that a driver driver installers at least could be a vector from malware.
19:31
Yep or whatever, but no, it's absolutely a problem yep, yeah, so and it's the nature of not controlling the hardware. Right like this is your trade. If you live in a walled garden, like apple, they are controlled. They of course they build all their drivers. They're the only game in town. Yeah, that's right. But if you're going to have an ecosystem, then you have to deal with this variation in quality.
19:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, this was the problem with NT in the early days. Microsoft originally intended to switch over to NT one full version before they did.
20:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a big part of the disaster of Vista and the problems in Win 8.
20:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right. They changed the driver model. Well, there was a rumor that Google is switching to Android All-In for Chrome OS, but it is not a rumor, because they announced it that they're bringing the part of Android, that is, the driver stack, to Chrome OS, because third-party developer hardware makers support Android explicitly all the time, because there are so many of those devices and Chrome OS is like, eh, sometimes, sometimes not.
20:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, and that's the argument, is because operating systems are less important. We just have no tolerance. I have no patience for this. I'm not here to use an OS. I here have stuff to do, so the OS, just you should comply, and that means consolidation. There should be fewer yeah, there you go.
20:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, I agree. So 24 h2 um. It's going great, everything's fine, no worries. There we're having a fine time, but they're they're screwing with it, so we're gonna have plenty of problems in 2025. So, yeah, um when?
21:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
when did they start on the net? When did they finally leave that thing alone and move on to the next one? Yeah, Uh, yeah.
21:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Good question. I don't know if you could, if anyone could, figure out the insider program right now? Um good, you know, I'd love to hear about it. But they, they say certain things. You know, channel is built off of 23H2 right now, dev is built off of 24H2 and Canary is like we have no idea, nobody knows. So yeah, that's where we're at, speaking of which, there was a new Canary build today. Nothing in it, nobody knows why they even have it, but three big things have happened over the past.
21:39
I'm going to call this well, actually I was going to say 24 hours, but actually one of these is from last week. So the first one happened yesterday. Microsoft is changing copilot. What in the notes I say is the 17th time? That's a rough estimate. I think the actual number is closer to 60. You thought you were exaggerating. No, it's not, it's pretty close.
21:57
Remember, they rushed this thing to market to get it out into 22H2 before 23 H2 came out, forcing it on everybody. It used to be a pain. It's always been a pain. Sorry, but a sidebar, if you will, at the side of the screen. At some point they made it resizable, then they made it into a window. They moved the icon three different times. Then they changed the UI completely and got rid of the Windows integration stuff and one of the consistent complaints across all of that was like hey, this thing's actually just a web app, which means you're running an instance of Edge in the background, and that's true even if I choose to use Chrome or Brave or whatever browser I have. So they've made it a native app and I'm going to put air quotes around native because really it's a native wrapper on a web app. So you still have an instance of Chrome running in the background, still WebView too, but it has some new functionality.
22:42
It's a little different looking. It has a new, always on top mode, called quick view, which uses the one of the most used keyboard shortcuts in windows, which is all space. I think all space is popular because it's what Apple uses. Essentially they have a different name for that key, but it's the same keyboard. For their. I'm sure they call it spotlight search. So if you want to launch an app without you know going and clicking through stuff, you can just hit all well, it's whatever. It's called commit, whatever. That squiggly thing is space, yeah. And then you know the bar comes up in the middle and you type so PowerShell, not PowerShell. Powertoys Run uses this UI. I think there's a StarDark tool that uses it as well. By default uses that keyboard shortcut.
23:26
So they'll respect the keyboard shortcut if you're using it somewhere else, but if you aren't using it, they'll give it to copilot now, instead of windows key plus c, which no one is using and it used to use because you know microsoft, but anyway, um, this thing runs on top of other windows and that's kind of the point. So, um, you were in the middle of doing something and you want to access Copilot Allspace. You type over here Allspace to close it again or just escape, I guess, and then you're back in the app and it's. It's sort of that side-by-side experience without it taking up the space on the side. So you just kind of get it when you want it.
23:55
Nice, yeah. And this one is available in all of the Insider channels right now, which is something they've been starting to do this past year. Um, instead of working its way, you know, canary dev, down through the channel, they're like well, this, you know machine gun it to all the channels at once and release it in two days. You know, yeah, what could go wrong? Uh, yeah, yeah, nothing's ever gone wrong with co-pilot, so that should work out fine um, so if they had to revert them all too, then what?
24:20
yeah, the reversion rules are yeah that's right speaking, well, I I don't have this in notes, but, um, uh, michael randair was telling me on twitter x that, um, he's had a computer in the release preview for months with the checkbox. Get me out of this. When this thing is released, and it's just, you know, this is not the problems. The inside program just never, never, hits that little milestone. Well, um, nothing is. The real question is, is of the problems?
24:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
with the Insider Program, which is it never hits that little milestone. Nothing is ever done. The real question is of the folks that are working in that space right now. Who even knows how to do that or that they should? I know.
24:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the entire point of the Foundation Trilogy. It's like we have this technology from the past and nobody knows how it works and some of it persists and I don't know they really got to fix that, because I I like the idea of people going into the insider program to test things. I think it's a good thing to do if you want to, but they need to give you that exit hatch and the problem is it's in the UI and it just doesn't work and to me that's that's beyond irresponsible. That's just not right. Okay, so there's that. And then late last week, probably on Friday, microsoft released a new build of the dev channel that adds support for recall. And let me turn off the spotlight on my face and click to do for AMD and Intel based copilot plus PCs, meaning those based on Zen five or lunar lake or newer right. Nice, yeah, and one update. So if you already installed this, like I had done with a Snapdragon X computer, you update to this new build and now click to do works outside of recall. And so the way this worked before for that one build was recall is sitting there, taking screenshots or snapshots of your system. You can go, flip through them and look for things, search, et cetera. If you got to a screen that has text on it whether it's text in a graphic or just text that was on the screen like a webpage or whatever click to do kicks in and it does that kind of purple, pink animation that's suddenly very common to all AIs, and all of the text is highlighted. Then you get these actions you can do right click to do things with that text, right. So that's cool. But that's the type of thing that should work like everywhere. Right, it shouldn't be locked into recall. And so in this new build, click to do kind of escapes the confines of recall. Now, that works everywhere and there's a kind of a fun. Let me see if I think it's just hold down the window key and click the mouse button and wherever it is on screen, the mouse cursor, it will do that little kind of a rippling water, purple and pink animation and then it looks at whatever app that is, looks for all the texts, gives you that little animated selection view, and then you get those options and you can do all that so magic selection view. And then you get those options and you can do all that so magic. Yes, exactly, yep, not the first time Arthur C Clark has rolled in his grave. But you know, whatever I will just point out because I feel obligated to, for all the haters haven't heard any security problems to recall, even though it's out in the public. It's kind of weird and we'll talk about that. Actually, uh, after whatever ad break as well, but I just feel obligated to say you know, we were so concerned about this thing and, uh, contacts matter nothing. Yeah, it's working fine.
27:35
Um, right before we started the show, microsoft released yet another thing I think yeah, across all windows insider channels which is new support for the iPhone in the phone link app. So today the iPhone is pretty basic compared to Android. In fact, it's incredibly basic. I think you get text messaging but not group messages. You know there's all these limitations. You get the photo stuff is gone, but you can get that through the photos app and I think it might be. I think maybe phone calls and then notifications, which is pretty useless, but they're adding support for file sharing. So I tried to get this and I haven't. It's one of those CFR type features, so it's not really you don't know what machine it'll show up on it's. I don't have it on any right now, so I'm trying.
28:19
Should I try it here, I wonder if I can yeah, so the way, what do you so if you have a machine that's in the insider program? Oh, I don't so that's the, that's the first thing, it could be any channel, and then you have to. I believe you you're probably going to get a phone link app updates, which I, by the way, got one this morning. I thought this I did. I did get one this morning, yeah, yeah, I think it was to support this, but it's not. It's just, you know, it's one of those features.
28:42
They have to flip a switch or whatever. Right, so this is going to work similarly to that feature that they just released in 24 H two for Android phones, which is that you'll be able to share files between, in this case, the iPhone and your PC without having to go through like a UI. That's nice inside of the app.
29:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, phone link works kind of better with obviously with Android, but it kind of works with Android. But it does. I mean it does some stuff. We were talking about this yesterday. Steve Gibson wanted a way to do text messaging on his Windows PC from his iPhone and I think it would work fine. I think it does work fine for that. It does, yeah.
29:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It works, I work fine. I think it does work. Fine for that it does. Yeah, that's right, it uh, it works. I mean I would say fine is maybe a bridge too far well, there are things that don't work. So you, you can't go like once. You, when you connect it to a pc, you don't get all your previous conversations. They don't show up like they do on android. If it's a group text, um, the text will appear as individual text between two people instead of oh, that's weird, that doesn't okay, so it's not perfect.
29:45
It's not perfect because it's not apple but um. But yeah, better than are you blame apple?
29:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah oh yeah, no, microsoft blamed apple. Yeah, oh okay, they would.
29:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They would have they would have implemented that two years ago. If apple isn't, yeah that makes sense.
29:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They're not. All has their own way and they're not real sherry. Yeah, exactly.
30:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And then also, this happened so recently I didn't have time to even write about it, but Microsoft announced today they're bringing the full Windows 11 experience, or they have brought the full Windows 11 experience to MetaQuest 3 and 3S. What does that mean? Yeah, what does that mean? And yeah, what does that mean? So it's I like, I like I said I haven't even had time to look at this, but what I believe it means is that you get a windows 11 desktop and floating in space, you can click on it. But I mean, looking at the pictures, it also looks like there's kind of like individual app uh capabilities as well, but there's one screen where he's got three different desktops and different app floating in each, three taskbars etc. So, um, yeah, I don't know.
30:52
Remember that there was a when I don't know a couple years ago probably, microsoft announced, um, they were bringing microsoft 365 to meta. Meta briefly had their own kind of productivity apps and services they were going to do on Meta, on Quest rather, and then they got rid of that and I think this kind of paved the way for Microsoft to kind of go in a little deeper on this partnership, so you can access a local Windows PC, basically stream it, or if you have a Windows 365 cloud PC up in the cloud, you can stream that as well.
31:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I like the idea of no visible screen, right, that it is put on a pair of goggles and can figure a way as long as I can touch, type Cause I can't see where my hands are. Right, that's right.
31:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Is that true? I don't know, I'm not, I've not used one, I'm not through it. No, it's vr. Yeah, that's their vr headsets, okay, well, yeah, so you know, microsoft's not really doing their own, uh, mixed reality stuff anymore, so they've partnered with the obvious choice the hololens is in an interesting state of suspension.
31:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They have a bunch of products out there that people are using, so they've held on to the last of their hololenses to to replace units that fail. They're not willing to sell to any new customers now. They don't want to restart the production line and, uh, last time I talked to anybody there they're like we're waiting for better hardware, right? Yeah, chips, yeah, which?
32:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
is actually the last thing I heard too. Same thing. Yep, yep, they had a minor update ready to go, and it was just like we don't feel like this is enough of a jump to bother.
32:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
well, and again, I feel like the military distracted them in HoloLens, like there was a HoloLens three. It was the one built for the army that they canceled the last month. Yeah.
32:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, they canceled for everyone else. Yeah yeah, this week's 24 H two issue of the week is that the Google workspace sync plugin for outlook and I believe this is outlook classic, but look, based on the screenshot, they might.
32:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, there is only one outlook. Then there are terrible pretenders, some of which are made, we're going to talk about that, richard, okay, so, um, get out of the basement, buddy.
32:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, um is uh not working. So there's, you know, because it's 24 h2. It's terrible. There was an update under the covers to the Microsoft store last week that allows Win32 app makers to opt into a system where the store will manage app updates. So what that means is that in the beginning, in the very beginning, they were all modern apps. Everything happened to the store. That was the deal, remember. You could do like a one-click install, one-click uninstall it. You know, you know nothing was left behind all that kind of stuff. And then over time, they've added support for all these different app types. So now, if you have like a win32 web browser like firefox or chrome or whatever, you can put that in the store if you want, no problem. But after you install it from the store, it's up to that app to maintain whatever the updates are right. So you know, browsers are a good example of an app that has their own updating system, et cetera.
33:47
But, um, honestly, that one of the to me one of the key advantages of the store is that it handles this stuff. It handles it automatically. It happens in the background, you don't have to think about it. It's nice. You know, for example, when we start this show every week, I notion always has an update. Now, for some reason, I have to update Notion and then Discord always has an update. So it's like I sit down at this computer, I launch these apps. It's like you've got to install an update, like here we go.
34:12
So the store helps get rid of that little phenomenon. But I don't know how this works. In fact it was just announced. But basically, if you want to allow the store to update your app, it will do it for you. It uses when get somehow under the covers, which is interesting. I always saw when get the Microsoft store not merging I don't mean that, but um being ever more complimentary that the store is what Microsoft always wanted for its kind of servers, which was that it's really just this command line environment. But the store in this case is the UI, the front end that you people could click on. If they're.
34:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know when. Get is your command line way to do updates and store is the repository.
34:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So store is going to kind of handle that Like yeah, there's another context here, which is the battle over updating company machines.
35:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Right, they're trying. They're deprecating it at wsus, right there's. There's like four different ways to do updates, but there's generally a push to you should do this to the store with white listing or blacklisting, like that's what they want, except that none of their customers want it.
35:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But you know well, and then the, this business segment you're talking about, is the type of the audience that's going to have a lot of win32 apps and those apps are going to have their own updating model, etc. So if they're this way, it's like the, the, the repository, like you said, where you require the app is the store right, but then it it's almost like a middleman that sits there and it just runs winged update against the app. You know, just to you know to manage the update and um, like I said. However, however, it works whatever, whatever you have to do as a developer. I don't know, but I would imagine this is going to be a lot.
35:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, and there's an angle on this about supply chain attacks, but we have no evidence that Microsoft's going to be especially careful about what's in their store right Like shall we be blocked a supply chain type by?
35:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
being. I mean, if Microsoft had a rich history of screwing up security, I might agree with you. Oh wait.
36:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Um, there was a time when they were doing it well, it's just not this time, yep.
36:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, I think that time might be now. By the way, they're doing pretty good right now, but you know it required them to get kicked in the face a couple of times, um, which is what happens, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, they're a little bit like the TSA in that regard's like okay, we got the message, we'll start solving that problem now. Um, yeah, we'll see what happens, but I, I don't know.
36:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I like this seems like a pretty good idea to me yeah, it's a long, careful process because you've got to go through folks who have spent a long time building up an update infrastructure they trust and say, okay, now whatever. In some ways they've even forgotten what was important about the way they were doing it.
36:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I guess you had the original requirements. Can we change that again? Right, it's like did you start your company to manage an email infrastructure?
36:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're selling widgets here, yeah, so it's like well, you need to host your own update infrastructure. Is that the best way to do that? I?
36:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
mean the more that you can hand off. Yep Right, it's like as a a, as an app developer, I can put my app in the store for free. They don't even have to help manage a website. You know, let pay for that right, and then I can have them manage the updated infrastructure. Yeah, this sounds like.
37:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This sounds excellent to me you know, right after you take the whole company down, then it's not funny anymore, right well?
37:18
yeah, you're so serious well, uh, I mean, the upside to that is then you can blame Microsoft for being down, like that's the whole reason people use cloud in the first place. It gives you somebody else's fault, right, right, right, but you still. You know this is what it makes admins jumpy is an update came out in the middle of the night. I didn't properly configure controls over that. It deployed and now my ticket center is filled with tickets.
37:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the conversation I had with that guy on whatever social network. Which is he's waking up to that in windows? Yeah, you know, I mean the we can. We can joke all we want about, um, uh, you know, microsoft changing the location of the copilot icon on the taskbar. The reality is you have real human beings turn on the computer and they're like what the freak?
38:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
what on the computer? And they're like what the freak? What is this? And they're calling or texting or whatever they do to get help and they're wasting time and spending money. It's a great one Showing up at the office and there's 300 tickets sitting in there and there were none when you left the office last night.
38:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, I experience a minor version of that when I look at my comments every morning. It's great, it's great.
