Windows Weekly 967 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat is here. Richard Campbell's here by the skin of his teeth. Richard's got a very interesting liquor pick, but that's not till the very end. Before that, we're going to talk about Microsoft's out of band patch for Windows, and maybe you had some little issues. You'll find out what happened and Richard's theory about why. We'll also talk about Satya and Ozela's desire to bring AI to everything and everybody, despite the feelings of some of its users. And a big Xbox game.
Leo Laporte [00:00:35]:
Pass January. All of that coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.
Richard Campbell [00:00:45]:
This is twit.
Leo Laporte [00:00:53]:
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurot and Richard Campbell. Episode 967. Recorded Wednesday, January 21, 2026. Second generation Bonobos. It's time for Windows Weekly. Hello, you winners. And you dozers too. Wake up, wake up, wake up.
Leo Laporte [00:01:13]:
Look who's here. Paul Thurot from thurrott.com, formerly the Super Site for Windows, now in old sunny old Mexico City.
Richard Campbell [00:01:24]:
Hello, Paul Col. Leo.
Leo Laporte [00:01:27]:
And from the boat house in beautiful British Columbia. That would be a good name for a pub or something.
Paul Thurrott [00:01:32]:
Yeah, the Boat house.
Richard Campbell [00:01:33]:
Yeah, the boat house. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:01:35]:
Where are you going, honey? I'm going down to the boat house. Okay.
Richard Campbell [00:01:37]:
A lot of nautical themed items on the walls.
Paul Thurrott [00:01:41]:
Well, you remember that. Remember we were having that small renovation done in the big house that was going to be finished by Christmas?
Leo Laporte [00:01:47]:
No.
Richard Campbell [00:01:48]:
Well, Christmas 2026. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:01:51]:
They don't specify the year. I like your boathouse, though. You've got.
Paul Thurrott [00:01:54]:
It's very nice here.
Leo Laporte [00:01:55]:
It's surrounded by a glass so you can see the. The ocean or the bay.
Paul Thurrott [00:01:59]:
Yeah, it's all about the sea. The sea view. Here it is. It is a studio apartment. It is not large. So on days like today where the. The. The fog is all the way in, you are in a small gray box.
Leo Laporte [00:02:11]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:11]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:02:12]:
I like that, though.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:13]:
Yeah. In the summertime when the sky is clear and you can see out to the islands in front of us and so forth, like it's untouchable. And you know what? The herrings. The herrings are just getting going so that soon there will be genocide outside to watch every day.
Leo Laporte [00:02:27]:
But it's the. It's the. It's the whales eating the herring. Or the seals.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:31]:
Yeah. Or the seals eating the herring or the dolphins eating the herring. Or the.
Leo Laporte [00:02:35]:
Everybody eating the herring.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:36]:
Everybody eats the herring.
Leo Laporte [00:02:37]:
I love herring. Yeah, I bet. Because you're a Good Scot. You like the kippered herring, don't you?
Paul Thurrott [00:02:43]:
You know, I can take one down, which only after I've been drinking whiskey the whole night before and I'm already in poor decision making mode.
Leo Laporte [00:02:50]:
My mom, I don't know why she would get. You get the cans of kippered her. Yeah. And she would put it in. She wouldn't fry it, she'd put it in the pan with boiling water, just.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:58]:
Slightly submerged, just to warm it up.
Leo Laporte [00:03:00]:
Tin up.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:01]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:03:02]:
And then serve that with eggs instead of bacon.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:04]:
Now I'm next weekend, or not this weekend, but the following weekend I will be back in Glasgow for a couple of days. I will be spending a night at the Craig Galachi and I do get the Scottish breakfast with the black pudding and the haggis and it's very good. It's so very good.
Leo Laporte [00:03:20]:
I have yet to become an organ meat.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:24]:
What's the opposite?
Leo Laporte [00:03:25]:
Donor.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:26]:
Yeah. It turns out if you, if you grind it up and mix it with oatmeal, you wouldn't know.
Leo Laporte [00:03:31]:
Oh, okay. And if everything's better with oatmeal.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:36]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:03:38]:
Ladies and gentlemen, we aren't here to talk about those organ meats. We are here to talk about something even, even more lovely. Windows. There was kind of a kerfuffle out there on the Internet.
Richard Campbell [00:03:53]:
I feel like Windows compares favorably to organ meat.
Leo Laporte [00:03:59]:
In both cases. You don't want to see the sausage.
Paul Thurrott [00:04:01]:
Being made, but it should be definitely made into sausage.
Leo Laporte [00:04:05]:
Yes, exactly. So what happened?
Richard Campbell [00:04:09]:
This is very typical for our community these days, but it's got a lot of play. But it didn't really impact too many people and it's been fixed, so I guess we're okay. But the January 2026 Patch Tuesday update borked some features in Windows for certain users, all of which are business or commercial customers. And so the two big ones were remote desktop connections just sign ins were failing. And the second one, which to me was the one everyone sort of reported on but it wasn't happening to any individuals, was that you would go to shut down or enter hibernation, basically close the lid of the laptop and instead of sleeping or hibernating or shutting down, it would just reboot.
Leo Laporte [00:04:52]:
But it only impacted happen to anybody.
Richard Campbell [00:04:54]:
It impacted enterprise and education customers, not home and pro users.
Paul Thurrott [00:04:59]:
So I mean I totally get enterprise because they'll have a bunch of other like GPO stuff running. But education that, well, it's just commercial.
Richard Campbell [00:05:06]:
I mean, yeah, I think education is probably just based on enterprise, I would imagine.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:12]:
Yeah. So it's probably actually enterprise derived ralph. So this is almost certainly an exotic GPO security problem.
Leo Laporte [00:05:18]:
Oh, interesting.
Richard Campbell [00:05:19]:
Probably.
Leo Laporte [00:05:19]:
And of course it gets attention because it's out of band.
Richard Campbell [00:05:22]:
Oh, it's Windows just screwed up again.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:25]:
Yeah. It's like they've totally reorganized those teams. Right. Like client and core being brought together. Like I would. We've had a lot of successful updates the past year. Very few failures. I would not be surprised to get a little twitch of them right now as they report.
Richard Campbell [00:05:41]:
But that's like saying AI works most of the time but we still report on the 1. You know the times when it goes bad, it goes bad.
Leo Laporte [00:05:48]:
You know, thing with self driving cars. Yes, they're safer than humans but when they crash.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:53]:
Oh, it's a good one story. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:05:55]:
When man bites dog, that's news they say.
Richard Campbell [00:05:58]:
Yep. So yeah, there was a story I saw today in my feed that was ATM crashes somewhere in the world. Who cares? Like a single ATM machine. I saw that and it's like Windows 7 sign in screen and you know, it's okay. Okay, so what, we're going to be outraged by this. This thing's on an isolated network all by itself. They probably very specifically left it there because it's requires very few resources compared to modern computers. And the ATM machine is not an i9, you know.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:24]:
And to be clear, you should be delighted It's a Windows 7 login screen because it was probably a Window XP long screen not that long ago.
Richard Campbell [00:06:30]:
Yeah, I mean it's just a complete non story but I know it got everywhere.
Leo Laporte [00:06:35]:
It got everywhere.
Richard Campbell [00:06:36]:
It's like a Family Circus cartoon. Right. You see a blue screen in a airport or a train station and you're like oh Windows, there it goes again. Or you're like oh Windows, it's everywhere. Nice.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:50]:
But you know, I'm not very. I will definitely say oh Windows, there it goes again. I just won't take a picture of it and post it because come on. Well, who cares? Not surprised at all. There's no airport in this world you can't walk through that doesn't have at least one screen on a BIOS right now.
Richard Campbell [00:07:05]:
So I will never not take those photos because of what I do for a living. Because I might need it someday for some awesome story. It's just good B roll. It's just smart on my part. But yeah, most people I think would just look up the screen that's not doing what they expect and be like, you know, there goes like typical for this place, you know.
Paul Thurrott [00:07:26]:
Yeah, no, I'm not surprised, you know.
Leo Laporte [00:07:29]:
So we begin today with two non story stories.
Richard Campbell [00:07:33]:
Two non story stories. Well, what was Blue Sky? Oh, I see. The ATM thing. Well, yeah, that was not officially in the list, but it doesn't matter.
Leo Laporte [00:07:41]:
You say no, I have to. Once you say it, it's in the list. If I, you know what I'm saying?
Richard Campbell [00:07:44]:
Fair enough. If I have learned anything from Leo, it's that I have to cover the nine stories because it's going to come up.
Leo Laporte [00:07:52]:
It's going to come up.
Richard Campbell [00:07:53]:
I'm going to bring it up.
Leo Laporte [00:07:53]:
You're right. You know what? You're right.
Richard Campbell [00:07:56]:
You're going to be like, well, what about this thing I saw, you know, I heard. Yeah. Through the grapevine.
Leo Laporte [00:08:01]:
But as I said before the show, I'm very proud of myself. I'm going through, as you know, every day I go through my beat check of all the stories and both those stories came up multiple times and all cases I did not say, yeah, let's cover that. I agree with you. They're non stories.
Richard Campbell [00:08:18]:
Just whatever. Well, I mean, you know, anytime Microsoft screws up a Windows update, it's, well.
Leo Laporte [00:08:24]:
And you know me, I'm quick to jump on them on the, you know, Windows 6 bandwagon.
Richard Campbell [00:08:28]:
But as you're about to discover, the.
Paul Thurrott [00:08:30]:
Vast 30 minutes number of installs work just fine. There were very few. You need a very amazing.
Richard Campbell [00:08:37]:
That's again. But the vast majority of planes land just fine. You know, it's like the problem, you know, we got to be careful. I don't know, we'll see. But anyway, I, I have to look at these things and then within 10 seconds it's like, okay, this is not right. A widespread problem for my audience. So I'm not going to worry about it too, too much.
Leo Laporte [00:08:55]:
Anybody in the chat room have you know any of these issues? Probably not. I bet, I bet not. I'm not seeing anybody saying anything, being outraged. No.
Richard Campbell [00:09:06]:
Maybe they could be like Verizon and give us some money back.
Leo Laporte [00:09:09]:
You know, it did happen to it, but only fulfilling the YouTuber it happened to. Well, a well known YouTuber.
Richard Campbell [00:09:15]:
Oh, well, there you go.
Leo Laporte [00:09:17]:
Linus Tech tips.
Richard Campbell [00:09:18]:
Oh, perfect. Perfect. And he definitely in any way. So he probably handled that, you know, the thumbnail was. Oh yeah, yeah. Yep. I couldn't remote desktop into my other Windows computer. Windows sucks.
Richard Campbell [00:09:31]:
Oh well, you wouldn't. We're using Windows so much. I don't know, whatever. But it's just this is the world I live in. It's terrible.
Leo Laporte [00:09:38]:
Same update seems to have some Rhymes with mogul saying broken remote desktop in some cases.
Richard Campbell [00:09:43]:
Yeah, that was one of the two issues.
Leo Laporte [00:09:44]:
So yeah, that is definitely a. What did you call it? Gpo security bug.
Paul Thurrott [00:09:49]:
Well, and also there was a big push for a while there on the Enterprise side to get rid of rdp, the whole remote desktop thing. You were supposed to work through admin center and so forth. And so I suspect they pulled it out of the security path for a while and they're still cleaning up that mess.
Richard Campbell [00:10:03]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:10:04]:
You know, this is.
Paul Thurrott [00:10:05]:
They had to give in. People could not put RDP down. It's a draft.
Leo Laporte [00:10:08]:
This is Microsoft's cross to bear.
Paul Thurrott [00:10:10]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:10:11]:
Is you have to support all of these old legacy things because.
Richard Campbell [00:10:14]:
So the good news in RDP is if you sign into your computer with a Microsoft account, you got to try really hard to make that work in the first place. Like this. I, I did a tip or whatever on this probably a year or so ago. It's. It's super hard. Modern versions of Windows are not designed to allow pass through from a Microsoft account. So you got to, you got to really go out of your way to make that happen. So at that point you probably know what you're doing and it's not, it's not an issue that's going to affect normal people, like individuals.
Leo Laporte [00:10:46]:
Yeah. Burke, who has two of my old Windows computers, says he hasn't had any problems.
Paul Thurrott [00:10:52]:
Yeah. You know, I am not unhappy to no longer be running enterprise infrastructure in my house anymore.
Leo Laporte [00:10:57]:
Yes.
Paul Thurrott [00:10:58]:
You know, like, how long. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:11:00]:
This is a disease that every person in our industry, including myself, fell into, which is like, I'm going to manage my home like it's an enterprise and you can do it.
Leo Laporte [00:11:12]:
Then the next thing is self hosting.
Richard Campbell [00:11:14]:
Right.
Leo Laporte [00:11:14]:
You fall into the self hosting.
Richard Campbell [00:11:16]:
I am. Self hosting is on my list of terms that I literally get like a creepy feeling up my back when I hear that term. It's like everyday carry. What are you, an idiot? You mean like your, your wallet, your phone, you jackass. You have to have a stupid name for it like you're a superhero.
Leo Laporte [00:11:31]:
Get my pocket watch.
Richard Campbell [00:11:32]:
Like, what are people talking about? Like everyday carry.
Leo Laporte [00:11:38]:
Damn it.
Richard Campbell [00:11:38]:
Unsupported stupidity of I am. I have got my head so far up my ass that I think my tech out in the Apple watch. It's everyday carry. Like, it's like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry. I got to save my IR for the thing that really matters today.
Paul Thurrott [00:11:57]:
Oh yeah, this is the good one.
Richard Campbell [00:11:59]:
Well, we're going to get to it. We're going to get to it.
Leo Laporte [00:12:00]:
Okay. Oh, I'm excited. Something to look forward to.
Richard Campbell [00:12:03]:
I'm not going to take it anymore, but we'll get there. First, this is what I'll call a half a step in the right direction and without beating this one to death, because God knows I have over two and a half years. In late 2023, Microsoft started quietly enabling folder backup in OneDrive in Windows 11 and probably running 10, but probably 10 too. After you said no. Right. And you could say no multiple times depending on the configuration of the time. This has changed over time, but you would typically see a screen in the out of box experience. Right.
Richard Campbell [00:12:37]:
When you first set up Windows, you know, do you want to back up your files to OneDrive? Say nope. Like, are you sure we really want you to do this? Like, nope, it's good. Get a little pop up notification, you know. And there were other methods over time, but those have kind of gone away. And then it was Microsoft mom, you.
Paul Thurrott [00:12:53]:
Know, I'm deeply disappointed in you for not having done well.
Richard Campbell [00:12:56]:
Okay. Except that would at least be some form of communication because what they were doing. Well, what they are doing is just turning it on anyway.
Paul Thurrott [00:13:05]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:13:05]:
So you can't possibly mean it. Well, you explicitly said no possibly two to three times. And it was like, you know what, we're just going to do it. And if there is no better version of insurtification than that, in my opinion. But this caused me over time to make a bunch of changes. First of all, and I should say, what are the problems? Right. Well, the problems are the folders that backs up by default are Desktop, which I use as a scratch space. I think a lot of other people do as well.
Paul Thurrott [00:13:33]:
Sure.
Richard Campbell [00:13:34]:
Documents folder, which of course people probably use or might use. And then the Pictures folder, which could have your entire library of photos you've ever taken in your entire life in it. Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:13:46]:
Yeah. Several hundred gigabytes just waiting there.
Richard Campbell [00:13:51]:
Yeah. Including things that you don't understand are there. So for example, on this particular computer, when I go to my Documents folder, I don't know why this is still allowed. We have the ability to virtualize the file system and redirect this stuff, but Microsoft does not do it. But on this computer, I have Battlefield, Call of Duty, PowerShell and Visual Studio 18 all have folders in my Documents folder, the local version. What the heck is that? And by the way, why would I ever want that synced to the cloud? This is specific to this computer. Anyway, among the many problems with this, if you, if this is not what you want, right, is that you would maybe not even realize it was happening. If you did realize it and you knew how to find it, you could go into OneDrive settings and turn that syncing, they call it backup.
Richard Campbell [00:14:39]:
But syncing off one folder at a time, you'd be harassed every time. And that it would leave the files in OneDrive and put a shortcut in the local folder that link to the one in OneDrive, which is just bad behavior. I'm turning this off because I don't want these things in onedrive near leaving them in onedrive. What happened to my files? So I noticed this over the Christmas break. There's been a change. And in their classic communication style, they have not explained it. But what Microsoft is doing now is everything I just said still happening except for the last thing. So if you know where to look and go into OneDrive settings and turn this thing off one folder at a time, it gives you two new screens.
Richard Campbell [00:15:28]:
The first one says, you know, it's sort of an are you sure Screen. Like you can continue backing up to that. That folder to OneDrive or you could stop the backup and choose where to keep the files. And if you choose where to keep the files and change it, it actually gives you the option to keep them in OneDrive or keep them on your PC. That's good. And like I said, this is a half step. But here's the couple of problems with this. First of all, I like that they did anything.
Richard Campbell [00:15:54]:
This is an improvement. If you have synced these folders without you knowing, you could, as I just said, have your entire photo library. Now you're telling it now you want that back on your PC and you do not want that back on your PC. If you don't have enough storage, it will give you an error. But.
Paul Thurrott [00:16:17]:
Most of the disk space.
Richard Campbell [00:16:19]:
Yeah, this is not a only bring back the files that were originally on my computer. It's everything that's in that folder in the cloud is now going to come to your computer. And that could be a problem. That could be a problem too. The other problem is sort of related to the recall issue last year, right? Not the security thing that everyone made up and wasn't real, but the fact that originally Microsoft was going to force you to opt out of recall. So as originally envisioned, you would buy a Copilot Plus PC and it would start taking snapshots all day long as you were doing stuff. And if you knew where to look, you could turn that off. You would opt out, right? In OneDrive's case, sorry, it's a negative option.
Richard Campbell [00:16:59]:
Yeah, so people complained and of the so called changes they made, that was the only really important one. They, they made it opt in. Which, yes, I think every AI feature, I think anything that's kind of a dramatic change when there's an alternative should be. You should be told about it. Right. And you could opt in, you could decide that's what you want. In this case, it appears that you can opt in because again, like I said, you have multiple places where you can see this, where it says, hey, do you want to, you want to use folder backup? You're like, no. But then it does it anyway.
Richard Campbell [00:17:34]:
So it's a fake opt in and then you can opt out later. It's like, plus you have to know where it is. And to me, this is the big problem. This is a hidden ui. I don't think that most average users would even know where to look. It's possible that most average users wouldn't care either, by the way, but for people like us listening to the show or me, certainly I have my own thing going on with OneDrive and the way I use it. And I do not want to use your folders, I do not want green eggs and ham, and I certainly don't want you to turn it on without telling me, which is insane, especially after I said no to it. The one thing I don't know for sure, and I actually reset two computers today so I could look at this, is if you bring up a new computer, 25H2, whatever, I don't know where it starts, whatever the latest version of the OS that's probably on the media creation tool that you get from Microsoft.com if you go to OneDrive immediately and go to Settings and then go into.
Richard Campbell [00:18:32]:
They call it backup. There's a little yellow bar that says we're going to back this up as soon as we're done syncing, you know, because it has to bring down the stub files. Right. If you say no, then it's possible. I can't verify this yet, I need to do this on more computers. But it's possible that it will never turn on backup. And again, this is a good half step forward. The problem is you have to know.
Paul Thurrott [00:18:57]:
To do it at that particular moment.
