Windows Weekly Episode 813 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. Richard Campbell has the week off. He's in London. Paul Thurrott is here. We've got a lot of Microsoft earnings to talk about. It was an interesting quarter. Revenue was up, profit was down. We'll also talk a little bit about the classic an Nintendo 64 game coming to Xbox and is the future of Windows advertising all that and a whole lot more. Coming up next on Windows Weekly

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This is Windows Weekly with Paul Throt. Episode 813 Recorded Wednesday, January 25th, 2023. Usage intensity. Windows Weekly is brought to you by a c i learning. If you love it, pro, you'll love ACI Learning aci Learning offers fully customizable training for your team in formats for all types of learners across audit, cybersecurity, and it from entry level training to putting people on the moon ACI Learning has you covered. Visit go dot aci learning.com/TWITto learn more. Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise@twit.tv and launch your campaign. Now, it's time for Windows Weekly, the show we cover windows and Microsoft and all that stuff. Not so much HoloLens. Yeah. Yeah. That's Paul Throt, little pauly t throt.com.

(00:01:53):
T H U R O double good.com. And of course, his books@leanpub.com, including the fabulous new field guide to Windows. Nces. <laugh>. That's right. Thank you. Yes, nces. Yes. You know all of that, that lingo, don't you? Yeah, no, not much of it. <Laugh>, but I saw it now. I you got me a little nervous. Yeah. Cause I saw in your Insta that you got your residency papers from Mexico. Right? What, what does that mean? Are you, are, does that mean you can? So it's, it means we can spend more than 180 days in a row there. Oh. So it's a we, we have to complete the process in Mexico, but we're gonna get, I, this doesn't seem accurate to me, but the people at the consulate described it as basically their version of a green card. Yeah. anyway, it's just a, it's just a, a step of the project. We, after four years, we'll get there's a cat. I see a cat. Yeah. I used to see, I used to be able to keep the cats outta my office, but now, now he's in the basement where the cats live. I can't stop them because there's a little hole in the door for them. <Laugh>. <laugh>.

(00:03:00):
So that would imply that you plan to spend more than six months at a time in your new Hacienda in Mexico City.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:07):
No, I con neither confirmed nor deny any such plans, but

Leo Laporte (00:03:11):
<Laugh>, Hey, if I were you, I would Especially winter. Exactly. Yeah. You know, but does it get cold? Cuz it's at an altitude? It's pretty high.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:20):
No, it is super consistent. I would say it's within 10 degrees plus, you know, high and low, so. Right. I mean, the days right now are in the high seventies. The nights are in the high forties.

Leo Laporte (00:03:31):
Nice. Very, it's like here. Pretty consistent.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:34):
Very consistent.

Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
Yeah. Yeah. Except we have other temperatures. But when it's that temperature, it's very consistent for a while. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. I would, if I were you, I'm still eyeing that penthouse across the street. But <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:03:49):
It's it's a nice neighborhood. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:51):
Oh, I, you know what I, and I know you have a variety of food in Mexico City, including sushi. The best sushi, which is weird cuz you're inland and I know. But anyway. I know I just when we were in Cancun, they had other kinds of restaurants. I said, let's just eat the Mexican food. It's so good. Look, real

Paul Thurrott (00:04:09):
Mexican food for

Leo Laporte (00:04:09):
A week or whatever is incredible. But you get sick of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:12):
You like, it's like anything else. Yeah. The one

Leo Laporte (00:04:14):
Variety. Variety. Variety. Yeah. Well, you got it. Yep. There's no Denny's though.

Leo Laporte (00:04:19):
No, I don't think that's a, that's, you know, every once in a

Paul Thurrott (00:04:23):
While, surprisingly good in Mexico or hamburgers. I know that sounds kind of weird. Hamburg us. Yeah, that's very, very good. Mexico. My mouth

Leo Laporte (00:04:30):
Is watering now. <Laugh>. I know. All right. We should probably talk about Microsoft since there is some news. This is our quarterly earnings learnings report. This just in <laugh>, Microsoft net income down, revenue up. I don't know how that works. Explains Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:04:54):
Net net income's just profits. Right? It's profit. I, I

Leo Laporte (00:04:56):
Don't you may profits they took in more money, but they, they kept less of it. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:03):
<Laugh>. Yes. Okay. And actually, right, so their revenues only went up 2%. So that's the, the, the lowest gain in over six years. I think that's notable. I believe that Microsoft is the first of the big tech companies to report earnings this month. So it's gonna be really interesting to see what happens across the board. I know Amazon's supposed to be a, a dumpster fire. I mean, we'll see what happens with the other companies. But for Microsoft, I would say let there be no debate over whether moving to the club was the smart thing for this company. Oh yeah. Cause it wasn't for that, that <laugh> it would be sold in this thing at a yard sale. Right Now,

Leo Laporte (00:05:35):
I wanna give Sacha Adela a lot of credit cuz not only did he, although as we talked last week, if if it weren't for Balmer setting it up, you know Yep. Teeing him up so that he could roll that strike. He wouldn't have been able to do it. But he definitely did that move. And now I have to say, I'm very impressed. It looks like, you know, Ben Thompson Strat had a good article, AI and the Big Five and its impact. And he said Microsoft was best positioned to take advantage of this. And he called AI the next epic, you know, in pc, well, this is the

Paul Thurrott (00:06:08):
Internet. This is the next, the next wave is Microsoft, the

Leo Laporte (00:06:11):
Next wave.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:11):
Right. That's, that's exactly right. So it's interesting because Microsoft missed the smartphone wave, which seemed to be like a death blow. But they were propped up with the cloud. I mean, the cloud is one of those, cloud is infrastructure. It's kind of, we don't really think of it as an epoch or a wave or whatever, but obviously it's huge, huge business for Microsoft and Amazon. And under the

Leo Laporte (00:06:29):
Company, he, he Thompson calls it a wave, he said. And he had the same Oh, he does? Okay. Yeah. He said the same thing. He said, you know, he might not think cloud is a wave, but it is a wave. Okay, good. So Microsoft's done very well catching that one. And, and it looks like maybe they're well positioned to catch the next wave, such as a good surfer

Paul Thurrott (00:06:47):
<Laugh>. Yeah. I mean, they missed a few waves, but they

Leo Laporte (00:06:50):
Missed the, you know, almost missed the internet. Bill Gates, you know, grabbed it at the last moment. They definitely missed mobile.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:58):
Yeah. And, and that's sad because they were immobile from the very beginning. I I, am I going to, I'm gonna punt my cat out of the sri's, like bumping into

Leo Laporte (00:07:07):
My, I don't mind. It's, you know, we miss Srae. So what's her name? What's this kid's name? Don't

Paul Thurrott (00:07:11):
See, I'm not gonna tell you your name. Who cares? No, it's Kitty. We have Kitty two, we have two cats. You don't know do Dash, Dasher and Dancer? This is smaller dancer. Oh, Dasher is the smaller of the two. I I refer to them as Big Cat and Little Cat. This is Little Cat. Oh, I just said her name and she Squawked <laugh>. She's

Leo Laporte (00:07:31):
Like,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:32):
Yeah, I'm Little Cat. She heard me talking down here. So she assumed naturally I wanted to, you know, give her, we

Leo Laporte (00:07:37):
Have one cat that has a Siamese. I'm swear. I mean, she's a black cat, but I think she has some Siamese, cuz she's a Wow. Like Siamese. You know that. Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:46):
Oh, this cat's, they're so much now. I, they have taken me yelling at them to mean that I'm interacting with them. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:07:53):
Good. He's talking to us.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:55):
<Laugh>. Yeah. It just makes it worse. Where's the food? They walk around. Go. Wha

Leo Laporte (00:07:58):
Like,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:59):
Shut up. Yeah, that Sammy does that

Leo Laporte (00:08:01):
<Laugh>. Sammy is terrible. And then she's got a new habit. Don't ever let your cat do this. She's expects to drink out of faucets.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:09):
Oh yeah. No, my cats want drink out of anything other than their ball. Anything

Leo Laporte (00:08:12):
Than the, there's a water bowl right there. And they, and Sammy jumps up on the bathtub and says, you know, you're gonna turn it on.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:18):
They like the dogs bowl better than their bowl. So the dog would be strange, the water. And one of the cats would just walk up next to it and start drinking next to it.

Leo Laporte (00:08:24):
What universe do cats live in? I don't, it's

Paul Thurrott (00:08:26):
The water's moving around. They like moving

Leo Laporte (00:08:28):
Water. Oh, they don't want Still still's dangerous. And they're smart. That's right. Anyway, yeah. Back to Microsoft. 

Paul Thurrott (00:08:34):
It's flushing, you know, it's just entertainment for these things. Anyway, this

Leo Laporte (00:08:37):
This cat moment brought to you by Friskies. <Laugh>, okay. Moving. Yeah. I

Paul Thurrott (00:08:40):
Forgot what I was saying. But the <laugh>, we

Leo Laporte (00:08:42):
Were talking about AI and the next wave. That's right. And how Yeah, that's right. Adeptly Adroitly. I think, well, they've positioned themselves for this. They, they now admit that they're putting in a massive investment into,

Paul Thurrott (00:08:54):
Yeah. I don't know if they got lucky or this is just whatever, but I, I always sort of felt that Microsoft's cloud infrastructure would lead to opportunities of whatever kind. So whether, you know, we were talking about whether cloud computing was a wave or not. I mean, I I I think for a lot of people, they think of cloud computing as like the backend and, and maybe the web was the wave. Maybe mobile apps were the wave. And you know, the cloud is what's happening on the backend. But like we said last week, I think, you know, AI is gonna transform every part of Microsoft.

Leo Laporte (00:09:23):
Bing, Bing might actually become ascendants become

Paul Thurrott (00:09:25):
Something useful. Well, it's like a crazy, but yeah, you never know. <Laugh>, you

Leo Laporte (00:09:29):
Know, I sure Google's worried about it. Google's for sure worried about it. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:32):
Oh, that's, and that's a big story. They are worried about it. Right. They brought back their founders to have meetings and, you know, where should we put AI and should we push, you know, faster on stuff? They when they saw chat g tp g p t the first time, apparently, they said, you know, where are we with stuff? And they weren't as far along as they wanted to be. And you know, I think the CEO of Google his name is now

Leo Laporte (00:09:55):
Cheche,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:56):
Thank you referred to it as a code red at Google, right? Yeah. This is

Leo Laporte (00:10:00):
Google gets, so, by the way, I just wanna point out Google has code Reds regularly. Okay. Remember with social, all of a sudden they said Facebook's gonna kill us. Code red, code red. And they did Google Plus and that didn't, you know.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:12):
Yeah. Well, I mean, so the Microsoft, the equivalent of that was the internet title Wave. Right? That was Microsoft's code brand

Leo Laporte (00:10:17):
Moments. Right. 

Paul Thurrott (00:10:19):
And like you said, you know, it took 'em a little while, but

Leo Laporte (00:10:21):
They survived. Okay. <laugh>, they survived. Yeah. cloud was smart because cloud is so intimately connected with ai because you need the cloud. Those, you know, people use those, those you know, special TPUs in the cloud that are just Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:10:37):
Yeah. Requires units,

Leo Laporte (00:10:38):
Resources. Yeah. Yeah. They need big data bases. They need lots of storage. They need. Right. And the, and the problem with of course is that you're doing the training. You need a lot of horsepower, but only then. And so it's not the kind of thing you want invest in and buy and, and put in your OnPrem. You want to just use it, rent it as you need it. It it,

Paul Thurrott (00:10:57):
Right. This is the inherent promise in cloud computing. This, everyone uses the example of holiday of holiday times at a retailer where all of a sudden you need a lot of infrastructure. But for the rest of the year, it's a sitting there idle and you're paying for it. Whereas if you adopt a cloud computing solution, you can just, you know, churn it up when you

Leo Laporte (00:11:15):
Need it. We know this historically because even Apple, you know, on the day the iPhone came out, their servers would crashed. Nobody, even the biggest companies can really handle those spikes. They don't want to have all that infrastructure Right. In the off times. And cloud has come along and really, and really saved that, really transformed that. So I'm not surprised. Cloud was the, the big highlight of the quarter, is that right?

Paul Thurrott (00:11:40):
It was the saving grace of the quarter. <Laugh> is the way I would put it. So Microsoft has three primary business units. There was a period of time, and it was a long period of time. Several years we're all three we're roughly neck and neck in, I I seem to recall they're all between 11 and 13 billion in revenues per quarter for a long time. That was just the standard. One of them is purely cloud-based. That's intelligent cloud. That's basically Azure and their legacy server products. The other one is partially cloud-based. That's productivity and business processes. So that's Microsoft 365 minus windows and things like LinkedIn and Dynamics. And then there's the bucket. They throw everything else into basically, which is more personal computing. More personal computing. Used to be Microsoft, right? Like it's windows, their whole business service now and, and Xbox, it's kind of their, the things that don't fit in elsewhere.

(00:12:30):
Right? Right. Over time, more personal computing has been going down. Although during the pandemic we did have a two year little asterisks where things were a little bit different. Right. but intelligent cloud especially has been going up and productivity and Bris processes have been going up. So I, I don't know the exact timing on this, but I would say for the past couple years let's simply maybe since the end of the pandemic intelligent cloud has been surging productivity and business processes is kind of in the second biggest business and more personal computing is their third biggest business. Their smallest business. It's not a small business, but smallest business by revenue. Right. So, intelligent Cloud is was in this quarter of 21.5 billion in revenues, up 18% year over year. These are the types of numbers we typically associate with Microsoft.

(00:13:16):
 If we just ignore the fact that we're in an economic downturn the other two businesses not so good. So productivity and business processes was 17 billion, which still actually great. Up single digits, 7%. And then more personal computing was just, or was 14.2 billion in revenues. But that's down almost 20% year over year. And that's, you know, we'll, we'll talk about that specifically. Cuz to me that's the interesting stuff. There is, there's some weird stuff going on. You know, like Mary Jo and I used to talk about this all the time. Microsoft likes to pull together, you know, they kind of cherry pick the best parts of the cloud businesses wherever they are and, and presented as a thing. And this thing is called the Microsoft Cloud. It's not, it's not a business unit, it's not a business, it's not anything but the Microsoft cloud.

(00:14:05):
The idea there is, here's something Microsoft can put out to Wall Street and say, see, we're doing pretty good against a w s. Right? 27.1 billion credited to this non-business, which is up 22% over nothing. <Laugh> literally incredible. As I put it, time from zero to 22%. Well, it's who, whatever it was, it's just doesn't, it's not, you're not comparing apples to apples for the most part here. So it's kind of a har it's kind of a goofy kind of a thing to say. However, I think that number is important. Right? So 27 0.1 is roughly half <laugh>. Right? Which is kind of where they want it to be. That's where it is historically. In fact, I think that's how they cherry picket honestly. They want it to be about half, a little bit over half, I guess in this case of their total revenues.

(00:14:49):
And, and what they're trying to do here is present what Wall Street want us wants to see. Like this is, you know, things are going great here. And if you look at their cloud oriented products and services, which I'm not gonna do a lot cuz I just don't, I'm kind of more of a client side guy. But that stuff is by and large grew, right? That stuff did well even during the downturn. And that's important because it kind of saved Microsoft's quarter. The problem is the rest of this stuff, with some small exceptions in the office space which actually did really well in con in commercial and not so well in consumer. Hmm. the rest of it did really, really poorly <laugh> like,

Leo Laporte (00:15:26):
Like Windows not so good.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:28):
Windows really bad. Like really bad. Really. yeah, really bad. So, but they,

Leo Laporte (00:15:33):
But so they kind of give it away though, don't they? Or, or?

Paul Thurrott (00:15:36):
Well, no, I

Leo Laporte (00:15:37):
Mean I guess they sell it to OEMs for

Paul Thurrott (00:15:40):
Your Yeah, there's two main revenue streams already.

Leo Laporte (00:15:42):
So it's tied into new the, the, the slump and new PC sales. I would guess

Paul Thurrott (00:15:45):
That's a big part of it. And then the other part is actually subscription revenues to commercial or to businesses. Basically. Commercial meaning business, government education, you know, that, that kind of part of the market. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:15:58):
Cuz I guess we license windows. We have some sort of enterprise

Paul Thurrott (00:16:01):
License. Yeah. And that gives you different rights and, and support and you can, if you want to downgrade the Windows 10 and, you know, all that kind stuff. So you get all these different capabilities there. So do

Leo Laporte (00:16:11):
So that didn't do so good.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:13):
No, and there's some warning signs here. So remember we had that conversation about the PC market, I dunno if it was a week or two ago. We were talking about PC sales for all of 2022 and they were PC sales overall last year only fell about 16% using numbers from Gartner and I D C. And that doesn't sound too bad, right? But the problem is when you look at it quarter over quarter, you see it's accelerating. Right? So first quarter of Cal calendar quarter now, now we're talking 6% dropoff, then 14% in the second quarter, then 17% in the third quarter, and then 28.3% in a holiday quarter. And I kind of made the case like, that's worse than it sounds because that's a holiday quarter. That should be

Leo Laporte (00:16:49):
A be a big one.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:50):
Yeah. went to oh, you know, should go up. Yeah. and this makes me wonder and worry about this quarter that we're in now and then subsequent quarters coming up. And Microsoft's data basically kind of confirms that Microsoft's revenues from PC makers, what they call OEMs was down almost 40% in the quarter 40 <laugh>. Like, now, the reason that's a problem is Microsoft doesn't sell Windows licenses to PC makers for PCs that go out that quarter. Usually those are sales for the future, right? In other words, PC makers buy these things in bulk or whatever, and then they have them sitting and then they apply them to PCs when they go out the door. So some of those might have been from that quarter, but some of them are definitely from the coming quarter. And Microsoft actually kind of says that, right? So remember, you know, one of the little asterisks is, you know, that Gartner and I c like to use is like, well, yeah, you know, PC cells are are, are are falling, but they're still above pre pandemic levels, right? Microsoft did not say that. No. What E Microsoft said instead that PC sales have now returned to pre pandemic levels.

