Windows Weekly 864 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.

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Therats here, richard Campbell's here. I'm in Rhode Island, but we're gonna do a great show for you Coming up. We're gonna talk about Outlook and Privacy and the Terribleness of Big Tech. Also, what's the difference between Microsoft's co-pilot subscription and OpenAI's chat, gpt, and some news about Windows 11, xbox and, of course, a whiskey of the week. It's all coming up next on Windows Weekly. This show is brought to you by Cisco Meraki. Without a cloud-managed network, businesses inevitably fall behind. Experience the ease and efficiency of Meraki's single platform to elevate the place where your employees and customers come together. Cisco Meraki maximizes uptime and minimizes loss to digitally transform your organization. Meraki's intuitive interface, increased connectivity and multi-site management keep your organization operating seamlessly and securely, wherever your team is. Let Cisco Meraki's 24-7 available support help your organization's remote, on-site and hybrid teams always do their best work. Visit merakisiscocom. Slash twit Podcasts you love. From people you trust.

01:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is Twit.

01:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Therrott and Richard Campbell, episode 864. Recorded Wednesday, january 17th 2024. Word doesn't respect me. Windows Weekly is brought to you by Miro.

01:41
Miro is one incredible visual place that brings all of your innovative work together, no matter where you're located. We're talking six whole capability bundles, from product development workflows to content visualization, all powered by Miro AI. That's really great because it means you're instantly generating new ideas or using the AI to summarize complex information With Miro. It's great because every bit of that information is right there on your Miro board. Miro connects seamlessly to the platforms you're already using Jira, confluence. We use both Google. We use Google Docs, it's all there. We use Zapier, asana.

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02:58
Record your thoughts with Miro's board video recording features called TalkTrack. You leave your thoughts on the board. Everybody can see what you think they can respond the same way. Forget meetings, get Miro. Try it out for yourself. Get your first three boards for free. I love that. To start working better, miro M-I-R-O Com Slash Podcast. That's Miro Com Slash Podcast. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show we cover the latest news from Microsoft joining us all the way from the great white north. It's Mr Richard Campbell.

03:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Hello.

03:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
British Columbia fame. He's been running a snow blower this morning.

03:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is the kind of snow. It might take a branch out and take me out. Take the power out as well. If I suddenly drop out, I ain't coming back. Uh-oh, all right.

03:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Good to know. Host of Run as Radio. And of course the Arctic front hit McCungy PA as well. Paul Therruz refrigerator has been beeping all morning. Hey, paul.

04:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
All I'll say is 11 degrees is not a lot of degrees.

04:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, yeah, yeah, it's 17 degrees here. I feel balmy.

04:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean actually oh no, it's up to 22 now.

04:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We started 11, but I waved at denim as I drove by from the airport. Was it doing To survive?

04:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
an exit Looks good.

04:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I saluted Bill Balacheck as I went by Gillette Stadium, gone down by Foxborough.

04:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
All the fallen ex-Massachusettsians, the ex-massals, as we call them.

04:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The ex-massals. I said hello to them all, and now I'm here in Rhode Island, which has a hot style of its own.

04:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I love your mother's plantation shutters. I want them so bad, aren't?

04:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they great, yeah, but you see what they're blocking out, which is snow, snow, snow. It won't be long. Anyway, this is a time to talk about Microsoft, not about weather, and I presume Paul Therrat and Richard Campbell have some things to say. First of all, we're starting a little late because we covered the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event in the new S24. Not one word about Microsoft in that.

05:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
A couple of words about Google, though, and I think we'll get on to that. I think that's a thing. I think there might be something to say there, yeah. I think so.

05:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But let's start off as we are want to do with the European Union.

05:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So let me preface this show by saying we have two highly controversial topics to discuss this week and then one liner controversy. And, as I do, I'm going to try to keep this as calm and measured as it can be. Oh, this will see how that goes. So I thought you were writing. So I thought you were writing my name in all caps. I am.

05:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm writing your name in all caps. You wrote PAU and I'm like oh, what am I? Going to do PAU Paul, no, I'm just. I'm just putting the breaks in the show so you know when to stop.

06:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You're like my mother screaming at me from the bottom floor of the house PAU Paul Holy.

06:10
So the first one is the general. Topic is that, because of regulation in the EU, especially big tech companies like Microsoft, google, apple, whatever are starting to have to either change your policies or disclose information that they would like to keep secret. And because this is a Microsoft oriented show, we will focus on and start with the Microsoft one, if you will, which is that the new outlook, which is this kind of web app that Microsoft developed over the past couple of years as a replacement for the classic desktop app that ships in as part of office, is apparently, in the words of an employee of Proton, a surveillance tool for targeted advertising. Wow, we should have come up with that one.

07:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But Proton makes their money by selling privacy and cryptid email. That's exactly right.

07:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So they're not going to be fans of any big tech, that's true, but I have a hard time believing anyone's going to read this and come over and touch you, feeling about Microsoft or Outlook. There is a dialogue that pops up when you run the new Outlook in the EU or we'll soon pop up, that you actually you'll see on the web, you'll see on all kinds of things. Microsoft did not generate this and the number that I'm about to read is dynamic. It will change as things change. It says we and 772 third parties process data to, among other things, develop and improve products, personalize ads and content, measure ads and content, derive audience insights and obtain precise geolocation data and identify users through device scanning. You, the blue, blue blue.

07:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But wait a minute. It says we, but we, microsoft didn't write this right.

07:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, microsoft did not write this. We'll appear automatically, it will appear for other apps Copy. Right Thing is, if you go and look up Microsoft's privacy statement, it it says exactly this Microsoft years ago, remember Microsoft used to complain about Gmail and Gmail man and reading email and all that kind of stuff. Microsoft used to do the same thing. They stopped doing that several years ago, maybe a dozen years ago, but as did Google.

08:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We should, oh right, I'm sorry, that's true.

08:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They also. That's not not exactly when, but windows 10 was the beginning of major true. Well, what do we really want to call it tracking?

08:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I guess in windows, windows 10, windows 11 made it worse they call it telemetry, as if it's merely checking what you're doing for your user.

08:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So here's what. Here's what's really happening. Microsoft looked at Google especially, but Meta as well, and said you know, these guys are making a ton of money on advertising. How do we get into this?

08:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Why can't we?

08:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And they've. They've been slowly over time doing more and more of this tracking and then selling that data to advertising networks. Right, so in 2021,? I forget that. I don't. I didn't like to it. Unfortunately, a Microsoft executive revealed that that year they had made $20 billion I'm sorry, that year, sorry, it was $10 billion and that their short-term plan was to double that to $20 billion. Wow, just advertising. And the way you do that, if you're Microsoft, when you own these platforms, is you put that telemetry data in the product. So, for example, when you use Outlook or Windows 11, no, it's not reading your email, but it is looking at your interests and your favorites, your location, your transactions, how you use Microsoft's products, your search queries, the content you view online. It's it's. And then you know we get into this thing.

09:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Not really, I mean some of these statements are so vague. Your interests? You mean you're not reading the emails Like you're interested.

09:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, your interest outside of your emails? Right, You're browsing the web, you're, you know.

09:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The real point is, you are giving them this information and everybody you know on your smartphone. You're giving them this information. You are Right, it shouldn't come as a surprise to people.

10:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but you know. So there's a. This is like saying, oh, my wife is pregnant, I'm going to have a kid, I know it's going to be really hard. And then you actually have the kid and you realize you had no idea, you had no idea.

10:15
And logically, we really live in a world with so many guys. So many of my readers will say this like I know that Google's tracking me, but I don't care. I love Google Maps, I love Gmail, I love whatever. And it's like yeah, you know, I, I don't think you know. You know how bad it is. I love those things too and I rely on them and use them as well. I'm a hypocrite as well, but I don't think many, I don't think any of us, myself included I really have an idea of how bad this is, and I think this EU stuff is going to bring this, you know, to the forefront.

10:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it certainly has with how it is. Interesting thing in this light. Yesterday, on security now, steve spent a long time talking about Google's new proposal. For you know, remember they were doing Well it's not a proposal. They're doing it. They're doing it, they're doing it. It's built into Chrome. Yep, they call it the. I can't something.

11:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not manifest three, but it's a privacy sandbox.

11:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and and. But it's really smart and it's really interesting because they say we're not going to get the data. Your browser in this case, chrome or any, presumably any, chromium based browser it's unknown whether Microsoft's going to do this with Edge, but your browser is going to keep track of what you're doing and then offer that to the advertisers for an ad. Your browser is, in effect, going to do an ad auction as you visit a website.

11:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Who gets the money? Who gets the money? Of course, that little nugget of this is available to for everyone to see, because when you upgrade Chrome or if you install Chrome, you get this dialogue. This is something about ads and you. They want you to just click, okay, but if you click settings, you can go in and three major buckets turn off all the personalization stuff, right, right, and this is another argument I have with people around this notion of personalized ads Like well, they're going to sell me ads anyway, I might as well see ads that matter to me.

12:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's my feeling.

12:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know, but that's a little short side.

12:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not just ads, because we know also data brokers collect this. When data brokers get it, all bets are off. Governments buy it. We know our government buys it.

12:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, I think the less they know about us, the better, frankly, yeah.

12:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't care. I don't care. Ford knows what kind of card I drive. But I'm not sure I want an entity that has nuclear weapons to know too much yeah.

12:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And unfortunately the dialogue box that would let you select between those choices does not exist. No.

12:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And this is kind of a problem. You either give it to them. It's all or nothing, right? Either give it to them or you don't.

12:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Now look, this is an amazing transition every time that we're in, and so we'll see how these things evolve. But this new outlook, which to date, I would say, people have kind of hated because it was missing features and it wasn't as full featured as the original desktop app, et cetera, et cetera, this conversation has shifted pretty dramatically right.

13:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is it clear since, though, that this is stuff Outlook always did. Is just now that the EU is mandating this, or is this?

13:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I don't think it always did this, so it's new stuff in the sense that Outlook is a 17 different apps right across the web and various platforms. The original Outlook desktop client probably didn't do anything like this, although I'll be interested to see when people in Europe run this thing if they see this kind of a dialogue for that too. I think what happened over time was that Outlook expanded to become more things a mobile client, various web clients, et cetera, et cetera and as Microsoft got more and more into ads I mean, look, anyone who doesn't pay for Microsoft 365, go to Outlookcom and see the ads, but what you don't see is the stuff they're talking about, the behind the scenes stuff. And the question here is I pay for Microsoft 365 as a consumer? I pay for it as a business? Do I? Am I still being tracked on the back end of these services and with this app? Honestly, probably Probably Right.

13:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, and you sort of get why they're pushing us to use the web clients so hard. Yes, right, that's right, because it makes them more money.

14:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's also this there's a well this comes later in the show, but I think this ties into this notion of Microsoft has shifted to this model where they ship products before they're ready. And I think and we've sort of talked about that in the context of AI this notion that their AI push is so important to them that they need to get these products out in the world. So we get kind of on that boat, so to speak, and but they're not just doing it with AI products, and the outlook is actually a great example of this. This thing's out in the world. It's absolutely not complete. It's been out in the world for a while. They're not going to replace the old things until it is you know more where they want it to be, obviously. But you know, this thing is in a constant state of churn and I think this is all.

14:53
I think this ad thing is also a priority for them. You know Richard and I were talking before the show and you know he said in this you know, yeah, sure, I mean this notion that AI is such as big moment in the sun. You know, whatever, just like you know, tim Cook may see the Vision Pro as his big, you know push, but I'm, like I know secretly on the back end. Maybe it's possible. This advertising stuff was in fact his first kind of company wide mandate. Right, because the surveillance stuff in Windows has gotten worse and worse that the tying of Microsoft, I'm sorry, of Windows and Edge in Windows 11 and the way you can. You know, obviously they're workarounds but you choose a browser and it still runs Edge because it hits those back end MSN start, whatever advertising services. This was a mandate. It's not like if the adults just knew what the Windows guys were doing they would put a stop to it. Like no, I think the adults told the Windows guys to do this. Right, this is a company wide strategy.

15:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, tim, I think you're right and certainly it's in the website. I think you know moving to the web client was part of that, because there's always a certain amount of telemetry and it's just easier to add more, and add more, and add more, like it's a total slippery slope. There's a you made me pull up my piehole data. You know one of the things when.

16:06
I stripped down my infrastructure to move to this house is I'm going to run piehole from now on, and it's 13% of all requests are being blocked by a piehole right now and when I go and look at them they're all ad telemetry stuff, like it's just unbelievable, the rate you know, and there's only two people live in this house.

16:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so is right. If you tried the new outlook on your network, I wonder if that would change. It would be worse, right? Yeah, the thing is, you know it was Steven Sonoski who told me I mean a million years ago now, over 10 years ago obviously that the vast majority of usage in Windows was happening through web browsers and the vast majority that uses even then was happening through Chrome. You know, and um.

16:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But I also think that's what they were able to measure, like it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. If the only thing you measure, then it, then of course it's the vast majority.

16:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But it kind of puts a dark side to this thing. I've always sort of thought, as as the web app kind of platform matured, that this was the thing that would could replace desktop apps and, of course, teams, uh, loop outlook. You know it's happening right.

17:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, but well, they're electrons, so they're coding in a, in a JavaScript platform, but then they're compiling, you know, running it natively, right, okay, that doesn't. But that means that all of those ad network and telemetry can libraries or any other run just fine, no problem, yeah.

17:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean Windows, has in many ways become a host for the web through, like WebView two or whatever, which is in itself, in Microsoft's world, a host for telemetry, targeted advertising and traffic.

17:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, so you just. You've now native eyes to telemetry engines, right? Yeah, you don't have to write a new one.

17:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's really scary, right I mean. So they're pernicious for sure, Right, yeah, I had a. It's funny when confronted by this number, right, Microsoft, Microsoft Outlook the new version is Microsoft and 772 partners right.

18:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's such a good number.

18:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's. Yeah. It's funny the reactions that people have to this, because I had one guy who was like, well, yeah, but what about? What about? You know what's the number looks like for Google and Meta? You know?

18:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
like yeah, I wonder about that too.

18:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, what, what does the number look like for Windows 11 or Teams or Edge or you know like? I mean, there's no version of this where Microsoft comes out looking good, right, that's kind of the problem, yeah. And then, of course, we get to the. You know where my brain goes immediately is like okay, well, what you can do about this. I'm going to talk about that in the back of the book a little bit, because it's an unsolved problem for right now. Although you just mentioned the piehole, that's absolutely one approach.

18:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
right yeah, A name piehole takes tweaking and tuning Like it's. You can't deploy a piehole at your parents place and not expect to get calls regularly.

18:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right, that's right.

18:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Even as technical as she, who must be obed is, you know, next door, she's still like. Why is this page broken? And okay, I whitelisted it for you.

19:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, so it's. You're kind of whack-a-mole, unfortunately.

19:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, but at least I'm working the other direction now, where I blocked a lot of stuff and I whitelist exceptions. You know, they, they the junk website. Junk website, that's nothing but ads, that's just generally blogged, is like oh, but you like that junk website? Okay, stuff does break though.

19:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I use a next DNS on our.

19:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I used to use it.

19:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I had to turn it off because Lisa said well, I can't you know, we've got sponsors and their site won't work and it's like I had to turn it off.

19:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, we're going to get to this. This is the thing. So this is a this. We're not going to leave this episode solving this problem, that's. That's. That's the.

19:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, believe it, we. We're all living in a pretty hypocritical world right now, when a chunk of our incomes are coming from ad revenue.

19:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, Except for one thing. So someone brought that up to me, right? So my site apparently triggers this $772, except my number's much smaller, it's a hundred something, right, right, here's the thing. I am not the source of those ads. I am not tracking you, so you know. In other words, I am a tiny business that's buying into an ad network and that's one of the ways I make money, and it's a really crappy way, but unfortunately, with this type of business, it's all you can do, and there are bigger companies than mine that are benefiting from this and doing those horrible things. It's not me. Yeah, in Microsoft's case, it is Microsoft. Microsoft is not an innocent party buying into.

20:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, oh, we thought this, this business was, you know legit, and this is also like we're the ones who want Microsoft to be the kind of gentler tech giant, right, Like we would like this to be true and we're just being reminded. It's not. They are still now the highest valued corporation on the planet.

20:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is right. It's the yin and the yang thing with, in this case with Microsoft, which is that, for the past 10 years ish, they have had they have seemed to had what I would have called the moral authority, if you will, over other big tech companies.

20:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, the moral, only because they got spanked first. Well, not for me, I mean. I mean, I'm not spanked for them.

21:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I, I, you. You shouldn't trust any of these companies, maybe, but if you have to trust one, microsoft would probably be the most trustworthy. I've definitely had this argument Sure, and now that, right. But now you look at this and it's like you know what. They're all terrible. And as much as I sort of celebrate Microsoft reexerting itself on the world stage, like you couldn't.

21:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
you had a chance to go the other way, right, because you weren't a play. You know, it was fang, there was no M Right and all I know, you got left out of it.

21:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, you got left out of it.

21:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now you got to step back in and say we're different. And you know you're not. Now you're not. Apparently, $20 billion is the price of soul.

21:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There is a price. Everyone has a price. Yeah, we learned Microsoft's in the now double digit billions apparently. So yeah, and it's still not the majority.

21:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know what the other 40, 50, 60 billion last quarter wasn't enough.

21:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know, I know, hey, they just became the biggest company in the world. Briefly, yeah, so you can't. I know, I know, it's all it's just awful.

22:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I, I and it's not like you wouldn't have made some of that money being the good guy.

22:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Look, I, I, I have all these examples of things that happen this week. I don't actually think we need to discuss them in any detail. There's the Epic V Apple stuff. Google unlinking its services in the EU. Apple removing Pulse Ox from watch, which is really just an antitrust issue. Yeah, google coming clean on incognito mode, actually tracking you. Google cloud allowing EU customers to keep data locally, something they've been working on for years.

22:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And and by the. You know this all comes from the EU, instituting this gatekeeper, rules, right and acknowledging, and then and they're not even legislating at this point they're just showing you what they found so far. I know like it's astonishing. It's the first release.

22:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But here's the thing, like, here's the problem. So one of the issues I've run into over the past few years no, the past few months, I would say actually is I've always, you know, look, I'm kind of a Microsoft guy, but Microsoft first, maybe whatever you want to call it, but I, I have stopped using Microsoft products and services when there's something better. I, you know, I went to the iPhone when it came out, or whatever. You know, like I, I'm pragmatic as well. Right, we stopped using a one note a couple of years ago because Barry, joe and I it could not collaborate in real time. It was horrible and and of course, they had gone to the. It was a brief moment there where they went to that Windows 10 version of the app, which was wonderful, lightweight, well, relatively less UI, minimalist, and then they were like, yeah, we're not doing this, and they went back to the desktop client. I'm like, no, I can't do this anymore.

23:26
So I've done those kinds of things, but in recent months I experimented with it and then stopped using a OneDrive because of all the crap going on there. I finally pushed after. I've done this a few times, honestly. We'll see if this one sticks, but I've stopped using Microsoft Word because it just doesn't respect the configuration changes I made. In other words, it's not paying attention to me, it's just berating me for not doing things the way Microsoft wants, because they want that data in their cloud so they can do their AI stuff. Right, they will get where AI is going to be the second big one.

23:55
But you know, the problem is because those things have happened back to back right Over October, december, whatever time frame. You know a lot of people read my stuff or like what's going on here, buddy, are you going to leave Windows? Right? That's the obvious one, right, and I got to tell you it. I use the Mac and the Chrome and Chrome OS fairly regularly and I very much prefer Windows. I really do, for all the crap going on there. I just I do.

24:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, let me ask you this, paul yeah, you think Apple might be better for privacy?

24:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, so here's the thing. So one of the things that bothers me about both Microsoft and Apple is how heavily they market privacy protection. Hypocrisy is what's getting. The hypocrisy is incredible If you, when you sign into Windows 11 for the first time, there's a whole page about it. All these things you can do.

24:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is why people aren't angry with Oracle. It's like we're evil. Get over it. Yeah, they're like. Yeah, you know we never, have a Scott Mac Scott.

24:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
MacNeely got this right.

24:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There is an important thing that I think most people don't make the distinction between first party information and third party information, and so these companies Apple's a good example of this act as if we protect your privacy because we have a lot of tools for humanists and no, no we have a lot of tools like Apple's application tracking prevention that turns off third party data. Third party and that's the thing is, people don't understand that Apple still collects the data. Here's the. So the, the data, and that's right.

25:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So you're not really hiding. You can fiddle with Microsoft privacy settings all day. You're not turning this stuff off. I'm sorry.

25:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And, by the way, well, I mean, even if you did, like Dean, how would you know you can't see what they're collecting in the first place? Yeah, you'll never know. How would you know they're not? You'll never know.

25:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I think, like Apple, you really think it's just lip service. That Apple doesn't, I can prove it.

25:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, oh good, okay, I'm more invested in the Microsoft side, but Apple's secret? I don't remember who said this, it might have been Cory Doctor, but someone pointed out. Explain to me exactly how two of the biggest companies on earth have a lucrative deal such that one of them is getting paid $20 billion a year and they never reveal this to anybody, right? Because here's the thing If you don't change the default search engine, you are being tracked on an iPhone. Right, and Because Google, apple, but they don't see no one. There's no dialogue popping up saying hey, by the way, you're getting tracked, you should turn that off because Apple's being paid for that. Right, that's how I know. In Microsoft's case, I have more of a.

26:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just have more experience. I think, phil, that there is so much telemetry in Windows that is not in Macintosh. Yes, right, right, that's right. Look, maybe it's a matter of degree, but and I certainly don't think Apple's pure, but I don't, no, no, look, let me get.

26:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'll just give you a single example, because it is Edge, it's Windows, it's Outlook, it's everything. But let's just stick to Edge. When you first run Edge, there's a couple screens. It makes it sound like they're doing a great thing for you. In fact, all you're doing is opting into more tracking. But if you go into Edge Privacy, search and Services and this was the big thing they pushed when they moved to the Chromium-based version of Edge tracking protection we value your privacy. We will always protect and respect your privacy while giving you the transparent control you deserve.

27:18
There's nothing you can do here to prevent tracking, and the reason I know this is because when this product first came out, I put it on the strictest form of tracking and I browsed, for I searched for a pair of New Balance sneakers I needed to replace. I got them, and then I had New Balance ads for the next two months, and so I actually contacted Microsoft and I said okay. So you guys said that this browser was going to prevent this. Why is it not preventing this? And I got some rigmarole. Blah, blah, blah. We can't prevent all tracking, but the thing is they were actually causing it. See the thing you come to realize over time is that when Microsoft says we're going to remove all of the Google stuff from Chrome, from Chrome, and call it Edge, that sounds wonderful, but the corollary, the other side of that, is we're also going to put our own stuff in there and replace it. We're doing exactly the same. Don't worry, we're not as good at it. Yeah, and that's right. They are definitely not as good at it.

28:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So this was a running gag with us SysMemBuddy, and whenever we'd go for lunch, I would mention a product we'd never talked about before in his car, only Just as we were sure that Facebook had the microphone turned on, like we're just sure. And before lunch was over, those were the ads in his feed. We've all Everyone experiences this creepy creepy.

28:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh yeah.

28:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And the trick was to pick something that we've never talked about radial armsaws before.

28:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So that's what I'm going to mention in the car right To make it abundantly clear.

28:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, listen, yeah, we all experience this, right, so it's not pretend, it's real. So the thing is, whether it's Microsoft Word or OneDrive or Microsoft Edge or just Windows 11, respecting my browser choice right, it's a pretty low bar when I say something like what I really want from software that I use as services is for them to respect my choices right Like duh. And when those things don't happen, you try to move on, right. The question is what steps can we take? This is like four or five years ago there was a big movement in certain circles Like, well, I want to remove Google for my life. And then you come back and look at these guys now like, yeah, they couldn't really do it.

29:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can't do it. Yeah, you can't do it. Cashmere, you know what? It wasn't a cashmere. You know who de-googled her life, but it didn't work.

29:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, it's like Kevin Roos was like. I can't believe I'm saying this. I'm switching to Bing. I'm like no, you're not. No, you're not, go ahead, we'll talk to him in a minute. And he didn't.

29:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But so this is where a tough spot, by the way, as you point out. It wouldn't make any difference if you did.

29:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you're trading one spy for another.

29:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, richard. So Richard, in the Discord is it quotes. It quotes as written shareholder value, right, as kind of a phrase we might use to. It's our Harvard Business School catchall for. Yeah, but this is the inshortification thing, too, right? In other words, when a company starts making decisions in its products that make life worse for you on purpose, knowingly violating what you've asked for and requested and demanded frankly, especially if you're paying for it, that's what this is right.

30:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is where is the shareholder value in violating customer expectations?

30:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's apparently about the $20 billion mark for Microsoft. No, because remember, back in the day we used to talk about, like what is it the Microsoft of 10, 15 years ago? What does it take if you're inside Microsoft and you want to spin up a new business and have it succeed? It had to be a billion dollar business. It had to be a billion dollar business. That was the thing. That's what Kambomar demanded. Yep, but that was a long time ago, right? I'm thinking the number is higher now. And look, microsoft, very famously, has had a severe case of the Apple and the thing for 20 years now, 20 plus years.

30:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't know why they have such a good business. They sell more than one thing.

31:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Microsoft is not a charity. They could make more money, yeah, you know. I mean now Apple. Whatever anyone thinks of Apple, they are a unique company and they do things that other companies just can't get away with. They don't have that same loyalty from the customers, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a special something there that no one can understand. But Google and Meta Absolutely not, so they also, less famously, have had a case of jealousy toward those companies. Right and honestly, that is more achievable and obviously because they've achieved it right. I don't know that their advertising business is worth 20 billion dollars a year now, but it's definitely above 10, right, and it's in there. And I think this is the baseline, Like, how much do we have to make for us to be awful to the people who are paying us to be customers? And the answer is 10 billion dollars a more year, unfortunately, right.

31:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, of course, Corey Dr is going to be on Twitter on Sunday. I'll uh, I love it. Yeah, I'm sure he's going to ask him what to say. Who's the shirtees this?

32:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
is just the beautiful thing about what he's done with this and certification stuff is that now he can just sit back and say I told you so Because everything we come up with now is just another example of it. It's all the same.

32:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It also speaks to a cycle right that you eventually damage a product sufficiently, the customers move away from it. Don't trust more like you. Overcome that inertia, thank you, and I, yes, I'm going to. That is, you get to make a new thing and swing up again and then go back down again.

32:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, literally, that's a point. The end game, uh, from the point of view of of us users, is interoperability. We have to be able to move. When it becomes so bad that you know we're obviously exploiting us, then we have to be able to move.

32:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Because it's inevitable.

32:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Like this is I think this is mobility, right. So a lot of the locks that would keep you into an ecosystem have fallen down. Simple things like being able to move your phone number to a new carrier in the United States, which was, by the way, it was almost impossible for a long time.

33:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And you, by the way, there you can thank government regulation for that. Yes. Phone companies would never have done it.

33:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have people are like over regulation, over regulation. It's like no, no, no, no, we we listen. Uh, history shows we need regulation, we I'm not. This is not over.

33:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, once upon a time the phone company owned your number yes, and then it was government regulations. No, that number is yours.

33:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You have a name, you have a social security number and you have a phone number that is collectively, arguably, your identity, like you know, I mean and I know that shifts over time or whatever but I have the same phone number I've had since the iPhone first came out, because back then I did have to change my phone number and that was actually fairly traumatic. Um, you know, and now I, now I live in a state, my, my area code of the phone number I still have is 617, which is the original Boston or Massachusetts area code. The area code in this part of Pennsylvania is the original one for this whole state, which is 610. So when I I get asked my phone number in a store, whatever, I six, I say 617 and they go six one. Did you say something?

34:05
I mean every single time there there isn't a human being in this state that could can get past that not being a zero, like you know, because they hear it, they just they know I'm going to say it and then I don't. They're like wait what you know? Um, any hope?

34:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So actually I'm just reading the uh Wikipedia article on number portability. It was created by Siemens.

34:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Really yeah. Introduced to the.

34:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
EU demanded it. It was introduced as a tool to promote competition and heavily monopolized wireline telecommunications industry. Uh, so it really did come from private industry, but it was eventually mandated by the FCC in 1996. Yeah, in this country it was absolutely. It's actually there are only three countries where there's true number portability the US, canada and South Africa. Everywhere else there's still kind of this gray area. Right, okay, interesting? Well, it's, it is interesting, you know.

35:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I guess email email address would be another one. Yeah, yeah.

35:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And that's been from the earliest days of the domain name system that you could move.

35:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's technology. Look for all the insurification stuff I got to tell you and you'll agree, everyone will agree with this. I mean, um, the ease at which you can uh move between phones, but with an e-signal, it's unbelievable. Yeah, it's instantaneous. Basically right, you do it by yourself. You just have to go and have like like a guy would come out and like a Intel lab suit and be like I'm gonna take your phone into the back room and charge you for the SIM.

35:32
By the way, yes, it's crazy, right, it's awesome. Um, the other awesome thing that's happening, that happens to be in that space, is, uh, uh, data access internationally, especially for people here in the United States where we don't have that cross border EU thing, right. So I, the first, the first year that the iPhone came out, I took that thing to Paris and had it in. They didn't have, do not disturb, but I had to turn off the radio because I was so afraid from those stories. You had a people who came back with this much paper from a bill, thousands and thousands of dollars, yeah. So it was the summer that Paris was rolling up for the first time public wifi in their parks and I would go out there like a little bigger and you know kind of connect to my tiny iPhone, and I was scared to death. And now I just, I just travel, I don't even think about it.

36:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know it's wonderful.

36:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not a thing Wonderful.

36:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So they'll screw that up eventually. I remember getting on a long distance phone call and shouting hey, this, this is long distance, I can only talk for a minute.

36:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's like you were talking about metal tube or something like that.

36:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So expensive, I know.

36:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You don't think about that anymore.

36:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nope, there are some good things in the world.

36:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There are some good things. I guess we should pause to rethink about it, I guess. But in the Microsoft world. I, I, I looked at good things. I guess you know, but yeah, that's why.

36:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
that's why you're upset. If there's nothing good here, we would have walked away. Yeah, there's an awful lot of good here. It's just been very shirty lately. You know what?

36:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
By the way, I agree with you, but I also worry that what we're really talking about is inertia, right, true, is there a lot of good here, or was there a lot of good here? And we're just kind of used to this, you know, I I don't know. I mean, this is a. I'm not trying to walk away from the Microsoft ecosystem, I don't mean it that way, but this is getting a little alarming, you know behavioral.

37:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, but we're our instinct still is. It's worse over there, right Like that's our instinct, it may be incorrect Right.

37:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, that's probably just tribalism and that's probably not Nail.

37:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Which is, you know, the type of thing I would kind of argue against, you know, if it wasn't me, but I'm going to support it because you know I never knew anything. No, I, I, no, I want to be clearheaded about it. I, I, I want, I want people to be educated on this stuff, and by people I mean me, I mean, you know, I want, I want to be educated.

37:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I mean, we look at, even when I show like this, which is about a specific company, or Mac break weekly, which is about a specific company, our real constituency is not the company, it's the end users.

37:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's exactly right, the constituency for.

37:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Windows weekly is the people who use Microsoft products not.

37:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Microsoft People come to me and they say man, you're really negative. I'm like, am I negative or are they just doing bad things? And I'm calling it. They are them on it. I mean, in other words, if they were doing something that deserved me cheerleading them in some way, I would do that, but I'm not just going to be a cheerleader Like I. You know, I, I that is. I mean my God, we have enough of those.

38:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's what I often get emails from people saying why are you so hard on Apple? Don't you like Apple? I think Apple sends me those emails actually, but I think it deserves more scrutiny.

38:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think Apple needs more people to be that.

38:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and there's plenty of fanboy podcasts and blogs you can, you can subscribe to, and if that's, if you just want to have your tribalism reaffirmed and understand them why people want that. That's mostly how humans are, but this is not the place for that and I guess we've we're kind of a pause state for some people.

38:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would like people to be. I would like people to take that Apple marketing slogan, make it grammatically correct, and actually think. Think, think differently, think differently. Don't just accept marketing as some kind of a truth. You know Right.

38:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look, apple's a good. I'm not. I think it's a good example of the same thing you're talking about. It's not not merely inertia, but the ecosystem does have value, that's right. And so by being having an Apple watch and an Apple phone and an Apple Mac and an Apple have a. You get some value out of that, so that's legit.

39:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So just on that topic, briefly, I'll I'll just say one of the things that I don't know. If we talked about this, I guess we did, I'm sorry. I talked about this. So this notion of casting and this amatic cast, and now it's like this kind of standard that Apple has their own thing and Google has their own thing and you know one of the nice things when you stay in Apple, you don't have to know the names of anything, it just works. No, it just works.

39:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
As long as you stay in the Apple right.

39:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But, this is the same conversation that I would have about Google, which is there are these two opposing ideas that that are not mutually exclusive. They're horrible, but they're also really good. There are parts of what they do that it's terrible, and then there are parts that are beneficial to you, so those things can coexist. They do they literally coexist, right. Nothing's perfect.

40:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And in a way this is true of Microsoft that if Microsoft were willing to make a pure ecosystem play like Apple does, things might work together better. So Microsoft still has this kind of open. We're a platform and we we want to give more value to the people who use us.

40:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And it is a distinction right.

40:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is that the part of this is cultural right. Microsoft came up in the world and became successful because of partners PC makers in the beginning. Right they got became successful in small businesses, work groups and then big businesses because of partners in that space as well.

40:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Isn't that? What Sutton and Delis said is, the definition of platform is something that makes more money for its partners than it does for the.

40:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Microsoft. Well, that's Gates's line. Originally it was like 10 times. What do you say?

40:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Microsoft is also the the mafia in this situation, because they changed the deal over time. This is like Darth Vader in Cloud City Pray they don't alter it.

40:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They just want to taste. They just want to taste.

40:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah Well, because in the beginning Richard was talking about this last week we used to have small business servers, right. We used to have the. We used to have a partner ecosystem where they would go out to your place of business and manage this stuff for you. They could do it remotely, but sometimes they would have to show up and they were like this middle man and eventually Microsoft was like you know, we're moving to the cloud, we can. Who could better manage exchange than the company that built it? You don't have to have on Prem infrastructure anymore. Well, that kind of cuts out that whole partner ecosystem doesn't it.

41:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It did, but also those mail servers were not well passed right, Like that's where the half DM exploit went. Like it became abundantly clear that they could be good and bad.

41:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's my. I mean. It's nothing is you know, nothing is absolute, but the but, in the end, what you have is, if you are not not again, not absolutely, but most I don't know I'm gonna notice a lot of Microsoft customers now are dealing with Microsoft directly, whereas in the past there was a middle man, you know, a partner.

41:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's more middle men than you know. Right, there still is a partner ecosystem. There's certainly a licensing ecosystem that abstracts a lot of stuff.

41:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's just not what it was you know, because it has changed.

42:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now you have. Yeah, they've also put a lot more requirements on partners, like it's tough to be a partner now where they were pretty generous about it. And that's the Gates figured out that if you're in the hardware business, you're a chump right.

42:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Like you said, that apple figured out If you are your biggest company in the world.

42:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yes, that's one of those markets changed, but his whole idea of sell the. Sell the languages for everybody, so that if you learn a Microsoft language you can run on anything. Sell the operating system for everybody, so if you can, you know you learn that it runs everywhere and they're not bound to any given set of hardware. That was the origins of the company and they've struggled to move past that. How many times have they gotten into hardware and gotten back out again, right.

42:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah Cause, no one can duplicate that thing that Apple did that was.

42:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
you know that was the anomaly, I know. That's why Apple can duplicate it. It's the exception that proves the rule Effect Apple.

42:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They need the new and they're now saying well, the future is not in selling hardware, but in average revenue per user services is the future. Now they're a software company.

43:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Average revenue per user is actually a great Microsoft metric, because Microsoft, which does not have an appreciable market share for its own PC business and has nothing in mobile, is counting on people to use those devices with their software and services Right. The thing with Apple, though, is that this is like a new business. This is the services business, right.

43:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, but I think it's Apple adjusting it's it's it's well so it's saying we're not just a hardware company anymore, because in fact that we've hit, we've said the real problem is they've saturated and so hardware said it's a different problem.

43:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So their, their hardware business continues to be successful. It's not that we moved to a new Apple where because that if Apple was a services business, their stuff would have to be everywhere. Right, they only want their stuff, so they have a complimentary set of hardware and services. Yes, actually, that's a better way of putting it, and it's a captive audience and in their you know, yes, the reason Apple moved into services honestly was because of growth right they had such heady growth for so many years once you've started to market, yeah, yeah.

44:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And then they're moving over at the other folks that were running the services for their customers saying we want that money, yep.

44:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, okay, right. And that way, every one of these companies is jealous of the ways that the other yeah. No, it's a grassy greener effect. That's the services right there Apple one.

44:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Apple TV plus Apple music, apple arcade. By the way, many of these services are horrible. Apple uh yeah, yeah. It's as bad as. Microsoft news. That's right, but if you buy Apple one, you get it all, and so I guess.

44:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and then you'll get in there and then you're like a tick and a lot of the services revenue is that $20 billion from Google, I should point out. One of the services is selling your data to yeah, you notice, they don't promote that on stand, they don't talk about the. That's actually a big chunk of it the grift they're doing with Google.

44:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you know we we got to talk about this Epic case because it is at because it's an Apple loss. There's not a lot of Apple losses out there, but look how they turned a loss into a victory.

45:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
All right, Well, and look how they're going to end up in court and listen. This is one of those things where it looked. All the three of us and then everyone listening to this, we all have super strong opinions about everything right, and the thing I'll say about Epic versus Apple they think everyone will agree on is that, regardless of your stance, the ruling is the ruling and Apple has to do a certain thing and they're end running around it in a way that everybody's still going to charge, they're still going to make all the fees, and I'm sorry, that does not violate the spirit of this requirement at all, and so I think Epic is actually going to prevail here, and that's an opinion.

45:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But just to fill you in, on Monday the US Supreme Court decided to decline to review the lower court decision which held Apple. On one count of that, I think there are nine total, Well, one of the two most important counts, though you have to be able, you have to allow third parties to refer, using Amazon.

45:59
As an example, when I go to the Kindle app on iOS, it says you can't buy books here and they're not allowed to say where you can buy books. They can't say just go to our Amazon store and buy them. They say you just can't buy them here. Now they'll be able to put a link in to Amazoncom and you'll be able to click that link and buy the book there. Yeah, but Apple's retort to that is well, we're still going to charge you 27 months.

46:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And what they did was because they've been working on this for months is they altered their arrangement with developers. They have a new support dog that explains this, and you have to meet certain technical requirements so Apple can see that you're doing this. You can't have the two things side by side so they can see the difference in price. And because you're going through what they call it I think it's a generic browser instance or whatever you have to log into the third party site as if you had never been there before. It's not a seamless experience, so they're making it more expensive and horrible.

46:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now do you think the courts will say, no, that's not the spirit of the judgment, and go back and do it right? Yeah, absolutely yeah.

47:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But, that's the two years of litigation right, that's no absolutely not the spirit.

47:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But this is when you've run out of appeals for your current case. Make a new case.

47:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, but I mean Apple kind of brought this on themselves, right?

47:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean it's you shouldn't go as far and the EU is going to ultimately make them, although they say now, the rumor is now that Apple will respond to the DMA, the EU Digital Markets Act, by making a separate store just for Europe, and everybody else is still going to have to buy through the Apple store. So they're going to, they're going to kick, go, kick and scream in all the way.

47:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The dumb part is they could have done this from the outset, right Like you could have saved all of this time and just circumvent, circumvent, circumvent.

47:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But think of the billions of dollars they're making. Well, the lawyers are happy.

47:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So my point about Google ads is that they're going to be able to do that, and Apple, with regards to app store fees, is always that. They know this is going away, this is going to go down dramatically at some point, but why not milk it for as long as we can? And one of the great things you can do is a gigantic company fighting small companies is take them to court because you can afford it, and an epic and a little FU to, I mean Apple, it'll up you to. Epic was like. Now you have to pay our core costs.

48:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like our work is like 73 million in core costs. Anyone who thinks.

48:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Apple is a an ethical or, you know, fair minded company of any kind. I'm sorry, but look at what they're doing here.

48:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's Tom's tech giant Themist column here Right Look.

48:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean they are a public, they held company, they have a fiduciary responsibility, they're stakeholders to maximize profits. I think stakeholders reasonably say all it's all about how weird it is.

48:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're different and better and the reason you come here is because we're so much better and they're not there. They're just as bad. Yeah, and that's you know. They're not any worse than Microsoft.

48:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not claiming that, honestly this is, this is how the church works. I mean, I don't want to offend anybody, I'm dying to hear this.

49:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You sure, you don't?

49:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Leo, I'm not so sure. Actually, before you say we're going to say, I'm going to say For 2000 years.

49:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, no, hold on a second. Good for you to figure out a non-conservative way to explain it, yeah. Yeah, I can't wait I don't need to go, I don't need to go.

49:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, while selling indulgences for years during the Middle Ages, the Catholic church said you know, you don't have to go to hell, just give us some money.

49:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I never heard anyone explain that the Catholic church was ever been horrible. I'm surprised to hear this.

49:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think we just heard of the movie dogma. Right, it's like if you walk through this arch, you're forgiven, You're good.

49:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah Right, and while they don't sell indulgences anymore, I think you could make a case.

49:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You could buy one on eBay, I mean they organized religion.

49:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here and there, not just Christianity, but other organized religions as well have professed the brotherhood of man while making sure that everybody else got theirs. So yeah, there's this is a human. I don't think this is Apple, microsoft. This is a human kind of propensity, yeah there you go, fair enough I actually one of the ways that Apple is, while meanwhile stabbing your fellow man in the yes.

50:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
In other words, you can get to heaven, but only if you agree with exactly what we think, even though it's 99.9% the same as everything else, and you know, humans are tribal there was a great and Elon Musk tweeted it.

50:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I, elon Musk, said you got to watch this Jonathan Hyatt lecture from 2015 about tribalism and it's a really good. I mean he's got Ted talks as well. I interviewed him for his book the Righteous Mind some years ago on triangulation. He's a social psychologist but he says look, this has been evolutionarily a very good thing for us to be tribal. It's kept. It's kept the human race afloat, but it has its consequences and you see, tribalism in the Apple Other people, as the others they're the other.

51:00
That's right, and you see that happening with Apple, a little less so with Microsoft, but you see it happening in technology.

51:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's human.

51:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not technology.

51:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's human.

51:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's how you are.

51:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Microsoft, until you know the past year has kind of positioned itself as the, you know, come in for the hug. You know we're going to work with everyone kind of company and meanwhile in golf and devour come on, and I mean they are back epic in their court battle. They back you know they. They're also going after these companies through third parties and in a very passive, aggressive way. That kind of shows you where they you know where they're aggressive.

51:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Aggressive, but my only point is they're not unique. This is how humans behave.

51:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah. That's why we're all terrible. That's, you know it was. It's an it's an it's amazing about humanity.

51:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're simultaneously amazing and beautiful, and creative and innovative. And the worst sons of ever and it's just, it's human. It's what being human is. It's a very odd mixture. Why?

51:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
do we have kids? What happened there? We all had kids, we know we. We only had known.

52:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a great poem by Philip Larkin. I can't say it without beginning bleeped. Yeah, they eff you up, your mom and dad. They don't, may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some others just for you. But they were effed up in their turn by fools in old time hats and coats who half the time were soppy stern and half of each other's throats.

52:30 - Speaker 3 (Host)
I, I, I wait a minute, I'm not done. This is the best part.

52:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Man hands down misery to man. It deepens like the coastal shelf. So get out early as you can and don't have kids yourself. Yeah, ta-da.

52:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Those are the truly good people you know. Plus, let's face it, they have more money way earlier in life than anyone else. You know. Trips yeah, don't have kids.

52:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And we're saying this, the three of us all have had kids. So, yeah, yeah, we speak from experience and we know I had a dark moment. And, by the way, we had a big baby shower today for Viva, who works in our continuity department, who is having her first child. So, viva, what are you doing? Yeah, what are we doing? Don't listen to this show. Don't listen to this show. What? Are you doing?

53:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We're just too late now. Old guys, yeah.

53:11
I was worried that I I can't. It occurred to me a long time ago that my kids best qualities came from my wife and their worst qualities came from me. And I I had a. I had this discussion with my daughter, kelly, a couple of months ago and I was, I was very upset about this and I was like Kelly, I feel, I feel so bad, I'm so sorry, you know. And she's looked at me. She said are you crazy? She goes do you know what I got from mom? And then she went through this list and I was like, oh, I'm living with a monster on you.

53:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What is that? I'm in debt.

53:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know she had the list and I was like yikes, so I guess we're all like backstabbing murderers really.

53:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But they but they got. But we got it from our parents and they got it from their parents. She's human, she's a great excuse chain. Yeah, yes, Well, we got philosophical here. I just but I almost just wanted to say it to defend Microsoft's greedy backstabbing corporate. How could they?

54:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
be any other way.

54:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
By the way, leo, that's why I'm here to defend it. You know that's my, that's been my stance all these 30 years. You know defend the terrible.

54:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I'm just, I'm don't think they have to be this way. I was like we can make profits other ways. Well, I agree.

54:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I wonder if the stock market would understand that. If, if a company said, look short term, our quarterly results may suffer, but when we are looking longterm at the for the benefit of our customers, are we. You know what?

54:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's not going to. I would love that to be the case. Absolutely not. Yeah, no right.

54:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think we blame the stock market, blame the shareholders.

54:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well it's, we're blaming capitalism, right? This is the system you know. And when? When she become a publicly held company you got to play that game.

54:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Jamie Diamond would like you to believe that, right.

54:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I wish you could say though I know some people would believe this. You don't need to grow anymore. Let's just do the right thing when they started said customer center, customer first.

54:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the the path to success. Yeah, lost a lot of money for years, In fact, so much so they couldn't get more money from the stock market. They had to start borrowing, but eventually and this is, by the way, Corey's prime example of insurification eventually they turn it around so they could extract all the money out of this great market that they had built over the years.

55:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It was then that you could hear the evil laugh growing in the background. Where is that?

55:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
coming from there. It is Money, money, money, money. Nice Money makes the world go away.

55:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, like I said I, there's no solving. We're not going to walk away feeling fulfilled in any way. There's no solving this problem, it's just the terribleness that is our world, and I don't know the answer. I can tell you what the the answer to big tech is not vinyl and a carburetor cars, and you know it's not. It's not this nonsense Going back and good either. No, that's, that's not. No, sorry, so I, I, but I don't have an answer. I don't think I know what it does. No, okay, let's move on. I see. The second thing in the yeah.

56:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Cover the little. Well, that's the first year yeah, you stuff. Well, these are the big buckets though. Yeah, yeah.

56:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That was the first of the big controversies of this past week. The second, also a surprise, came out of nowhere and I'm I'll. I'll just preface this by saying I've gone through what I think of as the seven stages of guilt when it comes to AI. It is, it isn't. It's great, it's crazy, you know, but but whatever, richard very calmly, rationally, was like no, this is the year 2023 where we're. You know, microsoft is going to announce things and then 2024 is going to be when they implement them. Right, and by the time I hit the end of the year, I was on board with that. Yep, he was right all along, and we didn't realize how right he was, because less than two weeks into the year, they implemented everything. It's something I I have. I thought last year was crazy. What, what, like if you had said to me this is how 2024 is going to go down. They're going to slowly expand co-pilot for Microsoft 365 to bigger businesses and maybe lower the the 300 license. You know uh, smaller.

57:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, they got a little bit, they'll move, they'll move.

57:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And I said we're going to bring this to consumers. So maybe sometime by mid year, you know, second half of the year um, we'll have a third tier of a consumer Microsoft 365, which is a little more expensive. You know, uh, we'll have the AI stuff maybe. Um, we're going to eventually allow. I mean, look, there was no version of 2024 where they were going to let people like individuals build GPTs of their own. I don't even know why anyone would want to do that, because I hear, like a normal mainstream human being, they did all of their everything. I said in more three days ago, like it's all it's out. Well, the, the GPT builder is coming, but they announced it. Um, I, I don't know. I don't even know what to say anymore. And, um, well, I do.

58:03
I have one thing to say about this but co-pilot pro is the consumer product. Co, co-pilot pro is basically co-pilot for Microsoft 365, but for consumers. Right, it adds the AI features that in all the office apps. Um, it gives you some consumer ordeal things like the uh, whatever they're calling the image creator thing today. Um, you get extra credits and extra quality and peak time usage and all that kind of stuff, and you're going to get this co-pilot GPT builder so you can build your own little personal GPT. And this is the kind of thing Richard is actually doing right now. I think Leo is too.

58:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've done it with open AI chat GPT, but same right.

58:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep. So, and I've been, I've been thinking about how, how would I do this for myself? I have a, you know, 30 years of archives and make a Paul Therade expert system.

58:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You'll never have to write another article.

58:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, not, not, not, not, not read another article, but rather one of the weird problems I have because of how much I write is that I can't. Oh, did.

58:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I write this before.

58:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I'm like did I do this, or what did I say about this, or what you know? Finding this stuff is actually very difficult. So, um, that, would you know, be useful to me personally. I can't imagine anyone else would do this thing.

59:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But, but anyway, imagine if MSDN and tech net could have been put into a well yeah, I mean expert system right. Sure, I don't know why they haven't done that, frankly.

59:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I've. Maybe that is what Microsoft learned becomes right. Yeah, you know, we'll see. So they just announced a flurry of things. Uh, okay, I'm sorry. I mentioned, uh, my Copiopro for consumers, right, which is the consumer version of Copiopro. It's the same price as chat GPT.

59:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I would always pre-user per month. That's what I pay right now.

59:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You have to have a Microsoft 365 subscription. You can't have that as a consumer and you have to sorry, I should say it has to be personal or family, because remember, there's the biggest one now. I do have that, yeah, and then so you pay whatever you pay for that.

59:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I wonder if that would be better or worse, or like it's the same.

59:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Let me you know what. Let's talk about that in one second, but let me just get through this list, cause I actually do want to talk about that. I think this is that's an important point. If you have a Microsoft 365 business account, you might do that as your own. Like you have a customer domain. You're like I have the basic thing you can't do Copilot Pro. You have to be worried. That's so weird. You have to do a $30 business one.

01:00:05
Yep. So they have the $30 business one that's available basically to all businesses. They've removed the exceptions. They've removed the baseline number of licenses, that's in more 300.

01:00:15
Yeah, so basically everyone on business can now get that Copilot is 10 bucks a month more, which is weird, it is right, but we're going to that's what I want to get to. That Copilot on mobile means there's an iOS and an Android native app for Copilot which they released and never discussed back in December. This is why. And then Copilot is appearing also in the Microsoft 365 mobile app, which remembers the all up. It's kind of like one drive word, excel, powerpoint and one note, I think all in one app or whatever. It's going to be in there as well, if it isn't already. And then I think the most confusing thing, honestly, when I think about mainstream users and Copilot and AI, honestly, I got to say the terminology is maybe the biggest hurdle. So this notion that they're going to give individuals like a Copilot GPT builder I'm pretty sure this is the first time Microsoft has used GPT as the name of anything in their little ecosystem. You know, I think people associate that with open AI and chat GPT. But it's okay, copilot, gpt builder, in other words, you're going to build your own Copilot, essentially, right, okay, cool, all right.

01:01:16
So why is the business version of Copilot 10 bucks more per month? It's because of the Microsoft graph, right, the missing piece for Microsoft and the consumer side right now. It's why Copilot Windows 11 is so lame is that they don't have that thing on the back end that ties together all those disparate data sources that exist in an organization. What they're trying to do is leech in all of your email through Outlook, leech in all of your personal data through OneDrive, leech in all of your activity online through Edge and then use that as sort of a mini Microsoft graph.

01:01:48
But the reality is it, it's not there, right? So I think that's why it's also the difference between what I would call like a commercially backed, licensed, supported service versus we're going to let you make cute pictures with, you know, bing or whatever they're calling it in Copilot. Now you know it's consumery, right, I think 20 bucks per month. Look, when you're paying, as an individual, 69 bucks a year for 12 months of this service and you have to pay an additional $20 not for the year, but every single month, I think you've just eliminated 99% of the people out there who are like wait, what that is not. That's incommensurate with the cost of the thing.

01:02:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And arguably a lot of the value isn't there because you don't have this big graph data set that the companies are taking advantage of Yep. So that might also be intentional, Like I feel. I feel like they've rushed this out just to see what would happen.

01:02:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I think you're right and I think by making it prohibitively expensive or restrictive which is what they did in November, and now it's just expensive they're cutting down on the number of people are going to try it and then come out and say this is garbage, Because one of the big problems for Microsoft is in their rush to AI, and now they're rushed to implement it. What happens if they poison it? What if so many people say this is garbage that they never come back right? This is a real danger.

01:03:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, I would point out that the $20 a month is what you play for JATGPT plus, so it's like this is the alternative offering.

01:03:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but what do you pay for Copilot, github, copilot 10? Right see, to me that's a very targeted offering with a very clear value proposition and it is expected to go up Right and you can't make a GPT with it, but it okay. But it $10. To me, code focus, that's commensurate with the value that you get. I in fact it's. If anything, it's almost a no-brainer. I would argue that. I will argue that almost any developer should probably have this right. I mean yeah.

01:03:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, I would argue it should be 20 and the consumer version should be 10. There you go, that's. The market currently says $20.

01:03:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But even at 10, you have more than doubled the cost of this annual subscription. You know, for $100 per month you get a terabyte of storage for six users, all of the off, all the office apps downloaded to as many computers as you want, all of the office apps and with their full feature set enabled on mobile and on the web. And Then you double that price and you get, I'm sorry, a couple of AI features and work. You know, like the one of the arguments I made in this article I wrote about this was that, like no one uses all of office right, so I'm not gonna look and say you can't even list all of office like right thing.

01:04:35
There are 24 new features in office because of AI. Well, guess what? I only use word. Well, how many features are there in word for and how many am I gonna use? One of them might be interesting. Is that worth $20 a month? I mean, that's a lot of money and that's really. That's the Pragmatic, real-world human being.

01:04:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah but only in the context of what you were already paying. Isn't it price that you use 20 bucks?

01:04:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is 20 bucks isn't also priced somewhat because it's so expensive for them to run. They have to. Well, you know what the price.

01:05:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That sounds like a Microsoft problem, not a customer problem. So you know, look at it this way back in the back of the day, who? We used to have standalone office products that would come out every three years, right? Office 2013, office, whatever you know, all the different versions. Microsoft is, like you know, would be better than this, because these people are only paying us like once or twice a lifetime is if we could get them on a subscription right. So we'll make it like you know, we'll make it useful and we'll make it Inexpensive. Well, how do we get them to pay for that? Well, we'll only put the new features in the subscription right. So if you don't buy a new version of office every three or six years, you're not getting any new features. The new features are all coming through the Microsoft 365 subscription. And my god, did they go to town on that? Yeah, we talked about this.

01:05:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
How well hard it was to keep up a part, and part of that was it was easier to develop in the cloud. You can slip small features and you can.

01:05:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can benchmark it but I mean I'm talking about all the clients. I mean, like the, every month, the office desktop clients on Mac and Windows on mobile in the web Would all be. There was some matrix of new features, all the time all the time.

01:06:11
So that kind of you know it hits some point. There's a weird thing like the. The standalone office user base was over a billion, probably 1.5 1.6 billion at one point. The Microsoft 365 subscriber base is somewhere in the three maybe 400 million point, but more lucrative because it's money every month. So what's the next step beyond that? Stop giving them new features. Claim that these new features are AI and make that a new tier, right, and. But the thing is it's so much more expensive than the thing you're already paying for, whether it's yeah, because you don't want them to compare them that way, like you're comparing it, except when you comparing it to chat GPT.

01:06:49
Well, no, I was gonna. I was gonna compare it to the past. If you compare the features They've added and, by the way, it's not like they're gonna come up with that many new AI features every month now, but if you could pick any given month, you could go back in time to 2017, 2018, whatever you pick a year, don't care. Pick a month, don't care. Look look at the hundred and seventeen new features they put into office and compare it to the seven they just added and then compare the the value of the relative features. And I'm telling you it was better back then and now we're. Not only am I gonna have to pay more to get that handful of new feature stuff. This, it's not gonna keep coming. I'm now. We just get to pay to have this functional level. It's like they've added not just a new tier, but a really expensive new tier.

01:07:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know the development is much easier in small increments, constantly deploying, testing and adjusting, yeah and. But the downside is you don't get a big bang version number anymore, right, and so it's hard to market that it is now with more incremental feature improvements right. I like exactly. You want to have a party for a big version and you can't give them the features. Over 18 months they go and now it will call that a version right like it's. It's very problematic. It's a better way to build software but allows your way to sell it.

01:07:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, windows suffers from the same problem. You know it's a. It's a problem, right?

01:08:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Windows doesn't really, because they're not selling new versions of windows constantly. It comes with the machine and it was lices through the vendor.

01:08:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So if I like incremental improvements, I want my. Get smarter every day, yeah maybe not every day.

01:08:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, you're right. You're right, I'm later in the show.

01:08:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Help me decide though, if I should give Microsoft my 20 bucks or open AI my 20 bucks and then which is actually the question you should be talking about?

01:08:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
or or should you give them 30 bucks and do the commercial version? And no, how do those things kind of line up?

01:08:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean well, what? Some relative value, yeah so, as an individual, I think, if I used office a lot, then I would probably want the, so it would be fat. Let's say you're a Lear an accountant, right?

01:08:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
so you're in Outlook, you're in teams, you're in Excel, right? Those? Are your apps. You can use spreadsheets. You can go up to co-pilot pro and go look down the feature list and see like, well, okay, what, what do I get? You know?

01:09:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
if word didn't respect me, I'm not sure I'd want it right. And this word does not respect you. It doesn't really I could. Could I get? What do I? Definitely doesn't respect anybody.

01:09:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is a lot of anthropomorphization for me, thanks. Software has no ability to respect.

01:09:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's nobody. Yeah, guns don't kill people, richard, you know, bullies don't kill people software developers do that's yeah, bastards.

01:09:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So. So which should I buy? Is there? Is there an API key, for instance?

01:09:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
with Bing chat, do you get an API key? So one of the things that's coming, like we said, was this chat GPT builder I.

01:09:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You might want to hold off and see what that looks like because I like the fact that I can build a chat, a custom GPT. I also like that I can provide an API key To a third party right and and add my chat GPT to that, and that is a very important feature. So this is the business version, but, yeah, the.

01:09:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Microsoft ecosystem. I know I'm sorry that the co-pilot ecosystem is such that a lot of the stuff that happens on the open AI site should transfer 100% right.

01:10:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're talking about the same plug-in model.

01:10:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They have chat GPT for the help of ability, if that, if you write short term.

01:10:17
You know, like at least you know, that should be pretty straightforward. Ideally, what we need is the, the AI version of cloud native, where you could easily bring your Models over to a different like to Google or Amazon or whatever happens to be out there. So we'll see. Obviously, in these early stages, it's astonishing there's any partnership right. I mean in a way, but I Don't know, I can't answer that question. I've not used the chat, the open AI stuff, so I'm gonna keep my open AI.

01:10:46
I did. I did start paying for co-pilot pro. Yeah, so I could explain. You know see how this works. For now, cool.

01:10:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And I'm not. I'm in the open AI camp too. I was saying before the show it's like my I'm looking at my billing on my API working through home assistant. It's gonna come up about a dollar, dollar fifty a month, yeah nice. But you know, and it's a day-to-day utilization.

01:11:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's that itself is very interesting. When Microsoft launched what was then called Windows Azure million years ago, One of the big open questions was, like we're not really sure what the billing is gonna look like here, right? So we're in the early days. They're like we're gonna send you three months of fake bills based on your usage. We're gonna you're gonna see what we think we would charge you, and you know.

