Windows Weekly Episode 785 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 Thore Mary Joe Foley are here some layoffs at Microsoft as they begin their new fiscal year. Paul and Mary Joe also look ahead for fiscal 2020. Is it two or three? I guess it's 20 22 23. Some predictions, edge OS hollow lens surface. We've got an update for the duo and a caution about using Rufus to install windows 11. That's all coming up next on windows, weekly podcasts you love

TWIT Intro (00:00:34):
From people you trust. This is tweet.

Leo Laporte (00:00:43):
This is windows weekly with Paul Thra and Mary Jo Foley episode 785 recorded Wednesday, July 13th, 2022. Mark of the web windows weekly is brought to you by Lenovo orchestrated by the experts at C D w to help transform your organization with Lenovo ThinkPads equipped with the Intel Evo platform for effortless connectivity and collaboration from anywhere. Learn more at cdw.com/lenovo client. And by new vey, say goodbye to abandoned carts, poor approval rates and high chargebacks with new vey, the platform fast forwarding to the next generation of payments. Turn payments into powerful accelerators for your business@newvey.com. It's time for windows weekly. The show where we did, I forget to say hello, dozers. The show where we talk about Microsoft with these fabulous head dozers, the chief dozers and chief Mary Joe Foley from all about microsoft.com is that blog Paul thera from thera.com thera.com joint also. Yeah, right? Yeah. And soon to be my cruise mate. <Laugh> that's gonna be a lot of fun. Yep. Yeah. He silky is, is silky is ING. He's already silky. He's

Paul Thurrott (00:02:12):
Another silky. The dwarf

Leo Laporte (00:02:14):
Silky the eighth dwarf. Many people don't remember. You could be grumpy. That's a real dwarf.

Paul Thurrott (00:02:19):
You know, the final test I took when I, I was trying to become a lifeguard was some giant, big guy had to force me under the water and try to drown me. Oh my God,

Leo Laporte (00:02:28):
That's

Paul Thurrott (00:02:28):
Awful. That's what I'll be doing to you when we <laugh>. It's awful. When the ship goes down, Leo, does it have, I'll be holding onto you.

Leo Laporte (00:02:36):
That's hysterical. It's gonna be a lot of fun and 120 TWiT listeners will be there. And we're gonna do a lot of fun things. I've got some prizes. Oh, and I forgot to tell everybody come is your favorite emoji because Sunday is world emoji day. So we gotta, you know, everybody dresses. Your favorite emoji. Is

Paul Thurrott (00:03:00):
There a, is there an offline emoji cuz that's

Leo Laporte (00:03:04):
<Laugh> favorite the best one

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:06):
There, a cocktail emoji. You could be a cocktail emoji.

Leo Laporte (00:03:09):
I, you know, Lisa and I will bring emojis with us and we'll strap them onto our head just to, just to set the set, the tone for world emoji day. I think that's our that's our lecture. So maybe we could just have the emoji movie and we don't have to do anything. That'd be fun. All right. Let's talk about windows incidentally. I see that there is a they just put out another insiders build. Yes. Yep. As

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:40):
They do add

Leo Laporte (00:03:41):
It to the notes. Oh, I see you put it in already. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:44):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:03:45):
So let's not start with the happy news. Let's start with the, the, the, the grumpy news layoffs.

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:53):
Yeah. Not that grumpy though. Right? They

Leo Laporte (00:03:55):
Do this every year. Is this, is this reorg time. It's like their sec, like Q like their Q whatever. And it's time Q1. It's the beginning of the fiscal

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:04):
Year. Q1. Yep. July one is the start of their fiscal. So yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:04:08):
So time to time to cut the fat.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:12):
Yeah. Although not much fat, 1% of their 180,000 employees. So not, not bad, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:04:19):
That's nothing 1%. No. Yeah. Most companies are doing 10%. 20%, right. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:25):
Right. Theirs. Isn't about, you know, they didn't blame supply chain or any of that. They're just like, you know, we're just realigning our priorities. Yeah. Like we do every year. Yeah. Start at the fiscal. That's

Leo Laporte (00:04:34):
What we do. Did did they did 

Paul Thurrott (00:04:36):
Well remember

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:39):
A few years ago

Leo Laporte (00:04:41):
<Laugh> I was just gonna, I was wondering if the CEO sent out the same memo that C Pacha sent out yesterday saying it's time for you all just to work a little harder. Okay. Just, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:50):
He did not <laugh> did not,

Paul Thurrott (00:04:53):
I'm not suggesting you might be gone soon or anything, but you might wanna do your best job

Leo Laporte (00:04:57):
Right now. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:57):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:04:59):
It's back to work. You <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:01):
Yeah. Now remember Microsoft a few weeks ago or a month ago announced they were not hiring in windows and office. And I think elsewhere in the company, and that's kind of the other way you'd reduce headcount. Right. You just attrition slow down the, I get. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:15):
But if you go to their career site right now, like if some people are like, oh, they're just not gonna hire. I'm like, oh no, they're hiring, they're hiring a lot for a lot of jobs, AI cloud, you know, all of those things where they, their priorities are. Right. And you don't see as many jobs listed for windows, you see some Silicon jobs, which is kind interesting. You see dynamics and that kind stuff. But yeah, you don't really see like pure windows jobs and

Leo Laporte (00:05:42):
That's kind of interesting.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:44):
Yeah. You see surface sometimes mentioned 

Leo Laporte (00:05:48):
So interesting. Yeah. I wonder why Microsoft's immune from what it seems to be hitting the whole tech sector or these massive layouts all around.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:56):
I would say because so much of their customer bases enterprise. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:06:00):
Ah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:01):
And they, the enterprise is isn't immune, but like that's, it's more resilient. I feel like than the consumer market right now. Anyway.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:08):
Well, it's not as bombastic, right. They don't have the huge peaks in the big valleys. It's not right based on word of mouth and what what's, you know, what people are doing on the street. You know, it's just slow and steady. I

Leo Laporte (00:06:19):
Would say rather that it's a lagging indicator and that you're gonna see the corporate tail off later this year. And so I wouldn't, I'm not, I wouldn't bet this is the last we hear from Microsoft have, have

Paul Thurrott (00:06:32):
This year. I think this is the notes. Let me just see if I can find this. Yeah. So I have a story later about the PC sales expectations for this year. So we we'll kind of get to that, but just real quickly, the, the, the demand for cor like a commercial PCs has, is still there of right now. Anyway, the demand for consumer PCs is fallen off a

Leo Laporte (00:06:52):
Cliff. Right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:54):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:06:54):
Right. That makes sense. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But I, but I, I, I wonder if, you know, if this continues towards the end of the year, if there might be more rightsizing, as they say earnings come out when

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:10):
Yeah. Today they posted the earnings are gonna be July 26th, Tuesday. Oh, okay. There was no date until this morning that I had been able to find <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:07:20):
So yeah. I was gonna say it would have to be late this month. Yeah. Okay. So

Leo Laporte (00:07:23):
That'd be their that's their fourth quarter. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:26):
Earnings mm-hmm <affirmative> and full year. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:07:27):
And oh, and full year that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, mm-hmm

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:30):
<Affirmative> same day as Google reports, which is kind of interesting too.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:35):
It doesn't happen too often.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:36):
Yeah. That's good. No, that does not cool.

Leo Laporte (00:07:39):
Usually

Paul Thurrott (00:07:39):
They just have dev shows on the same day. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:07:41):
So hap happy new year. And as we always do at the end of the old and and the beginning of the new it's time for your predictions for the new fiscal year.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:56):
Yeah. You thought I Wass year earlier, wait till you hear what I say

Leo Laporte (00:07:59):
About

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:59):
This uhoh oh

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:04):
Yeah. It's a good time to look at where, what we think they're gonna do for the rest of the year. I feel, I, I don't know if you guys feel this way, but I feel like things have been kind of slow so far this year. Yes, there haven't been as many new product announcements. What's been kind of keeping Microsoft going and in the news is a lot of gaming announcements, but I feel like at, usually by this point in the year, we have a kind of a strong indication of where new products are going, where they're, what's likely to come towards the end of the year. And I feel like when I look back at what I've written this year, I'm like there hasn't been as many brand new things announced.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:41):
I'm not saying I can answer a question why, but I, I feel like the, the answer might have something to do with the uncertainty around hybrid work and the, you know, the end of the pandemic, it's not really right. Right. But he, I just don't, I, there was a period of time there for a year or two, where we knew people were gonna be working from home. And it was something that Microsoft and other companies that support businesses could really rally around zoom, you know, exploded during this time, et cetera, et cetera. And then it's like, okay, now we're doing hybrid work. All right, great. You know, and let you know, Leo was questioning earlier whether the business PC sales were kind of a lagging indicator and all that kind of thing. I mean maybe, but you know, businesses can save a lot of money by closing offices and not bringing people into the office if they can get away with that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I feel like that, I think that is what may, might drag out a scale back on the business side, because that that's how they can scale back. They can just not put all this money into like real estate basically or whatever. So, I mean, I don't, there

Leo Laporte (00:09:42):
Might be some money to spend in other words,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:44):
And then recess or traditionally less money. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:09:47):
But less money on, on, on facilities, more money and more laptops maybe.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:52):
Yeah. Maybe. But I, I just think there's an uncertainty, like the, the one trend, I would say with Microsoft that I think we've seen over the past, I'm gonna call say six months, say sinces ignite or so is during the pandemic, everything was free. Microsoft added features and features and features. Yeah. And it was all free. They opened up things that were paid before and made them free for others. And now what you're starting to see is new product lines, new brands, new skews, and new price points, like new, like things that have a cost associated with them. And I think, you know, they, you can't release paid things at the same scale. You can free things because I think there would be a lot of pushback. So I think this is maybe this is a natural slowdown just because of what we experienced over the past two years, maybe

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:39):
Yeah. Could be mm-hmm <affirmative>

Paul Thurrott (00:10:41):
Something like that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:42):
Yeah. Yeah. But let's, let's dig into windows first, cuz I feel like that's kind of what we do here. Right? So mm-hmm, <affirmative> the rest of this year. There's gonna be two releases at least of windows. There's gonna be windows 1122 H two, which we think OC September, October, probably fall of fall release.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:04):
Yeah. I'm guessing it might be a little earlier than October. You do just because of the way it's kind of come together. But yeah. But yeah, October's a safe, a safe be

Mary Jo Foley (00:11:11):
Share fall. We could say fall, fall timeframe. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> in the us. And then windows 10 22 H two. We also believe will come out this year. I mean, they've been very close melt about that one and kinda where it's at. What's gonna be in it or not. Right. But you know what, there might be other windows releases before or after that as well, because of the way they've been interesting bundling some things up into cumulative updates and throwing 'em out there as features and say, Hey, here's some more features. Right. And it's not a feature update, but here it is. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:43):
But it's a feature. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Microsoft. Give us Microsoft take it away thing. I think right last July through October, we, if, if there was one thing that we could celebrate about windows 11, universally individuals and businesses, they had walked away from this TWiTce a year, feed trip, update thing. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and I think everyone thought great. That was, it was too aggressive, you know, whatever. Even though they had shifted to a scheme where they had a major update in the first half of the year and a minor update in second half, that was kind of like the long term support version, whatever that was. Okay. But you know, having one a year was great, but then you realize, like you said, they can add features at any time they added features last fall, they added features this spring. It's you're you're gonna be rebooting your computer at least TWiTce a month because of updates. Yeah. It's just the way it is the way it's been.

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:28):
Yeah. Even, even yesterday on patch Tuesday, the patch that came out for windows 11 added a new feature, it added that new search experience. Right. And so that's supposed to be security updates, right? Like that's what you expect. In patch Tuesday updates there usually almost always, I would say security updates, but this one also you get that new search experience that adds all the you know, the state and history thing. And, and I forget what they exactly call this now, but 

Paul Thurrott (00:12:56):
Search highlights yesterday, it was search highlights, Henry David throws hundred and second birthday. Woohoo. See like I,

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:03):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:13:04):
I call this is a, this is a distraction. Like I said, because when you go to search, you're going there to do something and then you see this thing that has nothing to do with what you were doing and you look at it. Right. And then you're like, why, why am I socks in the refrigerator again? What was I doing here? You forget, you

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:20):
Know? Yep. Yeah. And then the, the other one we've talked about many times on the show, tapped file Explorer. Maybe we'll show up in a cumulative update this year. I don't think they're gonna put it in 22 H two, but they could, right? Yeah. They, they

Paul Thurrott (00:13:35):
Haven't, I just, I just got it on one of my computers. Oh you did. And you did. Yeah, yeah. No idea why. Yeah. In fact I was, I was taking screenshots for the book and I bring them over to the computer that got the update and I started realizing, you know, the, the navigation pain in fol Explorer was completely different on the two computers. I'm like, oh my God, what am I doing? I've been taking screenshots of this thing what's going on. And then I realized it's because that computer had gotten the file that I'm sorry, the tab update. And it also changes the navigation pain. It moves one drive from toward the bottom to toward the top, for some reason, you know, they're moving the cheese around. So

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:13):
Yeah. Is that running an insider build or what, what was

Paul Thurrott (00:14:16):
That?

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:17):
That got it.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:18):
So the way, well, <laugh> the Providence of this is hard to say MEO, but basically I got the, the first build that was, we knew would be 22 H two, which is like, I should know what it is. Sorry, 22. It's like 22, 6

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:34):
Something, something

Paul Thurrott (00:14:34):
2 22, 6 21 dot something. Right. So right. They provided an ISO for that. I have used that to install that build on all of my computers. It gets updated, you know, so now it's 20, you know, whatever points, something, something, something so that's how it was on there, but I don't, it's not enrolled in the insider program. It's just out there with that build on it. So it gets updated and it got the fly. It got the tab update.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:01):
Hmm.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:02):
Lovely.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:02):
Okay. I know. Yeah. <laugh> yeah. Cuz I, I feel like right now the, if you're in the insider program, it did get, it went to the dev channel. It went to the beta channel. I don't think it ever went to the release preview channel. Did it tab, file Explorer?

