Transcripts

Windows Weekly Episode 798 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. And this is a big day. We got up early for the surface event. Paul will try to talk me out of buying a Surface Pro <laugh>. We also have Ignite going on. There's lots more information about Microsoft's plans for, well, everything from the Metaverse to the Office 365 averse. Yeah, stay tuned. A big Windows Weekly coming up. Next podcasts you love

TWiT Intro (00:00:30):
From people you trust. This is

Leo Laporte (00:00:41):
Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley. Episode 798 Recorded Wednesday, October 12th, 2022. Cued for un enrollment, Windows Weekly is brought to you by Secure Works. Are you ready for inevitable cyber threats? Secure Works detect evolving adversaries and defends against them with a combination of security, analytics and threat intelligence directly from their own counter threat unit. Visit secureworks.com/TWiT to get a free trial of contagious extended detection and response, also known as xdr. And by Hover, whether you're a developer photographer, small business Hover has something for you to expand your projects and get the visibility you want. Go to hover.com/TWiTtch to get 10% off. Your first purchase of any domain extension for the entire first year. And by Collide Collide is an end point security solution that gives IT Teams a single dashboard for all devices regardless of their operating system. Visit collide.com/ww to learn more and activate a free 14 day trial today.

Leo Laporte (00:01:56):
No credit card required. It's time for Windows Weekly. Yes, winners and dozers. Gather around. We've got, oh, a big big day here. Microsoft Ignite Time and Paul Theros here from thro.com sort, the author of Field Guide to Windows 11. And you didn't think it was happening, which by the way, I learned this morning. Everybody wants Windows 11. I was so impressed. Yeah, no, I know you wouldn't think so. Everybody wants to, I'm talking to us. So excited about 22. That's what they tell you. People were so excited. Mary Jo Foley, all about microsoft.com. Are you missing some Ignite Sessions to be we here with us? I'm sorry if you are in the immortal words, we all replay. Okay. The office space. I wouldn't say I am missing em. Bob

TWiT Intro (00:02:43):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:02:46):
I thought in some ways Microsoft's biggest news was yesterday at the meta event when Satya Nadella, who did not show up for today's Panos pane event, showed up for Mark Zuckerberg. Well, he

Paul Thurrott (00:02:58):
Was there for Ignite and I mean the event today, the surface event was prerecorded. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:03:04):
Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:04):
A little curious that it wasn't part of it.

Leo Laporte (00:03:07):
Right? Well he was busy in the horizon world with Mark. Yep. Getting Mary,

Paul Thurrott (00:03:14):
We didn't discuss this ahead of time, but maybe we could talk about your theory here cuz this I think is kind of interesting.

Leo Laporte (00:03:22):
I thought the biggest announcement of the week was yesterday when Meta announced they were gonna make the new Oculus Pro work with teams.

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:31):
But except it's, it looks big when you think about partnership with meta and ar vr. But then you're like, okay, who's actually gonna use this? Right. Nobody

Leo Laporte (00:03:40):
Know that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:41):
Gonna do a teams' meeting wearing a headset. Why <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:03:46):
Thompson looking for a way

Leo Laporte (00:03:47):
In we

Paul Thurrott (00:03:48):
How terrible the pandemic was. Imagine he had to wear a helmet. <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:03:54):
Let's

Leo Laporte (00:03:54):
A helmet. Ben Thompson, his strater, he said that he really had been enjoying meeting with his team in the old Quest two until one of his team members lost his quest. And so they went back to Zoom. But now he's so excited about getting OCU for 1600 bucks each. Oculus Quest pros and getting the whole team together in Horizon world. He says it, You would never know that everybody was in a different place. He was very

Paul Thurrott (00:04:24):
Excited. You're speaking nonsense talk now.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:25):
<laugh> Total nonsense. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:04:27):
It's just not making any sense at all for anybody.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:30):
Also, I'll say this,

Paul Thurrott (00:04:31):
I like, I do. I think it looks nice.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:33):
No, but think about this. Right? Think about this for a second. If you're in teams, what do you need to do? Type. How do you type wearing a headset?

Paul Thurrott (00:04:43):
Oh, well, okay. In other words, you're saying it's chat based collaboration.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:47):
Yes.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:49):
And Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:49):
That's what teams in the Metaverse could hear. Could you're using how

Leo Laporte (00:04:55):
<laugh>? Well, but you, you'd have the helmet on. You'd have to put down the controllers, which means in the space, your hands would be like this. Like a little raptor to So Rex just vestigially hanging there while you type with your real hands. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:10):
Right. Does this sound like a good experience, guys? I'm just asking <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:05:19):
Yeah. Okay. You

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:20):
Know what? It reminds me of Windows eight when they thought, Yeah, hey, everybody's using touch and no one uses a keyboard. Right? Right. Except if you're at work, but you need a keyboard.

Leo Laporte (00:05:29):
You know what I think,

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:31):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:05:32):
I think the executives, including Penos Pane, the people who design this stuff have people who type for them.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:38):
It's gotta be That's true. Otherwise, how do you

Paul Thurrott (00:05:41):
That's true. And write for them as well, not just type.

Leo Laporte (00:05:43):
Yeah. Executives don't type. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:46):
I know. Okay. I know they don't. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:48):
Actually, so, okay. Just as a weird coincidence, I will say just yesterday recorded some new episodes of Hands On Windows and one of them was about the lock and the sign in screens. And if you really step back and think about it, why on earth does Windows have a lock screen? What is the purpose of this user interface? It literally dates back to Windows eight when they thought everyone was gonna be touching things and you wanted to screen to kind of sit there that you could swipe up on. Just like when Steve Jobs swiped on the fish thing from the original, Yeah. 2007 iPhone. But I have to give Microsoft a little credit. They turned it into a revenue source. It shows ads now. So it does that. But literally it's another thing to get through to sign into Windows. It's, Yeah, it's a pretty picture, but it's, Yeah, it's literally dated back to that kind of failed attempt to make Windows. Make sense?

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:42):
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:44):
Touch devices. Yeah. That's all it is.

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:46):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:47):
We still have it.

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:48):
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, You can have a team's meeting while you're in the Metaverse and look at a team screen that's a virtual screen in the Metaverse. But why are you doing this,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:01):
Right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:02):
I dunno. <laugh>, it seems,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:05):
Well actually, okay, but hold on. We didn't get to your theory though. Cause you did have, I don't know if you wanna,

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:10):
Well, I don't know. I'm allowed to say that theory because

Leo Laporte (00:07:13):
What? Oh, come on.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:15):
Let me break the rules then. And then you can come out with the theory. Microsoft Surface event was supposed to be yesterday. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:07:22):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:23):
I

Paul Thurrott (00:07:23):
Don't think that hurts anybody. Okay. Well it was supposed to be yesterday,

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:26):
Right? So originally it was scheduled to be yesterday and then Meta announced, Meta Connect, and then a couple weeks later we heard from Microsoft, Actually we're not doing the event on Tuesday. We're gonna do it on Wednesday instead. And they never said it was,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:40):
Which is the day of Ignite. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:42):
They never said that. But when they first said it was gonna be on Tuesday and then meta announced Tuesday, I said to Paul, I'm like, What if Microsoft and Meta are doing an announcement together? And that's why these two events.

Leo Laporte (00:07:56):
Oh, you knew.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:57):
No, I was just guessing. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:07:59):
<affirmative>. Right,

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:00):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:08:01):
<laugh>. Right. Pretty impressive. By the way, I understand that this is not your lead story for today's show. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:08:08):
No, no. But I as we talking, apologize. No, no, we were, No, I I'm glad you, I don't remember how we got sidetracked, but I'm glad we did because I thought this was kind of interesting. SA Nadela did appear at the meta event, did not appear in the video that they made for the surface event. That's right. Maybe he was originally going to do that and it, Well, no, what they moved the date. What would the difference be? I don't know. Maybe one

Leo Laporte (00:08:29):
Match was to segue into No, that makes no sense. Nope. I

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:32):
Feel like he only, why? He only appears on surface events when it's a big announcement. And I feel like today's surface announcement is not a big announcement.

Leo Laporte (00:08:40):
<laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:08:41):
I you were only

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:43):
Magically appears <laugh>. Great.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:46):
I

Leo Laporte (00:08:46):
Will confess I purchased one of those. Ok, you

Paul Thurrott (00:08:50):
Did. Yeah. Thanks.

Leo Laporte (00:08:51):
Great expense

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:52):
That you're gonna say the surface.

Leo Laporte (00:08:54):
No, I'm, You know what? Okay, well you can talk me down. I'm, I'm very tempted because I was thinking of the 5g. I was impressed by the camera. Should we

Paul Thurrott (00:09:05):
Save

Leo Laporte (00:09:06):
All this?

Paul Thurrott (00:09:06):
I'm gonna step through everything that's wrong later

Leo Laporte (00:09:09):
And you can tell me what not do. So my hand is off the buy button. Yeah, yeah. Wait a minute. I already,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:15):
It'll be, it will be firmly off the buy button when I tell you why.

Leo Laporte (00:09:20):
Okay. I did foolishly by, but they have a 30 day return policy. So I figured, yeah, either this thing's gonna allow me and I'm gonna see the future or I'll return it. And I think either way

Paul Thurrott (00:09:33):
I would take that bet

Leo Laporte (00:09:35):
I put down, I threw in on the Kickstarter, the original Oculus r Kickstarter. <affirmative> had the original one upgrade.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:44):
I'm sorry. We keep going back and forth being Surface and ocu. I know.

Leo Laporte (00:09:46):
I don't have I put the surface? No, no. The surface is in the back of my, I

Paul Thurrott (00:09:49):
Don't have an opinion on Surface. Oh no. Oculus, I, That's fine. I

Leo Laporte (00:09:53):
Did not buy any Siri.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:55):
I get No, no. That to me actually makes some sense given what you do for a living. And Yeah, I have to attribute the world is setting

Leo Laporte (00:10:02):
In this. Correct. What I'm thinking every say five years, I'll check it out and see if we we're getting any closer. And I thought it was really interesting that Satya showed up with Zuckerberg Tolog the idea. It was almost an acknowledgement that yeah, HoloLens really isn't for business or because it's an AR device, it's not. So they showed it, Oh, can we get people using office

Paul Thurrott (00:10:26):
The language together? Can we get our language going? And I don't mean you and I, but I mean Microsoft Hauls things, augmented reality and mixed reality. Mixed reality. The industry does use the term augmented reality, but it refers to what Oculus Rift is as virtual reality. Virtual reality. But now we're starting to use this term, the Metaverse.

Leo Laporte (00:10:44):
Well, it's confusing because this thing has a color camera, several color cameras facing out. So that's one of things I'm interested in. How much of the,

Paul Thurrott (00:10:52):
It's almost like it's mixed

Leo Laporte (00:10:53):
Reality. It is mixed reality. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:57):
Yeah. We gotta figure out these terms. What

Leo Laporte (00:10:58):
Is me calls it something. Even a third thing. Okay. Can't remember what it is. Anyway. All right. Enough of that. People don't tune in to hear about that. Although to me, again, this was a big announcement for Microsoft. Bigger than the Surfaces.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:12):
Yes. And we will talk about that aspect. Okay, good. For sure.

Leo Laporte (00:11:15):
Okay. But let's start with I ignite. Let's start with the real news. The real news guys. The real news loop. I want Loop. Where's my loop? Unfortunately it's

Paul Thurrott (00:11:28):
A private good news. We get better right

Leo Laporte (00:11:30):
Now. Oh, private preview.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:32):
Yeah. I look, we've been talking about this for what year more? Yeah, I don't remember. Year and a half. And every time it's always the next show, the next milestone, the next something. <affirmative>. And it still is, and this is disappointing to me. I expected, at the very least for this show, Public preview of Loop.

Leo Laporte (00:11:53):
Yeah, I know. And we should to explain what Loop is. Cuz I don't know if people are up on that. Right. So if you know what Notion is The notion, That's why we're interested. Cause that's what we use for the shows prep stuff. That's what it is. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's a workshop doesn't like you to say that's is' a workspace with objects, a database you can type in it. And I think Microsoft's idea is that these little objects on this page can be from any of the many Microsoft.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:25):
Yeah. It's a kind of a componentized modern replacement for what today is a traditional office productivity suite. It sort of is to content creation. What teams is to chat based or just to messaging and meetings and so forth. A new way of looking at this, a new way of doing it. Microsoft wisely, I think and correctly saw this as an opportunity to bring in everything from the past. So you can have word components, Excel components, one note components, whatever. But people who wanna start fresh and start with the new stuff can just move forward. If you look at, well, Leo looks at it, but if other people think about maybe what our notes are in Notion, basically just text, right? I mean we have a little cute he graphic and things like that. But really what this is text and hyperlinks, because we're linking the stories that we wrote, our stories that are available elsewhere on the web and or Mary Jo, we could use this to story articles, kind of copy and paste into web forms and so forth. But you could do much more complex things with them. So this is one step above Notepad, basically. As far as I'll

Leo Laporte (00:13:31):
Concern, I mean I use it for all sorts of things. So this is our travel planner and I have mm-hmm. <affirmative> upcoming trips on here. And in the upcoming trip, I'll have a lot of details. I'll have confirmations, maps. I made one for our Alaska cruises. You remember that?

Paul Thurrott (00:13:49):
Which was awesome, by the way. I can show that nicer than anything that the crew had <laugh>. No, really was I,

Leo Laporte (00:13:55):
I referred, I honestly should have shared this because yeah, it's now it's in my past Journey's view. And here it is a TWiTtter, Alaska cruise and

Paul Thurrott (00:14:06):
Cause I'd always be like, What's city? Where are we gonna be tomorrow? I don't know. I've have a hard time finding. I'm like, and

Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
You can share this as a webpage. It had all the stuff, the confirmations, you could put maps in it. I'm even not using it probably as thoroughly as I, If you

Paul Thurrott (00:14:24):
Go to, well, you have different types of data in here, <affirmative>. And that's kind of a better

Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
<affirmative>. If you go to the subreddit for Notion people are doing amazing stuff with it. I mean it's really cool.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:36):
But think about how Microsoft could take something like this and have those components be standard web based, whatever. But also everything that's in the Microsoft graph, all of the Microsoft products and services that already exist. And it's kind of a way to be inclusive. And

Leo Laporte (00:14:52):
It's exciting. I love this idea.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:54):
So this should pull in people. It will be interesting to see how this work. Well, we've been waiting for years. We keep talking about it. I can't wait to see the Microsoft version of it, but it keeps getting pushed back. I don't know they're having,

Leo Laporte (00:15:06):
It's really interesting because meanwhile, Google is pushing ahead. We'll be talking about it on the next show this weekend, Google. But they are pushing ahead with something very similar in Google Docs. They see this as a way to make Google Docs more competitive with Office.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:24):
Well, because Google Docs today is very much a stand, like a stripped down a word processor. It's a version of words.

Leo Laporte (00:15:32):
It looks like an engineer designed it. It's very,

Paul Thurrott (00:15:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make one of these, but put it in a web browser,

Leo Laporte (00:15:38):
<laugh>. But they plan to do that same object model where you put stuff in there and keep, Is that their note taking the Notepad app? Yeah. So this is an idea. We've talked about this before, but this is something that computer scientists and companies like Microsoft have been thinking about for a long time. Back with Olay object linking. And that's embed, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:16:01):
Right. Yeah. Microsoft, if anything overengineered that stuff. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:16:03):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:04):
It's two things, right? When you talk about Loop object linking and embedding in embedable components that stay constantly in sync, but it's also fast coauthoring too, right? So

Leo Laporte (00:16:14):
It's collaborative. Yeah. We couldn't do that very well before, but now we can. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:19):
And

Paul Thurrott (00:16:19):
So that's why, because it's hard to this bring stuff forward from the past. I mean, one of, when Google created Google Docs from Scratch to be Word, they were able to add Instant Live coauthoring because it was just a new thing. They were creating it new. It's much harder to do that to an existing product. Like worried because Word has been around since the late 1980s and there's all kinds of legacy stuff going on there and all kinds of interactivity and integration and so forth that makes that stuff really hard to do. Well obviously they failed <laugh>. So web version of Word, interestingly is a better authoring experience than the desktop version or whatever. But anyway, but Docs is even better. And Notion is, I would say one level above all of them.

Leo Laporte (00:17:06):
Yeah. And I think one of the cool things about Notion is the ability to turn any notion into a webpage. So I was able to share that planning notion with you as a webpage. And I think that's a nice feature too. There are people who make their whole blog on Notion.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:22):
I was just say, you could just be how you publish, right? Yeah. I, So I was trying to describe some Mary Jones run into this issue. You meet somebody new and they're like, What do you do for a living? I'm like, I'm a writer. And like, Ooh, that's really interesting. What do you write? Yeah. And I'm like, Oh, I write about computers. Oh, that's too bad. They were hoping I was like Steven King or something, but I was sort

Leo Laporte (00:17:42):
Write who? But it's about Microsoft, so Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:45):
Not so exactly. They're like, Oh. And then it is completely tune out. They're looking out the window pilots

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:48):
And stuff. No, I always say, people say to me, What do you write about? I'm like, Technology. They're like, Oh, that's so exciting. I'm like, Yeah, operating systems, developer tools, Quantum. And they're like, Oh no, no, no, no.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:00):
Oh, you're one of those people. I got started in print publishing, so I wrote books that were printed on paper. I wrote Wow magazine articles that were printed on paper and you make this kind of transition. But <laugh>, Yeah, that's right. But if you were getting started today, not that a lot of people would get started in writing today, but they make YouTuber, TikTok videos at this point. But if you were, this is kind of a new way of doing things that to me is a little alien and foreign, just like a blog in the mm-hmm. <affirmative> early two thousands would've been that way to most people who came from traditional publishing. A big hole. That's so silly. But actually it's pretty sophisticated and it's more modern. And I mean, we're not like we're switching over our websites anytime soon. But if you were getting started today, this is an interesting, That's interesting. This might be a way to go.

Leo Laporte (00:18:51):
All of which is to say we're excited about Loop <affirmative> and a little disappointed to be left out of the loop.

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:58):
Well, I asked them,

Paul Thurrott (00:19:01):
And

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:01):
Again, Access, I asked them if we could get access for Windows Weekly into the private preview and they said they would take it under consideration.

Leo Laporte (00:19:08):
Oh Poo.

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:09):
That's all I could get. Co

Leo Laporte (00:19:10):
P

Paul Thurrott (00:19:12):
Chair.

