Windows Weekly Episode 777 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word.
Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for windows weekly. Paul Thras here. Mary Jo Foley is here. There's a brand new version of outlook. Finally, project Monarch is available officially. We'll tell you what you could do to test it out now and what you can expect from it. Microsoft teams is now in the windows store and that's where quick assist has hidden in case you've been looking for it. It's all coming up next on windows, weekly Podcasts you love
TWIT Intro (00:00:29):
From people you trust.
Leo Laporte (00:00:32):
This is,
Leo Laporte (00:00:38):
This is windows weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley episode 7 77. Recorded Wednesday May 18th, 2022 halo in fan. This episode of windows weekly is brought to you by collide. Get endpoint management that puts the user first. Visit coli.com/ww. To learn more and activate a free 14 day trial today, no credit card required and by a Cronus. Keep your digital world safe from all threats. With the only cyber protection solution that delivers a unique integration of data protection and cyber security in one, a Cronus cyber protect home office. Formally Aron's true image. Go to go.aros.com/ww and buy trade coffee. Right now, trade is offering new subscribers, a total of $30 off your first order. Plus free shipping. When you go to drink trade.com/windows. That's more than 40 cups of coffee for free. Get started by taking their quiz and let trade find a coffee. You'll love. It's time. Get ready. Dozers windows weekly on the air all the way from Mexico city where he's burying his face in his hands. At this point, the sun is shining bright on Mr. Paul Thra, thra.com lean pub.com. Looking good in his brand new apartment.
Paul Thurrott (00:02:06):
Don't mind the bed.
Leo Laporte (00:02:07):
<Laugh> I thought that was sound roofing. I thought you
Paul Thurrott (00:02:11):
Had it. No, but it's the block. The light there there's I don't know. 15 or 12 feet of just light glass. It's it's nice. Inescapable.
Leo Laporte (00:02:18):
It's nice. It's so nice. Also here, Mary Jo Foley, all about microsoft.com and that's a ZDI net blog. It's great to have both of you for our Stevens OVS ski memories episode. <Laugh> no, no. That's later in the year. Not now. <Laugh> so you actually, this, this surprised me, cuz Paul was looking at an old episode where you guys talked about Synsky that's right. An hour and a half.
Paul Thurrott (00:02:43):
Well, because remember I'm writing that series and that's where I'm at. I'm at the aftermath of him leaving. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:02:48):
Yep. And then Mary Jo actually knows the date he was fired <laugh> so we're gonna celebrate not bitter guys in November. I'm not bitter. We're gonna celebrate November 12th. The story, the story is the, is
Paul Thurrott (00:03:00):
The 10. So whatever the Wednesday is right after
Leo Laporte (00:03:02):
12Th, 12, we should do the 10th
Paul Thurrott (00:03:03):
Anniversary. That was a Monday. I'm sorry.
Leo Laporte (00:03:06):
We'll do the 10th anniversary.
Paul Thurrott (00:03:08):
So that was a Monday, which I know because I was driving to basketball and you called me and I was in my car and I literally, I literally almost crashed the car because she was screaming and I thought something was wrong. And she was, I, I, Mary Jo is usually not very yelly <laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:03:25):
I guess.
Mary Jo Foley (00:03:26):
And I couldn't even, I couldn't even talk to you. I just remember I was like talking in gasps and you were like slow down. I can't understand what you're saying. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
No, this was a very traumatic time.
Mary Jo Foley (00:03:38):
It was very traumatic.
Leo Laporte (00:03:39):
Yeah. I mean, you remember this, like, you know, one remembers a traumatic event.
Mary Jo Foley (00:03:42):
I don't know if you guys remember you. I do, but I'm I think Paul does, I was blacklisted while he was a news guy. And so when the dark cloud lifted, I got my access back to
Leo Laporte (00:03:54):
The
Paul Thurrott (00:03:54):
Women. I just, I, yeah, again, I don't mean to just go on and on about this, but the one thing I was, I was talking to my wife about this today because I I'm obsessed by this now I I was up and down with Steven snaky. Sometimes I was his best friend and sometimes he, he literally directed PR to have nothing to do with me. He, he actively worked to make my career less and all these years later I've gone back through everything that I've written. I go, I've gone back through the entire history. It is, I've done it. It's it's over. There's no more to say about it. I can't find a thing where I might have made him upset. Like I don't actually understand his problem with me. I, I, I think he was surrounded by yes, men. And I suppose I might have, at one point said, you know, maybe this thing needs some training in it for normal people, cuz they're not gonna find the UIs. And that was not the message he wanted. I don't re I don't, I really don't know what the catalyst was because I look at what I wrote and if anything, I was overly positive about it. I, I don't know why. Huh. So I don't even know why. And I know with Mary Jo, I'm sure it was too truthy, you know? Yeah. You just, I, he doesn't, he, he <laugh>, you know? Right.
Mary Jo Foley (00:05:03):
They, yeah. They said to me, he doesn't value the function of what you think is news. I'm like, that's nice. Right? That's my job. Doesn't
Leo Laporte (00:05:11):
Matter
Paul Thurrott (00:05:12):
What he say, think objectively is news, right?
Leo Laporte (00:05:15):
That is, I don't understand. Well, that was,
Paul Thurrott (00:05:17):
You wanted to control the
Leo Laporte (00:05:18):
Messaging. Sorry. I just, I don't understand that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm reading the new book after Steve, the trip medical book. I'm gonna interview trip tomorrow at one 30 Pacific. Yeah. On it's great book on the neTWiTork. It is, it's really fun. And there were per personalities at apple kind of like Synsky oh
Paul Thurrott (00:05:36):
Yes. Scott
Leo Laporte (00:05:37):
Forstall for one. And I think it was absolutely similar celebration inside, by the way, when Scott weird
Paul Thurrott (00:05:43):
That you said that because Scott Forstall was let go from apple just before this. It was the same year. Yeah. And we talked about that on the podcast, a very similar personality. Yeah. Mega maniac assumed he was gonna be the next CEO. Yeah. Was
Leo Laporte (00:05:55):
Sure of it.
Paul Thurrott (00:05:56):
Yeah. Yep. Positive.
Leo Laporte (00:05:59):
It's there's I mean, it's not a surprise, but there is a lot of politics at apple and I would guess the same thing at any big company. Totally.
Paul Thurrott (00:06:07):
Yeah. By the way, here's a fun little, no, it's not a factoid. It it's a real truth. That's in this book that I just heard, which was Johnny Ives met with JJ Abrams, who did the new star wars movies. And he said, I have an idea for the light saber. He goes, I think these things are too clean and rigid looking. He said, you should make one that is like barbaric looking and has odd shapes and stuff. And that was the inspiration for Kyle run's light Saru in those new movies,
Leo Laporte (00:06:32):
Johnny,
Paul Thurrott (00:06:32):
Johnny, he actually influenced the new star wars movie.
Leo Laporte (00:06:35):
Not a surprise.
Paul Thurrott (00:06:37):
Crazy. Right?
Leo Laporte (00:06:38):
Yeah. I think that's one of the takeaways from this book for me and we talked about this a couple weeks ago is designers. Maybe it's just part of, they're not necessarily all like this, but they there's a certain arrogance where you just say, no, no, this is don't know, this is good. And right. And that's not. And I know, and you
Paul Thurrott (00:06:56):
Don't it's right. In other words, don't worry about the business. The business will take care of itself form over function. Yeah. Right. It wasn't problem a problem. Although on the, on the flip side he did lots of amazing things. Beautiful stuff.
Leo Laporte (00:07:06):
It's
Paul Thurrott (00:07:06):
Yeah. Yeah. It's a hard,
Leo Laporte (00:07:07):
I'm still wearing the watch, you know, anyway. Well, that'll be a fun conversation tomorrow
Paul Thurrott (00:07:13):
On track. That's a great book. It's a great
Leo Laporte (00:07:14):
Book. It is. I, you know, that's we were talking about great business mm-hmm <affirmative> really tech business books. And I put a list up on our TWiTI social of few of them. And we mentioned show stoppers, GP, Pascal Zachary's book about NT and Dave Cutler.