Paul Thurrott (00:15:18):
No, I don't sure did it definitely go to beta, I guess it must have. Cause I got it.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:22):
It did. I

Paul Thurrott (00:15:23):
Thought it did. It must have cuz I don't have an I don't well I do have one, but this is not a, a dev channel machine. So yeah. I don't know what to say. I don't know. I didn't expect to see it. I was confused by it. So yeah. There you go.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:35):
Yeah. <laugh> yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:39):
So I think to answer, to answer your first question though, it says what's gonna happen with windows 10 and 11, the rest of this year. I think windows 10 22 H two will happen. And I think it be the most minor updates. Right. I don't remember the details of this, but if you think back to 21 H two or 20 H two, it was probably like a little bullet list of a couple of business oriented. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> very small things. Yeah. It will be something like that. Right. It's it's not gonna well search, I guess search highlights will be part of it. Exactly. Yeah, by the way, did you know the new Microsoft store is in windows 10? The one that comes in windows 11, I just, yeah. I brought up a windows 10 PC for, you know, book purposes. And that's the story that that's, there's an interim update that I know it's an app, but that's an app that delivers app updates.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:22):
It's kind of an important app. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> like that app was updated on windows 10 in the past year as well. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> in a pretty major way. Right. so yeah, there could be, you could see more of the app stuff which, you know, may, may or may not be interesting to you mm-hmm <affirmative> but I think that's gonna about do it, but I think you're right about the, the, the trick isn't whether 22 H two happens, we know that's happening. It's the whatev, what else happens? <Laugh> you know? Yeah. And I think, you know, file Explorer, tabs is a great example. That's it's probably gonna happen this year somehow, you know, it will be like the thing we got Tuesday, it will just appear one day and we won't know why.

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:01):
Yeah. <laugh> yep. You know? Yep. Yeah. And then next year, you know, looking into the rest of the fiscal year, we already know that windows seven extended security updates ends in January. Right. So, yeah. Yeah. So that they, people had three years to pay for extended security updates and that's gonna stop in January. I don't think they're gonna that's well, windows one support, right? That's right. Windows eight, one support and windows, sorry, Microsoft 365 apps on those two platforms also no longer will work right in January as well. So you know, some people are banking on them, extending the, the date again and letting people pay for more time. But I don't, I don't think you should count on that. Wouldn't I don't <laugh> yeah. Mm-Hmm

Paul Thurrott (00:17:49):
Yeah, no, we're gonna be in a windows 10, 11 world at this point. And just like XP for a long time and windows seven will be out in the world. You, we talked about dance offices, I think last week or whatever, but yep.

Leo Laporte (00:18:01):
<Laugh> 

Paul Thurrott (00:18:01):
You'll still see it because that's the way the world works. But I, I think for all intents and purposes, this is the end.

Leo Laporte (00:18:08):
Yep. This is the end, my friend. <Laugh> the end

Paul Thurrott (00:18:13):
Bringing the helicopters.

Leo Laporte (00:18:16):
<Laugh> very good. You picked right up on that. That was good. Yeah. Yeah. And I I don't know what this bullet point means. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:18:28):
Well, actually, cuz you were, you weren't here for this. Oh, when you were away a couple weeks ago, I went off on this. Mike asked me a question and then 40 minutes went by <laugh> and basically

Leo Laporte (00:18:39):
Remind me not to ask that question. The

Paul Thurrott (00:18:41):
Question, the question was, well, you know, I wanna write an app for windows. What do I do? Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:18:47):
Something good Lord <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:18:50):
And oh,

Leo Laporte (00:18:50):
There's a short answer to that. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:18:54):
Yeah. And that done

Leo Laporte (00:18:55):
A long wrap. That

Paul Thurrott (00:18:56):
Result was

Leo Laporte (00:18:57):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:18:58):
Yeah. There are, there are about 17 different ways you could write apps that will run on windows. I think it's, I don't think it's possible for any, some, some guy, some woman, anyone is out in the world and says, I have an idea, this incredible app. I'm gonna make it just for windows. <Laugh> what do I do? No, one's thinking like that. Right? we're in the cross. Well, that

Leo Laporte (00:19:16):
Seems like a bad thing. I mean, in the early days of computing, there were lots of little people writing you know, simple apps that's right. That's that was the, what made the ecosystem so broad, vast and exciting.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:30):
Yeah. But you know, ecosystems mature over time, you know, and the way that,

Leo Laporte (00:19:35):
So it's now narrow

Paul Thurrott (00:19:36):
Is kind of a broad term, but

Leo Laporte (00:19:38):
Narrow and

Paul Thurrott (00:19:39):
Boring. Well it's well by, by nature. Well, we have two mobile Mo still sorry. Major mobile platforms. Yeah. It's still vast, but there, there are two <laugh> right. Yeah. You know, back in the early eighties we had Commodor and Atari and ti and time

Leo Laporte (00:19:51):
I'm thinking the early days I mean windows 3, 1, 1, and on what, you know, all of those, remember all that shareware and freeware and yeah. Norton utilities and all

Paul Thurrott (00:20:03):
That. Sure. But

Leo Laporte (00:20:05):
Peter was just some

Paul Thurrott (00:20:06):
Guy with society.

Leo Laporte (00:20:07):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:08):
Yeah. No, the point we came to was nobody's writing a killer app for windows

Leo Laporte (00:20:13):
Anymore. Well, for anything that's mean a killer app. That's just not what you do. And

Paul Thurrott (00:20:16):
That would be insane. That would be insane

Leo Laporte (00:20:18):
To do it. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:19):
Even you, you will see people because apple has done an incredible job with a developer evangelism. So you will see companies who will say I'm gonna target apple, you know, and, and they might just come out on iOS, iOS, and iPad, maybe the Mac, whatever. But you, I, I bet I don't know this for a fact, but I bet that doesn't happen as much on the Google side. For some reason, even though that ecosystem is bigger, I'm just gonna target target Android, you know is not a thing too many people say, but certainly nobody's saying that about windows and it's not because the ecosystem isn't big. It's just because you wanna reach customers and the customers are spread between these different platforms. And so, you know, the web makes a lot of sense.

Leo Laporte (00:20:56):
So you're saying people write cross platform looking at that's rust. Yeah. That's what, okay. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:00):
Yeah. Like web apps, you know, even Microsoft has their own solution for this. Right. They have Maui on the Microsoft side, they have flutter on the Google side. You know, remember apple waged a war against this kind of thing. Nearly days of iOS, cuz Adobe had some kind of cross platform. Yeah. Solution. They specifically said we don't, we don't want least common denomin denominator apps. Right. but I think that stuff is, is matured. And I, so, you know, are we ever gonna get, like in other words, are we gonna have a PDC? Well, we have a build now where it's like the Longhorn bill@pdcandwegetlikeanew.net based, you know, API. No, <laugh>, that's all guys like the do nets.net. The fact that.net exists today is a miracle. But part of the reason it exists is because of cross platform.

Leo Laporte (00:21:46):
So was Mike asking

Paul Thurrott (00:21:47):
Net is very much a cross

Leo Laporte (00:21:49):
Platform about cross platform apps or was he asking? He asked

Paul Thurrott (00:21:51):
A very simple question. I, I, I took it down.

Leo Laporte (00:21:53):
He just wanted to write a, like he he's learning Python. So he says, well, I wanna, I, I would like to write a windows app. How do I do that? Right. And you know, it used to be, say visual basic, right? Well, no, usually be, say visual basic. Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:22:08):
Right. No, that's right. That's exactly right. So if you go to the windows developer website today, what you'll find is visual basic still sort of exists. Of course C sharp, there's different. We have these legacy frameworks say, I don't want, I'm gonna do this again. <Laugh> but we, we, we have these more modern frameworks that actually this came out of a discussion about the expiration windows eight one. Now that I'm thinking about it. So the modern development platform that's built into windows, that's native, it's not native is a tough term, but is what used to be project reunion, which is now called the windows app SDK, which used to be U UWP, which used to be universal apps. Yes. Which used to be Metro style apps. So this

Leo Laporte (00:22:45):
Is, this is, this is not mobile apps apps. This is not the smart sixth grader who says, I wanna write a little calculator app for my PC. He's not gonna, I mean, how big is the documentation for, for this stuff, right? He's, you know, he's not gonna

Paul Thurrott (00:22:59):
Do that. Here's the thing. So Microsoft in its infinite wisdom decided 10 years ago that they were gonna put a mobile app platform inside windows. And that was the future. So, oh, what they didn't do was evolve the native desktop app platforms that they had at all. And belatedly. Now that.net has resurged. There are third parties who are actually looking at wind forums, they're looking at WPF and they're extending them and bringing new features. And that's neat, but it's not, which is not what we've done. Unfortunately,

Leo Laporte (00:23:29):
When the smart sixth grader calls the radio show and says, I wanna write an app for windows he's not saying cross platform. He just wants to program. And he wants to program it on the platform he's using, which is windows. I would've said, you know, the free VB for years was the right. Was the right answer before that.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:45):
You still, by the way, you still could, you could answer that. You could answer it that way. Yeah. You still, so visual basics still exists. Okay. Okay. Yeah. There's a visual studio community. Okay. you can use, they don't really call it visual, basic.net anymore, but it's basically visual basic.net. They'd be better off learning C sharp, by the way, you get all the same tools. It's a more sophisticated language. And it's also being rapidly and updated and and, and actually updated. I mean, visual basic right now is kind of flatland as far as new features and so forth. But you could, if you wanted to, that's what I did a couple years ago when I wrote the first version of my that no pet app was written in visual basic.

Leo Laporte (00:24:21):
Oh, okay. Well, I didn't realize I did.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:23):
That was cuz I

Leo Laporte (00:24:24):
That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's still the, so

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:27):
What's your prediction though. I'm curious. Like, okay, we get this whole discussion with

Paul Thurrott (00:24:32):
Your prediction. This doesn't change. There's no, there is no thing. We're not gonna have that next big framework. Right? So Microsoft, we we've talked about this so much. Microsoft meets developers. They also meet customers wherever they are. That was the thing about when SA Nadela came on board, they brought office to the iPhone and everyone was like, oh, it's crazy. You know, but they they're just meeting people where they are and that's what they do with developers. So if you're a web developer, we support react native, go to town. We have.net tools for web around blazer. And so N asp.net and whatever you, we, there are, there are like a hundred choices. So you can't point people to a thing and say, that's the one you gotta do. It depends on where you're coming from. What your background is. You have a code base you want to bring over you there's so many solutions. You know, Charles, Petzel used to write a book called programming windows. You can't write a book called programming windows. There's no such thing. You know, you'd have to have 17 volumes programming windows with, right. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:25:29):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>,

Paul Thurrott (00:25:30):
It's just the way the world's gone and it's never coming back. It's just, there's, there's no new native windows, anything that's gonna change the world ever. It's just, it's over the world has evolved. It's not Microsoft's well, <laugh>, it's not Microsoft's fault. I was gonna say, I suppose it's partially

Leo Laporte (00:25:45):
Microsoft. No. And the same you, you get the same probably same answer for most platforms. If somebody said the same thing for apple, you might say, there is no VB. The closest they've got is swift playgrounds and that's kind of not very,

Paul Thurrott (00:25:59):
Yeah, good. It's a learning environment. It's good for that learning environment. And

Leo Laporte (00:26:04):
So probably the answer to Mike's specific question is Python allows you to write code cross platform and you just have to learn. And it's not easy. I have to say, you just have to learn the libraries to use, to make it a windows app versus a Mac app versus a Chrome. Versus

Paul Thurrott (00:26:23):
If you, if you came up, if you're a.net developer, you have multiple avenues for the future for you to go to, there's all kinds of things you can do. It's great. If you literally are a, a, a grade school child and you've never programmed and you wanna make an app of some kind it's most likely that a kid like that would want to do it on a phone or something, how exciting would it be to bring

Leo Laporte (00:26:45):
Up someone phone? That's probably true, isn't it? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:49):
But you know what I would, I mean, you could make a case for web apps for those people as well, because those things run everywhere. But yeah, mobile app, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what to say on, on windows. It's hard. I would not want anyone starting out in the world today to start with visual basic because that's a dead end. Not that they couldn't learn. Not that it wouldn't be useful and fun and

Leo Laporte (00:27:13):
Honestly, but basic has always been a dead end. There's no time basic. Wasn't a dead end. <Laugh> seriously. And people of our generation, well, well, your generation and, and mine learned basic because it was the first language, but we always had to transcend that to go any farther. So

Paul Thurrott (00:27:31):
I didn't, I don't know if I ever told this story, but I co-taught a class at Scottsdale community college a million years ago about visual basic. And it started out as a, just a traditional class. Here's what we're learning here are the topics. Here's the homework. And toward the middle of the semester, it turned into all right, here's some visual basic code. What do you think it does? And then everyone would say, blah, blah, blah, whatever. We're like. Yeah. That's exactly what you would think it does. It doesn't do that. And then we would, we would because the language was so terrible. And so illogical, we had every, almost every week we had examples of people who were smart, who said, this should work. And we would look at it. We would say, you're right. It should,

Leo Laporte (00:28:08):
It doesn't.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:09):
And here, and it's, it's visual basic,

Leo Laporte (00:28:11):
It's a bad choice, you know? Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:28:13):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:28:14):
On the Mac in the early days, people used HyperCard that way. It was the that's right. Simple kind of for everybody programming language. And I have to say an apple script somewhat too. And, and I have to say every time computer scientists write a language for beginners, it's really a nightmare. It's not a, it's not, I understand their desire to make it accessible. I mean, you know, there's scratch which is, you know, kind of cross-platform there's ways to do it, I guess, but sure. That's a good that's for

Paul Thurrott (00:28:42):
Teaching Keigan and Richie have their own version of basic still to this day, if you really want to hit a dead end and you want <laugh>, you wanna see how the originators of basic want, wanted the language to go it's out there it's you could find it right now. It's

Leo Laporte (00:28:56):
Crazy. Is it Q basic or is it something else?