Leo Laporte (00:19:12):
Maybe if I write, Oh, I know. What if I tweet to them from my half million strong TWiTtter account,

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:17):
Chris Cap go

Paul Thurrott (00:19:18):
With

Leo Laporte (00:19:18):
Chris. Well, so did you ask

Paul Thurrott (00:19:21):
Chris? It's a little more complicated than this because Yeah, this is a commercial feature for one thing, right? This is not the first version that ships publicly is not gonna be for people with Microsoft accounts. It's gonna be for people with a enterprise Microsoft 365 commercial account. Now, Mary Jo and I both do have such an account, of course. So we could still do it. But I think the issue here is, I think a lot of people listening is, I really wanna get going on this. I would use Notion, but I kind of prefer the Microsoft thing. <affirmative>, it's gonna be a while. The fact that this is private preview and commercial only is gonna be a year or more.

Leo Laporte (00:20:00):
That's a little disappointing because I think if they would make it something that was widely used, it'd be more likely to get developers to develop plugins for it. It'd, it would build an ecosystem around it keeping it locked into business. It's a mistake. They did it to teams at first. Right Now they're all hot to get everybody using Teams. That's not how you do it. You don't start an enterprise and then migrate it. And clearly, Enterprise Tool to in public, I don't think

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:27):
I

Paul Thurrott (00:20:28):
Agree, was

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:28):
Ready. I don't, because they gave it very little play during Ignite. There was very little of it in the book of news. Like I said, Could I get more information on this? And they're like, Eh, no,

Leo Laporte (00:20:39):
It's not ready. Really. It's actually a harder thing to do than remember Google had Google Wave, which was very similar

Paul Thurrott (00:20:47):
10 years ago and killed it instantly. But I think it really has to do with the difference between a consumer service and a service. So if you were gonna come out with something like this for consumers, honestly, I think it'd already be out. Problem is you have to map all these different layers of permissions and teams that are internal to the company or externals to the company. And where does the data sit and how do you surface it in different places. If it was just me and Mary Jo and we had Microsoft accounts and we had, I mean, we're just doing text, who cares? Like, well see, that's one drive be no big deal. I think part of it is kind of doing the basic stuff. Easy is the collaboration in real time. That's tricky. Very hard for to do.

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:31):
Oh yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:21:32):
For sure. I bet's well also, just the working's. Some requirements. Yeah. I mean, they've been

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:38):
Focusing more on the components in Embedable components. I feel like that's what they've been putting a lot of their energy and their focus at the

Paul Thurrott (00:21:46):
Moment. I think. I bet they've been working on the infrastructure. You know, there's just a higher bar when it's Microsoft first party for commercial customers. Yeah. With all of their requirements. It's just a different, That makes sense. It's like a company start can make something like Start 11, which works great. And it is used by some businesses of course, but they have X number of customers, whatever it is. But the bar is raised so much higher. If Microsoft were to take that product and say, Okay, we're gonna put this in Windows, it would take them a year probably to make that, even though what would come out would be exactly the same in the end, <affirmative>, because they just have a higher bar for their commercial customers. I just think it's a complex thing. It's too bad. I'm trying to excuse it, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:32):
Computer science problem.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:33):
Well, it is it. Yeah, it is. It, I mean, Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:37):
It is. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:22:38):
It's, And I really want get going.

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:40):
Yeah, yeah. Well I asked them and if it comes through, I'll let you guys now. But <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:22:46):
Yeah, well we kind sucked it up with one note longer than I would've liked. Yeah, because Loop was right around the corner. That's what we thought. So I think Ignite last year happened. No Loop. And then we turned. We're happy though, right? It's worked out really well. No show works great. It has much better than what I thought. And I know you're gonna talk about the Surface event later, but I was shocked that one of the features, Good notes they talked about for these new tablets, <affirmative> is good notes. Not one note. Well, it's good

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:16):
Notes. That was a weird thing to pilot.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:18):
What the hell? That was a, And it came right after, Hey, if you wanna jot something on quick, you can put it right in one note. And then they showed sticky notes and then right after that was good notes. And it was like, Oh really? And I think that was an attempt to show that a product is probably popular on iPads. Oh, it's hugely popular on iPads is now available on Windows. I think that's what they were really trying to show. But it was kind of bad timing, badly positioned.

Leo Laporte (00:23:45):
If you hate one note, good news We've taken a product from the iPad library and we're gonna make it available on Windows. Congratulations.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:57):
So I'm not surprised. Yeah, I'm not that. That's how it read to me when they did it. I was, Cause it's clearly an iPad

Leo Laporte (00:24:01):
Product. Oh yeah. That's very popular. An iPad. In fact, there was a lot of, Well see, I don't, Okay, I'll save it for later and <affirmative> it.

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:11):
If you wanna just get the surface stuff over with, it'll take us like five minutes. No,

Leo Laporte (00:24:14):
No, no, no, no, no. We could do that.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:15):
No, no, no. It won't. I have a lot to say about Surface.

Leo Laporte (00:24:17):
You do. Paul has to talk me off the ledge. I

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:20):
Didn't even write the surface stuff. I think that will be lot to someone else. <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:24:24):
I've got my finger on the blind button. Oh,

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:26):
This is so boring. Here, take this. I'll take the other stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:24:30):
<laugh>. All right well

Paul Thurrott (00:24:31):
This, no, there's stuff to

Leo Laporte (00:24:32):
Talk about. Teams premium add-on.

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:36):
Okay, this is important for all you team

Leo Laporte (00:24:39):
Teams.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:39):
I was gonna talk us through that. Nightmare

Leo Laporte (00:24:41):
<laugh>. Okay. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:43):
Yeah. Shoot. So there's going to be an add-on available to teams for people who want certain high end features. And the high by high end, I mean a lot of ai, a lot of extra level of security, an extra level of customized ability. So here's some examples of these features that'll be in this add-on like an AI generated task. Things. So that if someone assigns you an action item in a meeting, it'll automatically be generated and you'll get it meeting guides. You can pick the right meeting experience. Is this a client call? Is it a brainstorm meeting? What is this intelligence search for? Transcripts. Advanced webinars. Advanced virtual appointments. All these things that only a certain class a level of person will care about. If you do, it's gonna cost you $10 extra per user per month if you want. All that's a lot

Leo Laporte (00:25:34):
Money.

Mary Jo Foley (00:25:35):
It's a lot of money. Yep, it is. So I ask them it, it'll be an addon to all the different plans. The Microsoft 365 plans. They say, if you don't need everybody in your company to have it, you just need the main organizer to have the access to premium in order to allow people to use these features. But still, it's a lot of money. And people, I didn't think we were gonna have another level of teams. Here's teams built into your plan. And it comes as part of Microsoft 365 or get teams essentials. If you don't have Microsoft 365 but now here's this extra, and it kind of speaks to the idea of how Microsoft prices things anymore. They don't wanna keep adding more like E five, E seven, E nine. They don't wanna go that way. Instead they have all these add-ons, right? So if you're somebody who cares about some of those kinds of things walking down your teams meeting content at a higher level so that people can't take a document and pass it off to someone like me, like a journalist. You probably will want this at.

Leo Laporte (00:26:34):
Yeah, there's some stuff. It's too bad that they mention me avatars. Cuz if I'm an executive, I'm going, I'm not paying 10 bucks a month so my people can be a cat.

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:44):
No. So that's separate Mesh sha

Leo Laporte (00:26:46):
Cars. That's not a big deal. That's not a big, This is all that's part of us. Oh, okay. I mean there's translations for captions, which is great.

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:55):
Pretty great, right? Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:26:58):
Security things, watermarking things. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:00):
Yeah. All that kind of good stuff, right? Yeah. But $10 per user per month. An extra level

Paul Thurrott (00:27:05):
For you. That's how the pandemic's, however, baby charging for stuff.

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:11):
Now, mesh avatars is the thing we were making fun of last year at Ignite, where we were saying these little cartoon characters that you can customize and put different outfits on and to have different expressions for people who don't wanna use their own face on camera during a team's meeting. These are now available in private preview. They're

Leo Laporte (00:27:30):
Actually be a lot of demand for this. Who knows? I mean, I think notice a lot of, I

Paul Thurrott (00:27:33):
Notice props above the waist.

Leo Laporte (00:27:35):
No legs.

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:36):
No legs in the Microsoft world. Only in the metal world. You get

Leo Laporte (00:27:40):
Legs. Yeah. Me. Meda didn't have legs until they said in the meta event it was the most demanded feature. <laugh>. Was it really the number one thing people tell us they want. Why

Paul Thurrott (00:27:52):
Does it say legs <laugh>? Yeah, exactly. Legs. Well

Mary Jo Foley (00:27:57):
A lot of people comment on that. They're like, why do you only see from here about? Well, if you're a meeting, you don't see people's legs. It's right.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:03):
<laugh> are, Well we're gonna change that right now. These are

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:06):
Like, Oh

Leo Laporte (00:28:06):
No, don't do that. No, I don't wanna see your legs pop. These are cuz I know he is wearing shorts. These are me emojis. Kind of. Can you make it look like you? Is that the idea or Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:16):
You can customize it more to look like you with features and facials.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:20):
I do think this is gonna be popular with people because I don't think many are happy with the way they look on camera.

Leo Laporte (00:28:25):
Exactly. A lot of people

Paul Thurrott (00:28:27):
A stylized, idealized version of you. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:28:30):
Yeah, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:28:31):
Right. Yeah. So that's gone into private preview. If you get into the private preview, in order to get in, you basically have to be in the technology adoption program for office and Microsoft 365. That's how you qualify right now to get in. But if you do get in, you can start using your team's avatars now and your team's meeting. So we may be having meetings with people and suddenly one of these things will pop up because they have,

Paul Thurrott (00:28:56):
That's gonna be amazing.

Leo Laporte (00:28:58):
You know what else is gonna pop up? Mark Zuckerberg,

Paul Thurrott (00:29:03):
Your legs. What happened? Him

Leo Laporte (00:29:07):
Popping up. I'm popping up with Bill

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:09):
Gates. Remember Bill Gates jumping over a chair.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:11):
Look at all the people in the back without legs jumping up and down. That's

Leo Laporte (00:29:14):
So horrible. It's so ableist. All these poor people in the back have no legs, but the people, presenters

Paul Thurrott (00:29:21):
Don't matter. Don't have legs. I think that's what we're learning here.

Leo Laporte (00:29:24):
I've learned a new term. Narp not a real person. And to people like Mark Zuckerberg. That's us.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:33):
Yeah. Right. That's everybody.

Leo Laporte (00:29:35):
It's everybody else. Wow. Wow. 2.1 million views on that tweet, by the way. Everybody likes it. Everybody

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:44):
Likes it. Everybody wants to have avatar.

Leo Laporte (00:29:46):
Everybody wants

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:46):
Legs. I heard from a lot of people on TWiTtter today, I don't want any part of the avatar thing.

Leo Laporte (00:29:51):
<laugh>, but I think Paul's right. I think there are a lot of people who don't like all the zooming and teaming and all that stuff. For sure. Because they don't wanna sit on camera. In fact, I think that's, for some people it's the zoom fatigue. Is that right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:04):
And you understand it more than anyone, Leo. Cuz you're on camera. Well, I

Leo Laporte (00:30:07):
Like to look at

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:08):
Myself. It's a lot on camera

Leo Laporte (00:30:09):
But it's

Paul Thurrott (00:30:09):
Lot. Yeah, no, but that's

Leo Laporte (00:30:11):
A trained professional <laugh>. Yeah. Most of you mean years to used to

Paul Thurrott (00:30:15):
This. They wanna get the job. This has been horrifying I think for a lot of people. I think know too. I just wanna get my job done here. What are you doing? Why exactly? My company has more meetings now than it ever had. They clearly didn't get the memo in the pandemic thing, but <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:30:31):
Yeah. What else else? Let's see. New rebranded Microsoft 365 app. What is that?

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:40):
So this app, I think Paul uses it too. I use it. It's this unified app I use, especially on my phone. I use it. It has,

Paul Thurrott (00:30:49):
What do you mean? You're referring to the office app for

Leo Laporte (00:30:51):
Now? Oh, it's everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:53):
It's crunched into a subset of features so that you get 'em all in one unified app.

Leo Laporte (00:31:00):
I've been puzzled by this for years because I have on my iPad, for instance, Word, Excel, I have all the apps, but then I have a Microsoft app. What do I need that for? A

Paul Thurrott (00:31:11):
Microsoft app? I'm not sure about that one, but

Leo Laporte (00:31:13):
No, but I mean it's, It launches the word in Excel. It's like a little launcher.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:17):
This is a little different between web when Windows desktop and mobile. But I think the point to date has been you can see all the stuff you've been working on. Yeah. You can go back to a document that is recent if you're on web,

Leo Laporte (00:31:33):
Wherever you've been working on

Paul Thurrott (00:31:35):
It. Yeah. If you're on the PC and you, there's some weirdness on the PC app because in some cases it will launch the web app. Even though you have the real app on your computers. There's some kind of goofiness there. But what's the fundamental difference? In other words, other than rebranding.

Mary Jo Foley (00:31:49):
So they're rebranding it. What's the point? And so they're saying a lot of people who've always used office, you think you know what office is like, you think I know what word is, I know what Excel is.

Leo Laporte (00:31:59):
I think you know what Office is, but you don't know what office.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:03):
But this is not

Mary Jo Foley (00:32:03):
Your father's office. There are a lot of things. No loop components is a good example. Microsoft has added a lot of new stuff to office that a lot of people just don't even know about. And so they're thinking this app is gonna be a good way to show people look at all this stuff we put in office. So you don't even know. That's a point.

Leo Laporte (00:32:20):
I think

Paul Thurrott (00:32:20):
It's also about collaboration though. In other words. Totally. When I go and look at recent, Well, I mean this is shared with me. I mean this is kind of a goofy Microsoft account type thing, but actually there is share shared stuff. But I bet this is gonna be a little bit more, I almost think of this as SharePoint in a way. The way we might have used SharePoint five years ago or something. You go into SharePoint, there's a feed that has stuff your coworkers are doing or the documents that they're sharing with you or whatever. Kind of a front end to your work related office stuff. Whether you created it or you're just part of a team that's working on it. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:32:56):
Yeah. On mobile, I guess I feel like the reason I use it in mobile is you can do all these actions directly inside of the office app on mobile. So if I wanna sign a pdf, I only do it this way. So I go into this app, the office, the unified office app, and I turn a Word doc into a PDF and then I sign it on my phone and then I mail it from there. Because you can just do it with one click basically. Yeah. That's awesome. It sets you up to do. Yeah, that makes sense. Is amazing. So there's all these little things you can do that people don't even know. People like wait, you can turn a Word document into a PDF and sign it and use the offset. You can do it in a second. Right? Right.

Leo Laporte (00:33:34):
So

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:35):
They're calling up the Microsoft 365 app, which makes sense cuz that's what they call most of the Office 365 plans now. So it's kind of time that they caught up with the branding on there.

Leo Laporte (00:33:44):
Scooter X says that he already is seeing a banner in his office app that says the office app is becoming the new Microsoft 365 app. Oh wow. That's on iOS Scooter X. Where is that? There

Paul Thurrott (00:33:56):
You go. I was gonna say, where does he do that?

Leo Laporte (00:33:57):
Yep. I'm reading your mind. Paul

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:01):
<laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:02):
Yeah. Cause I haven't seen that yet myself.

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:04):
Yeah, I haven't either. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
It's probably on the iPad or something like

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:07):
That. Yeah. But if you've never tried it and you wanna try it, just go to office.com. Just type in office.com and your browser and you can use the web version of it and see what it's all about.

Leo Laporte (00:34:20):
And it would pull you into Word if you needed more features than in the basic app. Is that the idea? Or I

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:27):
Wonder if it upsells you. Right? It says you can't do this with this app. You can buy a Microsoft 365

Leo Laporte (00:34:32):
Subscription. Oh, I get it. This is free. You get this for free, this free.

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:36):
And there's paid, Right. It's free version that lets you do a lot of things and then Right. To unlock more features, you have to have a Microsoft 365 subscription to get everything.

Leo Laporte (00:34:48):
Okay. Wwd in our chat room is saying he likes it. It's a godsend for us that support less intuitive users that dunno what app to use me. So I guess he will say, or she will say, Well

Paul Thurrott (00:35:02):
That's probably most people can't, Such a weird assumption that you think everyone completely understands anything related to office. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:35:11):
Right. Yeah. So I guess he or she will say, Open the Microsoft Office app or, Yeah, like that. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:35:22):
Let me take a little break. Do you mind? No, because we have so many things to talk about. We sure do. And our fine sponsors are just waiting there champing at the bit to say hello to all you winners and you dozers and anybody in business Secure Works is a leader in cyber security. You know, need this building solutions for security experts by security experts. Secure Works offers superior threat detection and rapid incident response all while making sure that customers are never locked into a single vendor. This is October, September is over, it's October. And that means we are now smack dab in the middle, not only of the spooky season, but cyber security awareness month. Actually they go hand in hand. They means now is the time to raise awareness about digital security and empower everyone to protect their data from cyber crime. SecureWorks has the perfect solution.

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Mary Jo Foley (00:39:48):
And Friday.

Leo Laporte (00:39:49):
And Friday. Friday. And we are already spoke is a Panos pane talk tomorrow.

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:57):
Tomorrow.

Leo Laporte (00:39:57):
Oh, who? Best. Best, Mr. Hair besties <affirmative>. Yes. Cdc. See him with the hair dryer and the Yeah, that was hysterical. That was the best moment, I think. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:09):
Markovich tomorrow on What's new in Azure? Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:40:12):
That'd be

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:12):
Coming in Azure. That could be pretty good too. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:40:14):
Why don't I think that, I thought he was leaving Microsoft, Was that a rumor or something? No, he's still there. No,

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:21):
He's

Leo Laporte (00:40:21):
Still there. Okay, good. No, I must have misunderstood. Yep. Never mind. I didn't say that. Never

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:27):
Mind. He's still there. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:40:29):
God, thank goodness. Yep, he's awesome.

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:32):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:40:34):
Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:35):
Another new app. Wanna hear about places?

Leo Laporte (00:40:38):
Yeah. Not really. Not really. No. What's Places Be

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:41):
Quick? It'll be Quick Places is an app that Microsoft's building for launch in 2023. So this app is for people who need to figure out how to coordinate with people on their team, whether they're remote at work or wherever they are. So it's, they say it does hybrid scheduling, right? It tells you is where are my colleagues today? Are they in the office or some in the office or some at home? So you can do intelligent booking, you can do hot desk booking, how people share desks at work. You can reserve a desk you can reserve a conference room, you can do all these things that people need to do these days because it's complicated where employees are. Yes. And how you are gonna connect with them. So it sounds pretty cool. It's like Microsoft bookings on steroids in a way. Just adding Microsoft Teams rooms plus bookings and you're getting this new app called Places. That's it. That's all I'm gonna say about it.