Paul Thurrott (00:07:31):
I think the Steve JPI who falls into this it's in there just because those crucial chapters about the iPhone, the iPad especially are, and a few others are just, I, I re-listened to them. I mean, they're yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:07:42):
They're they're exercise for us cuz we covered it. It's interesting. Cuz we're hearing details behind the scenes that we didn't know or we kind of thought, but weren't sure confirming our thoughts, that kind of thing. But it's also, they're great sagas of Tracy Kitter's soul of the new machine. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> about data general creating a MI, a mini computer. It's an old one. Steven Levy's hackers. And we were, we've all said, the three of us have said, we wish there were more books these days. Oh yeah. Like that. And
Paul Thurrott (00:08:08):
That's why, which is why this new one is so great.
Leo Laporte (00:08:10):
You Paul Thurrott and you marry Joe Foley. You've got to get to work. Thank you. I've
Paul Thurrott (00:08:16):
Been begging you for years.
Leo Laporte (00:08:18):
That's not forget.
Paul Thurrott (00:08:19):
Voice has arisen
Leo Laporte (00:08:20):
Point. Oh I mean, honestly
Mary Jo Foley (00:08:22):
I'm happy to be an about background consultant when Paul writes the history of windows book, but I am not participating.
Leo Laporte (00:08:29):
<Laugh> okay. You could be his deep throat. You could be his
Paul Thurrott (00:08:32):
Me you Richard Campbell insider should be great. Oh
Leo Laporte (00:08:34):
Yeah. Oh, wouldn't that be a good book? Wouldn't you right. Show of hands. Look at that. Everybody <laugh> they all want it. They all want it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> all. Let's meanwhile <laugh>
Mary Jo Foley (00:08:46):
Episode at
Leo Laporte (00:08:46):
The ranch back at the ranch episode, triple seven. And we're back with outlook. Yeah. Now this is the official preview. Not their leaked one. Yeah. You guys had mm-hmm <affirmative> one hour. So
Mary Jo Foley (00:08:57):
A week ago, a week ago, this leaked and at the time they said, you know what? Their, their actual official release in preview will be out in the coming weeks. Whenever they say in the coming weeks. I I'm like, oh yeah. Okay. So three add three months, right? Yeah. And then yesterday it just shows up at the, the version for windows is out in beta. I'm like, well, there it is. Okay. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:09:21):
And it is the same as the one that you guys got.
Paul Thurrott (00:09:25):
Right. Well, I'm glad you asked I, so I don't know. And here's why there are like 118 requirements to getting this thing going. So I, yeah, I'm a little you know, preoccupied this week. So I look, I was going to install it, but I, I just said, I can't deal with this. It, it basically, first of all, you have to go into your, you have to be a manager of a commercial or education tenant at Microsoft 365. You have to enable it. Then as user, you have to run and configure outlook for windows, which I never do because I hate outlook. And then there's a switch in there that you can turn, oh, sorry. You have to put your as a user, put the machine into a into the beta channel for office of cider program kind of goes on and on. So I looked at all the things and I said, I, I can't, but based on the screenshot, I don't know, because there they describe things that looked, I just didn't see, but then I wouldn't have known to have looked. So it looks more
Mary Jo Foley (00:10:18):
Complete perhaps. I think some of these things are in process of being turned on too. Like they mentioned loop components, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> being part of the new version and I've heard from some people who had the leaked version, they didn't think they had the loop components. So
Paul Thurrott (00:10:32):
Yeah, actually, so, but it's, let's talk about, let's talk about that real quick for a second because I was talking, talking to Brad this morning and he said, you know, I have a theory about why this thing needed to be a web app and I'm like, oh, bring it on. That's great. I, and, and just as sort of a historical background, that's not that far in the history, but in recent years, and I don't remember when this started, Microsoft moved to a web based extension model for office applications, right. They used to use VBA back in the day, you know, whatever. And one of the advantages of doing that for outlook is that if someone writes an extension or if Microsoft wants to extend the functionality of outlook, they do. So using web technologies and it works across all of the clients. So office for windows, the web versions, you know, outlook.com and office outlook for the web.
Paul Thurrott (00:11:17):
And I assume for the Mac, I don't actually know too much about outlook for the Mac. I'm sorry, but I assume that must be in the system as well. I think the, I, he, I'm sorry. He thinks now this is not my idea. Brad says, I think the reason they went to this web app is because they needed to do this for loop components. Loop components are gonna work inside of the various office apps teams, especially of course teams as web based. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, maybe this is why they're pushing to make outlook a web app. So not just the extension model, but the entire app, you know, that somehow for, for the deep, the deep integration that loop components would require maybe it had to be on the web. Maybe that's why it took so long.
Mary Jo Foley (00:11:58):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, that's a good theory. Also, also, this is a web view, TWiTo app instead of an electron app. And that's also what team, the new teams is, right. Teams too, is supposed to be that
Paul Thurrott (00:12:09):
As well. Yeah. So that's in other words, chromium based, right. You know, relatively lighTWiTeight <laugh>, you know, compared to electron what they're using electron, especially. Yeah. Or, but even react and things like that can be heavy. Yeah. Right. This should be a little more lighTWiTeight,
Mary Jo Foley (00:12:25):
Right? I mean the, the big picture reason Microsoft wants to do this, this is the, this is Monarch. This is a thing called one outlook that we're talking about. They want the same code base for the Mac for web and windows, because it's easier for them, right? Yeah. If it, if they have one code base instead of three code bases, they can update it more quickly. Fix bugs more quickly. Not have to do all these separate updates for every single platform like they do now. That's right. So it's also
Paul Thurrott (00:12:54):
That's you want it that's better for everybody, right? Because it allows no matter what platform you're using, you're gonna get the latest updates or the latest security fixes or whatever it might be. Right. I, I guess the one asterisks there might be, there are power users and I'll look for windows today who probably are looking at this a little nervous. Yes
Mary Jo Foley (00:13:11):
They are. <Laugh> oh yeah. I'm hearing from all of them on TWiTitter. Yeah. <Laugh> right. They're like, I am not touching that piece of junk. I already hate it. I don't want it. I hope I don't have to have it. And are there features missing?
Paul Thurrott (00:13:21):
Is that why? Or are they
Mary Jo Foley (00:13:23):
There's some, yeah. There's some features that aren't there and some are on the list to come. Like they have, they put, they put out a list yesterday saying here's, what's on our roadmap for the more immediate term, the longer term and things we're investigating. Right. So some of the things that people were crying about, sorry, I don't mean to be pejorative, but <laugh> but I just was <laugh> <laugh> like quick steps. I I'm like what the heck is quick steps, but now I know, cause I looked it up so quick steps. It lets you, I guess like set up something to go automatically into a folder when you get it in your inbox, that's coming, that's on the roadmap to come, but people are like without quick steps, I don't want that. Okay. Everybody has the feature set of things. They can't live without an outlook. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:14:05):
I mean, outlook architecturally is sort of the original teams in the sense that it's a big complex application. Yeah. With lots of modules, extensibility, lots of add-ins people have configured it the way they want this thing dates back to the 1990s. The, the original version of outlook is from 1997, but it's really based on schedule plus, which is from earlier than I, I don't remember when schedule plus debuted, but it, you know, it's a big complex application. Yeah. And that for some people that's terrible. I hate it. I personally, I think it's big, slow to load, etcetera cetera. But for people who are, like I said, power users who need these like kind of esoteric features sometimes to us yeah. They just, they can't let go of it. It's just because it does everything they expect and want.