Leo Laporte (00:17:54):
Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:17:54):
Interesting. And the question now, of course is the question I've been asking all along, which is how far they go

Leo Laporte (00:17:58):
Down do keep going down. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:00):
Right. They will. They will. Because I think this 40% number

Leo Laporte (00:18:04):
When people buy a lot Yeah. The market saturates and then there's gonna be a down period as as people stop buying. That's right. Because they got all new stuff.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:13):
Now I'm gonna, we're gonna talk a little bit later about some of the side issues related to this because there is a concern with Microsoft where with Windows rather where Microsoft's like, we need to mon monetize this audience a little bit better. And it's tough when people aren't upgrading to new PCs, right? So we'll talk about that a little bit, but Microsoft addressed that a little bit in the earnings they would talk to, this is so stupid. It's typical. Microsoft did get a lot hard numbers, right? But they mentioned that, and this is not a hard number, this is a stupid number, but <laugh> usage intensity of Windows <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:18:41):
Usage intensity.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:42):
I know <laugh> continues to be higher than pre pandemic. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:18:46):
Talk about cherry picking.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:47):
I know, I know. So I would just call it usage

Leo Laporte (00:18:51):
<Laugh>. No, but but it doesn't sound like usage. It's, there's a further qualifier. I know. Like, so when they're using it, they're leaning

Paul Thurrott (00:18:56):
In, like they're way more engaged. Like are you measuring the distance of their forehead to the web camera

Leo Laporte (00:19:01):
Or something? I think it sounds, did they say what it is? Because it sounds like, like hours spent using Windows or something

Paul Thurrott (00:19:06):
Like that. I literally wrote, I would love to know what this means. Yeah. I don't know. I

Leo Laporte (00:19:09):
Don't know. PC intensity, please.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:11):
So, but that speaks to I thing I just said it, it, it's, it's not a, that's not a great, that's not a very good metric for us because what this sort of means is Microsoft is seeing more and more people relying on PCs that they already have. They're not buying new PCs. How are they gonna monetize

Leo Laporte (00:19:27):
That? They're using 'em intensely <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:19:29):
They're gonna have more ads and more, you know, we'll, we'll get to that.

Leo Laporte (00:19:32):
Oh, so there's dear. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:34):
There's

Leo Laporte (00:19:34):
That. It's it's the same number that Apple now reports instead of sales, which is revenue arpu AV a a average revenue per user. Yeah. And that's a reasonable, I mean, it's not an, it is revenue after

Paul Thurrott (00:19:47):
All. Actually. That's an Okay. Yeah. Rev, I'd love to see a revenue pre user <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:19:51):
But they don't even do that. They just, no. It's always a bad sign when a company to me makes up a new stat. Right. And says, but we're really doing well in usage intensity. That's virtually in mission that they're not doing well in traditional stats.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:06):
That's right. That's exactly right. And when Microsoft started this, back when the Xbox One fell off the cliff and they started talking about other metrics, they wouldn't, they like, we're not gonna talk about console sales. Console sales is not where we make money anyway. That's fair. These are these other metrics that we think are important. And to, to that point you made about Apple, Microsoft will talk about games per console. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like, in other words someone buys a console, how many games do they buy? Or how many games do they buy in a year? Or whatever that number is. And you wanna see that go up every year. And you know, and they don't talk about that anymore either, by the way. So that's probably not going great either. There's a lot of low bar numbers that don't really matter that are soft numbers anyway.

(00:20:43):
You know, usage of cloud-based versions of Windows, windows three five and Azure Virtual Desktop are <laugh> are growing. <Laugh> was literally the entire, well of course it's growing. I mean, you know, one more person could use it last year and it grew. I guess. Like there's no way to know what that even means. You know, windows 11 defer revenue deferrals, right? So when Windows 11 first ship, they deferred revenues that accounted for about 426 million. It really wasn't a big deal. It was to, yeah. So if, if they didn't defer those revenues, the drop in revenues at more personal computing would've gone from 39% down to 36%. So it still was gonna fall through the floor. Like it Windows 11 didn't help, you know, that kind of thing. And then Microsoft specifically said that Windows OEM revenues, revenues from PC makers will continue to decline this year as the PC market returns to pre pandemic levels.

(00:21:40):
So there you go. <Laugh> and big numbers there. This, we get some hard numbers, right? Windows revenues from PC makers are expected to decline in this quarter in the mid thirties, meaning 35% ish year over year. Minus 35%. That's terrible. And q3, P Q3 for them is this quarter, right? Cuz they're fiscal year goes from June, or sorry from July to June. PC sales, they said this is for the wider market are expected to be similar to pre pandemic levels. So I think we can kind of give, you know, give up that little fantasy. Well it's still above the, you know, pandemic still above it was where it was at pre pandemic. It's not, that's not how this year's gonna go. So here's that. But that's okay cuz Surface did even worse. And, and <laugh>, this is the thing, this kind of kills me because you, you'll remember that HoloLens had that 400 and something million dollar drop off cuz the Congress nixed the Army contract and Microsoft basically said that they were gonna realize that drop in the current quarter.

(00:22:45):
And when the devices revenues were down 39% in the quarter, I figured they're gonna talk HoloLens. They're gonna say, this is why they'll blame HoloLens. And that is literally not what they, they'd never, by the way, Microsoft didn't mention HoloLens once in any of their earnings documentation. It didn't come up once during the post earnings conference call. They never mentioned. I thought someone surely would ask about HoloLens. Nobody asked. So instead the devices revenues were down 39% because of continued PC market weakness, which is surface and execution cha execution challenges on new product launches. That's interesting. <Laugh>, that's another one I'd like to know more about. They mentioned that both in their, I think it was in their PowerPoint presentation about the quarter. And then they mentioned it when they spoke during that post earnings conference call where they again said that execution challenges impacted our surface business. So Surface somehow tanked 39% in one quarter year over year. I think that's crazy.

Leo Laporte (00:23:47):
Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:48):
Surface is, is not, it's, it's not a bad product lineup. You know, I, I certainly have my quibbles with some of the things that they do. I don't like how slowly they move. I really didn't like how slowly they embrace u s BBC and Thunderbolt. But when I look at their mix today and I look at what they have, I mean, there's a couple things I would certainly criticize, but honestly I think it's a pretty strong lineup. I don't know. And by the way, it's gonna get worse again. Yeah. the revenue declines for Surface and the current quarter are gonna be in the mid forties. And again, it has to do with working through the challenges of that execution. Well, working through the execution challenges that they noted earlier

Leo Laporte (00:24:28):
Is, do Lenovo, Dell HP report the same kinds of drops? Or is this unique to Microsoft?

Paul Thurrott (00:24:37):
Well, all we have right now to go on is the, what the analysts have said. So we don't, Lenovo hasn't announced

Leo Laporte (00:24:43):
Anything yet. Once they give their quarterly results, which I am imagine Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:24:46):
We coming, we can actually, we can look at it. I mean we can look at what those guys said, right? Yeah. So lemme see real quick. I'll look at it right now. 

Leo Laporte (00:24:51):
39%.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:53):
Yeah, it's big. So Lenovo, yeah, actually Lenovo, according to again, Gartner 90 C, their sales fell 28%. Okay. in the same quarter, HP is fell sorry, wait a minute. Is that the quarter of the year? That's gotta be the quarter cuz it's so big. HP 29% Dell, 37% <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:25:15):
Apple. So this is, this is typical year over year. Yeah. This is this is what's happening. Okay. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:21):
Yeah, this is, but

Leo Laporte (00:25:22):
Again, that is from pandemic high. So Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:25):
Well it was, well yeah, I don't know if last December was December it was a pandemic high, but Yeah, I, it's, it's well, suffice to say that, that, yeah, the buying spree certainly continued. So Yeah. It's Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:25:38):
Second good seeing they had the cloud <laugh>. Exactly. Such an Adela is getting some pats on the back from the board. Wow. Good move. Good move. Set ya. 

Paul Thurrott (00:25:48):
The only, so, you know, Xbox was down across the board. Gaming generally was down across the board. Xbox hardware was down. Expert Xbox software and services were down. Those were all in the low teens, 12, 13%. In line with expectations in this case. They said that Xbox Game passive grew, but didn't tell us by how much. And they, like Sony did say they expect increased console supply in this year. And so maybe that will

Leo Laporte (00:26:16):
Be, they can start selling 'em anyway. They can. Yeah. do they say cuz they don't, they always in these analyst calls give a kind of forward looking statement? Do they say they expect a turnaround or is this more of the same? No,

Paul Thurrott (00:26:28):
Every, every, every one of these things that's down, they expect those things to all be down worse. This in this quarter. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
Yeah. Everything. So this, I mean, honestly this has a lot to do with why these big tech companies are laying off so many people and why Microsoft's doing the belt tightening. I thought it was kind of interesting that they laid off a lot of the mixed reality

Paul Thurrott (00:26:50):
Folks. Yeah. Well probably, I think I have a little note about that later, but, okay. Yes. No, but it, that's fine. It doesn't matter when we talk about it, but yeah, the, you know, obviously Microsoft doesn't come on say, Hey, 26% of the people we laid off were in this part of the bus. You know, they don't talk about that. But you hear from people people who write articles, like I do hear from people that they know and you get like a sense of where these things are coming from. And overwhelmingly there is a sense that they're getting rid of a lot of that part of the business. So there, there's kind of two sides to it. There's the hardware business, which is obviously the headsets, which they only make one first party headset. And then they have partners that make the mixed related headsets on the consumer side, which I don't know why anyone would do that. And then there's a software side. So well,

Leo Laporte (00:27:31):
They're talking about like the HTC vibe and 

Paul Thurrott (00:27:34):
That's right.

Leo Laporte (00:27:34):
I mean, it sounds like what they sounds like is somebody who said this on Mac Brick Weekly yesterday, it sounds like they're just gonna let other people's headsets. I so

Paul Thurrott (00:27:42):
I, I wrote a, an editorial before they had announced these layoffs where I said, getting rid of Len seems weird to me. But if they do this, I think they still need to keep the software as a platform and offer to third parties like they did with the Windows mixed reality. Right. there's a, people forget about this, and by people, I mean, me, I forgot about this completely, but there's something called Alt Space VR that Microsoft bought a few years back. Right? That entire team was killed and that product's gone. I didn't even know it was the thing. So that was

Leo Laporte (00:28:09):
No, people were, that was a place you would go into and hang out with other people that didn't have legs. And so

Paul Thurrott (00:28:16):
<Laugh>, right? It was

Leo Laporte (00:28:16):
So, you know, you know, I don't want to say I told you so cause it's early days yet, and then VR may still be a thing. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:28:24):
I, I never, I I just never, I don't know. I I, I, I guess what I would say is I recognize the advances. Oh, the, the technology was incredible. They made really nice advances in HoloLens too. The price was always an issue. The fact that no major market emerged where this made a lot of sense. It was all a lot of small vertical markets. They obviously put all their eggs in that one basket with the US Army. You don't have to be a, a, a military genius to fi and know anything about that, that much about Hall ends to realize this was probably not gonna work. <Laugh>, you know maybe not the best idea. And I think that with all the personnel, the loss to especially to Meta and then Alex Kitman leaving, kind of gutted that team. It's, I I just feel like the whole thing is directionless and that the smaller, maybe smarter thing they can do going forward is to just keep working on the software and and do the interoperability stuff they're doing. Right. They, they working with Meta and others to get their software on.

Leo Laporte (00:29:25):
It's the same model as Windows, right? I mean, it was only recently relatively Microsoft made their own hardware for Windows. I,

Paul Thurrott (00:29:32):
I feel so, and

Leo Laporte (00:29:32):
Look how well that's gone. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:34):
Sorry. Well, no, I mean, I Too soon

Leo Laporte (00:29:37):
<Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:38):
Well, the interesting thing about the hardware for Microsoft's perspective, I, I completely disagree with ever creating something called Surface. I don't think competing with your best partners. Yeah. Biggest partners is, well

Leo Laporte (00:29:47):
Now they're regretting it for

Paul Thurrott (00:29:48):
Sure. I think that was stupid. Yeah. But I think to, in part, to justify this new model of way of doing things this new for them, new way of doing things, this kind of Apple-like way of doing things that when they started with HoloLens, I think the, the thinking was for us to get this thing going quickly, we'll just do it ourselves and we won't let these other guys get in the way. Although you think HP especially would've tripped over itself to be the partner on that one because they followed Microsoft on every rabbit hole they've ever found. But that didn't work out either, right? I mean, HoloLens, we've seen two generations of delays slow moving on all fronts. They had that one major rev with version two. Then the Army thing happened. I just, it, it, this didn't work either. <Laugh>,

(00:30:30):
You know, so I give them credit for going past that PC model because that PC partnering model worked great for that one thing and didn't seem to work well elsewhere. Like in media player software and other markets. You know, the the home, what do you call it? The media center stuff that they did. It just never seemed to come together. Maybe PCs are a unique market where the, you know, for whatever reason that just kind of makes sense for them. But they went, they went it alone and I eh, it just didn't work out. So, yeah. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:31:02):
I, we should mention, I didn't mention this I mm-hmm. <Affirmative> foolishly that Richard's not here. Cuz he's on assignment at the Tower of London where yes, he is in fact, right. Polishing up the crown jewels for the coronation. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But he will be back next week and we, he'll probably want to talk a little bit about cloud. So we'll, that's kind of his Bailey Wick,

Paul Thurrott (00:31:21):
Right? Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I just hit it kind of at a high level. I mean, yeah. It, it, if it didn't exist, <laugh>, you know, Microsoft might be talking of divesting itself of certain products right now. Yeah. Yeah. Things have gone.

Leo Laporte (00:31:35):
What about the heat Microsoft got over having a Sting concert for its executives?

Paul Thurrott (00:31:44):
Oh. Oh, this is fairly recent, right? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:31:46):
Yeah. It was at Davos the day before they announced the big layoffs. They had a little, little, little thing,

Paul Thurrott (00:31:53):
Little

Leo Laporte (00:31:53):
Intimate show for the executives.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:56):
I always have a huge problem with this kind of thing. I'm not the right person to ask, is this real? I, I I would've referenced something like, you know, Sacha Nadella flying on his personal jet over to Davos, where, you know, destroying the environment as he lands and talking about the future as he's laying off 10,000 people. I mean, I, it's un it's a little unfair, you know, the way I just described it, but it's also a little fair the way I just

Leo Laporte (00:32:18):
Politics the way it's played these days. For sure.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:21):
Well, I mean, it's true. And I How do you, I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:32:24):
It's appearances. I admit it's more appearances than reality. But

Paul Thurrott (00:32:28):
I got to see Sting because of Microsoft. A Sting played at I think it was the Windows xp. No, what was it? The, that's funny. It would be XP launch. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:32:36):
They have a thing for Sting. Yeah. Yeah. I think every big tech company has its band. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:43):
I saw the Google Dolls thanks to Microsoft. I also saw Dennis Miller, who he gave me my favorite Microsoft joke of all time. He said, what's with this Bill Gates guy? He's a monocle and a Chi hair cat away from being a Bond villain. <Laugh>. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:32:57):
That's bit in the hand that feeds you. Good for him. Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:01):
Thought that was good.

Leo Laporte (00:33:01):
It's a good line though. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So, so look, things are looking a little grim at Big All Round big Tech. It's not, it's not unique to Microsoft.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:12):
Well, this is Mi Microsoft, I, like I said, I think is the first. So, you know, we'll see. There were some, there were some okay points. You know, they finally gave a new number on Teams. Teams now has 280 million active users, which is great. That's the first

Leo Laporte (00:33:25):
Sounds like a lot number since I don't know what to compare it to.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:28):
Is it? Well, you can compare it to Teams. So I think the last number I think was two 40, you know you know, nine months ago. So that's good. The number of third party apps is up in big ways. The number of active teams, rooms, devices is up big time. You know, people use, our company's using team's phone to replace a traditional pt pstn system is up by 5 million seats. 

Leo Laporte (00:33:52):
<Laugh> by the way, I, I'll I'll give you, I will give you a number to compare it to. Yeah. slack has its guest. The last number we have was for 2020, which was 18 million active users. Yeah. We're gonna

Paul Thurrott (00:34:05):
Talk about Slack a lot. Cause Slack's

Leo Laporte (00:34:07):
Coming up. So that's, that's a big difference. That's like, you know Yep. A a order of magnitude plus <laugh>. So

Paul Thurrott (00:34:14):
We have, we have antitrust stories to talk about today. So they're

Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
Involved there. Yeah. If you can't beat them, Sue 'em.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:22):
My favorite teams number, no, my favorite teams quote rather cuz it's not a number, is that we finally got the softball Microsoft is just a few months ago, announced something called Teams Premium. Teams Premium is a way to take some of those features they gave away for free during the pandemic and charge you for 'em, <laugh>. And and I'm just literally describing what it is Microsoft said, and I quote, there is strong interest in teams, premium

Leo Laporte (00:34:45):
<Laugh>, strong interest. Yeah. So did they talk at all about ai at

Paul Thurrott (00:34:52):
The on call? Yeah. Well, AI doesn't really impact the revenues right now. Right? But the, the, their introduction to Microsoft 365 as a product family, they said, I think it was Sacha Nadel who said this was that Microsoft 365 is rapidly evolving into an AI first platform. And that makes sense, right? So Microsoft 365 is a productivity tools and services primarily Microsoft Office. And that's, I think, the one where, the one area where people can say, yeah, okay. Like, I get it. Like I could see how Word, Excel, PowerPoint, these legacy applications that are Brown for 30 years-ish could be improved with ai. It's like not hard to see. So that was it. That was the whole AI thing. Hmm. Although they made, they announced that $10 billion investment. Yeah. They, they confirmed that earlier just ahead of the earnings. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited.

Leo Laporte (00:35:44):
I think I, I'm glad to see that Microsoft is on top of this one. It feels like they caught

Paul Thurrott (00:35:50):
This thing. Well, you know okay. So actually to go back to that for one moment whether they were lucky or, you know, purposely positioned themselves, it's kind of hard to say, but back in the 1990s, there was this strategy that was all, it was all Windows, right? Windows three Oh exploded. Windows 95 happened. It was the biggest product launch of all time for them. It was all Windows, but they started, but, you know, windows in particular, the Windows nine x versions of Windows, windows three, you know, were not well regarded in the industry for technical reasons, right? They, they were seen as kind of cobbled together products. It was a thing on a thing. It re ran on top of Doss and all that. And that's why they hired David Cutler and that team from Deck to create Windows nt. It's why they hired people away from NetWare and Banyan and other companies to create their networking and work group products.