Leo Laporte (00:41:36):
Okay. I have it. Maybe Paul would like to talk about something now. Microsoft Edge perhaps.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:44):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:41:44):
Boy. So actually this is related to something we were just talking about. You've got this company, Microsoft, that makes products for individuals as well as for companies and how do you release those things? And so in this case, there's a feature coming to Microsoft Edge called Workspaces, which takes a product that we've typically used as individuals and kind of upscales it so that you can use it as part of a team. And it's a way basically just to share groups of taps with others on a project you're working on. I do kind of feel like we're getting to the point where we almost have too much of this stuff and I wish there was a right. I mean it's complex and I don't just mean from an edge feature standpoint. I mean you literally work at some company, you're on some team of people, you do some job, whatever it is, and you collaborate in some way. Microsoft offers a dozens of ways to, I mentioned SharePoint. SharePoint is still kicking around. People still use it every day. Some people still work out of Outlook every single day. They exchange emails, they send versions of documents around. It's all different ways to do this. We keep talking about loop components. It's some kind of a holy grill. Is it? I dunno.

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:57):
So the strategy, I really dunno. I feel like Microsoft always has too many ways to do one thing. This is just the way they've always been like it's overkill, but they, they're big on giving people choice. So everybody thought Teams was gonna be the only place to collaborate. But Microsoft knows there's some people who live in Outlook, not teams. And there are some people who live in the browser and not teams or Outlook. So they're trying to give everybody their favorite place to collaborate, I feel like. But meanwhile, like you said, it's confusing. Are we working together in teams today or are we working together in edge with the work spaces, or are we gonna do something else?

Paul Thurrott (00:43:32):
This is gonna seem overly simplistic, but do you think that this feature came up on collections? Is that possible?

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:39):
I think it came up because of what Google is doing with Tab. Okay. Tabs. Yeah, I think that's where this came.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:45):
Tabs didn't come. Okay. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:47):
Yeah, that's my question.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:49):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:51):
What's interesting is this feature Microsoft showed off this feature two years ago, I believe, and they called it Edge Workspaces. It was in a Canary Build and then last year, or earlier this year mentioned of it leaked again in another Canary Build. So everyone knew it was lurking and maybe going to be announced. And I think when Google and somebody else told me today, Opera has a similar feature as well. So I think they're just trying to do basically what everybody else

Paul Thurrott (00:44:17):
Is doing. But Opera doesn't target the enterprise <laugh>. Right. I I think the thing that's interesting about this is heading out to the enterprise and also

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:28):
Going to consumers. Did you see that?

Paul Thurrott (00:44:31):
Oh no. Of course it is mean. But I'm saying in other words, But they are doing it for the enterprise. It's that bar. This is a high bar. When you were talking to the enterprise with this kind of thing. It's true. That's true. I dunno, maybe it was a couple years ago, actually. It might have been before the pandemic, but when Surface Duo first came out and they were talking about our, when announced it and they announced Neo remember ahead of time and then shipped it. There was the whole bait around dual screens and oh, it supposedly impacts your productivity in some positive way, which we know is ridiculous. The way they're marketing edge today is that literally having to leave the app you're working in do something else somewhere else is distracting and draining, which is exactly what I described at dual screen setup as being, And now they want you to do everything in the one app.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:18):
Yeah. Microsoft Edge has a calculator built into it, <laugh>, It has these little kind of app outlet things as the sidebar, these Outlook experiences and gaming experiences and all kinds of other stuff. And I don't know, I don't have an answer here. I feel like Edge has gotten too complex and will continue to get too complex. But on the other hand, when I listen to the rationale, which I just described, that for a lot of people it is very confusing to have to contact Shift to do different things maybe. And unless they really do have a plan to create an edge based platform of some sort literal edge computing device, if you will, That's super simple. And you do everything in a web browser, which I know sounds super familiar to something that already exists. At that point I could say, yeah, okay, this kind of makes sense. But just as an individual using a web browser and trying to go to amazon.com or whatever, a lot of stuff in the way these days, I find this to be, I'm kind of mixed on this. I don't know which direction they should go in.

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:26):
Yeah, I bet there is a plan for a device at some point, but I don't think we have. There has to be a plan yet. There's got to be right?

Paul Thurrott (00:46:34):
There has to

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:35):
Be. Otherwise why are you putting, or they're assuming people will, We keep saying why are they acting? There's a big market for Windows tablets, but maybe they think there will be if they have this kind of

Paul Thurrott (00:46:48):
An Yeah, but I mean Edge is part of Windows, but Edge also goes to other devices. But Edge is part of Windows. And now Edge is a source of duplication of functionality in Windows. If Windows already does it. Why is this an edge? Yeah. I mean even something collections, my argument at the time was you already have OneNote. Why not just integrate OneNote into Edge and have the UI that's in there be what collection is. And this is a real simple view, certain type of OneNote functionality. And then when you open OneNote, you see that exact thing there. And then one of the things they added to collections eventually was what OneNote integration. It's like what it's, you already have this thing, why are you making something different? But that's, remember notes

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:29):
And notes and tasks in general at Microsoft, there are so many options and ways, sticky notes. One note, Notepad, WordPad like is just an endless number of things you can do if you want to take notes. I

Leo Laporte (00:47:43):
Know. Good notes.

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:44):
I know. I'm just like, Yeah, there's so many

Paul Thurrott (00:47:47):
Not made by Microsoft <laugh>. Yeah, I know. Crazy.

Leo Laporte (00:47:51):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:47:52):
Right. If good notes is so good, Stop making notes.

Leo Laporte (00:47:55):
<laugh>, what someone

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:56):
Else doing? Making bad notes. Where are bad notes? Paul? Maybe you could write that up. Bad

Paul Thurrott (00:48:00):
Notes. I think one notes is bad notes. When no one note was created, the surface that you write on was not compatible with Microsoft Word. In other words, if you copied and pasted from one note into Word, it wouldn't come out a hundred. Know it was different. They were different styles. <laugh>, you could copy and paste from Word into a web form would work. Right? You could not copy. Still cannot copy from OneNote into Web Form does not work. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:48:27):
Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:28):
Why? If you have these two different things and why today? Do you still have these two different things? Why was there no, Well now they're just redoing it. I think Loop is going to answer the one. No problem. You do. And I think, well, I don't think there's another simple No, I, What I mean by that is I don't think there's another simpler notes app coming from Microsoft. I think one note will float around. It always has. And a lot of people will just use Loop for note taking. Just like people today could use Notion for note taking,

Leo Laporte (00:48:59):
<affirmative>, <affirmative>,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:00):
<affirmative>. And it would be a simpler experience. And I think what is more, it's certainly more of what I'm looking for and I bet it's more what most people are looking for. And when you pace from that into a web form looks perfect, which is ultimately what most people are looking for these days. Yeah. If you have to export. All right. Sorry, I didn't mean to go off my little,

Leo Laporte (00:49:20):
Where are we?

Paul Thurrott (00:49:22):
I noticed terrible dev box.

Leo Laporte (00:49:23):
We're in the dev box. I was trying to remember this morning, the name of the dev box. Cuz there were rumors. There's so many rumors flying about the Surface event. They show a, Yeah, it's tiny computer and nothing. They didn't do anything. So no, they didn't mention the deaf box even. But I guess that's not really where you'd mention that.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:38):
That sounds It is in the book of news though.

Leo Laporte (00:49:40):
Oh, okay. Wonder <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:45):
So what is the deal? So it is now, No, it's filled now in preview. Now in

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:52):
That's

Paul Thurrott (00:49:53):
What it's, yeah. Yeah. It's not generally available. It's in preview. No. So you have images for these virtual machine images are up in the Azure marketplace. And so this is a way to have a more powerful computer that you might need for some specific reason, Predesigned for you up in the cloud. You can fire the thing up, do whatever it is you're gonna do in it. And then

Leo Laporte (00:50:13):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:50:14):
Sorry, could use that.

Leo Laporte (00:50:16):
Do whatever. No, it's whatever it is you can. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:50:18):
I mean it's a,

Paul Thurrott (00:50:21):
Oh, in other words, like developers can't have one of everything in their office. I'm sure a lot of them have tried and a lot of 'em still do try and virtual machine server purpose. But virtual machines require maintenance and management and storage and physical devices and on and on and go. So this is, obviously, this is a managed service. This, I'm sure there'll be individuals that use this, but I think for a lot of big developer teams, this is gonna be, I need to see what happens when I target whatever the environment is. I need to use some computing resources I just don't have at home.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:54):
How do I, And this is, they're saying it'll save you time, right? If you have a really complex setup as a dev and you need to get everything just right before you start. They're like, What if you could just have these images in the cloud and there's my dead box.

Leo Laporte (00:51:06):
Right? That's why Docker is so popular right there in a nutshell. Yeah. It's the whole point of dock.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:11):
Again, I think we talked about this when they must have announced this at Build, and I'm sure the conversation we had at that time was, I don't know any developer who would take stock anything and just use it. I mean, I feel like developers probably spend half their time just configuring things to be exactly the way they wanted. What

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:29):
If you could have your perfect configuration in the dev box and the cloud?

Paul Thurrott (00:51:33):
In the cloud? Yeah. Yeah. It's different now you can write, right? No, that's true. And then he could access it from your little Chromebook when you're home with the keys.

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:40):
Raf told me he was very excited about this feature, by the way.

Leo Laporte (00:51:44):
Oh yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:44):
But let's think about what RAF is really

Leo Laporte (00:51:47):
<laugh> talking about. Raphael Deep here. Raphael,

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:52):
Who

Paul Thurrott (00:51:53):
Of course he's

Leo Laporte (00:51:53):
Excited, who was on the cruise. And a wonderful fella, by the way, and his wife loved his wife Sweetheart. Yeah. Ra, what's his name? Rafael Rivera. Yes. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:06):
R it's just so we, That's his last name, Riviera. But he doesn't like that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:11):
<laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:52:12):
He always said. I says he'd fine coding the,

Paul Thurrott (00:52:15):
Is it? That's

Leo Laporte (00:52:16):
Exactly right. Oh God. I just, I'm I, New Outlook features for hybrid work.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:23):
I know. See, it's just it. It's like it writes itself. <laugh> or something. Or

Leo Laporte (00:52:31):
Something. Weebles wobbles. But they don't fall

Paul Thurrott (00:52:35):
Down. Absolutely. Fall down all over themselves. And yeah. Mary Jo, anything?

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:42):
I didn't really even write this one up. There was so much in the book of news.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:45):
There's not much <laugh>. There is not much.

Leo Laporte (00:52:48):
I

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:49):
Didn't take this one. I didn't take this one off. Okay,

Leo Laporte (00:52:51):
So is this Project Monarch? Is this No.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:54):
Well, okay. I was gonna say, so with the understanding, the outlook is a bunch of different things. Unfortunately, this is a couple of small things for every single version of Office Outlook that there is. So there is the Project Monarch thing that's coming. There is the web version, there is the current Windows application, there is the Mac application and there are mobile applications. So I don't think they talk too much about that. But basically I think the big thing here is better support for loop components humming to the web version of Outlook first, of course. But that means it's probably gonna come to that Monarch client soon as well. And it will be coming to the native client too, <affirmative>. But yeah, this is a couple of small things for everyone. It's like a couple small features for the Mac version in the desktop native client on Windows.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:41):
And I'm not sure about the back, but this new fee, the hybrid bit is there are people who are obviously working at home. There are people who come into offices, How do we match up their schedules? We won, We wanna have a meeting, and how do we provide a thing in that meeting event that's an outlook that lets you go back if you missed it or you want to recap it or whatever after the fact it will be available in Outlook now. Whereas before it was like, well, I wanted to see the meeting recap. Where do I do that? Probably teams, if that's what you're using. But we'll also be coming to Outlook. So this is unfortunately every single time we talk about Microsoft with regards to anything they would announce or ignite, there is this conversation which we've already had where they do a lot of stuff at a lot of different places. So that meeting recap is something that you can get through Teams today. Meeting recap is something that is coming to Microsoft Outlook. So depending on how you work, it's

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:37):
Coming an edge. I bet it's coming an edge.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:39):
You bet it is. It's gonna be that stupid sidebar thing for a meeting recap to wait for it. Yeah, I'm sure you're right. <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:48):
Yeah, this isn't a big one. And actually one of the things that's Will of Impact Outlook, I think we have. Yeah, it's actually the next item. So Microsoft editor is Microsoft's Grammarly competitor. So it's something that's built into now Word. Of course. It's built into Outlook. So when you're writing an email, you know, don't look like an idiot and use a bad grammar or spelling or whatever, or tone, which is one of the new things that's coming. Outlook will take advantage of the new stuff that's coming to Microsoft Editor. And if you're familiar with Grammarly rundown of features that are coming in Microsoft editor will look very similar or very familiar, I should say, <affirmative> around the tone of what you're saying. And that's something Grammarly can do. You know, write something, it'll say, this looks a little aggressive. <laugh>, do you wanna maybe sit on that for a second?

Paul Thurrott (00:55:39):
And you can do summary and conciseness just for better writing. I will say Microsoft editor can only get better. It is very obvious to me when I read certain Microsoft blog posts that those people are using Microsoft editor because it's not actually very good. Which is crazy given how much experience Microsoft has with language and writing style and spelling mistakes and grammar errors obviously don't use their own. I know it's crazy. Or they're tools sucks better. Right now, Grammarly is a much better product. However, Microsoft is an AI powerhouse than they do all have all that experience. So I do expect Microsoft Editor to get better over time. And I probably should mention at this juncture,

Leo Laporte (00:56:23):
Grammarly is a sponsor.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:26):
But that I didn't know that. And nobody

Leo Laporte (00:56:28):
Cares. It's fine.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:29):
Yeah. It doesn't matter. I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:56:30):
It's just a disclaimer. It's not, Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:32):
Yeah. It's what I use and it's what I recommend.

Leo Laporte (00:56:34):
Yeah. Yeah. So good.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:39):
I can't tell you I write, I mean, I write Microsoft Word. It is ridiculous to me. Every day when I take something from Word paste it into the word WordPress and Grammarly will find three to seven mistakes word never found. That's inexcusable. It's crazy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:56:57):
But it's true. That's weird. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:59):
Every day

Leo Laporte (00:57:03):
Where, you know, mentioned this several times. The book of News or Yeah. I wonder who wrote the book of No, I don't. Don't wonder. Yeah. Where can I get Baby? Yeah, The Book of News.

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:15):
So the easiest way to get it is probably to just do a search for it. Look for Book of News, Microsoft Night 2022. And so the book of News has all of the announcements. Microsoft made it to Ignite all of them. There's hundreds. We were just talking about like six here, but there are more.

Leo Laporte (00:57:34):
A lot. I want to know where I can get this chair. I

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:37):
<laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:57:39):
Don't care what the book of news.

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:41):
Yeah, I don't care about the news, but

Leo Laporte (00:57:43):
The chair is great. So this Microsoft does this for every event. This is big event. Is this for Ignite Attendees or for the press? It's mostly the press, right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:54):
Well mostly us, but anybody can make use of it, right? Cause like I said, we have to pick and choose what we write. We can't write everything. And so if you care, say about Cosmos db, you should get the book of news and look up the announcements around that. Right, Right.

Leo Laporte (00:58:09):
<laugh>, right.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:10):
If you care about anything if you care about Loop, for example, if you go to the book of news, search for the word loop, you'll see Yeah. That there's only one very small section unfortunately. And we were hoping for more. In fact, I think it is all literally in one section and it's in a couple sections, but there's really not a lot to it. Well, it's a little section the editor section is even smaller <laugh>. But whatever it is that you care about this is a great resource. And I'm so glad they put this up public because they've given it to us for years. Privately. They gave it to us ahead of time before the show. And now the day of the show, they actually put it out. I think it's

Leo Laporte (00:58:45):
Smart. It also is impressive in terms of the breadth and depth of Microsoft. I mean <affirmative>, this is a lot of stuff

Paul Thurrott (00:58:54):
Yeah's interesting to me is

Leo Laporte (00:58:55):
What's hugging face? <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:58):
Well, so hugging Face will host Bloom. What language are we talking?

Leo Laporte (00:59:04):
What are you talking about? Data.

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:07):
Wait, what is this under What's section?

Leo Laporte (00:59:09):
This is a, I think machine learning. What's interesting, Azure machine learning. What's interesting though is that name is familiar. I'm just trying to, Is it art? AI art

Paul Thurrott (00:59:22):
There? Yeah. So I learn more about this update link below, which I think is the most, in some ways is the most fascinating bit here. Because yeah, every one of these things, a lot of you, most people would skip over Mo. They'd be like, Nope, no, no. But all of them have teams of people doing work every day. Yeah. This is their big event. Yeah. You can go to their little, not their little, you can go to their big announcement and learn more about it than is in the book of news. Because of course it goes much

Leo Laporte (00:59:48):
Deeper. It's hugging fa now. I remember. And thank you. Outta sync. Hugging face is where you can get stable diffusion. All

Paul Thurrott (00:59:55):
Right, let's talk about surface. Let's

Leo Laporte (00:59:56):
Talk about surface.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:59):
Cause I have a lot to say about this.

Leo Laporte (01:00:00):
Okay. So can I just say a couple things? Unfortunately? Cause I said I got up really early to watch it. Panos pane

Paul Thurrott (01:00:08):
Terrible. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:00:09):
The pseudo sincerity is great on

Paul Thurrott (01:00:13):
Me Rating. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:00:15):
It's always, And his brown,

Paul Thurrott (01:00:17):
We'll never know what the percentages are. Some people just think he's the most sincere, believable, heartfelt person. And others are like, Oh my God, what's happening here? Wow. I don't, I find him, I don't, don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:00:29):
But I like best.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:31):
I do still love him. Stevie.

Leo Laporte (01:00:33):
Yeah. I'm saying his name wrong. But I thought he was great. Stevie, we call him Stevie. Stevie.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:37):
Stevie.

Leo Laporte (01:00:38):
Long Hair. At first I thought is this Russell brand? You don't, Oh

Paul Thurrott (01:00:43):
No. Howard should that Craig, they should have had that Craig PGI moment where he was like blow dry his hair in slow motion.

Leo Laporte (01:00:50):
<laugh>. They missed some opportunities. It was fully, there was no live audience. It was just, here's a video, watch this. Which it's rumored. That's what Apple's gonna do with its next thing. It's not even bother. Yeah. They're gonna

Paul Thurrott (01:01:06):
Why bother?

Leo Laporte (01:01:06):
Why bother? Okay. The things that stood out in my mind that I was very impressed with, actually one and this came from The Verge. Tom Warren, written and Verge. He had used the new Surface Pro nine with the arm chip, the so-called Microsoft Chip. And he said, You know what? You wouldn't know it's arm. It's actually, yeah. Okay, I'll ask you about that. The <laugh>, but attempted me. I was very impressed. I think those, that Pixel perfect screen is great. I mean I loved it on the Surface Studio. Yep. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:44):
4,500 bucks.

