Windows Weekly Episode 806 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 Thores here with the latest on the Activision acquisition, the biggest acquisition in Microsoft's history. And it could be on the line. Plus we'll talk about new features in Windows 11. A discord like feature that comes to free teams. And then Paul will run down his top podcasts, audio books, and songs of the year. It's gonna be a Great Windows Weekly. Next, podcasts you love

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:40):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Throt. Episode 806 recorded Wednesday, December 7th, 2022. Clippy in Prison. Windows Weekly is brought to you by Lenovo. Orchestrated by the experts at C D W to help transform your organization with Lenovo Think Beds. Equipped with the Intel Evo platform for effortless connectivity and collaboration from anywhere. Learn more at cdw.com/lenovo client. And by Rocket Money formally known as True Bill, are you wasting money on subscriptions? Cancel those unnecessary subscriptions right now at Rocket money.com/windows. Seriously, it could save you hundreds a year. And by Melissa over 10,000 clients worldwide in industries like retail education, healthcare, insurance, finance, and government. Rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twi. It's time for Windows Weekly to show we cover the latest news from Microsoft where it is snowing on clippy.

(00:01:58):
Hello Paul thro thro.com. Dot com. Hello. I wore, I I I didn't get the memo that we were gonna hold off until, oh, I did 21st, so I try to put it off as long as I can. I, this is a cozy little sweater. I bet it's got I actually got it cuz I thought Chris Cap Pace would have it. Now I know hes not coming on the show. Cause every year he would come on and talk about the ugly sweater from Microsoft. And I always find out too late. So I heard the minute, the day of it's got a happy holidays with a clippy and that okay button that's right over my left breast. So girls stay away. Don't, don't be tempted there. And they're not, trust me, they're not. They're not. They're, they're not. They're not. There's no temptation. Right. And then little, I don't know what is going on on this sleeve. Little things. I don't know. Anyway, it's, I like it. It's nice. It's good colors. It's got green and Microsoft blue and

Paul Thurrott (00:03:02):
I like the

Leo Laporte (00:03:02):
Colors. Yeah. Yeah. It's cozy and warm.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:06):
Not a fan of sweaters personally.

Leo Laporte (00:03:08):
But you're not warm. You're not sweater guy. You live in in cold country.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:13):
I need something for my feet. <Laugh>. Not for my, my body.

Leo Laporte (00:03:17):
They've invented something that basically sweaters for your feet. They call 'em socks. Mm.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:23):
I see. I'll look into that

Leo Laporte (00:03:24):
<Laugh>. Yeah. I saw on your Insta pictures of you and Mary Jo Foley yucking it up. You took a trained Newark.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:37):
Yeah. A friend of ours visited from the UK with his wife. They, in fact, they were celebrating their 10th anniversary. Aw,

Leo Laporte (00:03:44):
That's

Paul Thurrott (00:03:44):
Nice. And so we said, yeah, we'll come on into town, you

Leo Laporte (00:03:48):
Know. Nice. And Mary Jo happened to be, does she know Mr. Was it

Paul Thurrott (00:03:52):
Chris? Oh yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah. We all, no Gary Pretty, is his name

Leo Laporte (00:03:57):
Gary Pretty. I confuse him and Chris. Love it. Gary pretty. And so she knows gear. Good old gear.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:03):
Yep. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:04:04):
Yeah. And where do you guys go now that there's no rat in home?

Paul Thurrott (00:04:09):
Well, it's someplace different every time. Oh.

Leo Laporte (00:04:12):
Actually there's no, there's no local that you go on a regular basis that's,

Paul Thurrott (00:04:15):
I sort of figured, I thought, you know, given where she is and given what those guys were doing that we would meet right at you know, Madison Square Garden, that area. Midtown.

Leo Laporte (00:04:24):
Midtown, you call it.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:24):
Yeah. And this was way down south,

Leo Laporte (00:04:26):
By the way. The Yale Club is very near Madison Square

Paul Thurrott (00:04:29):
Garden, if you ever

Leo Laporte (00:04:30):
Yes. It's, if you ever need to stay there, <laugh>. You know, I, after, after that humiliation some years ago, I I dropped my membership.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:40):
I did early. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:04:41):
Because I stayed there once. And you stayed there once. And I was paying for years. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:46):
It was beautiful. I mean, it was a beautiful place.

Leo Laporte (00:04:48):
I thought, well, it'd be good to have a little piano chair in the city, but I never go to the city, so. Right, right, right. And it's not really much cheaper than a hotel. And a hotel you can get easily whenever you want it and not pay year round.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:02):
Interestingly, on this particular trip, you know, Gary contacted us back in October. I'm like, yep, we'll come into town, don't worry about it. Nice. Let me know the dates. And then we started looking at the hotel rates and for some reason Oh no, not for some reason. I think they were lighting the Christmas trees.

Leo Laporte (00:05:15):
Oh yeah. I guess, yeah. There's certain,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:17):
So hotels,

Leo Laporte (00:05:19):
Search pricing they call it.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:21):
Yeah. The last time we, this is embarrassing, but we haven't been to New York City since April, 2021. That was the first time we had gone since the pandemic. And we paid $99 to stay at a Hilton. Wow. And, and this, on this weekend, all the hotels were 600 bucks a night. Yeah. So we had to stay, we ended up staying up by the Newark Liberty Airport. And we just took a,

Leo Laporte (00:05:42):
That's a nightmare. And we stayed in Newark and Ubered in talk about bridge and tunnel. Holy cow.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:49):
Yeah. But actually the Uber was, it was like a Cadillac esade. It was nice.

Leo Laporte (00:05:53):
It was actually really nice. Yeah. Newark to Manhattan is how much,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:58):
Actually it wasn't as expensive as I thought it was gonna be because all of our non Mexico Uber trips are like incredibly expensive. Yeah. When we were in Seattle, I think from the airport to the hotel was 75 bucks. Yeah. But this was 36. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:06:11):
That's not bad. It really is better than paying a lot of money for a hotel. Nice.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:17):
Well, I just can't, I mean, I can't spend <laugh>. I just couldn't do it. There's no way. Like, 600

Leo Laporte (00:06:21):
Bucks. It just hurt. It hurt you. It hurt your, it hurt your feelings. Yeah. Yeah. I know

Paul Thurrott (00:06:27):
That feeling. It was, it was fine. It

Leo Laporte (00:06:28):
Was. And how is Mary Jo? She doing good.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:30):
Mary Jo's doing great. Yeah. Her she like your job. I guess we'll call him her, his nephew. Her nephew in-law. Is that the, I don't know. Were there as well. And yeah. So we went to a couple places. We had dinner and drinks at that first place. That was down toward Chinatown. And then we did end up back in Midtown. And I, I got to see the new part of Penn Station which is gorgeous. Like really, really nice, huh? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:06:56):
Nice.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:57):
That was good.

Leo Laporte (00:07:00):
Good. And Mary Jo is enjoying her new gig as the@directionsonmicrosoft.com Editor in chief.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:08):
Yeah. She said she's still in her kind of, you know, I'm figuring it out, TA or whatever. And she

Leo Laporte (00:07:13):
Didn't make any noises about like, please take me back. Please, please, please.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:17):
<Laugh>. No, no. She's, I, I've made it clear to her. She's always welcome back. 

Leo Laporte (00:07:23):
Yeah, we'll get her on soon. We'll get her on financial.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:25):
I think she, I think she's, I think she wants to work less <laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:30):
She's joined her freedom.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:32):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:34):
Good for her. Sure. Okay. Well there you go. There's the Mary Jo update.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:39):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> this week in Mary Jo.

Leo Laporte (00:07:42):
Now it's time to talk about the real story of the week, the month, the year Activision and Microsoft sitting in the tree. K i s s I n G.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:58):
So it's kind of three things going on here. As everyone I hope knows very early this year, I think in February, Microsoft announced it plans to buy Activision Blizzard for almost 70 billion, 69 billion.

Leo Laporte (00:08:10):
That's a lot. That's more than Twitter. That's

Paul Thurrott (00:08:12):
A lot. It's a lot of billions. Yeah. Yep. And of course it has to go through the regulatory process. Microsoft was a very open upfront. They said, look, this is gonna take a while. We don't expect to close this until the end of our next, now current fiscal year, which ends at the end of June in 2023. And they knew they were gonna, there would be feedback from the eu, the uk, South Korea, China, United States, other places, whatever. I've always kind of said that this is something that should sail through with the right compromises and that Microsoft would make the right compromises to make it happen. What has happened since then is that one major competitor has emerged and only one <laugh> to complain about this and that everyone knows this. It's Sony. Right. And Sony's,

Leo Laporte (00:08:57):
Cause they have the PlayStation, they're afraid they're gonna lose the great big division titles chiefly Call of Duty.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:04):
Yes. And a couple things are interesting about that. We all focus on Call of Duty, I think mostly cuz Mic or Sony won't stop talking about it, but Microsoft keeps saying, yeah, yeah. Call of Duty. We would never take that off PlayStation. That doesn't make any sense. We're doing this for the mobile play. You know, and in recent weeks, you know, Phil Spencer, I was calling him Phil Specter this time anyway, Phil Spencer <laugh> kind of a music thing going on lately. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:09:31):
Yeah. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:09:32):
Phil, Phil Specter has ruined more things than Phil. What's his name? Phil Schuller has, anyway <laugh> Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox has come up publicly many, many times and said, look, we're never gonna do this. It doesn't make any sense. Don't worry about it. You know and they've offered supposedly different deals to Sony. You know, whatever. So Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this past week talking about the acquisition and the complaints they've heard and what they will do. There wasn't too much new to it. In fact, I was a little surprised how short it was. He's written very long posts. In some cases I thought, I thought this guy was just gonna really lay it out and say, look in bing bang, economic advantage, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But really that his editorial was about two different topics.

(00:10:21):
One was Sony and the other was mobile. And on the mobile front, he actually didn't have a lot to say beyond saying, look, in the video game world, we are, he didn't say distant number three, but we have been at a number three. We have been in the third place basically forever. And we are in third place now. We don't ever expect to not be in third place. We're just not a dominant force in consoles. However, the way the gaming industry is going is most of the action now is taking place on mobile. In fact, by the way, even activation Lizard is seen as not just because they have a lot of mobile games, but because one of their most lucrative franchises Call of Duty actually makes more money on mobile than it does on PC and console. Which is crazy. It's kind of a brand new game.

Leo Laporte (00:11:03):
It's not even, but it's not even the same game on mobile. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:06):
It's like it's not. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:11:07):
It's, they had a zombie thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:09):
Oh really? It was multiplayer. Yeah. You could play Multiplay. It's actually pretty damn good. I have to say. You

Leo Laporte (00:11:13):
Wouldn't play enough and phone.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:16):
I wouldn't cuz I wouldn't be able to see it. But I I played it on an iPad with an Xbox copy. I'll tell you. It's, it's not, not horrible. Yeah. but that's whatever, that's, you know, neither here nor there. It's popular. Yeah. Yeah. The complaint that he had, which is the complaint that all developers have, basically, and what Microsoft has said in the past is that we have these two gatekeepers in Mobile, apple and Google. And both of them charge inordinate fees and impose crazy restrictions on developers when it comes to dodging in-app payments, which is where Apple makes all their money. When you look at Apple's services business, which is their second biggest business most of that comes from the app store. Of course, they charge 30%, which 30% is as arbitrary a number as 10,000 steps, 1000 hours to become an expert. Eight classes of water a day. All these things that, like we have in our heads that are just the way they are. None of those mean anything. They're all nonsense. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:12:10):
But Microsoft charges 30% does Sony, don't they?

Paul Thurrott (00:12:15):
Oh one Xbox. Yes. Yes. But we can, but we can explain that because, but they

Leo Laporte (00:12:20):
Did it first. So Apple I think was following along with what they thought was industry stand, standard practice.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:27):
I don't, I doubt that, but I don't, I don't, I don't know. Okay. Let's, let's just say that's what it is. Who cares? That's fine. The, the problem when, when you have a, a market that is some size, you can do whatever you want <laugh>. Right? But at some point you become a monopoly, or in this case a duopoly. And you have to follow slightly different rules. The things that were okay for you as a scrappy startup are no longer okay. Because now you're a dominant market power. Apple keeps talking about the billions of users they have. They, they're one of only two mobile platforms. There is a, there's a weird, this is mostly on Google's part I will say, but there is a weird almost Japanese style of non competition between these two companies where their mobile app stores have exactly the same terms everywhere. That has to be on purpose. That's on Google's part. But

Leo Laporte (00:13:13):
Wait a minute. But so does Sony and so does Xbox.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:16):
Yes. Sony. Okay, let's,

Leo Laporte (00:13:18):
So is Microsoft, here's the difference following Apple or Apple following Microsoft or Google following.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:23):
I don't know that, I don't

Leo Laporte (00:13:23):
Know. Everybody agrees it's 30%. That's

Paul Thurrott (00:13:26):
The standard. Nobody actually, I don't know that. Who <laugh>. Okay. So, so two things. We're only talking about four or five companies here. <Laugh>. So Sony, apple,

Leo Laporte (00:13:34):
But you can't say it's Apple Google. It is, it is a broad range stores,

Paul Thurrott (00:13:39):
No, it's not <laugh>. Hold on. I can say that because Microsoft, Sony have markets that are number in the tens of millions. Apple and Google have markets that number in the billions. Those are order magnitude differences. Apple and Google.

Leo Laporte (00:13:55):
How about Steam? Would you include Steam in that list? Steam also charges. Percent

Paul Thurrott (00:14:01):
Also a tiny market compared to Apple and Google. They're, they have to play by, they play by different rules. That is literally the law. They, they, they are not beholden to the same set of rules. If you don't have a monopoly, you can't do whatever. But that's the Yes they do. Of course they do. Apple

Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
Has a monopoly among people who use iPhones. But iPhones market isn't even more than half the market,

Paul Thurrott (00:14:23):
But it is 1.5 billion people. Yeah. Just by itself

Leo Laporte (00:14:26):
In an eight, in a world with 8 billion people.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:28):
But in a world of three or 4 million users, that is a, that's a duopoly is what it is. There is no competition in this market. And when the only two people who control this market, companies control this market, set prices arbitrarily with no relation to the cost of doing business and are able to prevent companies like Microsoft from coming out with an app that will let them run cloud gaming streaming games. Because what Apple wants to do is charge a 30% fee on every game that anyone plays with that platform. Whether it impacts their infrastructure or not, and use their in-app payments, whether, because there are no other choices, basically. Let's just, Spotify that's starting to change only on Google <laugh>. No, that's I don't remember Z Apple or Google. I think it's only on Google Store. It's only on Google. And these are, that's what makes these things different.

(00:15:17):
Apple sells in some years more phones in one quarter than Sony or Microsoft sell consoles in one entire generation over seven to 10 years. No, that's right. Yep. That's, this is a completely different kind of market. It, it, it's, and the other thing is, I I, I haven't published this yet, but I've been writing this thing about what Microsoft used to call the next wave. And when you look at personal computing, I think it's fair to say we've only had two major eras of personal computing. There was the pc, the personal computer era, which was mostly Windows, but also Mac. And I know what Linux. And in the early days we had, you know, commod, Atari, eti, whatever. And then we had the mobile phone error, which started with the iPhone, the modern smartphone error. Right? these things are, the thing is, when, when Microsoft controlled the world, if you go back in time 20 years 25 years, whatever, we were talking about, hundreds of millions of computers.

