Windows Weekly Episode 762 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. 

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on Windows Weekly. I Mikah Sargent am in for Leo Laporte this week and there's plenty to get to first windows 11. We've got some new updates worth checking out. The adoption rate continues to climb. Then we talk about front row for teams. That's starting to roll out. We talk about loops and loop and the Microsoft app. I went in and set up my own set of lists. We get to earnings. We talk about ad tracking and all of the browsers kind of clapping back at Google. We get into of course, Xbox and gaming plus so much more. This is a fantastic episode of Windows Weekly. So stay tuned.

... (00:00:41):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:50):
This is Windows Weekly episode 762 recorded February 2nd, 2022. Diagonal sharks. This episode Windows Weekly is brought to you by Plex track the purple teaming platform. Save time and increase productivity with the premier cybersecurity reporting and workflow management product designed to support proactive security strategy from assessment through remediation. Visit Plex track.com/TWiT and claim your Fremont. And by Melissa, the us postal service process has more than 98,000 address changes daily. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Try Melissa's APIs and the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API sandbox. 24 7. Get started today with 1000 and records cleaned for free at melissa.com/TWiT. Well, hello, there it is time for Windows Weekly and if you're listening or watching, you can very clearly tell that it is not Leo LePort here. No, it is. I, Mikah Sargent who is in for Leo this week while he is on vacation. We're very happy for him to get to take a bit of a break, but I'm so excited to be co-hosting Windows Weekly today with two incredible people. It's your regular panel of Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott. Hello? Both of you. Hello? Not Leo <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:26):
Oh, hello. Hello, Paul Thurrott of course of Thurrott.com. Joining us from lower. Is it Macungie or Macungie?

Paul Thurrott (00:02:35):
Yeah. Google says both it's Macungie.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:38):
Oh, Macungie. And of course, Mary Jo Foley of all about Microsoft, the ZD net blog. Hello, Mary Jo. Hello, Micah. Good goodbye. Nice to see you again on our show was nice to see you as well. I I always enjoy my time on Windows Weekly. And there's a lot to talk about today. Per usual, we're starting out with windows 11 because as windows 11 continues to mature, if you will, it continues to add new features. So what are we working with this week?

Paul Thurrott (00:03:14):
I guess it is kind of like a fine wine getting better over time or cynically. It could only get better. So one, one of the things we've been bringing up a lot lately is this notion of windows 11, improving before the next feature update and how, and when Microsoft might do that last week, there was an announcement along the lines of sometime in February, they're gonna start deploying new features for windows 11, not a lot of new, but I think three-ish actual OS features a couple new apps and then the beta version or pre-release version of preview version, sorry of the Android app compatibility that everybody seems to want for some reason. But <laugh>, but the other thing that happened was last, I guess it would've been last Tuesday. I didn't really see it until later in the week. In fact, I guess it would've been after the show, but as part of the non-existent week D <laugh> right in the schedule, right.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:11):
I think people who follow windows updates understand we have B the B week of each month is the patch Tuesday. There's this notion of a C week, which is the third week. And then last week was, is the like, I'll call it the D week. I don't think that's the name, but sometimes that week they'll release previews of cumulative updates that are gonna come out the following month. And I think we just got a hint of how those new features are going to be rolled out, which is via a cumulative update because we got a preview view, a cumulative update of an update that will ship in February. They included a new feature, which is a an addition to the settings app in windows 11 that lets you see, not really manage so much, but see a lot of information related to your Microsoft account.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:56):
And then they have links in there where you can go to the web and where you actually do that stuff. And it's a great, it's a, it's a, it's a fine feature. It's kind of a neat feature. I think mostly because a lot of people probably don't even know that this stuff is possible with their account, but it's, there's a lot of management activities you can do around your Microsoft account and it is available from this interface, but more important I guess, is this speculation of how, how would they deliver these things? Right? <affirmative> and I guess also I, I had mentioned this might be technically the second to new feature, actually it's probably technically the third Microsoft had added some emojis to windows, love it. At some point I'm surprised that wasn't met with more excitement and also the, it was, they had not these circles. And also the update to that defaults app interface, which is so controversial where they're blocking attempts by third parties to circumvent the protocol handle list for web. But so this is the third one, I guess.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:55):
I have a question about this account management thing. Did this ever go to testers in the insider program? Yes.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:02):
And I actually, I had to look this up. Yeah. So this, by the way, first announced way back in late October, and at that point it went to the dev channel. The interesting thing is it was released to the beta and release preview channel simultaneously on January 14th, which was, was it one week? I, I can't remember if it was one or two. I I'd have to look at the, I could just look at the calendar and find out I, so was it Tuesday? It is the 14th is a Friday. So it's, it was about 10 days before it arrived broadly in preview form. Right? So in other words, for anyone who has windows 11, right? Not in the insider program can go to windows update. They won't, this will not install by, you know, automatically, even if you check for updates, but it will appear it's a KB 583 53 oddly in windows update. I believe it doesn't say it's a preview, but it is a if you look it up on the web, it does say preview it's something that will go out to everybody next next month on PA or I guess this month, sorry, now it's this month. So probably next Tuesday, which I think by the way is when all those other features are gonna appear to.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:12):
I know I, I bet you're right about how they're gonna do this, which is cumulative updates. That's that makes some of sense, given how they've been kind of positioning cumulative updates, right? There are two things that won't be in there though. The no new Nopa app and the new music player, those will be separate. Right? Those will

Paul Thurrott (00:07:29):
Be stores, right? Those will be in the store basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the type. Most people are not gonna check for this stuff. So Tuesday will come and go, no one will see any of this stuff. But at some point these things will install. Your PC will probably have to be rebooted. So you'll probably notice it. And then the, those two apps you mentioned Nopa and media player, they'll update at some point through the store. I think that might take just a couple of days, but it's the type of thing, you know, obviously have to go run the app to see, to see if anything happened. You're you're not gonna just notice it, but those should appear pretty quickly. I, I would imagine.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:05):
All right, well I brewer the seeker, Ken brewer saying in discord, he got the media plea yesterday.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:12):
Oh, there you go. Yeah. That's

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:13):
Interesting. I wanna check,

Paul Thurrott (00:08:15):
Can you ask him if he is is the insider program or is his like just unstable <affirmative>

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:21):
Yeah. I'm asking him he's he's doing

Paul Thurrott (00:08:25):
Stable. You know, technically those it is February <laugh> right. Those two time.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:29):
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was just thinking. I'm like good. It's February. So I guess it's in. Yeah. <Laugh> yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:36):
Interesting.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:38):
Huh.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:39):
All right. And we beat this to death already, but for those who don't know the media player app is a store app. It's a replacement of the groove app. It's you know, this is not the windows media player eight days or whatever, or was this awesome? All in one thing with integrated stores, you could buy music and stream, you know, do streaming radio and all that stuff. It's not, it's nothing like that. It's for playing back the music and video files that you have in your PC. Yep. Simple kind of a simple app. I do not see it. I would love to get that app now, though. That would be good.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:13):
Oh no, you have it yet. <Laugh> how so? How does that work? What is,

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:21):
Let me explain this. I actually have it <laugh> oh, I was just gonna say the way it works is Microsoft usually blocks Paul Thurrott from getting any app updates. So he's the last person to get it. They like, they do this consciously. I'm sure. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:36):
Paul Thurrott IP.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:38):
I have a rich history. That's true. I think I was the last human being on earth to get the outlook.com updated a couple years ago.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:44):
You pretty actually block everyone in lower Macungie. If you wouldn't have put that there,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:49):
Your location, right. Everyone's here still on windows seven. They have no idea. This other stuff has even happened.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:54):
Right. I'm surprised that haven't blocked Mary Jo Foley yet though, because Mary Jo, you like to ask them, Hey, can I, can I try this thing that that's

Paul Thurrott (00:10:02):
I think Mary Jo asks, I just figure out how to get it. And then they get mad at me. No, I ask. They just say no to her. They say,

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:07):
No. Right. I ask. They say no. And then I get it in another way, like a nicer way, you know,

Mikah Sargent (00:10:13):
<Laugh> quote, nicer way,

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:17):
Nicer, nicer.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:18):
So usage is up on windows 11 now.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:21):
Yeah. So this is one of those things this is gonna be, this is always one of those debatable topics. Cause we don't get these numbers from Microsoft, right? They'll Microsoft will never say, this is how many of anything that have ever happened. This is where we are with windows 10. They're not gonna do this. So we have third party companies ad duplex is doing, doing this for a long time. I, I they're, they're basically measuring the they're, they're looking at windows store apps and these are running on PCs and they're determining what version of windows are running those things. And it's based on a survey, if it's always tens of thousands of PCs, I think in this case 60,000 PCs. So it doesn't cover some things. I like the the people that aren't running, not just not running store apps, but running the particular store apps that these guys can measure.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:04):
But it's still, you know, because we don't really get anything official. It's kind of a nice rough number to see what's going on out in the world, kind of in the non corporate world, I guess, is what I would call it. Obviously the two biggest versions of windows by usage a, our versions of windows 10 and they are the previous two versions, not the very latest version, which is now just starting to grow. So windows 10 version 21 H one has 28.6% is the biggest as the biggest version, a 28% of the installed. The, I guess not the installed base so much is the usage base. So whatever you wanna call that it 26.3 are on windows, 10 version 20 H two. And then windows 11 is in third place now with 16.1%. And so if you're re interested in horrible math, I've got some for you.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:51):
<Laugh> Microsoft recently, well, I mean, why not? <Laugh>, you know, let's extrapolate this Microsoft recently said that there were 1.4 billion PCs, not users, but PCs out in the world, running windows 10 and 11, if 16.1% of those are running windows 11, then there are approximately 225 million windows love of PCs slash users out in the world. I, I realize these things are not directly, you know, that's why I said it was terrible math. But just as kind of a random fact, that is true because I just happened to write about this. Microsoft 20 something years ago released windows XP. So 21 years ago, 20 years ago, I guess and in October, which was the same month that windows 11 shipped. And when this, this figure is from January, which is the same month that Microsoft released the first sales numbers for windows XP and that number was 17 million and it was considered an incredible success story.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:51):
<Laugh> so there are, are many, many more times the number of computers running with is Lebanon in the same time period. Granted, no one has paid for that, per se. Although some people have bought new computers a lot of that's gonna be free upgrades, you know, so it's a different world. And even though the PC market you know, slowed there for a long time, we've seen some good growth the past couple years it's been sitting still mostly for the past 10 years. It's still a lot bigger than it was 20 years ago, the, the market for PCs. So that's kind of interesting. I mean, a windows XP was considered a big success at the time. Other than that whole security thing we're not gonna talk about, but you know, windows, Eleven's been kind of quiet, but actually it's going out pretty quickly too. So Microsoft's made it a lot easier to upgrade over the interviewing 20 years, for

