Windows Weekly Episode 760 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 Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley. You here and yeah, there's no big news except for Microsoft's biggest acquisition in its history. Why is Microsoft buying Activision blizzard? What's the business model? Why is it a good idea or is it a bad idea? And will it pass regulatory approval, all that and more coming up next on Windows Weekly.

New Speaker (00:00:26):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:28):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley episode 760 recorded Wednesday, January 19th, 2022. The Actvision Acquisition. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by hacker rank. It's time to reboot your technical interviews with hacker ranks. Easy to use tools with a pre-made question, library code playback, and built-in whiteboard. You'll be conducting better technical interviews and, and instantly identifying the right talent. Go to hacker rank.com/ww to start a better tech interview for free today and by Intel systems orchestrated by the experts at CDW to deliver increased performance with a built for business eleventh gen intel core vprocessor. Learn more at cdw.Com/intelclient. It's time for Windows Weekly, or should we call it gaming weekly? Paul Thurrott is here. All About Microsoft, Mary Jo's going no. F M L finally, Mary Jo leads with this story,uvery Joe full that's the other, the other that's the other meaning expansion of that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:01:48):
The other FML. Yeah. The other, other

Leo Laporte (00:01:50):
FML, Mary Joe Foley, all about microsoft.com from ZD net, Paul Thurrott, Thurrott.com. His own suey, generous autonomous and other Latin website. There is just nothing to talk about today. So I think we should have a short show.

Paul Thurrott (00:02:07):
No, yeah, let's just do some recipes and 

Leo Laporte (00:02:10):
<Laugh> biggest acquisition. Microsoft has ever attempted

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:16):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> by a long shot.

Leo Laporte (00:02:19):
<Laugh> the funny thing is what is it? Is it 68 point 67.8 67.8? Billion's supposed,

Paul Thurrott (00:02:28):
It's supposed to be 75 even, right, but the

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:31):
68.7 68.7. So

Leo Laporte (00:02:33):
Third times says nearly 70 billion. And I'm thinking since when is 1.3 billion, a rounding error almost.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:40):
Yeah. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:02:41):
But it is when you're talking. What? The, so Mary Jo FML, finally, Mary Jo leads.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:50):
Yes. So let me give you the highest level of this story and why even I wrote about it first, M Microsoft's biggest acquisition ever, like you just

Leo Laporte (00:03:00):
Said, what was the next biggest GitHub? 

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:03):
Linkedin, LinkedIn, 26.2 billion,

Leo Laporte (00:03:06):
Which even then we thought that's an awful lot. We

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:08):
Thought that was like insane. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:03:10):
<Laugh> well, it's a LinkedIn. It was insane. But 70 Instagrams, my God.

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:14):
Yeah. And so the way this all came out too, like the day after holiday, we're all thinking Tuesday's gonna be easy day. We're just gonna coast. Plus next Tuesday is Microsoft earnings. So you're, they're kind of in a semi quiet period. No wrong. <Laugh> not so quiet. <Laugh> not so quiet. And it felt like the the news started trickling out a couple hours before 9:00 AM Eastern because I a couple headlines saying Microsoft might buy Activision and I'm like, oh, I hope they don't. I want a quiet Tuesday. And then suddenly 9:00 AM we all get email? Like, yeah. We just made a bid to buy acquisition to buy. Activat. So act vision for people like me, who had no idea who they were act vision blizzard, call of duty. Come on. I had never heard of them. You never

Leo Laporte (00:03:59):
Heard of call of duty?

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:01):
No, I heard the you've been of the company. <Laugh> I heard I heard of the games, but not the company. So call of duty

Leo Laporte (00:04:08):
And that's like a dagger to the heart. <Laugh> right. Candy crush, candy crush. The own king. I didn't know that. That was a shock. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:14):
Yeah. Okay. If you hate candy, crushing your start menu. You forget it. It's gonna be there forever. Big time. It's just gonna be there. Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, all these names. I don't know. Right? All these big,

Leo Laporte (00:04:26):
Big of this franchise. Big James, Mary Jo. Big. Yes.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:29):
Big, big, very big. How many employees will Microsoft get? If this goes through 10,000 employees? Yep. 10,000 more employees, but

Leo Laporte (00:04:37):
They're also gonna get one employee. They probably only don't want actually they probably, so they're not gonna keep, oh, that would be a relief. He's going away. He's so KA has been, and you see you, you do know, or Kotick, I should say you do know this name because surely you saw the news about the harassment. The, I did the frat yeah. Frat boy culture around world of Warcraft. Yes. So, and, and Bobby Codick is the poster boy for this. In fact, some people were perturbed that he's gonna have this big payday when in fact, you know, everybody's calling for him to resign, you know, and that's why I think Microsoft rushed into this.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:16):
Well, so the rumor, the rumor is that activism blizzard was going around, shopping itself around and they offered

Leo Laporte (00:05:24):
Themselves, wanted out, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:26):
Meta and meta said, no, really?

Leo Laporte (00:05:29):
Hmm. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:31):
And so then they came to Microsoft and Microsoft, wasn't their first choice, but they're like, Hey, what about you guys? You seem to wanna do this gaming thing. You wanna buy us? <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:05:39):
That's a gross paraphrasing of the conversation. But yes, I,

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:43):
I was privy to this conversation and that's what they said. <Laugh> what else you need to, you're gonna be like

Leo Laporte (00:05:50):
Ti you're like time magazine now in all of your articles. Exactly. And then he walked into the room, looked from left to right. And saw a shining desperation

Paul Thurrott (00:05:58):
In the eye desperation in his eyes.

Leo Laporte (00:06:01):
Yeah. I, I think, you know, I mean the noose was tightening around KA yeah. Act vision has paid huge amounts of money in settlements. I'm not surprised they're being shopped around and my way

Paul Thurrott (00:06:14):
It's actually a good to be cynical. Yeah. To be cynical. Microsoft has had its own similar issues thanks to bill gates and probably others. And actually definitely

Leo Laporte (00:06:21):
Others. I'm sorry. I'm sure. Part of your news this

Paul Thurrott (00:06:23):
Week is they've just yep. And right. And, and coincidentally or not just this past week, Microsoft announced they were gonna allow a third party to review its policies with regards to those things and be transparent about that because of a shareholder.

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:38):
What do you bet coincidental or not, not <laugh> I betting

Leo Laporte (00:06:41):
Not. I betting not, well, you certainly wouldn't want somebody to acquire act vision blizzard. No, it's really not active. Right. Who had the same problems? Yeah. You would want, you would want somebody who's taking serious. Well, I will say,

Paul Thurrott (00:06:53):
You know, this can remember this came up. I think as recently as last week in the wake of that power on documentary about Xbox Shamus Blackley came out of the woodwork. I hadn't heard from him in years and started talking to, you know, publicly and started being public and everything. And he mentioned something about the toxicity on Xbox live. And I kind of railed against that because dude, this has been a problem since pucks live started 20 years ago. And you folks, Microsoft, he hasn't been in Microsoft in years, but you know, Microsoft has never done anything substantial about that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And then last week Phil Spencer, then the head of Xbox. Now the CEO of Microsoft gaming says something similar. I don't know if it was on Twitter or in a, a press interview or something. And I think it was last week on this show where I basically said the same thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:43):
It's like, guys, mm-hmm <affirmative> you, you can't just talk, you, you have to actually do something about it. And Phil Spencer as well in the wake of the activism stuff had come up publicly and said, well, this isn't okay. You know, we we're looking into this, you know, where whatever, and you know, did absolutely nothing about it. Except by the company <laugh> and now, and now you assuming it goes through, maybe they will be able to do something about it. So in a way mm-hmm, <affirmative> it, you know, not that, that makes right what's happening on Xbox live, but it does at least put effect to the words that Phil Spencer had said previously with regards to vision of blizzard mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> so we'll see what happens.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:24):
Yeah. so when I'm looking at this from like a sheer strategy perspective, so MI what does Microsoft want here other than all the games that they can put on game pass, right? They also want mobile, a play and mobile, which active vision blizzard has, and they do not. Right. So all the time Microsoft is looking for an entree into mobile, like how can we get back in the mobile game without a mobile phone platform? This is one way you have games for mobile. Right? another thing they want out of this is, is what they always say. They want out of every acquisition lately, which is community. They talked about this with GitHub, with LinkedIn, when they were trying to buy discord, like it's all about we're buying into communities. We wanna bring communities along because if you get them in one area, they're thinking you can get, bring them along into others. I'm not saying if you play, you know call of duty, it means you're automatically gonna buy power BI. I'm not saying that, but it's kinda in the back of their mind, maybe like, okay,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:23):
Maybe I will say there's a, a nexus of toxicity that involves call of duty and Xbox live. And I, that I have lots of experience with. But yes, there certainly there's a community aspect of it,

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:36):
For sure. Right. Microsoft before this acquisition and before nuance, which still hasn't closed nuances, the healthcare slash voice company, they, they decided they were gonna buy last year for 19.7 billion before that, before that closes. And before this closes, Microsoft had 150 billion in cash, right. And

Paul Thurrott (00:09:59):
By the way, they were ready to pandemic for that

Leo Laporte (00:10:02):
Half of it. And it's what, it's a month's revenue. I mean, it's a significant chunk.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:07):
This is, this is, this is free money. And I, I know, I mean that sarcastically, but a lot of this money occurred over the past two years because of the pandemic incredible spending that occurred in COVID that's right. And all of the surge usage and teams and all of the work they've put into teams and the other Microsoft. So you can thank Donald Trump

Leo Laporte (00:10:25):
For this really

Paul Thurrott (00:10:26):
Yikes <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:10:28):
And is that, is that a bridge? That's

Paul Thurrott (00:10:29):
A real, that is a sentence that will never leave my lips, Leo. Yeah. Unless you're talking about the end of democracy, is that the rep

Leo Laporte (00:10:37):
You know, I think it was carefully arranged so that the rich would get Richard during the pandemic. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:10:44):
The rich did get richer that's for sure. Yeah, they did. By the way, just from a high level as well, to think about gaming and how it works within Microsoft, et cetera, et cetera. Electro I'm electronic guys act vision blizzard is the result of massive mergers and acquisitions over many years, right? This is a, a conglomerate that has occurred over many decades. And I was just talking to Brad this morning and I was saying, you know, a lot of people either don't remember or don't know this, but active vision started in the 1980s when a group of independent developers from Atari left that company because Atari refused to give them credit for the games they created. And so all of those early games had their names on them, you know, pitfall by stormy, et cetera, was someone, you know, someone's name was right on the box.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:30):
And that was something that they really wanted. It was just a, kind of a cute little independent company back in the day today division blizzard like EA like Sony, really. And like Microsoft is a, a, a place that has dozens and dozens of game studios they've either acquired or merged with over the years. And thus they have all those game franchises that Ryan Joe mentioned. So that's been kind of a big part of the Twitter conversation is, is the gaming world inevitably hurdling toward this kind of consolidation thing where there's only a couple of major players. And the answer obviously is yeah, of course it is. That doesn't mean that indie developers can't be successful, kind of a like indie movies can be successful or whatever. There are lots of great indie games these days. Of course Microsoft's been a big champion of that, for sure. But yeah, I mean the big get bigger, the rich get richer. This, you know, there's no, I don't think there's any stopping it. I mean, there will be regulatory. Well, that's the

Leo Laporte (00:12:29):
Next, can this go through? I don't think it can Microsoft. I don't think there, I don't think it's gonna be stopped.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:35):
You don't, I don't think it's gonna be stopped either. Here's why, and there's a single sentence in the Microsoft announcement that I think tells the tale. They said when this, and of course they say, when not, if when this acquisition goes through, we will be the third largest gaming company by revenue after 10 cent and after signing. <Affirmative> so there's your, there's your answer to why it's okay. They're not creating the biggest, they're not leapfrogging everybody, Microsoft isn't using it. It's massive cash to dominate an industry in which they were almost a don't mind me <laugh> entire neighborhood exploding around me. You know, in, in a, in an industry where they were almost in all ran, remember, thanks to Xbox mm-hmm <affirmative> this is them getting back in a very competitive position against those companies. Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:13:21):
And apple, let's not forget. I mean, casual gaming is huge. Right too. Do you, so you're in, are you in Roma? What, what area are you?

Paul Thurrott (00:13:29):
Yeah, so let me, if you, I assume you can hear what's happening around me. Right. So just to quickly in the world here, Mo <laugh> next well there's dogs. Yeah. But actually the dogs have not been much of an issue. Although apparently there are something like 11 million dogs in the city. Which is one for every two people. Yeah. It was

Leo Laporte (00:13:47):
Like that in Oaxaca. Now, do you have the guy who comes around every morning? That's truck that get Mo

Paul Thurrott (00:13:53):
Sounds <laugh> well, they do everywhere, but in Mexico city, there's at least five regular sounds. You'll hear. Yeah. Is they ring the bell when the trash is coming? Yeah. There's the Tamali guy that comes multiple times a day and love, yeah. Come out of a bar at two o'clock in the morning. You want to run into that guy? Not the Tamali guy. The girl you were hearing is a famous recording. That's I believe a junk truck. There's knife sharpeners. There are we had a guest, a junk collector

Leo Laporte (00:14:16):
That would go play in unintelligible, and then it would play. That was sound. This is, is that the ice cream? That was the gas guy.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:29):
Yeah. This is Quinte century. Yeah. The gas trucks everywhere too. That, so this is quintessential Mexico. So everybody knows these, my heart to grow up with them. It's just life. Hear the sounds. They come downstairs to get rid of that thing or get that thing fixed or whatever it is. When those, when they hear those sounds, it's

Leo Laporte (00:14:43):
Like, bring out your dead.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:45):
It is exactly like, bring out your dead. <Laugh> speaking of bring out your dead need.

