Windows Weekly Episode 770 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word.
Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for windows weekly. Paul Thurrott is here. Mary Jo Foley is there and we will talk about windows 11. What would you guess just before you hear this show, what would you guess? The total penetration is windows 11 compared to say windows 10. We'll also talk about Microsoft. Build the dates have been announced, but not live the, not this time and the beer of the week with a scary name, but a pretty nice look. It's all coming up next on windows, weekly podcasts you love from people. You trust this. This is windows weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley episode 770 recorded Wednesday, March 30th, 2022. Harry shooters listeners of this program get an ad free version. If they're members of club TWIT $7 a month gives you ad free versions of all of our shows plus membership in the club. TWIT discord, a great clubhouse for TWIT listeners and finally the TWIT plus feed with shows like Stacy's book club, the untitled Lenox show, the GI fizz and more go to TWIT.tv/club TWIT. And thanks for your support. It's time for windows weekly. This show where cover the latest is news from Microsoft to your left in the orange trunks, Paul Thurrott of Thurrott.com to your right in the blue and green it's Mary Jo Foley of all about microsoft.com together. They form the dynamic duo of windows journalism, the, the windows weekly, such as it is such as it is.

Leo Laporte (00:01:48):
There's not a lot of competition. Hello? Hello boys. It's freezing cold on the east coast. Yes, it is. It is. Oh, I'm so sorry. It's ending tonight. It is. It is. We're switching over. Yeah. And now it's gonna be spring, spring, back to normal. Yeah. So weird. So weird. I forgot about that when I was a kid growing up in normal. There's no clean break with the seasons here. Yeah. Like two steps forward. One step back. Well, having said that we can now, you know, small talk aside, get down of the most important stuff. Windows 11 stagnation. Is that the word you really wanted to use? Stagnation nation, the windows story. What do you mean stagnates from a usage perspective? Doesn't go up that monthly check in. Well, it has been going up in fact, some months it's gone up pretty dramatically. Yeah. but this month's the last month.

Leo Laporte (00:02:47):
It's only gone up 0.1%, I guess that's 0.1 percentage point technically, but it's windows 11 now accounts for 19.4% of the overall base of windows 10 and windows 11. Right. So yeah. And last month it must have been, what did I say? 19? Yeah. 19.3 change. What mean everybody who wanted windows 11 has it. And now we're done. I don't think it means anything. I, I think you know, cuz when you look at the stuff month to month, it's like whatever, I, I, yeah, I think the important thing to look at is gonna be, you know, a year out from when windows 11 launched or whatever. So and I think there are also statistical anomalies month and month. I, the, the interesting thing to me here, well look, windows Eleven's growth is interesting. Of course. Where the top, you know, the top two versions of windows 10 are or windows.

Leo Laporte (00:03:38):
I, you know, windows 10 version 21 H two is the most popular version. If you will, 28.5% and then 21 H one is 26.5. So they're pretty close. And those are the two, two most recent versions. That's great. That's the way it should be. That's what we're looking at. And then you know, windows 11 is, I guess in third is those elevens 5, 10, 15, 20%, 19, 19.4 19. Okay. Yeah. That ain't bad. One in five windows users is using well, Ivan. That's true. Yeah. That's probably all Microsoft expected or no. Well, I mean yeah, given the way, yeah, I mean they did kind of a, they launched it too early in my, my opinion, but it went out on whatever number of PCs. It has been, I think they've opened the floodgates on the upgrades. You know, the computers that can get it are getting it.

Leo Laporte (00:04:30):
Although I just gotta do PC in for review the interestingly, the HES windows 10 on it. I didn't expect to see that. Yeah. Yeah. And they also brought up an older PC. Which one was it? I don't remember, but I brought up an older PC the other day that has been on windows 10 and I've been leaving it on windows 10 and it was offered windows 11 for the first time. Huh? Somewhere, somewhere in that downtime of the past couple of months. So, huh. I think that's the end of the line right there. I would say for upgrade possibilities.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:58):
There are some that can't upgrade. Right? I

Leo Laporte (00:05:01):
That's what, yeah, probably majority I would guess. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:04):
Yeah. And there are also a lot of businesses who are like, we are not ready to go to windows 11 windows 10 works great. We're seeing on windows 10.

Leo Laporte (00:05:11):
And again, we, I say it every week, but there isn't really a strongly compelling reason to go to windows 11. It's just the new look if you like it. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice. It's pretier and then you kind of end it there because honestly, well that's not fair. I guess there's some nice little, you know, snap features and things like that that are kind of nice. But I keep running into little problems. I was ranting on TWITtter this morning about this like windows has this notion of sound schemes, right? So by default you get the windows default sound scheme. And I turn that off. Cause I don't like the sound and this, you know I, I may recall I was having problems with this focus right device. I used to connect the microphone to USB. It would disconnect, reconnect, disconnect, reconnect. And every time that happens, there's a little dialogue that comes up and then there's this it's like, you know, keeps making these sounds. It did this several times this morning, which was particularly aggravating to me cuz I've already turned off the sounds, but the sounds keep getting turned back on somehow. And this is something that windows 10 never did, but windows 10 does, you know, it's just, I don't know. It's a little Fri this little things like that's so I it's this kind of a fit and finish problem. I would say with windows 10 11.

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:22):
Yeah. And I feel like every, every month or couple months we get another little, okay, now we fix the, you know what? I don't even know what these features are called. Like the kind of bar that you see when you adjust volume and stuff like things that some people seem to really be obsessed.

Leo Laporte (00:06:38):
It cosmetic improvements. Yeah. Lipstick on a pig if one

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:42):
Kind of, well,

Leo Laporte (00:06:43):
By the way, this is the literal definition of lipstick on a pig. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:47):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:06:47):
It really is. I mean, in the sense that, not that good folks you're gonna no, no. I mean, well, but that no, but that when that phrase, the reason it exists is it's really just kind of an arbitrary UI change. I, the, the new windows 11 UI doesn't make anyone more efficient. In fact, it makes a lot of people less efficient. It is it's pretier and that's kind of a subjective thing, but it, it literally the, the problem is it, it arrived with a lot of functional degradation and you know, for people who are used to windows, which is like air everyone using windows, you know? Yeah, they're a problem. So yeah, They do not rush into the one thing I've heard. And from my radio audience who are the people that I know that are debating this 10 or 11 thing yeah. Is I don't want to go to 11 cuz I'm gonna lose some things I like. Yeah. Okay. That's you remember any of the thing? No, I don't. But yeah, he

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:40):
Knew he'll probably like, yeah. Right. Click on the task bar. That kind of stuff for you.

Leo Laporte (00:07:44):
Are there apps that get turned off too? Like like remember when they feel media center, there's a bigger change in the availability of apps. If you do, if you get it on a computer or do a clean install because there are, if you upgrade from windows 10 to 11, I think it's not gonna delete anything. It's not gonna, I don't believe so. I don't believe so. Yeah. It's only if you go for clean install that you won't have everything that you thought you would've. Yeah. I mean, right. I'm trying to think if there's or an exception to that off the top of my head. I don't believe so, but okay. But yes, if like, for example, Skype does not come with windows 11. So if you upgrade from windows 10 to windows 11, you have Skype, Skype is still there. Yeah. You lose that media feature in the task bar and all that stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:08:24):
You could manually download it and, and still have it, the scam. Yeah. And so, yeah, you're not really gonna, it's not like the media center thing where they just killed something. Well, you know what, so I don't, I'm afraid to say yes to, so it's possible that there are things like that that were, I'm just not remembering. So I don't wanna say that definitively, but well, you know, who remembers and cares is the one person using that thing. Yeah. Oh yeah. And the rest of us go really? That's why you're not, you know, I'm okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:53):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:08:55):
Clip, clip, champ.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:59):
Yep. The hardest to say product name of any product name. It's so hard to say

Leo Laporte (00:09:03):
Clip champ is now in 10 too. Right? So even that there's nothing you go to 11 to get, besides the look

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:12):
That you couldn't have that

Leo Laporte (00:09:13):
You couldn't have, even the cert you don't even get a price cut. It's exactly the same, same thing. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:19):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:09:21):
Alright. So I just wanted to clarify that from my own Yeah. Notes. Yeah. I should. I was just trying to look this up. I don't wanna say definitively, but I, if you do an upgrade from 10 to 11, I don't believe there's anything major that gets deleted or whatever. You should look, you should go to killed my Microsoft done and phone find out that's a good point.

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:44):
I added that to the notes. So I'm like, we gotta, at least

Leo Laporte (00:09:46):
Google has a page like that. So Microsoft should, you know, any, any company could have a page like that. We could have a page this's

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:53):
New though. Podcast

Leo Laporte (00:09:54):
We killed.

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:56):
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, this just showed up this week, which was kind of funny. Right. right. I don't even know who site this is. You did this pretty. It's very pretty. So you gotta kill by microsoft.info. And there's a list of 70 products that over time Microsoft has gotten, and I was looking through this list. I'm like, does anything on here? Surprise me. And there is one on here that I was like, I forgot about that. Windows 10 IOT core.

Leo Laporte (00:10:27):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:27):
There's 10 IOT core. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:10:29):
They're missing a lot of stuff by the way. I'm

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:31):
Just, there's tons of stuff. This

Leo Laporte (00:10:33):
Work in progress. Yeah. There's a lot more than Microsoft system is. It should be in there. I mean, there's a ton of hardware product.

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:38):
There is a lot of stuff that should be in here. That's not the

Leo Laporte (00:10:41):
Outlook phone that everyone forgets existed. Oh, there's a bunch of phones with the Ken. Is the Ken in there?

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:46):
The Ken is there the is. Yes. Ken is there

Leo Laporte (00:10:49):
And there's movie maker, which has been, I think, nicely replaced by keep Kim

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:55):
Kim

Leo Laporte (00:11:00):
Mac back point. Oh yeah. I actually really, you know, with a company that's been around for 40 years or whatever, you could probably find a large group of things. I think that, you know, this is obviously a big problem in the Google sphere, you know, and, and Google is kind of infamous for killing services without any warning. And, and it's surprising people because a lot of people seem to use them, et cetera, et cetera. I don't Microsoft doesn't really do that too much. I mean, I, no, in fact, they're famous for leg, you know, reporting legacy things along. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For too long, if anything too long, if anything, but, but of course, things do have to go by the way. I mean, by the way, so of course, you know, that's

Mary Jo Foley (00:11:40):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:11:40):
This is nice. At least they divide it into software services and hardware, which is nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:11:46):
And maybe, maybe there is a person's name associated with

Leo Laporte (00:11:49):
This pano Ricard. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:11:52):
Pano Ricardi whoever that is, but

Leo Laporte (00:11:54):
It looks like he took over from something done by Cody Ogden.

Mary Jo Foley (00:11:57):
Yeah, it does.

Leo Laporte (00:11:59):
Huh? Interesting.

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:01):
Yeah. Yeah. But like I said, the IOT core one surprised me because

Leo Laporte (00:12:05):
Oh cool. Oh, Ogden did killed by Google. That's what it is. Oh,

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:08):
Did he? Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:09):
Okay. So this is, this is some of the, and it's on GitHub, which is hysterical. It is, it's a getup page, so, okay. So that's cool. Actually, he, he said, oh, well, why should Google be the only one?

