Windows Weekly Episode 827 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 Pols here, Richard Campbell's here. We got roadmaps to talk about the Windows 11 LT S c. Long awaited is Finally here. We'll talk about the week D preview updates. And now something new. The CFRs controlled feature rollouts surface duo. What happened to it? And yes, Microsoft's still working to get a approval on that activation deal. Signs yet another 10 year Xbox deal. All that and a whole lot more coming up. Next, it's time for Windows Weekly podcasts you love

TWiT Intro (00:00:39):
From people you trust. This is twi.

Leo Laporte (00:00:49):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Throt and Richard Campbell. Episode 827 Recorded Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023. It makes me fight. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by Melissa. More than 10,000 clients worldwide rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contacts data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records clean for free at melissa.com/twiz. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show we talk about the latest news from Microsoft with Mr. Paul Thro throt.com. Hello, Leah. Get the cup and you'll never so satisfying, never beat something again. Hello, Paul. Also here still briefly in his home in beautiful Coquitlam British Columbia, Mr. Richard Campbell of run his radio fame. Hello, Richard. Ah, the peaceful times at home are coming to an end be hear a European run. I hear you're going to the low country. I am, yeah.

(00:01:57):
Gonna tend to do a little run across the Ben Deluxe and be back in a couple of weeks, but run across the Ben Deluxe, which is, by the way, the best way to do it. Like the German in 1940. Yeah. Across the low list. Oh, I like the Germans. That's not your final stop. It's called gabo creeds. Just passing through. No, enough, enough. Let's I love that. I love, love that area. I love all of that. No, it's, it's, that's great. Yeah. How's your Flemish <laugh>? That's a good, yeah, but have I been invited to two different dinners? Primarily because I'm gonna be picking the wine. Yes, yes, I have. Oh, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. You'll pick the wine, right? Yeah, I'll pick the wine. So you have wine expertise as well? I did not know that. No. I'm, you know, professional, alcoholic, <laugh> expert, not professional expert. Well, not professional. I have been paid to drink in bars. That's when I considered brace myself professional. Yeah, there you go. Once the conference said, listen, you know, we're

Rich Campbell (00:02:58):
Paying you, we need you to go to this bar, select whiskey for the, for the speakers and tell stories. Wow. I'm like, I'm a professional alcoholic. Like that. That makes sense. That's what I cross the line

Paul Thurrott (00:03:07):
Makes. Yeah. I like it. Wow. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:03:11):
Let's talk about what, well, whatever's on your mind, I guess looks like roadmaps are on your mind and not romance Mapps of Benelux

Paul Thurrott (00:03:20):
<Laugh>. No, no. You're

Leo Laporte (00:03:22):
Thompson's guide to Windows

Paul Thurrott (00:03:25):
<Laugh>. Well, yeah. Right. The yeah. The Michelin Guide to East Eastern Eastern German or East Germany or whatever. Yeah. So we have been sort of speculating about this for a while, but Microsoft finally put out a roadmap this past week where they discussed kind of the end how Windows 10 winds down, and also how Windows 11 kind of winds up, if you will. Right. So the thing we had talked about was that Microsoft has never released an L T S C version of Windows 11. That's the long, long-term servicing channel version. Technically, L T S E is actually for kind of what Microsoft calls specialty devices, meaning PCs that maybe are in medical or in some location where they, they literally don't want to ever be updated. But I think a lot of enterprises just like to use L T S E <laugh>, you know, just like get a, a version of how they don't have to update. They're, yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:04:17):
Ltsc is an excuse to not migrate. Right? Yeah. Like, it's like, I'm not gonna talk about your, I'm not gonna concern results of product until I know I can stand it for extended period of time. And I don't know why you went with like PCs. Like it's ATMs, you're talking about it. That's still equitable. That's still xp, but Windows 11 version of at t m will be hilarious.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:36):
Well, yeah. So actually, I, I have to say I'm a little vague on some stuff with L T S E because there are in some ways three different versions. There's, there are versions that are supported for five years. There are versions that are supported for 10 years, and then there are IOTT versions, which I believe are also supported for 10 years. And I don't know if the at TM use case is iott or just standard Windows 11.

Rich Campbell (00:04:57):
I don't, it predates all of that really. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:59):
<Laugh>. So,

Rich Campbell (00:04:59):
Yeah. I mean, they're making this stuff as they go along. I think it's more what will the customer tolerate. Yeah. And they keep trying to make it a shorter amount of time, and there's a good case for that, right? Like Right. These things do need to be updated. There are vulnerabilities. Yeah. But nobody wants it.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:14):
You know, we yeah. There, there's an ongoing discussion that we've been having here that I have on my site that we're gonna have here yet again today, which is about that Oh. So delicate balance between Microsoft wanting to update your computer all of the time, and some people, and certainly most companies wanting to never update their computer. And this is kind of a, we'll talk about this in a little while, but yes. I I was a little worried, well, worried is the wrong term. I was wondering what they were gonna do about L T S C. Was they, were they gonna try to get rid of this for Windows 11? And I, so the answer's no.

Rich Campbell (00:05:48):
I, I began to wonder if they were gonna try this time and then decided mm-hmm. <Affirmative> not to. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:52):
Like, well, they might just, they might just say you know, for Windows 11, it's five years. Right. And you, we'll, see, we, we, yeah. There are no details about it. We just know that it's gonna arrive in the second half of 2024, meaning it will be 22, I'm sorry, 24 H two. I believe there were two L T S C versions of Windows 10 currently supported 2019 and 2022 probably.

Rich Campbell (00:06:14):
And, and the fact that you just said those words speaks volumes of what went wrong with the whole Windows 10 is the last version of Windows thing

Paul Thurrott (00:06:22):
<Laugh>, right? Yes. Yes.

Rich Campbell (00:06:23):
You're referring to two versions of Windows 10.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:26):
Well, that's the the irony slash hypocrisy of Windows 10. We want to have as few versions of Windows supported in the market at one time. Yep. And we have created a situation we have where we have the most ever,

Rich Campbell (00:06:38):
The most ever. Well, and, and at the same time, you also have that force of how do I shake up the dev team inside of Windows to get with these more, we're fast moving practices that they just had never needed to do

Paul Thurrott (00:06:49):
Before. Yep. You know, they, yeah. And yeah. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:06:52):
It's is, this is part of our lives of being affected by the politics inside of Microsoft showing up in this product that we all ultimately depend on.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:00):
That's right. Yeah. That's actually, that's a good point. I mean, we've talked about this before, but one of the big things that switched over the Windows 10 life cycle was this notion of pulling a developer APIs out of Windows. Yeah. And making them just support all supported versions of Windows. Right. This is the Windows app SDK stuff. Well,

Rich Campbell (00:07:17):
And I think it was, that was a revelation inside of Microsoft too, because up until then you only put stuff into Windows. You never took it out.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:25):
Right. <laugh>. Right. But but it was a, a byproduct of the Windows as a service thing that I think no one saw coming or mm-hmm. <Affirmative> at least no one important enough to make a decision. And when that situation arrived that we just described, where they had more supportive versions of Windows in the market than ever before the bell went off and they kinda, yeah. You

Rich Campbell (00:07:44):
Know, you've done the opposite of what you intended to do, and you frustrated your customers. You know, actually they frustrated more people ever before. The devs were annoyed cuz they couldn't get the version they needed to run their apps. The it people annoyed cuz why are the devs wanting us to operate update the os? Yeah. The users annoyed because I saw this feature on this guy's machine, but all on that guy's machine. Right. And let's not even talk about the search pill, like, oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:08:06):
We're gonna, we are gonna talk about this search. That's, that's the next big topic. It's coming up again. You thought, I, you thought we were done,

Rich Campbell (00:08:13):
You're gonna let it go. But this, you know, here in lies the why do people avoid updating windows? Because sometimes the Windows guys go off the rails and do trivial things with update instead of what they were supposed to do, which is make, keep our machines safe. So, gee, I wonder why we're irritable.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:29):
Well, if you if you were irritated by the fact that your computer could not be upgraded to Windows 11 we have some good news for you because Microsoft is no longer going to ship updates to Windows 10 windows 10, version 22 H two is going to be the version they ride out until the sunset, allegedly until October, 2025. And what they promised is that we will of course, deliver security updates every month, but we're not gonna do any more feature updates. And I have to believe there was a huge part of the population out there, especially on the business side that are saying, yeah, thank you. That's what we've been asking for, for the past eight years.

Rich Campbell (00:09:04):
Yes. So a you're gonna make Windows 10 correctly now, or Right. Yeah. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:07):
<Laugh> Right, right at the end. So I'm, I'm sure there are also some that went to Windows 11. They're saying hold on one second. What, what, what are you doing? Can, can I

Rich Campbell (00:09:15):
Get what I do? What?

Paul Thurrott (00:09:17):
So I, the way the, the Microsoft blog post about this was kind of interesting. It's like, hey you only have two and a half years now before you have to switch over. You might wanna start your migration hours. I think a lot of businesses are thinking, wait a minute, I could write this out for two and a half years. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:09:31):
This is

Paul Thurrott (00:09:32):
Brilliant. That sounds pretty good to me.

Rich Campbell (00:09:34):
With a fairly good probability that you're gonna extend the deadline anyway, cuz a as you do with every popular version of Windows. Right. Because in the end, you guys may be, you know, quote unquote leading the parade, but mostly it's cuz you run in front of us and keep walking. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:49):
Actually, you should turn around cause the parade went left when you went, right. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:09:53):
As they tend to do, right? Yeah. I mean, they, they, you look at how long they extended seven and seven was good, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it ain't no 10. Yeah. Know, you know, 10 is a very, when you, when you get over the madness of the versioning, ten's a very good version of Windows. And I see a lot of organizations going, yeah, we're not going anywhere and you haven't impress us with 11.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:14):
Right? Yeah. No, yeah, for sure. I mean, I, Microsoft, I, I, all these things are kind of help put the whole situation in perspective a little bit. You know, you could also argue, well, Microsoft now has two years ish to get Windows 11, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know not really. I mean, obviously businesses that are gonna make this migration need to get started on that at least a year ahead of time, depending on the size, et cetera. But you know, no man, this, this is them blank

Rich Campbell (00:10:40):
Time, a cynical man, and I don't know any in this room. A cynical man might say that most organizations will wait for Windows 12.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:47):
Yep. Right. Well, so that's the other, that's the one thing they didn't discuss in this roadmap. Right? So there's a lot of evidence that Windows 12 is coming mm-hmm. <Affirmative> there's a lot of speculation about the timing to that. But I would imagine that 2024 is the time for that 22, you know, 24, 20 24 H two, I guess. So we'll see. I mean, if you, they waited until last minute to announce Windows 11, I have to think they're not gonna wait that long on Windows 12. But if this really is the AI edition of Windows as we kind of think of it it would, I think it would behoove them to start talking about it a little early, you know? Yeah. I wouldn't wait till next summer.

Rich Campbell (00:11:26):
Well, and just, again, I'm thinking the internal politics of Microsoft, if you don't get out the door with a version of Windows mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with your large language model features in it, M 365 owns this like Yeah. <Laugh>, they're already talking about co-pilot. Sure, sure. And the longer that goes, the less your things gonna matter. So I, and apparently the directive came from Satcha, thou shalt make AI products in each of those stacks. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:11:51):
Yeah. Yeah. This is yeah. In the same way that thou shult make your product make sense in the cloud Yeah. Was the previous edict yeah. I mean, a hun Yes. 100%. This is the Yeah. This is the

Rich Campbell (00:12:03):
Gold movement. It's got, it's gotta be soon. And I'm just, you know, taking a fly here saying we're gonna get an 18 to 24 month extension on retirement of, of, of 20 of 10 as we have with again, popular versions of Windows. And even then it'll be a $50 fee to stay in support for a year the first, on the first year out. Boy, oh boy. You've given me all the reasons not to go to 11 to I know. I wonder you're gonna make a jump go to 12.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:28):
I You have to think, I, I don't know what the timing is exactly, but let's say one year before the end of life supposedly of this product Yeah. They look at the numbers and say, oh, you know, we still have a lot of desktops sitting here on Windows 10. Still, this roadmap that we just discussed is gonna be the thing that makes that happen. Yeah. You know, it, it makes it much less of a, an important thing to move to Windows 11, knowing now that this thing is gonna be stable

Rich Campbell (00:12:54):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:54):
The next two and a half years. Like that doesn't make me wanna leave. That makes me wanna stay.

Rich Campbell (00:12:58):
That makes me wanna stay. And I have to, I mean, I, I've never been in the room for this. I don't know that this is even really true, but it, like, I can think of a half a dozen companies in this world that make a phone call to Microsoft and say, you know, we're not gonna be ready by 2025 and we need you guys to fix this. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:16):
Yep. Yeah. I, yeah. I, I, yeah. We'll see what they do. You know, Microsoft can be curiously belligerent sometimes, but they did it for XP and they did it for seven.

Rich Campbell (00:13:26):
No, they, they're, they're like a black, a, a female black bear. They'll charge you, but they always turn away at this last seven <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:33):
Nice. I, that's something I hope to never experience <laugh>.

Rich Campbell (00:13:38):
Oh, it's a moment. I'll tell you.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:40):
I mean, I've been, I mean, bullied by Microsoft and Twitter. I, I guess that's a little close to that key is to

Leo Laporte (00:13:45):
Make loud noises and make yourself bigger than windows. And

Rich Campbell (00:13:48):
You're totally right. Yeah. And you know, I find when the bear runs at you, not hard to make loud noises. <Laugh>, you're highly

Paul Thurrott (00:13:54):
Motivated.

Leo Laporte (00:13:55):
Whatever you do, don't run.

Rich Campbell (00:13:56):
Yeah, no, don't run. Lean into it. Yeah. Look,

Paul Thurrott (00:14:00):
He wants to play. That's

Leo Laporte (00:14:01):
Gotta be hard. I saw a video on TikTok the other day of a family and a bear just kind of lumbering up behind him and the kid at one point, little kid says, when do we get to play dead <laugh>? And I thought

Paul Thurrott (00:14:15):
Okay. That could be coming quicker than you want. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:14:19):
Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:21):
I

Leo Laporte (00:14:21):
Wanted to ask you, and I don't see it in your notes, so maybe you don't think it's an important thing, but one of the rumors that came out this week was that Microsoft was hiring chip designers to work on, you know, their version of an M one or M two.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:37):
We, oh, well, that I'm not sure about. We, when you were gone, we talked about Microsoft. There were two things that had come up. Microsoft is adding NPUs to their future service

Leo Laporte (00:14:46):
Products. Yeah, I remember talking about that too. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:14:48):
Of course. Okay. Yeah. And then Microsoft is designing chips in-house to use in their data centers for the cloud computing slash So, so

Leo Laporte (00:14:54):
This story is looking

Paul Thurrott (00:14:56):
No, no, this is, I think this is just more recent, I think. Yeah. Well, gotta remember. Microsoft actually licenses Snapchat and chip sets, and then I, I don't think they do much to them, honestly. They basically just rebrand them. I, this story as I understand it, suggests that they want to do more than just that.

Leo Laporte (00:15:15):
Yeah. I mean, it came from a site I'd never heard of called Windows latest. I don't know if that's

Paul Thurrott (00:15:19):
No, no, they're, no, they're

Leo Laporte (00:15:21):
Okay. Okay. Yeah. They apparently found job listings mm-hmm. <Affirmative> suggesting Microsoft is in the market for a few key roles in silicon engineering to join its Microsoft Silicon team, the main hire being principal system on a chip silicon architect.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:36):
Yeah. So that's suggest client side. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:15:39):
Responsible for building complex. This is a quote from the postings state-of-the-art SOCs using leading silicon technology nodes and will collaborate closely with internal customers and partners.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:51):
There's all this stuff that we speculate on when it comes to surface. Right. And some of that we speculate about has to do with arm chips and that kind of stuff. And part of the reason that Surface isn't enormously successful and we sort of wonder, you know, is this something Microsoft wants to keep around? It was controversial when they came up with this product line, you know, competing with their best co partners, et cetera. I, I, there's little doubt that the Snapdragon work that was done for PCs has been disappointing to Microsoft so far. The

Leo Laporte (00:16:21):
Qualcomm specific Yeah. Lock data. Qualcomm.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:24):
Yeah. And part of the speculation I mentioned earlier was around this notion of d does Microsoft have a, an exclusive arrangement with Qualcomm for these chips? When they announced, when they announced windows in Arm for Windows eight, windows r t, they, they, they were talking about multiple chip sets. And I don't, I think they just went within Nvidia at the time, if I remember correctly, when they talked about the Windows 10 version of Windows arm. Once again, the, the notion was we're gonna expand this into other chip sets. And, and there have been companies, I dunno if it was Media Tech or some other company that showed interest in this but it's, nothing has come of it. And so people are like, well, maybe they have some kind of an exclusive arrangement we've talked to about the New V acquisition and how that's gonna impact Windows and Arm. And the expectation is that we'll learn more about those chip sets late this year. I don't know. I mean, Microsoft, Microsoft has their own chip sets. It's like Microsoft has a, a rebranded, Qualcomm, Snapdragon ax, whatever they're called, you know, chipset. That's, is it really any different does it make a difference? Has anyone ever used a Surface Pro nine versus a whatever else and said, yes, this thing is 10 or even 15% faster or something. I don't, I don't know. I don't know.

Rich Campbell (00:17:33):
And I wouldn't say they've made their own chip setss up till now they've taken existing chip sets and assembled the way they want to. Right. It would be interesting if they did, because I mean, definitely we have the modern Foundry system where you get to spec what's in the chip Yep. Even if you're not actually cutting the silicon yourself.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:49):
Yeah. I mean a lot of Apple's success with making chips has come about because there's a company that can build those things. Right. You know

Rich Campbell (00:17:57):
The Modern Foundry system is what's

Paul Thurrott (00:17:58):
Made all Yeah. That's not, they're not building them. Right. So I don't, I guess the, if I could kind of summarize the issue I have with this, it's just that Surface is a brand Surface is a product line is a tiny, tiny percentage of PC sales, arm-based chipsets that are used inside Surface. Pcs are themselves a tiny subset of the <laugh> of what is a tiny subset. So it doesn't mean things don't change in the future, but I don't, I don't know. I'm not really sure. I I, I would be less surprised if Microsoft left the industry <laugh> than it would be if they dropped s into,

Rich Campbell (00:18:33):
And maybe I'm jumping ahead to you, your list here, but it, they doubled down on the Surface brand this week.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:38):
Yes. In a way that I find alarming <laugh>. Whoa, <laugh>. Well, it's weird. It's a weird one. Okay. Should we save that for the Yeah. Let's say their entire segment le labeled surface <laugh>. Yeah. Okay. Gotta have something in there. You might as well keep it. No, it, it, it, yeah. Yeah. We'll, we'll get to that. Okay. Anyway, sorry. I didn't yeah, I didn't mean derail you, but I just, I know it's wasn't the, and I No, it's worth three. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It, it's, I I think one of the things that's coming out of this AI phase that we're in right now is that the way for these platform makers to save money is to have their own ship sets. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they can't rely on others for this, because you need the neural processing unit. Yeah. You need to do that.

(00:19:26):
You need your own, you know, Google does it, Amazon does it. Microsoft's going to be doing, doing it in the sorry, the data center side. And then, you know, apple obviously has been pushing this pretty hard for several years now on iPhones. Isn't it ironic? Cause they have real, really no, no position in this whole AI chat GBT race. Yeah. But I think that's, that might actually be why, because they understand how important it is. App Apple is never gonna be that trusted partner that others go to, to rely on for anything, let alone ai. But Apple, as that kind of insular company, sees how the world is going and says, well, we, we have to do this ourselves. And where do we, where is our strength that's on the client?

Rich Campbell (00:20:04):
What you haven't seen is a standard for an N P U. Right. Nobody's even offering one. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:12):
Right.