Leo Laporte (00:14:49):
We need sounds not New York. Why don't we not totally should have a new, I think they used to in New York, they

Paul Thurrott (00:14:53):
Used to guys, I gotta tell you, I saw the weirdest thing I've ever my wife and I have no explanation for this. We took a, an Uber from some place to some place. It doesn't matter. This is right over by the center historical area of the city, which is by the Hilton. We usually, it is literally one city block away, but we turned on the street. All of a sudden, there's all these police everywhere. There are EFS hanging from the trees. And in the middle of the road is a woman in an open coffin. And it happens

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:20):
A woman or a

Paul Thurrott (00:15:21):
Dead woman, no, a dead woman. And we drove by it and we kind of, you know, you, as you would <laugh> no, I have no idea what that was. I, I don't, we, I don't know, but we drove by that yesterday. So <laugh>, it was kind

Leo Laporte (00:15:34):
A's, it's a really fascinating culture. And I think it's a very warm, positive culture. Oh my God. Yeah. Mike ELGAN was telling me that Oaxaca's COVID rate during Democrat has been very, very low, cuz everybody kind of is careful. And they take, by

Paul Thurrott (00:15:48):
The way in this city, the, the usage of masks is somewhere in north of 95%. The only people in this neighborhood that we don't see wearing masks are

Leo Laporte (00:15:57):
Americans, Americans. It was the same in Oaxacan disgraceful. It was just it's a little,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:03):
All the blonde girls walking down the street saying like, like, like, like she said that thing. Yeah. It's unbelievable.

Leo Laporte (00:16:09):
But I love the culture. I'm so jealous. It's I mean the food man, your Instagram is loaded as usual. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:17):
The food is not horrible.

Leo Laporte (00:16:19):
Anyway. Back to <laugh> back to the, sorry. Back to FML that happened, Mary Jo's leave. Yes. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:27):
I think this

Leo Laporte (00:16:28):
Very, I think this is very future looking.

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:32):
Let's talk about the metaverse part, right? Like where they used, right. To justify this acquisition by claiming it was about the metaverse. Right. And okay. Whatever you think about the metaverse like, if you think it's just complete crap or there's some pieces of it that are something right. Like the very first thing sat Ella said about this is we think there won't be a single centralized metaverse that there will be multiple metaverses and this is where, why we want this company because we think gaming is one of them. Right. So

Paul Thurrott (00:17:06):
Yes, I, but, but think about, well, you mentioned the word community is maybe the way to kind of get into is that's way to it is I think people who hear metaverse there are two reactions that, oh my God, I can't wait. And the majority who are like, oh my God, gimme a break. You're kidding. This is never gonna happen. You know? Right. In the gaming world today, we've only hit at the ti at the tip of the iceberg of all of the communities that are out in the world. There are PC based communities. There are just single game based communities that are, or mobile communities. And there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them in every FA facet of this. So the notion that there's not gonna be one metaverse is like saying, there's not gonna be one mobile platform. There's not gonna be one social media network. There's not gonna be one messaging application or whatever, you know, of course there aren't. And today I would say gaming is maybe the most diverse and that's the messiest <laugh> of those kinds of things. There are more gaming communities than there are, I think, any of, any other kind of communities, perhaps, right.

Leo Laporte (00:18:05):
I'm gonna have to listen to way, which is New York New York times podcast with Kara SWER. Apparently she interviewed Phil Spencer on the 10th and he actually talked about act vision. Yeah. So I'm

Paul Thurrott (00:18:17):
Gonna have to, well, because of this, he's been very vocal about their issues and had nothing substantive to offer with regards to doing something about it, which is what makes him in his company buying activism. So amusing in some ways, because he's been kind of quiet. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:18:35):
You know, this is an opportunity for Microsoft to really say really step up and say, look, we're gonna, and, you know, get rid of Kodak first thing. Right. Get rid of,

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:43):
And they talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. They, they talked about how, if we get 'em, if we get them, this is all about access and equality and they keep using all the words. Right, right. <Laugh> yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:18:54):
Right. But I do think it's more than it's more than just metaverse it's e-sports which still think is gonna be huge. It's it also there's these are online economies. Spencer talked a little bit about that. It is look at how much Fortnite makes selling virtual goods. So there's a, I think in many ways, this is very future forward and it's a smart move on Microsoft's part, especially since they've seen such great success with Minecraft.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:22):
Well, you, you just asked about I think it was before the show started, but you asked if the NFL was popular in Mexico, sports is arguably more popular than the NFL right now. Interesting. And will only get bigger, right? Yeah. Yeah. and that that's an area, you know, again, it's like the metaverse a lot of people will kind of shake their heads and say, you're kidding me. People are gonna watch other play people, play video games. Well, yeah. I mean, people watch other people play games right now,

Leo Laporte (00:19:47):
Sports. They do. It's just a matter of making those nerds it's who are just basically sitting there, slack jog twitching into something more interesting. And I think that well, Leo TV

Paul Thurrott (00:19:59):
Knows how to do that. If you could make poker players seem interesting. You can make these guys see exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:20:04):
That's true. And actually I watch a lot of poker online poker, not online on TV. I watch on TV. Yeah. The world poker tour is FA to me. I don't know why, but I find it fascinating. Yeah. If I think the problem is that there's not a mass audience, especially when you're looking at league of legends and other mobs, there's not a mass audience that understands what's going on. It'd be like watching a chess.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:25):
Isn't that true of any sport? I mean, if you brought in someone's true

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:29):
Football for me, for you, that's why you don't

Leo Laporte (00:20:31):
Watch. I don't know

Paul Thurrott (00:20:32):
You all the rules and why there yellow flag and why are they moveable

Leo Laporte (00:20:36):
About the, I football, know the rules and it makes it much more engaging and you just need a larger message. Can

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:41):
Teach people, right. You can teach people what is going on and then they get into it and that's, and then

Leo Laporte (00:20:46):
They'll really get into, I, I think that's, what's gonna take is there's gonna be a game that's gonna come along. That's accessible. It's not necessarily that violent, but it's, it's

Paul Thurrott (00:20:54):
Fascinating to watch and you can see there's something exciting happening mm-hmm <affirmative> and that's all it's gonna take. And eSports is gonna just be huge. Sure. Huge. I mean, it already is, is, and it be massive. I think that speaks to the diversity of it. Right. There's mm-hmm, <affirmative> so many game franchises, so many contests, so many events you know, there are people who just, you know, there are people who just care about quake games, you know, when they show up at QuakeCon every year. And then the modern games, obviously the college duty type games, the Fortnite, the, you know, the over watches, et cetera. So, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:27):
So I think that's good. Oh, by the way, that's smart to plan for that to break through. I mean, that's is every, every company in Silicon valley and I guess racing in Silicon valley north is looking at the future and what's the next big thing

Paul Thurrott (00:21:38):
Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> part of well, in, in gaming, right. We can say the next big thing is game streaming, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and Microsoft is already there really unusual model is kind of at the forefront of that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> part of their announcement was, Hey, we have 25 million subscribers, hint intent. This is gonna explode when we start adding activism games. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> which of course it will. And over time, Microsoft purchased Bethesda, which injected an incredible amount of content, including those quake type games. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> they did a deal with electronic arts to get EA play into there. They I've already forgotten the name of the other company that is gonna bring their service into Xbox game pass. But activism blizzard is gonna explode this out in it's just in every way imaginable. And we know Sony is working on something like this. They're going to improve their PlayStation now service to be more competitive with Xbox game pass.

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:32):
But, and what are those guys? We also know, we also know Sony and Microsoft have some kind of agreement around streaming and Azure. We don't know the details still of that, but that could be interesting about the implications for gaming there.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:46):
Right? Yeah. So it right. Sonys Sonys coming service could be very well run on Azure rather right on Azure. That, which would be kind of interesting. And that's great. I mean, I don't know if they're reconsidering that now, but I do find it interesting that Sony stock kind of knows dove and the wake of this announcement, the stock and other companies like Nintendo and third party game studios exploded because all potential acquisition targets. Yep. Because obviously Sony's gonna wanna strike back.

Leo Laporte (00:23:16):
Yeah. Sony drops 22. What was it? 2 billion billion, 20 billion,

Paul Thurrott (00:23:21):
20 billion in one day, 20 billion,

Leo Laporte (00:23:22):
But that's just the stock market. But it, it is, but you do have to wonder how much of this stuff, which has been bread and butter for Sony's gonna go exclusive to Xbox for you. <Affirmative>

Paul Thurrott (00:23:31):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:23:33):
Microsoft says they're not gonna do these

Paul Thurrott (00:23:35):
Exclusively. So here's the thing. I went back and I went back and looked. So when Microsoft announced Bethesda, they didn't say anything about that. Yeah. When Microsoft concluded Bethesda, they said, Hey yeah, actually some of this stuff is, is gonna be exclusive. When they announced activism, blizzard, they said, you know, nothing basically. I mean, they, well, they talked about, we're gonna bring a tax box game pass. They, they kind of said that didn't say anything about exclusives, but I it's reasonable

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:59):
To wait though. I saw somewhere. I saw somewhere that either, I, I don't know who said it, but somebody said almost everything will be, you know, supported on multiple platforms that are even ones that aren't our own, but not

Leo Laporte (00:24:12):
Everything. And they didn't give a timeframe. It may be for this year and next year. No.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:18):
Yeah. Well, I obviously look, let's just talk, like make this conversation simple. They're not gonna take call of duty off of the PlayStation, regardless of the fact that right now they have an agreement with Sony that will is, will continue to whatever year it concludes. But aside from that, but pretending that doesn't exist, you don't ignore the, that market. It's too big of a market. You don't do that. And of course they have, they have, they are for cross play and they have different things going on there. You don't do that kind of thing, but they could do with what they're doing with Bethesda, where key titles that are new coming in the future might be specific to something that is Xbox only mm-hmm <affirmative> or, you know, the Xbox, not the console, but Xbox the, the platform mm-hmm <affirmative> we'll see. But it's a, it's a big, it's a big diverse company with lots and lots of games.

Mary Jo Foley (00:25:04):
So, you know, it's funny when you go back and you look at the transcripts, so this is also a little insider baseball, but when we got the emails about this yesterday, they said, nobody from Microsoft is gonna talk to any press people about this <laugh> right. They just said, that's, it don't even bother asking. Right. And when you go back, though, there were some transcripts, like they did a, they did a call for wall street. They did a couple things is I, I was looking and I'm like all the words that come up about this deal begin with the letters C, which is very interesting, like why Microsoft's interested cloud commerce communities, content, and creators, like that comes up over and over those, all those words, right? Every time they're talking about those words are the words that come up. Right? And so this is how Microsoft's justifying how the fits in with the rest of the company. And I would add consumer, I would add the word consumer here because

Paul Thurrott (00:25:51):
Oh, of course. Yeah. That's the big scene, right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:25:53):
To me, the reason they did this is because they have a terrible presence in the consumer market. The only place they're good in the consumer market is gaming. And they know like if they wanna capture more cons of the consumer market, they need a foothold foothold gaming.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:09):
You know, you mentioned, we mentioned Lincoln early LinkedIn at the time was Microsoft's biggest AC well still is, I guess. I remember that distinctly because I was traveling at the time and I, I just couldn't understand the justification for it. And I got a phone call from franca, you know, who tried to make it make sense to me, which I appreci, but this to me is more obvious, you know? Yeah, there, I, I understand this. Doesn't

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:35):
Made a lot of explanation, right? No. I

Paul Thurrott (00:26:37):
Mean, there are people who might say, oh, I wish Microsoft wasn't buying them. I wish they could remain independent or I wish maybe they could combine with EA or something or whatever it is. Yeah. And I, okay, that's fine. That's a conversation. But the justification for this is so obvious and so beneficial. And you, you can look at the stewardship that Microsoft has brought to things like Minecraft, which I think has been incredible to GitHub, which hits at a certain part of the audience who dis distrust Microsoft. But they've done a great job with that. And that linked in to a lesser extent, I don't know that there were LinkedIn, you know, partisans or whatever who were worried about that service per se, but they've done a, I don't know how Microsoft justifies it internally for their own bottom line mm-hmm <affirmative>, but as far as keeping it going, integrating into their products, keeping it an ongoing concern, no problems at all. And you know, I, they've been very explicit about how they planned, what they planned to do with the company. In some ways it's not gonna be an independent entity it's going to, you know, whoever runs that thing will Spencer,

Leo Laporte (00:27:41):
Right. Or no

Paul Thurrott (00:27:43):
Support, direct plea too. Phil Spencer. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:27:45):
Yeah. He can't write 'em all, but he he's in charge of 'em all. So yeah, sure.

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:50):
Yeah. A lot of people were saying yesterday on Twitter, they were saying, oh, because he's CEO of gaming. Doesn't that mean Microsoft might spin off the gaming division. <Laugh> no. Right. So there, Microsoft has named a number of people inside the company, CEOs like the, of LinkedIn as a CEO, the head of GitHub is the CEO. It's just a title. Like it doesn't mean they're and

Leo Laporte (00:28:09):
It also signals that they wanna run these somewhat independently. It does just as long as they fork over. And

Paul Thurrott (00:28:14):
That it's a, a much more formal entity, right. Yeah. Right. You know, when Phil Spencer assumed control of Xbox, he became head of Xbox, which, which to me was always like, what is this? Choose your title date. I mean, like, you know, it's just such a, it's such a non-standard

Leo Laporte (00:28:29):
Title now. You know what he is. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think I can't see anything wrong with this. Microsoft has some money, right? I know it's expensive, but of course, activism price has tumbled in the last couple of months, which is what made this possible. It's a good deal. You know, it's it's bargain bargain, basement pricing.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:47):
Oh, we should just to address the number real quick. The number when they were talking to activation was 75 and the reason it hit whatever the numbers now, 60, 70, 40, or 60.7. Yeah. Is that, or activation's cash value was lower, right. Than they

Leo Laporte (00:29:05):
Were, their stock prices are a hundred, three bucks in February of last year, 65 bucks this past week. So it makes a lot of sense. I can't see anything wrong with this. This is, this is almost

Paul Thurrott (00:29:18):
Too yahoos. This is crazy.