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:35):
Sure. Yeah. You know, part, part of the reason they can't really say how many windows, like they can't give us a, a good comparative metric with windows 11 is because not every PC can upgrade to windows 11. So yes. You know, usually when they tell you, you know, X number of PCs are now on windows 10 instead of windows eight, it's because you can move off of that one onto the next one. And there's nothing hardware wise, typically that is blocking you. Yeah. There may be a few cases of that, right. But with windows 11, because of their designations around TPM and CPUs, not every PC is eligible or if you aren't, you have to take a chance and maybe dates in the future, maybe not, and just go for it and get windows 11 on your non-compliant device. So this is gonna make it hard for them to give us a number, right. <Laugh> yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:25):
This is not a type, the type of thing, your mother or my mother, whatever <laugh> considered doing. No, it's like, I really want to get with this. What, but I know I don't have a TPM <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:33):
No, no, but my mom, my I'm waiting for my mom to get the message where it'll be like, do you wanna upgrade to windows 11? I'm gonna get a call someday. Like, probably like right in a very inopportune time, like during the show perhaps, and my mom will call and say, what kinda computer she, so should I do. She has a very up to date HP that I had and I gave to her. So it definitely is able to run windows 11. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yep. I'm just waiting for the panic sounds of my mom hyperventilating, because she's like, wait, I just got used to windows 10 and now I'm gonna have to go to something else.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:08):
I was just 

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:09):
I actually think she would like windows. I do. I think she would like do well with,

Paul Thurrott (00:15:13):
Yeah, right. I, I mentioned, I think last week or the week before I mentioned my wife and how she had gotten that upgrade and I, some weeks had gone by and I said, Hey, you know, how's it going? Is it all right or whatever. And do you like it? And she says, it's the same. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:27):
That's that's we were on the would say too.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:29):
<Laugh> yeah. I mean, I flying home the other day I looked over at her computer and, you know, she was riding away and all kinds of problems with what, the way she's working. I, I <laugh>, I had to really kind of bite my tongue. Like, you know, I don't know why this is configured the way it is, but, but I was sort of reflecting on, I, I didn't say anything cuz you know, I that's

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:50):
Good job stayed married. Good,

Paul Thurrott (00:15:51):
Good job. But I <laugh>, but I thought about it and I, you know, at one point she was doing something in the file Explorer, which in windows 11 is kind of this light blue color on her computer. And I was thinking to myself, man, like that, it just looks different. Like I'm surprised she is, you know, didn't really notice anything because she just it's like, no big just it was nothing. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:18):
I'm still learning to not say anything cuz I, I so much, you want to help, especially if you know, you just wanna help the person. And just this morning my partner was saying something about doing a thing a certain way and I thought,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:32):
Are you broken inside easier? I mean you could, if you wanted to take all day or yeah. Here's

Mikah Sargent (00:16:38):
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:40):
I just, I still remember Paul watching me in horror when we were driving somewhere and I was writing a story. I know in no past you were driving to

Paul Thurrott (00:16:47):
Twitn, we

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:48):
Were in the, a limo. Right. And I'm like writing a story in the, and I have no pad full screen. And he is like, what are you doing? I

Paul Thurrott (00:16:56):
Was like, what the hell are you doing? <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:00):
I'm like, I'm writing a story. And you're like, what? Like, it's this the way you work? Like I was a

Mikah Sargent (00:17:06):
Lawyer. Oh my gosh. That's just that idea of yeah. Going in and seeing the way that somebody works. And I thought I knew you

Paul Thurrott (00:17:13):
It's. Yeah, exactly.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:15):
Exactly. Oh

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:16):
Boy, everyone has a ways you should let people keep their ways. Right. Like if it works for them, let them keep it. <Laugh> exactly.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:23):
Do you think we're gonna continue is, is, is the 16.1%? Is this just mm-hmm <affirmative> what you gen generally expect from have, I guess what I'm asking is having the past there have been updates that people kind of rushed to a little bit more. And so we saw kind of an adoption rate, those a lot faster, so, right.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:42):
Yeah. So the answer to that is yes. The, the problem is the, the, the time that happened most recently was windows 10. And the reason that happened was twofold. Windows eight was terrible and windows 10 was free. Right. And so this was like a get outta jail free card for a lot of people. Yeah. The problem is at that time, we didn't have these numbers. At duplex, for example, didn't start measuring this type of thing until about a year or two later. So that, that initial bump is kind of a mystery right now, but there's no doubt that that happened more quickly. There's there's no doubt just because the situation was so perfect for that. If you flash forward to today, in addition to what Mary Jo said, which is absolutely correct. There's a certain percentage of pieces out in the world that don't have TPM two or don't have an enabled or whatever it is, no computers just kind of won't get it. And you just won't notice. There's much less of an incentive because windows 10 works fine. And and a lot of normal people I'll throw my wife into that bucket. They'll get that upgrade and won't even notice anyway, and it's not, it's just not as, it's not as important that may change. And there's a little bit over time, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:48):
There's business customers. Very, I know so many business users who are like, I got the notification. I'm not, I'm not going at windows 11. Like everybody in my company's on 10 or we standardize on 10. We haven't really tested everything to make sure it's gonna be okay. And windows 11, which it highly likely will be because windows 11 is really just windows 10. And a lot of people are putting it off and they're just, they, they said, I got the reminder and I'm just either I turned it off or I am gonna let it keep popping up, but I'm not ready to move. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:17):
Yeah. I, you know, when I, when you think of this notion of windows 10 slash 11 PCs or users, it's like, yeah, you know, these things are comparable. It's fine. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, mm-hmm, <affirmative> you know, it will shift over time. I mean, obviously windows will 11 becomes the thing at some point, as far as you will have a complete year now where most computers will ship with windows 11, not windows 10. Right? Yep. We'll have more upgrades happening over time. Of course we'll have new PC sold and that will change the mix. And at some point windows 11 will Surpas windows 10 from a use of perspective. And then windows 10 eventually will fall outta support. Right. We're not how far away from that now three and a half years, something like that. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so, you know, it's, it's, it's not a rush.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:01):
I mean the big, the big thing, remember we, you kind of forget about this and we shouldn't Microsoft promised to get to 1 billion windows, 10 users within a year, I think, or a year and a half, whatever the timeframe it was originally. And never did that. And yeah, there's a lot of reasons for that. We don't have to get into that again, but this time around there's no, there's no imperative for that. You know, the user base is in a good place. You could even look at a whether or not you believe ad duplex numbers or not. They show that thing that Microsoft always wanted. They, what they really want is everyone to be on one version of windows. That's not possible, but they're really on three major. And they're the most three most recent major versions of windows. And that's great, you know, from a servicing perspective. So yeah, they're in a good place.

Mikah Sargent (00:20:46):
Good. alright. Oh. And if you wanna mention the related item before we take a break.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:52):
Yeah. So I want every January I look at PC sales, we talked about that a couple weeks ago and PC seals doing great, thanks to the pandemic. So obviously COVID, O's the best thing that's ever happened. It's great. And there are related reports coming about things like tablets, smartphones, and to a less degree Chromebook. So I try to look at data from both IDC and Gartner for all this stuff. So the PC stuff is out, but when it comes to tablets and smartphones, I only have IDC data. So I'm not really writing about that yet. Chromebooks are kind of a small slice of the market and oh, the IDC data is out again. And I don't think that Gartner's gonna call them out. So I thought I'd just write about this, cuz it's kind of interesting. So Chromebooks like windows PC saw big growth during the pandemic.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:39):
Last year overall they grew 13.5%, which is actually pretty close to those growth level that windows PC saw. The difference is in the fourth quarter, they fell 63.6% year of year, crazy like off the side of a cliff fall. And the explanation, this is kind of interesting. Part of it is just that demand had finally been met right in primary markets, which is the us and Western Europe. So that leads to a slowdown. But the other part of it is because of the component crisis P hardware makers. Because every, if you look at the list of top Chromebook makers, it mirrors PCs, basically it's HP, Lenovo Acer, Dell and Samsung are the top five. They decided because of the component crisis that they were going to prioritize windows PCs because windows PCs sell for more and thus they make more money for them. So that actually suppressed Chromebooks sales in the fourth quarter. So part of it was natural. We've had a good two years run there, but part of it was artificial. Hardware makers decided to prioritize PCs over Chromebooks. Interesting. PCs are not a high volume. I thought this

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:54):
Was public by

Paul Thurrott (00:22:55):
The way. Yeah, I know it's crazy. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:57):
It's cuz you OEMs will never do that kind of thing. They'll never say, well, the real reason we decided to do this is cuz we make a lot more money. If we sell the more expensive device it's like, wait, you just were so honest, which just happened here, right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:09):
It's I said high volume. I meant high margin. Like PCs are not high margin devices to begin with. No Chromebooks must be as razor thin as you can imagine. Like I, yeah, there must be almost nothing. Cause they really don't, you know, the average price of a Chromebook is, is gotta be under $500. Right. the average price of a PC is somewhere close to a thousand mm-hmm <affirmative> I would think

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:29):
It made me think cuz a week ago during earnings Satya, I think it was Satya just throughout this thing and said it, or maybe it was Amy Hood, the CFO and we're taking share with windows. And I was like, from who? Like from whom yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:23:42):
Exactly. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:43):
<Laugh> and, and they never said, but now I'm like maybe they meant Chromebooks, you know, maybe that's what they meant. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:23:50):
If so, I mean talk about, they really needed an asterisk on that, right? Like they did. Yeah, you are. But only because there was this, but there,

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:59):
But yeah. You know, earnings, the less information you can provide the better. So <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:24:04):
Blind. I mean they didn't, you know, it's a fact <laugh> they, they did take you from Chromebooks,

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:08):
Not a fact toyed. It's a fact.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:10):
Although by the way, Chromebooks, if looking at the year are still are the second biggest computer platform on earth after PCs. Yep. They're bigger than max by volume volume,

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:22):
Right? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:24:25):
They've taken, taken the market. Alright. Let's take a quick break ramps back of the market. There. There you go. <Laugh> exactly.

