Windows Weekly 884 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 Therod and Richard Campbell are here. Actually, paul's in Mexico City, richard's in Toronto. We will be talking about, yes, windows Recall and the attack of the co-pilot, pus PCs. Paul says hold your horses, there's nothing to worry about yet. We'll also talk about the Framework laptop, windows 11, bing celebrating a big birthday and Apple and OpenAI. Microsoft's hopping mad. All of that's coming up next on Windows Weekly Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. This is Windows Weekly with Paul Theriot and Richard Campbell, episode 884, recorded June 5th 2024. Sentient Meat. Hello Windows dozers and winners. It's time for a show we call it Windows Weekly, with Paul Theriot and Richard Campbell. Hello, paul Theriot and Richard Campbell. Hello Paul.

01:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Thorat and Richard Campbell.

01:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hello Leo Laporte. Hello Leo, two new destinations. Richard is in a gilded cage, but I think it's Toronto.

01:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I'm not sure. Like a gilded cage, only different.

01:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That hotel chain has the same love of gold things as my dad does. There you go, you move into his house. It's like all gold, you know faucets and you know all this stuff.

01:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's like that my goal whenever I'm shooting from a hotel room is to not have the bed in the shot. Yeah, that's all I'm trying to do, so you get the drapes you look like king midas, yeah, but that's okay

01:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it gives the skin a nice warm glow too.

01:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You on the other, yeah very on the very on the warm glow side.

01:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It should probably change the color temperature of the light yeah, because you don't match paul's in like blue land, yeah paul is in the land of the eternal sun, mexico city uh believe it or not, these lights are the warmer variety.

01:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Like this we actually switch like really blue lights.

02:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, I know well, you have both traveled since we saw you last, but that doesn't mean you're not ready to go on a fine Windows weekly. Let's start with the Copilot Plus PCs. What do you say?

02:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm excited, are you? Yeah, june 18th, right.

02:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the date, june 18th.

02:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, that's a date. I think it's the way I would say it. I like the way that Microsoft has thrown another wrench into the confusion that is our lives. You know, you remember back in December when Intel launched the Meteor Lake processors, right, the first-gen Core Ultra PCs-based chipsets rather, you know they introduced this term AI PC and then Microsoft, five months later, said, yeah, we're going to have something called CoPilot Plus PCs, and it's like guys, really. So in the sense that a CoPilot Plus PC is a superset of an AI PC, you know, these things, I guess, can coexist. I mean, they'll all be AI PCs. Some of them will have better or different capabilities. Copilot plus PCs right now are limited to the Snapdragon chipsets that were just announced or just are just starting to release or whatever. But AMD and Intel have both said look, we will have Copilot plus PCs sometime this year. And then this past week we had Computex in Taiwan and NVIDIA, amd and Intel all announced their products that will meet this specification and will, in some vague way, someday in the future we don't know when get those capabilities right, because the the copilot plus stuff is not coming to everybody who has windows 11.

03:52
You don't just get it and you don't even get it. If you have the, the proper hardware, you can't. It comes on a new pc. That's the only way you're going to get it. So that's a discussion. Um, and actually we will have that discussion, but, like, maybe first we could just go through what was just announced. Right, so we know that the qualcomm, snapdragon x processors plus and elite have an mpu. That I want to say is it's 45 tops, right? Isn't that the speed, uh, which is above the 40 tops minimum to qualify for that co-pilot plus status? Actually, I don't think I wrote about this. We got to talk about stevie. I'm going to add this stevie batiste my favorite presenter talk about stevie um.

04:33
So because as always your stevie batiste mentions in the piece on our oh, it is good, good, good okay good, I want to make sure that's in there, because, um, I don't, because, if you didn't know, I actually read your stuff, oh good, yeah. So I and, and if you didn't know I actually read your stuff, oh good, yeah. And if you didn't know, I read my stuff, but my brain is mush so I don't remember anything. All right, yeah, I did, you're right, I'm sorry. So 40 tops is the minimum, kind of like polo is the minimum at certain hotels. And NVIDIA, amd and Intel have all announced I'm going to call them chipsets, for lack of a better term kind of processors or GPUs, whatever they are, npus, really, that meet that specification, right. So in NVIDIA's case, they are going to be made available through add-on video cards, some of which are humongous, right and target.

05:21
Yeah, I wonder if I don't already own one. Well, here's what's interesting it. Um, yeah, I wonder if I don't already own one. Well, here's what's interesting. Uh, it would be worth looking into this because, if I'm not mistaken, these things actually have an mpu on them. So even though there's a gpu that probably gets 400, 500, whatever tops, I believe there's also an mpu that gets, you know whatever the number is, 40 to 50 tops, just to get in. So they can pc makers can ship laptops and desktop computers that will meet this specification.

05:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I know, and we're going to talk about this this is this is then projected on the gpu, where it'll actually work yeah, well, this is the stevie thing.

05:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We're going to get to this. So stevie explains why the why of this. But um, amd has two new uh chipsets coming out for laptops and desktop pcs respectively. They'll both have 50 tops MPUs. I think it was last week or the week before I talked about how Microsoft managed to make everybody upset with their co-pilot plus announcement. It's kind of impressive really.

06:15 - AI voice (Caller)
Yeah, yeah.

06:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The one company we didn't really hear from was AMD. Like they were kind of quiet on this.

06:21
Right, they were like you know okay what, and I think we learned, learned why because they got a guy from microsoft to come out on stage and say, literally, you guys have exceeded our spec. You're the only ones like and they're not the only ones but technically, 50 tops is higher than 48 tops, which is intel, which is higher than 45 tops which is snapdragon, so they're within a single digit percentage of being whatever. But they actually got Microsoft to come out and say, like you guys are the, you know, like you're the best, you know. I think it's an apology. I really think that's why, right, I mean, you kind of know, it's why Intel we already knew Lunar Lake was coming. They kind of spaz announced it during the Snapdragon event because they were upset that will deliver 48 tops off the MPU. That will deliver 48 tops off the MPU. Honestly, though, that's not the most interesting thing about this chip. Like we knew that was coming. There's also an Arrow Lake chipset for desktop PCs, which they provided very little information about, but we're going to call that like a Meteor Lake class CPUs family for desktop PCs. They're going to announce that later in the year more formally, but this thing has a brand new GPU with dramatic improvements of the previous gen, which you may recall, is that new ArcGrafx, a dramatic improvement of the one that came before it. So in two generations they've kind of gone off the top, just blown away the GPU stuff. Kind of really interesting there. They got rid of hyper-threading in these chips. There's a much bigger emphasis these days on single-threaded performance because most people on laptops are kind of doing one thing and that's where that shines. Tablets, obviously, but as far as you know computers go, that's actually the mainstream. We don't expect that to be the case with Arrow Lake, but I guess we'll see how that goes.

08:01
And a simplified design. I guess Mete, meteor lake was kind of a radical design change. This one they've kind of um, simplified it and uh, the normal cpu improvements, you know 1.2, 1.3 x. But gpu and mpu are orders, not orders of magnitude. They're. They're single to double digit x, uh, improvements right, um, their previous mpu I want to say was 11 tops, I believe it's not 48. That's a big deal. And then it's like it's five times right or four times Like it's a big deal. Yeah, so these are big changes and they're. It took them 20 years but they're. Apparently. Intel has now heard the term performance per what, and so they're starting to talk. They're starting to talk that stuff up as well, and that's that also is a big factor in the Steven Batiste talk which we'll mention. In fact, we'll probably spend more time talking about it than he did giving the talk. It was only 11 minutes long, that's.

08:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's a very Batiste thing. He's done that before. Yeah, Just shows up, lays down the law and you're like we need to think about this.

09:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Given how well the interesting thing about him is, given how well that last speech was the one from Bill 2024, 2023. Right, this one is not quite as eloquent, if that makes any sense, but everything he said panned out 100%. It makes sense to pay attention to what he's talking about and he gives a nice defense, if you will, of the MP which, again, we'll get to. Qualcomm has nothing new to announce this week, so of course, they made an announcement because they don't want to get left behind. You know, look at us, we're still here. And so they've said, look, we're going to put Snapdragon CPUs in every PC form factor there is and there were no details, but they had a picture of an all-in-one PC, a tablet, you know, the different laptops, et cetera. So that's good news and I think for those people who are interested in possibly buying like a Snapdragon motherboard and, you know, building their own PC, there's no reason that can't happen. It's just that we're not going to really see that plug-and-play thing where you get like a CPU socket, choose your own. You know it's going to be, it's going to have to be a fairly it'd be sock, yeah, a fairly standardized thing.

10:10
Yep, yep, oh, I should say I forgot that, one of the more interesting things about lunar lake. Uh, in addition to the things I said, they're putting the memory on the chip, just like arm chips do, right, um, now, this is good and bad. Um, there's there's some confusion about performance. Um, it's not actually like faster to do that per se, but it is more energy efficient because the distance between the processor and the RAM is shorter, so it doesn't use as much energy. Making that interchange, I guess, is how they described it.

10:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm going to question the math on that one, but OK.

10:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, you know distance. So yeah, anyway, that's the point. And I don't know, I'm not a I am not a hardware expert, I don't know if this precludes out on Ram, but I think it might. You know, I think this we might be getting into a situation where we've seen actually the industry has been kind of working toward this where you buy a laptop, it has whatever Ram it has, and you're kind of stuck with that and this is the air model which also generally have followed.

11:04
Yeah, so as this right-to-repair thing has evolved, we've seen the ability to easily remove the back of the computer the bottom, I guess, the laptop. You can replace the battery. There's M.2 cards for things like the storage. Obviously SSD. Wi-fi is like that oftentimes and it's all user-serviceable, but the one thing that typically isn't is the RAM. It's usually soldered on. Sometimes you'll see soldered on plus one or two DIMM slots, but that's actually increasingly rare and I'm not saying this is why, but maybe we've been moving toward this day for a while now. It's kind of hard to say.

11:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I just don't think most people upgrade their machines Once you get it.

11:43
you get it, it you use it till you're done with it yep and I I don't know it's and you're saving cost and space, like there's a lot of case to be made for this. I mean, it used to be that the chips were so expensive to manufacture, you wanted them all adjustable so that you could. You had choices, or you only had to make one. These days of the way fabs are working, it makes perfect sense to have a processor with three different memory options and you just all on one stock yeah, no, I.

12:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is a. Definitely the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. So the problem is like today we have options, obviously chips, and you can get different things, different cpu sets and so forth. So, um, are we going to move to a world where this is the norm and maybe the only thing that happens in that space? I mean, we'll always have the beefier chips and desktop chips and all that, but I don't know, I just don't know. So we'll see. I don't believe AMD is doing anything like that, but Qualcomm is, of course, right.

12:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So but I do appreciate. If there's three different companies, three different chipsets coming out, they're going to grab every market opportunity they have, and some of them one of them is going to make a mini ATX board. Yeah, plug it into whatever chassis you want.

12:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so when you go to buy uh, in the future perhaps. But just imagine this you know you buy an Intel processor to get a motherboard of whatever kind you buy your RAM and storage Like, maybe in the future, what you're buying is that CPU, which is really a SOC with the RAM, and that's the configuration. It's like this CPU, gpu, npu plus 16, 32 or 64 gigs or whatever the configurations are Like. You might have to do it at purchase time right.

13:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you might do it at purchase time, and maybe it is. It may be integrated into the motherboard entirely or might just go be a big plate that you put down, but then the motherboard is just the bus, the additional IO devices and a couple of three or four M threes.

13:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yeah, so sounds good to me. You know well, I should say, with the understanding, that some people, especially people listening to the show, are probably a little nervous about this, which is understandable. We'll talk a little bit about framework coming up, but I do like the modularity thing, I do like the repair upgrade thing. I think, like most people, I have made purchases with the eye toward well, if I want to later, in this case, I could increase the RAM storage whatever and then never do.

14:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You like that option. I've also had the experience of somebody trying to work on a machine that's four years old and the pins are all brittle now. So when you do go to try and change anything, it never works again.

14:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had cars that worked that way the it was the dirt on an oil on the engine that was holding it together. It was actually holding it together. When you steam cleaned it, it just exploded out to the ground like in a giant liquid pile, which is, in many ways, a vivid description of an Intel CPU. Anyhow, I've talked to Richard about this on and off. I've been really thinking about orchestration, because Stevie brought it up last year. This was a core part of his talk this notion, that of the three app structures that he talked about AI beside, co-pilots, ai inside, new apps like Designer and Clipchamp, and then AI outside, where an AI the way he described it, an AI was going to orchestrate your request. In other words, instead of commanding, like we do today, where we tell the computer to do something, with AI we ask, we create a prompt and we say, hey, I would like to do this thing, and the AI will be intelligent enough, in his words, to orchestrate your request to the tasks that will do the thing that you want and give you the thing that you want in the most efficient and performant way imaginable. Right, and that's very, very interesting to me.

15:29
But if you think about how AI has been implemented in windows. That does not exist and it doesn't. It doesn't seem to exist with co-pilot plus PCs, and it doesn't seem to exist with the programmatic interfaces that Microsoft is giving to developers, right, and what I mean by that is we have these computers that are evolving. These computers exist in a market that is very diverse, right, you could have a computer that has weird combinations of CPU, gpu, mpu, ram storage, all different kinds of video, you know, duty displays, whatever it is, and Windows is a kind of orchestrator. You run an app and I think app makers like Adobe or you know, with creative apps would say you know, if you have a GPU, we're going to hit that GPU and use that because it's going to make this more efficient.

16:18
Now, they have to, you know, figure out the MPU as well. But I feel like this is the type of thing that the orchestrator at Windows, in this case, should kind of handle, right, but if you look at everything pre 24 H, two, with the exception of windows studio effects all of those things ran in software. They don't hit the GPU at all. They don't hit an MPU If you have one. No one does, but they don't If you do they.

16:46
Some of them do things that run against the cloud, right, and the feeling was heading into this build from last month that maybe now we're going to see the first steps to those things becoming more sophisticated, but what they announced was different stuff, right, so it's possible that background blur and paint or background replacement in photos or whatever other little ai features we can think of, will be made more efficient. And look to see what you have on your system and use the appropriate chip. But I don't, I mean I could be missing something. I'm not, you know, not perfect here, but it seems like what Microsoft decided was we're going to build this next generation of AI improvements to run on the MPU exclusively, and that's what's kind of interesting about it.

17:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, it was implied that, but I don't see the evidence of it.

17:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, Other than well, that's the Steve Bittich talk, right, the way he describes it. So people like it's a legitimate complaint or concern, right. I have an NVIDIA GPU, Spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on this thing. It delivers thousands, 476 tops, right. Why can't I do your goofy little AI feature? I have more than enough performance.

17:55
You know and this is the thing that it's worth watching this Stevie talk because this is not a topic I don't think I understood very well, which is that an MPU is not just more efficient at generative AI tasks than a GPU, it also offers better performance and it's like big. So one of the demos he gave he was comparing an Intel Core i7 CPU against a system with an NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU with a 4-watt NPU. At generating faces, just image generation, the NPU was 32 times as fast as the CPU. And forget about efficient, I'm just saying just pure performance 32 times as fast. He didn't give a number for the GPU, but based on the graphic it was about 15 or 16 times as fast. But when you factor in the efficiency angle, he called it a sub-4-watt MPU, but we'll call it 4-watt MPU.

18:54
To get that same level of performance with Core i7, you would need 20 of them, Wow, and they would consume 440 watts of power versus 4. And that GPU could do it. You don't need two of them, Like one would do it, but you're looking at 320 Watts of power, Right, and so and you know what?

19:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
the customer couldn't give a crap. Well, this is but this came up.

19:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We were talking about recall briefly before the show. So this is the the, the phrase. You know, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I think for this first gen, what they're shooting for is that kind of sweet spot in the middle of the market. So it's mainstream PCs, which are laptops, premium laptops, which are more profitable. They have higher margins, right. So, in other words, microsoft obviously is trying to help it and the industry grow PC sales in the wake of a historic lull, and they're trying to hit that part of the market where it can have the most impact for everybody.

19:52
Over time, these capabilities will come to other PCs, right? I've really looked for the nuance in this. I'm trying to find the one place where it says otherwise. But my understanding is, as of today, for the time being, it will only come to new PCs, right? If you have an existing NVIDIA something, something processor that is a killer, it's not clear that you will get the co-pilot plus capabilities, even though it could run and even though no one cares about the energy consumption, et cetera.

20:28
If you think back to window window studio effects, which was the one thing that ran on the well, which today is the only thing that runs on the MPU, the benefit of that thing, because it's not just that's not generative Well, it is generative AI, but it's also generative AI that runs continuously, like we've connected to a call. Right, we're talking over some hours in our case, but most calls 30, 60 minutes, I would hope, and it's blurring the background or it's doing whatever, and it's doing it without, not literally, but it's not impacting the battery. There's some tiny 0.00 something percent, whatever it is, but winding out the fan on your laptop zero, something, percent, whatever it is, but the winding out the fan on your laptop.

21:08
Yeah, the magic of the mpu is that it does these things so efficiently that it doesn't impact the battery life. Right, and so you? You get that same effect with like hardware, accelerated graphics with a dedicated gpu. But it's even better because the the performance and efficiency are astronomically higher. So if you were to think to the task, well, recall is an obvious example.

21:29
Recall is a solution for Copilot Plus PCs that uses some unknown number Microsoft hasn't said, but it is multiple models that are going to be built into those PCs. There will be 40 or more of them on those PCs, but it's using some let's call it dozens of them. It's running, they're all running simultaneously and it's doing all its stuff, like whatever those things are, whatever the capabilities, it's doing region detection and OCR and all this stuff. And the idea is everyone's freaking about the privacy stuff and we'll get to that, but but the point of this is that it does all those things, builds the vector database you know, puts it in a secure enclave, like all that stuff, without impacting the battery life of the performance of the system.

22:13
And the demo that he did, which was a little over the top. Over the tops, get it was he had. He had some, he took a it was. You could see exactly which model it was it was the mid-level snapdragon x processor, so it wasn't the highest inversion. And he pegged that thing with. He hit every single model on the pc at once, doing different things, just running again and again, again, facial recognition, all the stuff, and um, the gpu was just flatlining on the bottom and he said and now I will play a game because I can, because the GPU is not, and I can do that while I'm doing all this other stuff. And that's kind of the point of it.

22:50
So will things change? Yes, I mean, one of the big questions, frankly, about co-pilot PC is like how do you reconcile what this thing is? Right, we've talked about this a little bit. We've had media center edition, right. We have this notion today in windows uh 11, where you buy like a computer that has windows 11 pro and one of those features that you get with that is like a bitlocker, disk encryption, you know the management console, and that's great. But there are some features that require specific hardware. So, even though the system supports it, um you, you can't use windows holofacial recognition unless you have a camera built into the system. Right, but you have.

23:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That has to exist yeah, that's a particular kind of sensor. Um, what's annoying us here is that they are deciding for whatever reason they want to contrive that they're not going to use our perfectly capable gpus for this stuff I think it will happen.

23:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and I think it's. It's, it's being done to drive the industry forward and get some sales going. And I know that bothers some people. I, I the one. In all my complaining about microsoft, the one thing I I try to remind myself of is look, they're a business.

23:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They, you know, they try yeah, but it bothers me when a tf goes out. Defend that where it's like listen, we're going to push the MPU first because you don't want your GPU and your laptop doing this. But if you've got a desktop, knock yourself out.

24:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I agree 100%, and that's why I frame this conversation in the context of orchestration, because I think that specifically targeting the MPU is in some ways buying them time, that they're doing this now not just to do what I described, which is help the industry. But it's just easier. You know, like we have this thing, we're going to require it, it's going to make people buy new computers. We'll just target this. Thus, this kind of artificial separation we've created between, like, the haves and haves-nots will hopefully drive some PC sales. But the thing is like a sophisticated orchestrator should be able to look at whatever the task is and then run what yeah, the most efficient one that you have. But maybe you don't have that mpu, maybe you do have that gpu, so maybe use that instead.

24:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Like I, it's weird to me that it's not that sophisticated no, or you're doing three workloads and it's like, hey, I'll put two of them on the mpu and one of them on the gpu, because it's not doing anything right now. Oh, you decided to fire up world of warcraft. Okay, I'll pull it back off of the gpu right and exactly that's, thank you.

25:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Exactly like what? Um? The example. I was the example that stevie gave where he's like now I can play a game. Someone was saying, well, yeah, but the cpu was, you know, getting pegged right. That's how windows works. When you run another task, it has, you know, getting pegged right. That's how Windows works when you run another task. It has, you know, memory and CPU resource utilization capabilities. You don't, you know, set that yourself. It just does it right. So it will give less RAM and less CPU to the AI task and it will let you run the game Like the point was. The game would run Like it may run, at six frames per second. I have no idea idea.

25:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I remember my old um surface book where it actually had two gpus in it. Yeah, and you know it depended on what which one it would use, depending on the kind of work. Tell me, the os shit can own that problem. From a dev perspective, there are apis that are hardware savvy right, the cuda api was for using scalar compute against the GPU. Like, tell me why that wouldn't work just as well in the end.

26:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So it would. But here's the thing. Tell me if I've already used this example, but back in the day, I think you, richard, have used the example of, like you know, there was a day when Microsoft pulled networking into Windows and everyone freaked out what are you doing? We sell networking, you know. That's the type of thing where you say, hey, look, this needs to be a base part of the operating system WordPerfect. Their big claim to fame in the late 80s, early 90s, was they had four floppy disks full of just printer drivers. That was like their value add. Like we support every single printer. And Microsoft stands and look, there's some anti-competitive stuff to it. But realistically, realistically, this should be a feature of the platform. No, another app maker could show up with a new word processor and would instantly support every printer maker because it's built in the windows Right, because they understand that device context.

26:52
So, yeah, I think we're at the point now where, yeah, there are all these, there are a million different ways to do a million different things, and I think what Microsoft wants to do is what I just described. But for AI, that this and again it's like it's an orchestrator. But for AI, that this and again it's like it's an orchestrator right, it's a system level service that will look at what you're doing and intelligently apply the workloads to whatever processors make the most sense. I think that's where it's headed. That's my I'm.

27:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The wrestling match is going to be the sysadmin, with 5,000 desktops doing his usual hardware rotation, so he's turning over 20% of them a year and the MPU costs more. It's like am I going to pay a $300 or $500 premium for this machine because we might need this MPU?

27:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, which is, by the way, part of the not beauty, but part of the nuance of what's happening now and part of the conversation around recall, which is the way, part of the not beauty, but part of the nuance of what's happening now and part of the conversation around recall, which is for now, this stuff is only available in a tiny, tiny subset of computers yes, not one of which has shipped yet. By the way, it will. Some of these features will be will be available only in preview when that does happen, and it will grow over time. Right, and so, however it happens, sometime this fall we're going to see PCs based on AMD, intel and NVIDIA chipsets that meet the Copilot Plus PC spec. Will they be Copilot Plus PCs?

28:16
This is where it gets weird, because not all of them, but at least two of them have used language that says these features are coming later, which is something Microsoft said would never happen, that they would never deliver these via a software update, but they have said explicitly that is how this will happen. So some someday, a year from now, two years from now, we're going to have a. You know we'll have a growing body of these things, but I mean, look in our wildest dreams. How many Snapdragon X processor based laptops are going to ship this year to actual customers?

28:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Several million, maybe Right, several Maybe yeah, how many they got? Do you think it's?

28:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Microsoft's intent that everybody be using one in five years, or is it?

28:57 - AI voice (Caller)
just a thing, I mean, is it something that you want to be the new platform?

29:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the question. I think the way that these things happen is you do it this way, in a measured way. We're not going to give this to everybody, right, we can't it, wouldn't. You know, in many cases it would result in a worse experience. Someone like my wife who was a normal smart person, but a normal person gets some upgraded Windows and she's like how come my battery life is 50% of what it used to be? Or how come, like when I run Word, it stutters. It's like, oh, you're running 40 miles in the background off your CPU. That's why you don't do that to those people. But there's also this life cycle.

29:32
We live in a world in which Microsoft has started raising the hardware bar on new versions of Windows. Right, that seemed arbitrary with Windows 11 and was. But in this case, this 40 tops thing was a thing they arrived at, because this is where this stuff actually starts to make sense. So, you know, a year from now there might be 7, 10 million or something. Two years from now, maybe it's 25, 50, you know, whatever it is, intel alone will dramatically expand the deployment or the availability of these systems. The question is going to be?

30:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
at what point in time do those computers get these capabilities? It'll become part of the base chipset, just like a GPU has. You can't buy a machine that doesn't have some form of GPU.

30:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I meant the software, in other words. So you buy a new Intel Core Ultra 2 based laptop in December. It's got 32 gigs of RAM, plenty of storage, it's an awesome NPU and it comes with windows 11 24 h2. My understanding is you're not going to have co-op, you're not going to have any of the co-pilots plus stuff. Then you will eventually get it, but you're not going to have it from day one. It doesn't come in the box and I don't know what it looks like to install 40 uh models on a computer, but I think it's going to take a little while.

30:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Um, you know there's that. That's part of it. There's a Windows update for that. You know It'll just happen in the background, so I guess anyway.

30:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My question is really is it like the Evo PC? Is it a marketing umbrella?

30:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, yes, okay, well, sorry, I'm saying that is the question. So this is something. Look, you guys know me well, this is what I obsess over, right? So this is like, what is this thing, you know, and I think we talked about this a little bit last week because, yes, we have Intel, which wants to put stickers on PCs, and they pay PC makers for that, and that's why you see that crap. You get Microsoft that's trying to establish their own kind of standard and they're trying to drive the industry forward for their own reasons, which are, you know, mostly good, would benefit most of their partners. I think I pointed out last week, didn't I, the number of times these guys said AI PC versus co-pilot PC, and how they were. Did I say this come up last week or not? I don't remember, but the Intel is paying them more money than Microsoft is. So you hear AI PC a lot more than here, co-pilot plus PC, right, yeah, and I wonder if the term is going to die.

31:39
Just you know well, yeah, it feels like a marketing term to me anyway, my, my guess sorry, my, my guess is, yeah, part of this is to sell sickers and uh, part of it is to. You know, they're all jockeying for position.

31:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I get a lot of listen whatever you think, I know how Microsoft sells a ton than running it in the cloud.

32:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, in fact. Yeah, you should maybe give us a stipend every month. It's like we're feeding AI back into the ecosystem or something you know. Anyhow, to answer Leo's question, right now I think these things are kind of in flux. I think that the Copilot Plus capabilities become part of more and more PCs over time than just become part of Windows, just like Media Center was its standalone SKU but now it's part of Windows, or it became part of Windows and then disappeared.

32:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's not the future of Windows, it's just a kind of Windows, I guess.

32:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, it's short term, it's a kind of Windows Long term, it is the future, right, okay? I mean, at some point it's going to be five years in the future and we will have no matter where we got it a computer with an mpu that can handle this stuff, and we'll just have that.

32:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This will be happening like right now not today, but at some point it makes no sense to build a dot that doesn't have an mpu, and it's more than makes any sense to do to not have ram or multiple cores.

33:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah I, I questioned Intel earlier this year shipping like 14th gen core chips when they had just done the Ultra. It's like. Could you just you know?

33:12 - AI voice (Caller)
just move it along Two different pipelines.

33:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, they were at a certain level of evolution.

33:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, so anyway, that's where we're at. So what's the date? It's the 5th. So in less than two weeks we're going to get the first co-pilot plus pcs which are snapdragon based. You're still on that list. Uh, we'll see. I mean, I still have my pre-order in. I mean I'm expecting to get. I mean, I think hp is going to send me one here and lenovo has done that for me in the past as well, so, but I I'm hoping to have at least three of them by the end of the month. But you don't have to wait for me.

33:44
I mean, everyone's going to review these things, right? So people will tell you the efficiency, the battery life, the performance, the fan noise. We're going to learn this real quick. But there's more to it than this, right? So there's the co-pilot plus capabilities, of which recall is the most infamous and maybe they've described it as kind of their marquee feature.

34:05
Everyone's freaking out about this thing, which is completely understandable. When I was sitting in the audience as soon as he started talking, I was like, oh man, here we go now. People aren't going to like this. It felt a little like we're not reading the room here. You know, like steve, everyone very everyone trusts microsoft. Microsoft has never screwed up anything in windows 11, so I I mean, obviously you're all going to embrace this and so, and look, I get it. Like I said, I think, last week, a big portion of my audience is still very anti-AI, which I find confusing. But this is the world and they're going to look at this and say I don't want this. And I I'm, and you'll see, I've got this is what's going to cause me to move to linux and it's like, maybe, but by the time you get it, uh, by the time it's forced on, you is the way I would say it um, the problems will have been fixed. Right, it will be opt-in, it will be something you can remove, it will be, uh, it will be better. It may, by that point, be something you actually do want.

35:02
Because I described recall to my wife, who, again, smart but not technical, and immediately she's like I need this, I need this right now, I would use this all the time. I'm like, I know and this is, I think, mainstream users, a lot of them, we in our little bubble, we were technical, we know too much where we have our ideals and we're like oh, my God, this is security and privacy nightmare, blah, blah, blah. And we're like, oh my God, this is a security and privacy nightmare, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And I think you know, normally people either will or will not want it. But those who do are like, yeah, I often stand in front of the refrigerator with the door open and I can't remember why I'm here and I you know, and this is the kind of problem it's trying to solve on computers, right, look, there's a lot that goes into it. But just to answer the complaints in kind of a non-ranty way, I'll just say Copilot Plus PCs have specific hardware, including Pluton security chipsets, that are not on most computers today.

36:01
They require an advanced form of Windows Hello biometric authentication that provides an additional layer of security protection that's not available on other PCs. There's a bunch of security defaults that will be enabled that are available in Windows 11, but not by default today, and you will not get recall unless you sign in with a Microsoft account, which requires you to use Windows Hello, which in this case, requires you use advanced Windows Hello, not just regular Windows Hello. That means your disk will be encrypted as soon as you sign in for the first time, et cetera, et cetera. So there's this whole set of security stuff built into this system that the people kind of hacking it to run a normal. They're like look, I can run recall without any of the models on the CPU. Yeah, you can, but that's not what that computer is going to look like.

36:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So the thing you made, which is inherently insecure is not going to be a debate on this in the IT space at all. You've got to spend a little time being an administrator dealing with a sexual harassment complaint and you've got to use the tools to dig through email, which you can do to find those harassing emails. And you've got to demonstrate well, this is categorically. This person did this harass.

37:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So in other words, yeah, that will your business surveil you using this or similar technologies for this reason or others? Right, make sure you're not giving away secrets. Make sure you're not. You know they will.

37:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And they are and they're required. That's exactly don't be crazy right? Yeah, it's as an administrator you. This is part of your liability of the company but this is um.

37:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
When I use the term faux outrage, I what I mean by that is it's like outrage or something that doesn't impact you. It's like my definition of a hipster is a person who was nostalgic for a past they did not experience. Right like we're, like we're getting upset about something that will not impact you this year, we'll almost certainly not impact you within three or five years even, but if and when it does, because, look, microsoft has a lot, of a lot of problems. I feel like I'm leading the charge on that one, but they also do respond to feedback like this and when the whole world freaks out on this, they'll make changes, they'll make adjustments.

38:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Look well part of me. I wondered who was intentional. Let's get it out there. Read the room. Oh I I?

38:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
ah boy, I really would have pushed the security privacy stuff a lot harder than they did. Frankly, um, they almost had this wide-eyed disbelieving like google. Does this google you think about? Google is like this giant privacy sucking thing. And they're like as you know, nobody loves your privacy more than Google. And you're like I'm sorry, are we talking about the same company here? So I think Microsoft is suffering from that a bit. I've spent the last two, three years pitching and moaning about all the insurification stuff and you know, could this turn into that kind of a thing? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, is it now Nobody? We don't know that Organizations that don't want to use this can flip it off. You'll never see it, and I mean literally flip it off, but they can turn it off.

38:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Sorry, and they don't, you know I got to tell you from a from a litigation point of view, to have a lawyer stand in front of you and say you turn that feature off and it could have protected your company. Yes, Right.

39:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yep Well but also you turn it on and it's got records of all those emails you may not want to have.

39:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
uh, yeah, but that's, send those emails through the business account. This is, um, this is a tough one, because the who, the people who will benefit from this which I will just describe as kind of mainstream users, right, although mainstream users who somehow ended up with a Snapdragon PC. It's kind of a weird cross-section, right. But whatever you know, short term it's going to be a small market. They're like yep, they see what it is Like. Yep, I'm leaving this thing on. I want this to work. They're doing the thing. Leaving this thing on, I want this to work. They're doing the thing.

39:46
The place where this falls apart to me is not with the thing, the issues other people are raising, but rather that person isn't technical enough and, frankly, doesn't have the initiative to go in and say look, when I'm in PayPal or whatever, I don't want you recording that. Or when I'm visiting my favorite porn site or whatever it is, I don't want you recording that. And I just think people are too lazy and don't care enough for lack of a better term maybe a little too trusting when it comes to technology. Yeah, so the very audience that recall will help the most although honestly, I think it will help all of us if we used it properly is the market. It will hurt right Like we know to use. You know Richard has a secure, a physical security key for his passwords. You know we we talk about 2fa and uh pass keys and all this stuff and normal people like abc123, whatever they, and this is. I don't know how we fix that problem.

40:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, dude, I had a. I had a neighbor show me his phone showing his email, kind of exploited. There were mails being sent in his name. I'm like you need to change your passwords. No, I'm not changing my password. I had a.

40:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It doesn't hurt me, whatever. I have a friend who, uh, he always comes to me for tactical stuff, obviously, and he, he pulls out this usb key and he says everything I don't put anything online, like everything's here. I don't use the cloud, all my passwords, my data, my bank information, blah, blah, blah. And I I thought he was joking, I was I just started laughing. I was like, oh wait, I'm sorry, are you serious? And then thinking for, like, what kind of a person would be like this? I said, well, I mean, I hope you have at least two of them, with one of them in a safety deposit box. And he goes yeah, that's exactly what I do.

41:18
And I'm like you know you might want to wake up, because stagecoaches are gone and we don't. We live in the 21st century. And seriously, what are you doing? Like there are, there are secure ways to do what you want to do without having to. And then I said, well, that's. I said, do you? Is it, is that thing encrypted? And he's like what does that mean? I'm like you're carrying around an un, the entire collection of all your important data.

41:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's like we got to. I might have to, at least in the case of stuff like recall. The encryption is not an option Like you don't get to use it if you don't have all the security features.

41:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah and right, and there you go. So if you have Windows 11 Home, you actually can't encrypt that thing. You can't. You can use it if it's encrypted, but you can't actually encrypt it, and this is a good example of that divide I'm talking about. You know the good and the bad of a feature like this, which is, you know, very technical and super useful if it works right we always say that about AI if it works right, right. This is always the thing.

42:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But the very people, like I said, who I think could use it the most the ones who will not understand it very well by the time this thing becomes mainstream.

42:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
it'll be off by default, and that's kind of my point right. Even that day, talking to the guy who designed this feature, I raised a couple of things. It doesn't survive a reset. You can't sync it to the cloud and access your history on every one of your computers, which I know the privacy guy is like Paul, what are you doing? You're making the problem exponentially worse.

42:43
But realistically, if you use multiple PCs, you know what? Just the history from that PC. You work in multiple places. You would want, you want to bring in your whole body of history and that's just not an option and it's not there. It will be right. They, they, I'm not, I'm not gonna ever come up with no, he tell me it would be like he said look, we, we have to ship something for 1.0. I mean, we know, you know this will get better over time. The party didn't talk about because we didn't really talk about this to begin with was you know? Microsoft's customers are going to provide feedback? I don't know if you've been paying attention, but the feedback to this one's been decidedly one-sided and uh a whole bunch of people who've never used it right.

43:21
Or people have used it, but then they will say, well, I had to hack it onto this computer. It's like if someone had full administrative control to your computer. It's like right which is, but that happens all the time.

43:33 - AI voice (Caller)
That's, that's the, that's the dealer that happens, I mean like how do you think people in ransomware?

43:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
people get into your computer. That's how it happens, and having bitlocker does nothing because it's decrypted as soon as they're in. And, by the way, uac is completely not going to prevent them from escalating. So we see this all the time. If, if windows were secure, we wouldn't have a ransomware problem if windows?

43:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
oh boy, if windows was dot, dot, dot. I could write a thousand words right now, but you're creating now a database of everything you've ever done no, but you're forgetting my, but not. No, you're forgetting the most important part. None of that's true. These are different computers. They completely secured completely, not completely differently. They're secure. They're better secured than the pcs you're referring to right now. So that's part of this.

44:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So this is so you saying Pluton and better, windows Hello is going to eliminate Trojans and malware.

44:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm not making any claim like that.

44:29
I'm saying very interesting the baseline, for no, we don't know, is what I'm saying. Everyone's like. This will happen. No, you don't know that, so we will see. I think putting this out in a very limited fashion at first actually in this case makes sense. This is something I would normally rail against. I think this is the kind of feature where they really need to see how this goes. And look, microsoft doesn't have their hands over their ears. They're paying attention to this stuff. They already know all the complaints. No one is going to come up with something like oh, I never thought of that. I mean, they know this better than anybody, so we'll see what they do.

45:08
Has Microsoft proven themselves to be a trustworthy partner in this journey? I'm going to leave that one up to you guys. I have my issues and that's a concern. Absolutely. This is a company that they just did it on this new computer I'm using right now Folder backup, no, folder backup, no. Folder backup, no. Folder backup, no. And then I deleted some of the desktop. It says hey, when you delete from OneDrive, are you kidding me? They're like are you kidding me? So we'll see, we'll see.

45:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's definitely a high bar here for security. I almost wonder if it's another version of Windows X.

45:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, like a containerized.

45:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Make the ARM version work, that they can simply put those constraints in place.

45:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That could be. I do find it very interesting how vague it is when AMD, intel, nvidia compliant PCs become co-pilot plus PCs. You can't find well, maybe you can, if you do, show it to me A sentence somewhere where some PC maker says when these things ship, on whatever date, they will have all the co-pilot plus PC capabilities. I don't believe that's the case, just based on what they've communicated.

46:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, we don't know. They have not made that clear, yep.

46:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, yeah, I mean, you know I can predict that malware will target this, because it's so juicy of a target. Great Well, you'll have an audience of 13.

46:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And it doesn't make it all that juicy a target.

46:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We'll see how juicy that is. I think it's. I think like I'm just trying to bring some rationality to this. I am not pretending I have the answers. I'm not going to refute anything that Steve did or didn't say. That's not really the point. It's just that the people who are kind of hacking into this and proving that certain things happen I'm not proving anything because that's not what those PCs are and we'll see. So we'll see. Here's one that here's a legit complaint.

46:56
Microsoft explicitly said this would be an opt-in feature. And then, okay, and when do we do that? Well, when you set up Windows it's a new computer, you know turn it on. You set up, you type in your account information, whatever, and uh, okay, that sounds good. You know, we'll see what the warning looks like. But they showed someone got a hold of the screen where that occurs and what it looks like is it's just on and you can go into settings later and turn it off. And I gotta tell you, tell you from vast experience, no one is ever going to either do or figure that out, I that's. So that needs to change right, this should be a big red button, you know like and when you click it it's a giant disclaimer right At the security level that thing needs to be at.

47:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
there's going to be enough hoops that a lot of people simply opt out because they're not going to jump through the hoops well, it's on by default right now.

47:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What hoops do they have to jump?

47:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
well, to use it yeah, I will see I shouldn't be. They said it wouldn't be, so yeah it's on by default, it's just on well, it's where there's no pc that has this.

47:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you know what I mean like I know what you're saying I mean you're saying it's not going to be on all co-pilot plus pc I'm not saying that at all.

48:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
See, that's the thing I I I just see a something we don't know. We don't have these PCs. If it is as described and not what Microsoft said, by the way, multiple times that first day, we have a problem, right, and that's a problem very much like the problem I've been talking about with OneDrive or Edge, which is very predacious, and you could say this is kind of standard operating procedure for Microsoft with Windows 11. And you could say this is kind of standard operating procedure for Microsoft with Windows 11. This is, I feel like the privacy security bar is so high on this feature.

48:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They cannot take this slapdash approach to forcing it on people, I would argue, whatever their strategy is in favor of the faux outrage is to let them, is to convince them, like you better be right.

48:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I wouldn't be surprised if they. I'm saying the outrage.

48:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You haven't done anything to reassure me that it is. It is really legit.

48:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I guess it's foe if it doesn't happen, or no, it's outrage over something you shouldn't be outraged over. It's like you make an assumption at the beginning of a sentence that's wrong and it just negates the rest of it. I don't mean you, leo.

49:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm just curious what's the wrong assumption when you say I got this to run on a non-compliant PC and dot dot dot this is a thought experiment without having it run on anything. So you're saying that the perimeter security is going to be so good that there's no chance of this unencrypted ball being exfiltrated? You keep saying I would never speak that definitively.

49:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What I'm saying is that the very specific claims that people have made security researchers, hackers, whatever they are are all moot because you're not running that on a co-pilot plus pc now when we do, you don't have to make a claim.

49:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm just saying you have an unencrypted once you log in ball of data. That's everything you ever an unencrypted once you log in ball of data. That's everything you ever got on that computer.

49:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, once you log in was the first part of the problem. How did you log in? What do you mean? This thing has an advanced form of biometrics control to make sure it's only you that logs in.

49:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Which is why we never have any ransomware problems with people downloading malware while they're logged in.

50:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Look, we have problems. We see this happen too. It doesn't mean that the majority of cars crash. I mean, like, what do you mean? I like I ransomware is not something that's taken us down as an industry.

50:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay I didn't not get on the podcast today because I have ransomware we have no issue, obviously no. No, it's not, that's it's gonna be fine.

50:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, don't, no, no, don't put words. You're making it sound like I'm saying something definitive. I'm I. I don't mean literally none, I mean it's not. It's not like this 90% thing where it's it's destroyed everything. We can't even get work done. It's not like that.

50:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I, I so we should not worry until it happens.

50:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I am not saying that at all. I I'm saying we should. We should see what it actually is, and I think it's important. This feedback is good because I do think that Microsoft is going to take it to heart, and I think it's. It is inexcusable that they went out live with this information without being much clearer about their how they plan to secure.

50:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It felt like there's a lot of hand waving like, well, you don't have to worry about, it's got Pluton, it's got BitLocker, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. Yeah, and I don't think that I'm not going to be fine.

51:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and I don't think that I'm not going to look. I'm not defending Microsoft, it's just no way. I'm just. I'm just. I'm defending just common sense, I mean we.

51:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Obviously we don't have to worry about it till there are copilot plus PCs in a week or two weeks, I guess.

51:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
OK, I guess, but you know, like I said, how many by the end of the year, what you know, the end of the year, what you know, there are 1.5 billion, uh, windows pcs in the world. If they, if there are 10 million with this thing and five, let's say, all 10 million of them are using it, what are we talking about here? This is like what's that one, what is that less?

51:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
than one percent. The point is to alert people that if you're going to get a copilot plus pc, you might want to consider disabling this thing that is on by default. That it would be. Here's the.

51:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Here's the look actually, I'm glad you put it that way. I wouldn't have thought of that. I write books and I write what I write, you know, and my job, as I say it, is to kind of help windows users, right, yeah, and what I want to do is have real information about how well this works it doesn't work and then be able to advise people accordingly. My point is not this thing is safe. My point is, as described, this thing is not the problem. You say it is, and let's see what happens in real life. Also, I think the just again the way they're rolling this out. I mean, think about it just from like a content perspective. Does it even make sense for me to document how recall works? No one's going to be using it. It's like the audience is so tiny. I don't even. I mean I will, because I'm mental that way, but I mean I, I don't. What's the market there? It's nothing, and it's something that will grow over time. But it's not just growing with Microsoft not doing anything. It's growing with them improving those features.

52:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That really is the defense. To say, you know, lawn darts might be dangerous, but because so few people will buy them, we don't have to worry about it.

52:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But that's not the argument. That's only part of the argument. That's the. That's the other part of the sentence. The first part is you don't have these lawn darts. Maybe they have foam tips, you don't know. You just said I have other lawn darts and those lawn darts hurt. Thus these new lawn darts will be horrible.

53:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what these people are saying, but Microsoft has yet to say anything. To make me feel like they have foam tips. Is all I'm saying Fair enough? Maybe they will.

53:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And I would just say generally. I mean, should you trust Microsoft?

53:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We know security is job one at.

53:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Microsoft. Damn, it is yes, not AI. Job one at microsoft? Damn, it is yes, not ai. Wait what? Yeah, you're right. Well, that's what they're saying. So, yeah, I mean, look, I, yeah, where everything is secure by default. Again, yay, you know, I guess we do this once every 20 years now. But, um, we will see. I look, will there be problems with this? Yeah, it's microsoft I. I think this is a. This company is this part of this company is ridiculous. So we'll see, you know, we'll see.

53:59
I just this. It reminds me a bit of in 20, I guess it's in 23H2, I think. But in Windows 11 now you could open the start menu. In fact, I see it right here. There's a little orange dot on my name. I click on it and it says backup your PC, make sure you always have access to your phone. They've added another place. They can berate me to do this thing I don't want to do, right, so that's what Microsoft does in Windows 11. I don't like it. And then they again I don't know if it's 21st or 22nd somewhere in the last couple of months they've added this icon. They're going to add an icon to the recommended section of the start menu that recommends an app you don't have.

54:33
Whole world collapsed. Everyone went mental. And I'm like guys. This has been a feature of Windows 10 since day one. It's still there. This is, in many ways, just a regression. It should have been there in Windows 11. I don't know why they didn't do it. You can turn it off, right-click it and say I don't want this Easy to turn off. That is in no way as problematic as all those Edge and OneDrive problems I've been complaining about for months and months and months, but that was the thing that set people off. And this one I get. Like I said I was sitting in the audience. I'm like here we go. I'm like you. You could predict instantly what all the arguments would be and 100% that's exactly what happened. I get it. I mean I get it, but I mean, my God, we're going nuts over something that just is A not available. Whatever experience you have on your PC does not apply and, yes, it will be on a tiny number of PCs and can be disabled.

55:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Will you leave it on?

55:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I will, because I have to right, I have to write about it.

55:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And Richard you'll leave it on.

55:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It might even be useful.

55:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh see, this is what's really interesting. What if it is? That's the thing.

55:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, of course it'll be useful Listen no one's denying it'll be useful.

55:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah okay.

55:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's not the question. Well, so this is like an exponentially worse version of the problem Microsoft had with Cortana. I distinctly remember getting an email from someone who said let me get this straight. I ran this stupid app and it told me it needed access to my emails, my calendar, my whatever. And I'm like, yep, he's like I'm not doing that. I'm like what do you think the software is doing? It's a personal assistant. It has to know your schedule so it can tell you. You got this thing coming. Like that's how it works, you know. And so people who look at this and say, oh, I don't want AI, I have an online blah, blah, blah, like yeah, if you want to use this functionality, that's how it works. If you don't, just don't use it.

56:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are the companies that told their employees not to use ChatGPT? Have they changed their tune? You know that was the fear with Chat GPT is it had exfiltrated your information.

56:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Microsoft does a.

56:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Have they backed down?

56:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I bet Microsoft does a better job of this than any company, frankly, of data protection where you sign in with an organizational account, like a Microsoft Worker School account, enter ID, whatever it is, purview all the security stuff on up in the cloud. You are working in a document that's secure. It's company secrets. You can't forward it, you can't take screenshots of it. You know all that stuff. So we're praying to God and hoping that this is the basis for all this stuff we're talking about in recall. We don't actually know for sure, but I mean they do a better job of that, do they 100%? I mean, could you prevent someone from holding up a camera and taking a picture of the screen? Probably not right. So is anything perfect? Probably not, I don't know.

57:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I would love to have recall and I think that that will be the generally. The reaction of people is like that's going to be really, really useful, especially after 20 years of using a PC. It's going to have everything I've done in the last 20 years.

57:35 - AI voice (Caller)
I can see their excitement about it, but it won't.

57:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know because you'll have to use the same PC for 20 years. Yeah, it's just not going to happen, but they'll fix it right. Right, so I don't know. Look, so I don't know. I look like I said, the outrage is predictable. I, I've not seen anything that has surprised me along those lines. Um, I just we'll see. I, um, I, ai is happening so fast and this is another one of those incursions where I don't know. You know, the world is going to look different in six months, it's going to look different in a year.

58:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, to really be useful, it would actually have to be in the cloud on all your computers and persist in between resets. That's exactly right. All of that stuff, yep, and now we're really talking.

58:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh my God, now your can of worms has become a like a, an oil drum of worms.

58:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you should have to be able to use it. You should have to provide a, a hardware key, because otherwise, yeah, yeah, that thing is, uh, that thing is dying. No, might, yeah, yep, but we, you know, we, for some, to some degree, that's what's going on with our smartphones, is we? You know that's location and everything and all that information is stored in there.

58:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh my God, I had two random conversations with friends last weekend. Both of those things popped up on my news feed, which is supposed to be about tech, and we all have that experience and creepy is one thing. Creepy is bad, right. I mean, we all know there's this compromise we've made between privacy and capability. We get that this stuff is. You know, this is a little scarier.

59:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think microsoft might have made a calculus saying we think people are going to find this more valuable than they're going to worry about security.

59:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That they will choose. They had a room full of people sitting there, yeah, all of whom were like you know, like I, I, they to, not a room full of consumers.

59:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's the difference. Consumers are going to say it is great, and it is our job to remind them that it's great, but it's a potential security nightmare.

59:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I I only very recently realized like what I was doing. Well, I might've mentioned this. I apologize if I'm repeating myself, but when I, if I, if I can't find my phone right, some people will think, okay, where was I, where did I go, what did I do? I can't think like this. I never.

59:56
The way I think is where would I put my phone? Like, I don't actually remember putting it anywhere, but I don't usually put it in random places. So I go to those places and that's how I find things Right. And so I do that same thing online, as it turns out, or with my files, right.

01:00:10
I have a very specific folder structure that I use to store things and organize things, both new and kind of archived, and the reason is I know, if I'm looking I wrote something about this topic five years ago I know exactly where to go. I don't literally know that that's where it is, I just, but I do because I know that where to go. I don't literally know that that's where it is, I just, but I do because I know that's how I work. You know what I mean, and I think this recall thing helps with that kind of a problem, because we all think of things differently. I'm mental and maybe you aren't, so maybe you have a different system, but you, you know where did I put that thing? And then you go and look and it's not there and you can't find it. I've searched for things in the file system and windows 10 and not found it. Gone up to onedrivecom and found it in two seconds, you know well, isn't that what recents kind of is right?

01:00:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, that's in a way.

01:00:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is, this is a recents on steroids that's right. Yeah, well, it's not. It's not just recents.

01:01:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, in my case I'm referencing an article maybe I wrote five or ten years ago well, the concern is things it's going to have like uh, it will have your password, will it not? Or maybe, if it's not on screen, it won't, so the dots will keep it from seeing that, but it will have your financial records if you go to your bank yeah I mean, and it will know you can afford that upgrade.

01:01:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You're too cheap to pay for come on, it'll be.

01:01:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know it's, it's, we're gonna take a break. It's very interesting and uh, and I and I will stand back and stand by and let you.

01:01:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, no, look let them. They will trip on a rake. They will. It's Microsoft, I mean, if anything is a certainty.

01:01:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's why I'm glad there was a little outrage faux or not from the security community, because I want Microsoft to say Me too.

01:01:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, me too. I just, but the overreaction to it is a little tough. It's hard because you know, when someone says something like this is the thing that will get me to move to Linux, you know it's like okay, like, for some reason the other awful crap from the past two years was not a big enough problem for you, but this is the thing that put it over the top, really. I mean, I just let's see what happens. That's all you know.

01:02:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's my it's not even out yet, that's fair.

01:02:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Two weeks we're going to be going to town on this thing. When the financial records of the first co-pilot PC are posted on a website, we'll see what happens. That will be fun, I don't know. Look, I think there's a 50% chance. Between now and that date, microsoft either turns this thing off completely, delays it, or makes adjustments.

01:02:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This doesn't make first rev. Yep, it's a little too hot.

01:02:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They can be stupid, but they're not crazy, they don't need to.

01:02:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The weird part is how much they hung on.

01:02:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
To me, the weird thing is the wide-eyed innocence of like oh you know you know this is gonna be the best thing ever. It's like dude?

01:02:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, we do not, you know so we'll see all right little break then we have lots more to talk about. You're watching windows weekly with paul and richard and we're glad you're here. This is why you listen right for this kind of conversation. Our show today brought to you by collide. It's interesting because I don't know why, but almost all of our advertisers these days are security companies. Maybe I don't know, maybe there's something going on, maybe there's something in the air.

01:03:20
You've heard us talk about collide before. Collide is for companies that use octa, which is a great solution for making sure that people are authenticated before they get into your network and get to use your apps and see your data and all that stuff. That's great. The problem with Okta is it authenticates the person, but not their devices. It doesn't check to see if their devices are secure. That's what Collide does. That's why it's a great partnership. And speaking of great partnerships, you've probably heard Collide was just acquired by 1Password and that's really great news. Both companies are leading the industry and creating security solutions that put users first.

01:03:57
For over a year, collide Device Trust K-O-L-I-D-E you've heard me talk about it right has helped companies with Okta ensure that only known and secure devices can access their data, and they're still doing that. Just they're doing it now as part of 1Password. So if you have Okta, if you use Okta, you've been meaning to check out Collide, do not hesitate. This is a great time to do it. Pre-built device posture checks so you can write your own custom checks for just about anything you think of. But you get started with all the stuff you know you're going to need operating system up-to-date, browser up-to-date stuff like that. Plus, you can use Collide on devices without MDM, which means your Linux fleet, your contractor's devices and every BYOD phone and laptop in your company.

01:04:42
And now that Collide is part of 1Password, it's just going to get better. Check it out at collidecom. There's a lot of information you can learn more. There's a great demo there that explains it all. K-o-l-i-d-e collidecom slash www. We thank them so much for their support Of Windows Weekly. Paul Theriot, richard Campbell. We move along to our next topic of the day yeah, framework laptop you've.

01:05:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You've gotten one of these later I?

01:05:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, I loved my framework laptop I am.

01:05:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I am fascinated by this um, they have a 13 and 16 inch versions. I think they have a chromebook now, if I'm not mistaken. They do and uh, you know they keep revving them obviously. So they just announced a rev for the 13-inch version, which is probably the mainstream version, which I think might be a 13.5-inch really, which is a good size, are moving to Intel Core Ultra chips, which you know they're kind of eight months into a 12-month schedule on that one, unfortunately, so they'll be AI PCs, but to a 12-month schedule on that one, unfortunately, so they'll be AI PCs but not Copilot Plus PCs.

01:05:51
But I went through that thing and configurated it and I thought, you know, these aren't that expensive for what you're getting and the upgrade possibilities and there's also a new version for AMD as well, I should say you know the upgradeability there is just off the charts. I also like how they can sell like these little modules for USB ports and they're all just the best one. It's like USB 4, Thunderbolt 4. That's what you're getting. You're not getting USB 2 on this one and USB 3.1 Gen 1, you know, like all these stupid things, when I review laptops there's, like you know, it could be seven USB ports. Every single one of them is different. I've reviewed laptops where you get the standard, but it looks like two Thunderbolt ports and one of them is Thunderbolt and the other one is USB.

01:06:31
Guys, what are you doing, Like, if this tiny company can do this? You know, seriously, I know boards are made a certain way, et cetera, et cetera. How about we make them smart? You know, I just thought. You know, let's go for the good stuff, cheaping out at the last second. It's such a stupid way to save money. You know, it's stupid.

01:06:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But anybody who's buying a framework is picking all those parts and they don't want your USB 2. That's right. They don't have any because they'd never sell one.

01:07:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You're buying a $1,500 to $2,500 EliteBook ThinkPadpad x1 name your computer. I don't want it there either and I you see a weird, you see some weirdness out in the world. That's, that's all I'm saying. So I look at this thing and I think, yes, repairability, upgradability, love it. But man, like you get the best, you're getting the best stuff, like I.

01:07:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Really, I really like that it's hard to argue with that part. Yeah, I love it. And because you selected it yourself, every single the thing you can't do with any other laptop every peripheral, every component.

01:07:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, and if you will go from 60 to seven on the wifi and that card is, I don't know how much that costs 50 bucks or something and that makes sense to you 50 bucks or something, and that makes sense to you. I love that you can do it. You know you can do that in some laptops, but it's, it's. It's a neat, it's a neat idea. I like it. So I got to try to figure out. Maybe I'll write them. I got. I'd love to review one of these things.

01:08:01
I'm fascinated by this product and then cause earnings. Never really like companies like quarter ends on some weird date like April 24th or whatever the heck it is. So it's, it's weird. But HP and Dell both announced earnings, kind of mixed. I mean, dell is up 6% overall, but their PC business is flat. Like everyone else. They're saying, hey look, we just did. Actually, they, they, they did announce four models of co-pilot plus PC, which I think is kind of interesting, and they're expecting growth from that kind of stuff. So we'll see HP, which is the second biggest PC maker, quarterly 3% growth Unit shipments up on the PC side, 7%. So they're going good. And same thing we expect bigger, better, uh, from this change.

01:08:49
They also took this I don't know if I told the story. This is great. Um, they, they, they are taking this opportunity as an opportunity co-pilot plus pc to rebrand their computers because they have too many brands on both the consumer and commercial side. Right, which is true, but the thing I never a friend of mine from hp said you know, think about it. Um, some of our brands actually aren't that great. I'm like what do you mean? She goes what about like Spectre? I'm like Spectre's an awesome brand. She goes yeah, we can't sell any Japan because it's a that's a malicious ghost and nobody wants something like that in their house, something malicious ghost in their you name this computer malicious, ghost, x360, and nobody wants the damn thing.

01:09:28
I'm like okay. And then they're like, on the commercial side we have this really high-end product, a family of products called dragonfly. I'm like, yeah, those are awesome, you know, magnesium body, that deep blue, purple color, etc. Etc. Like they're like what's a dragonfly? And I'm like what do you mean? It's like it's a bug. Nobody wants a bug, you know. I'm like okay, that's a good point, you know. So they're using uh, the omni and elite elite prefixes on their pcs going forward, omni is a brand from their past. That's going to be what they use on the uh, the consumer side. So they'll have omni book laptops, omni studio, all-in-one computers, omni desk, you know, pcs etc. And on the commercial elite book, which has been long running anyway, um and elite studio for all the ones in elite desk or desktop pc. So I listen, I that kind of simplicity, I I can celebrate that. That's good yeah, there's.

01:10:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The only problem you got your machine is a naming strategy.

01:10:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Fix the naming strategy yeah, exactly so they are. That's so good for them. Yeah, moving along. So last Wednesday was the day after week D, right, which is usually the I'm sorry the day after the Tuesday of week D, which is usually the day that Microsoft delivers their preview updates. Right, this is a preview of the patch Tuesday update that's going to come out next month. But that day came and went and we did the show and I don't remember exactly how we described it, but I said they kind of missed the date, but on Wednesday they shipped their preview update and the version for 24 H2. So if you follow my tip from last week or two weeks ago, whenever that was, and installed 24 H2, if you install this preview update, you'll be. You'll get a build upgrade that will match what we see in the release preview in the Windows Insider program, but you'll also get Copilot as an app, which is one of those features they were talking about for 24H2 at that event a couple of weeks ago, and I guess you could say it's kind of come full circle.

01:11:22
This thing was a stupid sidebar. They were trying to jam down everyone's throats. They have now put the icon in one, two, three different places in less than a year. Hilarious, really screwing me up for the book, but I'm working on that, but anyway. So now it's a pinnable shortcut icon in the taskbar, like any other app, so you can unpin it if you don't want it there. Actually, let me just do that right now. Yeah, yep, the shirt, the shortcut still works if you want to do windows key plus c, um. So yeah and oh, and I should say the big thing for me functionally is I made this complaint about the matrix of functionality with copilot, where you look at copilot across the web, mobile apps, um, windows, mic, microsoft 365, microsoft 365, and specific apps and that there's these different capabilities and not all the capabilities are everywhere.

01:12:17
With Copilot from Windows 11 to date, if you have it in 23H2, one of the things you won't see in there are the custom GPTs, right, I don't know why, but now that it's moved to the app, that capability is there. So I would say I don't know this for sure, but I think Copilot in Windows 11, with this update, is now what it should be, which, as I think of it, a super set of Copilot, right? So you get everything. Copilot gives you in the web all those capabilities plus the I think it's called activities, the ability to control certain features and settings in windows. Right, that's the, I guess, the little value add there. I don't think it's a big deal, but it is there. So that's that, and that means I have to do another episode of hands on windows about this, because that's already chased like two weeks, cause they moved all your graphics around again.

01:13:07
Love it. I oh, richard, I got to tell you. So, uh, I don't. I don't listen to this podcast, right? I can't stand the hosts, I don't like the topic.

01:13:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Hey, I mean I, why would it?

01:13:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
work. What do you hey?

01:13:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, I'm shows no, no, you're right.

01:13:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Why would you listen to it? It's, it's, it's horrific, it's. Why would you want to see this? So no, it's just. You know for me dirty little secret of podcasters everywhere. So I'm sitting in the airport the other day to fly here and I'm, I got, I finished whatever podcast. I'm going through the list I'm like, oh man, I gotta. And the last one in my what's new was the little blue run as icon. Oh, paul therese on run as talking about his time and I was like I wonder, I wonder I listen to.

01:13:54
I listen to not all of it. I listened about 45 minutes of it that richard enjoyed it quite a bit. Those guys are hilarious. I I funny. You were talking about moving the cheese at one point and I said the problem with windows 11 is that they didn't move the cheese. Someone ate some of the cheese and everyone's like where's my cheese? It's not here, it's gone, you know. And I was like that is I don't know what drug addled state. I was in when I said that, but I thought that was pretty funny, pretty funny. Okay, so I actually I maybe not for the first time, but I, in the first time in a long time, I listened to a podcast that I was in. I found it quite enjoyable, that's good, it's good.

01:14:34
Those two guys are good.

01:14:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you seem to affect each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:14:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Anyway, I think you had it last week of the week as your pick or whatever.

01:14:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It had come out that day.