38:22
Let me get the coffee, and then I'm just going to throw it in my face a lot of face damage today for some reason um, okay, tied to the uh, the year-end stuff I've been going through, I've noticed something interesting in fact, I think I noticed this first on the yeah, the surface, uh laptop, which is the windows on ARM machine which is that, because of the way I do things, I often go back and use other products instead of the ones I prefer, right, so I'll use other web browsers instead of Brave or whatever. I do this kind of thing a lot. I'm always trying to keep up on this stuff and then, when it's something that's in Windows and is in the book and Edge is a complicated one for me because I hate it with a hot, burning passion, but also I have several chapters in the book about it I have to kind of, you know, stay up on it. So you know, sometimes I suck it up and I run Edge and I've noticed something with Edge lately and that something is that it doesn't really suck anymore and there's always been this kind of duality in the Microsoft space. It's true in Office, slash Microsoft 365. It's true in Windows, it's true in Edge, where they support some form of.
39:32
You sign in with an account and it syncs your settings, right, except it only syncs some of your settings, which is an app I used over 30 years, basically does not save the configuration that I put it into, which involves a bunch of things going through options and going through the different dialogues and I have to kind of redo that every time I run that app. Now there actually is a way to save that, but just bear with me on that. One. Windows is the same thing. Windows 8 introduced a bunch of really good setting sync capabilities. It got better in Windows 10, and then in Windows 11, they started taking them away and so there's less than ever and it's not transparent. It's actually not really clear what settings sync app's not. That's not. That's not syncing. You know every time you sign into a new computer or whatever, you're getting the stock. You know experience. That's kind of what they want.
40:28
So edge works the same way so I find every time you get an os update it goes back to that's exactly which is tied into this app I'm still working on, which is basically like uh, you could think of it as a user state vigilance tool, like you reboot after a OS update or a monthly update, whatever it is, and then it says, hey, by the way, they changed this configuration over here, right, like I. This is something I actually need, cause I'm trying to understand that list as well, like the, not just the list of things that actually do sync, but the list of things Microsoft resets after an update, because they absolutely do that For sure. So edge is exactly the same. There are certain many, in fact, there's a million features in there. It's a little daunting, but there are certain features that don't sync. So, for example, if you like the workspace icon up on the title bar there, if you don't use that feature, you get rid of it and you go to a different computer. It's back, you know, and so there's kind of a hundred of those things.
41:24
So I do, I spend that time and I go through the UI and I I don't like using sleeping tabs, for example, but whatever, I turn things off, I turn things on, I change things, I use the Google search engine instead of Bing and whatever. And then you get to this thing. That's pretty good, like it's pretty minimal, you know it's not bad. But I've noticed that this thing is actually really fast, which is not something I've said about Edge possibly ever. Maybe the very first release of the Chromium Edge, because it was so stripped down. Maybe that was pretty fast, but it's you know, it's kind of big and heavy and slow and whatever.
41:59
It's bulked up, yeah yeah. So I went like I have this vague memory that they were working on something with this regard and, sure enough, back in May they announced that they were replacing bits of the UI with this new technology which speeds things up dramatically like a double or triple X um performance improvements, and it's doing like one component at a time and they've never talked about it since. So I don't have any thing I can point to and say hey, this is you know, this has definitely changed. But here's what I can tell you when you open something, like if you open the menu and go to browser essentials, that thing appears so fast it almost makes a sound Like it's almost like bam.
42:41
And one of the things that, like objectively, has always been slower in edge and just kind of bothered me was history, which is control H, and downloads, which is control J. In Edge are these kind of weird floating panes, yeah, and in Chrome and other Chromium browsers are just full window, just another window, yeah yeah, those things appear really fast, like if you type control J, you can see it kind of. It almost like jumps out at you.
43:04
It's excited about it, like if you type control J, you can see it kind of it almost like jumps out at you it's excited about it. Yeah, it's really.
43:09
This has not been the experience, so they've actually done something and they did talk about it, but it's, I'm starting to see it, I'm starting to like, experience it, like it, like I've read it, I wrote about it and I'm like, whatever, I still hate it and I've been. I, I, I used edge on a couple of, you know one computer that's like this interesting, I wonder if it's just on arm. I used it on x64. No, this thing, it's better like it's actually working better.
43:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, the main thing I've noticed with edge these days is I don't know that I'm using edge right like there was a time there where it's like oh dang, I opened this in an edge browser like that's why there are things to like about edge.
43:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
If you like the windows 11 aesthetic, which is kind of a combination of well, a general style, the way things look, but also just the fonts and the, the menu, that settings and more menu and edge is the correct kind of size and scale for the OS based on your setting, whereas in brave it's just like this tiny, like two point thing. You know, you can barely see it. Maybe it's because you're brave isn't so good, or something no, brave doesn't spend a lot of time on the front end.
44:10
It's not just brave because I've also been using, like right now, for example, I'm using um chrome and the chrome menu is also just a fixed size. It's nothing special. But if you compare the size of that menu in chrome or or or whatever browser, this seems about right.
44:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is Edge. Yeah, it seems it's correct.
44:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Like it's bigger, but it should be bigger, like these things are not scaling. You know, edge all browsers support like a UI scale kind of a feature. Obviously it does not impact that menu, it should, and so that's one thing. Edge has always gotten right, which I really like, because I always scale everything big, yeah, should, yeah, and so edge, that's one thing.
44:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Edge has always gotten right, which I really like, because I always scale everything big, yeah, but but the menu stays the same and you stay small, and that's where you really notice it.
44:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And so, on edge to me, I don't know. You can see for yourself just it. It looks to me, it looks correct, it's definitely bigger is the way I would say. The text, um, and you know, whatever there's, you know they do text rendering a little different, although I think they've shared that with Chromium since now.
45:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, it's just a browser. Browsers are browser is a browser, right, oh Leo.
45:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean yeah, yes, Are we looking a?
45:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
little too deeply at the size of the fonts in the menu. I mean.
45:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, if you're 58 years old and you can't read it? No, I mean.
45:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I guess you're right.
45:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I mean that's the, that's part of it. I mean I it's like, wow, I could like this. You know I to me edge, you know everything is uh, um, uh, every relationship, you know like pros and cons and then uh, sometimes, when they're negative enough that, looking at it and this is a big turnaround for me because I wrote an entire chapter of the book about how to fix all the stupid stuff they screw up.
45:50
And I have to say I think it's slid over. You know, the other one that might fall into this category for some people not for me, but it's only because I use web-based email is the new Outlook, which is the subject of more hate than maybe anything Microsoft has done, since I don't know Bob or I, I don't even know what this equates to. It's just mockery right Like yeah, I mean it's, it's.
46:16
I think it might be the unicorns and the flowers in the UI. It might be it's a little too cheerful or something. It's very pretty, it's very. I love how much you can customize this thing. I really do Like it's kind of crazy how beautiful it can be. I don't like using an app for email and stuff, but it, you know, it's outlook, so it's email calendar context to do you know all this stuff.
46:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, it's going to make outlook familiar. Should I let it make outlook familiar?
46:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would not allow that um, yeah, what we're gonna do is like double the resource requirements it's gonna load. I want the generic ad look so that's this is the generic look, yeah the one, but go with that like just I'm just sticking to just the look and feel of it, like don't select it and don't open it, it's pretty but no, but go up to whatever the menu is and go to settings and go to uh just customize you.
47:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I really weird this bar, this toolbar, okay, and now I can customize the look at general, probably, and then whatever the appearance, yeah, like oh, unicorns, yeah.
47:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, but I mean, but honestly, like these, it's, it can be quite attractive. You know it's, it's, it can be quite attractive. You know it's actually pretty nice. It's kind of cool.
47:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.
47:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's better than the old way it was.
47:31
Yeah. So the problem with this app, the big problem to me, is that if you don't have a paid Microsoft 365 account commercial or consumer you're going to see ads and those ads will appear as if they were email messages. Oh, that's not good. I do not like that, but I'm paying for it, so that's not a big deal. Um, I know there are certain features that businesses rely on that either are half implemented or aren't quite there yet. But if you haven't done it, there was a great um. Well, there was a an outlook session at uh ignite. It's worth watching. They've made a lot of strides, uh, toward the stuff that they want businesses, that businesses want. Um, they're going to start making it opt out for small businesses in early 2025, but not for big businesses.
48:13
At least it put its own microsoft store ad in the junk mail yeah, at least it had the courtesy which is the hilarious, you know side story to this right like they're all like house ads, you know unsubscribe.
48:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, oh, now I have to go to a website.
48:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Of course I want to do in edge probably but uh, anyway, I look I'm not going to use the new outlook, but other than because I have to write about it for the book. But um it is pretty yeah, I look at it and I'm like you know, this is actually pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good yeah it.
48:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's going to take me a little while to get used to this ribbon up here.
48:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So if you're an old school look guy, you can turn it to the old ribbon too.
48:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I should have said. Right, that was my option. When they said do you want it to be like the old way?
48:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I should have said yes, no no. I want to try the new way I could change my density.
49:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, I like that roomy you are. My density all right, I'm gonna switch on this machine. It's pretty.
49:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm sorry I wasn't actually trying, we weren't, we weren't advocating anything I will, you know, I'll message you and curse you.
49:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I know where you live. Well, you know, I've got the writing machine, which is I'll stay with the old one, but on the on the video machine.
49:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What do you use on your phone? Do you use microsoft outlook?
49:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
yeah, yeah, but you don't have a choice there. It's bad no matter what you do.
49:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right like yeah it's just a question. It's consistently bad on ios and android.
49:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah and that's the thing I like about outlook. Classic like yes, I hate this thing, but it's the hate I know, right. Yeah, now what you've done is you've made this. You know A? I do not need unicorns in my email. Like please.
49:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It is a weird fact of history that they updated Outlook on the Mac years ago yeah, like three years ago-ish, whatever it was, and I don't use that either. But my understanding is that app's pretty damn good, like it's supposed to be really good, and I would imagine on the mac it's not like this web app like we have in windows, like this is the new way on windows, but on the mac it's probably just like a native xcode app, whatever, and, um, I think they were trying to go for a similar experience on windows, but using web technologies, but which freaks people out for some reason. It definitely feels reacty right, like yeah, but the thing is they move to the web model, react whatever for uh, office and outlook extension add-ins, whatever years ago.
50:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So I mean making the whole thing consistent well, and one of the things you got to think of in terms of is dev resources. Right, yeah, you know the these react devs don't want to write code in C++ anymore. They just don't.
50:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Although, I have to say, I look at JavaScript code and I'm like it's like yikes, I'm sorry, you said JavaScript and code in the same sentence and everybody knows, hey look, I came up out of Visual Basic. I've been dealing with that kind of thing for a long time. I've got lots of friends doing Advent of Code and doing each uh different uh event in a different language. Yes, I've seen people do that. I was hoping you were going to say the polyglot version doing it in like visual basic six, just none of them in javascript.
51:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, no, one of the guys did it in gw basic. I think he did number two in gw basic.
51:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you could do number two in gw basic. I wouldn't want to do recursive stuff in gw basic. No, no, no, oh, you should tell we have a private leaderboard for the club twit if they know yeah, oh, wow yeah advent of code is so much fun. I actually streamed, uh, my first five days live. Four days live, no five, I can't remember. But then it got hard and so I'm not going to let anybody see me trying no and it's going to be in one life there is.
51:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The two scariest things you could do in life is kind of, uh, open your heart to another human being.
51:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's number two, and number one is letting people see your source code code in public and it's like yikes and it's like people like are you some kind of a?
52:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
freaking idiot, which is not one you want to hear from either one of those audiences.
52:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But like you know. Well, I think it's a whole. It's one thing to just to put the code up on GitHub where other people could see it, but to stream while you write it.
52:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was scary Well this is the yeah. But I just acknowledge that I don't.
52:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm not a pro, I'm just messing around Every time I write anything about this, I always try to stress like, just as a reminder, I'm a writer, not a coder. Yeah, exactly.
52:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Exactly. It actually went pretty well. I solved them all in real time, under two hours. Oh, that's great. It was a lot of fun. I had a lot of help from our coders.
52:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I've never done this.
52:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Advent of Code is super fun, but it's challenging. It gets harder, every day gets harder. So there's 25 days, it's an advent calendar and we're in day 11 and there's two parts to each day.
52:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, um, the nice thing about it if you're doing a little chocolate at the end is that there's no chocolate. There's no booze.
52:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nothing just to say, but it is. You know what? It's a big dopamine rush when you do write the code oh, they don't ask for a code they just ask for the answer and you put in the answer.
53:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like a udacity course or something. It's like you get yeah, you got the answer and you get a gold star when you're right, so that's even better.
53:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and your input set is different from person to person, so yeah, yeah everybody has it. So you can't take someone else's output and put it to yours. In fact it's, it's in there. If you do that, it goes. You know this is correct, but for somebody else's output does it say that yeah, oh, and it literally asks you like, you wouldn't be cheating, would you?
53:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
that's somebody else's answer. You're yeah, there's the guy who does this eric wastel is yeah, he's so brilliant, so so brilliant. Yeah, it's cool and there are a lot of coding challenges out there, but I think this is the best. It's the one I look forward to all year. It's really fun.
53:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah.
53:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's pretty special and I am not by any means I haven't finished. I've never gotten all 25.
53:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, I am deeply immersed in in a rest interface to have current tied data show up in a home assistant.
53:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you should stick with that.
53:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, that, and it's Python so I'm hating myself at the same time. Well, okay, but at least all the AIs seem like they're optimized for Python, so you could at least get help, I am getting help.
54:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yes, in fact Stephen was talking about this yesterday on Security. Now he actually asked an assembly language question of. Chatgpt and got an interesting little conversation and eventually useful code.
54:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is not a complex thing. I'm not trying to say that. But in thinking about taking my NET Pad app to a multi-tab interface, right, one of the things I have to do is, you know, I've got the system where there are certain states that are like the document, the document name, is it saved, et cetera, that are just global to the app but now have to be individual to each tab right. So it's dynamic. You don't know how many they're going to be, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm like I'm going to have to make like a C-sharp class for this. So I did it and it seems like it's working great.
54:58
And then I published an article about it and then the next day I was like anthropic came out with an announcement. They said, hey, we're good. You know it's better for this now. And I'm like gosh. I said I wrote a really detailed, I want a class and c-sharp that. And it was exactly the same. And I was like nice, yeah, that was really. That was a nice little that's affirming yeah, yeah that was really now again it's simple it's.
55:22
I'm not trying to prop myself up too much, but it was really nice to have that happen.
55:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I always wonder, when I'm looking at code generated by an AI, if it's just somebody else's code that it ingested. Entirely possible, yeah.
55:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Hey, listen, it's still the correct answer on stack overflow as a service is still worth paying for. That's true. Anyone who has ever spent time. And then you're like, okay, this is going to be a. Definitely like no, that doesn't work. And then you read for like oh, someone already said it doesn't work. And then you know in two hours later you're like what was I doing? You know, like that's, that's the typical flow. Yeah, I mean, we've all done this way down the yep. So, yeah, I'm sure you're right. And you always have that moment where you step back and like am I even attacking this the right way? Like why am I doing this? Well, that's uh, 50 of the answers on stack overflow are I don't even know why you're trying to do this.
56:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, and it's like dude. Listen, I am just trust me, I need to do yeah, thanks for the help. That's why we recommended our sponsor experts exchange, because you don't get that weird like yeah, that happens, that is so common.
56:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so common, yep or answered.
56:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Answered 10 years ago.
56:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, this was answered in another threat. Yeah, why do you? Because I'm not omniscient.
56:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Omniscient or omniscient or whatever, like I'm something all right, let's take a little time out, uh, and come back with lots more of this chocolatey goodness that you think of as daily chocolatey goodness. It's so good we are going to do it again. By the way, the next show will be a week from today It'd be the 18th but the following show we're not going to do this.
56:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That was quite a cliffhanger there. Our next show? Well, we'll be next week, actually next week but then they'll have Christmas Day off.
57:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That will be a best of which the elves are working on right now, and then it's New Year's Day, so you're going to have a couple of days off.
57:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was out with somebody and we were talking about the holidays and someone said something about Christmas being on a Wednesday and I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? What? I? Obviously, the way the calendar works is this had to have happened before. I cannot remember having a Christmas off. I can't like both of those days, eight years ago, yeah. Well, that's what my wife said. She, yeah, the smart one was like well, paul he's like every year Like yeah, thanks, thanks but yeah, eight years ago Right.
57:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I'm saying. I don't remember it at all, yeah that's crazy.
57:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so you get two weeks off, uh, so just remember that I'm probably just gonna sit here and talk for three hours to myself.
57:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know me too. What do you think? I just come up in my attic and I turn on the lights I'll just log in and we can talk to each other.
57:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, like richard's actually there, like what's going on?
58:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
we should do a show, just not record it, or there you go, yeah, yeah.
58:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What are you guys doing on christmas day?
58:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
nothing watching football, probably, uh, our show today brought to you by those wonderful folks at threat locker. You ought to know about threat locker if you are, uh, in business and there are threats there are, you know to know to zero-day exploits. Microsoft patched one yesterday and supply chain attacks keep you up at night. Well, you know they should be, probably, but I have a way you can get a good night's sleep. Harden your security with ThreatLocker. Worldwide, companies like JetBlue trust ThreatLocker to secure their data and keep their business operations flying high. And if you check it out, you'll see, first of all, great reviews from all over, but you'll also see it's very affordable. It is the easiest, most affordable way to set up a zero trust on your network, and I think this is exactly the right way to protect your most valuable stuff.
59:05
Imagine taking a proactive and this is the key deny by default approach to cybersecurity. That means every action is blocked, every process is blocked, every user is blocked. Nothing can happen unless authorized by your team. So it's the opposite of a blacklist, it's a whitelist. You only say you explicitly say they could do this and this, but not that, and that is you know. I think I first heard of Zero Trust when Google started using it. It is the best way to protect your network and the great thing about ThreatLocker it only does this. It gives you a full audit of every action. So this is great for risk management and compliance. Their 24-7 US-based support team fully supports you getting started, onboarding and beyond. So what you're doing is you are protecting your network completely right. You're stopping the exploitation of trusted applications inside your organization. You're keeping your business secure. You're fully protected from ransomware.
01:00:15
Organizations in any industry can benefit from ThreatLocker's ring fencing. Ring fencing isolates critical and trusted applications from unintended uses or weaponization. It also limits this is so cool attackers' lateral movement within your network. They just it's like a brick wall. It's so good. Sertlaker's ring fencing was able to foil a number of attacks the traditional EDR. Couldn't you remember the SolarWinds Orion attack? Remember how many companies were bit by that? Well, what you probably didn't read was it was completely foiled by ring fencing. Companies using ring fencing had not a fear, not a worry, not a care in the world.
01:00:57
Threadlocker works for Max2, so your whole network can be protected. Get unprecedented visibility and control of your cybersecurity quickly, easily, and I have to say I was blown away by how cost effective it is Very affordable. Get unprecedented visibility and control of your cybersecurity quickly, easily, and, I have to say, I was blown away by how cost effective it is Very affordable. Threatlocker's Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform offers a unified approach to protecting users, devices and networks against the exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities. Doesn't matter if you've never heard of it, threatlocker blocks it. Get a free 30-day trial. Learn more about how ThreatLocker can help mitigate unknown threats and, at the same time, ensure compliance. Visit ThreatLockercom. We thank them so much for supporting Windows Weekly and we thank you for supporting Windows Weekly by going to that site. And if they say, hey, where did you hear about ThreatLocker? You say, well, I heard it on Windows Weekly. Threatlockercom. Thank them for their support. All right, I've been playing with outlook, by the way. Uh, since you and I put my fast mail in it, it downloaded.
01:01:57
I was very quick I actually kind of like this I, you're right, it's not it ain't half bad.
01:02:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's astonishing like how much hate this thing gets, and then when I use it I'm like, honestly, this is pretty good, like now this is.
01:02:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is not the office Outlook, though this is the Outlook that comes with Windows, right.
01:02:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right, but it's going to replace the office Outlook. Oh, it is Over the next couple of years. Yeah, interesting.
01:02:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm sorry, I got fixated on when Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday. Was it eight years ago, it's not as regular as you think because of leap years. It's right that's why I said eight not seven, because 2019 was the previous one and 2013 was the one before that. Six years, okay, but the next one will be 2030, right, and then it doesn't happen again until 2041 yikes.
01:02:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I won't be here for that, are you sure? Yeah, I'm thinking probably not.
01:02:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Are you already booking that day?
01:02:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I ran an app that said I'll be dead.
01:02:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
My death day is March 17th 2041. So I won't be here for that one, I see. Well, we'll do Advent of Code, or whatever it's called in your honor.
01:02:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do it without me, although, if I am here for that, celebrate good times.
01:03:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you might just be a machine model, I think. Model right, I think that's a very possible. You know ai is moving quick. It might be any day now by 2040. We just have a copy of leo and some software. Yeah, I mean, the great news is we can reboot them too, so that's excellent it just be like the, the two google voices going.
01:03:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Hey, so today there was a story about this thing wow, windows 29 it's awesome have you tried the new outlook? 100 he's like, so I should reboot it now, okay, yeah it's just like.
01:03:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just like the real one did yeah exactly, yeah, I think I know how they trained it it'll still be in the insider program wow, that's a remarkable, remarkably accurate no, don't press the button okay, I was referring to something that happened many years ago, before uh, before leap year was.
01:03:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's hard to imagine. Um, you know, you like you might talk about like one time. You know, one time you were in the cottage and then you moved to this other studio, but I think of it as more like at one time this whole thing was run off of a laptop that he was using during the recording of the podcast, which, um, in retrospect, maybe wasn't the smartest.
01:04:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I had audition running on a laptop yeah, the uh windows laptop that was both recording and doing all the stuff, and it got a windows update and I said, paul, should I hit, should I it?
01:04:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
returned. I was like no, not now. And he's like, okay, I'm clicking. I'm like no, don't hope they went away just died, the whole show, just leo's gone.
01:04:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He'll be back once it reboots leo's exactly where you left him. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about recall, shall we?
01:04:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, so I mentioned that recall is now available on x64 uh in in the dev channel right now for everybody and only on the latest uh co-pilot plus pc hardware. I have spoken in the past about how microsoft and third parties keep talking about all these changes they supposedly made to it. But I can also point you to the documentation from may and say I'm actually not sure they made any substantive technical changes to recall. But it is still important that it's opt in, not opt out, right, which is the model I should follow. I really wonder how many users are actually are right.
01:05:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's probably not too many. Yeah, cause how many, how many copilot plus BC machines are out in the wild, and then how many other small?
01:05:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
and then how many people and then what subset of that is putting them in the insider program? Right, very small, very small. Um, that said, I mean it's been a lot there. You know, this is another one of those things. For all the hate, in this case there are a lot of people who are like, yeah, actually I'd like to use this thing, and you know they're not super loud about it like the haters are, but they're, you know. So there's some people are doing it, I'm doing it. Like I said earlier, the security stuff is pretty quiet. You don't hear anything, regardless of the number of people using it, those security researchers, the guys that were all over this thing like cockroaches, you have to think they've been all over it.
01:06:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And don't hear anything from those guys Not so sure because those types don't tend not to have the hardware. It's one thing to snatch a copy of the code and run it your own way and break the snot out of it, it's another thing to snatch a copy of the code and run it your own way and break the snot out of it.
01:06:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's another thing to actually go. You think they're even lazier than I think they are. That's interesting. Okay, fair enough.
01:06:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Are they lazy or are they broke?
01:06:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They can be both. But I will say, in using recall actually there are problems with this thing. They have nothing to do with security. Well, actually they have everything to do with security. They have nothing to do. Well, they have. Actually, they have everything to do with security, or a lot to do with security, but not the, not the problems people are imagining.
01:06:38
Um, the user experience is terrible actually, and um, what? And? And the biggest problem with it is that anytime you do anything, you have to authenticate with windows hello, uh, and you know it's windows, hello, ess, right, so it's you know that more secure thing, it's the secure underpinnings, yada, yada yada. But it's like you close the app and you're like, oh wait, I want to go back. And it's like, oh, you got to authenticate again. And the way that it works is it doesn't just authenticate you, you have to then click the button to OK. It Kind of like the way Windows Hello works, works in chrome.
01:07:08
If anyone does that to protect their access to their or any phyto key implementation, yeah, it's, it's, it's a terrible, it's pretty, it's not great, um, and then the other issue is just the ui itself is kind of amateurish, I mean it's. It's kind of weird. If anyone's ever used um file history in windows, I don't know when that debuted seven, probably seven, eight, ten, whatever um it's that it's the same ui it's. It's not great and it takes a ton of screenshots. I will say the screenshots don't take up that much space. That was one of the big worries right and so on. My computer, I think I have. I think I have a terabyte of storage and I haven't changed anything in this regard. So I think the default storage it sets aside for this thing is like 150 gigabytes it can use. It's not using all of it, it's only using about. I think it was two gigabytes or something like that.
01:08:06
And I'm not ever aging out screenshots or anything. I'm keeping everything, so it's not really taking up that much space. I mean, that was one of the big concerns too non-security concerns. But, like I said, back in May, when I talked to a guy who claimed to have created this thing, I said, yeah, I got some questions for you. And he's like, here we go. And I'm like, no, no, these are not the questions you think I I to me, because I use multiple computers and I think a lot of people use multiple devices regardless for for this to be truly useful, I don't. I don't want my activities locked to a single device.
01:08:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I want to cross all my devices. This is what's unfortunate is like this. The security scare made it less useful.
01:08:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But to be fair to Microsoft, um, they were doing this before the security scare. They said, look, we know that and we will do that. We will have controls for enterprises and all that stuff. It was going to come out in a preview, like it you know, and it is now only in a preview. So their point was like we know we have to be secure with this thing, so we're going to lock it down, it's going to be local only on the device. And I was like yep, and that is completely useless to me. He's like yeah, no, I hear you.
01:09:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know, like I get it, like don't worry, we'll get there. But there's the whole enterprise side of this which I just think could be huge.
01:09:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so in the enterprise, like their initial. This reminds me very much of Windows Phone. It was like almost no, not almost. It was literally antagonistic to enterprises. So the way they originally presented this was look, it's going to be on there. If this is an enterprise device, the enterprise cannot touch it. It's up for the user.
01:09:41
They can do whatever they want, and they were like whoa, what are you talking about? That's crazy. So that's not the way that is anymore. Now they're allowing it's off by default, like I said, but enterprises have controls through policy to control it or not. And you can, as an enterprise, go in and say look, you're not taking screenshots of this app or of certain types of information. So, you know, for individuals it's like credit cards and whatever other things. But, you know, for businesses it might be something, you know, different.
01:10:07
Obviously they have different things you might not want captured on these screenshots, which can't go anywhere anyway because of all the security controls on the pc. But whatever I get it, um, I mean, look, I I don't think there's anything stopping a user from taking a screenshot of the screen when that thing's on screen and sending it an email to someone. I mean there's, there's a whole path of stupidity that can occur. But oh sure, um, as far as the underlying tech, I, it seems to me, if it's almost too locked out, it's a little much it's impairing its usefulness.
01:10:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah.
01:10:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can do this yourself. Well, if you have Windows Hello ESS, I think, if you go into the settings app, for example, and go to I don't think this one has it but if you go to accounts and then sign in options and I don't have it, but yeah, you'll see normal Windows Hello there's an option that says if you've been away, when should Windows require you to sign in again? And the default is 15 minutes. The default on ESS is every time and you cannot change it Right, and that's a pretty big difference. Now you, as an individual, could set Windows Hello to work that way, and then you'll have this experience I'm talking about. Let me tell you something A day will not go by before you turn that off. It is horrible, it is, it's heavy handed. It's what bad MFA looks like Right, exactly.
01:11:21
Yes, yes, exactly, so there. There that's, look. It was always going to be Windows Hello, ass. That was always going to be the experience. Nobody changed that. That was what they envisioned. We just didn't know it. And here it is, and it's not great, that's all. To me, it's a pain. I'll just say look, I think they've overcorrected, so I get it.
01:11:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think you're still right that it was always going to be like this. Oh, definitely, I can show you the documentation.
01:11:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Like. It was definitely like and you, no one would remember this but at some point, one of the delays over the summer, I and then they came out and said this is how we're going to change it, you know, and I was like, I don't think you're changing anything. I went through the whole list and I went back and looked and there was only one thing I wasn't sure about, and it was the Windows Hello ESS this thing. It was this whether it was going to make it happen every time. But if you go back to the May documentation, it was always Windows Hello ESS as a requirement, which means this always was the requirement. So that I've learned since then. So, yeah, there was literally nothing substantive.
01:12:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, I'm sure they were small and they could just use the facial recognition feature so that, yeah, it reauthenticates, but it reauthenticates without interrupting you, but it does interrupt you. That's the problem. I know that it didn't. That's what I don't like. Yeah, I agree. Well, it just means people won't use it, right, like?
01:12:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
that's what I, that's that's. My worry is that it's you know, for all of the concerns, that's one way. Yeah, exactly yeah. The other one I mentioned this in passing last week. Since then I looked it up so there was a. I saw this report in PC World. This is what's happened to journalism in our little field, PC World right, used to be a print magazine. Microsoft's going to start threatening people with unsupported hardware by putting a watermark on the on the windows 11 desktop If the PC is unsupported, if there's any hardware that's unsupported. I always did that so I was like, yeah, that's always been the thing. So I went and looked it up since then.
01:13:23
Oh, I should say it's written, it's, they must. They're either partnering with or bought a German tech blog, and so it's this tiny post or maybe it was Swedish, swedish or German and they're quoting another Windows blog that had this big story about this and it's like I don't think you guys know what you're talking about. So I went and looked it up and when I wrote the first version of the Windows 11 field guide, I had a tip in there about how you could turn it off, and I eventually got rid of it because I never actually saw it appear on any computer. So I thought, well, microsoft's not going to do this anymore. So when I looked it up, so when I wrote that the first version of the book came out in October 2022, one year after Windows 11, right, the first example of the exact language on that page that talks about a watermark dates back to July 2022.
01:14:09
All right, so it was six months before I wrote the book, the first version of the book. It was over 18 months ago now, or about 18 months ago now. This is not new. So, um, people acting like, oh my God, they're, they're, you know they're. They're closing the reins, it's coming, you know it's like.
01:14:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, they've been talking about this for a long time, so yeah, cause when 11 shipped in 21 and they always they had the tpm2 requirement from the outset and then you know we got around that.
01:14:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I always wondered if they just weren't forcing microsoft, I mean to this day documents ways that you can get around these blockers, like they actually document how you could do it, um, which is kind of strange. But you know, you, they're acting like you're, you're swearing an oath like. It's like you have to promise that you understand that you might not get like updates, which has never happened, right. You might get a watermark on the desktop, which has never happened, right, um, you know, like, like, and then you have to, you know, raise your hand, put your other hand on a bible or something, and it's like I don't.
01:15:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's not really what's happening here. I promise, yeah, anyway, yeah, that's not new, Whatever, yeah.
01:15:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And then this one will probably be the most controversial of the three I have here, which is that um I think it tells Yep Editorial.
01:15:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think it tells toast.
01:15:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think it's over, I think it's going to be and the know for a while. I'm not exactly Nostradamus here. I mean, you can see what's going wrong with this company, but the thing that did it for me was we taught when, when that Monday occurred a week ago, monday where we woke up and they're like, hey uh, pat Gelsinger is retiring. You know, it's like a really fascinating. And then you find out, sure enough, you know, leave or or we'll fire, you'll be leaving. So you think, okay, something's happened. Some partner walked away, some milestone wasn't hit, some promise was unmet, some, whatever it was, something happened and they got an offer from Qualcomm they can't refuse, or something. Something happened.
01:16:04
So obviously, the next thing we're going to learn is that the strategy is changing. That's what's going to happen. The strategy is exactly the same. The people who are co-running the company now the two co-CEOs, these two non-engineer idiots are like oh no, we're not changing the strategy at all. Okay, so what? You gave this guy three and a half years to implement this incredible turnaround and you're not. What? Why did you fire him? What was the problem? You know he was the guy that lobbied the US government to get something called the chips act to happen. Yep, he didn't lobby them to get the money, he did, but first he said you know what you guys should do, you should give us money. And it worked. That's what he did and he got rid of that guy.
01:16:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Really. I mean, when you're going to restructure a company, you need a restructuring CEO, not an engineer.
01:17:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
CEO. But that's why I believe Intel's dead. Because now that you're talking restructuring, there's the minor stuff. Because now that you're talking restructuring, there's the minor stuff. There's these little other businesses like Mobilized Security and whatever else that Intel has.
01:17:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Okay, which they've been shuffling a bunch of them off anyway.
01:17:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, which is part of this, because I think, like Pat Gelsinger, has been working toward this. Remember, pat Gelsinger was the guy who started reporting foundry revenues as if it were a separate company. Yeah, I don't think there was a clear sign ever that this was the future.
01:17:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I just don't know that he had the political clout to actually do it, so he was dancing around it, right? That's the difference. Okay, well, and I also think you were just listing off all the possible ingredients. Qualcomm did suggest they were interested in bits of it. Amd is mainstay discussion, like Qualcomm did suggest they were interested in bits of it.