Mary Jo Foley (00:14:49):
Yeah. There's TWiTo big features that are missing, but they're listed as definitely coming. One is offline access. That's coming multiple account access also coming, like that's not in there yet. So everyone's like, can I add this account? Can I add my Gmail? Can I add this? Not yet, but you will. It's on the list of things that are, are on the immediate roadmap. So, okay. It's a preview, right? It's it's this is an early build. Microsoft's been using it internally for months. Like I I've known people at Microsoft saying I've had, I've had the Monarch thing for months that be many
Leo Laporte (00:15:22):
Months, but
Mary Jo Foley (00:15:22):
You know yeah. Many months <laugh>. Yeah. So this is just the first time that windows users who aren't part of Microsoft are getting it officially from Microsoft. Now I have a question for you. I'm sorry, Paul. The Mac client. Okay. Right. Microsoft's blog post yesterday. They, they said, oh yeah. And we already have a new version of outlook for the Mac. And they made it seem like they love it. Consider that one outlook also that came out in November. Right. And I'm like, I don't think that's the same, but maybe
Paul Thurrott (00:15:56):
It is. I didn't either. But I will point out. We said this last week, I think we were originally expecting to see the windows version in November. That's true. And, and, and who knows what caused that delay? I don't know. I don't know enough about the Mac version of outlook to speak intelligently about it. I suspect it works offline. Of course it does. I thought it was a native application. I didn't think it was a web app. I, I don't know. Yeah. I, I have like said
Mary Jo Foley (00:16:21):
I had a couple people ask me that cuz I, I put as the last line in my story, I said, and they say the Mac version came out late last year. And one guy came at me on TWiTitter and he is like, that's not the same thing. And I'm like, okay, well it's in their blog post. I'm not a Mac user. In fact I hate the Mac. I hate apple that's
Leo Laporte (00:16:38):
Okay. Cuz I hate outlook. So there exactly
Paul Thurrott (00:16:41):
That one often a way
Mary Jo Foley (00:16:42):
Everyone has hates Everyone has hates <laugh> I don't know about the Mac version.
Leo Laporte (00:16:47):
I'm I'm sitting here worried. You're gonna ask me about it cuz I wouldn't go near it with a 10 foot pole.
Mary Jo Foley (00:16:51):
You don't you guys hate outlook. I love outlook.
Paul Thurrott (00:16:54):
Well, okay. So I, the new version of outlook for the Mac is supposed to be much more streamlined yeah. Than older versions. It is lighTWiTeight, et cetera. It it's I'll look for the Mac was always kind of its own thing. It was developed later. It's
Leo Laporte (00:17:08):
Separate product.
Paul Thurrott (00:17:09):
Yeah. It's a separate product. It's not. Yeah. It's not based on any of the code.
Leo Laporte (00:17:11):
I get only one question. Still use big one big honk and great PST file for all the data.
Paul Thurrott (00:17:18):
See, I, I don't know on the Mac, I doubt it. You know, that was one of my problems with the windows version.
Leo Laporte (00:17:23):
Yeah. That's that's just a, it's like the registry file. It's a recipe for disaster.
Paul Thurrott (00:17:27):
It's just yeah. People used to carry around a back of a, a back
Mary Jo Foley (00:17:30):
Of it. I know of
Paul Thurrott (00:17:31):
It. Sorry. Back up of it. Yeah. With them when they moved around just in case,
Leo Laporte (00:17:35):
Just in case,
Mary Jo Foley (00:17:37):
You know, so on this was fast. Right? So on that's faster on the roadmap thing. It says dot PST file support is coming <laugh> can't
Leo Laporte (00:17:43):
Wait.
Mary Jo Foley (00:17:45):
Well,
Paul Thurrott (00:17:46):
But that doesn't mean it's requiring it. Right? It
Leo Laporte (00:17:48):
Doesn't. So for recording it doesn't it or something like that maybe. Yeah. But
Mary Jo Foley (00:17:51):
We don't know what all that's all it says. It doesn't say anything like, and we revamped it. We fixed it. It's better. We, it doesn't say anything about
Paul Thurrott (00:17:58):
That. It also doesn't say anything about what the expected roadmap is here. Right?
Leo Laporte (00:18:02):
So get this outlook for the Mac uses a instead of a PST file, an om file, which does exactly the same thing. Email messages, journal, calendar, data, application data, similar to PST files. Of course. But they can't be opened by outlook for windows <laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:18:22):
Oh yeah. God forbid,
Leo Laporte (00:18:24):
Om file. Can contain multiple mailboxes.
Paul Thurrott (00:18:27):
Maybe it's more efficient, a more efficient format because PST dates back probably to the late nineties.
Leo Laporte (00:18:33):
Well and the point of PST and om is, it is more efficient cuz it's a database mm-hmm <affirmative> so you can search faster and stuff, but I'm a fan of keeping mail, plane texts in the, in folders or well, you're gonna do it in the cloud anyway. Right? Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:18:49):
Well, but I think the point that PST is you have that local database and it's faster because it's there.
Leo Laporte (00:18:53):
Yeah. And it's a database. No it, yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:18:56):
Right. And one of the tough things about setting up a new computer is the first time you run outlook, you basically have to leave it for a long weekend to let it do everything it needs to do. So if you have that PST file, you can open that instead and it will configure everything for you and everything's there. So that makes the process go faster, which is, I think why people would carry it around. But I mean, seriously, it's the 21st century guys. <Laugh> like, what are we doing here? Yeah. I mean, it's crazy.
Leo Laporte (00:19:20):
Well, I'm the kind of old school. See, I want my email to be in a machine readable or human readable format. That's independent of, well,
Paul Thurrott (00:19:26):
That's just objectively smart. I mean,
Leo Laporte (00:19:29):
Oh it is because then there's no lock in. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:19:32):
That's right. And that, that, that file format plain text basically is a lot more lighTWiTeight than whatever Microsoft is using in PST.
Leo Laporte (00:19:39):
Maybe not as fast as search, although with modern machines, I, I think it probably is same, same thing. You're gonna keep your address book and V cards. You're gonna keep your,
Paul Thurrott (00:19:47):
But who's searching. You're not really searching locally in a, in an app or you shouldn't be right. The idea here is that you have, you're part of an organization. You need to search things that aren't just cashed locally. They're up in the cloud. They might be meetings from the past or emails or whatever it is. Yeah. I
Leo Laporte (00:20:02):
Don't care what format the cloud data's in. That's fine. Do whatever want it's it's whatever works. Don't lose it. But do whatever works
Paul Thurrott (00:20:08):
For you. I like to as little as possible to come down to the local computer, I have a
Leo Laporte (00:20:13):
Well isn't that how IAP works or even exchange it's a cashed, you know, kind of version of what's up there.
Paul Thurrott (00:20:20):
Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:20:21):
Often with just the, the subject and the recipients.
Paul Thurrott (00:20:25):
So I guess this is the question you have to ask yourself. If you're an outlook user, what the hell is wrong with it? No, no, I'm sorry. Is is no, are you the type of person who is comfortable using a web client, like outlook.com or outlook on the web? And if you're just like, yeah, that's fine. Then mm-hmm, <affirmative> this thing immediately will be fine for you. But if, if you recoil at this because you, because you have some specific requirement with outlook for windows today, this is gonna be a tough road. And hopefully, and we don't know how long it's gonna take.
Leo Laporte (00:20:55):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:20:57):
Right now it's, it's, it's weird the way they do it. There's actually a switch in outlook for windows that will enable, enable you to access this client. It's not a separate thing. Well, it is a separate thing obviously, but it's not just sitting there side by side with it by default. I mean, in the future, you have to think it will. And then you also have to think outlook for windows, the classic version will be a deemphasized, you know? Yeah,
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:22):
It'll take a while probably because you know, Microsoft never does anything like that fast. Right? It'll be like side by side and you'll have the option and then maybe years will go by as my guess about
Paul Thurrott (00:21:34):
That'll the thing you gotta do is kind of compare the life cycle of this thing with your retirement date and see if they intersect <laugh> you know, and maybe it'll be okay.
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's there's some other new features though that I wanna call out besides yes. The bad one. Oh yeah, yeah,
Paul Thurrott (00:21:51):
Yeah. <Laugh>
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:52):
<Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:21:52):
No, actually there are some interesting new features.
Mary Jo Foley (00:21:55):
Yeah, for sure. So in, in the new outlook, the one that they just started testing they've got the thing, they call calendar boards, calendar boards. If you remember this, this was, I went and looked back when this was 2020, Microsoft had this thing called outlook spaces that they started testing and it's made inside of your outlook like a blank canvas where you could drag things, right. You could drag like documents and to-do list and this and that. It was codename project mocha. And then they just, one day dropped it and they said, oh yeah. So we're at we're instead of calendar, instead of outlook spaces, we're gonna make that part of this calendar boards feature and this calendar boards thing is in the new outlook client. That's right. So I'm, I'm kind of curious how that's gonna work and if I'm gonna, like
Paul Thurrott (00:22:41):
Later looks like it looks like people sticking sticky notes on a board, kind of it does different size things. It's oh,
Leo Laporte (00:22:47):
Can I put, use it for my vision board?
Paul Thurrott (00:22:50):
Yeah. You can use it for that. Or if you're hunting a serial killer and you need to draw string.
