Windows Weekly Episode 775 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 has the day off. She's got jury duty. So it's kind of like old times, Paul and I will talk about a video that Microsoft released that is just making him ho and mad. And there ain't no one to bang the gong to slow him down. We'll also talk about some dev topics and there's a giant, an Xbox segment, of course, windows weekly coming up. Next Podcasts you love

TWiT Intro (00:00:28):
From people you trust. This is,

Leo Laporte (00:00:37):
This is windows weekly with Paul Thurrott episode 700 recorded Wednesday May 4th, 2022 shuffleboard at three windows. Weekly is brought to you by Intel orchestrated by the experts at C D w to deliver multi-layer security and remote manageability with the Intel vPro platform by 12th gen Intel core processors, learn more at cdw.com/intel client. And by Melissa poor data quality can cost organizations an average of 15 million every year. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Try Melissa's APIs and the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API sandbox. 24 7. Get started today with 1000 records, clean for free at melissa.com/twi and by thanks Canary detect attackers on your network while avoiding irritating, false alarms. Get the alerts that matter for 10% off and a 60 day money back guarantee. Go to canary.tools/twi and enter the code TWI and the, how did you hear about his box?

Leo Laporte (00:01:53):
Hey, Hey dozers. It's time for windows weekly and it's just like the old days. Mary Jo Foley has jury duty. She's on a Paul Thurrott is here though from Thurrott.com and his books@leanpub.com. And this is how the show was for many, many episodes. Just you and me, buddy. Hey Paul. Hey Powell. Hey buddy. Old Powell. It's good to see you. Yeah. You, so you said she got on a jury. Do you know, is it federal, is state, is it local? It's gotta be, I don't know. It's local. It's in New York. I know it's there. China it's D N Y <laugh>

TWiT Intro (00:02:31):
It's

Leo Laporte (00:02:31):
I think she's trying terror cases. <Laugh> yeah. I mean, if you live in New York and you're on a jury, you who knows it could be anything I, yeah, from a fender bender to you know, meanwhile here in PO Don, I was supposed to be on a jury duty as well. And I called the day before because they never, they sent me reams of paperwork, but nowhere did it say what time I had to be there never anything important. So I called 'em. I said, what's going on with this? And they said, oh no, you, you, you're supposed to call after five 30 and then they'll give you the exact instructions. And I said, okay. I said, and I had called that number, knowing this, not knowing that, that the time was tied to it. Just to hear what it was like. And I did notice that certain ranges of numbers were actually excused from jury duty.

Leo Laporte (00:03:11):
So while I was on the phone, you know, Mabel or whatever on the other end says, hold on a second, talks to someone in the room and says, actually, you don't have to show up tomorrow. We're not doing, we're not calling jurors tomorrow. Well, well thank you Mabel. They shoulda let you know. And then she put the, you know, the, the cord back in another hole and went onto the next <laugh> number. Please do it. This is the lo mace township three. Yeah, I know its it's something like that. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Well, good. I'm glad. I'm glad we have you no one wants to hear me talk about windows for two hours. It was, I, we had this weird, like what if we both somehow have jury duty? I think if I had done it, it would've just been the day. I don't think I was getting on the next big murder trial or anything like that.

Leo Laporte (00:03:59):
I will only, I've been called a few times, but I've only got on one jury. That was a federal case. Oh boy. And it was it was one of the, you remember Dateline had this to catch a predator series where they would set up a house and pretend to be teenage girls and try to lure people in. And there, there was a, they set up a house in Petaluma and, and then, so you would, you would come in, you would think you were, you know, the, the bad guy thought, oh, I'm hooking up with a 13 year old <laugh> you'd come in the door and there'd be the date line host saying, sure, have a seat. And the cameras in your face would like to talk. And so we, we saw the whole prosecution, the whole thing. We watched the videos, the whole, they set up the whole thing.

Leo Laporte (00:04:48):
I'm taking notes. It was, I think it was that took two weeks. Wow. Sitting in the jury, taking notes. Yeah. I'm taking it very seriously. Right, right. It all done. Right. Then go crazy. It's time for the defense judge comes out, says before the defense begins their case. I'd just like to say it's over <laugh>. I am. I have ruled that this is an entrapment and the defense asked for a summary judgment and I'm here by ending this trial. Thank you for your service. Bye bye. Yikes. So it's kind of a weird feeling, cuz you've been really work. You know, I, I, I took serious guy clearly. Well also did something. Yeah. But if you saw the whole story, I understand why the judge did what he did. The, it was, he was just kind of a, a dumb kid. He was thinking the coast guard and he, he, he remember, they use adults to pretend to be teenage kids.

Leo Laporte (00:05:45):
There's no teenagers involved obviously. And these adults act as they think, you know, so it's not the whole like Steve Bohemi in that movie. Like yeah. Hey fellow kids, Hey other kids. So <laugh> yeah. I think the judge did the right thing. To be honest with you. It was very much a TV show set up, you know? And I was kind of, I probably, I don't know what I would've done, but it's a little weird to go through two weeks of trial and then nothing, you know, you don't get any closure at all on the whole thing. And I did get my $15 a day though. So yeah, actually, so in my case, it would've been $9 a day. That's when I got nervous, it was $9 a day. But if I was there three days or longer, it started to be 25. See, there you go.

Leo Laporte (00:06:26):
And I thought, you guys, you have no idea what my life costs. It's not to make up for your loss. It's just was the gas money. Yeah. It's pretty much, it doesn't even that my lunch, it's not even money. Look, it's our civic duty. I was happy to do it. You know, I was very happy not to do it. Yeah. I, I know nobody, but this is why I was gonna be like, you don't have a, a trial in this country cuz the only people on the jury are people who couldn't, wouldn't smart enough to figure out how to get out of it. Yeah. And have time to kill and right. So that, that's why busy bodies. I felt like yeah, busy bodies or, you know, I that's why I was happy to do it. I think these are my civic dudes. I'm nervous enough about connectivity on this boat.

Leo Laporte (00:07:06):
You know, like being, being forced to, okay, wait a minute, sit in a room. Let me tell you right now, first of all, cruise that to do TV Paul and Stephanie and Lisa and I are going to Alaska, June 16th through the 23rd. There's still room. Please sign up. But there is no internet access. Paul. There's gotta be something. There is no in <laugh>. So what, there's an internet connection, but there's no internet when you're sailing around. Forget it. Now once we're in town. Yeah. You can use the 3g 4g 5g available. So bring you know all your phones <laugh> yep. Just so, I mean it is America we're in Alaska. So you know, but I don't know if Verizon T-Mobile, I don't know which one will work better. So, so bring whatever carrier you have as all that's gonna be. That's gonna be amazing. I am.

Leo Laporte (00:07:53):
I'm bringing a V Verizon T-Mobile and Google five phone and hope in one of those works, but that's gonna be your really pretty when you're on a cruise. You're the whole point is you're disconnecting from the world. See <laugh> I, I, I, are you, are you gonna be like, blah, are you gonna be posting and stuff? I mean, you can be working. I don't know. Well, I mean, look, I, the way I think of this is, you know, I do these homes shops, like in the summer I go away for three weeks. Right. I don't take three weeks off from work. I, I still, you know, yeah. I'm a writer. I know. I like to write, you know, I'd like to, even if I can't get online, I'm still gonna write it. Nobody says you can't write. <Laugh> just, you're gonna have to understand it when you get to town.

Leo Laporte (00:08:34):
But we're in 10, most days there's only so the, okay, so back in the 1990s, I would sit for hours in a Roman write and that content would sit on my computer and yeah, eventually it might head to a publisher, get a mode book somewhere the past. Yeah. For the past 20 years is whatever 25 years I write, it goes online. I write it goes online, you know? And you kind of get used to that. I don't know what you call it. They have internet Strat. Somebody's saying they have internet. I know they have internet <laugh> yeah. They just don't have any speed. Cause sure. It's it's basically 2000. I won't be doing live video I guess. No, no, no. It's 2000 people using a T1 basically. Sure. So it's, it's also 2000 people. Our crowd is all like tech people. Oh yeah. We're gonna have a hundred of us trying to watch YouTube.

Leo Laporte (00:09:16):
Yeah. And Netflix, how come I can't watch my Netflix, but yeah. I don't care about watching Netflix, but I would like to, you know, have you ever, have you ever been on a cruise ship before? No. Oh, okay. This is, you're a newbie. Yeah. Oh, well I'll have to give you the whole talk sometime. Is there like a, a towel snapping thing that has to happen? No, no, no, but there are some <laugh> no, no, no. You're gonna, you're gonna enjoy it. I think you are. No, I, I, no, I know. I am. I know it's very relaxing, very enjoyable. Beverage beverages flow freely. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but the internet is really, really, really, really though. You can get up if you get up in the morning before everybody else it's right. You know, or late, maybe late at night, you wanna use it when no one else is using it, I guess is the rule.

Leo Laporte (00:10:04):
And again, we'll be close to sure. A lot of the time. So this is like being at a CES hotel in the late nineties when everyone was, you know? Yeah. They have a killing the tiny connection. Yes. That's all they have. They have Inmarset they have a Marine in satellite. Yeah. And that's their internet. There are boats. We're not on one of 'em. I don't think. Well, maybe we are. I don't know, but I don't think we are that have high speed, like Royal, Caribbean. They have this thing called boom room and it's, it's pretty fast, but I don't think this, this will be like that. I think, I don't think itll be interest. This is gonna be hard for me, but I'll be I'll I'll get through, right? Yeah. Your state room has wifi. Scooter X wifi. Yes <laugh> but we cannot guarantee it's 8 0 2 11 B <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:10:50):
Yeah. We can have guarantee. I, I don't know if you have equipment that can even can connect to that, but you should think in terms of like you write offline and then you, then you upload it. Whatever. Yeah, no, I've, I've gone through this. I, I, you can email our stuff in <laugh> our first home swap in France in 2006 ish, the guy had some ancient, a DSL thing that was really far away and really slow. And I would batch, upload everything like that at night, you know, would go up on overnight. And when I got up in the morning, sometimes it was still going <laugh> you know, it was really slow. Yeah. Someday, you know, I mean, airplanes are starting to use Starlink. I wouldn't be surprised if ships starting to do something like that, but it's fine. But even in planes, it's hard.

Leo Laporte (00:11:32):
You go over water. Like we go to Mexico. Yeah. You have connectivity over land. But once you get over the water, you get nothing. So it's gonna be kind of like that. It's be, be spotty. I should have warned you. No you did. You've mentioned this many times. Okay. You've been very upfront about this aspect of it, but you've been in kind of in denial. The food will be good. <Laugh> the, the beverages will be good. The company will be good. And that's what matters. We're gonna have a good time. Is Stephanie excited? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's less concerned about connectivity. Yeah. Obviously she didn't care. <Laugh> she's not working. I hope, I hope she's not trying to work. No. I mean, I mean you and Lisa can get up at 6:00 AM. Yep. Go into the lounge. Sure. Cause Lisa doesn't rest 6k connection.

Leo Laporte (00:12:14):
Yeah. Yeah. Think of it like that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so there's a video from Microsoft. This is tough timing for me, Leo, because if Mary Jo was here, I feel like she could stop the insanity <laugh> but Mary Jo is not here. There is no gone. So I'm gonna do my best because I frankly, I've already ranted about this so much. I haven't seen it yet. Tell me about it. This is horrific. This is, should we watch it together? You and me? Yeah. Let me just prep it by saying windows 11 is mostly fine. Right? There are a lot of regressions. They've implemented a new start menu, a new task bar. They're not as full featured as the versions they replace. Yeah. And they don't give you a way to go back. It's just so if you're a, a power user or an experienced user of any kind and you have certain expectations, you know, there are things about windows 11, that what you'll find frustrating.

Leo Laporte (00:13:08):
Yeah. And you wanna believe in your heart of hearts, that there are people at Microsoft who, who really care about it. Yeah. And yeah, they're thinking hard about it. They're actually working on it. They they're teaming up and getting in rooms and working and they're they've solve, they're solving problems. And then you watch this video and it just makes you question everything that you think is important. Now let me just ask you ahead of time. This is not a tongue in cheek video that they're gonna play at or something. This is, I'm glad you asked that this actually plays very much like a college humor parody video. This is in fact, a real video from real Microsoft employees talking about how awesome the windows 11 start menu is. And if you can get through this without coughing something up, I'll be impressed. It's only a minute. So I'm gonna try horrific. Okay. Let's watch together.

Microsoft designer (00:13:52):
The process of designing is informed by research challenge of making sense of it.

Microsoft Designer 2 (00:13:56):
You come into a design problem. There's always a blind spot there. It's,

Microsoft Designer 3 (00:14:01):
It's really easy to design something that you like, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will work well for everyone,

Microsoft Designer 5 (00:14:07):
For us, we need to listen more than just do. There are a lot of questions that we were asking should start be left, align or center line should be a search box and start. Should there be an all apps list is start gonna feel familiar. He's

Leo Laporte (00:14:20):
Looking out the window.

Microsoft Designer 4 (00:14:21):
Let's let people tell us how they would want to put it all together. Here's a search bar. Here's the weather. Here's your documents. Here's your apps.

Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
Now you

Microsoft Designer 5 (00:14:29):
Tell us you lay those on the table. And it was really cool to see what all these different people were building. Like

Microsoft Designer 4 (00:14:33):
What order did they put them in? And you know, some people thought the weather was important, but other people wavered on that.

Microsoft Designer 5 (00:14:38):
And they were all a little bit different. But one thing that they had wave

Leo Laporte (00:14:41):
Not waved on that.

Microsoft Designer 4 (00:14:42):
Yeah. We always saw search files and applications together.