Rich Campbell (00:20:12):
Like, that's what's interesting. Like the competition is so fierce. Yep. You know, that nobody's actually saying, oh, we should do a chip like this and we'll make it available to others like that. The person who does it, the one who says, I'm behind and not going to catch up,

Paul Thurrott (00:20:25):
<Laugh> trying get, I Richard, I think you use a pixel phone. I don't know which one you have. Do you have a, which, what's what, six. Six. So starting with the six and now with the seven and soon with the eight they have their own tensor chip set, right? Yeah. And so this thing is kind of optimized for ai, well, machine learning tasks, and

(00:20:48):
It's okay for other things. <Laugh>, like, it's fine, but this is a phone that can heat up. It doesn't, they, it can't charge very quickly. I think that might have something to do with the the chip set. And I, that's just the direction they decided to go in. They're like, look, we're gonna try to make this thing as helpful as possible with these kind of interactions that people have. But as a mainstream kind of normal processor, it's probably, it's probably just kind of average. You know, it's not, it's not like super high end or whatever. It's fine. Yeah. and that's one direction. And I guess that, that they're, the bet they're making is that that's what's gonna matter to people, you know, that we're going to the

Rich Campbell (00:21:25):
Customers at all. I mean yeah. Camera features are great. Detecting that you're doing astrometry awesome. Like all of that is cool. But the problem you've got with the LLMs with the chatbot situation here is they're free. Yeah. And most people aren't gonna pay for them. And they consume a lot of compute. And so it is in the vendor's interest to push the compute to the edge, not in the customer's interest.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:50):
Well, to lower the and, and or to lower the price of the stuff they are doing up in the cloud, which is what this

Rich Campbell (00:21:56):
Yeah. Again, which they're paying for not us. Like why are we going to care? The only way you're gonna make US care is to construct <laugh> I know features that only work with our new devices and that's cool. We'll get to sell more devices. And there, you know, there's Microsoft's problem. They don't care if they sell more devices, really. Right, right. Google only vaguely cares if they sell more devices.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:16):
Well, but this is why it's so important that NPS come to the client regardless of the fact that regardless of Microsoft making their own PCs, that's not gonna change anything. You know, all of the computers at Dell and HP and Lenovo and whatever EL sell have to have these chips for the Yes. Some

Rich Campbell (00:22:32):
Version.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:32):
You

Rich Campbell (00:22:32):
Think it'd be Microsoft that it declared the standard by now. Like that's the logical thing to do. You're the guys with the ecosystem eco, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:22:39):
Like Yes. Well, I, I, that's okay. So that's tied to what I said earlier where I think they need to come out a little earlier, not a little, a lot earlier this time. The normal schedule one year in advance at least mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and say, Hey, this is a major push for Windows 12. It's gonna be ai. N P U is paramount to this. Yep. Here's

Rich Campbell (00:22:57):
The, here's a reference machine,

Paul Thurrott (00:22:58):
Here's the whole stack. Yes, yes.

Rich Campbell (00:22:59):
Yeah. So that better be this October.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:01):
It better be by this October. Yep.

Rich Campbell (00:23:03):
Yeah. This October they need to do that pitch. And now the vendors have a, the, then the ecosystem has a year to build the machines that people will actually buy.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:11):
Yep. And by that point, those machines will market that have mp cuz it's already happening. It's just that we, it's just not everywhere.

Rich Campbell (00:23:17):
Well, and clearly they've been working on this chip now for a year or two. The Apple guy's been on board since LA early last year. Right. So, I mean, that's enough time. There should be a chip.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:27):
And that lawsuit was disrupt, by the way, that's also not in the notes, but Apple had a lawsuit against the guy who left to go to Newby. Right.

Rich Campbell (00:23:34):
You know, you'll, you're never gonna win those. All you're gonna do is,

Paul Thurrott (00:23:37):
Well, you wanna, so yeah. Fear pretty much William Gerard Williams, I think his name was, anyway, they, he

Leo Laporte (00:23:44):
Countersued

Paul Thurrott (00:23:46):
Sure. The suit's been well and, and

Rich Campbell (00:23:47):
Did, I'm pretty sure it was Microsoft Legal supporting all of that as they do. And it's ha and it has happened before and likely happened again. And all of it is dumb. You don't get to not let a guy make a living. Like,

Leo Laporte (00:23:59):
Especially in California, because yeah. Hiring employees away from another companies actually protected <laugh> Yeah. In California. So that's,

Rich Campbell (00:24:07):
It's, they call it Right. To work.

Leo Laporte (00:24:08):
Right. To work. So, well that's another to poach conversation of Right. To work. But yes, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Right to right to Poach I think is

Paul Thurrott (00:24:17):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:24:18):
Rtp like it.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:21):
All right. All

Leo Laporte (00:24:22):
Right. So, all right. Yay.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:24):
Richard mentioned the search pill in, in my <laugh>. Can't believe you talking non ending Quest for the truth. <Laugh>, I, I have, I have come up with various theories as to why Microsoft pushed the AI thing, as you recall, every week it seems like I have a new one I've been, I've been really concerned about and really focused on how would, when Microsoft updates windows, it's, it's, it's interesting to me. Right. And you know, just at a really high level, we, the, the, the problem is easily stated. They said, we're gonna do one feature update a year, and they release multiple feature updates every month. <Laugh>. So it's, you know, it's what they say, what they do. And, and the interesting thing is Microsoft over time has started coming out and explaining itself. You know, it is, it has talked about how yeah, we changed the schedule for preview updates. We're gonna make them now in week D, which is two weeks after week B and two weeks before the next week, B week B being patch Tuesday. So we get this preview update. If you want to go get it, you can. And if you don't wanna go get it, that's fine. Wait two weeks. You'll get it with Patch Tuesday automatically.

Rich Campbell (00:25:29):
Oh, you're getting it.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:30):
Yeah. <laugh>. Oh, no. They literally use ma man, what do they call it? Mandatory. It's a mandatory update. Right. So these are non-security updates. Cumulative updates are fe they're features. Right. And I, I think last week I discussed about how I went back and looked at it. And if you really look at it, what you'll find is that they've been doing this since September of last year. The only time they didn't release extra feature up features in any month was in January. And that's only because December, they take half the month off. And there was one, there was no Week D that year that month. So that was the only time they skipped new features. But, and Richard you may remember this I think because it was just as you were coming on the show, but back in November slash December last year, Microsoft all of a sudden outta nowhere popped this little surf search pill onto people's task bars.

(00:26:16):
Yes. Well, and the way they did, some of them, thank you. The, the way they did it was so weird. And, and I was of course hut in the middle of writing the Windows 11 field guide. And I'm, and I had just taken a 1100 screenshots of the task bar, and the task bar changed cuz now this is new icon here. We talked about how there were feature regressions, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But the thing that was weird about it, the thing that always stuck in my cra was they had never tested this, this never went through the insider program. They had just appeared out and stable day, but not for everybody. And in my own situation where I had several laptops going at one time, I could see it appear on two, but not on five. And then next month it was three and not on four. And then it took a really long time for it to kind of get rolled out everywhere. And I was just, it's just you

Rich Campbell (00:26:57):
Were uniquely positioned

Paul Thurrott (00:27:00):
To

Rich Campbell (00:27:00):
Witness it. You know, you, you, you're, you're clearly harnessing your O C D for the forces of Good in terms of noticing the changes like that

Paul Thurrott (00:27:06):
<Laugh>.

Rich Campbell (00:27:06):
Yes. And you're surrounded by an array of machines, so you That's right. Know the update cycle's wonky, like Yep. There's very few people in the place you are to make that right happen. That's

Paul Thurrott (00:27:14):
Right. Right. And you know, of course, you know, the cynical view of what I do is people who you do is complain. You know, it's like, yeah. Or maybe I'm just like a canary here and I'm witnessing something that is unusual and I'm just trying to, I was trying to make sense of it, you know? Yeah. And

Rich Campbell (00:27:26):
I felt like it was an experiment the whole time, which happens, right? Like they, they, well,

Paul Thurrott (00:27:31):
It doesn't just happen, Richard. It's a strategy and it's called controlled feature rollouts. It is literally a formal strategy that Microsoft employs to

Rich Campbell (00:27:40):
Will, that's an acronym now. So it must be real.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:43):
Well, they, they documented it. They, they talked about it. Mm-Hmm. This is the thing. Mm-Hmm. They're doing it. And that's what the search bill was. It was a C F R. They didn't say that, but it, it, it is, it's implied. No, it, it absolutely, it ab when you read the way they describe how this will happen and compare it to the way we just described how the search bill happened, it's identical. So do you think, was

Rich Campbell (00:28:02):
That the search pill was the beta of the cfr? That was their first chest run?

Paul Thurrott (00:28:09):
I can't say that for sure, but it, if it either was the first, or it was one of the

Rich Campbell (00:28:13):
First, I think you would've noticed if there had been any others.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:16):
I think so too. That's why. Yeah. I, I, it was, this one was very prominent. I Yeah, it was, it was in

Rich Campbell (00:28:21):
The middle of you capturing screenshots. So, I mean, I, I feel your pain.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:25):
Well, I mean, I feel, I, I, I, I pay attention regardless, you know, but I, I feel like I would've noticed something like this, but this one was very obvious. Yeah. so here's what bugs me about this other than the you know, the, the obvious Microsoft has a program in place. In fact, just in January, they expanded it. It's called the Windows Insider Program. And the Windows Insider Program, if used correctly, has three or four tiers where you can insert a new feature, go through the testing cycle on each channel, and then pop it out to stable at the end of the cycle. The search pill was an anomaly because it never went into the Windows Insider program. It just hit stable. But this is, like I said, a strategy. They're doing this on purpose. They're purposefully not testing it with insiders, and they're pushing stuff out into stable.

(00:29:10):
Now, the idea here is they roll it out. Like they roll out a major Windows feature update, capital F, capital U. In other words, they don't just, you know, <laugh> split it out to everyone. They put, they, there's some algorithm that determines these computers. It should work okay. Or whatever. Not that the search bill was a big deal, but the idea is it goes out to some subset and they gather feedback by which I suspect they mean telemetry mostly. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> make sure it's working right. By the way, it wasn't working right. There was a fu you know, a feature regression as we discussed, but whatever, then they expand it over time. And if there are no major pushbacks, eventually it will hit the entire user base. And in the case of the search pill, I bet it wasn't until, I bet it wasn't until February. In fact, it's possible someone listening to us now will say, I, I never actually got that <laugh>, you know, or whatever. They eventually superseded it with another update. But this is why. So why, why would you do that? And they, this, they have not said explicitly, but it's hard not to think that there's something wrong with the insider program, that they're not getting the wrong, we know

Rich Campbell (00:30:14):
There's something wrong with ES insider program. Like it's obvious. Yeah. They made it too easy to sign up. They put no criteria on it. Lot, most people put it on a tertiary machine. <Laugh>. Right, right. That's true. And you're not getting good feedback. That's plain and

Paul Thurrott (00:30:27):
Simple. Yeah. And, you know, unfortunately they've also made the program kind of crappy, right. So yeah. They've gone back on their promise about what, what these channels mean. They've done AV testing in the beta channel. If I was in the beta channel and I was there very specifically because I'm getting, I'm gonna be able to test this level of things, and now I'm not getting those features you're kind of sucking the life

Rich Campbell (00:30:48):
Out it, right? No, it's, it's self-fulfilling. Right? Yeah. And I think part of this is that the folks who set those programs up back in the day, they've all moved on and there's new people in play. It's quite questionable where they even agreed with the strategy in the first place. They may or may not know how to do certain things, much less what was necessarily promised. Right. And they're reinventing it bit by bit without causing a, a too big of a ruckus. Right. So you, you know, all you can do with the insiders is annoy them

Paul Thurrott (00:31:15):
<Laugh>. Right? Well, they've, they've done a stellar job of that. So I the three of us have all been around long enough to remember this. I, I'm, I feel like the people making the decisions at Microsoft might not remember this. Back in the 1990s, there was this notion of internet time, you know, that Netscape had come out and they said, look we need to ship fast. That's how we're gonna get ahead in the, in the market. Right. And we'll fix the problems later. And

Rich Campbell (00:31:40):
That's cute because we can deliver it online.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:42):
Yeah. It's a cute thing to do for a little browser, you know, thousand lines of code at the time, or whatever it was, you know when you're doing this in a product that ships two hundreds of millions, possibly billions of people in stable, like normal people, I don't know. I, I, it seems like a dicey strategy to me.

Rich Campbell (00:32:01):
Now, I mean, get into, and this also leads into your next point where software is being built more reliably, right? Yeah. These are the, these are not breaking change. This search pill may have been annoying, but at no point did Windows crash. Yep. You didn't beast DOD on it. That's true. And, and search didn't even break. Right. These literally were just UI

Paul Thurrott (00:32:20):
Things. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, I, I, I don't, you know, I I would say in our group here, and you know, the people watching are listening to this show, obviously we're enthusiasts, and we feel these things a little, a little bit more, but I think

Rich Campbell (00:32:34):
You're, you're talking about Microsoft simplifying where the update channel is the beta channel, and when I'm wearing my IT hat, it's like I use Update server for a reason. I control what's coming.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:44):
Right? Right. Well, and that's the thing, I I, I actually, right. And to defend Microsoft somewhat, I would say I, yeah. If you're going to do this kind of thing, at least you're doing it in a company that has two halves and enterprise half and a consumer half, and you have a system in place for enterprises where they can block this kind of thing from happening Yep. For some amount of time. Right. And actually, in the, in this exact case, I will say like it, it was superseded by an update that changed the search yet again, and it did fix those problems. Right. And so they got it to where it needed to be in the first place. It took 'em three, four months, whatever.

Rich Campbell (00:33:18):
So that's, that's the, you're just describing Windows 11 full on, right? Yeah. Yeah. They took a whole bunch of stuff away. Listen for how loud the screams were and then just kept adding it back. Yeah. Now we're back.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:27):
Y Yeah. And so for those businesses that blocked or blocking updates, whatever this thing came out was broken, was fixed, and then they updated, and why would they care? Right. And so maybe that's okay. And I actually, I had written something to that too. And I mean you know, as, as an individual using this product, it's fine. I, I think a lot of normal people, I always held my wife up in this regard. Like she had switched to Windows 11 at some point, and I forgot about it. And then one day I said, Hey how's the, how's Windows 11 go? And she's like, what do you mean? I said, well, you up, you asked me about it and you were upgraded and everything. She goes, yeah. And I said, well, you, you know, do you notice anything? She's like, I ain't talking about it, <laugh>. I said, it's

Rich Campbell (00:34:06):
An operating system. It's like,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:07):
Yes. Well, she, she said, it's a tool. I'm like, okay. I I, I am also a tool. I don't know. These are the kind of things I think about. Yeah. So I don't, you know, maybe this is the right way. Do it. This, it's

Rich Campbell (00:34:18):
Also the same way that people are like blind to cars, right? Yes. I get in a box, it takes me wrong, I go, I get out. Right. Right. You can talk about the styling on the, on the rear quarter panel, but I really don't care.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:29):
Well, I'm, so, I'm a car fan, and so I will say in this apartment complex we live in, there are seven parking spots, and five of those vehicles are almost always a Kia. And yeah. And I, and I, I walk, I walk out to the car one time we walked out to the car and I, I, I walked by each car. I said, Kia, Kia, Kia, super Kia. And Stephanie's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm like, did we live in a Kia dealership? And, you know, I don't think she would've noticed this. You noticed? Didn't care.

Rich Campbell (00:34:56):
Yeah. Didn't care. And you, and ask her about your operating system. Same thing. Same

Paul Thurrott (00:35:00):
Thing. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:35:00):
Right. And, and as you know, I remember my wa my mother telling me, I don't want Windows Vista. And I'm like, you're not qualified for an opinion <laugh>. But it just showed how well the things had gone off the rails that the non-technical had an opinion about something.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:15):
Yes. Windows eight, same thing I had. Yeah. In fact, the same friend we talked about, the friend earlier who had the iPod, he traded into the Dell that, that guy called me one day and said, Hey I, I just bought a new computer and it came with Windows eight, and he never used to, he would never bother me about technical things, but Right. He said, how do I put Windows seven on this? I was like, I make it go away. I dunno if you can do that, man. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:35:38):
Why would you

Paul Thurrott (00:35:38):
Care? Yep.

Rich Campbell (00:35:40):
Any this ties into that story. We talked about this before we even started about Rust in a good way. Yeah. Because this is a maturation, an interesting idea of maturation of Windows. And Restovich was talking about this a year ago or more.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:54):
Right, right. And this is one of those times I kind of wish he was in this part of the company again, a little bit, you know?

Rich Campbell (00:36:02):
Yeah. I don't even know what that guy does for a living anymore. I, I got him coming up on Run ads in a, in another

Paul Thurrott (00:36:06):
Month or so. Yeah. We'll find out what he does for a living though, because Yeah, I will,

Rich Campbell (00:36:08):
I'll ask

Paul Thurrott (00:36:09):
Him. It will just be confusing. But yeah, I mean, this is Markovich for people who don't know you know, his to me came to, his claim to fame was he wrote an article in Windows NT Magazine back in 1996, probably or seven, discussing how you could make one registry change and turn Windows NT Workstation into Windows NT Server.

Rich Campbell (00:36:30):
Right. And

Paul Thurrott (00:36:32):
You know, he, and with David Solomon essentially kind of semi reverse engineered the win windows anti the Windows Kernel, the Kernel, and sy a internals when internals, et cetera was bought by Microsoft, came to Microsoft Microsoft Fellow, I would imagine

Rich Campbell (00:36:48):
He's a tech fellow. Yeah. Well, tech fellow, no, he created his, he's hit the point where now you just make your own titles. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think CTO Azure at the moment, I think,

Paul Thurrott (00:36:57):
Okay. Yeah, he's a genius. And he is a super nice guy, and he used to be very, well, he was in Windows for several years and and was doing, you know, kind of low end colonel work, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But yeah. So he, what you're saying is for the pa, sometime in the past year, he's been saying, Hey, there's something called Rust, let's start using it in the Windows kernel. Yeah. Linux is start put their first bit of rust, so to speak, into the 6.1 kernel back in, I dunno, February, March, something like that. And Microsoft was just, just had a like a, I think it was a security conference in Israel. Hmm. And vice President David Weston, who I was telling Richard, I'm, I'm pa I I have met this guy. Like I, I've 100% met this guy and it's killing me. I can't, like, I'm really bad with this kind of name thing, but

Rich Campbell (00:37:44):
He's, except fif, he's a 15 year veteran. He's been around a while.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:46):
He's super nice guy.

Rich Campbell (00:37:47):
Always on the security side.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:49):
Yeah. And so he, he appeared and as part of his talk he said that, yes, Microsoft is going to be adding Rust code to the Windows kernel. Now they're not gonna rip and replace, you know, the, like, it doesn't make, and he said this, look, it doesn't, we've got decades of code there. We're not going to, yeah. You know, you've got, you could spend the next seven years replacing it all with Russ.

Rich Campbell (00:38:08):
I, I did a show where they talked about being able to use, they had to modify Git make contributions to Git to be able to use Git as a repository for Windows. Right. Because it's 300 gigabytes of source

Paul Thurrott (00:38:21):
Code. Right. <laugh>, actually, I haven't looked into this yet. I'm probably gonna write about the specific and fines. Yeah. Pseudo and Sue, right. Two of the mm-hmm. U mm-hmm. Two of the core Linux like utilities in Lennox are gonna be mm-hmm. <Affirmative> rewritten in Rust as well. And when you do this kind of stuff, what you're looking for is kind of the high value targets. Like where can we do, where can we get the most bang for the bucket? It's not so much performance, although one of the criteria here is we don't want this thing to bo down performance, but what they've found is actually there are no performance issues at all for doing this. And there are huge security implications Yes. In a positive way.

Rich Campbell (00:38:59):
And that, and that's the main thing is that Yeah, Russ has, Russ is this modernization of a general purpose language. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> focused on type safety. So you get past these sort of core issues about data injection and buffer overruns, and they call it, all of that stuff comes for free, and they've managed to do it in a way that compiles with very comparatively low overhead. Like, it's, it's impressive.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:22):
It's Right. Typically to get this kind of protection, you need a, what Microsoft calls a managed language, like C Sharp or Java does this as well, where this's kind of an intermediary between you and the OS or whatever, however you wanna describe that. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:39:39):
And it, and it makes me wonder if you won't see an initiative over time with various bits of, of Windows being rewritten in roughs for just that reason. Yeah. And I'd also say this, they need new devs in the winds team, and you aren't gonna get in the right c plus

Paul Thurrott (00:39:51):
Plus. Yes. Thank you. This is one Yeah, exactly. I, yeah. The r I follow like the kind of stack overflow in other similar sites where they do little, you know, developer surveys every year. And there's an interesting thing you'll see in there, but the trends are very clear. Everyone loves Rust. It's not really clear how we could get a job at Rust <laugh>. Yes. You know, every, it's, I want to use it, but I have to use, I, hopefully it's not JavaScript, but, you know, it's the, the disparity between like the real world and what they want to do is pretty big. But now that the platform makers are starting to put rust into the kernels of these systems, all of a sudden this is, this is, yeah. This could be an interesting job opportunity.