(00:36:38):
And they kind of evolved windows up into what we now think of as managed environments and then eventually into the enterprise. And as they did so, they also created more technically sophisticated products. So NT was a, a whole let you know, order of difference better than MSOs slash Windows. And as we go forward into, you know, 2000 xp, et cetera, et cetera in the early two thousands, I mean, a big part of what Microsoft was talking about was that better together thing. We mentioned last week, this notion that if you're a business of whatever size, obviously deploy windows to your clients, but if you can put server on the back end, those things are gonna be better together than you're gonna get much more value out of that. You can have small business server, we have like Exchange and SQL and whatever else all running together on this one box.

(00:37:23):
 You'll have Windows clients. Those things will work together. That will be great. It, it really was that work that set the stage for this AI stuff, right? Because it's that work that led into cloud computing. And it was, that was an easy transition, you know, taking Microsoft server products on-prem server products and putting them in the cloud and giving users all those benefits and giving Microsoft the benefits. Well, they already had kind of had it in this, on the server side, but we'll call 'em the subscription benefits of that regular revenue, kind of a win-win for everybody. They saw that as a great business model and it worked out for them. And Microsoft as a Windows only company was very quickly a Windows office company and then a Windows office server company. And today, you know, they're, they're kind of cloud first. It's the server part of that business that evolved into this cloud computing thing, which is what makes AI possible, right? So it, I mean, I don't, I'm not gonna credit, I don't know who, who would get credit for that, I guess. Well, bill Gates, right? I mean, did Bill Gates foresee this AI future? Not, not exactly, but I mean, but but <laugh>, you know, I mean, I, I I think it's fair to say

Leo Laporte (00:38:33):
Bill would probably say he saw it.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:34):
Hi, buddy would Yeah, I saw

Leo Laporte (00:38:35):
It. I know it was gonna

Paul Thurrott (00:38:37):
Happen. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Let me bring up a, a slide from my mother <laugh> says right here, AI <laugh>. Yep. 1993. Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:38:46):
I think probably Bill, after the debacle over the internet was probably keeping his ear to the, the rails. You

Paul Thurrott (00:38:53):
Know what though? So I we're gonna talk about this later too, but I, I was going over this part of their history very recently, and I gotta say you know, Microsoft was slow to, or Gates, gates being the mind of Microsoft, right? The, the person who decided everything that they did was slow to understand the internet. This is the guy who published that book. Remember? The wrote ahead? Yeah. barely mentioned the web <laugh>. Yeah, yeah. And everyone who reviewed it was like, did you hear, have you ever heard of the internet? What is

Leo Laporte (00:39:18):
The web, this

Paul Thurrott (00:39:18):
Information highway thing you're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway but you know what, man? Talk about turning a battleship on a dime. Yeah. within a year that, that company, everything was internet, everything. I mean, it was, it the, the sheer number of products and services that they unleashed, you know they really, you know, Netscape really did wa awake awaken a sleeping giant, as you said, <laugh> referencing, you know the, the Japanese and World War ii. But but yeah, they, they, I mean, and I guess in the scope of things right now, I, the fact that they were maybe a year or two late to the internet maybe is less meaningful today. But at the time, it seemed like the stupidest mistake of all time. But then you go forward a couple years.

Leo Laporte (00:40:00):
Yeah. I mean, yeah, they missed a year or two, but

Paul Thurrott (00:40:03):
I think ie. Surpassed Netscape usage share within, I wanna say it was less than two years. I think it was something like that. It was very

Leo Laporte (00:40:10):
Quick. Yeah. It was in 94 or 95. I mean, it was, it didn't take long. Yeah, they, they jumped right on that thing. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:17):
Yep. I mean, they made mistakes later that screwed that up, but whatever, I mean, they, they did, you know, dot net, ca whatever, <laugh>, it's a, it's

Leo Laporte (00:40:25):
A business school case study kind of a Oh sure is thing. Let me, I want to talk about, read to you and get your opinion on what, what Ben wrote on okay. You're familiar with Ben Thompson, I'm sure?

Paul Thurrott (00:40:38):
Oh, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:40:38):
Yep. he's, you know, he, he, he, he's great. He's a good analyst. He's done quite well mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with his newsletter and his podcast and so forth. We used to have him on until he got real big time. He wrote <laugh>, he wrote, he wrote a piece on, and this is for subscribers only. I think I subscribed AI in the Big five. And he, this is where he talks, as I mentioned about the, the ep, the epox pc, the internet cloud computing mobile, and how the next one is gonna be ai. And he, he says, I thought this was really interesting. Microsoft, meanwhile seems to be the best place of all. Yep. It has a cloud services sales gpu, it's the exclusive cloud provider for open ai. Yeah. It costs them a lot of money, but it gives you an inside track.

(00:41:27):
Bing. Meanwhile is like the Mac on the eve of the iPhone <laugh>, this is interesting. It contributes fair bit of revenue, but a fraction of the dominant player. Right. but if incorporating chat G P t risks results into being, risks, a business model for the opportunity to gain massive share, it's a be well worth making. And as you mentioned, productivity apps are gonna get it. They put co-pilot, which is based on G P T into mm-hmm. <Affirmative> GitHub with I I, despite the controversy, I think some real success. Right. And then he says, what's important is that adding on new F functionality, perhaps for a fee fits perfectly with Microsoft's subscription business model. They were, you know people didn't like it, but Microsoft didn't want this pay once perpetual licensing thing. People

Paul Thurrott (00:42:19):
Go ahead. I dunno what to say to that. So Microsoft has been using a subscription license program for business users for 20 years. Right. This is actually not new. The the other, I don't know if he says this, but

Leo Laporte (00:42:32):
It wast kind of a gradual, you know, he's, it, it took office a while to get to that point, but they did it, it,

Paul Thurrott (00:42:39):
Okay, fair enough. I I, I yes,

Leo Laporte (00:42:41):
It was clear. I mean, look, we were talking about this 20, 15 years ago that there was clearly was Microsoft's intent despite consumers, you know, a version to this description model. Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:42:52):
Well, it's, that's the thing I was gonna kind of, that's an interesting discussion.

Leo Laporte (00:42:56):
Business doesn't mind, I guess. Huh?

Paul Thurrott (00:42:58):
I don't think consumers mind too much either. As it drinks, they're selective about what they pay. So think about seriously it's, it's still January. This is the right time of year to go into mentor whatever you're using and look at all your stupid subscriptions and be like, what am I doing? Like, it's astonishing how many things we pay for on a monthly, or I know

Leo Laporte (00:43:14):
Basis we may not like it, but we've given in, we've,

Paul Thurrott (00:43:17):
We've, well, it used to be about big purchases, right? Yeah. This was the only way you could afford to buy a car or a house,

Leo Laporte (00:43:22):
Right? Buy now, pay later. Now it's, now it's,

Paul Thurrott (00:43:24):
You could, you could spend, you could go to Amazon and buy like a $29 cable and it'll say, do you wanna split it over three payments? Yeah. I, I mean, it's, it's, you could, you can do this with everything now. And we do do it with everything. Yeah. How many people listening to this show right now, how many people pay for five or more video streaming services? Oh, yeah. Every month. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. In addition to probably cable or some cable equivalent, like YouTube tv.

Leo Laporte (00:43:50):
Absolutely. You almost have to, if you wanna watch the things you wanna watch.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:53):
Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (00:43:54):
I don't think we, I think we've gone kicking and screaming, but we've gone is the point we're we're doing it. I,

Paul Thurrott (00:43:59):
Well, but for this to work, there has to be a real world advantage to it. So for example, if I wanted to watch movies back in the day, right? I could buy them at great expense. Remember like, what, what was it like to buy like Star Wars in 1985 on vhs? It was probably like 120 bucks

Leo Laporte (00:44:16):
<Laugh>, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's

Paul Thurrott (00:44:17):
True. I think you could rent a movie from a rental place or whatever, and you could buy music on CD or album or whatever you're using at the time. You could buy music on, say just music. I'm sorry. You could buy you know, whatever the content is a book, you know, you could buy a book and say it like a book is in, in hardcover, it's $29. I could wait till it comes up in paperback, but that's like nine months from now, and now it's gonna be like $5 or whatever. We have all these models. But then you move forward to this new system, the subscription system. It's like, I can have all the music the world's ever created for 9 99, or increasingly, maybe 1299 a month or whatever it is. I have Netflix and Hulu and Disney and whatever else, hbo, opl Max.

(00:44:56):
And it's, they're, they're nine to 20 bucks a month each and blah, blah, blah. But I have this incredible library of whatever, I could buy all those Towers movies on Blu-ray right now, or I could just subscribe to Disney Plus and watch 'em in 4K at any time. You know, that kind of thing. So I, the, the value, the value has to be there for people to say, okay, sometimes the value is so good, they say okay to so many things, they get a little bit of fee fatigue to it. I think the problem with the office stuff, for example, just use a Microsoft example, is you don't see like, big numbers on office consumers, subscribers. In fact, I have the exact number. I think it's 40 something. Nope, 63 million, 63.2 million people subscribe to Microsoft 365 family or personal, compared to the 1.5 billion people that use office every single day.

(00:45:43):
Wow. That seems like a really small number. Right. And I think part of the problem is they perceive it as being something that you get with a PC for free, right? And you use it for the duration of that pc. Yeah. And now you're telling me I have to pay $99 a year for this. No, I, I've talked to people, but people are coming along and they go eight bucks a month, it takes a while. It takes a, so, you know, $80 a year, I can afford that. This is why AI is so exciting, right? So Microsoft's are, so there's a couple things. I would say that real world advantage to having a Microsoft 365 subscription to basically anyone today, is you get a terabyte of storage on OneDrive. And that's huge. I I, I think a lot of people, well, 63 point million people will say, yeah, okay.

(00:46:18):
Yep. I, I may, I may not need it all, but I can put my photos there, I can put videos there. If I wanna put my, whatever I have, I can put everything there. Okay, cool. And that's good, you know, and you get access to all those apps you're gonna have anyway. And you get, there are services that are only online and you get ad free outlook.com or whatever, and that's cool. I I th Microsoft would've or has been advertising it like, Hey, you get all these new features too, right? If you buy office 2019, or now we have Office 2022, I think you buy this thing, you can only put it on one computer. You can put this other thing on as many computers as you want. You can use it on 10 computers at a time per user. And every month there's gonna be new features and you're like, yeah, I, I'm using Microsoft Worded Buddy.

(00:47:02):
I don't really new features are not a problem for me. In fact, I would say for me, literally for me, I, as I, I am a professional writer. I don't need any new features than Word. In fact, I need fewer features. I don't care about new features. However, the, this, the advent of this AI thing, I think is gonna be the selling point where they can say, cuz they're not gonna put this in the, the version you buy for your computer. They're gonna put it in the version you get with subscription. If you want to use the AI enhancements that are coming from chat, G P T or whatever other open AI technologies, that's where that's gonna be. And I think we'll see, like, I don't know when we're gonna hear about this. We obviously, we have build coming up probably in May.

(00:47:40):
 We will have a an Ignite show in the end of the year, November probably, you know, who knows when the time, what the timing is. But those advances, because this stuff has been so heavily publicized, people have seen all those beautiful painting, like photos you can make with it, of your face or the, the paintings that they're making when you describe something to it or the, the writing that it does for you, we can describe a story or whatever. It's c this is coming to Microsoft 365. That might actually trigger some growth there, right? That might be the thing that pushes it over the top. So it's a possibility.

Leo Laporte (00:48:15):
I compare it to Adobe. I mean, people still push back really hard on the pres on the subscriptions at Adobe, I guess cuz it's not cheap. Although these are professional tools.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:25):
Adobe I know, but geez Louise. Like I buy I use Photoshop and I use Premier, but I don't use the CC apps. I use the elements versions because I can buy them once every two or three years. Right. Those things don't change a lot. Right. There's a couple little things that aren't great. Like I can't pull in like a web p or there's not

Leo Laporte (00:48:42):
A big difference. Yeah. I completely forgot about elements. So that's

Paul Thurrott (00:48:45):
Not honestly just

Leo Laporte (00:48:46):
Do that. Huh?

Paul Thurrott (00:48:47):
I'm just saying I there's so much less expensive. They're often on sale. You can get both for like 80 to $90. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:48:53):
They don't have Lightroom elements, unfortunately. I

Paul Thurrott (00:48:56):
They do. Yeah. That's the thing. I, yeah, it's not everything, but I, I, I can't believe I, I am, I've never understood how expensive the Adobe services are. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:49:07):
And people's,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:08):
It's gone in the opposite

Leo Laporte (00:49:08):
Direction. People have found inexpensive alternatives and you know, like Affinity and use them.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:14):
Oh my God. And I, yeah. Those, those things work great. I think

Leo Laporte (00:49:17):
It's hurt Adobe. Let me give you the last sentence from Ben Thompson cuz you'll like it. It's notable that the company once thought of as a poster child for victims of disruption will in the full recounting not just be born of disruption, but be well placed to reach greater heights. Because

Paul Thurrott (00:49:38):
I would've said reborn of disruption.

Leo Laporte (00:49:39):
Yes. Yeah. He's really given them a lot of credit for having caught

Paul Thurrott (00:49:42):
This well, because they literally are, as he says, he's correct of all of these companies. They are the best position to take advantage of it. It doesn't mean they're gonna win. Right. Right. I mean you know, we'll see a Google, like, you know, has done their little code red thing. I'm sure Amazon's working on whatever as well. And Apple you know, apple is a unique company in this space because they don't tend to do things that are kind of cloud forward. It, a lot of their stuff is the on device advances that they do, but they have such a large audience. Those things are really impactful. Something simple.

Leo Laporte (00:50:13):
It's interesting. I think that they may be left out a little bit, although he actually is pretty bullish on their, on their

Paul Thurrott (00:50:20):
Prospects. Well, I, this is where their app store thing is gonna save them because it's, there'll be apps that run on this stuff that uses on the back end. And this is like the, we use this, we talked about this CARSs, you know, you're not gonna see a Microsoft logo in a car. Yeah. but there stuff might be on the back end. You may not realize you're running open AI chat G B T, but you're doing it on your iPhone and you don't care. You have the fun app,

Leo Laporte (00:50:40):
You know, so. Right, right.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:41):
It's a win-win.

Leo Laporte (00:50:42):
Yep. So while this quarter was disastrous <laugh> especially for hardware expected. Yeah, yeah. It's still aright, a Fright Butcher for Microsoft. A Bright Future. A Fright, future Fright future. For Micro

Paul Thurrott (00:50:58):
It runs on the business.

Leo Laporte (00:50:59):
<Laugh>. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that they have, well, let's put it this way. They seem to have strategized for the future. Well, and a lot of credit too. Saja Adela for that. Let's take a little break. Come back with more again. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Richard's not here. He'll be back next week. But don't worry, we have a Brown liquor pick, nonetheless, thanks to Mr. Throt.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:19):
I'm gonna go grab that right

Leo Laporte (00:51:20):
Now. Go get your, go get your brown liquor. While I talk about our sponsor, our studio sponsors ACI Learning, these guys are, are great. You may not know the name, but I know you know IT. Pro they bring you engaging and entertaining IT training. We've talked about them for years now. IT PRO is part of ACI learning together. IT Pro and ACI learning are expanding their production capabilities. That's what's exciting about this partnership. It's gonna be even better bringing you the content, the learning style you need, you love. But at any stage of your development and in a number of new arenas, whether you want individual training for yourself or you wanna train your whole team, whether you're interested in IT or audit, they have Audit Pro. If you're interested in cyber security, these capabilities, these, these offerings have now become richer and broader.

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Paul Thurrott (00:56:45):
Continue. Listen, if I'm gonna get through the second part of this show,

Leo Laporte (00:56:48):
Oh my God, <laugh>. So

Paul Thurrott (00:56:51):
Here she comes.

Leo Laporte (00:56:52):
<Laugh>. Oh boy. Here comes kitty.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:54):
Can you hear my cat?

Leo Laporte (00:56:55):
No. Oh, wait a minute. I little bit in the background. I can now. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:00):
Come by my feet so I can kick you.

Leo Laporte (00:57:02):
<Laugh>. No, Paul, even I jest. Even. I jest. So you said something that kind of is not something you've not said before, but worries me a little bit, that the future Windows is advertising.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:18):
Well, this is the yeah. So we kind of alluded to this notion that Microsoft has this audience of a billion, maybe 1.5 billion, whatever the number is, people using Windows, but they're not really upgrading. Right. And Microsoft doesn't offer those upgrades. Windows 10 and 11 were free updates. Right. and you can go to a store and buy it in a box or whatever, but I mean, this is not how Windows sold. People buy new computer, they get Windows. That's the thing. I just had a friend today just text me and say, Hey I just got offered Windows 11. This is something I want on my computer. And that's a whole conversation.

Leo Laporte (00:57:48):
The perennial question. <Laugh> never gets old. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:51):
Hey, it, there were worse questions. I remember another friend when we got, when Windows eight came out, got a new pc and he said, so how do I put Windows seven on this? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:58:00):
How do we get, and I was like, get rid of this. Yeah, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:02):
Yeah. That's, you can't so yes. But anyway, so here, you know, there's this big audience. Microsoft wants to move to the subscription model across the board. Like we've been talking we as Windows users have feared this notion of a windows 365 thing, although now they're using that name for a different product. But the idea was like, you know, Microsoft will charge us to use Windows somehow every month or every year or whatever. And I think, you know, Microsoft understand is not gonna fly. This isn't McGaffy <laugh>, you know it's not gonna work. So how, what else could you do? And I think we have to respect the notion that Microsoft has a right to try to monetize its customers as much as they can. Right. And we have a hope as those customers that they'll do so in ways that are maybe not annoying, but <laugh> you know, starting with Windows eight and then moving up through 10 and now 11 advertising keeps getting worse and worse.

(00:58:56):
 And advertising takes many forms. Obviously there are su you know, suggestions or literal ads. Sometimes the yellow bars that appear at the top, Hey, did you know there are sponsored app shortcuts in your start menu for things like you know, Spotify and Messenger and whatever else Right? That are not actually installed, but you click on them, they install and, and someone is paying Microsoft to put that stuff in there. It's a, it's a sponsorship thing. But there's, there's other stuff going on. You know, I was, I was kind <laugh> I was looking at, because I've been writing the book, right? You start running these apps you don't normally run. There is a premium edition subscription for Solitaire and Casual Games, which is the new name of this app that costs $2 per month or $15 per year. So you don't have ads, huh?