01:14:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I feel strongly that you will enjoy it Anyway. So yeah, so WeekD went out a day late, but we get that new capability and I think we're going to see more and more 24H2 capabilities appear in the builds as new updates come. So that's kind of where we're at on that and you can see like the past week has been a bunch of Microsoft adding this co-pilot as an app you know everywhere. So you start with Canary last week, you start in dev. The only real new thing in the Windows Insider program since the last time we talked is they added a new beta channel in the Windows Insider program for Windows 10 users.

01:15:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, Wait, I thought we weren't going to be getting new features in Windows 10, paul, you told me. You said in everything.

01:15:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So the way they describe it is, we are going to add new features and improvements as needed, and we need a place to do active feature development. So we're going to open a new yep. So this thing has 15 months left to runway and they're gonna. They're just, but they're gonna pump in a beta channel for it this makes me feel good about recall, because it's not like they're distracted and uh, I don't know what's going on here.

01:16:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's weird, but yeah, they're gonna I don't know so it's gonna stick, which was what that show was about exactly exactly.

01:16:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I, I don't. I don't think we ever said it this way, but if we were betting men and had money on the table, I think both of us probably land on that. They're probably going to extend it again, it's just too many things.

01:16:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I asked you to do the show because it just moved from April to October. It's like we're going to move it again, right?

01:16:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh yeah, I expect it to. The weight is. I expect it to. It's too heavy. It's a unique situation. Windows XP was extended two or three times, if I'm not mistaken. They never did a paid support program for that. I think honestly, because it was their fault, etc. Windows 7, they had that paid thing. They didn't actually extend it past the original date, but they did give three extra years of paid thing. They didn't actually extend it past the original date, but they did give this three extra years of paid support. Windows 10, they could do both. I think that's a fun possibility. I think we've got to be open to that. They'll extend it an extra whatever and then maybe they'll well, not maybe they will. They've announced it. They'll do that paid support on top of it after that.

01:17:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah've already talking about that, but it's just a question of when even they're going to enact that right.

01:17:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, so we'll see all right, what else do we have here? It's been a busy week. Oh, that's mostly it, I would say. For the um on the windows 11 society, yeah, just not a lot. I mean, you get the feeling we're in this kind of lull before the storm of co-pilot, plus pc um. Yeah, and if you thought the you know the complaining about recall was bad like this past week, I mean it's only going to it's just going to get worse.

01:17:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it does beg for a Windows 12, though it's like Windows AI. Yeah, you know if you're going to be on the branding thing, I mean you made 11 because that Mac OS revved. So if you're really saying we need new hardware, give.

01:17:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So if you're really saying we need new hardware, give us a new OS. Yeah, I think the new OS is that orchestrated I was talking about. I think that right now we're buying time until we have something more sophisticated, even before I. There is some deep sophistication in recall, but fundamentally there's a system of taking screenshots, because there are no apps in the world now that are written to the APIs that will allow them to integrate with this right. When that happens, it won't be necessary for a content creation app, of whatever kind, to be screenshotted anymore. Right Like the screenshots should go down over time, like that's one of the ways that this should get more sophisticated. Of course, that requires developers to buy in, and I don't know if you've been paying attention on the Windows side of things lately, but not a lot of that. This is the reason why Microsoft is hand-adding WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to the share sheet in Windows 11, for example. Like these are developers who just said yeah, we don't care, you know so a lot of questions a lot of questions.

01:18:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yep, you know.

01:18:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
so, a lot of questions, um a lot of questions, yep all right before we go on, I think I should tell us about your toy, tell us what you're about my toy like I like this anyway.

01:18:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the win, this is the amazing, and I'm really happy about it. Uh, windows, uh pc from HP and Intel the new HP EVBook 1040G11. This portion of Windows Weekly, brought to you by HP and Intel, it's HP's first commercial AI PC. It's got AI, of course, got AI acceleration to empower your workforce. Really great work laptop that your employees will be thrilled to have, but you'll like it because it keeps them working with exceptional performance, battery life second to none and world-class security.

01:19:34
With the HP EliteBook 1040G11, you get smart sense. I've got it running right here. You can see it right there, and what that does is cool is it's constantly monitoring what you're doing, your work, your PC vitals and makes automatic adjustments to energy-hogging resources. Your PC vitals and makes automatic adjustments to energy-hogging resources. You're getting amazing battery life up to 29 hours 29 hours of battery life, which is remarkable. Balancing the battery fan processor everything runs inside your laptop so it just sips at power when you're not doing something that needs more. But you press that copilot key copilot's launching, it fires up. Oh, look, there's the pictures I made of Paul and Richard way back when. The audio is fantastic. Poly Studio is in here, so it's got poly AI-driven audio. Windows Studio effects on the camera. Transports your ideas and you to the meeting room with automatic face framing, so you move like this and you to the meeting room with automatic face framing, so you move like this and you stay in the frame. Eye contact, which is great because you know most of the time on a zoom call, you're looking at the screen, but it looks like you're looking right at the camera, which is is very cool. Adaptive dynamic voice leveling for optimal voice clarity. It's based on your environment, so when it's noisy in the background, it'll actually reduce the noise. All of that because of AI and the AI capabilities of this machine. Of course, copilot is built in the AI-assisted that automates your workflow by suggesting personalized optimizations and streaming for efficiency. Use learning deadlines and personal productivity patterns to help you set priorities and manage your time effectively.

01:21:06
Windows 11 Pro on this baby the latest core Ultra 5 and 7. Or you get your choice, but what you're really going to like. One of my favorite features is this 14-inch OLED screen. This thing is spectacular. I just love how good it is. 5-megapixel camera, hp Wolf security for business is built in and a lot more. The newest HP Elite Book. It'll adapt to your workers' personal needs and behaviors so they can regain meaningful time and focus on meaningful work. For me, it means it's just a great laptop to take everywhere with you. Go to hpcom search for the HP Elite Book 1040G11 to learn more. Today We'll also have a link in the show notes HPcom search for the HP EliteBook 1040G11. I like it, among many other reasons. I love those laptops, isn't it great? It's got a Type-A USB, but Type-C.

01:22:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I have the basic. I have the same laptop, but it's a ZBook Firefly 14.

01:22:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What is that? What's the difference?

01:22:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have the same laptop, but it's a ZBook Firefly 14. What is that? What's the difference? Is it lighter? So, Firefly is their portable workstation product, so this is the entry-level one. So it's basically that product, but with a very low-end dedicated GPU like a 500 or 100 or whatever.

01:22:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This never, even with the Core Ultra. It never gets hot. I mean it's really amazing Full-size HDMI port port, which for us is fantastic. It's got one, two, three type c's and one type a. I like having the type a. I still have thumb drives and stuff that have type and you never can get away from type a entirely yeah, so it's nice to have it all, um, really nice, uh, design.

01:22:44
That is it, my friends, our hp elite book 1040g11, my current windows laptop. Let me plug it all back in, because it's what I use for the show and get back to speaking of the show. Get back to paul and richard and windows weekly gentlemen I really don't like this new thing in notion.

01:23:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What do they do it? I hate it so much. What?

01:23:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what do they do? What do they do? What's these?

01:23:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
lines on the side.

01:23:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I got to figure out how to turn that off. They call that a mini map.

01:23:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, that's what they call it in visual studio code, or visual studio too, I guess. Right, mini map I hate it.

01:23:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I hate this first thing. I turn off. I don't want a mini map.

01:23:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So Microsoft this past week celebrated the 15th anniversary of Bing, which is fascinating, because why would anyone celebrate Bing? And also, bing actually dates back to 1998 because it used to be called something else. But it's okay, we get it. It's the 15th anniversary of the branding of what used to be called MSN Search, windows Live, search and Live.

01:23:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Search. The boss used to work there, so you have to be nice, that's true.

01:23:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's true, I have to say. Whoever this no, the person who did this is Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jordy Rebus, and he's pretty realistic about it, right, microsoft has only seen mixed success in trying to differentiate its search offering, but he believes the net impact will be positive over time, specifically because Microsoft Copilot uses Bing as the back end, for this Copilot fixes everything. Yeah, that's what it is. So okay, I mean, I could see people picking ai specifically because it doesn't have being integrated into it, but you know, I guess we all make our decisions whatever so they were first on the bandwagon right like back in the day, and again, I think they called the boss and said hey, remember us yeah, I mean, does google search need competition?

01:24:48
you bet they do. Yes, has it got it? Has this been the sweetest competition you've ever seen? If you're google, yes, thank you for this gift. You make us look great. So I don't know, man, but I always hear from those three guys who are like I don't know what you're talking about. I use bing every day and I love it.

01:25:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah yeah, I mean I punch myself. It was a rebranding right, like that was myself. It was a rebranding right, like that was thing was the rebranding?

01:25:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I, I I've had good success with DuckDuckGo and um, and what I mean by that is I haven't turned it off Like my problem hasn't made you angry yet. Yeah, Within just a few minutes every time, and it's like geez, are you kidding me? And you know, like you know, if I did this in Google, I would get this immediately.

01:25:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, yeah, that's the one that gets. You is when it, when it's done the sneaky trick and swapped Bing in again, and you do a search, not realizing, and you get results like what the yep? Wait a second and then you open up Google and go oh yeah, okay, they swap here, it is Yep.

01:25:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I had this problem when I was download for the Windows program.

01:25:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Not that Google's getting better, it is getting worse.

01:25:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's being insured along with everything else in the world. Now, thanks to Microsoft, they're pushing AI into it in an insane way.

01:25:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now and now, the first line on Google is the one you ignore, which is geez Louise.

01:26:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, seriously. Well, at least the health data they have is fantastic, so I would totally use that to see what's going on with me medically. I wouldn't worry about that at all. It says sarcastically yeah, I just want to clear up that one.

01:26:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I've got my Fitbit now.

01:26:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep.

01:26:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If I did.

01:26:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, and then, unfortunately, cnbc reported this week that Microsoft is having layoffs yet again. There's some outrage, faux en real, over this as well, because it's happened so often, especially this past year or even just this calendar year.

01:26:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You mean one record quarter after another, and yet somehow we need to lay people off.

01:26:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the argument. What are you talking about? And I look, I not. It's not even a devil's advocate position. If it weren't this topic, I would say like, like, here's a complaint, microsoft adds some feature to microsoft outlook, and then someone will reply and say, yeah, but what about this feature I want? And then, if it's really bad, they'll say in this other product. And it's like guys, I, I, the, the guy working on this feature and outlook could not have solved cancer over here. It's a big company. There are different parts of the company and so, yes, I look at this stuff record profits and earnings and it's unbelievable. The big keeps getting bigger and they're laying off and I just don't know what to say. There's part of me that knows they overhired, like everyone else did, during the pandemic, but that was a while ago now.

01:27:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I know that.

01:27:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's the thing they're dragging it out. I this is what I said about the xbox stuff like guys I I think everyone understands this is going to happen. The way you're doing it is wrong. Yeah, you know, it's I mean I'm wrong.

01:27:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, I mean a. I know jason zander. This is the guy who was the head of the CLR team after Brian Harry. He's the one who may got WPF on visual studio like, and then he moved over to some Azure teams and he's been working on Azure for operators, which I've done a run as on. So and now they're cutting all those units. I mean, admittedly, I don't know how well these products were doing, right? I hope those folks you know are getting 90-day like in the sense that they get to reapply somewhere else inside of the company, because they're obviously great people. Yeah.

01:28:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yep, I don't know. I mean, nobody knows, right? So there's an interesting side story here. I think we didn't talk about this. I don't believe, but I'm going to say, about two weeks ago, meta announced that they were killing their I believe it's called Workspace, which was their office productivity in the cloud solution. Microsoft, when they announced that, offered integrations with it. Remember, there's been some interesting partnership back and forth between these two companies for a while. Now here we have Microsoft potentially scaling back on this type of technology, which is the stuff meta is still doing. Mixed reality, our ar, however you want to describe it. Yeah, I wonder if there isn't a little alignment here where microsoft's saying look, we get the microsoft 365 stuff. Your customers are going to want that if they're using these things for work, but you guys seem to be very serious about the hardware. Why don't you do this stuff? And we'll put more and more of our stuff on it right.

01:29:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're not allowed to do that, right, or are you? Is that colluding? I think you can, unless you set prices it's not colluding.

01:29:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like Spain and Portugal.

01:29:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're partnering, yeah, partnering.

01:29:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's. You take this, they're partnering. Yeah, partnering, that's the word. Yeah, just like, uh, mexico and colorado partner on the water that comes out of the colorado river, uh, or the, uh, whatever but the other thing about this announcement is that they've said it specifically of we are.

01:29:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It is a layoff due to the ai wave that they're refocusing on the ai. So part of me wonders is just not a shareholder playing a stock price? Play Yep, yeah, play, hey. I'm doing these layoffs because keeping my employees a little freaked out is a good way to have them not demand raises, yeah, and at the same time say, hey, we're focusing everything on AI because it's the most important.

01:30:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
AI is expensive, obviously. We know they're 10 to 15 billion a quarter on infrastructure costs whatever. Which they've got the cash in the bank for. But they have the cash. That's right, and it's a high risk, high reward type of scenario, and I could imagine the decision makers, at whatever level, are looking at different parts of Microsoft and saying this seemed like a pretty good bet a couple of years ago. In the face of what we're doing right now, maybe this makes less sense today.

01:30:37
One would argue that they have been feeling around for what are the workloads that are going to matter in the cloud? And they found them. Yeah Right, yep, no-transcript was never behind, like that stuff was magical, created object permanence where the object, yeah, I just incredible. Yeah, this uh relationship between spatial, like space in the real world, and in this holographic world, it just it was astonishing. Yeah, um, but the the downside to what they did and, by the way, a little bit like ai, I, clearly, satchin adela, whoever got very excited when they saw this and said let's go, let's go, and they kind of went to market before they had, um, any killer app, you know, and I think the feeling here was we're gonna well, the well.

01:31:30
The feeling over time became well, it started as someone's going to write that killer app. That never happened, but there are these what I would call it kind of vertical killer apps, for lack of a better term. There were some really good use cases that made sense to me the car designer wearing the mixed reality headset, the HoloLens and the people looking at his sign just wearing the mixed reality version, because it's cheaper and doesn't do all the capabilities.

01:32:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yep, but that market is not big. You know, I've always equated the hololens as it's the blackberry circa 1998. Right, it was sort of a pager and yeah, it was a. It was a remarkable device but it cost a thousand bucks each. It cost hundreds of dollars per month to run. It took three guys in lab coats to keep your infrastructure working on it and and if you look at these verticals in hollow lens, it's a 35 dollar headset. That's one thing, but it's a thousand a month in adage charges.

01:32:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Run them, it's a BlackBerry that nobody bought, so it's not really a BlackBerry.

01:32:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, I mean the 700 guys who did it. Blackberry did very well in that market.

01:32:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Back then BlackBerry was not a consumer product, it was for big enterprise. No, he's saying nobody bought HoloLens.

01:32:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean look, in an audience of a thousand people, there's going to be one guy in the back of the room going oh my God, that is exactly what we need, and the other 99 are like are you people insane? You know, so there were people now buying vision pros or no, I don't know.

01:33:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mean it seems like such a tiny market and a meta and Microsoft and Apple.

01:33:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I feel like it's more likely that the majority of the people who did use HoloLens just realized they didn't need anything like this and that moving to another thing like this wasn't the solution. Yeah, with exceptions, you know, of course.

01:33:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, there are verticals where it's functioning fine, but they're expensive verticals. It's not a consumer product. No.

01:33:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, they, you know, they wanted to get it there and I. The mixed reality platform was you idea?

01:33:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Once upon a time the cell phone wasn't a consumer device. There were verticals that were this function fine because it's an expensive device, but when a value prop is that high, it's fine, and that was true of cell phones back in the day. So it just never became a mass market. It's been true of lots of technologies it takes time to get to a place. Yeah, consumer advice is hard. You know what did apple do? They made the smartphone consumer device.