Rich Campbell (00:40:29):
Well, and, and, and it's, and it is finally encroaching in the c plus plus spaces. Like I think we could see drivers written in rust, like Yes. Typically something only ever see in the C space. Yep. it's interesting to see in the AV Asian industry, which I occasionally bump into, they've been retiring old languages as well. Languages like ADA and moving to C

Paul Thurrott (00:40:50):
Wow. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:40:52):
<Laugh>, that would be a question of moving to, to languages like Russ, like Right. Clearly the tech giants are all over it. I'd like to see NASA into it. Yeah. For exactly that recent, like this is, this is a, these guys write quality quote and they write it the hard expensive way. Yeah. Maybe this is an easier way to write that kind

Paul Thurrott (00:41:09):
Of quality quote. That's right. Yeah. I'm really interested in this. Hmm. I wonder if I'll learned more about this at Build. I'm cur I'm really, I was fascinated to see them come out and discuss this. It'll

Rich Campbell (00:41:19):
Be interesting to see what happens with the C P P conference. That's Microsoft's C conference. Okay. And certainly never going away. Like that's a, it's a great No,

Paul Thurrott (00:41:29):
No, no conference. No, but, but, you know, look, my you know, this better than anybody, best message to developers has always been, we'll, we'll show you a way forward. You know? Yeah. They've been very good about that. And I don't think anyone saw a way forward for c slash c plus plus other than more c and c plus plus. And this is very similar language you know, synt tactically. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:41:53):
Now it's, it's very approachable. It just takes a bunch of stuff off the table and it, and more importantly, shakes off literally decades of Croft.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:01):
Yeah. Just

Rich Campbell (00:42:02):
Decades of built on, built on, built on, built on. This is, you know, the specs are from 2015. This is really

Paul Thurrott (00:42:10):
New. Yep, yep.

Rich Campbell (00:42:13):
Yeah. Exciting. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:15):
Very exciting. I think so, and the chief, by the way, the

Leo Laporte (00:42:17):
Chief purpose of this is a memory safe language, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:42:21):
Yeah. So primary

Leo Laporte (00:42:22):
That's really the issue, is

Paul Thurrott (00:42:23):
That what they're looking Yeah. Corner

Leo Laporte (00:42:25):
Corners and

Paul Thurrott (00:42:27):
Yeah. Where where can things go south. Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:42:30):
And Rust protects you from that compile compiler side or at

Paul Thurrott (00:42:35):
Run side at run time. So it's definitely a compi, it's definitely a compile time. And I, I think the idea is that you're creating code that Yeah. Will also be safer at run time, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it doesn't require, it's not like it's a runtime environment. That's the point. It, they, that's the overhead. They're trying not to.

Leo Laporte (00:42:52):
No. It's like, it's a systems language. It's like, see in that, in

Paul Thurrott (00:42:55):
That regard. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:42:56):
Yeah. Yeah. But I think it probably does stop nu pointers at runtime as well. It must otherwise, but you find it, you find it in the, in the code coding

Paul Thurrott (00:43:07):
One, one of the side effects of us having to discuss the updates, the feature updates they add to Windows every single month. Right. And including the thing we're about to talk about next is just how surface level and stupid it all is, right? It's like this moment in time, like they're doing this one stupid little change, and it's like, is this all we have to talk about? And it's very exciting to me to see, cuz I, you know, you know, with no one's really writing new Windows apps anymore, like what's the developer thing? What, what's the, what's going on technically with Windows? It's not really that interesting, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so the fact that they're even taking the time to do this to me is, it's just so great. Now, this isn't

Leo Laporte (00:43:44):
Unexpected. This, this is internal, right. It's not gonna impact any third party developers, although it does kind of give a nice seal of approval linnux to this couple of months ago. And so it gives it a nice seal of approval, like, oh, this is a good systems language and it's memory safe, so you should Well, and you should learn it.

Rich Campbell (00:44:02):
Yeah. It's the big vendors vent betting big products on it.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:06):
Yeah. Mm-hmm. For the past few years, you still see them. Right? Exactly. Yep. And when the, when the best minds in the industry at this level, the, the really technical people, the, the Linux tour of alls, the Markovich of the world, whatever, whoever they're mm-hmm. <Affirmative> kind of endorsed this <laugh>, you know? I think that it just, it, it, it, I think it just gives it a whole, because we're not, we can debate, you know, things like Swift and Sea Sharp and, you know, dart and whatever, like Kotlin, you know, like, yeah. It's kind of interesting. But like, this is just this kind of deep level stuff. I, I almost felt like we were kind of past this almost like, yeah. Like they would never do this too long. Work again. Long. Yeah. Yep. So I'm just, I, I just, I really like to see this. I really, I, I love that they're spinning. I obviously windows with a server, Azure, there's some shared infrastructure there and some lower level stuff. And I'm sure these changes will benefit the cloud side of the house as well. That's fine. I mean, obviously I would expect that's where this comes from originally. I'm sure that's where the, the kernel, the kernel lives, so to speak, is with that side of the company. That's great. But again, is the kernel

Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
Code so isolated that you could do this? I mean, windows to, from the outside feels to me like a, a pile of spaghetti, and Yes, it is. It's not like you could just take one strand of spaghetti out and say, we're gonna replace this with a whole No, the

Paul Thurrott (00:45:25):
Kernel is like a meatball in the middle of the

Rich Campbell (00:45:27):
Stadium. <Laugh>, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:45:31):
It's

Paul Thurrott (00:45:31):
A spicy meatball. It's

Leo Laporte (00:45:32):
Separate enough that yeah, you could, and it's not the whole

Paul Thurrott (00:45:35):
Process. Well yeah. This, the whole system for Yeah. I mean, the lower level parts of the system interact with the kernel in a very specific way. And so it's, it's a black box. It's a, yeah. It's very much like the com stuff. You know, you don't, you don't know how it's written internally from the outside. It doesn't matter. You just, you have a certain set of functions you can call, you get things back. And this is just making that, you know, for, to the outside world, whatever that is, par other parts of Windows or third party developers, whatever, nothing changes. It's just that it's more secure now. If it was just more secure now and it was like 10% slower, I bet we would accept that. But the thing that's fascinating about Rust is that's not what they found. There is no performance penalty. Oh, no.

Leo Laporte (00:46:12):
Yeah. Rust is, rust is

Paul Thurrott (00:46:13):
Good. This is the Yeah. This is the beauty of Rust. Yeah. so I wonder where Dave Cutler falls on this. Yeah. Right? I mean, and

Leo Laporte (00:46:21):
The creator I've heard

Rich Campbell (00:46:22):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Yes. Yeah. And, and, and I've heard is still working.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:27):
Right, right. But

Rich Campbell (00:46:28):
Also just turned 81

Leo Laporte (00:46:29):
And a c plus plus guy, I'm presuming. Yes. And

Rich Campbell (00:46:31):
It's through and through, through and through four decades, right? Yep. So yeah, I really wonder, but not a young man, like no choice

Paul Thurrott (00:46:40):
About it. Well, this was the guy when they, the original design of nt the graphic stuff was all outside of the kernel for all of the obvious security, whatever, reliability reasons mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And to make this thing perform well on relatively low end hardware of the day, they had to change that design. And he fought that tooth and nail because that's bad design, you know, and he, and he was right. Yeah. But you know, this, the realities of the market, et cetera, et cetera.

Rich Campbell (00:47:05):
Yeah. Gotta make it work. They ring three versus ring zero

Leo Laporte (00:47:07):
Battles. Mr. Mr. Lyon in our discord reminds me that someone announced that they were gonna rewrite su and u. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:16):
I just,

Leo Laporte (00:47:16):
Yeah. Did you mention that? Oh, okay. Handwriting. They did. Yeah. Yeah, you did. Okay. Yep. That's not, I mean, I don't think that's the official su n u do. Right. But Right. Somebody's gonna do it. And

Paul Thurrott (00:47:29):
I, I think all, whatever architect of whatever system should be looking at what they can do and where the benefits are, and I think, you know, again, we're not, I don't think we're gonna see a wide scale wipe out of c and c plus plus across the board. Well, that's

Leo Laporte (00:47:43):
Why I'm asking you how modular it is, because Yeah. I like the idea of saying one brick at a time rewriting one brick at a time, and rust. And certainly with Sure. In, in Unix SU is a standalone app. I mean, you can write it in any language you want. So but this is a little different because you have all these interactions.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:02):
Yeah. I mean, I think the, the front end stuff is a little different. I, I, the, the back end stuff though, I like, it's as modular as it's, it's, I would call it componentized, I guess. I don't know. You know, it's again, like in, in the Black Box Sense, you have some set of interfaces you're calling. Right. Or can call.

Leo Laporte (00:48:18):
Yeah. And as long as

Paul Thurrott (00:48:19):
Those, you change the internal, this is the classic kind of, oops. Design, really. I mean so yeah. This is what they're doing. And I, yeah. We'll, never, I don't know. We'll see. I mean, how much they update, they may never talk about it again. I don't know. I, I don't know. I'm, that's, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:48:33):
See, I'm not, I, I've played with Rust. In fact, when Russ mm-hmm. <Affirmative> kind of came out, I, the first book I kickstarted it and Got it. Yeah. And all that stuff. And it's, it's a little too much boiler plate for me as a hobbyist, but it, but I, you know, I understand the value of it. Have you? Yeah. But I'm not familiar enough. I know that the way it does memory management is not exactly garbage collection, but it's not exactly do it yourself. And so that's gonna be, I would say that's probably a big impedance mismatch between existing software where you do your, you know, you do an amalek and that you're responsible for reallocating that memory. When you're done with it, the rust doesn't work that way. So I'm wondering if that's, I don't know enough about

Paul Thurrott (00:49:13):
It. I think I, I don't know enough about it either though. I, I researched this and wrote a short article about it, and the way that I described it at the time was that the, the difference between this and other c like languages is that it cannot write code. It cannot, you cannot compile code that improperly handles memory. Right. It just, it just does not allow you to do that. It stops and in it, and at runtime, it has this concept of ownership. Yeah. That helps. Yes. Richard had that great quote a couple weeks ago about you know, we gave you the gun, but you shot yourself in the foot. That's c plus plus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. <laugh>, you know and with Rust, you can't shoot yourself in the foot. So I, I think that's, you know, and, and the, I, I kind of compared it to the managed code languages. Right. That to achieve this type of code safety, I guess, for lack of a better term, you typically need some kind of a managed layer that sits between you and the hardware and rust. The rust pilot creates native code, right? Yeah. So there's no, there's no intermediary layer layer, and that's part of the reason for the performance. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:50:17):
It's my understanding that, that that memory is allocated and when allocated is owned by a process. Okay. so that process is kind of, I don't know. It's, I don't understand. It's very fancy <laugh> very fancy. It's very fancy. I don't Right, right. I don't understand it anymore.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:36):
I, I just think Synt, tactically, if you are a gut help USC c plus plus guy, still today, in 2023, you could, you'll look at Russ and say, oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:50:45):
I think that's

Paul Thurrott (00:50:46):
True. It's, it's, it's very familiar. I think that's the big, or Well, no, that's part of the appeal, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
Yeah. And, and, and to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot is always a nice thing. Mm-Hmm.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:57):
<Affirmative>. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (00:50:59):
Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:51:00):
Now with less holes in foot. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:01):
<Laugh>. Exactly. Yeah. I

Leo Laporte (00:51:03):
Think that's good.

Rich Campbell (00:51:04):
I'm only saying less.

Leo Laporte (00:51:05):
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:07):
I wonder, I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:51:07):
How committed Microsoft is to this, if it's, I mean, it could just be a PR thing, right? Look what we're doing. I don't

Paul Thurrott (00:51:14):
Who does that? I don't know. I mean, I, I I don't know who that benefits, you know, I mean, I, I, I'm, like I said, I'm surprised they're even doing this. I, but they are. And that's fantastic. And

Rich Campbell (00:51:27):
Well, I'll, I mean, I'll give you one context on it. Cause you're also seeing how many Linux, which is that the cloud vendors are afraid Yeah. Of cost instance infection. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:51:36):
Sure. That's what Mr. Lion is saying in Discord. A w s is behind this.

Rich Campbell (00:51:40):
Well, all of the cloud, this is the thing that cloud vendors fear, okay. Is that we are busy sharing,

Paul Thurrott (00:51:45):
Are running up in the, yeah, there you go. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. There

Rich Campbell (00:51:48):
You go. So anything we can do to start building code that would resist. Yeah. That exploit some surfacing. I mean, that was the real fear was Specter and Meltdown back in the day, right? Yeah. Was exactly that, that I could invoke in another process at vi visibility into data in, in, in your process.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:04):
Yeah. But in that case, we're talking about apps on the same system. Now. We're talking about different operating system installs on the same hardware. So the, the memory that's shared is across multiple Yep. Systems. It's even scarier. It's yeah. Security at scale. I guess

Rich Campbell (00:52:19):
It is the stuff that keeps the cloud owners awake at night, <laugh>. And, and that makes it worthwhile to just put the kind of energy we're talking about in, in, you know, rewriting operations is a terrible job. At best you get back to where you were more likely is you broke stuff that used to

Paul Thurrott (00:52:34):
Work. That's, yeah. That's that might be why they're talking about it, because the reality is no one is gonna realize a benefit No. When they don't get hacked. Yes. You know?

Rich Campbell (00:52:44):
But they will certainly notice when what used to work breaks, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:52:46):
Yes. Right. Yep. Cool. I'm gonna skip right over this stupid widget board story, cuz I just talked myself up. I just, yay.

Rich Campbell (00:52:57):
Still cares.

Leo Laporte (00:52:57):
I don't even know what it is.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:58):
Microsoft. What is

Rich Campbell (00:52:59):
Microsoft watch? Widgets is none. Zero widgets.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:04):
It's funny cause Apple use the widget party. The

Leo Laporte (00:53:05):
Rumor is apple's adding widgets back to the Apple watch. So if you miss your widgets,

Paul Thurrott (00:53:10):
Well, hold on a second though. Come on. The widgets that Apple would have on an Apple watch aren't gonna be the crap that we have in Windows 11. Right. I, every time I look at it, I want to gouge my eyes out. Why am I looking at it now? Stop doing this <laugh>. The point is, it's always terrible. It's always a new kind of terrible. I was tell I I, because I like boring my wife to death. I'll, I I was telling her the other day that in the beginning widgets were terrible because there's a pitcher, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:53:35):
Yeah. Well, it's got my, oh, that is picture photos.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:37):
Oh, see, that's okay. Leos the

Leo Laporte (00:53:39):
Board. Oh my God. The, I, something's come out about me. Oh, I'm in trouble. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:43):
So in the beginning it was terrible cuz it was always like, you're never gonna relieve what the celebrity award of this event. Or like, like

Leo Laporte (00:53:48):
How many Donald Trumps are in my widgets. Yeah. That's, that's telling, isn't it?

Paul Thurrott (00:53:53):
But the, the big thing that I see in the widget board today are these stories. They, they're not stories. They're the, the listical type things. Or you have to click next on the pitcher to see the next thing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just,

Leo Laporte (00:54:02):
You won't believe what happens next.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:03):
Customer service stories like or, or like road rage stories or like these, all these like nonsense garbage. It's just garbage. Yeah. It's just terrible.

Leo Laporte (00:54:11):
Garba. Yeah. Yeah. It's sad. The wives of the 25 most famous w w e wrestlers,

Paul Thurrott (00:54:18):
I mean, kill me. I just, what is

Leo Laporte (00:54:20):
This source? Bola VIP <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:22):
Yeah. Oh. But oh, we should say, oops, I clicked it. Oops. Oh, click on it. Where you go as Microsoft Star. I just,

Leo Laporte (00:54:29):
I just said by way

Paul Thurrott (00:54:30):
You click, you clicked on a listicle. This is, I just

Leo Laporte (00:54:34):
Sent a septic signal that I want

Paul Thurrott (00:54:35):
More. Yeah. So what you can't see, Leo, in that screen you're on right there is what you're supposed to be doing, supposedly is reading the text below the picture. Right. So e e each of those pictures, I could

Leo Laporte (00:54:47):
Do fewer stories like this. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:49):
Could. And it's not gonna, you know what,

Leo Laporte (00:54:50):
I'm gonna hide stories from Bo vip mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, whatever the hell that is.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:54):
<Laugh>. So, and I love how long it takes <laugh>, right. There's a little animation

Leo Laporte (00:54:58):
Shing

Paul Thurrott (00:54:59):
And now processing. Processing. I've

Leo Laporte (00:55:00):
Got the best guitar riffs of all time <laugh>, according to Guitar

Paul Thurrott (00:55:03):
World, I found it would be better if you just never opened widgets. And I wish to God, I think you're right, that you could do to widgets what you can do to the edge. New tab screen, which is turn off the newsfeed. Right. In other words, there are some widgets you might wanna put there for weather and your photo gallery and whatever other things you care about. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:55:22):
That's the main reason I

Paul Thurrott (00:55:23):
Have it there is that's a fun little cause

Leo Laporte (00:55:24):
I have weather in my corner. I like that.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:26):
So what happens is, like the, the strategy that people have now is they'll add enough of these custom widgets to the top to hide the news stuff. <Laugh>. Right. In other words, you don't, you won't see it cause it's below the fold. You shouldn't just have to think like that. Now, you know, if you light your desktop on, on fire, you'll ignore the newsfeed all day long. It's easy. <Laugh>. I just, yeah. I

Leo Laporte (00:55:50):
Kind of have done that. So I have the Giants, San Francisco Giants and weather. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:55):
Just cause you, you were, whether you knew what you were doing or not, you were hiding the crap. I

Leo Laporte (00:55:58):
Was hiding the craps. Not a, I need more widgets to hide the crap though, because it's apparently not

Paul Thurrott (00:56:03):
Hiding. Yeah. You're not, you're not, you're not tied yet. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:56:05):
Yeah. The comeback, whatever that is. Or bang, Malaysia. I mean, these, these sources are ridiculous. I know, I know, I know,

Paul Thurrott (00:56:13):
I know. Imagine if this was just Reuters and Associated

Leo Laporte (00:56:16):
Press Yeah. Then it would be Okay. I don't think I ever want to read an article from a source called Be Viral. Yeah. And by the way, the headline person does a knee buckle and lands in a death dive.

Rich Campbell (00:56:29):
No, no. That sounds like, Nope. It's just IQ points lost right

Leo Laporte (00:56:33):
There. Yeah. By the way, I don't have that three.menu on this. I just haven't that one.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:37):
Oh no, you do. It's below the pitcher. Oh. below

Leo Laporte (00:56:40):
The text. Oh, there it is. Oh, good. Move it around so we can't find it. That's clever <laugh>. That'll do it. And I need to manage my interests. Is

Rich Campbell (00:56:50):
Is this, are we literally at the point now where we're just playing whacka all, like, where's where's the option? Just block them All

Leo Laporte (00:56:58):
Right. Block 'em all. Gotta block 'em all.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:01):
So, sorry, I'm,

Leo Laporte (00:57:02):
I'm gonna manage my interests. Managing interests now how about just business news and technology that'll fix it. Right. And science <laugh>. There you go. That'll fix it. Nothing else, you know, take the NFL out.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:18):
I can't tell you how many times I've tried to <laugh> customize a feed like this and it just, it doesn't, let's see the thing, the thing you have to remember is there is actually an endless supply of crap. There is. Yeah. And so you can, you know, rock and

Leo Laporte (00:57:32):
Facts. You didn't know about the Eagles

Rich Campbell (00:57:34):
<Laugh>. I don't think it's changed a thing. Really

Leo Laporte (00:57:36):
Change anything. I

Rich Campbell (00:57:36):
Think you did. You did nothing. Oh, rapper.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:38):
I think what you did was you brought back that thing that you canceled earlier. They Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:57:42):
I did. I brought it back. Oh gosh. And I accidentally clicked on this, which is now telling Windows. I like it

Paul Thurrott (00:57:48):
Also, you were just serve an ad that's gonna follow you around the internet for the rest, rest life too, isn't it?

Leo Laporte (00:57:53):
Oh, try Microsoft 365 everything I need to achieve more in less time.

Rich Campbell (00:57:59):
Oh, it's like the, it's like the deceit interface. We hearing you let, we can cool you into clicking on next. We hearing

Leo Laporte (00:58:06):
You hide card. Okay. Bye-bye. I already own Microsoft,

Rich Campbell (00:58:11):
But there's no option to say, receive no more things from Microsoft. That's not an option. Of course not.

Leo Laporte (00:58:15):
Of course. Are you crazy now? Can I move this traffic cameras up? I wouldn't mind having that up at the top. Nope. Can't drag things, can you? I'm sorry. Let's just forget. Oh yeah. Let's just forget we ever, we ever met.

Rich Campbell (00:58:28):
I remember when you said we weren't gonna do the widget story

Leo Laporte (00:58:30):
<Laugh>. I remember <laugh>, but Oh good. I was able to move traffic cameras up. So now I am actually hiding

Rich Campbell (00:58:37):
All more. See,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:38):
There you go. Next door. Now you've, that was, was a good issue. Now you've

Rich Campbell (00:58:41):
Really solved it. Keep it below the fold. <Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:44):
That's Eish. Oh boy. Oh boy. Ish. Oh boy.