(00:16:14):
And Microsoft to a lot of people was the most evil company on earth. But one of the things they didn't do was prevent developers from leasing apps on their platform. Right. Unless they followed some crazy arbitrary rules apple and Google control markets that are in the billions of users. This is a much bigger thing than the first era of personal computing. They are the gatekeepers. And this is, you know, this is starting, not starting this has been a problem for a long time. So the argument from Microsoft, I'll just use the Microsoft example cuz they, you know, they've been very public about this. They wanted to put Xbox Cloud gaming on Android and iOS. Google said yes and Apple said no. And Microsoft said, why? And they said, well you have all these games in here. We need to make money on every single one of those things.

(00:17:03):
And they're like, this has nothing to do with you. Yeah. That's ridiculous. Yeah. But this, so this is the argument. So Mr. Smith, sorry to get back to the, his public argument in the Wall Street Journal, he basically laid out two points. He said, look, this acquisition will be good for the industry and it will help solve two problems. One of the problems is mobile. And one of the problems is Sony <laugh>. So, which is kind of an interesting way to put it, but he in no way explained how them acquiring Activision Blizzard would solve the mobile problem. All he basically was arguing was that once they have this stuff, they'll have more content. And I guess they'll have more leverage or something. I, apple is never going to <laugh> make any changes for them. Apple, and to a lesser extent, Google will need to be prodded by antitrust to make changes.

(00:17:54):
And I think the reason they're digging their heels in so egregiously, especially Apple, which is insane in some ways, is because they know that by doing this now, they'll get the best deal they can get in the future. In other words, we don't know what the number is, but let's say Apple could run their app store infrastructure with a 5% fee and still be wildly pop or profitable. They don't want 5%, they want 15%, or you know, they want something in the middle. And they, they, that's probably where this is headed. This is kind of a secondary issue.

Leo Laporte (00:18:24):
Who would figure that out though? And how would they figure that out? Like, what is Apple's cost of business

Paul Thurrott (00:18:30):
Internally? They know what they, they know what know it is. Of course they know. They know it's, yeah. So you know how we, every time there are quarterly results from Microsoft primarily. Right. But I also cover other companies. We write about this and we look at the data that they provide and you can see the giant holes in the data that they don't Yeah. They

Leo Laporte (00:18:46):
Don't wanna give you the dates. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:48):
One of the things that Apple used to do, which I really liked, I thought it was very transparent, was they would actually provide literal numbers of units sold of their top platform. So we sold this many iPhones, we sold this many iPads, this many Mac, whatever those things were over time because eventually the hyper growth has to stop. They stopped doing that and you know, legally they can, but it becomes less transparent. You know, one of the, one of the bits of data they've never shared and won't share because this, I think many people think, including a guy that used to run that business for Apple who's actually spoken, you know, publicly about it since you left the company, is that this thing is stupid successful because these fees have nothing to do with how much it costs 'em to run the business. But like I said, it's kind of a secondary issue because the real issue here is it doesn't matter how much it costs to run that business there.

(00:19:38):
They want to charge developers for things that have nothing to do with the infrastructure that they are paying for. And I, I, you know, Microsoft would like there to be a, Microsoft would like to do with Epic would like to do like I'm sure many others would like to do, which is not just have a choice of in-app payment systems that where they could, you know, have competition, get the lowest possible fees, but also have it be open like it is on PC and Mac where you can have multiple stores or just an open system on the web. And we all know the arguments against it, you know, we all know the arguments for it, but I mean, you and I have talked about this a lot. I think ultimately open wins the day and Apple is the exact opposite of Open, especially when it comes to this part of their business. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:20:23):
I'm gonna channel Alex Lindsay here cuz he's the stalwart defender of this whole thing. Okay,

Paul Thurrott (00:20:28):
Good. And,

Leo Laporte (00:20:28):
And, and has, and has, you know, a little bit more expertise in this arena cuz he's had apps on the app store. He's, he's submitted apps. He's put apps up there and he says, as a developer of apps the convenience of the app store makes it well worth it. Remember Ingram used to charge a lot more to distribute a box of Microsoft Office. They'd take half or more. That's

Paul Thurrott (00:20:52):
Not, that's not what we're comparing it to. We have

Leo Laporte (00:20:54):
Now, okay, so we have the web now, but you still have to create a website. You'd have to pay for bandwidth. And there's, and there's, and there's the discover ability of the app store, which is

Paul Thurrott (00:21:04):
A value. It's all such thing as discoverability in the app store. There's 80 billion apps in there. There's no discoverability. Well you can, the chance that you release an app and no one ever sees it is 99%. I just say this,

Leo Laporte (00:21:15):
The users, users and the iPhone are gonna, they're gonna search the app store if they hear about something.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:22):
Yeah. And that would be fantastic if that was one option. <Laugh> Actually, I gotta tell you, I almost don't care if there is no, no. If it was one of some options,

Leo Laporte (00:21:30):
Like there are other app stores, I think Apple makes a pretty credible case that other app stores are not a a desirable thing. I mean they're on Android. It doesn't change, it doesn't change. We're equation.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:40):
We're arguing something that has nothing to do with this topic. So let me just say this, Alex, as an, as a developer is an individual and the fact that Apple has services that are important to him makes sense. He is part of what is 90, 99% of the developers on there. But also part of the, from a revenue perspective of the 1%. So the companies that want change are companies that want to, and by the way, the thing, one thing that would benefit him would be a choice of payment systems where they could compete on price and he could pay a lower fee to get the exact same service in the exact same store. So

Leo Laporte (00:22:12):
That would be, to do that fairly, you'd have to have a separate store because Apple's paying the bandwidth and, and, and storing the app. So, and signing the app and all the security stuff. So if you're gonna do that fairly, you have to open other app stores, not just say other payment systems. Google

Paul Thurrott (00:22:26):
Is test marketing this system right now with Spotify and several other companies. And

Leo Laporte (00:22:30):
Well that's, so there, there is an argument for companies like Netflix and Spotify that there's really no reason reason that's okay for Apple percent and they'd only 15% by the way. Hold

Paul Thurrott (00:22:40):
On. 30. Okay. Okay. That was, that's actually not my second point. My second point was he, he is, he is not Representative <laugh>. So we're not talking about Alex Lindsay personal developer. I've made apps. Look, I put something in the store. I'm talking about Microsoft, the biggest software company on Earth. Yeah. I'm talking about Epic games. I'm talking about big software companies. They don't need these things that Apple provides and it's not worth 30% of the money that you make. That's crazy. Well that's true. They know how much this thing costs.

Leo Laporte (00:23:10):
That's true. Although

Paul Thurrott (00:23:11):
Apple, how much it

Leo Laporte (00:23:12):
Costs Apple does, you know, give those people a break. It's 15%. I mean, okay, but it's, it should be, it should be zero. Is that what you're saying?

Paul Thurrott (00:23:19):
Mass? No, no, I'm not. Should

Leo Laporte (00:23:22):
Microsoft be told how much they can take in the Xbox store and Sony and, and Steam be told how much they should take? Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:23:28):
I know

Leo Laporte (00:23:29):
There's smaller markets, but, but should some regular come in and say yes, no, you don't get 30%. You get 15

Paul Thurrott (00:23:35):
<Laugh>, Leo, Leo. Listen, if you owned a car and you could only buy gas at one gas station on Earth, you'd have to pay the price that they ask cuz that was the only gas station. But if there were different, different gas stations and they all competed, you, you would, the prices would naturally be lower. There's just no choice. The the point is, they are keeping prices artificially high, which is price fixing and preventing companies like Microsoft with cloud gaming from conducting business and interacting with their own

Leo Laporte (00:24:02):
Customers. No, I think the argument for Microsoft makes sense, but there are vast number of small developers who use the app store and would have no other good way of doing

Paul Thurrott (00:24:13):
This. No one's saying take away

Leo Laporte (00:24:14):
The app store and they're very happy. No, they're very happy to pay 30% because the benefit they get, it's the Microsoft Spotifys and Netflix of the world that don't want to pay 30%. Let's be clear. And it's Spotify that's given the, this app store hard time in eu, it's all coming from Spotify.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:30):
That's not,

Leo Laporte (00:24:31):
I don't have any sympathy for that. That's not, that's just some big company's, that's not saying I don't want you to

Paul Thurrott (00:24:36):
<Laugh>, but it's not correct if every developer on earth, Alex and Lindsay all the way up to Microsoft would still benefit from lower fees if those fees were still fair to Apple. The point of the 30% complaint is that that is inordinately has nothing to do with the reality of running that store. It is probably, it is anywhere from three to 10 times too expensive.

Leo Laporte (00:25:01):
I don't know how we know that.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:03):
Because there are other companies that do this kind of thing. And by the way, apple benefits from scale that they get a better deal from MasterCard and Visa in American Express because of the volume of traffic that they do. They, they are as a bigger company actually their costs are lower as a percentage, you know, higher I guess overall. But because there's so much interest in that store there, it's a virtuous cycle. And look, the only way we can truly know it is for court cases. Like what's happening with Epic and maybe with other companies in the future where this stuff will have to come out and make it

Leo Laporte (00:25:39):
Profitable. It feels, the position though is we're big rich companies and we don't want Apple to make as much money.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:46):
No <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:25:47):
And I don't, I don't, I don't think if that's fair and if Apple, if Microsoft are in the same position with a men with a majority the chair of the market and they locked it in contract, wouldn't, wouldn't they not doing the same defense.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:02):
This is not their complaint at all. I just brought this up as part of the big broader

Leo Laporte (00:26:07):
Complaint of the Appt. Well Brad Smith, Microsoft was complaining. Brad,

Paul Thurrott (00:26:10):
No, Brad Smith was complaining that as gatekeepers to mobile, they're actually preventing them from getting their games out to mobile users. Right. They had bypass past the issue. Yes. It doesn't, I just mentioned that cuz this is part of a bigger story. He didn't bring this up. So I don't, I I we're, we can, like I said, we can debate that. But that's not the, that's not the,

Leo Laporte (00:26:31):
His issue was that they, they wouldn't let Microsoft do a do a store. Is that what he was I didn't read that. It's

Paul Thurrott (00:26:38):
Not store <laugh>. It's not a store. They wouldn't let them release an app called Xbox Cloud Gaming that would allow people to access the library of games that are available on Microsoft's data centers, by the way, not Apples and stream them to these devices. That in no way would impact Apple's infrastructure <laugh>. Because what Apple wants to do is take a 30 or 50 in whatever the number is, percent cut of each one of those games of whatever value they think they might have. They don't want. Well so Microsoft says, well hold on a second. Netflix is on there doing this with movies, YouTube music is on there doing this with music. How are games different? Do you know how games are different? Apple would never say this because games make up, I don't, I don't remember numbers off the top. I had 80 something percent I believe is the figure of the profits and revenues that app stores generate.

(00:27:32):
That's when, you know, I talked about like the 1% 99% when you come at like the content type, most of the stuff and the app stores, I don't know what the breakdown is, but most of the profits and revenues are games. If it wasn't for games, the app store would, well it wouldn't be a non-event, but it'd be a much smaller entity. So they look at this thing differently because it's games because games are so lucrative for Apple. Not the games they make, although they have their own service, but games that others sell on the service cuz they get that cut. So

Leo Laporte (00:28:02):
What, what do you think Microsoft would like? I mean if they could make the rules would like Apple to do, just say Hey go ahead put your game, your game store in here, your

Paul Thurrott (00:28:13):
Cloud. No it's not.

Leo Laporte (00:28:14):
I know, but it's, well

Paul Thurrott (00:28:17):
Cloud in there. We won't

Leo Laporte (00:28:18):
Charge you anything even though you're charging money for the use of it.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:22):
Let's say, let's say what Apple would like to do is this you have an Xbox, well an Xbox called gaming app. Fine. If you subscribe to the service through this app, which is Xbox Game Pass, ultimate, we get a 15% cut every month of the $15 a month that you are charging your own customer. Right? So Microsoft's losing that amount because someone decided to sign up for the app. Okay, fine. Microsoft's response that could be like, well we're not gonna lost signups in the app. Which Apple would say, well that's fine, but you can't even tell people you can sign up. Cause that's one of the things, you know, apple does, they're terrible but whatever. Right? But I think they would like to change that. That's one thing right now as far as the actual amount of the fee, you know, that's again, that's a, that's a dis I don't know.

(00:29:06):
And I don't think anyone really knows for sure. But there it somewhere between 3% and 30% is the right number. And based on the way credit card companies and others with financial infrastructures work, it's a lot closer to 3% than is the 30. But let's whatever, let's split the difference. Say it's, what is that difference? Say, you know what, a 15, 18% whatever, whatever it is, it doesn't, I don't even, that's not really the point. I just brought that up cuz that's a point with the App Store. But the other issue is, but Microsoft has this thing, there are examples of these things, but they're different types of media app. Apple is not charging YouTube music or Spotify, some 30 or 15% per song streamed because it has this value, blah, blah. They don't do that with those things. They only want to do it with games. It it's not a store. You don't buy things in it. There's no, nothing's getting transacted. The apple's total cost for their customer using this app is that they downloaded it from their server, which I, I'm not, I'm not saying it doesn't cost anything but whatever they download, well they have credit

Leo Laporte (00:30:11):
Card, it all fees and they have, I mean they have 4% credit card fees or something like that. Right? Okay. And then they have server, they have to provide server space and, and, and that's fine. What would it be? 8%, 10%. That would be fair. And I just don't know who would figure that out. I mean, what is, what

Paul Thurrott (00:30:27):
Are they charging if you, if you have Spotify

Leo Laporte (00:30:30):
15

Paul Thurrott (00:30:30):
And you pay no, you pay for it yourself. You went to the web and you downloaded the app from Apple. What is Spot, what is Apple getting for that, for that app? Nothing. They're getting zero. So for some reason it's okay. But Spotify, which by the way, what's their number? 500 million people use some crazy thing.

Leo Laporte (00:30:46):
No, I think Apple gets 15% from Spotify on They can't

Paul Thurrott (00:30:50):
Subscriptions. There's no, no, I'm not talking about subscriptions.

Leo Laporte (00:30:52):
Oh, if you just have the app and you pay on Spotify, put an app. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They get zero.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:56):
Yeah. So that app costs Apple more then Microsoft will ever cost them. Because the Xbox cloud streaming app will only be used at most by single digit, maybe double digit millions of people. That's it forever. It's never gonna cost them a cent. But they look at it and they think we should, we can squeeze money out of this thing. And Microsoft's like, we don't charge per game. It doesn't make sense. Like, you know what Microsoft, what Apple wanted Microsoft to do was put a separate app into the store for every game that they offered the game

Leo Laporte (00:31:32):
Post. Yeah, that was crazy <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:34):
And it's like, guys,

Leo Laporte (00:31:35):
Nobody was gonna do that. And Epic had the same problem, but I have to point out Epic brought suit and lost all this

Paul Thurrott (00:31:42):
That's still in court,

Leo Laporte (00:31:44):
So we'll see. Well, they've appealed, but they have lost and there's very little likelihood of the appeal succeeding.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:49):
We'll see, we'll see. Anyway. But Epic did what they did. I mean, I think Epic's strategy is kind of interesting, but

Leo Laporte (00:31:57):
Part of the problem with the Epic one, and I think you'd have the same problem with Microsoft, is people felt like it was just one giant battling another. Like this isn't, this is who's gonna, you know,

Paul Thurrott (00:32:09):
I really, I take, I take such huge exception to that because, and I I I also take huge exceptions. Someone like Alex Lindsay saying, I'm happy to pay these fees. That is this. So,

Leo Laporte (00:32:19):
Well again, just you used to pay pay 50% of the to Ingram. It's, it's better than no one used

Paul Thurrott (00:32:24):
To go. That's that. That's no one paid thir. No one named Alex and Lindsay paid 50% to Ingram. This is a new type of a thing. This is a digital service. You could put this on the web if you made your app for any other platform and distribute yourself and you could see what those costs are and they're minimal.