Richard Campbell [00:19:00]:
Yep. Right then. Well, you have, depending on how many files you have in OneDrive, you might have an hour, you might have two hours. It's not going to be too much time. But if you are a power user or enthusiast, whatever, and you bring up a new Windows 11 install, you know you've reset your computer, new computer, whatever it is, if you know to look. It's possible. So next week, I think by next week I'll know for sure, but.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:21]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [00:19:23]:
I'm not sure on that one. So I don't know what to call it. What do you call it? One step forward, 13 steps back. I don't know what that is, but it's a small improvement over the previous situation, I guess.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:35]:
Yeah. The other problem is you don't know if it's intentional or not, but this might be a bug.
Richard Campbell [00:19:43]:
It feels malicious to me, but. Yeah, fair enough.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:45]:
But this idea that you can only get to those. Don't back this up by having a transfer a sync running so that you can see we're going to back this up.
Richard Campbell [00:19:54]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, right. I see what you're saying. I think we're too far into this for me to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I hope you're right.
Paul Thurrott [00:20:04]:
I mean, that's why I thought it might be an accident. Like it might have been unintentional. Like eventually a PM's going to see if you're not supposed to do that.
Richard Campbell [00:20:13]:
I don't know. It's in line with their malicious behavior to date. But, you know, we'll see. We'll see. I could have held this one until the game section, but I thought it was important enough to mention this. So when Windows 11 on ARM shipped with the Snapdragon X based chips. Right. Back in June 24, 2024.
Richard Campbell [00:20:35]:
Yep. You. It came with the same Xbox app that everyone gets. Right. But you couldn't do anything with it except stream games from the cloud. If you had at that time Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Right. There was no ability to browse the store to download games to the computer.
Richard Campbell [00:20:56]:
It just wasn't there. And my thing at that time was like, guys, this should be a curated experience. Right. You should only see the games that are in that catalog that are compatible with this computer. It should. That's how that should work. Right. That's how stores work.
Paul Thurrott [00:21:11]:
That's also a real powerful experience for somebody buys ARM is seeing that store getting fuller and fuller and fuller over time.
Richard Campbell [00:21:16]:
Time, yeah. Instead of emptier and emptier.
Paul Thurrott [00:21:19]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:21:19]:
Which was the original experience. So I think, I want to say it was August, but sometime late last year they started providing the ability to browse and download games from the store if you're on Windows and arm. I guess I've forgotten this, but it was only in the insider program, so I did this and this was also tied to some other things like the ability to play Fortnite and other games on arm, right? Which I did back in November, whatever. But again through the Insider program. So maybe. I'm not sure how much of this is tied to Insider or not. So yeah, it's nice. You can go into the Xbox app and you can download games, but as I discovered, there was no curation, right.
Richard Campbell [00:22:01]:
So I could go download Call of Duty, right? Whatever the latest version is, install that whole damn thing. It takes a long time, right? Go through all the stuff and then you run it and it's like, this game doesn't run. It's like, why did you let me download it? You know, like that's stupid. So today Microsoft announced that the Xbox app is now fully available on Windows 11 on ARM. I don't understand. Like this was already there, but it's. Because now it's available to everybody, right? It's outside of the Insider program. So it works like it did last, whatever.
Richard Campbell [00:22:29]:
August, November, pick your time frame, it doesn't really matter. Except they did a step toward curation. Well, no, it's definitely curation, but they're not hiding the apps that will not install. But what they are doing is delivering yet another one of these kind of performance. You remember the, the Windows Performance Analyzer, whatever it was called, would give you like a score across, you know, your cpu, gpu, disk speed, yada, yada, yada, back invested time frame, which by the way is still hidden in your computer. But they used to have this score, right? And so what they're doing now is for each title they're providing a Windows performance fit. I don't know if it's a number or a checkbox or whatever it is, I haven't seen it yet. But that will indicate whether or not this game will play well on any given device based on hardware specs.
Richard Campbell [00:23:13]:
But this is particularly important on ARM because most, well, I'm going to say most games don't work well. Microsoft says 85% of the games in the Game Pass catalog are compatible with ARM based PCs.
Paul Thurrott [00:23:26]:
Maybe not telling you what's emulated and what's native.
Richard Campbell [00:23:30]:
Well, I mean, almost all of it's going to be emulated, but that's what I assume.
Paul Thurrott [00:23:34]:
Yeah, but, but again, these are all good. They've got to have a benchmark somewhere internally about how many. Of course they've got to do their conversions like.
Richard Campbell [00:23:43]:
Right. So one of the issues with arm, one of the few issues really is that between Microsoft and Qualcomm, you would think they would just provide this to the world, right? They would have that kind of thing and they don't. There's a third party that has a website you can go to that list whether games are compatible or not. It's completely out of date. It hasn't. It's. I'm sure it's updated all the time, but every time I look at it, there's no information for games I'm literally playing at that minute. And so it's a little out of date.
Richard Campbell [00:24:10]:
And I feel like this is something that should be in the box in Windows and this feature gets us close to it. It's close enough. So if you're in the app, you know, the Xbox app and you look at some game you're running on Windows and arm, it says yes, this is going to run great, that's fine. Like it's better than nothing. It's better than what it was.
Paul Thurrott [00:24:29]:
So you know another stuff they should be highlighting this. This is a commitment to the customer. This is how you tell us that you're serious about arm.
Richard Campbell [00:24:37]:
This should be a thing when you're in ARM that just says here's a page with all the games that work great. You know, just show that, yeah, this is going to get better with Xbox.
Paul Thurrott [00:24:45]:
I guarantee a good experience for customers who are arguably still taking a flyer on a one generation processor.
Richard Campbell [00:24:51]:
I know. Which by the way is a miracle of all kinds of performance, reliability, efficiency, whatever. It's a miracle. But. But games are special guys. I mean, you know, we've talked about this.
Paul Thurrott [00:25:03]:
This could have been a heartbeat, right, of how things are getting better.
Richard Campbell [00:25:08]:
I'm not going to, I'm not. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I'm not defending this because I feel like this should have shipped on day one, but it's possible that just from a timing perspective, it just wasn't ready and we can't hold off and releasing chips with new computers. It's a whole industry here. So they had did what they did and like I said, I'm not defending it. But I didn't like it. I complained about it. But this is better.
Richard Campbell [00:25:28]:
So it is better. And X2 will make it better too. Whenever those games ship soon.
Paul Thurrott [00:25:32]:
That's what I'm holding on tight for X2 like that.
Richard Campbell [00:25:36]:
Yeah, I want.
Paul Thurrott [00:25:36]:
I'll be an early mover on the action and then I'll probably get punished for it, but I'm okay with that.
Richard Campbell [00:25:40]:
Yeah, I don't think so. I. X1 is so great. I Mean, yeah. My favorite is the lowest end first generation Snapdragon X you can get. It's awesome. It's awesome for what it is.
Paul Thurrott [00:25:53]:
For the price is crazy.
Richard Campbell [00:25:54]:
No, not for what it is. No. I mean literally just as a. A laptop that I use every single day to get work done without caveats. Yeah, it's awesome. And that's the lowest end version there are.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:06]:
There are very few times you get to hear Paul Thurrock giggle but one of the ones you can is when.
Richard Campbell [00:26:10]:
You open this up in person because every time the.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:12]:
That's weeks old that he had to touch it in a few weeks and he opens it up and it's right where he left. Like, like that'll give the giggle.
Richard Campbell [00:26:18]:
Just like that. Yep. Because look, the computer I'm using right now which is the highest end i9 something. Whatever stupid intel, whatever this thing is, it's. You play roulette. Every time you open it. I wonder what's going to happen, you know. Yeah, it doesn't.
Richard Campbell [00:26:33]:
Doesn't come on I guess after the power button or it's coming out of hibernation for some reason. I didn't even know that was enabled. Or you know, you just never know what you're going to get or the camera doesn't see you or it's a nightmare.
Leo Laporte [00:26:44]:
Well.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:44]:
And you're hitting your sort of thoughts on the rain. Point is it's something's going to come up but you don't know if it's actually.
Richard Campbell [00:26:50]:
Well, like something's going to come up.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:53]:
Cancer is. You should reboot.
Richard Campbell [00:26:54]:
It may be a Balrog. I don't know. Yeah, it's. It's going to. Yeah. If it's an intel computer.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:59]:
I can't tell you how many times I've had a machine tell me. I. I shall not pass. Right. Like that.
Richard Campbell [00:27:04]:
Yes, you shall not sign in. Actually that did just happen last week. So. Yep. So yeah, there'll be more Xbox stuff later but I, I thought that was worth noting. It's. This is a big deal. This is.
Richard Campbell [00:27:18]:
This is a nice, nice. This is a big step forward and.
Paul Thurrott [00:27:21]:
It could be a bigger deal. They really could be talking about this more.
Richard Campbell [00:27:26]:
Yeah, I mean this is one. This is what all those people that were talking about the ATM machine. Where are you when this happened? Like this is actual news.
Paul Thurrott [00:27:32]:
Yeah. The thing is, if I'm a, if I'm a consumer retailer of PCs and I've got these ARM machines to sell, this is the story you want to pitch to consumers. You're going to love this. I mean, the only reason I can think they're not is because they currently think that the user doesn't realize that some games won't run.
Richard Campbell [00:27:50]:
We're stuck in this kind of. I don't know, hopefully it's not an infinite loop, but it's like a non virtuous cycle where people understand the intel brand. So they're like, obviously I want that kind of computer. And they're like, there's this other thing that's actually way better in all these extremely important matrix or ways. But it's possible if you want to play high end games with a dedicated GPU or whatever, something like that, like it's not going to work. And they're like, yeah, I don't want that. I just want the thing I know. And it's like, you know what? The thing you don't know in this case is way better than that piece of junk you do know.
Paul Thurrott [00:28:24]:
Yeah, well, and again, I'm feeling like you guys aren't talking about this because you believe that the customer doesn't know enough to know. That might even be a problem. And I really, that upsets me. Like you should not count on the ignorance of your customers to make sales.
Richard Campbell [00:28:37]:
When intel announced their latest. Well, again, it's not just see, it's this. What I mean by it's a cycle. So it's the whole industry, right? From the customer to the retailer to the PC maker to the chip maker to Microsoft and back, right? It's like a, we're all at fault here, right? And you know, intel just announced the Panther Lake chips which absolutely have huge GPO advantages, still have reliability issues based on one computer. So let's not get too excited but you know, we'll see if it's really there. But one of the things they announced was like this thing's going out on like 125,000 different computer models or something where you know, Qualcomm will have, you know, 6 or 12 or something and AMD has like 25. And it's like, yeah, it's not because it's better, it's because this is the inertia from their dominance of the industry where they were paying off PC makers. And that's all this is.
Richard Campbell [00:29:29]:
It's literally just we keep partnering with the same company who was terrible, but they give us so much money that this is all anyone gets to know about. So when Best Buy has an ad on tv it's all intel, dun, dun, dun dun. And then intel advertises Lenovo advertises whatever it is and it's all intel and it's just a shame. Sorry, am I going on too long? Until era Leo arrived. Like Leo's got the yellow flag out, like he's ready to penalty.
Leo Laporte [00:30:01]:
I just thought this would be a good time to long Hammer. You are watching Windows Weekly with Paul Surratt and Richard Campbell. I just, you know, I thought I'd just say that gives you a chance to wet your whistles, have a little haggis. And we continue on.
Richard Campbell [00:30:18]:
Yes. So, two bits of Windows Insider news. So, last week, probably late last week, I don't recall, but Microsoft issued a single build to the beta channel, which, if you recall, has. It's been beta and dev on the same thing for a long time. Yeah, lately that's been 25H2.
Paul Thurrott [00:30:41]:
So canary beta only kind of a big deal.
Richard Campbell [00:30:44]:
Yeah, that's. That itself is news. They didn't say anything about this, by the way. No. When beta and dev have been on the same tree or whatever. Branch or whatever you want to call it, branch, they have never done this before. So I think this is notable. We know that Canary switched over to what they're calling 26H1 late last year, and they've given us nothing new there so far.
Richard Campbell [00:31:11]:
But the fact that Dev did not get this exact same build suggests that they soon will be going to 26H1 as well. Right. It's not a huge update, but if you've ever gone into the Settings app and gone into accounts, anything that triggers a dialogue, a change account type, like if you're going from an MSA to a local account, or in reverse, or anything or account info, like you want to change your username, whatever it is, whatever comes up in that dialog has been a windowed version of a UI that debuted in Windows 8. I'm not kidding. So, in Windows 8, those were full screen experiences. In Windows 10, they shrunk them down to Windows, but they kept the UI from Windows 8. Windows 11 has done the same, and they've been slowly modernizing some of these things, and so they have, in this build, modernized those dialogues that appear within the accounts area of the Settings app, if that makes sense.
Paul Thurrott [00:32:10]:
Okay.
Richard Campbell [00:32:11]:
Not a big deal. Right. But kind of interesting.
Paul Thurrott [00:32:14]:
You were mentioning Canary when I interrupted, and I'm hoping you're going to say something derogatory about Canary, because it makes sense. Me happy every time.
Richard Campbell [00:32:20]:
Yeah, what I would say derogatory about Canary is that they have added no new features yet, and I don't know what they're doing.
Paul Thurrott [00:32:26]:
So it's still an orphan is what you're telling me.
Richard Campbell [00:32:28]:
I don't get it. Yeah, okay. I think those things will start appearing in depth actually. The next. The little next. The first little hint that may be something new. Although I don't believe it'll be unique to 26H1. We'll see.
Paul Thurrott [00:32:38]:
I'm just hoping that the reorg we know there's reorg going inside of Windows is going to land at insiders in some way and say either take Canary away or give it a freaking purpose. I would argue probably take it away because it's just no reason.
Richard Campbell [00:32:51]:
I don't. Yeah, I don't know. I want to believe that there is going to be positive change from this, but I don't know. I haven't seen much evidence of that so far.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:04]:
You know I have. That's a big fire hose. And they try to do it, you know, through Christmas. So I gotta give Peven some slack. Like I want this to come true that this gets reorganized.
Richard Campbell [00:33:18]:
Okay. So here's. I can give you a reason to give up all hope. So I was really excited when what used to be the Windows Phone team took over Windows. Big Windows. Right. So this was Terry Myers and Joe Bilfield. Terry Myers guys, right?
Paul Thurrott [00:33:32]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:33:33]:
And I just felt like their heart collectively was in the right place and they did a lot of things right pretty early on like returning to the desktop, focus from the touch first focus, etc.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:44]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:33:45]:
But the thing we didn't understand right up front was that Terry Meyerson was tasked with a horrible thing which was you need to make Windows make sense within the Microsoft of the day, which was the cloud focused Microsoft where it's about subscription services and online services and that resulted in Windows as a service. But also the crap where the ads, the tracking, all the terrible stuff that we still deal with today. So that was like the little asterisk at the bottom of that story. Yeah, I would add the same.
Paul Thurrott [00:34:16]:
It sounds like they're also pressing him on seat. Revenue doesn't count anymore. You need recurring revenue, right?
Richard Campbell [00:34:21]:
We need to.
Paul Thurrott [00:34:21]:
Because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows. So you're never going to make money on that again. Show us another one.
Richard Campbell [00:34:26]:
Only one guy who doesn't matter said that. But we need more revenue per user in a world in which we're not able to charge people for upgrades because no one would ever pay for that. But yet we do want them on that latest version. We're going to give them Windows for free, the update. But in Return, you're going to do all this other terrible stuff. And you know, look, it's fair to say it has not worked out. So I think the same caveat applies to pavan, right? Which is now we're in the AI era and we all know how this has worked out, right? Copilot Everywhere, all the AI features everywhere. Copilot Plus PCs with these features that, honestly, some of them were pretty cool, but they're relegated only to those computers.
Richard Campbell [00:35:09]:
So you have to buy a new computer. Has to be a specific kind of computer. So he's still operating with sort of guardrails, right? Yeah. And I hope you're right. I hope it can happen.
Paul Thurrott [00:35:18]:
I think he's got teams with more clout around him, you know, looking at folks like Office and so forth that are demanding things of Windows, that. And he can only push back so hard too.
Richard Campbell [00:35:29]:
Right?
Paul Thurrott [00:35:29]:
Like, this is.
Richard Campbell [00:35:30]:
No, I know, but that's what I mean. I, you know, by the time Terry Meyerson wound down, it was pretty obvious that he wasn't able to do what he wanted to do because he was constrained by these requirements. And I'm worried that this will happen to this guy. So we'll see.
Paul Thurrott [00:35:44]:
And again, I'd also go, this is part of Windows no longer being the center of the company. You have to learn how to convince other teams to play. And the Windows team never had to do that before. It doesn't surprise me that it's going to take some goes to finally get a place where it's like they get.
Richard Campbell [00:36:03]:
We're 15 years into this. I mean, this is, you know, this has been happening for a while.
Paul Thurrott [00:36:07]:
I mean, your problem, Paul, is that too many of those folks there are still the same guys. Right? Especially on the window side. Right. That's the old Osterman line. It's like unless they got eight wives and a cocaine habit, they don't need the money and they're still working. No, but I can't convince them of anything.
Richard Campbell [00:36:21]:
Right. But the guys who were the champions of the universe at the time, like the Brian Valentines, those guys are long gone. So when Windows literally was ruling the world, that was a completely different org and a different mindset. And the people who are there now adopted that. But they were never on top of the world. So I don't.
Paul Thurrott [00:36:41]:
They. They're second generation bonobos from the banana experiment. I agree, but. Okay, you know, but that's. But say that again.
Leo Laporte [00:36:52]:
Second generation bonobos.
Paul Thurrott [00:36:55]:
Do you know this story? This is a classic, right?
Richard Campbell [00:36:57]:
No.
Paul Thurrott [00:36:57]:
The bonobo being a Very this very clever ape and quite emotional and expressive. So the demonstration is. And actually you do this a bunch of other creatures. They put a stepladder in a room with bananas at the top of the step ladder. And as soon as the bonobos touch the stepladder to go after the bananas, they turn on sprinklers. And bonobos hate getting wet. So they quickly learn, you touch those bananas, you're going to get us all wet. And so now they start taking bonobos out that have had that experience putting new bonobos in.
Paul Thurrott [00:37:25]:
And every one of the new ones goes immediately to go for the bananas and the others beat the hell out of them because they don't want to get wet.
Leo Laporte [00:37:31]:
No, don't go to the bananas.
Paul Thurrott [00:37:33]:
Exactly. Until eventually they've removed all of the bonobos that ever got wet. But the ones that are there still beat the hell out of every newcomer chairs to touch that ladder.
Richard Campbell [00:37:44]:
Wow.
Paul Thurrott [00:37:45]:
Yeah. That's.
Leo Laporte [00:37:46]:
What have we learned here?
Richard Campbell [00:37:48]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:37:48]:
Bonobos communication.
Paul Thurrott [00:37:51]:
That 15 years, 15 years on is not that long for cultural change. That's my point.
Leo Laporte [00:37:57]:
Second generation bonobos, kids.
Paul Thurrott [00:37:59]:
Yeah. And that's why I said, okay, I get it. You're at second generation bonobos, but they're still beating the hell out of each other.
Richard Campbell [00:38:05]:
I don't know. I don't know. Anyone joining the Windows team from 2015 on had to kind of understand you were the third world nation. I don't, I don't know.
Paul Thurrott [00:38:13]:
No. But it also takes time to grow up. A set of leaders know how to work across those teams the way a bunch of other teams do. Like I, I am empathetic to the problem of finding their places.
Richard Campbell [00:38:25]:
I am not. So I, I just, I don't. These people should not believe that they run anything. I, I, I, this doesn't mean they.
Paul Thurrott [00:38:34]:
Know how to make it work either.