Mikah Sargent (00:24:36):
Number two. Perfect. Yeah. What a perfect comparison there. I wanna tell you about Plex track while we take this little break cuz Plex track bringing you this episode of Windows Weekly. It is the premier cybersecurity reporting and workflow management platform that empowers teams to win the right security battles. What if you could streamline the communication across the entire security department so that every team member could do their job more efficiently from amplified data aggregation and reporting to integrated ticketing for remediation to analytics and visualizations for board reporting Plex track touches every aspect of the security management workflow. That means you can gain a real time view of your security posture by bringing all your data sources together into one power or platform where you can triage scanner results, generate powerful analytics and visualizations, assign remediation tasks, a test to your posture and track progress over time as a satisfied Plex track client put it, we see flex track as a part of our strategy to move quicker and be P.

Mikah Sargent (00:25:47):
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Mikah Sargent (00:26:44):
You can begin purple teaming or power up your current strategies with runbooks the best in industry tool for test plan execution, Plex track improves the end entire security engagement life cycle. By making it easy to generate security reports, deliver them securely and track the issues to completion straight from the platform. So security teams of all sizes and maturities can maximize efficiency and effectiveness book a demo today to learn more about the product and how it can support proactive security work in your organization, triplex track free for one month and see how it can change your life. As a security professional, all you have to do is go to Plex track.com/TWiT and claim your free month in case you're wondering how that's spelled that's P L E X T R a c.com/t w I T. And of course thank you, Plex track for your support of this show and of TWiT. We appreciate it. Plex track the purple teaming platform. All right. Let's head back into the news first, Microsoft 365. This is an interesting conversation about teams. I saw this, this bit of news with front row. What's what's going on here? How can I sit in the front row? <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:06):
So you know now when you have meetings where some people are in the meeting room and some people are dialing in from home, the people who are dialing in from home, it's kinda like your second class citizens, right? You're in a video gallery, you're off to the side. The people in the room are having this conversation and you're like, Hey guys, we're still here. We're here're call on us. Right? So Microsoft knows this. They know that hybrid meetings are kind of the future. Even if people start going back into the office. And so they've been trying to come up with ways to make meetings better. And one of the ways is this feature in teams called front row that they actually announced last June and is now available for on windows as of this week. So front row it, it moves the video gallery down to, to the bottom of a team screen.

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:55):
So if you're in a big meeting room and you have a big monitor in front of you, everybody's on the same eye level. So it feels like you're actually, even though you're remote, you're in the room with the other participants who are physically there. I, I think this is a super cool idea and it's very basic kind of, but to me, this, this is more natural than something like together mode, you know, which is where Microsoft has these fake backgrounds and they put you in a coffee shop with all the other people in the meeting or they put you in stadium. And so you're, you know, you see everybody's little cutout faces in a gallery. I, I like this front row thing cuz it's like, yeah, that's what you wanna have. You wanna have people feel like they're in the same room with you? And if there's some kind of a chat going on during the meeting, which inevitably there are these days, the the chat will be visible to everybody. So not just the remote people will see the chat, but the people who are in the room also will see the chat on their larger screen. So what they're trying to do is make it like a blended environment where whether you're there physically or you're their remote, it feels like you're all together in a real way. I like it. I think it's good.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:07):
Hmm. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:08):
Yeah. Now they said also that they've got some new features coming and they said by the end of this year, but with the pandemic, whenever they give a timeframe, it's probably like add six months and that's more likely I don't, I'm not saying that critically. I'm just saying like nothing, almost nothing that gets announced. It actually ships when they're, when they say it's going to, and it's not just Microsoft, it's everybody. Right. so one of the things is they're gonna bring that loop app that we saw that, that kind of it's very similar to notion. It's this idea of a new kind of collaborative app. It uses the fluid framework technology into teams, meeting rooms. So that if you're in a team's meeting, you can pull up this app and everybody can be collaborating together on what looks like a giant shared whiteboard with your agenda.

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:57):
And you can see which people are contributing, which things and there's pointers sore, gonna bring that to this experience of the team's rooms. And they're also gonna bring something like together mode that I described earlier, where everybody can be in a, if you're on a large monitor, everybody's in like a same background kind of effect so that it feels more like you're in the same physical space. So there are continuing to kind of look for ways to make hybrid meetings better. They're trying to make it so that you don't need to have special furniture or you have to have a giant screen monitor. That'll work with basic PCs and basic conference room setups like people have now. So I, yeah, I think it's cool. I, this is the kind of research I like seeing Microsoft do. Cause I'm like, it's applied, it's immediate. It doesn't need a lot of special extra stuff that you have to buy from them or partners. It just kinda works.

Mikah Sargent (00:31:52):
I, I know this makes me an like incredibly nerdy, but I always want to see case studies with this kind of thing, because I, I, the loop app sounds super are cool. I would just, I would get so much out of watching like a team meeting take place. Yeah. And they're using the loop app in this way. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I, I want a trailer, I guess, is what I'm saying. Give me a YouTube video, showing them using it. Cause I think it's, it's a good idea and what you're, especially what you're pointing out there, the fact that sure. You know, your, your company might be able to buy the $4,005,000 screen. That's got touch built into it or whatever, but not everybody can work that at home. And so giving them the ability to use this and collaborate is really nice.

Mary Jo Foley (00:32:37):
Yeah. I think so too. I agree though. Let's see how people use it and like in a real world setting, is it, is it really complicated to use, right? Because it, when we saw the demo of this, that ignite the loop app, I was like, you know, it looks good, but it also looks like this could be really complicated to figure out, learn. Maybe if you used it repeatedly or if you're used to working in a white board environment in your company, that it wouldn't be such a stretch, but in my interactions on teams, I don't use a whiteboard. Right. I don't know if call, I feel like this might,

Paul Thurrott (00:33:13):
This is, well, this is to OneNote kind of what windows 11 is to windows 10. Right? It's the same basic idea simplified. Yep. And there are gonna be people who love it because it's simpler just in using it. And then there are gonna be people who hate it because it doesn't have that exact feature they expect from the past,

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:33):
You know? Right. Yep.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:36):
So is this is loop only part of teams calls or will loop exist as its own separate thing? Or it's a, it's a feature that is exclusive to teams calls.

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:49):
Yeah. But there's loops and there's loop just to make it

Mikah Sargent (00:33:53):
Really loopy. Wait, hold on. Yeah. What is loops versus loop?

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:59):
So the is when, when they first talked about fluid framework, they had this idea of really fast co-authoring that would enable you to take a component, say like a spreadsheet or any other kind of document, like a, a sales document and embed it in a ch a team's chat or embed it anywhere like in a OneNote document or some anywhere you want in a, in the Microsoft world and maybe ultimately third party world as well. And because of the fast coauthoring, it'll always be up to date. So anytime someone makes a change somewhere, it'll update it wherever it is. If it's in teams or wherever, and you'll always have the most up to date information and they call those embedded things loops. Yeah. There's the loop app and loops component like components basically.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:48):
And those components are subsets of loop. Or I should just consider those two completely different things.

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:56):
The loop app is more like a whiteboard or like notion if you, what the notion app is and loops are just like Olay for people in the Microsoft world, Olay object, linking and embedding components. That's Microsoft hates when you make that comparison, but that's kind of what this is. It's like components. Yeah. Gotcha. That's why we keep using it cuz they hate us to say it. So we just keep saying it <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:35:20):
Like Cru. Yes, exactly. Yeah. <Laugh> yeah, I got, I gotcha. I gotcha. Yeah. All right. So we've got loop loops, Olay, which is not shampoo or soap or whatever and lists tell us about

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:36):
Lists. <Laugh> okay. This is my Paul. Every once in a while, jokes on the starter Windows Weekly, she buried the lead. I buried the lead. This is the lead of this show today. And I'm gonna tell you why. Okay. So Microsoft lists, I don't use this feature. It came out of SharePoint. When SharePoint used to have this thing called SharePoint lists, then stuff separated it out and made an app called lists. There are people who love lists, right? Like some people live and die by lists. This is how they do their task management. I don't, I use my calendar to manage my task management tasks. Everyone has their own way. Right? Some people use Google, keep some people use notepad. If I would know pad, if it existed on Android, but it doesn't. But tasks is another one of these apps. The way Microsoft had been selling tasks up to this point was you had to have an office 365 or Microsoft 365 subscription.