01:17:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Amd is mainly just like. All the pieces are there. Now the question is can you cut the deal? It might really be.
01:17:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think Intel might literally have the worst board in the history of big tech Tech companies in general tend to have crony boards, right?
01:18:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Crony boards, boards of friends, yeah, but these are crony boards.
01:18:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But Intel's board is made up now largely of non-engineers. They're just like the guy who was the ceo of intel before, pat galsger whose name escapes me because who cares? He didn't do a single freaking thing was not an engineer? Yeah, he was. He was the cfo of like three or four different companies before he came to intel. Right, and he didn't do a single freaking thing in two years.
01:18:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think it's part of the challenge there is. Do you know how to do work the politics to get this done? Do you? What is the tool you have in your pocket? Do you know how to raise money? Do you know how to close the deals right? Right, can you? Can you get through the regulatory requirements? You're going to have, dod is going to have an opinion, ftc is going to be all over this like this is not a small thing to pull off the I think that's the handling of a giant, yeah, but so I'm agreeing with everything you're saying.
01:19:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I just want to clear I'm not disagreeing about any of it, I, but this is part of what leads me to this inevitable kind of conclusion.
01:19:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I intel, as we know it is over is over, but it had been for a while. I would also say this yes, gelsinger was probably retired because they went off the Dow Like that's a statement, right. Yeah, when they came off the Dow, he was done. He had no, there was no, it doesn't matter what he was doing.
01:19:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're off the Dow now. You don't have to be an engineer to be unhappy about that.
01:19:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, look, the board is responsible as shareholders.
01:19:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean their purview or their, whatever their point of being, is completely different maybe from that of the NGC. You got a couple of calls from a couple of those larger pension funds saying WTF, dude, do you know how much stock I have to shift now? Of course, because this fund's rules mean only down companies.
01:19:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's fine, I'm just saying. But the point here is that Intel is this force that was 50% of the personal computing industry, called Wintel. Yeah, I think it's over. I think that's over, and when you look at this inevitable shift where these things drift apart, you've got a foundry business that cannot keep up to TSMC to save its life and you've got a company that is still the biggest but floundering master of the smallest pond in personal computing, has done nothing right for the past several years, technically, and I think and now at the worst possible time two things have happened AMD, which should have taken this over, has restructured itself to focus on cloud computing and AI and not on PCs. And Qualcomm happened with Snapdragon X. Like I said, aliens handed down this technology, and so now we have this out as an industry, this thing that is actually technically better.
01:20:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised at all if an entity takes over the licensing for the x86 and they actually run it through some other fabs and make some really phenomenally good versions of it. Yeah, I will say.
01:21:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The little asterisk here is AMD has done such a phenomenal job with Zen 5. And it's weird because they're just not emphasizing this too much their graphics business is like next to nothing. And it's weird because they're just not emphasizing this too much.
01:21:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Their graphics business is like next to nothing they're really making this AI push now, but that stuff, that's also their board hammering them to keep the stock price up. We don't want to get delisted either. Right, like they've all got their fights here.
01:21:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's too bad because Zen 5 is very good, it is very good, it very good. It's not, you know it's not quite, it's not qualcomm quality, but as far as uh, just you know you need that compatibility, whatever you're okay with, you know, two thirds of the battery life or whatever. Um, general performance across the board is unbelievable five years from now will x86 be gone no, so it never goes away.
01:21:49
But then like that. But you know businesses will keep it there, just those code bases. But the point is, is it influential? Is it evolving to some point that?
01:21:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
is interesting, but it hasn't been for ages, right?
01:22:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
no, I know that that's no, I know, but you're right. But it it has been kept in the market by inertia.
01:22:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah if you look at like 250 million, and it's going to stay in the market of inertia for longer too. All you're seeing here is that the vertical integration model is over for Intel.
01:22:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm arguing that that is what's going to change, that Intel has maintained this incredible control over the industry through paying companies off. There was a three-year period where dell was, uh, profitable, only because intel paid them right, um, which is their bottle? And that what? And they can't do that anymore. No, they don't have the money.
01:22:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's what I'm saying, that's what I mean, like intel and then x86, like yeah no, you, and so you're talking about the bankruptcy model the very slowly, then all at once, and maybe this is the all at once.
01:22:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is my point, yeah I think I, I and I think x86 goes with it. I think we collectively have an industry, just like Dave Cutler looked at x64 and said, yep, this is the way forward for 64 bits. At that time, 25 years ago, whatever it was Windows on, windows was the paper right. Yeah, and this is look Apple. This is a sad reality of our existence. Apple has shown us the way so many times and we hate them, we resent them, we're jealous of them. And they did it with ARM. And they did it on the PC with the Mac. And can we just wake up and get the message for once, like this is the way forward?
01:23:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They showed us how to do it Well, and it's felt like they had a grand vision. They were just trying to make money and they knew the phone was the win for them.
01:23:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, no, I mean when they did the mac. In other words, by the time they got to the mac they were like, oh my god, which mac across the board? What? The m1 mac?
01:23:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
the okay apple right, yeah, so the fully integrated sock is, without a doubt, cook's opus. Right, like the thing that tim cook did.
01:23:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That was not something that I was even on the radar. You'll never have. I know, tim cook is interesting because jobs, obviously jobs. I mean it's like iphone, ipod yeah, but he was always but apple watch and health and this thing, yeah, this is a non-engineer. This is a not well sort of an engineer, I guess technically was he sort of an engineer?
01:24:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, he's not an. Was he Sort of an engineer? No, he's not an engineer, he's a supply chain guy. But you could argue that he single-handedly kept the PC, the desktop computing, alive, relevant.
01:24:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know At a point where he had the key to killing it. That blows my mind.
01:24:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They even were talking about post-PC era. In 2011, talking about exactly in 2011. Steve jobs are actually yeah, no cook went to cook. Went to tsmc in 2011, yeah, and the tsmc chairman he just. His autobiography just came out yeah and and cooks said to him when can you make me a desktop chip, right, and what do you need to make it? They funded euv, they funded all that stuff, right, and and it is, it's a it's an amazing when your biggest customer shows up and says I need something.
01:24:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You're like yeah all right. Well, you know what can we do yeah, microsoft doesn't have our intel, certainly doesn't have that capability.
01:25:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So yeah, I didn't look intel always thought it was best to have it in house, but that's because they started all of this. That's right, right, of course.
01:25:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was just an advantage dilemma. That's all.
01:25:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the usual was the same kind of company. It's like our manufacturing facilities all over the world are our biggest strength, or your biggest anchor?
01:25:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, your $7.5 billion anchor. Yeah, there's strength until they sink you. Yeah, yeah, both are I mean so we're talking in the um discord. You probably see it. No, system 76, which is a linux desktop integrator, has a beautiful desktop. Jeff gearling's reviewing it right now the thielio.
01:25:39
They've been making it for a year, a few years. They make it in the us. They control all the hardware. They also make their version of linux for it. Okay, a version of ubuntu. Um, I think probably at this point they're very, but they're saying would you buy this at the either? Very few x86 pcs that I would consider at this point.
01:26:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, well, depends on what you so look I nothing is absolute. You know, like I mentioned, like one of the cool things.
01:26:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're a gamer.
01:26:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
If you're a gamer, that's an example like I, if you're, um, if you're going to play games on a pc, uh, which is, you know, a shift I've made myself over the past year, year and a half, whatever, uh, yeah, snapdragon's not going to do it, you know, but that's the thing. Like I, we're acting like all of us have one thing that we use for everything, and I think a lot of these people that are playing games on computers probably have a couple of their gaming PC.
01:26:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, If you have to say I was coming for you too, by the way, more and more. Uh, you know they still are way behind on AAA games, but oh yeah, definitely, they're. That's definitely in their roadmap.
01:26:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I oh, yeah, yeah and I'm playing valhalla, which I bought, a linux machine to play back into covid.
01:26:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, I'm playing on a mac now native there steve, or uh, tim cook money guy.
01:26:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He's clearly done this calculation. Yeah, we could make the ipad replace a laptop. We could, but we're not gonna do that. But we don't, and we don't need for and for fans of that platform. It's like, what are you doing? Like the stupid mouse support they added at first, and then the half-ass keyboard stuff, and then eventually they get there. And 12 years later you're like, oh, this is the thing you should have done a million years ago, but you're finally getting there. But why don't they take that extra step?
01:27:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's because they've looked at this and said, well, the mac is actually a better business in that regard, and the what we would lose by doing this would be greater than what we would gain, and they don't need to.
01:27:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They can have two platforms. Well, I, there's a touch platform and a non-touch. Yeah, so a hardware-based company sees the world in terms of hardware. Yeah, um, microsoft made their big bet with windows 8 that we could do one thing that would do everything. I don't remember the history exactly, but I feel like it didn't work out too great. Yeah, and it doesn't mean it was a bad idea. No, it might mean the implementation was wrong.
01:28:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're talking about some of the execution elements there's all kinds of stuff.
01:28:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but there are different approaches. But yeah, here we are all these years later, literally 10, 12 years after Windows 8 and 14 years after the iPad and Apple. You know they're making money other ways too, but they still approach it like we're this hardware company. You know, you use this device for this, you use this device for this. And then you know people obviously people get worked on an iPad, but those people must work at like a play school or something.
01:28:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's pretty clear that's not a productivity tool.
01:28:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, but it could be right. That's the thing.
01:28:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
For photography. My iPad pro is kind of a nice platform, but it's not going to replace my desktop, no.
01:28:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But even simple things like iPad pro the latest version comes out desktop. But even simple things like ipad pro the latest version comes out. Uh, awesome hardware, a new version of final cut pro. You're rendering video and then you go to look at an email and the video stops rendering. You can't run that background task. It's like guys, come on, throw us a bone you know, like that's crazy yeah, I have to wonder.
01:29:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
if Intel gets dismantled, the licensing for x86 goes into a separate entity. They now can go to any fab they want. The chip prices drop in half because they're not being propped up by Intel's pricing and cost of manufacturing and it becomes an actual, really inexpensive way to build a PC.
01:29:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's an interesting yeah, I mean this doesn't change my whole.
01:29:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Intel is dead shtick, but I I look things last. The Z80 went out of production fairly recently. You know the Moss 6502 didn't last quite that long but it was in market for forever. We have a raspberry pies that are running these. I think they're broad come low end, kind of arm chips, whatever, like there'll always be something for something. You know that stuff is there, but I think just for mainstream. We'll see. I mean I can't. There are possibilities we can't really foresee, but I just don't see Intel emerging on the other side of this Like anything close to it.
01:30:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Not the vertical integrated business. No, yeah, I just brand may hang around um, but I think the you know it's not an innovative design. It doesn't need vertical integration.
01:30:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It can be made less expensive I think we talked about this last week.
01:30:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Ge is a model here yeah, I mentioned polaroid is like a license.
01:30:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The conglomerate yeah, they submitted three parts health care and I. I don't get nuclear plants or something, but they really. The general electric we knew for a century is gone. Yep, it's, it's split into parts and that's what's going to happen.
01:30:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Intel, right I think so, I, I and I. When, when this event occurred last week, it wasn't clear. But the more time that goes by, little bits, you know, the board will start talking a little bit of those two co-CEOs and you're like, hmm, they don't actually have a plan, so they've announced co-CEOs. Yeah, they both said. They literally said oh no, we're not changing the strategy. Yes, you are, yes you are. Well, that's because they.
01:31:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Are they?
01:31:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
M&a guys. No, they were existing board members.
01:31:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, oh well, so they're interim they're trying, they're in there, exactly they're trying to do a search but, it's just imagine the quality of the people that are gonna like would ever be interested they were floating a rumor that johnny cerugie, who's chief of hardware at apple actually yes would be, but you know what johnny's gonna go, yeah right, no, yeah, you know, they're not looking for an engineer, they're looking for a restructurer an m&a guy
01:31:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, or gal, they're looking for marissa meyer hey, I think she's available by nice?
01:31:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
pretty sure she is. They're gonna need someone who knows how to work with the ftc, who can deal with the dod concerns, who can piece this company out into places that will keep everybody happy. Yeah, what a job. Well, that's the big thing.
01:31:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Supposedly-.
01:31:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, they'll make a lot of money doing it.
01:31:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They will. The award from the CHIPS Act assuming they hit their milestones is based on Intel staying together. Apparently. I think that's nonsense, but I would imagine that allowing the foundry which to me is the healthy, more potential part of the company to go off and do its own thing and get that money and help it do that would actually make some sense.
01:32:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Sure, as long as they can fill the pipeline Well and the fabs are still valuable and it's DUV right, They'll always.
01:32:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, there'll always be legacy nodes you can make. Hey, my PC's running an M12 and an Intel modem chip.
01:32:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I just mentioned Raspberry Pi pi. We need someone to make those chips.
01:32:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, you guys would be great for that yeah, um, yeah, exactly, but low margin business right, what was? It was like the three or four year period where they couldn't get past 10 nanometer. Yeah was probably the time like. It was like intel as a company had a stroke and no one saw it and I saw it.
01:32:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We talked a lot about it.
01:32:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm sorry, no, but I mean they, but nothing happened, like nothing changed.
01:32:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, but it was obvious, they were in stasis for yeah, they could.
01:32:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They were stuck. Yeah, it's too bad. And people are putting out three nanometer chips and they're at 10. I know, I know they're just well, I think they've.
01:33:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They might have seven, no I don't know, do they?
01:33:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think I don't know if they do do that.
01:33:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a relativistic measure anyway it is, it's not really anymore. It's become a marketing term. Yeah, but yes, they definitely had a tough time doing the tech part of the tip talk so, leo, you mentioned in the discord that you were worried about like, like Linux on.
01:33:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
ARM. So the System76s are Linux desktops. They're beautiful but it's, and they do have in the x86, I'm sure they have AMD and Intel. They certainly have AMD, but apparently they have ARM versions. But would you buy a Linux on ARM at this point? I don't know.
01:33:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Not today, but as long ago as I don't know, February or maybe March of this past year, snap or Qualcomm. It was very public about the work that they're doing. They're working with them. Yes, oh yeah. They've been doing this forever, since they started this chipset, so they're actually part of that community. They have a I don't know what the organization's called, but they're making sure that there are drivers for linux for all of the hardware components right, and since system 76 is making all the hardware, presumably they're using hardware that is.
01:34:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know that could be work with. I mean, I would assume. Should I buy one and just find out? No, I'm gonna watch jeff gearling's. Uh, yeah, I wouldn't do this.
01:34:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I wouldn't do this now, but't do this now, but I but this coming year these are beautiful computers. They're so sweet yeah no, I I mean for look for sure. I I mentioned earlier, like you know, these use cases where, like obviously x64 makes sense, like gaming. I would say, for now, linux falls into this category, right uh yeah, sort of because of uh the compatibility, just yeah you know, I mean scientists would buy this right.
01:35:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's, these are people with hardcore, you know, uh, big jobs. They need to get done and like that I mean I don't know who they are what?
01:35:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm sure they're people honestly what are they?
01:35:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
if they're not people, they're scientists.
01:35:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah well, if they're using qualcomm harder, they might be aliens. Nice, that's my new theory all right, they know something.
01:35:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, I'm gonna take a little break, a little breaky poe, do you mind? Nope, I thought you would be, uh, I thought we would be, uh, there would be more, more of this. But I I'm ready to wait a minute. I have to rearrange, put all in the middle. Okay, there we go there's some things.
01:35:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, I feel better yeah you should.
01:35:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You should be in the middle. Yeah, um, there's just some things that have changed in this world, and one of them is I have to do all this myself on a mac hey you.
01:36:03
Actually it's in a browser. I could be doing this on linux. I could be doing this in anything. There you go. Yeah, our show today, brought to you by a great company We've been talking about a lot.
01:36:12
I had never heard of them when they first came to us and I said, wow, why don't more people know about you? And they said, well, that's what your job, so I'm doing my job. Right now, let me tell you about US Cloud, the number one Microsoft unified support replacement. One Microsoft Unified Support Replacement. You might say well, what's wrong with Microsoft? Why do I need US Cloud? Well, you might ask the 50 companies in the Fortune 500 who use US Cloud why do you use US Cloud? They're the global leader in third-party Microsoft Enterprise support. One reason and the reason they said oh, you should tell everybody it's less expensive. Switching to US Cloud could save your business 30 to 50% on a true, comparable replacement for Microsoft Unified Support. But I said I says to them, I says, yeah, but it's not just less expensive, it's better, right? Yeah, they said it's better and faster.