Leo Laporte (00:22:54):
Can I do string
Paul Thurrott (00:22:55):
<Laugh> yes. Yep. Yep. That's for that too.
Leo Laporte (00:22:59):
Sought out the Gambino crime family on that
Paul Thurrott (00:23:01):
That's right. That sounds great. Like they made a one note for journalists and they made this for serial hunters. Yeah. Serial killer hunters.
Leo Laporte (00:23:08):
Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:23:10):
Yeah. So that's a cool interest, potentially interesting new feature. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> then they've also got this thing. How it's a little hard to explain. So, you know, an outlook you can do, you can app people, like if I put at Thau you would be like, you'd see something when I send an email, like highlight it's
Paul Thurrott (00:23:26):
Highlighted in that's. Right? Yep. It's a link.
Mary Jo Foley (00:23:29):
So now that's a, I like that. Yeah. So now they're gonna, and outlook. I don't even know how they're gonna do this, but it's kind of intriguing. They're gonna let people at the name of a file on your PC to attach it. Oh yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:23:41):
Nice. So
Mary Jo Foley (00:23:41):
That's cool. The only downside for me, somebody disorganized like me is I don't have any kind of file name naming convention whatsoever.
Paul Thurrott (00:23:51):
Do you even have files
Leo Laporte (00:23:52):
All on the desktop? Mary Jo? Just all
Mary Jo Foley (00:23:55):
I have very few files. It is pretty much, it's not on my desktop, but like my file naming system is so like our can not organized. So if I was even trying to think of the name of a file to attach, I'd be like, I
Paul Thurrott (00:24:07):
Don't know. So if, if this thing could look inside files, this would probably be very useful for you as well. Right? It would. It would. And I, and no matter how organized people are and I'm organized to a fault and it's certainly hasn't helped me. You, you know, I often have to look for something and I have to think about where it might be or where it could be. And you kinda spend time navigating around if you could do an at and then start typing and have it bring up choices.
Mary Jo Foley (00:24:30):
That would be good. That would
Paul Thurrott (00:24:31):
Be great. Like search basically. Yeah. That could be really useful.
Leo Laporte (00:24:34):
See, these are all actually arguments for using outlook. It's very it's business focused. Isn't it? I mean, that's, yeah's really maybe why I don't use it or need it is because that's right. But I could see the usefulness, you know, if you're using it in an organization, adding somebody or adding a file that's yeah. I could see the usefulness
Paul Thurrott (00:24:52):
Of that. It looks good on you is what you're trying to
Leo Laporte (00:24:54):
Say. Not on me, but on you. You wore it well, yeah. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:24:57):
Now there there's a worrisome feature in here that I'm already worrying about the reminders thing. So that there's a feature in this where outlook is gonna decide for you. If a message seems important <laugh> and it's gonna keep reminding you about it until you turn it off. That's I'm like great. Okay guys. Well, you know what? There's a reason I hate focused in box. This like this automatic machine does this for you thing. It doesn't work for me. Right. It just never works.
Paul Thurrott (00:25:26):
So I use Gmail for my work stuff and, and Gmail has a feature like that. It will, it will surface an email from three or yeah. It
Leo Laporte (00:25:34):
Like important.
Paul Thurrott (00:25:35):
No, it's a little, it's just a message. In other words, there was, I got some kind of an email. Someone said, Hey, are you available on Tuesday or something? And I never replied to it. And then it comes out. In fact, let, just look. It might even have one there right now. It, you
Leo Laporte (00:25:48):
Too.
Paul Thurrott (00:25:49):
I must, I saw, I saw one recently.
Leo Laporte (00:25:51):
Gmail will also say, oh, you haven't read this newsletter in a while. Do you want to unsubscribe? I think that's good. That's things like that are
Paul Thurrott (00:25:57):
Useful. That's a very useful feature.
Mary Jo Foley (00:25:58):
Yeah. The, the pit of something is deciding for me, it's important. Like you don't know what you don't know. What I think is important. Well, maybe
Leo Laporte (00:26:07):
Though there are some signals that are pretty concrete. Like it came from the boss TWiTo weeks ago. You never replied
Paul Thurrott (00:26:11):
And it might be
Mary Jo Foley (00:26:12):
No, I ignore those all the time.
Leo Laporte (00:26:14):
<Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:26:16):
So
Leo Laporte (00:26:16):
You mention scoff laws like you, Mary Jo <laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:19):
So Mary Jo mentioned pinning, which is another feature, which may, that may even be a outlook today. I'm not even sure, but the pinning is kind of the manual version of that. You, you, cuz you can star things today and I do that, but they still move down in the list. So pending is something like, this is important. I can't deal with this now, keep it at the top of the inbox. So I always see it until I get rid of it. That's good. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:26:40):
That's good feature. All email has flagging or something like that. That's
Mary Jo Foley (00:26:43):
That's right. That kind of thing is good. Yeah. That like when you decide yeah it's important and you pin it. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:49):
So I'll just say I the, the feature that you don't like, whatever it's, what's it called? The what is it called? I don't even know recommendations or whatever. The, the similar feature in Gmail, when that pops up, I actually don't, it doesn't bother me. Sometimes it's useful cuz sometimes I just forget, I get a lot of email, you know, I'm busy like I am this week. Yeah. And and I forget things and then I see it. I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I need to follow up on this or I, it surfaces and I say, yeah, I don't care. And then you can click whatever. I don't know how you click, but it's something you can click. And it says it goes away. So I don't know. No. <laugh> you get the look at your face. Like yeah. I, I hear you. I am not listening to you.
Leo Laporte (00:27:28):
<Laugh>
Mary Jo Foley (00:27:28):
Yeah. <Laugh> it's a, it's a no, for me as Simon, Cowell would say
Leo Laporte (00:27:33):
<Laugh> there you go.
Mary Jo Foley (00:27:35):
Okay. No, that's a no that's a, no, that feature has to have a turn off button that is permanent and you never see it ever
Paul Thurrott (00:27:42):
<Laugh> I bet it does. Or worst case scenario. It's something that's configurable from your organization.
Leo Laporte (00:27:48):
Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:27:48):
Right. Or it's gonna be like focused inbox and you turn it off and it always tries to come back on every single thing, putting
Leo Laporte (00:27:53):
In features. If you can turn them off and stay. Yeah. Is is okay with me.
Mary Jo Foley (00:27:58):
If it stays off. Yeah. That's it's
Paul Thurrott (00:28:00):
Gotta stay in an ideal world. This would sink back to your settings and you can figure this on a different device. It knows you don't like it. That might be
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:08):
Correct.
Paul Thurrott (00:28:08):
Yeah. But they don't, they don't ever do that.
Leo Laporte (00:28:10):
I do like the idea of this becoming a view in the in loop. This is the loop is their notion,
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:15):
The loop component things
Leo Laporte (00:28:17):
Copycat. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:28:19):
Yep. I think that's
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:19):
Crazy idea. Idea. Right? So there's a loop thing that we don't know. We don't know when this is coming, the loop app that's like notion then there are these things called loop components that are discreet things like a to-do list or an email they go
Leo Laporte (00:28:32):
Hand in hand. Cause you could embed them in your it's
Paul Thurrott (00:28:35):
It's a TWiTo-way street. Yeah,
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:36):
Exactly. Yeah. So this an email it's like gonna have a dropdown where you can pick off like a component and say, you know Excel spreadsheet, and then you put it in your email and then everybody who gets the email can update it. If you give them permissions and automatically updated.
Leo Laporte (00:28:53):
I love
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:53):
Insight. The moment you do it. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:28:55):
Yeah. The other nice thing about this system is that with outlook moving to be architecturally, maybe not the right word, but more like a teams in some way, you know, you have this option. I like to work in outlook. And so all that stuff is there. I like to work in teams. So all that stuff is there. Right? it, it, it lets people work the way they want, which I think was one of the big pushbacks against teams. When it first came, it was like, wait a minute. Were we we're all moving to chat? Like we're teenagers now. Although I think people, you know, over time have seen the value of chat based communication. Honestly,
Mary Jo Foley (00:29:30):
Microsoft has this idea. You're right. You're, you're exactly right. This is what they're doing. They have these things. They call their hubs teams is a hub and emails, a hub. And they know some people organize their whole life around email and some organize their whole life around teams. So they're trying to make it so developers, when they write an app, it can be an app for teams and outlook. Like the same app can work in both places. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:29:54):
The other thing is that calendar board feature that used to be project mocha is in many ways like notion itself. It is you, you can plug different components into it, different data sources, different things. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and you have this kind of a almost a dashboard yeah. Of things that are important to you. I mean, it's, it's, that's a pretty good idea.