Leo Laporte (00:58:49):
Ish. All right. Sorry. Go ahead. Do other things.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:52):
So I wrote this just before this, this changed a little bit, but this month Stack Connor says that Safari has surpassed edge usage on the web, right. As a web browser. So obviously distant number two and three compared to Chrome. But if you look at these two browsers, they've been kind of paralleling each other for a while. I'm

Rich Campbell (00:59:13):
Just stunned the safari's that low down,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:16):
This is just a default browser. Sorry. Sorry,

Rich Campbell (00:59:18):
This is just on the desktop. Yeah, but that, here's why it's

Paul Thurrott (00:59:20):
Max it Yeah. If you yeah, if you look at all web browsers, safari actually is up in the, you know, Vera pretty high. Cuz you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative> a lot. I think a lot of Apple people tend to be loyal. And of course it has the cross platform stuff that is absolutely a benefit of that. So, yeah, I, I get that. But Safari usage, here's the thing. So we don't know how many Mac users there are. Exactly. Microsoft has pinned the number of Windows users at 1.5, 1.4 billion depending on the day of the week or whatever. Right? But if you, if you look at stat counters stats it suggests this is absolutely not the case, but it suggests that there could be 350 million max in the world if those numbers are all true. Wow. that's not true. But let's pretend it is because this doesn't, the, if if you, it doesn't change my argument.

(01:00:09):
Right? In other words, if there're only a hundred million or 200 million max, what I'm about, about say is actually worse. So this is a conservative way to make my point, which is this Apple with one quarter, the usage of Windows has as many or more people on their browser than does Microsoft. Interesting. <laugh>. So, yes, part of it is absolutely the cross-platform stuff, no doubt about it. It's also fair to point out that most people on every platform are using Chrome, you know, full stop. So nothing has stopped that. However, I think it says a lot about Edge that its usage is now lower, we'll call it the same, roughly the same as Safari, despite the fact that it is pre-installed is the default on at least four times as many computers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> more than that, but let's just say four, it doesn't matter.

(01:01:01):
And it pops up whether you want to use it or not. They, there, there's all these underhanded tactics that they employ to get you to use it. So you choose Chrome or Firefox, whatever you like. As you default browser, you click on a search highlight, you click on one of those widget stories. There's a couple of different places in ui it loads an edge anyway. So Des, despite all the underhanded tactics that Microsoft has employed, they still have only managed to engage one quarter. I'm gonna argue it's a lot less than that, but we'll call it one quarter of the respective user base that Apple has. So why, like, why is that? And I think it's cuz Apple, if you go and look, if you don't have a Mac, go look at the web, go to apple.com/safari and look at what this browser is.

(01:01:41):
And what this browser is, is nothing. It just gets outta your way and you browser web with it. That's what it does. Right. Put stuff in front of you. It's just not busy with, it doesn't have that widget like thing you just looked at with all the crap in it on its homepage. It's just, it's for there for you to use to browse the web and whatever we think about Apple, I'm not the world's biggest fan of Apple. I think people would understand. I've been pretty critical. But this product is minimalist and it and B, both in design, like the way it looks, but also in the way that it works. And Bed Edge. Bed, yeah. Edge is busy and it gets in your way and it's constantly adding new features between now and the beginning of the year. I think Microsoft has added like 17 new features to Edge. Now some of them are useful. I I I, I know, I know. Don't, don't worry about that stuff, but I, ed Edge is like, is designed to just push crap. That whole thing we just did with the widgets, that's Edge <laugh>, that's what Edge is.

Rich Campbell (01:02:39):
They're really, really trying to help you.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:41):
Yeah. It really, I I, I

Rich Campbell (01:02:43):
Know you didn't want any help, but they really want to help you.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:46):
This, I think this proves, pr proves is a strong word, but strongly suggests that Microsoft's approach with web browsing is much worse than Apples, even though they went with the industry standard browser rendering engine, et cetera, et cetera. And that when we talk about this in shift five thing that we talk about so much, that that's what Edge is, and that's not what Safari is. And I I, I don't mean to say it. Well I almost said it, but I, I wish, I don't really wish I could have safari windows. What I wish is I could have an edge on Windows that was like safari,

Rich Campbell (01:03:19):
Right? Where is SAF s where is Safari mode?

Paul Thurrott (01:03:22):
Yeah. Right. Safari mode. Get outta my way.

Rich Campbell (01:03:26):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:27):
Now there are some rumors that mi Microsoft might be putting a front end onto Edge that would let you uncheck c certain features which I would welcome wholeheartedly, but I don't know. It's just, it's depressing.

Rich Campbell (01:03:41):
Yeah. Gimme the quiet version.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:43):
There's also and you know, I get a lot of pushback from Edge users who will tell me something like, well, I like the browser, I like the features. Okay, that's fine. Or well, at least it's not Safari <laugh>. At least it's not Safari. It is Safari. You are getting tracked as much with this browser as you are with Safari. Not Safari. I'm sorry, with Chrome. With Chrome. Sorry about that. It's as bad as Chrome in that regard. The only difference is the ad network that your information is going to is owned by Microsoft. Now Google. So it's probably not as sophisticated. I mean this and it's not as pervasive. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:04:19):
Microsoft didn't have to go that way either. This is not like this is their principle revenue model. They could have done this

Paul Thurrott (01:04:24):
Differently. They want it to be a principle revenue model, which I think is part of the problem. And

Rich Campbell (01:04:27):
That you're totally right. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:29):
It's like, now

Rich Campbell (01:04:30):
Why, why fall down this toxic path that's clearly on the end that, that is struggling. Like is bit by bit, the customer doesn't want this anymore and are looking for alternatives and are subverting your your intent. Yeah. Like why would, you know, my, wasn't it statue who said we're not going to, we're not racing for second anymore <laugh>. Right? So why is down the same Path?

Paul Thurrott (01:04:51):
Path? There's no race. They're just there. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:04:53):
Because the guys at the top are saying, Hey, this model isn't working for us anymore. And you're still ready to try to get to the point where you care that the model doesn't work anymore.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:00):
Yeah. Now someone in the co the comments in the Discord comments here has raised an issue which is pertinent to this, which is, you know, apple can do this because people pay them directly for the hardware. That's what, you know, that sort of subsidizes the whole thing. Microsoft's kind of hardware subsidization program, so to speak, has gotten a lot less effective because people don't upgrade as often and they do the partner strategy then let

Rich Campbell (01:05:22):
Me, let me throw it at you this way then. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, give me an M 365 browser.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:25):
Thank you. 100%. This is,

Rich Campbell (01:05:27):
I'll pay you every month.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:29):
Yeah. I will pay you extra every month for this over on top of what I'm already paying you. Yes, for sure.

Rich Campbell (01:05:33):
To have a browser that doesn't suck.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:35):
And, and an operating system that doesn't suck. This is, yeah. Get rid of the ads, get rid of the tracking, get rid of all that stuff. Get rid of the bloat. Get rid of all the stupid features, or at least gimme the check boxes where I can say no to stuff and remember it ti sync it to my Microsoft account. You,

Rich Campbell (01:05:49):
You're, you've already got my credentials. Yep. I'm already paying you. Yep. Burning. And, and literally we could have a button. I have a button on this account that says, make it not suck.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:00):
This is I don't mean to stop system is perfect, but the system is perfect because it serves everybody. There are people who can't afford to do this. And this is a very standard model for that kind of a thing. People who wanna pay extra for a premium service can get a better service. It's the difference between business class and coach, I guess, or whatever. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the reality is everyone gets to fly. Yes. You're gonna have a slightly worse experience if you fly in the back of the plane. That's the unfortunate reality of it. But it's better to have that choice than to just to be sorry we're Southwest <laugh>, you know? Yeah. Or whatever airline you can't stand. It's, it's just horrible that there's no choice. And and I

Rich Campbell (01:06:37):
I I'm just staggered that they went down the same path. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:39):
Yep. I don't like, look, I, I own my own little stupid website and we have a premium program and we have terrible ads for people who don't pay. And that's the, the reality. I can't control the way the world works, but even I can offer this as a, as a, an option. I mean, why can't Microsoft do this? Yeah. And that's a direct relationship too. I mean, when we used to buy win buy windows, you know, or upgrade Windows, whatever, there wasn't really much of a direct relationship between Microsoft and their customers, individuals on that side. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. This, this creates that relationship. And I trust Microsoft and, and I or should be able to trust Microsoft and I would pay them for this service. And I think a lot of people,

Rich Campbell (01:07:17):
Especially if you, if you're already paying for an N 365 account, like, I'm not even saying just turn everything off. Give me control over it. That's right. Show me the digital effluent coming out of my browser Yep. That I can now choose what goes where

Paul Thurrott (01:07:31):
It, it makes me. So, like they had

Rich Campbell (01:07:33):
Said, they had all the opportunities, they had everything to do this.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:36):
When, when they announced this chromium version of Edge, I thought, this is it. They, they're gonna, yeah. They're gonna take the world's, you know, most popular browser, get rid of all the chro the Google stuff, right? Yes. This is something I'm gonna be able to use and recommend to people. And then what you find out is no. And then you see the, they fell the same track receptive practices, they, the, this language they use during setup to make it seem like you're making the web better, when in fact you're just allowing more tracking and the way they keep coming back again and again and again. You don't even know what they're asking you. You just like click through it. And that's the point. They want you to open it up even further.

Rich Campbell (01:08:08):
How do I, Hey, I'm gonna give you subtle dialogues that, that you'll find the quickest way to get rid of, so I get what I

Paul Thurrott (01:08:14):
Want from you. Yep. It's just underhanded and it's the, it's the, it's a, this is, this is a bad relationship. <Laugh>.

Rich Campbell (01:08:20):
It's unfor it's unfortunate because Yeah. And it also sucks, right? Like, that's the sad part. So

Paul Thurrott (01:08:26):
Sad. So sad. Hey,

Rich Campbell (01:08:27):
Hey, if I wanted to be exploited, I just would've stayed with Crime Chrome. You know? It would be simpler.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:32):
Right? Right. Exactly. I just, I just, I just wish Say what to fix this. Semi-Related to this <laugh> in the past week, one of the many new features Microsoft added to Edge this year, this calendar year all of a sudden people started noticing that every time you were browsing the web, everything that you did on the web was being sent to Bing. Now this sounds nefarious, right? Yep. But no, what this is, is a poorly written new feature that allows you to follow influencers or whatever on YouTube and other sites, I guess even though tho their systems for doing that exist in those services you can do it through your Edge web browser. There's a collections interface you might be familiar with. They added it to that. This thing has been part of collections for many months.

(01:09:19):
It's just that there was no obvious UI for it. So they added the obvious UI and now it tracks you everywhere you go. So Microsoft said they were investigating it. It appears to be a mistake. So they're probably gonna fix it in a that made it all the way into production. Yep. Again, because that's what happens when you don't test features. Yeah. In an insider program, which I does have an insider program, so I don't know, I don't know if that one was actually that maybe that one was tested. I don't know. So anyone else who still using Edge we need to have a word <laugh>. I

Leo Laporte (01:09:53):
Still use it. And this is probably in inertia as much as anything else don't is for my PDF reader. I don't use it to browse the web

Paul Thurrott (01:10:00):
For your PDF reader. Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:10:01):
Yeah. I could get Firefox to do that instead, but I like to separate. I like to separate what? Not

Rich Campbell (01:10:05):
Adobe. Oh my goodness.

Leo Laporte (01:10:07):
<Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:08):
So you're saying that Edge has two good uses. You can use it to install Firefox and use it as a PDF free. Perfect. There you go. Keep it around. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:10:17):
The reason being, I want it, I don't want it to PDFs to get into my Firefox. I want to keep 'em separate.

Rich Campbell (01:10:22):
<Laugh>. Ooh. Is that a PDF in your Firefox? Sticky, sticky,

Paul Thurrott (01:10:28):
Sticky.

Leo Laporte (01:10:28):
There isn't really a strong, compelling reason to use Edge, except that it's just what the default, right? I mean, there's no, is there anything it does better than anything? I mean, safari, as you say, has an advantage. It's simple, right? And it's clean.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:42):
Well, look, there are no, there, there are user interface niceties to edge that people like, and, and Edge in this way is a lot like Windows. There's a million features. And you know, this guy likes this feature. This guy likes this feature. You know, that kind thing. And so it's, it's become a grab bag of stuff. I I, the original vision of this was it for it to be, you know, remember we're gonna get outta your way and not don't, they would use Chrome with a small c like, don't worry about the browser Chrome. We're gonna show you the content was all about that kind of thing. And it really kind of isn't.

Leo Laporte (01:11:16):
Newman says edge is great for touch. That that might be good. Yeah. That might be a good reason to do it.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:21):
Okay. Well, those 17 guys can use that. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:25):
Iridescent Ox says, I love the read aloud feature. Yeah, there

Paul Thurrott (01:11:28):
You go. There you go. Yep. Yep. Yeah, no, there are definitely things that it does. You know, I I think some of the chat, well, I'm sorry, <laugh>, the Bing chat bot integration's kind of interesting to people, you know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:39):
That's why Yeah. That was what got me kind of to re

Paul Thurrott (01:11:42):
Yeah. I mean, I browser makers are starting to do sidebars. The idea is that you're on a page doing something you don't wanna leave to go do something else. You could have this other thing on the side. And that's that's interesting. I mean, I, I don't care myself, but I mean, that's something that people like and Yeah, that's fine. But yeah, the problem is for I, God, I gotta bring up Edge just to look at it. I gotta hate

Leo Laporte (01:12:02):
Myself. Scooter X says you're, this is the Edge case. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:06):
Yes. It's, yeah. Making

Leo Laporte (01:12:08):
The Edge case. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:10):
The, the, yeah, the, the, the, the problem with this kind of thing is, I would argue that most of these features are, are better added to a browser via an extension. Right? And that in doing so, you create something that would of course would not just work on your browser. You it would work any on any chromium based browser. Microsoft doesn't want that. And they want people to use this thing. And I, I just, I dunno, <laugh>, it just makes me, ugh, every time I look at this thing, I want to, I just makes me sad. It's too bad. But it does split screen. You want split screen?

Leo Laporte (01:12:44):
Oh boy. Mm-Hmm.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:45):
<Affirmative> people like Split Splitscreen. I don't know. Anyhow, there you go. There's that,

Leo Laporte (01:12:52):
That was our, yeah, that was <laugh> between Widgets and Edge. You just used half an hour of, of my life. I know. I'm never gonna get back.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:00):
I know. I'm so sorry. Or I'm well, or You're welcome. You know, really? I don't know, <laugh>, I dunno how you want to take that.

Leo Laporte (01:13:07):
I, I've literally spent this entire time customizing widgets. Cuz you, cause you brought it up trying to

Paul Thurrott (01:13:11):
I'm okay then I trying to get it to work very. Then, then I am sorry. I I can, I can state with some certainty. You will never get that where you want

Leo Laporte (01:13:18):
It to. Yeah, no, you're right.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:19):
Yeah. And I wish, like I said, I I, they, they could make this thing useful. And the way to do that is to only to have a view where the newsfeed disappears and you only have the, the widgets you decide on. And one of the side benefits of that could be, I don't know that it is today, that information sources like Bloomberg or whatever could create their own widget. And then you could have these widgets for high quality sources that you chose that just appear there. That would be kind of nice.

Leo Laporte (01:13:46):
I just wanna take Microsoft out of my Stockwatch list, but they won't let me. I don't care. I don't watch. Oh, no, you need to watch. Oh, no, I don't wanna watch. Please. Tape the eye tape. Tape tape the eyelids open. You're gonna watch <laugh>. Oh God, it's not, I mean, I just, I'm not, I don't have any Microsoft stock, so I really don't care. <Laugh>, right. Okay. Well now we know what to get you for Christmas. Thank you. Actually, you what? The best Christmas present I ever gave Michael, our 20 year olds, a Green Bay Packers fan. I bought him a share in the Green Bay Packers, and he's got it framed on the wall.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:20):
I, so I had a friend from back from grade school who in the early 1990s gave me a share of commoner stock. And guess how much that's worth today? <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:14:31):
But what a piece of history you

Paul Thurrott (01:14:32):
Have. Yes. I still have it. Actually. It's kind of a cool, cause you were

Leo Laporte (01:14:35):
AGA guy.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:36):
I think that's cool.

Leo Laporte (01:14:37):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:14:38):
It's a, it's a beautiful looking document for sure. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:14:40):
Yes, yes. Stock certificates are really be cool. Yeah, they're beautiful. I don't know what, where they're used,

Paul Thurrott (01:14:45):
But we had to get our a copy of our wedding certificate, I guess, is that what it's called? A wedding? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> certificate. For when we bought the apartment in Mexico and this thing came and it was in Boston, had gold leaf on. Wait a minute. I was like, the, you have

Leo Laporte (01:14:57):
To prove you're married to get an apartment together in

Paul Thurrott (01:14:59):
Mexico. We were bought. So

Leo Laporte (01:15:02):
You're not living in sin?

Paul Thurrott (01:15:04):
I I don't, we had to do it for Yes. I don't, I guess so.

Leo Laporte (01:15:07):
I guess your joint

Rich Campbell (01:15:08):
Proof a marriage. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:09):
But here in the US you could just say, you know, we, we, we, you know, we

Paul Thurrott (01:15:13):
Don't No, no. We never needed it. I, we, we had never seen this before. Oh, that's funny. So her parents got it at the, wherever they did it locally, and they sent it to us. And I was like, Aw, this

Leo Laporte (01:15:22):
Isn't that sweet.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:23):
We should get another one of these is really nice. Put it

Leo Laporte (01:15:25):
Over the marital bed.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:27):
It's it's pretty, I know it's the marital bed. <Laugh> <laugh>. Anything that happens to the bed stays in the bed. There you go. So <laugh>,

Rich Campbell (01:15:35):
Do you wanna talk hardware vendors dying,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:38):
Please? Yes. These intel. Yeah. Continuing the theme of the PC industry is in trouble. Intel and AMD just released their earnings intel. I don't think it's unkind of these to say circling the drain maybe. Yeah, a loss of 2.8 billion in revenues of 11.7, which is a 36% year over year downfall, if you will, in revenues. Obviously the PC part of the business, which is their Intel client computing group is the big problem. And well, data center is pretty bad too, actually. So client computing fell 38% revenue wise to 5.88 billion data center and AI business data center fell 39% to 3.7 billion. I mean, sell Foundry services, which is the future of the company down 24% <laugh>. I mean, it's like, ooh. You know, but

Rich Campbell (01:16:27):
All of these things were up because of the pandemic and Yeah. And the other, the other part of the, I think that's interesting on this is, and they're, they would have made money, but they're building so many foundries right now. They spent a tremendous amount of, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:42):
So, right. The one thing Intel is doing is investing heavily in their future, and that's the Foundry services part of it. And

Rich Campbell (01:16:48):
Partly getting outta Southeast Asia, like, don't build in Taiwan. Right. Like you,

Paul Thurrott (01:16:53):
Well, you know, I, so yes, Phil, first of all, I, is this smart? Is this the right strategy? I think it's, it's, it's a strategy. I mean, it's a good idea. I do think we need more of these companies that can build these things, right? Yeah. We don't, not just tmsc. But I, I maybe one of you guys will remember, I I just saw a headline that Yeah, no, I remember. They're gonna build a foundry. T m SSC is going to in Germany. T

Leo Laporte (01:17:17):
S by the way, T S M C.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:18):
T S M C, I'm sorry. And that Well, there you go. I mean, that's gonna be the pro what, what happen because their,

Leo Laporte (01:17:24):
Their foundry in Arizona's founding, I thought maybe.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:27):
Yeah, I thought so too. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:29):
They don't like the so they, they were using money from the CHIPS Act, but there's some very severe restrictions on what you could do with the CHIPS

Paul Thurrott (01:17:36):
Act. Well, they want it to be, they, they most of that to be US companies. Right? Right. I mean, the point of it is, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:42):
So maybe Germany's a more favorable environment.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:44):
I I'm positive it is. So I mean, I think spreading the wealth, so to speak makes sense no matter which company we're talking about here. So yeah, you want these things all over the place because, you know, what happens to Apple if China just wakes up one day and says, yeah, yeah, we're shutting this all down, you know, trust me,

Leo Laporte (01:18:01):
Apple's well aware of this. Yeah, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:04):
I mean, the world's biggest company Right. Could be brought to their knees by, well, if you looked at the

Rich Campbell (01:18:08):
Facilities they've built out in India for exactly that reason. Right, right. Fox go had a whole group over there. The phone fourteens being built in India, not in China. Right, right.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:17):
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Some of that's, some of them are, it's gonna, yeah, it's gonna take a while, but it's, yeah, it's coming. Or they're trying to at least diversify there. That makes sense. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> AM MD is not immune to the same problem. So am md net loss 139 million on revenues of 5.4 billion. I just kind of put that in perspective. A M d used to be, I would say, a, a quarter to one third the size of Intel by

Rich Campbell (01:18:42):
Revenue. Yeah. Not even. Yeah. The, it's,

Paul Thurrott (01:18:44):
It's, it's half. It's half half. That's a big change. Not that they're doing well. I mean, that income pledged 118% revenues fell only 9%, but their client group, which is the PC market part of it 65% drop to just, it's not even a billion dollars, like 739 billion. Last year, the same quarter, they had 2.1 billion in revenues. And and actually their client stuff is kinda split between that and gaming, right. Because they sold graphics products for the PC and also the gaming industries. That actually was flat <laugh> pretty much, it was down, I think maybe down 1% or something. Was it 1.76 billion in revenue? So I think it was 1.8 or something. It was, it was close. It was, it wasn't too bad.