01:37:11
Us Cloud supports the entire Microsoft stack. They're there, of course, 24-7, 365 days a year. They respond faster, they resolve tickets quicker for clients all over the world. But I should point out, you're always talking to real humans, real engineers in the United States, in fact, some of the best engineers in the United States. I asked them about that. They said, yeah, we recruit the best people, we give them great benefits, great salaries. We get the best Expert level engineers, an average of 14.9 years experience, and that's for break, fix or DSE. They're 100% domestic teams.
01:37:50
Your data never leaves the US, and here's something that US cloud does that even Microsoft will not do Financially backed SLAs. On response time, they guarantee it. Initial ticket responses average under four minutes and I could tell you and you probably know this, if you're in the hot seat, if the network's down, something's going wrong and the CEO's calling you, the board's on the line. Four minutes even. You know every minute counts. You're not going to sit there waiting for Microsoft to get back to you. You go to US Cloud. In 2023, 94% that's almost all of US Cloud's clients reported saving one-third or more when switching from Microsoft Unified Support to US Cloud. Better, faster, less expensive. From Fortune 500 companies to large health systems, major financial institutions, even federal agencies, us Cloud ensures that vital Microsoft systems are working for over 6 million users globally every day. Now, if I haven't convinced you, maybe this will help.
01:39:00
Who uses US Cloud? Big brands Caterpillar uses US Cloud, hp uses US Cloud, aflac Dun, bradstreet, under Armour, keybank. Even the IT folks at Gartner have chosen US Cloud for their Microsoft support needs. I heard an interview. I wish I have to act this out. I heard an interview with an IT director and he says and within an hour, US Cloud responded with, I want to say, four engineers. So not only did they bring the right people to the call, they brought the cavalry. I just felt like wow, that was amazing. That was unlike anything I had experienced with Microsoft in my eight years of being with Premier. We made the right choice. That's the quote.
01:39:47
When it comes to compliance, of course, no one gets it better than US Cloud. Iso, gdpr, esg compliance For US Cloud, these aren't just regulatory requirements. These are their strategic imperatives. They drive operational efficiency, they drive legal compliance, risk management, corporate reputation. These are standards that foster trust and loyalty among customers and stakeholders. Us Cloud takes this very seriously. It attracts investment, ensures long-term sustainability and success in a competitive global market.
01:40:18
I'm telling you you need to call these guys. I'll tell you what? Here's what you do Go to uscloudcom, go to the website, book a call. Just talk to them. Find out how much your team can save. Get the lowdown. When I talked to them, find out how much your team can save, get the low down. When I talked to them, I was blown away Because I mean, I'd never heard of these guys and I said everybody needs to know about US Cloud. So now you know, you have no excuse. Call them uscloudcom, book a call today. Get faster, better Microsoft support for less uscloudcom. Now you know about it. There's no excuse. Uscloudcom, all right On, we go with this fine radio program. I like to pretend I'm still doing radio Coming to you live. Coming to you live from the basement studios of the united twit network.
01:41:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, let's see what's next somebody says, paul, why don't you like walmart? It's because I've been there no, walmart's good.
01:41:28
You get some good stuff at walmart I told the story in the discord, but my wife made me go to get a christmas present for, like, a babysitter at one point or whatever. And I'm walking through hell's waiting room, you know, and I'm standing in line with all these people, and I called my wife and I was like you owe me so where was it that you and your son would wait outside when the new call?
01:41:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
of duty came out.
01:41:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Ah, big difference yeah, yeah, those are quality people, not like the scumbags.
01:41:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Walmart, it's right next door, all right so today apple shipped the dopiest update ever. I just want to show you my picture according to the new apple ai you look enthusiastic I'm happy a little bit like that uh shooter guy actually with those eyebrows. How about this one.
01:42:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's my luigi impression so my wife and I are using apple and tell like those pictures for our picture on like eternal spring now really, yeah, well, you, but you've been using mid journey and, uh, you've been, yeah, co-pilot.
01:42:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You've been using all of these ai things. The the apple is so paranoid I think about you know they're deep fakes and stuff that they really make it.
01:42:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's cartoony, it's not. They're purposely cartoony and like pixari you might. One might say, if you want to here, let me take it.
01:42:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going to take a picture of you guys and we can, we can, uh, just do a little thing here all right, that's not gonna be good this is gonna. This is gonna be good. This is gonna be real good. All right, I got a picture of you guys on here. Now I'm gonna use this photo it doesn't.
01:43:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It doesn't do great with multiple people oh, maybe that's my experience.
01:43:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe that'll be a problem, like I had to I had to cut it up to two individuals but yeah, so here is paul as a superhero I can't really, oh yeah it's more like an astronaut actually looks a little bit like a wizard. You still got that awful smile like nate bargatze as superman. That's exactly what you look like. Yep, they all have this goofy look yeah.
01:43:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, Sorry. Richard I had a hard time getting one that kind of captured. The like mine was kind of easy, but getting it to kind of capture my wife's I don't know like essence or whatever, yeah. It was actually very difficult. Well, that looks like you yeah.
01:43:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's closer. It's more you than nate bargatze. I can make you a race car driver, but you see, so you, it's additive, so I now have paul as a race car driver. Superhero with fireworks, I like it starting to pile up, throw a windows logo on my chest and we have a winner anyway, I mentioned this because apple is clearly terrified of ai, unlike a certain company we cover here. On the show at google what, no, that's next show.
01:44:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm sorry, google actually just did a big update on gemini too yeah and I haven't had time to look what's going on like yeah, so google announced gemini one year ago, probably this week, right, um, and now they have gemini 2 and I haven't. I just don't have any. I can't really talk about it too too much because I just am so busy. I haven't you know what's interesting.
01:44:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know if microsoft has done this, but gemini, yeah, uh is now using current web information, so I, for instance, I've been asking all these guys like what's the situation in Syria? Chat GBD says I don't know.
01:44:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I don't have any historic Chat. Gbd was like Syria was founded in 1872. But you know, yeah, thanks.
01:45:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Turn up your volume. It says why do you want me to turn up? Okay, so what's the current situation in Syria? This is Gemini. I'll do more of this later. Oh, it still thinks I'm talking.
01:45:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Sounds good. This is where I have to tell Siri to shut up. No one's talking to you, stop.
01:45:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let me know if anything comes up. All it got was I'll do more of this later Nice.
01:45:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Never mind. Well, that went. Well, we'll talk all right.
01:45:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Google's ads are sad where they have poor, lonely people talking to the chat bot, as if you saw the apple, a apple intelligence ads where it's like this loser at work like fakes his way through a meeting because of a like, oh like guys what is with these big companies?
01:45:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
so microsoft's not doing that? What's this co-pilot vision? Tell me? No, microsoft is doing that.
01:45:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So microsoft? Microsoft invented that, leo. I don't even know no, not really.
01:46:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You mean with clippy. I see you're an idiot, I feel like.
01:46:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So the story? A year ago, november, uh, richard and I were at ignite. We were like there's too many co-pilots, yeah, and now there are too many co-pilots and it's actually not even co-pilots, it's like co-pilot features or features that use the word co-pilot in the name, where you're like what is this thing? What the what is this thing? So Copilot Pro is the subscription for consumers. That's like Copilot for Microsoft 365 on the commercial side. Right, and they're at a. They're testing, I guess, a feature with a limited audience of people in the U S only who subscribe to Copilot Pro, which is going to be an audience smaller than the audience of people are using Snapchat and computers, frankly. But okay, fine, and it's only available in Edge.
01:46:54
But the idea is that you're browsing with this thing and it looks at what you're doing. Does that sound familiar and allow you know? Provides you analysis, so if you want to learn more? So the simplest version would be like a blog post about something you're like okay, actually, this topic is's kind of interesting. I'd like to know more about this topic or something right. So, um, it's super limited. Microsoft has gotten the memo on the. This thing is wrong all the time. Maybe tone it down a bit kind of thing, so only works for certain sites. It doesn't store personal data, etc, etc. So I haven't ever seen it. I can just go by what the pictures and video says, but the idea is that it's like every web browser on earth has this now. It's basically you're doing something on the web and this can help you do more with that thing. Right, context aware suggestions based on the thing you're looking at.
01:47:47
So I would imagine that the big use case here is going to be shopping. Right, that you're the example everyone uses. You know, I'm trying to find a Christmas present for my sister and blah, blah, blah whatever they use, they use this for recall. Actually, I was researching pants. You know I did the green pants thing, remember, yeah, so that's, to me, is the big one. There will be other use cases for this, but I feel like this is just. I think this type of thing to me is just becomes like it's a today, it's a feature, well, an experiment. That will be a feature possibly in this paid subscription. Shouldn't this just be the browser? Isn't this a little bit like what the browser company was talking about when they talked about their new AI based browser that's coming out next year, this notion that it will help you do these things on the web instead of manually browsing around like a jerk or whatever.
01:48:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, everybody wants to get in on your shopping traffic, right? That's where Google made their money.
01:48:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yep, yeah, no, a hundred percent, yeah, and I get it, but this is going to be an example of. I'd be interested to know what the actual numbers are in this. But I feel like there's a huge part of the population that is just does the thing they do, which is usually just go to Amazon and search for something there, and I don't know that they're out on the web doing comparison shopping. If you've ever used like the shopping features and edge I just complimented edge earlier Honestly, sometimes it's pretty good, but the majority of the time you'll be on whatever site, like on Amazon, I'll be like hey, we found a better place price for this thing. Like okay, great, you can save 30 cents by buying a used version on each eBay. And you're like okay, so you?
01:49:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
were not helping me. Show you. Me, show you, because Apple Intelligence, in theory, is doing this, but guess what? They're using Google.
01:49:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So let me show you they're using Google.
01:49:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, watch this. So if you press and hold the camera button, so I'm going to take a picture of my microphone.
01:49:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, you're talking about the. This is the vision. What's this feature called Vision intelligence?
01:49:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and then they have a search button. Intelligence, yeah, and then they have a search button. So I'm pressing the search button, but the search button searches searches Google.
01:49:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Google, it says well and, by the way, all the answers are wrong but it probably uses your default search engine. I assume you?
01:50:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, that's a good question.
01:50:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You might want to change it to something else, just to see what it does, but I bet it goes to your default search engine. Cause I don't think there's a thing there for Google Search engine.
01:50:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going to say use Bing right. What could possibly go wrong Somewhere?
01:50:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
there's a server with like a rusty hinge that's turned on for the first time in seven months.
01:50:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Searching with Google. It doesn't search with Bing.
01:50:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, that's fascinating Okay.
01:50:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They made a deal. That's why, and if I ask there's an ask button and a search button, ask goes to chat. Gpt Interesting, okay, yeah.
01:50:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, well, this is look. Curating the best AI for the job is one thing that Apple you could see them doing that as a service right.
01:50:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let me take a picture of you, paul, and see what I, if I'm gonna say, ask who is this jerk?
01:50:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I am gonna say who the hell is this? I don't think. I'm like is this a ring doorbell? You should call the police. Look at that. Says this looks like a live streaming session oh interesting.
01:51:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Huh might be the live in the corner of the screen.
01:51:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're like brendan frazier has really gone to give away. You do look like what's happened to him.
01:51:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, without the fat suit, that's well, I'm working on it. So you know a lot of people are gonna be playing with this. It just came out this morning. So, right, yes, and it's ironically, so did advanced gemini advanced just came out this morning.
01:51:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know it's kind of weird coincidence, all at the same time, right, yeah, yeah. So the Apple intelligence stuff, this is the bigger release, right? You already showed off the image playground thing, which I think is pretty good, yeah.
01:51:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you use that for your Christmas cards.
01:51:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, not for the Christmas cards. We have that Eternal Spring site.
01:51:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's right.
01:51:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, we used it for the little face logo thing or whatever On YouTube. Actually, I don't think I've switched it on YouTube yet, but it's on wwweternalspringcdmxcom or whatever. What am I saying, sorry, I?
01:52:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
lost my look. Oh yeah, so chat.
01:52:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, it's just a little logo thing.
01:52:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you used Apple Intelligence to do this. Yeah, I did it on the mac I mean I had like the beta.
01:52:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, you can just click, you don't have to, so just click through the bottom link no, I say no thanks, no thanks, yeah, oh, look, that's cute.
01:52:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, we made like a little chachdi out of it that's cute. It looks like you guys sort of yeah, you know, creepy weird way. Oh, here's the big here's the logo here up in the right. Oh, it's not, I can't get it big no, it's, it's small. Anyway it's yeah, all right um, let's see.
01:52:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And then the real picture I want the fake picture.
01:52:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, go ahead.
01:52:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm sorry, I'm no, it's, it's most of it I mean to me, the big, the the biggest things are what you already talked about, which is image playground, uh, visual intelligence, which, by the way you know if you're an old school microsoft guy, it's been around. Remember that lumia yeah, nokia had a, I think it was called lumia lens. Or well, google had google lens, google did.
01:53:09
Yeah, no, but this might have been one of the first ones where you were out in the world and it would actually show a pop-up. So, if you like, in front of a storefront it would say this is the store, here the hours, whatever it was. That's cool. It was kind of like an ar kind of thing on your phone, so kind of an early whatever which I thought was kind of cool um chat, gpt integration, but without requiring you to sign in and it's supposedly anonymized and all that kind of stuff.
01:53:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So cool, but yeah not the $200 a month version of chat.
01:53:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, that's the free version. Yeah, yeah, well, if you subscribe, you actually get the paid version too, but I mean I, I pay for the $20 a month. I'm not everyone's making fun of this $200 a month thing, but I look at it like a McLaren kind of car, Like it's not for everyone, but if you can afford it and you think you need it, it's there. And if you look at that and you laugh or you think it's ridiculous, it's not for you.
01:54:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Just don't worry about it. It's a classic anchor high mechanism too, so only $20 looks very reasonable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:54:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's right.
01:54:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's, that's right, that's a melvin gladwell thing. Yeah. So google announced gemini 2 on the same day that we all knew apple intelligence was coming. Google or open. Ai announced sora, the kind of general release. Just a couple days after, google surprised everyone with a preview of something called vo, or, which is their uh generative ai video creation tool um, do you feel like the horse race?
01:54:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
everybody's kind of neck and neck.
01:54:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I do, but you said something you said something earlier that I actually think is key to just general AI, and this goes back almost two years now from when Microsoft did that Bing chat thing and I was like you know, google's been working on this for a long time. They have the search engine. They're going to be the ones that put that together. I've been confused why this has not really happened yet. You know the things they've done so far, like here's some AI stuff at the top of search results and then here's and it's like no guys come on, like intelligently, look at the thing people are asking and then reply accordingly. So it sounds to me like that's what they're starting to do in Gemini and I think that's. I think that's really smart, I think that's a key advantage for them, and I didn't write this up, but there was an interview with Sundar Pichai recently where he they asked about Microsoft and that competition and AI, and he said they're not even using their own models and I was like okay pretty good.
01:55:34
Pretty good Is Richard. Are you okay, richard? Yep.
01:55:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, you were. So still he's thinking.
01:55:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was like he has dropped off the internet. You were literally not moving. You're like a, like one of those people who pretends they're a statue and then scares the kids. Like you were just like. You were just like, yeah, you were just like you were just bush.
01:55:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you were just like like a cowboy guy, you know?
01:55:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
nope, staying on the microphone, that's all so omalek wrote a very interesting um piece on his blog that's saying basically what you're saying that uh, browsers are dead, that search is going to be browsers well, I hope he mentions this arc thing or whatever it's called he did. It's as if that was an interview with the, the head of the browser company yeah that, oh, okay, there you go.
01:56:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I I have to say I you know we'll see what google does, and obviously there are regulatory concerns here as well to think about, but I I do feel like google's the one company that has all the parts in place. It's really kind of up to them to not do this. Google should change Chrome to be this thing that helps you browse and whatever like helps you do the thing, or whatever.
01:56:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is his new newsletter, crazy Stupid Tech, which is a pretty good name for a tech newsletter. But yeah, he talks. He talks, uh, about his own experience. This is one of the things I love about om. I mean, he's been around as long as we have, so he really he knows the history and he taught. He's talks to josh miller, who's the founder of the browser company, about dia, this next thing for them.
01:57:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and uh, really, he says, uh, this is the next step browsers will be replaced by something I don't know what I have to go back and look this up, but I I had written an editorial some months ago, based on what arc was doing at the time, where it was like this is the most you know, we just talked about this the most important application on all our devices. There's been no innovation there whatsoever. The most innovative thing is there are like smaller browser makers. They're like I think we're just going to block ads and stuff by default. You know, we're not going to let trackers through, we're just going to do that and it's like that's awesome. But it is weird that the fundamental UI has not really changed at all.