Mary Jo Foley (00:30:16):
I mean, am my outlook.com now I have my calendar pinned to the side, so it's always open. Cause I like that. I like having that always right there. So when I'm like doing email, I can just look at, oh yeah, I can do this. Or I can't. Yep. So this board thing is gonna be like that. It's gonna let you see a lot of different things while you're,
Paul Thurrott (00:30:36):
And it's one of several things you can pin over there. Right. There's like a, kind of a, my day view, which, you know, outlook has had some version of this. I mean probably since geez, a long time ago, 2000, 2001, whatever. Yeah. But yeah, again, the idea here is we all work a little differently. We all have our own preferences and you can pin or not pin, whatever it is you want over there. And that's, it's created this custom view that works for you. So that's all good.
Mary Jo Foley (00:31:03):
Yep. Yeah. But you know, what was so funny? <Laugh> it was so funny. How low key, how low key this announcement was yesterday. Right, right. They didn't even like tip us to it like a couple of our, of our frequent readers and contributors, like Tara Han and he's he saw it and he goes, Hey, I dunno if you saw, they just dropped project Monarch. Like there it is. <Laugh> yeah. I was like,
Paul Thurrott (00:31:28):
No, it's not like we haven't been working on this for three years with constant delays and everyone's been waiting for it. No, that, that never happened. It's just a little project <laugh> you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:31:38):
I really thought it would be, I, I actually was wondering if they were gonna announce that at build, like, I, I, they were, this is a pretty big deal, right.
Paul Thurrott (00:31:46):
I think because of the, the leaks and I think what was gonna happen was some of that backend functionality was gonna become enabled and they didn't want people to see it outta context in the leak. And they said, look, we just gotta just come clean about it. And maybe build will be the loop part of it. And they'll talk about all the extensibility and Yep. The standalone loop application too. So right. We'll see. That's soon right next week.
Mary Jo Foley (00:32:10):
Yeah. So bill here, speaking of te it is next week speaking of Tero, he's clarifying the Mac stuff for us. So he said, okay. The current outlook for Mac preview is a native app. It's not the web view app. Right. okay. That's what I thought. And he said the Mac OS preview is on the roadmap for the web view TWiTo team. So there is a Mac, a Mac outlook preview out there that is not the same thing as this <laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:39):
Well, go to them to mention that in the blog post, like it was,
Mary Jo Foley (00:32:41):
I know, right? Yeah. Weird. I gotta go back and tell my story.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:45):
<Laugh> I think what they're trying to show is some continuum of updates on outlook. Like yeah. You know, we we've been busy, we work on all these different things. We just did this. Now we're doing this, you know? Right. But it did make it seem like they were somehow the same thing. Same. Yeah,
Mary Jo Foley (00:33:00):
Yeah. Yeah. So project Monarch, finally we have the code officially. There it is starting with windows <laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:33:10):
With the, you know, as with the leak, it was a little underwhelming in a sense, not because, again, not cuz it's bad, but there was such a buildup for this. And it was like, it was wait, this is just the web app. Like what, like, I don't know. Okay. Yeah. I hope they are not basing offline support on a PSD file by the PST file, by the way. <Laugh> I guess we'll see. But
Mary Jo Foley (00:33:32):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:33:34):
All right. I wanna take a little break. We have many more fabulous subjects to talk about
Paul Thurrott (00:33:40):
To beat to death, to beat this only weekend to death
Leo Laporte (00:33:44):
<Laugh> but no, I think out, you know, so many people use outlook. It is really the backbone of a lot of enterprises. So it's, you know, this is a big subject. It's a big deal that they right. It, this project Monarch is finally here.
Mary Jo Foley (00:33:56):
Woo. Who? Woo <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:34:00):
A lot of us really have looked to other ways of communicating over email. I don't know about you. I, I find email's very, very difficult
Leo Laporte (00:34:10):
Especially for like real time conversation here at TWiTit. We use slack like a lot of enterprises do. And our sponsor for this segment is actually I think a very clever use of slack collide. It's a new take on endpoint manager. K O L I D E. The, the problem with endpoint management of course is they're really <laugh> a lot of ID departments are very coercive. You know, maybe yours, like you gotta do this. I understand. Believe me. I, I'm not saying no. It's a, I completely understand to the point where they'll, you know, put crazy glue in USB ports, things like that. There is a problem though, and you maybe have already experienced that. The more you push that way, the more likely the user, especially now that users are working at home are gonna throw up their hands. Say, forget it.
Leo Laporte (00:34:57):
I'm just gonna use my laptop. And that's worse for everybody. <Laugh> that's just, that's not the right answer to endpoint management. So collide answers the kind of age, old question of how do we get users to be more secure and to get them more involved. So they, they kind of understand what they're doing and buy into it. And I love this idea. This is complete contrast to, you know, MDM, other old school device management systems it's built by like-minded security practitioners who understand how important this stuff is, but who have seen just how MDM was disrupting their users, frustrating them even causing 'em to switch to their personal hardware without telling anyone. And that is not good collide doesn't lock down a device. It takes a user focused approach that communicates security recommendations to your employees directly on slack. Now you, you gotta be a slack house.
Leo Laporte (00:35:50):
So if you're not, you should probably move to slack. Honestly, it's that good? We are. What happens is collide. The first thing that happens is the, the new employee or, or when you start using collide, your employees get a slack message that says, Hey, let's install the the collide endpoint agent. We're gonna do this together. You, the employee will actually do it really. They're learning, they're understanding better what's going on. So they feel more in control. And then and from then on's gonna keep an eye on what's going on. The, the agent will monitor. And if it sees a security flaw or proactively, you know, if you wanna start warning people about spear fishing things, it'll send us lack message with recommendations, simple things like, you know the screen lock isn't set correctly. And so coital sent a slack message saying, Hey, I notice it's your, your screen lock is not password protected.
Leo Laporte (00:36:43):
You know, that means when you go to lunch, anybody could send an email from your machine, let me help you fix that. And it walks them through even kind of more nuanced things like setting up TWiTo-factor backups, or maybe even like they did that. But then they back up coder in their download folder, unencrypted wide open and, and Kaleel notice that. And they'll say, Hey, thank you for setting up TWiTo-factor. But you know, in your download folder, the codes are still there. Let's move. 'em Somewhere more secure. And because it's talking directly to the users, Kae is educating them about the company's policies, how to keep their devices secure, using real examples, not theoretical scenarios, and they feel more involved. They, you want a workforce that is paying attention. That's exactly what collide does, I think is so brilliant. Linux Mac windows puts end users first for any team that uses slack completely cross-platform as is slack, right?
Leo Laporte (00:37:40):
You can get endpoint management that puts users first at collide.com/ww. Learn more activate a 14 day trial free today. You don't need to give 'em a credit card just, you know, try it for free. I think you'll really be impressed. Even if you just go to the website, you'll see some examples of collide messages. And I think you'll see how, what a great idea this is. K O L I D e.com/ww. Right now you can get a goody bag of collide swag too. After signing up for a new trial is their way of saying thank you. K O L I D E collide.com/ww. We thank them so much for supporting windows weekly. And we thank you for supporting windows weekly. When you use that address, it lets 'em know that, that you saw it here. And that's really important to us on the show, collide.com/ww. Let's talk about Microsoft 365. I mean, now we already have, but there's more, yeah, there's more,
Paul Thurrott (00:38:40):
Yeah. We mentioned Microsoft teams and you'll be happy to know that your nightmare is over after only five years. Microsoft teams is now available in the, when sorry, the Microsoft store as we call it. No, <laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:38:51):
It wasn't before.