Mary Jo Foley (00:36:32):
And then you just get it for free. Well, mm-hmm <affirmative> this week. They said, you know what? We're gonna have a consumer version of tasks. And all you need is a Microsoft account. You don't need to have a subscription to Microsoft 365. If you sign up, it's a limited preview. Like the first 200,000 people can try this out. All you need is a Microsoft account. And if you have it, you can use this online application called lists. They call it the list. Essay, preview MSA is Microsoft account. And it gives you a subset of features of the other lists. Okay. So, oh, that's fine. Like, yeah. Okay. Who cares now? There's gonna be a consumer E version of lists, right? Here's why you should care what they're doing. I finally figured this out. I, what they're doing is they're taking a lot of the things that are in office, like lists like OneNote probably is gonna be another one planner tasks to do, and they're gonna make consumer versions of all these things.

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:31):
Just like they have teams, enterprise and teams, consumer they're, they're gonna take all these things and they're gonna make consumer versions of them just like they did with teams. And this is the thing that I couldn't quite figure out two years ago that I called meta OS. Oh yeah. That's what Microsoft calls it. Right. That's what Microsoft calls it. And I was like, I don't totally know what this is, but they're doing something big. Like they're trying to replicate the, the enterprise experience in the consumer space. This is what this is. I'm a hundred percent sure. This is what this is. And so we've already got teams, teams, consumer, and teams enterprise, and now we're gonna have list enterprise list. Consumer next will be like planner then to do, they're gonna do this with everything. And then they're gonna try to make it just like they're trying to do with teams. I would argue unsuccessfully so far. So the idea is people use this work. So what if they give them the exact same product at home? And that's how we get consumers. We have the same thing. They get used to it at work and they come home and they still use it because they're used to it from working it with it at work.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:32):
It's kind of impressive. I wanted to be part of that 200 K or what however many it was. So I, is it site? No, no, it's still open. And you can create an issue tracker event, itinerary content. I mean, lots of different things. You can create from a CSV or start, you know, from scratch and it's got integrations a that it can sort of pull in graphs and data. Yeah. Well this reminds me of, of, oh golly. What is that Monday? I think it's called monday.com. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> also a former sponsor on the network just as a note, but it reminds me of some of the stuff that monday.com does where you it's sort of issue tracking item tracking <affirmative> all built into yeah. Lists.

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:18):
Interesting. So yeah. Any anybody who's listening who wants to try this list.live.com? All you need is a Microsoft account and it'll put you in there and you can start playing around with the preview. Now I, I, so I, you know, Microsoft doesn't want us to talk about meta OS. That's an internal name. And so that's why we keep talking about it. Like I said earlier, <laugh> <laugh> but then yesterday Jeff Teer who is a corporate VP at Microsoft, he's like Mr. Sharepoint, Mr. Onedrive, right? He did this LinkedIn post. That was so nerdy. Like, I mean, he's a nerd, but like this is ultra ultimately super nerd. Right. And what he said was, this is our big, this is our big, our next big technical bet. We're using SharePoint to power, the consumer experience. I'm like, that's it, that's, that's meta OS for you. That

Paul Thurrott (00:40:08):
Should freak out everybody who knows anything about SharePoint

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:11):
That everybody is, I know people who see this and like, oh my God, they're using SharePoint in the consumer space. Like, isn't it complicated enough? Right. <Laugh> yeah. And then he said, we rearchitected SharePoint to per user shards, S H a R D S for consumer support and we support Microsoft account and Azure active directory. So they're trying to replicate just like I'm saying they're replicating or trying to replicate in the consumer space, what they're doing in the enterprise. And because Jeff Teer is like instrumental in the SharePoint, of course has gotta be a big part of it. So yeah, if you're, if you were scared of SharePoint before, get ready, you're gonna be really scared. Now that's crazy.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:54):
You asked at the end of last year, how Microsoft was moving into the consumer space since that's what they sort of set one of their goals. And at the time I think it was other than in gaming, it was kind of not very clear. It seems, this is the year of making that move.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:13):
If we went back a year and said, let's have a little round table, how do you think Microsoft's gonna get to, into the consumer market, everyone through, at all their ideas, the one phrase that would never have come up ever, not once would've been SharePoint, SharePoint, <laugh>, you know, like no one would've said SharePoint, I guarantee it.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:31):
And they especially wouldn't say SharePoint shards, right? Those two things together. I'm like, no, that

Mikah Sargent (00:41:37):
Sounds like, that sounds like some sort of gaming currency. Microsoft releases its first cryptocurrency SharePoints. AARD

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:48):
A shard is a horizontal partition of data or

Mikah Sargent (00:41:51):
Database. What makes it horizontal and not vertical?

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:56):
You're asking the woman who knows the words around Haddo, but doesn't really know what it is. So I don't know. I'm not the one to answer this question, but I'm sure people in our audience know very well about sharding and shards. <Laugh> it's a thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:08):
God, I'm positively.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:12):
How about Diane agonal? Is there diagonal

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:15):
Shards versus horizontal shards? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:18):
Yeah. There's a show title though. Sharding and shards. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:22):
Yep. Make sure you spell with the D people. Yes.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:25):
How it's should be very clear. That's what, that's what Mary Jo was saying. Alrighty. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:33):
Micro it's tough to pop that one. Isn't it? It's, it's tough to move on from that

Mikah Sargent (00:42:37):
Topic, but yeah, I, and plus I'm over here creating a content scheduler and Microsoft list now see for a bunch of content that doesn't exist, but it's just fun to play around. <Laugh> interesting. I I'm just a little sad because oh no, nevermind. I was wrong. I thought it had the little button in the top to let you share to like one of those huge Microsoft screens, but it was actually just a, it's just a, a share feedback button. So I can't,

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:02):
It was a, it was a horizontal shard. It was a

Mikah Sargent (00:43:04):
Horizontal shard that got into my diagonal shard. And I don't understand why it's here. <Laugh> lots of other companies had earnings calls and revealed lots of stuff. And I think Paul is probably gonna tell us about that.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:19):
Right? Cuz I'm the bad math guy. I just, I just throw this out as for comparative purposes, you know, last week we talked about Microsoft's earnings 51.7 billion in revenues, 18.8 billion in net income. So since then we've had four of the other major players in the big tech space report earnings. I think Amazons is probably tomorrow. But Intel for, well, I should say for hardware, we have Intel and AMD Intel did annual as well as quarterly. I just stick to quarterly cuz not everyone's doing annual, but for the quarter 20.5 billion in revenues, 4.6 billion in net income. AMD is a much smaller company, but they're probably their primary competitor for now anyway. 974 million in net income on revenues of 4.8 billion. So much smaller company than in health, still alphabet, which earns 81% of its revenues from advertising. So it's unclear why we even consider it a big tech company. She's not gonna go net income of 20.6 billion on revenues of 75.3 billion crazy. Their second biggest business. This always amuses me, let see if I can get this name correctly, it's called other <laugh> and other other is non-advertising revenue. So hardware play store, things like that. And then they have Google cloud, which is of their competitor to whatever you want to call it. Microsoft 365 Azure, AWS, whatever. Pretty small Microsoft cloud ly. Yeah. Microsoft cloud. Yeah. 5.5.

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:59):
Yeah, the Google cloud and the Microsoft cloud are very comparable, right? Like they have okay. They have Google cloud and then they also have Google workspaces together just like Microsoft puts Azure with.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:11):
And then, and that's a, it's a tiny business compared to Microsoft.

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:14):
It's tiny, right? It's 5 billion and Microsoft is 21 billion. And so that's why you always hear Google is a distant number three when you're comparing Microsoft.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:24):
And I mean, if you just wanna look at like the productivity and business processes, business unit, Microsoft, which is responsible for Microsoft of 365 office 365 is 15.9 billion in revenues. So it's over five times or about five times. I'm sorry. Sorry. See bad math. I promise bad math. <Laugh> you did promise. Thank you three times, three times bigger. And then apple right now is the biggest of all these companies. I think Amazon will do them holiday order and whatnot, but still 34.6 billion in net income on revenues record revenues, 124 billion, 124 billion. Just the iPhone by revenues is bigger than everything. Microsoft does combined 71.6 billion in revenues up 9%. And probably would've been up more, right? If it wasn't for the component thing, people get up it by the way. For some reason, when I compare the iPhone to Microsoft as if these things were two completely different businesses, I mean they are obviously, but you know, apple and Microsoft have kind of this history together.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:22):
It's fascinating that the way that apple has evolved, I at Microsoft I think has followed a much more traditional evolution. I, if you were to go back and look what Microsoft was in the early nineties, late nineties, 20 years ago, whatever, and then saw what Microsoft was today. Be like, oh yeah, that makes sense. But if you were to go back and look at apple in the late nineties and compare to what did they say? You'd be like, wait, what does this company <laugh>? You know, I mean, it doesn't make any sense. It's crazy. Even services, just services which by the way of money, they make through third parties in the app store as well as their own services. But still that business is 19.5 billion. That's as big as Microsoft 365 and all of the other stuff in that part of Microsoft's business. And it's <laugh> the growth has gotta be higher 24% year of year just in, in revenues. I'm sorry. In services, revenues M that business unit, which was productivity and business processes actually experienced 19% growth too. So the pandemic, like I said earlier, fantastic. Best thing that's ever happened. I hope it continues. Golly, <laugh>, that's

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:27):
Bad math. That

Paul Thurrott (00:47:29):
Is bad. That's some bad math. That's some bad math. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:32):
I just, I end up being kind of numb to these numbers. Maybe that's why they call them numbers. <Laugh> yeah. I just, I it's like, no, I, for sure.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:43):
It's

Mikah Sargent (00:47:43):
When you get to those sizes, right. You're just like, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:47:46):
It doesn't make any sense. Doesn't make any sense. We've all heard of compound interest in inertia and <laugh>, you know, I'm sure this plays a role here somehow, but yeah. I, yeah, there's nothing, nothing can explain this success. We can, I mean, Monday morning quarterbacking, we can look and say, oh yeah, they, they, you know, they did this thing and this worked out great. And we get that, but I don't think anyone could have any of these businesses, like I said, 20 years ago. And it plot is some trajectory, right, exactly. Where they, they combined are bigger than the gross national product of every, you know, country on earth. Basically. It's crazy. I'm exaggerating again, bad math is all I can find. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:48:26):
Right. Are we ready to move on from these big, bad numbers into the browser wars?