Microsoft Designer 5 (00:14:46):
They were creating designs. That match what we were already thinking about. And so that gave us a lot of confidence that we were on the right track.

Leo Laporte (00:14:53):
Who was, was she talking people she's not talking to anybody she's talking to the wall. This is scary. The designers were just talking to the wall. They weren't, they weren't what I just turned. There were no people in there just decide. And I, let me see if I can do this. I gotta, I dot the same post cuz looking up at something. I don't know what they at the wall. You're like, yeah, Leo, I don't use windows. But if I did <laugh> I would imagine that what would be important to me? <Laugh> I don't understand a lot, I guess. I have a hard time with this one. I'm wavering on the weather, honestly. I'm wavering on the weather. You know, we, we gave them pieces of paper until to arrange their perfect start menu. Of course they could only base it on the things we've given them.

Leo Laporte (00:15:35):
So right. It was kind of a preordained thing. <Laugh> here, here's the thing. So, so I, I, the, the look of the windows 11 start menu is pretty for sure. It is the most unsophisticated piece of software Microsoft has ever created. I keep using all the same examples, but there are two big sections pinned and recommended. If you delete a row of icons from pinned yeah. Or you delete 'em all. Cause you don't want any of them. The, the other thing doesn't fill in the extra space, it just leaves a hole. That's how dumb this thing is. It is really poorly designed with regards to start search by default, there are at least four ways to access start search in the UI. I you can turn you know, that stuff off laboriously, but you can't get rid of it entirely.

Leo Laporte (00:16:18):
I mean, you know, they almost put the weather in the start menu. <Laugh> like, what, what are you talking about? I, I just, I don't E this is, this is crazy. Like, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. These people don't underst and windows are people that use windows it's and I don't think they care, you know, was this like a summer intern project or something that you like, you gotta, I, I don't, I don't know. There's a new book that that just came out about apple. Yep. I tripped for it. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. After Steve, after I was a new one by Tony Fidel as well that came up the same. Yeah. I actually wanna read them both. Cause I think they'll have a different take. The subtitle, how apple became a trillion dollar company company lost its soul and lost its soul.

Leo Laporte (00:17:08):
Yep. And it seems, at least I've only read the excerpt in the New York times, but it seems that the center of this is Johnny ive, the designer becoming affronted. <Laugh> that the accountants, that's how he, I called them had been taken, taken over apple. Remind me what Tim cook is again. Yeah. So yeah, I'm not all the way through the book. That's accurate. Allegedly, it's also about Tim cook, but it's mostly about John the I right. And the close relationship he had with Steve jobs and how they connected on a certain level and how Steve jobs would never purposely lash out at Johnny I and how Johnny ive could skill or take jobs off of a cliff who was the only guy that could do it. And they created a bunch of special things together. I think it's fair to say on the flip side, I will say Johnny I've created and jobs created a sense of form of a function, which is something apple critics would point out, you know, this thing is arbitrarily thin, but now it doesn't work properly.

Leo Laporte (00:18:05):
Or he was the guy responsible. If the antenna thing on the, which went to town on about the unworkable butterfly keyboard, the mouse that had the charging port in the bottom. So you couldn't use it while I was charging it on and on and on. Yes. So this is very polarizing. I, there are people who idolized Johnny, I, there are people who can't stand that kind of pew, British videos. He was a brilliant designer. Yep. My takeaway is similar tos. This which is designers, overvalue, their contribution. They really that's right. That's right. And I, I will put this in the context of something that maybe Microsoft people will appreciate a little bit more I'm with you. A hundred percent of the Johnny I've designed thing at apple, I a hundred percent. We went through this with Metro and it started with windows phone seven series.

Leo Laporte (00:18:49):
And there was this weird thing where, and by the way, I know Metro dates back, you know, it was technically in zoom, the early version of media center. But with windows phone, seven, Microsoft came out and felt they had to over explain why this was so awesome because it, this was made by designers. And there's all this white space. Even, even though you have this tiny little 3.5 in screen where every pixel matters, we're gonna chop off a third of it, but don't worry. We know what we're doing. We know better than you we're designers. That's it. Metro is authentic. Metro is blah, blah, blah, blah. And the thing I finally came out with was like, you know what, if two things, if you have to explain something, this much you're wrong. Yeah. You're just wrong. Because design is obvious to anyone immediately. Even if they can't express why it's good design, people will pick up an iPhone and be like, wow, this is a beautiful thing.

Leo Laporte (00:19:40):
Why I don't, it's beautiful. The word design shouldn't design. Shouldn't come into your head at all. It just works. It's nice. I like it. You don't, it feels good. Right? The other thing is like people who talk too much about anything <laugh> those are the, those you, those the li the liars. Wait a minute. Right? Wait a minute. We do do a two hour podcast in which we talk necessly <laugh> no, no, no. I, well, I know, but you asked me a question. Yes. Paul, are, are you buying a place in Mexico? Yes. Yeah. That's the end of that conversation. You don't have to explain it. I don't say well, Leo I've spent many years investigating different. You don't go. I'm not yelling out the window. Here's how we, it's not a monologue. Here's how we thought about this. Right? Yeah. So I, the thing is, and then, you know, just general apple versus Microsoft kind of mentality, form of a function versus function over form, right?

Leo Laporte (00:20:26):
Microsoft has always approached things generally has approaching. So more of an engineering standpoint, engineer focused a lot of times you would see software developers or engineers creating the UIs, which, you know, I think objectively is a bad thing as well. You know, no doubt about it, but this is an example of Microsoft putting the, the, the, the form first, without really paying attention to the rich history of this UI, what people have done with it, what people expect of it and how they will react when things that they expect to be there are just missing. And their only response can be like, no, no, you don't understand. It's beautiful. <Laugh> it's like, no, you don't understand. The thing is a tool <laugh> it needs to work. You know? And it does, obviously it basically works. I mean, it does the basics, but like, you know, as I pointed out serious regressions and, and just immature kind of unsophisticated, lack of functionality that it seems more like a prototype than a shipping product to celebrate this.

Leo Laporte (00:21:28):
And these people in this video to me is an insult to the one point, whatever billion people that use windows. No, but you don't understand. We had, we had to make it like this. We thought a long time, you don't understand. That's kind of the, you don't don't understand. You don't understand it is the, it is the subtext. And, and it really, like I said, it reminds me of the trust stuff. I really recoiled against this. When I loved windows phone, I was immediately on board with it. But the more Albert Sherman that design team came up, blah, you know, just like talking about, I was like, what are you talking about? Like they, and, you know, inevitably, and this will happen with the start menu. Inevitably. They had to give up on all their white space design nonsense, because everyone complained about it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:22:14):
And it's like, okay, we can fill the screen now. Like you wanted you pedestrian. So ugly. Yeah. <Laugh>, you know, what's wrong with see Android, that's fine. I don't care. You know, like it's just, and this will happen with the start menu will happen with the task bar, you know, is 11. People are gonna complain. People are gonna complain. <Laugh> people, businesses are not gonna upgrade. And they'll ask why, and they'll be like, cuz you ruined it. Like what? You know? And eventually they'll be like, okay. And you know, I'm not saying we're gonna go back to windows 10. I don't mean it like that, but they will make concessions over time. That's how this happens, you know? And I, I to sell, but again, make a video like this is, so this is Steven Parker from Neo N wrote this. I don't mean to quote from him and not give him credit.

Leo Laporte (00:22:56):
Cuz he was the first he, he was where I actually found out about the video described it accurately as tone deaf. And yes, that is that's exactly what it is. It's tone deaf. You, you're not reading the room. You, you don't seem to understand the, at the people who care about windows enough to watch this inci video of the very people you have insulted by making this video, you know, it's it's we made it for you. <Laugh> yeah. Yeah. Look, you may not understand why this is good, but you know, suck it up. You'll get, you'll get there eventually. Yeah. It's a higher plane of existence. You just don't understand it. It's like, yeah. It's someone doesn't understand something. Well there's so there's design. I, and I love good design. I love designers. Yeah. Yeah, they are. They do as a rule.

Leo Laporte (00:23:40):
I think they overvalue what they do and they really look down their nose at non designers for the most part. Yeah. But that's a, so there's a designer and then there's UI experts who I think are kind of somewhere in between engineers and designers, but they focus on UI people like Jacob, my son was trained in this, you know, there's, there's an emerging study that is between programming and design. Yeah. And involves aspects of psychology. Yes. It involves accessibility. Yes. It involves all this different it's it's that thing I was talking about. You don't let the engineer design the UI. You have to have an understanding of the wide variety of people in the audience and what their needs and the expectations are. Yes, that's right. And, and, you know, anyway, that's great. This was not something that was available to me growing up as a sort of course of, we didn't understand this stuff back then, but you know, I <laugh>, I just, again, I don't, it's hard for me not to just, I, I, I find these PE the, their whole presentation style to be so frustrated bad for them.

Leo Laporte (00:24:40):
I mean, yeah. They honestly, probably these people have their heart and the right place they're trying to of do a beautiful, workable, usable new windows. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> honestly, the, there was a heavy burden on them because the only thing that changes in windows 11 is the design that's right. Well, here's the thing though, Leo, there are decision makers at Microsoft who stand between them and the customer <laugh> see. So they can come up with their little fruity designs and blah, blah, blah, whatever. But someone with a brain in their head should have said is anyone concerned? This thing doesn't do this stuff that used to people expect, and it's a balance, you know, the, yeah, there's a balance and it got, it got pushed through. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I feel the same way about windows 11 that retroactively writing this article series I've been doing, I feel about windows eight, which is that if they had given this thing one more year and actually engaged in feedback and found what do users re here's the thing we were gonna do, but tell us what you need, you know, with windows eight, what you eventually got was windows eight, one update one or windows 8 1 1, which is you can have the start menu.

Leo Laporte (00:25:45):
If you want, there's a start button, just kidding. You know, we brought all that stuff back. You know, you, you would've gotten to a system that was a little Sanner than the, in the stupidity that they put out as 8.0 and you know, windows 11, that thing was in testing for three months, no one had any chance to provide feedback that actually made its way into the product that's happening this year. This is, there was no reason to ship this thing in October, you didn't meet the holiday season. You're not helping PC makers. Nothing happened. There was no benefit to it. You know, when they could have used it is this year because PC sales are not gonna skyrocket this year. Like they did during the pandemic. And, and maybe a new windows, 11 version that actually meets people's needs would been exciting and might have triggered some upgrades.

Leo Laporte (00:26:30):
You know, I don't know why they did what they did. I don't, I think it's apocryphal Henry Ford or somebody said, if I had asked what my customers wanted, they would've said a horse, but there's gotta original sea jobs. I got it. Yeah. But this is not, listen. We're not, we're not inventing something new. We're upgrading something that has tried and true and has been, is the central point of productivity for billions of people. Every single that's true. This is a new, we're not looking for. We don't need star shapes, screens. We don't need orbs flying in the sky. This is productivity. This is basic stuff. I don't mind it. I honestly, I like the way windows 11 looks. I do think it's, pretier more attractive. However you wanna say it. The windows 10 really it's, it's nice. I don't mind it, but the problem is everyone has this thing, you know, whatever it is I was talking about this.

Leo Laporte (00:27:19):
Everyone has their thing. And you know, for me, it's right. Clicking on the tab and it's, I still do it, even though I know the answer to the problem and I can't get to task manager. And I'm like where? And I do it every day. Every it's hard to overcome. What for me must be 20 years of muscle memory, you know? And we've gone through there's, like I said, windows eight did the same thing. And windows say actually was Cal categorically worse. I mean, windows eight was full of undiscoverable UIs with no help whatsoever to help you discover them. And people would accidentally click something and a UI would appear and like, oh my God, what's that. And then it would disappear. And they had no idea what they did and they couldn't get it back. And, you know, windows eight was like a categorically, like I said, worse than windows 11.

Leo Laporte (00:28:01):
It's not even close, but you know, it's 20, 22. This is what we're dealing with. You, you know, what they're chew, trying to do is, is hard. It's a hard thing to do. And you can ask to do it. What are they, why are they doing it? Well, that's the question? Do they need to what's that's right. I mean, so I, I think we keep going back and forth earth in this, you know, one of the things that we thought and it made sense was if we make the UIs of things similar, they'll be easier to use. Microsoft did this back in the 1990s, I think with office, you know, word six, Excel, five, whatever that was where they made the top level icons and the toolbar and the menus all the same. The idea was if you, to word, you knew where things were, you could turn on Excel or PowerPoint or whatever, and things would be in the same place.

Leo Laporte (00:28:49):
You'd be like, oh, look, I, I know how to use this application. What we learned late. That sounds like it makes sense. It doesn't make any sense. That was based on any research. People actually can adapt to different UIs and different places and do different things. And they're fine, it's, it works fine. For some reason, here we are with windows 11 and we're like, well, this new start menu, it looks a little bit like you're you know, the screen on a phone, you know, it's like, it's thin you can't resize it. You know, it, it like which people might want to do. You can't change how the icons appear. Like if what you have in each section or whatever it's like a phone, you know, you're like, yeah, it's like a phone except I'm music, a 29 inch screen. I don't, that's horizontal, not portrait.