Leo Laporte (00:28:59):
They ha it's not kne handed Richie, by the way. It's what they call it and it's not accurate. And mock it's not, I thought who did basic. It was 

Paul Thurrott (00:29:06):
No, it's no it's

Leo Laporte (00:29:08):
Kne handed. Rich. K no. K RRC

Paul Thurrott (00:29:11):
Is that C

Leo Laporte (00:29:12):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:12):
Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So I should know better than that. All right. So basic, let's see, I wrote about this in, in

Leo Laporte (00:29:19):
My that's interesting. So there's still kind of a primitive basic that's around. Yeah. Oh, you're think of Kearney and CU find, I could find Kevin, Kevin you're thinking of John ke. That could be, yeah, not Keigan Khan. I'm sorry. Yeah. John Chemy he wrote basic

Paul Thurrott (00:29:33):
K and R C you're right. You're right. That's

Leo Laporte (00:29:35):
Yes, yes, yes. He he's one of the Hungarian Martians. No, seriously. There, there came out of hungry in the twenties, a group of scientists. I know this cause I'm reading about biography of John V. Newman who were considered Martians because they were so far ahead of everybody else. They were like these brilliant. They were mostly Jewish. They were disproportionately represented for instance, in the Manhattan project. There were, you know, the, the majority of them were Hungarians. Yeah. From the, who were trained in, you know, went to high school in the twenties, escaped in the thirties and then helped us dev devise the atomic bomb. So yeah. So you're Kennedy was one of them. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:17):
John, John Kennedy and, and

Leo Laporte (00:30:18):
Kurts

Paul Thurrott (00:30:19):
Right. I'm so sorry.

Leo Laporte (00:30:19):
Yep. It's easy to mistake. So

Paul Thurrott (00:30:21):
Those guys are one

Leo Laporte (00:30:22):
Of those de and Kurts I think that's fair.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:25):
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. So right. The product is called true basic it's refocus as the original, basic true

Leo Laporte (00:30:30):
Basic

Paul Thurrott (00:30:31):
It's cross platform. It runs in dos Macko S windows 95. Is that still ran Linux, whatever.

Leo Laporte (00:30:36):
Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:38):
It's still around.

Leo Laporte (00:30:38):
It's not free though. I don't think

Paul Thurrott (00:30:40):
John Chemy passed away in 92. Right? I doubt it. <Laugh> I'm sure they still tried. Yeah. The original basics since Nigerian

Leo Laporte (00:30:48):
Basic.Com, the basic bronze edition it soon you see a bronze,

Paul Thurrott (00:30:54):
Basic was screwed up. You haven't seen

Leo Laporte (00:30:56):
Any of, you can see a bronze edition, you know, oh, that's gonna cost money. That's gonna cost money. Yeah. Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:02):
The bronzes

Leo Laporte (00:31:02):
Edition, the bronze edition. You don't want the bronze edition. So the bronze edition is $19. These silver edition is $99. These silver plus forms is $129. The gold edition is $149 and there's nothing better than gold. There you go.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:20):
<Laugh> <laugh> I don't know what to say.

Leo Laporte (00:31:22):
Do not say

Paul Thurrott (00:31:23):
About this. Our suggestion

Leo Laporte (00:31:24):
Do not buy any version of basic period.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:29):
<Laugh> true.

Leo Laporte (00:31:30):
Or otherwise.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:32):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:31:33):
Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:34):
Oh, that's funny.

Leo Laporte (00:31:35):
And they've got like,

Paul Thurrott (00:31:35):
What's interesting. Is this thing has supposedly been around since 64? Yeah. It's only on version six <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:31:42):
Yeah. You'd think they you'd think they'd they, they improve it over time version 6.07. That's funny. And then they have all these libraries you, you would buy that's hysterical.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:57):
It's

Leo Laporte (00:31:58):
Yeah. Basic is an important concept for Microsoft fans, cuz that's how bill gates started. He's very famous, you know, basic in a minimum number of lines that he sold first to Miz for the Altair and then formed Microsoft around it. And he was very proud of his code. I remember Devork used to tell me all the time bill would say, eh, I'm really, I nailed best one.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:20):
<Laugh> yeah. But you know, so yeah he did, but I actually, Paul Allen had the more impressive accolade or, or Fe during that time because he flew it Albuquerque right. To demo it. And he was looking at the tape and found a bug and he fixed it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:32:34):
<Laugh> they, well, they didn't have it frontier. So they had, they had, the whole thing was in emulation. They had no idea if the tape would run,

Paul Thurrott (00:32:41):
Not a VX. What was the thing before the VAX? The digital 

Leo Laporte (00:32:45):
The deck PDP level PDP. Yeah. Probably a PDP PDP level. Yeah. There you go. That's it? Yep. What a story? I got a 10 behind me right here. What a story that is hysterical. He debugged the paper tape.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:58):
He debugged it and, and put it in ran the first time correctly.

Leo Laporte (00:33:03):
There is a wonderful book, which I highly recommend called programmers at work. And the, the first edition has the interview with bill gates and the code that he's so proud of code.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:16):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:33:17):
That's great. He has a piece of the code.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:19):
Yep. I had that book. 

Leo Laporte (00:33:23):
Oh, it was a great book. I love that book. I don't know if it ever, I have it somewhere here. I have it somewhere here. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:27):
I don't have paper books anymore, but I wonder, I don't think it was ever digitized, but like a flip con must have been in that and 

Leo Laporte (00:33:34):
Yeah, exactly. Susan Lamers wrote

Paul Thurrott (00:33:36):
It guys

Leo Laporte (00:33:36):
Like that. Classic. and I'm just wondering if, no, you, you still have to buy it. <Laugh> yeah. Cause it'd be fun. If you could get a PDF of it. There is. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:33:48):
There it is. There it is. Dan 

Leo Laporte (00:33:50):
Dan Brooklyn guy from

Paul Thurrott (00:33:52):
Visco,

Leo Laporte (00:33:52):
Dan Brooklyn bill gates. This guy is familiar. I can't from

Paul Thurrott (00:33:57):
CPM. He made CPM.

Leo Laporte (00:33:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Dr. Du Gary Kal. And then who is this?

Paul Thurrott (00:34:03):
I don't recognize him. It's not fleet con

Leo Laporte (00:34:08):
<Laugh> no, I don't know. No. wow. 

Paul Thurrott (00:34:12):
Wait, go down. You're

Leo Laporte (00:34:13):
Buying a used version. You buy Wayne rat. See Wayne rat the creative Dase or it could be John warn. I think it is rat Ratcliff. Ion. Think so

Paul Thurrott (00:34:22):
Too. Yeah. It's not Andy

Leo Laporte (00:34:23):
Harrisville obviously. No, it's not hysterical. Great book. Highly recommended. And in the index in the back there is the code listing for bill gates. Let me see if I can find that online. Everything's online, right? <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:34:39):
Sorry, Mary Jo. We derailed.

Leo Laporte (00:34:42):
We could get this into

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:43):
Back down this rabbit hole. Guys.

Leo Laporte (00:34:45):
We love this stuff.

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:47):
You do. I have a better story for you though. Breaking news.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:50):
Oh, okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:54):
Netflix has been rumored to be doing a lower ad price subscription. Guess who their partner's gonna be in building it.

Leo Laporte (00:35:02):
Who?

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:03):
Microsoft.

Leo Laporte (00:35:04):
Oh, wow. Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:07):
That's ranking. Wow. Now why would that be? Wait for ads? Why would

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:10):
That be? Because

Paul Thurrott (00:35:10):
Of ads?

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:11):
Yes. Yes. Because of ads of

Leo Laporte (00:35:13):
Ads. What? Oh, they're gonna use the ad back end. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:15):
They're gonna use the Microsoft advertising platform. It's early days. We have much work to do, but blah, blah, blah. Yeah. They're gonna work with Microsoft ads.

Leo Laporte (00:35:25):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:25):
You thought our games were second rate. Wait until you see your ads.

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:28):
Thank you to the discord. People who are like posting breaking news in the discord <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:35:34):
Here is by the way, if you wanna see, and it may look a little familiar to you. Oh, should have lost it. Somehow I got I here it is bill gates. This is a YouTube video of bill gates. Yeah. And here he is in front of something that should look very familiar. The Al tear computer, which I have over my left shoulder which is why I have these, by the way, I just, I just did this. I flipped those switches. Mine's running up pie, raspberry pie obviously. And is about a hundred thousand times more powerful here, here was talking about his and then I wrote basic and 20 lines. So,

Paul Thurrott (00:36:20):
Oh, his voice is not that deeply. Oh, <laugh> <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:36:25):
More nasal must be more nasal

Leo Laporte (00:36:27):
If people, people wonder why I have these Blinky lights here 

Paul Thurrott (00:36:31):
Windows that hate was designed to be more user friendly.

Leo Laporte (00:36:38):
The Al alter 8,800 computer.

Paul Thurrott (00:36:41):
Oh God, the savior of our industry. And

Leo Laporte (00:36:43):
That's the cover of the popular electronics. Remember that Paul Allen ran into their their Harvard dorm room, slapped bill with it and said, go wake up, wake up. We gotta

Paul Thurrott (00:36:55):
Go, go to that news stand. And I, yeah, really Harvard News's that's still there. Like, yeah. Yeah. Wow. No, now it's gone. But it was there for, I, I mean, it was there until it probably 10 years ago. It was, yeah, it was kind of a fixture.

Leo Laporte (00:37:11):
Nice. Okay. Back to Netflix. Much more important. Okay. Yeah. That was the, the rumor's been going around for a while that they they were gonna do the ad supported version.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:23):
Yeah. But Microsoft's involvement is definitely a surprise. That's

Leo Laporte (00:37:26):
New. It's huge. Because the last story I saw, which was from the wall street journal said that it was gonna be Google and Comcast or NBC universal. Oh

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:36):
Really? Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:37:37):
Wow. To do the ad back, you end. So this is, this is a big win for Microsoft. It is, this is June 22nd in the wall street journal, Google Comcast corpse, NBC universal and alphabets. Google have emerged as top contenders to work with Netflix. And that's, that's a huge win for Microsoft, I think.

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:57):
Yep. It is

Leo Laporte (00:37:58):
Their ad platforms. Big. I mean,

Paul Thurrott (00:38:02):
<Laugh> their ad platform exists. It

Leo Laporte (00:38:05):
Exists.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:06):
It's yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:07):
It's bigger than apples probably, but it's not as big as Google's or Facebooks.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:11):
No, no.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:13):
Mm-Hmm

Leo Laporte (00:38:14):
Interesting. So it'll be Microsoft Bing in your Netflix.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:20):
<Laugh> probably, well, yeah. Bing will be involved somehow, right. Because that's part of the platform. Yeah. So yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:28):
Comcast does the ads for apple news and apple stocks. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> okay. So that's why Comcast is a player. Google does Disney's stuff. It's interesting.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:43):
I love it. When two empires get together.

Leo Laporte (00:38:45):
Yeah. <laugh> to, to capitalize on us. Yeah. Love that.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:49):
It's like the hampers and the, what was the other one? <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:53):
I

Leo Laporte (00:38:53):
Don't remember. I think Khan and Richie were the other ones. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:56):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:38:58):
Khan

Paul Thurrott (00:39:02):
Keigan and Ken ma no ke wait, Kurtz and

Leo Laporte (00:39:05):
Chem and Kurtz.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:07):
Kurtz is the name out of apocalypse now, too. Yes. The whole it's all coming back to apocalypse.

Leo Laporte (00:39:11):
Now. It all, it's all about apocalypse. Now, today it is. Let's take a little break unless you have something germane to add and then we're gonna do edge OS versus Chromos. How about that?

Paul Thurrott (00:39:24):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:39:24):
Or did you, or did we finish the developer story? I mean, oh,

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:27):
We finish that.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:29):
We'll never finish it. So let's, let's move right along.

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:33):
I saw that in the notes. I'm like, don't not this again. No, that's

Leo Laporte (00:39:37):
All right. Let's talk. C D w and Lenovo. Oh man. I love those think pads. Oh, I do. I do this episode of winners weekly brought to you by Lenovo orchestrated by the experts at CDW. The helpful people at CDW understand that as the world changes, your organization needs to adapt quickly to be successful. So how can CDW help keep your business ahead of the curve? Well, will Lenovo think pads, these powerful devices deliver the business class performance. You're looking for thanks to windows 10 and the Intel Evo platform with your remote teams working across the country and around the world. Collaboration is not a problem because Lenovo think pads keep your organization productive and connected from anywhere. Plus CDW knows your workforce has different work styles and needs flexibility, which is why Lenovo think pads are equipped with responsive tools and built in features that lay your team work seamlessly across their favorite tools.