Paul Thurrott (00:38:53):
No it was a hard computer science problem. That's hysterical there, there was something about the design of the team's website, where I, you know, every time I set up a computer, I have to install teams and I have to go to the web and I would type in download Microsoft teams. And it would go to that page and I'd click on the consumer version by mistake, because for some reason it's seemed like that was the right thing to do. And then I would stall it, try to sign it with my commercial account. I'd be told I could, oh, no, actually I'm sorry. You would tell me I already have it. <Laugh> then I would go back to the site, which I've closed the browser, you know, so now you can get it through the store and I, is that easier? I don't know, maybe, but it's the, it's only the commercial version. Obviously if you have windows 11, you get the, the consumer version built into the system. If you have windows 10, you have to download it, load that separately as well. I don't know why anyone would, but the commercial version is actually very useful. So I could see, I could see getting that through the store. Yeah. yeah, no, no big deal. It's it's, it's identical to my understanding. I don't think there's any difference or any advantage or disadvantage to getting it that way, but it is available. Good.
Paul Thurrott (00:39:59):
Yeah. I guess <laugh> I guess,
Mary Jo Foley (00:40:02):
I don't know. No here. I forgot to put this in the notes, but I don't know if you saw that Microsoft is going to change quick assist to be a store app also.
Paul Thurrott (00:40:13):
Yes, <laugh> that's right.
Mary Jo Foley (00:40:14):
So we should, we should
Paul Thurrott (00:40:15):
Explain what that
Mary Jo Foley (00:40:16):
Means. We should. So quick assist is this tool you can use to help people remotely who need you to take control of their PC? It's built into windows 10, windows 11, if you use it right now, if you like on your windows machine, it'll give you a popup message that says, as of may, I think it's May 23rd. You are going to have to go get the store app to keep, to continue using quick assist. I think this is kind of a mistake on Microsoft's part because you're
Paul Thurrott (00:40:46):
Not alone.
Mary Jo Foley (00:40:47):
I, I use this with my mom when I need to help her with something with her PC. If she has to go get an app from the store. I mean, it's not that hard, but like trying to talk her through that, I think you have to change the local adminis administrator setting to enable someone to use it. <Laugh> yeah, and I, I just was looking at all these things. I'm like, oh man, it's already hard enough to get her to type in quick assist in the search box. Like <laugh>,
Paul Thurrott (00:41:17):
What's the, what's the rationale for this change? Have you seen anything?
Mary Jo Foley (00:41:21):
I have not seen anything, but I don't know if you remember when we were first hearing about this thing, like feature, experience, pack, and we were trying to figure out what that was. One of the things that was in that category of things that would be updated independently was quick assist. And I don't think it dawned on me what that meant until now. I'm like, oh, that means it's gonna be an app that's updated and available to the store for
Paul Thurrott (00:41:44):
Some reason, given the way that Microsoft updates windows now, by which I mean continuously. Yeah. What's the difference, you know, why can't it just be in the, in the application? Yeah. It tells you to go get the new versions from the store. I'd like to know what they're doing there. I don't know. I can't understand what the point of that is.
Mary Jo Foley (00:42:03):
I don't, I'm not really sure.
Leo Laporte (00:42:05):
Get you used to using the store.
Paul Thurrott (00:42:07):
Hopefully what your mother's problem is is that the store's not working because <laugh>, you're not gonna be able to help her with that. Yeah. You know?
Leo Laporte (00:42:15):
Hmm.
Mary Jo Foley (00:42:16):
Yeah. So I, and then once you have the app, at least you don't have to do it every time. Like, like if I can get it on our PC, once it'll be there
Leo Laporte (00:42:25):
And update automatically and all that stuff, I mean, that's good. Right?
Mary Jo Foley (00:42:29):
Yeah. Guess how much do you really need to update quick assist?
Leo Laporte (00:42:33):
Well, I don't know, but if there were a flaw, it you'd want it updated. So, but as long as they
Paul Thurrott (00:42:38):
Can, they can do that in windows. They don't have to wait
Leo Laporte (00:42:41):
For, they don't, they don't have to that's Tuesday.
Paul Thurrott (00:42:42):
Right? Yeah. I don't understand the
Leo Laporte (00:42:44):
I'm just, I'm thinking that stuff that's in the app store gets automatically updated old time. Right? Is that not that not the case on windows?
Paul Thurrott (00:42:54):
No, that's true. That's true. But that's true of, it could be true of an app that comes with windows too. I, I don't.
Leo Laporte (00:42:59):
Yeah. I mean, they could push out an update, but they don't like to. Right. They don't.
Paul Thurrott (00:43:03):
No
Leo Laporte (00:43:04):
<Laugh> no, I don't know. I feel like something that you get in the store is more likely to be up to date
Paul Thurrott (00:43:10):
More windows like iOS, like Android is one of those things where if you randomly one day say I'm just gonna see what apps are available. You'll find there are like 117, you know, updates. I mean, it's weird. Like,
Leo Laporte (00:43:23):
Well, that's true. You would think they'd be updating in the background, but everything does that too. It's not my iPhone does that too. I think it's just staged out or
Paul Thurrott (00:43:29):
Something. The idea is don't look, <laugh> you'll wonder
Leo Laporte (00:43:32):
What's don't be a secret. What's
Paul Thurrott (00:43:33):
Going,
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:34):
Don't be a seeker
Leo Laporte (00:43:35):
People. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:43:36):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:43:38):
Do not seek or you shall find
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:42):
Exactly
Leo Laporte (00:43:42):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. Less. He shall find.
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:46):
Yeah. That might come up on your call and show though. Leo, when people can't see quick assist anymore.
Leo Laporte (00:43:52):
<Laugh> yeah, sure. It will.
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:54):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:43:55):
And your mom, you say you want your mom to have quick assist.
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:58):
Yeah. Well cuz whenever she's like, can you just take control my patient
Leo Laporte (00:44:01):
That way you can easily fix it and
Mary Jo Foley (00:44:03):
Right. So I'll just be like, okay mom, you have to call up quick assist. She goes, what? What are you telling me? I said, type in quick assist. Quick resist.
Leo Laporte (00:44:11):
No
Mary Jo Foley (00:44:12):
Quick assist. <Laugh> I'm like start typing the word quick. She goes, are you saying quick? Like fast? Oh Lord. Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:44:19):
Oh Lord.
Mary Jo Foley (00:44:20):
And I'm like, okay, now they're gonna give you a code that you have to read me the number and I have to put it in my system and you have to don't touch it while I'm like controlling your pieces of
Paul Thurrott (00:44:28):
The only thing better than kids is parents.
Leo Laporte (00:44:30):
Oh Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:44:33):
My mother, I, I, I would've told the story before. My mother's so disconnected from what I do for a living that one time she asked me, this is a few years ago now, but she said, so, so writing about Microsoft, right? I said, yeah, mom. And she goes, what about that other company? And I'm like that other company <laugh> and she says, yeah. And I said apple, and she goes, yeah, that one. Are they still around?
Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
<Laugh> I'm like, I love normals. Yes. I love them. Yes. Yeah. My mom, my mom said you still work? I said, yes. Yes. You still have TWiTI said, I thought you
Mary Jo Foley (00:45:01):
Radio. She
Leo Laporte (00:45:01):
Said, I thought you sold that a long time ago. I said, no, no, Nope. I'm still doing it. <Laugh> oh,
Mary Jo Foley (00:45:08):
My mom knows you, Leo. She always says how's Leo.
Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
Oh, that's nice. Oh, I'm glad to
Paul Thurrott (00:45:13):
Hear that. Leo should help
Leo Laporte (00:45:15):
Your brother with no, no. Oh
Mary Jo Foley (00:45:17):
No. Oh, that'd be hilarious. If I had my mom call in on your show something. Well
Leo Laporte (00:45:21):
That's okay. Totally could. That'd be hysterical. I'd love that. That's funny. She's more than welcome to anytime. And I'll ask about quick assist.
Mary Jo Foley (00:45:29):
Yeah. Oh God.
Leo Laporte (00:45:31):
<Laugh> I suppose telling you that control, win cue.
Mary Jo Foley (00:45:35):
I know somebody else said tele control, win cue. I'm like, oh guys, like
Leo Laporte (00:45:39):
That's all know, like what's control whenever.