Leo Laporte (00:29:20):
Yeah. It's a lot of money, but, and, but Microsoft has the money and boy, so gonna be a money machine. I mean and, and especially the synergies that Microsoft can bring with all the other studios with Bethesda. Do you think they'll go after more like EA? Is that next? That's

Paul Thurrott (00:29:39):
A roller don't well, come on that one. I think that's the point where people say, no, you're too right. Too big. Now you can't get a EA. A EA has to either stay independent or go to Sony or merge with Tencent or something like that. Like they can't, but smaller

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:54):
Studios. Sure. Right? Like they, like, they could keep buying more studios. They could

Paul Thurrott (00:29:59):
At this point or something. Yeah. But they just got 30 more <laugh> they just, you know, they were already, I don't remember the numbers anymore, but at some point in the past year and a half, two years, they surpassed the number of Sony studios that Sony owns at some point last year, they were double or over double the number of studios. Yeah. I mean, with this acquisition, they're not, they're in a different league altogether. I think that's Theus I was on Sony to either try to duplicate what Microsoft's doing or just try something different. I, this, it really you're looking to these other companies.

Leo Laporte (00:30:30):
I just, I, to me, we talk all the time about self-driving cars, augmented reality, all these things, the metaverse, this is concretely clearly a big future business. I, I think it makes every bit of sense for Microsoft it's cloud based it's it's social, which they would love to have more of mobile. It's mobile. It's everything that we know is gonna grow. Yep. Boy, I can't think of anything better. The only maybe negative is, is games. Like movies are creative enterprise that requires talent, creative talent.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:10):
This is already, this is in place, right? This is one thing they know how to do. Yeah. They, they have the studios that are doing this serious. Well, and so does my free

Leo Laporte (00:31:16):
Studios. Minecraft is flourishing. Bethesda seems like they're doing well under micro Microsoft's governance. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> yep. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. They seem to know how to do this.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:28):
The other way to think about this too, by the way is remember Microsoft has three primary business units. Two of them are overwhelmingly cloud based. The other one is called stupidly more personal computing and it's windows. It's surface it's office not office, I'm sorry. Xbox. Yep. The only chunk of that business, that figures into the whole cloud thing that Microsoft is becoming is Xbox. And we are before this acquisition. We already would've said that. It's just that it's still small, right? This is the beginning of that cloud era, but it's the part of the business that part of that business that can evolve into the cloud. It makes sense inside of M soft with the addition of Activision blizzard, that piece becomes much bigger. And I think if you kind of break Microsoft down into cloud, non non-cloud, you can almost see a future where the cloud part of more personal computing is by percentage similar to the cloud part of the other two business units of Microsoft. Yeah. It's this kind of a way to get that part of the business into the, the mold or whatever that Microsoft is shooting for these days. Also,

Leo Laporte (00:32:30):
Do you think with Satya Nadella who somebody was just telling me Satya Ella's first at his first press conference, which is a less than two months into his tenure CEO. He announced office touch for iPad. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative>, which according to this article was a shot across the bow of the windows division. It was saying and to the, and in a way to office too, but it was saying we are not the windows company anymore. Right. And

Paul Thurrott (00:33:00):
Well, they've been, God, they've been saying that. Yeah, it's

Leo Laporte (00:33:02):
Clear. That's why this fits in. So well with that strategy, if you were looking for the next platform, the next big business, this is exactly

Paul Thurrott (00:33:10):
Where you headed. Yeah. It's gonna, it's gonna take a while. You know, we don't know exactly what revenues each part of that business delivers, but I would imagine that windows today is somewhere in the, on the odor of two thirds of the revenues or whatever, somewhere up there it's big. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> off the top of my head. I, you know, activism, BLIS revenues. Aren't gonna replace that. Exactly. But they're, they're, they're, they're actually pretty close <laugh>, you know, they're, they're in the ballpark and that's kind of what, I mean, I, I don't think it's gonna happen overnight, but you'll see that shift in what we'll call cloud-based revenues increase over time, you know? Yeah. I mean, by the way, most act active visions revenues are not, I don't think we would call those cloud revenues today. They're they're selling all,

Leo Laporte (00:33:51):
But

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:51):
That's you call game pass though, because I consider game pass because it's a subscription I do,

Leo Laporte (00:33:56):
But that's why you want this. You don't want a company that duplicates every effort of yours. You want a company that's gonna merge with the things you think are important and become better because of it add cloud to active vision. Suddenly

Paul Thurrott (00:34:11):
It's very game explodes. Assuming this thing goes through game pass, become the no brainer. And by the way, it's reasonable to expect the price of game pass to go up game. I just wanna everyone for that. Yeah. However, when you consider that the average cost of a new game today is 60 to $70. And it's usually, usually what you're getting for that money is to play it on one platform. If you look at something just like call of duty, where there's one game every year, so you're spending 60, maybe $70 now, maybe more cuz they have those season passes and blah, blah, blah, whatever cross platform supporter, next generation support, whatever it is that you could spend a hundred bucks a year on this kind of thing. When you look at the cost of Xbox game pass, just compared to that one game in a year and extrapolate all the, all of the titles you could play, you could play that game. Plus the 500 other games that we have collectively class, all of the Microsoft game studios it really becomes a no brainer. It becomes to entertainment or at least to gaming. What, you know, Microsoft 365 is for a lot of corporate customers. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, it's just be it's it's right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:12):
You just get it because

Paul Thurrott (00:35:13):
It makes sense. Get, get you are absolutely gonna get it. And like you said, they don't have a good position in consumers with this thing they do. Yeah. You know, and that's like a overnight turnaround. That's amazing. I,

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:25):
I still think they should go back to those work and play bundles. They did for a while, like bundle gaming with office 365 for consumer and throw in something else. Right. And make that like, you know, you, you have some, some of your times work some play. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:38):
You know what a good name for that. Would've been Microsoft 365. <Laugh> right. It's unfortunate. They went that direction for the productivity part cuz now all of Microsoft could mean so much more. I mean maybe they could, they could still use that in. Sure.

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:52):
So I have a question for you, both you guys I feel like everybody is looking at this deal is looking at it as what is Sony gonna do? You know, what is Tencent gonna do? What are all the gaming vendors gonna do? I wanna know what's Amazon gonna do and what's Google gonna do, because if you go back to the roots, this is a cloud at the very root of it. It's a cloud play, right? Like we're talking about and if you're those two company is you're like, oh, so you know, we, we have strengths in the cloud that are more business oriented. What should we do with gaming? I mean, Amazon has Twitch, but like, are they gonna do more? And Google has, well, Amazon has

Paul Thurrott (00:36:28):
Luna as well. Right? People don't remember this, but, and,

Leo Laporte (00:36:31):
And they, they have a studio. I mean they're a new, new world is very 

Paul Thurrott (00:36:36):
Is doing, I think pretty, I think mm-hmm <affirmative> you gotta look, we we've talked about kind of acquisitions and mergers, but I think partnerships is also a thing. And in the PC space, for example, you have things like steam in the epic game store, you have Invidia GForce now, which brings PC games to mobile, through streaming. It's possible that well we already know Google is using their stadia as a backend for other services, which always made sense to me. Amazon could do the same. They could partner with some of those companies or others or independent game studios or mm-hmm <affirmative> mid-tier gaming studios because you know, between the divisions and the EA of the world, and then the individuals who make games by themselves on mobile or whatever, there's a, there's thousands of things of area sizes in there. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I don't know. I, this could, I think a lot of people expect Google to give up on stadia as a standalone service that they deliver directly to consumers. This may has in that if that's happening, I don't know. But yeah, Google and Amazon are the only two other companies in position to offer this level of scale and infrastructure. Right. That Microsoft has for sure. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:46):
I don't know. I mean, this is the next year's gonna be really look, they, they, they're talking about everyone's saying mid 20, 23. And I think the reason for that is that Microsoft says it will conclude by the end of their fiscal year mm-hmm <affirmative>, which is the end of June, 2023. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen by the end of, you know, December. So it could happen at any time, but whatever the it's not gonna be next week, but whatever the amount of time it is. Yeah. Between now and then is gonna be very interesting in the gaming space. I think we were gonna see lots of pieces start moving around.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:16):
Yeah. I think they also edited that in because of antitrust, like as patting it, in case they have to go through, you know, antitrust

Paul Thurrott (00:38:23):
Stuff. Oh, they, there will be scrutiny. I mean, it's just a question. Whether there will be any attempt to have Microsoft make certain concessions, you know, you can imagine you know, spinoff, like you can, you can keep call duty, but you gotta spin off candy crush or you know, that kind of nonsense or whatever.

Leo Laporte (00:38:40):
But I, I hope not because I, I think you made that. I, you know, I, now that you said, oh, they're only the third largest game company in the world, the largest in the us, but still the third in the world. I think that's yep. That's,

Paul Thurrott (00:38:53):
That's good. It is.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:54):
You know what? It depends on it. It depends on why the government wants to do an antitrust push. Right? I feel like on, on certain companies they're doing it because they feel like they there's been egregious problems like meta.

Leo Laporte (00:39:09):
This is, this is what I joked yesterday on met weekly while, while the government's eye evil, I of spell, I of Soran had turned to Google and Amazon and apple and mic Microsoft is just going we're over here. We're not that's right. And so

Paul Thurrott (00:39:21):
This is, but that's thing actually. No, that's an excellent point. You know, Google and apple, just to look at app stores have done egregious harm and it it's all over the world. Everyone knows it. Everyone's talking about it. Everyone's trying to stop it. No. And

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:34):
M some people, right? There's some people who just like break up big tech. It doesn't matter who they are. It doesn't matter what they're doing. Break 'em

Leo Laporte (00:39:40):
Up break. I think it's conceivable that that Le con at the FTC may say, we blew it with with Facebook and Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp. We're not gonna blow it again.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:50):
And except for one thing, Microsoft is a very different company than the Facebook. It's also a very different company than, and Google and Amazon. And one of the reasons it has avoided that scrutiny in part is, but whether you, I mean, I, I, I realize the slacks of the world may disagree. The salesforce.com the world makes I get that. Of course. But even someone like Eric's Tim Sweeney rather has come around on Microsoft. He's been awfully quiet. Hasn't he? This guy who was so worried about

Leo Laporte (00:40:17):
He's Microsoft, he's another fish to fry

Paul Thurrott (00:40:19):
<Laugh> well, no, but that's an important point because he, first of all, he's partnering with Microsoft right. On HoloLens and other things, but he's bringing his game store to the win

Leo Laporte (00:40:27):
Microsoft CEO of epic. We're talking about here,

Paul Thurrott (00:40:31):
But he's a, he's a big critic of this kind of thing. And back when Microsoft talked about bringing an app store to windows eight, right. Just a million years ago now. Yeah. He was a vocal critic for this mm-hmm <affirmative> because he was afraid Microsoft was gonna do what they did in the past by bundling and blah, blah, blah. He was gonna kill companies like him and, and steam. And today he's he's part of the little <laugh> the little prayer circle or whatever. He's not, you know, he's in the, he's in the circle now. So yeah. I don't know. I, he know, I, I realize Microsoft's not perfect and we certainly have had our complaints in the past, but I think when you compare them to those other companies, but you're right. You see a, you see a company who's done well by the acquisitions they've made.

Leo Laporte (00:41:10):
I think Mary Jo's right though. If government is just saying big Tech's too big. Yeah. This is gonna make Microsoft a, I think that's, it will make them, it's gonna become a powerhouse. This is really exciting for Microsoft. This is really good for Microsoft. I think it is. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:25):
It is. Yep. I mean, it's definitely good for them kind of catapulting back into the top, you know, tier it's funny. They they're never considered part of Fang, you know, the Facebook, apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google thing. Yeah. That's right. Like, Microsoft's not part of it, even though they're second. There's no am in the second biggest company. Right? Like, and still people ignore them because they're enterprise that's who

Leo Laporte (00:41:47):
They're. Well, that's another point they're made on Mac break weekly yesterday. This is also a defensive move against of all people, Netflix, because Netflix in that streaming model getting into gaming. I mean, I don't think they're gonna be a threat to anybody for a while, but I it's, just to me, this is such a, a brilliant move.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:05):
I think companies need to align to their strengths. I, I, you probably saw this thing about YouTube is dropping their original programming, which a lot of people didn't even realize they had. Right. But to me, it's probably Google slash YouTube doing original programming was like Microsoft doing original programming, which by the way, they did back in the early two thousands. And they quickly realized, okay, this is not our strength. Like we need to not, this is just a dumb place to be. Google may decide, you know, us delivering a game service to the consumers is not our strength, us having the backend infrastructure for gaming, for other services, EA whomever, maybe that makes sense. And that's a business they can kind of be part of. And, and we'll see, but that's, I, that's what I, when I think about the next year, I think we're gonna see those changes occur. It's gonna be this it's gonna be a busy year, you know, in gaming in general, I would say.

Leo Laporte (00:42:56):
And I'm sorry to say Mary Jo, but Paul's new gaming segment is starting to look better and better.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:02):
I'm thinking I'm throw an idea right now. It's kind of at the end. I was thinking maybe moving up mush, mush it up a little bit. <Laugh> yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:11):
I can have a delayed start to just saying

Leo Laporte (00:43:15):
<Laugh> Mary Jo will join us in half an hour, but first let's talk gaming. Sure.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:21):
Let's talk Overwatch strategies with Paul.