Leo Laporte (00:29:24):
And I don't need this thing to be like a phone. I'm not that dumb. You know, like I'm not, which doesn't touch the screen. Like I don't, are we really just doing the same mistakes over and over again? Which is the Microsoft Terry <laugh> I guess, you know, writ large. I don't know. I think we are anyway. I hope I didn't ran too much on this topic, but I, I just, I can't, I just it's so frustrating. The thing I will say, actually I may add one more thing. Just, this is just about me really is I overreact to things. I dunno. You probably never noticed that. And you know, when you overreact to things, there's only a couple of possible outcomes, right? Unfortunately, I married a woman who is used to the way I am and she'll, you know, sometimes I'll react to something she'll be like, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:30:06):
The reason they did that is, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And you're like, oh yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So that works with you deescalate immediately. I'm not an insane, well, I am insane temporarily. So I'm not insane person I've learned not to say, which is one is calm down. Not to use specifically, but just in general, calm down does not work. Yep. Never works. That's true. I am. Of my general temperament is to always try to understand from the other side and say, well, there's a reason. And do what your smart wife does that had in my relationships has not worked <laugh> right. Right. But, well, I, yeah. Would say if you look at, there are two sides of argument and one of the're the guy freaking out and this other ones, like a com Zen, Buddhist guy, Theen Buddhas guy never really wins.

Leo Laporte (00:30:50):
Right? Like, no, no, he's not. No, no Noss not he's too cool. He's too calm. Yeah. The Lisa says, you always do the devil's advocate thing. And I said, well, you're right. Okay. So, yeah, but you know, so times Leo though, if you freak out on something, here's the thing, like in this case, I may, whatever anyone thinks of the way I reacted I'm right. I think you are right. Like, I think you're here we are. It's no, it's a week later. Yeah. I have had time to digest this. I've had time to think about that way. I react, reacted to it. Yeah. A week later it still makes me mad. I'm still right about this. Like objectively what these people did is terrible. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. It's not good to overreact. I don't mean it like that. But in this case, I feel like it was warranted.

Leo Laporte (00:31:35):
Yeah, no I, and yeah. I'm, I'm in agreement with you. I really am. Yeah. The only thing I say is this is a hard thing to do and <laugh>. Yeah, but why do then why do it then? Why do it okay. Actually, okay. Let me answer my own question. The reason you do it is windows 10 had the vestiges of that tile based UI that started in windows eight. And when you think about what live tiles were, the point of them was to provide you with attic glance information. So you do didn't have to go into an app. You could see what your most recent email was, maybe what a social media post was photos or the weather, whatever. And it's, it's a good idea in general. And it makes sense on mobile devices, you know, you pick up your phone, you look at the screen, you're like, oh, look at that.

Leo Laporte (00:32:18):
That's nice. I don't have to go into the app on apple is a little red one. It says, oh, I've got in the app. I guess I gotta go in the app. You whack the, all you go in the app, you look at it, you deal with it. Whatever. So on a phone, I feel like the live tile thing made lots of sense when they tried in windows eight to do a full screen thing where that was what was on the screen. So it was there. You could see it at, you know, they tried to make it make sense. They gave up on that. Cuz everyone hated it. Windows 10, they stuck it in the menu. It didn't make any sense. Nobody used this stuff. Here's the challenge. Stop supporting it. Here's the challenge. I mean, I guess in an ideal world, you'd make it completely customizable and then people can do whatever they want.

Leo Laporte (00:32:56):
The problem with that, of course, is that a lot of work and nobody, nobody wants to do it. So then you do what apple does does, which is say, well, instead of giving you a hu, Apple's the least customizable user user system. I know. Right. And instead they just say, well, we're gonna figure out what the best way is and that's how we're gonna do it and you're gonna enjoy it. Right. And if you can get yourself into that lobotomized state, you know, like honestly, no, this might be who use windows and Android cuz they wanna have some choice. No, there are things about the iPhone. I really like, I mean, even UI things where like for example Android and windows phone had this have, or had this concept of all apps. You could, you, you pin things to a home screen, but your, all of your apps are somewhere else.

Leo Laporte (00:33:43):
So what you're seeing is a, like a curated view of the stuff that's most important. But when you want to get to other stuff, it's in this list on the iPhone, everything was just on the screen. That was EV that was the, all the apps, all apps on the, on the screen. People like, well, you know, it's a few years have gone by have hundreds of apps. It's hard to navigate around. We'll give you folders. Here you go. You got folders. You can organize. It. Took them a decade. Yeah. Yeah. It took them. But that doesn't solve the problem. And so finally with I dunno, a couple versions ago, they released this interface called what's it called? I know what it's called. It's sort of their version of all apps. You scroll to the right. Yeah. Yeah. And you let, you can now hide icons.

Leo Laporte (00:34:16):
The only appear this thing. It's a weird view. It's its, I'll just, I use it an apple show. I never use it. I use I, so it's called apple library. So I actually do kind of use it, but here's, what's weird about it. First of all, the default view is like these windows, phone looking tile, icon, things that apple does either. You have no choice in the matter if you want to, if you it's so weird, I's the weirdest. See why, if you wanna see the all apps list you have to swipe down and then you have to swipe up to get rid of the keyboard and then you have to swipe down to go. It's like the stupid it's so apple, it makes no sense. But you know, as I, as I, as I descend into this matrix, like serenity about the iPhone, I find myself just accepting it.

Leo Laporte (00:35:01):
Like, yeah, I kind of like app library now. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Cause you have no choice cause you have no choice. You need the smell. Honestly. Linux has every, you can make it look any way you want from text on a black screen to all sorts of, you know, stuff. And the main of some sense. Yeah. The main plane people have about Lennox is I have to fuss with it too much. I had someone argue to me on Twitter that windows 11, having fewer customizations actually made sense from a support standpoint. Yes. Because they know what you're gonna have. They know what you're, they, they always know what's gonna be on the screen. Cause it's always, you move your mask to the lower left corner or whatever. Yeah. We hit a woman in our HOA recommend that everyone in my neighborhood get the same color mailbox, same reason.

Leo Laporte (00:35:49):
<Laugh> and it's like, I, I guess <laugh>, I'm actually trying to understand what the point of that one. We want a nice homogenized understand the point is they're like they actually believe this. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So anyway, I, yeah, maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle, but anyway, with windows 11, they had live tiles were going away. So, you know, we're not going back to the windows seven star menu. Right. So I guess they took this opportunity to say people are using mobile devices a lot. Maybe we'll make it look like that. It's a hard thing. I'm sure <laugh> I guess I don't know that the first iteration of any of these things, you're gonna get all these complaints. They know that, and then you can slowly tune it to get it closer to what people want. Right. Yeah. Assuming that's what happened, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:36:38):
Right. So what we've gotten so far has not been encouraging. Right. with the task bar, for example, a very small percentage of windows users on windows 10 or older will move the task bar to the right or left or to the top. A very small percentage makes the icon sizes. Different sizes makes them smaller. Very small percentage used toolbar us of any kinds. That was a feature that existed until now. So the windows 11 start, start, I'm sorry. Task bar is brand new. Doesn't do much. <Laugh> it's, it's a slab of whatever it is. I don't know. Doesn't have a lot of options, you know, I don't mind it for the most part, but well, except for the right click thing, right. If you write click windows 10 or any older versions is you're gonna see like 25 options. You right.

Leo Laporte (00:37:20):
Click when and windows 11, you get one. Yeah. And I'm, so that's a choice they're making maybe the be happy medium. They're taking people who are used to a more customizable environment. Yeah. And putting 'em more in the Mac kind of, you know, no customization and that's as changing expectation and it hurts. It hurts. It burns. Yes. so the good, so on the Mac, as you know the big solution there is to get third party apps that can customize things for you. Right. They system can't do a lot though. Yeah. I, you know, I mean your menu bar, for example, like folder, folder colors is a typical example. Okay. You can do some reason folders in a, on the macro, like blue, like whatever. Like you can make him any color you want. That's fine. Yeah. It's kind of weird that you can't, you know, so I, I the, the, the next story, I think, let me just look at the list to make sure this is true.

Leo Laporte (00:38:11):
My, my tab is before, before you get to the next story, we're gonna take a break. So, right. But I just wanna say actually speaks to a future where third party will be able to take advantage of new capabilities to make this thing more customized. I guess that's the way to do it, to present to people, a monolith interface interface, and then say, if you really care, there are ways to customize it, but you don't need to. Yeah. Microsoft, Microsoft doesn't support it. It removes a layer of training necessity and yada, yada like an organization might say, yeah, we wanna buy this third party utility because this does this thing we want, but we know it's not coming from Microsoft. You think that's where they're headed. That that's like really what they want to do. No, I just T drew that little connection to my head as we were talking.

Leo Laporte (00:38:58):
I don't, I don't actually think that's where they're heading. <Laugh> but, but, but it, it, it is. You'll see, we'll go get to that. It's it's a possibility. All right. I wanna take a little break and we will, we'll talk more. Mary Jo Foley has the day off. I hope she's enjoying the exciting trial, which is, it turns out is a lawsuit about making all your mailboxes the same color. So it's, it's like she could have benefited for this conversation. Wouldn't that be funny? The worst thing you can get is on a civil suit. Oh my God. So funny. No. The worst thing you get is someone did implement that mailbox thing and then someone killed someone else cuz they were so mad. No, but that's what you want. You want a murder? <Laugh> that's always much more interesting. Just, just trust me on that.

Leo Laporte (00:39:41):
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Leo Laporte (00:40:59):
And when you're in control and secure life is better. Isn't it? You can relax because with Intel's vPro platform powered by 12th generation Intel core processors, your teams will be more productive and power through disruptions, letting you and your business focus on other things for secure remote management and security trust Intel VePro and it orchestration by C D w people who get it, or should I say people who get it learn more at cdw.com/intel client C cdw.com/intel client. We thank CDW and Intel so much for their supportive windows weekly. On, we go with the show, Mary Jo out, but that's good because it means we get more Paul, I will say this, this is an absolute coincidence. And I know we've been trained to think coincidence is conspiracy now, but there's a lot of Xbox in this today. <Laugh> just completely by chance. No, it's completely coincidence.

Leo Laporte (00:42:04):
It really is coincident. Yeah. Yeah. Just by chance. Well, let's throw it out there. Let's start with the, a new insider at dev and beta bill. Right? So last week I, they did this later in the week, maybe even on Friday, but Microsoft did release a new build and they released it to both the dev and the beta branches. And same build. Now the, the big news to me is the watermark is gone. Right? And that means they're getting ready to finalize this thing. That's kind kind of interesting. So this is what we think of as windows 11, version 22 H two, right? The, the second version of windows 11, not a lot of new features in this build. In fact, I find this sentence to be really weird. This is how Microsoft described it near that little TLDR, this build introduces some new group policies for it, administrators and an update to the family safety widget.

Leo Laporte (00:42:56):
<Laugh> it looked like two, okay. Two things that have nothing to do with each other, but normally I wouldn't care too much about new group policies for it, administrators. But then I looked at the list and I thought, this is interesting. And this is what I was talking about earlier. When I said this speaks to the ability of third party utilities to give you like a one whack approach to making these customizations. So for example, you can disable the quick settings, fly out. This is that new interface. That's very similar to what you see on ChromeOS on the Mac with the little, you know, quick settings for volume and brightness and all that kinda stuff. Yeah, yeah. That, I didn't know. You could customize it. I felt like it was built into the hardware. No, no, this is you can disable it. Oh, even better of it.

Leo Laporte (00:43:35):
Yeah. Oh, I like that disabled the notification center and the calendar flyouts this is what used to be called action center. Disable all task bar settings, which is crazy, cuz is kind of only one really disabled search across start and task bar. That's actually very interesting to me. I hate search hide task view, which is something you do manually now block customization of the pinned area and start interesting hide recommended disabled start context menus, meaning when you right. Click the start menu and then hide all apps and start. Now, this is, these are, these are interesting. Now these are obviously aimed at businesses and the idea here. So you have to have the pro version and, and group policy editor or <affirmative> well, that's the thing. So technically, if this is a like a, I think it's just a registry policy, a registry setting.

Leo Laporte (00:44:24):
Exactly. So this is something that third party utilities could do for you if that's what you wanted. So, or you could, you know, the Wolf people will find the, the registry keys and give you this access. So yeah, on pro or higher, you could go into the local group, admin or local group policy command center or command center control center and control panel. Geez. I'm losing my brain and do make and find these settings, but the registry settings and, or they will be, and that suggests to me that third party utilities can make these changes and they'll probably be more coming down the pike as well. It's very, it's interesting. These are, these are interesting choices, you know they, this is, and it's, you know, in some ways it's like if you thought windows 11 was like, kind limited now <laugh> you, could, you, you can, you can actually, no, I mean, you could, these could be used to make it even more limited.

Leo Laporte (00:45:13):
Is it interesting? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what it always wants to do, right? Lock it down. Yep. Yep. Can you still do downloadable little registry double, you know, that you double click and they modify the reg, so somebody could on their page. You yes. Could you say, I just want to do this or you could have a, you're the five things I want to do. It's a script. You run it. Those changes. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Every time I install windows, I install a registry key like this, I don't like a little registry script basically that disables the cap lock key. Yeah. Cause I'm a, I'm a, and I'm thing. Do you know? No, no. First thing I do, I turn into control role. Right. So you could have a, a, a, a file, one file or a set of files mm-hmm that had all those settings mm-hmm so you don't need group policy edit and it could be windows home, not just windows pro that's.

Leo Laporte (00:46:05):
Right. So somebody's gonna come along and do that maybe. And if you're a power user and you know, like, look, I know I'm gonna bring this machine up and I don't want these three things. You can have one little script. Yeah. You know, it's funny that used to be, maybe this is kind of windows is changing a little bit to be a little bit more like for normal people, cuz it used to be, there was this, there were, you know, whole blog posts with these settings and lots of little ways you could change the registry and stuff like that. And I feel like that is less of that. Is that? Yeah. Well, like I said, so windows 11 was kind of rushed out, right? So windows 11 kind of appeared. I, I I'm sure there was some number of group policies that administrators could set at that time.

