Windows Weekly Episode 792 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 thoro and Mary Jo Foley are here. Paul's gonna rant <laugh> about windows eight, creators complaining about windows 11. Really? Really we'll also talk about the new AMD desktop CPU. Microsoft drops, Kaizala, Kai, and a very good game coming with the September games with gold plus a couple of great app picks of the week. It's got jam packed windows weekly, just around the corner podcasts you love from people you trust. This is tweet.

Leo Laporte (00:00:42):
This is windows weekly with Paul Thora and Mary Jo Foley episode 792 recorded Wednesday, August 31st, 2022. Arbiter of lies. This episode of windows weekly is brought to you by it. Pro TV. Give your team an engaging it development platform to level up their skills. Volume discounts. Start at five seats. Go to it. Pro.Tv/Windows, and make sure to mention WW 30 to your it pro TV account executive to get 30% off or more on a business plan and buy INFR scale in for scale delivers industry leading data protection through backup and disaster recovery. Visit infra scale.com/TWiT to sign up for a free demo and see how INFR scale protects your business today. Hello winners and you dozers two it's time for windows weekly. Paul Thra is here thra.com, Mary Jo Foley, all about microsoft.com. We have a quorum that's time to gavel us to order.

Paul Thurrott (00:01:53):
We're voting you off the island. You

Leo Laporte (00:01:54):
Know, I feel bad about the people who don't have a hammer gavel. They have the little, the, have you ever seen that? The little thing gavel? Yeah. Yeah. That's not. You want the hammer? <Laugh> yeah. Can bring a hammer down. I, the little,

Paul Thurrott (00:02:09):
That thing snaps off the, the Ru you know?

Leo Laporte (00:02:10):
Yeah, it goes flying. Maybe that's why they started doing that.

Paul Thurrott (00:02:13):
Yeah. They had to put up a net like in a baseball stadium. So you don't nailed.

Leo Laporte (00:02:17):
Whoa, sorry, man. Let didn't mean to hit for the kids.

Paul Thurrott (00:02:20):
That's common

Leo Laporte (00:02:22):
Or duh or ah ladies, gentlemen, it is time to talk about windows. This is gonna be a, a challenge. Paul and Mary Jo, because there is no there's no build. There's no new build of windows. How are you gonna do a show with no new windows build? Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:02:40):
Fortunately there was some new stupidity this week that I can't wait to

Leo Laporte (00:02:44):
Talk. Oh, somebody said we should have a Theran every week. Yeah. <laugh> every week a new Theran and now ladies general, they're ready for one today. Get the gong, cuz it's time for

Paul Thurrott (00:02:55):
A Theran there's a lot of background for this one though. So I earlier this year I finished up that series, the programming windows series, which was the history windows. Yeah. And I really, and I talked to Mary Jo about this a lot. Not just on the show, but privately. I, I mean, I, I look, I, I don't mean this is gonna sound offensive to people that went to war, but I feel like I have some version of PTSD from the Stevenson off scare. Like I, okay. It's mild. You're not having nightmares. It's well actually I have dreamt about it and I, Mary Jo experienced a lot of the same stuff that I did. Yeah. So I think she can at least relate to it. It was definitely a form of trauma. I mean, I've had horrible things happen to me in my life. For sure. And, but from a professional perspective, this was easily the most awful thing that's ever happened. What really it was. Oh yeah. It was really, really hard to write about again, really, you know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:48):
I was reading his series as he was writing it about this era and I had to a few times I just had to stop reading the article cause I'm I get so mad or I just be like really happen and I'd look it up. I'd like, yep. It sure did. And you just kind of block some of this outta your mind. Cause it was so the thing I

Paul Thurrott (00:04:06):
Horrific, the thing I left, I, I, I went into this area with a sense of dread because I, listen, I wrote this in, I just wrote the in article. I, I don't know how other people deal personally with the bad things that have happened to them. My particularly coping mechanism, which is probably not super healthy is I, I try to forget it. I just pretend that it never happened. And

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:27):
I do that

Paul Thurrott (00:04:28):
Too. I wonder you've got trauma. Yeah. So I realized as I went into this that I had, I was doing this with this particular era, you need to go some where you can shatter pottery or so something. Right? Sure. Yeah. So that's why I play college duty. Exactly. That's what you need to do. I, the thing I didn't write in any of those articles and the thing I, I will probably never deal with directly is the personal stuff that happened between me and Steven Sonofy in particular who was an insane mad man that would write me at three o'clock in the morning, these 25,000 word emails. And then I would write back like one or two sentences, cause I couldn't deal with it. And then he would write another 25,000 word. And the thing I always used to think to myself was there are people who actually work for him or work with him at Microsoft.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:18):
Yeah. Who have to respond to these emails, you know? And I, I, I don't know how anyone dealt with that. And the simple thing I will say is that Mary Jo and I both experienced some form of that era ending and people from Microsoft slash Wagner, some calling us and saying, we're sorry, <laugh> this will, this will never happen. I mean that literally like, we're sorry. Wow. We don't know what the, we don't know what was happening exactly between you guys, but he's gone. And we want you to know that things are gonna go back to ding, Don, the witch is dead. So which articles should we go through to really get that PTSD? You, you won't you won't that's my point is I wrote that stuff without you going through any of that, you didn't post. No, I can't. I it's too personal. Oh, that's

Leo Laporte (00:06:02):
Hysterical. It's it's not, I'm looking at your windows eight one stories, but it won't be there, right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:07):
No, but you did write about the windows eight. No, you did write about the windows eight history.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:11):
Oh, of course I did. But what I mean is I didn't write about the personal stuff. In other words, what I went through with this person is not part of the history of windows. Well, it's part of my history. What, what

Leo Laporte (00:06:21):
It, it, what did he do? That was so awful.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:24):
He was, well, I just said, I didn't wanna talk about Leo <laugh>. He was a

Leo Laporte (00:06:30):
He was

Paul Thurrott (00:06:31):
Bipolar for one thing. And I had instances where I was his like pet chip. Like I was the happiest. He was, I was the person he wanted to be with and talked to more than anything. He would be like a little child jumping up and down. And then I, then I would just be honest about the products he was writing and he would set out to assassinate me personally and professionally. Wow. And it's, it's, like I said, it's, it's, it's a little hard. I, I can't, I, I don't wanna get into too far, but the point is there are people associated with him who still Revere him to this day. There is an element that we see today in politics and just in our world of misinformation and people just overtly lying and presenting it as facts and not caring about the truth

Leo Laporte (00:07:13):
Gaslighting call that

Paul Thurrott (00:07:15):
Those people innovated <laugh> like they, I, they almost created it out of whole cloth. And

Leo Laporte (00:07:22):
Should we just from, from now on say Stevenson Osky is the person who shall not be named and just,

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:26):
That's what I say. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:29):
From now on

Paul Thurrott (00:07:29):
No more, but I, I just say this is background because

Paul Thurrott (00:07:36):
There are a group of people. I, I remember we, you know, Julie Larson green was his like kind of chief, like top Lieutenant or whatever she

Leo Laporte (00:07:44):
Took over for.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:45):
And for a while for very well, partially and only briefly, but I almost saw that as a punishment, like you you're gonna fix this mess you made, you know, <laugh> she was the most unqualified person imaginable, but we were behind her Mary Jo and I briefly before Mary Jo took off during the surface pro four event.

Leo Laporte (00:08:03):
<Laugh> and why did she take off Mary? When

Paul Thurrott (00:08:05):
Screaming from the

Leo Laporte (00:08:06):
Really, wow. Wow. Wow.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:08):
I almost got tackled in the hall as I was running.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:10):
And I said to her, I asked her if I could take a photo and she said, she said, okay, but as long as you're not mean to me. And I, I thought to my mean to you, <laugh> like, youor of lies, <laugh> you? You, are you kidding to me? Like you, you think I'm mean to you <laugh> like that. That was crazy to me. Wow. but another person that was par, so you have SS and then Julie Larson green and the next person down was Jensen Harris and him and I, him and I actually have a long history and he's a good guy, but the, the couple of points I'll just make about him was before the, whatever the PDC was, where the office team, which is where they were from at the time announced the ribbon interface. Remember? So it was probably PDC 2005 or seven, whatever it was.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:55):
He emailed me and said, Hey, I'd like to show you something before the show. And I met with him at the Los Angeles convention center, head of the PDC. And he opened a laptop. He showed me the ribbon and he explained all the stuff and why they did it and what they were doing. And everything I thought was really interesting. And I, I'd never heard of this guy. And I said I said, this is great. But I said, why, why, why did you wanna show this to me? And he says, well, I've started to tell you, you actually got me my job at Microsoft. <Laugh> like, what are you talking about? <Laugh> and when office 97, the first I'm sorry, outlook 97, the first version of outlook came out. It didn't handle internet email. It was just a mappy, like a Microsoft email. So he wrote an extension for it as some kind of add in that would let it work normally with internet email. And I wrote a little tiny thing, just a paragraph about it. And I said, did you get this it's turns out, look into a usable email program. The guy who ran outlook at Microsoft, read it, talked to his, some underling and said, hire this guy. And they did. And he got a job in office and Annie went, so windows eight was involved. He

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:53):
Was, he was the chief, he was the chief designer at office. Right. And then became the chief designer at windows. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:58):
You know what, I don't know exactly what his title was. Okay. But I'll tell you something. This guy has no background in design at all. Oh, interesting. He went to school for music <laugh> oh, he was, he was a good, interesting, he was a good guy, but yeah, you're right. Like, so the, these people who were really not qualified to be doing what they were doing were doing it. And this was, I think Steven Sinski surrounded himself with people who were not threatening to him, frankly. I think that that was a lot of it. And Jensen like probably like Julie lash Graham was a really nice person. He was a really nice guy. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but I, I, I knew something was wrong. It was the, I, I, I recorded an extensive interview with him for windows eight when they revealed the UI, whatever that was.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:37):
I think it was midyear a year and a half before I came out, whatever it was or year before it came out. <Laugh> and I, it was confusing <laugh> to say the least. So we, we, we talked for an hour and I recorded the whole thing. I don't believe I ever published this interview. I, because I was so freaked out by what he was saying and the one key phrase, I will never forget. And I've told the story before, but I said, it was just like the story we talked about last week, where I said, went to the windows phone guys. And I said, Hey, I need to know the names of these things. So I can call them something. And like, oh, we don't know what the names are. No. I'm like, you do know what the names are, it's in the code like it.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:13):
So you created a UI that UI has a name it's in there. You know, you gotta be able to tell me what it is. And so I had the same question with Jensen about the charms. And I said, so the charms are a fly out a panel, a toolbar. And he said, no, Paul, they're just charms. <Laugh>. I said, no, Jensen. They're not <laugh>, they're a, the, and a widget, an interface. And he said, no, they're just charms. And the start menu or start screen is just windows. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's not true. And, and it was the moment. It was like, the king has no closed moment for me. Like the, yeah, there, that there was no, no thinking behind this at all. Like, I, I, this

Leo Laporte (00:11:55):
Is why I don't like big corporations because they're a little bit of an echo chamber. So <laugh> what he was saying was internally, we think of this as this. That's what we do. Well, actually, as an outsider would like to liken it to something else. But no, no, no.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:13):
And, and let me tell you, listen,

Leo Laporte (00:12:14):
The group think

Paul Thurrott (00:12:14):
That he's, I didn't go to school for this. Okay. But as a, as a communicator of a sort, I can tell you that one of the key ways you could explain something to someone is to compare it to something they already understand. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:26):
So, but not in a corporate environment, in a corporate environment's group think, and they, and, and so I understand what he was trying to do. Same.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:35):
I think what he was doing was parroting a company line, which was really just a windows division line. But that's what was an us against them. Divisional problem.

Leo Laporte (00:12:43):
That's corporate. That's exactly. That's why I hate big. I hate him.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:47):
Yeah. And I walked away from that like, oh my God, what has happened to this guy? I really care about this is nonsense. They don't know what they're talking. They don't know

Leo Laporte (00:12:54):
What they're doing. This happens all the time at big companies where somebody usually a leader or boss says something that's patently wrong. Yep. But it gets adopted as part of the company song. Yep. And, and, and, and everybody drinks the Kool-Aid. And but the rest of us in the outside, we're always saying you're nuts. That's not the way it is. And they say, no, no, it is because, well,

Paul Thurrott (00:13:18):
To recap, windows eight came out windows eight, got rid of the start button. It got rid of the start menu. Oh, made a full screen start experience as they called it, that only made sense on tablets, which no one owned or used. Everyone had traditional form factor computers. They, for the first time offered no way to go back to the old interface, every major UI innovation from the windows, 95 desktop to the XP start menu to whatever else you wanna talk about. Those versions of windows offered a way to go back to the old thing, because people were used to the old thing. And some people weren't gonna be able to move forward. So quickly windows eight, which had the most radical design change offered no way to. There was, it was our way or the highway. There was no, there was no plan B. There was no nothing. How it was a disaster.

Leo Laporte (00:14:04):
How aware do you think they are when this kind of thing goes on? I mean, it happens at apple. It's gonna happen to, you know, a week from today at apple where they're gonna say things like we invented Astro photography, or, you know, and, and they're gonna say that, or we invented the Periscope camera mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so everybody in the outside world knows it's not true. Do you think they are aware?

Paul Thurrott (00:14:27):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a timely comparison. And this will help you understand it because it's something you'll understand. No, it's a I watched a, a documentary last night about John McAfee on Netflix. It is

Leo Laporte (00:14:39):
Horrible. I can't wait for, to watch that.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:41):
Horrible. Yeah. It's one of the worst things I've ever watched.