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:19):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know the, a lot of these, some of them, you can kinda split hairs too, like Skype for businesses on here and that technically isn't dead. It says October 20, 25 there. Right. It

Leo Laporte (00:12:33):
Probably shouldn't be on the list. I,

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:35):
Yeah, it probably should not be because it's

Leo Laporte (00:12:37):
Not yet good news. It's essentially a Wiki. It's a GitHub Wiki. You can add anything you want to it. So, I mean, big

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:45):
Suggestions,

Leo Laporte (00:12:46):
God knows. I have a lot of free time to contribute free contact. I, you know, that's great. So it's, it is, is actually based. I thought it looked familiar on the killed by Google. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:59):
Yeah. I like to look at it. The killed by Google list is a lot longer.

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:03):
It, is

Leo Laporte (00:13:03):
It a lot, bit more bitter?

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:06):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:06):
This should be one of these for apple because you know, they, that would be kind of interesting as well. I, I feel like that audience is a little more accept of things as apple moves along, you know? Well, in fact, we always compare it to Microsoft. Like see, you know, Apple's willing to, to move on Microsoft isn't and that's why Apple's better in every respect. Well, or you could

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:28):
Look at it as Microsoft, Microsoft keeps supporting its customers. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:13:34):
Exactly. Which is, and that perfectly, you know, that's a very last half full way of looking at it, Mary Jo, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:40):
No, you know what, that's the enterprise way of looking

Leo Laporte (00:13:42):
At it exactly. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:43):
Their major customer base, for sure. Yeah. For sure.

Leo Laporte (00:13:46):
That's exactly right. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:48):
Yep. Yeah. Anyway, I thought it was a cute site and you're right. There could be a lot more on here. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:13:56):
There should be a lot more on this. There will. I'm gonna silver light is gonna be is one of my upcoming topics.

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:02):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:14:02):
Silver light is a yeah. It's the, the apple like intersects with the mic, the history of Microsoft many, many times, of course. And this is one of them, believe it or not. And the reason is because Steve jobs killed flash on the eye iPad and on the iPhone. And that model of browser plugin is what silver light was. And the second that he did that silver light was dead technology walking. They killed it shortly thereafter.

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:29):
Yeah. Let's not revisit my traumatic silver light story. We write it down. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:34):
What part of Microsoft is Bob mug run again? I can't remember speaking of GitHub. I wanna congratulate Christina Warren who has moved over. Yeah. From still in Microsoft world, I guess, but moved from her senior dev relations position at Microsoft to GitHub. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:52):
You know, it was funny. She post at the end of last week, I'm leaving Microsoft and I'm like, I can't believe she's leaving Microsoft know. Then she's like, oh, I'm going to GitHub. I'm like, wait, they own, they're owned by Microsoft.

Leo Laporte (00:15:01):
But I think from her point of view, and from the point of view, if somebody works there probably is a different,

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:05):
I mean, they wanna pretend it's a different company. Yeah. It's

Leo Laporte (00:15:08):
Building the same. I mean, does she just put a thing in her box and go down the hall? I don't know. You know what we'll ask her. She's gonna be on TWITtter on Sunday. So I'll ask her. Oh,

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:15):
That's fine. Yeah. Like GitHub people just like the LinkedIn people like to pretend they're different companies, even though Microsoft owns them. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:15:24):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:25):
Yeah. so yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:15:27):
I think that's fine. I, I think 

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:30):
I think that's good a place for her. That's like a really nice

Leo Laporte (00:15:32):
Place for if I were, if I'd be I'd love. I'd love GitHub. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:36):
Yeah. I think it's awesome. Like she's, she's the perfect person to go there.

Leo Laporte (00:15:40):
Github is maybe she could fix the interaction of a visual studio to GitHub, which I can tell you is not good. Freaking

Leo Laporte (00:15:47):
I use GitHub for like everything just cuz it's an easy way to kind of back stuff up. And then I get a free website too. So I back up in effect by doing a get commit. When I update my website I get a cuz I have, so the way I do my website is, is with a static website generator called Hugo. So it generates static HTML. Then I, then I push that to GitHub. And then if you go to Leo Laport dot GitHub, doo IO, it's the same as Leo FN. It's actually, that's it's little things like that. Well, this page is a perfect example. This is actually a free page. The process you just described, I'm gonna guess you do that entirely from the command line. Yeah. Cuz I like GI. No, that's fine. I'm just, but I'm saying like that's the, the problem is it's not a windows you're doing that's yeah, no.

Leo Laporte (00:16:37):
And, and the, the few windows types experiences I've ever seen, like the one that's built into visual studio are terrible. Yeah. Like they're really bad. Well, that's too bad. You should. I'm telling you Emax has the best you think I'm joking. I don't think you joking. I'm I'm best get a plugin called mug it. So I think about Emax every single day in my life Leo and the reason is right around the corner. This is not for the reason you think, oh, there's a, there's a, a business on the edge of my, our neighborhood called EMAC, which is the that's Aus a qu club. Oh. And it's a swimming pool and you know, blah, blah. That's hysterical. And I think I, I, in my head I make an EAX joke almost every day. And then I look at my wife and I realize she's not interested in this humor. No, no, but I think about it all the time, but I,

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:26):
You just laugh to yourself privately. I,

Leo Laporte (00:17:29):
Nobody are you laughing at nothing? It's like, so what's wrong with the VI visual studio code? Github. I mean, that should work beautifully. I don't understand why. Yep. It should. I know. I know. How do I even describe it in a way that would make sense? It's very easy. So there are three things like if you cause I we're gonna talk about this a little bit, a little bit later. Oh, well save it. If you, you don't have to. Well, it's just part of the whole, I yeah, let's just save it for yeah. Save. It's good. No, that's a good tease. I can't wait to hear what's wrong with kit and visual studio. That's good. Well, it's, what's wrong with it is you'll see. Yeah. Don't don't, don't spoil it. I don't wanna have to slap you Paul. Please

Leo Laporte (00:18:10):
Not help you. If you have any issue, get upstream, then you have to go back to the command line, which is fine if you know what you're doing, but yeah. I love GI. Well, that's the thing, the only things you can't do from visual I'm of the opinion that if you're using GI, you should learn how to use it from the command line. And then anything else on top of that is gravy. But that's interesting. I did use GitHub to publish the book. Yeah. See, there you go. Perfect example now, I mean, and there's Git, which is a great program and, and by itself, and then GitHub is a really good, you know, and I have to say, I was like everybody, when Microsoft bought them a little looking at scans, right. But they have been, be excited to know that visual GitHub 2022 will be coming out soon. And there already is, GitHub has its own apps and and, and all of that. So there's lots of ways to do it. But the third party ups too, like the, yeah, like my kid Hey, we can declare victory. Can we? Yes. And we're gonna do that in one moment. Okay. The moment has passed. Let's declare FIY no, I think this, I think you can say safely say this is because of you guys.

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:19):
I, I think, I think we can definitely say it's because of bad feedback,

Leo Laporte (00:19:24):
Bad, bad press. And who is the press?

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:28):
Yeah. The press.

Leo Laporte (00:19:29):
Yeah. I, I would, I wish we could take credit for this. Tell us what we're talking about. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:36):
Yeah. So our also I'm gonna rant on this one too. So Microsoft did a C week update, you know, which is when they let it managers see what's gonna be in patch Tuesday. So they did their usual one this week. There's a long change list of what is coming. And this cumulative update on patch Tuesday, you know, what's not mentioned. Yeah. What's not mentioned is at all. Is that, oh, the set default browser button is back, but it's it's there. So

Leo Laporte (00:20:13):
Does it work?

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:15):
Yes, it does. It works. So it works for the, for at least a few of the most important categories that people care about. It doesn't set every setting. Right. Like, but we knew that because they had been testing this since last year and the dev channel. So we knew how this was gonna work. A but I, the most appalling thing to me is they didn't even acknowledge that this is in there and this is a big deal. Right? Like it, I, I asked them, is this in there? And I didn't get an answer. So I'm like, let me download the sea week. Even though I never do this, like, I, I was a seeker. I went, got it. Downloaded it. I'm like,

Leo Laporte (00:20:49):
Yeah, see, is C Dasher.

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:51):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:20:52):
Oh, is that what sea week means?

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:55):
Yes. Yes. So yeah, you, you can now with a single button like you do in windows 10, go back and set most of the default settings in one place at one to time, instead of having to go through this long list, I have a, which app do you want to be associated with this? Which one with this? Which one with this? That was just, that was just really a way to make it. So it was hard to switch out of edge. They can say whatever they want about the reason they did that. But that's what it was.

Leo Laporte (00:21:22):
So does this, I'll tell you it's bad fulfill your dreams, Paul, I mean, is it do what you wanted the one click button to do? Does it do what it used to do? No. No, of course not, but it, no, it's not this, it doesn't, here's the, it doesn't but it is look, it's

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:36):
The same. It's not the same.

Leo Laporte (00:21:38):
When we looked into this last fall, the thing that I did finally determined was there were four, maybe five file types or link types that you needed to change to get the effect of what we're getting now with a single click. And those things are HTM and HTML HTTP and HTTPS and optionally. If you like to use your other browser, whatever it is for PDF, you could change that one as well. So like the most obvious protocols or, yeah. Yeah. So if, yeah, and if you go into this thing and you say, well, I wanna make Chrome, my default browser. Those, those are literally the five things that change the other file associations that Chrome in this case could take on HTML, SVG, WebP, et cetera, et cetera, FTP. These things are not converted from, from edge. So it's not, it's actually not the same, but Microsoft been subtly non subtly moving away from that one.

Leo Laporte (00:22:36):
Click actually works thing for a couple of windows versions. Now, you know, back in windows eight, windows seven, I think you could literally go in and say, I want everything on this new thing. And it would, you could, there was a way to do that. Now it's still very ponderous, but it, I honestly, the, the biggest advantage of this being there other than we made them blink is you don't get that annoying popup on the first choice change where it says, are you sure you don't wanna browse the web safely with internet or a Microsoft edge? It's so much better than the thing you're about to choose. Like there was that one last little,

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:11):
Are you sure you don't get that?

Leo Laporte (00:23:14):
Actually, I'm not sure cuz now I don't see it, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:16):
I know because I saw somebody say they still were getting the popup when they went okay. Okay. To

Leo Laporte (00:23:20):
Choose. So I actually, while we were, while you were talking about it, I actually switched all the false back to edge and then switched back to Carmen. I didn't see it. So I actually, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but it's look, it's easier. And I think for most use cases, it solves the problem. But you gotta remember, there's all those other things in windows that are never gonna go to your default browser. So the widgets, if you click on anything in widgets, that's opening an edge, start search, that's opening an edge. Like you can't, you're not getting rid of edge. You know, it's not, it's not it's it's I find that to be, I don't know, dishonest disingenuous. I'm not sure what the term is, but yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:59):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:23:59):
But you know, again, without being too pedantic about it, it's I think it's all else. The problem for most people now let's be pan about it. You know what it doesn't solve problem. I'm really well, that's what we said before. Is that just fixing those, you know, automatically do it's it's it's a it's it's you want everything, something without you, you we've met the letter of the apology, but we haven't met the right. The point of the complaint, which was, I want my browser to be my browser. I want this thing I've chosen. Whether it's Chrome or Firefox or brave or whatever, to launch every single time, anything related to the web happens. That's what I want. That's why I chose it. Yeah. And Microsoft's not doing that,

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:44):
You know? No, but just the fact they did this much, I'm like, okay, this is good because all we knew up to this point yeah. Was it was in the dev channel, which means it may or may not ever show up in the product. Right. So then they just suddenly put it into this cumulative update. That means it's gonna be in the patch Tuesday updates for everyone. We

Leo Laporte (00:25:02):
Can't, it it's kind of hard to say how we might reacted if this was the interface to begin with. Right. If, if windows 11 shipped this way originally I think most people would've looked at it. Would've thought nothing of it. You know, if I go to, I, I don't know. I mean, like I'll have to do this now. You know, install Chrome after this thing has been changed, go in Chrome will say, Hey, do you want to be the default browser? You say, will that cause this to happen? Or do I have to click a button? I probably have to click the button. Okay. Whatever. So it's like one extra step. I think so too. Yeah. It's not a big deal. I think most people will move right on and not think about it. And they'll think they got the same thing. But I think people like me, you know, sorry, the people who are broken inside will see that list of things that are not switch over cuz it's right in front and center now. Yeah. And say, you know, this isn't actually the same as what they used to do a few versions ago.