Mary Jo Foley (00:45:42):
That's how I told my mom to press control. I'll delete. And she goes, okay. And I just hear the phone on the go down. I'm like mom, no
Leo Laporte (00:45:49):
Mom, mom,
Mary Jo Foley (00:45:49):
Mom. She's like, no, I can't do this. I can't press three cheese at once. If I, the phone, that's a good point. I'm like,
Paul Thurrott (00:45:56):
Hey, literal, reboot the computer one time while we were recording windows weekly. So
Leo Laporte (00:46:01):
I think I even asked you ahead of time. I said, should I press return? And you said no. And that was I'm like, no, that was the last we heard of Paul. Yeah. <Laugh> so I do see this believing computer article where windows admins have been expressing their dismay about Microsoft's decision to move quick assists to the store. I just think that's a better place for it. I think that's just a more logical
Mary Jo Foley (00:46:27):
Can't we just have some things like that. Are utilities still in windows?
Leo Laporte (00:46:30):
Well, that's true. It should just be always there. But I think right, maybe that some people would not like having a remote access program, always running on their system kind of thing.
Paul Thurrott (00:46:39):
So it's the way it is today is the existing act app acts like sort of a stub
Leo Laporte (00:46:45):
There's do anything. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:46:46):
But it tells you, you have to go to the store, you can click a button. So right. If the, if that continues that's okay. At least the people who are trying to find it, find something and then they know they have to update. Yeah. As long as they don't just remove it without any message whatsoever.
Leo Laporte (00:47:00):
Yeah. I think the, it guys are more saying like, I want this on all my computers. Do I have to go to each computer one by one? Yeah, sure. Cause that's no fun. Right, right, right. Yeah. alright. Well at least we know where it is. It's the little devil's hiding now. <Laugh> nowhere to find it secure neTWiTork for edges out
Paul Thurrott (00:47:26):
Sort of. So this has come up a few times in the past. This is that the sort of limited VPN that Microsoft is adding to Microsoft edge it's in the Canary channel, there was some documentation I think, up on docs.microsoft.com that explained how it worked. And that's how most people kind of found out about it. If you do install the Canary version of Microsoft edge, what I've found, because I've done this on a few computers, you probably won't get it. <Laugh>, you know, it's, it's one of those things that kind of rolls out over time. So it's still, we still don't have the answers to our questions. You know, we know that there's some sort of limited da data sharing with cloud flare that will be automatically deleted pretty quickly. We know that you can get a gigabyte for free every month.
Paul Thurrott (00:48:06):
We don't know if they're gonna offer the ability to get more data or if they're gonna offer Microsoft 365 subscribers, a higher allotment or anything like that. So it's still kind of early days. I guess the thing that's happened here is sort of like what happened with the new outlook. It basically just kind of went official <laugh>, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> so it, you know, it leaked people, you know, at least documentation leaked I've yet to see it. So I'm eager to write about this. I have edge Creek and area now on both of the computers I have with me, you know, just in case mm-hmm, <affirmative> I'd like to use a VPN from Mexico. That'd be fun. So we'll see. But they, they basically acknowledged it, I guess, is what this says. And it's gonna be called edge secure neTWiTork because edge VPN is too complicated
Leo Laporte (00:48:49):
Or something. Well, cuz I say it's not really a VPN either. Right? So they don't want call it that. And probably there are a lot of third party VPN providers who would be very upset if they did. Sure.
Paul Thurrott (00:48:59):
Well, it's not like they're putting antivirus in windows, Leo, come on.
Leo Laporte (00:49:02):
That's fine. <Laugh> you know, we thought when they announced that years ago, that that would be the end for third party antivirus, but they're they're bigger than ever. In fact, I was just looking at the the order of my Dell 15 inch windows, 11 machine. Yeah. And I apparently paid $50 for McAfee, secure, safe, forever for a year, but I didn't. Oh, but they just bill that in.
Paul Thurrott (00:49:29):
Right. Did you get charged for it?
Leo Laporte (00:49:30):
Isn't it? Yeah. Well, it's I, I guess, I mean,
Paul Thurrott (00:49:34):
Oh boy, that's not, that's not okay.
Leo Laporte (00:49:36):
That's not okay. No. I
Paul Thurrott (00:49:38):
Would, I'd give them a call.
Leo Laporte (00:49:39):
I should call 'em say, look, I don't want that. They haven't started building it.
Paul Thurrott (00:49:42):
Yeah. But you know what? You don't wanna delay it until September
Leo Laporte (00:49:45):
Either. Yeah. We could do that for you. When do you wanna get your computer in 2025? <Laugh> you have your choice of months? Yep. Yeah, you're right. I don't wanna mess with it.
Paul Thurrott (00:49:55):
I don't know. Just a
Leo Laporte (00:49:56):
Thought. It just, you know, so again, there's still a brisk market for antivirus. Third party antivirus on windows, even though you probably don't need it.
Paul Thurrott (00:50:07):
I don't think anyone needs it. No, Probably don't. What do I know?
Leo Laporte (00:50:11):
Probably don't Microsoft windows, 11 three words that seldom go together. No, no. They always go together. <Laugh> and now it's, it's available for broad deployment. What
Paul Thurrott (00:50:28):
We have to a, we have to add the phrase, whatever that means.
Leo Laporte (00:50:31):
What the hell
Paul Thurrott (00:50:32):
This comes up. Every version of windows.
Leo Laporte (00:50:34):
It does. So it wasn't before.
Paul Thurrott (00:50:39):
Well
Leo Laporte (00:50:40):
<Laugh> as of May 17th, it is Des meated for broad deployment.
Paul Thurrott (00:50:45):
Tell me if Mary Jo, if this is what you think this means, cuz this is my understanding. They deploy windows 11 in this case or any new version of windows to a subset of the machines out there is you can get it through windows update. They have a probably like a chart or table or something. They're looking at configurations known good configurations. They wanna send it to the people that they know will have the best experience and the fewest problems first. Yeah. Depending on that goes, they broaden it out over time. Different. They hit different milestones, different percentages of the population. I believe that general our broad deployment means there are no more major roadblocks or show stoppers or whatever that if your hardware is technically compatible with windows 11, you know, eighth gen or newer, the Intel side, et cetera, et cetera you will now get it. Basically, if you go to windows update and you're on windows 10, you will be offered windows 11. I think that's what that means because
Leo Laporte (00:51:40):
It sounds known issues and notifications. Yeah. So this is like a notification. That's go, is it for it? People more than anything? Who's this for?
Mary Jo Foley (00:51:51):
Well it, it, they're letting it, people know that they're gonna be pushing it through windows update and the update mechanisms. Right. So they'll know that people are gonna start getting it and they'll have the option unless their organization turns it off. I believe to stay on windows 10 or go to 11. I mean, some organizations will just block you and say, you're staying on 10. Like you don't care if you get that note. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:52:14):
Most of 'em should have done this once ago. Right. They would've.
Leo Laporte (00:52:17):
Right. Yeah. Right. Is that what safeguard holds are?
Mary Jo Foley (00:52:21):
Yeah. That is safeguard holds. I oh no. Actually safeguard holds, I think means Microsoft doesn't push it out because it knows that certain machines will have problems with certain
Leo Laporte (00:52:33):
Configurations. So yeah. Maybe you have a neTWiTork
Paul Thurrott (00:52:34):
Card or something that has issues
Leo Laporte (00:52:37):
One's 11. So there are no known big
Mary Jo Foley (00:52:40):
Issues. Right. So now it, like it's basically been in the market, you know, for how long, like <laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:52:47):
Well also it's October,
Mary Jo Foley (00:52:48):
So
Leo Laporte (00:52:49):
Eight
Paul Thurrott (00:52:49):
Months-Ish I
Leo Laporte (00:52:50):
Guess eight
Mary Jo Foley (00:52:50):
Months.
Leo Laporte (00:52:51):
Seven, eight months. Huh? Wow.
Mary Jo Foley (00:52:53):
I know it feels so much longer. Doesn't like, hasn't it been a couple years? <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:52:58):
Yep. Yes. It's now the EF is this make it, the official version of windows now kind of, is that kind of what this,
Paul Thurrott (00:53:04):
Well, the version hasn't, well, the version has changed, but it's separate from this. It does that doesn't impact. There's kind of TWiTo separate issues. This is just
Leo Laporte (00:53:12):
10 is still considered to be an official. It is version of windows
Mary Jo Foley (00:53:17):
And the vast majority of windows PCs are on 10. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:53:20):
Yeah,
Paul Thurrott (00:53:20):
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yep. And will be, you know, for some time to come, I would
Leo Laporte (00:53:24):
Think. Okay. Yeah. Time for another break. Our show today brought to you by a name, you know, a Cronus, how many years for years we've been recommending a Cronus true image as being like kind of the king of the of the imaging tools. Well, a Cronus is bundled true image into a tool called Aros cyber protect home office, which solves the TWiTo issues that many people and enterprises and home offices have the risk of data loss from hard drive failure and coffee spills, but also from ransomware and other cyber threats, a Kronos cyber protect home office, formerly a Kronos Truman offers everything you need to safeguard your device. It's the only cyber protection solution that delivers a unique integration of data protection and cyber security in one app windows and Mac OS and Android and iOS devices can take advantage of a Cronus cyber protect home office.