Leo Laporte (00:40:40):
Now think about that for a second and let's not forget about security. No, no, no. These high performing machines protect at the highest level with built in hardware to guard against modern threats without slowing your team down. When you need to get more out of your technology, Lenovo makes seamless productivity possible. And CD w makes it powerful. Learn more at cdw.com/lenovo client cdw.com/lenovo client. Thanks CDW and Lenovo for their support of the windows weekly program. We may now move ahead in the discussion, unless you want to talk some more about the developer story. I mean, it's always,

Paul Thurrott (00:41:24):
Well, we didn't, there were a few things we didn't

Leo Laporte (00:41:26):
Cover <laugh> I can't do that to Mary Jo. All right. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:31):
But watch, I can segue from the Netflix story to the next edge versus Chrome watch. Oh, please

Leo Laporte (00:41:38):
Do. Okay. A little slight of hand here.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:41):
Watch this little cool segue. So Paul and I have both been speculating that Microsoft might be adding a lot of stuff to edge because they want to create an operating system similar to Chrome OS, and we've been calling it edge OS. One of the things they've been adding a lot of, a lot of to edge is stuff around advertising around shopping and like stuff that we've been calling crap. But basically very consumer focus stuff that has to do with MSN and has to do with Bing and has to do with all these things that they're gonna work with Netflix on, on the ad supported Netflix platform. Right. so we've been thinking about this, talking about it, contemplating it. And then one of our listeners the other day emailed Paul and I, and he said, I actually found an edge OS listing in the Microsoft career site.

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:34):
So we both raced to look at it. And when you look at what this is, it has nothing to do with Chromos right. <Laugh> at all. Yeah. Like there's like, there's a thing that is called the edge OS team at Microsoft, I guess. And it has to do more with distributed cloud distributed edge. So edge computing, IOT, that kind of stuff, and nothing at all to do with like a Chrome OS competitor. So then the question comes up. Do we still think Microsoft is trying to build something to compete with Chrome OS? And I've been asking around about this and my contacts say, no, my contacts say whatever edge OS is and why the many reasons why, why they're adding things like shopping and, and all these weird consumer features to edge. It really doesn't have to do with them trying to build something that's like Chrome OS.

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:23):
They said, because like, if you were gonna be, if you were going to create something to compete with Chrome OS you wouldn't be adding that kind of stuff. Right. You wouldn't be like, sure, adding shopping and all that. Like, you'd be adding other things to the, to the browser, but not that kind of stuff. So my, my belief now is that the reason they're adding all these things is somebody has done surveys at Microsoft and we know they love telemetry. What do people use their browsers the most for? And results came up like shopping, right. And like comparative comparing prices doing web searches. So this is why they're adding what they're adding to edge. It's, it's not because they wanna compete with Chrome MOS. It's because somebody got a survey and they said, oh, <laugh> we need to get more consumers. Let's add this stuff because that's what people do with a browser. Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:44:11):
Yeah. I think that's, what's ons like a usage PLO, a play, I guess. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I, but I think it's fair to say that windows 10 X had it happened would have been yeah. A Chromebook compete kind of a product. Totally.

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:26):
That's the whole purpose of it. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:29):
<Laugh> yeah. And it, if that container based system for running 1 32 apps had worked it, I mm-hmm <affirmative>, I think it would've become windows in the same way, in the same way that NT had, you know, back in the nineties, the early two thousands, you know, and it didn't <laugh> so I guess, whatever, I mean, we've moved on, but yeah. Yeah. They've tried before. I mean, they've had, you know, obviously windows 10 S windows RT back in the day. I mean, these things could all be, so I guess RT, you could argue was more of an iPad kind of a thing, but it's all the same space. It's the, you know, we have trouble selling computers that work well for under $500. How do we compete in that market? You know, mm-hmm <affirmative> and I I don't think we do. I think the sweet spot for PCs is right about $500. So 500 to a thousand, there's some great machines in there. You look under $500. It's like, eh, not so much. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:20):
Right. Agree. Yeah. It makes you wonder though, is that what <laugh>, what they're gonna do with the duo as they move forward? Like, I think they're gonna keep investing in surface duo. I don't think it can. I don't think it really is a phone competitor, even though it has telephony. Right. I, I feel like maybe that's their low end mobile platform plate, the duo as it evolves. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:45:44):
What about, so I don't,

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:46):
I think, I think they're gonna be, keep betting on Android for the low end. 

Paul Thurrott (00:45:51):
Yeah. I mean, I, I could picture them doing a Neo device running on Android and Google has just announced that they're really serious about tablets again and detachables and whatever. And dual a dual screen, bigger device, maybe. I mean, I don't personally think that kind of thing is particularly interesting, but if you, I, I think one of the big weaknesses of Android is that it can't compete effectively with the iPad for whatever reason, for many reasons, I guess. And if they get the apps updated and they look great on bigger screens, et cetera, I mean, I could picture Microsoft doing more Android devices for sure.

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:26):
Yeah. I don't, I don't know if they'll do I, well, yeah. Windows central had something recently where they said they don't believe there'll be anything like a Neo, like they think Microsoft's just tabled that idea that's too bad. Yeah. Yeah. But, but I don't,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:41):
I don't, that doesn't mean actually care about that, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:44):
Mean neither saying, sorry, like I, I'm not totally full, I'm not totally sold on the dual screen with the hinge thing. Right. But Microsoft seems is very sold on that. At least for the duo, I saw

Paul Thurrott (00:46:54):
Somebody put windows 11 on a duo.

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:56):
They did. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:58):
Yeah. Here's what makes more sense to me, Microsoft sells certain surface products with both AMD and Intel choices, like, okay, cool. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> what if Microsoft made a windows or surface pro X, but running Android. Yeah. You know, same form factor running Qualcomm parts, you know, whatever, but basically an Android detachable tablet though, those things exist, you know, Samsung makes some things like that, but mm-hmm <affirmative> if Android evolves to the point where it makes sense on a tablet form factor device two, and one form factor device, I, I could picture Microsoft jumping on that and that, and by the way, that makes a lot more sense to me than a dual screen device. Yeah. Of any kind agree. Honestly,

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:40):
I know it's possible unfortunately. Or fortunately, however, if you are a dual screen fan, the surface team is very taken with the hinge. Right? Like they love this hinge idea. They think this is their like claim the fame. And I think no matter what they build is gonna have a hinge. Right. It's like, they just seem to think they can make a case for this. And yeah. I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:02):
Yeah. They're a little too taken with their engineering there, but I'm not, I don't know that we have a good example of an incredible hinge from Microsoft, to be honest. I mean the surface book was kind of ludicrous, you know? Yeah. Didn't work. I, I, I think their, their big contribution has been the original surface design really surface pro three, but this ally connected keyboard that detaches and it's a true tablet. I, I, to me, that's where their, their strength is.

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:32):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:33):
Not these complexities, you know, the whatever folding, whatever screen devices we have in the future, Samsung huawe, whatever it is. I'm sure the hinges are incredible. <Laugh> and that's a big part of it, but really it's about the screen. I think that's what people care about.

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:48):
Mm mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> I think better. Yeah. It'll be interesting if they get into foldables too, you know, Microsoft really, they, they keep talking about enhancing windows to work on dual screen and foldables right. So, I mean, would they ever do a foldable? I don't know. Maybe

Paul Thurrott (00:49:05):
I think they have to, if, if assuming they continue forward with duo or whatever other dual screen devices, like to me, foldable is the natural evolution of that. Mm-Hmm

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:14):
<Affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. We should talk about surface and we've been talking a little about it. So predictions for the rest of this year for surface, my, my expectations are low. Like I think we'll see more surfaces refreshes of all the many of the lines, not all, but like, I don't think there'll be anything you're

Paul Thurrott (00:49:31):
Talking fiscal year, right. Not this

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:34):
Year. So year this calendar, like usually there's a fall surface launch right. Of some kind where they have Christmas. Yeah. But holiday,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:42):
What has to be updated? The, the only major product that has to be updated this calendar year in my mind is laptop. Right. So there has to be a surface laptop, five mm-hmm <affirmative> beyond that. I mean, I, unless they're suddenly changing their release schedule, they just had a major product launch last fall. Yeah. And they don't typically do every year, you know? So, I mean, we'll

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:05):
See, I think if they do things incremental, right? Like update the processors, that kind of thing. Not nothing like a brand new type of product in, in the fold.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:17):
Is there an example of Microsoft? I don't think there is taking an existing product is make one up like surface laptop three back in the day. And it came with whatever Intel and possibly back then at AMD processors, I think it did just take that product and rev it and say, now we have 12th gen processors or whatever the new one is mm-hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative>, but it's the same pro I still call service laptops. Right. <Laugh> you know, or whatever the product is. I don't think they've ever done that. And I, I, except they, they have, and they called it surface laptop four, I guess. I don't really think there are too many differences there, but yeah, maybe that's what they do. I don't know. I, I, I don't, I don't, what else would, what would you, if you're coming into the holiday season this year? Yeah. You know, when they've updated things in the past, like what has to be updated now? I think it's this laptop

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:04):
And, and what can you get parts for if you're updating it? Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:51:08):
Right. That's a big one. That's

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:10):
The other question.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:11):
Yeah. That's true. That's

Leo Laporte (00:51:13):
True. You know, the I was just looking at the calendar. I'll, I'll be gone, Paul, and I'll be gone next week. You've got a very special windows weekly on the 20th, and then we'll be back on the 27th. And that's the day after the end of the year earnings

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:26):
Earnings.

Leo Laporte (00:51:26):
Yep. One of the things to look at will be how surface is doing, right. How, yeah. How big a business that is. Do you think it'll still hold? No, it's been no.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:36):
They Warren less quarter to expect further declines there. I, I, and I think it's just a cyclical thing. I, you know, they did their, like I said, I think, I don't remember the month, September, October, or whatever. It was their big product release. They came up with the surface laptop studio. They went to surface pro eight with the new design, which is fantastic. I don't remember exactly all the details, but the, the one that was missing, like I said, was the laptop. They haven't updated it all year. They, I think they've updated this year. I know surface laptop go and have they updated surface go this year as well? I don't remember, but if not,

Leo Laporte (00:52:11):
They don't have a 12th gen.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:14):
Right. That's right. But they don't typically jump right on this stuff. I mean, that's, that's what I'm saying. You know, it's, it's a weird thing one year. I, I, I guess they could, they could just rev. They could do that thing that they've never done and rev their product lines don't change the designs. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, I mean, they're in a pretty good place design wise, I think mm-hmm <affirmative> and put 12th chin chips in them just in time for they, they

Leo Laporte (00:52:34):
Should at least do that. Do that. I would think to

Paul Thurrott (00:52:35):
Be announced. Yeah. Well the least thing, I guess the other thing they could do is wait for 13th gen, which comes out in the spring and they could announce that for the spring and then they could just be on the, the, the most current, huh? Gen what do you know? I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:52:48):
What do we know about the 13th gen? Is there still big? They're they've they're gone big little, right? Everything's big little,

Paul Thurrott (00:52:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Hybrid

Leo Laporte (00:52:56):
Hybrid. Yep. Performance and efficiency.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:59):
Yep. No, I would expect us

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:01):
More, more

Leo Laporte (00:53:02):
Of that. That LTE would be something. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:04):
Yeah. They cuz they occasionally roll out quietly and LTE enabled version of an existing feels like

Leo Laporte (00:53:10):
L LTE is gone now from laptops. Like they, people just say, well really? Yeah, because everybody has a hot spot on their phone.

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:17):
I know there are still people I talk to all the time who are like, yeah, I don't wanna use that though. I wanna, I want it built in. I know I'm not that person, but there are people like that.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:25):
We talk to those people, but I don't think those people are the mainstream. And the reality is if, if these things sold, everyone would make them and you just don't see a lot of 

Leo Laporte (00:53:35):
Broad's. That's what I think. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:36):
Of 'em connected laptops. You, I mean, there are some, right.

Leo Laporte (00:53:40):
Yeah. It not only adds to the build, but it cost of the build, but it adds to the monthly subscription fee. So right. It's a lot of money.

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:47):
Yeah, it is. Yeah. And

Paul Thurrott (00:53:49):
When your phone, if you have a an unlimited plan of whatever kind or in Verizon, we call it an unlimited plan with air quotes, whatever it's you can tether your phone and, and get that connectivity when you need

Leo Laporte (00:54:01):
It.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:02):
You can. Yeah. So in the discord, Lowell is bringing up some products that we haven't mentioned explicitly. Like he's talking about the duo, he's talking about the old Microsoft band, you know, and people always ask us this. They're like, do you think they're ever gonna make the band again or something like a fitness tracker? I say, no, I think they have decided that's not their wheelhouse <laugh> also the duo. So the latest rumors I've heard from various places is there may not be the duo three this year that they may wait, take a pause and do it next year. But sounds like they're still investing in the duo. Like they haven't decided like, eh, it didn't really go anywhere. We're not gonna do it. It sounds like they're still full all in on the duo from everything I hear 

Leo Laporte (00:54:46):
Prices have dropped haven't they have the duo.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:48):
Oh yeah. The original duo. The price is like nothing. It's like 500 bucks or something crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:54:55):
Usually that means a new version's coming, but in this case it just means the lack of interest.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:59):
It also means it's not so

Leo Laporte (00:55:01):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:01):
They made em and they gotta get rid of 'em. Right. <laugh> yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:55:06):
Maybe they could take them apart and put the chips in something they need.