01:11:27
Tell us what you think you know, but in this case we're still, we're just as early in the game and In that case it's making sense for you, right Financially which was always.

01:11:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But I'm also the kind of guy who goes and looks at logs to figure out like. I'm not gonna be surprised At the end of the month. I'm you know, I know better right, I would have had a very different reaction. It was like oh, there's a hundred bucks.

01:11:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know, yeah, we. So when we moved into this condo, there's a gas like fireplace. We never had one of these things. We always thought this was lazy like wood and you know, oh no, it's the best. Oh no, it's the best. In fact, my cats are addicted to it. Now it's that cats there. They creep ever closer to the burning of it slate bottom of the thing.

01:12:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm a hundred better.

01:12:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're like little pizzas they turn over to keep themselves from dying, I guess.

01:12:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh so it's amazing. They're leopard spotting, yes, but we.

01:12:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But the question was it's cold now, right, and we're run this thing every day. We run it in the morning, we run it at night, you know it's really expensive. We're like what's this gonna look like?

01:12:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So we got so much.

01:12:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, the first bill was a hundred bucks. We're like okay, no, we can do that, we can do it. It's gonna be okay. But yeah, if that bill had been four hundred dollars. Yeah, sorry, cats, you're freezing your ass. Yeah, we're done, you can die now.

01:12:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah it's kind of, for I always think of it as a it's a cosmetic heater.

01:12:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not, it's a it. Actually it's very warm in front of it, right in front, yeah. We don't have a tent. There's no temperature. Some of the like water ones.

01:12:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think we have a heat pump, so it's a much more efficient to use the heat pump. I think that it is to believe in. We got baseboards in here.

01:13:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But we've been using wood, so we cut a bunch of trees on the property that you got.

01:13:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Chop those trees down. So hold on.

01:13:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think it was that it was that and they fell down a tree's Leo, I don't know. Like you know, it's not like a bunch of them burned down this year.

01:13:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, just um take that tree and put it in the atmosphere as carbon. The cats are gonna be so happy.

01:13:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's two degrees Celsius. Actually, our stove, or whatever it's called, a fireplace, works if the power goes out. That we, so we may need right.

01:13:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You might be so nice to have a gas backup.

01:13:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah that's kind of neat. So, yeah, any you any, yeah, so all this co-pilot stuff just happened. I have my concerns about you. Know, maybe they're going too fast. You know, we'll see. I'm kind of interested to see. My god, it was like January 14.

01:13:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But it's too fast. It's a different question.

01:13:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's Christmas of the holidays hadn't occurred, they would have released this thing on December 2nd, like they were. They've been very ready to go.

01:14:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're going fast, you know. All right, we didn't get our pause in no, so actually, let's do the galaxy thing, because you're gonna do that yeah.

01:14:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So when you get to the end of this, AI says this is the end I mean. So I didn't get to watch the galaxy event I saw I got to. I did see that Samsung partnered with Google on their Gemini hello.

01:14:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But didn't. Maybe it wasn't last year, but in years past. Hasn't Microsoft had a presence at these galaxy events?

01:14:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I Feel like I don't know. Was it a regular presence? I mean, we feel like it was as recently as last week, we talk to your phone you know the phone link thing. And now there's a Special thing if you have a Samsung galaxy book, laptop and a Samsung phone and you know link, you get additional features right.

01:14:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And another thing in previous years, samsung was loath to mention Google. In fact, I can remember a Samsung Galaxy event. They didn't mention Android, like oh.

01:15:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I, it's our years I was working on the theory that Samsung was trying to eliminate Google and Android from the equation and that the way we would know they were finally there is when they released things like Samsung Maps and you know like, because they, you know they have their own browser.

01:15:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're an email their own messages or phone there you know yeah so something weird happened, because all of a sudden they're in partnership.

01:15:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, this is paying them $20 a year.

01:15:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What do you think? So when Google went I'm sorry, when Samsung did their smart things smart home platform they went that alone, right, that was their own thing. They didn't partner with Google and Google home or whatever system they have ties in their own kind of. Although, but not see, they've got no but now where for?

01:15:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, that's right, it's where. So I'm really wondering if Samsung and Google are Having a rapper, are mending the fence. I'll go even further and I wonder if Google is kind of I. I've never really understood why Google feels like it has to have a phone Itself well need a reference phone.

01:16:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's, it's it's.

01:16:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's sort of a reference phone it used to be in the early days it was rationale for surface I could make, which I can't because they don't actually do. This would be if they did that right because they used to have this Thing called signature PC remember.

01:16:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Google is processors signature.

01:16:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
PC was like their version of Nexus and right surfaces like they're they killed it. Yeah, so I do think there's a place in the world for especially in an open ecosystem right, apple does their own thing, so that you know, we can't count that. But on the other side of the fence, where Samsung is a great example polluting this Android experience with their own stuff some of it's good, most of it's terrible. There are apps you can't uninstall right there. I mean, they duplicate apps.

01:16:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a mess, right you and I both are pixels because we want to right, I like that experience.

01:16:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I really do, and but I would hate, I will you know Google kills stuff, I know and they have never seen any level of success that makes them look like they're in the same market as the iPhone. That's right.

01:17:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the problem or even close to Samsung.

01:17:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I've the iPhone just surpass Samsung.

01:17:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
For you know, smartphone sales in a year yeah, I, I, you know Samsung.

01:17:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The one thing you could always say was like, look, yeah, too much crap, where they do their own UI, which is honestly pretty good, and they do their own services and they have their own ecosystem stuff. You know, they get earbuds and blah, blah, blah, whatever they've. All stuff was like, well, you know, but they sell so many of these things, right, so it you kind of have to pay attention to it because they're so big and they still are. But that the fact that they were just beaten by like a monoculture company is like gotta be a little scary for both Google and Samsung here's my scenario.

01:17:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Samsung is very much threatened by the Chinese companies Huawei, xiaomi and some names you haven't heard. I mean Apple is too right. I mean, to some degree, yeah, yeah, these guys are coming, yeah, and and Samsung is more threatened than Apple by these guys. So that's, on the one hand, the pressure on that.

01:18:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, they would like to be well, Thank God for the United States blocking over Right you know, and then, on the other hand, google, I think, looks at the. Who cares what they've?

01:18:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
spent a lot of money To make this thing and we don't make any money on it. It's a tiny business we haven't. We've got no mind share out of it. Maybe it's time to kill it.

01:18:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Boy, that that's oppresses me so much I, and I'm not arguing the logic of it, I it totally makes sense to me. I, as someone who loves surface but also argues, this thing doesn't make any sense. I don't know why Microsoft keeps making surface. I know you could. You could make the same argument for pixel. I hate that because I really do prefer that. It's not a clue. See, people get this wrong all the time, like it's some kind of a clean, pure Android version. It's not. It's actually very heavily modified. This is not the thing they give to Samsung. And then Samsung screws up like they're building their own stuff on top and so, honestly, it really meets the bar of their marketing where it's like the helpful phone that you know. It answers spam calls and turns them away. It does us awesome. It's awesome at all that stuff and, yeah, I worry every day that it's gonna go away every day. I really do.

01:19:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's all you're talking about no co-pilot in the s24, but didn't. Literally last week you were talking about how the book for had an exclusive version of co-pilot.

01:19:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is that. Well, this is the yes, the co-pilot in Windows 11, like the Okay but it's only. It was for the Samsung Galaxy book for if you had a book for a high-end Samsung phone of whatever Generation and we're running what well you would be running Windows 11. Yes, your co-pilot experience has some additional features.

01:19:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Okay, yeah, but that's an on the s24, that's not the no.

01:19:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I well, no, no, in fact, using Google's they're using Gemini for everything and that's I thought. I wrote that poorly. I'm sorry.

01:19:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What I'm XB is not big speed long gone. Let me know it's.

01:20:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, it's like no co-pilot. It like another words, like local, like SLM or what are they calling it like Google has. Samsung is partnered with Google for their Gemini like right. When they announced Gemini in early December, they announced that pixel 8 pro only would be the first phone to have this thing locally. Now Samsung s24, ultra I don't know all of them, but at least ultra will have it as well.

01:20:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They the way they're using the NPU designation Microsoft.

01:20:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
NPU interesting and because Qualcomm chips do not use that terminology.

01:20:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I'm saying is using Exynos again, but not the US.

01:20:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but they must have their own NPU or whatever you're calling it right, yeah, right and.

01:20:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Qualcomm and Google. I mean sorry a Samsung. Google announced that they're going to have a joint sharing Platform that there won't be?

01:21:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, so that this was announced at CES. So I'm this is Google used to have something called nearby share, nearby sharing, and they're combining that with a quick share from Samsung and calling it quick share Samsung. Interesting I was. I was not happy with the nearby share name because Windows 11 has a nearly identically named feature and they're not compatible, and so as reasons, I mean nice if this were all you know Apple, samsung.

01:21:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, the thing is.

01:21:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I said this is recently is last week. I feel like I've always felt long, felt that there's a missed opportunity with Google and Microsoft for then the partner to meet this Ecosystem threat from Apple. But now that you see what's happening with Samsung, you're like, okay, maybe that's actually I might even be the better company, right? I mean, they do make the best-selling Android phones by far. I bet Samsung. That's probably not true. I was gonna say Samsung might be bigger than the rest of the mark combined. That's.

01:21:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have to think that open AI and Samsung talked a lot about using chat.

01:22:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm saying is a big company. I'm sure they talked to everybody. Yeah, so interesting.

01:22:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They chose Gemini.

01:22:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, maybe it's probably because Google is more incented to get that deal than the other companies right, because I there is a really regardless what happens with pixel. There is a fragmentation issue in Android that I think drives people away, and it's the the, the Yang, if you will, to Apple's yin, of everything works together. You know, one of the problems with Android and and and the broader someone would argue this is the success of Android.

01:22:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The reason that the Android market as a Collective is larger than the Apple market is because you have a whole bunch of vendors. You get to do what they want.

01:22:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So this is why the PC was successful for a long time, as well same thing, right, you know I would buy like a Dell computer because it's a special feature or something you know, whatever it might be or whatever was, but you know. I don't know.

01:22:52
There's some, there's something to be said, but we keep talking about this. You know the, the thing that Apple has been able to see succeed at that no one else seems to be able to succeed at, for all the awfulness, as we see it from the outside, there is. You know, there's some benefit there.

01:23:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And they are second rate and they are, but they are do run the largest portion of the Android market.

01:23:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know they're not as good as yeah yeah, I've part of everybody else.

01:23:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Combined is larger than them, but they are the single large if you look at I don't I don't think I didn't put it in the notes but if you look at Android, sorry, smartphone sales from the last quarter and from last year, only IDC has weighed in, so it's just a single source. But Apple surpassed Samsung for the first time in history to be the biggest seller of smartphones in the world. It's it, they're close, you know 234 million iPhones in 2023 versus 226.6 for Samsung. But this has been true for a long time. The next three companies are Xiaomi, oppo and something called Transian Transian, which are all Chinese companies, right? I've never even heard of that third one.

01:23:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Most of these products only sell in China.

01:23:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They well, that's true, but no one thing.

01:24:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So in the US they sell everywhere in the world but the US, yeah, and in Mexico.

01:24:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
When we go to Mexico, that's all over the place for a while. Wow. Yeah, why, why, why, why, why, why, why ear buds, while, what you know, that stuff is still being sold elsewhere. So right, yeah.

01:24:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All of them, except Samsung and Apple, are Chinese companies right.

01:24:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're all that's left, notably Google, not a netlist motor rolling, not a netlist you know.

01:24:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Google's in the other is focused on the North American market but look at the the far right column is the growth or Immunution now I can't tell from the tiny size, as you're looking at the year of the last quarter, last it's let's, oh yeah, this quarter over it's year over year, quarter to quarter.

01:24:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But it's the year, the year number, not. Yeah, okay, yep, so, yeah, so. Yeah, I'd be our Apple sales were up 3.7 percent, or the year. Samsung's were down 13.6%. Yikes, yikes, yep. The last quarter went Actually not too great.

01:25:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everybody was down, except for Transian, which is up 30%. Wherever the hell they are yeah.

01:25:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, we're gonna talk about some numbers like this for the PC industry in a little while, but this is always an interesting time of year because we get to look back and see how things went. And is an IDC is pretty reliable in this right there.

01:25:29
But you know, I want to see Gartner and right at least I usually try to average those guys because they, they do measure things a little differently. But but, yeah, I, it's probably true that I wouldn't. I'm not saying that Apple did not surpass Samsung last year and whatever. Apple had a blockbuster last year At a time when the market overall was not doing great, you know, yeah, so they're changing some minds, I mean yeah, you are, I hope, having your mind changed by the fabulous Windows weekly.

01:26:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All the rot at the rot calm and Richard Campbell run as radio calm. We've got that back of the book. Still to come Windows 11 coming up next. What's new we have? I can't believe we've gone, I know, almost two hours and not mentioned Windows.

01:26:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, because this week has just been kind of weird. So actually I just mentioned this all. We might as well talk about PC sales, right? Oh yeah, one thing I do every January is I have a little chart and a couple of interesting things about PC sales is that for the year, 13.5 25% decline year of a year compared to 289 in 2022, but they declined 16. Something percent. I don't see it right here, but 16. Something percent the previous year, and both Gartner and IDC believe that we have bottomed out and this year we're gonna see some growth.

01:26:53
It may not be fair to point to 2021, which was the 344 million high watermark for the previous decade, that pandemic era. You know PC boon, but this is the fewest PCs that these industry has sold since 2006 and yikes, right, you know that that's a little scary and no one's talking about big double digit growth, right? And Frankly, if this AI thing on the client doesn't pan out, I don't know. I don't know what we're gonna see. I don't know what does you know? I don't want to say Lenovo still number one, 50. No, except for the year Yep, 59.4 million units, 23.7% market share, hp close behind, number two Dell, number three Apple and then ASUS, but you know, lenovo, hp and Dell sell significantly more than the other any other company. A Dell is almost twice the size of Apple from a unit sales perspective.

01:27:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Wow, but the point you know, the analysts are saying bottom double. You don't know how wide the bottom is, it might just sit at 250.

01:27:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, yeah, so. Yes, so sales did decline in every quarter of the year, but it was only a 1.5% decline in the right quarter, so that and it was a year of deferral, certainly that's.

01:28:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know, the conversation I was having with sysadmins was and by the extended warranties, like, just let we're not replace machines right now.

01:28:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right, stretch it out another year or two.

01:28:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So and that does be to, it might be a surge right. Eventually they though there is no more extended warranty, that stuff starts to get expensive and machine start to fail and just from a business PC perspective, which is probably two-thirds of the market, that let.

01:28:38
you can't put it off forever, and so you, and when I argued co-pilot could move the market on this, it's like, hey, you know, so we've got to go to 11 because 2025, you know, co-pilot looks interesting. I want my MPU, like there's some cases for the next two years, selling all what if you?

01:28:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
what if you're rabidly anti AI, which I would say some people are some?

01:29:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
people are but you know you could buy a 40 gen will be buying their old gear as they go out of business, right?