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:24):
No, if, but as, as Azure gets more in the mix here, I'm I will be interested because I care about anything Microsoft's doing at the cloud, even if it's gaming. Right. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:43:33):
That's the thing, and this is so good for their overall business

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:40):
Goals. I feel like it fits in, in many places Soly. Right. I, when you look at who they almost bought this year, right? Like last year, they almost bought at one point TikTok, but that was a weird circumstance on that. Right. Then they bought, what

Paul Thurrott (00:43:54):
Was the number? Sorry to interrupt. What was the, what was the number on TikTok

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:56):
To, I know what was the TikTok number? I don't remember. It seemed, but then they almost bought Pinterest. They almost bought Pinterest. Then they almost bought discord. I'm like of all of these things, this, this acquisition, the activism blizzard fits in the best

Paul Thurrott (00:44:10):
Actually. And it's gonna have the biggest impact and right away. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Leo Laporte (00:44:19):
I I'm yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:20):
Yeah. I woke up this morning yesterday morning rather thinking I got a cute little story to publish about <laugh> windows, 11 se laptops and

Leo Laporte (00:44:28):
Stuff we should do. We should. Okay. Let's take a break. When we come back, all the stories that were the top stories of the week that were the top until this yep. All the stories that you just put on the back burner because you know what, this is the biggest, my, you know, it's funny. I like kicking off the year with the biggest, with what we will certainly be at the end of the year, the big, one of the biggest stories of the year. Yeah. Crazy. It's crazy. Right. I mean, amazing. Alright. I wanna take a a little break and we'll come back with the, the other stories, the other stuff, the other stuff, Walter Berez, Mary Jo Foley welcoming a brand new sponsor to the show. I think, you know the name, certainly if you're a coder, you know, the name hacker rank how hacker, I just love hacker rank actually.

Leo Laporte (00:45:18):
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Leo Laporte (00:46:11):
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Leo Laporte (00:47:35):
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Paul Thurrott (00:48:43):
They're crazy. Holy, just to be clear about that. I I've been tracking this for years and every year I make a spreadsheet and you know, a comparative year of year, the, the PC industry hit a high in 2011, something like 365.4 million units sold. And it's been on a downward free fall. <Laugh> almost ever since in 20 17, 20 18, it kind of plateaued around 2 50, 2, 6 or around two 60. We'll call it. And then thanks to the pandemic. We've seen some little upticks until this year. <Laugh> three hundred and forty three, four 0.3 million. This is the third highest number of PCs sold in a single year in history. And if it wasn't for the component shortage, there's a really good chance. This would've been the single best year ever for PC sales. This is we, we, we have, I'm saying this, having just come back from the funeral for the PC industry, right. I mean, it's

Leo Laporte (00:49:41):
Incredible. Yeah. We didn't think it, I mean, we knew it went up cuz of COVID that made sense. Right. But we, we didn't think, oh, in fact that's the conversation we had about windows 11 is this is a jumpstart, but will certainly be a laggered year for PC sales. That's right. Guess not. That's right.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:58):
Although <laugh>, I will say PC sales did not go great in the fourth quarter, especially for the top two PC makers. Lenovo and HP. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:50:06):
Well for apple though. Well, for apple.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:08):
Yeah. Although apple year over year didn't move their needle at all on market share interestingly.

Leo Laporte (00:50:14):
No, but they did have but they didn't move the needle. They had better growth than they've ever had. That's right. They did. That's true.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:19):
Yep. But and I'll just point out that shortfall happened right as windows 11 was released. So I, you know who, you know, I'm not saying it's windows 11, in fact, I'm very specifically saying it's not windows 11, but you know, the question of course is the future. And we'll see how that goes. Industry analysts who work for companies like IDC and Gartner are still saying, Hey, look, you know, this is not, you know, we're not gonna keep going up and up and up. This is not how that works, but you know, you look at, at the graph over time and you see kind of a, a CSAW effect. We could be in for another good year this year. So certainly last year was astonishingly. Good. And again, it, it, you have to qualify it with the component shortage problem. Right. and the fourth quarter, probably would've been a lot better if it wasn't for you know, for those issues. So, yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. That would've been to me the biggest story this week. Huge <laugh> yeah. If it wasn't huge well to

Leo Laporte (00:51:17):
What do you attributed? I mean 

Paul Thurrott (00:51:21):
What's going on. I mean, it's, we're all looking for that answer. I don't know. Obviously the, the pandemic is ongoing, so, you know, odd for that. Yeah. But your

Leo Laporte (00:51:29):
Fingers would think that everybody in 2020 bought whatever hardware they needed for the kids to go to school, maybe you think they've been suffering and then finally said, oh yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:51:36):
I guess it is gonna continue. Or anyone who has kids at school tell you that those computers are either non-existent or terrible. So, yeah, that continues. I think the look Microsoft has kind of shifted language. I think we all have all shifted language. We were working from home for a while. Now we're talking about hybrid work. We, the phrase, the new normal, which everyone hates as they should is terrible. But I think the reality is, unfortunately the, of the world is this thing is ongoing. You know, we have this new wave with Ahn. It is gonna be more, we don't, you know, the future is uncertain. Apparently everyone didn't buy a computer who needed it. And I think because a lot of people did buy computers in 2020, and all of a sudden there were no computers to buy. We all raced to get more and more computers out into the world than other devices.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:22):
We're just talking about computers here. You know, the component shortage happened. I mean, I think maybe this is a self <laugh> fulfilling prophecy of some kind or whatever, but the question is how it continues or whether it continues, if so for how long, you know, who can say, but you have to the best tool for the job. You have to think it can't continue. I mean, you have to think it can't. I mean, the, the, the PC is kind of an interesting device because if you asked most people what they impression was of a computer words like unreliable and, you know, those kinds of things would come into play. The truth is computers last for many, many years, right? And as people have shifted from piece, you know, desktop to laptop, to mobile devices, especially phones, you know, they don't get used for everything.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:07):
And that helps them last, longer and longer as well. And I think I don't, we don't even know what the cycle is anymore. I think that's part of the problem. So there's, it's possible. There's an entire new generation of people ready for an upgrade who realize like, yeah, I can get some stuff done on my phone. Okay. I can get some stuff done on my, my laptop. How long has it been? 15 months? I think I need a computer. Yeah. You know, sometimes I just need to sit in front of a thing that has a big screen and a big keyboard and actually get work done. And and maybe that's all it is. I, I mm-hmm <affirmative>, I can't, I have tried and not because I want to move from the PC, but just what I do and how I am. I've tried every permutation of other things that can be things that are not what they are iPads with keyboards and blah, blah, whatever. And at the end of the day, I need a computer,

Leo Laporte (00:53:54):
A good laptop, right? Not, you're not saying desktop, I need a

Paul Thurrott (00:53:57):
Computer. Good laptop. Well, whatever. I mean, I, you know, if you're a gamer, we just talked about game for a lot of those guys, the ultimate device is desktop computer, and it's a big, really big, expensive desktop computer. It depends on your needs. There are people who have multiple screens, they analyze data. They, they do all kinds of crazy things with that. I think maybe

Leo Laporte (00:54:15):
That's what came into play is, as you say, you know, we realize, well, this is gonna go on for, for people in the information economy. You know, people were half jobs. They had more discretionary income cuz they weren't spending it on eating out and traveling and all the things. Sure. So maybe they said, look, you know, I got an extra couple of grand and it really would be nice to have a gaming system or maybe a new laptop, even

Paul Thurrott (00:54:41):
A VR system or something or you know,

Leo Laporte (00:54:43):
Whatever. Yeah. So maybe that's what's going on is I got some discretionary income.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:49):
I think there were don't you think there were also a class of younger, especially younger people who, before the pandemic just had kind of written off

Leo Laporte (00:54:57):
Pieces. My phone is all I need.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:59):
Yeah. Right. My niece, both my nieces, they didn't even have a PC and they didn't care. And then suddenly it was like, oh wait, now we need, because we're doing all this stuff that we didn't do before. That's

Paul Thurrott (00:55:09):
Right. That's right. Yep. Yeah. I mean, in, in many ways, you know, for students, PCs were probably like computers were to you and I 30 years ago where you went to a place, you sat in a room, you click click clicked the way and did whatever you did. You saved it to a dis and you put it in your pocket and you came home with it. And I, yeah, I think the way the world has gone again, you know, the, the pandemic is awful, but it has accelerated certain things. And I think this is I sort, you know, as a PC fan, as, as someone who started this career I'm on now because of the PC and I hope to write it out on the PC it, it's nice for me to see a renewed DEP for a device that does a job.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:49):
Well, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> the phone does certain things, well, tablets and e-readers and things like that do certain things well, that's fine. But PCs do certain things. Well, they happen to be things I care about a lot, but you know, whatever. But there, I think there are things that people need they're real productivity value to it. And I, I think it's, I think it's great personally that people are really seeing that value now as well. And obviously companies are on their own upgrade cycles. It's possible just that a certain number. We're doing this in 2020, and then some in 2021 and now 20, 22 here and, and oh no, one's back. Okay. Time to buy new computers or whatever it is. Yep. You know, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, I'm sure it's a mix of all that stuff. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:56:29):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and of course, M one Macintosh is cuz well, who wouldn't want guess a couple of more of those.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:39):
Yeah. Well, I mean, I we're,

Leo Laporte (00:56:41):
We can't least no, because we are so unusual. I mean, we buy new com or get new computers, whether we buy 'em or, or, or loan them every few months, you've got dozens of laptops. So we're not, we have no idea what a normal person's life is.

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:58):
Like, <laugh>, I'm probably more normal than the two of you, but just saying <laugh> but you,

Paul Thurrott (00:57:03):
Even you, by

Leo Laporte (00:57:04):
The way, that get more computers than most. No, I have

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:06):
Have two computers right now.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:09):
Well, hold on a second. So let's we should talk about this. So I don't know if you remember the dates, but I remember you had that Acer laptop. And did you buy that specifically in tune with the, a windows

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:20):
A you mean the ASU? Maybe I thought it was an ACE. I never had a

Paul Thurrott (00:57:25):
I'm sorry. I apologize. Sorry, ACE.

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:27):
No, that was like bought 20 17, 20 16 around there, I think. Right. And

Paul Thurrott (00:57:33):
Okay, so that would've been windows 10, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:36):
Then it didn't didn't work. It stopped working and I had to get another computer. So I got the surface laptop three. What year was that? Like two, two years ago. Two to three years ago. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:49):
So that's actually not that big of a timeframe between those two, no

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:51):
Couple years, two years. And then the only other one I have is because you gave it to me, but normally I, I just buy a PC when it dies. Right. I

Paul Thurrott (00:57:59):
Don't have a bus. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm trying to establish like how long that is. So you live on a PC. I mean, that's your living, right? Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:05):
So I say about every, every two to three years I

Paul Thurrott (00:58:09):
Use, so that's pretty aggressive, honestly, three

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:11):
Initial right. Three is pretty aggressive, right? It is. Yep. Yep. But yeah, I, I'm not like you guys in that. I don't, I don't change my laptops and computers. I change my laptop

Paul Thurrott (00:58:21):
Just about every month. <Laugh> I know you, and that doesn't mean I'm spending the money mean I'm, you know, obviously review them as living or for a living as well. But yeah, I don't, yeah. I don't know. I I've done that for so long. I don't know how long I would hold on things, you know? Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:35):
If I had to use my desktop full time, no, the desktop I had that twit bought for me. I, I had that for, I had that for, that

Paul Thurrott (00:58:42):
Was years.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:44):
I had adult Plex that I had for eight years. And the only reason I got rid of it was windows seven went outta support and I'm like, you know what? I should really should upgrade this and get a new PC. Yeah. Otherwise it was still working. Like, it wasn't bad. It wasn't a problem. It did go through,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:59):
I went through a series of Intel nos at least two of which had a issues certainly that triggered upgrades and you know, I like to buy things that don't work and then buy new ones. <Laugh> you know, for some reason, which is fun

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:15):
<Laugh> yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:16):
Cause I hate myself, but yeah, I, don't very typical for 

Leo Laporte (00:59:20):
Knowledge worker and then for a normal, you know, people

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:24):
At home seven, eight years is much more typical. I hear that's right. That's nothing weird about that.

Leo Laporte (00:59:29):
No, I hear from people on the radio show all the time with 10 year old PS, it's very common. I mean, they're enthusiast enough to listen to a technology radio show. So they're not, that's a good point. Normal, normal. Yeah. Right, right. And they still have really old systems. So

Paul Thurrott (00:59:44):
I think that's pretty tough. What are, what are the kids doing on AOL these days later

Leo Laporte (00:59:47):
That still, oh, I get calls from people when AOL changed their, you know, they were bought and I don't know, it was a mess. I get so many calls from people say my AOL mails aren't working anymore. It's like, what? Why do you still have AOL?

Paul Thurrott (01:00:02):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:03):
But that's lot of Hotmail people still. I do, I get people saying like, I'm on Hotmail. Do I need to go to outlook? And I'm like, I <laugh>, well, they are on outlook. They just I'm like, you're basically on the back. End of outlook. Even though it says Hotmail, so don't worry. You're fine. You know <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:00:18):
Hey, my primary Microsoft account is hotmail.com account.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:22):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:00:25):
Hmm. All right. Moving on, moving on. All I know is

Paul Thurrott (01:00:28):
PC's a great,

Leo Laporte (01:00:28):
Here's a new PC you're gonna wanna buy or not. Yeah. The surface laptop se what's se stand for special edition. Super excellent

Paul Thurrott (01:00:39):
School edition. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:42):
What? It stands Microsoft.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:43):
Won't say they

Leo Laporte (01:00:44):
Won't. So Microsoft, this is the low end

Paul Thurrott (01:00:46):
One. Yeah. Microsoft announced this. I don't remember a few months back. Oh, so

Leo Laporte (01:00:50):
It November

Paul Thurrott (01:00:51):
It's it's now shipping. So $250 to start. Wow. This is an 11 inch without the

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:56):
Keyboard. Oh no.