(00:59:42):
There's a Clip Champ essential subscription that we kind of know about, right? Is 12 bucks a month, which is expensive but still can't export to 4k. Obviously the Xbox app, if you wanna use that thing effectively, you need a Game pass subscription that's 10 to $15 a month depending on the tier use OneDrive. You want to get extra storage, you can pay for that. You can get a Microsoft 365 subscription, then you can pay for it again if you want to because they have that additional subscription, right? There's, there's all this kind of additional stuff. And like I said, it's, it's understandable. And we, and you were there. So you'll remember this, I, we had this conversation with Chris Capasso a little bit over a year ago where I said, well, look, why don't you offer, offer a way for people to pay not to have this crap in Windows?

(01:00:25):
Yeah. What did he say? I forgot. And his pushback was that that wouldn't be a good value proposition for Microsoft because it would be implicitly admitting, admitting they were didn't, didn't add value <laugh>, they were crapping up Windows <laugh>. So here's my, here's my retort. Did he actually say that out loud? Yeah. Wait, that's great. Another, I like Chris, the way you said it was, he goes, we can't offer that because that would be like us submitting that those things were bad. Yeah. We believe that those things Yeah. You know, we're good or whatever, right? And I lo you know, listen, I gotta love this guy. He gonna love his clarity. He could love his transparency and all that kind of stuff. But the thing is, Microsoft actually does offer a product that does this almost the exact thing. It's called Ad-Free Outlook. <Laugh>, right? It's a perk of Microsoft 365.

(01:01:08):
It's it takes away the ads from the outlook.com web experience, right? So I, I suppose in a way you're admitting they're bad. Those things are bad. I mean, I have a premium subscription on my website that I would say that, well, this two key components to it. But one of the big deals is it takes away the ads cuz ads on the web are terrible today. And it's not our fault. It's just the way the, the, you know, the world is. But anyway I, not everyone is gonna pay for this thing. And I, and there is this kind of, I want to call it egalitarian <laugh> viewpoint or something where it's like everyone should be able to have, you know, an ad-free experience, blah, blah. Okay? But the reality is life is full of these kinds of things. I, I think I used the example of like a, a first class airplane ticket and you're coach in the back and they, they pull over that cra you know, this terrible little transparent curtain thing is like a, you know, like a joy, a joy it in the back of the bus. The chickens don't, you know, get in the way. Th that's, you know cars, luxury cars had safety features first things like actually seat belts, but also like airbags and different kinds of airbags, like on the side, all that kinda thing. I mean, unfortunately, this is the world that we live in. And, and

Leo Laporte (01:02:20):
As a, as a member of the 1%

Paul Thurrott (01:02:22):
I

Leo Laporte (01:02:23):
Would appreciate Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:25):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:02:25):
Love

Paul Thurrott (01:02:26):
For that. I mean, well, we just, okay, so we just talked about Adobe and how that was expensive. And so for me, that's kind of where I draw the line. I'm like, I, I do use these products. I, I, I guess I technically use Photoshop just about, I do, I use it every day. I don't use it as much as word <laugh>, you know, of course. Or a web browser, but I use it. But whatever the, I don't remember the price is for the cc or just for once you, once you subscribe to two of those products, it makes sense to get the full boat thing. I, I, is it, the way I recall it they're very expensive, but whatever the price is, I, that's where I draw the line. And for something like Microsoft 365 family where it's a hundred bucks a year, and literally everyone in my family uses it, that to me makes tons of sense. I think it's fair to say, I

Leo Laporte (01:03:11):
Think part of the problem

Paul Thurrott (01:03:13):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:03:16):
It used to cost a lot to do this stuff. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:19):
That, well actually, that was my, that was my concern about Adobe, because people forget this Microsoft office is a product 70. It's be 800 bucks, 7,800 bucks. Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:03:28):
That's gone down. Used the pc you used to, the PC you wanted was always $2,500. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:03:34):
Right. That's

Leo Laporte (01:03:34):
Right. We were talking about the lease. It's the 40th anniversary. $10,000. That's right. This stuff used to be expensive,

Paul Thurrott (01:03:41):
By the way. That's $10,000 in 19 $80. Yeah. Real money. That money today would be 25, 30, whatever the number is. I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:03:48):
I remember getting a deck pc, very nice pc, it was a, you know, a 10 grand. Was

Paul Thurrott (01:03:53):
It a Rainbow

Leo Laporte (01:03:54):
<Laugh>? No, it was a, it was a, you know, I don't know, maybe it was a 4 86, I think it was, oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:03:59):
I'm sorry. A deck. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:04:00):
Digital equipment when they were still making personal computers. Yep. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and it was very, it was, I looked at it, I went, this thing is like tens of thousands of dollars. Right? That's how it was. And then there's been this push to the bottom to, and, and it really comes from a desire from companies to commoditize the stuff you use on your computer mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to boost the sales of the computer itself. But there's been a downside to that cuz what's also gotten commoditized is the computer. And so now everything's cheap and we, we, but actually we are really getting a good deal when you're getting office for $8 a month.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:36):
But you're getting, but that's the point. It is $8 a month. So if you think it, let's say you spent $800 in office, right? And you were like, well, I would, how much would it be? How many months would I have to use this thing for it to get down to $8 a month? A hundred months? Well, how many months is a hundred months? How many, how many years is that? You know, eight years or something like that.

Leo Laporte (01:04:57):
Yeah, it's a long time.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:58):
That probably is the length of time that a lot of people use in these things. So it, it's

Leo Laporte (01:05:04):
The same cost. I mean, Microsoft I'm sure wants it to be, but that's what ultimately, right, right.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:08):
Listen, I, I, I don't, most people don't have $800 to spend on something like that. Right. But they do have $8 this month, and they figure they'll have eight, $8 next month. And that's why these subscription services make sense to individuals, right? Because they allow you to buy something. You know, back in the day, like I, I, I worked in a bank, I was a teller, and I remember this woman came in, she was so, I used to see her all the time. She cash her check, she worked in the mall and she was so happy. She was, so, she was getting a cashier's check. It was, this is 1988 ish or 89 or something. So it might have been as much as, you know, $12,000 or something at the time, whatever it was. To me it was a lot of money. And I'm like, what are you doing?

(01:05:45):
And you, you gotta get, I'm like, $12,000. What are you doing? And she says, I'm buying a car. And she saved up for it month to month. She put some money aside every month until she had enough money. That woman is an exception <laugh>. That is not the way the world works. At least not our world, our country, people buy things they can't afford and they, they push 'em off and they, or they pay for them piecemeal. And that's, that's, that's very common. I mean, it's the way it is. So, yeah, I, I, Adobe software, Microsoft Software, it was a lot more expensive. You, you, you can, hopefully they're making a case for the value that you get. But for, for Microsoft, for Adobe, getting $8 a month forever is way better than getting eight. Do $800 once and then eight years goes by and then maybe, maybe you get $800 again.

(01:06:29):
Like it's, it's better for accounting. It's better. It's just better for, it's better across the board. I don't, I, I don't know. It, it's tough because in technology we do expect things to cost less. But I think the way we expected this stuff to cost less was that instead of spending $800 every eight years in office, I would spend $8 <laugh> once on office and then buy it to get an eight years or something. Like our, maybe that's an exaggeration. But I mean, a, a typical retail price for like a standalone copy of office is probably a hundred bucks ish or something. I know they have special deals online that's probably as cheap as $30. You can buy it for one computer. It's probably harder, maybe even possible these days to move that license to a different computer. It's kind of a different situation.

(01:07:16):
But you know what, for a lot of people, they only have one computer. They don't care. Most people don't have the stupid collection of computers that I, you know, that I'm surrounded by every day. In my case, being able to move my Microsoft 365 subscription around is huge. And like I said, I'm using it for my whole family. So the, the value of that is just, it's off the charts. But this is math we all have to do. I mean, it's it, and it, you know, it's a case by case basis. But like I said, Adobe, that's where I'm like, yeah, no <laugh>, I'm not paying for that. That's too much. It's too much. It's too much for the way I use the product for me.

Leo Laporte (01:07:52):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:53):
You know, but I,

Leo Laporte (01:07:55):
You know I guess my point was,

Paul Thurrott (01:07:58):
I'm sorry, <laugh>, did I go far, far? I

Leo Laporte (01:08:01):
Feel bad for you. I'm so sorry. Yeah, no, I, no, my point was though, these companies do have to make be profitable. Yes. And

Paul Thurrott (01:08:09):
So how would you do it? You're a Microsoft, you got this Windows product, right? This thing is bringing in pretty good money still, even in an off month, it's still, or an off quarter. But you know, you, you, you're like, we have this audience. It's a big audience. Yeah. And if, and, and I'm sure they have some vague idea. Apple makes X amount of dollars per quarter on each iPhone customer. Google makes X amount of dollars on each, you know, Android, whatever. It's, and they're like, man, we are really lagging behind. And I, I, I think part of it is just the nature of the, the legacy nature of the product and our expectations and all that kind of stuff. But it, like I said, it's, it's understandable that they would want to drive more revenues. Unfortunately, they do all the underhanded stuff.

(01:08:48):
They do the stuff where you're like, I have chosen Chromas my default browser, but when I click on a search highlight, it loads edge and it loads a Microsoft website, and it loads Microsoft advertising on the backend. And that's one of the ways that they monetize you as a Windows user. It's underhanded. It's you're giving the user an unexpected and unwelcome experience, which is not, is you're, you're not respecting the choice that they made, or you're showing advertising or suggestions or sponsored apps that you didn't. Right. Now we're, this is probably a mistake. Microsoft has not commented on this. But when you install, or rather when Microsoft Edge upgrades to a new version, which it does, you know, every four weeks an edge icon appears on new desktop. Now I deleted that icon. Why is it a reappearing? I delete it comes back, I delete it, it comes back. It's like we're playing a little game with Microsoft. It's like, how, how much can they push us before we finally say, you know, Linux is a thing. Right? I could buy a Mac <laugh>. Like, what, what are you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:09:49):
Well, that's, yeah, I mean, unf that's the risk of course. Right? to be fair, I put Linux on almost every PC I buy after a while because I just, you know Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:10:02):
Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:10:03):
Starts to drive me crazy. This

Paul Thurrott (01:10:05):
Running

Leo Laporte (01:10:06):
<Laugh> mad vision. Actually, you know what WSL probably, yeah, we'll start changing that. It's, it did already with Chromebooks where if I can run, if I can just run emax <laugh> and a few programs like

Paul Thurrott (01:10:20):
That for a lot of it.

Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
Yeah, that's interesting. Then I'm, then I'm might, this

Paul Thurrott (01:10:23):
Is the exact opposite of the way most people think, by the way. You know, like if you, if I were to go go to a Chromebook or a Linux box, I would say if I could just run OneDrive, if I could just run <laugh>, Microsoft Word, if I could just run, you know, it's like those kinds of things. It's interesting that your workloads are such that they're like Linux apps, <laugh>, you know, which I think is a very developer-centric way of yeah. Things, I

Leo Laporte (01:10:49):
Guess. Yeah. Yeah. It, I also feel like there's, I, and I'm, I apologize for this cuz I'm still a hippie, but I really love open non-proprietary stuff where you're not the product, you know? And

Paul Thurrott (01:11:08):
Well, there you're in a news flash year though, because you're a you're right. And it doesn't really have anything to do with any kind of like sixties ideal or whatever you want to call that. Microsoft agrees it's right too, because everything new that Microsoft's doing. Yeah. Not everything, but

Leo Laporte (01:11:21):
Lot of,

Paul Thurrott (01:11:22):
Lot all the developers. Yeah. There's a lot of open source. Yeah. Lot of open source. They just completed a several year project to completely open source, the entire.net stack.

Leo Laporte (01:11:33):
Yeah. It's amazing. Do

Paul Thurrott (01:11:35):
Net.Net was the last major Microsoft platform 22 years ago-ish. It was completely proprietary. Well, I'm going call it 99.9% per, cuz there was a little escape hatch there, but it was, it was a win. It was for Windows. That's what it was for. Yeah. Dot net was gonna run on Windows. It was gonna run on Windows server and and Windows mobile and, you know, whatever. But yeah, Microsoft has seen the light. I mean it's, I dunno, I I think we're too far along with some things. Like, I don't know, you know, windows probably not ever gonna be open sourced office, you know, whatever. But, but a lot of this new stuff, and even when it's not, even when it's proprietary,

Leo Laporte (01:12:18):
Their core stuff for some teams is never gonna be open their core. They're money making stuff. They can't make it open,

Paul Thurrott (01:12:26):
But they can use open technologies to create it. And that's what they've been doing. Yeah. And that's the thing, you know, well, that's open

Leo Laporte (01:12:32):
Source. This is, maybe I'm cynical, but I, this is what I feel is that they are using these open technologies because they support their core business mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so they're gonna ha you know, whether it's Azure or Windows, they're gonna have a, a profit making. They have to, they're, they're a profit making,

Paul Thurrott (01:12:51):
Doesn't have to make

Leo Laporte (01:12:52):
Money. Profit making, core business, red Hat and

Paul Thurrott (01:12:54):
Money. I mean, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:12:56):
But somewhat cynically and again, I'm gonna have to quote Ben Thompson, who is actually quoting Clayton Christensen from the innovators dilemma that companies will commoditize all the stuff around them. Apple wants apps to be cheap because it supports their Right. Their moneymaking product, the iPhone Microsoft wants tools to be free. Well, because it supports their moneymaking product

Paul Thurrott (01:13:21):
Windows. But I, I, I, again, I I don't mean to hold up Microsoft. Well, I will say that Microsoft in this regard is a better company than Apple. Apple was a company when they started doing OS 10, talked about its open source. They, they were all open sourced and they, that stuff's dropped. That's gone.

Leo Laporte (01:13:38):
Well, Darwin's still there and they still contribute back to it. There's still, they're

Paul Thurrott (01:13:42):
Still, you don't, this is not a Okay, all right. But I don't know what anyone's doing with Darwin. I mean, like, but the, but when Microsoft uses open technologies to create something like Microsoft Teams, for example, what they're really doing is creating a world in which it's much easier for developers to extend that product with their own solutions. And this is maybe the modern version of that partner ecosystem we were talking about with PC makers, where the relationship has changed a lot. They look, they are still, look, they're at their heart. They're still a proprietary software

Leo Laporte (01:14:12):
<Laugh>. Yeah. I mean, they, look, we conglomerate these companies all are profit making businesses. We, that's their, how they're constituted. They're never gonna be. And even Red Hat, if I b m bought it to support their core moneymaking consultancy businesses, you know, that's where they make their money.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:30):
Yeah. yeah. I I don't know that we'll ever see an example of a company in Microsoft Size announcing where they hit, look, we're going completely over. Like, I just don't know. Won't if that's possible. No. Yeah. But they

Leo Laporte (01:14:43):
Like open source to the degree it supports their profit making businesses they get a lot of

Paul Thurrott (01:14:49):
That is right. You are actually a hippie that is very

Leo Laporte (01:14:51):
Similar. I am a hippie <laugh>. I told you I was

Paul Thurrott (01:14:54):
Orange. No, no, no, no, no. It's true. But it's true. You know, you're right. I mean, it's true. Of course. It's true. 

Leo Laporte (01:14:59):
So they're always gonna, that's, I guess what I'm saying is

Paul Thurrott (01:15:03):
I feel like though that open source has to coexist and yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:15:07):
It's like the frog in the scorpion.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:09):
It's not Star Trek. Right. We don't, we don't not give up money. We're not <laugh> you know, it's not this like No, no, no.

Leo Laporte (01:15:14):
I didn't, we're not headed into this utopian No, no. Like

Paul Thurrott (01:15:17):
That's not,

Leo Laporte (01:15:18):
We're a capitalist society. Yeah. I, the it's the frog in the scorpion. This it micro, it's in Microsoft's nature and <laugh>. Wow. They're always gonna bite the frog in the long run. You just, you know, it's the way it is. Wow. It's, it's in my nature.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:33):
That's, that is, that's dark

Leo Laporte (01:15:35):
<Laugh>. I don't mean it as a negative, I mean, as acknowledging the fact of the matter, which is that they're a publicly traded company.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:45):
No, they gotta grow. That's, they have to do this. This is the insane end of capitalism.

Leo Laporte (01:15:50):
Okay. With Are you su I mean, you can, I don't know how, I mean, look, we're ADSD supported. I'm not nega, I'm not down on ADSD supported at all. Right. I would

Paul Thurrott (01:15:58):
Do, I do feel I, I agree with you a hundred percent. I, I I think open is the way forward. I think open is the future. And 

Leo Laporte (01:16:04):
I, you know, where it really, it came home was with Twitter, right? Yeah. And, and when an opens alternative to Twitter came along, right. It, it was better in a number of ways because you couldn't have some guy come along and buy it <laugh> and then turn it into a hellscape. And I thought, I thought that was a really good lesson in all of this for everybody. There

Paul Thurrott (01:16:24):
You go.

Leo Laporte (01:16:25):
You know? Yeah. anyway, but, but I don't, I think Microsoft is a fairly good steward of it's Yes. Customer base. And

Paul Thurrott (01:16:33):
I, I really think they're embracive open sources.

Leo Laporte (01:16:36):
Yeah. And the ads that they do put in windows. I know we both are. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> unhappy about it, but it's not, it's not awful. It's not like a banner ad for a laxative. I mean, it's,

Paul Thurrott (01:16:47):
I, but I will take your role in this discussion and say yet, because like you said, this scorpion is always gonna sting the frog. And in this case, we're the frogs. And I, you know, this is the slippery slippery slope argument. It's only gonna get worse and it only has gotten worse. And sometimes it takes something really bad before you realize, wow, I didn't how much worse it could get. And so we'll see, you know, how this goes.

Leo Laporte (01:17:14):
They, they know the backlash would be so severe if they started. Really? I mean, putting real ads, these aren't, these are like house ads right now,

Paul Thurrott (01:17:22):
Right? Yeah. What I would like, well, yeah, I mean, sponsored appro carts are not really house heads, but I think that but you're right. I mean, what, yeah, by and large,

Leo Laporte (01:17:31):
And they're, and they're minor. Those, you know, look, I, I, everybody knows when you install Windows, you go into the start menu and you get rid of all of those Stubbs for programs, you're never gonna buy. And, you know, candy Crush and all that stuff, and everybody, I think everybody or many find a slightly

Paul Thurrott (01:17:46):
Annoying, but they're also trying to find ways to get the stuff in front of you. And there'll be pop-ups cuz there have been pop-ups. There'll be stuff in File Explorer because there has been stuff in file. Well, they

Leo Laporte (01:17:53):
Gotta be careful they can't go too far down this road. Or people do have, as you pointed out, they do

Paul Thurrott (01:17:57):
Have alternatives. Like I open the I, I read the New York Times every morning and it is a cesspool of advertising and animated nonsense that you can't turn off and I pay for it, you know? And so there is this model cause it's worth it, you know? It's worth it. It's, well, I, we've been debating whether that's worth it to be honest for those reasons. But anyway, I guess my point is, I, the one thing I do like is this play model where you can say, look, we have advertising, but if you can, if you wanna pay, we'll get rid of the advertising. And I, my, my end game here, my my argument is still that ad-free Outlook experience. Like I just do that for Windows. I just don't want this stuff. Give me a, you know, give me the thing that you give enterprises. Cuz enterprises are paying much more for Windows than I am as an individual. And they don't have this junk in Windows when they run Enterprise Edition. I would like to pay for that. I don't wanna pay, you know, 20 bucks a month, but I would pay a little bit extra in my, as part of my Microsoft 365 subscription. Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. Hmm.