Leo Laporte (00:46:44):
But this very clear, very clearly to me is they've gotten feedback. This is not something Microsoft just came up with. Right. Like right. I like clearly businesses have said, okay, you have some UIs that my users are gonna find confusing. And I gotta be honest. I don't want them screwing around with this stuff. Can we disable that? You know? And I think that's what I think that's what we're seeing here is those capabilities. But like I said, I just drew, I didn't think of this, like days ago as we were talking, it occurred to me, you know, these customizations would be interesting four third party utilities, you know, like we know we talk a lot about StarTalk and star 11 and but you know, whatever, you could have an individual could write a, a little UI that has, you know, a customized windows 11 or whatever.

Leo Laporte (00:47:26):
So I think we're gonna see stuff like that. I like that, you know, suddenly this is why it was good that I bought this Dell because now I'm paying attention again to all of these things for a while. I was just right. Just ignoring it. But for instance, that cap, I, I hesitate to mention this to you, by the way. Uhoh you, you had mentioned that the Dell XBS 13 did not come in a, it does now. It did the, the day after ordered it. Well it's okay. So you saw this, so this is the weird new version it's called with like a, I didn't want the track bar that touch bar. Okay. That's the only way you can get 12th general. No. As soon as I ordered <laugh> the 15 we talked about, I swear to, I stood up, walk away front of my phone and I was like, huh, this minute, of course.

Leo Laporte (00:48:09):
Should I tell 'em? And I'm like, no, that's my story of my life. But I, but I had seen, I knew from CES that they were going to ship this 12th, gen SPS 13, what's it called? It's like SPS 13 max or new, it's got some name. This is well, there's some name to it. It's a different name. Yeah. I mean, it's cool. But I knew I didn't want the we, so there there's no track pad. It's just, you have to kind of know where it is. <Laugh> well, this, yeah. It's and, and there's a, instead of the function key, there's this touch bar, like apple that accept, but that stuff's always worked out. Great. People love those. Yeah. Because you hit it by accident all the time. So unlike apples, it doesn't stand out. It's just looks like it's part of the metal part of the machine.

Leo Laporte (00:48:51):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm actually intrigued by it. I love my XBS 13. I love these machines. I would personally get a 15, I'm thinking the bigger screen. Yeah. Yep. It's the gorgeous, the bezels like nonexistent there. Yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Yeah. It's really neat. Where do they put the camera on these though? It's at the top. It is at the top. They still that a few years ago. Yeah. I mean, it's a garbage, it's not the nose. Yeah, no, no, no. They fixed that. Well, it'll go very well with the poor bandwidth on the cruise ship. So <laugh> that's right. You look so horrible. Are you calling from world war II? What am I looking at? I am calling from the past keep turning the generator.

Leo Laporte (00:49:36):
Microsoft edge now has they, you know, I love how they've taken edge, a simple clean browser and made it a Christmas tree of features. This one's a yeah. Good one. Yeah. I think this one, I will say of the kind of end user features they're adding to edge. This is the first one I've been like, oh, okay. And you see this in other browsers, you know, opera does this, et cetera. What is this's said yet? Oh, so I'm sorry. Right. Sorry. You can't read my mind guys. <Laugh> so Microsoft edge is getting a, a built-in VPN at some point in the future. Is it like a real VPN or is it like what I Apple's doing with the kind of private relay? Yeah. So it's not completely clear. And I can't test yet. I actually specifically downloaded dev to see this on two different machines.

Leo Laporte (00:50:20):
It's, it's, it's one of those things that kind of comes eventually. So it's not on either of my PCs. Oh, okay. It will appear in that settings and more menu toward the bottom. Here, the thing it's, there's a lot of questions. First of all, I'm curious, you, you're adding a VPN to a browser, which I sort of get, but then I think, well, why don't you just add this to the operating system? You know, I, I think a, because when I, like, in other words, the reason I would use this is, is, well, I guess there are a lot of reasons, but let's, let's just make something up. Even though I know this doesn't technically work very well. I'm in Mexico. I wanna watch Netflix. I wanna watch my us Netflix, actually, they block this, but let's just pretend this works. So I use a VPN of some kind express V you know, VPN, whatever.

Leo Laporte (00:51:02):
Yeah. I, the realistically, what I really want from a VPN is a VPN that works with this one thing, because most of the time, I, I, I want, you can do that. I think you can assign, you could say when I run this app, I want the VPN to launch. Yeah. And that, but that's an OS function, right. Or an OS level function. Like I, that's not, I mean, this is like very specifically websites, you know? It's you know, you can talk it on and off there also. So a question around this notion of the amount of data you're gonna use. So the documentation for it says that Microsoft will give you a free gigabyte of VPN data for lack of better term every month. Doesn't say anything about what happens when you go over. It doesn't say anything about whether you can get more pay for more Uhhuh <affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (00:51:45):
If you have Microsoft 365 paid account, will that part of it, or whether they give you a higher limit, you know, there's no, it's just, they're just starting to test it. So we don't really know. But I think the first thing, I think first, when I see this, I think good. Okay. Here's an interesting feature. Good. I'm glad to see that. But then I, you know, you kind of think past it and you're like, well, I almost wish this was like a windows 11 feature, you know obviously by putting it into works across platforms, but I think this needs to be an OS OS. I think that's how apple did it. It's not a full VPN, but the fact you can't do the Netflix thing with it, but you want, you wanna do the you know, you want a list where you say, look, I, yeah, I want it on all the time for everything.

Leo Laporte (00:52:26):
Or I want it on all the time for everything except for this and this. Or I want it off all the time, but I wanna use it for this, you know, maybe you're using like a financial service or something or whatever it might be. I don't know. So I, I have questions basically. But it's early it's, this is not shipping and stable, you know, it's not out yet, but but it's coming. So we've seen this it's in dev, so it's interesting what be on now a six week, six week, four week. Are they, it's a third party VPN they're using or are they doing their own or I have, no, I can't see it. I don't know. You don't know? There's not a lot of information about it. Well, we'll find out more when it happens. Yeah. But it's coming. It just well, it's, I should say they're using CloudFlare on the back end.

Leo Laporte (00:53:08):
I mean, I, I, but I mean, Microsoft built, I'm sorry. They're using cloud. Yeah. So I believe Microsoft built the, okay. Okay. Yes. So it might be a limited, more limited kind of a VPN, more like one or cloud CloudFlare relay or something like that. Okay. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> speaking of edge, we're number two, we're number two, also asterisks only on desktop. So <laugh> yeah, of course. Well, no, I mean, you know, cuz Chrome's number one on Android, Safari's number one on iPhone because that's right. So if you look at overall or if you look at mobile Chrome safari, right? That's the whole world, if you look on desktop, it's a lot more nuanced. This is Chrome, basically. I mean, everything else has 10% or less. The interesting things to me here are a, that is Sur did surpass safari in the desktop.

Leo Laporte (00:53:56):
I know that doesn't sound like a big deal, but honestly that's pretty good for edge. I mean, just to the context of edge also double digit usage share, right? It's a at 10 point something 10 very low. It surpassed 10% for the first time. It's been, I mean, if you look back, let's see what it says a year ago. Isn't that funny? So what is, what is Chrome then? Is it like 99? No 60, no, 67, 60 7%. All right. What you have at the bottom is browsers like safari Firefox and opera and then other right. That are all single digit. Oh, well edges now 10%. But you know, a bunch of little things at the bottom safari as number three, used to be number two because that's default, you know? Yep. And the edges default. Yeah. But you know, but, but edge was default windows 10, the old edge.

Leo Laporte (00:54:45):
Remember the kind of IE based version of edge for lack of a better term tried base version of edge. And that did really poorly, it was horrible. And you know, them make basically an on chromium. It it's, you know, honestly it's taken longer than I would've thought, but it seems like it's finally starting the pay off a little bit for 'em. So it's a good browser. I, I wish we had policies for edge. We could get rid of all the up. Like, I don't want collections. I don't want vertical tabs. I don't want, you know, whatever. I wish I could turn that stuff off too easily and have it stick, you know, that kind of thing. Like have it persist, but we don't do that anymore. Do we? We don't persist things. No, because life is a constant moving river, <laugh> it sure is.

Leo Laporte (00:55:24):
Yeah. And so as you, and so a brass that was a big windows, a feature we're gonna sync, you know, you're gonna get your same lock screen. You're gonna get your same desktop background. I remember that was a big deal. In fact, that was your advice that, that I followed when I set up my that's so good, so good windows machine. I made my Microsoft account and I got all the settings in there, the way I wanted it. And then I logged in and the machine was that way and it was very cool. It's nice. All my machines. Right. The only thing I'd like is that the desktop started sinking and I didn't want the same wallpaper everywhere, you know? Yeah. You had to, if you were quick, you could get into settings. If you knew where to go and you could turn it off before you could do that first.

Leo Laporte (00:56:01):
I don't want that wallpaper now. I do. I just do Bing everywhere. Yeah. Bing, wallpaper, everywhere. I got a big banner when launched Firefox this morning version 100, they had fireworks. They had party hats. Yep. Chrome a hundred came out and I think 1 0 1 and now it's edge 1 0 1 mm-hmm <affirmative>. So they're following the Chrome numbering, I guess edges. Yeah. Edge. Well, you know, edge is based on chromium. They they're, they've adopted both the versioning and the release schedule which, you know, whatever that makes sense. I mean, these things happen so fast when a new version comes out. It's, they're not always monumental anymore. I mean, in, in the past they used to be a little more significant, but as this thing gets faster and faster, obviously starts to change. It's funny. Actually, I mentioned I wish I had extensions for edge there.

Leo Laporte (00:56:46):
One of the new features in edge 1 0 1 is some new policies. But they're nothing particularly interesting, you know, set the default policy, you know, for people have like a personal and a work related account for end users. The big thing with 1 0 1 is the ability to launch progressive progressive web apps from the favorites bar. So it's just a, you know, they're just adding app by guns and stuff. They're just making kind of pretty, they've been doing kind of low boy look, you know, P is still a thing. We promise stuff, you know, for a little while now. So, but mostly it's policies. None of which are particularly interesting to me anyway, it's like the opposite. Well, I mean like, you know, the new policies in windows 11, I think those are actually really interesting. The new, you know, swipe gestures and edge kiosk mode.

Leo Laporte (00:57:34):
Okay. Kiosk mode. Yes. Yep. A favorite of Las Vegas Marquis everywhere. <Laugh> I used a kiosk mode Chrome west thing at Costco today. Oh yeah. I didn't really need to use it. I was just fascinated that it was a thing. How did you know it was Cru OS? It said how did I know? No, it, it said it somewhere. It said it somewhere. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, vertically oriented their portrait oriented. Oh, neat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The thing I wanted was sold out. That's what I found out. So a good thing. I went to Costco <laugh> <laugh> it was, it was fun. Were you looking for I don't know, party chips? No. I was looking for a mattress. I wanted to see if I could try it out, but all they had was a little mattress wedges. I know where I could get you a mattress.

Leo Laporte (00:58:24):
Paul, if you really <laugh>. Okay. Oh, you need a mattress from Mexico city probably. Well, I do. I actually, I need a mattress from home for this was for home for home. Okay. I think mattress in Mexico city will be a local. Well, they have Costco actually in mattress. They, I wonder do they have mattress in box companies in Mexico city? They must people sleep in. It's the thing they're kind of famous for it. If I see a business opportunity. All right, Mary, Jo's not here has heard a bed. <Laugh> it's pretty good. I, I have slept on rope beds in Mexico. You know, you have a, a pallet on a ropes. No, that's no good on a frame. No, we went once we when I was telling Abby this when she's her 30th birthday, but when she was not even one, yet we went down to Mexico and we stayed in a, what they call palapa, which is a yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:59:19):
A hu and a tree basically. Yep. That didn't have any windows. And it said be careful of the monkeys. They like to steal things. <Laugh> I love it. Oh, I need, what part of Mexico was this? That was what? 10. It was beautiful though. Oh, it was beautiful. We did, we stayed there one night and all the noises and wrestling scared the hell outta me, especially since we had a baby in a play APEN right. You know, or crib right there. You know how the Tarsan story started? <Laugh> yeah. It was like being in tar sand literally. Right? Yep. And my wife was very pregnant, so we had to climb all these stairs and steps and ladders to get into it. So we went down to the beach and found a nice place. That was the <laugh> went, was spent one night with the E one line with EOX is all.

Leo Laporte (01:00:03):
And it's like a year. And any other place. I think that's a Marie Marie head song. Oh boy. Microsoft 365. There is no Mary Jo Foley to do that today. She's probably thinking it right now, as she sits in that jury box, I'm gonna make you do the Microsoft 365 update. Yeah. I don't mind people watching this or listeners might actually remember back in the day, Microsoft had the ability to switch between at, probably at the time it was like windows live accounts or windows live IDs or whatever in the browser. So you could have multiple accounts. So if you were looking@likeoutlook.com, you go to the top and say, now I wanna look@myotheroutlook.com account or actually, you know, again, it would've been Hotmail or whatever, back in the day, but you can actually switch accounts like right there on the browser. It was kind of nice.

Leo Laporte (01:00:46):
And then they got rid of it for technical reasons, whatever, but they're now offering the ability and the office web app. So this is like office.com. So the web versions of, you know, word Excel PowerPoint. And I guess one note is included, but one of it's technically somewhere else, but I think it's in there can actually switch between accounts. And this is good because a lot of us have multiple accounts and we have work and home accounts and you know, a lot, there's all these like stupid tricks and tips. Like you use two different browsers and you can have one for this account. One for the other account. Yeah. Yeah. But now you can seem seamlessly switch between them. So, you know, it's it's like we're in the 21st century again. So what is, I know is technology, is there anything you can't do?