Leo Laporte (01:00:57):
And it's a lab. I wish people would not sell $250 computers. It sets an big is completely unreasonable. So mad at me. When I say you should not buy a computer for hundred, $500. It's a mistake. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:01:10):
These are for schools, right? These

Leo Laporte (01:01:11):
Are for individuals. You

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:12):
Can't even buy this one unless you can't,

Paul Thurrott (01:01:14):
You can't buy this. You have to go to a Microsoft reseller as an educational institution. Yeah. The thing is, you know, for as a surface device, it's not much of a surface device. Right. Doesn't have a 3.2 display. Doesn't have AER service connect port or anything like that. It's all standard parts. I will. I agree with you that it's garbage. You know, these computers are all garbage. It's not just Microsoft. Right. Other companies are announcing similar. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:01:35):
And why should I, should some kid have to suffer with <laugh> with this piece of crap.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:39):
I know. Well, but here, but here's the silver lining I will say. And, and this is, I think a direction the industry is finally kind of removing into it's highly serviceable and you can take it. Anyone can take it apart. It doesn't require a technician, minimal tools. You can replace things like the keyboard, the display, the battery you know, Microsoft obviously on their higher end service surface devices have started doing that kind of stuff. You see SSD replacement, although that is supposedly supposed to be done by a authorized person today by a technician, although that's changing, right. They've kind of embraced this right to repair movement. So this is, that's a good trend at least. Yeah, of course. The thing you wanna upgrade is all of it. You know, you wanna upgrade the screen, the processor, the Ram, the storage, I mean, it's all really low end stuff and Sellon processors, EMC storage, you know, it's not, it's not great. I wanna

Leo Laporte (01:02:35):
Give that's a five

Paul Thurrott (01:02:36):
Year old. Here's a phrase, here's a phrase you haven't heard a while. TFT display. <Laugh> my

Leo Laporte (01:02:42):
God. What does that even mean?

Paul Thurrott (01:02:44):
It means this was new 20 years ago. <Laugh> like,

Leo Laporte (01:02:48):
This is, we haven't used this in a long time. Yeah. This is not. So here's a question philosophical for you both. Yeah. obviously not everybody can a full, a $500 computer or a thousand dollars or 2000. Obviously I know that. I understand that. Oh boy. But just cuz you can't afford it, should you be offered a computer that is really terrible because it's in your price range. Is that a better thing than just saying no, no, if you can't afford it, you can't afford it. You know, you shouldn't buy a $200 car.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:20):
This is actually kind of a fascinating conversation because there's a, there's a big conver there's a thing to be had around value versus cost. Right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> one of the things that's really interesting to me in Mexico city, we get on the Metro, we're riding it and, and I do this when I'm on buses or planes or anything. And you look and you see what other people are using in the United States. You lot of high-end smartphones, Samsungs iPhones, obviously very common. Everyone has these things and you can kind of justify it by saying, well, yeah, it's a thousand bucks, but I'm gonna own it now for probably three years. And you do the math on the monthly cost. And like, this is, it's not an investment, but it's a good value over that period of time because you do use that thing all day long every day. And I okay. Fair. But I look around the, the Metro in Mexico city, these are much poorer people than you see typically in the United States, they all have phones. None of them thousand phones, none of them are iPhones. You don't see iPhones anywhere here. No. they're all using what I would call mid-level or even low end Android. Yeah. Android funds. And a lot of them have crack screens and you know, the big bezels at the top and bottom, you don't really see anymore in the United States.

Leo Laporte (01:04:24):
That's kind of a measure of how important it's that you at least have a cell.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:27):
Yeah. So I guess what if, what you're asking is <laugh>, is it better to have a cheap thing than a nothing, you know, especially in the education market, I guess you to have a computer. Right. I don't know. Yeah. I, I kind of wonder why we know that education computers are usually built to be rugged because they're passed between kids. And if they're in a lab, different kids come in all day long and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And you would kind of hope that these things are durable enough to last for X number of years. And obviously schools are doing the math and they don't have big budgets, whatever, but they have, they need X number of computers and what we do. And so a $500 computer is when you start to get into something that is usable and nice. Is it better to have twice as many lower end computers that are kind of dubious? Or is it better to have half as many that are reasonable? And I, I don't, I don't have an answer

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:23):
Volume. No, you gotta go with the, they do

Paul Thurrott (01:05:25):
Here. Right. That is where they go. I mean, that's the answer. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:29):
Yep. Yeah. And you know what these, they say, these are for a K through 12, they're really for K through like, I don't know what eight

Paul Thurrott (01:05:36):
Yes. Say or seven. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Yep. You wouldn't find a high school student that would wanna be caught dead with one of these things. Right,

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:43):
Right. Unless they had nothing, unless they had no alternative, then they'd take it. Right. But yeah. Yeah. Right. And all of these devices based on windows 11 se that are coming out you know, they announced a bunch of them this week, the way they described the them is can be dropped from, you know, a, a height of five feet or it can be

Paul Thurrott (01:06:01):
Thrown. Well, they shouldn't describe 'em as they will be dropped <laugh> from a height of, you know, whatever and

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:07):
Thrown against the, you know, like Ken endure spills into the keyboard. Like that's how they describe these. It's not like how fast they are, how powerful they are. It's more how rugged they are and how durable and easy it is to wipe them and re and you know, they have to be

Paul Thurrott (01:06:22):
Usable. I guess if, if they are tolerably usable. Yeah. Then it's fine. Well, by the way, so this is okay, so I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is the other issue that has kind of dogged the PC industry for long, long time. If you go back to 2006, 2007, timeframe pro probably windows Vista was brand new. Microsoft finally shot for the moon because of what apple was doing with Mac OS 10 hardware, accelerated graphics, you all this impressive stuff going on, no one had computers that could run any of it. People were freaking out like, what is this, this thing doesn't work on my computer. And then nets took off running Linux. Yeah. And so Microsoft had to issue something called windows starter edition, which is, you know, they didn't want to do, they wanted to have windows Vista something edition, but they couldn't get windows Vista down into that for that footprint to make it work in the year, since lots more componentization work, et cetera, et cetera.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:12):
Today with these laptops, you're seeing something called windows 11 se stripped down edition. That's not the name, but <laugh>, you know, the, the, the idea here again is the same thing. We're, we're not competing so much with netbooks anymore. We're competing with Chromebooks right in education because those are the devices, honestly, for 250, 300 bucks, you can get a decent computer. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> now. No one. I know. And I certainly not me has ever had any experience with windows. There's 11 SES. So I can't, it claim that it solves this problem, but that's the goal. And if windows 11 se on one of these, what I would term kind of garbagey type computers from a components perspective, runs acceptably, well competes effectively against a Chromebook. Then maybe that is mission accomplished. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but I, I don't right. I've never seen it. I don't know. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:07:59):
So on, on MSFT that website, they have gotten their hands on a couple of the windows, 11 se devices. They're hard to get because you need to find a way to have either an education account or some end to get it because it's not available to normal users, you know, non student users and it for schools. But they, they said, you know, it's like, basically it's like, when does 11, for the most part, except that you can only run certain curated apps. There's not a store that restricts you, but it, but it's built so that you can just run a, a certain set of, or type of apps. And it's, it's definitely not like a, a high end skew or anything, but it's just meant to be simple, straightforward. The focus is on is on management, but you have to have in tune in the mix, I believe to manage these in the school.

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:51):
Right. So that limits them to some degree and doesn't make them quite Chromebook competitor. But yeah, that's, that's totally the market they're going for is Chromebook. And as somebody saying here on discord basically what you do on a Chromebook is you use a browser and we always joke about edge books, but that's what these are gonna be used for. Right. It's gonna be people with edge who, who need to use these kinds of apps that are plus plus apps that are very specific to students in schools, you know, certain quiz apps and homework apps. Those are gonna be allowed on the device, but it's not a, it's not a device where you're gonna try to run or you, you will be able to even run things like, you know, games that you wanna download, or it doesn't run YouTube. It's blocked from running YouTube, those kinds of things, right? Yeah. Yeah. Very special purpose.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:38):
Yeah. Yeah. There it is. I'm curious. I mean, I, I I'd like for Microsoft to solve this problem, and we've been talking about this notion of maybe them doing like an edge book type of a thing to compete with Chromebook. Yeah. But if they can get real windows down into a footprint that makes sense on, I mean, seriously seller processes, it's 20, 22. We're talking about sell on processes. Yeah. the industry collectively can't seem to make an inexpensive, low cost chip set that can form the basis of a low cost Inex or a low cost low end PC. That makes sense. You know? Yeah. The, this is clearly just the reality and its it's too bad. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:10:24):
I don't wanna be insensitive. I, I understand you. No, I, not. Everybody has money. You know, I, when I was young, I didn't have any money either and I didn't have a TV because I didn't have any money. I didn't have a car cause I didn't have any money. Is it worse to say look, you don't have enough money to buy a computer or say, well, you do have enough money to buy a computer. That's not gonna serve its purpose and is really just a waste of your money. That seems to me worse.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:51):
Yeah. Well that, by the way, I feel like that's what the education market has been. I hope that maybe with when those 11, I see it turns into something better,

Leo Laporte (01:11:01):
You know? I mean there are cheap refrigerators. People need refrigerators, you could find cheap refrigerators. At least they refrigerate

Paul Thurrott (01:11:07):
That's right. Well, by the way, so I, this problem has been solved. It's been solved by Google with Chromebook

Leo Laporte (01:11:13):
And well, well that's what I'm saying. There's tablets. There's Chromebooks. There are yeah. Computers in the $250 price range that are that's right. Usable. I don't know if this right. Surface se is I

Paul Thurrott (01:11:28):
Problem I think is, you know, but we're coming at it as any user would. Right? If you have any experience with the PC platform with windows, you have certain expectations. So you see a laptop, you see it runs windows and well you think, you know, okay, well this has gotta be its windows. When that doesn't perform the way you want it to or expect it to. It's a huge disappointment. I, I do think it's notable that a Chromebook can give a windows like experience. I know it's not exactly the same, but I looks like windows, you know, runs apps, whatever, a lot of stuff, obviously you're doing it on the web. It's fine. That's fine for most. I mean, I, that does solve a problem, which I think is why we talk about edge books still. Yeah. Yeah, but I, you know, my Microsoft wants to leverage the whole PC ecosystem and all those rich

Leo Laporte (01:12:11):
Outs. It's just risky because that remember what happened at books. It, it, it hurt the industry battling. Yeah. Yep. Right. It hurt the industry. It gave people an expectation that you could buy something that cheap. That would be good. That's right. It wasn't good. It's like what the Commodor 64 did for the, and they said home computer industry, or not that so much as a Vic 20, the Vic 20 ended up 64 was a decent, it was okay. The Vic 20 though wasn't was not. And it was an attempt to get it down under a hundred bucks. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and it was crap Ola that's. And so all it did is turn people off

Paul Thurrott (01:12:41):
The comment, 64 debut is $600. <Laugh> right. You gotta remember in at the time that seemed like a lot of money, but

Leo Laporte (01:12:46):
That was good. Vic 20 was the one I was thinking of. That's the one that was really, you know, as bad as a, as a net book. So I don't we're we're gonna

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:54):
Here. We're gonna hear in the next few months, because now that these things are starting to actually ship mm-hmm <affirmative>, you're gonna start hearing school admins who deploy them, say like this is garbage, or they're gonna say, you know what? It worked, it's fine.

Leo Laporte (01:13:07):
The Vic 20 was 300 bucks when it debuted. And that's when a buck a buck

Paul Thurrott (01:13:11):
It. Yeah. And it quickly hit a hundred bucks though. And, and it was, it was too, was it 5k? I think in, it was unusable.

Leo Laporte (01:13:18):
It ended up in people's closets basically. Yep. And it told, and a whole generation of people's parents said, I'm never buying you a computer. <Laugh> right. We already bought you. What? It's that big 20? You never use it.

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:31):
You know, a lot of these have 11 inch screens. So really small,

Leo Laporte (01:13:35):
Well, if you're a small person that may not be so bad, <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:37):
It's okay. Probably for younger kids,

Paul Thurrott (01:13:39):
You can see every pixel with those perfect eyes yous. I can tell you that <laugh> it? No, like surface

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:45):
66. What's that what's surface go 12 or 11. Like that for me is too small.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:49):
That's I think that is also an 11 inch. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:51):
11 younger kids. It might work, I don't know. Or 11 point

Paul Thurrott (01:13:54):
Whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, surface go at least was three by two. Right? this is a speaking of, you know, terms we haven't heard in 20 years, 1366 by 7 68 <laugh> resolution. Yikes. I mean, that's,

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:09):
I don't know. That's amazing. They're going after price. Right? The, they, these things start at 200 bucks. I mean, they, in some ways it makes you say netbook netbook, right. But may, if it isn't a netbook and it starts at that, that's great because that means schools can, more schools can afford to

Leo Laporte (01:14:24):
Buy more of that. That's I mean, the market for this is not the individuals at schools, so we shoulds. That's not right. If you were a administrator, would you say, would you look at that and say, yeah, I think we're gonna get Chromebooks instead. Or would you say this is a

Paul Thurrott (01:14:36):
Reasonable, you'd have to evaluate one and see what it was like. Yeah. You would. Yeah. I, you know, I don't, I don't work in that market. It, it seems to me that you move a certain direction, techno technology wise, and you kind of stick with it, be cuz you've got all these curriculum, you based around whatever tools you were using. So if you're doing, I guess if you're using web based stuff on a Chromebook yeah. You could transition it back to PC pretty easily. If you were relying on word and Excel and things like that, I mean, I guess you could go Chromebook, right? Cuz it's basically on the web. I, I, there's a, I feel like the transition's a little harder and either the direction, but yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't, I really don't know. I feel bad. Every, every time there's an education event, you know, the, the original surface laptop of that, you go to that gallery they have with all the education computers and it's like, Ugh, it's like surface laptop at the time was probably, probably started a at 1299 or 1199. It was a nice computer. And then next to it are all these little, you know, plastic, terrible things. It's just, it's sad. It is a, a vivid demonstration of the difference between the haves and the have does

Leo Laporte (01:15:48):
The chat room. Discord just sent me a link to an interview with Bobby Ko by Dean Takahashi that just came out this morning on venture beat mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. In which, and I, this is an interesting take from kadak. He asked why, why is a good time to sell? This is act vision's point of view. Yeah. And Kodak said if you look at increasing competition between Tencent and net and Sony, and now you have Google and Amazon Facebook and Microsoft and Netflix, we were looking at over the course of the next couple years, starting to realize we needed thousands of people to be able to execute against our production plans. We needed them in disciplines like AI and machine learning or in data analytics or purpose built cloud and cyber security and that we just don't have. And the competition for that talent is expensive and really hard to come by. That actually I think is, is actually the plight of a lot of companies these days. That's a very interesting point of

Paul Thurrott (01:16:44):
View, but by the way, that's a humongous company. Imagine you're a, an independent game developer, you know, two or three guys in a garage or whatever. And I, I, I mean, how do you, you it's bad enough, you know, call duty has the production value of a, a Hollywood movie. You're literally hiring professional actors to do the voiceover work. You've got people in suits running around in a sound stage leaping through the air, so you can animate them in the game. <Laugh>, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> and that's, before you get out into any of the, the stuff you just mentioned, ML and AR and, and all that, you know, all that stuff. I, I, I, this is

Leo Laporte (01:17:20):
It's tough. I mean, I, we know, I know it from one another angle, which is we have small companies approaches from time to time wanna buy ads. <Affirmative> because our ads are really a great way to, you know, get a company off the ground. They would be. But when they hear how much it costs, they just back slowly away because yeah, I understand they can't afford it. I understand that I would, you know, but that's the going rate. It's hard. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, it's not easy to start a company these days. Yeah. And to, and to, and to get your head above the rest and then to compete with these massive companies for talent and for, you know, in new areas like ML and, and AI is I understand, I, that, that, that statement on his part actually makes a lot of sense. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, to me he's a good guy. No, he is not, but <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:18:20):
I know, I

Leo Laporte (01:18:20):
Don't know he was a good guy, but his reputation proceeds let's put it that way. Probably isn't yeah. He, I didn't realize he started active vision.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:29):
Yeah. That was the, so I saw that, well, it started at, okay. So I saw

Leo Laporte (01:18:34):
Started, he was, but he was been a CEO at division since 91.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:38):
I know. I saw that and I thought that has to be a typo. That can't be true. Yeah. 1991. Yeah. Do you have any idea how tiny activism had to have been? Yeah. Then, and then you look at their gaming empire today. It, geez, I it's it's there's no, it's kind of hard to compare. I mean, I bet their trajectory up is, well, I was gonna say bigger than Microsoft, I guess it isn't bigger than Microsoft, but they're getting bought by Microsoft, but it's incredible in the game space, for sure.