(01:18:59):
I want one. I want the thing I'm using to be clean. I got work to do here. I

Leo Laporte (01:19:02):
Got work

Paul Thurrott (01:19:03):
To do. I, I'm, yeah. I'm not like, I'm trying to get work done. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a little much. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:09):
Alright, let's, let's talk about some of the new things. Anyway. Yeah, there was a new build today I think. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:16):
Yeah. But let me, let's go back in time a little bit cuz there's been a, a few other developments and then we'll get into what happened today. And today's thing is not that great. Anyway, so we talked to the past about how Microsoft has redesigned File Explorer, I believe three times over the course of Windows 11. Yeah. Three times. They are working on yet another redesign. This one is actually kind of a major one visually. And I I, I would say i j cuz I just wrote about this for the book, you know, there's this there's an office app in Windows that is being renamed in Microsoft 365. Of course it is. And because they're renaming this thing that everyone knows the name of and now they're confused. There has to be a lot of not advertising, but just promotional popups.

(01:19:58):
Hey, you know, don't worry, everything's where you left it, blah, blah, blah. Microsoft is trying to create a single experience that works well in the, what we'll call the Microsoft 365 app in Windows. What will become the Microsoft 365 app on mobile, what will become the Microsoft 365 web app, which is@office.com by the way. A consistent experience. So you have like you know, you're a recent ar you know, your recent documents, you have document templates, you have pinned or favorite documents, et cetera, shared documents, all that kind of stuff. So they are working on a redesign of File Explorer where that's the stuff that comes up in that homepage, right. It's gonna be very much like that. So actually, I mean, I honestly, I think one of the things I kind of like about File Explorer today is that it's kind of a minimal app, a minimalistic app.

(01:20:51):
I like that. And it looks like they're gonna turn it into like a busy thing, <laugh>. And I'm not, you know, I just don't. So I, I, I configure my file Explorer to go to the this PC view that used to be like my computer or whatever. Cuz I don't like all the nonsense, but if you like nonsense, you're gonna love this cuz there's a lot of nonsense. So that's, that's one thing that's coming down. We knew before that Microsoft was going to be testing a tab based UI and notepad that appeared in the dev channel at the end of last week. So if you're in the dev channel you can check out tabs in Notepad. No surprise there. I, I will say I, I like the look and feel of Notepad today. It's kinda get that win UI kind of look to it.

(01:21:36):
 And as with File Explorer, the, the addition of tabs is a very natural looking thing. I think it's something that's gonna be fine. So I don't know that anyone actually needs this, but <laugh> it's fine. It doesn't, doesn't hurt anything. There's also a sort of, yeah, well, not as sort of, there is a, an <laugh> Insider program for Microsoft Edge and their version of the dev channel, which is called a Canary channel to match it to what Google has for Chrome has started testing an ex experimental feature called Split Window. So I have a big problem with this <laugh>. So basically what this is, is you can see two webpages at the same time. It's basically a way to take two flag two tabs and display their content side by side. Now this will remind people probably of Windows eight, remember back when you can only have two things on the screen at the same time.

(01:22:29):
But what it should do is make p you confused because we already have all these different ways to multitask in Windows. And one of the things that's kind of weird is if you are using a, what used to be called like a multi document interface application, right? Which office used to be over several versions or a tab based application, like any web browser, and you're doing alt tab to switch between application windows. You can't switch between those tabs, you can only go to the main window and then you have to use a different key controller, use the mouse or whatever to get to a, a document, which is, in this case, in a tab Windows, I think it was. Yeah, windows 10 has this feature. Windows 11 has this feature where by default the first three or five, and you can have 10, or you can have all of them, all the tabs can appear in alt tab.

(01:23:15):
That's kind of a cool little bit of like Windows slash Edge integration, I guess. But it's another multitasking overhead thing. You have to kind of manage yourself and just figure out how you want it to be. And now they're gonna have like split windows and like, why I don't what <laugh>, like how many times do we need? Why do we need this? If we're gonna have split tab split windows in Microsoft Edge, does that mean that tab based apps, like File Explorer and Notepad should have split window feature too, right? I mean, where does it end? Like what are we do, what are we doing? Like what is all this? Why are there so many ways to do things like the same things? I don't know. So I, I don't know. I'm hoping that this won't be turned on by default. It's not on by default. Now you have to enable it with a a, a flag. But

Leo Laporte (01:24:00):
So that's how Windows Central, this is what we're looking at. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:03):
Yeah. That's the FBO one. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:24:07):
So that's how they, so

Paul Thurrott (01:24:09):
Ble. And then today we got another new Deb channel build. This one has exactly one new feature. It is the addition of the first third party widget to the widgets board, which is for Messenger meeting Facebook Messenger exciting, or as the Verge called it, the dawn of third party widgets. <Laugh>. It's a new era of personal computing. Meaning to date the widgets that have appeared they do appear in the widgets board in Windows 11 are Microsoft widgets. Right? So this is the first, third party one that literally is the only feature that is new in today's build. <Laugh>. This is what we get. So really exciting on the windows front. Yeah. So there you go. What else have we got? We all, somebody asked

Leo Laporte (01:25:01):
A great question Yep. In the chat, and I, I kind of wish this would be the case. It's, it's kind of tangential to what we're talking about, but I just thought I'd bring it up. Why? Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I wish Microsoft would allow us to put Reddit in instead of Microsoft News. Ooh. Or some other source, you know of an RSS reader or something. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:22):
That would not drive you to Microsoft's content and advertising. So they will never do that. But that's an

Leo Laporte (01:25:27):
Example of we're advertising Trump's

Paul Thurrott (01:25:30):
Yeah. Gets, kinda gets user

Leo Laporte (01:25:31):
Desire,

Paul Thurrott (01:25:32):
If you like, that sort of thing. Browsers like Viv does it, Vivaldi opera, Vivaldi, I think they offer kind of sidebar experiences where you can have that stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:25:44):
Yeah. Vivaldi does that. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:45):
Outside of, you know, whatever you're viewing in the webpage, you can kind of have these side experiences. I mean that, you know. Yeah. that's Yeah, sure.

Leo Laporte (01:25:52):
I just, I just don't want to see M s n I guess <laugh>. It's the

Paul Thurrott (01:25:55):
No problem, Leo, that's why, that's why they're forcing it on you. I, that's the point. <Laugh>, that's how you know, no one wants to see it. They're, they're forcing, they're making you,

Leo Laporte (01:26:03):
They're making to see it <laugh> they're making you see it.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:05):
There's no choice. Well, I suppose it's possible, like well, I dunno. Well, we'll see, I, if you're gonna allow third party widgets, there's no reason that you, I mean, I don't know what that would look like, but it would be, instead of you, you would not have a widget stream from another source, but you could have widgets from a, the New York Times of the Wall Street Journal, whatever it is you chose. And then position them those things that when you pick those, they go to the top. So they would appear above the stream. Yeah, I don't, I don't think we're gonna be able to do that, but No, that's yeah, of course you want that. If you want that. Don't use Microsoft Edge. I think it maybe is the answer.

Leo Laporte (01:26:40):
There you go.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:42):
Yeah. Sorry. We already talked about some of the ar mr stuff around Microsoft, but I, I did wanna just throw this out. I was curious what you thought of this. The latest rumors from Mark Irman, so probably pretty reliable, is that Apple's $3,000 ar Mr, whatever you're gonna call it, headset is gonna have like a digital crown like they have on the Apple Watch

Leo Laporte (01:27:04):
<Laugh>, but it's also, we'll have the battery in your pocket with

Paul Thurrott (01:27:08):
A wire. Yeah. Right. Exactly. and the reason is it's gonna let you switch between AR and VR mode, right? So sometimes you'll I like that idea completely. I can

Leo Laporte (01:27:18):
See what's going, like I'm in the game, but I want to see what, you know, what's going

Paul Thurrott (01:27:21):
On. Your wife comes and says, and then you turn it back so you can see her and you're like, yep. And then you go back. Yeah. I mean it's,

Leo Laporte (01:27:26):
You know what it's like, it's like noise canceling headphones that have an on off so you can hear the world around you

Paul Thurrott (01:27:31):
And like an ambient thing. Ambient. Exactly. Right. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:27:32):
Yep. That makes sense.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:34):
That's kind of a cool, yeah, that's a cool idea. It's not, I it's not worth $3,000, but it's, you know, it's, but

Leo Laporte (01:27:38):
One of the other things Mark said was that Apple was gonna defer, it's augmented reality. It's real product at least until That's right. 20 24, 20 25. Because

Paul Thurrott (01:27:49):
I think they want those things to be like, glasses

Leo Laporte (01:27:51):
Aren't, yeah. And they said they can't, they just, and I think the real truth is they can't do it. They don't have the technology. Right. That's right. And so what they will do is this $3,000,

Paul Thurrott (01:28:01):
I

Leo Laporte (01:28:01):
Know HTC Vibe, I guess, you know, or Oculus

Paul Thurrott (01:28:05):
Riff very expensive for that kind of thing, but it's Apple and I'm sure it'll be,

Leo Laporte (01:28:09):
I'm sure it'll be, it'll be this year and then next year they'll have a less expensive consumery version. But both of those are basically VR helmets. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, and this, this, this lightweight AR thing. Yeah. Could be a long time if ever. I mean, that's how I read it, is we haven't got it working yet. So, you know, you're gonna have to wait until we do

Paul Thurrott (01:28:31):
Someday. This will just be a, a contact lens or a, you know, someday surgery you can have in your eye or whatever

Leo Laporte (01:28:37):
With sci-fi. Yeah. Yeah. Someday. But it's a very sci-fi concept, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:28:43):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:44):
Oh, yeah. And as of now, we don't, technology doesn't support that.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:49):
Right. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:28:51):
All right, let's talk about Office Insider. As much as I would love to continue to talk about Apple.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:57):
Sure. This will be a 32nd conversation. So I already mentioned this rebranding from Office to Microsoft 365, 2 important points here. Office doesn't go away. This is one thing people don't quite understand. It's, it's in, it's literally in the Microsoft fact about this. Like, but they are look, looking at these things that are kind of the user facing non-Office Suite products and saying, look, we're gonna start using Microsoft 365 for this app. We talked about how the office app in Windows 11 is being rebranded to Microsoft 365. So they're rebranding the Office Insider Program to the Microsoft 365 Insider Program. And yeah. Okay. Whatever. I gotta tell you though, I, I really feel like this is, this rebranding thing is a big mistake. I, I, we've kind of gone through this a little bit in different ways. Remember when, you know, surface Products used to have a Surface logo and a surface well surface name in their font on the back, and then they switched to a Microsoft logo.

(01:29:53):
And the idea there was that the Microsoft brand was better than the Surface brand, and it was more likely to attract potential customers, that kind of thing. The Office brand has been around for 30 years, and it's very well understood, and I, I don't understand trying to get rid of most of it. I know that I, like I said, they're not gonna get rid of all of it. But office.com, the office app for Windows 11 or for mobile, to me, that just makes sense. That's what that is. I run the office app on mobile because it has word Excel, and PowerPoint. Now I know it has other things in it. Probably like Office Lens capabilities, these other kind of newer services and so forth. And maybe that's why it's Microsoft 365. But I, I, I, I, I, this kind of reminds me, and again, I was just going over this history.

(01:30:40):
I'll talk about this soon about the.net era. And there was this, there was this brief moment of insanity where every single Microsoft product was gonna be rebranded. It was gonna be Windows do net visual studio.net, visual basic.net, you know, office do net. Everything, everything was.net. And and that didn't last very long. <Laugh> didn't last very long at all. Some of the developer products kept it for a few a few years. I think Visual Studio, visual Basic ha kept that probably for two or three product revisions. But windows.net never happened. Windows server.net never happened. Oh, that, that one was very close. That one came very close to coming out. Office Do Net never happened. So this is, this is Stupid. Office is a good brand. <Laugh>, it's a really good brand. You know what else is a good brand? Skype. Keep it. What are you doing? People understand, understand what Skype is. People understand what office is. I don't know. Anyway, that's my little, my little mini rant which will lead into my next mini rant, which is about Slack <laugh> in the eu. So Politico reported this week that the European Union is about to launch an antitrust against Microsoft for abuses related to Microsoft teams. Right. this is based on a a guess who half, three year old.

Leo Laporte (01:32:00):
Yes. Yeah. Guess who

Paul Thurrott (01:32:01):
Slack. Yeah. Here's the thing here. Here's the thing. If you go back and read the original Slack complaint, which is hilarious a couple things to remember. This was like I said, almost three years ago. They had not yet been bought by Salesforce, which to my mind really undercuts their case in the same way that when a O L acquired Netscape during the Microsoft Antitrust trial <laugh>, it kind of undercut the argument that that company had no way out because they were being bullied by this big company when the, in fact, it looks like you're worth a lot of money because a o l just paid a lot of money for you. Slack was acquired for 27.7 billion later in 2021, or in 2021, which is about a year after the, the complaint. The other thing is Slack at the time, referred to teams as a weak copycat product, which I don't think was ever technically true, but let's say it was when teams first launched.

(01:33:02):
Teams launched in 2017. So by the time this argument came around, this was three years later, teams had evolved into an incredibly feature rich application that far surpassed anything that was possible in Slack today. Another, what do we now, three years, almost three years later. That's doubly true. But apparently the EU liked that argument because <laugh>, they're about to announce their own little I guess, well, I guess what they're gonna launch is a statement of objections. I don't know. The act actual language we use for this kind of stuff is, it's a, they're already investigating Microsoft. They apparently have seen enough that they will now, I guess, we'll, we'll call this a complaint, I guess, and then Microsoft has to address it. And I, I don't know, there could be a, could be an antitrust case for Microsoft. So that's fun. You know, this in, it's like the good old days. Again, we get Activision Blizzard, we get this. Who else could we beat up on? I would feel

Leo Laporte (01:34:01):
Sorry for these companies, except I guess

Paul Thurrott (01:34:03):
This is, I know part of

Leo Laporte (01:34:04):
The, you know, part of doing business, but gosh, it'd be, it's hard to be a company that's just constantly fighting all these jurisdictions over

Paul Thurrott (01:34:14):
Stuff. Yeah. Actually, right? That's actually a huge problem. I don't, I, you know, okay, so actually let me, let me look at some of the substantive things that they complained about. They claim that teams is force installed on millions of people. Microsoft blocks the removal of teams, and Microsoft is hiding the true cost to enterprise customers, which is kind of hilarious. But I don't, I have to manually install team. So I, I have a Microsoft 365 business account, and I have to, it's not part of my office install. I have to, I have to go get it. <Laugh>. I don't know what they're talking about even now. Like, I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, we'll see what happens here. It's sort

Leo Laporte (01:34:55):
Of like the complaint

Paul Thurrott (01:34:56):
Against internet Explorer that is pre-installed. It's very much like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Remember, see, we forget this stuff, and again, I'm going over this history again, but you know what, the, the big one of the big bullying tactics that Microsoft employed with ie. Was they made it available for free, right? Because Netscape was sort of free, but if you were a business, you actually, you were supposed to actually pay for it. Like, Microsoft's like, no, we're just gonna give it away and, and we're gonna integrate it with Windows. And it was like, oh, <laugh>, like, what are you, do you know, like, it's kind of interesting that Microsoft giving away free software was kind of the central part of that complaint. And they had that was, you know, talk about open source. So given something away for free that they had, that had to go through some channels as well.

(01:35:42):
But anyway and if you can't get enough of antitrust you'll be delighted to know that the DOJ here in the United States has announced an antitrust case against Google. And I strongly recommend <laugh> going back. And so Google has issued a response to this, and in the Google response, they reference a God, I think it was, yeah, January, 2022 post that they wrote about a very, a somewhat similar Texas case against them about the advertising business. That 2022 post that Google had is classic <laugh>. Like, it's awesome. And they, if you could look at their response to the DOJ lawsuit, they, they reference it, and you can go read it yourself. I, I remember that at, I, they, they referenced Texas. And I was like, wait a minute, this sounds really familiar. And I wrote about this, this cuz I thought it was so beautiful.

(01:36:33):
Like, <laugh>, this is really funny. Like the Texas case against them. They actually, because there were so many <laugh> mistakes and not just like errors in fact, but just, just accusations that had nothing to do with whatever was happening. Texas had to rewrite this lawsuit three different times because Google kept pointing out like, that's not true. That's not true. <Laugh>, you know, that kind of thing. So like they're comparing the US Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit against them to the one from Texas. Honestly, other than the surface level stuff, they're not that similar. And the big deal here is, and this is the, this is the interesting tenant of antitrust the United States today that has yet to be tested, which is this notion of divesting previous acquisitions from big tech. So they're gonna try to divest DoubleClick, which Google bought in 2015, I think It's been a long time.

(01:37:27):
Yeah, been a long time. And this is what pe this is what a lot of people want these days. They want Facebook to lose Instagram. You know, they want Google to lose DoubleClick, et cetera. Interesting. <laugh>, I don't know. I will say Google is in the online eyed market number one with a bullet. Facebook is the only thing that's anywhere close to them, but even companies like Amazon and Microsoft are distant. Distant. I think Microsoft at best is like the number six player. Seven, something like that. Tiktok has been a recent player in this market that's done really well. I don't know. Anyway, I just, I just think it's fascinating that they're going after Google for that, so. Okay. Yeah. It's, we'll see. Yeah. We will.