Leo Laporte (00:32:40):
So if I if I sell a game for the Xbox and Microsoft takes 30%, that's fair.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:49):
Look, I <laugh> No, it's a different market.

Leo Laporte (00:32:52):
Yeah, no, I market, but Microsoft has no cost associated with that game and they're taking 30%.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:58):
No, no, that's not true. Actually that is absolutely not true. Because the big difference between the console market, and I'll just say the iPhone, just to keep it simple, is that when Mic Apple sells an iPhone, which they sell, like I said, tens of millions every quarter, they earn an incredible 35 to 40% profit on every single one of those. It's the highest margin in hardware in the history of the earth. That's what they do. They make money on the hardware. When Apple, when Microsoft sells a console, we just talked about this,

Leo Laporte (00:33:27):
They make money on the games. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:29):
They lose, they literally lose hundreds of dollars. And the way they make it back is by on per they, the hope is, but that's

Leo Laporte (00:33:36):
Their choice. That's their business decision. Why should Apple,

Paul Thurrott (00:33:40):
Because No, hold on a second. Apple is trying to have it both.

Leo Laporte (00:33:44):
They're double dipping, you're saying? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:45):
Yeah, they absolutely are. Yeah. And we could, whatever. That's a moral thing. We could kind of, you know, oh, I don't like that. That's not, I'm about to saying that I, whatever they should do, whatever they can do. My point is, once you have a billion, 1,000,000,005, 2 billion users, the rules change,

Leo Laporte (00:33:59):
I guess. I mean, it feels like, like, oh, you're successful, so now we're gonna take some something away from you. They're not, they're not a monopoly. I mean,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:10):
I disagree

Leo Laporte (00:34:11):
With that. That's the real that I think that's the nut of it. And you know, Apple's defense, which is kind of dopey, is, well, you can always buy an Android phone. Once you, once you're in the Apple ecosystem, they're absolutely a monopoly. But they don't have anywhere

Paul Thurrott (00:34:23):
Near, that's, that's how 50

Leo Laporte (00:34:25):
By the market. They don't bar have

Paul Thurrott (00:34:27):
How much of the profit in the market do they have? Well they have

Leo Laporte (00:34:30):
Almost all the profit.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:30):
There you go. I look, we could

Leo Laporte (00:34:33):
Punish somebody for that.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:35):
No, <laugh>, you don't punish someone for that. You punish them for bad business behavior elsewhere. That is because they have this dominant market that they can take advantage of and are.

Leo Laporte (00:34:47):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:47):
It, it's, these are two different things. Anyway, we've gotten completely sidetracked on this

Leo Laporte (00:34:51):
<Laugh>, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, act Vision. Blizzard <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:55):
The second half of the, oh, I should just say, just to wrap that up, you're wrong about everything. Yes. Is that

Leo Laporte (00:35:01):
<Laugh>? No, I'll accept that.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:02):
No, no, no. I'm just kidding.

Leo Laporte (00:35:04):
I get just as bad at Alex Lindsay when he says it as you're getting though.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:07):
I just, no, no. Look,

Leo Laporte (00:35:08):
This is IAnd. I understand

Paul Thurrott (00:35:10):
What you're saying. This is a, a great debate of our

Leo Laporte (00:35:12):
I think it's complicated. I don't think it's, it is completely obvious. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:16):
I feel like it is, but that's

Leo Laporte (00:35:17):
<Laugh> doesn't matter.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:20):
My point about the App star stuff is Smith doesn't really offer any solution <laugh>, you know? Yeah. What he seems to say is, if we have more content, maybe they'll take us more seriously. And Apple will never do that. No, you don't have to know too much about Apple to know that they're very obstinate. No, no. So there's that. But the other half of the story course is Sony. Now suddenly, like I said, has Infamously been the one company that's kind of been like, hello, we're the only ones that don't want this to happen. It's like, okay, well what's the problem? Well, PlayStation is a big deal for us. You know, this PlayStation, Sony took Xbox, hello, took Call of Duty away from Xbox as an exclusive platform several years ago. There was a a couple year period where it was, that was really bad.

(00:36:06):
So what would happen is, like a new Call of Duty game would come out on day one, so it'd be available everywhere. And then DLC would start happening. So map packs and, you know, different content, whatever it was, would occur through the year. And Xbox would get it like a month later. It was one year. I'm not gonna remember the exact details of this, but a, a new Call of Duty game was coming out at the end of October and October 1st. Xbox got the final DLC that Sony had gotten, you know, six weeks earlier or something like that. It was like, it was past the point. It was just like, it was pointless to even put it out, you know, it was just kind of you know, indicative of the problem. Now, I don't know what changed, but it's fair to say that over the past I don't know, two, three years, whatever the timeframe's been, honestly, the DLC stuff has kind of ironed out.

(00:36:55):
I don't know if maybe the Sony agreement had some kind of a limit on it or something. But the way things work now, for the most part is I'm sure you get something for being on PlayStation. I'm not really sure what that is, but we tend to get Map Hacks and DLC and stuff like that day in day, you know, so that, that's kind of a nice, so, so what's Sony's like? What's the, what's the worry here? Well, we're afraid that Microsoft is gonna take Call of Duty away from PlayStation. Playstation is, that's a huge part of our platform. It would've a material impact on us. This is the only way they can compete. You know, they're gonna take this thing away from us. Microsoft, we talked about this, we talked about this every week since, probably since the announce Microsoft has said again and again, we will never take <laugh>, call it duty off a PlayStation.

(00:37:38):
Doesn't make any sense. So Brad Smith in his letter said a couple things. He made, he, he humorously, and I'm not sure a lot of people understood this comparison. He compared Sony to Blockbuster when Netflix arrived. And when I say Netflix in this case, I don't mean the Netflix we know today. I mean the original Netflix when it was a DVD delivery service, remember that blockbuster was the biggest video rental chain in the world, well, in the country anyway probably in the world, but in the country. And Netflix arrived and you could get DVDs via Mill. It was kind of nice. So Blockbuster tried a couple of different things, but one of the things they did right before they went under <laugh> was they started a Netflix style DVD mail, dvd, you know, a mail and DVD thing, right? So you could choose how many you got per month.

(00:38:24):
It was like one, two, or three or something like that. Or at a, I'm sorry, not a month. It was at a time. And the quicker you turn these things over, the quicker you could get the next stuff in your queue, just like on Netflix. But Blockbuster had one major advantage over Netflix back then. They had stores. So if, if you had DVDs that you got in the mail from Blockbuster, you could bring them back to a store, right? So you could just maybe less than 30 minutes away and they would give you as many DVDs as you had brought in. So you could go walk to the store, pick out two movies. In my case, and I used to do this, like I actually used Blockbuster for a while because it was actually a better deal. Now, flash forward to today, I think we all know Blockbuster's not around anymore, right?

(00:39:06):
And, and so by comparing Sony, the market leader by the way, right? By comparing Sony to Blockbuster, this is kind of a kind of an underhanded dig. You know, in other words, what they're saying is Sony is so married to the old way of doing things that they don't understand that the world is about to change and they're not gonna change with it. And what they're trying to do is prevent Xbox subscribers from getting these games day and day on Xbox Game Pass, which is a subscription service or an Xbox Cloud gaming, which is that cloud streaming service, which is part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. They would, what they would like is for Activision to remain what they are, ship discs out or digital downloads and have it just be the same everywhere. Cuz Sony doesn't really have a service. They do technically, of course, but they, they're not on the same footing with Xbox Game as they're behind on that kind of thing.

(00:39:59):
And so I thought that was funny, but okay, whatever. But he did confirm that Microsoft went to Sony and said, we will give you a 10 year contract for Call of Duty. We will guarantee that we release every, everything we do for Call of Duty, we'll do it on PlayStation. And Sony never responded. Oh, they didn't answer. They didn't accept. Yeah. Didn't, didn't even, didn't even acknowledge accepted in our our entire premise would be faulty. Yeah. The thing is and I kind of have this later in the notes, but the thing we lose sight of, and I lose sight of. Cause I, I think about this in terms of Call of Duty. This isn't really about quality duty. I, yes, call Duty is probably the most successful, one of the most successful franchises that Activision Blizzard has, of course. But really this is about Microsoft looking at what is the future gaming.

(00:40:49):
That's why they're getting into game streaming. But the current gaming situation and going forward in the future a bigger chunk of it is mobile. And they have no presence in mobile whatsoever. So here you have this company that has a great brand Xbox, everyone knows about it. They're losing in consoles. They have a, a cloud streaming service that Apple is preventing them from using on their devices. You can do it through a browser preventing it from going into the app store, which like you said, is where people expect to find things. They don't have any mobile games of their own. They don't have anything. So this is really what they're buying. What they're, they're gonna spend almost 70 billion to get a foothold in mobile gaming. And Microsoft's, Brad Smith didn't really say this, but Microsoft has been such a good steward of games and has done such a good job of living up to, what is Microsoft's kind of slogan for everything, but just in the context of gaming, meeting gamers where they are, they took Minecraft, everyone freaked out.

(00:41:53):
They made it available everywhere. Yeah. It's on, by the way, it's on Xbox Game Pass and it's on cloud streaming. You do that stuff, but it's everywhere else too. We didn't take it away from anywhere. Well, actually they did take it away. <Laugh>, I think it did disappear somewhere. But basically it's in, it's in more places now than it's ever been. They took, they brought back Microsoft Flight Simulator, which was a PC only title back in the day. Put it on console only in the newest generation, but then put it on Game Pass and cloud gaming, meaning you could play it on previous generation console, Xbox One and on mobile, right? I mean, that's what Microsoft is doing. Their, their whole thing is like, we don't, we don't really do great in consoles. We just, we just talked about the fact they lose money on every console they sell.

(00:42:38):
 They don't think that market's gonna shift, you know, overnight. They know PC gaming is still a big thing. They're, they're playing a role there as well with Xbox Game Pass and with their own first party titles. But mobile is mobile's the big thing. Mobile is, is personal computing. Today they want to be on mobile. And that's what this is about. So in the wake of this we learned, I think last night or today that Microsoft has a team of people going to was, or they're in Washington DC right now, presumably to talk to the ftc, which is the antitrust bot, the regulatory body that had indicated that we might be blocking this. And they would block it by basically filing a lawsuit to prevent this acquisition from happening. I believe that, you know, the way this would work is there's, they must have some committee or panel or whatever, and they, they, everyone votes and a majority rules, whatever it is.

(00:43:35):
 We've, there have been rumors in recent days that people are now waffling that people on this panel, or whatever it is, have previously were saying, oh, we're not gonna allow this. Have looked at it more closely and said, you know what, actually we don't see any problems with this. And I think what they're gonna go to them with is two things. One, what they've, their information about the stuff that he said publicly, whatever. And then a separate <laugh>, this is classic announcement that came very late last night, that Microsoft has now reached separate agreements with both Nintendo and Steam for that 10 year Call of Duty promise that they're gonna put this game on their platforms for 10 years. We offered Sony the same thing. Sony didn't answer us. Do you see what's going on here? Like, we're trying to do the right thing and Sony is just trying to block it. So this

Leo Laporte (00:44:27):
Is though you might argue exactly the point of the FTC is to push mm-hmm. <Affirmative> things like this. Microsoft may not have made these 10 year deals with any of these companies if they weren't in faces. And by the way, they still have to get through the EU and the eu. I don't if they're gonna be agreeable or not.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:44):
Yep. But same thing, I I I've sort of look, this is like the, the conversation about where, where app fee should be Apple and Google want them to be as, as high as possible. Microsoft actually, it's a little different because, you know, economically it makes sense for Microsoft to put this game on PlayStation forever, right? As assuming PlayStation doesn't fall off a cliff. It would be suicide for this platform to take it off a PlayStation. It's the most popular platform for Call of Duty. But yes, I, I think that, I think that Microsoft actually always intended to make some form of thing

Leo Laporte (00:45:24):
That liked us. This negotiation is, was gonna happen. They knew

Paul Thurrott (00:45:27):
That. There's no way to know what the numbers were in their head. There was, there was a rumor, actually, I think Phil Spencer denied this, but there was a rumor some couple months ago where Microsoft had gone to them and said, how about four years? You know, and they were like, four years. What are you talking about? Like four, four years is nothing. And then he, he did come out at the time and made the comment like, we can't, we literally can't make a contract that says forever. However, as long as there is a PlayStation, we will make a call. Whatever the call of Duty is, we will make it for PlayStation.

Leo Laporte (00:45:56):
Which is not a big concession, frankly. Right? I mean that's, they make a lot of money in that, I think.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:03):
But my but Sony's argument is that they want to take it off of

Leo Laporte (00:46:07):
The exclusive would be more valuable than, than selling it on every platform. I'm not sure I agree. I mean, you just said how important it is to sell it on mobile. Why, you know, I don't know

Paul Thurrott (00:46:17):
If Yeah, but the, so the, the well until one last mobile and console and PC somehow become one thing. In other words, like when I play Call of Duty online, it's a different game. It can actually playing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well it's a different game, but I'm also playing. But, but one thing has changed. Like one thing has evolved. I'm actually playing against people on Xbox, obviously, but also on PlayStation, which is not new, but not

Leo Laporte (00:46:39):
On iPad pc.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:40):
No, no, but also PCs, but PCs as well. Yeah. So that's actually very interesting. So when I played the game, I haven't done it in a while actually, but when I, when I've played the Call of Duty mobile on an iPad, honestly, one of the most striking things about it is how well they've kind of emulated the experience, if you will. And then how beautiful the game is. Like this game looks fantastic on mobile and they did that thing that I've wanted for years and years, which is you go back to the catalog of maps and you cherry pick the, that's

Leo Laporte (00:47:10):
10 or

Paul Thurrott (00:47:11):
20. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's awesome having the best maps of all time on that thing. So is there a future where maybe these things come together? I will say, if you allow Call of Duty on Xbox Game streaming and somehow it works. I first person shooters, streaming is a little tough, but if you could multiplayer, I mean maybe impossible, but if you could somehow make that work, there's no reason a person on an iPad couldn't be playing with PC players and console players because it's the same.

Leo Laporte (00:47:39):
It's the streaming game. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:40):
That would be the same game, right? So anyway, it's, we'll see, we'll see what happens. But

Leo Laporte (00:47:46):
They still gotta get through the uk. They still gotta get through the eu. Yeah. Lena Conn was asked last week. She's the chairman of the ftc and the one who's the most aggressively antitrust was asked about it. She said, I can't talk about Activision Blizzard. Let me see if I can find the quote here. Cuz I thought it was interest. She

Paul Thurrott (00:48:05):
Says, look, if they're gonna put Microsoft Word in the Sony Plays station, you know, we can talk about it.

Leo Laporte (00:48:10):
She, no, no, she did not say that. She said the top priority is preserving in innovation in emerging markets. In no case, in no case could you say this is an emerging market of any kind. She says, I, this is the quote from the Wall Journal CEO of someone. I think there can be this misperception. The FTC is somehow anti deals. But when you have increased consolidation, increased concentration, and declining competition, that can have a real adverse effect on innovation. Incumbents and monopolists are not gonna be incentivized to innovate and really push the boundaries in the way that they are when they're facing robust competition. I, does that mean, I don't know what it would be in this market? A new game console that's, that's that ship has sailed a new game company? No, cuz you're gonna end up putting it on those platforms. Your partner not, not competitor. I don't, I don't know how this would save anybody's innovation. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:05):
No, I look, I we should just be clear about this. This benefits Microsoft, right? I, I know that's obvious, but I just like step through it for a second. So Microsoft has these subscription services which have kind of stalled, right? It's always been kind of interesting to me when they were still reporting numbers that Xbox Live Gold kind of hit 45 million and never went anywhere from there. And so now they try this new strategy, they get like a three tier Xbox game pass subscription, 9 99, 99 99, and 1499. The expensive one offers game streaming. Everyone's game streaming is the future. Oh my god, maybe it's finally gonna happen. Year or two goes by and it's like, okay, well actually this is always gonna be a small part of our market too, you know, but you gotta look at it as part of a giant, I dunno, pie or something where it's just part of the puzzle.