Leo Laporte (00:14:43):
It's not worth watching or it's just cuz it's

Paul Thurrott (00:14:45):
No, it's horrible. Cause

Leo Laporte (00:14:46):
It's true. Oh, oh, it's not

Paul Thurrott (00:14:48):
Worth. Oh, it's horrible because it's true as well. So here's poorly. It was poorly missed. This is, this is

Leo Laporte (00:14:52):
Okay. So, okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:54):
This guy spent the last years of his life on the lamb and, and the point of it is he invented this world in which the, the Narcos from Mexico, the us government, whoever was all after him, he had supposedly bugged, every computer on earth had, you know, done all these things. He'd done. None of it. Now it was happening. And throughout this documentary, he's like, we gotta go. Our lives are in danger. The bad guys were after us. That none of it was true. None of it was true, but there was this moment. That's

Leo Laporte (00:15:19):
What happens when you are smoking a lot of that thing he was making. Yeah. <laugh> yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:24):
Okay. Right. But there's a moment at the end of the documentary where one of the filmmakers had gone back years later and was with him again and in a moment of drunken, drugged up, whatever nonsense. He finally, he admitted he had made everything up. Oh wow. That he was creating his own reality. And wasn't it more interesting than real life or something

Leo Laporte (00:15:46):
Like that? No, it isn't.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:46):
No. And I feel like windows eight was like that. <Laugh> like the, the guys who gonna

Leo Laporte (00:15:53):
See in Elon Musk documentary in years

Paul Thurrott (00:15:55):
Come, yes. Very similar. We'll do the same thing. Yep. <Laugh> the, the guys who believed in SS and what he was doing may, may, may believed that what they were doing is right. They may have, I, I, I don't understand following this, whatever, but they did. The people outside of that group did not, did not. There were teams at Microsoft who over time, all agreed separately, were not working with you. Like what you're doing is insane. We're not doing it. We're not gonna make a version of office that runs under Metro or whatever. We're not, you know, like over time the whole company came to this. By the time windows eight was going to be released Microsoft as a company already understood. This was gonna be a disaster. And that they needed to take steps immediately to correct this as quickly as possible. They got rid of him before the thing was launched and they talked, remember Steve ball came out at the launch or at whatever, the, the PDC that year.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:48):
And he said, we're all rapid released. Now we've been building toward this moment. We're gonna iterate, iterate, iterate. And the point where they had to, because the windows eight was so awful. So awful. All right. So this is a long story. I'm already 30 minutes into this, but the point of this is this is all background because I've been sitting here. I wrote my piece about windows seven and windows eight and my history thing. And I'm like, I'm gonna put this behind me. And I got on TWiTtter yesterday and God dammit. Jensen Harris has come out of a hole in some woods somewhere and he's criticizing the windows 11 start menu. Oh. And I gotta tell you, we

Leo Laporte (00:17:24):
Got rid of that many years ago,

Paul Thurrott (00:17:27):
The things he writes about how the windows 11 start menu are wrong are <laugh> multiple multiple version, multiple wor times worse. What they did to start in windows eight. Like it is, there is such a lack of self-awareness here. That it, by the way, he's, he's kind of right. It, it is amusing to me that he confused search highlights with the start menu because he didn't know what start was when he was making it. But <laugh>, you know, now he still doesn't know what it is like, that's hilarious. But I, you know, it's like, we've all heard the term like pot, kettle black, right? This may sound a little dramatic. This is like a drunk driver pointing to someone, not using their blinkers and saying that guy's being bad. <Laugh> you know, like, no, you, you destroyed windows. You destroyed it. And now you're complaining about a version of windows that yes has. He's

Leo Laporte (00:18:20):
Not wrong about this aggressions searching for Chrome. He's

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:22):
Not wrong about what he's

Paul Thurrott (00:18:23):
Saying. Well, hold on a second. Actually, he is wrong. Oh. So go back up to what he writes about this. Okay. What, what did he think was gonna happen here? Like I know, does he know? I mean, seriously,

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:34):
He, what trying to criticize though is isn't wrong. He just, he, he's not the guy who can throw

Paul Thurrott (00:18:39):
Any stuff. No, he has no moral authority here at all. <Laugh> but the, the, the thing he saw, so first of all, the start menu is Microsoft's flagship user experience. Yeah, it is. You destroyed it.

Leo Laporte (00:18:49):
<Laugh> yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:18:50):
It is. It should represent the very best UI design the company is capable of. Yeah. It should you put a Fisher price front end onto Microsoft's flagship client operating system. And you're complaining about windows, the windows 11 start menu looks great.

Leo Laporte (00:19:05):
Yeah. But that

Paul Thurrott (00:19:06):
Could not be set of windows. It's not

Leo Laporte (00:19:08):
Wrong about what happens when you search the Chrome in it,

Paul Thurrott (00:19:11):
Except for one thing. What is he what's he searching? Does he seriously think that the way to find Chrome is to use the windows 11 start menu?

Leo Laporte (00:19:21):
Well, that's how you,

Paul Thurrott (00:19:21):
That's why I find Chrome.

Leo Laporte (00:19:23):
If I had Chrome, if I, I

Paul Thurrott (00:19:25):
Guess if you had Chrome installed. Yeah. Guess what happens when he type in Chrome when it's installed? Oh, okay. It comes up under best match and it just works.

Leo Laporte (00:19:32):
Right? I got it. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:33):
Okay. That literally says best, best match. Google Chrome. Right? So it

Leo Laporte (00:19:36):
Shouldn't be a web search in the start menu is what you're saying.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:38):
Now look, he, his complaints about ads and UIs and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Okay, fine. Windows eight first version of windows that had ads. You did that

Leo Laporte (00:19:47):
<Laugh> you

Paul Thurrott (00:19:47):
Did that. Your stupid new mobile platform brought ads to windows for the first time ever. I in nine, in 2012, whatever year that came out, 2011, maybe before it came out, I said, ads were a slippery slope and they cheapened windows. And the point was, it was only gonna get worse over time. And so, yeah, here we are in windows 11. It's worse. He, congratulations.

Leo Laporte (00:20:10):
He congratulations. He says, congratulations, Microsoft. They're fixing it. Thanks to me.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:16):
I'm gonna kill this person.

Leo Laporte (00:20:17):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:20:19):
Please tell me it. Doesn't say that

Leo Laporte (00:20:21):
He says less than 24 hours later. Pretty impressive speed, Microsoft. Great stuff.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:27):
He is. He is.

Leo Laporte (00:20:29):
Please,

Paul Thurrott (00:20:30):
Please take that off the screen before I lose

Leo Laporte (00:20:32):
Kevin <laugh> I'm just,

Paul Thurrott (00:20:34):
He is the last person. He is the last person on earth to be discussing this

Leo Laporte (00:20:38):
Topic. Microsoft has already gotten to work fixing some of these things. The Bing wallpaper ad is a gone and a few of the corners have been fixed up a bit. It's cool to see. Don't worry. The big a ad will be back. <Laugh> they'll be back how fast they can update content server side.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:52):
So, first of all the, the search, I'm sorry, the search highlights experience, which is not the start menu, which is what he's describing. Yeah. Yep. Is web based. It's easily to fix, easy to fix. Yep. One of my best tips about windows 11 and windows 10, by the way, is how you get rid of that thing because it's terrible. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> you recall? I described this as a distraction. When I, I did this, I had to turn it on to take a screenshot of it. I turn this off on all my computers, but you know, you go to search for something, not typically on the web, by the way, because you're using bang and no one normal does that. But you know, trying to find something on your computer, you're trying to run an app. You don't run very often. Whatever the reason you might go might do that.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:31):
If you type windows key plus S or Q search highlights comes up, I don't know what this is. It's a distraction today. They're talking about koala Lumpur. <Laugh>, you know, great. I, that has nothing to do with what I was doing. Right. And I'm just distracted enough on a daily distrac daily basis. Yeah. I may literally forget what I was doing when I see something like this. Yeah. I, I don't understand why this UI exist. Well, actually, excuse me. I know exactly why it exists, but I, there is no, no one can point to it and say, well, here's why it makes sense for users. Here's how it makes your life better or makes you more productive or keeps you in the flow. This is literally the opposite of keeping you in the flow. <Laugh> this is a distraction that makes you forget why you were here in the

Leo Laporte (00:22:15):
First place. Part of this is Bing. I mean, look, I, I clicked the button that said, yeah, let's go to the Chrome download page. Of course. And then they've got people before I get to the Chrome download link. People also ask why won't windows 10, let me download Chrome. Why is it taking 20 hours to download Chrome? Why should you should install Chrome on your laptop? How to install Chrome on my computer. But then I have a whole and Google doesn't do this trending on Bing page

Paul Thurrott (00:22:38):
More distractions, right?

Leo Laporte (00:22:40):
Harley Quinn, season four,

Paul Thurrott (00:22:41):
Seriously.

Leo Laporte (00:22:43):
Bezos notes ignored. Well, you know, that's kind of interesting. I wanna read these instead of do what I was gonna do, which was

Paul Thurrott (00:22:48):
Download Chrome. And if you spent, listen, I don't know. It's different for different people, but if I spent 10, 15 seconds on that, I would completely forget it. Why I was there in the first place. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> I I, anyway, look, so

Leo Laporte (00:22:59):
I download Chrome and now it says Microsoft edge runs in the same technology as Chrome. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:03):
Now someone's gonna say to you, Leah, but Leo go, you know, Microsoft, I Google does the same thing. Sure. Right? Sure. They're just as bad. Yeah. No Stalin and Hitler were both terrible. I,

Leo Laporte (00:23:13):
I get it.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:14):
<Laugh> it doesn't make one of them. Okay. Okay. Because the other one was doing it. I

Leo Laporte (00:23:18):
Just wanna point out he just compared Microsoft and Google to Stalin and Hitler.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:23):
Listen, I think historically I can make a case first look, but whatever. So it's like, I, the point look, I, sometimes you also let's we'll talk about communication. Sometimes you exaggerate to make a point, listen, something else being terrible. Doesn't make the thing you're complaining about. Okay. Yeah. It it's still terrible. <Laugh> right. Like, but Google does it too. Yeah. Great. They're both off companies. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:23:48):
I get it. Yeah. No, I agree. One

Paul Thurrott (00:23:49):
Of these companies could take the high ground and neither one of them is doing it. So yeah. Great.

Leo Laporte (00:23:55):
Now you've got

Paul Thurrott (00:23:57):
Before I'm done <laugh> before I'm done ranting. I also want to address the feedback I always get. When I say it, write anything about windows eight, whether it's this topic or the article series it did I hear this every single time? It makes me insane. They'll say, well, yeah, but I, I still think the windows eight UI was the best one ever on a tablet like that. Somehow what we did in windows 10 is terrible. And now what we're doing in windows 11 is terrible. And you know what nobody cares did. Nobody cares because windows eight did not Institute a great era of tablet computing that we're still enjoying today. The fact that there some tiny minority of people prefer or need a tablet is interesting. The, the fact that windows 10 or windows 11 might be less ideal for those computers is interesting. But the, the fact remains at 90 something percent, it's probably a high 90 something percent of people that use windows today as in 2012, do so on a traditional form factor computer without touch, without a pen, they don't care about swiping in from the sides. They're not touching stuff. They just it's a computer. They get work done. So if this is like, what's still in your head, your head's in the wrong place. Cuz that's not, what's important. It was never, what's important. It is the central problem with windows eight that they focus so strongly on something that nobody used, that they made the experience worse for virtually everybody.

Leo Laporte (00:25:17):
Yeah. I'll I'll grant you that by the way you were right. I searched for Chrome after installing it and it's and the right answer shows

Paul Thurrott (00:25:25):
Up. Exactly. What a great UI. Yeah. Smart. Yeah. Yep. It's smart. It's even smarter than you're making it look because if you just type ch probably Chrome would already be selected you

Leo Laporte (00:25:35):
To enter. I always mistype stuff. So I typed crime at first. Ch H R I N E. And it found it. So yeah. It's

Paul Thurrott (00:25:41):
Actually, that doesn't mean star search is perfect. No,

Leo Laporte (00:25:43):
But it's better than I would've thought

Paul Thurrott (00:25:45):
It's it's the thing, the thing he, he doesn't explain what he's doing. It's like, oh, look at all this Lu blah. Yeah. Nobody uses the start menu to search the internet.

Leo Laporte (00:25:56):
<Laugh> right. What are you talking about? That's that's a good point. I didn't even, I didn't, that's crazy. I didn't even think of that one. And

Paul Thurrott (00:26:01):
By the way, if you do do that, you deserve that UI. That's terrible.

Leo Laporte (00:26:06):
Doesn't Microsoft say it's kind of a universal search though. I mean, isn't that part of the,

Paul Thurrott (00:26:11):
It is part of it. Yeah, for sure. So they're encouraging. No, of course they are because they want you to hit Bing. Right. And that makes Bing more popular. I know. We get to show you ads. Oh, and look, we have MSN things. This is all part of this game. They're playing in windows, driving you to their own products

Leo Laporte (00:26:26):
And service. When I want Chrome, I always just go to Facebook and search there. I think that's

Paul Thurrott (00:26:31):
Exactly. <Laugh> thank you. That's actually, that's a great example.

Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
Exactly. Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:35):
Actually I put on my VR head headset and I do it that way. Yeah. That's a good idea. I use my, I use my eyes to

Leo Laporte (00:26:40):
Type, I say, where is it? Where is actually I, I feel bad cuz our editors have been using windows 8.1. For years since it took, came out on their Dell, April

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:51):
One was a little less horrible. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
It was horrible. 8.1 was an improvement on their Dell precision workstations. We have new ones we just bought and sometime in the next windows, 11, few weeks, windows 11 on brand new Dell workstations.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:06):
So I thought I had PTSD. Those guys are still using windows eight, one

Leo Laporte (00:27:09):
Windows eight one. Wow.

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:11):
Wow. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:27:12):
When they search for Chrome, they get nothing

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:15):
<Laugh> yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:17):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:27:18):
All right. Well your point is well taken. I think your point is well taken.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:22):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I just it's. Yeah, it's

Leo Laporte (00:27:25):
Crazy. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:26):
It's crazy. I mean, I, I,

Leo Laporte (00:27:27):
I'm not as upset as you are about it, but I get it. I

Paul Thurrott (00:27:30):
Get it. I was. Yeah. But

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:32):
No, you know what made me upset? I, I was like, I laughed about it when I first saw that he was saying this I'm like, oh brother Jensen Harris criticizing windows 11. Right. Oh brother. But then people started chiming in and going, yeah, Jensen's right. Windows eight was better. Blah, blah, blah.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:47):
I'm like, here we go.

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:47):
Who are you? People like where, where did you come from?

Paul Thurrott (00:27:51):
<Laugh> the history rewriter come flying outta the woodwork. You know like, no. Yeah, no, never forget what they did to windows. And, and that they ruined it. <Laugh> like never forget this. It is so important that we not forget that. How

Leo Laporte (00:28:05):
Long was eight? The Dom the, the,

Paul Thurrott (00:28:07):
The, well three years. Right? So

Leo Laporte (00:28:09):
Came

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:10):
Out to make,

Paul Thurrott (00:28:11):
Oh, windows eight was for one year. So eight year one came out in a year and it was, it was free. The next year windows 8 1, 1 came out. The thing people kind of forget is by the time windows eight wound down before windows 10 came out, we had a start menu was back. You could replace the full screen experience entirely. They had floating windows. Remember one of the biggest things they had was mm-hmm <affirmative> was all these things were all full screen. The, the initial version of snap was ludicrously. That's so bad limited where like a one app had to work on a side panel that was a fixed width. And they added arbitrary with work. Yeah. They finally, yeah. They finally figured that out. And then, you know, windows 10 just kind of cleaned it up. So windows, windows 10 in many ways is like, you know, windows 8.2 or 8.3, whatever you wanna call it. But mm-hmm <affirmative>. But you know, they wanted to get rid of the brand. I mean, I, windows eight was so tarnished as a brand <laugh> that they, they skipped a number. That's how bad it was. <Laugh> they didn't even want you to think this was the next one of eight.

Leo Laporte (00:29:07):
I even not even, no,

Paul Thurrott (00:29:08):
No, we're going double changes, but this one it's way different.