Leo Laporte (01:01:45):
Yeah. Oh yeah. The Stu, I'm sorry, talking about, But even on the Surface Pro, it really looks beautiful. Okay. Very responsive to the pen. Very impressed. It's got 5G now, which you and I had talked about. Paul, why don't they put 5g? And I had concluded, well cause everybody's got a phone and they can hotspot, so, but they put 5G in. I think there are people who were be very happy about that. Yeah, I was very impressed with the camera and the noise reduction, because they have an and A nor now this is, I think the Intel version. They have a neural processing unit in there. Is that the Intel only or Arm got? No, that's the arm version. It's the arm version.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:20):
Yep. So I, I'll just say reviewing laptops that those capabilities background noise, AI background noise, React. They a

Leo Laporte (01:02:29):
Guy with a lease slower. You couldn't hear it.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:32):
Yeah. How real was that though? Well, I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:02:36):
I'm counting on you to give us the

Paul Thurrott (01:02:38):
<laugh>. I don't know yet. So we'll see. But I wouldn't buy a computer because of that personally and that arm thing. I'm sorry, but ARM is not quite there yet. What

Leo Laporte (01:02:48):
Do they call the SQ two? What is it? The microphone.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:50):
Q three three is the new one. And it's based on the latest Qualcomm thing, which

Leo Laporte (01:02:54):
It's basically a qualcom.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:55):
Absolutely. It's better than it's been. Yeah. Is still not as good. Astel md. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:03:00):
From

Paul Thurrott (01:03:01):
Perspective.

Leo Laporte (01:03:02):
And then

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:03):
Can I say something about ARM here please. So did you notice during the event, they've stopped talking about ARM as being advantageous in terms of battery life.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:12):
Battery life

Leo Laporte (01:03:13):
Power. Right. It did quote 19 hours battery life though,

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:16):
Which is just a pure lie. Purely eight at most. Eight at most. You'll

Paul Thurrott (01:03:23):
See, I will say, yeah, in the Intel world, if you see big battery life like that, you can have it. Or maybe even third it. And that's closer to real world. That's that's video. Same with nonsense, Same with arm. No, that's what it is. That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:36):
But the thing they're talking about more and more with ARM is they keep talking about ai. So I wonder if they're gonna start pushing the reason that you would won an RMP C as you can do more with AI and stop talking about battery life and power. Yeah, because those things aren't really advantageous on Windows on Arm. They're

Leo Laporte (01:03:53):
So the arm chip has the npu, That's the S Q three part. Yeah, that's the Microsoft part. Yeah. Not the Intel chip. Ah. See again, I'm very tempted the Surface Pro nine with arm.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:05):
Okay. There is absolutely no reason that the Intel version of this couldn't have a 5G chip set in it. It doesn't. And it like What about about the

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:12):
Neural

Paul Thurrott (01:04:13):
Process differentiator?

Leo Laporte (01:04:14):
Can I have an M? And then the, Okay, the other thing I was really thought was very interesting is they're adding Dolly to artificial intelligence, art generation to designer, which you still have to, What

Paul Thurrott (01:04:31):
Does that have to do with Surface though?

Leo Laporte (01:04:32):
Okay, well it's just there and Bing. Okay, that's great. Nothing to do with Surface, but okay, that's pretty cool. Let's

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:37):
Talk about the hardware first.

Leo Laporte (01:04:39):
Okay, Hardware

Paul Thurrott (01:04:39):
First. Yeah, let's get the hardware, the Cause each one of these things, each things has a problem. Okay. They all have the same problem which is that they're the same exact design as before.

Leo Laporte (01:04:48):
The carpeted surface Laptop five. Yep. They're exactly same Screen

Paul Thurrott (01:04:53):
Windows or Surface Pro Nine was designed for Windows 11. Was it? Because it's the same design as last time. And that time it was designed for Windows 10.

Leo Laporte (01:05:02):
They did say that everybody wants 22 H two. That's what they're hearing. Okay. Everybody wants it.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:08):
We can talk about that in a little while. Actually.

Leo Laporte (01:05:10):
We will talk. Let's talk about a little while. Let's talk about hardware. All right. But

Paul Thurrott (01:05:12):
That's fair. That's Surface

Leo Laporte (01:05:14):
Studio two plus surface, which we saw with in the FCC picture is exactly like

Paul Thurrott (01:05:20):
11th gen Intel chips. Not latest gen. Are you kidding? Quad

Leo Laporte (01:05:24):
Core.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:25):
Are you kidding? Quad core.

Leo Laporte (01:05:26):
Quad core.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:27):
Are you kidding me? How many cores does an H series? 12th gen chips. I have now

Leo Laporte (01:05:32):
16.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:33):
This is something like that. Quad

Leo Laporte (01:05:35):
Core is like what's in my Sonology?

Paul Thurrott (01:05:37):
Yeah. This is like hey, I'm still using a car with a carburetor in it. <laugh> like, what are you kidding me? You

Leo Laporte (01:05:43):
Want to it off?

Paul Thurrott (01:05:44):
It's 2022.

Leo Laporte (01:05:45):
You at least it has a terabyte hard drive. 32 gigs of ram. At least it has that, right? I presume it has an ssd Because the old one had a spin drive. We had a replace.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:56):
That's right. Remember? And I remember Padre replace an assisting. So Surface Laptop five they dropped. AMD

Leo Laporte (01:06:04):
Got no amd, they didn't say why? Didn't even mention it didn't. Why Right Am

Paul Thurrott (01:06:09):
What? Oh. Oh. And here's the other thing. Surface laptop five until Chipset doesn't support room time.

Leo Laporte (01:06:18):
What

Paul Thurrott (01:06:18):
The Microsoft security chip said, Do you wanna know why?

Leo Laporte (01:06:22):
Because

Paul Thurrott (01:06:22):
The Intel doesn't support it. Intel thinks that Chip said is superfluous. They already have enough technology in their chip sets for to do security. They don't need Pluto time. AMD by the way, embraced it fully.

Leo Laporte (01:06:33):
That's

Paul Thurrott (01:06:33):
Hysterical in there.

Leo Laporte (01:06:35):
This is a Microsoft technology, right? Pluto to, Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:39):
Yeah. In a Microsoft product. And it doesn't have it because Intel will not support it. That's why it's

Leo Laporte (01:06:43):
Got the Evo chip though that I heard them say Evo a couple of few times.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:46):
Well, Evos just a's not a chip Evo. A

Leo Laporte (01:06:49):
Marketing term

Paul Thurrott (01:06:51):
Is a marketing qualification. It's a, Yeah, it's it.

Leo Laporte (01:06:55):
I wasn't gonna get the laptop Mary Jo though. That's what you use right? As a surface. You like your Surface laptop?

Mary Jo Foley (01:07:00):
Surface laptop three. No, I'm, I'm not liking it anymore. It's having a lot of problems. And so no, I would never get another

Leo Laporte (01:07:07):
Surface laptop. And that's the one we got for Micah. This Alara the blue.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:11):
Yeah. At this. Well by the way, I like surface hardware. I don't want to lose sight of that. I recognize the people have had issues with them over the years. I've certainly have had some issues, but I like that Surface Laptop Live is a laptop, but it's a nice laptop. It's a nice looking laptop surface, Pro Nine Surface Pro whatever is kind of the canonical tablet PC for the modern era for sure. It's

Leo Laporte (01:07:34):
Now with,

Paul Thurrott (01:07:35):
I just

Leo Laporte (01:07:35):
Don't think, which is very exciting to me.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:37):
I don't think most people need a tablet.

Leo Laporte (01:07:41):
So no, that two in one form factor, I'm wondering, they talk so much about how great the keyboard is on the laptop. Well they keep, and it's like there you get a pro and surface and now you'll have a Yeah, if you

Paul Thurrott (01:07:53):
Go back and watch that part of the presentation, they acted like this thing and come out brand new. It was like <affirmative>. We never had one of these before. And nothing new. It's nothing new.

Leo Laporte (01:08:04):
It's completely not redesigned in any respect.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:06):
No. Which is fine. It's a fine design. I the move from 12.5 or 12.3 I guess it was to 13 inches. Great. Bigger screen everything. It's great if you do need a pen or want a pen that Yeah, it works great. I don't mind the keyboard cover thing. I know people talk about how bouncy is. It's fine.

Leo Laporte (01:08:23):
I love the pen hiding in the keyboard. I almost bought a Surface prox just for that. I like that. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:31):
Yeah, Surface Pro Eight had that as well, by the way. It's nice. I like it. But again, it's just more of the same. This is just more of the same. So

Leo Laporte (01:08:38):
Talk me off the shelf. I was thinking of getting a Surface Pro nine with the s Q three.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:44):
Oh do not get anything arm based on Windows ever.

Leo Laporte (01:08:46):
No. I'd have to use Windows and Arm, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:08:49):
Yeah, yeah. You don't wanna do that <laugh>. So my next review, my next hardware review is an HP Dragon Elite Dragon Fly, which is unbeliev. It's one of the, it is the best typing experience I've ever had last. It's beautiful.

Leo Laporte (01:09:02):
Ever

Paul Thurrott (01:09:02):
Beautiful. It's unbelievable. But the one after that is the Think pad. dw, what you called the X 13? No, what's it called? It's the arm one. So this is the one that is closest to what you're seeing in Surface today from a processing and compatibility perspective. And it is absolutely better. But remember three years ago, four years ago even Qualcomm was talking about how they were offering Core I five levels of performance. Yeah. Desktop

Leo Laporte (01:09:28):
Clause. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:29):
What generation Core I five we talking about second? Cause it's nowhere even close, right? It can get close. But the problem is it depends on what apps you use. So if you use lots of Intel apps you're gonna have a problem. It's still not great

Leo Laporte (01:09:43):
Because those run in annulation.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:45):
Yeah. And it's just not great. Okay, so nevermind. I've been using X 64 and in some cases X 86 versions of Intel apps. Just to see how that works. This will be in my review, but it's just, it's not there. It just isn't there. Yeah. It depends if you're, look, you're all office and you use Edge and that's kind of your whole experience okay, you'll probably be okay. But it's the same basic issue with ARM is remains. But why would you use,

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:12):
It's like there's no reason for ARM right now until there's better arm chips for PCs. There's no reason.

Leo Laporte (01:10:18):
No the reason, there's

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:19):
No advantage right

Paul Thurrott (01:10:21):
At all. The reason ARM exists in the Windows world is because Microsoft begged Intel for years and years and years. Stop raising the performance and make something that makes sense on thin and light devices where you don't have to have a fan and you never occur with anything decent in that. They couldn't. They didn't. They wouldn't. Listen.

Leo Laporte (01:10:40):
There's a great story from yesterday's Mac Break Weekly. Apple all of a sudden dropped notebook and they call it laptops again, which Microsoft

Paul Thurrott (01:10:47):
Is always done. Right. I saw that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:10:49):
And so Jason O'Grady from the O'Grady power page, which is a ancient but still viable Mac blog said mm-hmm <affirmative> because the lawyers said you can't call it a laptop because the Intel chip is so damn hot it's burning people. So we need to call it a notebook.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:08):
Oh, I have a theory about why they, I thought no, they changed from notebook to laptop.

Leo Laporte (01:11:13):
They now, But the reason they changed from laptop to

Paul Thurrott (01:11:17):
Notebook back in the day, back

Leo Laporte (01:11:18):
In the day is cuz that was when they were Intel laptops for Macintosh. And the Apple lawyers said

Paul Thurrott (01:11:24):
That's an awfully cynical.

Leo Laporte (01:11:26):
Jason O'Grady said, I have it on. He says, I heard it on very good a authority. So I

Paul Thurrott (01:11:32):
Thought a great when I at that,

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:35):
No, don't you think the real reason would be more, they didn't wanna be compared number wise to laptops.

Leo Laporte (01:11:40):
Yeah, maybe. Yeah. And that's why it's a notebook. Yeah. But didn't PC makers adopt notebook as well or no? Is it always been a laptop?

Paul Thurrott (01:11:47):
We have all different terms for things we do.

Leo Laporte (01:11:51):
I remember he trained myself to call it a notebook. I do remember that. Yeah. Some that was a decade ago probably. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:59):
They're portable PCs. There are convertibles, there are notebooks, there are laptops, there are tablets, There are two and ones. Yeah. Netbooks.

Leo Laporte (01:12:05):
Yep. Netbooks S Don't

Paul Thurrott (01:12:07):
They all? Sorry, Close mean the same.

Leo Laporte (01:12:09):
So

Paul Thurrott (01:12:10):
I believe I'm

Leo Laporte (01:12:12):
Thinking, Okay, you talked me off of the surface Pro nine.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:15):
No, no, but wait another year. This is, No, no, hold on. So I watched this presentation and I'm thinking to myself, what is the point of this product line? What literally, what is the point?

Leo Laporte (01:12:28):
That is a good point.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:28):
And interestingly, Penne was obviously he had an interview with Axios. The Axios article they produced was not an interview, it just quoted him occasionally. It's kind of a strange thing. But basically he came up with three reasons why this product line exists. What role does it play? And I, I'm paraphrasing this, but basically these are crazy to fill the gap between the Windows software and the PC hardware. Like what? To fill the gap. What are you talking about? To inspire other PC makers, which is something we've talked about in the past. And to create high end devices that compete well with the Mac. And my contention here. Right. My question here is does it do any of that? I, first of all, whatever the gap is between software and hardware, there is almost nothing in a surface device that isn't in any other pc. It's not like Microsoft is making Pixel and they're like, we're only gonna have certain features on Surface. Not giving 'em to everyone else that would be suicide. They don't do that. So you just have

Leo Laporte (01:13:38):
The OEMs would be, they would be very

Paul Thurrott (01:13:40):
Upset, right? You might like the design of a surface. You roll in the dice I think on reliability. But that's your choice. Inspiring other PC makers I would have, aside from the initial Surface Pro device, I would say they have inspired them not to do what Microsoft is doing. Is the only thing they've inspired them. No one is copying their other devices. No, there's nothing you were

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:04):
Don't see beginning, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:14:06):
No, for pro. Yeah, for pro, for sure. That's it.

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:08):
No, didn't Dell do something that was like a Surface book? Am I misremembering that? <laugh> somebody did.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:15):
I guess the point is there's no other surface, no form factor they've made has ever turned into something other than pro with the tablet and then creating high end devices that compete with the Mac. I'm sorry, have we never heard of ThinkPad X one? Have we never heard of Elite Book? Have we never heard of Specter? Have we never heard of Dragonfly? Have we never heard of XB 13? What are you talking about? So I guess I don't think they fulfill any of those goals.

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:43):
What's very weird that I've been noticing a lot because we have a lot of people at NET who really love Surface and I kept saying to them, <affirmative>, what do you like about it? And without an exception, they were all Apple users who liked it. And so I'm like, there's something in a surface that's very familiar to Mac users or they like that the way it's being constructed or that pitch for it. I don't know. There's something, I think they are hitting that spot of we're going after the Mac users and we're getting there. Right? <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:15:15):
Are they? Cause the Mac market share has done an all time high. So yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:20):
No, I feel like that's, But their goal with that is I see why they're doing that. And people who are real PC users like me, I don't think surfaces as much as Mac

Paul Thurrott (01:15:29):
Surface has never appeared on any market share chart made by any company ever in history. Not once. They don't register, they don't sell enough of these things, they almost don't exist.

Leo Laporte (01:15:41):
I think you should point out that that's the true also of the Google Pixel phones, that they are a

Paul Thurrott (01:15:47):
Laggard. Yes, that's exactly the That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So why does

Leo Laporte (01:15:50):
Google make the Pixel? Same

Paul Thurrott (01:15:51):
Reason? Because they see some value in first party hardware. They wanna show what's possible when you do the full Google or Microsoft thing. But just the difference between Android and Windows honestly is that most PC makers Al already doing the full Windows thing. I mean you see crap wear, which is just a terrible byproduct of how bad you know that market is. But on Android, the biggest OEMs change the ui. They have their own services, they have their own apps. It's like their own thing. You don't see HP making a word processor or I'm trying to think what an email app or something like that. It's really not the same situation. I don't know that Surface fulfills the need. And honestly, you gotta remember what was the original point of this thing? It was none of those things. He said it was, we think the world is going touch, Apple is killing us. We have super Apple Envy. iPhone is everything. They just released the iPad. We need to answer that. When they came up with Surface Pro, it still looks like that

Leo Laporte (01:16:54):
Surface laptop is a dead ringer for the MacBook. I mean it's a dead

Paul Thurrott (01:16:58):
Ringer. But if Surface Pro had been, I'm sorry, if Surface had been successful as a product line, the way they intended, the thing that would've been successful would've been that RT version, the one that was most like an iPad. That was what they thought was gonna be successful. Ton of them. It took a huge Writedown. I still have mine. I have no idea what they were doing.

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:19):
Yeah, don't you think they think the Surface go now is the iPad competitor, right? <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:17:23):
Is that though mean

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:25):
Don't think. No,

Paul Thurrott (01:17:26):
Really.

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:27):
I think that's what they think. I think that's what they think. So

Paul Thurrott (01:17:29):
It's just Apple Envy. I mean is that why they're doing

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:31):
ARM too heavily? Apple Envy? No. They were

Paul Thurrott (01:17:35):
Doing, No, no, they're doing ARM because of the Intel B Intel problem.

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:39):
Yeah, they've been doing Long arm. Do you guys remember that long arm? It's like a 10 year, 10 years ago when they were trying to do Windows on arm.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:45):
Well, Microsoft has decades of experience with mobile devices. They saw ARM as it evolved from the nineties to the two thousands, et cetera. And in the beginning, one of the big issues was just performance and compute capability. That's obviously been solved. But the one thing those devices already always had was these things were designed from the get go to be instant on mobile, really long battery life, often days or weeks compared to a pc, a completely different kind of device. And they want that for PCs, they want that level of uptime, they want that level of reliability. They want that instant on capability. And so that they kind of retrofit it to Intel computers and it works sometimes. But Intel has never answered this call. Intel, I think finally saw the writing on the wall hired Pat Gelsinger. They're doing this hybrid chip set approach and the first version is kinda met, but they're getting there.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:41):
And I think the ultimate call, I think where we're gonna stand at the end is Intel will look a lot more arm than it does <affirmative> towards original set. Yeah, I think that's true actually. Yeah. And we'll see which one wins out, but mm-hmm <affirmative> like Mary Jo said, the more you add these capabilities and performance and blah blah, blah to arm, the more it starts to look like Intel. And in the end it's like, so we have these things, maybe let's pretend they perform the same. Battery life is the same, compatibility is like, eh, it's not quite there a couple little issues. Why would I buy the thing that's not quite there? Why not just buy the thing that always works? I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:26):
Every time there's a surface event, I have this major crisis of confidence. I don't understand what they're doing. And when they deliver, when this is treading water, they deliver these, not Apple is often criticized for, Oh, another iPhone look, it looks exactly like the other iPhone. Apple looks aggressive compared to surface. Surface. It's not like every year there's a new, every surface gets Rev every year. Some of them get revved and then sometimes six months later, one of them gets reved and then six months later, oh there's a few other ones. And there's no sense of planning or strategy or coherence or anything. It's just you never know what you're gonna get. Or all the surfaces on the latest Intel AMD slash Qualcomm chip. No they're not. They're not. Because they never, they just don't, don't,

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:14):
I think care, part of the reason they're not is they can't get the parts right. As you said, they're not among the top laptop vendors. You get in a line for chips, the one who make the most get 'em first <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:28):
So I guess the question, Tom Brady consumer,

Leo Laporte (01:20:31):
Even Tom Brady doesn't like the,

Paul Thurrott (01:20:34):
Well, he would've done that if it was an iPad too. But he got a big fight

Leo Laporte (01:20:38):
For doing that I believe. Sure.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:42):
When you spend money on a product that you intend to use for some number of years, you gotta make a decision. And <affirmative>, do you trust Surface A? I cannot, based on my experience with these products, recommend this to anybody. I can't. As much as I like the design, as much as I like the looks or whatever, I like them. I really do. They're pretty, Oh, should I buy? But

Leo Laporte (01:21:06):
They're not special. Yeah. What Mary, what are you having trouble with your surface?