(00:49:54):
You know, it's, Microsoft has games on pc, they have games on Xbox, they have games on mobile, they have games that they put sometimes on other platforms. Steam is not another platform in the sense that it's, you know, pc, but they do put games on Steam with this acquisition. They'll have games on Sony. But the way that this benefits them is it gives them more of an audience, more incentive for people to pay for a subscription. Because a much bigger library games will be there. Like Bethesda was a nice step up. They have that agreement with EA for certain things, but this would be like a, a monumental increase in quality and, and volume and that would benefit them, and okay, fine. But like they've said, like, we're, we're third in consoles, we have zero in mobile. What, what's the, you know, we talk about monopolies and duopolies and blah, blah, blah.

(00:50:45):
What? There's, we have nothing in this market. We, the only market we're currently competing in, we're nowhere. So what's the problem? <Laugh> like, yeah, we're a big company, but as far as this market goes, we're, we're not nothing, but we're not, we're not a majority of anything. So there's that. So yes, Microsoft benefits, of course. Why else would they buy something? Sony, I think it hurts Sony a little bit in the sense that they're already kind of behind in cloud streaming and cloud gaming, whatever you wanna call it subscription type stuff. There's no reason they couldn't catch up. I or, you know, do well there. Maybe one of the agreements should be, Microsoft should have to put this on Sony's streaming service at whatever the going rate is for that kind of a thing. Maybe they could do that. I don't know. But I feel like guaranteeing to any reg regulator, whatever country they're from, that we have no, we will put in, in writing where you're not walking away from Sony from the PlayStation. I think that should be enough. I don't understand why we're talking about these other things. Yeah.

(00:51:50):
You know?

Leo Laporte (00:51:52):
All right. Let's take a little break. We do have many, many things to talk about before the end of the show, and I want to get to them.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:59):
Yeah. I just so people know, I wanted to get that done up front. There is some more Xbox stuff. I just felt like this was such a big deal. It's a

Leo Laporte (00:52:07):
Big story. It's a Microsoft story because

Paul Thurrott (00:52:09):
It's, it's happening.

Leo Laporte (00:52:10):
This is the future of Microsoft. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I, I think it's legit. But I do wanna talk a little bit about CDW and Lenovo. Lenovo orchestrated by the experts at cdw, our sponsor, the helpful people at cdw. Understand that as the world changes, your organization has to adapt quickly if it wants to succeed, right? So how can CDW help keep your business ahead of the curve? Well, how about with Lenovo ThinkPads? Well, I love me some ThinkPads. These powerful devices deliver the business class performance. You're looking for thanks to Windows 10 and the Intel O Platform. With your remote teams working across the country around the world, collaboration isn't a problem because Lenovo ThinkPads keep your organization productive and connected from anywhere. Plus, CDW knows your workforce has different work styles needs flexibility. That's why Lenovo ThinkPads are equipped with responsive tools and built in features.

(00:53:12):
Let your team work seamlessly across their favorite tools. Now think about that for a second. Oh, let's not forget about security. While you're thinking of that, these high performing machines protect at the highest level with built-in hardware to guard against modern threats without slowing your team down. When you need to get more out of technology, Lenovo makes seamless productivity possible, and CDW makes it powerful. Learn more at cdw.com/lenovo client cdw.com/lenovo client, we thank you so much for supporting Windows Weekly and we thank you for supporting us by using that address so they know you saw it here. Cdw.Com/Lenovo client. Let's talk about Windows. What's new in the world of Windows?

Paul Thurrott (00:54:03):
Not a lot, actually. We have beta and I believe Dev builds in the past week, neither of which have any new features. However, there has been a persnickety game performance issue on Windows 11. That's apparently been a problem since there's been a Windows 11. If I understand the history of this, it's been pretty bad. Sometime in the, I don't know if it was this past month or the month before, but fairly recently, there was a I keep calling it stable channel. I don't know what to call it, but a, a stable channel cumulative update that supposedly was gonna go a long way to fixing this problem. It's not the case, <laugh>. So in the beta channel now the beta channel, remember they have the two builds, because some have new features, some don't. Of course, with this particular build, there are no new features. So they're the same, but they have different build numbers. They are apparently gonna fix this. So if you're in the beta channel and you have the latest build, you should have a fix for the issues that have been affecting games, but also anything that's like GPU intensive. And we'll see. So if you've been using Windows 10 and not Windows 11 for this reason soon, I don't know, we'll be next Tuesday, probably not, but sometimes soon there should be a fix for that. So nothing new to say

Leo Laporte (00:55:28):
Those, this is not related to the edge freezing thing you were talking about on the, in Intel 12th

Paul Thurrott (00:55:34):
Check. No, and actually, since you bring that up, we

Leo Laporte (00:55:36):
Got so much mail from people saying, yep. See the same thing. You were absolutely confirmed in your experience.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:42):
Yeah, I, I, so

(00:55:46):
It's not just that I, but that is the most obvious and frequent thing that happens right there. There's actually other issues. It's, for me, it's tied largely to using some kind of a Docker hub, but it's not just that. Right? I have other weird performance issues on 12th gen systems only, you know, so I've been experimenting with different things, using a different browser. Of course, I talked about Firefox last week using different computers that don't run on the 12th gen chip set. When I was in Mexico, I was using a laptop that I think was 10th gen, or maybe 11th, but no problems whatsoever. Doc didn't matter. Which doc I used was great. This past weekend, I switched the computer we're using for the show from an nv 16, which is a 12th gen, I think, age series processor to this computer, which is an AMD horizon of some kind.

(00:56:39):
Actually, I should just look at it. I'm not sure what it is. Rise in seven PRO 80 68, 50 u. So kind of their take on the U series processor, right? So just a bit your basic ultrabook kind of processor. No problems whatsoever. So like I said, I, I've also gotten some feedback from other, some people, I've never talked to PC makers about this, and I should, and I actually, I do have that capability. So I will do that. I don't know how much I'd have to find someone who'd be willing to talk off the record. I'm not really sure.

Leo Laporte (00:57:14):
Yeah. Nobody's gonna dis Intel <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:17):
Well, yeah. And by, by the way, it's not a hundred percent clear. It's Intel's fault, right? Intel did change the architecture, but Microsoft is responsible for the system. So it might be something Windows 11 related. What

Leo Laporte (00:57:28):
Complicated? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:29):
I, I'm working on a Windows 11 book, right? So I can't really just play with Windows 10 every day. I have to be in Windows 11. But that would be another thing I could kind of take a look at, right? I mean, there's lots of variables. That's what makes this really hard. I don't want to be a hundred percent, you know, I know it's this, it, it's just that I've used so many 12 gen systems this year, and the problem is so obvious. And like I said, I think last week, I, I'm surprised no one reviewing laptops that I've seen has ever come out and said, this is, there's something going on here. Instead, what you see is, I ran this benchmark, it's 10 to 15 to 20% faster than last year, blah, blah. And then you move on. And it's like, that's cute. But <laugh>, you know, when I actually use it, I have these problems. So, anyhow,

Leo Laporte (00:58:12):
Don't, and it's edge only, right? Oh, no. Wait. Any

Paul Thurrott (00:58:14):
Chromium, chromium, chromium based,

Leo Laporte (00:58:16):
Chromium based thing. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it could be chromium too.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:20):
Yep. Yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (00:58:22):
What's hard to

Paul Thurrott (00:58:23):
Figure that out. I don't want to test one thing and say, I saw that AMD fixes everything. Like, you know, but, but <laugh>, you know I did, I did not have this problem with Windows 11 Onar in Mexico. I brought a Lenova laptop that ran that system. So

Leo Laporte (00:58:38):
Yeah, it just ran slow all round. So who cares, right? Yeah. Yeah. It <laugh>. Yeah. You didn't notice any No slowdowns. It's slow in general,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:45):
<Laugh>. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:58:46):
Now this would be obvious even then, because it's a, it's a like a hesitation, right? It

Paul Thurrott (00:58:51):
Just, well, well, the way I, so I, I think I told the story, but on a typical show like this, like when we go into a new segment of the show, I'll like preload these stories in a browser terms, right? Right. And as we finish the story, you know, I'll control w and get rid of it. When I did that before, the browser would hang and it would sit there for 30 seconds, maybe, which doesn't sound like a lot of time, except when you're doing a live show and you have to move to the next topic. That's a long time. So what I started doing was not closing the browser tabs, cuz I was like, I can't mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I can't afford, I can't afford this time. And then you would do an ad and I'd try to close a few. It got to be a real problem. So I am, I just closed the tab. I needed Godammit <laugh>. I, I have been on this show just closing the tab.

Leo Laporte (00:59:46):
A little demonstration, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:48):
No, I'm using an AMD system, that's fine. Right? No problems at all. Yeah. I'm using Microsoft Edge, by the way. So

Leo Laporte (00:59:55):
That's so weird.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:56):
All I have is, I have evidence, I have theories. I, I absolutely don't have a, a fact to say it is this, I can't say it's this, but I have my suspicions and I've

Leo Laporte (01:00:06):
Voiced, I mean, it could be an interaction between those systems, but it definitely goes away if you're not using Intel. So Intel seems to be the culprit,

Paul Thurrott (01:00:15):
Which is why I've, yeah. And I don't want to tunnel vision it. I'm trying to be objective here. But yes, of course. Yeah. I mean, you look right, you look where you, where you see the problem. I, the problem, well, no, it still happens. But it was a gre like when, when these things, when I first, the first few that I got, I was really, I was kind of freaking out how bad it was. And of course I talked about the whole thing where they added this P series. I, I, I finally got a couple of U series machines and I thought, man, these are gonna be horrible if the the, you know, the more powerful ones are not working well. But actually they're okay. They're, they seem to be okay. They're not any, any worse. I guess. I don't,

Leo Laporte (01:00:51):
<Laugh> can't we have lowered our expectations. You know, the good news is it's not any worse.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:58):
I mean, if you, if you like your browser hanging, it's just as good. I mean, you could save some money, you get the same hang

Leo Laporte (01:01:05):
It hangs just as well. Yeah. It hangs good. Hangs just as good.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:10):
I've tried everything. I've tried efficiency mode.

Leo Laporte (01:01:12):
It's so weird, you

Paul Thurrott (01:01:13):
Know, stuff. I've tried all

Leo Laporte (01:01:14):
Kinds of stuff. So if you're out there and you're a PC maker, maybe you're even an Intel person mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and you think you have some is you, your personal anonymity will be guaranteed. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:27):
I I, I went through a lot of stuff with this. I'm, I could just babble about this for two hours. I, I, one of the first machines I got had some kind of, cus it was an hp, they had a custom like a power management thing going on, like their own power manager that overrid what was in Windows. I thought maybe it was that. I looked at deleting the app that controlled it and see I tried all kinds of different stuff. But eventually I started piling up machines and I realized, no, this is, this is

Leo Laporte (01:01:53):
Happening everywhere. It hangs just as good <laugh>. That's, that's right.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:59):
Six money wait

Leo Laporte (01:02:00):
Is 11 and until 12th gen it hangs just as

Paul Thurrott (01:02:04):
Good. I really think it's a, I don't know what scheduling might be. I'm not a hardware

Leo Laporte (01:02:07):
Guy. Scheduling sounds right, you know, especially you have these performance and efficiency cores and you going

Paul Thurrott (01:02:13):
Back and forth. That's my guess.

Leo Laporte (01:02:14):
Something's going on there. Yeah. That sounds,

Paul Thurrott (01:02:16):
Maybe someone knows someone if they, we don't have to <laugh> go on for another half hour. But if someone knows Discord email, however they wanna do it. When, when AMD switched to kind of a multicore system, right? They're not, I know it's not really hybrid like arm, but they, they, and I don't know enough about hybrid to know are they really just doing a thing that's like hyper threading slash cores? Is it really? You know? But it seems like amd machines now have, you know, it's not dual quad core. It's, they have 8, 6, 12, you know, lots of chorus. I wonder if when AMD switched to this kind of thing, if they, if those machines ever experienced

Leo Laporte (01:02:50):
Interesting. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:51):
Scheduling issues. I don't know. I don't, I never, I don't use enough of them to know.

Leo Laporte (01:02:56):
Well, it's a good story. Do you do, do you do Signal? Do you have any sort of like super encrypted way to be in touch?

Paul Thurrott (01:03:06):
Oh, no, no. For the, no, I don't. I'm sorry. <Laugh>. I'm on ma.

Leo Laporte (01:03:10):
Damn. I'm on Maam.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:12):
Macon, I'm on Twitter.

Leo Laporte (01:03:13):
Hey by the way, welcome. Welcome. I saw you signed up and we welcome you into the Twit social embrace. Yeah, the warm embrace of Twit Social

Paul Thurrott (01:03:22):
Started following people. I boost things sometimes.

Leo Laporte (01:03:24):
Oh, do you toot trying to, do you toot and boost

Paul Thurrott (01:03:27):
I every night? I toot <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:03:31):
And I, I had to thra some sheets the other day cuz I was tooting too much.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:35):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:03:36):
Toot becomes a boost. I boosted that too. <Laugh>. Oh boy Honey. Yeah. Sorry. Moving, moving right

Paul Thurrott (01:03:47):
Along. Yes. Sorry. And speaking of things that haven't changed anything Microsoft released version 1 0 8 of Edge, the web browser. It's a stable. There are new, new features for end users. This is some new stuff in there for it. Pros. we

Leo Laporte (01:04:03):
Better hurry up with this show. Or they're gonna get to 8 0 6 faster. 8 0 7 faster than we do get to thousand. They're at version 108. Cause it's tied to Chromium's version. So it's the same. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:15):
So it's every four weeks now, right? So it was six every six weeks for a while. Now it's every four weeks. Yeah. yeah, we're not gonna get big changes every month, I guess we're call it. Yeah. the, I didn't write about this because I just didn't really see the point of it, but Microsoft Edge now has over 11 point 11%, I'm gonna call it usage share in November, according to Sta counter, which is the highest it's ever been.

Leo Laporte (01:04:40):
Wow.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:41):
Yeah, I know it's not great <laugh>, but on desktop, the number two if you factor in all places,

Leo Laporte (01:04:47):
Number two,

Paul Thurrott (01:04:48):
Distant number two, they're they're not even the Burger King, they're kind of the RC Cola tube Chrome's Coca-Cola. But but whatever Number two is. Number two.

Leo Laporte (01:04:59):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:00):
If you factor in all platforms, I'm sure they're number three after Safari, I

Leo Laporte (01:05:04):
Think. And well that's the problem is mobile. You know, you get the Apple monopoly. There you go. Now that we've agreed

Paul Thurrott (01:05:12):
<Laugh>, thank you,

Leo Laporte (01:05:13):
Thank you

Paul Thurrott (01:05:14):
For finally coming around to that.