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:11):
Okay. Yeah. You know what, you know, my, I cuz I started reading more about windows eight after I saw this. I'm like, wasn't really as horrible as I thought. And I went back and started looking at my articles on it <laugh> and, and the thing that was the most horrible was they knew this was gonna be a train wreck that's right. Like they knew, oh my God. Because they had test PE testers, especially in businesses telling 'em you guys aren't really gonna do this. Right? Like you're not gonna make a non desktop centric OS that isn't built for keyboards. Right? Like you're not gonna really roll this out as like your new flagship. Right. And I kept thinking, I don't think they're gonna do it. I think they think they're gonna go right up to the edge and then they're gonna be like, no, somebody, somebody is gonna say to them, you can't do this. Like our customer bases businesses. And they did it. And I'm like, okay. They ignored every single piece of feedback that they got that, you know, like Leo said, inside the bubble inside the corporation, they were like, this is gonna be amazing. This is great.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:03):
It seems so. Alright. Since you're going on this path, I will also add another story. I tell all the time about windows eight is people complain during testing like the, you, there are UIs that are non discoverable. For example, the charms were non discoverable. So you could do something, you might hit a keyboard command. You might move them out. The most might kick over and hit the edge of the screen. And this UI would appear and then you'd move the mouse and it would disappear. And then you wouldn't re because you didn't do it on purpose. You had no idea how you triggered it. And you were like, what was that thing? I just saw? What was that? And so people would say, Hey, you, you need to have some

Paul Thurrott (00:30:35):
Test or some training in the, in the product, explain to people, Hey, before we get going, let me show you, like, when you run the Android for the first time, it says, Hey, we're using gestures. Now let's step through it. We're gonna make sure, you know how they work before we dump you in the system. It's this common sense. So they relented at one point and said, all right, we'll put something in the product during testing. We'll see how it goes, universally. Yep. Perfect. This is exactly what we're talking about. You need to have training in here. You have it. Now people will understand how works OV was like, yeah, we're not doing it. I don't care. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:31:05):
<Laugh> because now he said, people have figure it out. People have figure it out. And this was, they won't

Paul Thurrott (00:31:11):
<Laugh> this was, this is an, this is his longest lasting impact on Microsoft remains to this day. And it's about feedback. It is paying lip service to feedback. Pretending all you care about is feedback. You don't care about feedback at all. Exactly. You don't, you just pretend that you do right. And they did that with windows eight. They do. They've been doing it ever since. And you know, the windows 11 is the ultimate example of that because this is a product that shipped three months after they showed it to anybody. Got a bunch of feedback. A bunch of people said, well, listen, this start menu, like Jensen points out. Oh actually he doesn't point out in any of the actual problems with the start menu, by the way, cuz there are many, but he doesn't mention one of them. Yeah. A lot of problems here.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:55):
Doesn't do a bunch of stuff we're used to. Yeah. Whatever don't care. And then a year went by and now we're getting the second version of windows 11. They, they added folders and they added a layout feature that just a little bit changes the dial on what, what you see more of and that's all they did. They did not address the complaints. In fact, they come out public. Well, no that was with the task bar. They with the task bar, they came out and said, yeah, we're not fixing those problems. Like we hear you. We know that some people like to put it on top or the sides we're not doing that. <Laugh> like, they just that's mm-hmm <affirmative> that's windows today. So yeah, there are complaints we could make for windows 11. Absolutely. he didn't hit on any of the important part parts at all. Which

Mary Jo Foley (00:32:38):
You know what my bet, I think, think he's a Mac user. I'm not, I'm not even saying that's sarcastically. Like he's a design guy, right? He's not, he's probably a Mac user.

Leo Laporte (00:32:46):
<Laugh> yeah. He's just, he's

Paul Thurrott (00:32:47):
Probably an iPad pro user because he was such a big fan of touch and pen and everything or whatever. Yeah. I don't know. Huh. Anyway, I got, he

Mary Jo Foley (00:32:57):
Was the time using windows 11 this week. He hadn't tried

Paul Thurrott (00:33:01):
Yet. Yeah, exactly. Timely. A timely chime in. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:33:05):
Yeah. All right. Can I do an ad or would you like to rant some more?

Paul Thurrott (00:33:10):
You know, I'm glad you had he's

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:11):
A breather <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:33:14):
I

Leo Laporte (00:33:15):
Won't say yeah, but I still prefer the windows eight tablet experience. I won't say that. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:33:21):
I will spiral in silence.

Leo Laporte (00:33:23):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:33:25):
Oh, good.

Leo Laporte (00:33:26):
That sounds like a

Paul Thurrott (00:33:28):
An Amber alert. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:33:30):
Yep. Or, or a hurricane's heading your way.

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:33):
Jensen Harris.

Leo Laporte (00:33:35):
Yeah. Here comes Jen. He's okay. Well I'll let Paul

Paul Thurrott (00:33:38):
Hurricane Harris is coming.

Leo Laporte (00:33:40):
I'll let Paul handle his his alerts. And I will tell you about our friends at it. Pro TV, who I personally know and love it. Pro TV Tim broom and Don Ette. I consider good friends. They, they came to us when they first started. They said we're modeling it pro TV on TWiT. We'd like to advertise. I said, well, alright, let me see what you're doing. Don and Tim were it trainers when they, you know, a traditional class from it trainers, they they, they saw what we were doing here. And they said, this is a better way to do it. This is a way to do it. Training. That's engaging. That's fun. That's available everywhere because it's on your TV, on your computer, on your tablet, on your phone, your apple TV, your Roku everywhere. So, and you know, they, so we'll make these videos.

Leo Laporte (00:34:34):
We'll get great people. People who are experts in the field, but are so passionate about it, that it's fun to watch them. You are gonna learn. We talk a lot about it. Pro TV for anybody who wants to get into it, it's a great place to get that cert. They have every cert under the sun to get started in it. We don't talk a lot about the business side of this. And you know, if you have a company and you have an it department, I think it's important to keep them trained, to get them upskilled, to get them recertified. And this is something that you can give them as a benefit that they will really appreciate. It's a great way to improve your retention too, of it professionals. Cuz they're gonna say, boy, I, I like this. I want to keep taking more classes.

Leo Laporte (00:35:19):
We know people love it. Pro TV, 80% of users who, who start the video actually finish it. That is unheard of. That is a number beyond YouTube, beyond TikTok, beyond anything else. It pro TV is engaging. Your team will enjoy learning on their platform, but they will learn. And that's the key. And you know, the, the industry is changing so rapidly. They need to learn your it team needs to keep trained, needs to continue to learn cuz there's new software, there's new systems, there's new cyber threats, all of which they can learn about at it pro TV so they can make your business sing it pro TV will give you any of the certs your team needs or, or if they wanna get re-certified all in one place. Every vendor, every skill Microsoft of course Cisco, yes, Linux, apple security cloud. They even have compliance training.

Leo Laporte (00:36:15):
They have soft skills training like business and marketing. So your whole company can learn at it pro TV. They are, there are seven studios in their beautiful Gainesville studio. We went out and visited. 'em When they, they opened. And I was so impressed. They're running Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, constantly creating new stuff cuz it's always changing. So that means everything in their library. 5,800 hours of downloadable content is up to date. It goes from the studio to the library in less than a day. I think that we're inspired by us too. With that, you know, you could do so much with an it pro TV business plan. Their, their dashboard means it's easy to track your team's results. You can manage seats, you can assign and unassign team members, you can access monthly usage reports, make sure they're using it. You'll see metrics like logins, viewing, time tracks completed and more you can, you know manage your teams.

Leo Laporte (00:37:10):
You can create subsets. You can even inside individual episodes. They're all about 20 to 30 minutes. You can say, you can you, by tomorrow, can you master this? And they'll they'll want to, and they will. And they can, you'll get immediate insight into your team's viewing patterns and progress over any period of time. You'll get great visual reports. That's nice for you for absorbing the information, but also to show the boss to show the board or the C level. So you, they know that you're, you're definitely getting your ROI. So for individuals, yes, but also for businesses to get that it development, you need to level up your skills while enjoying the journey for teams as small, as two, as large as a thousand volume discounts started five seats, but we gotta discount right out the box, go to it. Pro.Tv/Windows as an individual or as an enterprise, you can use this code, WW 30. If your business tell, tell your account executive whisper in his ear or Herer WW, 30, 30% off or more on a business plan that that holds for individuals too, by the way, it pro.tv/windows offer code WW 30. Please use that because then they know you saw it on windows weekly and that helps us it pro.tv/windows offer code WW three zero. Okay. We've given Paul time.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:37):
He's calmed down.

Leo Laporte (00:38:39):
He's calmed down. You know,

Paul Thurrott (00:38:40):
I, for all of the talk about ransom, whatnot, I think Mary Jo's rant about what is it? Conversation view

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:47):
Focused inbox

Leo Laporte (00:38:48):
Focused. Yeah, that was pretty good too.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:50):
Was

Leo Laporte (00:38:51):
I you think I blame myself cuz we got new album art that shows you two tugging at tug at war and, and it's got a big red background and it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. We just it's our fault. I'm my fault. I set it off and I apologize.

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:07):
Okay. I thank you for bringing up focus inbox right now because oh no, I don't wanna rant. No, no,

Leo Laporte (00:39:12):
Not rant.

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:13):
Okay. Well it's maybe a rant. I don't know. <Laugh> I am curious. Are other people getting a ton more outlook spam than normal?

Paul Thurrott (00:39:24):
Oh

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:25):
Outlook.Com ads, regular outlook,

Leo Laporte (00:39:27):
But spam from other people, not Microsoft

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:30):
From everyone. Like every possible source of spam. In

Leo Laporte (00:39:34):
Other words, there's spam filters are not working as well as they

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:37):
Used to not working. Yeah. And at first when I put my little tinfoil hat on, after a beer or three, I was like, you know what? They heard me ranting about focused inbox. So you know what they're doing? They found my email account and they're just gonna flood it with spams to prove that I should be using focused inbox. But then I started seeing other people who don't have focus inbox enabled saying they're getting more spam than usual.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:59):
So you've done a little bit more legwork than Jensen Harris did <laugh> cause

Leo Laporte (00:40:03):
You didn't

Paul Thurrott (00:40:03):
Quite fall for the, this happened. Therefore this happened. He assumed that because he, with all of his influence, went onto TWiTtter and complained about something. Microsoft fixed it. When in fact I bet they didn't even know he did that. <Laugh> so probably not. You know, and or they, you know, they switched that thing up on some normal, regular BA I, I love the notion that you, that like you just assume you did this, you know, <laugh> this is so

Leo Laporte (00:40:31):
Ile. I had this

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:32):
I'm blaming beer for that, but I

Leo Laporte (00:40:34):
Had this

Paul Thurrott (00:40:34):
Not you. I'm sorry. I didn't mean you. I, you actually, you thought that and then saw other people and you said that's not the correct. He thought that and stopped thinking is, was my, I didn't mean you. I meant, I meant him.

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:44):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:40:45):
Sorry. Sorry. I had this happen in Gmail where all of a sudden, it just didn't. I used to yeah. Get all my mail, go through Gmail as just kind of you know, first stage sewage treatment plant. We just get all the worst stuff out and then I would do other stuff later and I stopped. I stopped going through Gmail because it just didn't do a very good job. So maybe, maybe there's something over time. The spammers figure it out.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:07):
Maybe I don't. I, I have had like the past few years great success with outlook spam filters. I'm not saying they never come through, but like very rare now I'm not kidding. You like 15, 20 pieces of spam a day in all my outlook.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:22):
No something clearly changed. I, I honestly, for something like this, I, I would almost always blame like human error and I don't, again, I don't mean you. I mean, someone on the back end probably flick the switch somewhere and yeah. Some 10 of outlook.com or whatever it is off or outlook on the web, whatever. Just spam got less effective, you know, a spam filtering. I bet it's something like that. They'll quietly fix it. You know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:48):
I hope it's been a couple weeks now and I'm like somebody, hopefully

Paul Thurrott (00:41:52):
Here here's okay. This is another example of this. So last week my internet connection from Thursday through Sunday was terrible. I couldn't play video games effectively. I couldn't watch YouTube videos in 10 ADP. Like they would always auto go down to the lowest, like 360 P or four ADP. Something was wrong and I was gearing up. I'm gonna, I'm like, I hadn't gonna have to contact our or, well, what are they called now? Our sand is now called astound or something. Cuz they are astounding <laugh> and 

Paul Thurrott (00:42:21):
And Monday I didn't call Monday. It was, it seemed fine. And then Tuesday, I got a thing in the mail from astound that said, Hey, you can upgrade your internet connection. <Laugh> I literally got a, a promotion for faster internet on the heels of them slowing my internet. <Laugh> yeah. Right. Yeah. So yeah, I, I, I think this is a very human condition. You naturally assume I did. They did that to me on purpose, but actually I think they're just incompetent and <laugh>, you know, I, that that's that's perfect. It's perfect. Internet access behavior, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:42:54):
Yeah. Perfect.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:57):
I dunno.

Leo Laporte (00:42:57):
Well, I was trying to get some popcorn so that I could <laugh> enjoy the rants, but all I could find is planters cheese balls. So if you guys, oh boy, if you just want to continue, I'm just gonna sit here and

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:10):
Eat some cheese balls crunchy

Paul Thurrott (00:43:16):
God's perfect food

Leo Laporte (00:43:17):
<Laugh> really, I think you could do better or

Paul Thurrott (00:43:21):
She, oh I, well you could get cheese from Canada, but

Leo Laporte (00:43:25):
OS Oz makes a very nice cheese ball as well. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:43:29):
I like that. You're a SSE of this type of,

Leo Laporte (00:43:31):
Of food review

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:32):
Of cheese balls.

Leo Laporte (00:43:34):
<Laugh> story behind it. I don't wanna go it. I am excited. I don't know if I should be. Yeah, because there's two things happening that are making gaming PCs. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> more approachable, more affordable for one Invidia has a overstock of cards and I know the four thousands coming out sometime in the next few weeks, but if you're looking for a 30, 80, or 30, 70, the prices of tumble

Paul Thurrott (00:44:00):
You can get did already make this, you can get like a, a, you know, previously used by a cryptocurrency. Well then I would, yeah. It's like buying a 78 Samara a Camaro that was beaten into the ground by a teenager, like yeah. Or a, it has high. Yeah. Get a place

Leo Laporte (00:44:12):
Cruiser. You really want a Chevy Caprice,

Paul Thurrott (00:44:15):
A former rental car. Yeah, there you go. You know? Yeah, no, that was, that was taken care of.

Leo Laporte (00:44:19):
No, but you can get 'em you can get 'em new, I think pretty good. Yeah. Price. And now AMD has announced and I, I use a, a Verizon mm-hmm <affirmative> for my gaming machine and it's with a 30, 70. It's fantastic. They've been, I'm gonna ask their new 7,000 series.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:34):
Yeah. I wanna ask you a question about this, cuz I'm not a hardware guy and I, I had this discussion with Brad and I, I, I feel like this is the lack of information here that both of us have <laugh> so Intel infamously is adopting like a hybrid core architecture that is clearly influenced by arm, right? Yeah. By performance cores.

Leo Laporte (00:44:54):
Let's let's yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:55):
Okay. Fair enough. The performance cores and efficiency course. Okay. but before this, the way that Intel did things was they just had cores. Right. And they were probably the equivalent of performance cores, but they were, it was kind of like the big block approach to performance. Right. And so couple years ago, I guess four years ago, three, four years ago, they switched from like two core to four core on their mainstream chips. And it was kind of a, it was kind of a neat thing to do. They didn't really harm battery life, but they, you know, improved performance. But AMD has always kind of been over in the corner doing their own thing. And their rising chip sets, recent generations have been multi core, but they don't talk about performance and efficiency cores. Right. So these core, this new desktop chip set, I think it goes up to yeah, up to 16 cores, right. 32 threads very high, you know speeds. But do, what do, I mean, what's your take on this? Like, is this like the way the world, the way this part of the world, the microprocessor world has evolved? Like we've gone from like one big, you know, <laugh> like, like a muscle car approach to like this way more efficient multi-core multi-processing thing. I don't know. Like I, what, what do

Leo Laporte (00:46:08):
You, what do you, well, it's great for laptops. I mean, there's no question about that. Yeah. And that's where, why it came from arm originally, cuz it was for phones. Yeah. where battery life was really critical and it's been great on the laptops actually. AMD has not traditionally been the greatest laptop processor out there. So I don't, they are doing performance and efficiency cores on these. Oh they are

Paul Thurrott (00:46:29):
Now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:46:30):
Okay. They're also five nanometer chips, which is something Intel can't really <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:46:36):
Literally do. Yeah. What's their small chips that they actually make. Is it 11?