Richard Campbell [00:38:35]:
Right. So we'll see. I mean, I, like I said, I want him to, I like this guy. I want him to succeed. I want Windows to be better.
Paul Thurrott [00:38:42]:
Well, and, and the whole I'm unifying the teams thing was the best thing I'd heard in a long time on Windows. As a guy who's not a wild Windows fan in place the first, first place. Right. It's like, okay, that's the right thing to do is pull the teams together.
Richard Campbell [00:38:54]:
Okay. In the middle of all these other features in these builds, who cares? All right. So today Microsoft released new updates to Notepad and Paint in the Insider program. But this is the little interesting.
Leo Laporte [00:39:09]:
How much better can these apps get? That's My question, so much better.
Richard Campbell [00:39:14]:
But only in the Canary, we've got to have. Jesus.
Paul Thurrott [00:39:16]:
Could I just get through this for Notepad? Is this.
Richard Campbell [00:39:18]:
No, I don't want to finish the sentence here, please, because this will answer questions I in the Canary and Dev channels. So that. I'm not saying that that's never happened before, but that is interesting to me because that 26h one bit. Right. So the only. The asterisk here is that, of course. 26H1, 25H2, 24H2. Well, it's still supported.
Richard Campbell [00:39:40]:
Whatever. Actually might not be, but whatever it is, they're all going to have the same features anyway. Right. So it's possible we'll just see these features come to other parts of the Insider program and then just to stable. And it will have nothing to do with 26H1. But I thought that was kind of interesting.
Paul Thurrott [00:39:55]:
Yeah. And it is an update in Canary synced dev.
Richard Campbell [00:39:59]:
Yeah. I mean, sometimes you'll see app updates that go across all channels. And that's when I saw this. I thought, that must be it. But then it said Dev and Canary, and I was like, oh, that's again, I'm not sure that's unique. That's interesting, because there was a time.
Paul Thurrott [00:40:14]:
When we thought Canary was pre dev. Right. The order was Canary dev data.
Richard Campbell [00:40:18]:
There was a time when it was. I mean, this is the thing. They. They kind of. At one point, there were definitions, and then they just erased them, you know. Yeah. They got very fond of saying that none of these channels equate to any version of Windows. And then they sort of backstepped on that because, you know, now they do.
Richard Campbell [00:40:36]:
Some of them do, right?
Paul Thurrott [00:40:37]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:40:38]:
But some of them don't. So Canary does not, supposedly. No, that's not true. But Canary now does. So Canary, for the first time since that change, now is very specifically 26H1. Yeah, whatever that means. This is confusing.
Paul Thurrott [00:40:52]:
It would be nice to have some guidance. Yeah. But you study it way harder than anybody else. But you may have actual guidance. That'd be something.
Richard Campbell [00:40:59]:
There used to be a thing where you could tunnel into the internals of windows and you could find stuff out, and you'd be like, I've come bearing light. I know the answer. And now I've just turned into, like, a palm reader. I have no idea. There's no science behind this. It's just, you know, whatever.
Paul Thurrott [00:41:14]:
I, too, am staring into the crystal and seeing my own reflection.
Richard Campbell [00:41:17]:
Yeah. And I burned my eyeballs out, and I don't even know what's happening anymore. But the Notepad update includes more Markdown syntax, right? So they've added markdown support already and, like, strike through nested lists, that kind of thing. There's also. They've added so many features to Notepad, they need a welcome experience, which I know is going to rub everyone exactly the right way. So when you first launch the app and then later you can go to it from a menu, it will tell you what's new in the app, right? Because there's a lot of new stuff, including. Okay, no, sir.
Leo Laporte [00:41:53]:
Just wondering how Mary Jo Phil Foley might.
Richard Campbell [00:41:58]:
I can tell you how she feels because she complains about this to me privately now instead of on the air. She's not happy about it. But the thing is, with the exception of tabs, which you can disable as a functionally but not as a ui, like there'll always be a tab. You can disable all this stuff, right? So if you don't like the Copilot stuff, if you don't like Markdown support, if you don't want it doing spell checking or grammar checking, whatever it does, you can turn all that off. So it's opt out now. We're going to beat that term to death. But I use this app every single day. I use Paint every single day, too.
Richard Campbell [00:42:40]:
And I don't just have a problem with this. I think these apps are great. They've done a really nice job with these apps.
Paul Thurrott [00:42:48]:
Is it a Copilot plus PC experience that makes it great, or is it anybody?
Richard Campbell [00:42:53]:
No. Well, I mean, no, actually. So to date, all of the features they've added to Notepad, not Paint, but Notepad are for everybody. If you have a Copilot plus PC, some of those features can be run locally, which is kind of interesting. But that's. So taking in that reverse direction, Paint is a lot like Copilot PC itself in that it is confusing. And if you said, okay, they've added 20 new features in the past year, which is probably an exaggeration, 10 or 12 of them require a copilot plus PC. So the experience you see, the options you see will differ if you have a normal computer or if you have a Copilot plus PC.
Paul Thurrott [00:43:31]:
And is that specifically mpu? Like, is this MPU utilization? That's exactly.
Richard Campbell [00:43:35]:
It is. Yep. Okay. Because, you know, think about it. It means graphics app, right? So, yeah, one of the things I'll talk about in the back of the book is the APIs that are behind all this stuff, right? And when it comes to AI and you have an App yourself a third party app developer or you're the guy that makes Notepad or Paint or whatever. The top level APIs, the big APIs or the, the APIs with the most functionality, I guess are all text and image related. Right? Think about it. I mean, think about what it is that things like recall or Click to do do, which is interact with what you see on the screen, which is comprised of graphics and text.
Richard Campbell [00:44:18]:
Right. And if it's a graphic that is text in it, they can make that into text. Right. So it's. This is where all the action is occurring. So anyway, the Paint update, I believe. No, I do know. Okay, I'm sorry, let me, let me restate.
Richard Campbell [00:44:32]:
There are two new features. One does require a Copilot plus PC. The one that doesn't is something called. This is such a stupid. Well, I guess if you're a graphics guy, this makes sense. It's a fill tolerance slider. So in other words, you're going to fill something over an existing image or maybe in a new layer and it's going to have some level of, I think basically transparency, if that makes sense. So you could do like a fade or something with that, you know, that new part of the image.
Richard Campbell [00:44:59]:
And then if you have a Copilot plus PC, and God help me, if you were looking for that one feature that would prove to the world that this thing is a productivity demon, it's this.
Paul Thurrott [00:45:10]:
This feature is called Dynamic Gradient.
Richard Campbell [00:45:12]:
Nope, no, the next one. It's called Coloring Book.
Paul Thurrott [00:45:16]:
Yeah, that's why I paid for our Copilot plus PC.
Richard Campbell [00:45:19]:
Yeah, it is. And this is what you can do. You can prompt it and say, I want a picture of a teddy bear. And it will create a. A black and white outline version of a teddy bear that you can then color in like a child.
Paul Thurrott [00:45:30]:
Nice.
Richard Campbell [00:45:31]:
Yep. I know, I know, I know. Listen, guys, I know you're rushing out to the store to buy one. Just let us get through the rest of the show before you do that. I know it's exciting.
Paul Thurrott [00:45:41]:
It only gets more exciting from here.
Richard Campbell [00:45:43]:
It's crazy, but this is like whatever.
Paul Thurrott [00:45:46]:
Anyway, it's the naming.
Richard Campbell [00:45:47]:
Look, I'm not known as a negative fellow.
Leo Laporte [00:45:54]:
But.
Richard Campbell [00:45:56]:
I know I can't get through this sentence. I really like Notepad and paint in Windows 11 right now. I really do. I think those. I think these are great app updates.
Leo Laporte [00:46:05]:
Is it. Is paint.com over that? Is that you paint on Net or.
Richard Campbell [00:46:10]:
No, no, it's still. It's still in on. It's still a going concern. It's still a viable. I don't know if it's Photoshop level, but something between Paint and Photoshop maybe and Notepad plus.
Leo Laporte [00:46:20]:
Plus Still.
Richard Campbell [00:46:21]:
Still thing. Yeah, if you like, you know, taking it to 11 or something. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [00:46:26]:
But if you like simplicity, it's the paint.
Richard Campbell [00:46:28]:
Well, that's the thing. You know, if you want me to complain about Notepad, I won't. But I will point out that they haven't added some power user features that I do feel like Notepad would benefit from. For example, the ability to display line numbers.
Paul Thurrott [00:46:43]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [00:46:44]:
That are in Notepad and in other text editors. So it's possible we'll get those kind of updates in time as well.
Paul Thurrott [00:46:54]:
I don't know if I need line numbers. I'm in VS code.
Richard Campbell [00:46:58]:
Yeah, no, that's fair. I'm going to just move. I keep saying this. The text mode text editor they made, the one that runs on the command line edit or whatever, I'm just going to start using. I'm going to literally regress to stall command line.
Paul Thurrott [00:47:13]:
What's old is new, my friend. What's old is new. Next you'll be setting your screen to 8020 by 25.
Richard Campbell [00:47:17]:
I'll tell you what I don't need, Richard, is a freaking mouse. Okay?
Leo Laporte [00:47:22]:
Children should say that I've become Mr. Tui. I am all about the Tuis. I don't want gooies. I want Tuis to text.
Richard Campbell [00:47:29]:
I want it to be less. I don't need the nougaty center. I just want to get stuff done.
Leo Laporte [00:47:34]:
Yeah, I'm a fan.
Paul Thurrott [00:47:36]:
I. I appreciate it.
Richard Campbell [00:47:40]:
Burke asks, what adult needs a coloring book? I would just say two things. One, children use Windows 2. But also there are a lot of adults that are children. Right? There are adults that are dressing up as Obi Wan Kenobi, walking around in the world like idiots. Or, you know, we've regressed as a society. This is actually. This is right on point, I think. Yeah, I'm never going to use it, but you know, whatever.
Richard Campbell [00:48:04]:
It's. I don't know. Maybe you could take an image and turn it into a coloring book image. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [00:48:09]:
So I wonder if I should bring this up. I probably shouldn't. I'm going to make Mad Paul mad.
Richard Campbell [00:48:15]:
Listen, you kid, there's nothing you could do to put me over the edge at this point.
Leo Laporte [00:48:19]:
This comes up from time to time and it's something actually I've said many times, Mason Remilay, who's a computer guy, he's been around he does games, he's been an instructor says prediction. This is in his new blog. Microsoft is going to do the funniest thing imaginable.
Richard Campbell [00:48:37]:
Okay, I'm in danger.
Leo Laporte [00:48:41]:
He says.
Richard Campbell [00:48:42]:
That's a great graphic by the way, isn't it?
Leo Laporte [00:48:44]:
It's Ralph Wiggins.
Richard Campbell [00:48:44]:
I love Ralph.
Leo Laporte [00:48:45]:
Yeah, I'm in danger.
Richard Campbell [00:48:47]:
We're married now, right. I love Rob. It's like duck, duck, duck, duck, duck. And he never stops, you know.
Leo Laporte [00:48:53]:
Anyway, by the way, the hottest skill right now in Claude code in the AI dev world is called Ralph Wiggum.
Richard Campbell [00:49:00]:
I love it.
Leo Laporte [00:49:01]:
Which is great. I love it.
Richard Campbell [00:49:02]:
I love it. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:49:04]:
He says, I predict within 15 years Microsoft will discontinue Windows in favor of a Windows themed Linux distribution.
Richard Campbell [00:49:12]:
So by the way, this comes up every six months.
Leo Laporte [00:49:14]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:49:15]:
So I'm not sure why he thought he would just do this now. First of all that would be extremely doable. I think if we had had this conversation even just a couple of years ago, I would have said you could totally thing I've ever heard of.
Paul Thurrott [00:49:28]:
Sure.
Leo Laporte [00:49:29]:
Linux is now really support Windows PCs very well.
Richard Campbell [00:49:33]:
So if you think back, we just talked about this so you don't have to think back too hard. If you can't remember this you might want to go to the doctor. But at the start of the show we talked about Windows and ARM and how the only little Achilles heel and it only matters to some people is the game stuff. Right. For it to run games it has to emulate them and it does surprisingly well. And it's going to get even better in X2 like we said. But that's been the thing they've been kind of working on to kind of get it there. Linux has been doing that for 20 years.
Richard Campbell [00:50:02]:
And so Wine and the stuff that Steam, what's the Steam emulator called? Something like Prism with Proton. Right. We've gotten to the point where that stuff actually is pretty mature. The other thing that changed and this helped the Mac is that you know, 20 years ago compatibility with Windows desktop apps like Arbitrary, any app was super important. But with the move to the web and web technologies and things like apps just kind of work everywhere now you'll see things, you know, you can run Edge on Linux or whatever. Right. I mean we are at the point there's a Microsoft engineer. I can't think someone will know this who has a Linux distribution that's very specifically looks exactly like Windows 11.
Richard Campbell [00:50:45]:
Right. To kind of ease that transition we have Linux distributions like elementary, but even more so Zorin OS that are Going after Windows users. They released their latest version back I think in November and had a million new customers over the first week. The biggest adoption they've ever seen, ever. So yeah, I mean all of us have. I refer to this as workflow. It's maybe not the right term, but we all have this list of apps we use that we're comfortable with. We all have a list of services that we use that we need to get our work done every day.
Richard Campbell [00:51:21]:
And then we have our way of doing things, which is keyboard shortcuts and menus and blah blah, blah, whatever. And the bar on that for me has always been pretty high. It's gotten a lot lower. And honestly the primary sticking point for me is Cloud Document Sync that actually just works like files on demand. And I know there are third party things that sort of work. But if Synology Drive would release a client, I'm sorry, Synology would release a Synology Drive client that worked on Linux and worked like it does on the Mac and Windows, that would, I mean that would chip away the only really big thing remaining for me. And I'm kind of a Windows guy if you're not paying attention.
Paul Thurrott [00:52:07]:
But I think we've let. The corollary is also true. Maybe Windows is the GUI that Linux has been looking for all its life.
Richard Campbell [00:52:13]:
Nice.
Paul Thurrott [00:52:14]:
It could be two have to be true for this to really make sense.
Richard Campbell [00:52:20]:
So when I the obvious choice for someone like me or anyone who's frustrated with Windows and this is true today, it was true 10, 15, whatever years ago would be like just get a Mac, you know. But I've owned more Macs than most Mac fans and I love the hardware, I always have. There's just something about it that I just hate. I mean I literally viscerally hate. And if Linux could get their act together somehow and I say Linux like it's a thing. There are like 2000 distributions, they all have different app package formats and all kinds of UIs and it's a mess. But I don't, I think there's something there because the keyboard shortcuts are the same and it has, you know, similarities that are just small. But people don't think about maybe I don't mind a different ui, that's not an issue as far as like just the style of graphics or whatever.
Richard Campbell [00:53:18]:
But the app stuff is not as big of a deal.
Leo Laporte [00:53:21]:
A lot of Linux distributions ape Windows, frankly.
Richard Campbell [00:53:25]:
It's a thing.
Leo Laporte [00:53:25]:
Even Gnome, which is kind of the default, often the default desktop for Linux is very Windows like Yep, yep. I mean I think GUIs have kind of converged. Even Mac has become more and more Windows. Like they've kind of converged on this.
Richard Campbell [00:53:41]:
Yeah, I mean, fundamental. There's something. I think one. Well, I don't. Literally one of the biggest stories last year was Apple making the iPad more like a computer, if you wanted it. And I think that might be enough for a lot of people. I think that kind of thing's simpler. You know, it's still familiar.
Richard Campbell [00:53:57]:
We've all used iPhones for a long time or whatever.
Leo Laporte [00:53:59]:
But Microsoft's been down that road and has turned back. Right. They don't want to do it. That kind of touch.
Richard Campbell [00:54:05]:
Well, they never had a successful mobile platform that would make those. As the inspiration for something. Yeah, right. And that didn't go well. Right. Because that the phone they made was not popular. Making something like an iPhone or Android that works on a tablet, a desktop, big screen, whatever. I think makes sense because there are billions of people literally who are used to that and maybe even like it, you know, but I don't know.
Richard Campbell [00:54:30]:
We've gotten pretty far in inertia so far. So, you know, we'll see.
Leo Laporte [00:54:35]:
Anyway, I would submit inertia is the whole problem with Windows.
Richard Campbell [00:54:40]:
As we said, inertia is the problem with most of our world. For sure.
Leo Laporte [00:54:42]:
With the world.
Richard Campbell [00:54:43]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:54:43]:
Maybe that's all right.
Richard Campbell [00:54:45]:
Yep. Yeah. No, I mean, I mean we're well past this mattering anymore. But in the early 2000s when Steve Jobs was around and they were working on Mac OS X and blah, blah, blah, whatever, you know, their problem was inertia. You know, they had something that was technically better than Windows for a long time, visually has arguably always been superior. But they didn't have that user base and they didn't have that app base and they didn't have businesses and that's the inertia that they didn't get. But now they have an iPhone and now they do have that inertia and they could make that work for them, you know, we'll see. Anyway, you didn't upset me.
Richard Campbell [00:55:22]:
I'm listening.
Leo Laporte [00:55:23]:
And actually I'm kind of at Mac Apostate now. I've kind of.
Richard Campbell [00:55:27]:
Because that's an interesting.
Leo Laporte [00:55:28]:
So in shittified.
Richard Campbell [00:55:30]:
Okay.
Leo Laporte [00:55:30]:
And that's the problem I have with both Windows and Mac is these companies now are really.
Richard Campbell [00:55:35]:
So how is the. See, I don't see this so much on the Mac, so. Because I don't use it that much. But how is. You know, compared to Windows, Windows is easier. Like I just talked about Folder backup. Right. Like, how is the Mac, how would you say in Certified? Like what, what are, what are the top problems on the Mac from your perspective?
Leo Laporte [00:55:55]:
Well, the big one that's current is this UI that they are imposing on everybody, Liquid glass, which is the rounded.
Richard Campbell [00:56:03]:
Window corners that aren't really rounded.
Leo Laporte [00:56:04]:
And yeah, it's a failure. It reduces accessibility. It doesn't look good. It's just there's all sorts of issues. And this is an example of a company imposing its will on its users. And unlike Windows, it's Apple's way of the highway. You can't, you know, Windows, you can really customize. You can make it look completely different if you want.
Leo Laporte [00:56:22]:
You know, that's why Stardock exists. There's no Stardock for the Mac. You do it their way and there's no other way to do it. So that's problem number one. Problem number two is actually something Steve Gibson was talking about last week on security now and extensively for good reasons for security. Both companies as well as Google with Android have really locked down their developers to the point where if your app is not signed, buy a certificate from those companies, it will not run.
Richard Campbell [00:56:58]:
Yeah, this is a problem with desktop platforms because they predate this mobile world with app stores and the lock in. And Microsoft tried this with Windows 10 S most famously. But Apple has an app as a Mac app store. Right. But they own the developer program. You can't just go buy Turbo Pascal for the Mac and make apps. Well, maybe you could.
Leo Laporte [00:57:21]:
You could. I can. I have. But you have to jump through hoops. You have to, you have to have. There's command line tools you have to use to sign your stuff. It's just, it's just an extra speed bump. And then finally, Anthony Nielsen's bringing this up.
Leo Laporte [00:57:37]:
I know that one really scares me is the creator Studio, which is a subscription.
Richard Campbell [00:57:42]:
I know I had a guy ask me about, I do a Friday Q and A thing and someone thought this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And I said, this is a disaster.
Leo Laporte [00:57:50]:
This is the beginning of the subscription.
Richard Campbell [00:57:52]:
Just from the perspective of you have this thing that used to be called Ilife, which is photos and imovie and whatever. And then you have something called iWork, which are the productivity apps. But now we have these pro level tools, Final Cut Pro, et cetera, and you're making a subscription that includes all of these things together for some reason. What is this?