Leo Laporte (01:05:16):
Yes, yes. Boy I feel like I should take another break. I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna be bold. I know it's a little quick, but we, we thank God we have advertisers. So that's the thing. And this one's a good one because everybody needs to know about Rocket Money. And I know this cuz it saves me, actually saved me more than a thousand dollars. I had to admit it <laugh> over the last year or two it used to be called True Bill. Maybe you've used True Bill Rocket. Bought it, made it rocket money. It's better than ever. Got lots more features. You know, you can use it to keep track of your finances, to budget, to know what your net worth is, to keep track of your investments, all that stuff. But the best feature, I just gotta, I just gotta say the best feature is it also lets you find out what subscriptions you've forgotten about 80% of people say they have subscriptions.

(01:06:11):
They just, you know, they forgot about, happens to me all the time. I still subscribe to that newspaper, that magazine, that streaming channel. Wait a minute, I'm paying, in my case, <laugh>, I was paying a lot of money to a campaign from 2020. You know that they do when you do the campaign donations, they check, they have a box that's checked that said, make this recurring. And I missed it. I guess I thought it was a one time only deal. Thank goodness Rocket Money told me, you know, Leo. In fact, it was on one of the shows I saw, wait a minute, you know, Leo, there's a tab that says recurring payments and you go there and sometimes it's kind of a revelation. They surveyed people and they found out that on average, most Americans spend about $200 a month. Much of that probably wasted on subscriptions.

(01:06:57):
You no longer use, you don't care about or you've forgotten about, or worse are duplicates. Here's the best part. You find them on Rocket Money and then you cancel 'em in Rocket Money, there's a cancel button and impress it. Rocket Money takes care of the rest. It has saved me so much money over the years. At first is True Bill and now is Rocket Money. I, you know, I was really pleased actually when I I saw the, the new icon and the new name and I thought, oh, and they've added so many features. Rocket Money is awesome. I want you to try it. Just, if, if nothing else, to get rid of these ridiculous subscriptions that just go on and on and on, get rid of useless subscriptions right now with Rocket Money. Go to Rocket money.com/windows. Seriously, it could save you hundreds a year.

(01:07:45):
Now, I know you're smart and you're listening and you say, oh, I could just go to the app store. No, please <laugh>, please don't go to the Google Play store or the App Store. Don't do that. Because then they won't know you saw it here. Just before you go to the app store, go to Rocket money.com/windows. Actually, they give you a link that make it easy. Do it on your phone. That way it's easy and you can install it from there. Maybe I would say marginally easier than searching for it. Rocket money.com/windows. Cancel those unnecessary subscriptions. Right now it's just sensible Rocket money.com/windows. Although if Microsoft ad offered a ugly sweater subscription, I might well have signed up for that. <Laugh>. I would like, I like having these, this is a nice ugly sweater. Paul Throt, Leo LaPorte, we're talking windows. We're talking Microsoft. We're fighting like cats and dogs.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:39):
<Laugh> like Apple and Google,

Leo Laporte (01:08:41):
Like Apple and

Paul Thurrott (01:08:41):
Google. Apple Point. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:08:43):
Let's talk about Microsoft 365.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:47):
Yeah. So speaking of anti-competitive behavior, Microsoft decided to add Discord to teams and not pay Discord for it.

Leo Laporte (01:08:53):
I I, this is really interesting. That's not true. It's not Discord. No, but I did see this this morning. They're gonna add, and it's for free, right? Right. Discord like features to teams for groups and, and families and stuff like that.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:06):
That's fascinating to me because this is clearly for teams. Like the version, no one actually uses the version in Windows, the version for consumers.

Leo Laporte (01:09:16):
Oh, it's not the, it's not like the, it's not all, all of teams.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:20):
Well, I mean, look, they put games into teams for enterprise and education. So yeah, this is gonna come to all teams I guess. But it, today it's launching for the free version of teams that you can get on mobile. The only other free version, so to speak, is in Windows.

Leo Laporte (01:09:35):
And they say that'll be coming soon, right? That's, that's next.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:38):
Yeah, of course. So it's interesting to doing on a mobile, again, go to where the users are, right? So you start with the most important platform, which is kind of interesting. And then you kind of look at how they describe, you know, what is this thing? So when you think about Teams or Slack or anything like that, obviously you've got this organization where you have groups of people or employees usually who are maybe working on a project or part of the same business unit. So they're in these groups that were within teams and they actually call them teams. Of course they do. This is sort of like, I have to say, I, I don't, I sort of don't like the idea of Teams for Consumers, but this community's feature, which is the name of it, is kind of like ad hoc teams, lowercase t for individuals.

(01:10:25):
So you can start, in other words, you start a group, you're like, I'm into this sports team I'm in, we're planning in events. There's a parent-teacher conference going on, or, you know, or you're a small business or whatever it might be. I honestly, I that okay, okay, <laugh> like that actually makes sense to me. I, I don't like the brand teams for people like for non, you know, work type things, but this, this feature is a step toward making teams for consumers as a concept. Kind of makes sense to me. I guess. So, yeah, it's free. And that, that's maybe the most interesting part. So we use Teams at work, but of course we are paying for some form of Microsoft 365 license, a subscription for every user who's on this team. Like, that's how that works. You can connect to outside users as well, but if they're using Microsoft Teams I shouldn't say this, I'm not hundred percent sure I would've, I'm actually not percent sure.

(01:11:20):
So I think you could probably connect to someone outside your organization through Teams. It's possible they wouldn't have to pay for teams to use it like that. But for the most part, people who, who use teams are paying for teams, right? So this is kind of an expansion of the free version. And I would say from a functional standpoint, it's a, it's actually a really big expansion beyond the usual stuff that you would expect from a chat based utility, right? So you can have, you know, video calls, audio calls, text chat, et cetera, et cetera. But this is kind of the next level. And I, I have to, I'm surprised to say I don't have a problem with this. Like, this seems like this is

Leo Laporte (01:12:01):
No effect. I'm tempted to try it.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:03):
Yeah. Seems like a pretty Isn't

Leo Laporte (01:12:05):
That wild? Yeah, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:12:09):
Yeah. It being on mobile only for right now is makes it a lot less interesting to me personally. But it's gonna, you know, it will spread. So we'll see. But yeah, I I, I'm, I'm struggling Not

Leo Laporte (01:12:20):
Specifically that it would come to desktop next, you know, it's like not just around the corner or something. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:25):
Yep,

Leo Laporte (01:12:26):
Yep. So really this is clearly a bid to get consumers to use Teams.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:32):
Yes. And honestly, that's very interesting to me because you know, chat for Microsoft Teams is the client has called in Windows 11 and you can download it from the web for Windows 10. Never made a lot of sense, right? It's this thing, they put it on your task bar. I think people kind of look at it and they're like, well I was using Skype maybe cuz I'm a Microsoft person, it doesn't just bring in my mic, my Skype stuff for some reason. Like, that doesn't make a lot of sense. And what is this thing? Or I, or maybe I used, I do use, I'm one of the 400 whatever million people use teams at work and, wait, this is, doesn't connect to that for some reason. So you're telling me I need to download a second teams to use in Windows 11, which you do <laugh> and, okay.

(01:13:17):
 So it's kind of, you know, it never made a lot of sense. And when you look at whatever improvements Microsoft has made to Windows 11 since last October, year ago, October, I don't think they've, I can't think of a single change they've made to teams. So this is the first big one. So, or it will be when it happens on Windows 11. But yeah, this looks, I think this looks interesting. So we'll see how it goes. I mean, I, I'm curious about things like sharing, if you have media, like I wanna, we had an event and you know, Bob took 250 pictures and this guy took 150 pictures. Can we put them all there and let people get them? And if this is a free service, how does that work? 

Leo Laporte (01:13:54):
This is definitely a loss leader because I remember them saying you could share media and stuff. I mean they've, this is, this is on free. This have a lot of of features. But remember, discord is free as well.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:08):
And

Leo Laporte (01:14:08):
The way they get you, you know, the way they they monetize is they get you to upgrade.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:12):
Right?

Leo Laporte (01:14:13):
Although Discord did just add a subscription tier. So I wonder if maybe that's not working so

Paul Thurrott (01:14:18):
Well. I'm, I mean I'm, I'm, I'm so cynical. I, I see this kind of cause and effect that's probably not real. And that cause and effect is back in, I dunno, February, March or something. Microsoft said some number. We, we have some number of people on Microsoft teams and they have been providing these updates for long ti you know, since teams was a thing and teams growth has had slowed for sure, which makes sense. It's in the hundreds of millions now. And then they never provided another number. And when they did their earnings back in probably October, or I guess it would've come out in November whenever it was they used the same figure from the spring and it was like, huh, what's going on there? And it, this leads me to wonder if this isn't some attempt to keep, bro, like, so they can come out later and say, oh yeah, we had a, we got a big boost in teams cuz they'll, you know, they'll combine these all together into one thing. I don't know, that's probably not true, but that's how my brain works. Like

Leo Laporte (01:15:10):
That would imply that they were highly sensitive to the lack of uptake of teams.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:17):
Well if you think there isn't someone monitoring a dashboard every single day

Leo Laporte (01:15:21):
That

Paul Thurrott (01:15:21):
Shows them, I mean, I honestly, I think they are very sensitive. A

Leo Laporte (01:15:24):
Mcdonald's style billboard.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:26):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:28):
Saved.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:29):
Yeah, exactly. I don't know. I, again, like I said, my, my brain's broken, but

Leo Laporte (01:15:36):
Yeah. Anyway, I'm glad they're doing it. I love, you know, why look a gift horse in the mouth? It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a holiday.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:44):
Well, hold on a second. That's yeah, there's this guy on the road that says he'll give us some free beans. Yeah, let's, let's take

Leo Laporte (01:15:50):
It, let's take it. Look,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:51):
Look, what could that get could

Leo Laporte (01:15:53):
Possibly go wrong,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:54):
<Laugh>. Yeah. we'll find out. It's interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:15:59):
Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that. I thought, oh, I gotta ask Paul about that. That's, and I, and it's funny, it works cuz I have no desire to use Teams at all. But that makes it more interesting now you're talking. I, but partly that's cause I love Discord. We use discord. Yeah. I'd never really used it until we started Club Twi. And I know I live in it. I love it. It's,

Paul Thurrott (01:16:18):
I have, I have so many different thing. I mean, you know, it, you know, Twitter and Macon and not chat clients. But you know, as far as things I kind of monitor all day long, you know, I've got Skype running.

Leo Laporte (01:16:26):
They're similar. It's very similar. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:28):
Teams, you know, Rafael recently asked me why I wasn't on like, the team's client in Windows. So I was like, are you kidding me? I was like, I don't, I already have like eight different ways to reach you. I don't why, why would I want another one? You know? It would be neat if there were more, like there were fewer of these things with more people on each, I guess. But

Leo Laporte (01:16:48):
Golia, who is in our discord said, you should look a gift horse in the mouth cuz a horse is badly raised and this has bad teeth. Might cost more than it's worth to you as a gift. Well, I think golly had some childhood trauma. I don't

Paul Thurrott (01:17:00):
That is a very lit, that's a literal, it's

Leo Laporte (01:17:03):
Odd on this, this specific, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:05):
<Laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:05):
Really go.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:06):
Okay. Do you have any idea how how expensive dental work is on a horse? No, I don't. It was just a

Leo Laporte (01:17:13):
<Laugh>. Just, all right. That's funny. You thought you had enough Xbox before. Right? Get ready. It's time for Xbox The Conjuring or the Reckoning or,

Paul Thurrott (01:17:29):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:17:29):
What do they, what is that movie? What do they do when they say the second one? It's the, the it's

Paul Thurrott (01:17:35):
Part due.

Leo Laporte (01:17:36):
Part due,

Paul Thurrott (01:17:36):
Like hot. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:37):
Yeah. Hot takes part due. Yeah. Hit me, hit me. Hit me.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:42):
Yeah. I don't remember the timing of this either, but past year or two mainline or mainstream AAA games on Newgen consoles have gone up from 59 9 to 69 99, right? So for example, the new Call of Duty is, is 70 bucks. Like, that's the starting price. And so that's kinda the way the world's been going. Obviously that's expensive, but Microsoft, I saw this headline and I, I got nervous. I saw, actually, they emailed me and I said, oh, this is it. This is the console price hike. But no, what Microsoft announced was that starting in 2023, the price of first party meaning Microsoft made or Microsoft Studio made AAA titles will be $70, you know, 69 99 instead of 60 in the US and, you know, different countries, different prices. But that's the way the world has gone. It's unfortunate. They all but con confirm Phil Spencer not Specter that they would almost certainly be raising the prices on the consoles as well next year. There was a big sale on Xbox Series s as you may recall, over Black Friday. I hope if you wanted one, you got it. Because at some point those prices are gonna go up. I mean, there's just no, no doubt about it. So we know that the game prices are going up to start.

(01:19:06):
So you mentioned today is a day that will live an in for me while I, I tell you, please look at the <laugh>. The, the, the, the graphic Microsoft chose for this story, uhoh, which is that Microsoft flight simulated across crosses 10 million pilots, as I call, call them gamers users. Right. since this debut two years ago,

Leo Laporte (01:19:25):
This is the anniversary of course, of Pearl Harbor. Right. In fact, it's a big anniversary, isn't it? It's the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Oh boy. Is that right? I think it is. Wasn't that 1940? Is that right? No, it was 40. Was it 41 or 42?

Paul Thurrott (01:19:39):
No, no, it can't, it was not 41. But

Leo Laporte (01:19:42):
December 7th, I know that much. I

Paul Thurrott (01:19:45):
Would've said, I

Leo Laporte (01:19:45):
Would've said, and if you looked in the skies of Honolulu No,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:48):
You're right. I'm sorry. You're,

Leo Laporte (01:19:49):
It would've looked just like this <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:53):
Yep. No, that's like, guys, listen, maybe, maybe an in plain view or something like I, it looks

Leo Laporte (01:19:59):
Like here they come,

Paul Thurrott (01:20:00):
Flight simulator games are

Leo Laporte (01:20:03):
That, that one in the middle though. Isn't that the Spruce goose that we talked about? That's the, the, it looks like a Howard Hughes plane. The big boy world's largest wooden. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:10):
Cause that would land that landed in the water, right? Those are the water. Yeah. The permanently affects water landers. Yeah. Yes,

Leo Laporte (01:20:17):
Yes. This is, so this is all the different airplanes,

Paul Thurrott (01:20:21):
I

Leo Laporte (01:20:21):
Guess, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:20:21):
Yeah. So some of this tasks on this thing they, Microsoft, this is another thing Microsoft does. Great. So when you're worried about Microsoft owning games, right? We've seen this across, you know, the Gears award titles, that Sea of Thieves game is like this. They update it and update it and update it. And so in two years, Microsoft has released 27 content updates all free. So if you own this game, if you bought it outright, or if you access it through Xbox Game Pass or play it on Xbox call gaming, whatever it is, you got everything for free. Right? There was a helicopter and glider thing from last month at the 40th anniversary. Yeah. So 10 was, what did I say? <Laugh>? What was the number? 10 million players. 500 million flights of 40 billion total miles flown. That's the equivalent of 10 million trips around the earth. I had a travel year that was like that. I remember that. And the equivalent of 200 round trips from the earth to the sun.

Leo Laporte (01:21:16):
Oh. Which was

Paul Thurrott (01:21:18):
A question I got and a test I took recently that said, how many miles is,

Leo Laporte (01:21:21):
Yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Paul Thurrott (01:21:22):
No, how many miles was it from the earth to the sun? And I was like, 93 million. No, no. The question was, how many minutes does it take for light to travel for the sun

Leo Laporte (01:21:32):
And a half minutes? Is that right?