Leo Laporte (01:38:17):
You hear you, you, you, you hear a lot of these lawsuits being started

Paul Thurrott (01:38:22):
<Laugh>. I know you

Leo Laporte (01:38:23):
Don't hear a lot about

Paul Thurrott (01:38:24):
Them ending. Right. I don't know if we ever talked about this, but last week Spotify put out a public letter and said, Hey, European Union, you passed a law that makes what Apple's doing illegal. Right. Are you gonna enforce it? <Laugh>, you know, right. Like, they're killing us over here. What are you doing? And they had a bunch of companies that are not all music companies, like some of them were like not e-commerce, but just other types of services that whatever they were, they had apps absent. The apps are like, guys, you can't let Apple keep taking money from us. When you said that doing that is illegal, you have to enforce it now. So, yeah. I, we'll see what if anything, I don't know, we're not gonna live long enough to see the end of this. Who cares? While you were doing your ad earlier

Leo Laporte (01:39:11):
You got booze. I got it. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:12):
I, I did get booze, but I also got an email from GitHub, so I haven't had a chance to write about this Uhhuh <affirmative>. But in 2019, GitHub set a goal so that they would've a hundred million developers using the service by 2025. And they just surpassed that number this week. So they have over a hundred million million developers. Wow. Using GitHub. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:39:28):
Wow.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:29):
Yep. Yeah. That's interesting. I use I think we talked about this. Obviously I published my software Pro my software projects to GitHub, but I also use GitHub to store my book repositories, which I always find really funny to say, by the way. Book repository. Yeah. So all my books are in GitHub as well. So we, I use, actually use a GI GitHub command line tools to push all of my updates up to Lean Pub so it can be published. It's not just developers.

Leo Laporte (01:39:59):
Nice. A hundred million. Yeah. I use it. I use it. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:04):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:40:04):
No, it's, yeah. In fact, for a long time, I, when I first started writing books, I thought it'd be really cool to use. We didn't have GitHub, but svn or some sort of cuz I had a co-author and I thought we could, we never really mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I tried, I set it up, but never really got at working with the co-author, but Gina Smith. But I've always thought that'd be a great way to write books. Plus

Paul Thurrott (01:40:26):
You have it is

Leo Laporte (01:40:27):
Track all the previous versions and things, and you can, you know, refer

Paul Thurrott (01:40:31):
Yeah. Screw something up. You can get it back. You know, it's really the best thing for me is I use multiple computers and getting this thing onto multiple computers is as easy as this trivial command is. Yeah. Yeah. It's really nice.

Leo Laporte (01:40:41):
Gets an amazing invention. Yeah. Yep. And for all the trouble about Microsoft acquiring GitHub I think that it's turned out all right, <laugh>, it's turned out well.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:54):
Yeah. They've done a great job with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:40:57):
Good job. Again, I can't

Paul Thurrott (01:40:59):
Believe

Leo Laporte (01:41:00):
Also I'm the one praising Microsoft on this show. There you go. He's Louise.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:03):
You're all over the map. Leo, come on.

Leo Laporte (01:41:04):
Oh, no, man. <Laugh>. I don't

Paul Thurrott (01:41:07):
Know. No, this good and bad. This is good and bad. I mean, for sure. Yeah. A big

Leo Laporte (01:41:10):
Company. Sure. So

Paul Thurrott (01:41:13):
I've been, I've been sort of, I, I, it's weird. I have a, a, a short article about GitHub I get, and GitHub, I started writing, I haven't finished yet. I have a short article about.net Maui I've started, haven't finished yet. And then today flutter announced, or Google announced Tims Smith at Google announced what the plans are for the future of Flutter. And it's interesting, cuz these things to me all kind of overlap each other a little bit. And it, part of my.net Maui thing was trying to figure out like, you know, how or when does this thing make sense to create desktop applications? And part of the big deal with Flood right now is last year they shipped, I believe this is out and stable, is the ability to publish to the web, published to windows and publish to the Mac, right? So you can, you can create like Windows desktop apps with Flutter. It's kind of interesting. I haven't looked at that too much lately, or at all, actually, I should say. And I should the stuff they announced today about the future is not particularly interesting. I think to us, generally speaking, it doesn't really impact the, the desktop too, too much. Although the ability to embed flutter code in the web using using what? Using web, what's the word I'm looking for? <Laugh>, using, where is it? Whatever, using

(01:42:32):
<laugh>. Can I find this thing? Is this not in my article web? Oh, boy, I lost my brain there. Sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:42:39):
I somebody getting excited about Flutter today on Mastodon. So what

Paul Thurrott (01:42:42):
Happened? Yeah. So one of, they just announced stuff they're doing for the future, but one of the big, they're supporting risk risk five. Is that the name of risk fee? Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:42:49):
Risk fee. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Risk five. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:51):
So okay. That's neat. I mean, that's, that's

Leo Laporte (01:42:54):
Out there a little bit. That's open, that's open hardware and software. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:42:58):
Great. Yeah. But I, I, more importantly, I think one of the, the thing that really struck me was their supporting embedding flutter code into HTML using web assembly. Right? Which is, is supported in all the major browsers. So that's really interesting because it really gives the possibility of kind of the full flutter experience on the web. It also reminds me a little bit, see if I could pull this outta my butt. The ActiveX did a little ActiveX kit. Remember, you could make these stupid little ActiveX components and put 'em on, but you had to, you know, how to use ie. <Laugh>, you know, it was like a, a thing back in the day with Microsoft, probably in the very late nineties. But whatever. This is a web assemblies a standard of sort. So this is kind of interesting. So, okay, whatever. But this, this doesn't really impact Windows.

(01:43:40):
It's, it's, I'm interested in this, but it's not, you know, that impactful. But the issue of using these cross-platform frameworks we'll call them to create desktop apps in an era where we're never gonna have another desktop framework for Windows, right? We're done. That this is never gonna happen. Like, how does this make sense? And I'm not sure about Flutter. Flutter might be further along. They certainly came out first. But when I look at.net Maui there are, you know, desktop controls, like things like top level menu bars, floating windows, you know, blah, blah, blah, those kind of simple things. And that's great. But I really feel like anyone who's tried to use.net Maui, you just do like the, you bring up the sample app that they have, you click a button and an increments a little alien guy, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a mobile app.

(01:44:28):
This is a mobile app. This is a mobile app that will run on iPhone and Android. It runs on Windows in a window. It will run on the Mac and a window, but it's a mobile app, right? I think that's where they're going with this. In other words, the idea here is you're a developer, you're creating a new app, you want to target all the platforms that make sense. And iOS and Android would be at the top of mine for most of these things, whatever it is. Could be like a cool little mobile game. It could be a like, just a little app. It doesn't matter what, it's just a little mobile app, right? I think what they're doing is not so much, so you can create like a new desktop app, but so that you can take a mobile app and have it make sense on Windows, right?

(01:45:05):
By adding those controls that only appear when you're running it on Windows. So maybe you'll have like a top level menu where, like I said, maybe when you do like a system about, or whatever, it, it brings up an actual window instead of just replacing the view inside of the phone screen. And I think that's what it is, right? Like, in other words, this thing, I don't know flutter, but I would say.net Maui is not about creating a desktop app. It's about it creating a mobile app that will seem a little more native when you're running it on desktop. I think that's all it is, you know, and it, whether or not it evolves to be a little more mature and have more features that make sense on desktop is, you know, well, I guess we'll see. But in its current form, even an application, like my.net pad is basically impossible to create and dive net Maui. Whereas I think it would be very possible to create it and flutter. So again, I think, I just think it's further ahead, just so it's just kind of an observation. I was just kind of in writing about this stuff, and then I was writing about Flutter today. I was like, how do these things kind of line up, you know? And I think, I think I haven't used Flutter as much, like I said, but I think Flutter is further along, and maybe as a result has more going

Leo Laporte (01:46:10):
On. Now you make me want, wanna investigate it more. I, I, I played with it a little bit. I think I have a couple of books. So dart's the language and flutters the framework, right? They go hand in hand. I mean, you could, you could write code and dart by itself, but, but pretty much go hand in hand. And I did play with it a little bit. I was, I was very impressed. I really, I like it. It's a nice framework. If you wanna write cross platform mobile apps, for

Paul Thurrott (01:46:35):
Instance. I think the, yeah, I think the big debate here is whether you would, as a developer, would use like React Native instead of clutter.

Leo Laporte (01:46:43):
The comparison That's Yeah, exactly.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:44):
The thing, you know, coming from the Microsoft world, we have this thing called saml, which an XML based language for a lot of things. But one of the, we use it for creating UIs. And so you, you describe a UI in zl in the same way that you might describe a web UI in html. You can style it like you would with css, CSS and html and you can access it programmatically on the web. You would use JavaScript typically, but C Sharp, right? On the Microsoft stuff. SAML is more powerful than html, obviously. Well, or there is, maybe it's not obvious, but it is. It's, and, and it's, it, it's the type of thing that kind of makes sense if you come from the HTML world. But Flutter uses a different paradigm where you're actually describe the UI using Dart Code. So it's the same code you that, you know, you write your software logic in or whatever is used to describe the ui. So it's a completely different way to do it, but it still has a hierarchy to it. So it, it's, it's very, it's different because of that. It's it's a different experience than writing UI and other languages. So it's, it's curious. Like, I'm very, I'm interested in it too. I just don't know. I

Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
Think it's more modern, probably. Yeah, there used to be this mvc mm-hmm. <Affirmative> framework and now they've gotten away from that. And as I remember, flutter doesn't,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:07):
VC is the new op. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:48:09):
It's become the new, which is Snow. It's

Paul Thurrott (01:48:11):
A little top heavy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
No longer the way to go. Yeah. Yeah. And I re as I remember vaguely flutter does, it uses something more, a little more modern, but similar. I liked the idea. I really like the idea of it. You could write really for any screen, you could write for Arm or Intel or Now five, this, this is the Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:31):
Right. Ones run everywhere. Like, this is what we've been talking about this since Java.

Leo Laporte (01:48:35):
One of the reasons I I use Lisp is because it hasn't changed since the eighties. Yeah. You know, the, the final common list speck was written in, I think 94. And it's, it's in stone. And I've been burnt so many times with Pearl and then with Python, and I'm very nervous about Flutter for the same reason that Right. People come along, you know, Python two, I learned it, it was great. And then all of a sudden it's Python three Pearl was worse. Pearl five broke everything.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:08):
I felt well, okay. So, I mean, Python I think has persisted. I think it's, you know, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:12):
But I mean, Python three is, is pretty different than Python two. And yeah. It's a bit of a, a lift for me to,

Paul Thurrott (01:49:20):
I

Leo Laporte (01:49:20):
Should probably be using Pythons, what everybody uses. And, you know, and it's not super performance, but every

Paul Thurrott (01:49:25):
Listen, you could fi people complain about everything. It's like you know, no js Right. Which is kind of a standard for like a Java runtime. People now are pushing, there's all kinds of alternatives. A but like, people now are like, oh, like ojs was so 2018. Yeah. That's the problem.

Leo Laporte (01:49:42):
Would've, and it's always the flavor of the month. Yeah. And then it's all whole, and I don't want, I wanna spend less time Yep. Learning <laugh> Sure. And remembering and studying an API than I want to code. So you

Paul Thurrott (01:49:55):
Referenced the SARS code for the Lisa was released right. On his whatever,

Leo Laporte (01:49:59):
Pascal right there. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:50:00):
I was gonna say, do you see the languages? Looks like

Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
Delphi, pascals.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:03):
I know. Oh, it's, you probably could read it. Costco.

Leo Laporte (01:50:06):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:06):
I was like, I, why would I wanna see the Source? And I was like, wait, it's, it's in Pasco, you

Leo Laporte (01:50:10):
Know, it's you, it's a language. You're very familiar. With's.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:12):
That's

Leo Laporte (01:50:12):
Interesting. Yeah. plus that plus 68,000 assembler. There's a lot of Assembler code in it as well. Oh, of

Paul Thurrott (01:50:17):
Course.

Leo Laporte (01:50:17):
Yep. I, I just for me, I like the idea that anything I write today in Lisp will run in when I'm dead. 30 years. Not that anybody wanna run it, but it would, this, it's not gonna change programs you wrote in the nineties still work today without modification.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:35):
Yeah. you wouldn't do this, but if you wanted to go to the.net route, I think that stuff would always work. 

Leo Laporte (01:50:40):
Really, it's astonish. It doesn't change. Yeah. Okay. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:50:44):
What, no. Well, it changes or it evolves, but I, that was as part of that series I did. It's astonishing how much code from back in the day still like, works fine. Like, it's crazy. It's, it's really interesting.

Leo Laporte (01:50:54):
I, I mean, you know, obviously I'm, I'm giving up a lot of stuff by using Lisman, especially what Flutter offers, which is this idea of a very graphical user interface that works in a flutter

Paul Thurrott (01:51:05):
Is screen, but that's what Flutter, flutter literally is a UI toolkit. You know, that's the point of it. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:51:11):
But dart's a very nice language. I mean, I, I'd be comfortable with Dart. It's it's a little python, like a little, you know, anybody's used a

Paul Thurrott (01:51:17):
Yeah. It's another, it's

Leo Laporte (01:51:19):
Got some functional language

Paul Thurrott (01:51:20):
Capability. It braces, it's,

Leo Laporte (01:51:21):
You know, yeah. It looks

Paul Thurrott (01:51:23):
Very true. But the thing, the thing is separates, I don't know if you could ever find a good example of it, is the, in, in describing the UI of an application there's a, there's an interesting kind of hierarchy in code where, you know, you know, you, you put, I don't know what the terminology is, like objects inside of objects, basically. And then the, you know, the the properties of the containing object can or cannot, depending how you'd write it, be pushed into the contained object, so to speak. It's, it's, it's really interesting. Like, it's, it's just kind of fascinating the way they, it's a different way to do it. I've just never seen anything quite like it. Although, I guess someone will probably look at it and say, yeah, this is how HTML works. So <laugh>, like, it's probably, I'm sure it's based on something. I'm, it seems like the, the hierarchical nature of it is, has gotta be based on the past. But it's it's interesting. It's just an interesting way to write it. I've never seen like a seed like language used to do that kind of thing.

Leo Laporte (01:52:17):
Is, is it objects or is it more like a dom? Like the,

Paul Thurrott (01:52:21):
Yeah. Yeah. I can't answer that. I'm not really sure. It is objects. Is it based on a dom? Is it a dom like system of like a dom like hierarchy? It probably is.

Leo Laporte (01:52:31):
Probably is, right? Probably. It's web, it's web focused.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:34):
Well, it's, it was mobile focused from the beginning, but they, I'm sure they wanted to attract, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:52:41):
It supports pwa, which is really nice. And I'm very, that's, I'm happy about that. You know, I always like <laugh>, I solve these adventive code problems. I always wanna write a visualization. And doing so in Lisp is, yeah. A little bit more challenging. That would be in other languages, <laugh>. Just

Paul Thurrott (01:52:57):
Write it to a, like a, a TT y. I,

Leo Laporte (01:52:59):
I, you know, honestly in many cases, I just do it. Yeah. It's a command line. It's, it's

Paul Thurrott (01:53:05):
80 columns

Leo Laporte (01:53:06):
And Yeah, I just spit out text. Yeah. Yep. But

Paul Thurrott (01:53:10):
I took a class that was just about organizing text to that format. Yeah. That's all it was. Yeah. Like, you know, million years ago. But

Leo Laporte (01:53:17):
Text user interface is two. Yeah, I think we've come a little farther along, and I would love to be able to just have it open a webpage and have the visualization there using modern technologies. I'll, I'll take a, I want to take more of a look at the Flutter and, and Dart. As I said, I have a book, but now they've, the book is probably out of date. <Laugh>. I had to buy all new Python books, and they're a lot thicker than they were. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I use 'em as door stops now, so. There, that's good. That's right. Moving, moving right along. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> should we talk about.net since you mentioned it and Maui Wui?

Paul Thurrott (01:53:52):
Well, we, I just, I kind of alluded to it. I, I just, I, I, the, I, the Fluter thing just reminded me of.net Maui, and I was just thinking like, what Maui is supposedly, you know, good to go for desktop development. And I feel like it's not really, it's really for, it's just.mc Maui is what Xin Farms was, which is a way to create cross-platform mobile apps. Windows phone is gone, so that part of it's gone. But now it also supports Mac and Windows, but it does it in the same way that you might run a like an iPhone app on the Mac. Right? It, the idea is it's still the mobile app, but I'm, we're gonna tailor it potentially. You don't have to, but you can with control, handful of controls, there really aren't that many. But some number of controls that are desktop specific that make that thing maybe feel a little more natural on that platform.

(01:54:40):
And, you know, obviously you can code it in such a way that whatever those desktop controls were will not appear when you run it on an iPhone because they wouldn't make sense on that device. Like that kind of thing. I feel like Flutter is, you, you could just go to Flutter and say, I'm just gonna create like a desktop app and I'm gonna make it, it will run on the web too. Like, I'm gonna target multiple platforms, but I'm not gonna put this thing on iOS and Android. Like, I'm gonna make a, an app app. You know, like when I talked to Tim sne last year, I was telling him about those, you know, notepad apps that I had written across Windows Forms, W P F and uwp. And he said, yeah. He goes, I I wrote a Notepad app in Flutter <laugh>. I was like, really? That's cool. So I haven't looked, I still have never looked at it, but he, to do that, but he had to use was a f a feature of the Dart language, which is that it can read sea libraries. And of course, a lot of the notepad stuff on Windows relies on native features that are available through the ca a p. And that's how we get it done. That's really cool. Hmm.

Leo Laporte (01:55:40):
Yeah. You gotta have a foreign language interface these days. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:44):
Yep. Anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:55:48):
Yeah. I don't think I'll be doing any flutter for one thing. It's not. So that native apple, silicon native, you have to use Rosetta, at least for developing. And they really want you to use Android studio, which is Google's I know, which is ide. And I'm not gonna do that. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:03):
Sorry. This is like the Intelli J thing. I know that,

Leo Laporte (01:56:05):
That I'm sure I can use vs. Code. I, I would be surprised.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:08):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Actually you can, you can for flutter. Yep. That's true.

Leo Laporte (01:56:11):
It's a little maybe too googly too. I mean, I'm trying to take a little, get a Google outta my life, you know?