01:57:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We have tabs we browse around and the customer is not asking for it either. Like you really have to have an original idea and make it compelling and work with the existing internet.
01:58:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, that's true. That's true, which is by which, if you haven't done it, it's worth watching that video that the browser company made about Dia and what they talk about, the kind of the foundational work that they're building. But they're still using a browser. Right, it's just the the ai clicks things. No, it's, they're, they're they're. No, you should go. I would go watch this. It's they're trying to fundamentally change the browser uh they, it, they're.
01:58:26
I almost feel like we're going to call it a browser, because that's what makes people comfortable a little bit, or whatever you've used their arc search on iphone, right?
01:58:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yes, that's is that what they're talking.
01:58:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's a component of it. So that's the um you ask it a question and it gives you. It does that kind of a nice formatting thing like what is a latte, as though I always use the same example, right what is a lot? Like a bulleted list with pretty pictures, explains exactly what it is. It provides links to the sources and all that kind of stuff and it has browse for me buttons.
01:58:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, right, so it gives you an actual AI synopsis.
01:59:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So for this kind of question, because there is an answer to this, and a dear God if someone could just tell Duncan Donis the answer. They have no freaking idea. But anyway, there is an answer. There is, objectively, there is one answer to this question and they could, they can give you the answer now. If you want to know more, you can go find out more, or whatever.
01:59:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But and they, give you those links yeah and I, but I think that's what people are looking for for that kind of question well, that's what you said, but that's what's gotten them in trouble, because they're not linking back to the source so much as just giving you the answer Google the great screen scraper in the sky.
01:59:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, yeah, they're going to get in trouble for this kind of thing, but that's what people are looking for. The more nuanced question, like the one you asked earlier what's going on in Syria? This is something you could ask five times over the day and you might get a different answer, because things are changing right, but and you?
01:59:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
might get a different answer, because things are changing right, but you won't get an answer for AIs that are not connected today to search to the cloud. Right, and that's the differentiator. Perplexity has been doing that forever. That's what the perplexity search does.
02:00:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I'm not proposing that this product I've never used or seen is going to solve all our problems, but the browser company guys and I think Google should do this as well Microsoft, whatever should look at these use cases and say you know, microsoft is doing little pop-up things and sidebars and all this stuff and it's like, well, okay, but at some point maybe this thing needs to fundamentally change. Like sometimes I am just browsing the web and that's what I want, but sometimes I'm asking a question answer, or sometimes I'm writing something in an online form or whatever. It is like a word processor and I need your help with that thing and it should do something a little different or whatever. And I think that's what we're struggling with right now and I think this is the time. I think AI is good enough or whatever. However you want to say it is evolved enough. Whatever, that I think it will change.
02:00:48
It's not just browsers, by the way, but browsers being the most important app. Microsoft got a lot of pushback when they changed the basic UI for Office Remember in Office 2007, with the ribbon Ribbon bar, which I think most people would look at now and say, yeah, no, we don't even think about it. It's like who cares?
02:01:19
But at the time super controversial and that was a mature product where people would have said and I said you know it's word processing, it's a spreadsheet. What are you going to do? Like who cares? Um, but I want to keep adding features, but I don't help with using a spreadsheet because I only use it once or twice a year, or with presentation Cause I only do that three or four times a year, and I think that those those instances are where AI, I think, could help.
02:01:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Richard, do you do that with your presentations? Do you bring in AI or do you just go down to the library at Madeira Park branch and take out a few books?
02:01:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're right, I read a lot of internet.
02:01:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but you don't have an AI kind of summarize? No, it's risky because you could get bad information.
02:02:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know there are technical tools like if, then, if this, then you know whatever that thing is If this, then that yeah, or the power. What do you call it Power?
02:02:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
apps type stuff Zapier, yeah, yahoo Pipes, yeah, there's all kinds of things like this, right so?
02:02:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
these are not. Yeah, these are not I miss Yahoo Pipes.
02:02:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was a great. That was a great tool. I'm sorry that it's gone Ahead of its time that I'm going to reach a mainstream audience.
02:02:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're just too technical. But the notion like I use winget to batch install like apps on every pc I use, right, this is not something like. My wife's never going to do this. I don't care how easy I make, well, maybe if I made it easy enough, but I I I'm not going to hand her a powershell script and be like here's how you run it. You know it's not going to work, but but maybe the you know this kind of automation stuff.
02:02:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I did write a PowerShell script, but I put it behind an icon. It's like when you click on that it will do the thing.
02:02:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right. I think that's valuable. I can be valuable depending on what it is Right. So the the the D example. One of the D examples is I, you know, make me an email. It saw that you were browsing for some gift across multiple tabs. Please send an email to my wife. I want to get her opinion on which of these she thinks is the best choice for whoever the gift is for. And it makes the email and the email program he uses. He doesn't have to tell it because it knows and it has a link to each one of the things in the name and it's nicely formatted and you can edit it before he sends it. And yada, yada, yada. Is that useful? Yeah, I mean, yeah, is it?
02:03:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean I don't know, it's not the way I do things, but I don't know, maybe did I use a remote access script to be able to mute her speakers from the other room, because she leaves the music on when she goes to lunch. Why yes?
02:03:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yes, that's a good use for home automation.
02:03:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I like it it's just a little icon on my desktop it's a silence I've seen the truck leave. The music's still on. I'm not going over there.
02:04:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm just going to throw this in as an aside because, as a relationship expert, I feel the need to jump into the middle of this, that these things are all pros and cons and, when it comes to the person you've chosen as your spouse, the goal is for there to be more pros than cons, and that that thing might be irksome.
02:04:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You solved it, you solved it with a button by the way, I am everything we do today is all because some guy at cambridge university didn't want to walk down the hall to see if there was coffee in the coffee pot.
02:04:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
God bless him, you know so little things from little little things spring streaming. Yes, yeah, exactly. So there you go. So there you go, and then there's a bunch of gemini crap coming to your pixel, richard, which you could enjoy or try to ignore.
02:04:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I haven't even looked at it. It pops up ever often, wanting to tell me about it. I'm like yeah, no, no hey, hey, here's an idea.
02:04:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You could use this instead of google assistant, the other thing we make. That's exactly the same, okay, which I?
02:05:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it is a little confusing. Turned off too yeah yeah, but it is a little confusing, like what you know.
02:05:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I think these transition periods are tough. I think this is part of the problem. You know, you got to get used to the branding for one thing and the whole way it looks and what it does, and yada, yada, yada. But you know, pixel has an image generation tool as well. Same thing, a generative AI image creation tool.
02:05:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's integrated into the Home Assistant phone client now. So instead of needing the separate audio devices in the house that you have to talk to and sometimes they work, sometimes doesn't? She now knows.
02:05:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Hey, if I pop open the home assistant app and click here, I can give the command to turn off the christmas lights and yeah, my wife would sit in a room with a couch and a table and an apple tv remote, a tv, for two hours, and then I'd get there and she'd be like, could you turn on the tv? You know it's like, yep, I mean I can, um lisa uses it as a as a weapon.
02:05:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually, yeah, it's me just say well, I would know how to use a remote if I ever got access to it I stopped taking the remote.
02:06:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I programmed the remote into my phone, so now I have no, no, I say you have it, it's yours go ahead. Yeah, you can have the remote.
02:06:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Learn the remote.
02:06:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's fine. It's all yours, I don't need it anymore.
02:06:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have it in my phone, all right. Is that everything that we wanted to talk about? I feel like I think so.
02:06:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I lost the thread. I know We've all lost the thread.
02:06:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We did skip the Surface stuff.
02:06:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah.
02:06:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Surface.
02:06:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Eye.
02:06:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh yeah, all right, just real quick. So Microsoft is not going to make any more Surface Studio. This is the giant.
02:06:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh I know, Isn't that sad. I saw that I never wanted their computer. I always wanted that screen, exactly.
02:06:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And that's what everyone says, and so I mentioned this earlier in the show. I can't remember the context, but, uh, I I've watched dozens of videos of sessions from ignite, which is something I do after every big microsoft show right, and two of them were surface sessions and one of them I wanted to reach through the internet and strangle this guy, but it was just like like this is the journey we've been on, like that kind of talk you want to just like, just like, beat that out of them. But anyway, I know, seeing it. Yeah, it was terrible, so, but it ended in the name of q a and of course, the first thing is like hey, uh, you know, I wish you guys would make a screen. It's like, yeah, we've been talking about this for 12 years. Everyone wishes they would make a screen.
02:07:23
The problem with the screen is that when you look at the surface studio 2, 85 of the cost of the computer was the screen. It's's super expensive, so I don't think they've ever gotten ahead of that. So there was Surface Studio, surface Studio 2, and then 2 Plus. I want to say I don't remember what the top man. It went 11th gen. I think Intel's a little behind. Yeah, they weren't that new. And so someone asked about this at Ignite and the guy just oh, I, just because I knew they were never going to do it. He kind of said like oh, we listen to all the feedback, you know, keep it coming, like you never know. And it's like and then they killed the thing like two days like after I watched the video and I'm like.
02:07:58
I swear to god he must have already known, it was dead, exactly like you've got to be kidding me, yeah, so yikes. Anyway, that's upsetting to me I don't, I don't feel.
02:08:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I feel for a guy who knows his products dead, but he had his time slot and he has to do it's a tough thing to do, yeah yeah, I was, I am I loved that first one and I wish I could have afforded another one.
02:08:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, it's a beautiful computer.
02:08:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I I don't personally have a lot of reason to pull the thing down and write on you're an artist, though I wonder if you, as like, could use it as a drafting tape, could have used it as a drafting table, sort of Maybe.
02:08:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I still feel like that situation is handled well enough by, like a Wacom tablet. Yeah, exactly. Well, that was what they were trying to replace.
02:08:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We actually when it first came out we gave our engineer Patrick Delahandy's wife Svetlana. We had her sit down because she does children's books and she illustrates them.
02:08:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
She really enjoyed using it, but she didn't buy one.
02:08:52
No, she didn't enjoy it that much no, it's I think she's welcome my surface as a business has not been particularly successful, right, so they have this one kind of breakout product, the pro, which has done great, especially since version three, where they got the three by two and everything right, um, and then they have things like but they probably should have, like Surface laptop. It seems like they should have to have, you know, something like this. I don't think people are buying a lot of desktop computers outside of the gaming space. So, you know, when I look at it and I think Surface and I, yeah, I think stripping it down to the ones that make sense kind of, is the right approach and not to have a million different products and you know's like they probably shouldn't have this thing but it is.
02:09:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They knew better than us. They may not have. They may have sold five in the last six months, I know I think I bet they.
02:09:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, they were lucky if they sold that many. It's too bad because this thing was a neat kind of imac alternative that was had unique capabilities.
02:09:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It was a halo machine, right, it was like here's a high water reference mark, priced accordingly yes, well, and it was using.
02:09:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Remember they bought that big, what was it? This big screen, touch screen, company surface hubs yeah, which they made a pixel. It was pixel art or pixel uh pixel setting no pixel sense or is that the name of the display? But that's what they were using in. Yeah, in the small it was a smaller version of the hub so that was kind of they made a 50 and they still make there's
02:10:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
a service. Three now there's a 54 inch and 85, something inch yeah they still make this the 85 is like 30 grams, like yeah we tried to buy one um, and for a long time you just couldn't get it. Couldn't buy them.
02:10:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, because it was the replacement for the projector in the meeting room, right like that's what people wanted them and that's why they still make them, because I'm sure they's.
02:10:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
A lot of demand is unbelievable yeah, yeah yeah, and, and that was a thing that they had their own os and now you can put windows on it. You know they just it's like look, it's it's windows.
02:10:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know like yeah, pixel vision was that it texel thinks I don't know the name of pixel sense was the name of the display. Yeah, uh, or the display technology which I think they still use. Google had a similar device which they had killed a couple of years ago.
02:10:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, which had a silly name. It looked like a play school. Did it begin with a J or something like that? It had some silly yeah.
02:11:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It looked like an easel, like a cheap easel you could roll it around.
02:11:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, but that's you know, in the world where Chromebook makes sense, which is education, like make a low cost thing like that, like actually something like that probably does make sense, or did make sense, I bet they announced it in February 2020. And then that was the end of that.
02:11:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Display business may be too cutthroat for these big guys. I mean Apple still doesn't make no margin, they only make the one display. Yeah, they used to make a lot.
02:11:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know, know, but this is, how do you not partner with someone who wants to do this and let them do well, here's the more salient point.
02:11:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Every vendor out there who takes displays has looked at this and they see that a man and nobody's made one, right, there's a return.
02:11:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, you don't see, three by two displays are not a thing you know, curiously for the, but also just the drivers for the pivot, like all of that stuff.
02:11:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
None of this is easy. Yeah, I really. I really liked that, though, boy well, it is attractive.
02:11:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What can you do? You're watching Windows Weekly. I hope you really like us and you will continue to tune in. As I mentioned, we have a show next week that will be the Ugly Sweater Show.
02:12:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
More warning the Ugly Sweater from Microsoft this year, by the way.
02:12:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Drapes some.
02:12:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
LEDs on yourself, have you? I'm warning, okay, the ugly sweater from microsoft this year by the way if you've not seen it no, it's not, is it?
02:12:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, yeah, they did a beast.
02:12:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like that they're celebrating their failures on their sweaters, you know uh, they do this every year, and it's always sold out before I I find out about it, because I always want one.
02:12:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think it's all the employees that buy them up honestly I'm sure it is capicella always had yeah you know, I've had it.
02:12:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, wait a minute. No, this is wrong. What is this? I searched for microsoft ugly sweater and I got this okay, for a dollar 99. What is it used are using?
02:12:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
bing or something. What's going on?
02:12:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
there's something really wrong with this, because it's the dollar 99 and I I don't want to buy it. Stop it, go away. Yeah, but just buy it. You know what I just uh, windows ugly holiday sweater. Oh, it's in the xbox shop. That's why, yeah, let's see, let's see this year's. Is it really the red ring of death? Yes, it is.
02:13:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's invisible so far it's actually a lot less elaborate than previous sweaters. Um, like the xp, I thought was kind of fun. Something wrong with my computer, it's just it won't show so funny.
02:13:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I might have to turn off the the $4 billion. Ark says I am not going to. You should not. Let me just turn off the ad block and see Nope, that's funny $4 billion. There is nothing at the Xbox gear shop that you want. I just I don't believe you that it's the red ring of death, but I guess I'm going to have to take your word for it.
02:13:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So just Google it, just Xbox ugly sweater 2024 will do it.
02:13:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh my God, it's hideous. Yeah, it's not good. Oh my goodness, let me uh, let me paste this uh link that kev gave us. Uh, wow, even the choice of colors is. I know it's terrible. That's the point, right, I mean it's xbox colors. And then is this like a piece of plastic on your chest that turns off and on I hope so, I don't know truly horrible. Yeah, it's not good, all right the merch had an article on it. Uh, that's where I'm, that's where I went, because they couldn't find anywhere else.
02:14:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So I will. It was only for sales of microsoft employees, so there you go.
02:14:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh well, that's it okay. They finally realized that, chris capicello oh, and then no, lee.
02:14:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, I muted myself, sorry every time it fails.
02:14:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Now I'm like, is it me?
02:14:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is it me? Is it me, it's? I'm just gonna. This is windows weekly.
02:14:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
All right, let's do some speaking of xbox, speaking of red rings of death, let's do some xbox stuff paulie, there's some news this week um, I fix it is selling official xbox series x and s repair parts. This is kind of a big thing in our industry now where you can get like the toolkit and whatever. Uh, you know right parts you want motherboards, power, wifi, whatever.
02:15:12
So it's kind of fun If you like to get inside stuff that you shouldn't be getting inside. So that's there. I'm actually kind of curious to try this one out. So Fortnite last week, or Epic games last week, announced a five by five, a five V five.
02:15:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
first person shooter.
02:15:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The normal 20.
02:15:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is what normal Fortnite is, is what 20 v 20, isn't it?
02:15:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, it's not like the og fortnite. I believe it's like that. It's a game mode of the most recent version of fortnite yeah, which I don't actually play, so I'm not. I'm I'm kind of saying like yeah, probably, but I know it's not. I well, I think it's not og fortnite.
02:15:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think it's going five by five is very counter-strike-y, right?