01:29:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I happen to be with you on that one. I'm just starting out. This is a. It's a possibility. We don't know how long you're going to be able to buy a CPU without an MPU attached to it.

01:29:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So, any more than you used to choose, you're gonna get a co-processor or not, like it's kind of silly Yep. You know it's gonna be in the chip, it's gonna be marginal cost difference and if you don't want it, don't use it.

01:29:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but if you don't want this stuff at all, just don't buy us PC that doesn't have it. You can do it right now. Right, you can get an abacus.

01:29:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm literally devil's advocating, and this I'm not actually saying yeah, yeah, I'm with you, but, but easy, yeah, it is interesting to see how long the stretch goes, because he we were expecting a catastrophe in 23 which did not come. So now we just think that the caster he's delayed or passed and that's that. That's the debate.

01:29:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So someone has asked in discord whether I would buy and I would. I'm gonna throw this to you. I'll hand us off like any delegator. Would you still buy an a PC? Recommend buying a PC with an AI chip today, even though there's no compelling use case right now? Yeah, would you?

01:30:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean the question well, the guy who bought the Surface Studio 2, you're gonna ask him that, I mean.

01:30:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, but what's your rationale? In other words, you're advising someone else, a friend, right yeah?

01:30:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And I would, I wouldn't think about it at all, wouldn't think about it.

01:30:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It wouldn't, it shouldn't, be part of your decision-packed you know, right.

01:30:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think a Utilization is gonna use on GPUs anyway, and so you can always retrofit anything you want. There's nothing special about the architecture of an MPU. Special is a cheap version of a high-performance video card. That's all it is.

01:30:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's also right. I was in for the short term. Gpus are gonna be the better deal. Yeah, and not just compatibility wise, but performance wise right.

01:30:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yes, they are more performative, they're more expensive and they kick off more heat. Yeah, on the other hand, you can retrofit virtually any machine with once.

01:31:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not a big deal if you even need to so I, I personally, will not buy a PC that doesn't have one of these chips, and this is just a future-proofing I want to see, not a normal human. I know that. That's why I know, I know and I also. There's a debate to be had, and we just don't have enough information to have it about which of these architectures will actually Be better, more efficient or performant, whatever the you know Well, and they still would be debated.

01:31:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
For what? Like we, for the most part the cloud vendors want you to run all that stuff on the cloud Anyway. So they, I don't know sure what the MPU is gonna do.

01:31:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I meant to make this point when we were talking about co-pilot. So for all of these new Services we can pay for and pay us money for, not a single lick of it runs off an MPU, not even one. But not is not one little thing that runs on an MPU and it's gonna. What are the other interesting little implementation things to look for this year is whether that changes, right, yeah, we'll see. I mean, when I think about features in Microsoft Word running on my Windows desktop using AI, is is the AI they're using dependent on things in the cloud, or is there some hybrid slash local usage that would make this thing? It's an open question. We'd have to go look at the features and think about that.

01:32:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and for the most part, everything you see so far is running in. The cloud is cloud.

01:32:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, no, not for the most, like literally a hundred percent.

01:32:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's all. It's all they certainly in the ha community we're all about can we run local? Because we, you know the whole point is your house works the same whether you can do the internet or not. Yeah, and so, and so far the experience has been, if you run it local, it you can tell because it's lousy. I mean, as soon as you start using the open AI API, it's good. I Right, for a buck a month.

01:32:43
So it's like yeah, and I'm the guy with all the horsepower in the world right Like I'm going to go harness some more machines to see if I can make make this run well, you're going to make a farm Like you're going to have an AI farm. By the time we're done with this thing, yeah, something you know it's sooner or later it's going to be this loud fan noise coming from the space under this and all the fish will be floating next to your house yeah.

01:33:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know, but at least you'll have fish and pre-cooked.

01:33:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But I am. I am mounting all that rack gear now on plywood because I'm getting, I'm going to totally rack free, so I'll make sure it's a flame return plywood.

01:33:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, yes, I would say so. Then maybe it depends on how you think you will use AI. I if, if, if all you think you're going to do is the Microsoft 365 copilot slash, whatever open AI.

01:33:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Which I have to use right Like get a copilot almost every day Now HA, pretty much every day, 100% the clock right.

01:33:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So at that point who cares? You don't need it on the PC.

01:33:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No.

01:33:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You and and hopefully me, some someday soon. We'll be working with stuff locally and if you're, if you see that in your future, you want to get going on that and experimenting with it, I would dive into. You know, I just don't think you know yet.

01:33:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, there's no way to know, Right, you know, and um well in the experience, I can't buy a Mac that doesn't have an NPU.

01:33:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, All the all the M2's have them right Like Well, that's going to happen on the PC side, it's just going to be, but but we'll have you know.

01:34:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's cheaper to make one ship. Yeah, the question is whether Intel comes out with 15 cents and it's all AP or a NPU, or if there's still that divide between NPU and non-NPU, and and you know, we don't know. So we'll see an.

01:34:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
AMD. I just think it was future-proofing and it may be as often as the case with future-proofing, that was a waste of money. Yeah, it's going to be agony.

01:34:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, um, but it's like that's not even.

01:34:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Life insurance is a waste of money. So you didn't die. So I guess he wasted your money, but Wasted my money. Um, mashed potatoes mentioned, you know. Forget about uh NPU. What about arm? You know I'm not, I might not never buy anything that's never an arm chip in it and honestly, we're pretty damn close to that Maybe being a thing even on the window side. We'll see.

01:34:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, in the in May when the GPU yeah.

01:34:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, that's another way to see. We, you know, Call it, we'll see, We'll see. I hope so.

01:34:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you know, uh, we had, um, uh, windows central Daniel Rubino on on Sunday and he actually disagreed that, uh, an NPU was just a fancy GPU. He did say that he believes that the NPUs have capabilities that are more than you know, that are really designed to tune for AI in a way that Show me the data.

01:35:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I was going to say.

01:35:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I don't know, I have no, that's true, Like I don't know, yeah, yeah.

01:35:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
If you were, what's the? What's that local image um generation software? Uh, you can run a stable diffusion or stable diffusion, so I would. I might be very tall. I'm willing to look at that app and see how. Not on a Qualcomm device, right, cause that's basically just GPU, a CPU. But now that we have these dedicated uh GPU, um, and GPU GPU, sorry, an NPU chips in Intel chipsets, um, what, what gets hit the most? See, they run better. Yeah, we'll see what which one actually makes the bigger difference.

01:35:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I hope there's a simulation for that right Like. Show me on the task manager that it's actually you know. You can see GPU being used.

01:35:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can see.

01:35:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
NPU being used.

01:35:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, we, we, uh, we didn't. We didn't do this in any sort of partisan way, but we've kind of been dumping on NVIDIA for a while. But we should acknowledge that there's a version of this future where the GPU does went out right and that NPU figures something out.

01:36:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, I Well, NVIDIA also makes AI versions of their GPUs.

01:36:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, what did I say?

01:36:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you said so. Nvidia both does GPUs and NPUs. Yeah, you know, I guess NPU would be a nice generic term for this. I think the, the, it isn't unfortunately.

01:36:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's almost certainly both right and even the. Whatever the Intel system and that ultra core chip set is called.

01:36:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's put it this way it's one else to both right. Both Microsoft and Google and Amazon have dedicated AI chips. Google calls them TPUs, and what are the?

01:36:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
what types of chips?

01:36:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
are they, leo? They're not GPUs, they're special. What's the architecture? Oh, I don't know.

01:36:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, these are. You're talking about the AI chips, because on their, on their, on their cloud, when you look at their custom cloud you're yeah, no, no, no.

01:36:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Cloud for training. They have TPUs that are dedicated, that's right, and they have their what is the term? I can't remember.

01:37:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's a specific term the tensor thing yeah.

01:37:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not flops, not terraflops oh, it's a something per second or something, I can't remember what a PTS or something, but there. But there are dedicated measurements and NPU specific measurements, and so I'm going to take it for granted that there is something more than just your vision errors TPU will do.

01:37:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is going to be a year. Look, there are going to be things that come and go. It's, like you know, the first hardware accelerated graphics card, open GL based, whatever that was called the light FX or whatever something. Fx came and went in a flurry, you know, in a flurry of excitement, and was quickly surpassed. We might be talking a year from now about how much everything changed on the chips that side, Right.

01:37:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have to say that there is incentive for companies like Microsoft and open AI to get some of the load off their servers. That's expensive for them. So I think there is going to be progress in local AI. I personally and I think there are probably a lot of businesses feel the same way would like to use the AI locally. Yes, you know I would, and I have a program, python program called chat GPT or it's called GPT for all. It's open source program. It uses, you know, open source models or it'll use it. By the way, it'll use an open AI API key as well.

01:38:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If you're running the model locally, what are you paying 20 bucks a month for?

01:38:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you know that's right. In fact, you don't have to. I mean, I happen to have an open AI.

01:38:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So what's the incentive for Microsoft? No, you can download lava, you can download lava.

01:38:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can download lava.

01:38:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, the incentive is you're really talking about a hybrid situation where it's a local end cloud and that it behooves both sides of this transaction to do this right. It would be better for you as the client because you reduce latency, and it's better for Microsoft because you reduce the cost.

01:38:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, just never actually seen a neural net model that has a two stage process like that. Like, no, no, it's a data, no, no, it's a local or cloud. Yeah, I don't see you do, but don't you?

01:38:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
think businesses would prefer not to exfiltrate their data to the cloud. They'd like to do it locally.

01:39:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yes, businesses would prefer to pay for nothing, not just money but, privacy.

01:39:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, this is just like a data sovereignty issue, I mean yes, yeah, people are very nervous.

01:39:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Companies are very nervous about AI's training on their private data.

01:39:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm sorry to interrupt. I have to, very latest, have to be gone by the top of the arrow.

01:39:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So let's move right through this then.

01:39:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Anyway, we got to blow through this. I'm so sorry.

01:39:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just know. We have a show at the top of the hour, so it's perfect.

01:39:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I'm just looking at this list, so most of this is pretty quick. This is only notable because this is representative of something they've been doing a lot lately and I don't like it. Microsoft launched a new I'm going to call it a weather experience. It's overstating what it is, but there's always been a weather experience. In the lock screen you can have one thing that's called like a detailed status item. That stays back to the Windows 8 days, when we had quick status items as well. Most people.

01:40:02
By default, it's set to calendar, but you could set it to weather right now and they just updated it so that it looks like a tile to me. They're calling it a card, but it looks like a tile, so it's just a more graphical, bigger thing, and when you click on it and sign in, it goes to MSN weather or whatever. It's not a big deal other than the fact that they didn't test it almost at all. They shipped it publicly. They put it into like a subset of I think it was the beta or dev channel for like three days or something and then threw it out into stable.

01:40:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's like guys, seriously like kind of strange, so that it didn't catch fire. So give it everybody.

01:40:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, related to this, I think there's an app store I'm sorry, an app store, a Microsoft store, app update that I don't know the history of it's being tested, the insider program, but that has also suddenly appeared very quickly in stable. And this is just you're going to see a lot of notifications every time there's an app update, which, honestly, I find to be incredibly annoying and I thought was already unstable. But whatever, I have noticed that for sure. And then this is at the bottom of the window section. I'm just going to add it here because it kind of makes sense Dev home has come to windows 10. Now the two dark sides to this are one, remember, no new features Right, we got in past that. But also this is another example of an app that's not done. It's just kind of half-assed. It's like loop, new outlook, microsoft Windows, backup, dev home, like Dev home. Why is Dev home a default feature in Windows, windows anything, when most people are not developers?

01:41:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, Everybody's a developer.

01:41:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Paul Come on.

01:41:41
And also I'll just back up the notes here, because this kind of ties into that Microsoft recording report, I think by Zach Bowden over at Windows central is reportedly going to bring back the windows insider program beta channel for Windows 10, which also speaks to that. Oh, no new features, just kidding. So if that does happen, that I think will be indicative that Windows 10 and 11 are going to go forward in the lockstep, possibly with some of the new features, like they did with the co-pilot and now Dev home Awesome. Last week I complained that there were no new builds. Somebody recently, less than 24 hours after the show, they released three new builds. Of course they did so the dev channel. They hurt you again.

01:42:21
Yeah, so the 80 gigabit USB version is going to be called like a Thunderbolt 5 or USB 5, whatever they call it. They're testing support for that in the dev channel. They're talking about auto starting, co-pilot that pain on the side of the screen If you have a 27 inch or bigger display. Wide screen display.

01:42:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Why does that matter? Why wouldn't it be resolution?

01:42:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Because that way it doesn't get in your face. It's not in the way right? If you have a wide screen display, it can be over the side and you still have kind of a kind of a wide screen display left, if you will. A co-pilot as a new application is not particularly sophisticated when it comes to stuff like running over your existing apps. If there are apps over there, it will push them out of the way and when you close it they don't go back Like the way multi-mine used to work and sometimes still does. And then there's some window share improvements that are coming also to the beta channel. They're adding more of those individual apps that can be used for sharing. It's kind of weird. I think what's happening is the app makers are not supporting the share feature, so they're just adding it manually on an app by app. I suspect they went to these companies and said we're just going to do it for you, is that okay? And they're like yep, so WhatsApp, gmail, twitter, slash X, facebook and LinkedIn are all being Interesting, yep.

01:43:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Because somebody wasn't happy with what was being made or not being made.

01:43:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So it's like we'll just the share pane in Windows has been a wasteland since the it was introduced in Windows 8. Is nobody carrying it? Nobody uses it. Nobody uses it. Even OneDrive doesn't use it. They have their own share window. Seriously, guys. Anyway, don't get me started. I read a book about this. It makes me insane. That Weather Experience that's out in Stable. They're testing it in beta. So Microsoft and the app install notifications also out in Stable. They're testing that in beta too. Also, instant Arcade games, and this is like we see. I think on I think only Android does this where you can kind of just run it from the Play Store and then it will load the background. I think they're doing that kind of thing for some Arcade-y, smaller games.

01:44:25
The thing to look at we talked about this last week this notion of release preview now being what we call Moment 5. They've released. It's not actually a new build, it's a KB, like an update, like a cumulative update for the one they released, I think a week or two ago, which is Moment 5, which mostly bug fixes, but more ink everywhere, which is the notion you can touch anywhere or with your pen. Touch anywhere and write Anywhere you can type, you can write is the idea behind this. I control system support at the system level, which they've been talking about actually for a long time Some 7-zip bug fixes, frankly, and other fixes. So not a lot of new features, but that one's it's kind of locked right. They're getting ready to probably oh yeah, we should look at the date, so I'm guessing this is my guess. You can see if I'm right or wrong Next Tuesday is Week D, right, yeah, so that should be when we get the preview version of Moment 5 on stable. That's my guess and it's going to be what we have in the release.

01:45:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'd love that you want to predict this right, Because that always goes so well, they will beat this out of me.

01:45:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We're getting close, but based on the past, which is no basis for anything anymore, because that's again. This is the what did I call it? The Crayola and coloring book part of Microsoft. There's no rules. All things are possible.

01:45:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Some of them are even likely. Yeah.