Mary Jo Foley (00:25:55):
It's not, but it's so much better for normals. It is so much better for normals.

Leo Laporte (00:26:00):
I think so. Yeah. Although, you know, but again, I, I don't know how confusing or weird it would be for someone who was like, I am a Chrome and I do want to use widgets. And every single time you click on a news story, you about someone who looks great in a bikini or whatever. The stupid thing is that's in there all the time. It's gonna open a different browser. And is that gonna be weird? Is that gonna be upsetting? Oh, that is weird. Yeah. I don't like that. It is. I don't know. Oh, it's not. I don't know. Yeah, no, you're right. You,

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:28):
It is. But, but trying to tell somebody before this button existed, like a normal person, like here's how you have to go in and try to set your browser as Chrome.

Leo Laporte (00:26:37):
Oh the

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:38):
Worst. Trying to explain this the worst on like, yep. Yeah. So Paul,

Leo Laporte (00:26:41):
What is the protocol that you would wanna reassign? So that is edge popping up just for things like in the Microsoft news. So the things I just described, you can't fix cuz they're gonna, oh, they've actually prevent hard. Wire runs. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:57):
In the early days of windows 11, which by the way was just six long months ago. People out what those protocols were, they were little apps or like browser makers wrote things that prevent that news colon slash slash Microsoft is yeah. Whatever it was, it was something. Yeah. It was some URL protocol. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it was a protocol handle or whatever. I don't remember the, whatever it was, doesn't matter because they're, they're blocking those workarounds. So yeah. There's little things in here. Like I did, I close it, I closed it, but there were, there were file formats, like things like web P or SVG, which are graphics formats. Essentially those stay with edge for some reason. I, oh, that's weird. It's weird. If you have a graphics application like affinity photo or Photoshop or something, you probably wanna associate those with that. Right. I guess. And that would be true no matter what web browser use. But I, I do find it odd that if you click on a WebP file or something, it will open and not near browser will open some other browser. And it's like, I, what is the point of that?

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:55):
Right. So they can say how many people are edge users and make sure that it opens some time in the month, but monthly edge

Leo Laporte (00:28:03):
Case users. Honestly, I would use edge if they hadn't kind of jumped it up it up.

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:11):
Yeah. No kidding.

Leo Laporte (00:28:13):
I mean, it is Chrome. And so you can use all the Chrome extensions. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:16):
I still use it, but I have, I have to keep going in and like squashing things as they add them on. Okay. Turn that off. Turn that off.

Leo Laporte (00:28:24):
Yeah. I, as terrible as this sounds I, I waited years for this to come together. I was so happy that they did this. I've always promoted the notion of what a lot of people want. I'm talking hundreds of millions, possibly billions of people is Chrome, but without all the Google stuff de Googled Chrome, what an opportunity, Microsoft, it sounds like such a great product. Yeah. And using both Chrome and edge, I gotta tell you, Chrome works way better than the edge. It's quicker. It comes together faster. If I bring up a new computer and I have to sign into an account and have it load all my extensions and all stuff, Chrome was like, boo, done edge. You gotta, you sit there and you wait. You're like here. Okay. It's eventually those things are gonna, it's just, are there other, so much going on chromium browsers that maybe like Vivaldi that you lie or brave that you like as much?

Leo Laporte (00:29:14):
I like brave, but I, but you have to draw this line there because brave, isn't something I can recommend to kind of a broad audience. Like it's not something you would recommend on your radio show. Yeah. it's a little too technical. Right? I, I there's honestly, for the people who listen to my radio show. Yeah. They use safari on the Mac. They use edge on windows. Yeah. Yeah. It's the default. Right. And you just don't just use it. It's not worth fighting. It. The disadvantages are so minor that it's not worth fighting. That's right. That's right. Right. So for the technical audience this is the, you know, the needs of the many out need, the way the needs of the view at George W. Bush, that somehow is, is true here, right? Like there's an enthusiast audience. Know what they're doing, they're technical. They can do this. I don't have to explain that to them. And so if you're watching this show, probably you could handle Aldi or brave or whatever brows you want to use opera, what? It doesn't matter. I, this is not something I would recommend to my wife, to my mother, to my family, you know, to normal people. So yeah. You kind of stuck with the big two or three, right? Yep. So you're picking your poison there. You're gonna be stocked by somebody. Good luck. You know, I don't know. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:30:35):
I wish it was better. I really, really, really wish that edge was this streamlined chromium thing. Yeah. A screen at the beginning with like a grid of features. What, you know, do you want any of these? No. You know, what could have been? I love that I would be, so I would be so happy. I think everybody would've been happy if they had just made a simple edge, not something you want to customize or anything that grid of features. That's fine, but that's for you. Yeah. But just a plain clean, simple browser handled PDFs. It's an edge, light, edge, length, edge, S anyone who, anyone who works for, for a company that makes browsers talks about getting, you know, getting out of the way of all the content, you know, let the content shine through it's about the content, not the Chrome and blah, blah, blah.

Leo Laporte (00:31:23):
Yeah. And now there's like 118 built in features and edge. And it's like, yeah. Now it's about your content. Like it's well, that's people just wanna go to the sites they go to, they don't want your nonsense for collecting. Welcome to capitalism. You know, that's, you know, in a nutshell, what's wrong with computing in general is that instead of doing what they be best for their users and the customers, they do, what's good for business and it's this tension. How far can we push? What's good for our business without pushing away customers, but it's always gonna be for what's good for business. This default browser thing we were just talking about is an example of, I think Microsoft reaching a little too far. Yeah. In that direction. Yeah. There was a lot of negative feedback and it was really hard to justify. Well, I, I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (00:32:08):
You're sending my grandmother into an interface where she has to know which ones of these things to change. Are you kidding me? Like, that's it it's so indefensible. So they, you know, they step back from the cliff. They didn't computing would be so different in a world where companies just said, you know, Jeff Bezos is false mantra, you know, customer centric, if they just said, look, we're just gonna do what's right for the customer every single time. I think computing would be a different experience. It's such a good story, cuz they all do say that. Yeah. They all lie. Yeah. Because I mean, for instance, messaging would be unified. All messaging would talk to all other messaging. Yeah. No it's better for Apple's customer. If all messaging is not unified, cause no one uses apple products has friends that don't use apple products.

Leo Laporte (00:33:00):
Right. So why would you ever that's a crazy, how could you example, why would you ever insane? It's it's insane. So, I mean there is this kind of and it's completely a bogus U utopian vision, but there's this kind of notion of, and it, and you know, why it persists is cuz people like you and me, Paul are old enough to remember a day when computing was a hobbyist thing, not a business thing. It didn't last very long. But at that, at that point, it was very exciting and interesting. And you felt like you know, we were working together and and then, you know, AOL came along and I just got into this with the, you know, this idiot, you left OnePlus and created this company called nothing is nothing car, nothing. It's like, remember when the smartphone industry used to be exciting. Yeah I do. But now I know that it's like the most common used personal computing device for the entire planet. Yeah. So it's not really exciting. We can't handle exciting anymore. Yeah. Like it's not exciting now. It's just like, sorry, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:00):
Utilitarian. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:34:02):
If you wanna be exciting, move on to the next thing and by the way, while you're doing it, stop pretending you're Steve jobs. Nobody cares. I, I just,

Leo Laporte (00:34:10):
This, this is the divide between enthusiasts and you know, normal people. It's like, I just want it to be cool. Well, that's neat. Yeah. I just wanna get my job done and then I want to go have dinner. Like I, you know, and this is actually the problem with this Microsoft stuff because unfortunately they've stepped over the edge of it. They're not trying to make it cool. They have this business initiative to drive people to the services and other products. Right. And it's getting in the way of these. It's very simple. It's very simple. I wish they wouldn't, you know, kind of misrepresent it as being customer centric, but you know, I understand, I don't expect them to be customer centric. They're they're they're stakeholders. Do I wish they, I wish they were, but well they're stakeholder centric. That's that's how the world is. Yeah. That's true. That's true. Driver block list. I that's interesting. What is that?

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:01):
I have no idea this. So this seemed more interesting at the time when I was writing it than it ended up being

Leo Laporte (00:35:09):
Oh, life. What? Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:13):
Yeah. So there there's a guy at Microsoft who's very active on TWITtter, who is the vice president of OS security. His name is David Weston. He he's very active on TWITtter. So over the weekend he tweets about this thing, like it's brand new. Right. And he said, we've got a new window security option. It's this new block list that lets you include vulnerable drivers. So if you turn this on, it'll automatically block things that we think are gonna be problematic drivers. That's good. So everybody, yeah. Everybody get excited. Everybody's like, oh man, this sounds really good. Right? Like there are people who are, are worried about it too saying like, what if you accidentally mark something as vulnerable? That's not, and I need it to turn my system on blah, blah, blah. Right. but if people are pretty excited, cause they're like, that's a good deal. Like Microsoft maintains this list of block drivers that they say there's known security vulnerabilities. There's you know, they've been known to work with signed malware, like a whole list of things that you're like, yeah, that sounds great. So I went to Microsoft, I'm like, okay, so when are you guys gonna have this? They're like, oh, it's already in the product. It's already there. And they said, it's already in windows, 10 windows is 11 and windows.

Leo Laporte (00:36:18):
We had that for years

Mary Jo Foley (00:36:18):
16 or later, right? Yeah. Yeah. We've had it for years. Yeah. It's not new.

Leo Laporte (00:36:23):
What you talking about Willis?

Mary Jo Foley (00:36:24):
Yeah. So I actually, I was like, let me see if this is there. So I went into windows 11 home on my surface laptop three and I did all the steps that they said show. And I'm like, yeah, it is there. It's there. But when I tried to turn on it, should it put my Western digital driver in the list of things they were gonna block? No. And so then they were just like, no, we're not gonna do that. No. And I'm like, oh, so it's there. But it doesn't really work because it's marking things that you need to compute, like to actually use your laptop's. I'm like, yeah. So it doesn't really, it's not really the thing that you think it is. Its

Leo Laporte (00:37:00):
It, it hard to do well, but would be a nice security fee it's there, but it doesn't work would be a great name for a book about Microsoft.

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:08):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:37:09):
Well what you want is

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:10):
It's not ready.

Leo Laporte (00:37:11):
Something like firewall rules where you would say, I have rules, no invi driver older than, you know this, no third party drivers for this, that kind of thing. But that's a little geeky and complicated, but that would be a nice feature.

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:26):
I think the idea is good. The implementation may be not so good yet. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:37:34):
Yeah. Well you gotta, if it was in the control panel, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's probably way too complicated. And

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:42):
Geeky, I think it would be really hard to pull this off. Right. Yeah. Even though they say they're working with OEMs to make sure with them that the things that are on the list should be on the list. I'm sure this list is gonna change,

Leo Laporte (00:37:52):
But false positives will kill you every time. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:54):
Right. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:37:56):
Yeah. And, and it's too, that's that's too give a failure if you're suddenly your oh my hard drive doesn't work anymore. I and how do I fix

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:04):
That? Yeah. I can't do anything now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:06):
What do I do?