Paul Thurrott (00:48:35):
Yeah, I didn't, I didn't talk about this last week, but Google has spent the last couple of years promoting this notion of a privacy sandbox in Chrome, which sounds wonderful. And they had a technology called flock, which was going to replace third party cookies which are used to track users across the internet with a proprietary Google technology that would track users across the internet because I just established that 81% of Google's revenues come from advertising. And the way they make money is to track you around the internet and sell that information to advertisers. That's literally their business, like in a nutshell. And this doesn't, it's not something that markets well, so they've been trying to find this way to continue tracking you, but make it sound like a good thing, you know, and basically everyone hated flock. So every browser maker on earth, except for Microsoft, by the way promised that they would block flock <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:32):
So which would limit the effectiveness of Google's coming ad new ad network called Skynet. <Laugh> also not true, but anyway and so Google has retrenched and they're gonna come out with something called topics instead, and topics is a fun, new word. That means flock. It's basically the same of thing, right? So the idea here is that Google wants their browser and other browsers to track you as move around the internet so they can share that information with advertises and the way that tracker or the topics differs from flock is actually fairly minimal. It basically sets up a, a set of interests that you have based on your act on the internet. And it gives that information to advertisers. So predictably the more aggressive of the browser maker so far brave being number one, obviously every time. And then VI Valdi had both said, have both come out against topics.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:28):
I would imagine opera apple with safari. I don't know about Microsoft, but Mozilla certainly they're big on privacy will come out against this as well. I don't know what to say. I mean, I feel like we, if you use Google Chrome, you need to be using extensions that block trackers like this mm-hmm <affirmative>, if you're not using Google Chrome, you also need to be using <laugh> blockers that, you know, that are blockers to trackers like this. Some of them have some built in capabilities brave and Mozilla, for sure. But this is just a weird turn of events. Like, I don't know, I don't, they just basically have gone public with this notion that like, look, we want track you, but we want it to be fun, you know? And there, there are people who <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:51:14):
I like that. It's, it's kinda how its yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:16):
But, but people, there are some people who hear this and say, well, yeah, but if I'm gonna see advertising on the internet, at least as personalized <laugh> it's like, guys, why, what, why would you, what are you talking about? You know, we've all had that, that creepy moment, like you and I are on a phone call and we're talking about some kind of a WASA dryer setup that Samsung makes or whatever. And then for some reason, for the next week on the New York times, that's the only ad I see. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> even though we were talking about it, <laugh> right. You want this to be personalized? I mean, I, I don't don't know. So I don't, yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:51:49):
That is an ongoing, I, I do keep hearing that where folks are saying, you know, I, I would rather have I think it was actually Leo who said something along the lines. Like I I'd rather have ads that matter to me than to have ads for barbed wire because I don't buy barbed wire

Paul Thurrott (00:52:05):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and see, I think you should have ads for Barb wire because you don't need Barb wire and there's one less thing you're buying for. No reason whatsoever.

Mikah Sargent (00:52:12):
Yeah. I, so I fall more into that camp. I, I really do. Yeah, the, the problem of course is that this for example is <laugh> is an ad supported network. And I, it works a little different of course. Right. But I can, I guess I can't be too <affirmative> 

Paul Thurrott (00:52:31):
Hold on a second. Let's this cuts. Okay. But this, this, this cuts the heart of the matter mm-hmm <affirmative> you are an ad supported network, but you also offer an ad free version where people can pay for the product and not have the ads mm-hmm <affirmative> related to this only somewhat this week word old is suddenly the biggest game in the world was purchased by the New York times of some seven figure number they're not gonna disclose the New York times is the worst possible outcome for this thing because the New York times has the model where you have to pay to access to content and you still get ads. You know, if Google offered an option through Chrome where you could pay, who knows what the amount would be? I don't know. So some amount per month or per year not to see ads <laugh> right.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:16):
I actually think that would be a successful business model, as long as it was the option, like what you're doing. And I do this on my own website. I mean, not me personally, but the company that owns my site does this offers an option where you can pay and not see ads, or you don't have to pay obviously, and the content's free, but there will be ads. And I, I, to me, that's, that's a common sense. Middle ground. At least you have both options. Right now the, the way the web works is we just, we, we act like it's free, you know, and cuz we're not really paying, but we are paying aren't we, I mean, and, and if anything, we're paying with our souls in a way, it is creepy to see that the ads come up about things that you, maybe you search for or talked about or whatever it might be, that's creepy, but it's more creepy. Isn't it, it, a surveillance state it's spyware.

Mikah Sargent (00:54:09):
This would be elite. Mary Jo. I'm curious about your thoughts. I, because I, I do, I do agree to a certain extent and honestly, not even necessarily for myself, but in the ongoing conversations that I have with people I very much care about who have genuine concern that their phone is listening with the microphone or by walking into a house that has a certain thing that it's listening to them. And then you try to explain the way that it actually works. And that gets a little bit too nebulous for, for, you know, the, the non then you go

Paul Thurrott (00:54:40):
Person, when you get an ad for this thing that will block this, the, the surveillance thing that's in this other guy's house. Exactly. I know exactly. Wait, how did that happen?

Mikah Sargent (00:54:48):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Mary Jo, how are you on, how do you feel about the, the ads stuff? I'm curious.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:56):
So I I'm somebody who thinks we've all given up our privacy for convenience. And I know that's not something a lot of people like to admit, but that's how I feel about things. Like whenever I get ads, even if they're very personalized and I don't know how they get personalized, I'm like, you know what? I decided to use the web or I decided to at like, search for something that might have been tangentially related. And so, okay. My data's out there, I accept all cookies. I do all the things you're not supposed to because I'm like, I just wanna get this over with quick, except the cookies. I don't care. Like, blah, I, I just don't expect to have privacy and I've kind of come to grips with that.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:39):
Hmm

Mikah Sargent (00:55:40):
Hmm. I, so I still do advocate for, and do my best to strive for a certain level of privacy. And I don't think that we should get to a place where we end up letting companies just sort of, yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:00):
How close are you to that dog park again? Would you say it's 

Mikah Sargent (00:56:04):
Oh God, I'm not saying anything else about the dog park.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:09):
If I was standing in the dog park and I was facing out the west <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:56:13):
Would you be able to see me waving my hand? Yeah. Right. but, okay, so this is the interesting thing. We had someone on tech news weekly last week to talk about flock versus topics and the, the difference between the two. And I, I said the same thing that they, I asked rather, they seem like they're pretty much the same thing. What is the difference? And the one thing that all added to make it a little bit different is the human element of it, where these topics are actually selected by human beings. Wow. So the, the cohorts, instead of being done by AI are instead selected by human beings. And I said, do we know what human beings, which human beings, how, how many human beings are in charge of this? So what kind of prop, we don't know really the internal, they had to do

Paul Thurrott (00:57:08):
Something with the Gmail man guy. He has been on his 20 for several years.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:13):
He's still around. Exactly, exactly. Versus flock, which had, because it was AI, there were so many subsets of, of groups. These cohorts could get pretty small. And if that is topics would be more general, but, but

Paul Thurrott (00:57:32):
Again, that's big, but

Mikah Sargent (00:57:34):
Yeah, it's, it's all, that's all still the same thing. I just wonder though, if we're looking at third party cookies, the way things that are done right now, the tracking that takes place versus this more generalized approach. Right. I think I would have, I would rather be less identifiable than more identifiable, but, but, and

Paul Thurrott (00:57:56):
Go ahead. I can't point you to an exact data source for this, but my understanding is that long ago it was determined that non contextual advertising was just as effective of is contextual advertising. And it's a lot easier, you know, it's basically like the, the spam mail you get still some days still in your mailbox, you know, just that, we're just gonna throw this out to everybody. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so they're going to all this, this is the computer industry in the nutshell, this is so Microsoft too. I'm surprised they not more involved in this. It's like just, we'll spend a lot of time looking at telemetry day until we get the result we want. And then we'll use that as the justification for some crazy AI based scheme to sell you hair tonic or, you know, fruit water, or whatever it is. Because for some reason you showed some interest in that God does everyone, I mean, seriously, you do a go it's like you know, this is them as I buy my mother a book for her birthday on Amazon. And then I start getting recommendations on Amazon, based on a book for an older woman that is not the type of thing I'm interested in. Like there's no, there's, there is computer science behind that. It's just deeply flawed <laugh>, you know? Yeah. And I, I don't, I, I, I don't understand why people would want this kind of thing. It just doesn't make sense to me. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:14):
Yeah. I, nobody wants

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:15):
It. Nobody wants it. Right. Like,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:18):
I mean, they've well, it's resigned to it. They're resigned to it. There, you, you go there. Well, yeah. It's like when, you know, Google maps is, is such a necessary thing. It's incredible to me that I went anywhere on this earth by myself and a piece of paper showing me directions. Right. Would never go back to that. But even Google map, you know, look, Google maps looking at the surface of it has become a vector for am. It just shows me places that businesses have paid to be placed on the map. Instead of the things I'm looking for. I had a problem. We were away for a couple weeks looking for, I had pinned things explicitly, so I could find them. And I was shown other restaurants instead of the ones I knew I wanted to go to because those businesses paid for that.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:59):
And it's like, okay. I mean, what am I, what am I, I know. And some people like Paul, what are you complaining about? It's a free service. I, yep. <Laugh> what I'm saying. Is there needs to be, there should be a better way. And I know a paid option isn't for everybody. But there are things that I think are valuable enough that I would certainly, and there are, because there are literally things that I pay for that are valuable to me. I would pay for this to have to be better if I could. And I wish that was an option.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:25):
Yeah. An option. There you go. I think that's the thing. Is that having one or the other? Yeah. That's where the complication comes in. I, you know, want to be incredibly aware of folks who are not able to necessarily make that per month expenditure, but if you're able to, to have that option is, is good. 