Leo Laporte (01:01:26):
It's there's well, you can't design a good start menu. Leo. I could tell you that it's that is a hard computer science problem. Oh, it's tough. All right. Let's take another little break. Paul throt is here. Mary Jo Foley has jury duty. I'm hoping she'll be back next week. On the other hand, Paul's going to Mexico sitting next week. <Laugh> bell. No, he'll be here. He'll be here. The whole, the whole house of cards is built on the, on the notion that Paul can do windows weekly for don't say host of cards, not to be a host of cards. The whole fancy it's made outta. All right. Good. All right. Yeah. Cuz zero earthquakes down there. Reminder, once again, couple of cabins left. Can you imagine some evening, you've got your favorite adult fabric through the wall. You know, Paul and I sitting there, we're talking about things like this and you're just, and you're there with us sitting there.

Leo Laporte (01:02:26):
We're enjoying life as the glacier, go by someone just to walk up and smack me right in the face. God knows. I deserve. Nobody's gonna do that. Thanks for telling me Chris rock. That's not gonna happen. That's not, people are gonna be very, you're gonna be actually, have you ever done? I mean, I know we've done meetups and bars. Yeah. But have you ever done spent a week with fans? No. <laugh> well, I'm telling you, there's nothing quite like it. The next trip. Well, just go to your house, stay there for a week. You know, outta there, I really enjoy it is about a hundred people so far. We, I think we have room for another 20. But I, I love it because you really do get to know people. And if you wanna know, you know, everything good and bad about what you're doing, this is the way to find out.

Leo Laporte (01:03:12):
This is the way. Yes. Wow. It's cruise.twi.tv. If you wanna go, if that's selling it that much, but yeah. July 16th of 23rd, too late. Paul you're booked. <Laugh> I know, I know I'm in, I'm locked in now as is it's kind of fun as his rich Campbell from run's radio he's but he paying his own way. He's just going. Yeah. And and Gabe is coming Gabe, Rafael rather. Yeah. I was confused. Rafael Rivera and Gabe Rivera, but they're two different people. They are different people. Yes. Gabe Verve is tech meme. Raphael. Also I insist that he, his last name pronounced Riviera, but he doesn't like that. He doesn't. Mr. Riviera will be joining us. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Please come. We really would love to have you cruise.dot TV. Our show today brought to you by Melissa poor data. Quality can cost organizations on average, 15 million a year, a year, the longer poor quality data stays in your system.

Leo Laporte (01:04:11):
The more losses you accumulate to ensure your business is successful. Your customer information has to be accurate. And you know where you go. Melissa, Melissa is a leading provider of global data quality and address management software. It's not just me who says that by the way Melissa is a constant Victor <laugh> in the enterprise battles. They CA off 2021 by reaching a milestone 30 billion with a B north American address lookups in the year. That's the most they've ever had. Melissa's a huge success because they make your business a huge success. If you've got your customer address lists messed up names change, of course. So does addresses and E emails and phone numbers. You're you're not gonna provide good customer service. If you address someone with the wrong name or you verify the wrong address and the customer's already frustrated, things can go from bad to worse with Melissa, verify addresses, emails, phone numbers, and names for over 240 countries and territories.

Leo Laporte (01:05:22):
You can do it. If you want. In real time. At the point of entry, Melissa has a variety of ways you can use it. Of course, there's an on-prem solution. You can even upload your contact list address list to an F to secure FTP server. They'll fix it. You can download own it again like that, but they also have an API and they have a SaaS delivery function. So you can actually incorporate it into your customer service software or your shop cart, that kind of thing. So you get the stuff right from day one. That's awesome. In real time. In fact, they even have apps now for iOS and Android, their lookups apps look for those in the app store. Then you can actually enter in an address and get it corrected a name and address that kind of thing. Duplicate information is also a problem, right?

Leo Laporte (01:06:06):
You could send out multiple catalogs or multiple bills. That's embarrassing. Melissa's data matching helps eliminate clutter and duplicates increases the accuracy of database and reduces postage and mailing costs us. So you've got batch address cleansing, which can do a whole list for accuracy and completeness. They have identity verification. That's actually really great for security. It also may be required for your compliance regulations. It keeps customers happy. Of course, geocoding enrichments mean you could turn an address into longitude and latitude. Great for deliveries, things like that. Email verification will remove up to 95% of bad email addresses from your database. 37 years, Melissa has been the address experts and with a renewal rate of 92%, you know, people are very happy. The typical ROI from Melissa customers is 25%. And of course they treat your data like the gold. It is. They undergo continuous independent security audits to reinforce that commitment to data, security, privacy, and compliance their SOC two HIPAA, GDPR compliant, and boy, their global support center offers the best world renowned support.

Leo Laporte (01:07:21):
24 7. All you have to do is sign up for a service level agreement. They're the best, make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Try Melissa's APIs and the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API sandbox. 24 7 get started today with 1000 records, clean free Melissa, M E L I S S a melissa.com/twi melissa.com/twi. We thank for their sport. Windows weekly. Sorry. Belatedly muted myself. <Laugh> I was laughing at a response on Twitter. Oh, you weren't laughing at me. Okay, good. Well, I'm sorry. I feel better now. There's nothing funny about Melissa Leo. No, there's nothing to laugh about. <Laugh> our fine sponsors are not jokes. Buster. Throt not jokes at all. <Laugh> that's right. That's right. Let's talk about Maui WUI developer time. Yeah. So my expectation, I think they think they've said this is that Maui, which is do net Maui, the multi-platform app UI kind of the, basically the, the follow up to zoomin forums will RTM, you know, be generally available either at, or around build, which is happening in late may.

Leo Laporte (01:08:41):
So maybe three weeks ish from now, but this past week they released a second. I think it's a second release candid and oddly added a pretty major to change to it, which is in addition, windows back iOS and Android, it now supports ties. It says basically Samsung, right? It's Samsung platform. This is used on smart displays phones whatever it's watches, I think. So you'll be able to write, you know, this is the, this is the dream, you know, to start with Java, like write ones, run everywhere, kind of thing. I am gonna be, I, I actually just started, I, I, should I keep saying, I'm gonna look at this, right. So I've actually started looking at it. I should say, I still don't completely understand what's happening with this product. And the reason I don't understand it is because on windows they're clearly using what is basically UWP <affirmative> and UWP universal windows platform is basically the latest version of this kind of win RT platform that started with windows eight.

Leo Laporte (01:09:44):
It's a mobile app platform built into windows that isn't really as full featured as the, you know, the desktop frameworks we had from the past, like w P F et cetera. Although it does have, you know, unique features related to, you know, mobile platforms, right? The ability to sleep apps asynchronous file operations and yada yada, yada, whatever. So, but it's, this is at heart, a mobile app platform, you know? And so I often talk about Maui in the context of something like fluter, which is a Google fluter is interesting because it runs on more platforms. It's well, Eric will, I should say actually today, I believe it's windows, Android, iOS, and the web, which is on, you know, it's coming to the Mac. I believe it's coming to Linux, but I think the web is a big piece of it. And the ability to have, again, you know, like one app that can run everywhere is know enticing.

Leo Laporte (01:10:40):
You know, fluter is not a mobile app platform necessarily. It started as one, but I mean, it has native desktop, you know, kind of features on those platforms or it will. And this one kind of doesn't, and I'm not, I'm not sure what to make of this. So for example, I can't create my dot iPad applic in this, at least not in any way. That makes sense. It's just not full featured enough. So, Hmm. I don't know. I don't know. It's nice that you have a test app, so you can kind of really get a sense. It'd nice if I could use it. <Laugh> yeah. You know? But yeah, yeah. Anyway, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep looking. I'm still very interested in it. But I'm confused. This is, I should say actually one of the confusing bits is win R T and you know, the Metro apps, the windows store apps, the, all the names we've had universal windows platform is not really.net, right.

Leo Laporte (01:11:31):
This is something else it's dot net like, but it actually runs outside of do net. It's not a managed environment. Do net Maui is part of.net, and yet it uses UW P under the covers. And I, I don't, I don't quite under, I don't know what's going on here. So I like the idea of a cross platform.net environment. I really like that idea. People, when I writing the articles about the do net pet apps were like, oh, this is really cool. You should port this to the Mac or whatever. It's like, I, I can't, I can't, you know, the.net stuff that's available on the Mac is not this full featured. So, or it's pretty full feature for what it is, but it doesn't have the, you know, the desktop framework capability stuff. So anyway it's still interesting. I mean, to keep looking at it, it's not a hundred percent what I was looking for, but anyway, it's coming down, it's coming.

Leo Laporte (01:12:18):
It's coming quick. It's getting there's. No, there's no perfect solution. I guess at this point, there is no perfect. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Actually, I wish there was, I, I really like the idea of.net and C and I wish there was a thing that did everything. I don't know there is, is it in the roadmap? I mean it, their plan to do this. Mm, no, this is it. Oh, now zoomin forums started as, remember the beginning of zoomin forums was you're gonna use C and.net to create apps that run on iOS on iPhone, Android, and windows phone. Right. That made a lot of sense. You know, when we, when windows phone was an ongoing thing and we want, you know, bring C sharp net developers into the mobile world, it made sense. Same forums was a, well, first of all, it was a third party solution.

Leo Laporte (01:13:01):
Originally Microsoft ended up buying the company obviously, and they brought in Miguel de Kaza. And for a brief time, some of the other people that were key players there you know, it's messy and there were a lot of issues, certainly.net. Maui is an improvement. I, I think we kind of, maybe, maybe it's like a version three kind of type thing of salmon forums. We might think of it. There's definitely improvements, but it fundamentally it's, it is a mobile application, you know, it's like, there's an M in the name, you think, you know, mobile APPI, maybe it's multi-platform I APPI, but it's really, multi-platform mobile APPI maybe is the way to think of it. Like I said, I'll keep trying, but I don't. Why would you add Tyson's support if you're not focused on mobile? I don't get that. Yeah. I don't know. <Laugh>, it's a weird ties before the web at all, you know? Yeah. Before the, I should say Microsoft has other solutions for the web that are C shop and, and.net, like blazer. But I, I think one, do those make BWA yeah. Okay. You can do that. Right. Apple, if apple would just give first class support to PWAs, it would all be done. I could not agree more. Yeah. And you know, but they're never gonna do that. They're it can be really frustrating. Yeah. It really is. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:14:21):
I use GitHub. I do too. And of course, this is, I turn on two FA but it's, but this is, you are in the minority. My friend, is it really, really, this blows my mind, according to Microsoft, only 16% of GitHub users. I don't know if these are actually contributors of just users are using one or more, two, one or more forms of two, a two factor authentication only 16.5%. So what they're gonna do bely, this is kind of news from the, this was what we were doing, but they're doing it by the end of 2023. They're gonna require anyone who contributes to GitHub will have to enroll their account in two factor authentication. I recommend you do this today. Maybe that should be the tip. There are 83 million developers who contribute code to GitHub. A lot of it is private.

Leo Laporte (01:15:10):
And if account is compromised, your private code bases could be stolen. And you know, given, I don't want anybody to get my Emax configuration, especially Kim, John, I don't that's they do a of course they do the, you know, six digit code, but they also do single sign on, in fact, that's mostly what I get now you could choose, I guess, but when I sign into GitHub, it says, okay, now look at the GitHub app on your phone. That's right. And approve, which is great. Yeah. They actually, one of the figures they had, I think was that of the, it something like 83 million accounts, I think 10 million of them have come on board in the, just the past six six months. It's yeah. And hopefully those accounts are, you know, doing the right thing, the new accounts, I would hope, but it's a, and, and now that Microsoft's become very generous with the free tier boy.

Leo Laporte (01:16:03):
I mean, even if you're not a coder, just for backing things up, it's something it's like what they did with clip champ, you know, clip champ and GitHub are so similar. I think it bears okay. Further. Okay. <Laugh> it does. I don't, I'm just kidding. But they did make the it's like what they did with Minecraft. They're good stewards. They are, they really have proven this, everyone, you know, open source people grown they're so, so nervous. Yeah. Yeah. No, they're, they're good at this stuff. Yeah. That's so good at the star menu thing, but you know what <laugh>. Yeah, good. Well, although, you know, the, the visual studio tools for GitHub are actually kind of garbage. If you use GitHub, I strongly recommend understanding the command line interface because obviously can do everything there. It is much more full featured. You, even if you're using it as a that's pathetic code repository, I know that's depressing.

Leo Laporte (01:16:59):
Yeah. It's like it was made by the windows eight team. There, there are three major steps you need to get, like, make, say you have a code in a project and you want to update the version that's up and get up. There are three things you have to do. Two of them are in, are in the UI. <Laugh> the other one is it's in the UI, but it's hidden. Like you have to know that to go do it. And it's, I just don't understand what it's very frustrating. Anyway. I don't run into this slot. I'm not a developer, but every time I do, I have to text Raha and say, what was the one thing he goes, oh yeah, yeah, you got ad. You got commit. And then you got push. Yes. And so it must be, I think it's the commit step.

Leo Laporte (01:17:39):
And when you commit, you have to, you have to describe what you're doing. They don't let you get away with not describing the change. Well, that's right. You should have a, yeah. Most, most, I think it's giddy. Really? Yeah, no, it's probably the right thing to do, but you know, a lot of times it's like, oh, I just, just wanna push it up. I just wanna push it up. I just made a mistake, a typo. I just wanna, I don't have to describe this typo to the world. No, you do. You do. There's an describe your typo. Yeah. There's no escaping your mistake. CD on, get commit messages. Lemme see if I can follow good. <Laugh> here you go. Boy. Thank you. Google the speed with which, so this is you didn't bring that, huh? No, here it, oh, let me make it bigger though.