Paul Thurrott (01:21:33):
I did not know that. I was like 93 million. No, wait, that's the

Leo Laporte (01:21:36):
Distance <laugh>. I didn't know it was 93 million. See, between the two of us, it's, we

Paul Thurrott (01:21:39):
Do, okay. It's 90. Yeah. 93 million miles. I believe that was what came outta my mouth. And then I was like, wait, no, that's, well,

Leo Laporte (01:21:45):
They just divide that by 365,000.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:48):
Yeah. It's surprisingly Leo, I couldn't do that on top my

Leo Laporte (01:21:51):
Head. 3000 kilometers per second divided by 93. Oh, nevermind. By the way, speaking of numbers, and I should have known this cuz we were in Pearl about a year ago, a little more than a ago. It's the 80th was last year. Cuz there was a big 80th

Paul Thurrott (01:22:07):
Single. Yeah, it was 41. You were correct. Yep. Sorry

Leo Laporte (01:22:09):
About that. And no, I said 42. I wasn't sure. I if you've not done that, by the way, an incredible experience to see the memorial where the Missouri was sunk and, and, and get on those ships. I

Paul Thurrott (01:22:23):
Just saw a, you sort of don't appreciate it. You know, when I've seen pictures, I've not been, but I mean, I just saw a beautiful photo of it from above where you can really see the, it was the, the water was perfectly clear and it was just a, a kind of a stunning photo of the stuff that's under the water, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:22:40):
Missouri under the water. Yeah. So they built the memorial over it, like

Paul Thurrott (01:22:45):
Out to over the top

Leo Laporte (01:22:46):
Of it over. And so if you look over the side of the memorial, you can see parts of the ship is still coming up. And in fact, oil is still leaking from it. So there's a little oil slick. Wow. And then the memorial itself is, is terrifically moving because of course Sure. It, you're standing above the graves of many, many sailors who died with the ship and were, and were in interned with the ship. And then there's also a list of men who were on the Missouri survived. And in their last wishes said, but when I die, please bury me there. So they actually does

Paul Thurrott (01:23:25):
Work. Is it a ashes thing?

Leo Laporte (01:23:27):
That's a good question. There is a a, a porthole that you could, that apparently they bring, they bring it, it probably's gotta be ashes, right? They bring it there. And I can't imagine that they drop. But it was very moving because the thought was was, you know, these guys survived, their comrades died, but they are so moved and touched by that sacrifice, they say. And, and some of them were buried like five, 10 years ago. I think it slowed down a lot, but some of them were like 2006. I took a picture of it. It was incredible. So there's a list of the people who have been buried there since, you know, dying of natural causes to be with their comrades. And I just, wow. Right. It's a beautiful place. Yeah. and a beautiful memorial and lots of history and just, I really you know, it's, it is something we should remember 81 years ago. Right? It's quite a shock. Quite a shock. It takes eight and one third minutes for light to get from the sun, as anyone would know who could divide 93 million by 186,000 miles per second. It's the Arizona, not the Missouri. That's right. The Missouri's, the one you visit, the Arizona is the one that's sank. And that you're the thank you for correcting me on that. I'm just full of misinformation today. Maybe you better do this show without me. I'll just I'll just sit over

Paul Thurrott (01:24:44):
Here. I honestly, the, if you want misinformation, I'm your guy. All right. So

Leo Laporte (01:24:50):
Game past titles for December.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:52):
Yeah. There's some good ones too. And some more day and date type stuff. So there's the the, hello, what do you call it? Lego Star Wars. The Skywalker Saga. That's

Leo Laporte (01:25:02):
Supposed to be pretty good.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:03):
Yeah, those are supposed to be good. The Walking Dead the final season. So this is the form of telltale games. Remove that company. Yeah. which I think back

Leo Laporte (01:25:11):
Like stories, story games. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:14):
I've, I have played through most of the games in a series and I, I don't believe I played the Final Seasons. I'm gonna take a look at that. Hello Neighbor two, which is kinda a crazy looking game I not played, but looks very interesting. Or not the original either. And then a Hot Wheels unleashed game. It looks pretty good too. So a bunch of stuff,

Leo Laporte (01:25:34):
Whenever I see these, these pictures of games mostly I've never heard of.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:38):
Yeah. Well, but these, I mean, this is maybe half and half <laugh> at least, you know. This is, they're

Leo Laporte (01:25:44):
All, they're all the covers are all very colorful and exciting and make you, you know. Yeah. I don't know what Metal Helsinger is, but boy, that looks like

Paul Thurrott (01:25:52):
Fun. Look at that cover.

Leo Laporte (01:25:54):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:54):
Why is there little cover? I'm just gonna download it. <Laugh>, you know.

Leo Laporte (01:25:58):
Well, it reminds me when I was younger and had a Atari, I was, was always looking for games to play.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:04):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:26:06):
I used to go to a game store that was dusty and they had stuff, you know, kind of from stacks and falling over and stuff. And you'd look at a game and you go, I have no idea. This is a good game.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:19):
I used to I had Ami and my favorite game company was Cosis. Which

Leo Laporte (01:26:24):
Was Cosis. Yeah, right.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:25):
Sony.

Leo Laporte (01:26:26):
And that had that weird the Cosis had that weird Ls d psychedelic

Paul Thurrott (01:26:32):
Mushroom. It was like, it was the guy I did the Yes. Album arts. It was Allen Dean. No

Leo Laporte (01:26:37):
It looked like a yes. Cover. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:39):
Yeah. What was that guy's name? A Dean Allen Dean, whatever his name was. It was the same. I think it was

Leo Laporte (01:26:44):
Joey Bishop as I remember.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:46):
Yep. Joey Ramone. I don't, it was one of those guys. I am gonna look

Leo Laporte (01:26:51):
It up. I am gonna it up something.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:53):
It's something Dean, it's, or

Leo Laporte (01:26:55):
Dean who did the artwork for Yes. Album covers Roger Dean. Yes, Roger, of course. Thank you. And he, so I did not know he did the Cosis.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:03):
Yes. Not all of them, but a lot of 'em in, it looked just like that. Not just the logo, but that every game had a unique logo and a box art that was gorgeous. Right. And at least on the Ammi, at least the game, you know, like you talk about Atari, like you buy a game that looks like that thing and you bring it home and it's like 16 pixels by eight pixels or whatever. But when you brought home a, like an Ammi game, like you know, shadow of the Beast especially I mean those games were amazing and graphically and kinda lived up, you know, they weren't quite as good as the the box art obviously, but they really looked up to

Leo Laporte (01:27:34):
It. Well, that's a problem I had cuz I'd get these games home and they'd be Well, that's the thing. And you know, the box art was always gorgeous. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:27:42):
There you go. That looks, that's a right, there is a a Yes album cover, but, but it's for a game, you

Leo Laporte (01:27:49):
Know, it's a game called Super Black Onyx that I never heard of.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:53):
Oh. Some of my favorite games were from these guys. I, cosis

Leo Laporte (01:27:56):
Was good. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:56):
I looked for this stuff. Yeah. They got bought by Sony and they released a version of Shadow of the Beast on some version of the PlayStation at one point. And that kind of just disappeared. I don't know what

Leo Laporte (01:28:07):
Happened. Oh, look at Barbarian. That's a good one. Oh yeah. I love Roger Dean. Let's give him some credit.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:14):
Yep, yep. Roger Dean. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:16):
Roger Dean. Yep. And Cosis, which had that great, that was, you know, that was smarter them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I I, on our last cruise I met a guy who did game covers on the boxes. He was the artist who painted them. He was a painter's in his paint. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:28:32):
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:32):
I wonder if it was Roger Dean and I just didn't know it.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:35):
Oh boy. That I, like he has, he passed away. Oh, I'm sure. I feel like he might have recently passed away. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:42):
Here's the Shadow of the Beast.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:44):
Yeah. Let

Leo Laporte (01:28:45):
Me show you this one. Did I push the right button? There you go.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:50):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:51):
Bring back memories. Huh? Huh? Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:54):
Right. That landscape right there was the same landscape that Yes. Used for their union album cover. It's the same fake Planet <laugh>, you know, it's like the same

Leo Laporte (01:29:04):
I, if you're gonna have, if Music Night is gonna feature these songs of mm-hmm. <Affirmative> of Billy Squire Quire and yes, John Anderson. I will be, I will be there.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:13):
Billy Squire. No,

Leo Laporte (01:29:14):
I

Paul Thurrott (01:29:15):
Dunno. No. Chris Squire. Billy Squire. What are you talking? Oh, what's up? Late last

Leo Laporte (01:29:22):
Night. Don't bug me, man.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:24):
I, I said a dean. What am I talking? I, I'm, of course this is the Squire the quintessential way that men interact. Like, I make fun of you for something. I make the same mistake and then I make fun of you from making it. You know, I don't know why. I'm sorry. I just go right there. That's not how I was. Oh, you're right. I'm like, are you, are you stupid? What the the hell? You're crazy, man. <Laugh> Billy Squire was you know, another guy stroke, right? He was, yeah. Stroke. Stroke. Lonely as the Night Lonely

Leo Laporte (01:29:53):
As the Night Boy, you're good.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:55):
Wow. Yeah, he was good. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:29:57):
You are very good. And then and Chris Squire was, was he basis? Yeah. The basis John Anderson's. But Squire did the singing too, right? Was he the high voice?

Paul Thurrott (01:30:09):
He didn't sing too many of the songs. He did. He did background mostly. He had Run With the Fox. He did. 

Leo Laporte (01:30:15):
I didn't know you were a Yes Aficionado.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:18):
Oh yes. I

Leo Laporte (01:30:19):
Love, yes. I thought that was my guilty secret.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:23):
Oh no,

Leo Laporte (01:30:24):
No one I know likes. Yes. But I grew up, I mean, that was my, we played that yes. Songs over and over in college. Oh yeah. Without of course let up. Yep. Close to the edge.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:34):
I've seen Yes. Many times. Have

Leo Laporte (01:30:35):
You Oh, I jealous. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:30:37):
Sorry. And this, and Br Wakeman, how I've seen Rick

Leo Laporte (01:30:39):
Wakeman was the course, the keyboardist, the Six Ys of Henry Vi Eights. That's right. Wild. That's great. Many people, the chatroom's making me feel better. Many people like Yes. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:51):
Oh yeah. Well, well people, I dunno. Nobody I know. I don't know what you mean by that, but

Leo Laporte (01:30:57):
People, right. Is there any more in this fabulous Xbox segment of which we speak?

Paul Thurrott (01:31:04):
There is one more thing. This is only, this is not Xbox specific, but gaming related. Amazon has a service called Luna, which is their game streaming service. They used to offer, they offer, so they have a kind of a, a base price for it. They have different I dunno what they call channels or something where you can kind of buy add-ons and you could pay, you could pay over 20 bucks a month for this thing if you wanted to, if

Leo Laporte (01:31:25):
You want like 4K and all

Paul Thurrott (01:31:27):
That. Yeah, yeah. Well and different like content too. So they used to offer an $18 per month Ubisoft plus channel that allowed you to access all the latest, actually, I'm sorry, they probably still offer this, but this was the only way you could get Ubisoft games through Luna. But now if you own Ubisoft games on pc, you can stream them through Luna for free. So it's a little bit like GForce now in that capacity, I guess I'll call it. So this is some kind of a deal with Ubisoft, which is good.

Leo Laporte (01:31:58):
Hysterical. Cuz they have Luna plus they have Prime gaming, they have Ubisoft plus, they have Jackbot games, they have all these crazy little,

Paul Thurrott (01:32:07):
And I think there are five or six of 'em. And you could, you know, prime members get, you know, two bucks off the base price and blah, blah, blah, whatever. So it's, there's a lot of stuff there, but, and it's only us only, so if you're launching from Europe, wherever, sorry. But I'm sure they'll get there

Leo Laporte (01:32:21):
Eventually. I think I bought the Luna Controller. I can't

Paul Thurrott (01:32:23):
Remember. I did. I absolutely bought the I speaking much. I just got my refund on the Stadia controller.

Leo Laporte (01:32:28):
Yeah, they're coming out.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:29):
Yeah, that's finally happening. So that was good. That was 60 bucks. I think I paid for that thing. Or 50 bucks. I don't remember. I did buy two games like an idiot.

Leo Laporte (01:32:38):
<Laugh>. I know, me too. It's such a moron. And it's silly because you and I both had, at the time, I had X Cloud gaming as well. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know how many different Its, its three music services. Four gaming services. What the hell? That's why you need I Rocket Money our sponsor.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:55):
<Laugh>. There you go. There

Leo Laporte (01:32:56):
You go. Figure out what you're paying for.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:58):
That's right.

Leo Laporte (01:33:01):
Xbox came included you. Oof. Right. That's what somebody's been saying in the chat. Outy

Paul Thurrott (01:33:07):
Da da da. I'm not, is that true? Hmm? I'm not sure about

Leo Laporte (01:33:10):
That. Outy says so. Okay, well, and he's hungry like a wolf.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:14):
There you go. Nice. Speaking of the eighties, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:33:19):
Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:33:19):
Just special show. Just on album tracks.

Leo Laporte (01:33:23):
I think we should have you know, they have Music Night at Throt. I think we should have Music night at Windows Weekly.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:30):
Actually, we are gonna have music night later tonight. So we're gonna, we're getting there. What do you don't? No, no. I mean, on the show we're gonna talk about music. Oh.

Leo Laporte (01:33:38):
Oh, is this gonna be your new pick of the week thing?

Paul Thurrott (01:33:40):
That's not gonna be a new thing, but it's the end of the year. So I've been getting those like end of year recaps from services and stuff. Yeah. So I thought I'd just kind of go through that a little bit. It's kind of interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:33:49):
Speaking of end of the year, I should mention that you will be part of our season ending twi, which will be I think that's New Year's Day.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:00):
That might be a When

Leo Laporte (01:34:01):
Is that? We're gonna record on the 15th. Don't forget.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:04):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:34:05):
A week

Paul Thurrott (01:34:05):
From tomorrow. So it's a week from tomorrow.

Leo Laporte (01:34:07):
Yeah. Okay. Because that, because it's gonna be, we decided to do we did this once before and I loved it. Kind of the, the long time, the long haulers haulers.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:18):
The <laugh>. The Covid. Long

Leo Laporte (01:34:20):
Hauling. The Covid, long haulers. They're all me going. Well, no. Throt. Gibson's gonna be there. Yep.

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

Leo Laporte (01:34:27):
Nice. Jarvis is gonna be there and we're adding a new member of the team cuz he's old just like me. I was gonna say doc Earls will be there as well. Okay. So that's gonna be great. This

Paul Thurrott (01:34:37):
Is gonna be one of the rare groups where I lower the average age.

Leo Laporte (01:34:41):
You were the youngest person in the group. <Laugh> by far. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:34:44):
Crazy. I never get to do that

Leo Laporte (01:34:46):
Anymore. If it weren't for you, I could make the cutoff 60 and up, but we thought we'd have, we'd kinda get one of the younger people in so that we found the panel <laugh>. Paul, what's his Snapchat I hear all about? Do you young people use TikTok? Is it, is it When I use Telegram? It's an app, not a piece of paper. <Laugh>. alright. <Laugh>. Okay. Okay. Oh boy. So we did the Luna story. Oh. I really wanna do the back of the book. There's some really good stuff. This is your picks. And that's by the way, what we'll do on that special. So the way we do this for all of our shows we have a best of, so there'll be a best of Wins weekly. Our last Windows weekly of the year will be the 21st. Of course Christmas is that weekend. And so we start our best ofs that weekend. And all the week of the 26th through the 30th will be best ofs. So best of Windows Weekly, right. And then we'll be about you and I'll be back January 4th. Okay. With all new shows for the new year. But as we usually do with twit, we do a, a best of, and that'll be on Christmas, so no one will listen to it. <Laugh>.