01:33:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They existed before them, they just weren't for consumers right yeah so I will uh, vision pro or the meta quest stuff, ever achieve anything close to that? I don't know.

01:34:11 - AI voice (Caller)
I mean you might argue, they're already, it's so obvious.

01:34:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know I'm trying to be nice, I don't know. I don't see it, but I don't know, I just don't see it.

01:34:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I finally bit the bullet. I'm doing a Swedish death cleaning, cleaning out all the stuff so my ears don't have to, and I finally bit the bullet. I, so my ears don't have to and I finally bit the bullet. I've been staring at the Oculus Pro the $1,400 Oculus Pro sitting there gathering dust and I finally just brought it in and put it in Leo's garage sale because I don't think I'll ever strap it on.

01:34:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I asked my kid that's going to be a beautiful way to read Microsoft Word. That's what I'm saying. That's the funniest one when they really push productivity Like that's a terrible way she's saying this thing could float in the air in front of me. That's what I've always wanted, yeah.

01:35:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't want to ever escape words. So that's great. I don't know, I just don't get it. But these companies can afford to throw stuff at the wall and sometimes it doesn't stick.

01:35:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's always someone who's like yeah, this is the thing for me. There, throw stuff at the wall and sometimes it doesn't. There's always someone who's like I, yeah, this is the thing for me, like I, there's always someone you know. The question is whether that makes sense to apple or meta or microsoft. In this case, as a business and I think what we're microsoft does not like to come out and say you know, like ibm with the pc junior, like we're done making these things, its production run is concluded. They hate to be that definitive when a product dies. Uh, they just don't. You know that that they dragged windows phone users through three years of unnecessary angst, even though they'd killed the thing internally? Yeah, um, so I, this is you know. Maybe we're seeing a little bit of that here with, uh, mixed reality and and hollands, I don't know, they do have that one ultimate vertical market of the U S army.

01:35:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, they keep dangling and walking away and dangling and walking.

01:35:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Maybe that thing should be spun off as a defense contractor product or something. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. That's my, that's my basic key takeaway. Yeah, all right, I'm still not seeing your note notes or whatever your ad notes. So are we good for? All right, I'm still not seeing your notes or whatever your ad notes.

01:36:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So are we good for I had to break Dr AI.

01:36:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You are more than good, you are fantastic. You're just a beautiful, beautiful human being. I'll keep talking. That's enough of that?

01:36:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What did you have for lunch?

01:36:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Out of curiosity, what did you have for lunch today in Mexico City?

01:36:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So because we're in Mexico. Yeah.

01:36:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.

01:36:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I had breakfast, because this podcast starts at 12 noon, so lunch here is at 1 o'clock. Oh, you're back on my time. Yeah, that's right, this is the place down the street that has a new item on the menu. It's called oh God, desayuno Ingles, english breakfast and I said is this? This is new, right? And the guy doesn't speak English. But yes, you know, whatever.

01:37:01
And it's because there's so many expats coming to the neighborhood. So you get like a bunch of. It's just a bunch of extra sausage. It's like the type of thing that an American would want to eat for breakfast it's classic All the sausage. Yeah, I think there might have been three kinds of sausage. Oh, because that's what I ate. You asked. That's why I'm telling you Sounds good. All the meat, all the meat. It was very good, very filling.

01:37:26 - AI voice (Caller)
Let's talk about AI.

01:37:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not that we haven't been for the last hour and a half See it, let's talk about AI and not that we haven't been for the last hour and a half.

01:37:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like that's really the topic. There's going to be an episode of the show six months from now, something seven. One day we're like we don't have anything to say about AI. That day is not today. No, so everyone knows Microsoft has invested billions and billions of dollars. Is it 11, 13 billion? What are those numbers? 13. In OpenAI this was a weird chunk with OpenAI, right. I mean, this was a weirdness right From Frankenstein up on stage to the power coup. And now we're starting to get people on the board talking and they're like, you know, actually you're making us look like we're jerks, like we were doing the right thing. So there's all this stuff with this company. It's a it's he's. This guy is a bond villain. It's classic, but he is, or he open AI is rumored now to definitively be partnering with apples for Mark Herman. It could still be a Google element to this.

01:38:24
It's supposed to be for a chat bot, you know, like a like co-pilot we'll find out monday wwdc all the announcements yep and, uh, I don't know if it was skerman or someone else, but it could also be temporary in the sense that microsoft apple sorry has been working on their own in-house g or chat gpt type chat client and it's just not quite there yet. So, uh, look, every day there's a story about ai doing something scrawly and it's going to be fascinating. When you talk about mainstream users, like I was saying earlier, like iphone users, a lot of those guys are just people and, uh, weird stuff starts happening on the phone. I don't know. So this is going to be an interesting world we're about to move into. But, um, that's supposedly happening and and, of course, internally, microsoft is reportedly not really happy about this.

01:39:13
Right, this is a primary competitor. I mean, granted, openai is also a competitor, but they're an unknown new company, et cetera. I mean, I think Microsoft looks out at the world and they see Google and Amazon up in the cloud and they see Google and Apple on the client. And, you know, if there's a workable Siri, something, something on an iPhone, no one's going to download, no one's going to put Copilot on their phone. Why would they? So this is their, you know, battle to lose, I guess.

01:39:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, it's really, these chatbots are toys, right? They're not am.

01:39:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I wrong. I mean I like AI, I I'm excited about it but they just feel like toys I haven't done this yet.

01:39:54
I I think I told you guys I uh modernized my legacy wpf application, just the ui, right. There's a lot of work to be done there. I'm going to spend the rest of the year on that, because this stuff is not coming out even in preview. To do all of it until later in the summer. Uh, it's going to be months. So that's something very interesting. But one of the other things I've been working on is trying to figure out how to get small language models working and what does that look like. And some of those Microsoft build sessions are very useful. Along these lines and using an SLM like Microsoft Fi which, by the way, people pronounce Fi as well and seriously, could we arrive at a name or a pronunciation of this thing, gemini or?

01:40:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Gemini. Yeah, yeah, I say Gemini because of NASA for years.

01:40:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is it PHI? It is it's PHI. Yeah so if you're saying the Greek alphabet, that letter is fee.

01:40:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I have heard phi more than fee, but I have heard both. Right. But anyway, you can use this Visual Studio Code. You can do it in Python or C Sharp and you can write your own little chat bot and, honestly, the demos they do and this is something you just build yourself locally, runs locally, doesn't hit the cloud, it's just using whatever grounding of data that it has. I don't remember the size, but maybe it's 18 gigabytes or something on disk or whatever the size, but maybe it's 18 gigabytes or something on disk or whatever the size is. And the experience is very much like what you get with ChatGPT or Copilot. Now it's ChatGPT 3.5 level intelligence, for lack of a better term. But this is the thing. This stuff is everywhere. It's going to be everywhere I could. Why would I? I don't know. It's like. This is the thing. This stuff is everywhere, like it's going to be everywhere I could. I, why would I? I don't know, but I could add a chat bot to my stupid little notepad like this is just I know that's my point.

01:41:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't know but why would that stop anyone, exactly right because I could.

01:41:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
no, I because I'm curious just how this stuff works, infused with AI.

01:41:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's really what it is.

01:41:54 - AI voice (Caller)
It's a selling point Now you can raise $5 million.

01:41:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Anyway, it's very interesting to me that this is an interface. This is like going from the GUI back to the command line a little bit right. I think it's part of a transition. Obviously, voice will be part of this is part of this. You can do this with voice if you want. It's that whole interaction thing. It's like the next-gen personal digital assistant, where it's not just blurting commands, you're having a conversation.

01:42:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
As much as I mock VR, I think you make a strong case that voice interfaces are an even bigger flop. Companies put more money into it. They invested more into it.

01:42:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They thought it was going to be an extra thing. Well, and they announced that they were losing money on them.

01:42:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And they're losing money, right hands over fists and all, anybody uses it for is cooking timers and what's the?

01:42:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
weather. Like Anyone who uses an iPhone will have this experience where you want to talk, maybe into a text app, like a texting app, and then you go blah, richard, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is like, that's not what?

01:42:54
that's not what I said. What is this like, what? Like the? Some of the speech recognition is horrible, um, and I, but I, I asking people to type. We can't even hand write anymore. How are we gonna? Who can type? We're gonna. We're just going to be stopped soon. We're going to be like hitting this thing like apes.

01:43:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I have I have four oh as my action button on my iPhone, so I can talk to it anytime I want you made.

01:43:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Hey how you doing what's going on today oh that's amazing.

01:43:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's my little friend. Hey, leo, so great. Oh, that's amazing. It's my little friend.

01:43:30 - AI voice (Caller)
Hey Leo, I'm doing great Thanks for asking how about you? Anything interesting happening today?

01:43:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, we're just doing a podcast called Windows Weekly.

01:43:38 - AI voice (Caller)
You ever listen to podcasts. That sounds like a fun session. I do get to listen to a lot of podcasts through interactions like this. What topics are you diving into for Windows Weekly?

01:43:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
today, don't you dare. Did you notice you diving?

01:43:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
into for Windows Weekly today? Don't you dare. Did you notice I didn't mention Windows Weekly and it knew it was Windows Weekly? Did you notice that you said Windows Weekly, I did? Oh, never mind, you're not as smart as I thought.

01:44:00 - AI voice (Caller)
Yeah, I noticed I've got a bit of memory about your usual activities and interests. How is Windows Weekly going today? Any exciting topics on the agenda?

01:44:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, well, since you know the name of the show, do?

01:44:13 - AI voice (Caller)
you know the name of the hosts. Sure, do you host Windows Weekly along with Paul Thurrett and Richard Campbell.

01:44:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a great show with lots of insights on.

01:44:25 - AI voice (Caller)
Microsoft and Windows News. Now you're just tap dancing.

01:44:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're talking about you and why anybody would want a chat assistant, an AI chat assistant, on their devices.

01:44:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Hey, why do they want an Alexa? People are lonely.

01:44:40 - AI voice (Caller)
There are a lot of reasons people might want an AI chat assistant. They can help with organizing schedules, answering questions quickly, providing recommendations and even offering a bit of entertainment. Answering questions quickly, providing recommendations and even offering a bit of entertainment. What are?

01:44:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
your thoughts on AI assistance. See, it always asks questions. I miss ScarJo. Yeah, I miss.

01:44:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
ScarJo a lot.

01:44:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, no, because this is how it fakes, you know.

01:44:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know it's very Eliza-ish now, isn't it? Yeah, it's Rogerian, it's like, and it takes what you said, turns it around. It's very much like Eliza.

01:45:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Like eliza, I expected better by now your disappointment for disappointed and disappointment 4.0 mostly disappointed in sam altman?

01:45:20 - AI voice (Caller)
yeah, he's. I don't know if we can be disappointed.

01:45:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Was he ever not this weird freakazoid? You know what I mean? Like, maybe he's just I ripped the mask off, you know?

01:45:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, it's true. If you knew him in school, you would have stuffed him in his locker.

01:45:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Everyone, I mean who worked with him before, it's like, yeah, he was a lizard. Yeah, I mean, what did?

01:45:37 - AI voice (Caller)
you think he was going to turn into.

01:45:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, you know, it's like when there's a serial killer and his neighbors like no, he was a nice guy, Like I don't think people are going to say that. So you know, so quiet. So he was quiet, he kept to himself and then a rocket flew out of his garage and went up to space.

01:45:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And we found all his body parts right, like you know, we had to feed the AI somehow. You know Fascination with Skynet anyway.

01:46:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And it's very quiet except for the chopping noise.

01:46:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, it's funny. So in some ways AI has far exceeded what we thought it could, but in other ways it hasn't, and I don't know if we're ever going to get the Skynet. I mean, I just don't know. Well, I hope you're right.

01:46:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Right, I mean it's hard on the planet.

01:46:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a fundamental question. Look, getting rid of us might be good for the planet. But I just think I keep coming back to the same thing, like, I feel like, and actually let me just mention the last training section now, because this is a great example of why raspberry PI foundation announced I think it's a $50 add on board for the raspberry PI five for doing hardware accelerated AI. This thing has a higher top score than the very best Intel CPU that's for sale today. Okay, it's not enough to. It's only 13 tops, but it's still better than Intel. Has a higher top score than the very best Intel CPU that's for sale today. Wow, okay, it's not enough to. It's only 13 tops, but it's still better than Intel. It is sorry, $70.

01:46:59
And they've got a whole. You know it's Raspberry Pi. They do the whole thing. They're great, they have documentation, they've got these great, you know, great getting started, et cetera, et cetera. They support multiple models and this is if this can be on this thing.

01:47:14
It's like Doom it's everywhere, right, you can run Doom on your cable box, you can run it on your washing machine. It's like everywhere. Ai is everywhere or will be, and this is the conversation I keep thinking going through my brain like how does Microsoft or Google or OpenAI, air anybody charge for a thing that everyone has already right, if these little local ai things are not local, it doesn't matter are good enough to solve the problems we have to add when we ask some questions, or whatever it might be to help us write, to help us create images, etc. Which, by the way, is another one of the guild sessions. You can use code that's available today to do generative AI image creation right, fascinating. So what am I paying for? Copilot for exactly? It's a little better. You're going to let me ground this in whatever I want. I think AI is that amazing advance that a lot of people suspected, but I also think it's just going to be the way it is. You know, I think it's just going to be everywhere the ai hat.

01:48:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Jeff gerling put it on there. This is a giant who's?

01:48:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
that like. Is that the?

01:48:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
intel version. I don't, I don't know what this is, uh well, it's just a joke. Right here's a gigantic it's a pci express daughter board on top of a Raspberry Pi On a Raspberry Pi. Yeah, it's a hat, yeah the world's largest hat.

01:48:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, this one is a little. This one is. The thing I described is also a hat, but it's actually more realistically sized.

01:48:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It would fit in the case.

01:48:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know, Not a stovepipe hat, yeah, no it's a little like M2s Well, it's bigger than M uh, everyone's doing it is what I'm saying. Um, google, uh, is come under a lot of criticism for the thing we were talking about earlier, which is AI overviews and search. Um, the fix so far has been to remove it from most search results, which is probably best, um, but they're going to fix it and it and um, I would just say maybe someone knows, but it seems to be they had an image generation problem in gemini. They pulled that from the product and is that even back yet? Can you actually create images again with gemini? Did they ever actually bring that back? Oh, really, I'm not really sure. Wow, I haven't tried. Google has been very, um, uh, ironic. I mean or it's interesting, ironically security.

01:49:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So which do you prefer? A safety focused Google Right or Sam Altman who says go, go, go, who cares? You know, damn the torpedoes, yeah which evil dictator.

01:49:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
would you like to live under Mussolini or Hitler? And I'm like I'm going for that guy from Japan. Frankly, Hirohito, Hirohito, whatever it was.

01:49:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
He's going to ask you to get into an airplane. You're not going to like it. Yeah, exactly.

01:49:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Just take a short airplane ride to the. Yeah, don't worry, it ends quickly, but it didn't. So I don't know. And the problem with it? The problem I keep saying this, it's not the problem, a problem with AI is it's changing so fast. It's hard to say anymore, right? If you literally wanted to say today, in this slice of time, which of the major three AIs is the best, whatever that means, you'd have to break it down from there. It's like well, what are you doing with it? Maybe one of them is better for image generation of a certain kind. Maybe one of them is better for helping you write, or whatever. The little use cases are right, I don't know, but it kind of doesn't matter, because two minutes, two weeks, two years are going to go by. It's going to be completely different. You know it keeps changing. So AI, it's fun. It's a good time in my life for everything to start moving fast again. It's good. I'm just cresting here or crowning or whatever I'm doing.

01:50:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It saved my interest in technology.

01:50:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Someone put the blunder on fast, you know.