Paul Thurrott (01:00:46):
By the way you mentioned your, the company you work for. And I mentioned the company I work for in advertising and everything. I mean, in a, in a way there's some targeting, you know, the notion that someone's listening to show about windows or Google or the Mac, or whatever is probably interested in technology. And a lot of these advertisers are gonna be tech based or, or a lot of aren't <laugh>, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, I mean, in many ways, but there's no targeting of individuals, like how horrible would our worlds be if that's what the ads were and all these things were creating, like literally going after each person, individually, as they hit your podcast or your website or whatever it might your YouTube or whatever. You're not seeing like the, the ad that everyone sees. Like when you watch the super bowl, you're seeing the ad that's for you. We noticed you were searching for some embarrassing medical thing maybe, or some, whatever it was. And now that's what you start seeing everywhere around the world. Like, this is the, is this clearly isn't this clearly not the way.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:42):
Yeah. In fact it was to, to, I will just say this. The, I have realized a couple of times where a social media network has made certain assumptions about me and used those assumptions to serve me ads that fall into stereotypical categories. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and it, that that's not cool. That's not okay. That's not any, it's not

Paul Thurrott (01:02:14):
Just not sophisticated. It's inappropriate and it's, it's

Mikah Sargent (01:02:17):
Inappropriate. There you go. Yeah. Yep. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yep. I agree. Well, it is appropriate to take a break right now, before we come back with Xbox corner. So I'm gonna do that and then we'll head into the Xbox. So Mary Jo put on your slippers, get your bubble pipe and feel free to kick. Oh, Michael, we have a big surprise for you. The first story that's right, Mary. Jo's gonna be doing the first story asserted by Mary Jo. That's right. All right. So don't, don't get your bubble pipe just yet. We will take a quick break though. <Laugh> so I can tell you about Melissa. You've heard of Melissa to ensure your business is successful. Your customer information needs to be accurate. Makes sense. Almost fifth, 15% of the us population moves every year. And that's a lot of customers that your business could be missing out on.

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Mary Jo Foley (01:06:13):
<Laugh> I am. The reason is there was a report this week by Bloomberg that said it's looking like the FTC, not the DOJ is going to be the organization in the us that ends up reviewing the Microsoft activism deal for potential antitrust concerns. So this is significant for a few reasons. One is the FTC at least under president Biden is taking a much harder line on big tech, right? And they're before it would just be like, oh yeah, it's fine. Whatever. Any, any tech company can buy anybody and no big deal. But FTC now has, has shown its hand. And basically they're not in favor of just rubber stamping, these kinds of big tech acquisitions reportedly the reason they're going to give this closer scrutiny is because they're afraid Microsoft might not make the games from activism avail on all platforms.

Mary Jo Foley (01:07:21):
Although Microsoft has been pretty adamant in trying to quell that fear. And then I also saw an interesting thing on the New York post of all places. I know I, this is surprising, but <laugh> knew it, the re I know, so they, you know, what's funny the New York post every once in a while has really good tech coverage and it's, every time they break a story, I'm like, oh, that's surprising. But yeah. And when was this January? Like a couple weeks ago before the Bloomberg story, they had a story saying the DOJs antitrust chief worked for Microsoft in the past. The anti I trust chief is Jonathan canter. And it says, because he did previously work for Microsoft, he was gonna have to recuse himself for, from looking at the division deal. And that opened,

Paul Thurrott (01:08:12):
Was he like drinking buddies with bill Newcomb or something? Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:15):
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So <laugh> I'm like, oh, so he CA he may not even be able, like legally to be the one to review this. Right. It says in the New York post story, Cantor spent more than a decade as a legal advisor and lobbyist for Microsoft on regulatory issues. So yeah, you would think he probably is not gonna be allowed to review the activation deal because of conflict of interest. But yeah, mic, you know, Microsoft knew this was likely going to happen, not, not the FTC part necessarily, but they knew they were gonna get antitrust scrutiny. And that's why they had predicted that the deal wouldn't even close until middle of 20, 23 at best. So yeah, Paul and I both have said on, on the show, we didn't think that the deal would be held up for antitrust concerns. And I still feel like it won't great. Me too, but, but this also kind of opens the door to, well, will they request any kinds of special concessions or, or will there be like caveats that will have to be made explicit for

Paul Thurrott (01:09:18):
Microsoft? We could call it a, a consent decree perhaps that Microsoft, I

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:21):
Hope that could go that way. Right. <laugh> then they're done that. We don't need another one of those, right. <Laugh> yeah. So that's, I think it was worth mentioning because it's not just gonna be smooth sailing, rubber stamping. Yeah. Microsoft get to buy activism. It's there's definitely gonna be a lot of scrutiny, not just here, but in all the other countries that have to approve this.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:43):
Right. Yep.

Mikah Sargent (01:09:45):
Makes sense. Well I guess, yeah, we'll, we'll see how that ends up. It's probably good then that Sony, for example, is, you know, I know you're gonna get to this, but it's probably good than other organizations are making acquisitions similar to this so that it doesn't feel very antitrust as it were.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:05):
Well, Microsoft was quick to point out that with this acquisition, they would become the third biggest player in the gaming market after, after who who's the first one son's number two. And what was the first piece I already forgot. It was like the company behind 10, 10. Thank you. 10. Yeah. 10 cent. Yeah, the point being like, yeah, this seems like a huge acquisition, but it doesn't vault us in the first place. You know, like these companies are still bigger than we are, you know, in some ways this makes the competition a little fairer, perhaps, which <laugh> makes me sound like a lobbyist. <Affirmative> so I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go down the path for too much longer, but bad math, bad math. That's that's yeah. That's exactly bad thinking. That's the, the argument, I guess.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:47):
Got it. All right. Now, the fuzzy slippers, the bubble pipe, et cetera, because it's time for the rest of Xbox quarter. Tell us what's going on with Xbox

Paul Thurrott (01:10:57):
Full. Yeah. A lot actually, as you might expect the UK's competition and markets authority, which is kind of a, like a consumer organization, I would call it consumer fairness organization has investigated Microsoft for auto renewing Xbox subscriptions, right? So this is across Xbox live gold and all the game pass products. And what they found is what I've found. <Laugh>. I think a lot of people have found not just Microsoft, but this is the whole point. I think, of subscription services. You forget you're paying for it, right. And especially if it's like an annual subscription, you get hit by this you know, $6,000, whatever it is, thing every January, every March or whatever it is. And you have no idea what it's for. And I literally just experienced this. I have a jet blue credit card that I don't use anymore because I don't live in Boston, which was a hub for jet blue.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:44):
And I just got a $8, a $9 charge from Microsoft for something <laugh>. And when I looked at it, you know, when I looked at my account, it didn't come from my primary account. So it's coming from some secondary account as possible. At some point I did something for my son maybe, or did something for a secondary account because I was writing a book or I have no idea. I, I literally have not figured out what it's for, but this type of thing happens a lot. And so what they've done is gone back to Microsoft and said, Hey you need to fix this. And so Microsoft has agreed. It's gonna take a little while, but they're going to basically be more up trans transparent and upfront in their communications with subscribers about a variety of things related to auto reduce subscriptions and we'll offer refunds, cetera, cetera.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:31):
Now this is in the UK. So I don't know that this applies to everybody worldwide. I'm sure it does not, but I'd like to see that kind of thing happen, but it's a, you know, a first step, I, you know, Microsoft doesn't come under a lot of scrutiny these days compared to the Amazon's apples, Googles Facebooks of the world. But this is a little minor example of something positive, I would say. And then it is February, well, February 2nd, today. So it's a new month. And that means that we get new games through Xbox game pass for the first half of the month and also Xbox games with gold. So if you have an Xbox live gold subscription or Xbox game pass subscription of any time any kind, you get access to those four games every month for free nothing jump out at me for these for these four games.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:18):
I've honestly not even heard of most of them broken sword, five very little Knights view Knight, sorry, never yield. Hydrophobia I assume is the fear of water and band of bugs. I don't know what any of those games are. I'm sorry, but they're all free this month. And then for Xbox game pass 8, 9, 10, I guess, 10 new games coming in the first half of the month, we'll learn more about the second half of the month as we get toward it. The big one, there is probably arc, although there's a game called crossfire. It looks really good too. Crossfire X, I should say single player campaign shooter type game. So that's cool. Flight simulator is getting it set or already got its seventh world update. And this is where they add like really high, detailed imagery for certain parts of the world.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:05):
They've done various parts of the world, us south America, Europe, et cetera. Now they're onto Australia. So that's really cool. That's available. No matter how you get flight simulator you fly over the upper house and see new people like four, four airports, high resolution, da sales for over a hundred other airports, 94 custom points of interest, 16 new activities, five bus trips, six discovery, flights, and five landing challenges. So this is just like the gift that keeps giving. Like if you're in the flight simulator, you'll never get tired of it. It's amazing how much they've added over time. Do they have wildlife in flight simulator? Hmm. Wildlife, like you fly over like a, like the, a kangaroo hoard animals. Oh, I'm not sure. <Laugh> no, that's interesting. I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:47):
That would be cool. I actually, yeah, couple soy. You mentioned earlier acquisitions. So Sony announced this past week. They're gonna require Bunge. Now Bunge is the game studio most famous for having created halo, but Bunge doesn't own halo anymore because Bunge was bought by Microsoft back in 2000. I think it was they developed the first I guess it, it was four major halo games and some other halo, little, you know, kind of mob games. They were spun off from Microsoft when independent again made two destiny games that did really well, but not like halo. Well, I mean, you know, it's like not quite like going from star wars to Howard the duck, but kind of a, you know, obviously not in the same category. Those games were being, that's a stretch. Those games were distributed by activism interestingly, but they actually cut that deal.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:40):
And now Sony has acquired that now, Sony kind of looking over at Microsoft has said, Hey, don't worry. We're gonna keep this company independent. The games are gonna be available cross platform. We're gonna change anything like that. Hint intent, Microsoft, you know and I think you can expect Sony and EA and other big players in the industry to start. I think this is gonna be a huge year for for video game acquisitions. I mean, compared to act vision, not humongous, 3.6 billion, it's still, you know, pretty serious for game for a little studio for a hundred people, whatever it is that, you know, has basically one game. I mean, it's kind of interesting that they're doing that, but I think content is king and that's where they're heading. So there they go. And then Sony just released its quarterly earnings and they have sold, let's see, 3.9 million PlayStation, five consoles in the quarter, a total of 17.3, I, that is below where they were with the PlayStation four, by the way 20 million is where they were at this time in that history.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:40):
But of course now we have a component charge problem. So it's kind of interesting. Like they actually had kind of, it was kind of a bad quarter for video games for them. I mean, everything was down basically like first time, first party, third pilot, I'll tell, you know content add on content. I should say peripherals PS4 versus is on the way out. All that stuff is like less <laugh>, you know, it's just, it's just less, I think Sony launched with a lot of great first part first party content last year. And they did really well, cuz obviously it was the launch quarter, but I don't know, like their game and network services, business unit, their revenues dropped 70% year over year. And they're like number one, <laugh> sort of, I guess, to be pretend intended doesn't exist which we do.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:29):
And then finally, I, this is really, I, I, epic is involved in some epic lawsuits right now against apple and Google and they got kind of what I would call a mixed ruling in the apple case they are appealing it and they have gotten the support of, of all companies, Microsoft and mic, the Microsoft rule, the Microsoft filing is actually really important. Especially if you pay attention to people know more about this than I do like flurry and Mueller over at the FOSS patents blog, who kind of explains how Microsoft as a big tech company that kind of does things like apple in the sense that they have an app store of their own and they have their own percentages and things that they do in their own ways of dealing with their partners is completely different from apple.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:22):
Microsoft has been victimized by apple, actually in the app store, as you know, they wanted to bring Xbox game pass there and apple wanted them to release every single game separately so they could get a little, you know, tax on each one of those things. Microsoft didn't think that was right. It's not right. I mean, they don't do that to Netflix for example, which is basically the same business model. It's very strange. So anyway, I it's, it's very interesting to me that Microsoft not only is backing epic, but they're do, they're doing so forcefully. If you look at the Microsoft filing, the language they use is is very direct <laugh> and I think proper, I actually, I think Apple's on the wrong side of history on this one. So I think that's kind of interesting. So we'll see, we'll see where this goes, but it's cool to see them do this. They also have the support of 35 us states, which is rather interesting if you include DC, which I know is not a state, but it should be the electronic what is it? The EF is backing them as well, but, you know, but anyway, I'm more concerned about Microsoft. It's interesting to see Microsoft kind of step up and just be vocally critical of apple in this case, which I think is correct. So good. Good to see them on their eyes, a history for a change <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:19:36):
Yep. There you go.