02:15:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah Well, and very Call of Duty-y as well, right, I mean. But yes, given the graphics, it's hard not to look at this and think like Overwatch or Counter-Strike maybe. So we'll see. In fact, it's going to start in early access today Ranked and unranked modes, one map. They're just testing it for now, but then they're going to add maps and weapons and all kinds of other stuff. But uh, yeah, that's kind of. This is the, this is a full circle moment, right like.
02:16:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The question is is this harder on them or easier on them? Like having 40 players on a map versus having 10 players on a map, but you're going to have four times as many instances because you've got 10 players per map I don't know I mean, it's uh, I'm thinking I'm such a back-end guy, right, like that's, immediately I think about it. So that scale, how well is that gonna scale?
02:16:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I feel like fortnight is like just a kitchen sink, you know, like they just throw everything in it. Now.
02:16:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, it's a money maker yeah, I guess this is not a trivial problem, right okay?
02:16:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know. I love it that you think about the back end immediately.
02:16:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's exactly where I go it's a back end guy this is the phone call that I would get, right, like yeah. So I look at it and I think would this be better than call of duty? I don't know it's not a big thing in a warzone type around what?
02:17:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
do you call, like, a, battle royale type games? Yeah, but um, like and this is a, it's five by five, five v five, I I think.
02:17:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
When you get killed, you're dead until the next round, but it's only five people, so right, it's not gonna take that long waiting 30 minutes or whatever so one guy with a well-placed rocket launcher and it's time to take out the whole team I think it does have rocket launchers.
02:17:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But of course, of course I mean it's you know, so I don't know, we just talked.
02:17:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We talked a little while ago about, uh, the og original unreal tournament and unreal um being made available for free. I mean, I, we need a game like this. So you know it looks it's, I'll definitely take a look at it, I love it like that.
02:17:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can dress like uh, the, the bad guy in the matrix in a suit and tie.
02:17:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean it looks like every, every other character in John wick as well, right Like yeah, it's.
02:17:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, it's John wick, isn't it? Yeah, no.
02:18:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know what it is, but it's, I don't know. It looks I, you know I, I I think one of hit some kind of a nice um middle ground between, like, quality graphics and then just the performance. This doesn't look high quality graphics this looks more like radio or something. Yeah, but I think that's the right, that might be right. You know you're moving fast yeah because, in
02:18:20
call of duty. If you don't have a really good system, it just looks like garbage right, like just make it so that it looks good everywhere, you know, and it's secondary to the performance, I think ballistic. Yeah, that's pretty good not to be confused with what was it called ek versus ballistic, or whatever I think was the movie. Terrible movie. Tony banderas, anybody?
02:18:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
no, okay, um so only you no idea what he's talking about.
02:18:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's okay um, microsoft has been testing the ability to stream your own games with a limited subset of whatever games you want to purchase to your console over the cloud, and they've expanded that. It's still in the Insider program, but it's a bigger audience and I want to say it's a bigger list of games too. It's in more countries. Yeah, so you have to have Xbox Live. Xbox Live, yeah, sure, xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which is the more expensive one that supports game streaming, obviously, um, but it's still in the insider program, so it'll be a little while before that becomes available to everybody, but it's happening. So that's good. Um, valve, which is owned by actually no steam, is owned by actually no Steam, is owned by Valve. Right, that's right. Valve, the makers of Half-Life Privately held company Gabe Newell, billion, billion. There used to be something called Steam Machines. Remember this? It was kind of a semi-open platform, oh, yeah.
02:19:44
And then they got Steam Deck.
02:19:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Steam.
02:19:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Deck has taken off pretty, it's doing pretty good and now it's doing well enough that several pc makers and hardware makers are making steam deck like, uh, portable gaming pcs with, you know, the controller on either side of the seven to eight inch screen, right, I think these new zen 5 processors are ideal, by the way, for this kind of device. Good battery life, etc, etc. Awesome performance, um. But there have been some leaks recently where it seems like um Val might be bringing back this uh steam machine platform, you know, using steam or wet, like the same system. That's good.
02:20:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Cause I have some wrinkly shirts and I could really use it.
02:20:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't think it's that kind of a steam machine, oh, okay, um, but I could imagine this being something like you know, like Linux, like you just put it on whatever, like I have a mid-level, whatever pc that's not doing much now they had their own os.
02:20:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah why open the door to compete with your own device right like well, because making hardware isn't a great business.
02:20:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They make more money, I'm sure, in the in the game license licensing.
02:20:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know and the steam deck has a small screen. I mean, the reason I don't use a steam deck is the screen is too small Seven inches, not big enough for you, yeah. No.
02:20:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I got a 55 inch monitor.
02:20:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's where I was going to say I can game on an iPad, but I have to be like right up on it Like I.
02:21:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I I'm never going to play like a triple A game.
02:21:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm on a phone, I'm just I thought, but I have to be drunk.
02:21:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah Well, no, like college Mobile's pretty good, just saying.
02:21:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I keep trying to play the age of empires Cause I love it so much, but they've made it such a you know pay to play kind of a thing that I just it takes the fun out of it. Games have been insured to find too. They really have.
02:21:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh yeah.
02:21:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep Google stadia controller, which no one has thought about in a year.
02:21:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Uh, it's not dead yet.
02:21:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, it might be so they were allowing uh owners of these things to turn them into normal bluetooth, which you should do, control, which you should have done by now. But they're extending that time period for one more year, so you have another year I like it that you call it bluetooth conversion I'm sure how that would fly, but you know whatever um, it always works.
02:21:54
That's all I know. Yeah, um, and we weren't born this way, that's all I'm saying. So, so well, in this case, you really weren't. You were born as a stadia control anyway. Um, I read this story recently where apple, when they were making Pro, had actually worked up controllers and then decided against it because it was too complex and they wanted one way to do everything. Johnny Ive did not want anything like that.
02:22:19
Yeah, well, that turned out to be kind of a big mistake because this expensive device might have flown with a certain class of users with money, called gamers. So now there's a story or Mark Gurman has a story that they're working with Sonyy to bring the vision pro sorry, to bring the psvr to controllers to the gauntlets which is kind of weird, because I didn't, they, I don't know that they discontinued this or they, they're not, I think they did.
02:22:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think they did. So I'm not sure what's going on there. Yeah, we talked about on mac break weekly yesterday and my sense was they were going to go into old psvr boxes and take the gauntlets out of them I mean honestly, I'm staying alone. Yeah, wow, that's not, but yeah but I have to say the vision pro uh owners on on the show uh, paul, uh, I'm sorry, uh alex Alex Lindsay and uh Jason Snell both agreed that this is the right thing to do. You need to have you do.
02:23:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, absolutely, this is something we found on all lens um and with windows, uh, media, sorry, windows, uh, mixed reality, same thing. Like you, you do these, but when you need whatever precision control, especially for a game, obviously.
02:23:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And spamming yeah, when you need to hit the key repeatedly gestures aren't going to do.
02:23:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You need something a little bit better than that.
02:23:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And Anthony Nielsen, who has a Vision Pro. For some reason he says scrolling is tedious after a while, just by pinching it. Yeah, I can see that you need some hardware. That's all.
02:23:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the company that said we hardware, that's all.
02:23:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the company that said you know we're never going to put touchscreen on a mac, because doing this thing, we get to hiring? Yeah, and we made a device where that's the only thing you could do. Yeah, just kidding. Oh, he says they are still selling the the. Uh, okay, I thought they.
02:24:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know if they stopped, like manufacturing them, or I thought they, I thought I heard, I thought there was something. Yeah, it didn't. It's definitely the first one, honestly, for what it was did very well. And then the second one was more expensive, if I'm not mistaken, than the console, wasn't it?
02:24:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it was like stupid expensive yeah um, I like the original playstation vr. I was very impressed.
02:24:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, this is fun, this is good, right, but you had to be sitting down, which was kind of funny, that's yeah, let's pray the safest oh, honestly, that's why they did that, yeah um, and then I I threw this one in here because I'm just fascinated by this and I love that this is happening and this is not an isolated thing, but there's, there is actually a lot of this. But this past year there's been all this stuff like atari refocusing on kind of game preservation, buying most of in television and and working just kind of working on the older stuff. Um, you know, the 20th anniversary of, uh, half-life falls into this category. I just mentioned the OG, unreal and Unreal Tournament, epic Games. It's like, yeah, whatever they're free, don't worry about it. Tied to this is there are a bunch of open source projects on GitHub and other places that are also working on game preservation. I just highlighted two that I learned about recently and they're both the same right and so-. And.
02:25:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So oh, look, you've also appled your uh, your icon on the therotcom there you go. Oh, look at that like okay, you're so cute look, I'm trying to, it's just trying to make a cutie boy.
02:25:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, all right anywho, uh, I'm not sure what happened there, but um went to a place, um, so, uh, the two games that I found out about recently are Medal of Honor, the original one, and this is the team that went on to make Call of Duty. They left whatever that company was to form, probably Infinity Ward and made Call of Duty, but before they did that they did Medal of Honor and a couple of add-ons, and you can still buy this game and those add-ons on a good old gamer, gogcom for like 10 bucks. And the second is the I think it's the first two versions of the original tomb raider, which have also been served by various remasters and remakes, etc. Etc. But you can buy those games as well on uh gogcom like 10 bucks for both, or 6.99 each on steam, or so what these projects are doing is making these games work well on modern hardware, upskilled graphics, et cetera, et cetera.
02:26:17
You have to own the game, right, they're not stealing anything. It's like you buy the game, you have the actual games, you paid for it and then you use our installer and you'll get the better graphics and whatever. And I love this. Like I think this is such a great idea, like I love this notion of, um, you know, keeping these older games going because they're still, you know, they're like half-life, the original half-life, or half-life 2 or um, uh, that black mesa conversion. There's a ray tracing update coming for half-life 2 that I I don't believe valve is doing, I think it's coming from a third party, and they're just like yeah, do it, like it's fine, like just put it out.
02:26:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did you ever play the predecessor to Halo Marathon?
02:26:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Marathon, yeah, the Mac.
02:27:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that's open source now and somebody has revived the Marathon trilogy.
02:27:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is open source Marathon might predate Doom, If it doesn't.
02:27:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was right around the same time we were playing it in 96 on the set of the site, so I think it was probably right after yeah, you had to have a Mac, though I believe yeah, it was a Mac game. So I have played it. That was the beginning of the Bungie saga.
02:27:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, wait a minute yeah, so because they did halo after this. That's right, and that was, uh, in the first halo demo was at a mac event like a right, not wwdc. But what are they back?
02:27:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
in fact, if you go back and play these old games the one I'd recommend is the multiplayer marathon it will feel very much like halo in many ways you'll say oh, that's yeah.
02:27:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's not surprising, because if you've ever played, uh, destiny also plays a little bit. Well, that's true too. Just a little bit, like for other, for other reasons.
02:27:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, oops, it's funny, richard's reaching over to get his uh. I think he has a master chief uh mask he wants.
02:28:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, I don't okay, nope, nope, I don't.
02:28:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was getting whiskey glasses, I forgot he's all about the back end, never mind.
02:28:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Forget it.
02:28:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's not a front end kind of guy. He's getting a whiskey glass. You know what that means. We're getting close to the moment. You've all been waiting for the back of the book, kids. And oh boy, he's emptying the whiskey glass. Now you know that's trouble. He's emptying the whiskey glass now you know that's trouble. He's clearing his palate. He's clearing his palate Properly prepared. There might be trouble ahead.
02:28:36
Back of the book, just around the corner, along with Paul's tip of the week, the app pick of the week, the run as radio pick of the week, it'll be Richard's Brown Liquor pick of the week An interesting, unpronounceable name.
02:28:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, we're're gonna make some attempts at pronouncing these. I've practiced them repeatedly.
02:28:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, so that I'll have a chance I do want to mention, before we get into the back of the book, uh, how important it is now to us, uh, that you join club twit. We, uh we've been looking at revenue projections for 2025 and it doesn't look really good right now, uh, and like like zero, like we got nothing. So, uh, we expect that some people come in late and so forth. That's happened last year, but really, really, we we're down to some tough times ahead, but the bright light is our club. So far, 12,000 people have joined the club, which is fantastic. It's been pretty flat for the last six months. Maybe that's the most we'll ever get. I don't know. Maybe that's all of the people who really care, but I know it's only about it's less than 2% of the monthly audience. So I figured there must be a few more of you that care.
02:29:55
And if you do join the club, it is more than of course, you're going to get some benefits. It's $7 a month. We looked at maybe raising the price, but I want to keep it affordable. It isn't a paywall, it really is just a way of supporting what we do. There are benefits. You get ad-free versions of the shows. There is video for shows like Paul's Hands on Windows that we only put out as audio in the public and stuff like that. But if you like what we do and you want to keep seeing these shows and I'm including all the shows that we do we're going to need you to participate. My goal before the end of the year you get 5,000 new members. Honestly, the membership we have pays half of our payroll, not even all of our payroll, just half of our payroll, and that's not including me and Lisa. As owners. We don't get to take anything until there's a profit and when there's no profit.
02:30:50
I'm up in my attic, that's what happens. So, uh, please, if you will, uh, consider joining club twit lots of benefits. We do have a two-week free trial if you want to see what it's like before you join. Uh, you also get access to the club twit discord and we are doing a lot of events in the club twit discord coming up uh, tomorrow actually, uh, it's chris marquart's photo segment that we we do once a month with chris his photography segment. Micah's going to do his crafting corner tomorrow morning. He's actually building some tiny kitchen or something. But you could do lego, painting, crochet, doesn't matter what you're doing Next week and I'm reading this right now and I'm loving it.
02:31:34
Stacy's Book Club will feature James SA Corey's brand new series. He's the guy who did the Expanse. He started a new one, the Captives' War. This is book one, the Mercy of God. I highly recommend it and if you're a fast reader, you have a week you could read it. So that's fun. We do the book club every couple of months.
02:31:54
Lots of other things going on in the club. The Discord is a great place to hang. I really, really enjoy the Discord, but the main reason you join the club is because you want all of our shows, including this show, to keep on going. And if you like it, please do me a favor. Be a great gift, by the way, for somebody for the holidays. Oh, we don't have a card or anything, you'll have to make your own card. We do have a referral program though. So if you join, you get a code you could put in your socials and everything saying hey, join the club, and you'll get a free month for everybody who does, for everybody who does, twittv slash club twit doom came out december 10th 1993, so we are actually at the 31st anniversary of the release of doom. Wow, isn't that something that's me isn't that something.
02:32:46
Um, and marathon came out december 21st 1994. So it was also so. It was 30 years ago. Yeah, it's big time of year, I guess, for releasing games, time for the back of the book. Mr paul thurot, you got a tip for us.
02:33:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I do, although I just got a an rss update from microsoft learn that told me that they're deprecating another windows 11 feature, oh jeez, which nobody knows anything about. It's in my book, but it's called suggested actions what's it called suggested?
02:33:22
actions. I'm not drinking, I promise, dina menzel, yes, yeah. So uh, like, if you write a phone number or a date in like notepad and then highlight it, you'll get a little pop-up window with actions you can do like call the number with different apps that are compatible, or open it in a calendar app or whatever. And uh, yeah, nobody uses this thing, it's going away. So future version of windows 11, it's getting rid of that, it's not really a tip, just a little, is that good?
02:33:56
Or does, if nobody knows about it. That means I'm gonna like be able to remove like one page from my 1200 page book, so that'll be nice. Yeah, uh, that will save it. Um, yeah. So, uh, tip of the week is I've started publishing my kind of end, end of year wrap up.
02:34:02
Some of these things I've broken out into bigger articles. That intel thing came out of that, the uh, what was? The other one that was in today's show, the? Uh, where is it? Uh, I don't remember it, doesn't? Who cares? Uh, oh, the no, not a problem. Uh, no, I can't find it, it doesn't matter. Anyway, I'm breaking things out, but some of the things are just like single articles. So I'll do something, probably about devices, something about books and audio books, but I did my podcast episode, my favorite podcast, 2024. And then, like every year, I do like a list of the new apps and services and games and stuff. Um, the podcast one is kind of interesting because you know you get those end of year wrap ups from like the services, like Spotify, et cetera. So I use um pocket casts, and pocket cast told me that the top five podcasts that I listened to, um, you listened to a lot of showsul I'm impressed well, I do and I don't, you know, it depends, you know.
02:34:53
But um, rewatchables, which is amazing, um, if books could kill. And then number three is a little podcast called dot net rocks dot net rocks run his radio right behind it.
02:35:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So yeah, yeah I do like books could kill books amazing. Such a nice amount of snark there.