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:08):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think maybe they're gonna keep working on this, but it like it physically is there, like you can see it's the capability is there in windows 10, 11. Yeah. Server 2016 and higher. But I don't think it's working the way they would hope.

Leo Laporte (00:38:23):
Oh, well the

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:25):
Microsoft nothing to see here yet. Steve Gibson will look at this and decide

Leo Laporte (00:38:30):
Actually. Yeah, I will. I'll I'll tell Steve about it cuz I think he'll be interested because in theory that is an important thing to fix.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:36):
Definitely protect, right? Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:38:39):
Hey, it's another build. I'm excited. Are you guys gonna go? What's going on with build? Are we gonna go? Yeah, I'll be right here. Is it virtual again? Yeah, I guess it would be, this might be the last virtual one though. Right? I hope so.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:55):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:55):
That's

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:55):
One 24th, 26th. One

Leo Laporte (00:38:57):
Conference you want to have in person developing two years now we're gonna be like, Hey, remember when we thought we were gonna have in person? Oh yeah, you're right. That's true. I know how many boosters in are you now? 18. Yeah. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:08):
I know. Yeah. And you gotta, if you're Microsoft and any tech vendor, you gonna be kinda weighing this. You're like we're saving a ton of money by not having in person events. Cuz we're not flying our people there. We're not running out conference centers. We're not having to get meals. Right. And we can say that we have so many more thousands of attendees because people are signing up virtually whether they actually watch it or not, they're signed up. So if you're just looking from a dollars and cent perspective, you're like, yeah, why should we do in person events? Right. Because

Leo Laporte (00:39:41):
You know, I think you,

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:42):
I know

Leo Laporte (00:39:43):
You can't beat in person. You know, in some cases there's ways Microsoft could save money. But I think, I think they're just gonna go. I think they will go back and have hybrid events and we'll I do

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:53):
Too

Leo Laporte (00:39:53):
Same. We'll be in San Francisco or Orlando gotta help us. So wherever. Yeah. and some people will be watching on the web, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:02):
Agree, agree. I think that's the future of all these events. I, I do agree. And I think they'll be smaller when they come back. Right? Like they're not gonna bring ignite back with like 30,000 people. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:40:12):
Well, especially not when, when they say Hey, by the way, you can attend all the sessions from the comfort of your own home. You know, a lot of people are gonna go to their boss with their hat in their hand and say, Hey, I'd really like to travel to Orlando or Vegas, wherever it is. And their boss is gonna say, Hey, I have an idea. Why don't you travel to your bedroom? And you can watch it from there. And yeah, I'll just, I'll just keep paying you the normal amount because there's no reason to pay for the flight and the hotel and the meals and all that stuff. So

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:35):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:40:36):
That's gonna happen. It'll lot of people. So maybe a hybrid then, you know? Yeah. Hybrid. Yeah, exactly. That's

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:41):
The way to do it. I, I think that's what they'll do. Yeah. That's what they'll do going for, although that's next

Leo Laporte (00:40:44):
Of it. Googles doing, although it's dumb because it's only like Googlers that get to go.

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:48):
Yeah. Theirs. Isn't really like a true hybrid.

Leo Laporte (00:40:51):
Well, but maybe that change, this is, this is the first step back. So you're saying Google gonna be Googlers in the audience and it's they say it's hybrid. But the very limited list of people who can be there, listen, all the Google employees are gonna be on hand to answer any of questions. I mean, you won't be there, but you know, but they they'll be there. Wave wave. They're like,

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:09):
Yeah. I mean, build is gonna have the Microsoft people presenting in one place. Like they're gonna be there presenting even if we're not

Leo Laporte (00:41:16):
That's for them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Microsoft folks have traveled and done little events here and there. I mean, that's happened. So there are upsides. I mean, remember you used to have to have lotteries cuz so many people wanted to come and they couldn't all come and right. So this way everybody wants to can lottery in world, world, lottery's at a company. Right. We can only afford to send five people, you know? Sorry. So if you, you know, you could watch the sessions later or whatever, you're not gonna interact with the people. That's what you know, but now I, I, we have the, you know, we have the technology just like the $6 million man.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:50):
Well, so here's what, here's what we, I know. So builds virtual, right? Inspire, which is their giant partner conference where people come from all over the world. It's supposed to be in Vegas this year in July, not happening. It's virtual also completely virtual. The next one we don't know about is, is falling night, right? Like there's gonna be a falling night. Yeah. We don't know if it'll be in person at virtual. We don't know. We don't, it's usually around like November around that timeframe. Right? So that, that one we don't know yet, but Microsoft employees and managers are out going to third party events in person. Like they're just not holding their own first party events in person. Cuz who wants to be the first big company to say, yeah, we had thousand people there and it was a super spreader event. Right? You don't, that's not the publicity.

Leo Laporte (00:42:37):
You thought the other Microsoft Irish was a bad let tell you about Wow. That's a good point. Although well they had mobile world. Congress was real, right? I mean, yes, it wasn't CS. CS was too CS was as much reduced, but it was,

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:52):
But almost nobody went to those.

Leo Laporte (00:42:54):
Yeah. Everybody was

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:54):
Nervous and the people did. You're like, why are you going to

Leo Laporte (00:42:57):
This? Why are you you doing, I know I, I, I wanted not to be that person, but some people I know, went to each of those events and I was had to bite my tongue. Like, are you serious? You know? Yeah. but there is this, well, I don't, this is completely separate from what we're talking about. But there is this kind of sense that maybe we, now that we're all, you know, most was vaccinated. Maybe we're overblowing the risks or the concerns. Maybe it's okay. If we kind of go back to normal, having had the shots and we'll maybe we'll get sick. That would be true. If the virus, if the pandemic was over or even if it's not over, it's never gonna, it's always no, because pandemic coming variants that are even more than what we've had before, but we don't. Yeah. But not yet. Not in the us. Not yet. That's true. Yeah. So I don't know. I, I feel like maybe I've just been a chicken, right. There are gonna be people that never go to an event again because of what happened. There's no

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:47):
Doubt about it. Yeah. There are. There's

Leo Laporte (00:43:49):
No doubt about it. And I, and IM not, I would never criticize a person. Absolutely not. I completely, many of us are, people have to

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:56):
Make their

Leo Laporte (00:43:56):
Own choices being compromised or we have comorbidities. That really mean that it would be a very bad thing. Right. We're not gonna take that chance. Desperately want to go to something. I, I, I, wasn't gonna go to Vegas for any event like that. That's not where I would go. And south by, I heard rumors might have been a super spread better event.

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:18):
Yeah. I heard some things about that too.

Leo Laporte (00:44:19):
Yeah. I dunno if the jury's still out on that one, but 

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:23):
You know, it'd be cool. Lots of small events, like in big cities across the us, like, you know, like, not just like everybody watches on a movie theater somewhere, but like you, like in New York say they had an event for build in New York and they said, okay, 500 people,

Leo Laporte (00:44:39):
Right. They've done this in the past. So build and ignite, they've done traveling road shows of different sizes across the United States, across the world where the, the key presenters actually travel to these cities. So let's say, you know, some number of cities across the United States, some number cities in Europe, you know, Asia, whatever you get to go out, you get to interact with these people. It's smaller audiences. I, I, I think that should be part of this hybrid approach as well. Yeah. It's give people the, that opportunity go to a local Microsoft, you know, field office or wherever it is, or, mm a smaller venue locally in a big city of the a hundred thousand people who went to Austin for south by about a hundred COVID 19 cases have been traced to the event, according to the Austin county health authority.

Leo Laporte (00:45:27):
So I don't, I mean, one in a thousand, that's not so bad. Well, unless you were one of the, one of the, unless you're the one in a thousand, I mean, you know, hospitalizations did not spike. Yeah. Appreciate that's. Well, that's the thing. So the, the big thing now is this most recent well, most recent to date variant wasn't as serious for people who were vaccinated, especially well, and, and they, and did say you have to be vaccinated at south by, well, there you go. I mean, a cruise ship just came back where they had ex it was all vaccinated people. Right. And there were a dozen or more people got COVID, you know, well, we'll find out won't we Paul, that's what I'm saying. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:46:11):
You'll be the all funny soon. But, but you know, we've lived two years where I know COVID was like, oh, code red. Yeah. But we are entering a period now where COVID is more like, well, you know, you got the flu, you're gonna be sick. You're not gonna like it. So in the spirit of, I'm not a scientist, I'm just asking questions. Yes. Which is the dumb fricking thing anyone ever. So I'm just, I'm just asking question. Well, the one thing I do wonder about this kind of thing is we've spent a couple years in isolation or near isolation. Right. And now we're gonna, I mean, are we less immune to things like, are we more prone to get, we're all gonna get sicker. Yeah. We're all gonna get flu now. Yeah. That's what I'm wondering. Get around me. Have a cold, really sick just from, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:46:55):
From other being out. Yeah. Cuz we had, I'd go to a restaurant and I'm like, you feel that news for O that, you know, the other one is, we've also, there's a psychological impact after two years, we are, we've kind of, it's amazing how quickly your veneer of civilization can run off, off. Oh my God. So of course, you know, you go to the movies and people are insane. They're throwing stuff. You know? I mean people, people are acting funny and I think it's cuz they, they haven't been around other people much for a while. They don't know how to interact in the public. Yeah. It's it just shows you, I'm sure. There's, it's a very thin varnish civilization. But when you, when you hear about the, the Maylee that breaks out in the press room at Microsoft ignite this year, you oh yeah. Your dollar that I, I was involved in it in some way will know. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's like, yeah, I got out the house. That's what, and yet I think we do crave this kind of, you know, it's so nice to go to a build, right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:52):
Yeah. You know, what's different. I feel like, you know, like when we're watching it at home, you kind of half pay attention. Right? Like you're like, oh, let me get a snack. Oh wait, I gotta answer some email. It's not quick. You're at the event when you're at the event, cramed into that little space that we get and you're all typing next to each other. You gotta

Leo Laporte (00:48:08):
Pay attention, had penguin, hats.

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:10):
Exactly. That happened. But yeah, it, it feels like you, you just have to be way more focused. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:48:17):
Well, you don't have to be focused because especially in our case, then we're gonna leave and go have meetings with these people. Right. And, and what you can't do is say, Hey, I was kind of, I wasn't really paying attention. I was scrolling while you were talking on stage. Could you maybe gimme a little recap there? Yeah. You know? Yeah. You have to pay attention.

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:34):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:48:35):
Do we even know how to pay

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:36):
Attention to, I've seen these things for two years. No. And, and especially ones where there's hardware or a demo, like seeing it in person makes a huge difference. Right. It really does.

Leo Laporte (00:48:44):
That's right. Absolutely does. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I was telling Mary Jo, I'm gonna go to a PC maker in person event for the first time. Since, since I believe, I wanna say December, 2019. Yeah. so that's, is that right? Yeah. 2019. It seems like so long ago. Wow. Yeah. It's been a long time. Yeah. Two and a years.