Mikah Sargent (01:19:37):
All right. We will head into the tips and picks in just a moment. Tips and picks are next.

Speaker 5 (01:19:47):
Thanks for listening to TWiT podcasts. If you'd like to take it up a notch, you can get all of our shows without ads by joining club TWiT, whether you're a loyal fan or once to give your employee something special with our corporate plan, you'll get the bonus TWiT plus feed with extra behind the scenes, outtakes and access to a member's only discord all for just seven bucks a month. It's a great way to get just the content support TWiT TV and be a part of the tech community. Learn more and join club TWiT at TWiT.tv/club TWiT.

Mikah Sargent (01:20:21):
All right. Actually there is an interesting question. And I'm curious if you mm-hmm <affirmative> if, either of, you know, the answer to this we do not Sarah, sorry. Okay. Oh, I, I thought you were in the chat. So you saw Sarah and the chat said, when are we going to get direct storage for windows 11 PC? It was promoted last June or July. Do you know? I don't know what that is. So I don't know

Paul Thurrott (01:20:44):
For sure. So direct storage was a feature is a feature of the Xbox that Microsoft said was coming to the, to windows 10 originally, if I'm not mistaken and then windows 11 happened, surprise, surprise. It is. I believe I it's not, yeah, it hasn't been delivered. I think it's just available on a developer P right now. Isn't it? I think that's the last, I don't remember.

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:06):
Remember. Yeah, I remember this came up. I remember this came up, but I don't remember where we at with it

Paul Thurrott (01:21:11):
Now. So basically what all this is, is just a way for games to have really fast access to storage. And it requires a special, you know, very fast SSD type. So the SSDs that are built into the new Xbox consoles have, you know, meet a certain set of criteria. And then I, I think there are on windows 10 or now 11. I, I, I assume actually I shouldn't assume. I don't remember. I don't remember what the decision was on 10. I know, obviously it's gonna be a feature of windows 11. I it's possible. It's not gonna be part of 10 now.

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:44):
I'm not sure. Part of 11. You mean

Paul Thurrott (01:21:47):
No, it's gonna be part of 11. It's possible. Won't put it in 10 because you know, a lot of the, the windows 10 performance improvements are, you know, compared to windows center, kind of artificial. It's like something they could have done to both, but they're only doing to 11 to give it that difference. I'm not sure of this. I don't know that there is a schedule. Yeah. I have to look into that. I'm sorry.

Mikah Sargent (01:22:08):
All right. Well, we will keep our eye, our eyes peeled for that. Let's do the tips and picks tip of the week.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:18):
Well, we're screwing everything up here again, because I know <laugh> Mary Jos doing the of the week.

Mikah Sargent (01:22:24):
Whoa, I feel so.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:27):
We just threw the show in a blender and said, let's see what comes out the other.

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:31):
Yeah. Yeah. So this is a tip I got from TWiTtter. Our friend who listens to the show a lot El Honan was talking to, I think it was Brad Sam's and Brad was like, man, edge has so many popups. Now the Bing rewards popups, the shopping popups, this popup that even a popup to say, why don't you try using edge on your mobile device? Whether or not you are using it doesn't even matter. You get that pop up too. And Tara, Brad said, I wish it was a way to stop this. And Tara said there is. And I was like, wait, there is a way. And so the way is to go into edge flags you know, which is where the experimental features are for edge and find the one that says edge show, feature recommendations, and you can disable it. And I did that this week and I haven't gotten any popups so far since I, my question is will the popups resume once you get a new version of edge sent to you through whatever channel you're in, like if you're in the stable channel like me, for instance, when I go to the next version of edge, will I have to go back in and, and disable this again?

Mary Jo Foley (01:23:44):
Probably it that's a small price to pay, to get rid of these popups. Paula and I were talking before the show and saying, you know, we really both like to edge at the start. When it first came out as a chromium based browser, it seemed like they were going the right way. And increasingly there are all these things that are really not just annoying, but like they hinder your productivity. When these popups come up, they don't, they don't cover like a little bit of your screen. They cover like a chunk of it. And if you've got something on that side that you're trying to do, it's like completely covers up your work. And like I said, I said earlier, I don't really care about ads. Like I don't notice them that much or care about them, but here's one place I do care about it because it's impacting my ability to get things done and the browser

Paul Thurrott (01:24:30):
I wanted to follow up on this direct storage thing, cuz I was confused <laugh> I couldn't figure out anything here. Oh, okay. Yeah, the last we heard about this was last July. And at that time, what Microsoft said was don't worry, we are still gonna bring this to windows 10, but they didn't address the windows 11 thing because the original announcement around windows 11, that there would be special direct storage, optimized PCs sold by PC makers that were preconfigured with both because it requires not just the hardware, but special drivers, which may not be, you know, broadly available. Like, you know, you may not be able to I in SSD and get this. So I, this is still kind of a weird gray area. Whether this requires you to buy like a special gaming PC that has this and whether or not those are even available, I don't think believe that they are and where they had left it last July, which I, I think I, I searched my own site to find this, but I, I, I, that was as a developer preview and I think that's still where we are.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:30):
I don't think that has advanced past that. So sorry about that. Epic of the week. So I mentioned epic games earlier. If you are a PC gamer, you should be taking advantage of this. Epic games has a store and it's one of many places where you can buy PC games is it's, it's a great option. It's, you know, kind of a, an alternative to steam or now the Microsoft store and the Xbox stuff that Microsoft is doing. But the one big difference between the epic game store and these other stories is that they give away a free game, like every week <laugh> and it's free. It's like, and it's free. You don't even, it's free to the tune of you don't even have to give your personal information to the company that made the game. That's an option you have the free the game this week is called the demon versus Machina. It's a me warrior type title. 3D looks pretty good, but everyone, once in a while, like the game they give away is incredible. Like there's, this is something you should just be paying attention to. So definitely become part of the epic game stores free, you know, just become a customer or to have an account there. And then you know, just take a look at this every week. It's just a, it's a good system. If you're a, you're a PC gamer

Mikah Sargent (01:26:43):
Like Mary Jo,

Paul Thurrott (01:26:45):
Like Mary Jo that's right. Try to get her hooked on the Xbox, but she won't get off the PC. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (01:26:52):
All right. Tell us what's going on in the enterprise unless Paul's going to do it because everything is

Paul Thurrott (01:26:56):
Backward. It's not that crazy. Let's not get crazy.

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:00):
Okay. so my enterprise pick of the week is a little bit self-serving, but I want people to know about this. Sorry. Sarchi is like putting his butt in the camera stop. <Laugh> I'm starting to do a new podcast. It's a once a month podcast and it's called the Dom briefing D om, Dom directions on Microsoft. I, and I feel like the, these, this is a group of analysts who I really trust. I quote them a lot in my work. They're independent from Microsoft. And I feel like they don't really get their due, but they cover a lot of the things that enterprises care a lot about very thorny issues around licensing and pro pricing and product terms, and the changing enterprise landscape for different Microsoft products. They do roadmaps, they do all this kind of stuff. So I, I went to them and I said, would you guys do a podcast with me where I interview one of your analysts every month about some kind of very deep technical or in depth issue in the enterprise around these topics?