(01:36:03):
And then the following week, which is New Year's Day, we're gonna have this special holiday episode, and it will be a look back at 2022. So we'll pick the 10 big stories from 2022 to talk about that kind of thing there. There'll be a, there'll be a list for you. You can, but Paul's gonna do his look back on podcasts, books, and music in just a moment. I'm very excited. But first a word, if I can, if I may, about Melissa, windows Weekly is brought to you by M E L I S S A. What is Melissa? It is the best way to make sure your customer contact data is up to date. But that just, even to say that is such a small part of what Melissa does. In fact, they have now put out the, their 2023 Melissa Solutions catalog.

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(01:39:51):
The result is a comprehensive tool set for data quality, address verification, and identity verification With our tools and services, businesses are empowered to meet complex regulations, streamline onboarding, combat fraud, and, and realize the true value of customer data as a business asset. Boy that he said it perfectly, what's cool is they're now using the latest cutting edge technologies like machine learning. They've been around since 1985. They've, they've kind of pioneered this whole idea of global intelligence solutions to help organizations unlock accurate data for a more compelling customer view. Melissa, and by the way, your data is safe with Melissa. They undergo independent security audits to reinforce their commitment to data and security and privacy and compliance. They are GDPR compliant. SOC two hipaa. Your data is in absolutely the best hands. Bottom line, make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today.

(01:40:53):
1000 records cleaned for free. Just to give you an idea of how it works at melissa.com/twi. M e l i s s a melissa.com/twit. Want to thank Ray and his team at Melissa. They're great people. Greg for your support. So on on this show and all our shows, we really appreciate it. Great product, great service, and really, really good people. Melissa.Com/Twi. Thank you by the way, for supporting us, by your listener and viewer by going to that address. That way they know you saw it here. Melissa.Com/Twi. Now with Paul, we are going to end the year. I like doing this. I I think you should do this every week. No, you can't. You couldn't. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:41:40):
Yes, this week's playlist

Leo Laporte (01:41:42):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:41:43):
This is really a good idea though. I like it.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:46):
Yeah, so well, you know, everyone's getting these year end recaps, right? Spotify came out with it. Everyone, you know Apple Music,

Leo Laporte (01:41:52):
I happy to say that your show is often people have been insane tuning on the ma on look at my number

Paul Thurrott (01:41:57):
One show, windows Weekly, right? Someone told me last week that the longest podcast episode they listened to this year was the last episode of Windows Weekly, which was two hours and 46 minutes longer. So, crazy thing. Yeah, so I, I mean, I get these things too, right? So I, I, when, when I think about podcasts books and mostly, well mostly audio books, although there were some good Kindle books as well this year. And music, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of in a different space than I used to be when I was younger, I guess. And for a long time, for example, I didn't really listen to Tech podcasts. One of the changes I made, not this past year, but the year before was I added a bunch of tech podcasts, right? So things like.net Rocks with Richard Campbell and run's radio also with Richard Campbell toxic Google, right?

(01:42:52):
And then there's a new one that just debuted from Google at the begin, right when they launched the Pixel seven and those other products called, made by Google. And they did a run of eight episodes where they talked to people inside of Google about particular products. So they talked about a guy, you know, about the tensor chip set. They talked to someone about their audio work. But yeah, it's, it's actually, I, I found it very informative, but my number one podcast of last year, and I mean like by far it's possible that I listened to this more than everything else combined, is something called Maintenance Phase. And this is, I think of it as a wellness and weight loss kind of a podcast. It's a <laugh>, I don't know, I just say this like, it's a, it's a, it's a fat woman and a gay guy <laugh>, and they are hilarious and super in informative, which is what I like. And they debunk things related to weight loss and, and whatever. I listened to this thing for 22 hours and 46 minutes this year. Wow. 26 episodes. This is the one podcast. I just listen straight through every single thing they ever do. I went back to listen to all the ones I've never listened

Leo Laporte (01:43:57):
To. I'm, I'm opening up my pocket pocket cast right now and gonna add this.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:02):
Yeah, it's very interesting. But I'll just say this. There's one that might even be more interesting to people because it's more kind of general knowledge type stuff. The, the, the guy of maintenance phase, Michael Hobbs, created another podcast recently with someone named Peter Sam Sheri, who was a lawyer called If Books Could Kill <laugh>. And what that podcast, it's a great name. What that podcast does, it is, it takes on, it does the same sort of debunking but for what they call like airport books, which are dangerous books that have bad ideas that lots of people bought and thought were they were, right. So the classic example of this is Freakonomics, which is 100%

Leo Laporte (01:44:39):
Nonsense. Yes. Isn't that nonsense? But you love it cuz it's like, oh, that makes sense. Oh wow.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:44):
Here's why I love it. I actually, so listen, I'm, I am, I am not in any way egotistical, which is, which I've just said. So obviously I'm egotistical, but I mean like, but the one thing I I'm sort like, I don't know, semi proud of is I, I like to think that I look at things differently than a lot of other people do. And I like to have a, a discussion with someone where they're like, no, you're wrong. And it's like, well, hold on, let's talk about this. And they're like, oh, okay, I see what you're saying. And I feel like Freakonomics, is that where they're like, Hey you thought crime went down in the nineties because they added more cops, but would you believe it was this other thing? I'm like, oh my God, that blew my mind. And it's nonsense.

Leo Laporte (01:45:22):
It's all that was the Broken Window theory, which has been proven wrong. It's

Paul Thurrott (01:45:26):
All completely

Leo Laporte (01:45:26):
Wrong.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:27):
Yeah, right. So they actually recorded eight episodes, or seven or eight episodes, and then they've recorded the one for Free Economics. And they were like, we gotta put this one out first because it's, it's perfect. And now they've, there's only three or four episodes so far, but that are out, you know, public. But it's, like I said, it's one of the cohosts from maintenance phase, which I love. This guy's and the two of them, they're so smart and the way they present this is one guy, one of the two hosts, and this is true both podcasts is, has completely researched the topic, read the book, whatever it is. The other one's just coming in fresh. Oh, I

Leo Laporte (01:45:59):
Like how to talk that. That's a common format. I love that. For

Paul Thurrott (01:46:02):
You, for someone to, you're good at the, this is like what you're like, actually I

Leo Laporte (01:46:05):
Just pretend to be a bimbo. No, no, no. For

Paul Thurrott (01:46:08):
Someone, for someone to be presented with something for the first time and then be able to speak intelligently about it is a gift. And these guys, the two

Leo Laporte (01:46:17):
Of them, that's awesome.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:18):
It's awesome. That's, that was, that was kind of my year end podcast

Leo Laporte (01:46:22):
By the way. Corey doctor calls and he, I'm sure he didn't invent it, but he calls it might actually been David Grabner in his, the dawn of everything, but he calls Freakenomics Malcolm Gladwell.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:35):
Yep. Malcolm Gladwell episode two.

Leo Laporte (01:46:37):
He calls 'em just, just so stories which like, kipling's just so stories are completely false, but sounds so right, that you just go, oh yeah, that's it. It,

Paul Thurrott (01:46:49):
I just, so I just did something like this on the show earlier. I said to you and I, I don't have a name for it. So I think of it as a, it's like, that does not mean this kind of thing, right? Which is, so in other words, I said to you, Microsoft is releasing this thing for teams, for consumers, because team in my brain teams has slowed and this is a way to get teams up. And that's absolutely not how it happened. They, there was, there's no way these things are connected because it's impossible. But I've drawn this connection in my brain and at least I recognize that I'm doing it. Like I know it's not right <laugh>, but that's, it's that kind of thing. It's like it's a Gilligan's Island. The best example I could think of this is one day the skipper walks up to Gilligan, Gill's, got a garlic necklace around his neck and he's like, what are you, why are you wearing garlic? And he goes, oh, this keeps the crocodiles away. He's like, Gilligan, there were no crocodiles on this island. He's like, see, it works <laugh>. You know, like it's, see,

Leo Laporte (01:47:43):
I

Paul Thurrott (01:47:43):
Prove it's nonsense. It's, it's, it's, it's nonsense. But that's, you know, anyway, I like things that debunk things that are smart. So yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
Anyway, those two podcasts, not Gilligan, but, okay. No, I'm subscribing. I just put them in my pocket.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:55):
Those are

Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
Smart. Those are where they will sit for weeks and never get listened to cuz who has time, but

Paul Thurrott (01:48:01):
Well, okay. But that's the thing with podcasts. So I, I just said with maintenance phase, that's the one that I, I blow through and I'm gonna do that with if Books could kill. Yeah. The other podcast I listened to are just kind of all over the map and I cherry pick things. So for example, I don't listen to every episode of.net Rocks, but when they have people on that, I really, like, for example, I know the latest episode is Billy Hollis. He is this guy talks a about UX design a lot. He's got kind of a funny accent. He's, he's, I've never met him, but he sounds really cool. But he, his episode with these guys a year ago was my favorite episode of that entire year. So I'm, I'm gonna be listening to that very soon. So I, I, a lot of these things I subscribe, but I'm really just kind of cherry picking. Like

Leo Laporte (01:48:38):
It's is nice to have 'em. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:40):
Yeah. Like American History Tellers will have a great series about Watergate or something. I'm like, yeah, we'll listen to that whole thing and then maybe I'll skip the next topic. You know, it depends. So people, that's, people often

Leo Laporte (01:48:51):
Ask me if I listen to our shows and I said, well, no, I don't, I was there <laugh> I don't, I don't really need to listen, listen to 'em. I don't even listen to other hosts shows. I probably should. I just, there's just not enough time. No,

Paul Thurrott (01:49:04):
Come on.

Leo Laporte (01:49:04):
In fact, mostly I listen to audio books. I just yes, I just started The Expanse series. I know everybody yells at me when I say that cuz people have been telling me, oh, you gotta, you gotta read the books and, and watch the show. And I, we watched the show. It was okay. It was a little claustrophobic, but I didn't expect much from the books and the, and I read the first one and I just finished Leviathan Wakes. It's incredible. It's incredible. And when I say read just Like You audiobook, but that's like a 20 hour audio book. So I don't have time for podcasts.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:36):
I, my audiobooks out performed at my Kindle books last year by Yeah, like five, five to

Leo Laporte (01:49:44):
One. Cause you can listen when you're doing, you know, I listen when I'm gaming, I bet you

Paul Thurrott (01:49:47):
Drive to the gym while I'm at the gym. Drive home from the gym. Yeah. I mean I just, you know, you kind of do it that way. If you ever drive to the airport that's longer, whatever. So this is, this was a good year for industry books. Two of my top five books of the year were Industry books Control Freak. We talked about this, this was Cliff Lesinski, Cliffy B Right. His epic adventures making video games. He was responsible for the Gears of war, but he played a big role in Unreal

Leo Laporte (01:50:11):
List. I said, see, I'm talking

Paul Thurrott (01:50:12):
Aboutt. That was a great one that, yep. The other awesome one, which I assume you have read, is after Steve, how Apple became a trillion dollar company.

Leo Laporte (01:50:19):
Yes. That's actually the best job book I think.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:21):
I couldn't agree more. It's a fantastic book. And I, that's one I, I've Steve Jobs biography, the official biography, the Isaac Center, there are chapters of that book that I listen to on audio book again and again and again, I iPhone. I've had you know, a couple of those things. I don't care about the his, he was a kid, that stuff. But there's parts of that I listen to again and again. I will, I'm gonna listen to this book again soon. This is a

Leo Laporte (01:50:47):
Really good one. Now, trip Mickel and his, and was ITMs, I can't remember his co-author were at the they were tech reports. I I wanna say it. Seattle

Paul Thurrott (01:50:57):
I was Journal. I thought

Leo Laporte (01:50:58):
It was, or was it Journal? That's what it was. I think it was. I think, oh, you're talking about Trip Mickelson's book? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's a different, that's not after Steve or is it? Yeah, it

Paul Thurrott (01:51:06):
Is is after. Yeah. Maybe you're talking about a different

Leo Laporte (01:51:08):
Book. I'm sorry. I was talk, I was talking about becoming Steve Jobs. Have you read that? I'm

Paul Thurrott (01:51:12):
Sorry. Yes, of

Leo Laporte (01:51:13):
Course. That's the best Steve Jobs photography after Steve is really not about Steve Jobs as

Paul Thurrott (01:51:17):
Much. No, but that's why I thought you were saying that cuz in a way what what it shows is like what he did for Apple. Because when he is gone Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:51:23):
What's missing. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:24):
You know, there's a No, I mean, it, it's very interesting. It's a fantastic book

Leo Laporte (01:51:29):
I was thinking of, of becoming Steve Jobs by Brett Slender and Rick Ti and they, I think were at the Seattle business.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:37):
Oh, they, it was a, okay,

Leo Laporte (01:51:38):
I'm sorry. I think so, but I may be, I I was gonna say business. I am the king of misinformation today. You should believe nothing I have said.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:45):
Well, that's okay. I'm gonna correct you with something that's wrong, so don't worry about

Leo Laporte (01:51:48):
It, <laugh>. Nope, you're right. Brett Slender was in the Wall Street Journal on Fortune. Rick Ted was at Fast Company. You I'm an idiot. I'm an

Paul Thurrott (01:51:58):
Idiot. Still wrong. That's,

Leo Laporte (01:51:59):
I'm an idiot. But yes. But after Steve was very interesting and we did interview Trip and yeah, that's very interesting. Book I, you

Paul Thurrott (01:52:05):
Know, when you speak off the cuff, this is what's gonna happen. Right. People come back later and be like, you know, on November 18th you said that

Leo Laporte (01:52:13):
I'm speaking off the floor.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:15):
I'm saying lots of stuff. I don't know,

Leo Laporte (01:52:16):
I'm sorry. My head is in the soup today. So, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:20):
One of the book has nothing to do with the industry, but I, and I'm not, I am not, I don't care about celebrities. I don't, I'm not into this kind of thing, but I do read memoirs from time to time, depending on who it is. I'm trying to think of an example. Well, the one that came out this year recently was Jan Wener, the guy who founded Rollingstone Magazine. Yeah. Oh my God. And by the way I started listening to it and I was like, I, the, the narrator, I'm like, I, this is, I know this guy. And he narrated the autobiography of Ray Manza, the guy who played Oh

Leo Laporte (01:52:54):
Yeah. From The Doors. Yeah, yeah. Keyboard

Paul Thurrott (01:52:56):
The guy. Yeah. So Set The Night On Fire. He narrated that book. So here's these two great books that kind of start in the sixties. Same o you know, same guy. And it has that kind of vibe. It's neat. So that was kind of cool. And I, I, this is other stuff I, you know, project Hail Mary Devil in White City, which is not new. That are fine. As far as books go, this one's I think you just mentioned Corey Doctor, right? Yeah, I think he just did. Yeah. So he, he has a book he co-author with Rebecca Giin called Checkpoint Capitalism.

Leo Laporte (01:53:24):
Incredible.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:25):
Yeah. And I honestly, I bought that on Kindle. That one's really good. And that's one, I, I think particular chapters are super important which I found to be very so, so very

Leo Laporte (01:53:35):
Interesting. Yeah. We did a triangulation, the three of us highly recommend that book. And that by the way, really rakes Apple over the Kohl's. I mean, it, it, it is exactly what you were talking about. Right. And it's very powerful and very compelling. And I think Cory's absolutely right. Choke Point Capitalism. I really, I'm glad you read that. That's a fantastic book.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:57):
Yeah, it is. Yeah, I recommend it. I also just, just, I actually wrote an article about this. I cuz I I, one of the things that strikes me as I get older is that a lot of the things I liked when I was younger don't really hold up. And that could be, you know, it could be music, it could be movies, it could be TV shows, whatever. The first Stephen King book I ever read, I was babysitting for family in 1982. The father of that family had left the paper back sitting out. I, by that point had read all of Tolkin, the, you know, CS Lewis aov, Cornell Nivan, all kinds of fantasy as well, the sort of shinara, et cetera, cetera. Never read anything by Stephen King. And now 40 you've it years later. Yeah, I have read it all. Basically there's only like one or two I have not completed.