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:10):
Yeah. Maybe

Leo Laporte (00:55:14):
It's

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:14):
A square. Can it go in a server though? Can I go in the servers and the data centers? That's what they

Leo Laporte (00:55:18):
Really know. Yeah, sure. Why not? <Laugh> they put all sorts of crap in there. <Laugh> office 365, Microsoft three, by the way, is it it's Microsoft 365, right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:31):
Well, not completely. There is still some skews called office 365,

Paul Thurrott (00:55:36):
But yeah, but I mean office, wouldn't you say the overall product line is called Microsoft 365. I would it's the, I would parent brand, you know, Microsoft is, is not good with branding. I think we're all familiar with that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:48):
They're not, they're not. 

Leo Laporte (00:55:51):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:55:51):
I remember remember they changed a bunch of them, but they didn't change some. And if I'm not mistaken at that time, they might have announced a new office, 365 SKU at that time too. I mean, they're,

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:01):
They may have really, I

Paul Thurrott (00:56:02):
Know they're just not good at this kind of thing.

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:04):
Not that great. So

Leo Laporte (00:56:05):
Hard. No,

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:05):
So hard consistency, not so good. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:56:08):
Somebody called up the radio show said I use outlook. And I said, oh, which one? You're gonna be a little more specific. Have to be more specific. Yeah. Hollow lens, anything new in the, the new year for hollow lens.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:23):
I think there's gonna be a big pause there, right? Because of all the turnover,

Leo Laporte (00:56:26):
I guess that's the real question is, is it dead?

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:30):
I think no, but I think, yeah. They'll if, if they keep it around, it's gonna be much more O only for business only very specific business markets. And then there are rumors that they may build some kind of new headsets that are for business use, like indu, like vertical, industrial, specific versions of them. But that doesn't mean they will give up on this market because there are a lot of rumors too, about them partnering with Samsung to make consumer headsets. Which is what Alex Kipman before he left was hoping they were the direction they were gonna go. So I, I think they've gotta stay in this market. Right? Like they, they, yeah, I think it they've made a case for it being something that some businesses can benefit from. And I think at least from the business standpoint, they're gonna stay in the augmented reality space, especially with what they're doing with teams, for mesh or mesh for teams. I can remember which way that name goes. <Laugh>, you know, like the, of here we go with web three, right. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:57:30):
They're all, they're, they're kind of alone in this space with businesses and excepts magic

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:36):
Leap. The new magic leap though, is all like high price, big business thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:40):
Like, yeah. I mean, sure. But <laugh> magic leap. I mean, meta meta could probably make a play here. Honestly. I know that there's something a lot of people might disagree with, but I, I, I would expect them to have a play in the, for businesses. But

Leo Laporte (00:57:56):
We've seen rumors minutes backing down on that hardware too. So I did.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:03):
It's great. And also in the ROS, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, when, when the iPhone first came out in 2007, it didn't integrate at all with any exchange, active sync, anything. It was, it was for people in the Microsoft world, which was all businesses. It was a big problem and everyone wanted to use the iPhone. So for iPhone OS 2.0, as they called it the next year, they added all that integration. And everything's been fine ever since, basically. Right? So that was a case where like C level people, whatever kind of drove the push to get this technology into places where it might not have gone. Otherwise they could pull that again with their own, whatever apple does around glasses or headsets or whatever, if it's good enough. And I, I don't see any way any of this stuff could ever be good enough, but I could see apple running away with this in a couple years if they come out with something and it's good.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:50):
And then you get that push from, you know, the executive suite, like, okay, let's go. I wanna get this stuff in, in the business. It could push that pro cuz apple will go full blown consumer. That's what they are. But you could picture the car designers, you know, whoever, whatever vertical uses there are for haul ends today, I could picture it all just collapsing and going. Wow. Which is a weird thing to say because the apple thing is imaginary at this point, but I, I they've done it before. And I, I just don't see a lot of enthusiasm for hollowlens out in the world, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:59:25):
Wow. People are already leaving the market before Apple's even entered, even

Paul Thurrott (00:59:30):
By the way this right. And this, this is the market power that Microsoft possessed in the mid nineties. Right. Right. All they had to do was hint that they might be entering this market and they would, you know, businesses would collapse. Yep. I think Apple's in that position for when it comes to devices.

Leo Laporte (00:59:46):
Wow. And, and you're right, because as soon as you said apple, I said, oh, business will never do apple. Except that B Y O D completely. Yep. Completely changed the world. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative>

Paul Thurrott (00:59:56):
All it takes is the guy calls, you know, the guy from the C-suite calls down to it and says yep. Support it. And they're like, but you don't understand. No. It's like, you know, you don't understand <laugh> you support it. Yeah. And that's how it happened with iPhone. Yep. That, that absolutely happened

Leo Laporte (01:00:11):
Kind of amazing.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:12):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:00:14):
Alright. Okay. <affirmative> okay. Then I think we have to talk about that's it for our rundown of things to expect in the new fiscal year, which goes through,

Paul Thurrott (01:00:28):
So the one little wild card that I think we kind of skipped over a little bit is arm and windows in our

Leo Laporte (01:00:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And 

Paul Thurrott (01:00:35):
There won't be anything product wise this year, this calendar year, but it's possible this fiscal year we'll see that new via acquisition product come out from Qualcomm. And if Qualcomm does their annual event in December, like they always do that should be the place where they announce it. CS happens a month later, that's where devices will be announced. Microsoft does a spring event sometimes, you know that's where we could see a prox update, et cetera, et cetera. So that might be where windows and arm finally starts to make sense. Or it might not, you know, like, I guess we'll see, but this is the, I think this is the moment of truth and it should happen somewhere in this in this fiscal year.

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:17):
Right. But also before that project Volera right. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, which is the arm based dev kit that Microsoft announced that should be out this calendar year. And

Paul Thurrott (01:01:28):
That's based on current end stuff and,

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:31):
You know yeah. But, but remember they also hinted they're gonna have something to say about licensing windows on apple, Silicon that's right, right. That they're gonna say something about it. We think, yeah, this year, right.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:44):
That's okay. That's true. And, and now we're over year after that should have happened, but right. This is another example where apple could kind of run away with it. Not that people would buy a Mac to run windows and arm. That sounds ludicrous, but it is a literal fact that windows and arm runs better in virtualization on a Mac than it does on real hardware today on PC. So that's a, <laugh>, that's something they gotta fix. I mean, that, that's crazy. Yeah. It's one thing for windows to run better on a Mac on hardware, which it never did actually, but it's another thing for it to run better while virtualized <laugh>. Yeah. That's incredible and right. They need to, they need to get it on top of that for

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:26):
Sure. Right. I mean, the thing, the thing people are waiting to hear is will Microsoft say they'll support it because right now you can do it, but there's no ISO, right. So there's all these things that are missing that businesses especially want. Right. it's so we'll see if they actually make good on this and say maybe by the time of ignite, like fall, fall timeframe, they'll have some, something more definitive to say that businesses will feel like, okay, now we feel like we can officially say it's supported.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:54):
Yeah. You, you should be able to buy a windows license download the arm version of the ISO. Right. And activate that thing on, if not on original hardware, then at least in a virtual virtualized right. Situation on a Mac, for sure. Yeah. It doesn't make sense that you can't, but that's the case,

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:11):
Right? No, they're putting a lot of investment right now in windows on arm. Like you're seeing like more and more of their own products being built natively for arm finally, like years after people thought this would happen. Yeah. So they're gearing up for something, right. They they're getting ready for something to be happening where they think people will actually want windows Onar right. Now, if you have it, it's more of a curiosity item, but they're acting like

Paul Thurrott (01:03:37):
Everything, but the PCs <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:39):
Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:40):
You know, we have the software's all in place for sure. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:45):
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:46):
That's true.

Leo Laporte (01:03:49):
Okay. You ready?

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:51):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:03:51):
The build is here. Mm-Hmm

Paul Thurrott (01:03:53):
<Affirmative>

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:54):
<Laugh> yeah. Today's build not a whole, you

Paul Thurrott (01:03:56):
Know what the best part of those build is 2, 5, 1 58. Yeah. You actually, there's one thing. There's one thing in here that I think is super important. Some number of builds back, they added what they called an experiment, which put a search box on the windows 11 desktop that is gone. They've concluded the explanation. They're not doing it. Thank God. That was the dumbest idea in a C of dumb ideas. So they, they have walked back from that. Cool. So that's good. Yay.

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:26):
Yep. They also have more AB testing in here, which Paul will love about when you hover over the search icon, what it will say, or like will let's say search the web or will it just say search or will it just be the magnifying glass still? And they're giving different bills to different people in the, in the dev channel. And they're trying to do compare and contrast the feedback from this.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:53):
Yeah. Not a fan of the way they're testing it, but it is a fact that if you're coming from windows 10 to 11, it is strange that search on the task bar, which I just turn off, but is only available as an icon and not as a search box. Yeah. Like it is on windows 10 mm-hmm <affirmative> so yeah. It's not surprising that they're thinking about maybe bringing something like that back. I think it should be an option. I don't think it it's not necessary, frankly, but it makes it discoverable. And I think that, I think that's the point of it. It does.

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:22):
It does. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:05:29):
Last week we talked about using Rufus to which I thought was really interest to saw windows 11 without a Microsoft account.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:38):
Yep. So I wanna talk about that because yeah. I have spent a bunch of time with that and I gotta tell you, I, I, so I'm writing the windows 11 field guide, as you know, and I, I have three different methods for getting through initial windows 11 set up without having to do the Microsoft account if you don't want to. So Rufus is the third of the three. I, I don't like the way this works and I, I I'm honestly, I'm, I'm probably still gonna leave in the book, but I'm probably gonna, well, I'm definitely gonna recommend people not do it. So what does that mean? So it, when you run windows set up, I'm just, I just took shots of this today. Cuz I did this on a real PC and I was kind of blown away by the way it worked. So I did it in a a virtual machine, which requires you to take a USB key and convert it into a bootable ISO, which is a bit of a project, but image burn works.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:29):
And that's how I did that. So anyway, I just, I literally just did the virtual version of this today so I could get screenshots. So the way this works is set up proceeds, normally you get to the point where it says, Hey, let's connect you to a network in windows 11, version 22 H two. When you get to this part, if you don't connect to the internet, you're not continuing. You have to connect to the internet with the Rufus built version of the USB or ISO, whatever you can say, I don't have internet. And then actually it works like it did with windows 10. It says, you can, you would ask you sure you wanna do this cuz you know, it's better when you connect, you say no, no I wanna do this. You continue with limited setup. You have to type in a username, Paul, you know, and then, and create a super memorable password, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:07:11):
The same language that windows 10 use, which you can skip and then you privacy. And then that's the end of setup. So I don't know the number off the top of my head, but I just described maybe five to seven steps of setup in a normal windows, 11 setup. It's it's gotta be 22 to 25 steps. Like it's, there's a lot of other stuff. So I was like, wait a minute. What? Like that really cut down on the, the amount of time you spend and set up. And I thought, well, okay, that's interesting. But then you get to the windows 11 desktop. And if you think about all of the thing, all of the icons that are built into the start menu, there's only like six or seven in there because they're actually built into the ISO at some point during setup, you actually download that stuff from the internet.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:51):
So that doesn't happen when you're offline. So the start menu is mostly empty and then you go into windows update to do updates and then you realize what, where you just say it all the time. I had to reboot this computer. I don't remember now, but it was five or six times. It took me over an hour. Oh, that's fine. There was something weird about it. Where I had to keep re it was like retry, retry, retry. Like it wouldn't, it didn't have sound the display driver wasn't right. It had to download everything. So basically when you bypass like huge chunks of setup, what you're really bypassing is the thing that makes windows, windows, you know, so you spend, it's actually quicker just to sign up with a Microsoft account. Use one of the other ways to bypass that go through setup. Normally get into windows, bring it up for the first time.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:39):
Still gonna check for updates. There'll be two or three little things and that's it. You've done. This takes a lot more time. I found this and this was true on a physical computer as well as the virtual machine. It was really Artis. Like I, I just like, I, I appreciate that you can do it, but I, I don't think this is the right way to go. So the one thing I just remind people aside from workarounds, which Microsoft may or may not get rid of, just remember this, you can always set up windows with a, with a Microsoft account, create a local account boot into the local, make it an administrator boot into that and then get rid of the Microsoft account and go on your Merry way. You'll be fine. And by the way, that computer will be perfectly set up and configured with all your drivers and all that stuff. You don't, I, this doesn't, I, I, maybe I should try different hardware I guess, but this just doesn't seem like the best way to do this because setup is so short. My first reaction was like, woo. And then you get into windows. You're like, oh, <laugh> oh no, no, this is bad.

Leo Laporte (01:09:34):
That's why it was short.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:35):
So I don't, I don't at all. I'm not really short. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm not sure I recommend this is what I'm

Leo Laporte (01:09:41):
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Paul Thurrott (01:12:55):
<Laugh>. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:12:56):
Yeah. Oh yeah. Tell me, tell me everything. What do I need to know?

Paul Thurrott (01:13:01):
I wish I could Leo, but I'm still bringing everything back. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:13:04):
Everything's rebooting. I, you know, I've been in, I, I got a Dell firmware upgrade, so at some 0.0 yeah. Yeah. And then I see real tech.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:13):
So you get those who are like a Dell update app, right?

Leo Laporte (01:13:15):
Yeah. They have a special app. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's a real tech USB, G B E E internet controller. But the windows update when I got in, I got a thing saying, you know, we time to update, but then I didn't look like it did very much. Huh. So I don't know what, how many updates were there? <Laugh> they should be

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:35):
One thing, right? Total.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:36):
Yeah. <Laugh> well, well delivered via one main update, right? For each version of each supported OS that kind of thing. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Mostly. Well, we already mentioned search highlights. That was the big one. So search highlights came to the original version of windows 11. So if you're running 22 H two through the insider program, you already have it. If you're running windows 10, interestingly, you already have it. And now if you're running the original version of windows 11, you have that distraction. So you can enjoy that. And one of my tips will be how to get rid of it. That's good. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:10):
I'm looking, I just downloaded right before the show. Yesterday's pat shoes update. And so now my, when I click on search I'm I'm on the mainstream build windows 11. It doesn't have the search highlight, cuz I think I have a lot of those things like turned off in my settings, but okay. The whole search menu looks completely different. Like everything's moved around. <Laugh> I'm like, okay, I don't have all those distractions, but things aren't where they were. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:14:36):
You mean? You mean the windows menu or the, or the magnifying glass?