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:11):
So last November is when my mother board died and I had to have it replaced because it was one month out of warranty. So that cost me 400 bucks. And then I had to buy a guarantee plan because the guy's like, I don't know how long this is gonna hold, to be honest, <laugh>. And now I'm having all kinds of sleep issues with it and Dr. I've had some Intel driver issues with it and I'm like, you know what? I've had a lot of PCs in my time writing about Microsoft and this is the first time I've had a PC that just is dying. And usually they last forever for me. And I'm like, Oh, maybe I should upgrade it. I don't know. It's been five years or six years. This is three years. And I, I'm very worried about this lasting much longer. So I've

Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
Kind of, Paul and I kind of had similar experiences, right? Paul with this, we had that Surface studio laptop, which never worked. <laugh>, right? Lisa had a surface laptop for about five minutes. You know what? I think I share

Paul Thurrott (01:22:12):
Feelings. I feel like I'm technical enough to deal with it. It's not something I would let my wife use. I wouldn't recommend it to family members of friends. And I, you kind of have to have this little talk. People are into tech, people watching this pocket, it's like, okay, you're technical, you're a Microsoft guy. I get it. But there's so many

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:33):
Better options. All these great hp, these Dells, I dunno, I feel like there's a lot of choice.

Leo Laporte (01:22:41):
That's the real strength of the PC ecosystem. It is. It's huge choice. And there's something for everyone. And I suppose mean Alex Gumble loves surfaces. We kept buying them surfaces.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:53):
So Microsoft is not gonna bog down a surface PC with crap where HP will in some cases. True. That said, the HP is in every way other way superior. So I guess it's up to you to decide what's important. But I still, we'll see, it's one of those things we gotta, we'll see what happens. This was just particularly underwhelming. And I think it's also kind of telling that they released these three products that are exactly the same as their predecessors. And then they announced these kind of little peripherals and it's like, oh those are kind of interesting. Not that we can't get this stuff from anywhere, right? But these kind of hybrid work devices or gadgets, mostly those kind of cool <affirmative>. I think the stuff they're doing with the adaptive accessories is amazing, frankly. I think that's cool. <affirmative>? Yeah. Bra.

Leo Laporte (01:23:47):
I thought that was great.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:48):
But you know, that was the leg. That's the legacy of Microsoft Hardware. They didn't make PCs, they made this stuff, They made keyboards software. By the way, I use a Microsoft keyboard mouse. Love it. Yeah. Yep. They're fantastic. They used to make webcams. I don't know if they still do, They should. Whatever. So what about

Leo Laporte (01:24:06):
The webcam and the sound demo? I thought that really looked good. I thought the webcam with the npu the hair dryer and the

Paul Thurrott (01:24:15):
Wind. Well, so the webcam was nothing special compared to what's out in the world. So hp, Dell, Lenovo all have all that stuff. The TV to his credit guy with really curly hair was like, I'm gonna blur my background. That's gonna be worst case scenario. And you can tell he had that halo around him cuz you just can't avoid that. And I give him credit for being honest about that. Yeah, it looked pretty good. I thought blow demo was a video that I saw that I can't trust. So we'll see.

Leo Laporte (01:24:46):
It did seem like it was really good.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:48):
Wow. Yep. A little too good. I guess we'll see. Not gonna be doing a web presentation in front of a guy with a leaf blower, but yeah. Okay. No, but you

Leo Laporte (01:24:57):
Might do it in a restaurant or a coffee shop

Mary Jo Foley (01:25:00):
For an apartment where they're doing above my house. So

Paul Thurrott (01:25:04):
Sit through a lot of presentations from PC makers and when the past two years has all been hybrid work. Hybrid work, that's all they talk about. So all the webcams now, or 10 ADP or 4K eight or not 4k, the 10 ADP are better, five megapixel, whatever. They have all this AI stuff to do, background noise, blah, blah. And it's always stuff like marking dog lawn equipment outside. They, they'll do a thing where they crunch a bag of potato chips and talk while they're doing it. And you can hear 'em talking, but you can't hear the potato chips <laugh> it. It's just like it's more real world. Not like, Hey, I'm standing five feet in front of a leafblower. Listen to that thing sort of optimizing a chip set for a benchmark. And it's like, but no one's not how people work. So maybe it was fantastic, but just don't, not a real world situation.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:53):
I don't know. We all have, everyone probably has used noise canceling headphones and you do, they kind suck on and it's like, and the sound just kind of disappears around you. It's wonderful if you're on a plane, it's wonderful. I used to wear those over the air headphones when I mowed the lawn, for example. But even that couldn't actually get rid of all that noise. I guess there are real world scenarios and then there are things where it's like I'm standing in front of a jet engine running full blast and you can still hear me. It's like, why are you standing in front of a jet engine? Nobody has meetings like that. <laugh>. What are you talking about? So yes, I'm sure it's good. I don't know. I just don't see anything I haven't seen from other PC makers. And by the way, I kind of don't wanna see anything like that from Microsoft. Because like you said, I think the strength of the PC ecosystem is the diversity. And I don't want Microsoft to take their best tech and not give it to everybody. I want it to be on Dell and HP in Lenovo. I don't want, And they do and they do.

Leo Laporte (01:26:59):
They don't. You just said they don't want

Paul Thurrott (01:27:03):
But to date, but this is the wey now. It's like, so wait, we're gonna have or excellent, we're gonna have surface specific features now because then it gets kind of like what are you doing? What is this that should it, shouldn't that just be part of Windows?

Leo Laporte (01:27:17):
That was always the contention. In fact, that's why those Windows Secrets books existed because there was always people say, Oh, there's the secret APIs that only Microsoft has access to. And that made people very angry. I don't know if it was true, but they do that. Our

Paul Thurrott (01:27:33):
Secret Windows APIs and Microsoft isn't the only one that knows about them, but the danger there is sometimes they disappear and then you'll have a product. This has happened to startup, I think, where you have products that rely on these APIs and then a new version of Windows 11 or whatever comes out and it's like, Hey we've been using for 15 years.

Leo Laporte (01:27:50):
Well, if they don't reveal it, they don't guarantee it. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:54):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. Anyway, the secret API I think is true. What's the point? I don't know. There's nothing, I didn't see anything that would make me wanna, All

Leo Laporte (01:28:06):
Right, you've talked to me down this,

Paul Thurrott (01:28:07):
Other than my normal, I liked surface surface laptop. I liked the design of it. And Mary Jo just TWiTtched cuz she's had such a bad experience with Surface laptop

Mary Jo Foley (01:28:16):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:28:17):
But that's a one off. I mean, not everybody's having motherboard failures. I,

Mary Jo Foley (01:28:21):
No, I loved it. I was so excited they finally made something that was laughable. I gave it a great review when I did one of my non reviewer reviews and I was just really disappointed that it hasn't held up as I even on the bottom, one of the little feet came off the other day, I'm like, Why? I'm not being rough on this thing. It's mostly just sitting on my desk, right? Like, ugh.

Leo Laporte (01:28:46):
All right, let me take that. And I do want to talk about the cloud and Apple and Apple and designer. Oh yes. We'll talk about all that in just a little bit. Windows Weekly on the air. Paul Mary Jo Foley Windows Weekly is brought to you by Hover. Paul, have you registered a domain name kind of a fun domain name recently? Recently, yeah. I mean you'd must had some awesome, I had some in the past. My favorite was Body by Chardonnay <laugh>. That's a website I wanna go to. Paul of Duty was one Paul of Duty. I love it. That's a good one. So this is one of the things geeks do, right? We get an idea, we go, Oh, and you go to hover.com and you register though domain. And I'll tell you why I go to hover.com because it's fast. There's no upsell.

Leo Laporte (01:29:40):
It's just like, come boom, boom, boom. They've got a great DNS set up. If you're an expert, if they have a one button connect if you're not. And I have to say one of the main reasons I would say go to hover.com is so that you don't get stuck at any given email provider. I think people often use their is P for email bad idea. Cuz then you've locked into that isp. What if you decide there's a better isp or even using Gmail? I get so many calls from people using AOL mail <laugh> every single time I go, Okay, that was a good idea in 1995, it's time to move on. One of the best reasons to register your own domain name is for email. Sure, it's great if you've got a blog body by chardonnay.com. I love it. Maybe you're creating a portfolio, building an online store could be, you're looking for work and you just wanna make a really memorable Hire leo.com redirect to the LinkedIn page.

Leo Laporte (01:30:47):
That's completely legit. But I have to say, if you're using email, especially if you're using it for a business, you really need a custom domain name. And this is where Hovers fantastic actually, even for a family. I don't wanna say it out loud cause I don't wanna get a lot of spam, but I have a family named email that everybody in the family uses. I think that's a really great reason to get a domain name. And connecting it to email@hover.com is great because it's easy to set up. You can have as many mailboxes as you need when you're domain renews every year. Your mailbox also, all of them will also renew their most popular mailbox. Very affordable, no brainer for business owners. And you can still, if you want, have web mail. They have a great web mail interface. It'll work with all your apps. So if you're using Outlook or whatever, it works just fine with those. But it's your custom domain name, Joe's donuts.com. And by the way, not just.com, you could have Joe's dot pizza. How about that? You could have, I mean, look at some of the domain names at Hover, they have hundreds of really great TLDs, including by the way.email, which I use.

Leo Laporte (01:32:01):
And hover is nice. They don't upsell. You go to some of these other domain registrars and they're 15 pages before you own the domain name. You want this, you want that? How'd you like some fries with that? We could do this. No Hover knows, for instance, that you want, who is domain privacy, Of course you do. So they just build it in. They don't ask you. It's, it's just part of the deal. And that's really important because if you, and I think it's really good to make it automatic cuz I think a lot of people don't realize that when you register a domain name, the address, the phone number that you register with, it is now public record. So you gotta get who is privacy hover just builds it in, protects you from spam, unwanted solicitations. I mentioned the Hover Connect, which makes it very easy to match your domain to your WordPress or your Square Space or your Shopify, whatever other stuff you've got.

Leo Laporte (01:32:51):
And this is important to, when it comes to email at Hover, you know this is not true of any free email solution at Hover, you're a customer, you're not the product, right? You're not the source of data. If you're using free email, there's a reason it's free. Take back control of your data with Reliable Tracker free email Hovers trusted by hundreds of thousands of customers who use hover domain names and email that turn their ideas into reality. Whether you're a developer, a photographer, a small business hover has something for you to expand your projects to get the visibility you want. And it's just kind of a geeky hobby. I have by now a hundred domain names at Hover. crazy stuff. I don't have anything as good as Body by Chardonnay. That's, that's exceptional. Paul of duty. I like that too. Go to hover.com/TWiT, get 10% off your first purchase of any domain extension for the entire first year. 10% off Hover H O V E r.com/TWiTt. Love hover. We've been with these guys for so long. We love you. Thank you. Hover for supporting a Windows Weekly and thank you Windows Weekly dozers and winners for supporting us by using that address.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:06):
You've heard of Rick Steve's, right? And through the

Leo Laporte (01:34:09):
Rick.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:09):
Yeah. Yeah. So we had a domain called Europe through the front door. It was gonna be like a home swap plug, but then the pandemic build that. So we let that one lapse.

Leo Laporte (01:34:18):
But what do you use for your Mexico journeys? Awake? What is it?

Paul Thurrott (01:34:24):
Eternal Spring.

Leo Laporte (01:34:26):
Eternal spring, Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:27):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:34:28):
I like that. I like that. Yeah. That's your YouTube handle now, by the way. Yeah, you can be at Exter Eternal Spring on YouTube, which is great.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:37):
Yeah. Well yeah, I try to get that obviously.

Leo Laporte (01:34:42):
Obviously. So <laugh>, I was very surprised at how much time Microsoft spent saying, and we work with iCloud photos <laugh>. I know, that was bizarre. Do you think the market's demanding that? Or they get some money from Apple or what's the deal?

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:01):
Well this was interesting cause they didn't really explain how these things happen that they announced around Apple. But there is somebody who works in the ISV organization at Microsoft who I quote in my story about this and he said, Excited about our partnership with Apple. So something has changed in the Microsoft, an Apple partnership. They

Leo Laporte (01:35:22):
Didn't like say, Oh, and now Apple has written Windows version of iCloud, or Apple has written Apple TV plus, but obviously it must have come from Apple, right?

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:33):
Or

Paul Thurrott (01:35:33):
The Apple as

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:33):
Of today, if you're a dev Windows Dev channel Insider, you can check out the new update to the Photos app that has the integration with the iCloud photos. So this lets you look at your iPhone photos right inside of One Drive.

Leo Laporte (01:35:53):
Are you surprised that do that with Amazon given their relationship with the Amazon store? I mean,

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:59):
But you know what? No. Who uses Amazon for? Yeah, I know some people do, but

Leo Laporte (01:36:03):
And they don't really like Google. They don't want use the Google photos. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:06):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:07):
I mean blah blah blah blah. Hold on. They're doing a lot with, They would love to use Google Photos. I think Google just won't do it.

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:14):
No. And they're already doing stuff with the Android, but not the way Google wants 'em to. Right? <laugh>? Well, okay. There are so many people, There are so many people at Microsoft and everywhere in the world who use Apple phones and not Android phones. So this is Microsoft Phone Link doesn't really work that well with iPhones. It almost doesn't work at all. Right? So this is a way that they're starting to find, it doesn't

Leo Laporte (01:36:36):
Work with Pixel, it works with Samsung. That's what it works

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:39):
For. I know it works with Samsung and the Surface Duo really well. Yeah. And other than that, no. So

Leo Laporte (01:36:45):
Apple's always said that they said that with iTunes, I mean Steve Jobs didn't wanna put iTunes on Windows, but somebody told Steve, Look, most of the people buying iPods use Windows. Most of the people by far who buy iPhones use Windows. You gotta live there.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:00):
I mean, it's probably still true today, although I think that the percentages have shifted a lot. But when Apple moved off of iTunes into Apple Music and whatever else, apps, and they did that first and mobile and then they did it on the Mac, the question was, well, okay, but what about Windows? And I don't know if you've used iTunes recently. It's unbelievably terrible.

Leo Laporte (01:37:24):
Oh, it was always terrible. Especially

Paul Thurrott (01:37:26):
But it today, so great. You would think, we have such amazing processors and everything. You think, okay, well maybe. No, it is a garbage application. So this Apple Music thing is long overdue. We've been expecting this for years. Apple TV is kind of a more recent phenomena. There is a web app. So I mean that works. Okay. If you just wanna watch whatever content. Yeah, iClouds integration and photos. Awesome. And Amazon should be in there too. And so should Google Photos. Yeah, these companies could get it together. I think Google Photos is the biggest one. And I would love to see that. I'd

Leo Laporte (01:38:03):
Love to see both. I mean, I put Google Photos on my iPhones. I use Apple iCloud photos and Google Photos.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:10):
<affirmative>, right? That's

Leo Laporte (01:38:11):
Why not. It's sensible things.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:12):
I think this is too, I think this all comes from Google. Google has a deep seated its trust of Microsoft that is no longer rational. It's just bizarre. No, it really isn't. It makes no sense. This is the most docile company on earth. I look at the Surface devices they just released.

Mary Jo Foley (01:38:30):
No, but look in the cloud though, like Google Cloud, they're like an heart pursuit of Azure. If you look at what they announced that their show this week, Google Cloud. It's almost Google Photos of what? Microsoft

Leo Laporte (01:38:42):
<laugh>. So they're compete. You feel like they're a competitor. I mean Microsoft is so much bigger than Google.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:47):
And the thing to do with putting your consumer surface service on a Windows pc pc, what's the difference? Can

Leo Laporte (01:38:52):
And Amazon. Amazon is

Paul Thurrott (01:38:53):
Compete and then they partner

Leo Laporte (01:38:54):
Is a much bigger competitor to Microsoft Azure. And they do and work with.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:59):
I just think Google is irrationally afraid of Microsoft. They just, they're so distressful with Microsoft. It's, I think it's hardwired into

Leo Laporte (01:39:05):
Their, Let's face

Mary Jo Foley (01:39:06):
It, Google the two have had a very cantankerous past.

Leo Laporte (01:39:09):
Yeah, Gmail, man, remember that?

Mary Jo Foley (01:39:10):
<laugh>? Yeah. Right?

Paul Thurrott (01:39:11):
Yeah. Oh, fondly

Leo Laporte (01:39:13):
<laugh>. But fondly. Paul loves

Paul Thurrott (01:39:16):
The grave years.

Mary Jo Foley (01:39:17):
No, you know what? I think the reason they played up this iCloud photos thing so much was they had no surprises at the surface event except for these Apple announcements. So literally the only surprises,

Leo Laporte (01:39:27):
Which is sad. That's really sad. It is

Paul Thurrott (01:39:31):
Sad. I mean, it's sad enough that, So Apple is rumored to be shipping a bunch of new devices this month and Apple in the rumor, we'll see what happens. But there's only two weeks left. Apple probably won't have an event because they just don't warrant an event. So they'll upgrade whatever it is, the iPad Pro, whatever they're doing.

Leo Laporte (01:39:48):
They'll probably do the same thing that Microsoft has done except without saying we're gonna have a surface event. They'll say they won't. Why

Paul Thurrott (01:39:55):
Even have the event

Leo Laporte (01:39:56):
Release that one hour, or in this case, 38 minute video,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:59):
Put a video on YouTube for each one and that's it.