Leo Laporte [00:58:12]:
Word processor is now for creators, the.
Richard Campbell [00:58:14]:
Only thing they have in common is an Apple Apple logo. And then on the other Side some Apple fan who can't throw his money at Apple hard enough.
Leo Laporte [00:58:20]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [00:58:21]:
You know, that's the initiative for a reason. To throw more money at you every single month for the rest of my life.
Leo Laporte [00:58:27]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [00:58:28]:
For things I will never use.
Leo Laporte [00:58:30]:
That's the case part is Apple has suddenly said, you know what? We make a lot of money on services. We make a lot of money with ecosystem.
Richard Campbell [00:58:36]:
And by the way, that will slow. How do we prevent that from happening? This is a, this is a bald grab and I don't like it. It's not that some of the features they're talking about aren't interesting. It's that you used to be able to buy this thing called. Well, you still can today. But that's going to go away. You know it's going away. Final Cut pro.
Richard Campbell [00:58:53]:
Buy it. 300 bucks. You own it, use it for several years, you buy the next version, whatever. But they don't want that. They want that per month, per user, every for the rest of your life. And they're going to start adding features that you're going to need and you're going to be stuck.
Leo Laporte [00:59:07]:
You'll see this. Their quarterly results come out on nine days.
Richard Campbell [00:59:11]:
Yeah, it's going to be.
Leo Laporte [00:59:13]:
And you will see them talk about. What is the term, Richard, for revenue per user?
Richard Campbell [00:59:19]:
Well, it's, it's, it's literally average. It's ap. APU or something, something like that.
Leo Laporte [00:59:25]:
And this is more and more the focus is not are we selling a lot of Macs, it's how much, what's the average?
Richard Campbell [00:59:31]:
It's not how many users we have, although that matters. It's not how many.
Paul Thurrott [00:59:34]:
Yeah, yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:59:35]:
Hardware devices we sold though, that's literally where they make all their money. But.
Leo Laporte [00:59:39]:
Well, it is. But for now, services is, has been. Is really on a very steady.
Richard Campbell [00:59:45]:
Yeah, but services also relies 100% on you having an iPhone. Right. Like that has to exist first.
Leo Laporte [00:59:51]:
Like that's all Apple, right?
Richard Campbell [00:59:52]:
This whole thing, it's literally an iPhone.
Leo Laporte [00:59:55]:
You get a Mac, you're in the ecosystem, everything talks everything else.
Richard Campbell [00:59:58]:
It's better for Apple for you to not have an IP, iPad, a Mac or a Watch, but to have an iPhone and whatever the highest end Apple one service thing is, right? That, that's way better for them.
Paul Thurrott [01:00:08]:
But that's what I mean, the services model, you know, people are going away from buying every new phone. It's every other phone. And so the services model can fill.
Richard Campbell [01:00:16]:
That in every fifth phone now. I mean.
Paul Thurrott [01:00:18]:
Yeah, but now you're starting to about jeopardize the model. As the services model becomes more important, sooner or later there's going to be a VP efficient for a promotion is going to say, hey, what if we didn't just support Apple gear.
Richard Campbell [01:00:29]:
That's interesting, by the way, which has already come up from time to time and been shot down. But as services becomes the. This is so we're gonna, we're gonna ease into this. But my rant of the day, so to speak, or the week, whatever, is this for Microsoft. And I brought this up, I think last week, this notion that you could make an argument that Microsoft is not a technology company just like Google isn't. Google is an ad company. Microsoft is a money management real estate company that also has tech and infrastructure. And.
Richard Campbell [01:01:02]:
But the way they're actually making money and what I mean by that is not literally gross revenues per quarter, although that ties into it. It's the thing that makes it the 1 to 5th most valuable company in the world, depending on how we spin the wheel today, is how they can fool Wall street and investors into believing that this AI crap they're throwing at us makes any sense whatsoever on the scale they're doing it at. And it does not. But they're just cooking the books and pushing out like the devaluation of hardware over double the amount of time than they've ever done in the past. And it's just all a smoke screen. So we can get forward and make sure that when this thing collapses we'll still be left standing and along with the other top four companies or whatever.
Paul Thurrott [01:01:45]:
No, it feels like the infra. Well, a culturally they're becoming an infrastructure company. And that's one of the reasons I think a lot of developers are really confused and distressed right now.
Richard Campbell [01:01:54]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:01:55]:
Is that the. Because the margins are totally different. But the bigger thing here, we've never seen this on the balance sheet yet, is how much is all that real estate worth and how much is it appreciated?
Richard Campbell [01:02:05]:
That's the thing.
Paul Thurrott [01:02:06]:
Because that's what overwhelmed a company like McDonald's eventually at some point. It's like retail land is worth a lot of money and keeps gaining value or whether your restaurant is profitable or not.
Richard Campbell [01:02:17]:
I'm not a. I'm not a financial expert, so I'm really not the right person for this part of this discussion. But the one thing you'll see on the Microsoft books is even though they have more money than God, they will get loans to pay for things because they can do it at such a rate that they make more money doing that than they would if they spent their own money.
Leo Laporte [01:02:34]:
That's what rich people do too.
Richard Campbell [01:02:36]:
Yeah, exactly. It's. Yeah, it's very common. And it's, you know, I'm, I don't understand it. I'm not, that's not my world. But that's what I mean. They're really just managing money and it's not, it's not quite there yet. But in the same way that whatever the figure is for Google this month, this quarter, whatever, 70ish percent of their revenues come from ads.
Richard Campbell [01:02:59]:
Microsoft's not there yet. You cannot make the claim that 70% of Microsoft revenues are from real estate, money management, whatever. But we're def. We. That's where it's going like that arc of success for them. Market cap, stock price, whatever you want to call it, is all money management. And also just like investor management or investor analyst management, Wall street management.
Leo Laporte [01:03:24]:
Does every company get to that stage or every industry? I remember, you know, that's what they say. McDonald's really isn't about making hamburgers.
Richard Campbell [01:03:30]:
What was that? Richard will know this. What was the Dutch, the Dutch company that used to.
Leo Laporte [01:03:34]:
East India Company.
Richard Campbell [01:03:34]:
Yeah. The last time we had a company like this, it was then where this thing was more powerful than the government. Right. That they supposedly reported to. Right. And it's been a long time since we've had anything like this. So this is, you know, for us like today, living in the 21st century, this is, this is new. And it's not one company.
Richard Campbell [01:03:54]:
Right. It's five. Maybe, maybe seven. I'm going to call it five.
Paul Thurrott [01:03:59]:
You know, the area you have not seen seen yet is what happens when companies with that much liquid capital start buying Treasuries in those kinds of numbers. Like what If Microsoft had 300 billion in US treasuries right now? And being unhappy would mean just put them up for auction at a half point off so the Fed can't do their auction raises.
Richard Campbell [01:04:20]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:04:21]:
Right. Which is, this is, that's, that's, that's an interesting place to get to when you have that much money hanging around.
Leo Laporte [01:04:26]:
Well, this is the. That much money is fundamentally undemocratic. Look at Elon Musk putting $10 million into a Senate race.
Richard Campbell [01:04:33]:
Because $10 million for Elon Musk is like me buying a hamburger. I mean that's couch. That's the problem.
Leo Laporte [01:04:38]:
But it throws the race. And I thought we had limits on this stuff, but there are ways around it is united. Yeah. And so this is, I think all of this undermines democracy in the long run.
Richard Campbell [01:04:50]:
100%. If you want to be outraged, just read Apple in China and then apply that, everything Apple did in China to every other part of our industry. And you'll see it everywhere. You'll see it everywhere. It's gross.
Paul Thurrott [01:05:02]:
I, I hanging out here in Canada where we do entire federal elections in 45 days. I don't understand you guys, man. Like, Holy cow. Well, 45 days, beginning to end. It's over, right?
Richard Campbell [01:05:14]:
Our system's quite broken.
Paul Thurrott [01:05:16]:
Yeah, work on that.
Richard Campbell [01:05:17]:
It's just, I mean, it is so. God, I don't know how far I want to get into this, but, but. I published it today. I wrote this the other day. But you know, Satya Nadella, we've talked about this. You could make a case that Amy Hood runs that company, not him. Right. Because of the money management stuff.
Paul Thurrott [01:05:38]:
Back to your finance. Yeah, financial.
Richard Campbell [01:05:39]:
We've made that case over many months. Whatever. Sure. Last August. I don't remember August. I think he gave up most of his CEO duties to Judson Alto. Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:05:50]:
Commercial CEO.
Richard Campbell [01:05:52]:
Yeah. So what is this guy doing with his time? Like, what's this, this genius at the head of Microsoft, this giant brain? Like, what's he working on? Right, what he's working on is one 600 word blog post he publishes every six months, apparently. Because that's all I've seen come out of this guy. And what he did in this blog post was blame his customers for talking about slop and not understanding the, you know, the value of this. And if you would just start paying us for this, you would see how important, important it is and blah, blah, blah, whatever. And I think I've reached the point where I'm like, no, no, it's not just insertification, Right? It's insertification with cancer. It's with cancerous growth. It's insertification exponential.
Richard Campbell [01:06:29]:
You know, you could, when you say that, insertification is a company that is literally harming its own customers and partners to advantage itself. Because that makes economic sense, by the way. That's money management. That's when that makes sense, when you have so much money. To Leo's point. Right. And that is what Microsoft is doing right now. So I am, I wrote this in the thing.
Richard Campbell [01:06:53]:
And I've said this before. I'm not an AI skeptic. That's not the point. I will talk about AI in the back of the. But we'll talk about it later. Whatever. There's good stuff going on with AI, but AI is not 80% of our industry from a functional or financial perspective. They're Just faking it.
Richard Campbell [01:07:10]:
Faking that it is the AI features that you see being added to Windows or being added to Microsoft 365 just to keep it in our little world are the things you would get for free. It's not really free, but for free in the past because you were paying for that thing. You know, if you go back and find an episode of the show from eight years ago where five years, whatever time frame, and there was a segment on Microsoft 365 and all the new features they added that month, they didn't raise the price of your subscription or triple it in most cases, right? You just got it because you were paying them. And this is a good relationship. It's like, we're going to keep this thing fresh, we're going to keep adding features, we're going to make it better. And you're like, yep, I love it. It's a no brainer. Windows, same thing.
Richard Campbell [01:07:56]:
Now, like I said, they have a problem with Windows especially because they can't really. No one is going to pay them for any Windows. Like no one. So you know, they're like, look, we're developing new features. Their AI features are stupid, expensive. You know, we need to figure that out. But here's the thing. I.
Richard Campbell [01:08:14]:
Look, we could always criticize Microsoft, right? Microsoft, going back to the beginning of Microsoft, the concerns about the quality of the product and blah, blah, blah, whatever. But the thing is, if you wanted to buy something from Microsoft, pay them for something, whatever it was, whatever product or service, there was a value and if you saw that value, you would do it and they became super successful. They are the most powerful company in the world for a long time. That's what they used to do. I remember this. You all remember this, right? They do not do this anymore. I just talked about a coloring book feature in Paint. Like, not that it doesn't.
Richard Campbell [01:08:48]:
I mean it's fine that it's there. That's not really the issue. And that's not really the problem. It's that they're selling us on this vision where the thing that makes that possible, which five years, 10 years ago would have been a feature, who cares? Today requires an astronomical financial investment that outweighs the profits this company generates every single quarter now. And I'm sorry, I don't see it. Here's the thing, if you went to any shareholder, logically, because you can't talk to them this way, but if you could, you could say, look, we're not going to add markdown support to Notepad. We're not going to add the coloring book feature to paint. We're just going to sell the product we have and be like, okay, that makes sense.
Richard Campbell [01:09:34]:
Or. Or we could spend 30, 35 billion, whatever we're at now, a quarter building out an infrastructure that will be a nuclear wasteland in three years or something. I don't know. The set of a neck. The next Planet of the Apes movie. What am I talking about? You know, it's crazy. So I, I, the. The way I told this story, like, we were in a.
Richard Campbell [01:09:58]:
We were in the taco bar, which sadly, Richard was just here, and it wasn't able to go there because they were closed the days he was here. But we were sitting there on a, Like, a dead night. There was no one there. So we know those guys were hanging around. They're giving me alcohol to try. Here's a Mexican something. Here's this, whatever. And so, you know, they keep going back to the mezcal.
Richard Campbell [01:10:18]:
They're like, you should try this. I'm like, I don't like mezcal. I don't like smoky drinks. He's like, but you should like it. Yeah, no, I get it. And I feel like that's what Copilot is. And AI at Microsoft, it's like, you know, I don't want this. Literally every single customer, they have pretty much, and they're like, yeah, but you should like it.
Richard Campbell [01:10:33]:
Yeah, no, I hear you. I don't like it. You know, they're not doing it for you. That's the problem. They're doing it for Wall Street. They're doing it for investors or shareholders, I guess they're doing it to rig the system so that through money management, they retain their position in the world. And we are so far removed from a company that used to sell a product or service to people or customer, whatever, businesses that saw value in it, that it's not even the same thing anymore. We're not playing the same sport.
Richard Campbell [01:11:05]:
I just think it's. It's tragic. You know, Richard brought up developers not kind of following along from, like, we used to develop Windows apps, and then we would go to build and they would. All they would talk about is the cloud. Like, there were Bill. Entire builds where they never mentioned Windows. And all these guys are sitting in the audience. They're like, we just paid $2,000 a ticket and then a week in a hotel in Seattle or wherever we are.
Richard Campbell [01:11:29]:
And what are you talking about? And what they were talking about at the time was something that made more sense for Microsoft than them. And they were trying to sell you on, but there's an opportunity here and you're like, all right, maybe there is. And now they're doing again with AI. The difference is the, with the cloud you could say, look, it's going up like this. The potential exposure to customers is humongous with AI. The only way you can do this is the cost and it's just not the same thing.
Paul Thurrott [01:11:59]:
You're talking about. What is Satya doing? You know, he's at Davos right now saying if more people don't use AI, the bubble might burst.
Richard Campbell [01:12:08]:
I think the bubble needs to burst. I really do. I think the best thing that could happen to us.
Paul Thurrott [01:12:14]:
Yeah. The number of people I'm talking to right now is like, I can't wait till the bubble burst so we can get on with.
Richard Campbell [01:12:19]:
Yeah, just get on with like. Yeah, yeah. Remember we used to talk about like important things that were improving your day to day efficiency or something. Like, remember when I was the focus?
Paul Thurrott [01:12:29]:
Include a group of tools that are sitting under the AI umbrella. That's not the point. The point is right now we're forced to make stupid decisions because of this bubble effect. And I would like to get over it because I got stuff to get done.
Richard Campbell [01:12:42]:
Yeah. Yep.
Paul Thurrott [01:12:45]:
You know, the, the meme that was going around just before Christmas was the, you know, presented to the board buying all these licenses for an AI related tool.
Richard Campbell [01:12:53]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:12:54]:
To the tune of millions of dollars. Got sign off with no metric deployed. It all was congratulated and promoted. Nobody's checking.
Richard Campbell [01:13:03]:
Not even one time. Yep.
Paul Thurrott [01:13:04]:
They don't even know if it's being used. It's not being measured.
Richard Campbell [01:13:07]:
It's not even being audited. That's hilarious.
Paul Thurrott [01:13:09]:
It got sign off on a multi million dollar spend for a product with no metrics.
Richard Campbell [01:13:14]:
If you care about the quality of software or whatever you want to call that, if you care about your soul. I don't know. If you just care though, it would be painful. The best thing that could happen to our industry, to our world, maybe to Microsoft, certainly would be for this thing to blow up in their face and for them to actually go back to a system and it sounds crazy where they actually do things that benefit their customers and that's the relationship we have with this company. You know, they're losing. They're not ultimate.
Paul Thurrott [01:13:48]:
They are. Right.
Richard Campbell [01:13:48]:
I'm gone. I don't even. The only reason I'm not using something else is because everything else sucks too. And I'm just so.
Paul Thurrott [01:13:57]:
I mean the only thing worse is everything else.
Richard Campbell [01:13:59]:
Yeah. Yep. And it's not just. And I want to be super clear about this. It's not because I know it so well. It's not because of familiarity. I mean, obviously that plays a certain role, but I can do this. I make change all the time.
Richard Campbell [01:14:11]:
I would have no problem switching to a Mac or an iPad or a Linux computer or whatever it is if that made sense for me. It's not. It has nothing to do with what I'm used to. This is good. And by the way, there is good in there, of course, as well. But I increasingly. And not. Incredible.
Richard Campbell [01:14:31]:
No, no. Overwhelmingly, what they do now, what the new that comes out of Microsoft is garbage that has nothing to do with anything any of its customers want. It's not just me. It's. And it's not just the guy in the corner complaining that I may disagree with. It's all of us. I don't. I.
Richard Campbell [01:14:52]:
I don't know what the heck this company is doing anymore. It doesn't make any sense to me.
Paul Thurrott [01:14:57]:
Well, there's a lot of folks inside the company that are saying the same thing. I don't know what we're doing.
Richard Campbell [01:15:02]:
Right. Well, maybe there's a new company be made that can go off and do that thing because this is getting. This is. It's not even frustrating. It's beyond. It's infuriating. And, and to be. For.
Richard Campbell [01:15:14]:
For. It doesn't have to be Satya Nadella. But it's particularly bad when it comes from him because I can't stand when he opens his mouth. But for anyone to come to anyone else and say, the problem with AI is you, you're not spending enough money on it. You're not using it enough. It's like, excuse me.
Paul Thurrott [01:15:30]:
And you keep calling it slop.
Richard Campbell [01:15:31]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We came up with a fun word. Now it's our problem. Like, I'm sorry, but if you were doing something that mattered to us, that we could actually use, that we would benefit us. That was the thing you say it will be. It's always, it's always happening next week or next year or two years, whatever it is. Last year we were talking about AI agents. I don't have any AI agents.
Richard Campbell [01:15:51]:
I don't have anything doing anything on my behalf except spending my money on things I do not want. And I listen, I'm open to it. I can't wait to see that agent. I have not seen that agent. The most advanced agent I have is Siri, and it makes my phone pink when I say its name by mistake. That's the best thing I have so far. The rest of it is garbage and.
Paul Thurrott [01:16:14]:
Well, in Google 3 and Gemini 3 hasn't gotten there yet.
Richard Campbell [01:16:17]:
Like. Well, for what? Like Gemini 3. I can make a great image. That's fun. I mean, that's great. That's not my life though.
Paul Thurrott [01:16:26]:
It's going to be what Siri responds with soon. Real soon. Now.
Richard Campbell [01:16:29]:
Yeah. Look, like I said, I'm not saying there isn't stuff there that is valuable. There is. I love that I can take an image and super res it and you know, take an old scan from a photo that's like, you know, 300 by, you know, 320 by 240, whatever, and turn it into a 4K image. It actually looks like that thing. Like that's, that's, that's great.
Paul Thurrott [01:16:47]:
I got a buddy who put his time into digging up all these old sepia photos of family members long gone, great grandparents and things and got little 15 second animated clips being colored.
Richard Campbell [01:16:59]:
That can be magical. I mean, absolutely. Now I go to Instagram and it's the opposite of magical because it's like celebrities who have died hanging out in heaven or whatever and it's like stop. Or this is what this person looks like at 25. This is the horror show. They are now at 70 or whatever. The thing is like, it's always stuff like that and it's like, okay, like whatever. But yeah, the thing you describe.
Richard Campbell [01:17:21]:
Wonderful. Is there a business model for that? I don't know. I think those, those APIs are free. I mean.