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:39):
The search, the magnify glass on test bar.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:42):
Yeah. That thing you're looking at there on the right is search highlights. So if you wanna get rid of that click the little.dot, dot up there in the top, right. Go to search settings and then scroll down a bit and scroll down. You have to scroll past and then right there more settings says show search settings. Right. So now you can hit like windows key S and you'll see that it is gone or yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:05):
Oh yeah. So pretty,

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:08):
But see that menu, he's looking at that my search menu didn't look like that. It didn't

Leo Laporte (01:15:12):
Even look like that. Well I'm on age 22 H two. So

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:16):
Yeah, I was on windows 11 mainstream here. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:20):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:20):
Right, right, right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:22):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:24):
I mean, I've was gonna say they mean well, but they don't mean, well, do they, this is literally about driving people to Microsoft services. They don't mean, well, this is not, this is no, <laugh> no end user benefit

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:33):
To this. This is about getting more people. Yep. More people to use Bing and MSN. That's what it's about,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:39):
Right?

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:39):
Yep. Yep. That's okay. You can turn it off. <Laugh> as long as you can turn it off. And, and if you that's what I say, as long as you can turn it off. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:49):
Yeah, yeah. You can. And this is a group policy to turn it off, across in org as well, right?

Leo Laporte (01:15:53):
Yeah. What, what, what the quick searches suggestions is that related to anything I do? Or just random crap in here.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:01):
Random

Leo Laporte (01:16:01):
Crap. Okay. <laugh> cause I don't think I've ever done focus. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:16:04):
You mean on the I'm sorry. Do you mean on the left side or

Leo Laporte (01:16:06):
No? On, on the left is just recent on the right. It says quick searches.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:09):
Oh, quick searches,

Leo Laporte (01:16:10):
Focus, settings, sound, settings, Bluetooth and devices. Display settings, color settings, search settings. Yep. Never change. Color. Exactly the same. That's the same phrase.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:17):
I see the same ones. This is not based on anything you've done. This is just things they think you might be looking for

Leo Laporte (01:16:23):
Something you might wanna do. And of course, Microsoft edge is a top app. Actually. These are the apps I have open right now. <Laugh> that's really dopey. These are the apps. Literally. I have open the top apps. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:16:36):
I yep.

Mary Jo Foley (01:16:38):
No. And here's the other thing it does on my list. If no, if, if you're signed into your Microsoft account, your business account, like I am now I see on the right hand side, all the things I did recently on my business account, inside the search panel, like here's what you did today at your account. 

Paul Thurrott (01:16:58):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:16:58):
It's a search history. That's new. Yep. Right. That's new also.

Leo Laporte (01:17:01):
Yep. And Adam sync says that, that 57,568 Microsoft awards points. That's a lot. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> what can I do with that?

Paul Thurrott (01:17:11):
You could probably get a $5 Microsoft gift card.

Leo Laporte (01:17:13):
I can get fries. It's natural French fries.

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:16):
And you can get hardware that new

Leo Laporte (01:17:18):
I've earned enough points.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:20):
You're gonna need a little more points than let

Leo Laporte (01:17:21):
Me see. Let me see what I can get. I, my

Paul Thurrott (01:17:24):
Rewards, I bet it's between five and $10 worth of gift cards.

Leo Laporte (01:17:28):
I can get a really plague tail requi custom PC bundle. That's forend enter for a chance. I have a Roblox digital search for

Paul Thurrott (01:17:36):
Like Xbox gift card just or Amazon.

Leo Laporte (01:17:38):
All of these are sweepstakes. Oh, here's a Domino's pizza EIF card for 5,000 points. Amazon gift card. How much is that gonna be? Is that $10? Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:17:47):
That's not bad. So you got 30, you got 30,

Leo Laporte (01:17:49):
You got 30 bucks in points. I get a Hulu gift card. That's that's not bad. Uber

Paul Thurrott (01:17:55):
Xbox

Leo Laporte (01:17:55):
Taco bell.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:57):
Yeah. Okay. Actually that's not horrible.

Leo Laporte (01:17:58):
Yeah. I presume these are all companies that are paying Microsoft for my search info, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:18:05):
<Laugh> oh, Leo, this is just done through the goodness of their hearts.

Leo Laporte (01:18:08):
I of course, I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:10):
I don't know what you think corporations do, but

Leo Laporte (01:18:13):
There's a lot of charities

Paul Thurrott (01:18:14):
Justice.

Leo Laporte (01:18:14):
You know what? You can donate it, which is kind of cool. There are a lot of charities in here. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:18:19):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:18:19):
That's really good. Yeah. Yeah. In fact that the I'm at the bottom now it's almost all charity,

Paul Thurrott (01:18:25):
Right?

Leo Laporte (01:18:25):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:26):
Well Microsoft's ad business is almost a charity, so that makes us no

Mary Jo Foley (01:18:31):
<Laugh> I only get to deal with Netflix now. It's not a charity,

Leo Laporte (01:18:36):
Not charity anymore, buddy. Now we're talking money <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:18:42):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:18:43):
And of course that opened edge, not my default browser safari to see that right.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:48):
Oh man. I just documented this. There's nothing sadder than configuring a different browser to be your default. And you click on anything in search highlights. Anything in widgets and edge comes right up

Leo Laporte (01:18:59):
Right up. That's

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:00):
How

Paul Thurrott (01:19:00):
It works. There's not a thing you can do about, well, there are, there are third party utilities that Microsoft is blocking, but there's not a setting in windows that will fix that.

Leo Laporte (01:19:09):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:10):
Nope.

Leo Laporte (01:19:11):
<Laugh> the redirection. Or should I say misdirection page is opening because

Paul Thurrott (01:19:17):
That is a good user experience and they just want you to have a good user experience.

Leo Laporte (01:19:21):
That's possible.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:22):
Microsoft cares.

Leo Laporte (01:19:24):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:25):
And then the ring, the rainbow goes by and

Leo Laporte (01:19:28):
All right. So do your updates. I that's I suppose they're critical updates in that bunch.

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:34):
Yeah. There's a zero day in there, so yeah. Oh boy. But I'm not sure the patch for it is there. But there's a mention of it at least <laugh> so yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:43):
There's Microsoft has acknowledged <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:19:46):
Well, we know about it anyway. That's a good, that's

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:49):
A, I saw very conflicting things about that yesterday. I'm like, so did they pass the zero day? I would assume if they disclosed it, they patched it closed if they passed. Right. That

Leo Laporte (01:19:57):
Would be pretty funny

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:58):
If they didn't, that would be really bad. And

Leo Laporte (01:20:00):
We told you about it. Well, Marty, you want

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:02):
Yeah. Just feel alert. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:20:05):
Windows

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:06):
Are. Yeah. And we should mention auto patch.

Leo Laporte (01:20:07):
Yeah. When is auto patch? General availability.

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:10):
Right. So if you're a Microsoft E three or E five customer, so an enterprise customer, you now have an option as an admin to do this auto patch service. So what it does is it basically helps do more than you could with windows update for business which is a set of policies and deployment tools. So this new auto patch service creates rings inside your company so that you, as an admin can say, okay, I wanna check these patches. I wanna roll 'em out to a small group first than a bigger group than a bigger group. It can automatically roll back things if there are patch problems. So it doesn't really replace patch Tuesday, which I think I talked about a couple weeks ago. It's not meant. So if you, if you do windows on a patch, it doesn't mean you're, you don't have to do patch Tuesday anymore, too bad. That's not what it means, but it just does automate and simplify your role as an admin, if you want to use it. In terms of more, more what would I say, uniformly setting up rings, automating the process, being able to more simply roll things back it's it's an aid. It's not a replacement for your work. But yeah, it's generally available now if you have E three or E five.

Leo Laporte (01:21:28):
Excellent.

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:29):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:21:30):
Excellent. And Paul, you were talking at the beginning of the show about PC sales for 2022. And do we, yeah, we don't have numbers yet. We're only halfway through

Paul Thurrott (01:21:41):
No, these are, these are predictions. Actually. IDC just came out with their second quarter numbers. Gartner has in some kind of waiting on that, but PC sales did fall in the second quarter, year over year. Gartner has now confirmed what IDC said back in, I think may or June that PC sales are expected to fall in the high single digits this year overall. So eight to 9.5%, depending on who you listen to. What what's interesting about this to me is that remember IDC had said, well, it's gonna be okay in the future. They're actually gonna go back up again. Gartner, didn't say that, but both of them agreed that we're at a, we're at a place now where even though year over year, PC sales are gonna fall. They're still at a much higher level than they were before the pandemic. So in the last pre pandemic year, which is 2019 PC makers sold about 264 million units.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:30):
This year they're expected to sell 316. So, you know, yay. Pandemic, I mean is all just good news for everybody really hate pandemic. Woohoo <laugh> but yeah. So the inter the other interesting thing about this to me, I mentioned earlier, PC consumer PC demand is declining big time. Actually business PC demand is going down as well, but much smaller numbers. Very, very, very different reasons though. Like I would've said, why are PC sales falling because of the pandemic ending, right. And it's like, yeah, not exactly. Consumer demand is down. You might say that's because of the pandemic sort of ending, but it's supply chain issues, war inflation. IDC says China, lockdowns contributed, Gartner says currency fluctuations and playing a role. I mean, it's like, we're like just pulling, like what, what could it be

Leo Laporte (01:23:20):
Week Euro? It's everything. Yeah. It's everything. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:23):
I don't know if you noticed, but our planet is circling the drain and that might have something. Ah,

Leo Laporte (01:23:27):
God, it feels like it sometimes. Yep. Yep. All right. I'm gonna place quiz time. I'm gonna show you, oh boy. A a flow chart. All right. And you're gonna tell me mm-hmm, <affirmative> what that flow chart means.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:40):
Okay. I know exactly what it is.

Leo Laporte (01:23:41):
Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? You know, where I'm going with this?

Paul Thurrott (01:23:45):
I think I do.

Leo Laporte (01:23:46):
Yes. I think you do,

Paul Thurrott (01:23:46):
Is that, are there guns in the flow chart?

Leo Laporte (01:23:48):
No. There ought to be there ought to be, oh this flow chart.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:52):
Oh, I see

Leo Laporte (01:23:53):
This flow chart start user opens file with VBA macros and then M O T w yep. Message of the, what attribute.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:05):
So this is funny because we just discussed visual basic and whether it had any future and you know, what it kind of does because Microsoft used to use a version of visual basic for macros across office. And those little programmable nuggets of gold <laugh> can can be used to compromise your computer. So Microsoft said wanna swap, we talked about that earlier this year that we

Leo Laporte (01:24:31):
Talked about this on security now, yesterday. Yeah. And and, and I had to correct Steve, cuz we had didn't have the latest, no surprise. Cuz Microsoft's been in waffling. Yep. <Laugh> so, oh yes. Fill us in. What's the history here, Paul? Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:24:48):
The, the BA I don't remember when it was, but Microsoft said that they were going to basically get rid of, or, you know, block VBA. I think in April that were obtained around April 3rd parties over the internet. It was in April

Leo Laporte (01:25:00):
And then business. This

Paul Thurrott (01:25:01):
Is one of those things

Leo Laporte (01:25:02):
They're so reliant on it,

Paul Thurrott (01:25:04):
Depending on who you are. Right. It depends on who you are, like how you, how you react to this. Right. I think like a lot of us would've been like, are there still VBA macros?

Leo Laporte (01:25:12):
<Laugh> right. Is that a thing?

Paul Thurrott (01:25:14):
Is that really still

Leo Laporte (01:25:15):
A thing?

Paul Thurrott (01:25:16):
I guess it is. Cause remember VBA, this is this might be 25 years ago. VBA was gonna be replaced by VB script at one point. And they used VB script for other things, but that was a disaster and by the way, yeah, a security disaster. So VBA macros kind of continued. And we just talked about this last week, more recent or couple weeks ago, whatever it was more recent ways to expand office capabilities or, you know, through new web technologies. Right. but VBAs macros is still around and I guess, yeah, if you're a business and you hear that, you're like, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. <Laugh> what are you doing? We use these things. And apparently enough of them complained that Microsoft said, okay, we'll, we'll back off for now. They, they still intend at some point to block VBA macros in what they call the current channel of Microsoft 365. But as of today, they've they, this date that I think it was supposed to happen Tuesday. Right? Was that the day?

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:12):
Yeah, I think so

Paul Thurrott (01:26:13):
Past Tuesday, probably.

Leo Laporte (01:26:14):
Yeah. Well wait,

Paul Thurrott (01:26:17):
According

Leo Laporte (01:26:17):
To Carly page writing for tech crunch, Microsoft has reversed its reversal. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:23):
They did great. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:26:27):
Oh geez. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:26:28):
What is, what is it currently in Mary Cho?