Rich Campbell (01:19:29):
These are the numbers that make me not surprised that companies like Microsoft are pulling back. Yeah. Because they, these are sort of the leading indicators for impact for them on as a trailing indicator. Like they're now worried about their next quarters looking at these. I hope it doesn't, I hope it isn't true that they're, they're misreading it, but Right. Certainly on the hardware side, there's so many factors moving on here. But I think the big one is that they're investing so heavily because they've been driven to that. They, they probably would've done a lot better without all of this investment, without anticipating the downturn they were gonna have.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:04):
Listen if they could be the biggest turnaround in the world and will be singing their praises in three or four years, who can say, but I, it's a big bet. I, I, I give 'em credit for taking the bet. I mean, it's, it's, it's we'll see. Yep. We'll see. But here's the good news. We we're always looking for that light at the end of the tunnel, and interestingly, both Intel and AM MD predicted that they would see growth in the second half of the year and that the PC and server markets are gonna rebound. So not to, you know, pandemic levels. I, I think right now where everyone would be very happy with pre pandemic levels, but Yeah. Obviously we're looking for this thing too. We are, we are dealing with an oscillation here that is Yeah. Feedback of the best. That's gonna be ugly. Yeah. Short term is pretty ugly. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:20:49):
All right. Let's now that we've really cheered everybody up let's change the subject for a second and talk about our sponsor, if you don't mind. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then back with more, we'll talk Microsoft 365. We'll talk surface. I'm sure there's some Xbox news Paul can shoehorn into the show.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:09):
<Laugh> just

Leo Laporte (01:21:10):
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Paul Thurrott (01:24:27):
I don't know. We're figuring out our next steps here. Yeah, we have a short term lease, so

Leo Laporte (01:24:32):
Won't be forever.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:34):
I don't think so. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:24:36):
We were if I were you, I'd be in Mexico now and forever.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:39):
I says, listen, I please,

Leo Laporte (01:24:41):
I Can you, what are the residency requirements? Can you, do you have to leave every few months?

Paul Thurrott (01:24:46):
No, I can stay there for a year now. A

Leo Laporte (01:24:47):
Year, and then go home. For how long?

Paul Thurrott (01:24:50):
Just for a minute. <Laugh>. Oh, let's just cross

Leo Laporte (01:24:52):
The border once.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:53):
Yeah. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:24:54):
Come up, visit us, go back home. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:56):
Yeah. Well, we'll always, the problem is I have kids and cats

Leo Laporte (01:25:00):
And ah, kids. I know kids. We'll get

Paul Thurrott (01:25:02):
There. We'll get there,

Leo Laporte (01:25:03):
Cats. Okay. But kids are harder too.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:05):
I'm thinking about abandoned. Yeah, I'm thinking about killing the cats. They're getting annoying. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:25:09):
No, don't say that. You're gonna get us in a lot of trouble. He's not folks. He's joking.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:13):
I'm kidding. He's kidding. I've had cats my whole life. He loves

Leo Laporte (01:25:17):
The kitties.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:18):
They're a little entitled. Oh God. They are cats.

Leo Laporte (01:25:22):
Yeah. So last night I go to bed, Sammy's on, they look like the sphinxes, one side

Paul Thurrott (01:25:28):
Of the

Leo Laporte (01:25:29):
Bed sitting like this. Paris is the other side of the bed. Look, we're like guard cats. And they

Paul Thurrott (01:25:34):
Say I one of our cats, one of our cats has done everything she can to kill herself. Like she's multiple times, has tried to kill herself. Nine lives. And her latest thing is she'll, she'll go under the covers of the bed. Yeah. And just be, it's just like a lump on the bed. Like I,

Leo Laporte (01:25:47):
There's no breath, there's

Paul Thurrott (01:25:48):
No I plop down on the bed, hair down, socks on, and next to me I hear ramp, she goes, ramp, ramp,

Leo Laporte (01:25:53):
Ramp.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:55):
It's like, cat, I, I, I literally am gonna kill you someday. My why? Like, what are you doing <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (01:26:02):
Wow. Yeah. Okay. Not smart. Okay. But we love cats and we are not in any way advocating cat lover cats. No, no, no.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:12):
Sometimes No, no <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:26:14):
No, never, never ever, ever. Lisa is such a cat lover. Sure. We now have pillows throughout the house with cats on them. In case a cat is not available. You could pat the pillow.

Rich Campbell (01:26:26):
We have a cat shaped object

Leo Laporte (01:26:28):
Available to you everywhere. Wow. And, and I should show you some pictures. We've got, there's one area of the living room, the main living area that is entirely cat toys, cat play things, cat towers. Have we

Paul Thurrott (01:26:39):
Cat scratches the time to have that conversation about cat ladies and

Leo Laporte (01:26:43):
Oh, she's a cat lady, you know? Yeah. She says that. I knew it when I married her. I knew it. It's fine. I actually like cats. It is what? It's, it is what? It's, I like cats. I don't mind it. I don't mind it. We,

Rich Campbell (01:26:54):
We are animal free at the moment and then it's not

Leo Laporte (01:26:56):
Bad. Well see, we were talking about this cuz Paul can't, you know, Paul has, I

Paul Thurrott (01:27:00):
Can't leave.

Leo Laporte (01:27:01):
He, Paul has obligations

Paul Thurrott (01:27:02):
Been, I stayed in a house and paid property taxes cuz I have a dog, <laugh> mm-hmm.

Leo Laporte (01:27:07):
<Affirmative>, you know. Yeah. At the time. Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:11):
It's like my daughter said own home. She wanted to be able to come home at Thanksgiving and you know, to have dinner. Cause we had this beautiful rum and everything. I'm like, Kelly, I'm not paying $8,500 a year in property taxes so you can come home for a weekend and have your dream dinner <laugh>. You know, like this is not how the, this is not how the world works.

Leo Laporte (01:27:28):
Yeah. This is not the system. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:31):
Anyway,

Leo Laporte (01:27:32):
Any who, Lisa is now sending me cat pictures hoping that I will. There you go. I will play them on the air, but I'm not gonna do that to you kids. We will move on to Microsoft 365.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:45):
Yeah. So anyone who has engaged with Microsoft on the web on the commercial side of the house has probably noticed that there are hundreds and hundreds of domains. And then if you just interact with a, a few of them, you kind of forget where to go. It's like, I have Microsoft 365 and Azure and like, what, what's where, like where am I going? You know, that kind of thing. So they announced the inevitable that they're going to move to a single top level domain for all of this stuff over time. They'll forward the old domain names obviously. And I I, when I first read this, I assumed what they meant was microsoft.com and that the cohesive domain would be cloud.microsoft.com. But no, the, the top level domain is.microsoft. Oh no. Yes. So if you go to Microsoft 365 or office.com, whatever it is today and in the future, this will be.microsoft. And so that's

Rich Campbell (01:28:43):
A lot of typing.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:44):
I know, I know.

Rich Campbell (01:28:46):
I mean it was.ms I could almost get behind it.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:48):
Yep. I think yeah. Dot ms Is that Mississippi? I don't know. No, probably not actually. I don't know.

Rich Campbell (01:28:54):
Montserrat.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:55):
Montserrat.

Rich Campbell (01:28:56):
Yeah. I was checking <laugh>. Now listen, we are talking Microsoft.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:59):
Yep. Like the

Rich Campbell (01:29:00):
Number two most valuable. They could buy Montserrat. I mean it's just

Paul Thurrott (01:29:03):
Not that hot. Hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, and they could put a Microsoft store there, it'd be good. Mm-Hmm.

Rich Campbell (01:29:07):
<Affirmative>,

Paul Thurrott (01:29:08):
But they're, yeah, it's gonna be cloud.microsoft. So,

Rich Campbell (01:29:13):
You know, they tried to buy my a master

Paul Thurrott (01:29:16):
<Laugh>. They must have tried. I hope so. Yeah. Ms Ft maybe. I don't know. I guess, I dunno.

Rich Campbell (01:29:22):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:29:23):
I think they were going for memorable.

Rich Campbell (01:29:26):
Yeah. I'm remembering to never type this

Paul Thurrott (01:29:29):
<Laugh>. Yeah, <laugh>. Yep. Anyway, that's happening. All right. So that's not a big deal with it, but that's happening. Bigger deal. We've got two previews that have occurred that people have been waiting for in some ways loop preview. Right. So I've been using that. That's cool. Now supports personal accounts Good. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and and I think we're, we should probably experiment with doing that for the show notes. Maybe we'll do that in a few weeks.

Rich Campbell (01:29:53):
Yeah, that's right.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:55):
I have used now that I've been able to kind of use it out in the world. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I will say it, yes. Very much like Notion, but also has some of the keyboard shortcuts from Microsoft Office or Microsoft Word. I guess that I Nice. Like, and yeah. So it has that advantage. And then Microsoft Designer is also available in an open preview that was available previously in a, I think a limited preview, some kind of stuff

Rich Campbell (01:30:16):
Speaking about domains. That's designer Microsoft

Paul Thurrott (01:30:19):
Designer.Microsoft com. Of course, it's okay. I it's

Rich Campbell (01:30:23):
A, that's a good domain, man. Like people remember that.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:26):
No, no. I mean, <laugh>, I meant the product. You know, the domains guy. No,

Rich Campbell (01:30:30):
Nobody cares about the product. That's

Paul Thurrott (01:30:31):
Great. Yeah, it's, well, it, I think people are confused by the product. It's kind of a a tool like Canva if you're familiar with that kind of thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> or what's the Adobe? Adobe, I think it's what's, what's the Adobe thing called? Not Creative Cloud, but creative just express Adobe Express, but used to call Creative Cloud Express. So it's just a web service that helps you create graphics and other assets for websites and social media and stuff like that. So if you're a content creator, you would use a service like that. It's okay. It has some some of the big chatbot, you know integration stuff. So you can describe something to it and we'll create a, a graphic of it, it looks like kind of a dolly style thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because that's what it is on the backend. So

Rich Campbell (01:31:12):
Dolly engines involved. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:13):
Yep. That's okay. I I've used other things. I, I use other things. I, I I do need, I have this need. I, I

Rich Campbell (01:31:19):
Was thinking I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this thing off for Aing to build the graphics for a new slide deck I need.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:24):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I I, I use stuff like this to create graphics for our eternal spring YouTube channel. But I, the trick

Rich Campbell (01:31:33):
Is to get a consistent style, right? I mean, that's really what you want. It's like I got yeah. 10 slides here for 10 ideas I want to communicate, but I want 'em to all have that sort of, they hang together.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:42):
Yeah. I, I, I have a semi-unique need in the sense that because I have this website and I have to use graphics on each image, image on each article, you, you can go to Unsplash and, you know, PXA Bay and stuff, and this all the stock photo, you know, stuff you can use mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's, it's, honestly, it's pretty good, but of course you don't own it. Right. So, and what I mean by that is that picture could appear anywhere. Right? Right. So, okay. I mean, it's okay. It's not the worst thing in the world stock

Rich Campbell (01:32:05):
Photo generator.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:06):
Yeah. It's, well, that's the thing. I mean, these AI services now you can create, I haven't done this, this yet, but you can create a photo realistic image that is, will be unique to you and that there's some value to that. Right. I got we got in trouble a few years ago where Microsoft back in, I don't know, 2016, held a build conference as they do as, as they do as they do. And they had these graphical assets. It was a picture of the Seattle, you know, skyline with the BUILD logo on it. Right. And of course, every, me and everyone else used that photo to talk about build, you know, build's coming on whatever date, and then years go by and their license for expires. And then the photographer that took the photo went and tried to sue everybody <laugh>. So cuz we're all using his photo and it's like, dude, what are you, what are you talking about? It, I I, you can clearly say I'm using the Microsoft version of it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, go get them. Have fun. I'm assuming them, but that's a, that's a real issue. So Yeah. It's you know, this stuff is interesting. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff going on there. Well, and it

Rich Campbell (01:33:05):
Is interesting you say like, how are you going to prove that you have a generated image? If someone says, you know, I'm gonna sue you for this. Well, it's like, Hey, I use Dally to generate this.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:14):
Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, I don't know. I, I mean, I guess I could just <laugh> take a screenshot of Dolly and be like, here it is so you can see it. Here's what I made it. Is that

Rich Campbell (01:33:24):
What I need to do? I need to screenshot me making

Paul Thurrott (01:33:26):
It and then Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:33:27):
And then save the image itself. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:33:29):
You do, wait, we did this for stuff, right? So what, I just did this for something I canceled some online service. I've gotten in trouble in the past where I, I'll just make it, it wasn't really Paramount Plus, but one of those types of services where I sign up, I use it for the free month, and then I cancel, and then a month goes by and I get a bill and I'm like, I canceled this. And they're like, I, we don't see any record of that. And so I've actually started taking screenshots of the site when I canceled stuff. When you cancel it. Yeah. It's like, guys, I I, you know, I, I don't know if this is a, an official record, but I, I can at least prove to myself that I did it.

Leo Laporte (01:33:59):
I don't know how well this is gonna work, but what I've lately been doing, you know, we have a sponsor called privacy.com mm-hmm. <Affirmative> where you can generate credit cards and I always generate 'em for that kind of thing. That's so

Paul Thurrott (01:34:09):
Smart to do.

Leo Laporte (01:34:10):
Yeah. And then stop it. I just paused the credit card Of course. And say, you figure it out. I'm not paying you anymore.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:15):
I like the idea of a one use credit card number. Yeah, you can do it for like one time. Purchases is one thing. I know Amex does this and there are probably other credit cards, but what you're talking about is a card. It's like when you create a unique email address for an email newsletter, it

Leo Laporte (01:34:28):
Has a variety of uses. So you could say, this is for one time only, you could say it's for this merchant only

Paul Thurrott (01:34:33):
Recurring. Right? Right.

Leo Laporte (01:34:35):
You can set a limit to how much money, and then it has a pause feature. So anytime there's a subscription that I don't want anymore, instead of, I know, I'm sure companies hate this, I

Paul Thurrott (01:34:44):
Just, no, but you gotta do this stuff. It's, and it's also I think the problem with subscriptions is you forget mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and I think a lot, I think a, a huge part of this business model relies on people just not looking at their banking accounts. Right. You know, they, they, they don't see it coming out. It's the gym hub. I

Leo Laporte (01:35:00):
Mean, how many times have you joined a gym and then just kind of stop going after a while, but still pay

Paul Thurrott (01:35:04):
For it? Yep. Right. That's

Leo Laporte (01:35:06):
How all gyms work. They don't expect to use it

Paul Thurrott (01:35:10):
As someone who goes to the gym. I love those people, by the way, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:35:12):
Yeah. Right. They're subsidizing.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:13):
You keep, keep doing that. That's right. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:35:15):
They're keeping the gym price low.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:17):
Yep.

(01:35:19):
this is less exciting than I'd hoped, but Mic Microsoft announced a, a major, like, I'll call it a visual and maybe even a functional overhaul of OneDrive. Nice. none of it is available now, <laugh>. So if you go through the list of all the stuff that's coming they did a basic redesign of the homepage, not a big deal, but all the big stuff. The for you section, which is all AI driven stuff that you need to know about the ability to browse by the people you're working with, or the meetings that you've had. See all the documents associated with each on and on and on it goes. None of that's available. So depending on the feature, it's coming this quarter, later this year. By the end of the year, <laugh>, like, they have all this different language. So it's like this year, oh, and I should say, I'm sorry, the fa the final one is, this is only for work in school. Right. It's not for the the consumer accounts. So even though this, this should be coming to everybody a and probably some of it will, right? But they haven't announced anything for consumers. So this is only for work and school accounts. So yeah, someday <laugh>, I guess it's common. I don't know.

Rich Campbell (01:36:29):
I'm trying to figure out if there's business here anymore. Right? I mean, everybody needs to store stuff. There's so much given away. There's so many different places. Like I feel for the drop boxes of the world. Right. Just because, you know, the Googles and the Microsofts don't need to make money off of storage.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:45):
Yeah. I, I, someone asked me about this, they, someone asked a question around, okay, so I don't use OneDrive like this <laugh>, like I don't use it on the web. Why are they doing this? Like, what, what, what is the point of this? You know? And I, and this is a very Microsoft thing. I mean, people interact with these services in different ways. They're probably half a dozen or more entry points to OneDrive. You could access it through teams. You can obviously go through the file system integration and Windows. You could use it in a mobile app. And some of these things are, there's a, well, not an office app, but Microsoft 365 app now in Windows. Yeah, I don't know. <Laugh>, different people do different things. I don't know. I mean, I guess if you run a Chromebook, you'd have to do it this way right now. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:37:31):
Maybe it's also like the gym model where a lot of people Yeah. Pay for it, but don't use it. I bet you that's the case that you

Paul Thurrott (01:37:39):
Just Oh, with online stories, def definitely Definit. Yeah. You forget

Leo Laporte (01:37:41):
About it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:42):
Yeah. But there's also this people that kind of abuse it. Like they'll throw up like a gigabyte of whatever nonsense, like video rips and stuff, and then never access it even once. And Microsoft has to, you know, legally take care of that. I, I'm sure it's a little bit of both, but yeah, I dunno. I tried to separate this story out from my previous seven rants on this episode because, you know, I want to spread the wealth a little bit. But you will be delighted to know that Microsoft is soon going to change. I'll outlook for Windows, and I assume they mean the new Outlook, but I'm not sure. And also Microsoft Teams, all the web links and those apps are going to open in Microsoft Edge, even if you've chosen a different browser. So I'll just let that one sink in for a second. <Laugh>, right? Sound familiar? This is new strategy. Yeah. Strategy they use right in Windows 11. Right. I think that's, let's see. Yeah. corporate customers are gonna have the ability to change this, right? Which is good. But what about people? We gonna have the ability to change this. So in other words, you've chosen Chrome, you're using Outlook as your email client. Someone has sent you an email with a link, you click on it and it doesn't open in Chrome. It opens in Edge.

(01:39:00):
And still the numbers

Leo Laporte (01:39:01):
Are low. <Laugh>. They're doing everything they can though.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:05):
How many ways? Yeah. How many ways can they get you to use Edge before you just use Edge <laugh>? I don't know. I don't know. This kind of thing makes me sad. I don't know what to say here. I dunno what to say. Yeah. I'll just say nothing. Yeah. I think you've said it all. This company.

Leo Laporte (01:39:26):
Now here's a question for you,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:29):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
Yeah. I kind of wish Mary Jo were here. Do is, do you know, is she still using her?

Paul Thurrott (01:39:33):
She's, she never used it. She never used it phone. She gave it. She No, she never used it.

Leo Laporte (01:39:36):
She had it.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:38):
Yeah. She never wanted, wanted to give it a shot. I think she said it. I

Leo Laporte (01:39:40):
Assessed it. I I returned mine. Sure.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:43):
That was the normal response. They were expensive. 1500.

Leo Laporte (01:39:46):
This is Schacker. It's a lot of

Paul Thurrott (01:39:47):
Money. I wouldn't spend that much on a Google Pixel folding phone or a Samsung folding phone. I'm not gonna spend that much on Microsoft. Apparently.

Leo Laporte (01:39:54):
I'm just gonna want you to spend two grand on their folding phone. But anyway,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:58):
That's

Leo Laporte (01:39:58):
Another story. We're talking about the duo. Yeah. The Surface Duo there, the two screen with a hinge phone that Microsoft has done two versions of. Where is version three?

Paul Thurrott (01:40:09):
Huh? So there was, there was a rumor semi recently about that saying that, you know, Microsoft had kind of held off on releasing a version three because possibly they were gonna move to a like a folding screen device like you see everywhere else. And look whatever anyone thinks about Surface, do I think a anyone would agree this was kind of a holding pattern until Microsoft could get its hands on folding screen tech that worked for them. And, and we're gonna do that. Right? but is the, does folding screen tech work for anyone? Bunch. Right. Some people love it and say it's fine. Stacy?