Paul Thurrott [01:17:26]:
Yep. The question is, would he have done it if he was paying for it? I don't know the answer to that.
Richard Campbell [01:17:31]:
I don't know either.
Paul Thurrott [01:17:32]:
Yeah, I'm tired of it.
Richard Campbell [01:17:34]:
I'm just tired of it, you know.
Paul Thurrott [01:17:37]:
And you, and you're just not alone on this, Paul. Like the people are really tired.
Richard Campbell [01:17:41]:
Yeah, no, I feel like I'm not alone on this one. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:17:44]:
And it's. There was a time where we looked at recessions as a, as an encouragement for companies to go back to focusing on what their customers actually valued.
Richard Campbell [01:17:53]:
Yeah. And, and this is why I, it started with you, Richard. We were in Mexico last year, Sorry, Puerto Vallarta. And Google took away my YouTube account. Right. And so that, that was the start of it for me last year.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:08]:
You were very excited that morning.
Richard Campbell [01:18:10]:
Yep. Yeah, I was. Very excited is a good word. I was living in interesting times and you know, but I look, this kicked off something for me and now I'm self hosting my everyday carry in the nas. I Hate those. Sorry, but you said them so well. I know, I know I struggle, but this has become a. I think we're being attacked by the United States or something.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:40]:
The bombing has begun.
Richard Campbell [01:18:42]:
This has become a push for me. I didn't intend this. I didn't do this on any design or purpose. But actively replacing big tech garbage with little tech solutions that are made by companies actually give a crap about me as a. As a customer. Right. It's not about doing free things, although some of it will be free, but it's about giving money or paying money to companies that actually value that relationship and give you something in return, which I distinctly remember doing with Microsoft back in the day. It's been a while, you know, so they, whatever.
Richard Campbell [01:19:17]:
They brought this on themselves. This wasn't. Yeah, I don't. I'm not like.
Paul Thurrott [01:19:21]:
I'm just amazed at their responses to complain that we are doing it wrong, you know, like this is, it's like, It's. This is AI's iPhone antenna moment. You are holding it wrong, right?
Richard Campbell [01:19:37]:
Yeah. Right? Yeah. Literally. Look, if you are not a good writer and AI can help you write better, even if it's something simple like a text message, a response or something, or you're about to send a text message or an email and it. It just fixes the spelling for you. Awesome. These are great features. These are not the features that drive our industry financially or functionally, but they are great.
Richard Campbell [01:20:04]:
If you were using Google Search and now you use Google Gemini, you've made a lateral move. And if it is somehow better, great. That's what an upgrade should be. This is not the entire business or industry. It's just we're overemphasizing something that we're just all going to have. At the end of the day, we're all going to have this wherever we want it. You could have it on your computer. It might be a little tech search service like Proton, whatever it's called, Lumo or whatever.
Richard Campbell [01:20:41]:
Or you could just go, Google everyone. It was pretty easy. Everyone uses Chrome. Everyone uses Gemini. Maybe that's going to work out great for them. That's fine. Is it better than it was with Google Search? Yes, it should be. It's like 15, 20 years later.
Richard Campbell [01:20:53]:
It should be better. Is it worth $45 more every month than what you were already paying? No. You should expect things to get better. That's what you're paying for. It used to be, you know, anyway. Or, I mean, so, Anthony, it's like you will own nothing and be happy. Maybe I'LL own everything and be happy. Maybe that might be my outcome.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:14]:
You know, pretty sure that's the billionaire's outcome.
Richard Campbell [01:21:17]:
Well, and by everything, I mean, you know, it's like if you don't pay for the product, you are the product. Which is an overly simplistic term, but. Or go back to the EULA issues that we used to talk about in the late 90s, early 2000s, where it's like, has anyone ever read this thing like you don't own the software on your computer, you don't own that, you know, that kind of thing. But okay, whatever.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:36]:
You own a license to use it.
Richard Campbell [01:21:38]:
But I could disconnect it from the Internet and they're not taking it away. I mean, I think the big difference between software you'd buy from a shelf and software you stream from the cloud is not necessarily the delivery vehicle. It's that the company that owns that thing can make an arbitrary change at any time and scrupule life anytime they want. Yep. And that was not the case before.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:58]:
No. Well. And we celebrate it when it's John Deere disabling tractors being used in war, but we're also freaking out when a farmer cannot get their tractor repaired without paying for. For a John Deere tech to come out to do it.
Richard Campbell [01:22:11]:
I know. Which is insane. Yep, yep. Yeah. Look, when I. Again, just arbitrary numbers. But you go back 20 years and some mechanic in a shop and some random small town is complaining because cars are becoming computerized and now I can't fix them because I'm mechanical and they're, you know, computer electronics, whatever. You're like, yeah, but you know, things progress.
Richard Campbell [01:22:33]:
Right. But now we have those DRM DCMA based systems where you're not allowed to reverse engineer this thing because they want to be able to control that. And if HP wants to sell you ink and prevent you from buying other companies inc. Or if John Deere doesn't want you to fix your tracker by yourself, even though anyone could do it. We're talking about something entirely differently. This isn't progress anymore. Right. That's control.
Richard Campbell [01:23:00]:
That's anti consumer. It's bad. It's not the same thing.
Paul Thurrott [01:23:07]:
That is the difference. Without a doubt.
Richard Campbell [01:23:10]:
Anyway.
Leo Laporte [01:23:11]:
Okay, somebody said once, and I think this is actually recently and I think it's not so bad is that there are two right now kind of different schools of AI. There's the AI or AI company. There's the AI company started by an entrepreneur who comes in the social media era, Sam Altman. And then there's the AI Companies that are computer scientists. By computer scientists. Which are DeepMind and DeepMind at Google.
Richard Campbell [01:23:37]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:23:39]:
And my experience in the last few months is I am mostly underwhelmed by the ones that are started by the social media entrepreneur types and frankly they're the ones who seem to be driving the conversation. And in this kind of sci fi story description of AI.
Richard Campbell [01:23:59]:
Yeah. Right.
Leo Laporte [01:24:00]:
And I'm most impressed by Anthropic's very.
Richard Campbell [01:24:04]:
That's very interesting. Yeah. We'll see how that plays out.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:10]:
But Deep Mind's release of 200 million protein fold solutions to the public. Right.
Richard Campbell [01:24:16]:
Right. Or they find there's some ancient manuscript we've had a hold of for hundreds of years. No one can read the damn thing. And AI comes along and they're like oh here's what it says. You know that stuff's amazing. That's amazing.
Leo Laporte [01:24:28]:
So I mean we've always seen that there is like this.
Richard Campbell [01:24:33]:
No, I'm not. I want. That's why I said right up front I'm not an AI denier. That's not my point. Right. My point is they're over emphasizing this so much that they have turned it into something only rich. The richest companies in the world can do.
Leo Laporte [01:24:46]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [01:24:46]:
Are artificially and to ensure their survival as this shift occurs. Because there are technological waves in our industry. Right. I mean we all know this and we're in the midst of one. I'm not denying that. What I'm saying is they're exaggerating it and it's not. It's.
Paul Thurrott [01:25:04]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:25:04]:
It's the Sam Altman. This thing is going to be sentient and we're going to bow down before this new God is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. It would make a fun movie.
Paul Thurrott [01:25:14]:
Movie. And we find the way they've already made.
Richard Campbell [01:25:17]:
Which is that Right. To Richard.
Leo Laporte [01:25:18]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:25:19]:
Richard's made this point many times like that we have all been colored or biased by the science fiction that we grew up on. Right. It's just. I don't know. Yeah. So we have these expectations. I don't have flying cars by the way. I don't live in a paperless office.
Richard Campbell [01:25:38]:
I, I like, you know it's a simplistic thing to say but a company that can't do spell checking accurately. I get news for you. They're not making Skynet. You know, it's not happening. They're not doing the Terminator robot. And if they somehow figure that out it's not going to work because those, those people don't know what they're doing. I don't know. I'm sorry, I'm ranting here, but it's, I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm pushing back on this more.
Richard Campbell [01:26:07]:
I was already kind of pushing.
Leo Laporte [01:26:08]:
Meanwhile, in the club Twit discord, Darren Okey, who is our resident AI guru, has during this conversation, written and published on GitHub, a notepad for Mac because he was lamenting the fact that there is nothing like Notepad for the Mac.
Richard Campbell [01:26:26]:
Yeah, I mean, so that kind of, that kind of vibe.
Leo Laporte [01:26:28]:
And he wrote.
Richard Campbell [01:26:29]:
Right, right. So right now, make a million dollars selling it.
Leo Laporte [01:26:33]:
No, no, no, that's not the point. He's sorting it and giving it away. He doesn't need it.
Richard Campbell [01:26:37]:
The fact that you can do that is amazing. I want to be clear. I'm not denying this is amazing. Right. You know, Dave Plummer did this. He recreated Notepad on Windows, but in the style of Petsal, using C and C. Right. He created it from scratch.
Richard Campbell [01:26:54]:
The reason this exists is because the code for this app exists out in the world already. And they just put it, you know, they threw it together. It's wonderful. Like, I, I think Leo was talking about this maybe a week ago. The, this notion that we're all, we're all going to have this ability to make these little apps that are just for us. Right. It's, it's transformative, it's wonderful. It's not a business model for those guys.
Richard Campbell [01:27:16]:
This is the problem. Like, I, you know, it's kind of, kind of interesting. I don't know. No, I don't deny the capabilities. I want to be super clear about that. What I'm taking an affront to or whatever, or what I have a problem with is the money and that these companies that used to be about this relationship between a customer and the business are now not about that at all. And that didn't have to happen. I don't quite know how we got there.
Leo Laporte [01:27:45]:
Right. You're watching Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat from Thorat.com, richard Campbell from Runisradio.com we're glad you're here. We're glad our club members are here. Thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And let's see. Is it time for the Xbox segment or do you have.
Leo Laporte [01:28:04]:
Do you want to talk a little more about AI?
Richard Campbell [01:28:07]:
We have more. We have too much more.
Leo Laporte [01:28:12]:
Up to you.
Richard Campbell [01:28:13]:
Yeah, no, it's fine. Microsoft has been adding Copilot to all of its products. For almost three years now. Remember, it was February 2023. Right. I think when they came up with what we now call Copilot. The way they have done this is part of the problem I have. Right.
Richard Campbell [01:28:31]:
They. They just add it. They add it before it's ready. They keep changing it because it wasn't ready. I point to simplistic examples like the way they move the icon around seven times in Windows 11, the way they rewrote the app at least three major times. I can think of. They had no idea. They were so busy moving fast and breaking things that they just didn't care at all about their customers.
Richard Campbell [01:28:54]:
And then people complained. And then a year, two years, whatever, later they start doing things like, oh, now you can opt out of it. Oh, now you can have as an IT admin, a GPO script or whatever that will eliminate that for your users or whatever it is. Those are the types of things Microsoft used to do before they launched a product. Right. This is the point I made in that thing about Satya Nadella in the article version, which is that move fast and break things works. When you're a startup, it's cute when you're what was then called Facebook and you're small and who cares? But when you're Microsoft, what your customers want is for you to move deliberately and don't break anything. That's what we want, not break it.
Richard Campbell [01:29:35]:
What are you doing? No one has ever wanted you to break anything ever. But that's what they do. So we are literally almost exactly three years later and they did actually have this ability. It was a little hidden, but they have this now says you can remove Copilot from Microsoft Edge now because literally, almost. Not literally literally, but almost literally, every single person that uses Edge does not want it. They do not want it. And even the people who love AI, the people who love it the most would be looking at ChatGPT or now maybe anthropic or whatever. Right.
Richard Campbell [01:30:13]:
I mean, it's fair to say Copilot has not resonated with almost anybody. GitHub Copilot being the exception and not the same, but just has the same sort of name.
Paul Thurrott [01:30:24]:
Well, it's the original name that they've then hijacked and everything.
Richard Campbell [01:30:28]:
Yeah. Well, we said this when they did it. It's a good brand. Right. The idea that AI will sit beside you, so to speak, metaphorically or whatever.
Paul Thurrott [01:30:37]:
That's that whole implication that you are still the pilot.
Richard Campbell [01:30:41]:
Yes. That you're in control. Right. Which is very much not what Microsoft was doing as they rolled this thing out because they were in control and they were forcing it on you. Right? Which is.
Paul Thurrott [01:30:50]:
And in control is a relative idea too. Right. You are responsible. It's really more. And it's. This is Cory Doctorow's line too. Right. It's like this is the reverse Centaur.
Paul Thurrott [01:31:05]:
You will take the blame when it mis. Malfunctions, right?
Richard Campbell [01:31:08]:
That's right. Anyway, that's a small thing, but that's fine. OpenAI last fall, sometime late last year, announced a product called ChatGPT Go, which is just a lower cost version of ChatGPT for emerging markets. I think in US dollars it was three to five dollars a month or something like that. It was only for select countries. Right. So even Mexico did not have access to this. But last week, sometime in the past week, they announced this thing is now worldwide.
Richard Campbell [01:31:38]:
You can actually get it in the United States and in Mexico. And I think the U.S. price might be, might be $8 a month in the U.S. i think in Mexico it's closer to $4. So it's going to vary by country, obviously, whatever the local currency is. So it's a less expensive way to gain access to this stuff. It's going to come with lower limits, Right, of course. And of course it's going to come with ads.
Richard Campbell [01:32:02]:
Over time they're going to start introducing ads because of course they are. Right. This is the, this is the model for anything you pay every, every month there's going to be that lower cost version that has ads. Right. And so no surprise there, but at least this will spread this to more people. Will this make up the $600 billion that. It's probably more than that now that OpenAI has committed to spending with other infrastructure companies. No, but will this make them profitable? No, but it kind of has to be part of it.
Richard Campbell [01:32:36]:
And if you just whatever, if you just care about making technology accessible to everybody in the world, I mean this kind of has to happen. So I guess. And then this one. I don't know what to think about this. There was an article this past week about how. What's that? The original. You know, it's like the wanted ads. What's that site called? The Craigslist.
Richard Campbell [01:32:59]:
Craigslist. Craigslist is like the only thing left from the old web, sort of. I would say Wikipedia is actually the same kind of a company or service, whatever. They are 25 years old and they announced in the past week partnerships across the board. So Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, the French one, and Perplexity, and they're Already partnered with Google. So that's everyone. But by the OpenAI, it's kind of interesting. So that they can legally use data from Wikimedia.
Richard Campbell [01:33:31]:
Wikipedia, sorry. And Wikipedia gets paid. And I have already seen people who have contributed to Wikipedia who are outraged that the content they wrote will be used by AI because those are the types of people that would hate I. Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:33:45]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:33:46]:
And I get it. But I don't know, this is one of those things, like you love something. Right. Whatever it might be. You love Firefox or something. Like you want that thing to survive. Right. It's not doing great.
Richard Campbell [01:34:00]:
You're like, okay, well how. You know, like where. What's the line? You know? So this one, I'm not sure what to say yet about this. Whether this is good, bad and different, I'm not really sure. But I like the notion that I like the. I like the part. I like the partnership thing more than I like the theft thing, I guess is maybe how I would put it. That makes sense.
Paul Thurrott [01:34:25]:
I mean, I'm appreciative that Wikipedia is always on the edge. Right. Like they. With this foundation set up, they suddenly have plenty of money. I'm sure that's going to be the outcome of. It's just not enough money to matter to those tech giants. But I get it. You're also selling out.
Richard Campbell [01:34:42]:
Yeah, yeah. Selling out. You know, it's. That's exactly the way people would describe. It's correct, I guess. You know, technically. But selling out, I mean, it's a. You.
Richard Campbell [01:34:53]:
You want them to be successful. Right. Like I, I know that they alive. Yeah. A lot of other people, A lot of people who want. That would maybe want it to happen a different way, but of course they don't have an idea about how that could happen because there is no way for that to happen, so. Right. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:35:10]:
I mean the types of money that AI needs to survive. Big AI is not there, but that money that they're paying to Wikipedia is there. And that makes a difference to that company or that organization. So we'll see.
Paul Thurrott [01:35:24]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:35:25]:
Yeah. We had Jimmy Wales on a couple of weeks ago. I don't. I really trust Jimmy and I trust the Wikipedia foundation. And I think they're people who just hate AI. That's right. And anything with the word AI in it.
Richard Campbell [01:35:36]:
Yep. And it's just viscerally a huge problem for them. Yep.
Leo Laporte [01:35:39]:
But AI is already scraping Wikipedia. That's.
Richard Campbell [01:35:43]:
I know that. That's my question. It's stealing regardless, so might as well.
Leo Laporte [01:35:46]:
Get some money out of it.
Richard Campbell [01:35:48]:
Exactly.
Leo Laporte [01:35:49]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:35:50]:
Did it this way with the foundation is very clever because it means recurring revenue.
Leo Laporte [01:35:54]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:35:55]:
Not. Not going down. The litigation approach, none of that stuff. It's like, hey, why don't we all work and play with each other?
Leo Laporte [01:36:01]:
I think it's acknowledging the reality and you know, I don't know how well funded the foundation is. I know they're always asking me for more money and I give them money every. Every month and I think I do it annually.
Paul Thurrott [01:36:13]:
But yes.
Leo Laporte [01:36:14]:
Yeah, it's worth it. Yeah, absolutely.
Richard Campbell [01:36:17]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:36:17]:
You know what else is worth it, my friends? The Xbox segment. You've waited, you've suffered long enough. Let us delve into the latest in Xbox gaming with Paul Thurat.
Richard Campbell [01:36:34]:
I love it. AI Is coming to get me. It's only a matter of time.
Leo Laporte [01:36:38]:
You know, the folks that did Halo Bungie are making and releasing for Xbox. I don't know, maybe I should have looked in your notes. The marathon, right?
Richard Campbell [01:36:49]:
No, I didn't put that in my.
Leo Laporte [01:36:50]:
I'm excited about that.
Richard Campbell [01:36:51]:
I am too. I mean, it was delayed, right. So now it's coming out in March, I think. Yeah. Good. I mean it's good, right? I mean it is good. Do I not have a link for this? I do not have a link for this. Oh, there it is.
Richard Campbell [01:37:04]:
Yeah, it's. It is good that. No, that's a good point. I'm interested to see.
Leo Laporte [01:37:09]:
Is if you've played Halo, you will. It'll feel familiar in some degree. I hope they were.
Richard Campbell [01:37:14]:
I played marathon on a black and white Mac.
Leo Laporte [01:37:17]:
I know.
Richard Campbell [01:37:18]:
Years ago. I know. I mean that. That was a thing like it was.
Leo Laporte [01:37:21]:
We played it in a marathon fashion in the old site studios back in 1995. 96.
Richard Campbell [01:37:32]:
That was what the Mac had. Like that was it for the Mac. So you know, we had Doom and before that, whatever, like Wolfenstein, etc. But you know, the marathon. And it was. I think it was Mac only for a long time.
Leo Laporte [01:37:44]:
I think it was. Yeah. In the beginning it was fun and we could play. It was a LAN party game. So we would all play at the same time. It was really fun.
Richard Campbell [01:37:53]:
Yeah. I'm curious. I'm definitely curious to see it.
Leo Laporte [01:37:56]:
It's now they're calling it an extraction shooter, so.
Richard Campbell [01:37:58]:
Oh, geez.
Leo Laporte [01:37:59]:
There we go about.
Richard Campbell [01:38:01]:
It's going to. What's that thing? Arc Raiders. It's going to compete with that, I guess.
Leo Laporte [01:38:05]:
What are you extracting? Ores, minerals, dollars. It kind of does. Here, I'll play a little clip from it since we might as well pad this Segment as much as possible. It kind of reminds me. It looks a little bit.