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:05):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:49:05):
And know we live in interesting times. What can we say? You know, but that's not

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:09):
A, that's not

Leo Laporte (00:49:10):
A good, no, you know, like Chinese curse. When my wife, she went on a road trip to Boston last weekend and I said Hey, anything going on? And she said, no. And I said, perfect. I don't wanna hear anything. Good news. What I want to hear is nothing happened. Nothing. You know, I drove there. I came back. Yep, yep. No. And then she, what she doesn't say is, oh no, it was really interesting. Oh, you know here. Yeah. You're right. I had to call AAA, you know, I, yeah. I don't, it's funny. I, I don't know if other people are noticing it, but I have just really noticed that everything and the stress levels are much higher. There's a lot of tension interactions. Oh. Giant animals are appearing,

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:48):
Giant cats

Leo Laporte (00:49:49):
Taking over. And I think honestly your, your frame rate went down quite a bit. About five minutes ago. Was SRA sleeping on the vents again?

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:58):
Yes, he was. Yeah. He had to move this over here.

Leo Laporte (00:50:01):
Yeah. It gets hot. Yeah. We actually noticed it. Yeah. I saw the,

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:04):
It was so hot. My laptop I'm like, I don't even know if I can touch it. It was so hot,

Leo Laporte (00:50:08):
So, so interesting. So SRA is a great way to test Thurrottling in lap. You gotta get like a stand. You can sit that in. So it's vertical, you know?

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:16):
Yeah. So won't, so he won't be able to get on it. Well, he

Leo Laporte (00:50:18):
That's why he likes it. It's hot.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:20):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:50:21):
It's like my eight sleep bed. It's hot.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:24):
No, I'm like picking him up off it. I'm like

Leo Laporte (00:50:29):
Let's take a little time out. Pause for station identification. You're listening to windows weekly. Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley. Time to talk business it's business time. Microsoft is still using bro to get cont contracts. You know, it's funny. We get training from, I work, the radio shows owned by iHeart it's training on how not to get bribes. We get training from iHeart. And because these trainings are for everybody and it's a global organization, what's, what's a, they call 'em grease payments. Should you ever pay grease payments, ding? Well, you didn't you okay. You, you, you do work in the payola industry, Leo. Well, yeah, I mean, it's partly payola, but it's also like the examples they give, you know, the customs officials says your shipment can be expedited for a small payment of a hundred D. Is that okay?

Leo Laporte (00:51:30):
Ding, I don't ever, I need to get greased more. I never get more grease payments. So it's, you know, I mean, it's, it's federal this, it's a federal offense. Yes. And it's, it's very illegal. We all get this training. Absolutely. Practices act. Yes. So Microsoft has been found to have violated this in the past. Brad Smith came out with a very strongly worded announcement of this practice. So they would never do this again. The on fact, still working with the contractor and Hungary that they had bribe and kickback schemes with yeah. In the past, because it's, and this is why it's difficult in the us is illegal in many countries it's expected. Right? Yeah. And you're a representative for a us company in Hungary and you, what do you do? This is like, anything else, illegal or business practice related. You're dealing with companies that are going through the same things you are.

Leo Laporte (00:52:24):
And it's hard. It's hard to put it on any. And it's like, you know, it's like riding a bike. Let's be honest. Well that's why they give us this training every year. I have to sit through these terrible flash slide shows about yep. All this stuff. But, but they do it every year. They may have a legal obligation to do it. I wouldn't be surprised, but also cuz they really don't wanna, iHeart does not want to get caught doing that. Right. Right. Right. Well, yeah. So a, a form of Microsoft employee is claiming that Microsoft is still behaving in this fashion throughout the world. Parts of the middle east Africa, Europe a minimum of 200 million each year goes to Microsoft employees, partners, and government employees for bribes $200. That's a pretty small Bri 200 million million. Okay. 37% of the company sells people.

Leo Laporte (00:53:15):
And managers are receiving these payments government officials in Ghana Nigerias and Bob KTAR. Yeah. Those are all places they expected Saudi Arabia, right? Yeah. It's just part of the deal. You get off the airplane in Egypt. If you want your hand though, too. Well, like I know they're not good places. You get off the plane in Egypt and you go to the bathroom, there's a guy standing at the door saying you have to pay me for the toilet paper. Right. That's not exactly a grease payment, but still, well, I don't know. We'll stop right there. Right there. There's so many so many things one could say, but I don't wanna get slapped.

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:51):
Let's not, let's

Leo Laporte (00:53:52):
Not. So what are they gonna do about it? Olympio what are they gonna do about it? I don't know. So memo that's what they're gonna do. It's

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:07):
They'll be more training. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:54:09):
Yeah. Mark of all the interesting, the interesting thing about this is this guy, this person has gone to the us department of justice, the security securities at exchange commission and has reported this and they have done nothing. Nothing. Yeah. Right now. Oh, so this is a whistle blower. Ah, interesting.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:28):
Who used to work at Microsoft who doesn't anymore.

Leo Laporte (00:54:31):
Yep. Yep. Well that's the problem I think is that it's one of those things that everybody knows it's going on and everybody can have turns a blind eye because if you're gonna do business in co yep. You gotta grease the wheel, gotta grease the wheels. So we've been talking a lot about the new EU rules. It's it, you know, it's not yet approved. And then there's six months before it goes into effect to give companies time to rewrite all their softwares. Cause that's, that's what all it will take. You know, it's a minor, minor change that's gonna require you rewrite everything. Google obviously, and apple obviously impacted Microsoft. Well, that's the question. That's why I wanted to bring this up. I mean, I I'm curious where you guys kind of stand on this. I, the issue here is you have to be of a certain market capitalization, which Microsoft absolutely is. You have to be considered a gate, a gatekeeper and examples of gatekeepers are companies that offer services like web browsers, messaging apps, social media platforms. You notice the language. There is really apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, you know, but I mean, I, I, I feel like Microsoft, I think they're gonna go after the big fish first, but I don't see any reason why Microsoft wouldn't run a follow of this

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:58):
Agree.

Leo Laporte (00:56:00):
That's my, this is my personal tech, but so they'll have to, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:03):
They've been so lucky. They've been like stepping around all the big tech, antibi tech and, and losses, you know? Yeah. But that's not gonna last forever. Right. I mean, at some point somebody's gonna go wait a minute. They're not part of Fang, but Microsoft, like, they're kind of a big deal, right?

Leo Laporte (00:56:21):
Yeah, yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:23):
Yeah. And they are a gatekeeper. Right. I mean the operating system makes 'em a gatekeeper. The kinds of stuff they're doing with edge makes 'em a gatekeeper. Right. they're in all these markets. Yeah. I think they are not gonna be immune from this. There's no way they can be immune.

Leo Laporte (00:56:38):
Yeah. And there's also, you know, Microsoft might want to get this act a vision thing done before this happens too, because companies that don't comply with this will be banned from acquiring other companies. Right. Which is, that's a big one. Yeah. That's actually a big one. Yeah. That

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:53):
Is yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:56:54):
Yep. Yeah. And the fines are

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:56):
The active vision thing. Right? Like their act visions in so much trouble legally. And like now their employees wanna unionize and Microsoft's like, yeah, if you want to go ahead. Right. They're just probably like, hurry up and let us get this done before they find vision is done. Something really bad. And they're gonna go after us cuz of act vision. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:57:13):
Hopefully act vision. Doesn't pull a Nokia and stop doing anything.

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:18):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:57:19):
You know, now that they know Microsoft's just gonna bail them out. Yeah. That was a big problem. It, Microsoft seems so willing to compromise on anything to make this happen. Yeah. I hope they don't run a follow of that. But I guess we'll see.

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:34):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:57:36):
Anyway, I thought this was kind of, it's not, yeah. It's not a law yet. And there, you know, I'm sure there's these intense lobbying going on. Speaking of grease payments, everything moves. So

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:44):
For sure. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:57:45):
So it's not gonna happen on, but you may not bribe a customs inspector, but parliamentarians EU commission, legislators, commissioners. Yep. They're fine. They're fine. The laws allow for a certain amount. It could happen in Switzerland. It's not a problem. It's not a problem. All right. Anything else to say before we dive deep into the Xbox segment? Oh God. We already had Xbox. No.

Leo Laporte (00:58:10):
Yeah. Can you believe it? Time flies when you're having a good time. I am. So I have to say I, you know, so I was deciding whether I should put my series X in the bedroom with the TV. We have a TV, nice 4k TV there. And I decided, you know, it really belongs in my office next to my Mac studio and my Linux box. I'm gonna put my, so it's all, it's actually quite a beautiful display with a little tower there on that 5k five. I mean old led 4k, old led 55 inch monitor. It's great. Played a little Eldon ring, got slaughtered and 4k. It was so much fun. I'm excited now. I'm wondering what games you've mentioned before, like Ori and the breath of the wind or whatever. Yeah. Just for the quality of the graphics. Yep. Yeah. sea of thieves, which I really, you know, wanted to, like when it came out has improved a lot.

Leo Laporte (00:58:59):
So I'm probably play that. No man's land no man's sky. Not gonna play call duty. I'm not, not a big fan of, of Harry shooters. Harry shoes, Harry, in a sense you go in there and it's, you know, bullets are whizzing and you, oh, that's all I do. Yeah. I know. No, I know you love that. That's all. I just don't have. That's how I get my, my COVID error. Rage has been pouring out into college. I don't have the TWITtch muscles or something for that. So Eldon ring is good because you, I you should play through the single player campaign on halo. Oh yeah. Halo. Infinite. I should probably get that, huh? Yep. Okay. I bought the master chief collection back in the day that didn't include infinite. So yeah. That's a good idea. Infinite. You like it? That's a good one.

Leo Laporte (00:59:44):
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a shooter, but it's not a hairy shooter. It's the no, no. In the single, no, it can be any level. You want it to be hair or not hairy. So yeah. I guess I don't really think of it in those terms, but it comes from, I don't know. I think it was Michael. Some, some kid I told me, yeah. Told me, oh yeah. You know, you don't wanna play call of duty. It's you, you go in and it's immediately Harry you're in a Harry situation is a situation where there are a lot of people who know exactly what they're doing. Yeah. And if you don't, it's not kind head Jo dead, that's it. It's like three seconds and it's over. Yeah. So no halo is a good choice. It's probably the best halo game since halo three. Good.

Leo Laporte (01:00:27):
Say I like halo. I played that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. The first, first three I played it's fun. It's a little weird playing a game, sitting at a desk though. That's the only negative do it every day. Leo is that so you, so that's a good question. You're I rotate to my life. Is that a desk? I feel like it should be a living room experience. Yeah. It probably is for younger people, but I like to pretend I'm working and yeah, there you go. There you go. Anything important happens. I'm right here. You know, it's nice. One big monitor and I've got Lennox, Mac and Xbox on it. It's great. I'm happy and windows too, actually. So it's a, it's like everything is there, you know, it's good. Do you have, you don't have game pass to I had it and I canceled it cause I never play any games.

Leo Laporte (01:01:07):
Yeah. And I'm thinking for me, I thought at first game pass to be perfect. Cause I could dip into, you know, a little bit here and there. I'm thinking maybe I'll just buy the games. I want, I think I mentioned this last week, but you gotta check out flight simulator. Oh, flight SIM Xbox. See, that seems like kind of boring. Yeah. Listen, you can have Harriet on har. I don't know. That's like, that's the exact opposite if you want boring or not boring. Try to fly that thing under the Eiffel tower. I remember successfully. Okay. Yeah. Maybe that'll be fun. And oh, red dead redemption too. Which I had already started. I think I'll keep that on there. That looks pretty fun. So okay. Cowboy, Cowboys and Indians.