Paul Thurrott (01:56:17):
Yep. I don't like Andrew's studio. I wanna to, I just

Leo Laporte (01:56:20):
Never do it. No, no. Well, it's Intelli j it's their version of it's not, it's icky. It's icky. And Uhwe

Paul Thurrott (01:56:27):
Eagles. No, it's two turkeys. What was it? Two turkeys. Don't

Leo Laporte (01:56:29):
Make an eagle. Don't make an eagle. I, I know Paul Holder in our chat will yell at me cuz he's a big <laugh>. He's a big, intelligent J user. He's a Java. Oh, really? Well, he's a Java guy.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:40):
Yeah. But this is just like Stockholm Center, like, like <laugh>. It's, it's like that time, I I, I met Mary Jo at that hotel in San Francisco and Oracle world was happening. Yeah. And I stood up on one of the chairs and I said, attention, Oracle developers. Oh God. And for a moment, the room just went silence. And I said, you were all wasting your life. So that peopled me off the chair. <Laugh>, you're a

Leo Laporte (01:57:03):
Bold man. How many how many beers had you had? Hundreds.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:05):
Hundreds of people in there.

Leo Laporte (01:57:07):
That's a, that's a bold thing to do.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:09):
No, I was mad cuz they were in my hotel. See, I would've been staying at that hotel, but it was full because of the stupid conference.

Leo Laporte (01:57:15):
It's their fault. Yep. I think you deserve a little a moose bouche. Or perhaps it's more like what do they call that thing in between courses to refresh the palate. A palate cleanser from Xbox. An Xbox pallet palate cleanser.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:32):
We used to get like a little sheer a little, she remember. Yeah. Something like that.

Leo Laporte (01:57:35):
Yeah. Little grapefruit,

Paul Thurrott (01:57:37):
Sheer toy toy days. <Laugh>. I don't know if you heard this, by the way. I didn't put this in a notes, but apparently there's a lot of, like, this made it to Fox News. There's a lot of right wing pushback against certain things in the world right now. So for example, there was a, about how Eminence is one. The gas ovens is one. Yeah. Right. That's another, they want to take your gas ovens away. And then one, and then Xbox made the list because Microsoft just came up with the new power management mode we talked about last week, where it's saving energy. And I will say, you know, like I, I do things like, I go into, like if you go into a Windows update, there's a little green leaf icon at the bottom and it says, windows I update is committed to helping reduce carbon emissions.

(01:58:21):
And you click a link and you course it, you know, goes to a website and you learn about how they're reducing carbon emissions, right? And you're like, I don't care. <Laugh>, I don't know what, what are you doing? And Microsoft's response to this has been guys <laugh>, first of all, you can turn it to any setting you want. If you want to leave this thing running 24 hours a day, you can do that. Like this is this, we're trying to do the right thing for the environment as, as the default setting. But you can <laugh>, you know, you can set it over whatever the, the, the difference between this setting and the normal setting is that if you come back to the Xbox after like a day of it being off it will take, you know, 15 seconds to boot up rather than five seconds. So it's, it's it's a huge inconvenience. <Laugh> all done in the name of wokeness. So anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:59:08):
Alright. Isn't that funny? It's, you know, this is, it's, it's, it irks me a little bit because these are smart people. They know better. They know this is made, made

Paul Thurrott (01:59:17):
Up well, but they also know that people get riled out. But

Leo Laporte (01:59:20):
It gets people riled

Paul Thurrott (01:59:20):
Up and that's crumble,

Leo Laporte (01:59:21):
Grumble, grumble. That's good for a business. And sure, it's a shame because they know that, I mean, they, I think the claim is that, well, it's just a matter of time before the Xbox you know, turns itself off during peak usage hours, <laugh>, you know? Sure. I think that's what they're, they're assuming and well, it's, they know better. They know better. It's just all about getting people upset. And there's so much of that. Who cares? Okay. And I can't believe Eminem actually fired the spokes M and Mss <laugh> because of Tarkin Cocker or whatever his name is Come per Toson. And I just makes me not idiot. Yeah, yeah. That guy. You know.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:59):
So give me five seconds for my Xbox to come on. Cause I wanna look at this

Leo Laporte (02:00:03):
<Laugh> Puter up, puter up.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:05):
Look at they, there does an ad. It says Join us for the developer direct

Leo Laporte (02:00:09):
Show. That's a good ad. That's a good ad.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:11):
That's a good ad.

Leo Laporte (02:00:12):
Yeah. They must know you're developer cuz that's not, they're not gonna show that today.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:15):
That's a weird one. So Tommy, our options is one of the, one of the top level things, right? So today we have two choices. We have shut down, which saves energy, and we have sleep, which does not save energy. And that's the one I have customized. I,

(02:00:30):
I, whatever I, you know what I, you can customize it. You can change the setting. You can actually choose the setting than customize that setting. I, to me this is fine. The bigger issue I have is that Microsoft or rather the Xbox has a quick resume feature. And what they do is they look at the games. Like, this is not something you as a developer can say, I wanna support Quick Resume. They, they'll just look at the game. And Microsoft determines whether or not it does, it's up to you as a developer to target it. But Microsoft determines it. You don't, you don't get to determine it. And the idea is that the game will set up faster. So I, I have my Xbox set up so it comes on really fast. And the games I play, sorry, the game I play

Leo Laporte (02:01:12):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Really. Let's be honest.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:14):
Okay. You know, okay. Sorry. I know.

Leo Laporte (02:01:16):
Exaggerate. Come on. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:19):
You know the many games that I play anyway, they, it, it supports this feature, but it doesn't really, here's the problem. The si the, the, it has fallen apart. And this is not something I can use or I can configure as a user. So if I see problems related to Quick Resume, I can't say, you know what, this isn't working, don't Quick resume. So the way this exhibits itself, cuz Call of Duty is the most horrible game ever created with its multi-level UI nonsense is I played Call of Duty early in the day, in the day the Xbox has gone to sleep, maybe, or I don't, whatever, it doesn't matter. I come back later and I I launch it again from the dashboard and it runs and it, and it, I click past some screens. I go to the point where I'm gonna start the game, I click it, try it, tries to find a game, and then it says, oh, the playlist has changed.

(02:02:05):
You're like, okay. And then you're like, you have to restart. You're like, oh, I have to restart <laugh>. And I'm like, okay. So I restart it and then I go through that process again. It says, oh, hold on a second. This other thing changed. To avoid that, what I do is before I start the game the second time I right click on, oh, you know, I, whatever the button is, you click the bring up the menu, I quit the game, then I just start it from scratch. Because if I don't do that, I go through that nonsense. And what that is, is Quick Resume failing <laugh>. It's like, quick Resume doesn't work for this game, it doesn't work. So I have to, I have to hard crash the game before I start it. That's, that's what's, that's an actual problem with the Xbox. And it has nothing to do with being woke. It just is a stupid technical issue. It's just,

Leo Laporte (02:02:48):
They'll fix that though. Right?

Paul Thurrott (02:02:49):
No, no. This, I did, I did this today. This is a pro, this is still a problem. That's silly though. People have complained about this. Yeah. Not just with this game. This happens across multiple games and Microsoft has said, well, we're gonna look it a way where you can determine on a game by game basis whether or not you want Quick Resume to be there. So there you go. They're gonna fix it. And maybe they already fix it. I don't even know if they, maybe they didn't fix it. I don't know. I think they're going to fix it if they haven't. But it, every day I have to hard crash Call of Duty so I can play Call of Duty. That's as stupidest console is. So Yeah. <Laugh>. Anyway. Yeah. I guess worry about the power management thing that you can disable, but, you know, let's not worry about this thing. I can't dis

Leo Laporte (02:03:26):
That's really

Paul Thurrott (02:03:27):
Not, I know. It's, it's incredible. Good. Yeah, it's incredible. Huh?

Leo Laporte (02:03:30):
Okay. Okay. Moving right along here. Yes. Big cat.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:34):
Big Cat.

Leo Laporte (02:03:35):
Let's talk about James Bonded.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:38):
Yeah. So the original game golden Eye, oh oh seven Classic was on the Nintendo

Leo Laporte (02:03:44):
60 64, right? Yeah. Yeah. Classic. Now

Paul Thurrott (02:03:46):
I did not, I did not own an Nintendo 64, so I did not really play this game. I re I by the way, rented an Nintendo 64 <laugh> a couple of times. Really? back Yeah. You could go to like a video rented store. Yeah. Remember? Yeah. Yeah. Rent, rent, rent the console, rent a couple games. It was a Mario flying game of some kind I recall. And anyway, visually impressive for the time, for sure. Anyway, this game is credited as being the first playable console shooter.

Leo Laporte (02:04:16):
Right. It also cooperative mode, which was pretty That's right. Darn cool.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:20):
You could do split screen without to four players. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you place, you know, single player by yourself, obviously. So that, that's interesting to me. Cuz it, for me, it wasn't until, I guess it was Halo that kind of proved that shooters could work on a console, but this game of course predated that by about four years. So it's interesting. On that note, I'm, I'm gonna go, I am definitely gonna take a look at this. I'm kind of curious

Leo Laporte (02:04:43):
About this. 10, 4, 4 players split screen. And this should really good on the Xbox. This will be really, I presume they've upgraded the graphics, right?

Paul Thurrott (02:04:52):
No, this looks a lot like Quake too to me. I <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:04:56):
It says Faith. Yeah. Okay, there you go. It says faithfully recreated and improve. Enhanced. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So there go you, it's,

Paul Thurrott (02:05:05):
It looks, it looks like it's chunky. Okay. That's,

Leo Laporte (02:05:08):
Yeah. No, but you wouldn't want it to look better cuz it would be like, well, that's not my, that wasn't my <laugh> that wasn't my game.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:14):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:05:15):
Wasn't my, a lot of nostalgic, but Yeah. But it was a lot of people's and a lot of stuff. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:05:19):
No, I know that, I know that I recognize. Yep,

Leo Laporte (02:05:21):
Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:23):
Wow. Yeah. So that's cool.

Leo Laporte (02:05:24):
That's, that's a

Paul Thurrott (02:05:25):
Smart thing that's coming. We're recording this on Wednesday the 25th. This will be out on Friday.

Leo Laporte (02:05:29):
If you don't subscribe to Game Pest, can you still get it? You can buy it. Yeah. Okay. You can buy it. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:36):
Yeah. All right.

Leo Laporte (02:05:37):
Yeah. Cool. That's really cool. Good for them. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:42):
And it's also coming on the switch, by the way, too, but Xbox. Ooh.

Leo Laporte (02:05:45):
I might played on the switch. Although I like you, I never had an an N 64, so I didn't I don't have that same nostalgic thrill,

Paul Thurrott (02:05:52):
But I like, I, I like games of that era. And I've played, you know, I've played many games of the era multiple times. Right. I just didn't have a, an N 64, so Yeah, that's interesting.

Leo Laporte (02:06:03):
January 27th.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:05):
Yeah. And then the other thing, this is like slightly related, but Sony this week shared their launch lineup for PlayStation VR two, which is that coming headset. They have got many games is fascinating to me how they've kind of pushed forward with this and how Microsoft just continues to ignore it. I had always kind of held out hope that the Windows mixed reality headsets would be brought to the Xbox. Why not? But that's never happened. And I'm not sure. I don't, God knows if they're even doing anything with it. It's gonna be expensive. The VR headset the original VR headset was about $400. This one's five 50.

Leo Laporte (02:06:42):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:44):
Which is means it's more expensive than a PlayStation

Leo Laporte (02:06:47):
<Laugh>. Yikes. It's kinda crazy. Yikes.

Paul Thurrott (02:06:49):
But yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:06:50):
I played it when it first came out. We had a guy on who worked at Sony and I, we did the thing. It was cool. I think, yeah, as far as I'm concerned, the only use case for VR is games. There you go. Productivity. No way. Team. You like the legless

Paul Thurrott (02:07:05):
People floating around? I wanna see that guy like this.

Leo Laporte (02:07:07):
No. <laugh>. I no <laugh>. 

Paul Thurrott (02:07:11):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:07:12):
And, and, and yet even with games, I think has some limited appeals. Some, some significant portion of the users get nauseated by it.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:21):
Yeah, I did when I tried whatever the first one. What was the thing

Leo Laporte (02:07:25):
I tried the years ago? Think the PlayStation VR that I used, we were sit, you had to be sitting down. I don't know if if that's still the case.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:33):
No, the a they, the little you could stand up video they have shows the guy standing up in his room.

Leo Laporte (02:07:37):
Yeah. All right. So this is how long, be careful doing that.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:39):
It was <laugh>. I would fall over. I can already tell. Yeah. Yeah. Just put pillows all over the place.

Leo Laporte (02:07:45):
Yeah. I mean, it's f I guess there's, you know, there's obviously a market for it. 600 bucks. Wow. There's a market for it.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:51):
It's crazy.

Leo Laporte (02:07:52):
Clearly.

Paul Thurrott (02:07:53):
Yep. Yeah, they've had great success with it. I mean, they've sold millions of units. I know that of the hardware. So I guess it's going great for them. I, it's interesting how they've been able to differentiate in this way, and Microsoft's always been like, yeah, no, no, thanks. Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (02:08:08):
<Affirmative>. All right.

Paul Thurrott (02:08:10):
That's their position.

Leo Laporte (02:08:12):
Before we get to the picks of the week, I'd like to do a little plug for our club. And the reason I think it's important is cuz Paul actually has a show club only show called Hands on Windows. And I know a lot of people want that. There is a way to just buy it by itself. 2 99, $2 99 cents a month for I think four episodes. You do one a week. And we do put some of the, you know we cherry pick a few and put those in public on a YouTube feed. But really, if you want to get all the hands on Windows or the hands-on Mac with Micah or the Untitled Linux Show, or the all the other stuff, we do club only, and you want to support twit and you want to have ad free versions of all of our shows, I would submit that the best thing you could do is to go to twit tv slash club twit and sign up seven bucks a month.

(02:09:03):
It's nothing. It's nothing. And it, it makes a hu it's something to us. Makes a huge difference. We've got some events coming up. Lisa and I did an Inside Twit that was club only last week. We do the Stacy's book club every month in there. Win to Dao is coming up on Thursday, February 9th for a fireside chat. Daniel Suarez will be joining us for a special triangulation. His new book just came out, or is about to come out at the end of the month. And Daniel, of course, will come in and, and spend some time in the studio, and we're gonna make that public as a triangulation episode. We'll also put a part of it on the Asthe Tech Guy show. But if you want to ask Daniel questions, you need to be in the club on February 10th at 11:00 AM So that's some we'd like to, you know, obviously we wanna offer, most people don't pay for the club by far.

(02:09:52):
95%, 98% actually, of twit listeners don't pay for the club. So of course, we're gonna continue to offer as much stuff as we can ad supported and free because, you know we, you know, that's our business. That's, we, we like you guys. But at, to the degree that we can get members in the club it makes a huge difference for us financially. And it gives us a chance to do some other extra stuff. Sam Samal Salmon will be in there on March 2nd for an ama. We have shows. It's a place we can launch shows, test em out, like hands-on windows. That's how this weekend space got launched. We launched it in the club. Club members supported it, and then we made it public. In fact, they're about to add video to that. We're gonna add video to the Untitled Lennox Show too, thanks to Club Twit members.

(02:10:39):
So, being in the club beside, oh, and I didn't even mention The Discord. It's a wonderful place to hang out. It's a really great social environment, not just during the shows, but at all times that we have a codings group that I hang out there all the time with our, my fellow coders. It's so much fun. TWIT TV slash Club twit, seven bucks a month. There's an $84 year subscription. There's corporate memberships as well. Do it because you wanna support what we do. You like what we do. You wanna keep the lights on and keep the staff employed and keep the shows coming. But you do get some great benefits for it. It's okay to, it's okay. It's a win-win all around. And thank you in advance to all of our Club Twit members. To everybody. Members are not a reminder that our survey continues, but is ending at the end of the month.

(02:11:26):
So you've got six more days to go to twit.tv/survey 23. The survey helps us get to know you a little bit better. We don't track you. We don't wanna know anything about you. We can't with an RSS podcast. This isn't Spotify. We don't, we don't, we don't collect information about you. So this survey, once a year, helps us with advertisers, we can at least say, you know, a little bit about our audience. It helps us know what we're doing right and wrong. And it's a, and it's an easy thing to do. It's of course completely optional. But if you would go to twit tv slash survey 23 for the year, 2023 TWIT TV slash survey 23. Take that survey. You have a few more days to do it. And thanks for in advance. Hey everybody, it's Leo LaPorte, the founder and host of many of the TWIT podcasts.

(02:12:14):
I don't normally talk to you about advertising, but I want to take a moment to do that right now. Our mission statement at twit, we're dedicated to building a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts. That's our audience. And you, I guess, since you're listening, by offering them the knowledge they need to understand and use technology in today's world. To do that, we also create partnerships with trusted brands and make important introductions between them and our audience. That's how we finance our podcasts. But it's also, and our audience tells us this all the time. A part of the service we offer, it's a valued bit of information for our audience members. They wanna know about great brands like yours. So can we help you by introducing you to our highly qualified audience? And by you get a lot with advertising on the TWIT podcasts. Partnering with TWIT means you're gonna get, if I may say so humbly the gold standard in podcast advertising.

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Those are incredibly valuable. You also get other free goodies mentions in our weekly newsletter that's sent out to thousands of fans. We give bonus ads to people who buy a significant amount of advertising. You'll get social media promotion too. But let me tell you, we are looking for an advertising partner that's gonna be with us long term. Visit TWIT tv slash advertise. Check out our partner testimonials. Tim Broom, founder of it Pro tv. They started it pro TV in 2013, immediately started advertising with us and grew that company to a, a really amazing success. Hundreds of thousands of ongoing customers. They've been on our network for more than 10 years. And they say, and I'll quote Tim, we would not be where we are today without the TWIT network. That's just one example. Mark McCreary, who's the c e o of Authentic he was actually one of the first people to buy ads on our network.

(02:15:06):
He's been with us for 16 years. He said, and I'm quoting, the feedback from many advertisers over those 16 years across a range of product categories is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. I'm proud to say that the ads we do overdeliver, they work really well because their honest, they have integrity. Our audience trusts us and we say, this is a great product. They believe it, they listen. Our listeners are highly intelligent. They're heavily engaged. They're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's partly because we only work with high integrity partners that we have thoroughly and personally vetted. I approve every single advertiser on the network. If you're ready to elevate your brand and you've got a great product, I want you to reach out to us, advertise@twit.tv. So I want you to break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host Red authentic Ads on twit.tv. Visit twit.tv/advertise for more details, or email us advertise@twit.tv if you're ready to launch your campaign. Now it's time for the back of the book. Paul has a tip of the week.