Paul Thurrott [01:38:28]:
Like.
Richard Campbell [01:38:28]:
I don't know. How can you.
Leo Laporte [01:38:30]:
How could I describe it?
Richard Campbell [01:38:32]:
This is a tricky one. So it looks, by the way, there's a definite old school quality there.
Leo Laporte [01:38:36]:
Old school.
Richard Campbell [01:38:36]:
That's also a little bit. There's a little bit of a Halo thing there too.
Paul Thurrott [01:38:40]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:38:41]:
If you played Halo, it'll be very familiar.
Richard Campbell [01:38:43]:
I mean, everything Bungie makes looks like Halo. Right? Like, this is the problem. But.
Leo Laporte [01:38:49]:
But. But boxy Halo, like old Halo.
Richard Campbell [01:38:51]:
Yeah, that's what I mean. Like that. Yeah. It's got that retro 80s kind of look or whatever, you know, like Counter Strike this for a long time where it kind of looked older. Or Borderlands, which has an almost cartoon effect, but plays fast, you know, like Overwatch maybe. Well, outright cartoonist or Fortnite.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:09]:
Borderlands never forgets. It's a cartoon. All of the death animations are hysterical. Yeah, but. But even Counter Strike Two, right, with its sort of arcade application, was.
Leo Laporte [01:39:19]:
I think this would be fun to play. I kind of don't mind the lack of graphical.
Richard Campbell [01:39:23]:
No, I. I mean, what matters more to you if you're playing online, especially, like performance or graphics quality, as long as it's at some level, which this is absolutely. Is.
Leo Laporte [01:39:32]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [01:39:33]:
I'd rather have it just run, you know, 60 frames and just go to town.
Leo Laporte [01:39:36]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:37]:
Besides, there'll be a DLC in a year with an upscaler in it, so.
Leo Laporte [01:39:40]:
So Microsoft bought Bungie. That's when they made Halo, then. Then got rid of Bung Punchy.
Richard Campbell [01:39:45]:
Well, I think those guys wanted to leave, Right?
Paul Thurrott [01:39:48]:
Yeah, yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:39:49]:
And they made. Not Titanfall. What did they make? Begins with a P, I think. Boy, I forgot. Destiny. Destiny.
Leo Laporte [01:39:59]:
That's right, Kevin.
Richard Campbell [01:40:00]:
I think there were two. Yeah, two destinies. But though, you know, I mean, fine, but Marathon was a big deal in this day and obviously Halo was huge.
Leo Laporte [01:40:08]:
It looks like you're in the Halo world a little bit, doesn't it?
Richard Campbell [01:40:11]:
A little bit, yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:40:12]:
Yep.
Richard Campbell [01:40:13]:
That's okay.
Leo Laporte [01:40:14]:
And then you have the grappling hook.
Richard Campbell [01:40:16]:
Grappling hooks?
Leo Laporte [01:40:17]:
Yeah, you can whiz around, play. Yeah, Grappling hooks are good for VR too. Because the worst thing about VR, you can't move around. There's no way to walk.
Richard Campbell [01:40:27]:
So you need something grapple from place to place.
Leo Laporte [01:40:29]:
Grapple, yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:31]:
Well, really what it is is creating motions that don't make people nauseous.
Leo Laporte [01:40:36]:
That's the hard part.
Richard Campbell [01:40:37]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:40:38]:
And I think it's.
Richard Campbell [01:40:39]:
I.
Leo Laporte [01:40:40]:
Sorry. A little bit of a simplified UI makes it easier to do in VR too.
Richard Campbell [01:40:44]:
But even that, even though it's simplified, that gives it a semi unique look as well. Right. Like it has its own vibe too. Even though there are elements where you're like, oh, that looks a little bit like something, but it has an identity.
Leo Laporte [01:40:55]:
Oh, yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:40:56]:
I think it looks fun. I think it looks good.
Leo Laporte [01:40:59]:
The collector's edition comes a little Marathon statue.
Richard Campbell [01:41:03]:
What a shit. Is like a. Like an emulator with the original, like black and white version.
Leo Laporte [01:41:08]:
It'd be fun.
Richard Campbell [01:41:08]:
Oh, yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:41:10]:
Didn't they had make a marathon, a game called Marathon, like in the 90s, like there was.
Richard Campbell [01:41:14]:
Yeah, that was the original.
Leo Laporte [01:41:15]:
Was the original mid-90s?
Richard Campbell [01:41:17]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:41:19]:
Wow. That was fun. And of course, I didn't know this, but my producer, Carson Bondi, who worked with me at the old site, told me that the entire stage team had decided to gang up on Leo and surround him with bazookas.
Richard Campbell [01:41:33]:
And you're like, why am I doing so bad?
Paul Thurrott [01:41:35]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:41:38]:
I didn't know it until 25 years later.
Richard Campbell [01:41:41]:
I want to see him legless.
Leo Laporte [01:41:42]:
But, you know, there was a rocket launcher and they would surround me because part of the fun of it, we were playing games too. Like, you can launch somebody in the air if you hit the all rocket launcher.
Richard Campbell [01:41:52]:
That was a big quake thing as well. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:41:54]:
Or maybe that's what they were doing. They weren't trying to hurt me.
Paul Thurrott [01:41:59]:
They were just trying to entertain themselves.
Richard Campbell [01:42:00]:
At your death, at your expense. It's the same thing.
Leo Laporte [01:42:04]:
It did explain a lot, to be honest with you.
Richard Campbell [01:42:08]:
Okay, well, the Windows 11 unarmed thing I mentioned with the Xbox app, et cetera, et cetera, is part of a broader January Xbox update that goes across platforms. The rest of it is not as interesting, but in case it wasn't clear up front and I should just run this app and look, I haven't looked at it yet, but that indicated the score. How well this will run in your PC is something the Xbox app has sort of had for a while. I believe it's going to be more explicit. And the goal here is you look at a game and it's like, yeah, this thing's going to work great on your computer or not. Right. I mean, that's actually useful information. I'm just trying to look at an app here to see what it does.
Richard Campbell [01:42:54]:
Yeah. So this thing, Resident Evil. Well, we'll get to that in a moment. But this particular game performance check is not available yet, is the message I see pretty much all the time, honestly, when I go through the Xbox app. So My hope is that we're going to start to see something that makes more sense, meaning it actually is useful information. So I believe that's the goal. This might not even be the latest version of the app, so maybe I should just not focus on that too too much. But anyway, so it's not just for arm, right? That's for everybody.
Richard Campbell [01:43:23]:
So if you're on x86 or whatever, it's going to work. There's a game save sync indicator that's in the Xbox app that I did to see. So maybe this is the latest version. And what that means is if you're like, say I play Call of Duty on one computer. If I launch it on another computer five minutes later, I often get this dialogue to processes. Hey, the other one hasn't synced to the cloud fully yet or to all the computers. Do you want to use the latest synced data set that's on this computer or do you want to use the latest one from the cloud? They'll give you an indicator in the Xbox app now so you know that actually happened if that's important to you. And it would be important especially I don't really care in like Call of Duty multiplayer, but if you're going through a game, like a single player game and you got to level 18 or something, you don't want to pick up the game on another computer and it's like you're at level 16 because it didn't sync like you, you actually kind of need to know that.
Richard Campbell [01:44:16]:
So that's kind of cool. I think we already knew this was happening, but Xbox cloud gaming, which is the old X Project xcloud, sorry, is coming to hisense and also something called V Smart tv. So V, like formally V I D A A I've never heard of this. Okay. But big deal. And then some more handheld compatibility games including like Arc Raiders, Clair Obscure, which is one of those bigger things that has occurred in the last six months. Red Dead Redemption, Silent Hill 2, which by the way is being turned into a movie, more Xbox play everywhere games, et cetera, et cetera. But to me the big thing is the ARM stuff.
Richard Campbell [01:45:00]:
So that's kind of a big deal. But the January Xbox update is rolling out today. We also got our first, not our first, our second collection of Xbox game pass games across platforms for January. Right. So around the first of the month, it was probably the fifth or sixth, they released the first set or started to release. Now they have the second set. The big one here is Death Stranding, Director's Cut.
Paul Thurrott [01:45:26]:
If you play?
Richard Campbell [01:45:27]:
I think there is a. I mentioned. I briefly mentioned Resident Evil. I'm just looking. I thought that was one of the games too. Yeah. Resident Evil Village is available with Game Pass Ultimate Premium and PC Game Pass today on cloud console and PC. I think as of right now.
Richard Campbell [01:45:41]:
I know I say that. I don't know why I said that way. This is my latent or the remaining French that I have in my brain Village. I believe that's still the most recent game. Is that true? I think it is because the one before it was the biohazard one which I finished and I feel like this one I did not finish. So maybe I'll give that one a shot. And then obviously a bunch of games.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:08]:
I've never heard of, but there's some killer games here. Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine is awesome. Final Fantasy 2, that's old. That's a very old Final Fantasy game. They were 15 or 16, but still awesome. And Death Stranding. You're either into it or you're not. It's an eclectic game.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:26]:
Like it's very odd, but it's quite extraordinary. Yeah, this is a hell of a lot. For as much fun as we made of the putting out these things, this is a killer roster.
Richard Campbell [01:46:36]:
I mean it's no, you know, what are they like Goat Simulator. It's no spray paint simulator, you know, it's okay. It's okay.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:46]:
Yeah, there's nothing you can do about Goat Simulator. Goat Simulator is just special.
Leo Laporte [01:46:49]:
The untitled Goat Game.
Richard Campbell [01:46:51]:
Yes, the unit.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:53]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:46:56]:
Anyway, so that's okay. So that's out. And then there are rumors that Microsoft is going to introduce a speaking of, you know, chat GPT go. In this case a free ad supported tier of Xbox cloud gaming. There we go. So we've gone from it's only an ultimate to it's in all the tiers to now I guess we'll see a version that'll be free and ad supported. So it's like, you know, before you can get into this match, you're going to watch a little ad from Spick and Span or whatever. But you know, Colgate, I don't know.
Richard Campbell [01:47:30]:
I'm just trying to think of stupid brands from the past. Ancient Chinese secret. What was that company? I don't know. But Nvidia does this now, right. With their GeForce now cloud gaming service. Obviously when you pay you get faster access, better points in the queue and more access and all that kind of stuff. But in the same way that doing something like this for AI services makes sense, I mean it does make sense, right? I mean, you want to make it available to as many people as possible.
Leo Laporte [01:47:59]:
Spic and Span is still around until.
Richard Campbell [01:48:01]:
Christopher, as we were discussing with Richard and his wife while they were here, it's like Sears, Roebuck and Woolworths are going concerns in Mexico and they're basically long gone in the U.S. i mean, maybe not entirely, but they're big deals here for some reason. So I guess, I don't know, anything is possible.
Leo Laporte [01:48:24]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:48:25]:
Had a great time in Mexico City. The tricky part was getting home.
Richard Campbell [01:48:28]:
I know. My God.
Leo Laporte [01:48:29]:
Oh, yeah. You were there this past week.
Richard Campbell [01:48:32]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:48:32]:
What was hard about getting home was it a lot of flights?
Richard Campbell [01:48:35]:
The actual act of getting home?
Paul Thurrott [01:48:38]:
The issue has this fog. There's been fog at YVR for days and for some reason Aeromexico just kept postponing their flights, literally for days. So we were supposed to fly home on Monday and got there only to find they had postponed the flight to the next morning and kind of left us in a lurch. But fortunately I had a nice friend that took us out for dinner and we had a great time. But then we had to be on the flight the next morning. So we got back there first thing in the morning, very little sleep, and 10 minutes before the flight's supposed to board, they cancel it outright and rebook us on the 5:30 flight. Later that day I told my wife.
Richard Campbell [01:49:15]:
We just need to be comfortable with the idea that you guys are moving in.
Paul Thurrott [01:49:18]:
We're moving in. We're just going to be back again.
Richard Campbell [01:49:20]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:49:20]:
Because literally, as we're getting the boarding cards for the 5:30 flight, they say it's delayed to the next morning, which would be this morning. So at that point it's like, clearly they have a problem. Like I'm looking at other planes are flying into YVR in this in 00 fog, which is not a trivial thing. So then I looked at the Air Canada flights and we had to fly through Toronto, which meant a very long day. But we got in Last night at 2 in the morning and crashed in the city at my friend's place for a couple of hours and then we're on the 7th, 730 ferry here.
Richard Campbell [01:49:51]:
I didn't think you were going to make the show today regardless of getting back into Canada.
Paul Thurrott [01:49:55]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:49:56]:
Because in case it's not clear, flying from Mexico City to Vancouver is pretty much directly north. But he flew from Mexico City to Toronto, which is on the other side of the continent.
Paul Thurrott [01:50:08]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:50:09]:
So that he could then fly back across the continent to go to Vancouver. Like it's. These things are not close to each other.
Paul Thurrott [01:50:16]:
No. So instead of a six hour flight direct, it was five and a four and a half hours to Toronto. Three hour layover, five and a half hours from Toronto to make you.
Leo Laporte [01:50:24]:
Yikes.
Richard Campbell [01:50:26]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:50:28]:
Well, I'm glad you got home.
Paul Thurrott [01:50:29]:
Me too. Home good.
Leo Laporte [01:50:31]:
Home good.
Richard Campbell [01:50:32]:
He's smiling a lot more than I would be and. And handled it a lot better than I would have handled it.
Paul Thurrott [01:50:38]:
But. And we did land at 2 in the morning in 004 fog. Like you could see nothing.
Richard Campbell [01:50:44]:
It's incred.
Paul Thurrott [01:50:45]:
Airplanes are capable of it, you know.
Richard Campbell [01:50:46]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:50:47]:
Meanwhile, I've been going down the Spic and Spam rabbit hole. So it turns out there's this little company in California called Kick K I K that has been buying up classic home brand names and manufacturing them. Names you'll remember like Spic and Span, Comet, Chore Boy.
Richard Campbell [01:51:12]:
I didn't know Comet was gone.
Leo Laporte [01:51:13]:
Comet was that none of these are gone gritty. They're just made by this one company. Now that is. That is believed.
Richard Campbell [01:51:21]:
So there's the market.
Leo Laporte [01:51:25]:
Top job Cinch.
Richard Campbell [01:51:28]:
By the way, that looks literally like my pantry. That. That could be a photo.
Leo Laporte [01:51:32]:
Yeah. They've been acquiring these brands as they kind of fade Greased Lightning and now they make them La Parisienne. Old Dutch. I think this is fascinating. This is kind of an area of America, American industrial history. That's quite interesting.
Richard Campbell [01:51:59]:
But a lot of brands that kind of this happened to like Polaroid, you know, turned in like it's still around. Sort of like it's not the company it was, but.
Leo Laporte [01:52:07]:
No, and it's not the company at all.
Richard Campbell [01:52:09]:
Boy is a form of AI if I'm not mistaken.
Leo Laporte [01:52:11]:
Sure Boy would be a great name for an AI Chatbot.
Richard Campbell [01:52:15]:
Okay, you like?
Leo Laporte [01:52:17]:
Sure. Boy, Contact Kick and see Shore Boy. Hey, everybody. Leo Laporte here. It's your last chance. We're in the final, final stretch of our 2026 audience survey. So important for us both to know you better because we don't gather information about you except this one time a year. And it helps us with advertising and we collect no personal information.
Leo Laporte [01:52:41]:
We just want to know about you in general. So if you would help us out. If you haven't filled out our survey yet, this is the time it closes. January 31st. TWIT TV survey. It helps us improve our shows and it helps us make money. And we need to do both. So Survey is at TWIT TV survey 26 should only take a few minutes.
Leo Laporte [01:53:04]:
Thanks in advance. Hey, we're going to get to the back of the book. It's coming up in just a moment. But first I want to put in a little plug for those wonderful, wonderful people. Not Joy, we're not sure. Boy, those wonderful, wonderful people in our club. Club Twit has made such a difference. Lisa and I are very grateful to all of you and all of our hosts and all of our staff are, because Club Twit is keeping Twit alive.
Leo Laporte [01:53:33]:
And it's a pretty important job from my point of view. I could retire, I guess, but I kind of like what we're doing. And if you like what we're doing, the best way to keep it going is to join the club. The club gets you some benefits, lots of them. You get access to the amazing Club Twit Discord, where there's always a great bunch of people talking about all sorts of interesting stuff. The kinds of things that geeks are particularly interested in. Not just during the shows, but, you know, there are two Minecraft servers for the club. There's all sorts of stuff.
Leo Laporte [01:54:06]:
It's a great place to just kind of hang out. We also do special programming in the club. There's your chore boy, hard at work. They love the AI in the club. We got Home Theater Geeks is coming up, I think tonight. Aren't we doing Micah's Crafting corner? Or did we do that last night? Maybe that's over. Johnny jets rejoining the crew. We haven't seen Johnny since the radio show went away.
Leo Laporte [01:54:36]:
He's going to talk about traveling and tech on the 29th, the 30th, Stacy's Book Club, the Heist of Hollow London. Great book. Recommend it. Worth listening to. You still have time to read it or listen to it. We have the AI Users group. That's the first Friday of every month and a great place to see people like Darren and Lawrence and so many interesting people, Manny, who are using AI to do some very amazing things. Lots of demos in there really is like a user group.
Leo Laporte [01:55:07]:
So that's one of the benefits. You also get ad free versions of all the shows. That's another benefit that's a significant benefit. You get the good warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that you helped us a lot. I've been saying till through last year that 25% of our operating costs came out of the club. It's now going to be more than that because I don't know if you noticed, there were no ads in this show. The ads have gotten kind of scant and I don't Want to be beholden. I don't want to only do stuff that advertisers want us to do.
Leo Laporte [01:55:44]:
Think that's the way to run an editorial operation. We want your support. You vote. You tell us what you want by going to Twit TV Club. Twit. $10 a month, $120 a year. There are family plans, there are corporate plans. If you like twit and you want to keep twit around, Crafting Corner is tonight.
Leo Laporte [01:56:05]:
Okay, that's going to be fun. 6pm Micah Sergeant, 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. Like a Sargent. He says they're doing paint by numbers. So that's your coloring book right there, Paul. Paint by numbers. This week on Crafting Corner. Join the club, will you? Twit TV Club Twit.
Leo Laporte [01:56:23]:
We would very much like to have you. And it is very much a way of voting to support Twit to keep it going. You wouldn't want Paul Thurat to actually have to work for a living, would you?
Paul Thurrott [01:56:35]:
Goodness, no.
Richard Campbell [01:56:36]:
No.
Leo Laporte [01:56:36]:
Oh, hell. Oh, bless you.
Richard Campbell [01:56:38]:
I'm so sorry. Excuse me.
Paul Thurrott [01:56:41]:
Now you have any serviceable skills? That's the question.
Leo Laporte [01:56:44]:
Did you know that the sneeze sound is cultural? You probably knew that, Richard, you're that kind of guy would know that. That the achoo is cultural. Different cultures have different sneeze sounds. It's a learned thing. It's not what it needs to sound like. Okay, just thought I'd pass that along. See, this is another thing you get from the fabulous Paul Thurrott back of the book. You kick things off, will you, with your sniff of the week.
Richard Campbell [01:57:13]:
Oh man. Yeah, last week I, you know, it's January. Not so much a resolution thing, but this is a good time of year to kind of take stock of things, whatever. And I wanted to focus on security, primarily for online accounts, but also just computer device security, I guess. I had written something about Passkey specifically for Windows users, but this past week I wrote a couple of more articles. One that was about securing a Microsoft account and the other was about an authenticator app. And on the Microsoft account side, this is something probably no one will ever do. But it's kind of interesting.