02:35:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I guess, and they're super smart. The thing I like about that show is one of the guys will read one of those airport books or whatever, like a four-hour work week, the other one is not, and then they just talk about it live. And the fact that these people can come back with what they come back with is astonishing to me, yeah they're very great. So the rewatch rules is like it's a sports caster who has the Bill Simmons he started. Oh yeah, he's legendary.
02:35:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This network that was bought by ESPN is amazing.
02:35:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's from Boston, so there's a lot of Boston stuff but a lot of sports stuff. So there's like this sports humor in this show that I think would be over most people's or would just. You know, you just don't. If you don't know the sport, you're like what are they talking about? But there was one episode they were talking about Uh, it was Mr and Mrs Smith the movie with, uh, brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and during that time they were actually getting divorced. Yeah, and it's like what do you? He's like he, one of the guys says what do you get when you divorce Angelina Jolie? It's like you get Jennifer Aniston in a second round draft pick. He's like what?
02:36:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
is he's like what is?
02:36:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
this. It's like you didn't, like you're not winning, like you know, it's just this stuff like that, like or like there's like the the big chill. There's a tag football game in it and they analyze it Like it's an actual football game.
02:36:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's classic.
02:36:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I love it. Anyway, that's a good one. Um, the other one was just app services, blah, blah, blah, whatever. By the way, leo IA Writer, which you know from the Mac, is kind of garbagey on Windows. They're coming out with a major new version they just announced. It's a great Mac app.
02:36:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's an awesome Mac app, if you like, markup I do and I pretty much write exclusively in markdowns.
02:36:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I said markup, I meant markdowns, sorry Um, I said markup, I meant markdown? No, I know that I put it in my mouth. So like I just, I just repeated it, that was my goal.
02:37:02
Like that was my goal, just to screw you up. Um, uh, it's okay on windows, but they just announced a major 2.0 complete rewrite. Awesome, awesome, awesome it looks, and so you have to sign up to get on it. But anyway, I've been using Type Aura and then also a visual studio code for the books. But, um, some of the big stuff this year, like I switched the proton pass for password management um clip champ premium I actually pay for it to get 4k output and um cloud storage, which is actually the big one. Um, I did the affinity V2 universal license so I get all their apps across all the platforms they support, which is really big. And then I kind of mentioned Edge. Before I wrote about it, that was the other one, it was Edge. I switched between browsers, realistically speaking, but right before I wrote this I was like Edge is not garbage, it's actually pretty good. I don't know what happened there.
02:37:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Anyway, this is a nice idea for a year-end article. I like this. The apps that you use yeah, I like it, you know, because?
02:37:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I noticed, like I don't two, three years ago, all of a sudden, like because you know a lot of this, if you go back and look at pictures of my desktop from like 15 years ago, it's you know, standard, you know most of the apps you would expect, and then, like I don't know, two, three years ago, it started changing a lot. You know, yeah, and last year and this year, but last year especially, it changed a lot. There's a lot of shifting there.
02:38:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So anyway, Now, this is, by the way, a feature of the premium Theratcom, so subscribe so you can see all this. You don't get in my head unless you pay for it, buddy, you got to pay for it, buddy. Nothing's free here. I wish there was a better system. I really do. But no, it's fine, you deserve it. You work hard. You know, if you can join the club, you can join the rotcom there you go.
02:38:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Do you need a whiskey club? Uh, richard speaking, yeah, I might be getting that way. Huh, oh, the curated. Uh, richard, you know.
02:38:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Monthly subscription did you get the advent calendar this year?
02:39:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
what? What I sent one to. I sent one to paul. I wasn't going to send one to you.
02:39:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I didn't want one yeah, because, uh, I did last year. I had a couple of the bottles and I gave it to my brother, it may, may literally have just arrived.
02:39:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
My wife literally poked her head and said there's a box here.
02:39:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you're only 11 days behind, so if you drink quickly, I'm going to catch up on during the show.
02:39:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Hold on, I'll be right back.
02:39:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was a nice gift. It's a very nice gift. I went Scottish again.
02:39:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think that's the way you're gonna go scottish again in a moment. But first, yeah, let's talk about run as radio. I'm bringing back one of my regulars, angela dugan, who I've known for many years and she's funny. She's been in and out of microsoft several times now. She'll go off and consult for a while and work for an organization and then got roped back into a different role inside of microsoft. So she's back in again and she's working specifically with the M365 folks, with government, with GSS, and so I had been chatting with her separately and she talked about that.
02:39:59
The GSS is getting to the point of saying here's what's required to use M365 copilot in government, city, state, county, federal and so forth. And so I'm like, wow, we should talk about that, because if government can find its way to get to some organizational level of data to be able to use Copilot, then any of us could, you know. So really fun conversation, and it's, I mean, it's all the same kind of problems. It's just their metrics are really interesting because it's about serving constituents and how quickly can you get to a response to the benefit of the constituent, and so they're really sensitive to that. These tools can answer questions quicker with the right operator. So that's the direction we went into. And then just this whole that government has its own version of OneDrive, their own version of Copilot, like there's a lot of rules around all of that. So if you want to know how government's doing it, that's how they're doing it.
02:40:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know you're impressed I am very impressed and I had my mic turned off so you didn't hear all the oohs and ahs. That, but a very impressive. And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for some brown liquor yes, let's um, let's try and pronounce some names there.
02:41:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The easy one on the bottle is tobermory, which is a, which is a town actually on the isle of mull. The word underneath there you can see it it's l-a-l-e-d-a-i-g. The the Dach. It's actually pronounced Le Chig Le.
02:41:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Chig. Yeah, obviously. I'm sorry. Why are we even discussing that? Obviously.
02:41:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Obviously, which is Gaelic for safe haven. So this is one of the very oldest distilleries in Scotland. It's on the Isle of Mull and that's one of the Inner Hebrides Islands, the second largest island, the largest being sky, which is where talisker is. Uh, mull is just north of jira and isla, so which should I love being the third largest island? Um, it's, there's only about 3 000 people on the island. It's not, uh, very heavily populated. It's kind of tough country there, although there's been farming there. They found evidence going back into the bronze age, so there have been humans around that area, for sometimes there's a. There's a remains of a fort called donard gaggle, which made me think like lord of the rings.
02:42:19
Immediately it's spelled sade yeah, but it's pronounced goggle iron, but it's from like 600 bc, so predates the romans, and it's been so. But the Tobermory was formed as a fishing port in 1788. And then a fellow by the name of John Sinclair, who was a kelp merchant because they were farming kelp in the waters off of the Mull Sound, wanted to establish a distillery and so he put together Le Chig in 1798. So only 10 years after the town was formed they had their one and only distillery. It was probably a mistake, because this distillery has a very checkered history. So he started that up in 1798. It was shut down by 1837 and stayed shut down for 40 years. Wow, he dies.
02:43:16
A new owner takes over in 1878. It changes hands several more times after that. The Distillers Company, which eventually becomes Diageo, takes it over in 1916, mid-world War I, when there's not enough grain to make any whiskey anyway. At the time they had a lot of light-up barrels that they were making into a blend they called Old Tobermory, although the name of the distillery was Le Chig. Then of course, 1930 hits Prohibition. The US market tears everything apart, so it shuts down in 1930 and doesn't reopen again until 1972. So another 40 years shutdown Like I'm really stretching that. They put 1798 on the bottle right, like you guys were closed for 100 years, with a few intermissions.
02:44:04
So the new group that takes it over again calls the Lechig Distillery in Tobermory. And then three years later they shut down and in 1979 the kirk levin property company, which is a consortium of a liverpool shipping company and also a company that makes sherry and some other overseas interests, now fully call it the tobermory distillery and they stopped referring to Le Chig, which nobody can pronounce anyway, and they operate for a whole three years. In 1982, they shut down again my God, it's snake pit yeah. And having not been able to pay their taxes, they actually sell off the rack house across the road from the distillery, which gets made into apartment buildings. And then 10 years later, burns Stewart Distillers these are the folks who own Bodehabed and Deanston, which is also around Eyley and Campbellton take it over in 1993. So this is proper whiskey operators that know what they're doing. They are making a sweet single malt there that they use in their blends. So Byrne Stewart makes a blend called Black Bottle and they're using it for that. But they decide to start making Lit Jig in 2007. So bring back this peated whiskey.
02:45:23
Byrne Stewart gets acquired by the Distil Group which is out of South Africa. They're the ones who actually own Heineken and they scale the facility up. So now today they can put out about a million liters a year, which is not a huge distillery but it's substantial. They run on pretty standard. They were for many years kept their iron mash tons but they switched up to stainless steel ladders which are more efficient. They use Doug for washbacks only four of them. They have two sets of stills and, unlike most distilleries, their wash and spirit stills are about the same size. They're both 16,500 liters, which is considered in the smaller side, but normally the wash still is about 50% bigger than the spirit still because of yields. But the large spirit still was an intentional thing. I suspect it's lost in the history. They've probably just got a deal on the size, but it makes for a slower reflux. So really it puts some character into their style of whiskey, depending on which.
02:46:19
They really make two different products. They age in both bourbon casks and sherry casks because they have no storage. All of their barrels actually get shipped to the Deanston storage which is on the mainland, so it's 100 miles and a ferry ride away Again, this distillery is remarkably questionable and then make two different whiskeys. They make Tobermory, which is a unpeated single malt, and they make Le Chig, which is a peated malt. Now it makes sense to make a peated malt on the Inland Hebrides islands where the trees don't grow particularly well but there's lots of peat, so it's inexpensive. That's your cheap fuel for drying your malt, which is why the sky and all these islands make peated malts these days. Of course you have other ways to make heat with electricity, so it's not that big of a deal. But if you're going to make both a peated and unpeated whiskey in the same set of stills, you have to clean out the still after making peated whiskey or everything tastes like peat, and so literally the Tobermory distillery does a split run six months of making Tobermory the unpeated stuff and six months of making Le Chig with peat in it, and it takes two weeks to clean the distillery to do the switch.
02:47:37
Wow, why, why, you know they've just sort of gotten to this place Now. And what's legit about this? This is a 10-year-old peated whiskey. It's not as pale as an Ardbeg 10. It's got a little more color. They don't color, they don't chill filter. This is a normal peating. It's about 30 to 40 parts per million of phenyl content. That would be considered a normal peating as opposed to something like is it?
02:48:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it's normal.
02:48:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a normal medium peat, right like octomore can be 150 and that's like a burnt ashtray got smacked into your face right like you don't want that. But this is nicely peaty, like this is we. You know we've got the fireplace running here now. The pot belly is running to heat the house, so you want to have some smoke because it's smoky anyway yeah, and this is not poke your eye smoke.
02:48:30
This is yeah, no, there's a fire. Right, you're being heated by fire. It's got lots of fruit flavors in it too, like it's really a little sweet and smooth, a little bit of heat coming down. This is a christmas time whiskey 100, you know, and not particularly expensive. You can you can find this in the us runs about 60 46.3. So that's up there. But I would also point out this is not like a cast strength or anything. They're keeping that number there so they don't have to chill filter so it doesn't go cloudy with a bit of ice not that I'd put ice in this.
02:49:05
It, um, you know you're there for the peat, just drink it. Uh, it doesn't they. You don't really want to do anything else with this at all, although if I was going to have some fun, this would make this is a nice whiskey to make a burnt martini with. Ah. So just take a little splash of this whiskey, swirl it in the glass and then drink it, because it's whiskey, it's good and then make your vodka martini, yeah, which is to say, just cold vodka, and you'll have that little smoky hint of a burnt martini.
02:49:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's interesting. Instead of a vermouth, use some.
02:49:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, a burnt is done with a scotch wash and this scotch is particularly well-suited. Interesting, yeah, and that's not a bad thing because you're not wasting any whiskey, but it was one of those finds in my local liquor store and I'm like, hmm, I've never talked about those guys and it's the only distillery on Mull at all. So that's it and, like I said, it's kind of debatable whether it should be there, but it's there.
02:50:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did you go in and say, hey, give me the Le Chig. Or did you say, hey, do you have any of that Le Dague?
02:50:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No. But I was looking at the rack and I said what is that? That's the, that's the solution. And then I noticed it was on the Isle of Mull and I was like, oh well, that's one of the, that's one of the Hebrides islands. I've never talked about that. Let's go get it Nice. You know, I'd always keep my loop app on my phone to just double check. I've talked about this, but this one definitely not. And then I like there's no way. That's pronounced ledeg. So I looked it up.
02:50:43
It's like it's pronounced lechig and I'm like why? Okay, because gaelic is funny, lechig yeah, it's pronounced ch, so what? You know who? You give this whiskey to someone, like a lagavulin or a beaumont. Give them a peated whiskey they've never had and it's legit, it's old school. It's made by pros. You know the same guys who do bunnahabon, but it's from mull and it's the only one and it's not outrageously expensive. It's very pretty. Look at the little island they make a tv show about with that particular shot in it, about that, about the isle of mull there, so that it looks like doc martin would be shot there, actually, but maybe it's some other tv show.
02:51:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and, and this is the boats where they, uh, they bring it over to the other side for the barreling. Well, it's 1798 when they got there, they burned the boats.
02:51:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's like you're not leaving this side. You can't leave, you're here. Population is like I said, it's only a couple. It's a 300 square mile island. It's not that small of an island, but there's only 3,000 people on it.
02:51:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not a big place Interesting. Oh, you brought us a fun little taste of the Hebrides, of the inner Hebrides, yeah.
02:51:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And again an island I hadn't spent a lot of time with because it was the only distillery. So it's great to have a find like that and, um you know, for if you're looking for a whiskey for a fictionado who likes peter whiskeys, this will be special, it really will, very nice thank you, richard.
02:52:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, paul. Sorry I silenced you during all of that. Were you trying to say things? I pushed the wrong button, it's okay. Okay, I apologize, paul. Paul puts in the chat. Uh, why am I backstage, man? I want to be in front. Put me up front, man. It was my fault. No, no, I. It's very complicated. It's a lot of buttons, there's a lot of buttons and then there's different switches here and I've been doing that and I don't know what the hell. Where am I going to show up? No one knows.
02:52:37
We do Windows Weekly on Wednesdays and I know you know that because you're here right now, unless you're not, in which case you don't know that. So that's what I'm telling you. Wednesdays, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern, 1900 UTC. People can watch us do it live. Sometimes they like to uh before kevin gets in here and fixes all the mistakes I made.
02:52:58
You can watch if you're in the club, on our club twitter discord although honestly it's not discord doesn't do a great job of streaming videos, so I think a lot of people chat in the discord and watch on youtube or twitch or tiktok or x or facebook or linkedin or kick. You can watch on all those places, uh. If you can't be here on a wednesday at that time, you can always get an on-demand version of the show at twittv slash ww for windows weekly. You can also see a youtube channel that's dedicated. There's a link at twitchtv slash www. Go right to that youtube channel. Great way to share, share clips. If you have a whiskey lover, maybe, share that little clip uh with with them and it. It helps us promote the show and you look very smart when you do that. After the fact, you can also subscribe in your favorite podcast client. Get it automatically the minute we're done Now. Next week there's a show Ugly Sweater Day. Everybody, wear your ugly sweaters, definitely.
02:54:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I have a clippy sweater I shall wear. I'll be running on my new rig. Paul wasn't here when I showed this.
02:54:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, I'm very excited Richard's going all road baby.
02:54:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I'm going to tear this rig down tonight and we're going to rebuild with this thing and we'll see how it works for the last show of the year.
02:54:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh boy, yeah Well, good news you get a couple of weeks if it doesn't work, because we're going to take Christmas and New Year's off, christmas Day there'll be a best of though. Yeah, if it really goes badly you'll see me a boathouse next week with the portable rig. I'm out. Here is richard in an outhouse. What's happening?
02:54:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
it's a boathouse I think it's fine. Everything's gonna be fine, it's gonna be fine, no, it's gonna.
02:54:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I use a road to cast your duo for the audio, and I'm very interested in this new.
02:54:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm hoping my levels are finally high enough right, yeah?
02:54:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you can oh, you can crank this guy, yeah, like crazy. So paul thurot is at theriotcom that's his website. Become a premium member and you get all sorts of great extra content. In fact you also get the contents of his books. Or you can go to leanpubcom and buy the Field Guide to Windows 11. Windows 10 is inside, always updated, which is nice. Or his book Windows Everywhere, which charts the history of windows through its development frameworks very interesting book, both at leanpubcom. Richard campbell is at run his radiocom. That's where his podcasts are run his radio and the show he does with carl franklin dot net rocks and uh. Together they are the dynamic duo of Microsoft journalism. Thank you guys, have a wonderful week and I will see you next week on Windows Weekly.