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:30):
What's the current? No. So, so the latest I know is they are going to roll this out at some point, but what, what everybody was complaining about was when they changed their mind and said, oh, actually we're not gonna do this. A lot of security professionals were like, wait a minute, you were going to do the right thing by blocking this. Yes,

Leo Laporte (01:26:50):
You was celebrated said,

Mary Jo Foley (01:26:51):
Yes, right now you said, you're not going to do it at all. And all you're saying is the reason is user feedback, but they didn't say what. So what was the user feedback that made you undo it? Then when everybody complained about them undoing it, they came back and said, oh no, we still are going to do it. <Laugh> we just, we don't know when. And we won't talk about what the user feedback was that led us to undo the good decision of getting rid of

Leo Laporte (01:27:17):
These. Okay. So you, so you can still with group policy do it. You can, and the, the new system was gonna be, you had a, instead of having a big button that said, you know, enable macros, which was by deemed by most that's a little too easy and people could be fooled. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:27:35):
You go to an alcohol? Say, it says, are you 21? And you're like, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:27:38):
I'm 20 <laugh> I think the, the

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:41):
Problem. Yes or no was

Leo Laporte (01:27:42):
The fishing sites. And so forth would say, okay, now we want you to be able to win this great prize, but you're gonna see a button in a second, make sure you click and enable to win the great prize and people just go. Yeah. Yeah. And they click the, so then they changed it. So you had to actually go in the document properties, you still could enable macros, but you had to go into document properties, check a box. Yeah. And that's the right way to do it from the point of view security professionals. But I think obviously big businesses said, well, I wanna have to train our users that now they have to do this. We use macros, we know they're safe. So that's when that flow chart appeared, showing, showing the future. I, by the way, I've looked up OT w and it stands for mark of the web, as opposed to mark of the beast. What is, can you, do you know what OT w mark of the web

Paul Thurrott (01:28:26):
Is? No, but I I'm, I can guess because it's some

Leo Laporte (01:28:30):
Sort of

Paul Thurrott (01:28:30):
Referring to externally sourced like VBA or scripts that come from outside your organization, like untrusted sources. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so it must, it must have something it's

Leo Laporte (01:28:41):
Just self. They have the mark of the beasts. Okay. Fine.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:44):
They have the mark of the beast. Cause they're from the internet.

Leo Laporte (01:28:47):
Okay. So there is, so this is in the Microsoft blog post. The, so it sounds like, yeah. Well we understood that was onerous some businesses didn't like it. So we're going to, for now, we're not gonna do it, but we're gonna do it in the long run. Is that what it is? Mary Jo? We're gonna do it eventually. Yes. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:04):
Yeah. We don't know when. Right. They won't give us a date right. Or a year. Nothing. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:09):
Okay. Well, we got that cleared up. <Laugh> yeah, because Steve was one of those people was saying, oh, this is, you know, about time. Microsoft should have done this

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:21):
Years ago. Yeah. He was happy. Right. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:22):
But security ex there's often this balance between security and convenience, security experts are always gonna say, well, it doesn't matter if it's inconvenient, you gotta do it. Right. And and businesses then say, wait, you know, that's not gonna work for us. Microsoft says.net core three, one is gonna be end of life soon

Paul Thurrott (01:29:47):
December. Yeah. So back when Microsoft was transitioning.net from the old proprietary windows based.net to new open source, goodness that we have today, they went through an interim period where they had.net core releases. Right. so.net core three. I don't remember the exact timing, but I'm gonna guess it came out in early 2019, it was supported for 18 months and then.net core 3.1 long term service release. A long time supported lease supported release was supported for three years. So that's expiring in 2022. Of course we've moved on now. So.Net five arrived. That was the first version that was all kind of open source and cross platform.net six came out last year.net seven will come out this year. So if you're still running on top of.net core, you basically just need to upgrade your, your products at some point this year to get onto either six. Or if you wanna wait till the very end, you can move forward right. To seven. So it's not a big deal. It's, it's just a, it's just like a, a vestigial, you know, leftover from that transition period

Leo Laporte (01:30:55):
And surface two duo updates for July. See, it's I'm not dead yet.

Mary Jo Foley (01:31:04):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:05):
<Laugh> yeah. I think the title pretty much handles the <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:31:09):
The

Paul Thurrott (01:31:09):
Story there, but well, but Mary Jo mentioned, you know, surface du oh two, especially seems to be getting some love from Microsoft has gotten a lot of updates. In this month, like last month, I think they added hap haptic feedback control in the camera app settings this year. There's some more camera related updates, not, not a big deal, but it's nice to see them supporting us because as Mary Jo said, it's kind of, we're not really sure where they're going with this. And keeping this product up to date is kind of a nice thing to do for the people who have purchased it and makes the platform a little more viable. Nice. I guess. But

Mary Jo Foley (01:31:45):
Yeah, you know, what's weird, I'm seeing more and more reviewers. And not just people who are very pro Microsoft, but some people who've been big critics say, you know what, now with all these updates and how quickly they're applying security fixes through Android for Android and such, I would actually recommend the duo. And I'm like, hold on. I don't, I think that's going a little too far, but 

Paul Thurrott (01:32:06):
<Laugh> well, if you could get Android like 12 L on there, which I, maybe you can, I'm not even sure if that's an option. Yeah. I don't know. That's kind of interesting cuz Google has done that kind of stuff, but updating the OS. And by the way, the price, like, I think you said this earlier, but the price is a lot lower too. I mean, I think the

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:21):
Prices are coming down

Paul Thurrott (01:32:23):
1300 bucks or something. I mean, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:25):
First

Paul Thurrott (01:32:25):
The $500 range.

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:26):
Yeah. I think only the first generation is in the $500 range, but I think second generation is down around a thousand now, but that's like almost a thousand dollars cheaper than it was. Right. So

Paul Thurrott (01:32:38):
Yeah. Yeah. It was

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:39):
Just too expensive. I don't know. The software experience is what turned me off on the duo. Like I feel like it's still too unwieldy and it doesn't work consistently. I have not tried it again in a while, but like, and the way you have to take pictures of the camera, like folding it in weird ways. I don't know. Like I just don't think the form factor works as beautiful as the hardware is. Excuse me,

Paul Thurrott (01:33:04):
You know what? We didn't do Mary Jo, what we did our little predictions for the current year. We didn't mention the biggest thing that's gonna happen this fiscal year. What the very biggest thing, Microsoft gonna close its deal to a, to Aquino, to acquire active vision blizzard

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:21):
Maybe this year. Right? Didn't they say this, this fiscally said, right.

Leo Laporte (01:33:25):
Not up to this. I mean, they've gotta get through regulatory, right? Yeah. Hell right.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:30):
Right. So, but their plan is that this will happen before June 30, 20, 23. So that's the fiscal year. Right? So they, they do anticipate it. Obviously they're gonna want to announce it as early as possible, but they were open about this in the beginning. Like this is gonna take a while. This is a, a nearly $70 billion deal. We know that regulatory from across the planet are gonna wanna look at this regulators. I don't know what I said. And so this past week the UK's it's called the competition in markets authority. The CMA announced that it's investigating this acquisition, this shouldn't be seen as a step back or a problem or anything. Of course they are. I, I, the major regulatory, why can I say that regulators from every country will, if they're not already announced will be looking at it. This is, this is part of that schedule that they built out. So that's normal, it's expected. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, I, I don't see any reason this doesn't happen. So we'll see.

Leo Laporte (01:34:27):
I mean, yeah. I mean it's not like they become the biggest gaming company or anything. I don't, I,

Paul Thurrott (01:34:33):
No, I think there's still I think the number was a distant number three St. Were at the conclusion of

Leo Laporte (01:34:39):
This. Yeah, that's right. As they were quick

Paul Thurrott (01:34:41):
To put, but the other thing I have to say, and I, I, I guess I just owe you an apology, Mary Jo, this is the only Xbox story I have made.

Leo Laporte (01:34:48):
Well, it's funny when you were gone. We, we, we thought there's no Xbox there. He snuck some

Paul Thurrott (01:34:52):
In. Yeah, yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:53):
Yeah. How did

Paul Thurrott (01:34:54):
This happen? Yeah. And I couldn't let that stand. Could not let that stand so very

Leo Laporte (01:34:57):
Impressive. How you just stealthed it.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:00):
I was just, just that guy. Yeah. Delivered it.

Leo Laporte (01:35:03):
<Laugh> all right. We're going to 

Paul Thurrott (01:35:07):
In many ways, it's the biggest story,

Leo Laporte (01:35:10):
Is it, it really, is it? No, no, isn't it. Well, but you said something, which is true that the biggest yeah. Developments in 2022 for Microsoft have all been gaming. Yeah. They have. Yep. They have it's important to their business. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so there, yeah. So

Paul Thurrott (01:35:28):
They they're all in for sure. I mean that, and, and listen, in the past that wasn't always a given right. There were many years where it just felt like sort of an, a, an afterthought and it's, it's very clearly very important to the company. Good. So that's good

Leo Laporte (01:35:41):
As it should be.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:42):
We'll always have something to talk about.

Leo Laporte (01:35:44):
<Laugh> we'll always have Paris. It is gonna be the back of the book coming up next. Mary Jo Foley has an assignment. She must come up in the next five minutes with a beer pick of the week because I already have, oh, she knows already. That's next. Let's start with, as we begin the back of the book segment, the, the segment, you've all been waiting for Paul throt mm-hmm <affirmative> and his tip of the week.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:10):
Yeah. So everyone, everyone, I mean, <laugh> everyone who sells anything is starting to have their back to school sales. Microsoft has one every year. And so they announced it this past week. The interesting thing about their sale this year is that it's actually gonna run for two months <laugh>. So it doesn't mean that everything is on sale for two, the entire two months, they're actually putting things in a different time. So some of the offers that they announced this past week are gonna end July 18th, August 21, July 24, depending on what it is. So none of this is super surprising, but if you think about what they sell at the Microsoft store, so you're basically looking at deals on windows PCs, whether they're from third parties or Microsoft windows, peripherals, accessories, you know, that kind of stuff. So you can save up to 50% on select windows, 11 PCs save $300 on a pretty good surface, pro eight and surface pro keyboard bundle which brings the price down on that machine to about $900 for a really nice configuration, by the way, I think it is 16 gigs in, I think up to $300 in select surface laptop, four models.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:15):
That's interesting, as we just talked about how surface laptop five might be coming. So that's interesting. I actually, there's some really good sales and surface laptop for 13.5, but not on the 15 is what I found, cuz I was kind of interested in that and then Microsoft and third party peripherals, all that kind of thing. So the, why would you buy for Microsoft? Free shipping free extended 60 day returns and a 60 day price promise on per surface devices. So if you can find it less somewhere else, they'll give you the, the difference back. So it's something to check out at the Microsoft store and you don't have to rush cuz it's gonna be going for a while. Which is kind of interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:37:53):
And then an app, an app pick of

Paul Thurrott (01:37:56):
The week. Yeah, I have, I do have one. So I installed everyone

Leo Laporte (01:37:59):
Has power, power choice in my new windows 11. I can't remember why there was something. I, this,

Paul Thurrott (01:38:05):
There is some really good stuff and there I needed it's worth looking at anyone. Yeah. Anyone who uses windows 10 or 11 should check this out. There's 12 tools. The, the, the big one to me, the one I like the most is called power to run. And what this does is emulates the spotlight search on the Mac. So you hit alt plus space and the search box comes up in the middle. I think that's kind of cool, but what's happening in the latest release. This is still in a pre-release version for it's version 0.60. So they're kind of iterating it, but it's, it's never hit 1.0, but it's, you know, there's a bunch of stuff. A lot of windows 11 support in this release. So power rename and imagery size are now support are now appear in the windows 11 context menus, which they didn't before only in windows 10.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:50):
The always on top utility uses the windows 11 visual style. So it's rounded corners and all that kind of stuff. The power toys run feature. I just mentioned, I don't actually understand what this means. So it's what it says is there's a plugin that allows you to run note PA one note from the, from this utility. But one note actually works on this utility. So I'm not a hundred percent sure what that means. And then fancy zones has been improved. So fancy zones is if you're familiar with snap, the feature that's in windows 10, well and 11 and previous versions, it's sort of like snap on steroids. Because if you think about how snap layouts works today in windows 11, you, depending on your system and the size of the screen and whatever you get different layout possibilities, you can have two apps side by side.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:33):
You can have like a two thirds, one third split. You can have one big app and two small apps. You can have a grid of apps, you know, whatever, but fancy zones lets you basically set up your own custom configurations for zones and it supports multiple displays and all that stuff. So you can, you can have apps in whatever configuration you want, save it as a thing and then you can come back and everything goes back to the way it was before. So it's it's probably more than most people need, but if you're a power user and you're really interested in that kind of functionality, it goes the extra step beyond the built-in step. So that's pretty cool. So you can get this from the the web or the Microsoft store. I actually recommend the Microsoft store. The, the web version is to GitHub. And if you're a normal person, you're gonna look at this site and be like, what

Leo Laporte (01:40:17):
Is going on? Where do I

Paul Thurrott (01:40:18):
Download? Don't make any sense to you. What's

Leo Laporte (01:40:20):
The download. But

Paul Thurrott (01:40:20):
If you just go to the Microsoft store. Yeah. It's exactly, exactly. It's really hard to find, but if you go to the Microsoft store, it's there and it works. It's exactly the

Leo Laporte (01:40:27):
Same. So I can't, I still can't remember the, what I installed it for, but I, I didn't know about that old space. That's great. I that's a good one. I'm gonna,

Paul Thurrott (01:40:34):
Yeah. If you used the Mac, it's like, and I that's one thing I always like better on the Mac, you know, ly lots of keyboard, customization stuff. There's a keyboard utility.