Leo Laporte (01:18:17):
Wait a minute. Less and less than four <laugh>. Yeah. So when you first do your commit yep. You go main loop and timing control enabled. And then by the end of it's like a, my hand are typing words, hands <laugh>. Yeah. Cuz you just you're like, I just made a type. I just wanna F like I just, you have to type something to do it. <Laugh> you know, you have to type something it's like, that's beautiful. That's exactly. <Laugh> in the beginning. You very descriptive. You take it very seriously. And the you're like, seriously, I just wanna get this thing up there. Yeah. Yeah. We've all been there. We have all been there. Alright. We talked about Microsoft's earnings last week. Yeah. Yeah. But this was a, this was probably the busiest earnings week. I can remember. I, this is, this is like a, this is a stupid thing as everybody tough time, tough time with the quarter for people like me, you have to write this stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:19:09):
Oh, I'm gonna do this in a different order. Then I took the notes. But just to level set this, remember Microsoft 16.7 billion of net income on 49.4 billion in revenue. So almost 50 billion in revenues. There are bigger companies in Microsoft, as it turns out. We talked about Google last week, for example Amazon 116.4 billion in revenues. It did lose $3.8 billion. However if that makes you feel any better about that particular business and they're blaming the challenges on the pandemic, the war in the Ukraine, sorry in Ukraine. And then they apparently, because of all the rapid growth that during the pandemic might have overbuilt <laugh>. So I guess they're gonna look back at that they have supply chain issues, et cetera, et, etc. I think that's kind of the story of this quarter is all of that pandemic growth has slowed a little bit, right?

Leo Laporte (01:20:05):
Yeah. And I, and that's the real story I keep saying here, like, guys, this was gonna happen, right. Like, you know, the, the rocket ship eventually runs out of fuel, but yeah. And Amazon, this is not a company that honestly typically enjoys huge profits. The revenues are already through always through the roof as a retailer, especially, but they actually lost 3.8 billion. That's that's interesting. That's why Jeff Bezos jump ship. He knew it was coming. Apple is coming up just behind him. Apple's about twice the size of Microsoft now. 97 billion in revenues 25 billion in net income. Yikes. <laugh> that's like a 25% margin. I it's incredible. Yeah. Just, just to, I keep, I know I keep beating this to death, the iPhone 50.6 billion in revenues, bigger than Microsoft, just the iPhone, like yikes. And by the way you know, these are all much smaller businesses, but the Mac the iPad services, all those things together just as the, is Microsoft <laugh>, you know, unwearable, I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:21:09):
Also wearables there, those, you know, but roughly equivalent to the size of Microsoft, and then we also have the hardware makers, right? So Intel AMD and Qualcom right. So Intel these are much smaller numbers. It's kind of interesting. A 8.1 billion in net income for Intel on revenues of 18.4 billion, actually a decline year of year. They still make about half of their revenues from PC. So 9.3 billion in revenues that business was down 9%. Their other businesses were up. So actually this is the fall off from sales to PC makers. This, I think this is what we were just talking about. I think this is where we see it. Microsoft's windows business, typically isn't the great bellwether of the PC industry because they just they're selling licenses to PC makers. You know you will see soft there, there have been down years, obviously for windows as well.

Leo Laporte (01:22:01):
And if it's bad enough that, you know, you'll see that. But I think the first place you're gonna see this is with the hardware makers that said <laugh> am D record revenues of the quarter. They are 786 million of net income profits, essentially record revenues of five point 9 billion they're PC business, which also includes graphics. So it's a little bit skewed there, but is 2.8 billion, which is again about half. So they're smaller than an, but I think they have the same basic mix as Intel does and then Qualcomm which powers most of the you know, the mobile chip sets in the world other than apple net income of 2.9 billion on revenues of 11 billion. And that is a record <laugh> and by the way, a 41% increase year of year, Qualcomm's a little tough because their chip set sales, aren't just what we think of as processes, right?

Leo Laporte (01:22:54):
Obviously they make associates, but they also make other chips that go on a phone. So a lot of phones will have two or three Qualcomm chip set chip sets in them. And then of course they make chip sets for other things like cars and internet things, devices, et cetera. But 9.6 billion, the vast majority of Qualcomms sales come from chip sets, mobile chip sets. So 11 billion there, what was I say? So 5.9 for AMD and 18.4 for Intel. So actually Qualcomm is, you know, not as big Intel, but they're kind of in second place of those three. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Not surprising, I guess in a way, but, but AMD coming on big. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Coming on big is really Intel is falling apart is what the, is the real story there. Yeah. I mean, you AMD's the, the PC part of that business grew 33.

Leo Laporte (01:23:45):
Yeah. You know, they're, they're doing good. I have to think every single customer AMD ads is taken away from Intel. I mean, who else? One thing I'm starting to see a lot is a Lenovo does this, HP does this, the biggest PC makers are now offering either AMD. And actually Microsoft does this. Microsoft's a small PC maker, but they'll offer AMD versions of, they also sell with Intel chip sets. They also offer in some cases, and this is more Lenovo HP computers that only come with AMD. Right. So they'll be like, well, we have this thing over here that has Intel. And then we have this thing over here. It's a little different, but it has an AMD inside. I don't know. I mean, I, you would, you'd like to think that both companies would be interested and competing fairly and exactly the same computer.

Leo Laporte (01:24:31):
And then you could have an apples to apples comparison. Well, which one's faster, which one gets better battery life, et cetera. And we can do a little bit of that, but there there's a lot more AMD. Now I would say in the mainstream PC world than there was just, you know, two years ago, there's no doubt about it. You see, every time there's a PC may or, you know briefing about new computers, whatever this AMD comes up more and more. Yeah. That's definitely something that's happening. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. It's a thing. It's a, it's a thing. It's a thing. All right. We are prepared for the highlight of the day. I know. Just hope that Mary Jo doesn't like get out early, come on over. It would be hysterical if she joined us in the middle of the Xbox segment, wouldn't it?

Leo Laporte (01:25:13):
It's almost a little less enjoyable because she's not here. I know. <Laugh> I know. I know exactly what you mean in a weird way. Yeah. It's not torturing her. It's not exactly the same without her. I'll I'll call her and leave this part of the, I want her answer. That's a good idea. <Laugh> you know, I don't record it. I just wanted to feel left out. Oh, great idea. I'm a friend. I'm not, you know, not trying to exclude her from anything. <Laugh> right, Joe. I know you missed it. So here's the Xbox segment from two today's windows weekly. It's actually a lot of Xboxing, like I said, you know? So yesterday I think it Microsoft finally belatedly launched halo, infinite season two. So new mass, like season one just came out well, season one launched with a game. Right? So I, I don't actually agree with this, but the way they're, they're supposedly gonna do it is the seasons are gonna be three months long.

Leo Laporte (01:26:06):
But because halo, infinite shipped in such an incomplete state, they were like, you know what? We'll take season one, we'll go six months. And then we'll do three months after that. And then as this date approached a couple weeks ago, they were like, you know, actually season two is also gonna be six months long. This is gonna go for a while. Oh, actually, is that right? No, I'm sorry. That's not true. It is gonna be three months long, but some of the things that we're gonna make it to season two are now season three. Right? So campaign split screen, co-op being one of the big ones. Actually that's not true campaign network co-op and mission replay for August campaign split screen. Co-Op eh, we'll see. <Laugh> it's gonna be, could be a while, you know forage for example is gonna open well, forge is the multiplayer map editor, right?

Leo Laporte (01:26:52):
Kind of a key part of the game. It will launch supposedly sometime later in season two, you know, I don't know. I don't know what to say. I'm actually gonna take a look at some of this stuff. Not super in, I mean, well, new Multiplay maps are always interested. Interesting. One of the big things that's in this is a new battle Royal mode, which I'm actually very interested in. I'm not a big fan of battle Royal games. This is like Fortnite PUBG, et cetera, a war zone in the call of duty world. Because typically what these games are, is like one and done, you know, a bunch of people parachute down, out some huge island, you run around like an idiot trying to find guns and stuff. You spend like 18 minutes. You don't see a single bad guy and then boom dead.

Leo Laporte (01:27:32):
Yeah. You know, that's pretty much how I play and I, I'm not a fan of that. So what they have is a game mode. Now that's debuted by season too, where you can go into smaller maps. I think it's 18 players, if I'm correct and you have five lives, so you sounds one and done. Yeah. That sounds like a I, that that might be of interest. So I'm gonna check that out. Catalyst and breaker, the two new maps king of the hill last Spartan standing is new free for all mode, et cetera. So there's a bunch of bunch of stuff coming. So our, a bunch of stuff here. And then during the season, there'll be more so they're just kind of <laugh> they were gonna ship this thing a year and a half ago. Supposedly remember that I, this is, we will be two years in the halo, infinite, before we have everything that we thought we were gonna get when this game launched.

Leo Laporte (01:28:17):
There's no doubt about it, but I will pin on that on another day, but there's, there's a story there for sure. It is May 4th as we record this, so we've moved into a new month. So that means there's new game, pass games and game for gold games with gold titles. Typically Microsoft releases game pass games in two waves. They do the first half of the month, the second half of the month. So we have what's new in the first half. I, I feel like I've been doing a lot of this. I don't, none of these games do anything. I, I don't recognize most of them loot river Trek to Yomi citizen sleep. I don't, it's like, I'm just making up word, like come game, name, generators. Like I, you in Chronicle, colon rising. I have no idea what that means are I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:29:01):
I, you know, I know I'm old, but so yeah. Well NHL 22, there you go. That's out. <Laugh> just in time for the playoffs. I don't know. Good. That's good. That's how I know almost all of them know are a cloud, which is nice. Yes. Yeah. We're starting to see a lot more of that, which is, yeah. It, that is nice game. If you wanted to play this war of mine, final cut. You finally can, you know, I know it's like, I, I, what is it? I don't <laugh> so games with gold is falling into the, kind of the same category. I actually do recognize most of these games. I just don't care about most. So unfortunately, so the beginning of the month we're getting Yoku island express. There's the Xbox one game. And then from the Xbox 360, this one, I played a lot of it back in the day hydro thunder hurricane which is like a boat racing game that, that was awesome, you know, a million years ago when it was new.

Leo Laporte (01:29:53):
But whatever, you can get it for free for an Xbox goal, Xbox live gold or Xbox game pass, ultimate subscriber, and then Viva pinata, which is actually pretty fun. Believe it or not. Of course. Yeah, no, I do. I, no, I believe it. Remember that. Yeah. Yep, yep. Yeah. I remember the original one from 360 days. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And then the inner world which actually looks last month, I should say that looks, that might be interesting, kind of an adventure game. That looks, that might be kind of fun, but it, it, they're free, you know, they're free beast. Let's not get too crazy here. The may update for Xbox is out, there's only two updates to this whole thing and they different platforms. So there's a new activity feed on mobile. So if you're using the mobile app on iOS and Android, you'll see the, because everything has to be Instagram.

Leo Laporte (01:30:39):
Now, every time you post like a game clip or video, whatever that's called a story now. So get used to that language. <Laugh> whatever. And then on Xbox consoles, which is Xbox one series X and S there's a quality quality of service, sorry, quality of service, tagging service there, we're going, I could get that out. It's buried in in settings, but the idea is you can choose between the things that you want to get preference. Obviously the big things are multiplayer gaming, a console streaming or hardly party chat. <Laugh> party chat is a bandwidth. Because you know, when you're trash talking with your buddies playing on Friday night with beer and pizza, you gotta get that, you know, you wanna make sure the latency's not there on there, on that part of the experie. So that's out now. We have highlighted only one of these new controllers, but there's actually a bunch of new Xbox wireless controllers out.

Leo Laporte (01:31:31):
There's a deep pink version, which lore has written about on my site. My favorite one, I don't know the actual name of it, but it looks like a, a Scottish kilt. So it's like a forest with black <laugh> yeah, it's beautiful. It's it's really nice. I might actually buy that one. It's beautiful. I like the translucent one. That sounds kind of cool. Yeah, yeah. This, yeah, this, you know, so you, obviously you can go to the Xbox design lab and design your own. Right. But they, you know, sold out of course every month is, but one on one is sold out, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of nice controllers now. So that's been, that's been happening nicely. If you miss this as you may know, or you may not know Microsoft, Ted purchased Bethesda and E three is coming in, it's not comings.

Leo Laporte (01:32:17):
The three is not coming E three and two. So in lieu of that, Microsoft is gonna have an Xbox in Bethesda game showcase, I guess I'll buy they lone sum, which actually, honestly, even when there was an E three, they did anyway, they were doing that anyway. Right. They were doing their own thing. So they're gonna start, they're gonna start talking about the new lineup of games that's coming soon to Xbox. Not just from Bethesda, but cross Xbox. So that's gonna happen on Sunday, June 12, which is a really E three kind of time to do that. Cuz why would you do something on a state they must have in June? Yeah. They must have been planning it and well, E is gone, but it doesn't matter. Well, I mean, it's, this is gonna be a virtual thing. Like what's the whatever. Anyway, they're keeping to that and that's fine.

Leo Laporte (01:32:54):
And then finally the company that owns to which is called Enix or square Enix, excuse me, is selling the, like a subs studio that created two Raider and some other games, right. To another company I've never heard of called embrace a group. This is a game like the two Raider games have sold. If I remember the number over 80 million units over its lifetime, you, I guess it's 88 million. I just saw the number 88 million. And it's like, why, why would you sell off such a successful franchise? You know? They're not really explaining it. I, I bet there's a lot of cost game studios are like movie studios these days. I sort of joked about this on Twitter that, you know, what else sold it? 88 million units, the Walkman <laugh>, you know, like that's not a, that's not necessarily a hugely popular thing these days, either.