01:45:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So that's Windows, not too much. I was kind of hoping, honestly, today we'd see some more bills. I guess it could still happen. But if not today, probably tomorrow we'll see what happens there, right, and then Xbox. Not as momentous as it was the last time, but they have a new set of games for Game Pass across all the platforms. Remember last month there were a couple of really cool looking games.

01:46:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Hell, that's no flurry of theory Hell after them, and we still haven't seen Activision Blizzard at all yet.

01:46:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, and we are not seeing it in this list. I guess I'm thinking we're not going to see it this month.

01:46:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's got to be a statement Got to be a year away, I think, oh God, it better not be that far. It's got to take a while.

01:46:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Last two weeks ago, I should say. There were a bunch of games in there that were very interesting. I look at this list and I'm like I don't even recognize most of these and I'm so I'm kind of back to that, but again, I can't wait to play Bro bro I know a bro Okay.

01:46:50 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Kevin. Kevin says our producers says produce, what is it 2006.

01:46:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It looks kind of shitter Like a first person thing or no, it's got a whole anime storyline to it Killing demons by night. Oh Lord how it sounds like a CW show with the problem with killing.

01:47:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I had a problem with killing demons. Come on.

01:47:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love it that the F1 game does not in fact have this year's F1 champion and last year's F1 champion. He was so expensive, they couldn't buy his image.

01:47:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, okay, I was like I'm confused that you even know anything about that.

01:47:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know it's surprising, I know I'm just I'm a full of them. It's just disappointing frankly. I'm an F1 fan. We went to Las Vegas to watch the race. I like to watch these circles.

01:47:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is what like if you were a baby and you had that little mobile thing over your head and you never got over it. You're a new one fan.

01:47:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not even that good. They're going so fast. And you see, cause it's a street track, you see, so little of the track is really just boom, boom, it's all. No, no, I we even saw kind of a crash, but it wasn't boom. They're so fast, you don't it's not.

01:48:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's easier to watch races, those races on TV, right, just like football.

01:48:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it's fun to be there. I wouldn't do it again, but it was fun for them. Yeah, it's two ones. Yeah, it's a big commitment. It's a big financial commitment. That's what these. I bought it a year, more than a year ago, or in the early bird so many Patriots games.

01:48:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And finally, one of my friends said you know they're not going to win any more games and, like I, you know what do we like. Why don't we just be wing on and be inside? To have, like you know, food and drinks. Yeah, you know what inside, like human beings, you know, okay, anyway, yeah, activision Blizz waiting on that Baldur's Gate 3, I think, probably, I think it was the biggest game of last year. Yeah, yeah. Save.

01:48:48
Bug, big bug on Xbox. Save Bug too. Not a fun bug, but Saves were disappearing, oh dear. There's an Xbox system update that has rolled out that will address that.

01:49:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So it's actually an OS level problem that the games interesting Right. I know how long did that take to diagnose a year. It took actually a while.

01:49:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They've been complaining about this for a couple of months. Yeah, yeah, I don't the problem. Let's see. Can you recover? Yeah, I don't know, I don't know If you lost Saves, I don't know you can get them back. Yeah, they're gone. Apparently they're gone. Yeah, I think they're gone.

01:49:24
That is a surprise me, right? So Ubisoft has made some changes to Ubisoft Plus and I just briefly want to take a slight segue here and mention that I saw a headline that said something like Ubisoft tries to convince people that not owning things is okay. And it's like guys, that's not the problem. You didn't really want that game, did you no? But I mean, like, we've been using subscription services for music videos, I mean office productivity software, for years and years. This is not new. It's not news. Yeah, no, I mean we just talked about Apple Arcade. That's a little unfair. But Ubisoft does have something called Ubisoft Plus, which is their kind of tier, so they've kind of segmented it out. So now they have something called Ubisoft Plus Classics, for PC users only. It's only $7.99 a month. But it's kind of all their legacy games Everyone knows it loves like Far Cry 6, rainbow Six, watch Dogs, all that stuff. Yeah.

01:50:22
Honestly, this is kind of a neat little. I think people can I don't know what, this is probably a word for this but when you kind of swoop in, you're like I'm just going to pay for this like a month, maybe two, so I can play this game or this handful of games, I'm done and maybe in a few years I want to do that again. Maybe not, but I think that kind of thing is kind of neat. And then they have the full blown service, ubisoft Plus Premium, which is like $17.99 a month and that's day one access to all of their games newest games, obviously, and I believe, yeah, it's included. I'm trying to make sure this is on Xbox as well. Yeah, it is Xbox, and actually our name is on Luna, interestingly. So that's kind of cross-platform but more expensive. Ubisoft Plus to me is like the video game version of Paramount Plus, right, yeah. Am I that much of a?

01:51:14
fan of this one thing? Or do I just like games or TD?

01:51:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
right, it's kind of the tertiary ran yeah, like nobody buys this for themselves, their grandmother gets it. Because they didn't understand the words in Netflix, right? Well, I get why people.

01:51:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I get why. No, I don't get why people, I get why these companies do it, but I mean I don't know, I play. You could make a case because they're huge in sports, I guess, and that's why you buy it. It's for the sports game. But EA plays, I think, is unique in that space. Ubisoft Plus, I mean they do have some good games. I'm not dumping on them at all, but I mean no.

01:51:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But you're talking about leagues here, like where do you bat yeah?

01:51:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, right. So to me it's a what do you call it? A tertiary service or what? Yes, not a secondaries. Yeah, yeah, You're right. Yeah, that's probably. Yeah, that's a good term. Yeah, tertiary service what comes after tertiary?

01:52:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Quaternary. Quaternary, that's a tough word, yeah, quaternary. I don't know what comes after quaternary, though Quaternary yeah. Quaternary that sounds like a 15 year old girl's birthday party thing, which was a wedding dress. Quaternary's Quaternary, quaternary, quaternary. All right, let's take a break and when we come back back of the book, yes, yeah, we'll get you out of here in time. It's really down to you and whiskey, so I think we're okay, yep.

01:52:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm going to. I want to make sure he has I kind of, I've got 45 minutes on whiskey for sure.

01:52:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, no, no, no, no Well you know, if Paul has to leave, you can keep talking. Paul is keeping off.

01:52:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, I think the record was the barreling piece and we're not going to go down that was 35 minutes.

01:52:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I thought Kevin was going to have a coronary. I did feel bad last week, I think it was last week.

01:52:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Before we go on though, you're back of the book coming up in just a bit yes, I do want to give a little plug for us. Go Yay team, if you like the programming you're listening to right now, if you want more of that, if you want to, if you want to keep up with that, what's happening in AI? What's happening with Microsoft, apple, google, the internet security you're a candidate for a club Twit, because Twitter is all about keeping you up to date on what's happening in the world of technology, so that you can be an informed user, you can create something new, you can protect yourself, and I think this is going to be a big year. This is going to be a very interesting year, so I want to invite you to join club Twit. What do you get? Well, besides the warm and fuzzy feeling that you're helping us out at Twit, you also get all of our shows ad free. You get members only shows like Paul's Hands on Windows Mac is covered with a microsarge and St St John Mac there's home theater geeks. Ios today is now in the club only the untitled Linux show. You also get a bonus fee that includes outtakes behind the scenes content. You get access to our Discord, which is a great hang, even when the shows aren't on, and you can watch a live feed of the shows being produced.

01:54:17
All of that for seven bucks a month. But again, the main reason I mean we wanted to give you some real benefits. But the main reason to do it is because you like what you hear and you want to support it. There are monthly plans, there are yearly plans, there are family plans and corporate plans and I you know you can occasionally hear from people saying well, seven is not enough. I want, why don't you charge more? We don't want to charge more, but if you want to give more, you can. In the process you'll see, you can increase that to 10 bucks a month if you feel like it, or more. But really all we ask is seven bucks a month and if we can get it is our goal by the end of the quarter to get to about 5% of our audience participating. That's not an outrageous amount. Public radio, public broadcasting, is more like 10%. I think we're worth it, don't you? So please.

01:55:06
Twittv slash club twit Also. I should mention, while you're there, the survey is ongoing through the end of the month, last chance to take it in the next couple of weeks. Twittv slash survey 24, just takes a minute or two, but that helps us understand our audience better and we want to make sure every show gets represented. So, windows Weekly listeners, make sure you take the twit audience survey at twittv slash survey 24. All right, no more begging, let's continue on with the back of the book. Paul Thorada and his tip of the week. Paul, I would pay for like a half life service we have. I'll tell you what we have. We have a mic. We have two different Minecraft servers that club twit members get to play on. One was originally built years ago by OMG Chad yeah, with a bunch of listeners and users, and it really is a replication of twins and the whole studio is there and everything's really cool. And then we have a really hard survival server. But people are good at Minecraft.

01:56:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, anyway transitioning to old playing. Old games, that's good. Old games are the best.

01:56:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I'm just going to read books that were written and call duties and old game, sure is, but around a long time.

01:56:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yeah, we talked up front about some of this crazy and certification stuff and a couple of years ago maybe 18 months ago I kind of freaked out when I was seeing all these pop up ads and mobile nonsense like first services I was paying for and I finally said I can't do this anymore and I started using something called next DNS on my mobile devices only, not on my PCs, and it's worked well enough that I actually convinced my wife to use it and as you two have both, I think, mentioned on this very show, you run into these issues with this type of solution, where they come down and they're like I click on this thing and it breaks and fix it.

01:57:05
So there is a little bit of maintenance to this and if you want to block, like the tracking that occurs through, whether it's the new outlook or on the web, whatever, these types of solutions, whether it's next DNS or something else, are one way a pile. Yes, one way to do this. The thing you need to understand is that you're going to have problems and that you need to be technical enough to kind of try to solve them. So you got to learn the tool.

01:57:33
Yeah, the thing I'm experimenting right now is because I say I pay for Microsoft 365. So when I run the new outlook I don't see anything right. But I'm going to. I have other accounts. So I've set up next DNS on three computers now, two of which are not my Microsoft account, just to kind of test that and see what that experience is like and what do I have to kind of work around. I've noticed things on my phone. I mean, there's certain things like I think it's the Google discovery feed, certain links, because they go through like a third, well, a Google service. You don't. You're not clicking on a URL, you're clicking on a URL that transfers to another URL. You actually never get to the story because you know that's one thing, that next DNS is preventing, right. So you got to kind of figure that out. It's a little bit difficult. So, like I said up front, this is not a solvable problem per se, unless you don't care about the rest of the world at all, in which case then you're all set.

01:58:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know, if you don't go on the internet, they can't serve you ads.

01:58:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The most secure computer in the world is not connected to the internet. Yep, so that's that I, I, I guess what the tip, such as it is, is that if you're bothered by this behavior you're seeing, and the new outlook in particular, I think it would behoove everybody to do a little bit of research and kind of experiment on these types of solutions. Next DNS or PIL being to two of the big ones I think I pay for. Next DNS, if I'm not mistaken, but it's cheap.

01:58:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's cheap, you can use it. I think you get 300,000 queries a month.

01:58:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But if that's not enough, it's really really cheap.

01:59:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's next DNSio and it's you know what you can. The way I solve this is I you could put it on individual machines. You can block the whole household, right.

01:59:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can put it on your router, right so initially I had on the router it's not software. It's just, you just direct your DNS.

01:59:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but but you can put it, you can have individual machines use it. I use it all the time. I don't want to.

01:59:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The reason I put it on mobile devices first and then kept them there is because of you run apps, right, you have to. Yeah, when you're on a PC, or probably a Mac, a lot of what you do is happening through a web browser and we have anti-tracking blocking in the, in those plans, right.

01:59:36
So, because I didn't want to break everything everywhere, I didn't ever put. Well, also, I had a Google, a Wi-Fi system that didn't support it, but now I have an era one that does. So I could, I could do that, but I need to figure it out first, and then maybe I won't even take that step. We'll see. Anyway, I'm, I'm experimenting and I I recommend that you do as well.

01:59:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, where the piehole came big was for the TV, because the TV has a built-in Roku, but also the the TV. You don't want to ton a troll. Telemetry, that's right.

02:00:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
About what you're watching.

02:00:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, they're the worst. Yeah, and I'm not speaking, I just don't plug them in. But in this case you need to, or the TV doesn't work.

02:00:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have a Roku TV in Mexico. I say I kind of hate it so much I put an Apple TV on it so I can just kind of bypass it when it comes on, but it's still.

02:00:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I just yeah, worst Roku I hate the Roku, and this is where I'm saying, like we can, we can fix this for you with a piehole and set it up in there.

02:00:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You gotta do a little bit of it, yeah, but you do have to do some care and feeding.

02:00:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's no two ways around it. Like that's right, that's right, nothing else you can do.

02:00:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right. Yeah, this is not something I could hand off to a man's like my wife say, yeah, you'll be fine. Yeah, you won't be fine, you know it's just, it's a little more complicated.

02:00:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, you'd have to teach it like it's solvable, it's just. First is the instinct to diagnose what's going on here. Why is this working? Is the internet down Like there's lots of possibilities? Yeah, that's exactly right, you got to go. Oh wait, it's being it's being interpreted as a ad or a tracker, and so it's being eliminated, yeah.

02:01:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, we'll get there. No, maybe we're all fighting this fight.

02:01:06
Yeah, it's going to be. It's the forever war really, but hopefully you get into a place where you kind of understand what the problem is and can know how to solve it at least, and then the app pick is. It's what I picked this several times. But I've been using Brave full time as my browser mobile and desktop for not quite two years, but close to that and I still recommend it for people care about privacy and security. There's literally no better choice. There is one little Achilles Hill with the browser, though, and it's not Brendan Eich, it's that well, you can argue that one. But they don't use the password, they don't do water fill on mobile, and this has been a known problem. Yes, I know. And, by the way, the only reason I ever went to a standalone password manager I do use Bitwarden is because of this right, because otherwise I just use Brave. I trust it. It's such a great browser, but I don't want like two copies of my password database out in the world, so I have to then maintain right, I'll keep up. You know sync somehow. So they've been actively working on this for at least three years.

02:02:13
People complain about it all the time. It's the one thing they've been kind of tone deaf on. I saw one really eagity response from someone who worked at Brave who was getting mad about all the questions about it. It's like we're working on it, shut up. It's like okay, but it's been years. And then, because we talked about Bitwarden and past keys and password managers, last week the weird I finally published my article, right, the non-controversial, not me advising you should do this, but just kind of explaining the problem and what I discovered. And, by the way, richard, I never told you this. I'm so sorry. You were 100% right that the security goons who work for Bitwarden have no idea how to make UI. And what I eventually discovered is that two to three weeks of me banging my head repeatedly trying to get this thing to work the same way on multiple computers was not me. It's because sometimes this thing just doesn't work, like what? No, I'm not. I'm not kidding.

02:03:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And it's not just it is badly described, it's that, it's it's badly.

02:03:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're talking past keys on Bitwarden.

02:03:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I'm talking this one, sorry. The one of the things we talked about last week was this notion of what I want to do is make this as seamless as possible Bitwarden just added this password this long. Yeah, I'm going to get that one. It's not past key. This is I'm just this, is it that's you're saying? Bitwarden doesn't work on some of your systems. It doesn't work consistently on any of my systems. Here's the problem. You have some weird thing going on.