Leo Laporte (01:40:43):
So I had a, you know, I've had both the galaxy fold and the, and the flip.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:47):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:40:48):
I kind liked the flip. I thought it was cool, but I didn't want to use it as my daily driver gave it to Stacy. Higginbotham on, on Twigging, right? She uses it. It's her daily driver. She still, I asked her the other day last week. Wow. Is it creased? Is it weird looking? You've been using it for almost a year, she said. No, it's fine. Yeah. Some people like it. I, I think women especially like

Paul Thurrott (01:41:06):
The Yeah, of course. Because yeah, it can fit in a little back a slip

Leo Laporte (01:41:09):
Cuz it's small. It's like a pocket square. It could fit in your jacket

Paul Thurrott (01:41:12):
Pocket. Yeah. I thought my wife would want that exact phone for that reason. And actually she does want a folding phone, but she wants the big folding phone. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:41:18):
Yeah, the big one's really big because it's got a, it's double thickness and they've gotta solve that before it really. Right. But I still worry about the, the screen and the multiple folds. I just, I don't know. I don't think they're, that it looks kind of weird after a while. Kind of looks creas.

Rich Campbell (01:41:34):
Yeah. Yeah. Only time's gonna prove that out. Right. There's nothing else that'll that'll

Paul Thurrott (01:41:42):
Show. Yeah. We'll see. So but that, that was the rumor as of, I don't know, late last year, but there's been a report in Windows Central from Zach Bowen who we trust that this thing is in trouble. And the reason isn't, like, it's just like, it's not selling well, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's just that there's been a lot of internal reorgs and layoffs and there's really not that many people working in this part of the company anymore. And it, what it's done is really slowed work on anything. So, you know, one of the thing, one of the issues with Duo, one of the many issues is kind of a slow rollout of Android versions. Duo got Android 12 l last October, which was right when Android 13 became available, or actually after. And it's gotten no updates pretty much. Not even fixes or improvement just

Rich Campbell (01:42:26):
Outta stock in Canada. I can't get one. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:30):
So Microsoft has said it has nothing to share

Rich Campbell (01:42:35):
When it comes, comes to service store. Now I want one. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:37):
Now you want one

Leo Laporte (01:42:38):
Now that

Rich Campbell (01:42:39):
It's dead. I want one now that I can't, now that I can't order it. Yep. Is

Leo Laporte (01:42:42):
That because they don't have a care? Why can't you order it? I don't understand that.

Rich Campbell (01:42:46):
I mean, it says outta stock,

Leo Laporte (01:42:47):
Outta stock. So they're not Oh. So it's, that's probably true in the

Paul Thurrott (01:42:50):
US It's never been sold through carriers. Right. This is sold like a device. It's sold like a computer. I mean, you just kind of

Rich Campbell (01:42:55):
Buy it. Well, and, and she who must be obeyed dropped her phone down the concrete driveway on the coast. What did she

Paul Thurrott (01:43:03):
Have? What was she

Rich Campbell (01:43:04):
Using? It was a four A, so it doesn't owe anybody anything.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:07):
Oh my God. That's amazing.

Rich Campbell (01:43:08):
That's right. I've been trying to, I've been trying to get her replace that foam for forever. That's a

Paul Thurrott (01:43:11):
Long amazing.

Rich Campbell (01:43:12):
It it, it turns out that that's a good phone actually. 30 meters down a face down on a concrete driveway. Yep. Leaves a couple of marks. Yeah. Right. So, all right. There's a seven upgrade

Paul Thurrott (01:43:22):
To a five A What happened? Seven

Leo Laporte (01:43:23):
A's coming. She seven a's coming.

Rich Campbell (01:43:25):
She, it was too big. She wanted the six A cause it was smaller. Well, six a's very good. So six A is nice. Phone's fine. It's good. And getting the screen protected for it. Just saying,

Leo Laporte (01:43:36):
I don't lose this, I take much chances.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:39):
Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:43:39):
You live on the edge later On the edge. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:43:42):
I live on the edge. You know what

Paul Thurrott (01:43:43):
I actually do. Well, but you're also, you, you use phones and move on. You know, I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:43:47):
She's, you know, I, that's

Paul Thurrott (01:43:48):
She's been using a, a pixel foray for what years? A while. A

Leo Laporte (01:43:52):
Long time. But I, what I do is the wallet thing. So it has a lid. Yeah. So if I, the problem is if you dropped it when it was open, that doesn't protect it. Sure. But if it's closed, it's not gonna, the screen is somewhat, I like the idea of one device. You know, my wallet is in here. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, my cards are in here. My driver's license. I

Paul Thurrott (01:44:08):
Themes like this a lot too, cuz it's just one thing to take. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:44:11):
It's perfect for ths <laugh>. And now that I'm putting Google PAs keys on it, they have access to everything, which is geez, you know, a convenience <laugh> just unlock my phone and you have me.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:23):
Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:44:26):
I well I have, I've been an iot hell this week. I mentioned this before on other shows, <laugh>. And I'm really looking forward to the day when I can actually move to a home with hot and cold running water. Maybe electricity, but, but no internet, no phones, no nothing.

Rich Campbell (01:44:40):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:44:41):
Just, I wanna, not a cabin in the woods. I'm not going crazy. Yeah. But just I'm, I

Paul Thurrott (01:44:47):
Can recommend to you, if you go to certain areas of Mexico Yeah. You can own a home that has a toilet that you can't flush anything down. So you have to put stuff in a waste paper basket. Well, I know

Leo Laporte (01:44:55):
About that. That's mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. See, I, that's the first thing I asked you, by the way, when you got your apartment, is can you flush toilet paper? Because everywhere I've ever been in Mexico, you can't Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:45:04):
No, no,

Leo Laporte (01:45:04):
No. So you're you? No,

Paul Thurrott (01:45:06):
I live in civilization.

Leo Laporte (01:45:07):
I didn't realize the Middle Ages has ended.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:09):
Sure. <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:12):
I mean it's just a hole over like a pit, but it's fine. You know, it's, yeah. But

Leo Laporte (01:45:15):
You can put anything in it that's

Rich Campbell (01:45:17):
Turns.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:19):
You can put a car in there if you want. It's fine. You know. Oh my God. Nobody cares. My God,

Leo Laporte (01:45:24):
Where did we go wrong?

Rich Campbell (01:45:27):
Alright, why don't you like them focusing on Surface as the brand rather than Microsoft as the brand. I mean, it's a surprise. Yep. Because,

Paul Thurrott (01:45:36):
Because everyone's heard heard the brand Microsoft, and no one's heard the brand Surface Surface. And those who have heard the brand Surface are gonna assume that those things are only for service.

Rich Campbell (01:45:44):
Right. Well, that's the problem. That's the summary essentially. Yeah. And, and all this time they've spent getting rid of Windows as the brand Microsoft they own, and now they're gonna go the other way on this. I know I did, did, did Penos Penai have a good, like rock paper, scissors or something? Like I can't Absolutely. How do you get this?

Paul Thurrott (01:46:02):
I, this is one of the weird things about this decision. The first couple of Surface devices had the Surface logo on them, and I think it might have been Surface Pro three, if not right after that, where they switched it to Microsoft because that was the stronger brand. And I Right. It's kind of hard to argue with that. So now what the Microsoft has said is we're, we're gonna consolidate our PC peripheral hardware business under the Surface brand. And I think that's a mistake.

Rich Campbell (01:46:28):
No, it's the whole, you know, they didn't want these, the, these products to sell. Well, this is a way to do it. <Laugh>. That's

Leo Laporte (01:46:34):
<Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:35):
Yeah. There's, well, yeah, there's that too. There's also, I mean, Microsoft has a rich history with hardware. I think a lot of people don't appreciate this. They, their first mouse was bundled with the Ms. OSS version of Microsoft Word back in 1983.

Rich Campbell (01:46:48):
Had to get a into, into people's hands somehow, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:46:51):
Yep. Like, yep. And I, the Intel Mouse was so popular, they brought it back sometime in the past year, year and a half. Wired intel mouses, right. With the red light. Like that was a huge thing for them. Their ergonomic keyboards have always been a very popular and even, you know, bestsellers such as they're within that space. My favorite keyboard, the one I'm using right now is a Microsoft sculpt ergonomic keyboard mouse. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> are you telling me these things? I look, look, if this thing comes out and has a surface log on it, I couldn't care less. That's fine. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:47:20):
But then that's what you're ho that's what this seems to say.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:24):
I hope so. I don't, I I can't imagine they're gonna take all of their hardware. I mean, this might be their opportunity

Rich Campbell (01:47:28):
And this does benefit you because nobody else will buy it. And you then you can get them. Because half the time you can't find the flipping things.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:34):
That's true. I've actually <laugh>, I, I've actually bought these things in bulk and I have one extra one sitting in my closet <laugh> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So I it's really important

Rich Campbell (01:47:42):
To me. I should go back to the Microsoft store on campus and see what else I

Paul Thurrott (01:47:45):
Can get. I brought one to Mexico to make sure I have it there. I mean, it's, I love these things. Backup, so Yeah. We'll see what happens. But anyway, it's,

Rich Campbell (01:47:53):
I mean, the great thing about a bad decision like this is they get another one out of it when they turn it back the other way. Again. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:47:58):
Ran. It's like new Coke you're saying? It's,

Rich Campbell (01:48:00):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:01):
That's true. Yeah. We'll see, I just, I just think that was the run,

Rich Campbell (01:48:05):
Run decision. Yeah. It goes against everything else they've been doing.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:09):
Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (01:48:09):
It's, so it's not an Intelli mouse anymore, it's a surface mouse. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:13):
We don't actually know. So all we know is that they're gonna go forward with the Surface brand. I would imagine some subset of existing Microsoft branded products will become surface branded products. But I bet they use this as an opportunity to get rid of things. Get rid

Rich Campbell (01:48:27):
Of 'em all the line.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:28):
Yeah. Yeah. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:48:29):
It, we'll see, it backs up my decision to buy six Intel mouses a few years ago. Nice. Never, never run out. Yeah. I don't want the ocean plastic mouse.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:39):
No, no.

Leo Laporte (01:48:40):
And I definitely don't want the arc that's,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:44):
Unless you want carpal tunnel syndrome. Yeah. It

Leo Laporte (01:48:47):
Seems like a bad idea. I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:48:49):
Yeah. Terrible, terrible

Rich Campbell (01:48:50):
Mouse. I, I've been buying gamer mouses. I mean, other, if you can turn the bloody blinky lights off. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They're quality built devices. Raise your mouse. They're too sensitive. Yeah. The main, the main thing is can you get in there and shut off the bloody LEDs once you do that Right. They use 'em. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:49:05):
I, yeah. I don't care cuz my, my keyboard trays under the desk. I don't, I don't see it. I

Paul Thurrott (01:49:09):
Dunno what I'm gonna do. They sounds familiar.

Leo Laporte (01:49:11):
You're looking right.

Rich Campbell (01:49:12):
That's vintage.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:13):
That's the classic.

Leo Laporte (01:49:14):
That's the one. And I,

Paul Thurrott (01:49:15):
So, so that was so popular. They brought it back. They make those new now.

Leo Laporte (01:49:20):
Yeah. And it's like with

Paul Thurrott (01:49:21):
A Wallers

Leo Laporte (01:49:22):
<Laugh>. So they still make 'em. So maybe I should buy some more. Cuz I think I've gone through my stock. I literally bought half a dozen. Yeah. Because I just like 'em so much and, and I'm a lefty. So the fact that they're yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:49:35):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:49:36):
Yeah. Agnostic as to which hand you're using as good

Paul Thurrott (01:49:38):
Too. Right. Which is a big problem with mice. Actually, look at

Rich Campbell (01:49:41):
That. The pro intel mouse, they still,

Leo Laporte (01:49:44):
They still sell it. Oh, good. Yep.

Rich Campbell (01:49:46):
Oh, good. Back again. Okay. Now in two colors, you're gonna have both black or white.

Leo Laporte (01:49:52):
Black might be all right cuz white,

Rich Campbell (01:49:53):
Which

Paul Thurrott (01:49:53):
As long as the light is red.

Rich Campbell (01:49:55):
Yeah. Inevitably you've got Yeah. Stains.

Leo Laporte (01:49:59):
Stains. Is that what you call it?

Rich Campbell (01:50:01):
Okay. My sweaty fingers. It's

Paul Thurrott (01:50:03):
Stained with use.

Rich Campbell (01:50:05):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:50:05):
And tell 'em Intels,

Rich Campbell (01:50:07):
So

Leo Laporte (01:50:08):
They still call it the Intels. That's good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I might buy a few more because it really has never been a better mouse.

Rich Campbell (01:50:15):
No, I think buy 'em by the case.

Leo Laporte (01:50:17):
Yeah. 30 bucks on Amazon.

Rich Campbell (01:50:20):
Yeah. Last chance. You're wrong. Only

Leo Laporte (01:50:23):
Eight left in stock says Amazon. You know, they say that on everything. <Laugh>.

Rich Campbell (01:50:28):
I think they're lying. It's lies, I think of the

Leo Laporte (01:50:30):
Lying. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:50:33):
Can I point out as we switched to Xbox, that you have nothing about the Activision acquisition here, and I do not understand how this could be like what we talked about last week on i, when, the week before and the week before

Paul Thurrott (01:50:44):
<Laugh>. Well, that,

Rich Campbell (01:50:45):
That's what makes this week weird. <Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:50:48):
I appreciate your, and I understand your angst, but I would say the first story is technically sort of about the acquisition because mm-hmm. <Affirmative> in the wake of the cmma blocking this acquisition.

Rich Campbell (01:51:00):
And it is a block not a concern. Like they just said no.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:03):
Yeah. They said no,

Rich Campbell (01:51:04):
Which is crazy.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:05):
And Microsoft has signed yet another 10 year agreement with a European cloud gaming platform. So in other words, we're concerned about local and we're concerned about cloud gaming. Well, this company isn't concerned <laugh>, so they're from Spain. I think they they

Leo Laporte (01:51:20):
Are appealing it, right? They can appeal it. Yeah, they are,

Paul Thurrott (01:51:22):
They are gonna appeal it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:51:24):
So there is some, you know, there, there is an audience for these moves.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:28):
What I like is the language Microsoft uses. So we've signed a 10 year agreement with this company, no one's ever heard of called N VMware. We will give them, we will let, let them stream PC games built up by Xbox on its platforms as well as Activision Blizzard titles after the acquisition closes.

Rich Campbell (01:51:45):
<Laugh> Nice.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:47):
You know?

Rich Campbell (01:51:47):
Nice. You gotta imagine this little company and it's like, it's four guys in a garage, right? Yeah. And then one day Brad Smith called exactly and said, Hey, what are we gonna do? I need you to sign something. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:58):
<Laugh>, you're gonna be in the news cycle. How does that sound? Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:52:02):
How does that feel

Paul Thurrott (01:52:03):
For you? Sounds it sounds pretty good.

Rich Campbell (01:52:05):
Okay. You'd be, you'd be doing me a favor, right? That's a guy you want to do a favor?

Paul Thurrott (01:52:13):
Richard hasn't been around on Windows Weekly long enough for this to be tedious yet. But allow me to suggest Oh.

Leo Laporte (01:52:20):
Oh, don't don't assume don't assume

Paul Thurrott (01:52:23):
That over time this will become tedious. And this in this case means Microsoft redesigning the Xbox dashboard yet again. Oh boy. This dates back. Actually, it dates back all the way to the 360 or the Xbox

Leo Laporte (01:52:36):
60. Sure. As long as the show's been on the air, they've been redesigning the Xbox

Paul Thurrott (01:52:39):
Dashboard. Yeah. Remember that one debut with the blade interface that was slide over with the Yeah. Got all excited. Yeah. Yeah. And Windows eight came out and they started doing the panoramic stuff, which everyone hated. By the time we got to the Xbox One, the issue was that thefor, the, this, it's weird because they, they went to a Hyper-V kind of architecture, but there was some, this thing could play the most beautiful 3D games on Earth, but the interface itself would just run like molasses. And during the life cycle of that console, they issued three revs to the console. They, they changed the dashboard. I mean, a hundred times maybe, but never got it exactly right. But they gave up by the end, they just said, look, at this point we're just focusing on reducing the steps it takes to perform every action.

(01:53:19):
It was all they could do to make things happen faster. Y y you mean the thing we actually wanted to do with it, which is play a game. Yeah. Yeah. So in the same sense that I, I feel like the FedEx homepage should look like the Google homepage with a search box. <Laugh>. Yeah. And then it says do everything else down here in the corner. Yeah. I feel that the Xbox should be, here are the last three games you played and here's a button for everything else. Yes. Because thank you. What, what are you doing on this console? Yeah. Are we browsing around? We looking at background images? Oh, thank you. Well, here's the thing. So they released a new dashboard update. Again, I use the Xbox every day. I gotta tell you, I don't really notice too many differences in the ui, like as little things, but nobody cares.

(01:53:54):
Right. Well, but people do care because people were freaking out because this new design, the buttons were too big and you couldn't see the background image that well, oh, this week they've solved all of our problems. They've made the icons 85% of their previous size, and now you can see the background images. And I'm, I think they're gonna get a ticker tape parade in Time Square. Yeah. Do, yeah. Dodged a bullet there. Yep. So that's happening. Missed, missed the foot entirely <laugh>. It's crazy. Anyway, that's, this is what passes for drama in the Xbox. Yeah. You,

Leo Laporte (01:54:25):
You play the same game over and over again, Paul. So you, I wonder if you're an outlier. I, I mean, you would just want a big Call of Duty button and, and that's that. But

Paul Thurrott (01:54:35):
I have been, I have been experimenting later lately, I should say. And I <laugh>, I, I feel like what they do with the, what's called the controller bar in Windows 10, which is part of the Xbox Game bar is the right approach, which is sort of what I just said, which was the last three games. Just, that's the right thing. Just show me the last, yeah. Yep. You know,

Leo Laporte (01:54:57):
So this is the last what, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 games. But that's okay.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:03):
Well, yeah, but how many of them are actually your games? And how many of them the one they want you to

Leo Laporte (01:55:07):
Install? I know. I don't want ads in there. Yeah, that's a good point.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:11):
I don't know. I don't get it. I, to me, this is very straightforward. I turn this thing on, I want to play a game. I'm not looking at stuff. I'm not browsing, I'm, you know, whatever. But I know sometimes obviously you're browsing the store, but the store could be one of those things <laugh> like what, you know, whatever. But I, in the same way that Windows 11 is, you know, getting a little bit busy, I mean, I think they're trying to sell you stuff, right? You can look at the screenshot they chose. There's an ad for the Xbox controllers Right. In the lower right. They, they want you to spend more money. They don't want you just to play the stuff you bought. They want you to spend more money. This is, yeah. So this is becoming another variation of the widget

Leo Laporte (01:55:47):
Morass.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:48):
Yeah. As long as I can see what celebrities were at a whatever event in the corner, I'm gonna be good. They don't have to, it doesn't have to take over the whole screen. But where's

Leo Laporte (01:55:56):
My Donald Trump tile <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:58):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:55:59):
I need a Donald Trump tile. No, this is fine. So I look, I think you're right. Nobody's gonna even look at anything else but just, what's that first game on the list there? That's the one I played last. That's when I wanna start. Yeah, yeah. Yep. I

Paul Thurrott (01:56:14):
Think so. Any Xbox?

Leo Laporte (01:56:14):
Think that's, I mean I'm not an expert, but doesn't it just leave the, unless you actively close the game, it's kind of always ready to go in the background, isn't it? That's true.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:24):
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. You're trying to think on, you should be able to get right back. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:56:29):
Yeah. I know. Cuz Harry Potter's been searching for something on my Xbox for the last six months. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:56:37):
Found it.

Leo Laporte (01:56:38):
I keep checking in. Find it yet, Harry. Nope. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I don't close games. I should I,

Paul Thurrott (01:56:46):
Is that a No,

Leo Laporte (01:56:47):
Is that a hygienic

Paul Thurrott (01:56:49):
Issue? No, that's not a No, no, it's not a

Leo Laporte (01:56:51):
Thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:51):
Okay. No, it handles that for you. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:56:53):
Okay.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:54):
Yep. No, no worries on an Xbox, on a pc. You should close the game. <Laugh>, but no, not, not on an Xbox. It's May, what is it? May 3rd today. So mm-hmm. We've gotten some Xbox Game pass and games with gold information for the month. We're down to two games now for games with Gold. So those games are Star Wars episode one Racer, which is probably pretty good. And then a game I've never heard of called hoa, which I guess is that

Leo Laporte (01:57:22):
Hoa, I believe that's pronounced Huah.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:24):
Yeah, huah. <Laugh>. Yeah. There you go. That would be a way better game. Yeah. <laugh>, that's a anyway, so if you, if you have Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass of any kind, you can get those two games during this month for free. And then on the, where is it? The Xbox where I've lost my link. Xbox game. Oh boy. I'm sorry. Lemme got here for

Leo Laporte (01:57:47):
You. Link here. Red fall, Raven Lock and more. Yeah. Red

Paul Thurrott (01:57:49):
Fall. Yeah. So for Xbox Game Pass, red Falls

Leo Laporte (01:57:51):
The game everybody's complaining about.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:54):
Yeah. But you can get it for <laugh>. Yes. So

Leo Laporte (01:57:57):
You can, it can break your system for free.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:59):
<Laugh>. Yep. I think I should look this up. Is I, here's the thing. So Xbox, I'm sorry. Red, what's it called? Red Fall. This is the open world shooter Vampire game. Has not gotten good reviews, I think would be the way to put it. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:58:14):
It's a, it looks, I've only seen ca screen captures and videos. It looks really broken bad.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:21):
Oh yeah, it's supposed to be. I wish it was. Well I guess it is. So I guess what you could do, fortunately it's, you can stream it with Xbox Cloud gaming. So if you have an Xbox Game Pass ultimate subscription, you could at least see what it's like without having to sit through the download.