Leo Laporte (00:46:41):
Yeah. I think they're still 11, maybe 10. I think it's still 10 or 11. Yeah. Yeah. So an, an Intel at AMD, which has done a really good job of making power chips for gaming, right. Is claiming even more like 30% increase in the performance. You know? So

Paul Thurrott (00:46:59):
Jay minor, who is the architect behind the Atari 400, 800 and the Amigos is a

Leo Laporte (00:47:05):
Alleged smiling

Paul Thurrott (00:47:06):
Somewhere in heaven. Yes. Is because he, in some ways I, he didn't invent it. I don't mean like that, but he created the first mass market computers that used what we think of as sort of multi-processing, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> separate chip sets to handle graphics and other operation music and so forth. And I feel like this is the natural extension of that work like that. We have these things that are very efficient, but also very powerful multi-core in this case like system on a chip that have little discrete parts, you know, for graphics and general processing and so forth. It's, it's kind of, it's interesting. Like it's what do we, 35, 40 years later we're

Leo Laporte (00:47:50):
Living the, we're living the pre at this point. I'll be honest with you. They're now up to 5.7 gigahertz, peak frequency.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:57):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:58):
Which is they do require DDR five, which is more expensive,

Paul Thurrott (00:48:02):
Which is really fast <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:48:04):
And there's one of their drawback, which mm-hmm <affirmative>

Paul Thurrott (00:48:07):
Is a big

Leo Laporte (00:48:08):
Bugs me a little bit Thunderbolt <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:48:11):
So if, as long as they support USB before I, this is something I've been meaning to test. So I just got a, a horizon based think pad in and it is USB before, but I suspect I can't plug this into a Thunderbolt.

Leo Laporte (00:48:24):
Oh, I'd be really curious. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:25):
I am really curious. Yeah, I haven't done it yet. I'm gonna do that soon. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:48:28):
Curious is that's an Intel technology, so the Intel PCs have it and it can sometimes be an add on a, on an AMD desktop, but

Paul Thurrott (00:48:36):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:48:36):
Yeah. It's not native. Like I,

Paul Thurrott (00:48:38):
I, right. So I mean, even if it doesn't support Thunderbolt like a dock, I mean, it should still be 40 gigabit speeds.

Leo Laporte (00:48:47):
Yeah. So you would have to, I like us before. Yeah. Yeah. And supposedly right. It's it's, it's compatible with Thunderbolt three, but I don't know if that means every USB before port will have it. So that's why I'm really curious what you yeah. The

Paul Thurrott (00:49:01):
Laptop I have, there are two that have it. And one that does not, I, one is USB three, two gen something. I don't remember the exact specifications

Leo Laporte (00:49:08):
Anyway. It's a good time 20 gig to be building a PC that's that's I guess the,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:13):
Yeah. Bottom all of a sudden after it was the worst time in history to build a PC, right. Like about a year ago. Right, right. You know? Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:49:21):
Ah, so and you know, it's funny, there's you go and red at there's people who call themselves team red, which you are now in, by the way. I, well, because logo is our logo. Yeah. Now. Oh, you're yeah. I didn't mean to do that red.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:36):
No, that's okay. I like AMD.

Leo Laporte (00:49:38):
Okay, good. <Laugh> <laugh> you're now in team red. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:42):
I mean, I like Intel too, but yeah, I, I AMD has certainly had their issues over the years, but I feel like they've been kind of hitting it outta the park lately. And it's interesting to me that Intel continues to stumble. The other issue, by the way, I, I, I don't wanna get too far down this rabbit hole, but I have this between the spring and the summer have had in for review at least a dozen laptops that are 12th gen and then the one rise every single one of them is outta a performance problem of some kind. And it's the type of thing that kind of evens out over time. But in the beginning, it's really bad. And I I've been stressed over the fact that I never see anyone reviewing laptops mentioning this, but I've seen it again and again and again, and I'm not, I was gonna say, I'm not insane, but I guess you could make a case, but I, I definitely see what I'm seeing.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:32):
And I finally saw a reviewer mention that there's something about the 12th gen, where they've gone to this hybrid core system where the Delta between like the balanced power mode and the high performance mode is much greater than it was with the older generation chip sets. And that, that might have something to do with what I'm seeing, cuz they all come in balanced and it just, it might be a little too balanced or like not balanced enough maybe or maybe windows just needs to be re or updated to support these hybrid chip sets better. Maybe that's just an inefficiency thing. Although you have to think they knew this was coming. Yeah. I

Leo Laporte (00:51:10):
Don't know. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. I used to, I used to root for AMD cuz I thought Intel needed the competition now I'm ready for Intel again caused their lunch. Yeah. It's kind of it's

Paul Thurrott (00:51:21):
Yeah. Yeah. We

Leo Laporte (00:51:23):
Actually now embarrass where, where we really were in a Wintel world, but 10 years ago. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> we really now have apple, Silicon other armed versions from Qualcomm. We have AMD and Intel. We really have some, some strong contenders out there. That's I think very good for competition for innovation and all of that. I agree.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:46):
It's also what Microsoft had been looking for for many, many years. Yeah. That's what they want. Sure. They, they were begging Intel in particular, but chip set makers in, in general to make more efficient chip sets, you know, Intel found it very easy to amp up the performance and it's like, that's great. But most computers are mobile. Now what we need is battery life <laugh>, you know, and that's gonna help that's. I mean, whoever comes out on top or, or this is a three,

Leo Laporte (00:52:16):
Whatever that's amazing in the battery life right now. I mean they just own it. They just I'd love to see, I'd love to see a PC with, you know, 12, 13, 15 hours. Are there any,

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:29):
The nine, nine would

Paul Thurrott (00:52:30):
Be no, there are there are there are, there

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:32):
Are no

Leo Laporte (00:52:33):
<Laugh> notepad is notoriously power hungry.

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:37):
You know what? We we've talked about this every time. And Paul is always like, what are you doing to your battery that you can't get more than eight hours? And I send him my battery report and he's like, okay, I don't know what you're doing, but you're you're right. You're getting eight hours of battery or you're getting seven or six.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:50):
I <laugh>, I, I actually, I'm not gonna name names here, but I got a complaint from a PC maker because I reported that their battery life was terrible. And I said, well, this is not what we're seeing in our labs. And I said, I'm not using it in your lab. I'm using it in the real world. And <laugh>, this is what I'm seeing. I was surprised by how bad it was as well. Yeah. Yeah. So I

Leo Laporte (00:53:12):
Does, does windows have to be windows needs to, part of this is, is Microsoft really taking advantage of these efficiency course? Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:53:20):
This is what I'm wondering. See, I don't know how much I, I, I can't say that I remember them ever discussing this explicitly, but they must be doing it. They

Leo Laporte (00:53:29):
Have to be smart about it. They have to say, oh no, we're gonna put this on the efficiency

Paul Thurrott (00:53:32):
Course. This is kind of why I asked about the AMD thing because AMD had gone multi core a long time ago. They've been doing, you know, by multi core. I mean more than four cores on mainstream chip sets. Intel now I don't know the exact numbers, but depending on what you're looking at core I three through core I nine, obviously they have two to four probably performance cores and four to eight or more efficiency, cores. I mean this changes thing. I mean, windows has to be tailored for this, for it to make sense. It has to be right. Like I wonder if I was, I, I also wonder if future enhancements to windows that take better advantage of this architecture will be, well, of course they will be, they'll be restricted to windows 11 as yet another way to yeah. Or right. Or some exactly just to, to re, to kind of force people to upgrade to get the, the new stuff.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:27):
That would be exciting if you said, you know, what, if you upgrade the windows 12, you'll actually finally get good battery life.

Leo Laporte (00:54:34):
Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:54:34):
<Laugh>, I, that's probably not how they would market it. <Laugh> probably not. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:40):
But if that were really the case, right. Yeah. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:45):
I, I, it depends. I have a, I, I have a, the latest generation Snapdragon is in the ThinkPad X 13 S which I have in now. So supposedly the battery life is in the, you know, near 20 hours or whatever. I doubt it. Sure. You know, but, but you know, we'll see, I will say, I mean, compared to the previous gen there is a noticeable performance improvement, however, it's still an arm chip and there's still the noticeable arm, miss, you know, the arm issues that you still have from time to time. But you know, it's, it's, it's creeping it's creeping upwards for sure. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:21):
I need you to tell me the right laptop to buy. Cause I think my surface laptop three is on its last leg.

Leo Laporte (00:55:27):
Ooh. Should she get that new one? You just reviewed Paul. The, the, the one that folds in half from Aus.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:34):
No, that

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:34):
Looks kind of hokey, right? Like that looks like a weird hokey.

Leo Laporte (00:55:38):
That looks kind of cool. 17

Paul Thurrott (00:55:39):
This think whatever Lenovo sells a think pad that looks like that as well.

Leo Laporte (00:55:43):
There's this 13 inches. This one is 17 inches.

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:46):
No. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:47):
Wait a, wait

Leo Laporte (00:55:47):
A but no, it folds in half and you put the keyboard in the bottom half and then it's just like a 13 inch. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:54):
13 inch. They're not the only ones who are doing that by the way they just show you around. Yeah. It just just was announced. No, you don't want a folding screen. No. It's

Leo Laporte (00:56:04):
$3,500

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:05):
On a lap. I know crazy.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:09):
Oh boy. I don't know. I, I, I guess the way I would say this is generally speaking, 11th, gen products are more reliable against slightly better battery life than what I'm seeing with 12th gen so far. Yeah. But the 12th gen are newer and I

Leo Laporte (00:56:27):
Thought 12th gen was supposed to be better. Better. Your life is yes.

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:30):
Maybe it'll learn. Maybe it has to learn. You like not to be all

Paul Thurrott (00:56:34):
You actually all, you know what it all, here's the issue. So here's this is I again, I can only, I'm not like I'm not a hardware guy and I know someone is gonna come away with and St. Paul, you, you have no idea what you're talking about. I

Leo Laporte (00:56:43):
Get good results on this 15 inch Dell. Really good.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:47):
So do you okay. But, and it's 12 five I five I five H P

Leo Laporte (00:56:54):
We talked about this. It's an H I

Paul Thurrott (00:56:56):
Know friend. It's an H. Okay. All right. So that's the most part. All right. So

Leo Laporte (00:57:00):
It's a good one. It's not one of them crappy gold Penns.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:03):
Here's my

Leo Laporte (00:57:05):
<Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:06):
This is just me not being a hardware guy, but this is my observation. Yeah. In previous generation chips, you series, which stood for ultra book, right. Was basically what the chips that you saw in everything. It was in everything. It doesn't matter what very occasionally you would see eight series, but it was you, you was everywhere when you go forward to 12th gen all of a sudden, there's this new skew in the middle called P, which is 28 Watts, which now is on most everything. It's on ultra books. It's on it's, it's the one I, like I said, I had 12 in, I, I bet 10 of them are P series and two, a U series. Like it's, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's overwhelmingly P series. And the only thing I can think of is, well, first of all, you sacrificed a little bit in battery life, for sure. But I wonder if this hybrid core thing has caused U series to not quite be as good, because I don't think the U series chip were seeing this year as good as the U series chip we saw last year with Chen. I just don't think they're good. 

Leo Laporte (00:58:01):
I'm, I'm very happy with it. Battery life. It's a 12 500 H. Right. and

Paul Thurrott (00:58:06):
Do you have discrete graphics or

Leo Laporte (00:58:07):
Integrated graphics? No integrated, you know, I got on your recommendation. I got kind of like a, a normal person.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:14):
Would I love the implicit blame that it's your fault. So <laugh> okay. No,

Leo Laporte (00:58:19):
No, you

Paul Thurrott (00:58:19):
Were right. That is what I that's, normal's what I choose. And I, and I this is a XB 15, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah, so I like this form factor a lot. I, I, you know, you don't have like the Nu pad stuff, which I

Leo Laporte (00:58:31):
No, no, no. Right. And you could get, you could get, obviously, Mary Jo, you don't need the 15. You can get the, the, whatever the 13.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:37):
Yeah. Yeah. Those are nice.

Leo Laporte (00:58:38):
The XPS is, and I, I have to say, I never have one. I don't want to go out on a limb and have you be mad at me, but I feel like this is eight or nine hour battery life, easy on the 15,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:48):
What I would like. So it's, I I wrote about this a little while ago, too. It's weird to me. I just said, you know, most people don't use tablets and pens and stuff, but it is weird how often premium PCs in particular are like hybrid convertible pieces. Yeah. HP specter X 360 is a good version or a good example. The anything with the name, yoga in it, like the X one carbon yoga or X one, sorry. Think pad X, one yoga. I, for myself, I actually prefer the traditional laptop form factor. Same. the ThinkPad think pat, I think is switching, not this year for everything, but probably next year to better keyboards, better form. I think that this is gonna be a big shift happening at, with think pad, which is very

Leo Laporte (00:59:33):
Interesting. I wish Mary Jo could try a framework cuz it's three, two I really like the framework. They have 12th chin now. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:42):
I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:59:43):
Keyboards, I think are very good. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but, and the nice thing is Mary Jo it's upgradable. So yeah. Right. They make motherboards, you know, I could upgrade my 11th chin until now to a 12th chin. And presumably I'll be very curious. I bet you, they do an AMD

Paul Thurrott (00:59:59):
<Affirmative> you gotta, Mary Jo, you got, so what you should do is first of all, you should visit here. We've been talking about this for a while anyway, but I know, and while I have a million laptops in <laugh> and look at them all, because it's hard to go and see these things, you know, in a store,

Leo Laporte (01:00:12):
That's the drawback in the framework. No, there,

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:14):
You can't go to any store. No, there's nowhere to go to like check out laptops and you know, like I won't get another surface after this one just because this isn't that old, right. This is three years old. Now my mother board's flickering again and doing weird shutoff things. And I'm just like, and this is the mother place. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:34):
So I'm

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:34):
Like three, right? It's not long for this world. Surface laptop three

Paul Thurrott (01:00:37):
Is produced in

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:38):
2019 Intel, Intel

Paul Thurrott (01:00:40):
Or, and okay.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:40):
Intel.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:41):
Yeah. I know the AMD that year was on like was previous Jen and was kind of underpowered.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:46):
No, this was the Intel one. Yeah, I'm just, just how this went. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:00:51):
I prefer HP keyboards personally. Yeah. Although the

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:55):
Latest HP a lot. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:57):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:59):
I don't know. Think there's gonna be a cer like we think there's gonna be a surface launch this fall. Right? Like every fall they have a launch, but I'm just like, yeah. I'm just not waiting around. Even if there's a laptop five, like I'm very gun shy on them. Now.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:12):
I think there would have to be whatever the surface event is. That has to be part of it. A laptop, five they're

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:17):
Overdue. I just, I'm just, I'm worried after what happened with the three about going with the service. I hate to admit that, but <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:01:24):
Yeah, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:26):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:28):
Well, if there was something perfect, I would recommend it to everybody. <Laugh> I don't know. You

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:31):
Know, I know. No. And everybody has different needs. Like for me, biggest needs are portability and battery. Those are my two things. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:38):
I'd like the spec. I, I will say I'd had a problem. Like I said, with battery life on one computer. And when we flew to Mexico, last time I used the specter X 360, the entire flight. And when the guy said you get put away the laptop. So I looked and I was like 54% battery life. I'm like, that's pretty good. Like, that's pretty good. Oh,

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:54):
That is

Paul Thurrott (01:01:54):
Good. And yeah. And I was online and I was writing and I had the thing going the whole time. I thought that was pretty good. It's a convertible, which I don't care for personally, but I just use it like a laptop. I mean, I it's a, it is a great laptop. Yeah. I

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:10):
Don't know you, you gave me one when my surface was in the shop the last time mm-hmm <affirmative> remember you gave me an HP AMD

Paul Thurrott (01:02:17):
And it was AMD. Yeah. Yep. I like it. It probably an envy. I think it was an envy. I think it was an envy

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:25):
Think it was an envy. Yeah. Yeah. I liked it. And I still use that. Like when I'm on the road and stuff, I use that

Paul Thurrott (01:02:32):
I just got, I have three 16 inch laptops and now one's an HP NV 16. I haven't written about yet. I really like form practices. 16. It's too big. I know, but I wanna use it on a, you know what I mean? I like the, I like the screen size. It's

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:45):
Good. Yeah. For me, 13 is okay. Yeah. I can get by with it.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:53):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:02:54):
Nopa on the 3.3, two screen on the framework would look so

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:59):
Good. Ideal. It

Leo Laporte (01:03:00):
Looks, oh my God. EAX looks great. So imagine how good notepad would look. And with that, I'm putting away the cheese balls.