Leo Laporte (01:01:45):
So anyway, let's do some Xboxing. Let's let's us. It's almost April. When's April 1st, like Friday, probably Friday, Saturday, tomorrow. No, maybe not tomorrow. Maybe day after tomorrow. Yeah. Friday. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So Microsoft has announced the games that are coming to Xbox game pass all and Xbox live gold subscribers for the month of April. Once again, you know, nothing super exciting to me. We're almost getting to the point now where like giving away Xbox 360 games. I think maybe we need to move past that, but yeah, you get two of those a month and then you get two more modern games, which they never really call up, which you don't wanna play. Yeah. It's like, I, I don't, I actually don't recognize any of these games. Be honest, outpost, outpost, collo X. Ooh, I know. I know. Ooh, looks like the, a, some kind of Adams family thing.

Leo Laporte (01:02:33):
I don't know what that is. So anyway, whatever, it's, it's a perk of your subscription. You should look into it. Who knows? Yeah. The bigger news, the biggest news this week to me is although it's also the most like less news in retrospect is we have known for years that Sony was going to do something along the lines of Xbox game. I'm sorry. Xbox cloud gaming, which is the game streamer service. And Microsoft has Sony in the past. I'm not an expert on the PlayStation stuff, but Sony to date has had something called PlayStation plus, which is basically Xbox live gold, right? It's multiplayer and some other stuff related to that kind of thing. They give you a couple of free games a month. I just mentioned Xbox games with gold. They have a similar program. I think you got two games a month and then they've had something called ex PlayStation now.

Leo Laporte (01:03:22):
And that's where I'm a little hazy. I, I, I think PlayStation now might have had streaming and download capabilities. The systems that ran on the games that offered have, have changed over time. But we know they wanna do like a cloud gaming competitor. They might be doing it at least partially on Azure, which I've not heard anything about, but this week they finally announced what they're doing. And it's like, eh, it's not that exciting. So this they're rejiggering the branding and everything. So it's all PlayStation plus now PlayStation plus essential is what PlayStation plus used to be 9 99 a month or $60 a year. It's the basic tier gives you the two free games. I mentioned the online Multiplay, et cetera, et cetera. There's not really not a lot going on there. There's a new thing called PLA station plus extra, which is 1499 a month or a hundred dollars a year.

Leo Laporte (01:04:08):
This is everything from PS plus essential plus an access to a catalog of 400 PS four and PS five games. Now this is game pass, right, but for PlayStation. So they've very specifically keeping it to the most, two most recent generations of, of consoles. And they don't really say this, but that you, you will download these games, right? So if you subscribe to this, you wanna play these games, you download 'em to your console. You go from there. And then the, the Xbox cloud gaming competitor is something called PlayStation plus premium. This is gonna $18 a month or $120 a year. This is everything from the other two tiers plus access to 340 additional OG PlayStation PS two PSP, which is the, you know, the portable thing and PS three games via cloud streaming and downloads, except for the PS three games, which I think are download only.

Leo Laporte (01:05:01):
I don't, I don't know what's going on there. Actually I think they're streaming only, and then some limited times trials. So this is not what we were looking for, right? This is not exactly. This is not what Microsoft is doing in many ways, right there Microsoft's cloud streaming services, new games. It's not old games. Well, this is probably some old games, but it's mostly, it's like new games. They are very specifically only offering legacy games for streaming, which I think is kind of weird. So I don't know, like this is not the big bang announcement I was kind of expecting here. The other thing is, this is not happening very quickly. Like this is gonna load a I'm sorry, started Asian markets in June. And then we won't see it here in north America or in Europe and other markets until the end of the year.

Leo Laporte (01:05:47):
And I'm thinking they're probably gonna bulk up the the different game titles are available everywhere. So for right now, not super exciting, waited and waited and waited here were doing. And it was like, I okay. Like, whatever, it just doesn't seem that interesting to me, unfortunately, but if you're a PlayStation guy. Yeah. Well, you know, they gotta have something too. Yes, I, yeah, I absolutely let's see. So micro, oh, Leo de Scott is Xbox series X finally. And of course immediately after I bought it, I know they're starting to sell they Microsoft, they're starting to sell refurbished consoles through their online store in the us and UK. So how much was really not that much cheaper though? Like your console, was it it's $500. Yeah. Five 50. Yeah. Yeah. Five 50. Yeah. So 4 69 99. Yeah. It's not that much cheaper. Yeah, that's not great. I mean, I, I presume because again, it for Microsoft refurbished is as good as new.

Leo Laporte (01:06:45):
No. Well, let's ask Mary Jo, what she thinks of her new Microsoft surface laptop three. Well, yeah, I presumably I hope so. I've never bought anything refurbished from Microsoft. I bought a lot of refurbished apple products. Those are always great. They do have a one year warranty. Yeah, I think it's probably in many cases, it's something that was open box and returned. And I will say this, we have never heard anything about reliability issues with these no consoles. Yeah. No red ring of death. Yeah. I don't think we had any issues the whole Xbox one time for any either. So that cooling tower is a good design that's right. Yeah. Even the S I mean, it's this beautiful little thing, but you could, you could cook an egg on this thing. But yeah, they seem, they seem to have figured that out.

Leo Laporte (01:07:30):
So that's, that's an option, I guess if you're having trouble finding that stuff, wonder if I should get the game pass again? I, you know, one thing that's annoying is you can't play online games without some sort of game gold. Yeah. You game. Yeah. You need game pass or Xbox. So like even an El ring, which I bought live gold. Yeah. I can't play online unless I have Xbox live. So this literally dates back to 2002, like when Microsoft was like, well, you need to make a subscription service. What's that gonna be literally it to multiplayer online? Like, that's the, that's the key benefit. Right. And Sony does the same thing. So you could pay, pay $60. I don't mind that much. Not having other people in my game. I mean, you would, obviously you, I pretty much rely on it. Yeah. like for Eldon ring, it's kind of annoying cuz you see these ghosts of other players and then there's all these messages that are just basically trashing the place cuz you can player can leave a message.

Leo Laporte (01:08:29):
The theory being there's a secret door here, but more often than not, they're really leave. It's like jump on off here. It's okay. And then you jump off and you die. So it's a lot of griefing and stuff, so, oh it's I don't miss that. The Xbox live is a toxic environment. Leo. I don't know. Yeah. I think so. So maybe I don't need the Xbox live pass. Well, if you don't wanna play multiplayer, you don't need it. Yeah. That's yeah. Right. But the, the advantage to game pass obviously though, is you get that whole library of things you can experiment with. Right. And if you have ultimate, you can stream a big portion of them too, which lets you play 'em without even downloading them. So that's right. There is an advantage to that and yeah. If you do choose, if you say, look, I'm not gonna keep this subscription or I play this game so much, I just wanna buy it.

Leo Laporte (01:09:12):
You actually get a discount when you buy it. If you have a game pass subscription too. So there's game, there's Xbox live. That's the lowest tier. Right. But that's still like 10 bucks a month, right. Or something. Yeah. $60 a year. Okay. You a game pass just for consoles 9 99 a month or probably nine, I guess it's nine a. So that includes Xbox live. Is there a Xbox live gold? Is there something in the middle? No. So there's well Xbox live gold is technically the, I think they just call it Xbox live now, but that's the thing at the bottom $60 a year, a game pass console or PC is 9 99 or 109 or a hundred dollars a year. Okay. And then Xbox game pass. Ultimate is for both. And the cloud streaming 1499 or $150 a year. Yeah. They should. It taken my 35 bucks a month when I was offering it.

Leo Laporte (01:09:59):
Cuz I know you wanted that. That yeah. I wanted that deal and now I'm like, eh, I'll think I'll just maybe I'll get the go back. I had had had live for 10 years or something. I just felt a different kind of gamer than I am. Honestly I am a D you included. Yeah. No, but I, you would, you should at least try it, you know, do it for a month and oh, I did. Oh, I had it for six months. Oh, okay. Okay. What I didn't have was an Xbox series X, right, right. No, I've had it maybe for a year. I've had it for a long time and I finally just said, why am I paying 15 bucks a month for something I'm not using ever that's right. Yeah. But now you have the console. Maybe you will. Maybe I will. Now that I have the console.

Leo Laporte (01:10:36):
Yeah. And now that you've spent more money, I'm constantly, you have to spend more money in the service. It just makes sense. Oh, it's basic finances Leo. So I dunno. Oh man. I don't use another job just to pay for all this. I know. I know. Yeah. Okay. And then I, this is one of the news of the obvious soft has created a new cloud gaming organization inside of Xbox game studios. Specifically with the aim of creating guess what? Cloud gaming titles, right? Yeah. Okay. No surprise there. The cool thing. There is the person running this business is the former lead designer of portal. Oh, oh that's cool. Yeah. Did they acquire Bunge? Yeah, they did. They that's right. Acquired bungee that's right. Yeah. And that's when he joined Microsoft then. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that's, that was nothing to announce there than that.

Leo Laporte (01:11:33):
So that, but that's happening. And speaking of flight simulator, which we were earlier they keep coming up with world updates. So like God, the cthe game, you mentioned earlier, cthe sea of thieves, sea of thieves. They keep updating this game as well. And one of the big ways they updated is through these world updates, which adds really detailed looking content for specific parts of the earth. Ooh, look at that. Yeah. The eighth one is the Iberian peninsula, which is Spain, Portugal, Portugal, Portugal, Portugal. But you could fly by G cathedral. Oh. And actually if you fly by it in the game, it looks like it's finished. So it's coming from oh, that's cool. Yeah. No there's no scaffolds on it. There's no, I've never, I've never seen it look so beautiful in my life. I've never realized that's what it was gonna look like.

Leo Laporte (01:12:17):
Okay. Yep. This is the cathedral look like that forever. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't. Yeah. And it will be in cons under construction after we're all dead. I think it's gonna be a long time, but it's gorgeous, but looks beautiful. Oh, it's gorgeous. Neat. Yeah, it is. Oh, I'd love to fly by that. That's neat. Yeah. You have to fly by this one. You can't fly under it. Like the architecture, the if you can try, would try it. Wouldn't go. Well, wouldn't go poorly. I like this kind of thing because there are certain cities like Paris is one example in Barlo as an example where I actually know my way around the city really well. So flying by, you know, these familiar sites, like I, I, I, I find that actually pretty enjoyable. So you buy this game, you sit at your desk and then you're flying an airplane and, and really I feel like you've immediately grasped the exact scenario and then really the, but for you, the point is like looking out the window that's right.

Leo Laporte (01:13:13):
Yeah. Otherwise there's not that much to do. Well, I, that is the thing to do. Yeah. Well, no, there, there are there are contests and, you know, goals and things like that. I mean, there's little things you, but it's kinda like Google earth with wings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But I'd, you know, it'd be fun if you were going to be going to Madrid to fly over it for maybe and you and I like to travel. I think it was a, for a game very early on that was took place in Paris. And I used the game too. It wasn't as it wasn't as detail, but you drive around. You're like, I know exactly how to drive the city, you know? Right. That's cool. Yeah. Yep. This is' pretty neat. I have been to that stadium. Yeah. There's the you've been, I drive.

Leo Laporte (01:13:56):
Wow. It's kind of neat. Yeah. And if you maybe ill get this, it's kind of cool. Yeah. What plane do you, what do you fly, man? Oh, I just fly the, the most, the easiest one. Okay. I don't need, cause I don't it's for me, it's not, it's not about the pedals and the metals and yeah. The, the problem with flight simulators was always, it was hard to take off and it was really hard to land. Right. And the rest of the time, it was just boring. Yeah. So these days they cut off the hard stuff and they just leave the boring stuff, but they make it beautiful. Yeah. So you can go to no, I'll do this. This will be really fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I like it. Okay. You keep talking. You have a nice 4k set. It'd be beautiful. Yeah. This will show it up.