Leo Laporte (01:58:36):
That's actually a good idea.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:38):
That's, and I feel like

Leo Laporte (01:58:39):
They're,

Paul Thurrott (01:58:40):
I think they're gonna fix it over time. I think. I think they're gonna, they'll do right by it. It's not like they

Rich Campbell (01:58:45):
Could make it worse. Right, <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:58:46):
That's true. Yeah, that's absolutely true. The other game's not super interesting, although Shadow Run Trilogy is kind of interesting. But these are RPGs if you're into that kind of thing. Not to be confused with, there was a shadow run game, I don't know if anyone remembers this, but probably 2006, 2008, somewhere in there. It was a cross platform game where you could actually play between Xbox probably 360 I guess at the time. And PC Vista?

Rich Campbell (01:59:15):
No, in Vista. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:16):
Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:59:17):
I remember it

Paul Thurrott (01:59:18):
Was an okay game. It was a shooter. I think it was the third, third person shooter, if I've

Rich Campbell (01:59:21):
Remember. Yeah. It was sort of first person, third bird kind

Paul Thurrott (01:59:24):
Of. Yeah. It was okay. You

Rich Campbell (01:59:25):
Flipped the back view.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:26):
Yeah, it was okay.

Rich Campbell (01:59:28):
And then, yeah, they've always tried there Many times we've attempted to make these games that go between console and so, and pc it's not always a good idea. And there was, and

Paul Thurrott (01:59:37):
I would say we're, it's getting there now, finally, you know, like took him 20 years I guess.

Rich Campbell (01:59:43):
It's, it's hard, you know, games Advantage, one device form factor over another.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:47):
I will say call of Duty does cross plat now, which I don't like that you can't turn it off. So it's Xbox, PlayStation five, and pc. Yeah. And when there's a guy hopping around like a madman who's killing everybody, it's, he's always on pc. And he's always on

Rich Campbell (02:00:01):
Pc. Yeah. It's because he's got a better video card than either any, any of Yeah. Yeah. He's got a lower ping. Like it's, and that's the usual.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:09):
I know. That's why we don't want it. And

Rich Campbell (02:00:11):
Or you, or it's a control intensive game. Right. There are games that, that are meant for keyboard. Yep. And it's re And the controls, when you get 'em into console devices are just wonky.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:20):
No, I, I, they do something to try to make it fair and I, I, to me fair means hand him a controller and we'll see what's up, <laugh>. Yeah. You know cuz that will be a different story. But

Rich Campbell (02:00:30):
Yeah, I'm pretty happy being just a member of the PC Master race. It's a lot simpler. <Laugh> and the Xbox consoles for playing Netflix.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:38):
<Laugh>. Okay. Yep. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. Not huge news, but Microsoft has an Xbox Game pass friend referral offer, which is exactly what it is.

Rich Campbell (02:00:50):
You played Xbox, you think you have friends.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:52):
Yeah. Right. I'll just say that's why they can offer this <laugh>. Yeah, that's a good point. Let's,

Rich Campbell (02:00:59):
Let's see if you have friends. If I

Paul Thurrott (02:01:00):
Had friends, I wouldn't have to refer anything. <Laugh>. yeah,

Rich Campbell (02:01:04):
Five friends make it 5,000. It doesn't matter. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:09):
And then as part of their fourth quarter earnings, fourth quarter fiscal fourth quarter, so first quarter, calendar quarter Sony revealed that they sold a record high 6.3 million PlayStation five units in the quarter.

Rich Campbell (02:01:23):
Wow.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:24):
A total of 19.1 million in the fiscal year and a total of 38.4 million since they launched. That's good. That's actually really good.

Rich Campbell (02:01:34):
That's 3 billion worth of PS five s maybe.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:37):
Yeah. And this is during a timeframe when there were severe supply constraints. Yeah, no, no kidding. That's le listening obviously recently. Now here's where things get a little, I don't think so, but they're, they made a comment, they, I don't know, someone from PlayStation said, you know, we're gonna keep accelerating the penetration of PS five. We want the sell-in for this current fiscal year to be 25 million units, which would be incredible. Mm. And the highest ever for any PS console in history. And it's like, oh, okay. Maybe I can say with certainty that this thing will never be the best selling PlayStation of all time. In fact, it won't even be at the top two. It's maybe not even in the top three, but it's, but you know what, given the way things are going and given that these consoles were launched in the middle of a pandemic mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, and then launched with severe constraints, like I said, Rudy Good plus Microsoft hardware revenue fell 30% in the same quarter, by the way. Xbox Hardware, I should say. So that's, you know, we don't know the numbers for Microsoft, but they didn't fall 30% to more than 6.3 million units. I can tell you that. So yeah, Sony's doing pretty good given all things considered.

Rich Campbell (02:02:54):
Yeah. PlayStation five consoles in stock and Canada Best Buy 650 bucks Canadian.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:00):
Wow. I think Ugh, boy, that's a lot of money though. Well, I think what might put PS five over the top, and this is not necessarily a problem that Microsoft has right now. One of the few is those things are humongous <laugh>, you know? Yeah, they are. It's like the Doc Lords tower or something sitting over there next to your tv. They need to do a size shrunk. You know, ver like a small, they

Rich Campbell (02:03:22):
Remember what they did with PlayStation, right? I mean, they got, they all of those units, they got smaller.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:26):
Yep. I wonder

Rich Campbell (02:03:27):
The other thing, they run hot too. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:30):
And that's one of the reasons they're so big. They need more cooling surface. But I wonder also if the sub, and when I look at the design, I think this is the case, the sub subconscious message is, it's, it's practically a pc.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:43):
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:44):
It's

Paul Thurrott (02:03:45):
Like a pc. It looks like a piece of like C hardware <laugh>. Yeah. Strange. I

Rich Campbell (02:03:51):
A guy who likes

Leo Laporte (02:03:52):
I've gotten used to it. I

Rich Campbell (02:03:52):
Like, yeah. I like my, I like rack mounting my gear and that's like anti rack mount. You can't

Leo Laporte (02:03:57):
Rack mount it, but

Paul Thurrott (02:03:58):
No, no. I like the, yeah, I like the style of the play of the Xbox Series nx, I mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I think those are both really nice. I

Leo Laporte (02:04:04):
Think people who have 'em don't mind

Paul Thurrott (02:04:07):
That

Leo Laporte (02:04:07):
They are that big. Or even having them show off and next to the tv.

Rich Campbell (02:04:11):
Sure. That's the statement pieces. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:04:13):
Okay. And I honestly think that they would like to give you the impression you have a gaming pc.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:19):
There you go. That's,

Leo Laporte (02:04:20):
That's just really a con, looks like a console,

Rich Campbell (02:04:22):
You know, is an easy way to do that. It should. Like gaming pc Gaming pc. Right. <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:27):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:04:29):
We are gonna do the tip, the pick and some brown liquor. Finally in Irish. You recommend?

Rich Campbell (02:04:37):
Oh, I have plenty of Irish. I like Oh. But the Irish, I've, I, I really enjoyed assembling the Irish story, but let's get there. Yeah. How quick would the Canadian whiskey version of this be, do you think? About three minutes. All of them get shorter now that, you know, sort of the fines, man. <Laugh>, I think I'm gonna do the Canadian one in the context of Prohibition, cuz it affected so much. Tell

Leo Laporte (02:04:57):
The story. The story of George the sixth. Why don't you, there you

Rich Campbell (02:05:00):
Go. Start, we'll go

Leo Laporte (02:05:01):
That Start with the Georges <laugh>.

Rich Campbell (02:05:03):
Yeah. All right. But you know, I, Dr. I, every time I go up to the coast, I drive past Smuggler's Cove and Smuggler's Cove was about smuggling booze. Yeah. That's what it was about. I like that. That's a place where you live and not a place that's in Disney World. There you go. Yeah. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:05:16):
We have a a local family restaurant's been there forever, but literally because it has a plaque out front that says this, this was a speakeasy during prohibition. And when you go to the bar, it's way in the back kind of hidden. And I can imagine a door there that you'd, what's the password? It was a speakeasy. It was the place you went in Petaluma if you wanted to a drink in the, in the prohibition era. The thirties. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> our show today. There's no prohibition against you, my friend. You becoming a member of the Fabulous Club Twit. We would love you to join. I, you know, originally when we created Club Twit, seven bucks a month, <laugh>, there's an Irish whiskey for you. <Laugh> seven bucks

Rich Campbell (02:05:59):
A month. I was just confused by that as our,

Leo Laporte (02:06:02):
Our thought was people want ad free versions of the shows and we'll give it to 'em, ad free, tracker free. You get a special feed just for you that has, you know, whatever shows you want. But then we realized there could be more to Club Twit. We we thought, well, let's set up a discord that's dedicated to members. Cuz that was kind of an easy feature to implement. And that turned out to be kind of in my mind, one of the best things about Club Twit was this place we could all hang out and and talk about HoloLens in the, in the field. I don't know what that picture is. Is that a HoloLens <laugh>? I don't know what that is. Anyway but, you know, animated gifts conversations, not just about the shows, but about every topic under the sun that geeks might be interested in.

(02:06:51):
Beer, wine, and cocktails. You bet. Coding, comics, crypto, current affairs. And that's just the seas hacking and hardware and travel and tech. And it's it's a, it's my favorite social community. I really love this social network cuz it's all Club TWIT members. We do put together events just for Club twit. Alex Wilhelms asked me anything is May 11th coming up just a few days. Of course we have shows that are only in the club, like Home Theater Geeks, the Return of Scott Wilkinson. We, you know, we had to cancel that show because the audience wasn't big enough to support advertising and we couldn't afford to do it for free. But once Club Twits started up, that gave us the revenue to do things like this. That's where we launched this week in space. That's where we have hands on Mac. Paul does hands on windows there.

(02:07:38):
It is, it is a really, oh, this is gonna be a fun one. By the way, coming up, they're starting to work on this after hours. We're gonna do this at the Twitch Studio on a Friday evening. An will be hosting, which means there will be Brown Liquor and everybody's just gonna kind of hang out. That's gonna be pretty amazing. I'm, I'm looking forward to that. Rod Pile's gonna have a fireside chat in July. So lots of, we do these events, thank you to Aunt Pruitt, our community manager. We also have, as I said, special shows that don't appear anywhere else. And the ad-free version of the shows, that's a lot for seven bucks a month, a buck less than a blue check on Twitter. I think that's a pretty good deal. And it, and I wanna say you'll also get that warm and fuzzy feeling that you're helping us keep the lights on and keep doing what we love to do.

(02:08:29):
And so it's a way of you showing you know, your support for the network if you're interested. There's family plans, there's corporate plans, there's a yearly membership, and there's the basic membership, which is seven bucks a month. They all basically cost that amount. Go to TWIT tv slash club twit and and help us keep doing what we love doing. And I hope you love listening to, and we thank all of our Club tour members for making this possible. All right. Time for the back of the book. Paul Thru starts it with our tip of the week.

Paul Thurrott (02:09:04):
Yeah. the, the Hands On Windows podcast that I do is in many ways video version of the Windows 11 field guide, which is kind of interesting and fun. And I always, I wanted to do a, some video components and, you know, Lisa contacted me. It was good timing and all that kind of stuff, but I had just written most of the command line section of the book. And the final chapter in that is a tool called Winget, which is the Windows Package Manager, which we talked about last week. Now command lines are not for everybody wimps, but fortunately there's a really good g u I front end to Winget, which is creatively called Winget ui. And it literally does everything that Win get does. So if you're interested in this technology and this idea, this idea being a place where you can find, download, install, manage, update, and then uninstall if you want apps on your, on your computer this is, this is kind of a good app.

(02:10:02):
It also works with third party, or, or I should say, other package managers like Chocolatey on Windows, which you can add multiple sources if you want. But I like it as as a front end to Winge and what that does. And so that's pretty cool. One of the things that it does, a couple of things that you can't do or can't easily do with Winget from the command line, and one of them is you can actually keep everything up to date. So you can actually use this thing to, you run it, it runs in the background checks on whatever schedule. The default is actually once an hour, which might be a little aggressive. And you can keep all of the packages you're monitoring up to date regardless of where they're from, which is kind of a neat thing. I mean, obviously Microsoft store apps have their own updating process.

(02:10:40):
A lot of apps have their own internal updating process you know, like Chrome and web browsers do that. But this is one way to do it from a central location. I will tell you since I wrote this article that the first week doing this is gonna be a little painful because depending on what you're doing with the pc, you might have many, many packages as they call 'em, apps, you know, on your system that need to be updated and you're gonna get a lot of notifications, but you can kind of go through it and determine, you know, which require admin access or which you don't want to work through the system, et cetera. So I'm only a few days into it, honestly. It's working pretty well. So this is not from

Leo Laporte (02:11:15):
Microsoft, this is

Paul Thurrott (02:11:16):
Somebody's No, it's a third party. Yeah. It's just Mar Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it does, it does everything you can do in Winge. It's just a graphical front end. It's nice.

Leo Laporte (02:11:25):
Yeah. And because it's not from Microsoft, it supports Scoop and chocolate too, which is

Paul Thurrott (02:11:29):
Great. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't be shocked if Microsoft, a lot of people sort of think this is what the window store should become. Yeah. You know it wouldn't be surprising to me if they did something around those lines, but

Leo Laporte (02:11:42):
Discovery alone probably makes it worthwhile cuz Yeah. It's not easy necessarily to figure out what Winget

Paul Thurrott (02:11:49):
Supports. Yeah, well, so yeah, for me so for example, one of the issues with Winget is it doesn't, you have to check every once in a while and see if there are any updates. And then there, if there are, you have to say, okay, I wanna update, you know, an upgrade. Right? But the, the command line you have to type in to make sure that it actually gets everything is a little convoluted. It's, it's easy enough to type winget upgrade. It's not hard. Winget upgrade all will work some of the times, most of the times maybe. But if you really wanna make sure it gra gets everything, there's actually an additional flag or parameter, whatever it's called, option which I don't know off the top of my head. But that, and that's the problem, right? Like, I actually want this to be a fairly obvious thing to do.

(02:12:27):
So this is one way to do that. It's just kind of just keep it happening in the background. It's not, not a bad idea. So that's cool. This is not really related to the Windows world per se, but Le and Rio referenced this earlier, but Google added Pasky support to consumer Google accounts today. Hmm. I'll just say I, I have installed it, so to speak, or added it to my my Gmail account just to kind of test it out. I do want to use this with my workspace account that's coming soon. To me, the big disparity between Google and Microsoft accounts over the past year, year and a half, whatever is that Microsoft accounts are, can be passwordless out of the box now, which is nice. And you can also, even if you don't remove your password, you never actually have to type in a Microsoft account password.

(02:13:12):
If you're using an authenticator app or whatever, you can type in your, you know, you signing into Windows or an online service, whatever it is, type in your email address, sends a code to your phone, you select the right code, you do what the authentication it works. Google account. You have to type in your Google account username and password. It's like, what is this 1999 like? It's crazy. So I, I assume and expect that passkey support will mean that I will no longer have to type passwords in on my Google account. We'll see. I mean, just second

Leo Laporte (02:13:41):
Today. Yeah. I, I set it up this morning I woke up and started reading Twitter at 4:00 AM and I immediately

Paul Thurrott (02:13:48):
Yeah. As one does Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:13:49):
Set up. Sorry, did I say Twitter? I meant Macedon immediate,

Paul Thurrott (02:13:53):
Whatever it was Yep. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:13:54):
Yep. Immediately set it up and yeah, so it's a little weird because

Paul Thurrott (02:13:59):
It is a little weird.

Leo Laporte (02:14:00):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean basically my iPhone. So what they did is they store a key in the cloud.

Paul Thurrott (02:14:06):
You have to kind of configure it on each device once I think is the, the weirdness

Leo Laporte (02:14:10):
To it, right? Well, if Yeah, and if you're using iCloud, then all your I iOS devices get configured. But you wanna do with something that does biometric id. Yes, that's right. So my, I, so now from now on my login is just my face ID on my iPhone or my, which

Paul Thurrott (02:14:24):
Is exactly what you Yeah, yeah. And if and I know Richard uses UBI Keys, it works for, I use UBI

Leo Laporte (02:14:28):
Keys. Yeah. So it's kind of like having a UBI key, except you don't do a password at all. It's like, if the UBI key did everything. Well,

Paul Thurrott (02:14:35):
I just my point is this is how Microsoft accounts have worked for a long time. Right. And it's, it's always been frustrating to me on the Google side that it doesn't work that way. But I, I, I'm thinking now, but Google

Leo Laporte (02:14:44):
Had single ALA Microsoft Authenticator. This is different. This is another, I mean, I, it's weird. You, your thing is I don't get logged outta Google very often.

Paul Thurrott (02:14:54):
See I actually do.

Leo Laporte (02:14:55):
Oh, you do. So this would be a real advantage. And of course people's a point out, what if I lose the phone with a YubiKey? I'm sure Richard. Well, one at home or in a safe that's a backup. I have several. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:07):
So you gotta understand this is early days. So this thing is in addition to what other oth whatever other forms of authentication you've set up already on your Google account, right? So if you lose your phone, well actually you couldn't get an S M s or a a two F A code I guess, but I mean, you, you still have, you, you can still use like a backup. I send a code to my other email account kind of thing. Like you can still,

Leo Laporte (02:15:30):
Yeah, you're gonna wanna make sure you've got these kind of backup.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:34):
You should already have that set up, frankly set up. But yeah. But yeah. Yeah, right now it's another way to do it. Like, one of the things you can do on a Microsoft account that I did on a secondary account, but not on my primary account, is you can actually just remove the password. Like, you don't, you don't have to have a password on your Microsoft account. It's not needed. Yikes. on my primary account, it's still there, but I never use it. And regardless, even if I wore it to type it in, I'd still have to do some kind of a two A somewhere. Yeah. I, the, I dislike the fact that I never have to type it in. All you need to know is your email address. It's the best. And I'm hoping I, like I said, I just added it, so I've gotta, I, I need to really kind of test it, but I'm hoping that this does this for Google. So finally, and you know, here we go into our Passwordless future. But finally, yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:16:18):
The fact that Google's kind of doing this is so obviously is I think gonna help PAKEs cuz other sites have it in theory, but I, I think this will kind of make it this the beginning of a mainstream pass keys. Yeah, I think so. Which is I hope gonna happen.

Paul Thurrott (02:16:34):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:16:34):
There are some good questions though about the whole thing, to be honest with you. Yeah, sure are.

Paul Thurrott (02:16:38):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's gonna be a process, but yeah, I, I, I, I can't test it super effectively until it's on my workspace account. But you know, that's, if you, if you use workspace, you know the problem that's what everything, everything happens like that. Alright. and then the app pick of the week this is kind of an oddball one because it's <laugh>. They literally dumped Bing and now it's a pick. So Brave Search I think some 10 percent-ish of their search results were based on were coming out of Bing. And now brave Search has gotten rid of that and they're kind of marketing it as the first search service that's 100% independent of Big Tech. Because most search services have to use some combination, especially of a smaller player, like duck dot Go or whatever.

(02:17:22):
You have to have some combination of search results coming from some of the big players. And they've say they've evolved to the point where their results are good. You can actually opt into something where there's a fallback, and I think it falls back to Google where if literally there aren't enough search results from them directly yet is Google. They'll, if you let it, you can, you, you have to opt into this, it will actually then use Google and then it will anonymize the stuff and push it back through Brave Search. So it doesn't, you know, attach to you like a, like an ad sucking <laugh> creature of some kind <laugh>. So, okay. I, I, I will say my ex, I use Brave the Browser. I don't, I don't like Brave Search enough to use it personally yet. It's something I will continue experimenting with. I know it's been improving pretty dramatically. I have a couple of friends who actually swear by Duck dot Go, if you can believe that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So people do this stuff, but,

Leo Laporte (02:18:17):
And it's big, it's out there, right?

Paul Thurrott (02:18:19):
No, no, no. That's the point. It's not, that's it's not anymore drop. Yeah. There's no, there's no Bing. It's bing free. Bing. If that's your kind of if that's what you're looking for and you don't want Google this is definitely an option. So I can't speak to its quality.