Richard Campbell [01:57:50]:
If you go and try to create a new Microsoft account today, by default they're not offering you an Outlook.com or Hotmail account anymore. You can still get one, but the default now is you just type in whatever email address you have and it becomes a Microsoft account. So there's a built in kind of recovery functionality there because it's hosted by a third party. Presumably this thing will be secured in whatever ways that service offers as well. But if you start to type something like not that this address is available, but paloutlook.com, then you get the dropdown for outlook.com and you can start trying to pick one of their addresses in which case they'll be hosting your mail as well. So that's not going to impact most people. But from a high level view when it comes to methods to identify yourself when you log in or just to verify your identity, which happens from time to time, obviously these accounts have passwords so they can take that away. You can have second or third email addresses that are.
Richard Campbell [01:58:46]:
You know that they can send codes to. Right. Also for recovery. But you sign into your account, you enable two FA or well, what they call two step authentication which you should do. You have to have multiple methods to authenticate yourself, right? So I recommend having at least one email address. But honestly, two would be good. You can text a code which I don't like because I know that's insecure. But man, they hound you to add your phone number to this account and it's bizarre.
Richard Campbell [01:59:14]:
That one I'm still trying to deal with. But they also they support two forms of authenticator apps. If you do have a Microsoft account, you care about it. Use the Microsoft Authenticator app, if only for that account, it's way better. But if you want you can use a third party authenticator app and it works the way you know that kind of thing works. But the experience with a Microsoft account with a Microsoft Authenticator app is literally passwordless. And it's wonderful. But the very best method is to use a passkey.
Richard Campbell [01:59:43]:
And if you are signing into a Microsoft account with a passkey, this is a password manager, preferably third party, but whatever it's in your browser. You don't even have to type your username. You just go to the site, whatever it is, outlook.com and the thing will pop down. Do you mean this one? Yep. And you're in. That's it. It will do like a Windows hello kind of authentication. So anyway I recommend, well not recommend demand turn on two step authentication set up passkeys and an authenticator app.
Richard Campbell [02:00:13]:
Microsoft Authenticator ideally is the job there related to that.
Paul Thurrott [02:00:18]:
Microsoft is now making it mandatory for M365 accounts hard to FA by the end of this year. You simply account will not work.
Richard Campbell [02:00:27]:
Well, that's the right thing to do.
Paul Thurrott [02:00:31]:
And the only reason they've been extending it is because some companies have still been struggling with it but bit by bit it's just not.
Richard Campbell [02:00:36]:
Not possible for individuals. It's weird but passkeys and this would be a passkey that would be in your password manager, maybe in your browser on your computer or passkey in the app that's in your phone that use for Autofill which is the same service. Right. Is both the most secure and the most convenient. It's kind of amazing but you should still have an authenticator app that's the next most secure next most convenient that you will have to with a few exceptions have to have a phone.
Paul Thurrott [02:01:06]:
Well and I like the phone number for recovery.
Richard Campbell [02:01:09]:
I do too.
Paul Thurrott [02:01:09]:
I don't like defined as an MFA.
Richard Campbell [02:01:11]:
And you cannot do it that way with Microsoft. I have no idea why. It's bizarre. So there's that. When I looked at Authenticator apps I know this is going to be semi controversial because everyone has their little favorites and you can't write about something like this without hearing about every single Authenticator app. But there is a clear winner here and that winner is Proton Authenticator. Free open source, fully encrypted. You can import, export if you want to go somewhere else or come from somewhere else, et cetera.
Richard Campbell [02:01:42]:
I like having an Authenticator app be separate from the password manager although some password managers support that. One of the couple of reasons I like that is because you can't store the key to a vault inside the vault. So you're always going to have to have something else. I mean it's you know, might as well just do everything through that. I that's, that's my.
Paul Thurrott [02:02:01]:
Now I've always been biased that if you, if you're an M365 user you should really be using Microsoft Authenticator and if you're a Google Workspace user you should be using Google Authenticator because they have so many benefits for something you interact with the most.
Richard Campbell [02:02:15]:
Yeah. So the companies that make have their own identity services essentially Apple, Google, Microsoft have their own ways of doing things. So I would say that you are better off using a third party authenticator app for everything except a Microsoft account or if you're in the Apple world, you know, because you have multiple devices the way they do 2fa is just different. They just don't, they don't support Authenticator apps.
Paul Thurrott [02:02:41]:
And that's always my question is like so if I go Proton Authenticator for everything am I still going to be able to use it for M365 you can stopping me from using. Yeah, I guess that's True.
Richard Campbell [02:02:50]:
And just not Right. So my advice for Microsoft people or people in Microsoft accounts is have Microsoft Authenticator. If just for the Microsoft accounts, yeah, you can also add it to the Proton or other authenticator. Right.
Paul Thurrott [02:03:03]:
It's not because they do support other authenticators.
Richard Campbell [02:03:05]:
It still works. You can have both. Right. If you're a Google guy or you have Google. Everyone has a Google account, right. So yes, you could have Google Authenticator. They don't do full encryption, though. That's the only problem there.
Richard Campbell [02:03:15]:
If you have a Gmail app, the Google app, if you're on an iPhone, or just the Google discovery feed on an Android. If you just have Android, right, you can, you can authenticate yourself through that phone's biometrics without the Google Authenticator app. So you don't actually need it. So you could add, you can add Google and Microsoft accounts to any authenticator app. You cannot add Apple accounts. It's kind of strange. So I'm actually going to write about Apple and Google.
Paul Thurrott [02:03:40]:
That was a real question. Here is like, okay, get them. Microsoft and Google will play well with others to some degree.
Richard Campbell [02:03:46]:
No, they do. I mean, not to. I mean, but they have a better experience inside their own ecosystem. So in Microsoft's case, that means the Microsoft Authenticator app, or actually Microsoft Edge would probably do it. I don't. Haven't tried that actually. But we'll have the Microsoft Authenticator app in the Google world. Gmail, the Google app.
Richard Campbell [02:04:05]:
That might be about it actually, but there's a couple of apps that will do it for you as well.
Paul Thurrott [02:04:08]:
I always like how authentic. At least Microsoft's authenticator would mix up the whole and do the number thing. Where sometimes it's like, I'm presenting a number over here. Type it in on the phone. Or here's the correct number. Choose from these three. So there's no consistent pattern.
Richard Campbell [02:04:22]:
Like it's especially true of Microsoft 365 commercial, where the prompt could be on either device. Right. So typically the Microsoft account experiences, you go to sign into outlook.com and it says, here's the number. It's 56. And then you get this alert on your phone and you tap it and it says, here's three numbers. Tap the number you see on your computer. It's 50. 56 is one of the numbers.
Richard Campbell [02:04:44]:
And it does not Windows. It does face ID or whatever you have, and you're in. And that's how it works. You never typed anything. It just, it's nice. You're. The way what you're describing is it goes in the opposite direction, you get a prompt that says, type the number you see on your phone. And you get a prompt on your phone, the phone says, here's a number.
Richard Campbell [02:04:59]:
You got to type that in your computer. So it goes in the opposite direction. Either one of those is great. And like you said, they mix them up. That's smart.
Paul Thurrott [02:05:05]:
Yeah. Well, and I think it's also a way to get people to stop ignoring it. Like you. They find a way to make you attentive to the authentication process.
Richard Campbell [02:05:14]:
I think I always think of the middle brake light on cars. You know, for the first year or two, it was kind of. It was unique and different. You really paid attention to it. Now we don't care anymore. You know, like, it's like every server car has these kind of stupid. But yeah, so there's that. And I'll do more.
Richard Campbell [02:05:27]:
I'm gonna do a more general passkey article, but the big one for me is going to be the password manager bit. And I would say that one's a little tough because there are at least three apps in my brain that are very, very good, but they all have a couple of unique features. And without giving away, it's no surprise. I mean, it's 1Password and Bitwarden, but I would also throw in Proton Pass, which is one I actually use. But we'll get there. We'll get there in the future.
Paul Thurrott [02:05:54]:
Well, and you know, the funny thing about password managers is I have never met anyone who started using a password manager and stopped. There's lots of people who won't start.
Richard Campbell [02:06:04]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [02:06:04]:
Well, it's like.
Richard Campbell [02:06:05]:
So again, I'm gonna get. I'm gonna. Yeah, I'm gonna get to this. But the. The real trick that. Well, the first trick is what you just described. You have to go to it and do that thing, right. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [02:06:15]:
You also have to stop using the old thing and delete everything in the old thing, which I think a lot of people don't do. I bet all of us have vestiges of password collections in multiple places. It's just very easy. But the next step after that is also using it to make sure that you're not on the dark web, that you're not reusing the same password everywhere, which you are all doing. I'm doing it, too. We all do it using it.
Paul Thurrott [02:06:39]:
Like, the only person who's not doing is the person who's using a password manager because it's. Because.
Richard Campbell [02:06:43]:
Well, hopefully a lot torment you. Yeah. But even same password twice. But you've imported passwords, so you are doing it like a lot of people are doing. You have to help you think of. You have to get over the hump of. You don't need to know the password. Don't worry about it.
Richard Campbell [02:06:58]:
The password manager is everywhere you are. It's on your computers, it's on your phone. You can have any tablet. You're never. Anytime you actually have to type a password in that thing will have it. You don't need to know the password. The only password you need to know if it has that is the password for the password manager. Right.
Richard Campbell [02:07:14]:
That's the, that's the, the trick. But we'll get to that. That's a, that's a big can of worms and I'm going to make people upset when we go through that. Past couple of weeks I've been talking about ways to do local AI. This one's a little bit left field, but Microsoft has an app called AI Dev Studio. It's in preview. It looks a lot like the apps they have for like what are they called? Like when UI3 Gallery or WPF Gallery. They're for.
Richard Campbell [02:07:40]:
It's for developers. But this app is interesting because it shows you what's possible with local AI in Windows. And if you think back to would be build 2024. So almost two years ago, Microsoft introduced something at the time called the Windows Copilot runtime, which is not a runtime, but it was going to be these APIs for developers. And then almost a year went by, they never released it. They finally released something in January, February 2020 that was a very early preview. You had to be on a experimental version of the Windows app SDK to even access this stuff. It never really fully came together.
Richard Campbell [02:08:17]:
So at last year's build in May, they replaced that with something called the Microsoft AI Foundry. Right. And there's a local version of that you can have in Windows which is text based. And that's the thing I talked about last week. But the, the big change to me is that the APIs for developers that they started talking about almost two years ago are actually now available. So if you go into this app, you can see what those things are like I said the big advances to me are text and images. But there's more. There's audio and video, there's software coding, there's smart controls, et cetera, et cetera.
Richard Campbell [02:08:51]:
But if you look at just text and images, just keep it simple. As a developer you could, and this is what I'm starting to work on myself is write an app that can generate text summarize text, just have a chat interface, translate text between languages, grammar checking, spell checking, paraphrasing, shorten, lengthen text, et cetera. The image stuff is very similar. So generate images, obviously generative AI, but delete objects from images, remove the background, enhance an image. The primary use case there being the super res thing I was talking about. So you take a 320 by you know, 240 image, whatever it is, and upscale it to 4K and it doesn't lose, you know, it's beautiful. This is available to everyone now and this is the kind of thing that's interesting. If you look at how many the samples in here so you can play with it.
Richard Campbell [02:09:42]:
You have to download models, you can choose if you have a Copilot plus PC for those to be MPU based models and you can see it hitting the MPU and how it's not hitting the cpu etc. Etc. But, but this is really, it's not so much a thing you're going to sit there and chat with exactly. It's more of a guide to what is capable right now on any PC. And it's actually a surprisingly good list, especially when you consider how long it took them to come up with anything for developers. So inside the app itself you will have to download some models you can interact with or yes, interact with many of these capabilities just within the app just to see what it's like. And then you can kind of apply this to what I'm going to call little tech solutions for AI that are going to run locally. Right.
Richard Campbell [02:10:30]:
So whatever you're using, if it was that, the JAN AI or whatever it might be, these models will all be available in those things and you can see where these things are at. And I have to say it's surprisingly good. So if you are thinking that like you know, small language models are maybe two or three years behind LLMs, they're not. They're pretty good. I mean they are behind but the capabilities are pretty impressive. So if you're interested in this and you want to see what you'll be doing pretty soon like with a local AI or could be doing right now if they support it already. This is a neat, this is a really neat app. It's just a, it's astonishing how many AI based capabilities are in there.
Richard Campbell [02:11:10]:
It's worth looking at if you care about this stuff. It's worth looking at.
Paul Thurrott [02:11:15]:
Cool.
Leo Laporte [02:11:16]:
Well, you know what I'd like to look at right now? I'd like to look at Run as.
Paul Thurrott [02:11:20]:
Radio with Mr. Richard Campbell well, I did an unusual show for this particular week. This is my friend Amber Vandenberg. We called the show ideation to implementation. So not a techie show that this is more of a soft skill conversation. But it came from a request from a listener saying, hey, I'm getting presented with these projects but I can't get my team moving. I can't get buy in like that whole problem space of how do you actually get a project started and how do you get it finished? From the political angles of it, often the tech is the easiest part. It's actually getting all the players lined up, making sure you do the right things to show success.
Paul Thurrott [02:12:01]:
Success, like those are the issues. And so Suddenly we were 35 minutes into a conversation about that whole idea of how fast you can actually move. We end up in method of mad month and sort of speed of trust conversations is like how do you reach across all those lines to get folks on board and give them a clear starting line, a clear ending line and a deadline. Right. Like each of those parts were important to. And I really enjoyed the conversation just because it was very coherent step by step thinking through the issues to be able to be successful. Often delivering well on attack doesn't turn into a win for a company. Like if you don't do these other steps to actually show the win in a way that's meaningful to non technical people, it doesn't matter.
Leo Laporte [02:12:51]:
Nice.
Paul Thurrott [02:12:52]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:12:54]:
Runners radio 1020. Well, I think the only thing that's really left is heavy drinking at this point.
Paul Thurrott [02:13:03]:
Totally. And I got a couple of stories related to this particular alcohol. I thought now we left Mexico behind, I would talk about something other than Mexican alcohol. But I was wrong. We had to do a little shopping on our way before we went home to bring certain gifts for certain people. And I decided to get something unusual in the agave space. I thought I was looking for tequila or mezcal and I was incorrect. I found something else completely else called racia.
Paul Thurrott [02:13:33]:
And then when I wanted to understand what the heck that was, I ended up having to dig all the way into how alcohol, what alcohol is about in Mexico, full stop. Because if you unpeel the onion and go all the way down. The agave plant has been important in that region of the world long before it was called Mexico. I mean, literally for centuries. Archaeologists have found evidence of the agave plant being used 9,000 years ago. So and they're not just for alcohol, obviously. The agave is a very versatile plant. It is quite edible.
Paul Thurrott [02:14:06]:
The flea, the flowers, the leaves, the stalks, all edible food. The worms on it and this. Yeah, we're talking about the tequila worms, which is not actually a worm at all. It's a larva of a moth that is a destructive pest to it, but also apparently delicious. And so has been is a mentioned eaten food again, literally for millennia. Oh, and by the way, never found in tequila. You will occasionally find it in mezcal. It is a gimmick.
Paul Thurrott [02:14:32]:
There is no reason for it. Yes, you can eat them. If you can handle the gross out factor or not. It's not a big deal. The fibers in agave are incredibly robust. They may make clothing out of them, they make fishnets out of them, they make rope out of them. The thorns are sharp and sturdy and good for sewing. And to the point where in the Aztec mythology, the Mexica group, there is a God of fertility and nourishment called Mahuel, who is literally this inspiration of the agave plant.
Paul Thurrott [02:15:05]:
And it turns out, because it's full of carbohydrate, as this plant's growing, this particular point, when you're growing the agave, and we've talked about this before, and tequila making, where it concentrates sugars in the main ball before it makes a stem to do reproduction. And if you harvest it at that point, you can get a lot of sugar from it, bake it a little bit, steam it, or roast it to increase the amount of sugar production. And folk humans have been clever for millennia. They figured how to do that a long time ago to pull this sweet SAP out of a roasted agave and it would naturally ferment. There are lambic yeasts in that part of the world to make a drink, a kind of beer called pulque. Now it's also known as ocli, which is probably the original name from the Aztec era. The Spanish also called it agave wine. They called everything wine if it had a little bit of alcohol in it.
Paul Thurrott [02:16:00]:
Sort of a milky product. It's still available today. You could buy the stuff. Although at that time, if you go back to the pre Hispanic era, this is very much a ceremony or religious drink. So it wasn't consumed in large quantity. But when the Spanish arrive in that world, arrive is a great term. In 1521, it doesn't take very long to find pulque. And it's much easier to make than beer because barley does not grow well in that part of the world.
Paul Thurrott [02:16:27]:
And so they start scaling the production of it massively to the point that by the middle 1600s, this becomes heavily regulated, as is the drunkenness problem that's generally happening, you know, Spanish empire stuff, we're going to skip back and forth of the ages there, but we're. That's the, you know, your typical product. When you find a carbohydrate sugar source, it's not hard to make a beer product of some kind of 4 to 7% alcohol. It's the distillation that gets more interesting. And the story of the distillation of P is back. It's still back in the 1500s. So in 1565, the Spanish Empire, which has already been in control of the area that is in Mexico for some time, has now made it all the way around the other side of the world. And they've taken control of the Philippines.
Paul Thurrott [02:17:16]:
And the Filipinos being very much ocean going folks anyway, considering the part of the world and they're working on the ships for the Spanish Empire and there is a route called the Manila Galleon route that runs between Manila in the Philippines and what we now known as Acapulco in Mexico at that time, the area known as Nuevo Galacia, but which is basically the whole west coast of what is now Mexico. And plenty of the Filipinos as they make it across the Pacific Ocean, which is a. In that era, you're talking the 1500s, that era that it's a very easy to die journeying across the Pacific Ocean. So when the Filipinos were make it to New Galatia, they're not inclined to go back on that ship again. They just sort of disappear and integrate into that the society of the time. And they also bring a bunch of the products from the other side of the world. So the reason that they're integrated into Mexican culture is things like tamarind and rice and mango and coconut all comes from the Filipinos coming in on the Manila galleons. Well, they also know how to turn coconuts in because it is a concentrated carbohydrate into a kind of beer that the Filipino called tuba.
Paul Thurrott [02:18:31]:
But they also had a simple but completely unique distilling technique to make a liquor called in the Filipino language in Tagalog, lambagnoc, but was quickly coined by the Spanish as vino de coco, as in the wine of coconuts. In the area that we now know as Colima, which is again a very old name. In and around Jalisco there's a. There's a record from a governor from 1631 talking about 262,000 liters of vino de coca being produced. So that's a lot of booze. What's interesting about it is the still that were used are completely different from the European style stills. There's not a lot of metal and so they didn't. They used as little as possible.
Paul Thurrott [02:19:22]:
The still looks more like an inverted cone where at the bottom of the still is a large metal bowl that's going to contain your ferment. The pulque that's got a bit of a fire underneath it. You don't need to get it too hot, right? You're just trying to evaporate the alcohol. And then built around that bowl is a cone made out of wooden staves. And then at the top there is another metal bowl that's smaller, that's got cold water in it. So that the as the alcohol evaporates, it's going to hit that upper bowl and it's going to cool and drip down. And in between the two you've got a kind of pan shape with it's angled with a pipe coming out of the wooden box. And that's where the alcohol is going to drip out.