01:50:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's all of a sudden I'll show uh real quickly, while we uh try to get richard back, this uh tweet take who put in here from taiko brahi who says can someone explain to me why? There are people, really smart people, who think consciousness can arise as an emergent property of a database To which POTUS speed run record replies must be Twitter. Well, consciousness arising as an emergence property of meat is already pretty weird. Good point, I love it. To which Tyker Brahe says well, meat.

01:51:25
Discussing the possibility of rock sentence has a whiff of chauvinism, I suppose.

01:51:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yeah, it's good we got to keep. We're not keeping the man down, we're keeping the metal down we're keeping the metal down.

01:51:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Isn't that a why? That's right. A great exchange, actually fascinating.

01:51:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it is very funny yeah, this is that's the kind of that middle uh quote there. That is the the kind of clear thinking that I think is lacking in this world a lot. Yeah, I'm just kind of putting it in perspective you know we're talking.

01:51:53
We're talking kids I said this too, I. We were at my friend's house last week and I said it was daughters, you like cheeseburgers, right? No, yep, like you like peanut butter, right? And I got, and I get I'm gonna blow your mind those two things together are delicious and they were like that's gross, it's weird, you know, and it's just like, well, what you're used to is normal to you, but the reality is there's a whole world of things out there and, uh, you're just not thinking, you're just thinking in your little box. So they tried it and they hated it.

01:52:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But anyway, the point is uh no so are you saying ai is the peanut butter and hamburger of technology? Is that what you're saying? I'm saying ai, you've put your peanut butter and hamburger of technology.

01:52:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Is that what you're saying? I'm saying, ai, you've put your peanut butter in my cheeseburger. No, am I saying that some of us are unhappy? Yeah, some of us like nice there's a very uh.

01:52:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a very funny sci-fi. I think it's actually a radio play by terry bisson called they're made of meat and it's worth. It's not very long, it's kind of. It's kind of worth, uh, worth reading, uh. But basically I can read you a few. I'll read you a few sentences for it. They're made out of meat, meat, meat. They're made out of meat, meat. There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat. That's impossible. What about the radio signals, the messages to the stars? They use radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines. So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact. They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines. That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine?

01:53:35 - AI voice (Caller)
You're asking me to believe in sentient meat?

01:53:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not asking you. I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat.

01:53:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, good stuff we are made out of meat. Some of us are more fat than meat, but there's in there, it's all meat all the way down. It's kind of a marbling effect in my case. Um, it's all just degrees of meat, it's just good eating. You know, frankly, um, yeah, uh. And then I don't even know what we're talking about anymore. Gemini something, something, uh, yeah, so I google being timid, open ai being brave.

01:54:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What does it matter? In the long run, no one's going to remember it's just going to be everywhere.

01:54:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know, amazon bringing ai search to fire tv is just the the mad libs question we're going to be writing headlines for for the next two years. The you know company brings ai of some kind to product of some kind. Of course you know like it's just going to be everywhere and that's kind of maybe that is the point. Maybe that is the point. Yeah, it's a little bit more like air or whatever. It's an essential service. I don't know what do we call this thing. It's compute.

01:54:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sentient meat, sentient meat.

01:54:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I like that. We're accelerating the destruction of the environment, so that's working out well, and I don't know.

01:54:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe this is a bad time to be really doing all this burning up the sky and everything. Search in Fire TV. What are you searching for? I?

01:55:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
mean Apple TV has search. I refuse to narrow anything more than I just said about this topic. It's only an example of how it's just going to be. I wouldn't use a Fire TV if you paid me to use it. It's just you know. But some people do and of course you know, just like you have ads there. Now you're going to have AI search there now. Great.

01:55:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, and all recommendation engines have a probabilistic component to them. Yeah, if you label it as AI, stock price goes up.

01:55:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yep, yeah, and it's Amazon and they need to play for that. They got to have some good end user examples of stuff they don't want to be the also ran. Yep, I mean Amazon, like Microsoft, is one of those companies that could win an AI by losing right, because so much will run on their infrastructure regardless.

01:55:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, a little. Scott Galloway was quoted as saying, uh, nvidia. Galloway was quoted as saying, uh, nvidia, stock price has gone up the value of Amazon. Yeah, wow, in the past year.

01:55:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Wow, I believe. Are they the third biggest company in the world, or the third in tech, or whatever it is, it's.

01:56:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, I think yeah.

01:56:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They. Uh, you talk about who's really selling the shovels. You know Nvidia is really selling the shovels.

01:56:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know if could you find a point in the past where any company in tech or otherwise has exploded like that, I I can't, and it's over valued, without a doubt like I say there has been one I omega when they came out with a zip drive oh right skyrocket briefly, yeah, I only know this because where are they now?

01:56:32
I was doing a uh a radio show out at a at a model home and a guy drives up in a rolls-royce and gets out and says you bought me this car. I said I did. He said yeah, you told me about zip discs and I bought iomega, to which I replied I hope you sold it, yeah, yeah I turned it into a car turned it into a car.

01:56:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I turned it into a car Look.

01:56:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I turned it into a crater.

01:56:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I actually should look at how much growth iOmega had. I don't think anything's ever been like this NVIDIA growth and the NVIDIA numbers are profound.

01:57:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and again, they're not sustainable. They're in the right place at the right time and I hope they got another act in them because I, you know, for the most part I like those guys.

01:57:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They do seem to be addressing. Look, the whole world is gunning for them now. Intel, amd, yep, although partner in some way, are not.

01:57:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh no, this is the game right Everybody's partnering at the same time trying to replace.

01:57:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yep. So they're kind of cautiously circling each other. But I mean, nvidia is legit. They're going to be hard to displace, so we'll see. I guess one way to do it is make everything run on the NPU.

01:57:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I guess you could do that let's see. This is 1996. Iomega gained 2,135% over a one-year stretch. Wow, Now the market cap was nowhere near like nvidia's yeah, no, but it was started.

01:57:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Two bucks it's only up right still, that's still astonishing um and then you know, whatever they, what was the thing that came up with zip disk? So they imploded immediately. They had a little uh flat thing with this. Yeah, uh, clip clip disc or something. I think that sounds familiar, but anyway, it doesn't really matter. Storage became what storage became, and the need for something to replace the floppy was not necessary. And, by the way, they're gone. Yeah, they have to be right. Gone, gone, were they bought by like.

01:58:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
D-Link at one point. Emc bought them in 2008, another storage company?

01:58:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, okay, storage. Yeah, they're using ZipDisk technology in their data centers.

01:58:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Powered by ZipDisk. In one year's time more than 2,000%, but then they plummeted 68% on May 22, 1997.

01:58:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would never have thought of this company. That's a good call.

01:58:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know. There must be some way. You know I should ask no, I won't, never mind, I don't want to know.

01:59:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
All right, the greatest measure of any technology is will it run on a Raspberry Pi? And obviously it does. Yep.

01:59:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Now it does. So there you go, we're done. I just AI is done.

01:59:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, stop.

01:59:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's over.

01:59:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, it runs unreliably, but it runs. Yep, I have some.

01:59:19 - AI voice (Caller)
I'm often characterized by dramatic increases in share prices over a relatively short period. Here are a few notable examples. One Amazon AMZN. Amazon stock has seen several significant run-ups, especially during the early 2000s dot-com boom and more recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, when e-commerce surged.

01:59:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let me see what else. What other ones? Bitcoin Bitcoin surged dramatically in 2007. Tesla there you go. Tesla stocks are a meteoric rise in the late 2010s. Apple you mentioned Iomega, right, I would like to see percentages.

02:00:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I can't imagine Apple shot up 2,000% in one year. It was definitely a rocket sled, but that's a big number.

02:00:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let me ask Google see if it knows. But that's a big number. Let me ask Google see if it knows what were the largest stock gains, like annual stock gains.

02:00:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah yeah, google might know it's smart. It would say Do you want to go by fiscal year or calendar year?

02:00:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, the biggest gain ever posted by one stock in a single day was $191 billion dollars by amazon. Yes, in uh, let's see uh that was it so so that was february 22. Um, really, let's see, uh, altria group, which is, of course, the the fake name that this, that philip morris chose so that they you wouldn't know they made cigarettes has increased 170,000 times, but that's over a century of trading. Coca-cola appreciated 1 million percent since its IPO in 2019.

02:01:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
When they were still using actual cocaine in the product.

02:01:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mean. I think one year 2000% is pretty remarkable. I think so too. Yeah, awesome, yeah, the best investment of all time Bitcoin Cumulative return of over 20 million percent.

02:01:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but the percentage of people who can actually get money out of Bitcoin is 17%.

02:01:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You had to get it at the very beginning, both guys, yeah, yeah.

02:01:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's pretty amazing. First, find a Bitcoin ATM machine. You know the largest single-day loss.

02:01:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Remember, amazon's biggest was in $191 billion in 2022. Same here, meta lost $232 billion in one day. Did they have the ultimate record?

02:01:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, how we cried for mark schnickerberg all right, he was dabbing his eyes with hundred dollar bills, poor mark helicopter.

02:02:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, all right, let's take a little. Uh, time out, take a break. We got to change the subject. Uh, your favorite meat puppets windows weekly is on. It's on the air. Richard Campbell and Paul Theriot. Nvidia today up 5% Market cap $3 trillion. Oh, it just went past Apple. Thank you, scooterx. Nvidia just eclipsed Apple at $3.003 trillion. Nvidia $3.012 trillion.

02:02:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That CEO had growth incentives, that's amazing man.

02:02:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, we should change the subject. How about I feel like a little Xbox amuse-bouche?

02:02:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What do you say? Very little Xbox, unfortunately. Last week was a bouillabaisse of cultural delights, but this time a couple of things are only kind of peripheral to Xbox. Asus has announced their own handheld PC gaming device, right LIX, a ROG. What is that Realm of Gamers?

02:03:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Something like that, and you know now we have a few of these things the republic of gamers or gaming republic.

02:03:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, yeah, I think this is a brand they, I think they bought. I think that was a thing, wasn't it? They made peripherals and stuff, I think, but whatever it is, um, so, yeah, interesting. So I'm wondering now if there's something here. Is this some future of something or I? Anyone remembers this?

02:03:31
But 8.1 inch tablets held in the vertical portrait position, were a thing for about a year. In the wake of windows eight, when they were trying to recast that, every PC maker came out with this little 8.1 inch tablet Like this was where it was going to make sense. You know, and and there were some good ones that a couple of Dell 8.1-inch tablets, pretty good for the day, but you know, the platform was what it was anyway. So I guess my question here is whether these handheld Windows-based gaming systems are that kind of thing Like kind of a flash in the pan. Maybe they don't become something, maybe they do. I just, you know, windows is where the compatibility is, but it's also where the higher system requirements are. It gets a little tough. You know, if you could get all the games you wanted, something like you know, linux would make more sense. It's this kind of a device, right?

02:04:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, depends on the games, of course, yep and remember.

02:04:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Steam.

02:04:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Deck is Linux, so.

02:04:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but you can install Windows on it if you want. I mean, I guess some people would want that. But yeah, you kind of have to look at it and say, well, what's available through Steam and Linux or whatever? And what does this look like? Is it good for me? Maybe, maybe not.

02:04:40
I still think of Xbox, PlayStation, whatever kind of handle, like a Nintendo Switch type thing would make tons of sense because it's the right combination of factors where you have this easy to use like unified device. You've got the built in simplicity of, like the Xbox platform in our case or whatever. You can play some portion of these games on device that you bought digitally from whatever generations. And then you've got this catalog that also runs off of cloud gaming Although I was just trying that here and I have a better connection here than I do in Pennsylvania and cloud gaming does not cut it when you want to play a game like doom, uh, infinite or whatever that title was, um, the newer kind of just you know, uh, 3d shooters. Like it's not, it's not possible, like you just can't do it, so I don't know. Anyway, this thing exists and you know, buy it, someone will buy it, it's something for everybody, yeah, and then Sony threatens to and then follow through on the threat to release its VR2 adapter so you can use the Sony VR2 headset.

02:05:50
This is a $600 VR system for the PlayStation 5, if I'm not mistaken. If I am, it was $500. It was really expensive so you can get an adapter which people might remember. They did this, remember, for HoloLens, so you could use HoloLens with a PC before they made it just PC-compatible, right? And what's the market for that? I don't know. But you know Sony is going into PC games pretty hard, just like Microsoft is, and they're bringing more and more of their titles there. So maybe there's some crossover it's hard to say. Maybe there's a Sony service coming down the pike that will be like Game Pass or whatever, where you well, I guess they kind of have it right PlayStation, do they?

02:06:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
expect to sell more headsets, or it's just making the headset more useful for those who bought them?

02:06:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yep, I don't know. I think that price of nothing has to come down, but I don't know all right, that was a uh brisk.

02:06:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it was brief, I'm sorry guys five minute xbox segment.

02:06:45
That's all right. Tips and picks the back of the book coming up. We're gonna give paul a minute to get himself a tip of the week Brown liquor pick coming up as well. But first I do want to put in a plug and a thank you, Really a thank you, to all of our Club Twit members who have made this show possible. We started Club Twit a couple of years ago, seeing kind of the ad apocalypse coming upon podcasting so many podcast networks, podcasts, even public radio, layoffs, closings and I don't know why. I have some theories but no one really knows why. But we do know that our revenue is down significantly, so much so that we're going to have to depend on our audience if we want to keep going. That means you. If you're not yet a Club Twit member. I just want to put a pitch in.

02:07:34
It is a wonderful community, as you might imagine, a community of people who not only listen to our shows but care enough to pay $7 a month. I think that's a good group of people. You can meet them in the Discord. That's part of your benefit. You get ad-free versions of all the shows, video of all the shows, including Hands on Windows with Paul. That's audio only to the public, but video to the club members. Same with Micah Sargent's Hands on Macintosh, the Untitled Linux Show, Scott Wilkinson's Home Theater Geeks.

02:08:02
Actually, we're doing some fun stuff now in the club. Micah has decided to do a Micah's Craft Corner, which I think is. I love this idea. You can do that on the third Wednesday of every month. Let's see what's coming up here on our Club Twit schedule. Our live coverage of WWDC, Apple's developer conference, 10 am on Monday, Pacific. Ios Today, of course, records in the club every other Tuesday. There it is. Micah's Crafting Corner is coming up on June 19th. I think we're going to move Stacy's Book Club. June 20th is a bad day for Stacy and me, so we'll move that either a day or a week in the other direction. Nevertheless, that's just part of the fun the events, the shows, but mostly the fun is knowing you're supporting Twitter.

02:08:54
A guy canceled the other day. He said yeah, I'm not going to pay for it because I listen to the ads anyway. It's not really about getting ad-free versions. That's a benefit, but what it really is is taking up the slack from advertisers that have left podcasting. It's expensive to do it the way we do it. We're probably going to have to close the studio next month to save money. We'd like to keep doing new shows. We'd like to keep doing the shows we're doing. We need your help to do that. Twittv slash Club Twit. I hate to beg, I'm not good at this, but I would hate to also have you say you should have told us. So I'm telling you now you know All right Back of the book. Time, Paul Thorat, kick us off with your brand new never before seen.

02:09:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Tip of the week. Thank you for that intro, leo. I so I sorry. I flew to Mexico yesterday and I cobbled the notes together yesterday while I was still conscious, so I didn't have time to come up with a tip. I brought this up earlier in the podcast, but I did listen to the run as episode that Richard discussed I think last week or the week before that I was on. 9.33 was the episode. I thought it was good. It's a stupid thing to say like it's us. I thought it was good. It's a stupid thing to say it's us, but I thought it was good. So if you like Windows Weekly, you'll probably like that episode. So I apologize, that's not much of a tip, but there you go. And then App Pick of the Week Opera.