02:03:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, no, I don't know. I don't.

02:03:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I've used this with multiple user accounts. No, no, let me explain what it is and then you'll I think you'll understand. What I want is sign in with Windows. Hello, biometrics Right.

02:03:45
We do that, you have to install and configure the desktop app. I'm just explaining, and otherwise I don't want to type a master password. So I get that I can't have past keys yet, but I want to use Windows Hello. That's the next best thing. It's still no, it's still passwordless. What happens is you go to the extension and you say turn it on. It says you have to turn it on first in the desktop app. You're like I did so you go to the desktop app and you turn it off. Turn it on, click save, go over here, and this is waiting for the response from the desktop app Never comes and then you go turn it on, turn it off.

02:04:15
So every PC is a little differently. I literally have one PC that I've never gotten it to work on. But what I found for the most part is if you keep trying, let it fail, let it fail, let it fail. Eventually you'll get through. I spent two and a half weeks to three weeks trying to figure this out. It's not me, it's it's. This is terribly written. So that's where I'm at and that's why I'm insane. But anyway, the day I published this, the day I published this, I file. I stressed over this for three weeks, sat down in front of the TV. Looked at my phone and it said Bitwarden adds passkey support. I'm like come on.

02:04:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They've had passkey support for a long time. They added it for your master password.

02:04:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There are two sides to passkeys. You can save passkey. What I'm talking about is use a passkey to sign into Bitwarden, right, right, a single sign on or passwordless sign on. So then I looked at the story and actually they they only added it to the web client, so it doesn't help you on a computer or a device, although on a device, as everyone knows, it works much better. That works. That biometric thing is completely usable, works great on mobile. So it wasn't what I asked for, but it was the weirdest coincidence. I finally I'm like I'm going to put this behind me, I'm going to put this out in the world. I feel good about it. Bitwarden adds passkey. I saw it, I knew.

02:05:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are you kidding me? This was literally after your tirade on Wednesday.

02:05:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, they came out with it. It was so funny, but it's not. It isn't what I was looking for. It's only on the web client.

02:05:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it doesn't do it in your browser.

02:05:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, there is no way to sign into Bitwarden in the browser or the desktop client with passkeys right now, but it's coming. It is coming. This is the first step. They did it in the web client, okay.

02:05:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mean it doesn't come up for me because I use biometrics, because I'm not using Windows.

02:06:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and by the way I meant to say you were making you were talking about, you looked at it on the Mac and the one thing I'd kind of forgotten about that it may be tied to this. We were talking about four digit versus six digit pins and blah, blah, blah. Whatever you were saying, like, the one thing about the Mac that's very different from Windows that I think people need to understand is that the Mac uses the system for signing that we had in Windows seven and older, where you always sign in with a local account that you created specific to that device and hopefully added a password that was hopefully specific to that device. In Windows seven, they added the ability to connect a Microsoft account, which was then called a PASCII account, to that local account. Right, so you could get the benefit of the authentication pass through capabilities like on a browser or whatever.

02:06:44
But in Windows today, most individuals almost all of them and many businesses, or most businesses to actually sign in with an online account, right, it's not a local account, and so I wonder sometime and because Apple uses the same system on their other devices if there isn't something about that that makes, because if you signed into a local account, windows added a password and then protected it with Windows hello. That actually works fine. It's just something about the online account that screws up this whole system, and that's true of things like accessing a network share on a different computer in your home network using remote desktop. There's something about those online accounts, microsoft accounts and Microsoft work and school accounts. I promise, richard, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, richard, I'll just shut up. Let's move on.

02:07:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You'll be fine.

02:07:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Everything's fine. I just said, richard, I'm not going to take up all the time, and then I kept talking. So sorry it's going to be fine.

02:07:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And now, ladies and gentlemen, run as a radio.

02:07:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This week's run out of radio April Dunham back for her third visit. Originally an independent, now she is a blue bad. She's a cloud advocate on the power platform, which is what she's always talked about. So we spent over 30 minutes just talking about all the co-pilots in the power platform space. Now we went over three of them there's a one for power apps, there's one for Power BI, there's one for Power Automate.

02:08:19
So apps is this heterogeneous client builder tool and this idea that you can actually add. You can use co-pilot to build the app and you can add co-pilot to the app. So, rather than trying to build interfaces for everything, just let them chat to it and then render what they're asking for. And Power BI, of course, is on the analytics side. So there's lots to describe there rather than try and slice and dice your way through a lot of things. And the Power Automate one this is the one where you can build automations inside of your normal workflows. So, adding a co-pilot who's got more of a GitHub co-pilot, feel to it that it's helping you write the automation, which is pretty compelling. Yeah, can't get away from it, it's everywhere. But it's interesting to see them expanding in that space. I always wondered how many of these co-pilots are actually going to see the light of day, but and turns out it's going to be more than you think. There's three more, and that's what we did on Run-As Wow.

02:09:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, there it is in all its glory, run-as radio. Now, how about some whiskey?

02:09:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We did a bunch of Scottish the past few weeks, and I had to do a Canadian last week, just to make a variation. So let's go a little Irish today for fun, and I picked an odd one, one that's called notice writer's tears. Now then, this is a reference to this idea. I always think of James Joyce in this scenario this famously slow writer.

02:09:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Like, it took him eight years to write Ulysses admittedly 250, 260,000 words, like 900 pages.

02:09:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So, and that when frustrated from writer's block or whatever it may be, you got all these famous Irish writers like Sam Beckett, yates, Oscar Wilds and what they'd all drink whiskey to the point where their tears were actually whiskey flavored. I mean it's ridiculous. There are cocktails called writer's block to there. There's a bunch of different ones. There's one that's like half a marado, half bourbon, with some lemon juice and bitters. There was one with pineapple juice. Let's not talk about that. What's interesting about writer's tears is that it is a new whiskey from a new distiller. So this is Bernard and Rosemary Walsh, who formed a company called Walsh Distillery Now, and they only formed that back in 99. Bernard Walsh has a long history in whiskey in Ireland and it was well known. But they actually started out making an Irish coffee liqueur called the hot Irishman, and this is before they had really had a distillery per se. They were basically ordering it from other distilleries and bottling it. They did then get into doing that with regular whiskey. Their first whiskey was called the Irishman, as opposed to the hot Irishman, and in 2009, they made writer's tears. Now, at this point, they did not have a distillery. There are what is known as a non distilling producer or an NDP, which is to say that they go to various sources to do this. Now, this is not that different from what we talked about last week with Bearface, because Bearface, those guys ordered a seven year old bourbon, made with 100% corn, right from another provider and then they did some additional aging, they did some time in wine cask and then some time in the Virgin Hungarian oak, and then they ship it over to a bottler. The wall shut up. They don't even do that much. They're literally. They're taking it from two different distilleries, having it delivered to a third place where it's barreled and aged and then bottled and shipped out. I don't know they touch it at all. Interestingly, jason to this, they did start building distillery in about 2013. And by was operated by 2016, but to finance it they 50% owner was Ilves Serrano those are the guys who make tea and marina and Dizarono and within a year or two of operations they were fighting tooth and nail by 2019. They went separate ways. You just say Serrano got the distillery. They renamed it the Royal Oak distillery. It makes a line of whiskeys you've never heard of called the buskers, which are sold only internationally. They're not really sold in Ireland and is the funny part is, when you read the website like if you don't get all these bits and pieces it seems like they make whiskey, when really what they're doing is they're contracting out. That being said, last year they broke ground on another distillery with the intent to make riders tears themselves because it has been their hit, and so they made a lot of variations on it using a bunch of distilleries, and they want to change it again, which is going to mean that you'll never know what kind of versions of riders tears you're actually going to get.

02:12:59
The original riders tears, the one from 2009, is what's known as a vatted whiskey and then we talked about these terms before but that is to say it is a combination of different styles of whiskey. It's not a blend, because a blend always has grain alcohol in it, typically made with corn. To lower its costs, you just add alcohol. That way, this vatted whiskey, where it is tears, is 100% barley, which is not all that common. The Irish like playing with their mash bills. They like little corn on the rye, little wheat, they go kind of nuts, but this is pure barley.

02:13:33
In riders tears Specifically, they use a 40% triple distilled single malt, likely from the Cooley distillery. They keep it a secret. Then they also have 60%, a triple distilled pot still whiskey from Middleton, which is where they do a lot of the production work. Now, this is the same recipe as the Irishman, but the Irishman was 30% pot and 70% malt and they come out to about the same price. They do, of course, refer to it as a super premium whiskey. To be clear, this is a vatted whiskey. That's not a bad thing, but it's worth about 20 bucks a bottle and they sell it for 40 because they do spend a lot on marketing and sort of positional things. And if you drink it, it's pretty good, you know it's all right, it's nothing, it's okay, it's okay. But if you're going to spend $40 on a 40% whiskey, spend $45 and buy a red breast 12. Yeah, exactly, I like red breast.

02:14:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I bought some for a friend over.

02:14:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If you want to, if you just want to, you can get a middling whiskey like this in a $20 range. Easy enough. Get a bottle of Jameson and again, I'm not going to just say anything bad about Jameson Get the black bush Good whiskey and cheap, inexpensive, very drinkable all day long. This is in a funny spot. It's got you know it's going for a good name and some good photos.

02:15:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think that bugs me. I positive I've heard of this. I positive I've had it. Yeah, writers tears.

02:15:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Absolutely. I've had bottles of it no question about it.

02:15:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You forget very quickly. That's what I mean.

02:15:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Like it seemed like it was custom made, especially as a writer. Yeah.

02:15:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it, it, it. It goes here right, it's got that name, it's got a name, it's got a style, it's got a finesse to it. But I swear to God, $12 of that bottle is marketing.

02:15:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
At least that's really well, uh, you know, I am here visiting my mom and she let yesterday said, bring me bourbon. And uh, I went to go. Well, she, she wanted Jim beam and she says, get me the one with a handle.

02:15:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I would like a jug of bourbon. The 1.15 song on it I went.

02:15:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I went to the to bottles, which is the liquor store over here, and uh, and they have, oh, they have all the um, the whiskey, Yankee spirits in your area.

02:16:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Those are fantastic stores in that area Bottle Great.

02:16:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They had all the whiskies that Richard's. I mean there was a because envy, there was all kinds of great stuff but the and I couldn't find the Jim beam. And I said where's the Jim beam? And she said oh, it's over here. I said would you have one with a handle? She said this is the East side, we don't have Jim beam.

02:16:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Nice, I love it. I love that it got that little this is in Massachusetts.

02:16:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You might want to go to Massachusetts.

02:16:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
My friend, you got to cross the waterway to find a jug.

02:16:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's probably just as well. I don't think my mom should really be having a handle.

02:16:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But we have wild turkey by the gallon.

02:16:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I bet. Well, maybe that's really so.

02:16:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Beams is okay I wanted to get her something better. I want to get a crown Royal and be a good mark Not criminal.

02:16:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I get her. Makers mark. Makers, mark. They had a big bottle of that. They'd bottle a knob creek. They had some good stuff. Yeah, you're right, beams Listen beams, your classic well whiskey.

02:16:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's fine. Now nobody's. Nobody got it. Nobody died for drinking beam.

02:17:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
She's 91 years old, she wouldn't make that.

02:17:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But you know you get a you mark so nice bottle Like it's a lovely drink.

02:17:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, I'll tell you what I don't want to get it Well, I don't want to encourage it to be honest with you, but she you know.

02:17:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
so the trick is to give her a taste of more expensive whiskey. So she has to buy less.

02:17:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, she, I think you know. I'm sure the doctors would say what are you crazy? Don't bring her whiskey. But I think if you get to a certain age, whatever the hell you want in life.

02:17:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
What are you trying to prove?

02:17:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right.

02:17:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know 91, she won, it's done. Yeah, she won over. Yeah, yeah, it's in the way and she likes her, she likes her sees candy, so I've always bring her.

02:17:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I bring her box, see, when I come out, and I'm sure the doctor would say, well, don't let her eat the whole box.

02:17:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I said, mom, if you like the whole box my mother, not my child.

02:17:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I do you? Know, eat the whole damn thing. Yep, what's it going to do? Kill you. It's fine, everything's good. Have some fun while you're doing it, you know she's, she's. It's so fun to see her. It's kind of fun, it's great.

02:18:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's awesome You're there again, brother. Yeah, I brought well love love declining.

02:18:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So plantation blanchers yeah.

02:18:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like my plantation shutters. Oh, it's very jealous. A lot of mom stuff behind me here, a lot of antiques. I'm in New England, so it's got a bunch of oil lamps.

02:18:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, it looks like the inside of a Krocker Braal restaurant.

02:18:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Kind of. Paul Therat is at Theratcom. That's his website. If you're not a premium member yet, you're missing some of the best content ever. I mean it's all great, but boy, he's got some good stuff under the premium label there and so so join. And of course his books are at lean pubcom, including windows everywhere, which is kind of a history of windows through its programming languages, and the field guide for windows 11 also there. And of course Paul's here every Wednesday, and apologies again to Richard I gotta have.

02:19:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I can't stop talking, I have a problem.

02:19:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're a podcast host.

02:19:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're the one with the time limit. Man, I would have just stayed in. Sorry, I think we made it.

02:19:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know I meant to get out of here and we're sliding in hot.

02:19:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
For sure You're sliding in hot. Richard Campbell. He is at runasradiocom. That's where runasradio is podcast is as well as dot net rocks. Every Wednesday, 11 am Pacific, 2 PM Eastern. We do windows weekly. You can watch us do it live on youtubecom slash twit. We go live when the show goes live. Of course, club members get to watch before and after as well. If you're not a club member, please join twittv slash club twit After the fact, on demand versions of the show here at the website twittv slashw w. There's also a youtube channel dedicated to windows weekly. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast player. We invite you to do that. That way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. Paul, richard, have a wonderful week. I can stay more or my know there's a lot of snow both in both places.

02:20:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I'm going to do another pass with the blower, I think what's the snow situation?

02:20:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
where you are.

02:20:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It. You know, he said we had almost a foot on Tuesday night, or no, I guess it was Monday night, and then it. And then it was slated like yesterday, and it got wet, and then it froze. All that good new and welcome to new England it's crunchy. I learned a trick, though, and you probably already know this. I'm walking around. I see everybody's windshield wipers sticking straight up. Yeah, my sister said. Yeah, that's something.

02:20:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm a freeze to the last you pull them off and it's like still a little bit of rubber on the glass Like you're crazy.

02:20:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so I used my scraper, scraped it off, turned the car on, let the heat warm up and it worked Nice. So it's going to snow again, I think on enough Friday, but it's yeah, it's a January, it's cold, it's cold, it's well. There hasn't been a lot of snow in this area of New York's first snowfall in two years?

02:21:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but the year we had six feet of snow on the ground, it didn't snow until January 29th, I think it was. Yeah, so you know you can get fooled, and then it comes. It comes in late.

02:21:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, going home Saturday night, going to watch the football game on JetBlue, and I was home be home for the shows on Sunday. Thank you for being here, guys. We'll see you next week, all you winners and dozers on Windows Weekly. Bye, bye.