Leo Laporte (01:19:07):
It's incredible. He was at you me when he's started a company with his dorm mate called Aros developing software for the apple two he met Steve jobs who said, you know, you should, you should just be doing this full time drop outta college, focus on the software business, Chris that's what jobs did. So of course he was,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:29):
He would all that. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:31):
All it worked out in 87. He tried to acquire, speaking of Commodor, he tried to acquire Commodor. He wanted to remove the keyboard and this drive from an amiga and turn it into a video games system. Yeah. He wasn't able to do that. They bought in December, 1990, he and his partner bought a 25% stake in the almost bankrupt act vision known at the time as media,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:57):
They were getting hit hard by a magic <laugh> didn't act

Leo Laporte (01:20:00):
Vision, eighties. I'm trying to think they were the ones that had pitfall. They had all those early Atari games. They were, they were ex Eary

Paul Thurrott (01:20:07):
Guys. It was Larry Kaplan and oh yeah. But

Leo Laporte (01:20:11):
Yeah, so they were activism was failing and he was able to buy into it and turn it around.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:16):
Well, yeah. I mean, think, you know, the, the video game industry, the video console industry implo in 83. Right. And when it came back, it was Nintendo and they probably didn't have a big role to play there. Yep. I don't know. I don't, I, I couldn't tell you a single late eighties activism, anything. I don't know what the heck they were doing back then. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:20:36):
So, you know, it's actually very interesting story. Now that there's a movie about Uber and Travis Callick. I think it's just a matter of time before we have the activism movie. Oh yeah. That'd

Paul Thurrott (01:20:48):
Be fascinating. Get everything.

Leo Laporte (01:20:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They first well, I won't, I won't go on, you can read this all on on Wikipedia, little bit of litigation in this past little bit <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:21:04):
Yep. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:21:06):
Yeah. All right. Let's move on to other topics as if there were any other topics. <Laugh> let's what else can we talk? PC makers? Oh, you already did the 11 SES new windows. 11 insider preview today.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:25):
Yeah, we got about 30 seconds of content in on this one. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:21:30):
Woohoo.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:30):
It's well, this is not, this just came out. Right. So it's right before the show. They're starting to do that now. So thank you, Microsoft. You know, it's an insider preview build dev channel. So this is stuff that may or may not come down the future in the future, and it's just updates to voice access and that's it. <Laugh> okay.

Leo Laporte (01:21:48):
Woo. Lots of fix

Paul Thurrott (01:21:50):
A ton of fix. Lots of fixes. Yeah. And they're looking at that alt tab windowed view, which looks very much like it did in windows seven, which honestly I think is gonna make some people happy.

Leo Laporte (01:22:01):
Yep. You know, you guys like me own this fine phone from Google, a pixel six. And you guys have not been too happy with your pixel six. Yeah. I haven't had, you know, I think, I honestly think as I talked to more people, aunt hates his, everybody. I have had no problems with it. And I think I got lucky. I think there was hard. I really, and there was hardware issues and I just got lucky.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:32):
I gotta tell you. So I, I I've, I've always bought iPhones for kind of testing purposes. I review them, et cetera. Having used the iPhone full time now for the past, whenever it's been month or so month or more, you know, there are pros and cons on both sides. It's, it's really nuanced. And it really depends on what you're doing. Certain things are, are better on the pixel than they are on the iPhone. I think the Google assistant voice typing stuff are,

Leo Laporte (01:22:58):
Oh, it's amazing. Incredible. Yeah. It's incredible.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:59):
They're very specific app differences. The same app on both sides, which is very hard to explain. I'll just give a really super simple example. This not Apple's fault, not to Google's fault. It's just, well, it is in this case Google's fault, but Google maps, right? So before I go to Mexico, I put all these pins on a map. These are places I want to go. I, it looks, it's a huge cluster of pins. And the goal over time is to visit not all of those places, but as many as you can. And if they're good, I'll change the style of pin to like a star. Cuz I like, we know, I like it. We might want to go back and if it's not good, we just, it gets off the map and I've been using the iPhone. And so walking around the world with the iPhone and I'm looking at it, I'm like, you know, we're like right in the center of everything.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:38):
And I only see like five pins here. There should be like 25 of them, you know? And you scroll in and you scroll in and they're not really there. And then I pull out the pixel and they're all there. Right? Yeah. And so that app is just different it's and, and there are certain things about Google maps that actually is better on the iPhone. Believe it or not than it is on the Google phone, but that's one on this trip. It's kind of bitters a number of times cuz I'm like, I know there's something here I wanted to do. I can't find it on the iPhone, which is bizarre.

Leo Laporte (01:24:05):
Have you used a translator in Mexico? Yeah, I, I tried to, but I couldn't figure it out how to do it.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:11):
And so you're talking about which one, because if you used both, so apple has its own thing, which is actually okay. And then Google has a translate app. Yeah. One thing we did on yeah, the August trip was we were going down to Soki Milko, whatever that's called, go on the boats. And the driver wanted to negotiate with us to drive us back basically. Right. And we did the real time communication thing in Google translate and it was actually pretty good. Like not star Trek cling on. Good. But it was, you know, it was pretty good. It got worked. Yeah. It was usable. We've used translate a lot on this up. And yeah, I mean, I would say overall it's been pretty good cuz obviously even just something as simple as looking at a menu, there's a lot of unusual food items.

Leo Laporte (01:24:56):
Oh do you? Not as good use the like the lens feature to translate. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:59):
We've done both. Yeah. Yeah. So you hold it up and it translates it in place, which is kind of cool. Some of those <laugh> I wish I could remember to said it was something like, oh man, I think it said, this is not exactly right. But it basically, it was like all these meat items. So it was like Rizo and then, you know, skirt steak. And then it said dead meat <laugh> it was

Leo Laporte (01:25:19):
Like I've had

Paul Thurrott (01:25:21):
That actually sour meat was one

Leo Laporte (01:25:23):
Don't get the dead meat.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:25):
It's better than nothing. It's

Leo Laporte (01:25:28):
So the reason I ask is because it's in your notes. No, the reason I ask is cuz apparently about Mexico, both you and Mary Jo have applied as I have the fi the thing, I think this is the update they were talking about. This is the security patch. It's only 200 megabytes. I still

Paul Thurrott (01:25:45):
Think that's it. No, that's it, it

Leo Laporte (01:25:47):
Is. That's it? That's the feature drop and

Paul Thurrott (01:25:48):
Everything. That's how they, yeah. They concludes everything. Oh, well then I,

Leo Laporte (01:25:51):
So I don't notice any difference at all.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:53):
I haven't talked to Mary Jo told me she got it yesterday. Very excited. Yep. I mean it's only been a day different problem. It did. Yep. Wow. Okay, good.

Leo Laporte (01:26:01):
So it's faster.

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:03):
Well before on my first try, I never get the fingerprint to take ever. Wow. Right. And I just did it three times right now and it worked the first time, every time. Oh nice. So something has

Paul Thurrott (01:26:16):
Changed on my side that has not worked. So I took one day this week, yesterday or the day before, I guess I just, I said, I'm just gonna use the pixel today. Cause I really wanna see. And I gotta tell you, I wearing a mask in Mexico makes the face ID thing on the iPhone. Very diff well it possible yeah. You have to type it in

Leo Laporte (01:26:33):
Pin. So you that, you know what you have to buy an apple watch.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:37):
Yeah, no, I, the, the solution is absolutely spending more money on apple box, but that's,

Leo Laporte (01:26:41):
That's always a solution <laugh> apple. So to do that, you just have to spend more <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:45):
But I, and I like that, you know, with the, in display fingerprint reader, theoretically, that should be better cuz it, you know, but the problem is that hasn't really, it hasn't improved anything for me. So the very first time I used it, it actually failed so many times. It forced me to enter a pin. God and I I've come so close to humming this thing at like a Stonewall.

Leo Laporte (01:27:05):
So many times I'm frustrated too, but I've never had

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:08):
That problem. Its been bad. I don't

Paul Thurrott (01:27:09):
Understand

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:11):
It's and you know what I, I say it's better. So no, you know how they Google pretended the reason they made it that way was for security because you're supposed to hold your finger longer. So now it doesn't require you to hold your finger longer. It works. Okay. Yeah. So they stopped pretending that was a

Paul Thurrott (01:27:28):
Security thing. Most people still will choose ease of use over security if confronted by those two

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:32):
Options. Right. Also that wasn't a security thing. They screwed up the phone and then they pretended it was for

Leo Laporte (01:27:37):
Security. So oh yeah. We meant to do that. I meant to do that. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:41):
Yep. Yep. I,

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:43):
But I, I noted a huge difference in, in the sensitivity of the fingerprint reader so far.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:49):
Okay. That's good. I, I, so tell me if you've experienced this issue. The, the pixel six pro to me has terrible. I guess you call it like ambient light, light sensing. So you'd be sitting there using it, like in a room like this where nothing's changing. It's just a consistent light and all of a sudden it goes really di yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:08):
Like I've seen that on Reddit and people say to reset your ambient light settings, supposedly this,

Paul Thurrott (01:28:17):
The adaptive breadth fix is supposed to fix that

Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
Adaptive. But maybe now you have to, maybe now you have to, now that you got the fix it

Paul Thurrott (01:28:27):
Start over start literally, first of all, the thing took an hour or more it spot was

Mary Jo Foley (01:28:32):
It took a while.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:33):
It really? Yeah. Oh yeah. The download is fine. It's

Leo Laporte (01:28:36):
The something wrong with your phones?

Mary Jo Foley (01:28:38):
No, it took about an hour for me to get it's an update.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:41):
And honestly got, as soon as it finished, I grabbed it. I unplug it. I'm like, okay, let me see what I can notice. And I'm I was just, I'm scrolling through something. And the thing just like when dim on me <laugh> I was like, come on. <Laugh> like, this is one of the problems I was having. Wow. I dunno. So it hasn't fixed anything for

Mary Jo Foley (01:28:56):
Me that I can tell, but you know what the camera, I just can, the camera's fantastic. Give it up because the camera is

Paul Thurrott (01:29:01):
So great. <Laugh> I will say that's the other thing. So comparing your pictures

Leo Laporte (01:29:05):
Are fantastic.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:07):
Most of those are the iPhone. Oh, oh really? Most of them are, but honestly it is very clear that the pixel takes better photos. And I Canice some specific examples. Like if you're, if the sun is anywhere near in front of you, you're gonna get lens flares all over the place on the iPhone. And the pixel is just, and the pixel also does this beautiful thing where you you've got like blue sky. Well, no, you've got sky. It's actually whited out and on the pixel, you can kind of tap right on that white part of the sky. And it's just whoop it's beautiful and blue and, and everything. And you do that in the iPhone and you to get a white blob. It's just,

Leo Laporte (01:29:41):
You know, so here's how you, this is completely counterintuitive. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but this is from Reddit. How you reset? Adaptive brightness. You ready? You got your pixel six there. Actually, I don't have it next to unfortunately, go to settings. You're gonna see why you don't, you won't know how to do this and it, it doesn't show up in the search either. Go to settings apps. Yeah. See apps, apps, see all apps. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> then go to device health surfaces. Oh, for the love, for the love of Mike device health services. You can't just go to that in the apps menu. Cuz it doesn't show up as an app, but you have to do it from apps then to storage and cash.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:22):
No. Now, now I know you're just messing up now.

Leo Laporte (01:30:25):
Now look, and then I should have shown this step by step. Cause you probably

Paul Thurrott (01:30:29):
Don't believe me. I'll never remem I gotta re where are we in the show? I gotta <laugh> I gotta

Leo Laporte (01:30:33):
Come back to this. So I'll go. I'll go back to, I'll go back to the start. Okay. So it's so weird. So you go to apps, apps last place. You'd go see all of them, a device health, which is again, not an app. That'll show up anywhere except in here. But

Paul Thurrott (01:30:48):
This Android has this kind of thing where they

Leo Laporte (01:30:50):
It's so weird storage and cash. Whoops. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:53):
Did I do that right? By the way, the reason they do this is so you can update this thing to the store.