(01:54:41):
 But there are books of his that I read or, or listened to again and again. And this is one of them and it's a collection of short stories. It's astonishing to me how well this holds up. And the thing I remember most about it is I would read it on a couch in front of a big window, beautiful summer days, you know, and I'd read some of it and I'd have to put the book down and go find the kids and make, you know, I'm like, I just wanna make sure you're okay. And I'm like, I just wanna make sure I'm okay. Like, it actually scared me. And I'm reading it. Yeah. I read it. Sometimes I'll, you know, we go to bed, I read it and I'm sitting there in the dark and I'm like, did something just move in the court of the room? Or is it, you know, like it's, it's, it's still scar. It's amazing. Like he's amazing. He's just an amazing author. So but

Leo Laporte (01:55:20):
Before you go on.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:22):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:55:22):
How do you feel about the gun slinger?

Paul Thurrott (01:55:25):
Oh, see, this is where I kind of fall off the map a little bit. Me too. The, the first book. The first book of that series, the Dark Tower? No, the Gunslinger is the first one, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the first book is very much like the first book of the foundation trilogy. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's a collection of stories that were written over time that they put together into a single volume. And it, it tells a story, but it's not, it's not one story. It's kind of just a collection of stories. And I, I thought that book was very good. I liked it quite a bit. The second book I also liked, and then they, it's kinda like the Game of Thrones book. You're like, oh, this is great. I I I look forward to more of these. And then more come out and you're like, I don't know, eventually there's like a, a, a robot bear and they're on a monorail and I'm like, I don't know what I'm reading anymore. Like, I don't, and people, when I, when I complain about it, people always say, oh no, no, no, you have to, you gotta get through it cuz the ending is amazing. And I'm like, I don't, I don't care.

Leo Laporte (01:56:24):
<Laugh> kind of endless. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:27):
Both

Leo Laporte (01:56:27):
Lisa, God, it just, it's a kind of running joke. It's another gun. Slinger <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:32):
Yeah, there you go. An

Leo Laporte (01:56:34):
Endless, an endless series of books that never make any progress.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:38):
That one didn't do it for me. Me neith it, it, it is a book that I loved in the eighties when I came out. The

Leo Laporte (01:56:44):
First ones

Paul Thurrott (01:56:44):
Were great now,

Leo Laporte (01:56:45):
But that's why it's disappointing. You know, it's, yeah. It just kind of petered out.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:50):
Yeah. It didn't do it for me. No.

Leo Laporte (01:56:52):
So,

Paul Thurrott (01:56:53):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:56:53):
All right. Moving

Paul Thurrott (01:56:54):
Along. That's book. So I didn't write about this, but I also just got my, you know, you referenced Music Night. And so I just say like the the origin of this is that, you know, when I was younger and I used to drive more, I think we used to, we, I was just talking to my wife about this, things used to take a lot longer, right? So we mentioned, I mentioned Blockbuster video, like if you wanna watch a movie tonight, you sit on your couch with a remote and you dick around for 45 minutes until you find something. But you have a, a selection of a million choices. The whole world is anything you want is there. But back in the day, we used to actually get in our cars and drive 10 to 30 minutes, depending on where the place was. Get out of our cars, look through a video store, find a thing, walk up to the front, find out it wasn't there, go back and find something else.

(01:57:37):
Oh my God, drive home. This is a very purposeful time, right? Yes. so in those days, I used to make, like, I think of, I used to make like mix tapes or mixed CDs for myself. I didn't like the radio. I didn't like talking and I would listen to music and that's what I used to do. And by the time we got older and had been working from home for a long time, we got our first couple of Sono speakers. I would often play music just kind of for myself. And if my wife went out with her friends, I would be, I would just sit there and, and kind of add music to a playlist on the fly. I would just make these playlists, my friends do this, we have get togethers, we some, someone will provide the music. You know, that kind of thing.

(01:58:17):
And at some point right before we moved here, my wife said, I'd like to do this. We should do this tonight. You know, we'll listen to music. And I was like, oh, that's not good <laugh>. Cause I'm like, I don't really listen to music that you might wanna listen to, you know, so it, it caused me to adapt these. And so now we have several years of playlists that I've made where I'm trying to find music that both of us like. And so in the beginning I had a kind of a, what do I call this? A, a beat, is that the right word? A requirement. Like if you ever see, like, when you see a group live, they play a song. It's a little sped up, right? Yeah. Sometimes it slow down and then I hate that. No. But oftentimes it's, it's sped up and I like that.

(01:59:00):
So I've often, whatever reason, more energy. Yeah. I've often liked live music better than the original version, so that kind of thing. So in the beginning I was like, we're gonna, I'm gonna find music that meets this requirement. This is gonna be mostly fast moving. Although I've lightened up on that over the years. But that was the start of it. And so I also wanted to find music that she would like. Right. So more mu like women artists that I wouldn't typically listen to or I don't know what else. This stuff like that. Just stuff I wouldn't normally listen to. The interesting thing is I like, I find my, like I've gotten into Taylor Swift, which is really weird cuz I'm kind of a, like a Van Hill and Def Leopard guy and <laugh> then it's weird. You are, and then of course the, the past two years we've been going to Mexico, so we actually now have a lot of like Latino music as well.

(01:59:45):
Yeah. So it was interesting to me to get my YouTube music end of year thing. Right. So first of all, I don't know, I don't know if they're count I, I, I usually play through Sonos when I'm on Sonos, so I don't know if they know that that's me or whatever, but I've apparently played 2,600 minutes of music, which doesn't sound like that much. I know. That's why I said that. I'm not sure. I think do not count at all. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. 2,600. So Def Leppard was number one <laugh>. Right? I am in the top 3% of Def Leppard fans on YouTube music <laugh>. That's hyster. Interesting. That's so funny. Yeah. So Taylor Swift was number two. There's a group called Ma that was number three. They're, I, I believe they're from Mexico, but they're Latino either way. Their big song is like, it's called NL Moe des Sandblast.

(02:00:33):
It's like the on the Pier or Doc in Sandblast. It's basically one of those, I'm holding a candle for someone who went away and may not come back kind of things. But there's a live version of that song, which is awesome. And I love acquiring new music for playlists. And the way that I do that is I could be at a friend's house and they're playing music. I'm like, oh, what's this? You know, I can find out what song is I added to my own playlist. We've been going to Mexico, so when we go to restaurants and bars and, and they'll play music over the thing, IAM it or whatever. And I found this song at our favorite restaurant in our area. And it's, it was our num my my number four song of the year <laugh>. So Wow. And my number three song, right.

(02:01:11):
 Shihad, which is a, in a New Zealand band. And and then number five was Sting. That's not Right <laugh>. I did not listen to Sting a lot this year, but whoa. Oh, maybe you did and you just didn't know. Mm. I didn't. Mm. Anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting. So it's kind of an interesting mix of my past <laugh>, you know, Sheha is a kind of a metal hard rock band. The music that I listened to with my wife, which is a little more diverse I guess for lack of a better term actually my top genres are rock, right? Pop, obviously independent Latino pop, and then dance. So it's kind of a, it's kind of an interesting mix. I was curious about this. I thought this was kind of interesting and I, oh, I should say I have a, like everyone else does.

(02:01:58):
You get a playlist from YouTube, right? For the year? It's I don't know how many songs it is. I assume it's at least 50 songs. Maybe a hundred songs. Oh, it's a hundred songs. These are my top songs of the year that we listen to out in the sunroom. So I've often people sometimes in Instagram be like, oh, what do you listen to? It's kind of, it's hard on like a device to be like, oh, we have, I added these five new songs. This is pretty representative. I have to save the type of music we listen to. So I have made this public on YouTube music. I realize not everyone's there. But if you, I don't know how you would do this. I have never done such a thing before, but it is public. So if you look me up on YouTube music, you'll see a 2022 recap playlist, which is six and a half hours long. And you are welcome.

Leo Laporte (02:02:39):
I will listen to your playlist. Although to enjoy that, it is a little odd. 

Paul Thurrott (02:02:43):
It's a, it's an interesting,

Leo Laporte (02:02:45):
It's a very, it's eclectic.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:47):
And for, yeah, I really like the new Def Leppard album. When you guys went there, I was like, you know, they have a really, there's a lot of good songs and that album and most of it is actually in this playlist. Cuz I did listen to it a lot.

Leo Laporte (02:02:56):
And you're a trend setter.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:59):
That's what it says. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:01):
I think you are.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:02):
I guess

Leo Laporte (02:03:03):
Not that many people have Shahad Taylor Swift. I know. And, and Def Leppard in the same

Paul Thurrott (02:03:09):
I know

Leo Laporte (02:03:10):
Top 10. That's just wild.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:12):
I do things like every, every night as you're playing, you'll, you'll kind of something will occur to you. Like that song that my number one song of the year is off that new album and it's, it's not a single and it's something Def Lepper does really well. It's the type of, and I said, I'm gonna, I said, I know you, my wife's not a huge Def Lepper fan, but I was like, listen, let me just play you three or four of these. I'm gonna go back to the past four albums and pick the song like this that it, that hits at this exact kind of mid tempo. It was never a single, you never would've heard it if you're not a fan. But it's awesome music. Like it's a really good song. You're a great band. There you go.

Leo Laporte (02:03:51):
You know, I don't know maybe it's just me, but whenever I see the name Whitey Bulger, I think a You

Paul Thurrott (02:03:57):
<Laugh>? Yep. <laugh>. I was born a little too late to help with the

Leo Laporte (02:04:02):
Concrete work that he was doing. Okay. I just, I I'm looking at the Wall Street Journal and he, there's a Whitey Bulger headline. Really? He was killed like four years ago, years ago.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:15):
He was fascinated that they caught that guy. How

Leo Laporte (02:04:17):
Did it Yes. And a federal report said mm-hmm. <Affirmative> now that the, the guys were tipped off by somebody on the inside, some prison officials who said, Mr. Bjo might just be getting transferred tomorrow. So Yik Okay. And that's, that's how they knew.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:38):
I feel like guys like him, like Jeffrey doers like this, they end up in jail and then they're not really supposed to be out with everybody and then they are and they die.

Leo Laporte (02:04:50):
Yeah. General, you know. Yeah. Yeah. At least according to the report from the DOJ a hundred prison employees were aware of Bulger's upcoming transfer. Some of them spoke about it openly in the presence of inmates, at least one of whom predicted an email to his mother that the crime boss would be killed <laugh>. Right. but they they got Freddy and Paul and Sean were indicted. Sure. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:14):
Freddy Polly and Shawn

Leo Laporte (02:05:16):
And Shawn, yeah. They're going up the river. Wait a minute, they're already up the river. 

Paul Thurrott (02:05:22):
There's a weird code in prison. You know, obviously they go after certain types of criminals. And then there's also this notion of like, this guy's famous, so if I kill him, I'll be famous. Right. You know, which

Leo Laporte (02:05:32):
Is why at least always ask me this. I have kind of recurring, you know, thoughts about what if I, what will I do if I go to prison? Like, what, how am I, that's our reaction is are you anticipating anything I said No. No, but I just wanna be prepared. I watch with great avidity the dramas about how they teach soft old people like me how to survive in prison.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:59):
Like pump, you'll be pumping iron.

Leo Laporte (02:06:00):
I'll be pumping. You gotta pick. Yeah. You gotta pick somebody

Paul Thurrott (02:06:04):
Right,

Leo Laporte (02:06:04):
Right up front and, and you gotta crap kick their asses. Then people be scared of you. Probably the number one tip I'm gonna guess is not to wear this sweater. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:16):
Hi guys.

Leo Laporte (02:06:17):
Into the prison.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:18):
Did I even, so I was, I was in, I was an mvp. Hello

Leo Laporte (02:06:23):
Fellow felons.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:24):
One thing I got from Microsoft was a, a leather jacket that was beautiful and, but it had an IE logo stitched into it. And so I never really wore this jacket. Yeah. And then, I don't know what, I don't remember the point of this, but I, one night I wore it to basketball. The league I was in at night and I was, I just walked in the door and the guys we're all, you know, talking and laughing and this guy is looking at me and I'm like, and he, oh, sudden he goes, is that, is that an IE logo?

Leo Laporte (02:06:54):
<Laugh>?

Paul Thurrott (02:06:56):
And I'm like, am I gonna be beaten up? Oh, like what's going

Leo Laporte (02:07:00):
On here? Add that to the list of things not to wear to your first day in prison. They're telling me I should not say, Hey guys, emax or Vem. Don't, don't try them.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:11):
Any fellow Swifties in

Leo Laporte (02:07:12):
Here? <Laugh> who likes lisp? Just show of hands. I'm gonna give you a list. <Laugh>, I'll give you a list buddy. Mr. Paul Thra Paul, we call him Pauly Walnuts is at thero.com. T uou r oou good.com. That's where, and by the way, become a premium member cuz that's where his best stuff is. Just really great articles about all sorts of stuff. And you did you didn't do music yet, I imagine you might eventually. No, I did. I did. Oh, you did? Okay. You did do articles also on the podcast and the books. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't, I I'm sorry. I did not write up the music. I'm not sure if I'm gonna do. Yeah, yeah. But well maybe I will. Maybe I'll, yeah, whatever. It's it's all there throughout.com. So I, the field guide to Windows 11 portions of it are there.

(02:07:59):
But the full book you must have is available@leanpub.com and with your purchase of the Field Guide to Windows 11 in a mighty generous Well, it's a mighty generous gesture. He is, he is giving you a copy of the Field Guide to Windows 10 10 as well for the same price too. Why not? Why not? Why not? Why not? Thank you Paul Thro. It's always a pleasure. Are you gonna be in, in the us of a for the rest of the month? Yes. He's not going anywhere. Not going anywhere. We, Paul says he has this sweater too, but he is, he refuses to wear it. Cause you don't like Well, no, I thought I was gonna save. Gonna save. I was gonna save for the last show of the year. That's good. That's the 21st. Our best of is the 28th and we'll be back January 4th.

(02:08:43):
It'll probably come off in the first commercial break because I'm gonna be getting hot getting sweaty here. Yeah, just sweaty. All right, Paul, have a wonderful week. Drink some Magno. Enjoy Music Night tonight. Oh yeah. <Laugh>. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We do Windows Weekly every Wednesday at 11:00 AM Pacific. 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 1900 utc. You can watch us do it live, live.twi.tv. Join the rip harte@irc.twi.tv or in the club to Discord. Have I mentioned how Great Club TWI is? If you're not yet a member please go on over to TWI tv slash club twi, check out the benefits. Seven bucks a month, that's all. There's a yearly plan, which would be a great gift for the geek in your life. There's corporate plans and it supports us doing what we really love to do, what we really want to do. And, and bringing you the best tech information you get, extras, all sorts of them, including the Discord ad free versions of all the shows. You get special content. We don't put out like Paul's show Hands on windows which is covering some really interesting topics. If you're a Windows 11 user, there's some stuff you wanna know. We'll all be there. You can get that for 2 99 a month, but honestly, why not spend a couple bucks more and get the whole thing, the whole shebang. Twit tv slash club twit. Thank you very much in advance. Paul Thra. Thank you. We will see you next week on Windows Weekly. Yes, you will.