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:08):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:03:10):
Notepad is probably, it's like a single core application. It probably just pegs your CPU and

Leo Laporte (01:03:16):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:16):
Leaves it. It must be, it,

Leo Laporte (01:03:17):
It doesn't need to peg it. It's just sitting there waiting for Mary Jo to type, right. It's an eternity between keystrokes from their point of view.

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:25):
I think tweet deck probably does a number on my battery for

Leo Laporte (01:03:27):
One. It might the live scrolling might. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh> actually that could, that could well be it. I doubt TWiTtter optimizes it in any way.

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:36):
<Laugh> right, exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:03:38):
Browsers, notoriously, power hungry. Really? Yeah. And what browser do you use?

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:43):
Edge?

Leo Laporte (01:03:44):
Oh, I think edge is the new Bing.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:47):
Yeah. The new pig in,

Leo Laporte (01:03:49):
I think actually edge was supposed to be very lightweight. I don't know. It still is. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:53):
So I launched notepad and it didn't impact my CPR M at

Leo Laporte (01:03:58):
All. No, it's sitting there most of the time. I

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:59):
Shouldn't do anything. It shouldn't right.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:01):
It shouldn't. No, I know. Right. I know it. Shouldn't, I'm just, and then you type, and it goes up 2% actually you type and it goes up up to 4%. Ooh,

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:09):
That's it.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:10):
Ooh, that's interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:04:12):
I wonder, you know, what I could do for you? I, I mean, I, I could try on this. I could just set it up. When I go home today with tweet deck in the background, unplug it, tweet deck in the background, notepad open. I sh I need to get some typing thing and just let it and just let it run. Just

Paul Thurrott (01:04:31):
Let it sit there, right? Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:04:34):
I bet you, if just notepad was running, I wouldn't need to type keystrokes. They're not gonna use a whole lot of juice. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:40):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:04:40):
I'll do that. I'll leave that. I now I don't know how I would know when it died, how long I went. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:44):
<Laugh> right.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:45):
There'll be a, you need an alarm, a liquid pile of sludge in the corner.

Leo Laporte (01:04:49):
<Laugh> yeah. May if I start the clock timer, if I start the stopwatch and then when I reopen it, after it dies, it might show the last time

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:59):
Maybe.

Leo Laporte (01:05:01):
Yeah, no, I'll try that.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:03):
<Laugh> like, like when there's a nuclear accident and the clocks.

Leo Laporte (01:05:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Everything died at 10 o'clock at night. Yeah. <Laugh> they're all the, all the clocks in Cherno are at the, the same time. Yeah. That's it right? Yeah. we shouldn't joke about nuclear accidents

Paul Thurrott (01:05:16):
These days. I was gonna say, it's gonna be that way again saying if they're not careful. Yeah. A little sensitive Microsoft three, six or five. Yeah. I can't think of anything. Boy. Paul sounds so excited.

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:29):
He sounds silly.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:31):
So, alright. So I'll, I'll present you with a, a sentence. And then my initial reaction, which is Microsoft outlook is picking up Microsoft to do integration. And then my reaction to that is it does doesn't it already have Microsoft to do integration. There is a tasks component in outlook, and it must tie into Microsoft to do, but I guess they're replacing tasks with, to do

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:57):
So.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:59):
Is that right?

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:00):
Remember Microsoft had, and still has like a million different ways to do your own to-do list. Like tasks is one to do is one. They used to have wonder lists. Like there's just so many different products, one note, right? Like you could use any of these things to be your task management type product. So true. I would love them to go public and just sit down and explain this to everyone. But I know just from people talking to me about this, that this whole meta OS thing that they're doing the idea of this thing is to bring a common set of elements to teams and to outlook and to edge. Right? So what they're trying to do is take things like tasks, lists, files, whiteboard, planner, stream, and make all of these things available on all three of those hubs, outlook, edge, and teams.

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:55):
So this is what they're trying to do. This is the Uber gold. They have never said this publicly that I know of, right. This, I think a lot of people would benefit from understanding, what are you guys doing? Why are you bringing outlook to, why are you bringing, you know, tasks to outlook? Why are you bringing todo to outlook? Why are you bringing planner to outlook? Like what's going on here? I think that, I think they should just one day have, have Jared Spataro or someone mm-hmm <affirmative> stand on a stage and say, you know, it's probably been confusing to you all, what we've been doing. This is what we're doing. And they don't even have to use meta OS as a word. But if they just explained that and the idea that people use different things as their hub, like not everyone lives in teams, not everyone lives in outlook. Right. They're trying to just be versatile. I feel like, and give people options. I feel like Microsoft already always gives too many options, but I feel like the office team is trying to streamline those and make it more consistent across these hubs. That's what I think is happening.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:50):
Well, actually, you, you may be onto an implicit acknowledgement of strategy, which is that if any service appears on all three of those things, it is the way forward, right? Yes. So in, in some ways you could meet making the argument here that because to do explicitly is now being added to outlook. It is the tasks functionality of the future. It

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:11):
Is. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:12):
Yeah. I mean, mm-hmm,

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:14):
<Affirmative> seems that way. That's my guess about what's happening.

Leo Laporte (01:08:17):
Yeah. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:19):
Yep. But then the biggest story of the day I'm

Leo Laporte (01:08:23):
Gladly. Thank you until now. I don't know why this wasn't the top story, frankly,

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:26):
But it should have been

Leo Laporte (01:08:27):
What, and I'm excited. Jen

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:29):
Harris, who cares about that

Leo Laporte (01:08:30):
Guy?

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:31):
What about Kala going away?

Leo Laporte (01:08:34):
What is, what, who Kaizala. Exactly. Thank you. Is movie response avatar it's no. Was in the lion

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:40):
King avatar, nothing to lion king or boozes none of those things

Leo Laporte (01:08:45):
Circle, blah. It's the Kaizala

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:51):
In 2018, Microsoft launched the service. It's a large group messaging service called Kaizala in India. Oh, it started in India. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:09:00):
Okay. Right. So it's not for, it's not for the us.

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:03):
It's kind of like, it was kind of like a WhatsApp competitor, like kind of designed like that. And somebody in the office team saw this and said, you know, it'd be cool. We should just integrate this into Microsoft 365. Right? Like give people this thing. If they wanna use it, let 'em use it. So once they did that, it I had so many people coming to me saying, so, wait, am I supposed to use Kaza now? Or am I supposed to use teams chat? Like what? I'm confused again, Microsoft giving too many options. As they want to do <laugh> then suddenly they are now killing Kaizala. So you now killed by Google. We have killed by Microsoft also and planning to retire Kaizala as of August 31st, 20, 23 until then. So you get a year from today. You can keep using it, but after that, that's it like it's going away <laugh> and their explanation is, you know why we're getting rid of it because it overlaps with teams.

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:00):
Yes. Thank you. We, we knew that like three years ago, four years ago, but now, right. It feels like somebody in the office team is like looking at things and going, why do we have this? Like we have teams. Right. it also could be that they're killing this product because as we've heard, Microsoft is doing a lot of belt tightening right now and the windows and the office team. So they may just be looking at things like do a lot of people use this? Yes or no. No. Okay. Let's get rid of it and get rid of the team and save some money that could also be what's happening. Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:10:30):
This shows how hard it is to create a

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:33):
Yeah. They, they were very low key about killing it off after kind of celebrating that they had brought it up through the Microsoft grudge and

Leo Laporte (01:10:39):
It was a garage thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shows how hard it is to

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:44):
So if you're a Kaizala user, they want you to go to teams instead.

Leo Laporte (01:10:48):
Fair enough. No big,

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:49):
No, no big surprise. As somebody said to me, but still an acknowledgement that if

Leo Laporte (01:10:54):
You're in anything user, user, they want you to go to teams instead. Right. Right. No matter what you use, go to teams, go to

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:01):
Teams. Yes. Pretty much.

Leo Laporte (01:11:02):
What were you gonna say, Leo? It's I just, it's a problem. If you're a global company naming products.

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:07):
It is. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:09):
Cause I think the name is a show is a stopper in the us. It's just in English. It's not, well,

Paul Thurrott (01:11:14):
People are

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:15):
Like,

Paul Thurrott (01:11:15):
What Kaizala should I called it? Kaza and brought in what's his name? SHA O'Neill

Leo Laporte (01:11:20):
But it was intended for India. There's no one India has more languages than almost any country in the world. Yeah. Maybe it does. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so there's no one word, you know, you don't wanna do a Hindi word because in the Mera people won't use it. So what you do something that's kind of nonsense, but sounds like it's insane. I don't know. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:38):
Must be now you have to make sure no one else owns the trademark also. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:11:42):
<Laugh> and the website and all of that, right? Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:45):
It's

Leo Laporte (01:11:46):
It must be very hard to be, I think, just to be a global corporation in general these days.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:52):
Yeah. You're always walking at eggshells. Yeah. You're you're gonna insult someone somewhere with your Nova car.

Leo Laporte (01:12:00):
<Laugh> right. Or whatever. I mean, you know, if you're a big, you know, if you're a big build nuclear plants, it doesn't really matter what your name is. <Laugh> you can work any, you could be a global concern. That's easy. You could be international paper company and be international. But if you're software mm-hmm <affirmative>, that's, it's very different.

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:21):
Now look at the names of startups these days. Like I laugh so many times when I see startup, maybe I'm like, what? Well,

Leo Laporte (01:12:27):
We're used to Google now, but that was a terrible name.

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:30):
I know people hated that. Right? Google, iPad. People like flipped out

Leo Laporte (01:12:33):
One. Oh, I hated iPad did iPad. I did. We really mocked it. But I also knew at the time you're gonna get used to it. Yep. Because you get used to everything except Kaizala. I'm never, never gonna,

Paul Thurrott (01:12:43):
Except Kaizala. Never gonna get used to. We hardly knew you. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:45):
Didn't get a chance.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:46):
You'll be right there. Ahead of kin in the book of Microsoft killed projects. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:51):
Ken was a good name though.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:52):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Leo Laporte (01:12:55):
Ken was a good name. Ken probably worked well in a lot of languages.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:59):
Actually. It was a good product. Got screwed by Verizon. It's cute.

Leo Laporte (01:13:02):
How long before Microsoft makes a, a product called Ken?

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:06):
I know cuz they love to use codename for names. They do.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:11):
Well, I think they,

Leo Laporte (01:13:13):
Because I might still be here if they'd called it Ken,

Paul Thurrott (01:13:15):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:16):
Or maybe something I gotta use, like Viva Kaizala, Viva.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:21):
They get something Viva. I think keep adding these models more likely

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:28):
Kaizala. Why not?

Paul Thurrott (01:13:29):
<Laugh> okay.

Leo Laporte (01:13:31):
Let's talk about the cloud. Shall we?

Paul Thurrott (01:13:34):
Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:35):
Why not?

Paul Thurrott (01:13:39):
<Laugh> this is no Paul. Paul,

Leo Laporte (01:13:42):
Can you fan interest of some kind? Just pretend.

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:45):
No, this is a big deal because yeah, it's kind of surprising Microsoft hadn't had this already, but they didn't have arm based VMs in Azure until now. Right? It's you know, a AWS had gravitron for like years and then Google just announced that they were going to have arm based VMs in the Google cloud. But Microsoft hadn't said anything until this April, when they announced the preview of arms arm support in Azure VMs. And then this as of tomorrow, September 1st, it'll be generally available. So the way they're doing this is kind of interesting. They're they partner with amp here. It's a company that makes arm based server chips. And so Microsoft started working with them to do arm based VMs for Azure. What else do you need to note all the, a lot of Linux flavors are available.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:39):
Yeah. I think that's the big, the big thing. Cause O Buno canonical came out with an announcement. I thought it was a,

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:46):
You thought it was

Paul Thurrott (01:14:46):
AUB Buntu, Microsoft partnership. No, no. Yeah, no. It's like every major Linux. Yeah, so we can find list

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:54):
A Buntu red hat, enterprise, Linux say Sento S and Debbie. Nice coming. Soon. Alma, Linux and Rocky Linux.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:04):
Rocky. I am positive. Those don't even exist. Those are hilarious

Leo Laporte (01:15:07):
Names. Those names up, just to see if you underst

Paul Thurrott (01:15:09):
Exactly to see if anyone's,

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:11):
If anyone gonna type those words. Yes. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:13):
<Laugh> all, you know, all Linux. We're all.

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:15):
Also, if you're not a Linux fan, I know there may be some people who are not, this is windows weekly. You can run a preview of windows, 11 professional and enterprise on these arm VMs as well.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:30):
Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:30):
So yeah, it was time. A lot of people have been saying, what is Microsoft gonna do with arm in the data center? They've got windows server running on arm, but only for internal use and they won't sell it to customers. So the way they're going at this is V arm, arm VMs. Oh, we've got somebody in the discord, all my user here. Okay. It exists. It's not made up. <Laugh> thank you, Newman. 

Leo Laporte (01:15:56):
Newman

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:59):
Newman. Yeah. Yeah. I think the one takeaway people should have is if you haven't been noticing Microsoft is really going all out to show that they're doing stuff with arm after years of working on windows on arm and kind of letting it atrophy they're back and everything they're doing now is like bringing visual studio to arm, a native version, you know, doing this Volterra desktop PC thing that they show to build based on arm. Everything is arm, arm, arm. And I think at ignite, I'm expecting to hear a lot more stuff about windows and arm. You know, they had to apple did it. Now everybody's going to Microsoft saying, so, Hey, Apple's doing this. What are you guys doing? And they, they need an answer. Is

Leo Laporte (01:16:40):
There any word, remember the speculation that Qualcomm had an exclusive on WOA? Yep. Is there any word about, we don't know.