Paul Thurrott (02:16:23):
I have two tips of the week. Ooh, <laugh>. Cause I don't have it out there. The first is a little self-serving. I'm actually working on a new book. It's maybe I should say a new book. I, in 2019, and then again in 2021 wrote a, a fairly epic series of articles that I stupidly called Programming Windows. Which is really about the history of Windows Good. Paul, from kind of a programming perspective,

Leo Laporte (02:16:49):
Right? It was so good. I I, I mean, I'm already a premium member of throughout.com, but if I hadn't been, I would've joined just for that. It was

Paul Thurrott (02:16:55):
Real close. Yeah. So I, I've been looking at turning this into a book, so I Oh, good. I just converted the first half of it, which I sort of think is the, like the Predot net era. It was approximately 55 articles. So I think the second half is gonna be about the same. And then just plain texts. I mean, cause I, I, I'm, at first I was thinking, I wonder if I can get away with not putting any images in here but actually gonna need images. It's about 226 pages in PDF form. So I'm thinking the final one will be somewhere close to 500. You know, we'll see. I've only done it. It's, it's a <laugh> It's a lot of work. It's crazy. Anyway, I'm gonna, I wanna put this on Lean Pub, like my other book books. And the question is, the, the, the reason I'm mentioning this here right now, because it's not available yet, is, I can't call it programming windows.

(02:17:48):
Programming Windows is of course the name of the Charles Petzel Classic Windows programming books. And I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions about what maybe I could call it. I, the issue is that it's kind of developer focused, although it does a lot of the history generally as well. There are code samples and things like that. I like the name Windows everywhere. I kind of think, you know, it's almost like the rise and fall of.dot Yankee kind of writes itself. But the problem is it's, I wanna make sure that people understand it's technical, it's sort of a software development focus, you know, but all the different ways that you could write Windows apps over the years and how that changed. So if anyone has ideas let me know. Please. Cuz I'm, I need to figure it right now. It's called Untitled Windows book, which is not a great thing.

Leo Laporte (02:18:35):
<Laugh> <laugh>. But thing let me think.

Paul Thurrott (02:18:43):
Yeah's

Leo Laporte (02:18:44):
Weird, I mean, program, you can't use programming windows. I think that's pretty good. No, cuz that applies. It's how to program Windows, right? And you wanna say the history of

Paul Thurrott (02:18:52):
Programming, right? I was thinking more like you, I could call it like programming Windows a love story. I don't know. I don't, I it's, it's a tough one. Like, I even when I called the series Programming Windows, I was like, this is not the best name for this. But yeah, I gotta figure that out.

Leo Laporte (02:19:10):
I'm sure you'll come up with a title.

Paul Thurrott (02:19:13):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you're doing that. Anyway.

Leo Laporte (02:19:16):
I I, that's gonna be great. I will tell you, will that be a lean, are you gonna continue to use Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:19:20):
Yeah. Going through that history again I found myself getting lost in it. <Laugh>. Yeah. It was like everything was great of this, parts of this are great and there's some really good stories in there. It's, it's, it's really interesting. Okay. anyway, yeah, let me know reach paula.com if you wanna email me about that. So the <laugh>, there was a, this news story this week that Microsoft is going to on January 31st stop allowing people to buy Windows 10 from its website.

Leo Laporte (02:19:52):
And I saw this kind of, and this is so irritating

Paul Thurrott (02:19:56):
And it, well, and it's like, well what does that, does that mean <laugh>, you know, so the thing is this is probably not the way almost anyone buys Windows anyway, right? So if you wanted to buy Windows 10, you could go, you could get it on Amazon, you could get the system builder version. What you're really buying here, by the way, is a, a license key, right? That's the point. The Windows 10 download will be available for the duration. The Windows eight one download is still available today, by the way. So you'll always be able to download it, but if you have a license key, you'll be able to install it and activate it. You, I haven't tried this in a while, but I believe you could just activate it in the product. It's not like they're not gonna sell you the license, but again, this is not the most inexpensive way to buy the product, right?

(02:20:41):
So if you were gonna buy Windows 10 for Microsoft, you would spend $140 for the Home edition or 199 for Pro. You can get it less for that, less than that on Amazon. There are other kind of places you can buy these things. Obviously you could walk into a retail store and buy it in a box <laugh> if you wanted to do that. So there are ways to do it. I don't, I don't, oh, and I should say too, if you have a window for some reason, I don't know who has these things, but if you have a window, seven or eight x product key, a retail product key, that still works fine. If you want to clean install Windows, 10 Windows, that

Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
Still works. That will work. That still works.

Paul Thurrott (02:21:12):
Yep. So I, you know, yeah, it's going away. But you're, if you really need to buy Windows 10 for some reason, like you're building a pc buy the system builder edition cuz that's what you're doing and it's cheaper. So those, those are, those are available on Amazon. New.

Leo Laporte (02:21:28):
New. So I always thought that was like a gray area. Like when you buy that from new Egg, you have to buy a har a piece of hardware <laugh>. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:21:37):
Like a little cable or something.

Leo Laporte (02:21:38):
Something you're Oh, I'm a system builder. But it's not like they're stripping those out of the boxes of existing oem

Paul Thurrott (02:21:45):
No, no, no, no. You're not buying anything sketchy. It's a legit, this legit copy

Leo Laporte (02:21:49):
Windows. Okay. Yep. And

Paul Thurrott (02:21:52):
Aren't all ways to buy, I know Windows licenses. I mean, there really are.

Leo Laporte (02:21:55):
Yeah. Well, there's terrible things to Don't do it. Yep. You'll be sorry. Yeah. so, so buying the System Builders version is okay. And that's gonna continue. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (02:22:04):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:22:05):
And we're all system builder,

Paul Thurrott (02:22:07):
You know, we are, we absolutely, we're all developers. We're all a content creators. We are all system builders. Yeah. I mean windows 10 is supported through October, I think 23, whatever the date is, 2025. So you still have, you know, two and a half years to go. It's but that said, I mean, obviously most people, this is not gonna impact almost. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. This is one of those things that's easy to get upset with, but it's like, I, even if you really wanted to install Windows 10 at this point, it's, you're gonna be Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:22:37):
<Laugh>, you know,

Paul Thurrott (02:22:39):
This is not to get

Leo Laporte (02:22:40):
Steve, Steve Gibson shocked me. I thought he was at least up to Windows 10. He's still running Windows seven.

Paul Thurrott (02:22:45):
Jesus, Louis.

Leo Laporte (02:22:46):
I know.

Paul Thurrott (02:22:48):
Wow.

Leo Laporte (02:22:49):
Yeah. It was, I mean, that probably arguably was the best version of Windows. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (02:22:57):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:22:58):
No, 10. I I would you say 10 is no,

Paul Thurrott (02:23:00):
I, I don't know. No, I, I don't know. I I, I think the thing about Windows 10 is that, to me, it, it just looks dated right now. Yeah. But then again, yes, this is the last version. It didn't have a stupid store, it didn't have the mobile app thing built into it. Right. The mobile app platform. 

Leo Laporte (02:23:19):
It was the last, it was the, was the, it was the height of a certain type of Windows

Paul Thurrott (02:23:24):
Classic Windows desktop,

Leo Laporte (02:23:26):
Classic Windows

Paul Thurrott (02:23:26):
Os. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:23:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:23:30):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:23:30):
And so, I see, I mean, I act, I, I kind of sympathize with Steve. I would love to continue to run Windows seven, but it's not supported.

Paul Thurrott (02:23:38):
It's just, yeah. It's so many products won't even run on it now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:23:41):
Well, he says that, I think he says it's having trouble with browsers now. Yep. That's the big one.

Paul Thurrott (02:23:46):
Yeah. That's how it goes. And, and, you know, antivirus will be an issue. Yep. although some are still supporting it, I, to me, it's just basic things like a OneDrive integration with the os. Like I a hundred percent rely on that. And Windows seven never supported, if I remember correctly, what we now call files on demand. And it wouldn't matter if it did anyway, because whatever it's predecessor was called, which was in Windows eight, they took it away because it was, it was a problem with data corruption. And I, I super rely on that. Like, I, I, it's a key part of how I work every day. Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (02:24:19):
<Affirmative>.

Paul Thurrott (02:24:20):
So that's Windows 10, windows 11 for me. You know, I guess you could use Dropbox or something. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (02:24:28):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (02:24:29):
If they support it, <laugh>, you know, I don't know. They

Leo Laporte (02:24:32):
Probably don't. I mean, on the other hand, Dropbox just now is starting to support Mac os 10 on apple silicon. So I,

Paul Thurrott (02:24:41):
Okay, there you go. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, Microsoft took a year to fix the one drop plant. They were running in emulation for a year. Yeah, that's

Leo Laporte (02:24:47):
Right. That's

Paul Thurrott (02:24:48):
Right. Yeah. It was terrible. That performance was awful.

Leo Laporte (02:24:50):
Yeah. So normally Richard Campbell, who is our co-host is on on on duty in London. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> this week would tell us a little bit about whiskey. He is a connoisseur. I mean, everything I know about whiskey I learned from Richard.

Paul Thurrott (02:25:06):
Same as

Leo Laporte (02:25:07):
Exactly, but you, you're gonna fill in here with a pick.

Paul Thurrott (02:25:10):
He's forgotten more about whiskey than I know. So I don't know a lot about whiskey. This

Leo Laporte (02:25:14):
Is something Richard has forgotten, is what you're gonna do.

Paul Thurrott (02:25:16):
That's right. Well, I don't know what, I'm curious what he would think about this. I couldn't think of the name of this, but, so over the holidays we had some friends visit from Boston, and a friend of mine, who knows I like whiskey a lot, gave me a bottle of something called Nomad Outland Whiskey, which is, it's, I believe it's scotch, but they put it in oh God. Sherry cases in Spain. <Laugh>, it's made in

Leo Laporte (02:25:43):
Spain. Just to get the complete here, here, it's a pretty bottle. It's a good,

Paul Thurrott (02:25:46):
That's good. Good gift bottle. Yeah. I have actually have the, I have a bottle. Here's that half gone. It's a good sign. The thing that's, well, but here's the point. So first of all, not super expensive. It's probably about $35 in a store. It's perfectly shippable as is like a lot of times with whiskey and scotch especially, you need to work on the ice or the water, you know, you can do a little dropper thing and kind of get it to the point where you can kind of drink it without it killing your tongue or whatever. But this, to me, out of the bottle is very it's shippable. So it's, it's if you're not, if you don't know a lot about whiskey, like I don't, and you're not, you know, just not in this world yet. Like, this is, I think, a good way to get there because it's a it's, it doesn't require any work. Like it's something I think most people could just kind of appreciate right. Out of the bottle

Leo Laporte (02:26:38):
Is an interesting, so if they say Born in Scotland, raised in hers in Spain, right. It's I guess the climate is different. So it would, it, I makes sense that if that's where you age it, it would have a different Well,

Paul Thurrott (02:26:51):
You know, so the thing about, the thing about whiskey bourbons, whiskey, scotch, whatever, there, there's usually like two markets. There's the low end market, which cheap, you know, like Jack Daniels or whatever. It's the type of thing you would put in a cocktail. Yeah. And then there's the high end stuff like

Leo Laporte (02:27:06):
Sip sip and whiskeys, Abba,

Paul Thurrott (02:27:08):
A bun aor bun,

Leo Laporte (02:27:09):
Whatever. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:27:10):
Yeah. A hundred bucks a bottle, 115 bucks a bottle, whatever. And up. And you're not gonna buy that and put it in a wi in a cocktail for starters, but you're also not gonna buy it and just drink it out of the bottle. <Laugh> like, it's, it's just too, it's too strong. It's too, it's too much. And so I, this to me is like kind of that middle ground thing. It's just, it's a step up from the, you know, the Jack Daniels or whatever, you know, kind of standard bourbons you might get. But it's also, it's a, it's just a good sipping whiskey.

Leo Laporte (02:27:38):
I remember 25 years ago at least somebody giving me a sip of something and he said, this is whiskey, but it was aged in Sherry casks.

Paul Thurrott (02:27:53):
Yeah. And it was stick, little bit of sweetness. Incredible it tone. Yeah. Yeah. Tones down the, the bitterness of, you know, just what, what scotch can be sometimes. Just

Leo Laporte (02:28:03):
It totally, it changed my attitude about it. Yeah. Whiskey. It wasn't his Petey.

Paul Thurrott (02:28:08):
Oh yeah. I don't, I can't stand personally. I, I don't, some people are really into, they

Leo Laporte (02:28:12):
Like, they smoke their Pete. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:28:14):
I just I can't stand there and mezcals like that. I can't.

Leo Laporte (02:28:17):
Yeah. Same thing with mezcal. It's very smokey.

Paul Thurrott (02:28:19):
I swear. I, I am, I'm positive. My wife gets Mascal cocktail, so I can't have any Now think that's what she's done. <Laugh> positive. She's like, oh, you wouldn't like this. Oh, you

Leo Laporte (02:28:27):
Wouldn't have some of your miss

Paul Thurrott (02:28:29):
In, can I have some of yours? Yeah. You

Leo Laporte (02:28:30):
Shouldn't go to Oaxaca.

Paul Thurrott (02:28:31):
I mean, you could have some if you want. You

Leo Laporte (02:28:33):
Shouldn't go to Oaxaca. Lemme

Paul Thurrott (02:28:34):
Tell you. I'm gonna go anyway for the food, but,

Leo Laporte (02:28:36):
Oh, the food is so good. But they give you mecal constantly. I know. Maybe that's cuz we were with Mike and Amira Elgan. I, I've tried

Paul Thurrott (02:28:42):
So many times and I can't, I just don't like it.

Leo Laporte (02:28:45):
<Laugh> <laugh> yeah, I think it was a, it was a Glenro, Sherry, Sherry it was a scotch whiskey aged in Sherry, and it was very, very good as is, by the way. The AOR button also aged in Cherry Gasks. I think that's much more common than it was back then.

Paul Thurrott (02:29:06):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:29:07):
I had never heard of

Paul Thurrott (02:29:08):
Such, but, you know, look, we can't all first of all, even if that's to your taste and, and or you said, look, I, I figured out the magic

Leo Laporte (02:29:14):
Form. Oh, it's Glen Farks. I'm sorry. I just found it. It was Glenfarclas. I remember that.

Paul Thurrott (02:29:19):
But AOR is expensive, you know, this is

Leo Laporte (02:29:21):
45 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. I

Paul Thurrott (02:29:22):
Mean, this is a reasonable

Leo Laporte (02:29:23):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:29:24):
You know, and you, it's not like you're not gonna, you're not gonna chug this. You're gonna, you're gonna sip it, you small amounts and and you can do it right, like I said, right out of the bottle. It's nice. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:29:32):
Yeah. Friends we survived a fabulous episode without Richard. He'll be back next week, however so Paul doesn't have to go it alone. Paul Throt, let's give him a very,

Paul Thurrott (02:29:45):
Not alone Leo. I,

Leo Laporte (02:29:46):
I'm here, but with you, you know, I'm a Lennox and Lis and Eax guy. You know, how much help am I gonna be?

Paul Thurrott (02:29:53):
That's true. It's kind of a mess. But you know what?

Leo Laporte (02:29:56):
I am just for you sitting in front of Lenovo running Windows 11 just for you, so don't worry.

Paul Thurrott (02:30:02):
Right, right. Reinstalling the winnick the Windows subsystem for lunch while we were

Leo Laporte (02:30:06):
Speaking, you know what Richard Stallman this week said W S L should be pronounced weasel

Paul Thurrott (02:30:13):
<Laugh>. Oh geez. God, dude, give it up <laugh>. And then he put his cape over his eyes and he laughed and he ran away. <Laugh>, geez.

Leo Laporte (02:30:21):
He of course is the founder of the software Freedom

Paul Thurrott (02:30:25):
Free. It's also the villain of, of the next Batman movie, if I'm not

Leo Laporte (02:30:27):
Mistaken. That Yeah. It's kind of a interesting character. Paul is@throt.com. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, please support him. Join the premium cuz it's worth it. You get so much great stuff. T H U R r O ott.com. He also publishes his books, and I think this is really generous@leanpub.com, which means you can set your own price, you download it, you get updates automatically. He's even bundled the field guide for Windows 11 in, with Windows 10. So you get both for one price

Paul Thurrott (02:31:00):
Level,

Leo Laporte (02:31:01):
It's vice versa. Yeah. He's bundled the field gun for Witness 10 into the field gun for think about that. 11.

Paul Thurrott (02:31:06):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:31:07):
Which came first. The chicken or the egg, we don't know. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But you get it that way and it's a great way to do it. And, and it supports our friend Mr. T. He joins us and does this show works so hard to do it every week here on Wednesday's 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 1900 utc. You can watch us live@live.twit.tv if you're watching Live chat, live@irctwit.tv or of course Club Twit members in the Discord. Somebody sent me an email, said, I don't, I don't get it. I was in the chat, I was in the forums, I was in the Mastodon. I never saw a button that said, listen, I was in the, I pay, I was in the Discord. I never see, no, we don't put a, if you wanna listen, you go to the website, twit.tv <laugh>, that's where you listen or download a copy.

(02:31:56):
If you want a copy of this show after the fact available, TWIT tv slash ww. We do that. We have little short version names for all the shows. You could also go to YouTube. There is a, a play button on YouTube if that's what you're looking for. Youtube.Com/Twit is the main channel. But there are channels for every show, including Windows Weekly. Great way to share clips from a show or watch the show at your leisure. I know a lot of people like YouTube for that. And of course, the easiest thing to do, since it is a podcast to subscribe just to go to your favorite podcast player and search for Windows Weekly. You'll get it automatically. Audio or video. We've got both forms Add supported. Of course. If you don't want the ads, check out Club Twit. That's the way to get it without hat.

(02:32:41):
And don't forget Paul's really good hands-on Windows Show, which appears weekly in the club. Really some good stuff in there. Kind of a visual version of the book, really. Right? I mean, yeah, you would, you do wanna watch this. You've been doing a, you're doing a series on like kind of logging in and how, you know, got cats. Yeah. Using accounts and so forth. That's really, really worth it. <Laugh> first one is just my brain dump, you know, it was like types of, types of accounts. <Laugh>, it was like this. This is like just how mental I am <laugh>. Yeah. For 13 minutes. Yeah, no, you know, it's great. It's just the way I think of that's why we like hands on windows. Thank you Paul. Have a great week. Enjoy a little bit of nomad and we will see you next week right here for Windows with Bye-bye.