Leo Laporte (01:40:41):
Oh, I know. That's why basically I wanted to turn off caps lock and make it a control key and then power choice

Paul Thurrott (01:40:48):
Does that. And that's why. Right. Cause you could do any, any keyboard combos you want. Yep. Yep. Just yeah. Sign it to nothing, right? Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:40:53):
That's exactly. Yeah. I hate caps lock <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:40:57):
I actually, I keep a reg file up in my NAS for that purpose. I just run that every time I install

Leo Laporte (01:41:03):
It to do the same thing. I always used to sign it to control. Cause I, because I use control a lot, so yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:10):
I just wish it wasn't there. I wish I, you know, I don't, I don't understand why I would ever need cap locks cap lock.

Leo Laporte (01:41:15):
That's a good, a good point. Why, why do we need that? That's a very good point. I never

Paul Thurrott (01:41:20):
Thought about that back in the day. I think all caps was more of a thing. I don't know. Yeah. It's not, I don't, I can't think of a single instance where I legal

Leo Laporte (01:41:27):
Pleadings or something maybe than I dunno nobody. I don't know nobody. Okay. Well, I don't know. It's just seems silly. I mean you maybe yeah. Maybe could be enterprise pick of the week. Maybe Mary Jo Foley.

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:40):
<Laugh> yes. If you are a dynamics and or a power platform user, you will want to listen to this tip the wave 2 20 22 release plans are out as of this week. So these are hundreds of pages of documentation about features, not every feature, but many features that Microsoft plans to add to dynamics 365 and the power platform between October this year and March next year. So, and the, and these documents, you get really granular things like, like they're not gonna disclose major new features that they haven't talked about before, but more about like here's how we're adding new kinds of rows to a CRM or how, how we're going to be adding more AI to various modules that we have in dynamics 365. There's something for everybody in here, truly there's hundreds of features. Total, all the modules are getting some kind of an update on the power platform.

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:41):
Front they've got sections for all of, of the power platform. There's new features coming to power BI power apps, power automate the new power pages module for building websites. More easily using the power platform, power automate power, virtual agents. It's something like I said something for everybody. So if you check out these plans and you're interested in any of these specific features, starting on August 1st, certain ones with these features will be available for trial for free in non-production environments. So again, if you use dynamics or power platform, you probably wanna go get plan the plan, two wave stuff and check it out. Now a related tip we've been talking about how Microsoft doesn't really hasn't really talked about doing any in-person events yet this year? Well, here's one that they're going to do September 20th to 22nd. The power platform conference in Orlando, Florida.

Mary Jo Foley (01:43:38):
This was the first, I believe first Microsoft sponsored and Microsoft run conference for power platform. And there's a list already up of all the speakers. There's some pretty big names. Jeff Teer from Microsoft, Charles Lamont from Microsoft or headlining this but if you are a developer really into the power platform and you wanna get tips and tricks and you wanna go to Florida and be in an in-person event situation, you should go to power platform, C O N f.com power platform com.com. And you can see the schedule, the speakers, and lots more already, already up there.

Leo Laporte (01:44:20):
Does anyone want to go to Florida for an in-person event? <Laugh> I know that's the,

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:25):
Not my first choice, but

Leo Laporte (01:44:28):
It's Orlando. Yeah, you can go

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:29):
To Disney

Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
It's Orlando world. Woo.

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:31):
Yeah. Yeah. It's a risky thing, but also some people are just rare to go to an in-person event and sure we have it. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:44:47):
I think we should do some beer.

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:49):
Wait, what about the code name?

Leo Laporte (01:44:50):
Oh, oh, code name time.

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:53):
It's a good one code

Leo Laporte (01:44:54):
Name.

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:55):
I think this is how you pronounce this Salis. S a L U S.

Leo Laporte (01:45:00):
That's where the word salary comes from. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:02):
Is it really? I think so. Yeah. Salus also is the Roman goddess of safety and welfare.

Leo Laporte (01:45:09):
Oh. Out.

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:12):
And that's why it's a very fitting name or code and or code name for Microsoft's new tool that generates software bill of materials. So if you're somebody in the security space, you know, about SBOs SBAM software, bill of materials, bomb,

Leo Laporte (01:45:30):
Bum bum

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:31):
Ingredients that make up the software components. And when you see these, it gives you more information about your supply chain dependencies. So Microsoft's SBAM tool. As of now, this thing known as Salus is available as an open source product, it works on windows, Lennox, and Mac, and it supports the standard software package, data exchange format, S P D X to those in the know

Leo Laporte (01:46:00):
Hmm mm-hmm <affirmative>

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:02):
Software bill of materials. It sounds good. Like

Leo Laporte (01:46:05):
It's a big deal for developers. It

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:07):
Is. Yep. It is.

Leo Laporte (01:46:09):
Yep. That needs it. Now we can do some beer.

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:13):
Now we can beer here. Beer pick for you guys for Paul and Leo and honor your trip coming up.

Leo Laporte (01:46:20):
Huh? Yeah, we're going somewhere.

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:21):
Okay. You're going somewhere.

Leo Laporte (01:46:24):
We're actually not going to Anchorage, but I

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:26):
Been here. We're not gonna Anchorage, but yeah, but you'll see this beer in Alaska Anchorage brewing is one of the biggest craft beer brewers in Alaska. They have a beer called deal with the devil. Very appropriate for you,

Leo Laporte (01:46:40):
Mary Jo. She knows

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:42):
It's a bur

Leo Laporte (01:46:44):
Mary Jo remembers. That was my favorite kind of beer.

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:46):
I know it's a bar.

Leo Laporte (01:46:48):
17% a B

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:50):
Yes. Not, not a lightly

Paul Thurrott (01:46:52):
Listener. If you're gonna do it, you gotta do it right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:54):
Oh, go all in. That's what I was saying. And I got to have one of these recently at a beer tasting. I was at they make different versions. They make some in bourbon barrels, some in cognac barrels they are outstanding. Like one of the best beers I've ever had. I, I saw people on, on tap saying I paid a hundred dollars for this bottle and it was worth it. What, what? Yeah. <Laugh> wow. Anchorage beer makes a lot of really good beer. We, we don't get a lot of beers from Alaska and New York, but well, the ones I have had from Anchorage and also from midnight sun in Alaska have both been excellent. But this, this one deal with the devil. If you see it, you guys should buy it and do your deals with the devil

Leo Laporte (01:47:35):
37 Platos baby. Woo. Woo. That's a, I used to

Mary Jo Foley (01:47:40):
Richard Campbell might find, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:47:43):
Is Richard gonna mock me if I order appol spritzers on the trip. Oh, the

Paul Thurrott (01:47:48):
Whole time. I think we're all gonna mock you Leo

Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
That's.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:51):
I think that's how guys

Leo Laporte (01:47:52):
Are Leo has his orange drink again? <Laugh> it's

Paul Thurrott (01:47:57):
Isn't touching the cup is

Leo Laporte (01:48:01):
It's a slightly alcoholic tank is what it is. <Laugh> good, good. We did it. We got through this one. Oh boy. Paul and I are headed to Alaska with 120 wonderful fans for the TWiTt crews. We will be leaving Saturday. So think about us. Pray for us. <Laugh> on the beautiful. You're gonna have a great time. No, it's gonna be so much fun. And yeah, you're gonna have a great time without us. Michael Sergeant will be filling in next week with Mary Jo and two special, special things.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:35):
You know, I can't wait. Maybe if we have connectivity that day, we should watch from the boat.

Leo Laporte (01:48:39):
Oh, we could do that. You know, it would even more fun. We could, we could call in from the boat.

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:44):
You could have, we do like an,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:45):
You could we'll do a mystery science theater type thing.

Leo Laporte (01:48:48):
Oh yeah, we could. Yeah, we could. We could replace their show with our show about their show.

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:53):
Hey, Hey.

Leo Laporte (01:48:54):
Hey, awesome. Let me just see where we're gonna be next Wednesday, cuz if yeah, if oh, we're in beautiful. Cisca Alaska. So I think we'll have connectivity. That's gonna be that's exciting. So tune in next week is every Wednesday, 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM. Eastern 1800 UTC. Paul and I will be back the following week. And of course we'll have Microsoft's annual earnings report to talk about. So that's, that's gonna be a jam packed show on the 27th. And we will look for you up there on the boat. If you're going come up and say, hi, rich Campbell and Rafael Rivera also there on their own

Paul Thurrott (01:49:42):
Dime. Hi, we're gonna be spending the whole week with these people. I think

Leo Laporte (01:49:45):
<Laugh> oh no, no. They just come say hi once and that

Paul Thurrott (01:49:47):
Grab your sleeping bag. <Laugh> come on in.

Leo Laporte (01:49:50):
No, no, come spritzers on me for all. Can't wait. Can't wait. It's gonna be a lot of fun. They, by the way, the cruise company has already called us and said, now what are you gonna do next? Oh, so I was thinking maybe in new England cruise, something like that. I wanna make it affordable. Right? Yeah. They said Mediterranean. I said, yeah, you know, I think I wanna make it easy for everybody. How

Paul Thurrott (01:50:12):
About what do you think about like a Mississippi river thing? Is that a,

Leo Laporte (01:50:17):
Oh, that's a thing we're doing. They have, oh yeah. In fact at Lisa and I already have booked it for 20, 24.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:24):
Oh.

Leo Laporte (01:50:25):
But we could do it TWiTce. It's a big river. That's a great idea. Yeah. Viking has river, Mississippi river cruises. And

Paul Thurrott (01:50:33):
So which way does it, does it go from new Orleans or to new Orleans?

Leo Laporte (01:50:36):
One we're gonna do starts in Minneapolis. Believe it or not Minneapolis. Wow. It's two weeks and goes all the way down to Nolans. And it looks like it's gonna be a

Paul Thurrott (01:50:46):
Two weeks. You could just, they don't even use an engine. It just floats down.

Leo Laporte (01:50:50):
It just floats. Probably does the way it goes. Yeah. But that's, what's great about, I don't know. Have you ever done a river? No. You haven't done a river cruise. I know Mary Jo has. That's what's great about 'em they're slow. They don't go fast. They're just put putt along. Right. You could, you can actually, in most cases walk faster. Yeah. Which makes it, you know, kind of fun.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:09):
I wanna do that in France. 

Leo Laporte (01:51:11):
Oh yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:12):
We've done. And locks kind. We've

Leo Laporte (01:51:13):
Done it. There's wonderful. Highly recommended. Yeah. I'd like to do that. Yeah. Lisa and I did that a couple years ago. Anyway, Mary Jo, we leave you in at capable hands. We look forward to it. You find Mary Jo Foley. <Laugh> your own, your own hands, much more capable than mine.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:31):
We leave you in your hands. We

Leo Laporte (01:51:32):
Leave you in your hands. <Laugh> Mary Jo Foley is@allaboutmicrosoft.com. That's her ZD net blog, Paul Thra at thra.com and his book. The field guide windows 10 is@lanepub.com and keep an eye peeled for the field guide windows 11 in process on its way. Well worth either one.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:53):
I thought it was gonna get this done before the cruise, but it's gonna be, it'll be soon close.

Leo Laporte (01:51:57):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:58):
It'll be soon close Rafael. And I will work on this on the boat.

Leo Laporte (01:52:02):
Really? You wanna do that in public? Yeah. To

Paul Thurrott (01:52:05):
Get it out just to get it out. Cause this well, we'll see. <Laugh> yeah. Some of it, I

Leo Laporte (01:52:10):
Mean, I have pictures of David Pogue doing his index. What kind of pictures? <Laugh> yeah. Really? No doing his index cuz

Paul Thurrott (01:52:20):
Yeah, exactly. Every time he was. Yeah. We know a lot about David book.

Leo Laporte (01:52:22):
He'd be writing a book. He'd be writing a book right. Anyway. so go visit their sites. Our site is TWiTs.tv and you'll find the windows weekly show there wi TV slash WW. You'll also find it on YouTube. There's a windows weekly channel, all the shows, the video's there it's video or audio for the podcast. In fact, you could subscribe to video or audio and your favorite podcast player and get it automatically the day it's pushed out usually a late Wednesday. So you can listen on a Thursday right on your, at your leisure. The clump TWiT is also a big part of what we do in getting bigger all the time. Lots of events coming up. We do the untitled Linux show there Stacy's book club. I think a new show they launching in the club. Pretty SU I don't know if I can say anything.

Leo Laporte (01:53:15):
We got, we just launched hands on Mac. Mic Sergeant has taken that show over Rech. He's doing that. Relaunched relaunched. Yeah. And that's exciting that right now is club only. So there are two ways you can get that show. The, the thing about the club is you get ad free versions of every show, including that show and hands on Mac and everything else we do. And you get the discord, which is really fun. That's Mary Jo's always in there trading animated gifts with a gang. Also you get the TWiT plus feed, which has stuff that doesn't make it to the shows before and after content specials, things like that seven bucks a month for that. But you can also get, if you just wanted Francis hands on Mac at either by the seven bucks a month plan, you'll get that.

Leo Laporte (01:54:01):
Or you could just pay for that alone. 2 99, then all of that is at right. Twit do TV slash club TWiTt, TWiT.tv/club. Twit somebody's saying are, we're gonna do the new newer screen savers. That's actually a great idea. We tried the screens savers and it did not fly, but I have some plans for late this year. And again, all of this is thanks to the club. So club members, thank you. You really you're the, the money we generate there really helps us do those extra things. Lisa wants to launch a bunch of new shows and so that's, that's a big part of why we started the club again. Twit do TV slash club TWiT. Thanks Paul. Thanks Mary Jo. Thank you, Paul. I'll see you in Seattle on Friday. I will see you in two days. Yeah. Two days Mary Jo will see you in two weeks and everybody else have a great week. You dozers. We'll see you next time on windows weekly. Bye bye.