Mary Jo Foley (01:16:47):
We don't know if that's true.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:48):
I would love to know about this, but,

Leo Laporte (01:16:50):
But windows and arm is still not

Mary Jo Foley (01:16:53):
Official available as an ISO or supported on apple. Right? Not officially supported.

Leo Laporte (01:16:58):
And the thesis was, oh, that's probably because Qualcomm had an exclusivity deal,

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:05):
But we don't know that, but

Leo Laporte (01:17:05):
We don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:06):
Yeah. We don't know that for sure. But it's, it is one of those things that makes sense. So it must be true and God knows that's never gotten anyone in trouble. So

Leo Laporte (01:17:12):
<Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:13):
<Laugh> well, I'll tell you the source of that rumor was rich woods. Right. Who has a lot of good stuff on Qualcomm. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel very,

Paul Thurrott (01:17:22):
But I think even if you went back a

Leo Laporte (01:17:24):
Hundred percent, he also said it, it was expiring. That's why he, he knew about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it apparently did not. So mm-hmm

Paul Thurrott (01:17:30):
<Affirmative> right. Or they extended it and didn't tell anybody because they certainly haven't been open about this

Leo Laporte (01:17:35):
Partnership. It's secret other probably collusion. It's probably an, an antitrust trigger.

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:40):
<Laugh> they're so far,

Paul Thurrott (01:17:43):
If only we could find someone who cared,

Leo Laporte (01:17:46):
I

Paul Thurrott (01:17:47):
Dunno, like you're cute. Just keep doing what you're doing. No one

Leo Laporte (01:17:49):
Cares. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:50):
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:52):
But yeah, no, the plan originally was it was gonna start with Callcom and move to other armed chip sets and that's never happened.

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:58):
And some of those companies either went outta business or just stopped working on that project. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:03):
I, well, I will tell you what we need less than the current architecture is a different bunch of different versions of that chip said that don't work well with PCs. Right? Exactly. I think what it's possible that I think the speculation was Invidia's acquisition Innovia, which is gonna result in a new style of arm chips or PCs mm-hmm <affirmative> might be what is keeping them on Qualcomm. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:18:25):
Interesting. That

Paul Thurrott (01:18:26):
The bet is like, this will work out. Well, yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:18:29):
Maybe. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:18:31):
And there's it, there's no incentive for them to work with apple, Silicon. They don't, they don't really care about

Paul Thurrott (01:18:35):
That. Oh, no. Microsoft would love to do that. I don't think apple cares.

Leo Laporte (01:18:38):
Apple is the problem. I don't think. Yeah. I don't. They made, I mean, you know, they went to a lot of effort to do bootcamp and they had apple specific drivers for windows. I mean, that was a significant effort back in the day. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:50):
It was necessary back in the day. I mean, I, I feel

Leo Laporte (01:18:54):
Like's changed that much.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:56):
Yeah. I think it has. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:18:58):
Interesting. Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:59):
Yeah. I don't think that running a windows app locally on a Mac is a huge deal anymore beyond special use cases like developers who obviously have special, you know, those needs or like help desk personnel, that kind of thing. But you know, general office workers where it's like, no, you have to run the win this windows app. And it has to be on your computer. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Obviously it does, but I don't think it's a mainstream issue anymore. I don't think so.

Leo Laporte (01:19:27):
That's

Paul Thurrott (01:19:28):
We can all speculate, I guess.

Leo Laporte (01:19:29):
That's your thought, Ken? Yeah. It's good to have

Paul Thurrott (01:19:31):
A thought. That's my thought. And I'm sticking with it.

Leo Laporte (01:19:34):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:19:34):
I don't care what you say about changing my

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:36):
Mind. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:19:39):
Let's move right along to the EU based cloud licensing issues with the, what is it? Is it about data storage where it's stored

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:49):
Now? This is, this is very complicated matter.

Leo Laporte (01:19:54):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:19:55):
Can I, can I summarize this one really quick? And then we can completely give it a whirl. I know. Give it a whirl. You're gonna love this. Yep. Three years ago. Yes. Three short years ago. Yes. Microsoft changed the licensing for windows and office running on competing clouds and to make it more onerous and expensive and partners and customers complained to the EU, ah, the EU actually inquired with Microsoft to see what was going on. Microsoft came up publicly and said, you're right. We're so sorry. This we didn't mean for this bad effect to happen. Oh, I remember that. We're gonna fix, you're gonna fix it. I remember that. Yeah. And they move really quickly and they fixed it and everything's fine now. Okay. Does that sound about right, right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:33):
<Laugh> no,

Paul Thurrott (01:20:34):
It's not what happened. Huh? Tell me if you have any issues up until the last, that version of the story. Yeah. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:39):
Good up until that last sentence. So yes. All of that happened. Microsoft changed the hosting rules to make it more expensive, to run their software on competing clouds. So if you're a Microsoft fan, you're like, yeah, of course. They're trying to give themselves a leg up so that people run it on Azure. Right? Why not all fair and business and competition? Well, you know who didn't like it, AWS and Google. So they got their partners and customers to complain to the EU. And then the EU kind of said to Microsoft, Hey, Hey, what's going on? The Microsoft came out with the European cloud principles. Like we're the good guys. We're so sorry.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:15):
Paul said, I love the name too European to do that principles.

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:19):
So this week they put shared the set of things that they're gonna be changing. And the things that they're changing are gonna help Microsoft cloud solution provider partners. So if you're a smaller hoster or an outsourcer, you love what Microsoft just did. You're like, yes, they just gave me all these new ways of licensing things with customers. It's gonna be awesome. And if you're AWS and Google and Alibaba, you're like, wait a minute, nothing changed. We're excluded from all of these new concessions that they just made were called listed providers. And they said, this is all good for everyone except these listed providers. So yeah, they helped customers who don't wanna run Microsoft software on Google or on AWS or Alibaba. But if you do wanna run it on that, they didn't change anything. And you're still gonna be paying more to run them on competitive clothes.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:09):
But here's why this is genius on Microsoft's part because <laugh>, they know they're dealing with the EU and they know how the EU works and how they think. Yep. So the first thing they did was they took three years to address this problem. They're they're operating on EU time. Brilliant. Yep. Really smart. It three years went by. <Laugh> like, seriously, it's incredible. But the other thing they did was, you know, I know this is a general, this is just a general statement. If there's an antitrust fan in the discord, don't freak out at this. But in general antitrust, the United States is focused on consumers and antitrust in the EU is focused on competition,

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:46):
Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:46):
Primarily with European competition. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, I don't think Google or, or EU cares if Microsoft is being mean to Google or Amazon, those you not, those are us superpowers. All they care about are these EU small guys. So they're like, yeah, we'll fix it for that. We'll take three years to fix it. And then we'll fix it for your stupid little special use case that no one else cares about. And the U is probably gonna be like, awesome. <Laugh> thank you. Yep. And that's probably good to be the end of it. I, I

Mary Jo Foley (01:23:12):
That's three more years, right? Three more years will go by <laugh> yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:16):
That's CRA it's crazy. Like it's, it's crazy how they solve this problem. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:23:21):
You know what? They're good. They're good. They, they know how to work this, right. I mean, there are, I'm not gonna say there are no good things in here. If you're somebody who, who runs software in a hosted manner on other cloud infrastructures mm-hmm <affirmative> you should check out what they changed. They've got some new things. They call flexible virtualization benefits. That's gonna help you for your soft software assurance customer, unless you're running on AWS, Google, or Alibaba. And there's a new provision in here. If you're somebody who has been wanting to run windows 10 or 11 in a hosted manner, they made a concession where you don't need a VDA add-on Licens anymore. So that could save you some money. There's a new way of windows, server, virtual core licensing. There's a whole bunch of things. So you should check it out. But just remember if you're trying to think, if you're thinking that this is gonna help you run Microsoft software on AWS or Google or Alibaba, you are wrong, it will not help you.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:16):
I like you. The other thing I hope people noticed during your description of this is Mary Jo skimmed right over the top of the Microsoft licensing elephant. And, and just mentioned that the smallest little slice of this terrible monstrosity I be, and it already is horrible. And the notion that Microsoft improved licensing in Europe, by making it more complicated, frankly, frankly, because this thing you thought couldn't be more complicated. It is in fact now more complicated.

Mary Jo Foley (01:24:48):
Som I'm friends with the guys at directions on Microsoft. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> who I do a podcast with them about, and we talk about licensing a lot. Right? That's their

Paul Thurrott (01:24:56):
Special, yeah. That's all they think about. That's their whole.

Mary Jo Foley (01:24:57):
So I sent them the link to this and you should have seen the answers that came back like charts and like graphs. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> things crossed out things, been circled and being like, make sure you mention this nerd, da, da, da. And I'm like, oh my God, there's no way I could like put all the things in

Paul Thurrott (01:25:12):
How, how they not insane people. All of them, they should all be in a rubber. Room's a weird,

Leo Laporte (01:25:18):
We specialize. Well, we specialize in licensing. I guess it's a good business,

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:21):
Man. Its be people need help. Yeah. Right. People need help. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:25:25):
Just, I wouldn't want do that to myself.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:27):
No, I know. It's a lot. Yeah. It it's awful.

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:30):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:31):
Nerds. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:34):
Licensing nerds. The best kind

Leo Laporte (01:25:36):
Of nerd. The worst. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:37):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:25:39):
Back to a BTU. I guess we must. What's

Paul Thurrott (01:25:42):
Going on. Know what's going on here?

Leo Laporte (01:25:44):
It's sneaking in

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:45):
All over this. Wasn't so good. There's a release of a Buntu called bionic beaver who knew? I knew <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:25:52):
One

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:53):
Of my favorite version. 18. Oh four

Leo Laporte (01:25:55):
Of it's old Buntu. That's old.

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:57):
Yeah. Oh it's old. Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:58):
Very old.

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:59):
Yeah. So some people were running this in their VMs on Azure. They had an auto update setting set, so it automatically updated to this. And unfortunately when it did it F we found out and, and canonical found out that there was a DNS issue in, in bionic beaver. And so it got propagated to VMs running that a Buntu release in Azure and it made a giant cascading outage happen for people who are using a Buntu on Azure. <Laugh> nice. Right. So a lot of services went down like a Azure Kubernetes service went down, the container app service went down. Yep. This started two days ago, by the way, this start, sorry. One day ago, yesterday, August 30th, really early in the morning it started. And that when I woke up this morning still going on, they like a bunch who had fixed it. Microsoft had told people, reboot your VMs and it's been kind of a big mess. So I just check the Azure page. They, it looks like they fixed it. But you might wanna go to Azure status page if you do this. And look at the remediation suggestions and stuff,

Paul Thurrott (01:27:06):
You know, if I'm not mistaken, this new Buntu and whatever else, Linux on arm is going live tomorrow. So you might wanna stay tuned to that page. Ah, tomorrow. Good point, you know, see how that goes. Yeah. I think that happens tomorrow. I think it's September one.

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:22):
Yeah. Good point. Yep. And then the last thing, while we're talking about Azure Kubernetes service, because of course we are, it's the cloud segment.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:32):
I like that you put AKs in there, like anyone would know what that meant.

Mary Jo Foley (01:27:35):
Like anyone would know AKs, you know, Azure, Kubernetes service. Yeah. so every, every year for the past 10 years, you guys know I'm very persistent. This is one of the reasons I drive Microsoft crazy. I asked them the same question multiple years just to check in. So about 10 years ago, I started asking Microsoft when they were gonna move office 365 to Azure because it doesn't run on Azure. Parts of it run on Azure like teams does. And they said their goal was to get all of Microsoft 365 and office 365 to host on Azure. You know, when we joke about hard computer science problem, this is a hard computer science problem, right. This is a very hard computer science problem. So what they're doing is they're using AKs to kinda lift and shift a lot of Microsoft, 365 especially the exchange part of it over to Azure. I, when I asked them this week, how's it going guys? Like it's been 10 years. Like how how's it going? They're like, yeah, we're still not done. Still a work in progress, but we're getting there like AKs is really helping us a lot. And Microsoft even put out a case study that I link to in an article I have, if you wanna read it about how they're using AKs to try to bring more of Microsoft 365 over to Azure,

Paul Thurrott (01:28:50):
Do they ever talk about what the rest of Microsoft 365 is running on? Is it yes. Don windows, they don't servers in a data center or what's

Mary Jo Foley (01:28:59):
Yes it's. So they they launched, I believe they launched office 365 before they had built Azure or Azure was very new. Right. And so what they had to do was build their own set of servers in their own data centers with their own cloud infrastructure that was not Azure to host this and the name of what hostess is autopilot. So if you ever hear about autopilot in there's two autopilots, there's the windows autopilot, which is for provisioning and configuring systems. And then there's this other autopilot which Microsoft built to host its own backend services before Azure was really a robust backend infrastructure. So yeah, it's running. So there's a lot of Microsoft things like Bing and Microsoft 365, officer 365, some of Xbox also that runs on these bare metal servers in Microsoft data centers and not on Azure.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:55):
Oh, at least it's not free BSD, I guess

Leo Laporte (01:29:58):
<Laugh>, you know what I would, I would go for that. If I could get three BSD to run on something, I would, I would do it even if it's the cloud.

Mary Jo Foley (01:30:07):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:30:09):
I got excited about this next story, cuz I thought, oh, maybe finally that one surface that runs on arm that I really like there'll be an Intel version so I can actually use it.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:20):
Well actually there, there is

Leo Laporte (01:30:23):
Surface. So the story is that surface pro and surface pro X brands may be consolidated.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:28):
Yeah. I, I, I don't remember the exact year this happened, but probably when I'm just gonna guess I might be wrong about this, but it probably the year that Microsoft came out with surface pro seven, they also came out with surface pro X or 10 or whatever mm-hmm <affirmative>, which was the arm version. And it had a new design, it was thinner, obviously fan smaller bezels. I

Leo Laporte (01:30:52):
Thought it was really cool looking. I like it

Mary Jo Foley (01:30:54):
Pencil little pencil.

Leo Laporte (01:30:56):
It was built into the keyboard sort of that's

Paul Thurrott (01:30:58):
Right. Yeah, that's right. But,

Leo Laporte (01:30:59):
But I didn't wanna WOA

Paul Thurrott (01:31:01):
Surface. Right. So actually the windows, oh, sorry. Surface pro eight, which is now I guess a year old. I don't a year and a half old has this design. Right. So they actually did switch this design for Intel. There's the second gen version of the surface pro X as well. And then surface pro eight and surface pro eight has the same keyboard with the pen integrated, you know, into the keyboard where it charges while it's sitting there. So you don't lose it, which is really nice. Oh it does have, it does have that design. So they, they actually did kind of switch that design. So I guess the theory here, I think this is just really about branding, right? So that with there'll be something they'll probably call surface pro well nine I guess. And instead of using in, you know, Intel and AMD skews, like we have on surface laptop, there'll be Intel and arm versions of it. And it will be the same body, the same branding, you know, that kind of thing. I, yeah, I guess so. I mean, it's, it, it it's, it was confusing that they had two different products. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:32:02):
I didn't really ever realize the eight is the same, to be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:32:06):
Yeah. It's a nice device actually. The,

Leo Laporte (01:32:09):
That looks cool. I'm glad. I didn't know that at our, I might have bought it by accident. <Laugh> I feel,

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:13):
I feel like this is their push to arm though. Right? Another piece of this is like arm is just like Intel, right? Like, right.