Leo Laporte (01:40:02):
I thought they would have an event. I thought, boy, you're really missing an opportunity to get everybody's attention. But all, everybody at Mac Break weekly. Everybody said, No, no Leo, they're just Mark Gorman. They're just gonna, And what they do, they've done this before. They put out some videos. But more importantly, they give marque Brownley and I just, Zurich and all these influencers on YouTube, they give them the hardware and they say, Okay, on Thursday the 24 or Monday the 24th at 12 noon, you can release your reviews. And that's get a ton of attention. And I think

Paul Thurrott (01:40:36):
Apple, Microsoft should do this. Well, I mean Microsoft does do the same. But they could skip the event for something like this. Skip the event.

Leo Laporte (01:40:46):
It's so obvious. The embargo

Mary Jo Foley (01:40:47):
Was your holiday event. That's

Leo Laporte (01:40:48):
What they considered. It's so funny cuz the embargo was 7:00 AM my time today. Yeah. So before the event begins right at the point and Gadget the Verge, everybody, everybody. 30 articles, all the

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:01):
Prices. That's everybody. You

Leo Laporte (01:41:03):
Guys too, Everybody. 7:00 AM So the event was completely superfluous.

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:09):
Yeah. The way these embargoes are done with these things, they've gotta just gotta change. Cuz I feel like this just does not work. Right. Okay. Drop a million stories all at once, everybody at the same time. And what good is this right? <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (01:41:23):
Oh wait a minute. Guess who has the new Surface Studio? <laugh>.

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:28):
Oh hi Justine. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:41:31):
Yeah, yeah. <laugh>. Does she

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:35):
Use Use Windows? Her name I, Justine, come on.

Leo Laporte (01:41:38):
I she's look at there. She's in a Microsoft store.

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:42):
Yeah. They

Leo Laporte (01:41:42):
Love her. Oh she does. I at this point, and I love Justine, I have to think she gets paid for this stuff. I don't. I don't. Or

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:52):
Microsoft wants Apple influencers to be Surfacer influencers, right?

Leo Laporte (01:41:56):
<laugh> of content. Yeah. She's got a podcast with Panos Pane. I mean yeah, they may not actually pay her to do this. They're probably to make this stop. I turned off. Please make this stop. Hey,

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:12):
Probably there's your sponsorship. Sponsorship opportunities, right? Like, hey, we'll put something on your site. Well

Leo Laporte (01:42:18):
I would think that if this is who I go to learn about Windows updates, it have to say, Oh my God, AD or something like that. If she's getting paid to do it,

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:29):
You would assume it'd have to be, She would have to do that disclaimer. Although there are a lot of sites that don't do this.

Leo Laporte (01:42:34):
Oh, I know. It's this other girl's like, who's this company again? That's, That's her sister. No, don't. Jenna, she's great. I,

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:44):
Jenna,

Leo Laporte (01:42:45):
Let's move on from this way. Okay. There's, Wait a minute though. This is cool. Look. See we got Chris Capella, but they get Panos pane. I'll never get pans. I was wondering where my headphones went. No, I know they've got em. <laugh>. Okay, so we won't get Ps. You think he takes it to heart when Paul says mean things? Yep. I do. <laugh>.

Mary Jo Foley (01:43:06):
Well I think we're not

Leo Laporte (01:43:07):
Impulse. Yeah, I know he does. Let's put it that way. I'm positive. He does. He does.

Mary Jo Foley (01:43:11):
So

Leo Laporte (01:43:13):
Yeah, I know it kills me. Yeah, because for the first or I would say 10 years of podcasting, maybe five years of podcasting, it was the bloggers that got all the attention, got the invitations. Yeah. Oh yeah. And then this is always, they skipped podcasting entirely and jumped to YouTube. <laugh> like, wait, hey don't I get Hello? No,

Mary Jo Foley (01:43:37):
I

Leo Laporte (01:43:38):
Know. Skip right over podcasting. I think we're pretty influential. I mean honestly, but

Mary Jo Foley (01:43:46):
We're not like they look for Apple influencers, right? Influencers review the, Well,

Leo Laporte (01:43:52):
I don't think it's just Apple. I think they look for

Mary Jo Foley (01:43:53):
Influences. No, but heavily. Heavily, right?

Leo Laporte (01:43:56):
Wow. I mean Justine also does stuff

Paul Thurrott (01:43:58):
For Samsung. Listen, feel like this is not a new strategy. When they launched the Zoom and what year? What was that? 2006

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:05):
Or something? The same thing, right? Yeah. They

Paul Thurrott (01:44:06):
Skipped over the tech press and went right to Playboy Magazine and whatever. It was all this. They wanted to go mainstream. They're like, we, yeah, we want this to be popular with normal people, not with you guys. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:44:20):
My God. Here microsoft.com I Justine top picks for back to school.

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:26):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:44:27):
It just,

Leo Laporte (01:44:29):
Oh wow. The thing that's amazing about Justine is she does that and it doesn't hurt her reputation in the Apple world at all.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:37):
It should <affirmative>. It really should. It's

Leo Laporte (01:44:40):
Weird.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:41):
And

Leo Laporte (01:44:41):
I love her. I mean, I know her well and she's a great person and it's hard to make a living as a YouTuber. You

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:49):
Gotta do

Leo Laporte (01:44:50):
What you gotta do. But you, you'd think that at some point people would say, Well what is it? Are you are excited about the Surface Precision Mouse?

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:59):
<laugh> <laugh>? Is

Leo Laporte (01:45:01):
That your new jam or what? Yeah. And

Paul Thurrott (01:45:05):
That's really just the Apple stuff. We know it is really,

Leo Laporte (01:45:07):
Right now she's definitely got the new Apple laptops and the new IMAX or whatever the Mac minis and she's recording videos for those coming out next week.

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:18):
Yeah, I remember when Duo one came out, they only sent it to 50 people and I was one of them. And I was so surprised. I'm like, why did they send this to me? Yeah. And then I found out later, No, it was because I had an Android phone and I used Windows and they knew that, right? They're like, So you're gonna be able to pick up the tools

Paul Thurrott (01:45:36):
Easily. I have a Windows pc, Android phone. They didn't send me one. So no. Cause they knew, I would've been honest about it.

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:44):
Well I was very,

Paul Thurrott (01:45:45):
I'm sorry about that. I meant obviously you're honest about it. I mean, I would've of, Yeah, I would've been very critical of it. There's no doubt

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:56):
About it. I was pretty critical. I think everybody who got one was the hardware's really beautiful and the experience is really terrible. And I think it kind of, everybody who got one kind of <laugh>, but you know, never know how they're thinking or why they're thinking. Cuz that one was like, that caught me very much by surprise cuz I'm like, Oh, they're gonna give it to all the usual younger,

Paul Thurrott (01:46:17):
I think they wanted to shoot for non-technical people and maybe, I think that was part of it. No, I really, That's

Leo Laporte (01:46:23):
Interesting. Yeah. That

Paul Thurrott (01:46:24):
Could have been, because I'm gonna get too caught up in the dual screens. Don't make sense where you're like, I don't know. I'll give it a chance. I,

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:31):
I used it a lot and really tried to give it a chance. I did <laugh>. Sure.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:36):
Yeah. I just think you'd have to do both. I don't think going to after influencers who by the way are just flavor of the second and gonna move on to the next big thing and Microsoft is never the next big thing for these people. It's not necessarily the best approach because they're gonna be all over the map and on different stuff. And if you think people care at all about Microsoft products, you don't understand them at all.

Leo Laporte (01:47:01):
Yeah, right.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:05):
So they get the little photo up and they get the, it's just sad, frankly.

Leo Laporte (01:47:12):
I do know that they did not see Mark has brownley with it. Or maybe they did, but he's still on the Pixel. He's makes an Android. Mostly known as an Android guy though. Right? And he's technical so maybe they feel like that. No, we want to go with the creator types for these <affirmative>

Mary Jo Foley (01:47:31):
Maybe.

Leo Laporte (01:47:34):
Huh.

Mary Jo Foley (01:47:37):
But a more upbeat note. Leo, your favorite topic is coming up on the next I

Leo Laporte (01:47:41):
Just designer.

Mary Jo Foley (01:47:43):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:47:44):
So I thought that was really interesting. It wasn't just designer is gonna dolly two and you can have misshapen cakes in your cake bakery shop invitation, but also in Bing, Bing search. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:00):
Mm-hmm <affirmative> B, how Bing already lets you do image search. So this idea they have is this tool called Image Creator using Dolly two. And so you can type a description of some image you're looking for with context. An image creator will build it or find it. Right. So pretty interesting also then they have the template site which is create.microsoft.com. A lot of this had leaked also thanks to the walking cap before today's announcement. But I signed up to get on the preview list and so I got a note saying you're on the list for the preview. So anybody can sign up. Go to designer drop microsoft.com and you can sign up if you wanna try out the web free, web based preview when it's available. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:48:49):
I got this. Does the Bing thing work yet or is that down the

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:52):
Road to No, that's coming next year. Image I love that is next year.

Leo Laporte (01:48:56):
I think that's really, It's too bad it's not now though. Cuz this is the crest of the wave right now of ai. Right? Art. By next year it be

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:05):
So else. Sorry I'm wrong. They will make available soon, in quotes, a limited preview of image creator for select geographies, <affirmative>. So the preview of it will be out sooner rather than,

Leo Laporte (01:49:16):
Do you guys have designer invites? I signed up, but I can't.

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:19):
I just got a got, just got. I'm on the wait list. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:49:24):
Yeah, me too. I'm on the wait list. Yeah, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:27):
Sorry. Yeah, so if you know what Canva is, this is that basically

Leo Laporte (01:49:30):
<laugh> that Interesting. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:32):
Yeah. We just talked about Canva because Adobe bought what Figma and has their own Adobe Creative Cloud, whatever it's called, the basic version. And this is big right now.

Leo Laporte (01:49:42):
Yeah. How much did Adobe pay for Figma? A billion. Yeah. So not that Microsoft film designer but Or

Paul Thurrott (01:49:53):
Two thirds of

Leo Laporte (01:49:55):
Division. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:56):
That was funny. This week, or I think I saw somewhere the head of Canvas saying, We're going after Microsoft. I'm like, Guys there going after you, so get ready <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:50:04):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:50:05):
He's like, We wanna be Microsoft or be the next Microsoft. I'm like, Yeah, well this is a small product for Microsoft and this is your whole business, so it's gonna be challenging for you <laugh>, but good luck

Leo Laporte (01:50:20):
<laugh>. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:50:21):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:50:23):
But

Mary Jo Foley (01:50:23):
Designer looks really nice. Yeah, the integration with Dolly makes it much more interesting. You know what? This reminded me of Sway in some ways, right? Yeah. They're trying to make design easier than PowerPoint for normal people who are not designers. And you can just type in, make a beautiful forest with a queen and it'll bring you a choice of images. This is what I need. Cuz I am not creative. I don't know how to use PowerPoint very well and I'm like, yes, this is exactly what I need <laugh>. So yeah, it's cool. And it's the same designer that's in PowerPoint Designer on the back end. It's that same technology. So if you've ever used PowerPoint designer, it's taking that technology, which they say is AI technology and they're applying it now to a separate app. Interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:51:11):
Good. What do you think the timeframe is for the public release of that?

Mary Jo Foley (01:51:22):
I thought they said next year, but maybe I'm wrong on that. Maybe they may not have said a timeframe for that.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:30):
Lots of previews today.

Mary Jo Foley (01:51:31):
Yeah, a lot of previews. Yep. <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:51:36):
Remember they had two ignites in one year for some reason. <laugh>? Yeah, I think they've given up on that. Yes.

Mary Jo Foley (01:51:42):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:51:44):
Okay. Yes. Is there any news now for about Windows 11? Is there anything

Paul Thurrott (01:51:51):
To say? Yes, I did. I wanted to share something. I actually wanted to share a few, some things. First of all, I think it was two, maybe even three weeks ago, whenever 22 H two at first ki come out, I looked at a bunch of the review laptops I have and I kind of gave a little report on which got it, which didn't what happen since then. Microsoft last week expanded the availability of 22 H two and now all but one of those laptops has received it. Oh wow. Which is kind of interesting. And the one that didn't receive it, so what I wanted to see, which is, hey, Windows 11 is coming. You're not getting it yet, but it is coming. So there you go. That's how this should have worked from day one. So that's great. <affirmative>. The other thing is, actually there's two more things.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:33):
So there's some confusion around the new features that are coming in October slash November, right? So yesterday Microsoft released a cumulative update as part of Patch Tuesday for Windows 1122 H two. Neil went actually wrote a story and said, Hey, this enables those new features. No it doesn't. And I don't know where that came from. It does not. This cumulative update updates the build number to 22 6, 21 dot 6 74 I think, or five. I've installed it now on four different computers. It doesn't do anything with the new features. But Microsoft announced how they were gonna deliver these new features. I mean it was in a footnote almost. But in the C week update, which is next week, they'll be an optional, sorry, a preview version of the update. So if you go and seek it and find it, you can install it. That will give you access to those new features.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:25):
But then the public normal version will come out in November. So patch Tuesday, That's on patch Tuesday, right? On the normal b B week patch Tuesday. Exactly. So yeah, I was really surprised to see this. I my, the guy who writes our news now, Lauren Pat, we had a long spastic exchange spastic on my part <laugh> because I have so many different computers and I wanted to try, I tried installing this update on so many different computers and no, it's not there. The, oh, the third one was, this is classic. So one of the other things that came up when 22 H two came up was like, what's the build number? Right? Great. If you get a, for most people it's normally you upgrade, you get 22 H two. You look at the build number, it should say not anymore, but today, before yesterday would say 22 6, 21, 5 21.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:14):
Right? That was the build number Most people were seeing. I said at the time, I was actually seeing three different build numbers. I it's not up there anymore, but I carted out an old hp, not old, like two year old HP. And it is on, was on, I blew it away, but it was on a fourth bill number, which was 22 6 21. I'm forgetting now. 4 74 I think was the number. Yeah. Never in the insider program. I have no idea why I blew this thing away. I installed a fresh copy of what should have been 5 21 and when it came through and went, you'd sign in for the first time, check the bill number. It was 6 74 because during the process it says checking for updates. I bet it installed. That cu you during setup. So forget that

Leo Laporte (01:54:59):
One. Let's get you a new one.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:01):
But if there is a lesson to be learned from this, it is do not be like me and obsess over this stuff because it honestly doesn't matter. But <laugh> 22, 6, 21, anything. You're on 22 H two. So just don't worry about it. Right. If you want the tabs that whatever other new features are coming, there are tools out there. V tool is one that will enable 'em. Just wait a week next Tuesday you're gonna be able to get it. They did

Leo Laporte (01:55:26):
Show that, didn't they? At the

Paul Thurrott (01:55:29):
Event? You'll get it. I have 22 anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:55:31):
6 23 7 41 7 7 41.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:36):
Oh good. Oh no. Cause you're still in some weird insider thing. Somehow

Leo Laporte (01:55:41):
<laugh>. I know.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:43):
I think you're seeing a bug. No, that said, that might be the build number of the thing that comes out Tuesday and in November. So maybe you're on the 22 H two ain't done until the October update ships kind of thing. Yeah, maybe that's what it is.

Leo Laporte (01:55:57):
Yeah. Cuz I can only guess they still haven't slammed the window. I know,

Paul Thurrott (01:56:01):
I know it. Well remember 22 H two is technically not all there yet.

Mary Jo Foley (01:56:06):
<laugh>. Yeah. Right. I know.

Leo Laporte (01:56:07):
Yep. Technically crazy. Crazy.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:10):
I know. I'm so sorry. Even talking about this, it it's make sense to anyone listening to this, It can't. I am still,

Leo Laporte (01:56:18):
It

Paul Thurrott (01:56:18):
Doesn't make sense as it's coming outta my mouth.

Leo Laporte (01:56:21):
Cued for un enrollment is my Sure. That's that's gonna be in my tombstone. <laugh>. Yep. Ju for enrollment. Cued for UN enrollment.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:29):
Your UN enrollment has been accepted.

Leo Laporte (01:56:32):
<laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:56:33):
Also, the other thing we know nothing about still is where is Windows 10 22 H two No word. Right. I'm right. I'm guessing next week if they follow the path they did with Windows 1122 H two, it'll be the week after patch Tuesday. So it might be next Tuesday. Yeah. But they have said nothing. All they've said is October. That's it

Paul Thurrott (01:56:52):
Mary Jo. They'll let you know when you need to know.

Mary Jo Foley (01:56:54):
Exactly. It's a need to know basis and I guess we don't need to know you.

Leo Laporte (01:56:58):
Were kind worried about it. We

Mary Jo Foley (01:56:59):
Also, we don't know the list of features in it. We can't even tell you what's in it. We can't tell you anything. So sorry, they just were not talking about Windows 10. It's

Paul Thurrott (01:57:07):
True. It's not gonna be big stuff. It's

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:08):
Not gonna be big. No, it's gonna be small. It's gonna be one of those enablement packages. We know that. Right. And it's gonna be a very small update. So if you're already on Windows 10 22 H, no, 21 H two, you'll get as an enablement package. Right. Oh

Paul Thurrott (01:57:26):
God. Help me for asking this question. But could you tell me your build number again?

Leo Laporte (01:57:30):
Okay, let do Wink

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:32):
<laugh>. I think he gets a, I was trying to figure from past Tuesday, don't

Leo Laporte (01:57:35):
You? I can show you.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:37):
I'm nervous about it because just this

Leo Laporte (01:57:39):
Says I start tiny. You probably can't read it. 2 6 2 three.seven 4 6 2 3.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:46):
So 6 2 3 is a beta channel.

Leo Laporte (01:57:53):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:54):
Build. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
Cuz that's acute front enrollment. <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:57:57):
It's never, you're gonna be unenrolled cuz Beta doesn't equate to any version of Windows.

Leo Laporte (01:58:01):
Oh right. Yeah. This says installed in June. It's your fault,

Paul Thurrott (01:58:05):
Paul. So here's, okay, so I feel like we might have had this conversation, but I'm just gonna throw this out as a bit of speculation cuz we just don't know. They Don won't talk about this. If you're in the release preview right now, you will eventually be able to unenroll automatically because that thing will come out as the October update. Right? Right. That's gonna happen. Right? The thing you have is 22 6, 23.

Leo Laporte (01:58:27):
The thing I have, this

Paul Thurrott (01:58:29):
Is a beta channel, but it's the split. Remember there's two parts there's 7, 2, 3 means you're getting the new features. So you see, should see tabs. Okay. In File Explorer.

Leo Laporte (01:58:42):
Let me open file File Explorer. Yeah. And then tabs. Oh yeah, I do. Look. Oh my god. New feature. I got tabs.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:49):
Oh, so that makes sense. But here's the thing. Yeah. At no point does the beta channel turn into a version of Windows. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:58:55):
So I'll never

Paul Thurrott (01:58:56):
Unclear how you're gonna be able to enroll. I cannot. My guess is that sometime after this October slash November update comes out, they will provide a window for people to make this shift. Because otherwise you'll never be unenrolled. Right? Yeah. Because the beta channel is not a version of Windows. It's one of the, This is a weird, So this is a problem. This is a big problem in Arm because there's no way out. If you take an arm pc, put it in the beta channel of the dev channel, you could never come back. There's no way. There are no ISOs for arm PCs. There's no far no legal, no easy, normal, whatever. I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:59:32):
Obviously, isn't there a promise of this? I kind of thought we might see that Ignite. I thought

Paul Thurrott (01:59:36):
It's a, didn't they

Leo Laporte (01:59:37):
Say this <laugh>?