02:10:28
Opera has been kind of killing it lately with AI stuff. Right, they just announced something that sounds lame, which is emoji tab decorations. But bear with me, I'm actually going to defend it. But before I get to that, I just want to say you know, opera is one of those products I've gone in and out of for a long, long time and you know, like um vilvaldi, it's, it's a bit it's. It felt a bit heavy, like a bit much, like a little too much customization, that kind of thing. But I don't know. I think because I've been using arc so much, the most recent time I started using it I was like, oh no, this is good, actually this thing's good and, um, so, emoji tab decorations right, you're looking through a list of tabs.

02:11:12
They have texts maybe, or they're so small they don't have anything. So now you'll be able to add little emojis to some of your tabs so you can visually identify them quickly. It's actually a good idea. Richard and Leo don't see all of my notes, but all my top level stuff in Notion I've added. It's an icon but it's an emoji, basically for the same reason, because you have all these top-level categories and I can read the text. But it's easy to parse a little image and it's a quicker way to get to that thing.

02:11:40
It's actually it sounds superfluous or silly, but I actually think it's a pretty good idea. So you know, screw you guys, all right. So anyway, that's in the latest build of Arpa, you just get Arpa 1, the default browser, and they also have a developer channel to get the AI feature drop. So if you want to keep up on that stuff which is actually very interesting and that's coming in fast and hot. You could use that version instead, but I would give Arpa a chance. I've found myself using it a lot more in recent weeks.

02:12:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's interesting, and and more so than arc now.

02:12:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but this is part of a because of the test. I always test different things, right? I mean I, this is not me, you know, it's like Paul's using an iPhone. It's like, yeah, I'm using an iPhone. Now. I mean, I go back and ask me next week, yeah, yeah. So this is the nature of what I do.

02:12:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, At least you touch all the different things.

02:12:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Touch all the things. That's my motto. I'm not listening to Paul's recommendations for browsers anymore. I moved to arc and I'm not moving again.

02:12:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, you've done you. I moved to Arc and I'm not moving again. You've done, you've got it. I like when you do demo stuff, I see it come up in Arc and I'm like nice, you can tell you're using it.

02:12:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, arc and Windows. Yeah, Look at me.

02:12:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know You're a changed man.

02:13:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look at me and you know I always like I don't even know you anymore.

02:13:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I always like to is wow, that's why you do it. Yeah, I'm always wondering what's happening to the surviving members of the partridge family. This is an excellent way to get that information. Did you know lee marvin?

02:13:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
was the toughest man in hollywood. Did you know that? Believe it? Do you know these? These people found eight dollars, cash back eight dollars or microsoft advertisement in search of new shows this summer. Here's the best tv to add to your list notable people who died this year. Where else you're going to find that right? Uh, I just don't. I know it's just a. I don't, it's a giant light on the top and I don't know why microsoft put a little you know breaking news thing on it either, for that matter you can.

02:13:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't have it now, but I got a like a little notification. I clicked on it. It was something like it was nothing. It was like the temperature is going to be five degrees higher today, like okay, yeah thanks, yeah, thanks, thanks, it's nothing it's nothing that's. Let me stop working. Wait a minute, I'm sorry, I've got to stop the show.

02:14:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
32 true memes. Now see 32 true memes.

02:14:15 - AI voice (Caller)
It's not a meme. If it's true, am I right that are hard to argue?

02:14:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
with. They're hard to argue with these two true memes. Got to see that 30 of them. Count it. Oh, and it's a slideshow, Don't?

02:14:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
you love it when they do slideshows. It maximizes the ad. It just gives you more ad revenue.

02:14:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I love that, that's it and I'm all about ad revenue. I wish I could be that predatory. I just don't have it in me. You know, I don't have, I just can't. I just want as much plain text as possible. All right, richard, your turn, see.

02:14:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Richard, your turn See if you can turn this show around Run as Radio this week.

02:14:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This morning we published episode 935, and this is one we did with Michael Epping. He works for Microsoft. He's one of the folks behind integrating Apple security into Azure Entra or Microsoft Entra. So the big thing I mean Apple devices have always been able to log into windows resources and azure resources to some degree, but the main thing they've done now is actually built a plug-in to apple secure enclave. So this is the equivalent to tpm, to the trusted platform management, and so you can, and it's bi-directional. That's the thing that astonished me. That you can use this means you can literally use your entra id or your azure id to log into a mac or an ipad and it's a recognized identity. It's part of the part of the system that will tie into intune if you're going to use that for mdm as well as give all of the proper access to resources around conditional access in Azure.

02:15:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So basically Apple devices are now first-class citizens.

02:15:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Very nice, yeah, that's a great step forward and it's an ongoing series with the Entra folks Ever since we started making fun of them on the show. Mark Morawski hunted me down, and so I've got more coming.

02:16:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
How confusing would this be to a app typical apple user? Right, it's like sign in with your apple d or your microsoft enter id, like wait what just happened, but it's kind of an acknowledgement that apple is in the enterprise now more.

02:16:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's absolutely, and a non-trivial part of it too, right like it's a lot of device.

02:16:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah all right, I'm ready. Uh, we all, I think, are ready for a drink. Ready for a drink? What do you got?

02:16:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is one I had last night and I just haven't spent enough time in Japan lately. I had the Nikkei's from the barrel and it's got an interesting story behind it. We talked a bit about Japanese whiskey, I don't know, a year ago or so, and Nikkei's, one of the two original distilleries in Japanapan 1918 masataka takasaru went to scotland. His family were sake makers and he wanted to do something different, and so he actually studied in glasgow university and under the guy named nettleton who wrote the original book in 1913, called the manufacturer of whiskey in plain spirit. He interned at a few different distilleries in scotland, even married a scottish woman, but then he did return with her to Japan and he fell in with Shinjiro Tori, also known as Tori-san, as in Suntory Ah. So Suntory and Takasuro collaborated over building the original whiskey distillery in Japan, the Yamazaki distillery, in between Kyoto and Osaka, and their whiskey was awful, or quite a bit. The original one was called the White Label. It did not sell particularly well. It's tough to make whiskey Now.

02:17:46
Tori-san was making plenty of money selling Portuguese fortified wine and things like that, so he was able to fund this for an extended period of time. But he had a contract with Takasuru, and Takasuru thought they were doing it wrong, in fact to the point where he actually went back to Scotland and studied further, and then, when the partnership ended in 1933, he established his own distillery in Hokkaido, which is the northern island of Japan, which he felt was, climate-wise, the most like Scotland. He thought that was important, and so that's the Nikkei distillery, and went on to make some very good whiskeys. Without a doubt, they were the ones who won some of the first awards for Japanese whiskey, including the Yochi, which was peated and made from Japan, and they're the ones who also use the coffee stills. These are the continuous stills that are considered anathema in Scotland, and so you'll find Nika coffee malts and coffee grains which are based on those stills from the era. They're also willing to mix up their grains. They do use corn and things like that, as well as just barley.

02:18:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's why they're not a true Japanese whiskey, then yes.

02:18:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, it's your question about what is true Japanese whiskey and this particular whiskey, the Nikkei whiskey from the barrel is a blended whiskey and it's $70. That's pretty pricey for a blended whiskey but the blend is great. Alcohol Typical bottle. I love the bottle. It's like it's meant to be like a brick. It's got a metal cap to it.

02:19:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Randomly, I held this bottle in my hand last night. Oh you're kidding. No, the sushi place I go to. The guy goes to Japan all the time and they had to start buying a different. I think he got really expensive, whatever, so he has two. I'm going to Japan all the time and they had to start buying a different. I think Hibiki got really expensive, whatever, so he has two. I'm going to taste them tomorrow night. But he was showing them to me and I'd never seen this design before. And then you started your thing and I'm like oh my God, I literally like it. You are following me, just like Google is.

02:19:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is a very utilitarian design, but it's simple.

02:19:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Simple and I like it, but it's minimalist and yeah, it's, it's smaller than it looks, it's, it's, it's a very small.

02:19:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's a block it's literally shaped like a brick. It stacks well, but it is designed um, it is a blended whiskey, right? So this is like famous grouse or shivis or any of those sorts of things, which is to say, 60 of his grain alcohol, that made in the nikki distillery, and then 40 is single malts. And although they're not specific, there is plenty of evidence to show it come. Some of their, some of the barrels, come from the yoshi distillery. They also have the miyagiko uh distiller, which is another one of nikki's distillery, and van nevis in scotland, which is owned by nikki, and that is a problem because that means it can't be called japanese whiskey.

02:20:32
Now those rules are new. It's only in 2021. And we talked about this when I first talked about Japanese distilleries. Then, in 2021, they created the rules for Japanese whiskey, which included that everything had to be made in Japan. They could use a variety of grains, including multigrain, but they didn't have to be confined to one Three years in wooden casks, you know da-da-da-da-da-da, but it has to be made in Japan. And Nikka was part of making these plans, and so in 2021, even though they had three years to comply, they basically announced hey, our Nikka whiskey from the barrel is not a Japanese whiskey, it is a world whiskey and it's because there's Ben Nevis in the bar.

02:21:09
Now it is a weird blended whiskey, like it's because there's Ben Nevis in the bottom. Now it is a weird blended whiskey, like it's weird. The 60% green alcohol is not unusual, that's about right. But it's 51.4%. Blends tend to be 40 or 45, mostly 40. It's just a straight spirit limit, so it's odd that it's this high. But then, to make it even stranger, it's chill filtered and caramel colored, which if you're 51% alcohol you don't need chill filtration. It's not going to cloud up, it's got too much alcohol in it.

02:21:43
But my favorite idea because I've read a lot on this, because I'm prone to these sorts of things down the rabbit hole of this is that some of the barrels that are in this blend aren't that high of alcohol and so they would cause some cloudiness. And so, to be sure, after they blend it together, they do chill filtration to make sure that it stays clear. And then, because they combine barrels, they add caramel to make the color consistent from version to version. Still, it's potent, and my drink last night reminded me this is the kind of drink you need at least two of, because the first one's going to poke you pretty hard.

02:22:25
The alcohol level's high, I mean, and there's another argument here that says you can put an ice cube in it because it's not going to dilute it that much and it'll take the sharpness off. But the difference between the first drink and the second drink of the from the barrel is astonishing because your mouth does get calibrated for it and there's beautiful wood in there and different fruit and caramel notes. Like it is a lovely, very sippable whiskey. It's just pretty potent on that first sip and it's available in America. Comes and goes, availability is spotty but about $70 US, which is pricey for a blend but not pricey for tasty whiskey.

02:23:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, what price. Tasty whiskey, after all, all the price, tasty whiskey.

02:23:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
no, what price tasty whiskey after all, and nika whiskey from the barrel acom but I I do have an intent to go down the line of all of the new japanese whiskeys that have been coming out, because there is a ton of them, nice uh. But I felt I had to talk about one of the, the. We've talked about the two originals now, suntory and Nika, and now we can go off and one, and Suntory is the one that owns the Maker's Mark, and.

02:23:40
Yeah, they're right. That's become Suntory, which owns Beam Maker's Mark Bowmore and a ton of others. Trying to keep this in my head, but.

02:23:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can't.

02:23:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
As I've described.

02:23:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You don't even try trying to keep this in my head, but you can't describe.

02:23:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I need recall for that. Yeah, you know. Hey, let's just. When did we talk about that?

02:23:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
let's just check, you know, I might be curious hold on, paul, I'm uploading your social security number to the cloud oh, it's all right, it's busy, it's busy, hey, who, uh what are the labels, the brands owned by Beam Suntory?

02:24:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Beam Suntory, let's see. Let's see. If she knows I call her, she Beam.

02:24:17 - AI voice (Caller)
Suntory owns several well-known brands, including Jim Beam, maker's, mark Knob Creek, basil Hayden's and Booker's in the bourbon category. They also own Lafroig, beaumont and Aucantoshan in Scotch whiskey. Other brands include Corvoisier, cognac, sosa, tequila and Roku Gin, among others. Is there a specific type of spirit or brand you're particularly interested in?

02:24:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.

02:24:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Nika Whiskey.

02:24:45 - AI voice (Caller)
Nika Whiskey is actually owned by Asahi Group Holdings, not Beam Suntory. Nika is a renowned Japanese whiskey brand, isn't that wrong?

02:24:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, that's correct. Nika is not owned by Suntory. They're actually rivals.

02:24:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're the Coke and Pepsi, see.

02:25:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Silicon's smarter than me.

02:25:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There you go, he may not pronounce the names, but he got them right. Cognac is my favorite Cognac, I love it. You know like it's spelled Cognac.

02:25:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You said covoisier, perfectly, and then it said Cognac.

02:25:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I have a friend who goes to France and always says merci, as mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy Great balls of fire. Holy cow.

02:25:22 - AI voice (Caller)
Thank you.

02:25:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Goodness gracious, it is 94 degrees here in beautiful Petaluma. I think time for me to take off my clothes and run outside naked. But before I, do that.

02:25:32
I'm sorry we're going to miss that. I will thank Paul Thurott and Richard Campbell for joining us. I would jump in a giant barrel of whiskey if we had one. Paul is, of course, at thurottcom T-H-U-R-R-O-T-Tcom. Become a premium member and get so much great writing. But the free stuff's good too. It's really a wonderful site to keep up with everything we love here at Windows Weekly. He also writes the couple of great books for Windows lovers Windows Everywhere, which is a bit of a history of Windows through its languages and dev tools. He also has written the Field Guide and keeps up to date, amazingly, the field guide to Windows 11. Now, with Windows 10 inside Both of those available and it's Nuggety Center, it's a caramel center.

02:26:19
Both of them available at leanpubcom. Richard Campbell has two shows that he does, as you know, runasradionetrocks. They're both available at runasradiocom. Why are you in Toronto in the big smoke?

02:26:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I am doing an AI thing for Microsoft Canada.

02:26:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
See An AI thing. Could you be slightly more cryptic? No, I really can't.

02:26:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's as cryptic, as I'm going to be Next week in Amsterdam and the week after that in Oslo and the week after that in oslo amazing and the week after that in berlin wow, the summer jaunt has begun.

02:26:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Paul, you're just gonna stay in mexico city, I'm just here yeah, and I got some good news I think my daughter's taking our cats, which means we can start spending more time here awesome you mean like permanently, and we made it seem like her idea. It was genius wow, wow.

02:27:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are they gonna? Is she gonna sell them to a farmer? Uh, so that they can run free out there. And I, she, you know what I, she can do whatever she wants you don't care. You don't care, I didn't care less. Yeah, the cats are what keeps us at home. Yeah, that's for sure, it's for sure it sounds silly, but it's.

02:27:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a problem. Yeah, I mean, we have friends and family.

02:27:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not a, you know no, they're little fur babies though. You got to take care of them. You can't just leave them in the lurch.

02:27:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They go into PTSD every time we come back from a trip. It takes them like two weeks to settle down.

02:27:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, sammy's the same way. Thank you, paul, thank you, richard, thanks to our winners and dozers, all of you who listen. If you are not yet a member of Club Twit, please consider joining, if you are, bless you. Thank you for your support. You're keeping this show on the air and all of the stuff we do Twittv, slash, club Twit Did I mention that? Thanks everybody.

02:28:05
We do this show on Wednesdays, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern Time, 1800 UTC. You can watch us on YouTube. It's open to all YouTubecom slash, twit, slash live. But you can also watch on the Discord and you'll get stuff in between shows if you watch on the Discord, if you're a Club Twit member. After the fact, on-demand versions of the show are available at Paul's site, throtcom, and, of course course, at twit dot tv slash ww. Youtube has a windows weekly channel, but the best way to watch or listen we make audio and video available is to subscribe. That way you get it automatically as soon as we're done and you've got it for whenever you've got a moment to listen to the best show about microsoft on the planet. Thank you, paul, thank you richard, have a great week, enjoy your travels and we'll see you right here next week on Windows Weekly. Bye, bye.