Leo Laporte (01:30:57):
Oh, that's right. You're right. That's exactly why they do that. Yep. Go to storage and cash manage space. Like this has anything to do with that. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:05):
And there it is, by the way, love that has a trash can icon smart. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:31:09):
<Laugh> yeah. Managed space. And for some reason under all of that, you'll find reset adaptive brightness to the factory default

Paul Thurrott (01:31:16):
0, 0 0 sense.

Leo Laporte (01:31:20):
That is crazy. You can also clear all data for device, including battery statistics. And I would do that if you got, when you get the update, just clear it all. Yeah. Because then you know, you're gonna get a fresh start, start again. Yeah. Cuz it doesn't.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:32):
Cause I have I've often considered just cleaned it. You like wiping it out, doing a factor reset.

Leo Laporte (01:31:37):
This might be kinda like that.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:38):
Yeah. Yeah. Just to, just to see if that does anything, cuz I, I, nothing has fixed. Can you, can you

Mary Jo Foley (01:31:42):
See this? This is the picture of what you were just describing. Right? Lens

Paul Thurrott (01:31:48):
Was gray day. Oh a great. Yeah. It was a, it was a gray day. The pixel excels at that, right? It does. You tap on, you tap on the sky.

Mary Jo Foley (01:31:56):
All my beer pictures. You should see them. They're like the best the night, night

Paul Thurrott (01:32:00):
Photos, food pictures. No they're oh no, she's right. It's main

Leo Laporte (01:32:04):
For

Paul Thurrott (01:32:04):
Food. No night. Night. Yeah. Food photos. It by the way. That's yeah, you're right. So the day that I took the pixel out and the food photos I took there, it does that Boca effect automatically. And the it's beautiful.

Leo Laporte (01:32:16):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:17):
I wish there's no one that does. I wish the, the, I wish I could have a, a smaller pixel that had that camera. Yeah. And it had the reliability of the iPhone <laugh> you know? Yeah. I, I, there is no one phone that does everything. But yeah, I,

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:31):
But I'm just happy. I'm happy. I got the update finally. And I'm happy that it seems to have done something about the fingerprint. It

Paul Thurrott (01:32:38):
Took, it actually took you a few days to get it right. 

Leo Laporte (01:32:41):
It did. I didn't get it right away. The other advice again from Reddit. Yep. I think Reddit's like, you know, the old thing where if you had a million monkeys type for a million years, that they do Shakespeare <laugh> I think that's basically where Reddit is. Right. So, so one of the monkeys on Reddit said, you should re-register your fingers start over again. Oh no. I did tried that after tried that? No, after the update, after the update. Yes. Oh, it's thing as, as doing what we just did, which is basically you kind of wanna start over cuz the update you true?

Paul Thurrott (01:33:14):
Sure. So if you factor reset it with the update applied. Yeah. We get it's it stays. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:33:19):
Yeah. <Affirmative>

Paul Thurrott (01:33:20):
Yeah. Maybe I'll just do that.

Leo Laporte (01:33:22):
Might be, if you, if you were testing, you know, if you're somebody like marque Brownley and you were testing it, right. That's what I would do. You that's not what he did, but that's what I would do.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:33):
Well I, so most of the time when I bring a new Android or any whatever phone up, I clean install it. I, I just manually go through, I don't bring up a backup, you know? I assume I should. I don't know. I actually don't know. So if I, you wipe out a pixel, you know, factory reset it and then you get that choice. You want to bring, you know, restore the backup. Would that bring back the garbage or is it just the settings and apps? I actually don't know. I don't know. I don't usually do it.

Leo Laporte (01:34:01):
The other thing with adaptive brightness is you can give it feedback. You can adjust it and it,

Paul Thurrott (01:34:07):
Oh, I, I swear at it all the time. Does it get that feedback? Not that kind of feedback. <Laugh> if it's, I

Leo Laporte (01:34:11):
Feel it's listening or if it's too bright, turn it up. You know, you have that slider. Yeah. Oh no, I do. And it will remember what did no, no, no, but will, it feels like it you're training it, it random, random. Yeah. This should stay in

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:22):
Room. Same room.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:24):
You could this different experiences. You have, you have children. You've told them the same thing over, over again. Do they learn anything? <Laugh> like, I don't, that doesn't happen. Doesn't

Leo Laporte (01:34:33):
Happen. I finally got cuz the other complaint and I think a lot of people have that as the curved screen. I finally got a case that just is like a, you know, the,

Paul Thurrott (01:34:41):
The that's the that's the other, the, the, the it's display. Why? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:34:47):
I want

Paul Thurrott (01:34:47):
Flat display so

Leo Laporte (01:34:48):
Bad. I know. So bad. Samsung did this a few years ago and I guess Google find,

Paul Thurrott (01:34:52):
And then I figured out this isn't actually premium. It's dumb. It hurts the user interface.

Leo Laporte (01:34:56):
Yeah. Remember Samsung used to store stuff in this little yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:00):
Curves here. Little stuff over there. You could have a little lap shelf there.

Leo Laporte (01:35:04):
You could have all kinds of stuff. Well, actually I do. I have. That's where I put my whole books. Wait, what is this? Oh, this is active launcher. I really like active launcher. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:35:12):
Okay. I was gonna

Leo Laporte (01:35:13):
Say this. Is' not standard. No, no. I don't use standard launcher, but active. Great. And this way I only have one main screen and then every, and then I have little, all of these icons are actually not really icons they're folders. So like all my messaging apps, if, if I want Android messages, just tap it. But if I wanna see more, I can slide it down. All my games. Yeah. I like after launcher that's might be my recommendation, but you know, and, and it's doing the you know, the material used.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:42):
Well, the other thing is that, so the Google, whatever the Google launcher is called, the pixel launcher has this at a glance widget top, you can't remove, takes a lot

Leo Laporte (01:35:50):
Of space's total reason. Why use active launcher, short part,

Paul Thurrott (01:35:53):
The bottom you can't remove. Yep. They've

Leo Laporte (01:35:55):
Effectively like all that space. Yep. Yeah. So notice I don't have any of that. I also have a sliding doc so I can have a few extra. I like that. That's actually pretty cool. Isn't that great? Yeah. That's good. Active launcher, highly recommended. I don't know how this turned into the Android

Paul Thurrott (01:36:10):
Show. <Laugh> well as windows users, you,

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:14):
We have a choice. Yeah. And our Android is what you should be using your windows

Leo Laporte (01:36:19):
Gonna say <laugh>, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:22):
Guys just being real, keeping it real in here.

Leo Laporte (01:36:25):
Honestly, if I put all the apple stuff away, you know, the apple watch the apple phone, the max then using the pixel would make sense. You know, windows are Linux and pixel and all, and I have a Samsung watch. I, I got the whole set. Yeah. But you don't, you don't wanna mix and match.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:41):
I no. So I've always used an iPad as a tablet. I use it to read primarily. And then when I travel, sometimes I watch videos on it. Since I've had the iPhone, you get into that weird situation where somebody texts you or calls you and all of a sudden your iPad is over there in the kitchen. And it's making sounds and I'm like, what the hell is that thing going? And it's, <laugh>, you know, it's like one, you know, cuz you can interchange everything. And honestly that, that, yeah, that stuff's great. And that's why Google hoping to do that stuff with windows or Microsoft trying to do it with your phone or whatever the thing is, is well intentioned like that, that kind of behavior is very welcome. You know, it was unexpected in my case, but it was, I can understand why people like that. It's good. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:37:28):
Yeah. I mean, I don't want to give in to my overlords at at the matrix loop <laugh> I don't wanna give in, but they're right. It all just works better. Like the face recognition. If you have the apple watch, you don't have to worry about it. Cuz the apple watch unlocks the phone.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:43):
They have a, a button they could put on the phone that would make that word Twilio and I, those that makes me so mad. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:37:51):
You know,

Paul Thurrott (01:37:52):
It's I have one on my iPad. It works great. <Laugh> You know, put the button on the phone.

Leo Laporte (01:37:57):
Yes. They wanna sell you the watch <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:38:00):
Well they, no, they really do. They

Leo Laporte (01:38:03):
Do. Yep. Yep. Do you, have you seen the ads? Did you, you watch the football game? The ads were the ads I dying. I'm dying. The water's coming up. Just hang on. We'll be there. I'm TA I can't reach my phone, but I'm talking to you on my apple watch and

Paul Thurrott (01:38:20):
Help me asterisks. Not a medical device. <Laugh> help

Leo Laporte (01:38:23):
Me, you know, there, you know what? We were sitting there watching the 49ers win against the cowgirl and that ad came on. I know I loved it. Oh man. That ad came on and Lisa's ex is with us cuz he's a 49ers fan. We're all watching. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and he buys an apple watch immediately, like

Paul Thurrott (01:38:42):
Immediately. Okay. So I, you know, this is only semi-related but since we're talking about this I I've, I've been very upset by how every time an apple watch saves someone's life, it generates a new story. What you don't get is the other a hundred stories about the person whose life. It didn't save <laugh> you know, because it's not, well,

Leo Laporte (01:39:01):
It's not, if you didn't have a watch, it wouldn't save your life either. So come on.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:03):
No, no. I mean, if you have an apple watch. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. What

Leo Laporte (01:39:06):
Are you expecting the apple watch to save every life? No, he wants the surface to save someone's

Paul Thurrott (01:39:12):
Life. No, no, listen. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. That's not the story I wanted to tell. What I do appreciate is now we've moved forward in time. Apple is really something called an air tag and my God, there are a lot of stories. Every single time, some horrible human being uses an apple air tag to stalk some woman put it in her trunk or something of her car or put it in her handbag or whatever they're doing. That thing makes a story now. And I'm thinking, you know what, because now the world has the circle is complete. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So yeah. Good. I guess the point of this is, I guess if apple makes it, it's just news, regardless if it's good or bad, so fine. I'm at least that's being reported on

Leo Laporte (01:39:51):
Bias. I am detecting here.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:54):
It's not biased it's perspective and 

Leo Laporte (01:39:59):
All right. Moving along. Yep. Let's see. We did the pixel six pro update. How about more boring Xbox news. I like that you admitted this and put that

Paul Thurrott (01:40:13):
My notes, but boring compared to the other awesome thing. Yeah, this, this thought this stuff is not super important, but I think we talked about last week that there was a report that Sony is still manufacturing, the ex sorry, the PS4 console to make up for the PS five S they can't make I believe that story has now been debunked. I gotta go look into that, but apparently that may not be true, but okay. Whatever micro for some reason. No, not for some reason, because that story existed. Somebody, maybe the verge or one of those sites went to Microsoft and said, Hey we used to saw this thing about the PS4. You guys still making Xbox ones as well. And Microsoft announced that they weren't making Xbox ones like two years ago or whatever it was, or last year or whatever.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:54):
And they basically had to come out and say, yeah, yeah, we're still not making Xbox ones. What are you talking about? So if you were curious if Microsoft was falling in Sony's footsteps or was in fact just doing this on the side, the answer is no, they are not. And I guess the confusion here was that when they announced that they were no longer manufacturing these things, or you at least admitted it they had said, I think upfront that they were not making Xbox one X and Xbox one S all digital edition, but now they have confirmed it at that time. They also stopped making Xbox one S the normal S so

Leo Laporte (01:41:29):
Any any thoughts about whether I can series X anywhere? How,

Paul Thurrott (01:41:37):
How do you feel about an Xbox series?

Leo Laporte (01:41:40):
S no, we talked about that last week. I, I really, those

Paul Thurrott (01:41:42):
Are, those are

Leo Laporte (01:41:43):
Doable. I know. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I don't know. So I guess you just have to kind of heap hitting the sites and hope that you'll.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:50):
Yeah. And they're regularly, they are introduced to the retail channel and then just as regular, they

Leo Laporte (01:41:56):
Disappear. Yeah. Immediately. I mean, you it's like you had to be there at that moment.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:00):
It's like every day is black Friday, you know, for these things, like, you just have to get lucky. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
It's very, yeah. Just get lucky. All I need to do is get lucky, man. <Laugh> I can only get lucky. It's been,

Paul Thurrott (01:42:11):
It's been almost 15 months. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:42:13):
Is there anything else to talk about before

Paul Thurrott (01:42:16):
We just, no, just real quick. This is not worth much of a mention, but you know, every month Microsoft usually has two drops on Xbox game pass. And it, if I could just get this thing to come up, it is now the second half of the month. So Microsoft has announced the rest of the titles they're released in January ones. Here are both rainbow six related rainbow six extraction. If I'm not mistaken is the new game. Maybe I am mistaken. I, I don't play rainbow six, so maybe I'm gonna get these wrong, but rainbow six extraction and rainbow six siege deluxe edition. The first one is available on cloud meaning Xbox gaming industry, gaming service console, NPC, and rainbow six SGE deluxe edition is PC only apparently has 70 million players in that game. So those are coming this month. I actually would say they're coming tomorrow on the 20th.

Leo Laporte (01:43:11):
Sorry. Okay. Should we do a commercial and then do the back of the book as it were. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:20):
Have we exhausted the activism story?

Leo Laporte (01:43:24):
I think we have. I'm exhausted. We're exhausted. I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:28):
Okay. All

Leo Laporte (01:43:29):
Right. I think we've, we've got every angle and I'm sure we'll talk about it more in the weeks to come.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:35):
You say excited.

Leo Laporte (01:43:37):
Yeah. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:43:39):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:43:42):
I'm sorry. I'm trying to buy an Xbox series X. Could you just <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:43:47):
I'll just drink my Mexican melon water.

Leo Laporte (01:43:49):
Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:43:51):
Have you had AUAS AUAS fresco.