Mary Jo Foley (01:28:07):
I think people would care because I feel like there's a real dearth of information about these kinds of things. And I think we can make a fun in the podcast. And so they said, yes, so we've already done the first one and it's up available and free on directions on microsoft.com. The first one was about the cl about the cloud out. We've got lots more coming up and it's gonna, like I said, once a month, me interviewing their analysts, who are the experts on all this stuff, and I'm not the expert. I'm just like the facilitator here. But yeah, anybody who cares about licensing pricing, product roadmaps, I think you might be very interested in this. It's called the D O M briefing for directions on Microsoft.

Mikah Sargent (01:28:48):
That is so cool. Ah, that's awesome.

Mary Jo Foley (01:28:52):
Trying to make, trying to make enterprise licensing fun. It's a good job. Someone's gonna do it.

Mikah Sargent (01:28:58):
There you go. Exactly. This is you're the new micro dirty jobs here. No, that's really cool directions on microsoft.com. Yeah. All right, awesome. Tell us about the developer. Oh, and of course, folks will have a link in the show notes. So if you're listening, you're going, where do I find it? You'll be a link in the show notes. Yep. All developer pick of the week.

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:23):
Yeah. So this month.net is turning 20. It's their 20th anniversary of the creation of.net, which is crazy. That's great. There's not a lot of software. That's still around 20 years later, but.net is still here and go going gangbusters right to commemorate. This. Microsoft has a site up on the web now called.net.microsoft.com. You go to that site and you can find out about some activities they're planning around the anniversary. The one on Valentine's day, February 14th sounds very interesting to me. It's only 30 minutes, which is surprising, but it's gonna be a, a live broadcast. They're promising that they'll have some Illuminati from the.net world. So I'm not sure who exactly will be on there, but they'll be like chat, like some live chatting going on and celebrating the 20 years. They've got a pivotal history of.net up on here, and they talk about a little bit of a out how it came to be and such then the next day is an another event that's not directly related, but somewhat related. I mentioned this on last week's show, the Azure open source day. And then in March, it's visual studios, 25th anniversary. And they're gonna do a broadcast on St. Patrick's day, I guess they're big into using the holiday to do their celebrations, which is cool. So yeah, February 14th, I'm very curious who they bring out for this.net anniversary broadcast. It starts at 9:00 AM. I think we

Paul Thurrott (01:30:52):
Should speculate.

Mary Jo Foley (01:30:54):
Yeah. Who do you think is gonna

Paul Thurrott (01:30:55):
Be there? Well, I think they're gonna bring out Don box. You do Chris Anderson, of course. 

Mary Jo Foley (01:31:01):
I don't know. Don box went to, and so maybe, maybe

Paul Thurrott (01:31:04):
I know, but that's why they gotta bring him back. He played, it's such a key role. He

Mary Jo Foley (01:31:08):
Did. Anders would be good to put on that

Paul Thurrott (01:31:10):
Anders. Yeah. I mean I, the site that you just recommended has a little video about the history of.net and just off the top end, I'm gonna get this a little bit wrong, but it, it goes from, you know, it's like 2000, 2002, 2015. <Laugh> like, what guys? Hold on a second. Yeah. There's a whole thing that happened in the middle. There that's actually really important, including the fact that they tried to kill.net with Longhorn, with something called win FX. And then they were like, oh, we're just kidding. It's dot net three point, whatever, <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:31:40):
You nevermind. <Laugh> and we're

Paul Thurrott (01:31:43):
Gonna back point it to X fee, you know, like originally that was gonna be Longhorn only. So there's a whole rich history there. That's very interesting. Yeah. And you're right. 30 minutes is not gonna, they could spend two hours on that. Very, they could do a series like that thing they did on the Xbox recently.

Mary Jo Foley (01:31:58):
I'm, I'm guessing it's just gonna be the tip of the iceberg. Like, there'll be that 30 minute thing and then there'll be more okay. Like blacks.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:05):
I hope so. Cause I don't think people appreciate how important.net is.

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:09):
Yeah. And how, how it stuck around and morphed over time and been very resilient

Paul Thurrott (01:32:14):
And how pervasive it is and, and how it started as yet another terrible windows only thing. And is now a wonderful open source cross platform thing. Yep. You know,

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:24):
Indeed. Yep. So, yeah, that should be fun. Something to look forward to on Valentine's day, get sweet with.net <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:32:33):
Well, you know, the restaurants of book folks, you gotta do something, you gotta do

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:38):
Something.

Mikah Sargent (01:32:39):
Before we hit, before we do the beer pick of the week folks are asking, I hope that it is clear to everyone that you can always get the show notes for whatever show you're looking for TWiT.tv in this case, it's TWiT.tv/ww/the show number. So the show notes for this episode will be TWiT.tv/ww/sevens six two. When the show is published, you'll be able to get the show notes there, which will have a link to Mary Jo's podcast. I went to the site, Mary Jo. I didn't see an RSS feed yet for the podcast. Yeah. Is they're working on it, published. They're working on it. So that'll be soon. Yep. Okay. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> excellent. Mm-Hmm

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:16):
<Affirmative> yeah. And the transcripts of our shows are up there too right along. Awesome. I, I just saw, I saw on TWiT site, I'm like, oh good. The transcripts of the shows are bad. Oh

Mikah Sargent (01:33:26):
Yes. Yes. For Windows Weekly. Yes. I think nearly all of our shows on the network now have transcripts for each show. That's cool. So yeah, you can always check that out as well. Again, TWiT.tv/ww then slash and then whatever the show number is. And a lot of podcast apps will pull in some of that, but I don't think it always grabs everything. So that's why you want to go to the site to do that. All right. Tell us about the beer pick of the week.

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:53):
Okay. This is a very funny beer pick. It's from a brewery and Bulgaria called Sophia electric brewing. I looked them up and here's what it says. It says we were, we are the best brewery built in an old refrigerator factory. <Laugh> we believe that good beer is a basic human right. And great beer is what we produce. So I have a friend who went Bulgaria recently and he brought back a can of this beer called small steps, giant leaps. And we were having a beer tasting this past weekend and he said, everybody's gonna try this beer. And I saw in the can, it said new England IPA. I'm like, this is gonna be terrible. Bulgar beer purporting to be a new England IPA, which is like a hazy IPA. It was amazing. It was fantastic. And it was brewed exactly like any new England IPA I've ever had.

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:50):
Totally true to the style. And it came in a really cute small can not a big can I guess, because it's called small steps, giant leaps. I would give it a really high mark against any IPA that I've had in the United States. And it, it brings up an interesting point, which is it when you go to a lot of countries outside the us, now they're making American style beers. Like it's very prominent even in places that kind of ridiculed American rightly so from years ago, now they're all making like American style IPAs and American, this American that, and it was just so funny to see a beer from Sophia. That said it's a new England IPA and it was, it was a very good one too.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:34):
Awesome. Yeah. I like the look at the little, little can small steps, little can giant leaps.

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:40):
Yep. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (01:35:42):
There's one small step for him. One giant leap for IPAs. All right. I believe that brings us to the end of this episode of Windows Weekly. Thanks everyone for tuning in of course this show records every Wednesday. Oh man. Now I'm forgetting what time this show starts every Wednesday at PM Eastern 11:00 AM Pacific. So you can tune into it.tv/live. If you wanna watch us live while we record the show. But you can also subscribe to the show. We think that's kind of the best way of doing it because you get it. As soon as it's available TWiT.tv/ww, there, you can choose to subscribe to audio or video apple podcast, Google podcasts, Spotify for the time being unless everybody leaves the platform YouTube we're in all those different places. So you can get the show they air now is a good time to mention the club club TWiT.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:43):
We had some great chatters today in the club, TWiT.tv/club. Twit is how you check that out for seven bucks a month. You get every one of TWiT shows ad free. We were talking about this just earlier on the show. You also get access to the exclusive TWiT play us bonus feed that has content you won't find anywhere else. I think today it'll include, it'll include a bit of the before the show conversation about things we root for and things we don't. It also has AMAs, I believe, including one with Mary Jo Foley in that feed. So it's awesome to check out and then last but not least is access to the discord server. If you're wondering what the heck a discord server is. Well, if you've ever used slack or Microsoft teams, it's similar to that. It's a place to chat with your fellow club, TWiT members, but also many of us here at TWiT are in that chat quite frequently.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:34):
Now is a good time to also mention that there is a TWiT audience, a that we are working on right now. That's because we wanna make sure that we are talking to all of you out there that we're getting that we're knowledgeable of who you are. So you can head to TWiTs.tv/survey 22 to check out the survey, the survey, it'll only take you a couple of minutes. In testing it, I filled out the survey about eight times and it only took me a few minutes. So I promise it'll take you less than that to TV slash survey 22 so we can know all of you Mary Jo Foley, all about Microsoft com. Thank you for being here today. 

Mary Jo Foley (01:38:17):
Thank you, Mikah.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:19):
And Paul Thurrott of Thurrott.com T H U R R O T.com. Thank you for being here. 

Paul Thurrott (01:38:28):
Thank you, sir.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:30):
And everyone have a brilliant rest of your day or night, depending on when you're watching us Leo should be back next week. So until then, it's time to say goodbye.

Jason Howell (01:38:41):
The world is changing rapidly so rapidly. In fact, that it's hard to keep up. That's why Micah Sergeant and I, Jason Howell, talk with the people, Macon and breaking the tech news on tech news weekly. Every Thursday. They know these stories better than anyone. So why not get them to talk about it in their own words, subscribe to tech news weekly, and you won't miss a beat every Thursday at TWiTt TV.