Leo Laporte (01:33:47):
It might, it might be that the best days of the two Raider franchise are behind it. Yeah. Much like might be, might be that the best days of call duty are behind it for all I know. I mean, it's not going so great, but I thought that was kind of interesting. And I was mostly interested that I, I don't even who this company is embrace a group, it's a Sweden based holding company. Oh, that is all also acquired gearbox, which is actually pretty famous. And SARE interactive with, you know, what they're buying is the intellectual property. They're buying the right to do movies. We're gonna get two serial. You're gonna see two Raider characters in fortnight's. It's gonna be stuff like that. Yeah. So not super exciting, but I guess it, what it means is no more tumor games. Not that I thought we were gearing up for a new tumor this year.

Leo Laporte (01:34:31):
I think I, I think that's been in the news. I thought that it was a reboot coming. Oh, well maybe that's another reboot. That's what they thought there was. Yeah. Maybe the problem was, yeah. Maybe the deal was like, this is gonna cost us a lot of, of money. It's like making a like a blockbuster movie. Like if this doesn't fly, like we're, you know, this expensive company. Sure. Yeah. Maybe that's and unlike a movie, you have to keep updating it. <Laugh> the movie you're done when it's, you're done premier. How nice would it be? Just to put something out the world and, and just have it reap it's over revenue. So the rest of your life. Yeah, this is great. Yeah. Instead I keep having to come in and do windows weekly. Yeah, no, we, we both got, we both chose treadmill. <Laugh> you know, because we're covering breaking news, ladies and gentlemen.

Leo Laporte (01:35:14):
Yeah. I, so I'm sure Joe you know wishes she'd been here for this, but I feel like you, you rushed it a little bit. Do you wanna try, try a little bit more leisurely pace? <Laugh> do it one more time. No, the Xbox. Yeah. Well I just, yeah, no, you, I think, I think you, even though she's not here, you kind of feel like I do feel lose. I don't wanna lose her attention there. You know, <laugh> the back of the book coming up. I don't know we're gonna do some we're not gonna do beer. We'll do a cocktail, I guess instead. Yeah, this is, this might be the best one ever. Oh, can't wait, whatever. Can't wait something to bring on the boat. It's I didn't think it could get any better. It got better. Ooh. I'm looking at it right now.

Leo Laporte (01:35:57):
That looks good. But before you look at that, look at, I want you to look at this, this, my friends, this little non-descript black box, about the size of a paperback book. This is not just a piece of plastic. This is a honey pot. This looks to a bad guy, like something really juicy as something they wanna attack. But the minute they do this, Canary in a coal mine is gonna let me know. There's somebody on your network doing bad things. This is the thanks Canary. And it is a very important part of your overall security strategy. Here's a stat that's gonna scare the pants off of you on average companies do not even know. They've been breached for 191 days more than six months, six months that the hackers are wandering around on your network, downloading things investigating. See when they get in there, maybe they're thinking I'm gonna put some ransomware on here, but they don't do it right away. No, no, no. The new thing is download anything that could be compromising, cuz then you can blackmail them over that. And, and then look for all the places they store their backups and their recovery tools and make sure you make a note of that so that when the ransomware hits six months down the road, you get a everything.

Leo Laporte (01:37:22):
Is that scary? That's a terrifying thought. This little box is all. You need to prevent that because as the attackers are wandering around, looking for resources, these little honey pots look valuable, you could put 'em on active directory. So when attackers browse around for file servers are looking at file shares, looking for documents. They're gonna see this. They're gonna say, and this can pose by the way, as a hundred different things, it can be a server windows server, a Linux server. It could be in, in this case, mine's a Sonology NASA. It could be a router. It could be a switch. It could be a skated device. It could be anything or everything just depending on what you want it to be. The other thing that Canary can do, which is great, is create Canary tokens. These are files. They look like word documents or PDFs or spreadsheets that you could scatter across your network.

Leo Laporte (01:38:14):
They look completely normal. You can name them, enticing things like payroll information or employee social security numbers. But the minute an attacker opens them up. You get an alert now, no false positives just alerts. When they matter, this is the way a honey pot should be easy to implement quiet on your network until somebody's there. And it lets you know, immediate, it's like a trip wire. You spread out all over your network, tiny little trip wires. You can put anywhere in your system. You can install a Canary and configure it minutes. I was able to do it very simply. You get a Canary console when you buy a Canary or two and they let you say what you want it to be. The Mac addresses look normal. The login pages look exactly like the real thing. Hackers have no idea. There's no way to know because the Canary was can created by people who have trained companies and militaries and even governments on how to break the servers and the that they have.

Leo Laporte (01:39:17):
They took and they built the Canary with you'll find canaries deployed all over the world. One of the best tools against data breaches, you can visit canary.tools/twi to pick yourself up a Canary big banks might have hundreds, small enterprises, just a few, a handful. Let's. As an example, you want five of these spread 'em around on the network, 7,500 bucks a year. You get your own hosted console. You get upgrades, you get support, you get maintenance, you break the Canary, they send you another one. No questions asked right away. And if you used the code TWIs, T I T, and the, how did you hear about a box 10% off your canaries for life forever. Now I know you're gonna love your things, Canary, cuz it's quiet until the time comes and then it lets you know, by the way you can do it any way you want email text message.

Leo Laporte (01:40:07):
There's a console. As I mentioned, you can use it. It'll do it through slack. It supports web hooks. So you can really pretty much do it with anything. CIS log. You can use that. They have an API. If you wanna to get fancy, I know you're gonna love this Canary, but if you are not happy, you get a two month money back guarantee, full refund. If before two months you don't want it. You're gonna want it. You're gonna want it. Even though once you put it on your network, once you set it up, you just forget about it. But boy, if somebody gets in your in network, they're gonna see it. Cuz they look valuable. They don't look vulnerable, they look valuable and you're gonna get that alert and you are gonna be so glad you listen to me. Canary.Tools/Twi. Don't forget, put tweet. And how did you hear best box for 10% off for life?

Leo Laporte (01:40:54):
Canary, C a N a R Y like the Canary in coal mine, cuz that's where this is. This is the Canary on the network. Canary.Tools/Twi code TWI. Thank you. Thanks. We love these guys. And we use 'em believe me. They are really, really good. Paul Thurrott is back cuz there's no one else to be back. He's the only one today. <Laugh> Mary Jo Foley. I'm hoping we'll not get a long drawn out trial and we'll be back next week. I hope I hope I pray. But let's get to the back of the book and your tip of the week. This is a little self-serving and I, I do mention this from time to time, but I'm mentioning it again because it's just about to wind down. So I've been working on this programming windows series, which is really the, kind of the history of windows for a long time.

Leo Laporte (01:41:48):
And I'm right now I am in the windows eight timeframe. I'm about to finish that. After that it's basically eight 1-811-AND-JUST the beginning window 10, I'm gonna go to 2015. So this kind of three years left to cover of history <laugh> of 30 years. And so it's, it's getting close. I've written over 130 articles. I think the exact number's 134 that are in the series. I think I've already written a conclusion. I wrote something many months ago. That might just be the conclusion, which is that Microsoft multiple times, literally since 1995 came so close to just embracing the web and web standards and using that as the programming window model for windows and backed off every time and never did it. And Ugh, they, they got so close so many times and I feel like I, that the name of that article, if you wanna look it up is called something like we fought the web and the web one <laugh> and you know, they, they, well, meaning you know, beginning with.net is a good example with the Zael stuff, which is basically like, like a, a declarative UI similar to HTL which I, I understand what they were trying to do, but really should have embraced HTL, you know, windows eight, they sort of embraced HTL, but they brought it in and made it proprietary.

Leo Laporte (01:43:10):
So many times they came so close, but it's getting there really worth subscribing into the premium throughout.com. I am a happy subscriber. These are long form articles too. Usually these are usually in the three to 5,000 word range somewhere, some so not all of them, but this is kind of like the way they make TV shows now, you know, used to be, you'd make movie's that's right. Used to be. You'd write a book about the history of windows, but how much better to write a series of articles as, as long as, or if not longer than a book, but you can digest in chunks about each subject. Yeah. This is your book. I haven't, I haven't done this in a while, but the, the other thing that's interesting about this format is that I can go in and add an article today that actually relates to something from stuff I was writing about six months ago.

Leo Laporte (01:43:54):
It's not, you know, it's not all linear, although actually most of it is linear, but and I hope too, when this is complete, I want, what I want to do is go back to some people I know from the industry and, you know, people, I don't know that would just players and kind of talk to 'em about stuff and, and get some money morning, quarter you know, look back stuff. So we'll see what I can do there. But I'm looking forward to wrapping this up because it can be obsessive <laugh> at times. I think you've had fun doing it though, right? I mean, it's really, it is fun. Yeah, no. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Look at, look at all this very time consuming. Yeah. Good stuff. It really is a book it's better than a book. It's fantastic. I do get asked if I'm gonna turn this into a book I'd like to, you know, I'm not gonna do this right away.

Leo Laporte (01:44:38):
I, like I said, I need to step away from it. I, I, and I want to talk to people you know now and see if I can get some additional info. You already have interviews that Jim Chen and Marcus sinic. Yeah. These are interviews I did back in the day. Yeah. I mean, this is a ton of stuff. I did an interview with Jensen Harris. I can't find that it was ever published. Jensen is the guy who worked on the ribbon for office and then helped create the windows, a UI. And I have a lengthy interview with him that I figured, well, I'm trying to find, I mean, where's the, where's the published version of this. I can't find it. I don't know that I ever of published it. So that might be unique. You started this three years ago, Paul. Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:45:17):
Yeah. So I, what I did was I probably worked on it for six months ish and I hit the.net era and I took a break and I waited about a year and then I picked it up again late last year. And wow. Started it June 4th, 2019. Yep. Yeah. Oh, that's really great. Yes, everybody thera.com highly recommend. It's important to remember. Anyone can start something, but the trick is finishing it. No, you know what? I'm terrible at finishing things. You are not, you are, I am too, but I, I got this one though. This you got, there's a labor of, of yeah. The last three years. Awesome. Well, you mentioned the after Steve book and as the Tony Fidel book, we're in a time period now where there's a lot being written about apple and Google and Facebook and you know, that kinda stuff. It's not a lot about Microsoft, you know, and certainly not a lot.

Leo Laporte (01:46:12):
Interesting. So I, this, this was, this is interesting for me to go back and go through all this. You bet. Anyhow you mentioned also Firefox hit 100. That was my, or is my app pick this week? This is, you know, despite it being version 100 is not a particularly monumental release, right. There's kind of additions to an existing feature called picture pitcher, right. Which is obvious what that is popup video players. It supports multiple popup video players, and now it supports subtitles and captions in those P and P P I P windows. But I, I mean, there's a, I, I don't have it hanging here, but there's a, there was a full page ad in the New York times when Mozilla split this thing off and made it, and we were looking for donations. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> if you grab a magnifying glass, my name is in there.

Leo Laporte (01:46:58):
I, I contributed to it. Good for you. I was using Firefox when it was called Phoenix <laugh>, you know, and went through different permutations you know, cuz they split it off from a, that communicator suite when when Misso happened, right. When Netscape kind of spun that off. And I, I don't use it regularly. It is one of the browsers I use. I kind of go in and out of things, I do use it by the way I use it every single day. Actually I do use Firefox every single day, but I use it on the iPad. <Laugh> oh, interesting. I know sounds I know which, I mean you're using really using web kit, unfortunately. I know, but it's yeah. It's syncing with all my Firefox. I use Firefox on every that's my default browser I use on every single platform, windows, Mac, Lennox.

Leo Laporte (01:47:41):
I use Firefox for password on iPad. So when I have to ah, sign into a anywhere, it actually goes through Firefox. Nice. Yeah, no, I'm a big fan. I'm gonna show you something that Steve Gibson taught us that I think is new in version 100. If you do about config, which is of course where you get to the really gnarly, in fact, they even say proceed with caution, the gnarly settings for windows and you type the global privacy. This is a new standard that's being used in the EU, but also California is doing it. I think it's global privacy without a gap. Yep. One word. You'll see three global privacy settings. Oh, and I've turned them they're by default, they're all false. This is the new do not track assigned by default in Europe or is this something that's no, you have right now, I guess they're testing it.

Leo Laporte (01:48:38):
It is gonna be part of the European protection laws. It is part of California. And that means because it's got a penalty written in the law. There's some hope that unlike do not track people will honor it mm-hmm <affirmative> and you could find time for every instance of violation. Yeah. There's a huge fine. So you just there's a little flip button that you, you flipped this setting to true. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I think there's two. I see. Oh, I see. The third one is added. Was privacy global privacy ever enabled that's automatic. But just turn those on, on fire Fox, 100 about Colin config. And now you're requesting any site that you visit do not track me and they have to honor it. Apparently Steve was very excited because there's never been any teeth and do not track.

Leo Laporte (01:49:27):
So this is, this is a good thing. And then you can, if you want to see if it worked, if it took go to the site, global privacy control.org and you'll get the GPC signal detected right at the top. So you can see, you know, what signal you're you're setting. It also explains what global privacy is all about. Nice and so forth. So I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful. We're hopeful if you believe in privacy. Yeah. Yeah, sure. People did another reason to use. Firefi I I'm a, yeah. You know, every time I try the other browsers and I've tried 'em all and I you've got me on Vivaldi for a while and I was using brave for a long and so forth and so on, but I always go back to Firefox cuz everything, cuz it sinks everything's in there. And and I wanna support the a browser ecosystem that is not a monoculture. It's not all Google all the time.

Leo Laporte (01:50:23):
Okay. Okay. Okay. Let us I think it's time for a cocktail. I don't know about you. Yeah. So just a as a bit of background, one of my <laugh>, one of my weird little habits is aside from the fact that you know, orange juice, as we know it here in the United States is just as bad for as Cola <laugh> cuz it's sugar. Yeah. It's as sugar, sugar water I've I've always found most juice is to be too cloyingly sweet and kind of thick mm-hmm <affirmative>. So on those rare instances, when I drink something like orange juice or apple cider, for example, I will actually pour the glass half full and then I'll fill the rest of it with cold water and mix it up. And it, it just makes it more of the consistency that I'm looking for. It's not as sweet, right.