Paul Thurrott (01:59:38):
But it doesn't exist. So it's a one way dead industry. Right. But now, because of the way the Beta and Jeb channels work, those are also one way dead end streets. Now the nice thing is you can just download Theso, make a disc or whatever and you know, can install it easily. So if you want to get out of it, you can. But then again, see the thing is you have a Dell computer. Yeah. Probably has some Dell stuff on it. Yeah. It's not a hundred percent guaranteed that if you do a clean install with a downloaded Microsoft iso, you're gonna get all this stuff back. You know, you's gonna live here. You wanna way out of this. You wanna Yeah, well you're kind of stuck. You're in the freeway and there's no,

Leo Laporte (02:00:13):
I'm queued for an enrollment lanes. There's no off ramp. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:16):
<laugh>. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:00:16):
But I will get likes. I mean, this is good, right?

Paul Thurrott (02:00:20):
Yeah. You are getting the new features. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:22):
One weird thing is that this recent files <laugh> goes back to files I haven't opened since 2019, which is like a little odd. That's normal, huh? Right?

Paul Thurrott (02:00:33):
Yep. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:34):
<laugh>. Okay. Here's all my sketch images. Wow. I was wondering where those went. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:42):
Yeah. So you got the new file Explorer. So that's all the new stuff, not just tabs. You have the new Navbar, you have that favorites thing in there.

Leo Laporte (02:00:48):
Well, Wahoo. I'm so happy. <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:52):
Nice. So you're in beta. You're not in release preview. That's, That's the problem. Well, that's a problem. So we'll see. I didn't do anything honest. If they ever announce anything, I will think of you immediately, cuz this is a big problem. And I'll let you know because I think you are gonna have a window. But they have never said that. They have never

Leo Laporte (02:01:08):
Promised it. Well, I'm cute friend enrollment. That's my life, right?

Paul Thurrott (02:01:11):
That's right. There's like, Yeah, you blinker on and no one's let, Ian, how's this just flying by? Merge?

Leo Laporte (02:01:19):
I wanna merge.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:21):
Yep. Not happening.

Leo Laporte (02:01:22):
Uhuh.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:23):
Sorry.

Leo Laporte (02:01:25):
Do I get third party widgets?

Paul Thurrott (02:01:29):
Actually, you probably do. Oh, not yet. So this is in the dev channel now. Oh, okay. So I'll get it when it out. This probably was a build announcement too, right? Or, Well, maybe not. Sometime over the summer. At some point Microsoft said we're gonna allow third parties to build widgets for the widgets experience in Windows 11. This is now available in the dev channel.

Leo Laporte (02:01:49):
They talked about focus, which surprised me cuz I've had that all along. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (02:01:55):
They talked about a lot. About a lot of old

Leo Laporte (02:01:57):
Features. Okay. That's what I thought this isn like they were like,

Paul Thurrott (02:02:01):
Yeah, they've changed some,

Leo Laporte (02:02:03):
It's, something's happened. But this was all, I've had this.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:06):
So Focus has been renamed to Do Not Disturb in 22 H two. Oh. And then there's a, There's also a focus, I think it's called Focus actually. It's just called Focus Sessions. Yeah. Which is a clock feature. <affirmative>. Right. Or it maybe Focus Sessions was the old name. See I lose track. It's

Leo Laporte (02:02:21):
Such a terrible button.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:23):
Well click the left thing on the top left there. This will bring up the cool app.

Leo Laporte (02:02:28):
Oh, that's nice. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:29):
The idea there is you have a little timer that counts down. It's just all you need. You can turn it on and enough

Leo Laporte (02:02:34):
My half hour focus. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:02:35):
They want you to they to look at

Leo Laporte (02:02:38):
Eyes. Yeah. Nothing fancy. Nothing fancy. That's cool. Yeah. I always thought it was funny that while I'm focusing I can listen to music. I'm surprised they don't have a, Well,

Paul Thurrott (02:02:48):
So apparently Spotify has playlists that are designed to not distract you. They're, they're

Leo Laporte (02:02:54):
Spotify. I don't wanna know anything about that. Nor do I wanna know about my to-do list. Let's, let's just collapse that. Yeah. Okay. My, I'm making progress every day and every way I'm getting better and better. Good.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:10):
I also open a focus, I don't think it's called Focus Session, I think it's called Focus. I think that was

Leo Laporte (02:03:15):
The nature. I just looked

Paul Thurrott (02:03:16):
At it. It's just focus. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:03:17):
Focus. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:18):
Used to be called focus session on

Leo Laporte (02:03:19):
It.

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:20):
When I clicked on it, it says Focusing <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:23):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:25):
I dunno. Focusing.

Mary Jo Foley (02:03:28):
I'm focusing. I don't wanna be

Leo Laporte (02:03:29):
Focusing on We'll love you. Let you know every hour you're focusing. Focusing again, I don't want, That's not Do not Disturb. That's a separate, Not

Paul Thurrott (02:03:38):
Disturb is I, They've changed. I'm sorry. They've changed the terminology. So Do Not Disturb is not a new feature, but it has a new name. Focus session was an old name. I don't remember if that became Do Not Disturb or if that just became, So

Leo Laporte (02:03:51):
It's two separate things. It looks like I got focus,

Paul Thurrott (02:03:53):
It is two separate things and I

Leo Laporte (02:03:54):
Get not disturb.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:56):
Right. So Do not Disturb is just no notifications. Yeah. Focus is do not Disturb plus other stuff with the timer. Yeah. The ability to integrate, to do the ability to integrate with Spotify, et cetera.

Leo Laporte (02:04:09):
Right, right, right.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:10):
It's sort of like do not disturb. Plus plus,

Leo Laporte (02:04:13):
Plus plus.

Mary Jo Foley (02:04:15):
Nice plus Pack <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:18):
I have not written this chapter yet. I find it confusing. <laugh>. So we will get to that. We're gonna get to that clearly.

Leo Laporte (02:04:26):
Okay. It's confusing yesterday, of course my meta had its Meta Connect event, thereby stomping on Panos pane <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:40):
Well, with the help of Sat Adella, right?

Leo Laporte (02:04:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Satya shows up for Mark. Well it's ceo. CEO to ceo. You just wouldn't understand. Sure. Not for Panos. He shows up for Zuck and goes on and on about how it's a kind of, I have to, I'm gonna be honest with you. Remember that rumor that Microsoft was given up on HoloLens? Yeah. Yeah. This is not gonna help. They're denying. Well,

Paul Thurrott (02:05:10):
Okay. But think about this in the perspective of what Microsoft does everywhere. We often talk about how Microsoft will meet their customers where they are. And this is not that a lot of their customers are on Oculus equipment. Exactly. But if there are gonna be, I'll call them competing metaverses or competing er, Mr. AR solutions or whatever, <affirmative>, Microsoft should be there.

Leo Laporte (02:05:34):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:34):
They should be there. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:05:36):
And it really is a shift for Oculus because it's been a gaming thing right Up to now. You know better, you know how to use Windows with it. They're actually showing Windows in office.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:48):
They're coming up with their own kind of teams style meeting. It's in teams environments. Right. But there's a thing, Meta has something called something Horizon or Horizon something.

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:59):
Work Workplaces. Horizon Workspace or places.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:02):
Yeah. I dunno, I'm not gonna, I am never gonna expend any energy figuring out what they're doing, but I know they have their own thing. So I think it's interesting on both sides that they're partnering with each other. They're allowing teams into the meta thing. They're allowing meta into the teams thing. There's a little bit of a chocolate and peanut butter thing going on here. But <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:06:22):
Well, and the HoloLens is very much augmented reality. You see through it, you see what's going on. Yeah, that's right. And this Oculus, even though it has external cameras, it is, Yeah. Covering your eyes, right?

Mary Jo Foley (02:06:36):
Sure. Now, at the end of the Microsoft blog post about this, yesterday, there's a mention about the HoloLens. And I said, we are still committed to the HoloLens. Okay. Don't misread what this announcement's about, blah blah, blah.

Leo Laporte (02:06:47):
Okay. It makes sense.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:49):
The week before Google killed Stadia, they said the same thing.

Leo Laporte (02:06:51):
Yeah. We're not killing it really,

Paul Thurrott (02:06:53):
Honestly. They literally announced new features for Stadia six days before they killed the service.

Leo Laporte (02:06:58):
Unbelievable. That's

Mary Jo Foley (02:06:59):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:06:59):
So Google

Mary Jo Foley (02:07:01):
See?

Leo Laporte (02:07:01):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:02):
Well, I'm just saying there's no guarantee.

Mary Jo Foley (02:07:04):
Yeah, no, there's a lot of uncertainties. They reportedly canceled HoloLens three. Alex Kipman is out. There's been no motion on the HoloLens front in a while. So yeah, I mean, if they do another version of the HoloLens, my guess is it's very focused on industrial metaverse stuff and it Right. Ties in with Dynamics. It's not

Leo Laporte (02:07:24):
In the military.

Mary Jo Foley (02:07:25):
A consumer plate, right? <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:28):
It'd be less objectionable to kill an avatar than a real soldier. So make it a cartoon. It's fun.

Leo Laporte (02:07:36):
It doesn't look like it would be much fun to be operating Windows or office in vr.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:44):
Well, so the reason is those things are 2D experiences that are just, if you've ever used Windows mixed reality, it looks like a floating picture in space. It's just flat. So yeah, the office that Microsoft is bringing to Oculus is just the office web apps in a 2D floating experience. That's what

Leo Laporte (02:08:02):
It's, But I don't want a 3D Microsoft word, so I'm not unhappy. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:08:07):
Oh no, That's gonna be what Loop does.

Mary Jo Foley (02:08:09):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:08:09):
That's why we're Wait a loop. It's the 3D stuff. Look

Leo Laporte (02:08:12):
What's behind your jock's. So it's

Mary Jo Foley (02:08:14):
Clippy. It wasn't just even that, it wasn't just even teams in the Microsoft apps. Then they started talking about Windows 365 is coming to me is stuff, and they, they're like an in tune and Azure active in like

Leo Laporte (02:08:27):
That

Mary Jo Foley (02:08:27):
Baffle be doing here. Got who

Leo Laporte (02:08:29):
Wants to do in tune what IT professional. Well,

Paul Thurrott (02:08:32):
Actually I can tell you, but so yeah, it's gotta be, It's no, it's an MDM play for Oculus. Right? In other words, it

Leo Laporte (02:08:38):
Is. You

Paul Thurrott (02:08:39):
Deploy this device into workplace

Leo Laporte (02:08:41):
That makes, It's not, it's you're gonna be doing in tune. No, no.

Paul Thurrott (02:08:44):
You're not gonna be manage. Okay. No, no, no. It's to manage.

Mary Jo Foley (02:08:47):
Oh, who knows the way things are going. But I mean

Leo Laporte (02:08:49):
No, but it will be an mdm, it'll be a mobile device. That's

Paul Thurrott (02:08:52):
Right. That's all. Its, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:08:53):
Right. Windows 365 is a little more confusing. Like you're in your win Windows 365 environment inside of Horizon Worlds.

Leo Laporte (02:09:02):
I

Paul Thurrott (02:09:03):
Know. Well, okay, so again, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. And again, the notion of meet your customers where they are point of windows. One of the points of Windows 365 isn't that you have Windows and then you gotta run Windows 365 inside of it. It's that you have a Windows app or some work thing, whatever it is that runs in Windows, it's hosted in the cloud. You can access it on an iPad. On your phone. Yeah. On your Oculus room. That's all it is. Right. Your app will be available where you are. I think that's the least.

Mary Jo Foley (02:09:30):
Yeah. The gaming though. Okay. The gaming wording was the weakest and the most wishy washing Microsoft blog post. It was like, yeah, we're looking at Game Pass, like how to do that, blah, blah, blah. They made it very, I don't know, maybe they didn't wanna give away the farm, but I'm like how wording on that was so non-it compared to I'm

Leo Laporte (02:09:50):
I'm just, I mean, Valve, the valve store is on five steam. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:09:56):
But what does the valve store look like on V? But in other words, you go in there and you run Half Life two and it just, how does it work?

Leo Laporte (02:10:02):
You get, Well if there are 3D games, you get 'em in the store and they're showed in your library <affirmative>.

Paul Thurrott (02:10:07):
How do they display inside of the vibe

Leo Laporte (02:10:09):
Is you're in a room

Paul Thurrott (02:10:11):
Like a Roman, it's on a flat thing

Leo Laporte (02:10:14):
Sing and you could point at

Paul Thurrott (02:10:15):
A theater or something. Yeah. So they showed, there's a screenshot that shows the, well it's the Xbox apps, but we'll call it the Xbox Cloud gaming app, for lack of a better term. A as the same thing I described for Office on the Web. It's just a flat 2d. That's what they showed. So they have this idea that we're gonna bring Xbox Cloud gaming to the Metaverse, but right now it's not interactive VR games. Although maybe that will happen. It's just flat 2D games on a flat surface inside the Metaverse.

Leo Laporte (02:10:47):
Yeah. But need you kind of, I mean that's helpful. And for Microsoft, if they're going, Do they have VR games in the

Paul Thurrott (02:10:57):
Yeah, so Microsoft has Windows mixed reality and they have a little, the environment. You walk around there, you can, I'm sure they'd like to

Leo Laporte (02:11:03):
Have

Paul Thurrott (02:11:03):
Photos on a wall

Leo Laporte (02:11:05):
And Yep, yep. Yeah. So that's the idea, I guess. Right? You're gonna have some, I

Paul Thurrott (02:11:09):
Mean I, it's been a long time since I've used it, but I would imagine if you wanted to play Doom or something, even some modern game, it would just be, it'd be a fake wall inside of the fake house and it would project onto it and it would just be a 2D experience. I

Leo Laporte (02:11:24):
Wanna play No Man Sky, which in the VR would be pretty cool and

Paul Thurrott (02:11:28):
Oh my God, yes. And turn around and actually be in the environment. Of course. Yeah. That'd be amazing. And that's where, yeah, these modern 3D games could be unbelievable other than you would need a barf bag.

Leo Laporte (02:11:38):
Yeah. And they really, I do get nauseated. I'm one of those people who just

Paul Thurrott (02:11:41):
Getted

Mary Jo Foley (02:11:42):
Guys, you mentioned Doom. We have to mention Doom on Notepad, don't we? Somebody brought Doom to

Leo Laporte (02:11:48):
Know.

Mary Jo Foley (02:11:50):
Somebody has to say it. I said it. There it is.

Paul Thurrott (02:11:52):
I really checked out on the Doom running on anything thing. It will. That

Leo Laporte (02:11:56):
Is' not anything.

Paul Thurrott (02:11:57):
Well it will, It runs apa.

Leo Laporte (02:11:59):
No, they got it running on the touch bar on Mac laptops. You can have run. Do

Paul Thurrott (02:12:05):
I think it runs on John Deere tractors? It. Oh sure

Leo Laporte (02:12:09):
It does. That's the corn game though. You're harvesting.

Paul Thurrott (02:12:12):
Yeah, there's in harvest and

Mary Jo Foley (02:12:13):
Corn, it runs anywhere. Sure.

Leo Laporte (02:12:15):
It does literally run on John Deere detractors. Alright in that note, let's do the Xbox segment and get the hell out of here. Okay, let's do it. I'm cud for enrollment, so you better hurry up.

Paul Thurrott (02:12:27):
<laugh>. What cued for enrollment by the way. Great. Show title This. I

Leo Laporte (02:12:32):
Was like,

Paul Thurrott (02:12:35):
So the second country to do so has now okayed Microsoft's active Vision Blizzard acquisition. That country is Brazil. The only reason this, Well, it's interesting because they okayed it. I don't think they're one of the major heavyweights we're worried about, but anyway, they did okay. But as is always the case through throughout this process, there's been a bunch of documents leaked through on both sides. Not leaked, I actually just published, So Sony has kind of weighed in. Obviously they don't want it to happen. Microsoft has weighed in Microsoft talked revenues for the first time, and I don't actually have it in my article, but I believe the figure was last year 2021, Microsoft made, I think it was 1.9 billion from they called it Xbox Cloud Gaming. So we're gonna, we'll call it Game pass.

Paul Thurrott (02:13:23):
So it's a thing, I guess it's getting there. I think they were trying to show that it was business that has potential and was not a major factor, but it will be. Right? So it's heading there. So that's good. This is the part of our industry that I kind of hate. I don't, for lack of a better term I don't like which is Phil Spencer appears in a video and people start and analyzing what's on his shelf and they're like, Oh my God, look, he's got an Xbox prototype up there. Or actually they thought it was the new streaming stick thing we've all been waiting for and there was so much talk about it. He actually had to come up publicly and say, Guys, it's just an old prototype. We're not what we're doing.

Leo Laporte (02:14:06):
I did notice that shelf behind him, the shelf of the dead toys. I thought that was kind of cool.

Paul Thurrott (02:14:11):
So Microsoft is known to be working on some kind of an Xbox cloud gaming hardware dongle stick, something, something that will probably end up being more like an Apple TV that plugs in to any tv. Unless you play these games on your tv. And obviously some people, I don't understand what, just put it on Android tv, just put it on Apple tv, just put it on Smart TVs. Actually they have in some cases. Yeah. I mean they're gonna do all that too. But they need to have their own thing. You need to address every possible screen and you need a Roku, Apple TV type device. So they're unknown to be working on it. They've stepped away from some earlier design. Apparently that was what was on the shelf and I'm already sorry I spent so much time talking about it. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (02:14:57):
<laugh>, you wanna see Doom and Notepad?

Paul Thurrott (02:15:01):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:15:02):
Yep. Here

Paul Thurrott (02:15:02):
It is.

Leo Laporte (02:15:03):
It's actually Aki text

Paul Thurrott (02:15:05):
And it looks terrible. But it is the game. It's the game.

Leo Laporte (02:15:08):
Playing back I guess through ask an text file. Sure. He says it's unmodified notepad. So Mary Jo, you too. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:19):
I mean this is not good.

Leo Laporte (02:15:23):
In a way, it says something about this speed of notepad that it could actually render this askie fast enough to have smooth motion guys. Nopa can do anything <laugh> apparently.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:39):
If Nopa would just support Mark down, that would be all over it.