Leo Laporte (02:18:35):
So I understand Brave isn't is Duck Duck Ko still bing

Paul Thurrott (02:18:38):
Or not? Yeah, they is Bing. Yeah, that's what thought.

Leo Laporte (02:18:39):
Okay. That's what I meant. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:18:41):
Yep. Sorry. Interesting. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:18:43):
And I use Neva, which is also very bing heavy.

Paul Thurrott (02:18:47):
Bing. Oh, is it really? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So Bing's

Leo Laporte (02:18:49):
Not bad. I don't mind having a

Paul Thurrott (02:18:51):
Bing. Yeah, no, actually I, right. I, yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:18:54):
Most important is I need good search results.

Paul Thurrott (02:18:57):
I, I, I this, I, I, well, Leo will probably appreciate this. Especially there's a part of me that likes that this kind of thing exists. I think these kind of smaller, preferably open, you know, whatever it is, solutions that don't rely on the three biggest companies in the world is maybe a healthy thing just for the ecosystem. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:19:15):
I completely agree. I mean, the fact that Google's so dominant in search gives them immense power. They essentially determine for everybody what the internet is, what you see. Yeah. That's not I don't want to give that to any company. That's, that's crazy. But that's, yeah, but you know what, at least the regulators are stopping that activation. There's a thing. Cause that's the real problem. Problem in our industry's there, <laugh>. Woo. So our, at least were, our priorities are all straight. Everything's good. Yep. I'm not at all, not at all. I default to bitter, but that's fine. Run as radio this week is all about ai.

Rich Campbell (02:19:54):
Yeah. For better or worse. I mean, this was basically a phone call we were having anyway, and decided we better ought to record it. Record it. We were just the, you, I have this guy on the show this week. His name's what is it?

Rich Campbell (02:20:07):
Paul something. Yeah. Anyway we were, yeah, we, we've been debating on this show and elsewhere about the impact of large language models. I'm being slowly driven into doing talks on this stuff too, and I'm not

Leo Laporte (02:20:20):
Happy about it. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (02:20:21):
But you know, funny when you start pulling all the bits and pieces together, so we had the conversation, it's like, well, what is, what is this going to do for us? It folk, how is it going to impact us? Where is it gonna appear? And I think we ended up spending a lot of time, more than all anything on the co-pilot for M 365. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, just because that affects most workers or will affect most workers, which means it's certainly gonna be a big impact on the CIS admins trying to administer and, and keep control of things. I, I wish we, we could have talked more about the security side of co-pilot, but it's nothing to talk about except the fact, you know, it's sort of this acknowledgement that most security people in most shops are part-timers. And those that this is exactly the kind of tool they needed. Something that gives them guidance for what should I be paying attention to? Where are we at right now? What do I implement next? Like, all of that I thought was very compelling.

Leo Laporte (02:21:11):
So if you're looking for a liquor free version of Windows Weekly, then that would be, and notice by the way, it's only 38 minutes, so Yeah,

Rich Campbell (02:21:22):
Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:21:22):
Which is,

Rich Campbell (02:21:23):
Which is long for our run ass. You know,

Leo Laporte (02:21:25):
It really The Fed you cut me on. I was gonna keep going. Oh man. Yeah. Paul's used to a lot more room. Yeah. I'm like, I need a bigger runway than this Skosh more room in my podcast just

Rich Campbell (02:21:37):
Lying alone along. That's why

Leo Laporte (02:21:38):
We made Windows Weekly.

Rich Campbell (02:21:40):
Yeah. It's a fun conversation.

Leo Laporte (02:21:42):
Run as radio.com show 8 78 featuring some guy named Paul,

Rich Campbell (02:21:48):
Some guy named Paul.

Leo Laporte (02:21:50):
And I think we should talk about Red Breast. We were you know, my, my brother-in-law, uncle Joe, is a Irish whiskey guy. And I actually kind of thought Irish whiskey wasn't good until he show, you know, gave me some, oh, I love Middleton. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And and so we wanted to give him a gift on his birthday a few months ago, Lisa went to the BevMo, as one does, and they said, you should take a look at this red breast.

Rich Campbell (02:22:16):
Yep. And it

Leo Laporte (02:22:16):
Was wrong.

Rich Campbell (02:22:17):
It was

Leo Laporte (02:22:17):
Great. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (02:22:19):
And and I'm gonna tell you how it was different from other, would you age recognized whiskeys, but we need to go back cuz the Irish will be the first to tell you they invented this stuff. It's true. Now that's true. Remembering that, that all of these cereal products are actually products from the Mid East, going back to the as Syrian empire and the Fertile Crescent and all that good stuff. So actually the strongest evidence seems to be somewhere in the 10th, the 12th century monks traveling back from the Mediterranean brought early, or not really early, but a lambic still is the simplest kind of, of still made of copper that was good for distilling alcohol from grain in very small scales. And so that kind of be kicked off the business that exists in Ireland first. But there's lots of hooks and twists around that.

(02:23:11):
So the first licensed distillery in the Western world 1608 in the northern part of Ireland in a district called Bush Mills. And part the, that location still has a distillery on it. It's obviously burned down a couple of times along the way. It's called the old Bush Mills Distillery. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they were making whiskey, then whiskey was made the whole time. I mean, the bottom line was people who had excess grain and needed to do something with it would use these little stills to, to make an alcohol from that. It was a good way to to store those remains and have some results. But the original sort of moonshine of Ireland is called poin, P O I t I N poin. And it is jet fuel, right? It's, it's a clear alcohol before you've done any aging in barrels and so forth, so inexpensive to make simple.

(02:24:11):
And it's so stunningly common and arguably still is to some degree. That's like everybody had a grandma who made pac. Now we, and so in 1608 when they did the original licensing, this was the idea that now it was going to be a taxable product. And so they had this idea of parliament versus PAC whiskey. And so naturally, once you're gonna play taxation games you get rules in place. And so by 1661 Pac is outlawed. No personal alcohol anymore. I, I come to appreciate as I've been working, assembling this history to realize that as the industrial revolution started applying to alcohol and it became a bigger business, all of the experiments in taxation, they happened here. You know, everything that you can do wrong with taxing this whole, you know, taxation without representation and forth. Yeah, this all happened here. So, you know, fast forward a hundred or so something years in the late 17 hundreds, there are literally thousands of distilleries in Ireland.

(02:25:16):
They've declared them all, but everybody's making whiskey their own way. They're all different. There's no standards of any kind. And new rules are brought in place. Now to be clear, this is the English trying to control the Irish, right? And a part of this entire dynamic is the conflict between the English and the Irish. And so while there may have been a 1200, 1300 distilleries in 1779 by 17 as soon as these regulations started to be put in place, the distillers start vanishing. They don't actually vanish. They just stop talking about them. The poach is still we well underway and in 1785 in order to come up with a new way to tax whiskey, the English Institute of Attacks on malted barley. And so the, this is now you have the rules where you have to malt a particular way. It takes a certain amount of space.

(02:26:11):
So it's always obvious. And based on the weight of the malted barley you have, you pay a tax on top of that. And the Irish response of that, it was to use less malted barley. In fact, one of the distinctive aspects of Irish whiskey to this day is that they use both a com a combination of both malted barley and unmalted barley. So they didn't germinate it. And that really comes from this taxation behavior 150 years ago, 250 years ago. So and it funny, oddly enough, that law when Riten said, oh, by the way, don't use on Monte barley. Yeah, they didn't worry about that part. Not at all. So by the early 18 hundreds, 1821. And so they were down to less than 30 distilleries left in Ireland. The, the industry is largely being strangled. It's gone completely underground. And so the taxation rules are sort of lifted to allow things to expand.

(02:27:03):
And that takes us to the most seminal event, I would argue in whiskey making as a whole. And we've talked about this previously in the Scottish sections when an ES coffee developed the coffee still, so he was actually a whiskey tax man. So he, he was able to observe a lot of distilleries as he was collecting duties and taxes in lots of different places. And so he there were already versions of column stills at the time, but he came up with a column still that was very, very heat efficient. And it, it's amazing to me to think in terms of this is 1830. So like James Watts's original steam engine is only a few decades old at this point. Like the industrialization of alcohol making is still pretty new. And I mean, we talked about a little bit when we were doing the Scottish section about, well, how important the coffee still was.

(02:27:56):
But the big thing was not only that it was continuous production that you're always feeding wart into the top and alcohol's coming outta the other side, but that it used steam for heating. The alcohol explosions largely came from the fact that you were putting fire underneath of a pot of of mash that was being turned into alcohol vapors. And then sometimes they catch fire and big bad things happen, possibly go wrong. And so one of the key aspects of of, of an S'S copy still was that the boilers in a different building and you're piping the steam into this double column still assembly to safely heated at a controlled rate and to be able to extract the alcohol e efficiently and continuously. So here's the kicker. Anus comes up with this unbelievably efficient, continuously running still that maintains thermodynamics effectively makes a better higher distillate alcohol with less effort.

(02:28:54):
The Irish won't use it, it goes totally against the style of the way they're making whiskey. They do pot distillation where you have a large copper pot sort of pear shape that you load the mash in it, the, the the wart into, and then heat slowly and up and it refluxes on the walls of the copper of the copper still and fill eventually out the army to the condenser, you know, who does use it? The Scottish, the Scottish build tons of them under license and they start distilling with the thing that the coffee still does brilliantly is it distills grain rather than malt. So they start cutting their whiskey 50, 60% grain alcohol, which drops the price by 75%. This is the original blended whiskeys. And so they dominate the market. It's the least expensive whiskey, it still tastes good, it's made incredibly efficiently, it takes less time to produce.

(02:29:54):
And so the, the, the Irish market is now being crushed to the point where the Irish decide we need to fix this with branding. And up until this point, whiskey was spelt without an E. In fact, the branding exercise in Ireland that bought back against this was adding the E they added an internet explorer e That's, that was their solution. Yeah, that was it. They added the e and that was the key, you know, there, we're not gonna fix our process. We're not gonna come up with a more efficient way to wave whiskey. We're gonna add an E. That's really funny. I was wondering about that spelling difference. That's the story. So that's the spelling difference comes out of this. The, the Scotts is starting to dominate the market, which they will do again. But cuz the Irish are doing well, they are selling into the uk.

(02:30:41):
They also selling extensively in America until the World War I, the, the reels really come off in World War I, it's not just the war itself, which is the original industrialized war, like we've been talking about this growth and industrialization of, of whiskey making. But then you have the industrialization of war followed immediately after the war by the Irish War of Independence, where they, they fight back and get their independence from in from England, which they succeed in doing. It takes a few years, but also closes that market for them in the process. So they can't sell Irish whiskey into, into the UK anymore. Followed by US Prohibition, 12 years of, of no no selling alcohol in the us. So once again, the Scottish market gets completely devastated. The Scottish market grows because the Scotts happily learned how to smuggle in a big old Hurley.

(02:31:35):
And they build out, and again, we talked about this in the Scottish section where there were groups of folks that actually started buying ships and, and dropping alcohol off in Canada, getting across the borders in various ways. And so at the grimmest period of the Irish whiskey manufacturing period is by the 1960s, so post-war res restitute post-World War II recovery, and there are really only two functional distilleries left anywhere in Ireland. There's the old the old Middleton Distillery, which is actually the Jameson distillery outside of Cork. Yep. And there's the Bush's distillery up in the north. So I've actually, have you been to both those? I have, yeah. I've been to the Jameson one. Yeah. And so they, the, there's actually three enemy Jameson makes a deal with the cork distillers in John Powers. And they form one entity like to stay alive, they call it the Irish Distillers Group.

(02:32:29):
And pooling their money, they sh they decide to build one new distillery. This is how they're gonna, they're gonna make all the whiskeys in the same place. We're operating more efficiently. And that is what we now know as the new Middleton Distillery which opened in 1975. And at the time was one of the largest distilleries ever built in the world where typical pot stills at the commercial grade in, in Scotland where 5,000, 6,000 liters. And today you're sort of lightweight, small custom boot boutique maker will be about 1500 liters. These were 75,000 liter pot stills. These puzzles were ano they spanned across multiple floors in a building. They were absolutely Titanic, but they were also now a monopoly, right? There was one group running the distillery. They made a bunch of different products. They were now buying up the bankrupted brands of the other distill.

(02:33:26):
There was plenty of remains of distilleries around, in fact, there still are to this day. But they would scoop up the various brands, and this is where you get all of these different names like Red Breast and Green Spot, and all of the, they all got consolidated under this Irish distillers, which ultimately was bought by the French group Pernell, the same guys who owned Shiva Regal. But coming into the eighties, whiskey becomes hipper. And I would actually lay this at the feet of the Americans more than anything. You know, when we talk about the, the, the wave upward of whiskey, the, the distinctive thing that makes whiskey, whiskey is that you take a clear dist, distillate alcohol and you aged in wood. But wood is expensive and hard to come by until the Americans start making a lot of bourbon. And the institute important rule, which is you only get to use a barrel once.

(02:34:16):
And so America, with these huge amounts of oak forests is now making tons of barrels using them once, and they need a market for them and the SCOs buy them and so do the Irish. And so all whiskey industry ascends because of this, this explosion and availability of barrels. And so by the 1980s, we start to see new distilleries opened up like the Cooley Distillery, which is up in the northeast and makes a number of well-known products. And then in 1997, they actually officially legalized pac. It's essentially what we know in America as white dog just un barrelled grain whiskey. And so by 2013, so the literally, now we're in the modern times already, we're up to five registered distilleries. Now there's the kil begging distillery, which I had an opportunity to tour. The original was opened in 1757 and shut down in 1957.

(02:35:12):
And then now is reopened, reopened in 2007. We're starting to get their lines up again. The noon middle to distiller, which is still there, but has been expanded. These are the guys who make Jameson, tele MedU, red breast, all of the spots that's the green, the yellow, the, and the red. Out in the West coast dingle head a distillery, a Cooley, which is in the northeast, that's Kanamara, and they reopened the old Bush mills distillery in the north, north of Belfast. In the, literally in the Bush Mills County, the declaration of the standards of Irish whiskey only came in 2016. So they've only really modernized their approaches to things by saying, okay, it has to be matured and distilled in Ireland. Whether that doesn't matter whether that's Republic or North Ireland, same diff that you, you have to have some kind of malt, although there's a bunch of ways to do that.

(02:36:06):
They talk about cation permitted by yeast distilled to no higher than 94.8%, which is bloody high only water and perhaps caramel color added to it at least three years in wooden casks finished a b v of 40% or above, and with a few different varieties defined. So what makes Irish whiskey distinct now, in the earlier days of Irish whiskey, they would use whatever grain they could land their hand on. I have seen mash bells that had like oats in it. But today the defining aspect of Irish whiskey is, or what they typically call pot still whiskey is a combination of malted barley and unmalted barley that is perme, that is distilled in a pot still with reflux. And then is on, is aged in wooden barrels for at least three years, although typically won't have an aged statement on it, although the same rules, the age statement has to be that that much. But it's also distilled three times. So where the SCOs are malted barley only twice distilled, the Irish are malt and un malt triple distilled, but otherwise aged in barrels. Well, by the way, in the regulations for 2016, they say the E is traditional but not required.

(02:37:32):
So yeah, typical of the, these kinds of whiskeys is the red breast. I think red breast 12 represents, it looks like a Scottish whiskey. But the distinction is it's 50 50 of malted and unmalted barley. I mean, why does, so why does this make a difference? Malted barley means you've germinated it, right? You've essentially used the plant itself to begin to break down the sugars. And the, actually the way that barley does that with this is with an, an enzyme called amylase. So when you add water and a bit of time and temperature, the amylase comes out of the seed and begins to break the carbohydrates into simpler sugars, which makes it easier to extract un marta barley. It's still combined that way, but there's other ways for us to induce sugar release. You can do it with heat and pressure, so you can cook the grain a bit and that will help break the sugar down.

(02:38:28):
You can also introduce other enzymes that help break those sugars down. The difference is in the flavor. You get a grainy, a different kind of grain flavor from old malted bar than you get from malted barley. Either way, you're lifting a lot of that flavor out because you do tend to distill it quite a bit higher than the Scottish distillery is due. And then you're aging it typically for less time. It is unusual to have age statements on Irish whiskeys. Most Irish whiskeys you see don't have it red breast being one of the exceptions. That 12 is the youngest thing in their, in their bottle when they actually bottle it. You can find this in America today fairly easily. It is about $55 and it is aged in a combination of bourbon and ola allosso sherry casks. So very much a space side style whiskey just made with the Scottish pattern of a mixture of mal and malt and triple distillation.

(02:39:29):
And it's quite good. I delicious. This is, I might add <laugh>. This is possibly only the second one you've recommended I can buy in the state of Pennsylvania. Yeah. Oh, there you go. That might be true <laugh>. Yeah, they have in gmo. I know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and, and I try to make sure I'm finding a whiskey that people have a chance to buy. I think it's very, I can always pick you a whiskey you can't find, right? <Laugh> years ago, Carl and I were doing a.net rocks tour across Ireland as he do. And we were in Dublin and we were meeting a friend of his, a musician friend of his, and he had brought some angel Zvi, some American bourbon with him to give to his friend as a gift. Nice thing to do. And we arrived early as we are prone to do when it involves a bar and found ourselves in red breast all.

(02:40:14):
So we were very happy sipping away at that. And his friend arrived and we gave him the gift and we had a nice chat and he's sipping his Guinness and watching us outta the corner of his eye. He's very concerned actually. And finally, I mean, after an hour or two of us steadily drinking red breast, he says, well, God bless you boys. You gonna walk <laugh>? Yeah, yeah. Bless you boys. I don't know how you drink the brown liquor like that. And it's like, I, I'm not sure what you mean. He says, oh no, I can't drink the brown liquor makes me fight. Ah, I love it. And I'm like, well look, give us, give us back the ancient 70, so oh, will not, right?

Leo Laporte (02:40:46):
Yeah, yeah. <Laugh>. Yep. That's great. Very nice. Yep. Red breast. It says red on the label. Single. I feel like Irish whiskey is, know what that means.

Rich Campbell (02:40:56):
You can, I feel like you can almost always tell what a whiskey is. An

Leo Laporte (02:40:59):
Irish whiskey does that Oh yeah. Universally.

Rich Campbell (02:41:02):
Especially if it's a pottail whiskey, cuz that there's, it'll have that grain flavor too, which is fairly distinct. Yeah. It has a distinct, there is a declared version of Irish whiskey called a single malt, which is straight malted barley. And then there are sing, you'll see single grain, which means they're not using any malt or they're using a minimal amount of malt. The days of complex mash bells seem to have gone by. I remember reading about these years ago where they were doing grain and wheat and rye and oats and so forth. Yeah. But mostly that's been eliminated by just barley processing as simpler. There's lots of challenges when you start to mix mashbill that that complexly and corn's not that cheap in, in in Ireland. So it's not a great grain to choose the way it is in America where corn is very, very cheap.

Leo Laporte (02:41:47):
Ladies and gentlemen, you have received the received wisdom from the man, the myth, the Scotch Drinken legend <laugh>, Mr. Richard Campbell runners radio.com for the run's radio podcast and his other show.net Rocks from beautiful Coquitlam British Columbia from Mce that this weekend, mace pa down the road from murder dogs. It's Paul Throt Bad Dogs.

Rich Campbell (02:42:13):
Oh, speaking of voice, they're ring. They're gonna stay

Leo Laporte (02:42:15):
Open. New owner. Yay. Old. How much does a hotdog stand go for in Mace? I wonder I'd probably $1,700. I dunno. <Laugh>,

Rich Campbell (02:42:25):
I dunno.

Leo Laporte (02:42:26):
It's a really good hotdog, Stan. It is a Paul Throt is@throt.com. T H u r r O t t.com. Become a premium member. You get some great extra material. I highly recommend it. He also has a good book called The Field Guide Windows 11, including Windows 10 wrapped in at lean pub.com. Also his new book Windows Everywhere which is what the kind of the history of Windows. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and Windows languages and all that. It's a really interesting read. Two great books. Thank you Paul. Thank you Richard. We do the show every Wednesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern Time, that's 1800 utc. You can watch or listen live as we do it at live twit tv, but if you're doing that, you should chat live with us. There's an open to all irc IRC dot twit tv. Your web browser worked just fine.

(02:43:18):
You can also, if you have a Club TWI membership, join us in the Discord after the fact OnDemand versions of the show available at the website, twit tv slash dub dub. You can also click there. On that page you'll see there's a YouTube link that's the dedicated YouTube site for Windows Weekly. There's also links to various pod catchers and an RSS link too. If you want to add it to your podcast client. I would do that. That way you get it automatically as soon as it's done on it Wednesday afternoon. Paul, Richard, thank you so much. Great show you and we'll see you next week. All you winners and dozers on Windows Weekly. Bye-Bye.