Leo Laporte (01:51:07):
Obviously water down. I really like, that's how I, and I don't drink this. I don't drink any juice regularly, but that's how I drink juice. And everyone thinks I'm an insane person. <Laugh> and then we go to Mexico and that's how everybody S it discovers there's an entire country. People drink juices. In fact, I found this out when we were in Oaxaca. If you ask for AWA, which you think is water, they're gonna give you a yeah. Which is juice, but it's literally, they, they take a fruit and they blend the thing up. And I guess they had water. I don't know exact, my wife knows that my wife makes shes it home. So since we, you know, what I make, I make, I don't know if you had this when you're in Mexico, but I make ha Micah, a Fresca, which is hibiscus and it's.

Leo Laporte (01:51:47):
Oh boy. Oh, it's so good. So my favorite is that it's I think it's is melon or canula, right? The, the orange flesh. I like the watermelon Lisa less. So that's my wife there. So my so right. So my wife has been buying watermelons and melons. I think melons delicious. Yeah. Ever since, ever since last summer, like she, and she makes these drinks, like it's just water and so, so good. It'll be like the middle of the afternoon. I'm I'm parched. And I'm like, Hey, could you make an AUA Fresca? We have that VI what do you call Vitamix? Blender. That sounds like a jet turbine. Yeah. Disintegrates these things beautiful. The drinks are the perfect. Oh, so they they're exactly like what you get on the streets of Mexico. I need her recipe for making watermelon AUA. Fresca. Yeah. I can do that.

Leo Laporte (01:52:30):
So, but for the past couple weeks, she's of course she did this. She, she turned these drinks into cocktails. So basically it's like an Agua Fresca, but with two kinds of rum and it is very clearly in AUA Fresca, like it's awesome. These are awesome. It's but it's an AUA Fresca that puts you out under the table. Yes <laugh> yes. Which might be what you're looking for on a Friday night. So half this looks good. Oh, there's this half a canop yeah. Four shots of coconut rum. Yep. One shot of dark rum and then my excuse blended a thing all together. It's unbelievable. And we've done both the can, I guess it's canop I'm sorry. Canop and watermelon in their, I don't, I actually, normally don't like watermelon that much, but watermelon in this form is so delicious. Yep. Malibu is pretty light alcohol mm-hmm <affirmative> but you could be, you could use Bicardi 1 51, if you really wanna get Ock.

Leo Laporte (01:53:26):
Well, but you, but in keeping with the light, it should be light should be original drink. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It, it, it really not very alcoholic. Yeah. It really feels the same. Like it has the same light kind of feel to it, which I really like I'm making that tonight. Yeah. This is good stuff. You, I think you're really gonna be impressed by this D li the, a Fresca and it's in the show notes. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it's on the screen, but if you're just listening a half a cantaloupe cut in one inch chunks, four shots of Malibu rum, or some other coconut rum, one shot of dark rum, Mexican flag up there in the, in the, yeah, there it is. Yep. Is Cico de Mayo tomorrow, a four to five. I have ice cubes, which is an American holiday, but that's okay. Te Leo will know Leo will know this.

Leo Laporte (01:54:10):
Yeah. But well, single de Mayo is a holiday in Mexico in Puebla, but most people think it's like Mexican independence day. No, and it it's not, it it's <laugh> there is a celebration it's in a particular area of the country. It's because they defeated the French in Puebla, which yeah. Most people would think the French where the, what they doing in Mexico. But you know what, you know what the French left behind, by the way, what baguettes there, some of the best bread I've ever had in my life is in Mexico, in Oaxaca, we had an amazing quants and other French goods. And when you amazing, when I started researching this country, of course, you're thinking like, you know, taco Mexican food, whatever, and people kept talking about these tortes, which are sandwiches. Oh, I love it. And I'd said to my wife, literally, this is almost an exact quote, not going to Mexico and eating a fricking sandwich, but then you go to Mexico and you see these sandwiches and you're like, oh my God, these are, they're amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:55:02):
Cuz they're on like the best French bread like imaginable. So, oh you, yeah. You picture as sort of like the, the type of stuff you might have in a, in a taco with that awesome walk and white cheese Keso oh, the best. Oh, okay. I should, I should buy a place. Let's go to Mexico city. Oh, you're going, you're going. I'm so mad at you. Let me know if the pen house is still over available. Okay. I might just, I might just buy it myself. Say Lisa, you can come with me or you don't have to, but I'm on my way. Watch shows from there. Yeah. Yeah. You can do that. But I, I demand the use of the, of the you can share the roof with you. That's unbelievable. The view from there is amazing. You'll be like the Mertes. <Laugh> the me. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:55:50):
Ricky, Fred N here. Let's go up to the room. Why were there? Their neighbors were like 80. I know. What's like, or the guy was the, like, if you watch you watch being the Ricardo's that movie. Yeah. Ethel is Vivian Vance, constantly complaining. She says to Lucy, I'm one year older than you. I'm married. <Laugh> look a 80 year show to this old guy. I know he must have hated that he must have. Oh, they, you gotta, you haven't seen that movie. Obviously. It's the only good thing about being the Ricardo. It wasn't a great movie, but okay. The, the, is this the one with, what's the name? Tom gr is Nicole Kidman as Lucy. That's actually the thing that's bad about the movie. Cause she doesn't look anything like Lucy. No. And she does a Lucy voice and it's very annoying. And, and, and as they said in the academy awards, how do you make a movie about Lucile ball without a single joke in it?

Leo Laporte (01:56:42):
There you go. And I don't know, but the byplay between Fred and Ethel and JK Simmons plays Fred mez, Fred Mertz has played by Fred Mertz. Oh, I can't remember. Can't remember his name, but he was an old, he was an old guy. Oh yeah. He was a, yeah. He was a classic famous actor. He, I just can't remember his name. Anyway. JK Simmons is very good as him. He play JK Simmons plays the old guy. Yeah. Cause that guy's actually, I mean he's older, but he's he's old, but he's ripped <laugh> yeah, I know. He's yeah. He's in really good shape. William Fraley thank you. Chat room William. Fraley. Yeah. William. Fraley interesting. That's funny. Anyway, say that way. How did that come up? You? What? How did this come up? I don't know. How did it come up?

Leo Laporte (01:57:31):
Mentioned? How did it come up? No one knows it's a mystery. I think you said something. Oh no, I will be. We will be Fred Neel is what you said. You will be Fred Ethel. And I took I'm rich with that because that guy was like 80 years old. Okay. I okay. You're right. We'll be Fred Ethel. <Laugh> it doesn't really matter. You can, we'll be the merchs. What about the you can be the Ricard that was like oh, Jackie G Gleason. Yeah. To the moon. Alice, the Crains <laugh> yeah. You wanna be Norton? You could be Norton. Hey Norton, come on. Let's go to the roof. Smoke a Koba. It'll be great. Look. Great skyline now. Okay. If you get there and it's still available, I, I will, I will. $10,000 at a time. <Laugh> I will wire you the money. Well, you'll have to do it 10 at a time.

Leo Laporte (01:58:14):
It'll take, it'll take very complicated. I know. I know. I remember your story. <Laugh> okay. Very complicated. You know, it's fun. It's like the old days. Me and Paul, just the two of us, couple of old guys, Norton. I don't even remember. What's the woman's name again? Who in which show? The one, the one that's on this show with us. Oh, her Ethel. No Mary Jo will probably, well, we don't know what kind of trial hope she's. I hope can I hope not. I hope it's not something horrible. Well, if she, you know, if it's a, I assume she'll she'll contact me soon. I hear there may be an indictment coming down for the former president. It would be kind of cool if she was on the jury. I think that'd be interesting. I don't, yeah. That's not gonna be no, you don't think so.

Leo Laporte (01:58:57):
Okay. right. My and Paul Thurrott is@Thurrott.com T H U R R O. Good.Com. His books at the lean pub organization, lead pub.com, including the field guide to windows 10, do become a premium member@thout.com. So you can read his three year odysey programming windows. It's really a of windows. It's fascinating. Yes. From the point of view of the, of the tools used to make mm-hmm <affirmative> software for is really great. I enjoyed a huge amount and we will be back next Tuesday as we are always 11:00 AM. No Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, as we never are. You know, actually we are not gonna be back on time because Google iOS next week. Oh, you're right. We will be back Wednesday, but it will be whenever Google I, after Sendar PCHA leaves the stage. Yep. So yeah. So Google I is, what time does that start?

Leo Laporte (01:59:52):
10:00 AM. So yeah, it will probably be like within an hour. I be it's it's unknown. Cause they've in, in, in they've done hour, you know, very tight. I hour long. If things, when they're prerecorded, they're back live with this one and they have gone two hours in the past. So it's just really unknown. It's gonna be, be indeterminate amount of time. Jason Howell Jeff jar. And I will be doing the live play by play from 10:00 AM until the end. And then immediately after we'll we'll switch right over. We'll do us weekly. So come back next Wednesday. And usually sometime 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM Eastern sometime next watch, watch Google IO. 1800 YouTube. Yeah, I'll definitely be watching anyway. So if you watch live the streams, audio and video@livedottweet.tv, of course, the best way to do this is on your, our own schedule.

Leo Laporte (02:00:43):
That's why we make on demand versions of everything we do@twi.tv. In the case of this show, twi.tv/ww, there's a YouTube channel with the videos from every show. You could subscribe in your favorite podcast player and if you don't like the ads, there's a few ways to do it. Add free. You can of course join club TWI. That would be my preference, seven bucks a month, a free versions of it, everything plus access to the great club, TWI discord, plus the TWI plus feed with all sorts of stuff that doesn't make it into the podcasts. But you can also go to iTunes and I think it's 2 99 a month. You can buy individual shows including this one ad free. And I think we are doing it with Spotify. Some point Spotify. Yeah. They're this now. Yeah. And I think we're, we are turning that on.

Leo Laporte (02:01:26):
I don't know if it's on yet or not. Cause they do videos new. I think they just had video. We can't do yet because the way they do video is you have to use anchor.fm to upload it. Yeah. So they don't have any love for RSS or podcasting. They just want to do it all inside Spotify. So we still have the audio up there and yes, you can buy. I think we're going to, if we haven't done it yet at free versions from Spotify as well, but those are onesy Tuesday. You don't get all the other stuff. Spend a little more, spend a couple bucks more, get the club, twi.tv/club TWI. And again, cruise.twi.tv. I don't, I know I'm flogging this thing, but I wanna see you there cause it's gonna be so much fun. If you wanna join us in July, what are you doing it though?

Leo Laporte (02:02:11):
What are we doing on the cruise? I know we have a, a cocktail reception. Let me check the notion, notion this stuff, right? Like we have, there's several things. So the first night we have a a cocktail party, a welcome cocktail party. And I think we're, we're hoping that we can get this is our group, right? This is, this is our group. Just the a hundred of us or whatever. Yep. 5:00 PM. Welcome cocktail party at BB King's blues club. We're hoping that we can get some fun stuff for you there. I want to get, I wanna get badges, like some wifi packages. No, no, nothing that good. <Laugh> no, I wanna get you badges. So we know who you are. The, the next day Sunday, we're gonna have a group meeting. That'll be you and all gonna be tired of being on the ocean exhaust.

Leo Laporte (02:03:01):
No, it's a second day, man. So you and I, you may be little CSIC it's a travel day. You know, this is like, yeah, this is a seat. What they call a sea day. Yeah. So but it'll be beautiful. We're not at sea. You'll be sailing by some beautiful stuff. So you can look out the window, but we'll do an event you and me and by the way, if rich wants to join us in Rafael, that'd be great. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, you'll all go up on the stage and tell war stories about windows or something. Yeah. and then there's the after ke can, which goes on and on. There's a farewell cocktail party also in BB King's blues club, but that's on Friday, but every evening I think you and I, you, I plan to find a spot, this be available, like at a bar or something.

Leo Laporte (02:03:45):
Yeah. We're gonna find a lounge where there's enough space that we can have a bunch of people. And so we'll just, we'll let you know on the first day where that's gonna be. And and we'll just sit there. We'll have drinks. We'll get inebriated before dinner. Then you can join us. <Laugh> then you can watch me back and come as myself. Oh, its be, I'm gonna get Paul dancing on the tables. It'll be, it'll be so much fun. Yep. Karaoke night shuffleboard at three that's right. Chicken hat. <Laugh> no, no, no, no shuffleboard. Sorry. <laugh> I better not see that band from the Titanic. <Laugh> near my God to the thank you, Paul. Have a wonderful week. You're when are you leaving for Mexico tomorrow? No. when am I leaving? Monday night. Okay. Okay. Well signing is on Tuesday. I'm so excited for you. Podcast is on Monday. I'm not kidding. Text me if you, if they say the place is available. <Laugh> okay. I, I, I have a secret pact with your wife that prohibits me from doing anything like that, but I'll I'll I'll you know, I'll see she, she doesn't know. We gotta that's the thing. I gotta take her to Mexico city when she sees she's a it is. She's gonna say what we can leave here. Breaking news. Sorry to interrupt. Yes. Mary Jo has been dismissed from service and she's free for four more years. Hallelujah.

Leo Laporte (02:05:07):
Hallelujah. I can't wait to hear about her case. She must have found guilty. Pretty damn. You're guilty. I gotta get on I'm outta here. <Laugh> all right. You. Yeah, no, I think Lisa needs to see Mexico city. I think a lot of people need to see Mexico city. I think you're right. I think you're right. Thank you. My friend will see you next week. All of you all your doses on windows weekly. Bye bye.