Leo Laporte (02:15:42):
<laugh> the notepad version of our Xbox segment. So continue on <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:49):
Yep. I don't remember if this ever came out, but sometime in the past year Google announced that they were gonna allow cloud streaming games to launch from Google search results. Now, at the time, obviously they had Stadia, but they were like, No, no, it's not just Stadia. We're gonna do this for competing services as well. So you could imagine there would be a game that was on multiple services and it would say something like, Play now on Stadia. Play now on Xbox Call gaming, whatever. So this past week Microsoft announced that Bing, now it's actually there. It's live. If you do a Bing search for a game that is on Xbox Cloud gaming, one of the options will be a play button. Whether you can stream it through the browser. Yeah, that's neat. That's

Leo Laporte (02:16:28):
Fine. Fine.

Paul Thurrott (02:16:30):
At least it did require a new toolbar or a sidebar or I like

Leo Laporte (02:16:34):
Whatever. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:16:35):
Well that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. So for the three people in the audience that actually use, enjoy

Leo Laporte (02:16:41):
That. And soon you're gonna be able to get Bing to draw pictures for you. That's cool.

Paul Thurrott (02:16:48):
Yeah, that's right. That actually is

Leo Laporte (02:16:51):
Interesting. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yep. All right, let's take a little break. Come back of the book coming up. Paul's tip of the week, app of the week, enterprise pick of the week, code name pick of the week, Beer pick of the week, and <laugh> <laugh>. I just saw your beer pick. Okay, we're gonna talk right now though about our sponsor coli for businesses that use Slack Collide is amazing. If you're an IT that kind of the standard thing is to, you don't kinda lock everything down to the point where some IT departments put glue in the USB ports.

Leo Laporte (02:17:38):
The challenge though, with device securities, it's always been difficult to scale. You can't go around and put glue in 10,000 USB ports. And the bigger you are, the more edge cases you introduce the easier it is for significant issues to escape your notice. The more B Y O D bring your own devices you've got. And then on top of that remote work happened right now, the challenge is exponentially harder. So whether you're a fast growing startup that has to graduate from managing device inventory and Google Sheets, Yes people do that. I do that actually, I'm embarrassed to say. Or an enterprise trying to speed up service desk issues. You need visibility into your fleet of devices in order to meet security goals and keep everything running smoothly. Well you know that right there is a lot of endpoint solutions out there, but how do you it When your design team uses Max, your accounting's on Windows, your top developers are on Linux, what do you do?

Leo Laporte (02:18:43):
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Leo Laporte (02:19:42):
What do you, you file a ticket with the team that manages your MDM and then you wait days, you get a report back, then you send a mass email, you hope the Linux users open it up. No, no, no, no with collide right away. Cuz you have real time access to your fleets data. And instead of installing intrusive agents are locking down devices, collide takes a user focused approach. We've talked about this before. How collide, Make sure your users part of your team. You communicate security recommendations, instructions, how tos directly to the employees on Slack. So collide we focused on kind of getting the employees on your team. But I really want you to understand Collide is an amazing tool. You can answer every question you have about your fleet without intruding on your workforce. Totally cross platform. Visit K O L I D e.com/ww to find out how K O L I D e.com/ww follow that link. You're gonna get some cool collides stuff. I got some t-shirts, I got stickers just for activating a free trial. The t-shirts are great. K O L I d e collide.com/ww. Please use a WW so they know you saw it here collide. Just it's just, just do. Once you, it's an idea who's time has come. Once you understand it's like, oh, why didn't we do this all along? Paul th time for your tip of the week.

Paul Thurrott (02:21:17):
Get into it. What

Leo Laporte (02:21:18):
Happened?

Paul Thurrott (02:21:19):
You

Leo Laporte (02:21:19):
So yeah, <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (02:21:22):
Microsoft published an amazing document this week detailing how some of the security features in Windows 1122 H two specifically <laugh>, will actually harm performance of games. And so the issue is, so yeah, this is one of those weird deals where obviously between Windows 10 and Windows 11, the first version, it was kind of an upgrade in security requirements around hardware and so forth. And now when 22 H two we're actually seeing security features that are often hardware backed being turned on by default. Now if you upgrade from Windows 1121 H two to 22 H two, that probably won't be an issue. But if you get a new computer based on 22 H two, certain security features will be enabled by default and will in fact impact the performance of your game. So one of them is called memory integrity, which is something you can actually enable manually if you want to through the what's it called?

Paul Thurrott (02:22:14):
The Windows Security tool. You can go in there and turn that on, but I guess it's enabled in 22 H two. So Microsoft is recommending that if you play games, you might wanna turn that off cause people are actually publishing tips. Here's how you can improve the performance of games on Windows 11. And then the next day you could publish another article that says here's how you could improve the performance or the I'M the security of your computer, which is by harming the performance of your games. So I don't know if work on this over time, but for people who are serious about gaming, I don't know if this is gonna be a small problem in a short term. So it's just something to know about. We're trying to do the right thing for everybody, but

Leo Laporte (02:22:58):
That's why I game in Linux. In turn, there's no security

Paul Thurrott (02:23:03):
There

Leo Laporte (02:23:03):
Beautifully.

Paul Thurrott (02:23:04):
Yeah. Well yeah, that would be one approach. <laugh>. And then this week Oracle, our favorite software company shipped Virtual Box 7.0, which is actually awesome, by the way. So

Leo Laporte (02:23:15):
Yeah, it's free. You're familiar with,

Paul Thurrott (02:23:16):
We've got some

Leo Laporte (02:23:16):
Nice features. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:23:18):
Yeah. Yep. So new UI fully supports Windows 11, meaning previous versions actually didn't meet some of the hardware requirements. So things around the processor, TPM and RAM were not things that were set up properly in previous versions of Virtual Box. They are now from a technical perspective virtual box, I believe is what's called a type two hypervisor. Meaning it's basically an app that runs on top of an operating system as opposed to Hyper V, which I think is called a type one hypervisor, which is something that runs concurrently with the operating system. In fact, it's used for certain services by the operating system. It's kind of a unique way of doing it. But if you've ever used these two products, you might know the virtual box is actually better in many ways. If your idea is to run just an operating system on top of your operating system, like a

Leo Laporte (02:24:05):
Window with something in it. Yeah, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:24:07):
Yeah. Yep. It's actually it's almost like Hyper HyperV is too technical. What are the problems I have with HyperV is I can't get sound. But also because of the way it presents itself, it's basically like an RDP into a different orange partition on the disc. So it's, it's just a weird setup. This is more traditional, just

Leo Laporte (02:24:27):
Emulate a whole machine.

Paul Thurrott (02:24:28):
Yeah. Works really, really well. So for things like testing or you're a developer, or in my case you wanna take screenshots of setup or whatever, I think Virtual Box works great also, It works on Windows 11 or 10 home where NA Hyper V is not natively supported <affirmative>, although there are workarounds which we will discuss in the future. For now, I would say for most people that need virtualization and it's free, like you said, it's virtual box is great.

Leo Laporte (02:24:56):
You're

Paul Thurrott (02:24:56):
Actually, Cause Oracle bought it, to be clear, they did not originated, but No, but they kept it free and they've been updating it. So

Leo Laporte (02:25:04):
You are gonna actually talk about installing Windows 11 on hands on <affirmative> windows this week. I think. Weird. Am I?

Paul Thurrott (02:25:12):
Yeah, we recorded a long time. I'm kind of far ahead on the Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:25:14):
Yeah, you're very good about that. But we thought we'd make that one public. So normally hands on Windows is a club members only thing. Paul Thau does that every week, just like Micah does. Hands on Macintosh for the club. But everyone, we

Paul Thurrott (02:25:29):
Gonna do a crossover episode where we talk about running Windows on Mac. I think you should

Leo Laporte (02:25:34):
<laugh> a great idea.

Paul Thurrott (02:25:36):
It'd be like when Angela Lansbury was on Magnum Pi, like the murder she wrote crossover.

Leo Laporte (02:25:42):
We call 'em the kids. Call 'em co colabs these days

Paul Thurrott (02:25:46):
There. Yeah, there you go.

Leo Laporte (02:25:47):
If you're not a Club TWiT member, this is just one of many reasons you want to join Club TWiT, add free versions of this show and all of our shows Access to the Discord where Mary Jo and I and Paul have so much fun. By the way, The Discord wants to know when you're gonna show up in a cowboy outfit for hands on Windows <laugh>. I guess it's the theme song. Yeah, cuz the theme song. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (02:26:08):
I think it was meant to evoke the Ty map. Like,

Leo Laporte (02:26:13):
Oh it's yo ho. Yo ho. Yeah. Cuz it's,

Paul Thurrott (02:26:17):
I'll get one of those giant soro things and throw like a blanket over my shoulders. I

Leo Laporte (02:26:21):
Got one you can borrow right here.

Paul Thurrott (02:26:23):
<laugh>. I like the Martin short character and yeah, Three Mangos

Leo Laporte (02:26:30):
<laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:26:32):
I could do that.

Leo Laporte (02:26:34):
Well, where was I? Oh yeah, subscribe. You get access to the Discord. Do you get access to Trip Plus feed? All the conversations? Is

Paul Thurrott (02:26:42):
That a hat for a small dog? What are you wearing? What is that?

Leo Laporte (02:26:45):
It's like, it's

Paul Thurrott (02:26:46):
Beautiful. It's like the dog from Taco Bell would wear that hat. What?

Leo Laporte (02:26:50):
Yo I'm gonna send this to you. You can wear it the next time you're in Mexico City.

Paul Thurrott (02:26:56):
I have a much big hat. I'm gonna need a bigger hat. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:26:59):
We're gonna need a bigger hat if you're not yet a member of Club trade. Really also, in all seriousness, which I know is hard to take me seriously with this add on. In all seriousness, it does make a big difference as we head into difficult economic times. The club is what makes it possible for us to develop new shows like Hands On Windows. We really appreciate your support and I think it's very affordable. $7 a month, there's an annual plan for people to know who don't like that monthly ding. There's also Enterprise plan and you can buy individual shows including hands on Windows for 2 99 a month. But all of that, all the dets at TWiT.tv/club, we're not getting that sweet Microsoft money to talk about Surface. So <laugh>, we need you to help us out if you would. Again, Club TWiT is at TWiT.tv/club. Now I turn to Mary Jo Foley for the enterprise pick of the week.

Mary Jo Foley (02:27:59):
Yes. So if you look in the book of news today, you will see something called Microsoft Syntex being discussed. It's very interesting to me in the book of news, they do not tell you what this is, is a product currently called SharePoint Syntex that they rebranded to Microsoft Syntex. I think they almost felt like, because they announced SharePoint syntax in 2020 during the pandemic, that no one really followed along and understood what it was. And so this is kind of the reannounce of SharePoint. Syntex SharePoint syntax was the very first piece of Project Cortex, which was Microsoft's knowledge management system that we talked a lot about on Windows Weekly to go commercial. And at that time Microsoft said SharePoint send text is basically using machine teaching to automatically tag sort route your content. Things like expense reports, invoices, it'll automatically kind of tag it, move it to the right place and keep your flow going within your organization of this kind of content.

Mary Jo Foley (02:29:04):
So now that they've rebranded this as Microsoft Syntax is still doing the same thing, it's doing that exact same machine teaching routing the content, but they're adding 11 news services to it over the coming weeks. They're gonna be adding things like annotation, contract management, order processing, all those boring things that your people who wrote documents need to care about. So this is coming in 2023, all these new features. And also they've hinted there's gonna be a new pay as you go licensing option for it. But they wouldn't tell me anymore. They said stay tuned as we get closer to 2023. Nice. So that if you see Microsoft Syntex, that's what that is. S Y N T E X.

Leo Laporte (02:29:50):
Hey, they took Cortex and they split it off into Syntex.

Mary Jo Foley (02:29:55):
Yeah, basically <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:29:57):
And our code name pick of the week.

Mary Jo Foley (02:29:59):
Okay. This is another one. Microsoft didn't really explain this in the book of news, but I figured out what this was. So in the book of news, you're gonna see something about Microsoft announcing a preview of AKs, which is Azure Kubernetes service for Windows iot and Windows devices. So when I saw this, I'm like, Wait, didn't we hear about this before? Yes, we did. At Build and it was code named Project Haven, which we talked about at the time. So Haven is a Microsoft supported Kubernetes platform. So they're bringing containers to IOT devices, IOT products, the Edge Windows devices. The idea at Microsoft is let's put containers everywhere. And then as people develop cloud applications, they can run part of it in the cloud and part of it on the edge and kind of move whichever parts make sense in real time as you're processing.

Mary Jo Foley (02:30:55):
So another cool thing about this Project Haven is there's two VMs that are part of this. One of them is a Windows vm and the other one is a Linux vm. And the Linux VM is based on Microsoft's Linux distribution, which we've talked about before, called Mariner, cbl Mariner. All of this can be managed by Azure arc. So there's a lot of things, It's like all these things we've heard about and pieces are coming together as part of Microsoft's updated vision for how people can develop apps for the cloud and run apps and manage apps in the cloud. So finally we see Project Haven coming to the market

Leo Laporte (02:31:34):
Finally.

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:36):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:31:36):
And finally speaking of finally it's time for beer.

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:41):
Yes. So this is a good one. I was came about Panos Panos, we always joke, Panos is pumped. We always say that. He is pumped. Said about himself. I am so

Leo Laporte (02:31:50):
Pumped. He's

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:50):
Pumped. Yes. So today's beer is called Southern Tier Pumpkin, Not pumpkin king. Pump King,

Leo Laporte (02:31:57):
Pumpkin <laugh>. Pumpkin,

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:59):
Pumpkin. This is if you

Paul Thurrott (02:32:02):
It's almost like pumpkin.

Mary Jo Foley (02:32:03):
It is. If you know anything about craft beers, this is a very famous one from New York state and you either love it or hate it. It tastes like a slice of pumpkin pie. It's got a lot of pumpkin spices. And the pa, I swo it off after a while cause I'm like eating a piece of pumpkin pie, but in beer, it didn't even taste like beer. I'm just like, Yeah, too syrup too sweet.

Leo Laporte (02:32:25):
Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:32:26):
But I had a glass of this last week at one of my local bars and I'm like, Oh, somebody got the message of Southern Tier and they have fixed it. Oh. So if you've heard about Southern Tier pumpkin and you've been like I don't know, I've heard it's not that good. Try this year's batch. It's quite a bit better. It's still very high in alcohol. 8.8%. Not a light beer tastes like pumpkin. You have the pumpkin spices, but it does taste like pumpkin. So if you like pumpkin,

Paul Thurrott (02:32:53):
You know how obsessed are with pumpkin at this time of year,

Leo Laporte (02:32:55):
Just don't get it. I know. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:32:57):
Pumpkin is the thing no one would ever think about, ever.

Leo Laporte (02:33:00):
I know. You know what

Mary Jo Foley (02:33:01):
I mean? It's not taste like pumpkin

Paul Thurrott (02:33:03):
Spice latte. I'm interested in beer, but I wanted to taste like a squash or maybe some other

Leo Laporte (02:33:07):
Kind of a go No flavor. It's the spices.

Mary Jo Foley (02:33:10):
It is. It's the spices. Although if you've ever had a a pumpkin beer that doesn't have a lot of spices, there is a taste. It's like squash.

Leo Laporte (02:33:20):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:33:21):
Well they're doing it the right way. They're using pumpkin puree pure puree, I guess, as opposed to puree. Yep. Some fake chemical taste or whatever.

Leo Laporte (02:33:30):
So it's real pumpkin in it. Yeah. And it's pumpkin. It's

Mary Jo Foley (02:33:33):
Not bad. I wouldn't say it's my favorite, but if you're looking for something that's very widely

Paul Thurrott (02:33:37):
Available, if you be everywhere, pump, This is,

Leo Laporte (02:33:41):
What's the PS up pump? Pump.

Mary Jo Foley (02:33:44):
Panos gets Pump King. That's the thing

Paul Thurrott (02:33:47):
You panos on. For a guy who says he's pumped all the time though, does he never really seems that pumped. He

Leo Laporte (02:33:52):
Seems low.

Mary Jo Foley (02:33:54):
Very, They had the quiet music, very mellow. I was like, Oh,

Paul Thurrott (02:33:58):
He's not really,

Leo Laporte (02:33:59):
He's not pumped. He's actually kind of

Mary Jo Foley (02:34:01):
Depressed. You feel pumped today? Well,

Paul Thurrott (02:34:03):
<laugh>. I mean, I'm not trying to psychologically evaluate him, but yeah, maybe. I mean, <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:34:08):
Got, Is there a, I dunno, betting line on his future at Microsoft at all?

Paul Thurrott (02:34:15):
No, he's on the slt. He, I mean I He's

Leo Laporte (02:34:17):
Had a huge promotion. He runs a big windows. Right? Big. He's a big shot. Yeah. Yeah. You should get nicer sneaks. Just saying his kicks are a little low rent. Wow. <laugh>. Ask Christina Warren just to going over to GitHub Panos and say, what's some get some nice kicks. I

Paul Thurrott (02:34:34):
Would've thought she would've given him this advice. She left, right?

Leo Laporte (02:34:37):
Did she leave Mike? No, She said yeah, she's said GitHub's. GitHub. I believe it. Join. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Still part <laugh>. okay. Hey, you guys did it. You survived. I was up early. Jay,

Paul Thurrott (02:34:53):
I've been up since five 30. It's, it's s nice to say I will be sleeping on the stairs on the way to my bedroom.

Leo Laporte (02:34:59):
<laugh>, Yes, <laugh>. Have some king Not

Paul Thurrott (02:35:03):
Even gonna make

Leo Laporte (02:35:04):
It. We'll help you sleep. The sleep of the dead. It is Halloween. I hope you have some good costumes prepared. Paul Thra is@thra.com. Not a spooky site at all. A great place to learn all about what's going on with Microsoft. Do get the premium membership cuz there's some really good content kind of preview content for the field guide to Windows 11. Many of the chapters already up there as premium members. You get we, I'm a premium member. Get to see that. Of course, when the book's out, which is imminent, you'll be able to get it@leanpub.com. As you can still get the field guide, Windows 10. Mary Jo Foley writes about Microsoft at her zd net blog all about microsoft.com and they join us every week right here at 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 1800 UTC of a Wednesday morning to talk about Windows with all you winners and dozers. We're dozers today, Paul. That's sure. I feel like I'm always a dozer. <laugh>. Mary Joseph, winner Can they watch Show after the fact with that TV slash ww. There's a Windows Weekly YouTube channel and of course just you can subscribe in your favorite podcast player and that way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. Leave us a review. Five stars, please. If you like the show, don't leave us review. If you don't like the show, just go somewhere else. Leave us alone, please. We will be back next week.

Paul Thurrott (02:36:41):
Equal everywhere.

Leo Laporte (02:36:43):
I guess that's all there is to say. Except have a great week you two and we will see you next time on Windows Weekly. Bye-bye.

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