Leo Laporte (01:32:20):
Same

Paul Thurrott (01:32:20):
Thing. Yeah. It's the mainstreaming of

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:23):
It is

Paul Thurrott (01:32:24):
Arm in a way on windows, I guess mm-hmm <affirmative> but yeah, but no surface pro aid is basically the same form factor, same type cover. Like I said in fact I reviewed it when I was in Paris last year, cuz I, I took pictures of it in front of the Arctic tr cuz I was like, we could bring this out into the world. So it has like a bigger display it's under bolt four, all that kind of stuff. So

Leo Laporte (01:32:43):
<Laugh> nice. Nice. All right. So this is less of a story than I thought it was.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:47):
Well, yeah, it's it's I call it a branding story. I think it was a little confusing that they had two different surface pros,

Leo Laporte (01:32:55):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:56):
Maybe, and window central said, and I think this is a good way to look at it. It's a, it's a nod to arm or a win for arm. They do this. Right,

Leo Laporte (01:33:04):
Right, right. Yeah. Arm is now an is equal an equal partner in effect. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:33:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a little bit of a smoke screen, but yeah. Yeah. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:33:12):
That's the,

Paul Thurrott (01:33:13):
It is, that's the theory. That's

Leo Laporte (01:33:14):
The theory. Yeah. 

Paul Thurrott (01:33:16):
That's the theory.

Leo Laporte (01:33:17):
Cool. All right. Let's do an Xbox thing. Mary Jo I think Sorachi wants your attention. So I'll like <laugh>, he seems to be signaling something. He is, but Paul thera is here with the latest news from Xbox

Paul Thurrott (01:33:34):
Last week. Sony announced that they were raising the price of the PlayStation five in all major markets in the world, except the United States. <Laugh> so interesting. Basically by what we'll call 50 euros or 50 pounds or maybe $50 because this thing was already not expensive enough. So naturally reporters went to Microsoft and Nintendo and said, Hey, are you guys gonna do the same thing? And Microsoft said, no. The interesting thing about the Xbox is there, there are two versions of the consoles. You probably know series S and series X series S is the smaller, cheaper, slightly less powerful version. They offer that at a starting price, a $300. Well, I'm sorry, a price of $300. Which is a really cheap way to get into kind of a NextGen console. It's a, it's a nice value was already a great value.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:26):
I, I think this helps put that over the top. The Xbox series X is gotta be 4 99, $500. So it's a lot more expensive. And I think with the, I don't know where Sony's at, but the, the Sony's Sony's prices are higher and now they're even more at higher still. So we'll see what happens. Obviously things could change in the general, but as of now, Microsoft says we have no plans to change the price of our hardware due to inflation or increase procurement costs, et cetera, et cetera. So they'll think about it, but for now they're sticking where they are. Let's see. So tomorrow is September 1st and that means Microsoft is gonna start announcing games with gold titles for the well they have for the month. And then eventually we'll also get some game pass titles. We got a little bit of news there as well. So games with gold. We're still splitting title. This is actually kind of interesting. We have 360 games. We have an Xbox, an OG Xbox game. This is gonna be one of the geez Louise. It's gonna be one of the last times that happens. It's right.

Leo Laporte (01:35:27):
That kid I'll tell you either that or the tornado's coming closer. Yeah. Are we in tornado season still? Yeah, we are. I don't know

Paul Thurrott (01:35:33):
What's going on here. I would

Leo Laporte (01:35:35):
Just make sure you're gonna be okay.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:37):
It, no, it's a, it's an, a alert. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:35:39):
I I've turned those off ages ago. Yeah. I never go out. I can't help.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:44):
<Laugh> two of the games coming this month are well probably Xbox one titles. I it's weird. Oftentimes we don't differentiate between Xbox one and series Xons, but I believe these are Xbox one titles, but the big news is one of the games coming this month is portal two, which is an Xbox 360 title. It's absolute classic. Yep. Definitely, definitely, definitely want to get that. If you have not played this game, my God, this is your chance for it's free episodes. It's free. It's free. Excellent. Excellent. Get it. So that's been one of the best games with gold titles in memory. I can't remote the last time I was actually excited about one of these things. So this is a good one. That's a good, that's a good game. Microsoft has not announced the first selection of Xbox game pass titles for the first half of September yet.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:28):
That should be coming any day now. However, they had kind of an out of sync, extra announcement about game pass the other day, and they announced that several new humble game titles are coming to game cross game pass across PC console and cloud soon <laugh> so we don't know when exactly that's gonna happen. I don't recognize any of these games. <Laugh> so I, I, I, I guess I'm increasingly out of touch here, but midnight fight express, moons, cars, coral island, ghost song, infinite guitars, Proteus. I feel like I'm just saying words and signals <laugh> are the names of these. I have. I've never heard of

Leo Laporte (01:37:10):
Any of them and Kaizala. No. And Kai. Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:15):
I feel like I'm missing a story in here. So Microsoft is also now testing what they're calling a con a consolidated game library in, on Xbox, I should say. So this is like a way to see your full library across not just the games you bought and maybe you're getting through incentives, like game I'm losing my mind game. I'd already forgot the name of it. Game games with gold. Thank you. But also game pass EA play, you know, that kind of thing. So they're, they're basically, this is just something that's happening right now in the insider program, but they're basically looking at how they can surface these games a little bit better. I don't, I don't really see a huge difference here to be honest, but anyway, they're try. I think they're just trying to, there are so many different ways you can access games now in Xbox through Xbox, whether you're on a console or PC.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:10):
I think they're just trying to make this make a little bit more sense. And I think the, the thing with Xbox game pass in particular is a lot like Microsoft 365, where you have a lot of stuff going on that you probably don't even know you have access to. And this is just kind of a neat way to surface that. So they're kind of promoting the stuff as if it were in your library because you're paying for the subscription and you get the idea. I think it was last week or two weeks ago, we talked about this white, horrible looking Xbox elite series, two controller that was rumored. It has popped up on Amazon, Mexico. It has since been deleted. But now we have an official render of it and it is just as ugly as I thought it was. It's

Leo Laporte (01:38:48):
Panda bear controller.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:50):
It's not, it's not attractive. It's too bad. Also. I'll just point out again, not to be a jerk about it, but this is the old style Xbox wireless controller. So it doesn't have the share button in the middle. There is a button in the middle, but it's for switching between profiles. That's one of the unique features of the late controller. So they're gonna have to figure out a way to fix that in my mind, but anyway, apparently this is gonna come up before they do that. That's too bad. So whatever I don't care about it. And if you're following video game news at all, you probably know that Sony recently announced that they were going to dramatically expand. The number of games were gonna make available on PC. And I think the, I think the figure was 50% of its games, which previously were all mostly PlayStation, exclusives were gonna pop up on PC and they sort of said mobile too.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:36):
And it was like, well, how's that gonna work? This past week they announced a new PlayStation studio's mobile division. And they're going to start producing mobile games. I think this is the smartest thing in the world. I don't understand why Nintendo hasn't done this. I don't understand why Microsoft hasn't done this. I'm sure Microsoft will point to Xbox game pass and more specifically cloud gaming as their solution for mobile. But I really like the idea of individual downloads and purchases and native games on platforms and just making them available on mobile. So I don't know what Microsoft's doing, but Sony is going all in on expanding their portfolio beyond just the console, which I think again is super smart. So we'll see what comes to that. But this just seems like a good idea to me.

Leo Laporte (01:40:23):
Nice. See, that was easy. That

Paul Thurrott (01:40:25):
Wasn't bad

Leo Laporte (01:40:25):
And here's, Sorachi once more. <Laugh> good to see you back cat.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:29):
I like that the cat gets agitated when I talk about Xbox <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:40:32):
Yes.

Mary Jo Foley (01:40:32):
As soon as, as soon as you say Xbox, he gets up and runs off

Leo Laporte (01:40:35):
And he talking about, he senses you're upset. Mary Jo. Exactly,

Paul Thurrott (01:40:40):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:40:40):
Plans mom upset. Right, right. Is that Paul Guy driving her crazy again? Get him. All right. Real quick. Take a break. Come back back of the book just around the corner, but I wanna tell you about our sponsor infra scale. I N F R a S C a L E. I don't have to tell you you know, I'm sure that the statistics for ransomware attacks are just alarming. Beta news.com says cyber criminals can penetrate 93% of company networks. That's how that's like everybody's vulnerable, right? And it's not just big companies getting hit. 46% of small and medium businesses have been victims of ransomware attacks. Almost half, not us so far, knock on wood and not you. If you've got INFR scale cloud backup, we always say backup is the key, right? Because if bad guys encrypt everything, you still have a secure backup. And that's what INFR scale does. It provides the security. You need to manage backups. And really importantly, secures them from hackers or adverse events. It's not really a backup. If it can be modified, right? Or, you know, if disaster is affected, you could sleep easier at night, knowing your company will never have to pay a ransom.

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Leo Laporte (01:43:20):
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Paul Thurrott (01:45:01):
Yeah, I'm doing this in backwards order today. You'll see why in a moment. Last week, a gentleman on TWiTtter, Kevin Lloyd recommended an app called image image glass, which is a free, lightweight image beer from windows. So I retweeted it. I went to the site, I clicked on the top link, which was the Microsoft store. I saw that it was maybe eight or $9. And I thought, yeah, I don't know. And, but in the back of my mind, I was like this guy,

Leo Laporte (01:45:27):
I'm

Paul Thurrott (01:45:27):
Pretty sure he said, this thing was free. And so I went back to the site and sure enough, this thing is free if you get it from anywhere. But the Microsoft store is free. So I'm not saying you shouldn't support the author of this application, but there is a free version available on the web and it is fantastic. So some number of months ago I recommended something called Han win, which is an awkwardly name, but famous windows application

Leo Laporte (01:45:47):
For it's his name Han.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:48):
Okay. I and I, and wind, there you go. That's not a good day for app, but anyway it's, it's okay. The reason you wanna replace photos in windows 10 or 11 for viewing photos in other pictures is that it's terrible. It's awful. And one of, yeah, and one of the ways that's terrible is you could have a, maybe you open an on your desktop or in a folder. So sometimes it lets you navigate between all the other items in that folder. And sometimes it doesn't and I have no idea why, but I really like this glass image, glass image, glass, right? So it's super lightweight. You can get rid of all the tool bars and all that stuff. There's only one toolbar, but it has all the information about the file and the title bar, which I think is really smart and it correctly navigates between photos and a folder. And it's really fast. It's a, it's a great app. So definitely check that

Leo Laporte (01:46:36):
One out and it's open source and it's in the store, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:46:39):
It is in the store, but you can download it from the web as well. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:46:42):
Very good. May I interrupt for a quick news flash news, flash of arm

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:49):
Sues Qualcomm and Nuvia for using licenses without approval, ask Qualcomm to destroy designs developed under Nuvia agreements with arm. Whoa.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:59):
Like what, what, that's crazy. Whoa,

Leo Laporte (01:47:02):
ABRO. So that's how you handle the, the merger. This,

Mary Jo Foley (01:47:04):
This is not good if you're a fan

Paul Thurrott (01:47:08):
<Laugh> so I, the one thing I, I will throw out there that I, and again, I don't know much about this stuff, but arm is they kind of make the re well, they're not even really reference designs, but they make the, yeah. They design chip sets that other companies like Qualcomm apple uses the basis for their own designs. I did notice in this past year that arm arm holding or whatever, it's called, came out with a chip set for PCs for, I think the first time. And I thought that was kind of interesting. Right. Cuz you know, Qualcomm has, for years now been working on their own PC chip sets and we've been talking about Nuvia just as recently as today. Yeah. That's I wonder if arm kind of went to them and said, yeah, you need to use our PC designs as the basis for what you're doing. And they were like, yeah, we're not doing that. <Laugh> I dunno. That's it's kinda

Leo Laporte (01:47:53):
Interesting. Wow.

Mary Jo Foley (01:47:55):
Some writers right now and it's going on tech meme right now. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:47:58):
That's a big story. Thank you for the breaking news. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:02):
Yep. It is. If it

Leo Laporte (01:48:03):
Is we will be covering that. I'm sure.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:07):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:48:08):
Hmm. Wow.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:10):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
That's probably holds up the Nvidia in Nuvia acquisition.

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:16):
I would guess that too.

Leo Laporte (01:48:17):
<Laugh> oh boy. What a mess porn Nvidia. I'm really starting

Paul Thurrott (01:48:21):
To actually feel not NVI Novia,

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:24):
Qualcomm,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:25):
Qualcomm, Invia. I think they're they've already, they finalized

Leo Laporte (01:48:28):
That that's done.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:29):
No, they've done it. They, they own that's why they're

Leo Laporte (01:48:32):
I get it? Both of them.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:34):
But what they're saying is you can't use this as the basis for new chips. It's like, Ooh, that's interesting. I'm curious what the rationale is there

Leo Laporte (01:48:42):
Because arm, I mean Licens, that's what arm's business is, is licensing, right?

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:46):
Right. Licensing chips, set designs.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:48):
Yeah. Before Qualcomm bought Nuvia, Nuvia was an arm licensee that was making their own designs.

Leo Laporte (01:48:54):
Arm is seeking an injunction that required Qualcomm to destroy the designs developed under new V's licenses. So arm saying we licensed it to Nuvia. It cannot be transferred to Qualcomm. Ah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:05):
Ah, that's ridiculous. They wanna sell them more licensees.

Leo Laporte (01:49:08):
Exactly.

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:09):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:49:10):
Arms. So, okay. Arms said those licenses cannot be transferred to Qualcomm without our approval. We do not approve <laugh> wow. Qualcomm of course we want money. 1.4 billion for Nuvia, probably thinking, oh, we're gonna get those licenses.

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:26):
Yep, yep. Yeah. So maybe it's fixable, but it'll cost.