Leo Laporte (01:43:54):
AUA are my favorite. And I've been making after we got back from Oaxaca ha Micah. Yeah. AUA fresco ha Micah, which is basically hibiscus juice. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:07):
Is so good. Yeah. So good. Yeah. So good. Like most fruit juice is a terrible for you. And this is probably not that good for you, I guess, but it's so much better than fruit juice, like it's

Leo Laporte (01:44:16):
Oh, its so good. And you know, my favorite is probably watermelon. It's so sweet. Yeah. That's my wife's so delicious. So wonderful. And I bet you Stephanie could come up with some wonderful cocktails mm-hmm <affirmative> yes. Based on those. All right. We're gonna take a little break. Come back bottom of the bottom of the book back of the book coming up in just a little bit, wanna welcome another new sponsor. I'm really thrilled. And in fact, a name that lives in the memory of PC users, everywhere, C D w remember them, they never left <laugh> there's still a, around this episode of win is weekly brought to you by Intel systems orchestrated by the experts at C D w C. DW has always been one of the best places to get computers. And it is for now for enterprise, absolutely.

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Leo Laporte (01:46:08):
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Paul Thurrott (01:47:14):
You are psychic because I am gonna tell you how to an Xbox series X. Yes. Tells me someday you go to go right now. Yeah. Go to best buy.com.

Leo Laporte (01:47:23):
I'm on best buy. Yes. Apparently

Paul Thurrott (01:47:25):
If you commit to that two year Xbox game passing. Yes. Subscription.

Leo Laporte (01:47:29):
But they want, they want, they, they want pack. I have to get credit checked by, by

Paul Thurrott (01:47:35):
Leo. Let me ask you a question. Do you want an Xbox or do you want talk about getting an

Leo Laporte (01:47:39):
Xbox? They wanted my social security number. That's what I was. That's what I was just doing. I just look, want my social. Why would they want they're strange times citizens. 1 24, 4 monthly payments. All right. I'm giving it to 'em. <Laugh> I don't care. Go ahead. Take it. What's my gross annual income. They want my gross annual income.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:59):
Do you want one or do you not

Leo Laporte (01:48:00):
Want one? I just, you know. Okay. Okay. Okay. Lines of credit account summary APR 0%. I guess they're treating this like a like a new car purchase. Like a yeah. Yeah, because this is the, it's an investment. The game pass thing. Yeah. Now if I already have a game pass what will happen?

Paul Thurrott (01:48:22):
I don't know, but based on how other Microsoft subscriptions. No, it should extend. It should say. Oh yeah. But

Leo Laporte (01:48:27):
Based on how you have, has done this in the past. Okay. Certified submit application to citizens, one citizens, one is unable to pre-qualify your application. Yikes. You know why? I, I think the credit freeze, I think I have is on and they went and they said, no, you can't find anything about Leo. Okay. It's and so Danielle says, why would you pay monthly? And, and because it's a better deal, you actually get a better price in the Xbox. Right? Right. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:03):
Well, you're paying monthly for the service. Anyway. I think this is their way is to make sure you're on there for two years. They gotta make sure they fill in that time before Activision comes board

Leo Laporte (01:49:13):
<Laugh> you know, who would've thought putting a credit freeze would be the one thing in between me and an Xbox series X.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:21):
I bet what you'll find. If you do get it is you'll be locked into that price. Even though the price of Xbox game pass has gone up because of act vision. Oh right. It might even save more money by the time this subscription comes to a close.

Leo Laporte (01:49:35):
So I really should do this. I'm not, I'll be with you. If I around

Paul Thurrott (01:49:40):
To, if you would read the disclaimer at the bottom of my screen, I am not a financial advisor.

Leo Laporte (01:49:45):
I have to go around all the credit bureaus and say, can you lift that freeze?

Paul Thurrott (01:49:51):
I would like to buy an Xbox, please. I wanna buy

Leo Laporte (01:49:53):
An Xbox who would've thought I'd have to apply. <Laugh> geez, Louise. All right. All right. So your tip of the week, real, the real deal tip of the week,

Paul Thurrott (01:50:04):
<Laugh>, it's a little self-serving, but I'm gonna blame Richard Campbell for this, of course, because <laugh> about two years ago, I was working on my programming windows series, which kind of cataloged the history of windows from the perspective of the way programmers could write windows applications and so forth. I kind of went, I, I, oh, I'm sorry. I should say. And then the reason it ended with twofold I hit the do net era. I was right@thecuspofthe.net era. So like the year 2000, this was the time period where I kind of walked away from programming. I covered it from a, like a news perspective, but I didn't really do much in the do net space. And then of course, you know, my, our good friend, Richard Campbell is working on a book about the history of.net. And so I thought, well, I'm not gonna preempt that.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:47):
He knows way more about this than I do. I'm gonna wait on him. And the other thing I wanted to do was start working on some programming projects to better understand the, that net.net technology. So I started a series of those notepad applications that became called.net pad. And I did two versions using windows forms, one version with windows presentation foundation, and then one version with the universal windows platform, UWP and Richard Campbell had still not published his <laugh> history of Donnet and to this day has still not. So I don't know what's going on that. I gotta ask him about that. But over the holiday break, I decided I was gonna resuscitate these two series. So I have picked up on the program windows series in the.net era and I've written, I think I've written. Yeah, I written, I wrote, I've already written nine articles, nine new articles, and there were many, many more to come.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:37):
I was working on a really fun one actually right before we started. So those were available on throughout.com. Likewise I also had promised to make my dot net applications available via GitHub at some point. So everyone could take advantage of that. I did that a year and a half ago, but I never nice made them available publicly. So thank you. I was hoping to have this done before the show started. I just fell short of this, but I had been working with the C windows forms version of.net pad over the past several weeks actually. It's right there. <Laugh> like it's right there. So I would say within a week if not this week, I I'm, we're gonna do a little side trip, so I'm not sure if I'll have enough time, but certainly sometime very soon that will be up on, on GitHub.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:25):
But I will also have articles. I've written one, but I've got another one coming out today, tomorrow at is describing the work that I needed to do to get these things modernized. You know, because two years have gone by and windows form is a 20 year old mess. And then I'm going to document modernizing the app further as, as you can in windows forms. I mean, honestly you hit kind of a dead end because you can't do the win UI three stuff, and there's a lot of technical challenges there, but we'll get to that. So that is also available on throughout.com. So unfortunately my app pick of the week is not available yet, but like I said within days and this is the year earliest one, it's the old one, the oldest one, but it looks a lot like traditional, you know, notepad the, the windows form version of.net PADD will be available publicly very soon. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:53:17):
Yeah. That's I I post a lot, put a lot of stuff on GitHub. It's a easy generally and it's it's fun. Yep,

Paul Thurrott (01:53:26):
Yep. Yeah. So I've been doing this for myself privately. But I've been meeting to make them available. I just wanted to get them down again, make sure they still work properly. Right. And they don't <laugh> yeah. In different

Leo Laporte (01:53:37):
Ways. So yeah. You don't want I've had, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:53:39):
I understand. Yeah. So I, I, that's what that's been a lot and Rafael's been helping me with that. I, I, I reach the limit of my <laugh> on some of this stuff, but it's pretty, I have to say, you know, it's, it's it's very much like no pet. It's good. So,

Leo Laporte (01:53:55):
Okay. I've got two credit freezes lifted <laugh> oh boy, Mary Jo, if you'll speak slowly <laugh>, here's it's time for your prize pick of the week.

Mary Jo Foley (01:54:08):
I wonder if security now mentioned this one, but they did on patch Tuesday this week last week, Microsoft introduced a bunch of fixes that broke a bunch of stuff. <Laugh> 

Leo Laporte (01:54:23):
Steve's always quick to mention things. People

Mary Jo Foley (01:54:25):
Reporting broke, VPN connections, causing some windows server domain controllers to restart on their own virtual machine problems with HyperV refs blocking access to volume stored on removable media. Yeah, it was, it was not a great time if you were an admin who applied those patches from last week immediately, but yesterday Microsoft released a bunch of out of band patches that I think ReMed the situation. And I say, I think because I see some people saying it was supposed to fix it, but it didn't. So I believe least some people think this got fixed. The, the versions affected, included 21 windows 10 21 H two windows 11 and windows server 2022, as well as older versions of windows server. So a lot of different parts of the Microsoft stack were affected by these problematic patches. I hope they get fixed, but again, I'm seeing some people saying, yeah, that didn't fix it for me. So I don't know if Microsoft's gonna take another crack at it or what's gonna happen, but it brings up the issue yet again, of how are patch, Tuesday updates being tested and by whom, before they're rolled out and when should admins apply them, how long should you wait or not? Wait. So yeah, not a, not a great start to 2022 with patch Tuesday this time.

Leo Laporte (01:55:58):
Sorry.

Mary Jo Foley (01:55:58):
So if you, if you were affected, I'd say go try to look for the out of band patches from yesterday and if they didn't fix it, I'm sure everyone will let Microsoft know and they can issue some new patches. <Laugh> very nice.

Leo Laporte (01:56:11):
Very nice. Yeah. Code name pick of the week,

Mary Jo Foley (01:56:15):
Right? So we even talked about windows 10 code names for a while, windows 10 21 H two and windows 11, because it's based on the same code base, where was code named cobalt. But the next version of windows 10 and windows 11 that come out, the feature updates, the code name is nickel. And the, you know, the way Microsoft gets these code names is through the periodic table of elements. That's how they're following along. I saw our friend tear El Honan who listens to Windows Weekly today say, yeah, there's starting to be more mentions of windows, 11 nickel showing up in the code, there was windows 10 iron. Then there was windows 11 cobalt and there's windows 11 nickel. So yeah, we're starting to see the nickel code name kind of percolate up. And I think you'll be hearing more about nickel. So this is just a reminder that that's the next version of windows is nickel,

Leo Laporte (01:57:12):
Nickel rust.

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:14):
Correct. Okay. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:57:16):
Very important. And just remember it was windows eight, if you have a nickel allergy to stay away. Exactly. Yes. And now our concluding moment on the show, <laugh> the beer pick of the week. Yep. A name I will never forget. <Laugh> right,

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:36):
Joe. So yes. So this week I actually did a cider pick because yes, I love sight. I yep. I had a friend visiting who didn't really like to drink beer because of gluten issues. So she was drinking cider and there, there are so many different kinds of cider these days that are available in bars, crappier bars in other places. Now it's not just the same old one or two choices I prefer to, there's like a whole case. Yeah. There's like a case of ciders. Now there's so many. Yeah. A lot of the really good ones come from Vermont. Not all of them, but many

Leo Laporte (01:58:09):
Cause that's where the apples are from.

Mary Jo Foley (01:58:10):
Right. I know. Yeah. New York has some good apples too, and we have some good cider here, but the one I made my pick this week is called shack. The Vermonter cider the Vermonter uses Juniper bees. Ooh. And they slowly ferment the apples. They throw in the Juniper bees so that you get almost this gin type flavor, even though there's no gin in it only 6%, but it, it gives it a little, something different, not the same old, just apple kind of taste. So if you like Juniper berries and G you probably would like this cider, it has that, that it definitely has that permeating flavor. If you do not like gin and Juniper berries, you will not like this cider <laugh>. But it's very nice. It's, you know, they're all, all different flavor rings and ciders. There are a lot of ginger ones. There's lots of other varieties. And I think this is a very nice one for people who are like, yeah, I like cider, but I'm sick of just plain apples. This is a good choice.

Leo Laporte (01:59:11):
Nice. Yeah. You know what else is a good choice? This here show is a good choice and they like them. Apples. We know you have many choices in your podcast preferences. We want to thank you for choosing air TWI and Windows Weekly. Especially on this most auspicious day. I know. And I'm not talking that live Fae. No, where we're, what's the opposite of for me, whereas fmy okay. Kids. Okay. We do this show every Wednesday lemonade Pacific 2:00 PM. Eastern 1800, 1900 UTC. If you wanna join us live, live.twi.tv chat live@ircdottwi.tv or in the club. TWI discord. Paul Thurrott is@Thurrott.com. That's his blog, his field guide to wins. 10 is available@leanpub.com. And what's your GitHub account? Is it Thun? Thro? Yeah. Okay. So watch, there's nothing there publicly. If you look at it, watch, and sometimes it's coming, it's coming, his.net stuff will be up there. I can't wait to see that. Mary Jo foleys@aliaboutmicrosoft.com. That's her ZDNet blog. She does not have a GitHub account. I do not so stop or an Xbox live account. What is wrong with you? I do not nor do I, because citizen one continues to be unable. Oh no. To unpro my application. I unfroze the big three. Right? Credit union, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. I don't know what I did wrong. Maybe they just don't like me. Maybe I don't make enough money to buy an Xbox. That could, that could be it.

Mary Jo Foley (02:00:54):
Yeah. I bet. That's it.

Leo Laporte (02:00:55):
Why don't you do like a like a virtual tip jar thing and maybe I did and it's all in Bitcoin and it's as we speak, lose value rapidly.

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:05):
I think you should just say your name is Phil Spencer and you B

Leo Laporte (02:01:08):
<Laugh>. I thought Chris Capella might offer to arrange you. I did too. Somehow. Yeah. If he wasn't gonna get me a Minecraft sweater at least, but no. Yeah, no, not nothing, nothing, nothing zippity, dude. Ah we will be back next week for a thrilling edition of Windows Weekly. I hope you will be to don't forget club TWI members get ad free versions of these shows. Just by going to twit TV slash club, TWI seven bucks a month. Cancel at any time it's easy to cancel. But you're gonna get ad free versions of all of our shows. You're gonna get access to the discord, which is a great place to be, I think all week long, Mary Jo's in there regularly. And also to our TWI plus feed, which has the new Andy and ACO ask me anything. Amper I talked to AMRU this morning.

Leo Laporte (02:02:00):
He said, yeah, I had all these questions to ask. Andy asked three, you know, the hour was, was gone. <Laugh> <laugh> so that's our Andy, but apparently really fun, really great time. Stacy's book club is coming up again. We just had a one, it'll be another she'll have to announce a new book soon, maybe today on twig. We do the untitled Lenox show. We do all sorts of good stuff in there. Again. twi.tv/club TWI. Thank you everybody. Have a wonderful week. We'll see you next time on Windows Weekly, all mine.

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