Leo Laporte (01:14:30):
Nice. Yeah. Nice. These are, this is playing the video on, on your website for yeah. Nice. And I, I, this is actually somewhere I would, I'll be going next year, so it'd be nice to kind of see it. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Good. Can you do it? I could get a 7 47 though, right? I mean, it'd be kind of, I think there are, I don't know which oh yeah. There's all kinds of plane. Yeah. I'm sure there's all kinds of plane. Yeah. Nice. All right. Is there a third party view like this where you're, you're kind of, yes. Okay. You can do that. Yep. Just looking through the window of the plane, you can, you can be in the plane looking out standard view. You can be, you know, the front view without any of the instrumentation, you can be like kind of next to it around.

Leo Laporte (01:15:11):
Like you can rotate around the plane, kinda like this as a way of traveling. Especially if you're about to go to this place where you've just been to this place, we're gonna go to lesbian next spring. So it'd be kind of in a year. So we kind's one of my favorite places in the world. And yeah, this is all very accurate. The neat thing is when they do a world update like this, they've all of the fame as places like the ones you just saw in li there have been really detailed, you know, rendered very, in a detailed fashion. They look very realistic. It's really, really nice. Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:45):
Very cool. Have you seen the halo TV show yet? Is that well, so here's the, my tip is about the show too by, yeah. So there's only one episode available so far. I assume both of you guys have watched it repeatedly. Like, oh yeah. I, you know, I go every night, I just watch it over and over. So are you folks familiar with the Mandalorian, huh? Yes. Mandalorian, including me and folks here. All the geeks love the Mandalorian, not Soly so much fan, not so much me. I know. I watched, I keep trying to watch the first episode. I never get through it. Wow. Okay. Actually, the Mandalorian gets pretty good, but over the two seasons they have, and then of course now they have this BBA fat thing, the book and BBA, FEDA, whatever it's called. I realized, you know, it's made the star wars world very small.

Leo Laporte (01:16:37):
I, I really like that. There's a lot of, they're making a lot of star wars content. Like I, I feel like this is something they sat on for a long time and they need to do more of it's good, but they're, they're all those three or seasons or whatever are all filmed in exactly the same way. Like they, they make the show feel small and halo. There are the, the sort of Battlestar gala Galatica style, special effects scenes, which are awesome. And giant ships flying over giant structures. And you can see into women, it's all amazing looking, but all the, like the live action stuff, did they like rent the set from the Mandalorian to make this thing? Like, it looks, it's like exactly the same place. Like it seems it's, it seems small to me. I know it's a TV show, but I don't know. It just seems like the it's like the it's like it, someone saw the, a man,

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:29):
Like something grander. You want something grander,

Leo Laporte (01:17:31):
Right? I, you sound like you sound like sunset strip. It's the movies that got small, right. Yeah. Right. Okay. All right. I don't know. It's it's fine. I'm I'm glad they're making it. It's it's, I'm, I'm a little older parallel story. I'm a lot older than you guys. And you're not a, I was an adult when star wars came out, so I didn't get imprinted. Oh, Lisa loves the star. You know, she, every star wars movie, we go see in the theater, blah, blah, blah. And we get chills when the John Williams theme comes up. And, but I was break out into focus groups. The movies of I was in, I was in my twenties when it came out. So for me, it was just kind of a bad kitty film and I never got into it. And I'm, I, you know, I'm, I guess I'm one of those elitist is gonna be the thing that breaks a holes.

Leo Laporte (01:18:22):
I know I'm one of those jerks who thinks that all this comic book stuff and all that. Oh, it'll like the comic book stuff at all. I think that's ludicrous. I just, I don't, I can't get into it. I, I know I wanna even star Trek. Doesn't really, you know, it's not like I would go, oh, I can't wait to see star Trek. I don't, I don't. Well, okay. I can't help you with that, but I, no, I understand. I'm broken that way. I do. I understand that. It's okay. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah. It's like one step above a COVID tonight. No, it's okay. It's okay. I will not I have freedom from star wars. The one thing I will, I will, this is a fan of this stuff. I don't, I don't appreciate the star wars versus star Trek argument thing. I think both of those are great. I, I don't understand that, but I, but the comic book stuff, I couldn't care less about. This is just the same nonsense men in capes over and over and over again. I yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Even if they don't have capes spandex. Yeah. Whatever spandex. Yeah. Tights men in. I, I also love I for these are like fully grown adults. It's like the type of people who like go to Disney world as adults and they still it's. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's that same.

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:39):
We have, we have, we have some friends in

Leo Laporte (01:19:41):
The group. I know. I know. I don't understand it. Be careful. Lots of people. And I'm not knocking it in any way, except I just think you're kind of infantile. Okay. I said it well. Yeah. I just don't. It's not for me, but I, I guess I don't wear my fandom on a, on my sleeve. Like I wouldn't dress up like OB want Kenobi or yeah. I understand. Whatever. I, I'm not gonna carry on a captain American shield. I don't like that kind of stuff. At least not in public. Who knows what I do in front. But anyway, with regards to halo, I, I'm glad they're doing this. This is a story I always thought would make sense as a movie. But now that we have like really terrific, you know, TV series longform stuff. I think it makes sense for this too. So, so far, you know, it's like, there's parts of it.

Leo Laporte (01:20:23):
I love and there's parts of it. I'm like, oh, I don't know. You know, there is a hilarious scene, which actually I think was in one of the games where he takes off his mask, which is one of the things that kind of, you know, actually is one of the problems with the Mandalorian. Right. You don't see. It's great. Yeah. You don't see him until, so people are pissed off that master chief revealed his identity. Well, actually it's but it's funny. You should. That's it's it's a good, it's a good moment. Okay. It's it's it's pretty good. All right. I won't ruin it. I don't wanna ruin that way.

Leo Laporte (01:20:54):
What are you laughing at? I don't. It's hard to take you seriously. I can't put my finger on it. I gotta crumple the ear. I had an art teacher in when I went to art school briefly, who said, I don't understand why anyone, why no one takes seriously. And I said, I think it's the clown nose. That's a good line. Yeah. Especially since he didn't have one let us pause momentarily. Yeah. So you can throw things at me. And we will Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley, all about M off.com, thra.com. Having some fun on windows weekly, just Josh and you. It's a, it's kind of the kiss of death to admit in a group of geeks that you nod into star wars. I know, but oh man. Hey, I just wanna

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:41):
Be honest. I that's why I, no, I used to be afraid. You guys would have me do trivia shows like you used to do at TWIT because I'm like, you know what I write about tick, but I don't know any of those geeky yeah. Things you guys know. And I always feel like I need to hide it because I feel like you feel like, oh, you're not

Leo Laporte (01:21:56):
A real geek. We want you, we want you to be authentic. That's

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:00):
You know what I mean? Like people are like, wait, you've never like, I I'm like, have I even watched star wars? Like I guess I,

Leo Laporte (01:22:06):
I like one. I have friends who come to me and they say, look, listen, listen, you see this one? This is a comic book movie, but it's not like a comic book movie. Yeah. They always are. I'll go watch it. They always say that it's a, it's a freaking, they always say that comic, John who loves this stuff, he says, oh no, but you're gonna really love w division. Yeah. You just, it's not a comic book movie. It's a, it is literally a comic book movie. 

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:30):
Everyone has things they like, and don't like, peace.

Leo Laporte (01:22:32):
It's okay. Peacemaker. You're gonna love it. Yeah, sure. He is a superhero, but it's not a comic book show. Okay. Fine. No, now it's just a running gag. Like my friend's like, Hey, do you want to go see the new Batman movie? I heard it. Wasn't like a comic a movie. I get bad news for you, John. The guys's wearing a column and a Cape. I did get I printed when I was a kid by Superman and Batman, cuz my dad was a big DC comic fan. And so I did get, so I have a little more affinity for that stuff, but not enough to say, you know, they need to make more Batman movies. You know, that's what the world really means. I think they've made enough Batman movies. I think they've made too many Spiderman movies there. I said it let's just move on folks. There are other stories. I'll give you an interesting statistic. Spiderman, no way home grossed, more money than all 10 of the top Oscar nominated films put together easily put together, by the way, it was easily intent as good as any of those movies. So that makes sense. Yeah. And I, you know, so there are directors like Scorsese and Ridley Scott who are saying, you know, sure. Cinema might be dead because the only thing that's pulling people to movie theaters these days is somebody in tights with a Cape.

Leo Laporte (01:23:41):
Right, right. So more and more them are turning to TV, which is fine. Yeah. Because honestly some of that stuff is fantastic. Right. And you know what? I did like black Panther. I liked it a lot, but it, I

Mary Jo Foley (01:23:51):
Did too. I like that too. See there, you and I don't know. Yeah. So I didn't know nothing about the Marvel movies. You know, people like,

Leo Laporte (01:23:57):
See

Mary Jo Foley (01:23:57):
There's a Easter egg in there. I'm like I guys,

Leo Laporte (01:23:59):
I don't as a residence of New York city, is it bother you? How many times your city is destroyed these movies Like San Franciscos a close second. Can I tell you a little plot of

Mary Jo Foley (01:24:10):
Like a Gotham always rises again.

Leo Laporte (01:24:12):
They're always blowing up golden gate bridge. Why? Yeah. Gotham will always rise again. I like it. I like it. Okay. let's pause for a Bri a minute. And then the back of the book, we will start our back of the book with Paul Thurrott and our tip of the week, sir. Yeah. So Microsoft has shepherded this halo TV series to life it's on paramount plus they just renewed it by the way for season two, they did. Yes. which is incredible. Yeah. And if you have an Xbox game pass subscription or Xbox, it might be Xbox game pass. Ultimate actually I think it's yeah. You get a month of paramount plus for free. What an amazing perk. So I thought to myself, I have Xbox game pass ultimate. I will go to the site and get my free month courtesy of Microsoft. Here's the thing.

Leo Laporte (01:25:04):
Everybody gets a free month of paramount plus not a, you don't get an extra month. It's the same deal you get just by walking in off the street. So the problem with doing that is Microsoft's deal is only good through the end of may. But if you sign up for paramount, plus if time you gotta get a month free. So if you wanna watch halo, wait till it's done, then get your phone. Oh, then binge it thinking, because right now there's one episode out and they're putting it out once a week. Like it's Archie bunker in the 1970s. I have no idea why anyone would wanna watch a TV show like that today. We just wait, we just wait till they're all done. I would never watch. Never. No, I just, we wa we waited. I, this is a total tangent. I'm sorry. We waited until servant was to watch the season. Same thing. Yep. I hated it. It's still a crap show. Even if you watch it all at once, it's a crap show. Oh, it was terrible. What a terrible show. So frustrating people like can't stand terrible, but it had, it had such promise. Like it was, what are you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:26:05):
What is that? That's my R two D two hat. Oh, it looks like, is you wearing a Patriots hat? That's kinda, it is Patriots color. Isn't it? Yeah. I'm told that that's an art. I'm told it's an R two D two hat. I don't know. So whoever did a blind person, stitch, what is going, look, if you wanna knit something that looks like R two D two, wait, bend your head down so I can see the top of it. Oh, I have to rotate it. Burke is saying I'm not, I'm not wearing it. Right? That is that's. No, there's nowhere. That is not. It's got some, even like 2,600 rendition. I look more like I may, this may notd it is an R2D2 ad. Isn't it? Burke says this. Yeah. That's not, that's not, that's not good. Oh, well that's not a good one. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:26:55):
Anyhow. so I have two, two epics sort of last week I talked about screenshots. I use screenshot, as you may recall for this week I was looking at screen recorders. This is what you make a video of whatever's happening on the screen with the mouse curse and all that kind of stuff. I found something called well, I found the only thing. I think that's any good. It's called OBS studio. Oh yeah. This is the best. Yeah. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Absolutely. free open source, et cetera. Works fantastically. It's excellent. Yeah. It's what I used to stream my Val Heim prime time games. Oh, nice. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it works great. Also, I don't know, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, a long time ago. I mentioned that I would be bringing the WPF F windows presentation foundation, version of net pad to GitHub.