Leo Laporte (01:49:30):
It may not be, you know, cuz I mean I'm sure Qualcomm's like one of their biggest customers, if not their biggest customers. So I, it may not be, it may just be, look, you got you guys, you, you can't just use

Paul Thurrott (01:49:40):
It. This is more of a, we're gonna put this public because you didn't do what we wanted privately. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So they'll settle and okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:49):
App pick of the week. Number two.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:52):
Yeah. So I was talking about doing some kind of, I had a rant last week. I think it was last week about ads and trackers and stuff. And Leo recommended next TNS. I've been using it ever since and I love it and I wanna recommended it to others. Good,

Leo Laporte (01:50:05):
Good, good.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:06):
It's there's a couple ways you can use this thing. You can use it as a whole house solution if you can figure your route it

Leo Laporte (01:50:13):
To yeah. Everything goes through. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:15):
Apparently there are issues with Google wifi, which is what I'm using right now. So I've just been testing it on

Leo Laporte (01:50:20):
Individual. <Laugh> what

Paul Thurrott (01:50:21):
A shock individual device. I know. Yeah, no it's been, it's

Leo Laporte (01:50:26):
Been, it's easy though to put it on individual systems, not just to computers but phones and

Paul Thurrott (01:50:30):
Tablets too. Yeah. And so what I found is honestly, for my purposes, I really just wanted on mobile devices because that's where all the, the mobile crap is so terrible. On windows, you know, I don't really need it for like applications, you know, not worried about what Adobe's doing or, you know, I use Microsoft office or whatever. I don't use a lot of mobile apps and I'm not confronted by unnecessary ads on windows except in web browsers, which is kind of the tip of the week bit of this. So I'll just say next to you, as you can test it for free. So there's no, there's no harm, no file. Just trying it. If you want to protect all your devices with unlimited bandwidth, it's I think it's $20 a year. It's nothing. So it, it definitely it's worked. It's it's been a game changer.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:12):
It's really nice. However, if you're just concerned with PCs, I mean, and this is the tip of the week, I guess I usually do this first, but we've talked about this a little bit before, but you could use nexts of course that would, that would solve the problem. But really mostly what you're concerned about on a PC is your browser. So for starters, get a real web browser, not that Chrome thing you're using right now or edge or whatever that don't do anything to prevent blockers or, or trackers rather. Or if, and meaning get something like duct echo or brave, which is what I'm using or if you have to use Chrome edge or Firefox, even get the right extensions that do those block that does that blocking as well. It's just, this is the minimum <laugh>, you know, like, like I, it, it hurts my brain to think that most people in the world probably sign into Chrome and use it and don't do anything to prevent it from tracking you across the internet.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:12):
And then you'll go to work and complain about how you search for a pair of shoes. And now all you see are ads for those shoes and you have no idea how that happens. <Laugh> that's how that happens. <Laugh> so, you know, and that happens in edge too. Sorry. I, you know, I know they made a big deal of the three big buttons for tracking protection. It could be lax or normal or strict or whatever they call it. It's like, isn't that exciting? It doesn't stop anything guys. It doesn't stop anything. Microsoft has just as much of a incentive to allow you to be tracked for ad purposes as Google does. In fact, in some ways they probably have more because they haven't made a good business of this yet, but they're working on it. <Laugh> so anyway, protect yourself at the very, at the very least protect

Leo Laporte (01:52:54):
Yourself. This would be the time to point out that not only is it Google and Microsoft, but apple also does ads. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:00):
Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:01):
I mean, honestly, all the big tech companies, Amazon too are ad companies. There's a lot of money to be made that

Paul Thurrott (01:53:08):
They're all just as terrible as each other. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't, I dunno if you have specific advice here, I use ad block plus on Chrome, I use disable HTML, five auto play, and I use something called U block origin, which is the big

Leo Laporte (01:53:21):
You block Chrome is rapidly phasing out all blocking cause yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:26):
Google. Yep. Cuz that's their business model. They make, you know, 80 something percent of their revenues with ads. I mean, what do you think they're gonna do? Right.

Leo Laporte (01:53:33):
So that's why I like Firefox Firefox you block Firefox you block origin, pretty close to heaven and X DNS. You, you,

Paul Thurrott (01:53:40):
You shouldn't, you got the, shouldn't see anything the holy Trinity of blocking right there. Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:53:46):
Like people will sometimes complain. Oh, I, I can't use YouTube, all, all the ads. And I say, why, what? I

Paul Thurrott (01:53:52):
Don't see ads, what ads, what ads nobody are you talking about? There are no ads on YouTube. I actually do pay for YouTube to not have ads by the way. It's worth it way. It comes as part. But I watch YouTube every single day. Yeah. Like literally. So yeah, by the way, don't think I'm not a cheap skater. <Laugh> I should say.

Leo Laporte (01:54:08):
I think a lot of content, we all

Paul Thurrott (01:54:10):
Idea how much

Leo Laporte (01:54:11):
All of us are spending more on content than ever before. Yeah. For content companies to complain.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:16):
Right. I'll just refu refer you to my rent from last week. I, I have a big problem with services that I pay for showing me ads and especially ads that are just intrusive autoplay video things that you can't stop or pause in any way. Like I, I I'm, I'm done with that. That's just unacceptable also. Yes. My website has ads, but I also offer we to pay to not to see them. So,

Leo Laporte (01:54:41):
So do we premium

Paul Thurrott (01:54:41):
Program? Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:54:42):
We came up with that as being the kind of nice compromise. I wanna make it always to be free. And, and, but we have to pay for it. So there you'll get ads. And if, and I think we charge seven bucks a month, right. For all of our shows, plus a lot of other content. And I feel like that's lot. That's not a lot. It's be hands on windows for instance. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, Paul's great show we, that guy <laugh> so you get a lot for seven bucks and I feel like that's a good compromise. And I think so. I don't, we haven't yet done the math to know whether that makes up for what we lose. I think it, I

Paul Thurrott (01:55:17):
Think it's something that will change over time too. You have to kind of keep looking at it. But I, this stage

Leo Laporte (01:55:22):
At this

Paul Thurrott (01:55:22):
Point, I think there are things we could do as an organization to pro to make it hard on ad blockers. Right. Like we could literally, you know, you'll see sites that will do that. You looks like you're using an ad blocker. Sorry, you can't come in here. Like we don't do that. Like we sort of

Leo Laporte (01:55:38):
Thank you.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:39):
Hope we hope people will do the right thing. <Laugh>, you know I'm literally teaching you how not to do the right thing. But I'm also saying, you know, in my particular case, like in, in with TWiT as well, you know, there's a premium option of premium.

Leo Laporte (01:55:51):
I think that's fair. Yeah. I use ad blockers because it also blocks malware.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:57):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:55:58):
It, it, it eliminates this incredible drain on your bandwidth and your battery

Paul Thurrott (01:56:04):
That's right. It actually improves the performance and reliability of the systems you're using. Yeah. I, I it's, we have to figure that we collectively as a, a content world or whatever, need to figure out something better than web ads

Leo Laporte (01:56:18):
Paywalls is what it's gonna end up being. Yeah. Yeah. Either that, or, and in our podcasting world where it's going is the Spotify model, which is it's exclusive, you have to use a special player and you either get ads or you pay, but either way we track you a hundred percent of the time. And so, you know, Spotify, if you listen on Spotify, they know everything about everything, right. And that's, you know, that's where we're headed. Unfortunately it's not good for it's as bad for podcasts as it was for blogging. I mean, blogging became a very difficult thing to pursue as an independent God bless you for doing it. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:56:56):
It's well, it's not possible. I, I think to make a, a living just ads on a website

Leo Laporte (01:57:01):
It's not anymore. No,

Paul Thurrott (01:57:02):
No. Not without really making it miserable on

Leo Laporte (01:57:05):
Everybody that day will come for podcasting too, which makes me sad. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:09):
Which is too bad. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:57:11):
Yep. It's time for Mary Jo Foley to cheer us up with her enterprise pick of the week. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:18):
So the same way Paul got somebody submitting something to him on TWiTtter the image glass pick. I had someone submit something on TWiTtter yesterday called self X, S E L F X. I had never heard of this tool. It came from a Microsoft MVP named Damien van robes. He posted the link on my site sorry, on my tweet, on my TWiTtter stream. And I clicked on it and I'm like, oh, this looks interesting. It's a tool that's meant to help it pros reduce the number of tickets and calls they get from their co from their clients and their users. So it's, it's a web based tool that this guy developed himself. I believe it's very modifiable. He shows how you can modify it, add your own issues to the thing and have it show a display to your users. And I'm like, oh, that looks kind of interesting. Well, it must be very interesting because on my TWiTtter stream, hundreds of people are chiming in and saying, this is amazing. I want this, I can I tab this? And he said, yep, it's free. You can use it. Go ahead. So if you wanna see if it might be something that would be right for you go to his site, S Y S T and deploy. So CST and deploy.com. And you's

Leo Laporte (01:58:39):
Just gonna put me at a business is the tech guy show is over. Everybody's gonna download this and it's done.

Mary Jo Foley (01:58:45):
It's pretty, it looks pretty interesting, right? Yeah, he uses PowerShell. He says, here's how it works. He explains to you how it uses SAML and how the gooey displays and how you can add in your own issues for your customers and change colors, change languages. It's it looks very, very modifiable. So kudos to Damien for posting that. And if you wanna check it out system, deploy.com for self X.

Leo Laporte (01:59:12):
Excellent. Very nice. That's the enterprise pick? What about a code name?

Mary Jo Foley (01:59:19):
So I wouldn't call this really a strictly a code name. I don't even know if it's a final name or what I would categorize this as, but I've talked about it before on windows weekly, CBL Mariner, CBL Mariner is Microsoft's own Lenox distribution that they built themselves. CBL is common based Lenox. They only use this internally and I thought, oh, that's kind of cool. They like, they use it for again. I'm gonna talk about Azure Kubernetes service. I think I talked about it three times on the show <laugh> in Azure stack, they use it in Azure percept, which is an AI tool that they have. They use it in the window subsystem for Linux and their play fab tool for the gaming community. Well today they posted that they're using it in another place. That's very interesting. They've got a team inside of Microsoft called the CR the creator platform and experiences group CPE.

Mary Jo Foley (02:00:15):
So that CPE is the team inside Microsoft that does the Xbox storefronts for PCs, for consoles and for mobile. And they posted something on the tech community site today saying, we're using this cool distribution, Microsoft built CBL Mariner, we're moving everything to it. And they said, listen to this quote, like this tells you how important this distribution's getting gaming security is driving all Microsoft gaming services to migrate, to Mariner as the gold standard Linux OS with the goal of a hundred percent adoption before the end of this calendar year, like Microsoft is all in on this and it makes you kind of wonder, what are they gonna do with CBL Mariner? Is it just gonna stay internal or will it become something else?

Leo Laporte (02:01:00):
Just the name CBL kind of implies that it's not intended to be a full right

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:06):
Linux full like commercial Linux distribution. Right. Right. And it's on GitHub. Like it's, it's not positioned as, Hey, we want customers to use this, but the fact that more and more teams and Microsoft are moving

Leo Laporte (02:01:17):
Forward. It's interesting. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:17):
Very interesting. There's

Leo Laporte (02:01:19):
A lot to be said for starting with a minimalist install of something. And then you add what you want. Nothing more. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> a lot of Linux users do that with arch. Yep. Huh? CBL Mariner,

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:32):
CBL

Leo Laporte (02:01:33):
Mariner. Now this beer company is absolutely properly named

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:37):
It

Leo Laporte (02:01:38):
Is, this is an abomination. Mary Jo Foley. <Laugh> our beer, our beer of the week.

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:43):
So after picking a very hard to pronounce beer last week, the port the Portuguese named Japanese beer. Yeah. We're going for an easier choice. Anyone could

Leo Laporte (02:01:53):
Say

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:54):
This. Yes. Abomination brewing. They are in north Haven, Connecticut. They make lot of clump beers. Yep. Excellent beers. Yep. So you know, it's about to be labor day weekend here in the United States. It's the end of summer. Tomorrow is September 1st. Oh yeah. So this, this beer is perfect for it. It's cost Rippy Popsicle. <Laugh> last

Leo Laporte (02:02:15):
Chance to drink an orange beer, you know exactly. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:02:18):
Uhhuh it's a beer it's a sour it's flavored with orange and vanilla beans on the can they recommend that people freeze the can for an hour.

Leo Laporte (02:02:29):
A good idea. Make a SLU

Mary Jo Foley (02:02:30):
It more like a Popsicle when it

Leo Laporte (02:02:32):
Comes out. All right. I want it though. That's a good idea.

Mary Jo Foley (02:02:35):
Yeah. And it's, it's categorized as a pastry sour. So pastry beers mean you put like pastry ingredients in like chocolate or vanilla or any kind of thing. Gram crackers, all kinds of crazy stuff, marshmallows. And it comes out like a smoothie. Wow. So it, some people call that a milkshake style or a smoothie. It's just, it's, you know, if you like a Popsicle, a drippy Popsicle and a hot summer date, you're gonna like the spear. I'm gonna freeze

Leo Laporte (02:03:01):
It. This gonna be Paul. If you had two slushy machines, you could have one for rose and one for orange Popsicle D drippy

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:07):
Pops. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:03:11):
Alright. 5.5 B. You could drink it all day.

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:15):
You could. Yeah, you could. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:03:18):
<Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:18):
I like, like Roseanne, like

Leo Laporte (02:03:20):
Sours. Yeah. Yeah. I like sours. <Laugh> all right. Paul and Mary Jo, they've done it again. Another fabulous edition rant filled <laugh> of windows, windows weekly. Who's gonna upset me next week. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:36):
You know what I'm hoping now that we're gonna get some more news fall starting. We'll have fewer rans and more news, but you never know. Rans are fun. Yeah. There

Leo Laporte (02:03:42):
You go. I'm look, I'm enjoying it. <Laugh> you can see the bright red color. It's all about getting the bull angry

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:50):
Windows rant weekly <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:03:53):
Mary Jo Foley writes about Microsoft at ZD net. The beautiful new lime green ZD net mm-hmm <affirmative>. You can find her stuff@allaboutmicrosofts.com. Paul thro. His blog is thro.com T U R O. Good.Com his books including the field guide to windows ten@leanpub.com. And they join together at the hip every Wednesday, 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM Eastern 1800 UTC for winters weekly. If you are a winner or a dozer, you can join us live by watching the stream or listening to it@live.Twit.tv. If you're watching live chat live@irc.Twit.tv club members also can chat in the club, TWiT discord, which is a nice place, a good hang. As they say, one of my favorite hangs. We have lots of stuff going on in the discord. We're gonna have a kind of a fireside chat with some of our members coming up. We have a number of shows that are in the discord.

Leo Laporte (02:04:59):
Also put out on the trip plus feed for club members only because they're new. They don't have an audience yet, or they don't have advertisers yet. So the club pays for it in effect. That includes Paul's hands on windows. My sergeant's hands on Mac, the untitled Linox show with Jonathan benefit, Jonathan Bennett <laugh>. But he is, it is a great benefit GI fizz with Dickie Bartolo Stacey's book club. We're trying to decide on our next volume and a lot of fun with Claire on the sun, all of that plus add free versions of every show. And it's, as I said, only seven bucks a month at TWiTt.tv/club TWiT. You could get, if you just wanted to hear hands on windows, you could buy that for 2 99 a month. Same for hands on Mac. So that's another option for you, but all of that is a TWiTt.tv/club TWiTt. After the fact on demand versions of the show available, add supported@TWiTt.tv slash WW, there is also a YouTube channel devoted to windows weekly. And of course you can subscribe in your favorite podcast client and get it automatically the minute it's available. And if your podcast client allows for reviews, please, would you leave us a five star review and tell the world how wonderful this show is. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Mary Jo. Thank you all for joining us. We'll see you next time. I'll win his

Paul Thurrott (02:06:20):
Weekly. Bye. Bye. Oh, one more thing about Jensen Harris.

Leo Laporte (02:06:24):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (02:06:26):
More. No, ah,

Leo Laporte (02:06:29):
We're gonna get him on the show next week, Paul. That should, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:06:31):
Exactly. The thing is I he's a good guy. I, I it's the, that's the hard thing. Like I like Jensen. I haven't spoken with him in a while, but I don't know. And you never will again, so it's all, it's all good.

Leo Laporte (02:06:45):
I wanna the a TWiTtter war between the two of you. I think that

Paul Thurrott (02:06:48):
Well, okay. <Laugh>, that'd

Leo Laporte (02:06:50):
Be so exciting.