Paul Thurrott [02:20:05]:
By the way, you can still find these stills in the Jalisco area. They're rare because they're not particularly efficient today they use much more efficient stills, but they're super simple. They could break down into something very small, transportable and ship. And it will make you a kind of alcohol from it. And so it appears that the first time that agave SAP or pulque gets distilled is because of these Filipino stills. And that product made of from the distilled pulque is called mezcal.
Leo Laporte [02:20:37]:
Almost from the other they invented mezcal.
Paul Thurrott [02:20:41]:
They brought the distillation technique that turned this ceremonial beer product of the aztecs into a 30, 40% alcohol, single stage sort of lambic distillation. And we've talked about this before, that all agave spirits are generally known as mezcals. And that was always true. The Spanish called the vinoda vas mezcal. And so but at each there's lots of different kinds of agave and they grow in different regions, different climate zones and so forth. And so as different regions got good at making mezcal, you started using the region name as part of the name of the product. So if you go up into the Sonora, the northern part of mezcal today, you can buy an alcohol called baccadora, but in which is from a town in Sonora called Baconor, which happens to be on the Baconora river, because original naming. And this product was originally known as vino de mezcal.
Paul Thurrott [02:21:33]:
De baccanara. Pretty simple. Today we just call it baccanora. And what made it distinct, it used an unusual form of agave, Agave angostifolia, also known as the mague pacifica. But it's a kind of agave not found anywhere very much elsewhere. And it's specific to that. The baconorids always used it there. And so it got its own sort of recognition.
Paul Thurrott [02:21:57]:
It's not a well known Mexican alcohol, but baccanora has its own domain certification, just like champagne does. Though they only got it back in 2000. Right. So as you get mezcal production spreading through new galacias, that's the whole west side of Mexico, into different regions, going up into the highlands and so forth, with their different species of agave, you get different results. So the one you do know is once known as vino de mezcal de tequila, right? Tequila being a region. And this is where the first commercial tequila products were made by the Cuervo family. They got the ticket from the Spanish government in 1758 to start mass production of that. And by the way, that name, vino de mezcal de tequila, is the normal name of the product until the 1970s.
Paul Thurrott [02:22:53]:
The only reason it just ended up being called tequila is that the Mexican government was very frustrated with the fact that certain southwestern American states were growing agave and making it into alcohol and also calling it vino di mezcal, the tequila. And so they copyrighted the name tequila as an intellectual property product, so nobody else could use the word tequila. And that's why it all started being called tequila for a while there. And they got the domain identification in 1994. But also going back into the early 1900s, there was Franz Weber, a botanist, who had been actually identifying all the different species of agave. It's not very obvious one from the other. And he focused on a particular kind of agave Today we call blue agave, although back in the day it was called Weber's agave because he recognized it as a faster growing in the highlands area, easier to reproduce. And agave azul, as it's typically referred to now, is what all tequila to this day is made from, because it's the most productive agave you can use.
Paul Thurrott [02:24:02]:
And another distinction of tequila was that they steamed the peanuts, the root of the agave, to extract the sugars from it, rather than roasting them, which is a traditional way, because the roasting techniques normally would add a smoky flavor to it that some people didn't like steaming mezcal flavor yeah, that's the mezcal flavor. And Mezcal, which we get to know is also the superset as a whole, now has its own DOM identification. Only in the 2000s, they actually get one. And they also set limits on the different states that could produce Mezcals and the various techniques. But where tequila was strictly agave, azul and bacon, strictly magalisa pacifica, mezcal has a bunch of different agaves that are acceptable and an array of techniques. And, yeah, most mezcals are smoky, but not all. And by the way, also true that most tequilas are not smoky, but not all. Right? It is.
Paul Thurrott [02:24:56]:
You have a choice on how you do your preparation.
Leo Laporte [02:24:59]:
Mike Devgan's gonna be on in half an hour, and he has his own tequila, own Mezcal that he makes sure it's not too smoky. It's actually quite delicious.
Richard Campbell [02:25:07]:
So.
Paul Thurrott [02:25:07]:
But we're not talking about any of those. We're talking about rassiya, and I have the bottle of rasiya right here. So this is also from Jalisco. This is where tequila, mezcal, and so forth all originated. The one thing you say for sure about rasiya is it is not made with blue agave. It's actually made with a bunch of other ones. But rasiya is not referring to a region like all the other names were. It's actually a term that means little root.
Paul Thurrott [02:25:35]:
Because this, my friends, this is the best kind of alcohol. The kind of alcohol invented to avoid paying taxes, you mean? Well, and it always ends up. You know, this happened in Ireland, right, where they started making putin to avoid the English taxes. Like this happens over and over again. So all the way back to 1608, the governor of Nuvo, Galicia, recognizes how much mezcal is being produced and starts imposing taxes on it. Now, most of these mezcal growers are down in the lowlands in the area and so forth, and are easy to go collect the taxes on. But no, not this stuff. The mezcal growers using a particular agave, the Maximiliana, only grows in the very high highlands, 2,000 meters plus, right? And so.
Paul Thurrott [02:26:25]:
So it's hard to get to those guys, and they don't get the news very often. And the tax collectors don't want to climb those hills, and so they just kind of don't get around to paying taxes.
Leo Laporte [02:26:35]:
You didn't want to go.
Paul Thurrott [02:26:36]:
And then when a tax collector does show up, they say, and he says, I'm here to count your pinas to pay taxes. He goes, oh, we don't make this from pina. We make this from the little root, which is what rasiya actually means is little root. Now they're lying, of course. They're making for the pina. There's nothing else to. To make it from. But it's all part of the game of avoiding paying taxes.
Paul Thurrott [02:26:55]:
And they constantly go into hiding. They avoid the taxation equation literally into the 2000s. Wow. Right. And it's one of the reasons it became moonshine, because the down. The upside to the taxation and regulation is consistency and quality. And the downside is you cheat. And so this was always a black market product that was kind of hidden away from the rest of the world.
Paul Thurrott [02:27:18]:
And so it does get this reputation of being a dubious product of being a moonshine and potentially dangerous and poisonous, which may be entirely possible because it's kind of under control, but it is kind of unique and only got recognized as a legal alcohol saleable in places like the US in 2014, and it got its Dom in 2019. So it's super original. So there is a couple of different kinds of rhaca today. They do roast the peanuts, but they roast them in clay ovens isolated away from the smoke, so they tend not to be smoky. And they use a couple of different agaves, depending on where they're growing. So there's one set of riceas called La Costa or the Coastals, which are kind of citrusy flavors. And this is Agave angustifolia, or also known as the yellow agave, as well as Agave rhodacantha. And then La Sierra, or the mountains, is the kind of pinier, stronger taste.
Paul Thurrott [02:28:15]:
And this is where Agave Maximiliana and also an even rarer agave called Inequacidens are used to make racia. And so this particular one we found is this is the Anastasia distillery, which is in La Estancia de Landros, which is over a kilometer above sea level in the Jalisco Footlands, where they use Agave Maximilia, which grown even higher up in the Sierra Madres, and it grows a lot slower there. So you're technically talking a bit little, least eight years before the agave is ready to flower, and makes that sugar concentration that makes it worthwhile to harvest. And then they roast it very slowly over two days, 48 hours plus before they do the fermentation. And for this particular one, for estancia, they actually do their fermentation in old Jack Daniels barrels, which I love. They're not aging it right. This is a blanco, right? There's no color to this, but it is fermented there and then later distilled. Do they use lambic still? So more the European single stage still.
Paul Thurrott [02:29:14]:
Although they do do a double distillation. There's another name that goes around for this, which is called Mexican gin.
Leo Laporte [02:29:22]:
Does it taste like gin?
Paul Thurrott [02:29:24]:
Well, that's the point. It's very botanical. Instead of green flavor, you know, it's not got that burnish. It doesn't have the pepper note you're used to with tequila. Turns out that's really from agave azul. The Maximiliana doesn't have that. So there's all these flavors that are very regional now. I mean, traditionally, a gin is a high distillation.
Paul Thurrott [02:29:47]:
That's. Then you soak botanicals in it. There's been no botanicals added to it, but there's all these botanical flavors in this. Just a natural byproduct of the kind of agave. Now, this product is so weird. People don't know anything about it. It makes no sense. That is.
Paul Thurrott [02:30:02]:
That is around anywhere, and yet you can buy it at specialty stores in the US and for 50 bucks, it's not even especially expensive because it's not famous, it's not heavily marketed.
Leo Laporte [02:30:15]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:30:15]:
And I. I tell this story because I was so upset about last week's story about the Don Julio 70 and the Crystalino and like, the version of tequila. Right. Like the disruption of tequila. And then I run into this, and it's the simplest, most honest manifestation of agave in a whole area you didn't know about. That's always gone on. This product's been made for hundreds of years. It's just been kept away from the public until literally the last 20 years.
Richard Campbell [02:30:46]:
Wow.
Paul Thurrott [02:30:46]:
And now it's starting to emerge. And there's only a handful of them, but you can get it. You know, you got a fan friend who's a tequila fan. You get in this. This is exactly what we did. We got this bottle for our builder. The folks that work on the other house. We want to give him something nice, and we know he likes tequila.
Paul Thurrott [02:31:01]:
It's like I brought him a sipping. It's like a gin you would drink neat. It's just this rich, no heat. It's 40%. It's not big and bold, but it would be a sin to put this in a cocktail. It's so nice by itself. You know, once in a while you find a gin that good. But that is this species of Mexican alcohol.
Paul Thurrott [02:31:23]:
It doesn't have to be the pepper bomb. You don't need salt and lime. Right. You could Just drink it.
Leo Laporte [02:31:30]:
I'm not crazy.
Richard Campbell [02:31:31]:
Blew my mind, to be honest.
Leo Laporte [02:31:32]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:31:33]:
You know what? It's a mood thing. Sometimes I want that, sometimes I don't. Right. Remember we did the black corner harditas, like last year when we were together in Mexico, and that was a big, bold, like, we're going for a ride called Tequila. I get that. Right. And that sometimes that's what you want. Dude, I.
Paul Thurrott [02:31:49]:
I gotta keep this bottle around for the summertime. I want two ice cubes in this and a couple of fingers that I'm gonna sit on my deck and watch the dolphins do their thing and drink this lovely drink the same way I would like a gmt.
Leo Laporte [02:32:02]:
This looks incredible. I'm not blown away.
Paul Thurrott [02:32:05]:
So surprised.
Leo Laporte [02:32:06]:
Rice. Ricea. R A, I C, I. Double L A Ricea.
Richard Campbell [02:32:11]:
That's right. Very.
Leo Laporte [02:32:13]:
Just.
Paul Thurrott [02:32:14]:
Yeah. And I'm just glad to have. When I started putting this together and realized it's such a good news story about the thing I've always liked about this gig we're doing, telling about craftsmen making an interesting product from the ingredients in their region. And so the big industry has come and destroyed tequila. In my opinion. From what we talked about last year, Tequila's kind of broken.
Richard Campbell [02:32:37]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:32:38]:
But agave is not. Agave's just broken.
Leo Laporte [02:32:40]:
Not. Yeah, agave is not broken. Ladies and gentlemen, as I rearrange the tiles, it is had. This concludes another thrilling, gripping edition of Windows Weekly.
Paul Thurrott [02:32:58]:
Yeah, it's definitely not a brown liquor at all, but I make an exception.
Leo Laporte [02:33:02]:
It's normally clear.
Paul Thurrott [02:33:03]:
It's crystal clear. It's a bronco.
Leo Laporte [02:33:05]:
Wouldn't want to put it in. In a margarita.
Paul Thurrott [02:33:07]:
I guess you'd lose out a bunch of things. The lime would overwhelm it.
Leo Laporte [02:33:11]:
Right. But. But Lisa might like it. I have to get a bottle of this.
Paul Thurrott [02:33:17]:
If you've ever met a really nice gin where you just drank it on.
Leo Laporte [02:33:19]:
Its own with an ice cube.
Richard Campbell [02:33:20]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:33:21]:
Yeah. This.
Leo Laporte [02:33:22]:
I'm going to go down to BevMo, see what they've got.
Paul Thurrott [02:33:25]:
You're not going to find a BevMo. You're going to have to go to a specialty tequila retailer.
Leo Laporte [02:33:29]:
Oh, okay. Okay.
Paul Thurrott [02:33:31]:
But there's. There's one around just like this especially. Whiskey shop.
Leo Laporte [02:33:34]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:33:35]:
You go to a nice tequila place, you ask for a. And the guy behind the counter who runs the place will be delighted. You asked because you didn't just ask for Jose Cuervo. Right. Like, you went and got something so very nice.
Leo Laporte [02:33:47]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:33:48]:
Right. Really unique. Agave alcohol all.
Leo Laporte [02:33:51]:
Learned something here today.
Richard Campbell [02:33:53]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:33:54]:
I hope we didn't.
Leo Laporte [02:33:55]:
You'll find Richard Campbell@renasradio.com and if you want to see all of the whiskey liquor tip pics, we've made a YouTube playlist at it. What is it? Something weird from my closet.
Paul Thurrott [02:34:08]:
Something weird from my closet dot com.
Leo Laporte [02:34:10]:
Yeah, that's the link. You go there and you will find a lot of stuff. How many Kevin's been putting these together.
Paul Thurrott [02:34:18]:
Last one was Posted on the 12th so we're at 111.
Richard Campbell [02:34:21]:
Wah.
Leo Laporte [02:34:23]:
That's a lot of drinking.
Paul Thurrott [02:34:25]:
Well, you know, I do my best. You know the great thing about bringing a bottle like this home? I. I was for work. Oh, by the way, this bottle flew home with us yesterday and it leaked. It was a brand new sealed bottle and it was fully bubble wrapped and then in a bag and all of it was wet. We lost could be an ounce or two from it. This is synthetic cork. And this particular bottle, and that's not that uncommon with synthetic corks.
Paul Thurrott [02:34:51]:
As the pressure went down on the flight. Right. Push the cork up a little bit of the liquid leak dough. I always wrap these things and pad them like it's not that easy to break this bottle. It's pretty resistant. But what I didn't do and I normally do is I always take an old dirty T shirt and wrap it around the whole package as well. So that will soak up any. You don't want it into your bag.
Paul Thurrott [02:35:08]:
Right.
Leo Laporte [02:35:09]:
You call it the airline's share.
Paul Thurrott [02:35:11]:
Yeah, well, because I actually brought.
Richard Campbell [02:35:13]:
Plus your clothes smell great.
Paul Thurrott [02:35:14]:
Yeah, yeah, it's exactly that. As I got down to the part of the bag. Oh no, I smell all that.
Richard Campbell [02:35:21]:
I shouldn't be able to smell that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:35:24]:
Oh, so that's not good.
Leo Laporte [02:35:28]:
Richard Campbell's@runnersradio.com that's where you'll also find Dotnet Rocks, a show he does with his good friend Carl Franklin. Paul thurat is@therot.com now. I just went there and they have a new. You have a new premium subscription service that explains what was going on last week on the website. So that's all set up. But you do need to re enroll as a premium member, which I will do. And then discontinue your old subscription so you don't get charged twice.
Richard Campbell [02:35:56]:
You're talking about me?
Leo Laporte [02:35:58]:
Yeah, yeah, your site.
Richard Campbell [02:36:00]:
So we're starting. Yeah, we're starting to do that. Trans. Sorry, I thought you meant him. I'm like, I don't bring. Yes. So this, it's going to be much better for everybody. Even Though you have to take a couple of steps because this, it will be self service so plus we'll be able to tell you ahead of time, hey, this is going to resubscribe so if that's not what you cancel it.
Richard Campbell [02:36:17]:
This has been a big problem for us.
Leo Laporte [02:36:18]:
Yeah, I count on that.
Richard Campbell [02:36:19]:
Yeah, yeah, it's good.
Leo Laporte [02:36:21]:
Well, good. So thorat.com, you can find his books as leanpub.com including the Field Guide to Windows 11 and Windows Everywhere. And you'll find them right here every Wednesday morning, 11am Pacific. That's 1300 UTC. That's 1900. I'm sorry, 1300 Eastern. 1900 UTC. I mentioned that because you can watch us do it live.
Leo Laporte [02:36:44]:
Get the freshest version of the show. If you watch live at those times for the club, we stream into the Discord. But I think even club members like to watch on YouTube or Twitch or X.com or Facebook or LinkedIn or Kik. It's on all of those platforms. Pick the one you like. If you chat, I will see the chat because we have a unified, I have a unified chat interface that lets me see everybody's comments. That's very nice, thank you. We appreciate everybody in there.
Leo Laporte [02:37:11]:
Hello.
Richard Campbell [02:37:13]:
What else?
Leo Laporte [02:37:14]:
After the fact, on demand versions of the show available at our website, Twit TV WW. There's audio there and video. There's also a YouTube channel with the video and you can use that to share clips. Always a nice thing to to do. And as I mentioned there's also that, you know Richard Campbell. 111 whiskeys and counting and more coming all the time. Thank you. Kevin King, he's working, he works hard on that.
Leo Laporte [02:37:38]:
I didn't realize there were that many. That's awesome. Finally the best way to get it, subscribe in your favorite podcast client. That way you get it automatically is as soon as it's available. And if you do subscribe in Pocketcasts or Apple's podcasts or Overcast or whatever you use, if it has a review section, leave us a nice review. Tell the world about this fabulous show.
Richard Campbell [02:38:00]:
Cannot believe Richard got home for this show. I was 100% positive there was.
Leo Laporte [02:38:06]:
Did you get in just this morning or.
Paul Thurrott [02:38:08]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [02:38:08]:
Wow.
Paul Thurrott [02:38:09]:
Yeah, no, we got, we got to the apartment at 2:30 in the morning. We're asleep by 3 up at 5:30 on the 7:30 ferry to get here by 9:30. And then I had an hour and a half to get this rig set up and running.
Richard Campbell [02:38:24]:
I, I was, I was thinking if you even got to Vancouver Maybe you do it from a friend's house or something, but I. The fact that you actually got to your home is pretty impressive, actually. Really impressive. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:38:36]:
And now it's time for a boathouse nap, I would think.
Paul Thurrott [02:38:39]:
I gotta run the she who Must Be Obeyed down for a little oral surgery, which is the other reason we were hurrying home is I've had to get done and didn't want to reschedule.
Leo Laporte [02:38:47]:
I hate that one.
Richard Campbell [02:38:48]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:38:48]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:38:49]:
Well, wish her the best.
Paul Thurrott [02:38:50]:
And, yeah, she's excited to get it done. It's been coming for a while.
Leo Laporte [02:38:53]:
Yeah, I know that feeling. You. The teeth start to fail.
Richard Campbell [02:38:58]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [02:38:59]:
We're not 20 anymore.
Richard Campbell [02:39:01]:
No, no, my teeth are 120.
Leo Laporte [02:39:03]:
I had. Because I am so old, I had a bunch of amalgam fillings with mercury in them. And some of them still are there, but most of them have been replaced by more modern material.
Richard Campbell [02:39:15]:
Yeah, all my metal has been replaced with what is like porcelain or something.
Leo Laporte [02:39:19]:
They do a better job now, but, you know, some of them still live, which is kind of amazing.
Paul Thurrott [02:39:24]:
And they say the dangerous part is their removal in the first place. So if they're at risk, then get them out, but don't disturb.
Richard Campbell [02:39:29]:
Exactly. Well, I think they start to fall out in my case, like they were needed to be replaced, but. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:39:38]:
Thank you, sir. Sorry to end this wonderful show on the dental note.
Richard Campbell [02:39:42]:
On the dental surgery note.
Leo Laporte [02:39:47]:
We will see you all again next time on Windows Weekly.
Richard Campbell [02:39:52]:
Bye.
Leo Laporte [02:39:52]:
Bye.