Leo Laporte (01:27:40):
I kind of procrastinated on that originally, just because I, it was all caught up in the stuff we were doing in Mexico and everything, but I finally got in touch with Rael and asked him if he would look it over first, cuz I just wanna make sure there's no obvious issues with it. This one is much cleaner than the windows farm version and is my favorite version of the app. So it is available on GitHub, if you would like to what's your GitHub code handle threat. So just github.com/t H U R R. Nice. There he is. This is the one to get, this is yeah, it's a good, there he is. And there's w F CS and there's WPF you say, yeah, you want the WPF WPF is the new one. Cool. So you do know how to use GitHub. I do.

Leo Laporte (01:28:23):
Oh, and I meant so. Yeah. So I was gonna say, so one of the reasons this took so long is because in, there are three things you have to do in visual studio to get. In other words, you, you clone a repository, you make changes to the source code. I did make some updates which I documented, you know, two, three weeks ago. And I couldn't there. Weren't showing up in GitHub and I couldn't figure out why. And it's because one of the, the is theres UI for two of the three steps, but not for the third step. And it's like, I, the, the, the GitHub thing in visual studio is just unbelievable. It it's horrible. Anyway, rap step me through it. So I got that done. So anyway, it's, it's all up to date. It looks good. It works well. I think it should scalable. Beautiful. How nice. And I thank you for making an open source, cuz I think a lot of people might start with my fork it and start with that and add features as needed Mary Jo away. Foray. I get yep. Mary Jo was definitely gonna add some feature.

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:21):
I'll be in there. I'll be in there working.

Leo Laporte (01:29:22):
She'll report it to the Xbox or something. Actually. Mary Jo, you can some

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:25):
Pull requests.

Leo Laporte (01:29:27):
Look at, look at her. Look at

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:28):
Me pretending. I

Leo Laporte (01:29:29):
Know something you, you actually could remove features as well. Oh

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:35):
Yeah. Even better. Yeah. What do you call that

Leo Laporte (01:29:37):
Same thing. Fork it pull request.

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:39):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:40):
Or are you are called out in the about box. You should download it just for that. Oh wow. Aw. Aw.

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:48):
Ah,

Leo Laporte (01:29:48):
That's so

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:49):
Sweet. Even though I don't use the app. That's cute. That's nice.

Leo Laporte (01:29:52):
Well, you inspired app. That's fine. You inspired

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:55):
Me inspired it. Good. That's okay. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:29:57):
It's speaking of inspiration time for Mary Jo Foley's enterprise, just pick the week.

Mary Jo Foley (01:30:04):
Great. So there's a Microsoft service called Azure front door that has existed for a while. It's a content delivery network, AKA CDN service that they have. And it's the service that they built for themselves to use for B Microsoft 365 link. And like a lot of Microsoft apps make use of this. Okay. So this week they sent me an email and they said, by the way, we just GA Azure front door. And I said, wait, this has existed for a while. And I went to the blog post and I realized they rearchitected Azure front door to make it a modern cloud friendly, the service. They a, they integrated in security as part of the service. They came up with two new pricing plans and now we've got three different things, all called Azure front door at Microsoft because we know Microsoft is a problem with naming things.

Mary Jo Foley (01:30:59):
So now there's Azure front door, the new service, the, it just came out. We have Azure front door classic, the one that already existed. And then the one before that Azure CDN from Microsoft classic. So yeah, there are three things now called Azure front door basically, or Azure CDN. They're under different pricing plans. They're under different licensing schemes. So you, you go look up Microsoft's blog post on the Azure blog. If you are somebody who needs or wants or uses an, an CDM service, especially if you want one from Azure, because there are multiple versions of this. Now the newest one of course is the best because has security built in better supposedly better, easy, easier saying I'll let people who use CDNs be the judge of that. But yeah, now there are three Azure CDN services gay.

Leo Laporte (01:31:56):
Yeah. And pick number

Mary Jo Foley (01:31:57):
I'm naming, naming what happened to you guys. It's very confusing.

Leo Laporte (01:32:01):
There's so few names that we've run out.

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:04):
Yeah, I know. Right. Okay. So I may have made this a pick a long time in the past, but there's a reason I'm making it the pick again. If you go on TWITtter at Azure end of life they also have a, an associated dashboard on GitHub and a newsletter you can sign up for. This is a really interesting service. It gives you a heads up on all the things that Microsoft is deprecating ahead of time. And you may be like, oh, how many things are they deprecating? A lot, especially lately, all the things, right? There's so many Azure services that are being deprecated and they're not being deprecated right away necessarily. You know, sometimes they give you a heads up of 2, 3, 4 years even. But just so you, if you're an it pro you need to keep track of this stuff because there's so many things being deprecated all the time around Azure. So yeah, I would say subscribe to Azure end of life on TWITtter and probably also subscribe to the newsletter. This is a really cool thing. It's from Tom Kirk Cove, who now works for Microsoft. He didn't used to work for Microsoft when he started this. But yeah, he's still keeping it going very useful for it. Pros who need to be in the know about what's ending when, in terms of support,

Leo Laporte (01:33:25):
Notion wanted to change depre to degradations. But I slapped, I slapped at this.

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:30):
You're like, no, no,

Leo Laporte (01:33:34):
That's, that's good. That's a good name for a blog degradation. Degradations. It is. Yeah. Deprecate the degradations degradations, a life story. You know, somebody Microsoft should really go talk to some people in the beer business because they are so good at names.

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:53):
They really are. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:33:55):
This one, I love the name. Although it doesn't, it doesn't sound like it would, it sounds like it tastes, you know what I'm saying? It sounds like it should be. Yeah. Kind of something grimmer.

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:05):
Yeah. So the brewery is grim. The beer is pink. P L I N K.

Leo Laporte (01:34:11):
Oh, I get it. So it's pink. It's pink. I get

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:13):
It. Okay. It's very pink like bright, fluorescent pink. It's made with hibiscus. That's what makes a and a little orange zest is considered a sour, but is very fruity. I feel like I had some this weekend and I'm like, this is a spring beer. This is like a beer you'd wanna have sounds good. And brunch on Easter. Right? It's it's very fruity. It's low a B like 5.7, this pretty low. Given how beers are these days? Very it's it's sour yet. Not so sour that it makes you pucker up. It's really, it would be a really nice beer for food.

Leo Laporte (01:34:51):
That color is making me pucker up. Like it, it looks sour. It's very pink.

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:56):
It's very pink, but it's more, I'd say it's more fruity than sour. It's very fizzy. It's, it's almost like a pink rose sparkling rose type thing. Oh, see, going

Leo Laporte (01:35:04):
On Paul, you would like that. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:06):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:35:07):
It's frozen. Yeah. In a slushy. And

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:10):
The reason, the reason I made it the beer of the week is I feel like March is about to end, you know, the saying March comes in, like a lion goes out like a lamb. So we're hoping it goes out like a lamb and we're ready for more spring beers and spring days and pink beers and all the good things about spring. It's an aspirational beer.

Leo Laporte (01:35:32):
I'm ready. I'm ready for some planking. Don't be drinking some and plank. Nice. Very nice plank is kinda like a, like a gun term. Isn't it like a, yeah. To me when I heard grim plank, I thought this is straight outta. This is like headshot. This is a hairy shooter right there in a nutshell. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:51):
Isn't plank also a piano sound like planking.

Leo Laporte (01:35:53):
The key. Yeah. That's why shooting. If you plank it cans. It makes, you know whether you're 22, it goes blink. So that's where the blink and shooting comes from. My friends, we are going to conclude this fabulous episode of windows weekly. But I hate to end it without thanking these two stalwarts. Paul Thurrott@Thurrott.com. His book, the field guide windows 10 is@lanepub.com or look for a GitHub commit near you. I just got the new book onto GitHub. So it's, it's getting there. Nice. Let's get in there. Good. It's getting there. Mary Jo Foley is is making pull requests right. And left at all. It's all about Microsoft.

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:40):
I'm just gonna do one in there just to like shock everyone in your

Leo Laporte (01:36:44):
CBA. What I don't, I think there should be more cats

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:49):
There. Enough cats

Leo Laporte (01:36:51):
Gub works very though.

Leo Laporte (01:36:54):
You'll find her work as Enet. It's all about microsoft.com together. They they, they join us every Wednesday 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM Eastern 1800 UTC. If you wanna watch us live@livedotTWIT.tv, you can also listen, live there's streams in both. But at that place you'll also get on demand versions of TWIT.tv/ww. There's a YouTube channel. And probably the easiest thing to do is just, you know, open up your pod catcher and subscribe. So you get it automatically. The minute it is available, we invite our members of club TWIT to stand up and take bow today. Because as you may have noticed, there were zero ads, which means this this show was brought to you. Thanks to club TWIT. Thank you, club TWIT. It's seven bucks a month, a free versions for everyone of all the shows. You also get access to the great club, TWIT discord, which is a lot of fun. Mary Jo, Foley's always in there having a good time with all the animated gifs. And I'm just glad she's abusing other people with these. Now I am.

Mary Jo Foley (01:38:03):
I like to abuse Paul with us too on

Leo Laporte (01:38:06):
Stuff. You know, you can put them in notion as well. If you're, or you know, or don't you or don't or not, or if you are not yet a member of club TWIT, and you would like to support what we do go to TWIT.tv/club, TWIT $7 a month it's month to month. So it's easy to cancel if you don't feel like you're getting your money's worth, but it really is a big help to us, especially on days like this. I really appreciate our club members. Thank you up TWIT. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Mary Jo. We'll see. Hey, by the way. Yes, I am doing an ask me anything tomorrow. Oh, I forgot to mention. Oh,

Mary Jo Foley (01:38:43):
Nice,

Leo Laporte (01:38:43):
Paul. What time is that? Paul noon at noon. My time probably you're 9:00 AM Pacific 9:00 AM year too. That is also something that we do live for club. TWIT members is one of many special events that we in club TWIT. It's gonna appear on the TWIT plus feed. If you can't be there at 9:00 AM. Pacific noon Eastern tomorrow. Thank you for doing that, Paul. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, no problem. I I'm glad you mentioned that. Cause yeah, that's one of the, I remember where I think for seven bucks a month, you get an awful lot, honestly. Yeah. And I, I know it not self-serving if I say that, but you know, none of that money goes in my pocket. So it really goes to operating expenses into developing new stuff, like our untitled Linux show in this weekend space and all of the stuff that comes outta club TWIT. So thank you at advance, TWIT.tv/club TWIT. See Paul tomorrow. Answer all the questions he refuses to answer for me, but Anne is more persuasive, I think. Wow. Yeah, I guess we'll thank you, Paul. Thanks, Mary Jo. Have a great week. We'll see you next time on windows weekly. Bye-Bye

Jason (01:39:53):
The world is changing rapidly so rapidly. In fact that it's hard. 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@TWIT.tv.