Leo Laporte (00:54:27):
Of course the, you know, the, one of the great benefits of imaging is it's quick for backup and recovery because it backs up everything. It makes a complete image of your hard drive. So you'll never lose precious files or expensive applications. Then you can restore a full system in minutes, but you can also, and you know, this is important to know, do individual files as well, which means you can back up what you want, where you want locally. You can even do it. This is something relatively new. The acro is cloud. So you've got cloud backup too. Imagine having an image in the cloud, which is great. You can restore your entire system in, in, in minutes, whether it's to new hardware or the original hardware you can even do. And this is a great feature, too direct cloud to cloud backups of your Microsoft 365 account.
Leo Laporte (00:55:17):
That includes outlook.com mail. It includes OneDrive. This is a great solution for keeping you backed up. If you're a business or a small off small business or a home office, you need this kind of thing. And of course from a Cronus, you get advanced cyber security, which is there to stop any cyber attack from damaging that data or applications or even your system. You blocks attacks in real time before malware ransomware or crypto jackers can cause damage it'll find any hidden infections. Looking on your system with flexible antivirus scans. I had somebody call the radio show the other day saying, I wanna image my drive, but I don't want to bring any malware along with it. This is what you need, right? This is what you need. You now can have confidence that your backup not only is secure, but it contains nothing dangerous in it.
Leo Laporte (00:56:07):
And management's a lot easier because you're using a single tool. You can reduce the complexity and the cost and the risk of using multiple solutions. Maybe even incompatible solutions, simplify your protection by managing everything through a single intuitive interface, TWiTo click set up and set and forget options means you don't have to think about it. It just get it done. Cros, cyber protect home office, more than just a backup, more than just an antivirus. It's peace of mind. Knowing your devices and backups are protected. Your data is safe, accessible, private, authentic, and secure. Keep your digital world safe from all threats. With the only cyber protection solution that delivers a unique integration of data protection and cyber security in one it's a Cronus cyber protect home office, formerly a Cronus true image. Go to the website, go dot Aros. A C R O N I s.com/ww. That's go do cronus.com/ww. Don't forget to use that address so that they know you saw it here on windows weekly, go dorono.com/ww. And we thank them so much for their support of the show. Back to Paul, Mary Jo windows weekly. Okay. To balance out the giant Xbox news, that's still to come <laugh>
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:30):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:57:31):
Let's talk about what's going on inside. Big green. Does he call it big green anymore? Is that,
Paul Thurrott (00:57:39):
Is that isn't big green? Wasn't that? Noel?
Leo Laporte (00:57:41):
Oh, maybe Nove is big green. Big red was Nove. Oh, big red. Blue is IBM.
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:46):
Some people call them green,
Leo Laporte (00:57:48):
But the green is that's old. That's old school green. What's going on inside Microsoft corporate.
Paul Thurrott (00:57:55):
What is going on? Do you understand this? This is basically just job retention.
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:59):
Some people, yeah. Some, some people at Microsoft are gonna get more money because cause everyone knows. There you go right now because
Paul Thurrott (00:58:07):
Windows eight was so successful.
Mary Jo Foley (00:58:09):
<Laugh> the job climate is very robust right at the moment. And right. A lot of people have been picked off at Microsoft recently because other companies in the Pacific Northwest especially are paying more. So there there's been a lot of employee complaints about, you know, our, even though we make a lot of money here, we, we aren't, we aren't being compensated the same as people at AWS and Google and meta. So Satya sent out an email to everyone saying we're investing in our annual rewards budget. We're gonna double the global merit budget. It's not people not, everyone's getting a, a TWiTo time raise or anything like this, but they're going to make merit raises higher and bigger,
Paul Thurrott (00:58:57):
I think. Yeah. Just to prevent people from going elsewhere. Basically. That's how I kinda took it. Okay.
Mary Jo Foley (00:59:02):
Yeah. Pretty much.
Paul Thurrott (00:59:03):
Yeah. I think this is a problem with all these companies.
Mary Jo Foley (00:59:05):
It is right. Like everybody's like, it's, it's a free for all like pay wise right now. Cuz it's such, apple
Leo Laporte (00:59:12):
Keeps people at $200,000 not to go to Facebook. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:59:15):
There's a great story. In that book, we keep talking about where this group of high placed engineers were gonna leave the company and they basically finally figured we gotta do something and they said, look, we'll do anything. What do you have to do to stay? And they said, we wanna make a car
Leo Laporte (00:59:27):
<Laugh> that's right. That was, to me. That was from the book. Yeah. The biggest revelation was yep.
Paul Thurrott (00:59:32):
Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:59:33):
The car project didn't come from Tim cook. No. Anybody else that came from employees who
Paul Thurrott (00:59:38):
They were gonna leave to Tesla. Tesla, if you don't do it. Yep. Wow.
Leo Laporte (00:59:41):
Which just shows what a lame idea is. <Laugh> Never do what employees want to do. I could tell you that right
Paul Thurrott (00:59:48):
Now. Well, yeah. Okay. There's a great steam group drops quote about that. You know you anyway, but yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:59:53):
What did he say? Ask the employees said yout, do
Paul Thurrott (00:59:56):
He, did he basically did. He said you don't hire smart people to tell them what to do. That's true. You hire smart people's so they tell you what they want to do.
Leo Laporte (01:00:03):
That's true. Yeah. And then you say, no, we're not doing that. Exactly.
Paul Thurrott (01:00:08):
Well, you're still an employee. So you can say no, but you know, the point is listen and then
Leo Laporte (01:00:11):
No, I thought that was fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's only gotten worse in the intervening years. I mean keeping, you know, especially if you're stock
Paul Thurrott (01:00:20):
The car stuff in that book is some of the best that's it's unbelievable what they were working on. That's
Leo Laporte (01:00:24):
What I'm reading
Paul Thurrott (01:00:25):
Tonight. It's unbelievable. It's crazy. Mm-Hmm
Leo Laporte (01:00:27):
<Affirmative> it's fun. All right. Well good. Let's hope that it works to keep Microsoft stock is doing well, right?
Mary Jo Foley (01:00:34):
Yeah. It's not doing
Paul Thurrott (01:00:35):
As well as it in context.
Mary Jo Foley (01:00:37):
Right, right.
Paul Thurrott (01:00:38):
Yeah. But everyone, all the big tech companies are down right now. I mean, I think they're still in the same position, you know, Vivi the other companies, apple and so forth. Yeah,
Mary Jo Foley (01:00:48):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:00:49):
Yeah. Cause a lot of compensation comes from stock options, stock awards. So yeah, if you don't have a strong stock price, strong growth, it's hard
Paul Thurrott (01:00:57):
To originally you gonna give money,
Leo Laporte (01:00:58):
But yeah. Where are you gonna go?
Paul Thurrott (01:00:59):
Twititter? Show me the money. Right? That's TWiTitter.
Leo Laporte (01:01:02):
<Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (01:01:03):
How do, how do you feel about volatility?
Leo Laporte (01:01:06):
Oh Lord. Yeah. Actually Microsoft's down quite a bit.
Mary Jo Foley (01:01:10):
Yeah. Everybody is though right now. Right? Like I feel like the uncertainty of the times the war in Ukraine.
Paul Thurrott (01:01:16):
Well apple, the one time $4 trillion company. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:01:19):
Yeah. No I saw, I was gonna ask you guys what you thought of this. I saw somebody say, if Elon doesn't buy TWiTitter, who's the company most likely to step in. And I saw people saying Microsoft, I'm like, no, no,
Leo Laporte (01:01:29):
No, nobody, no,
Mary Jo Foley (01:01:31):
No.
Leo Laporte (01:01:31):
<Laugh> no, no. They've been trying to sell TWiTitter for years.
Mary Jo Foley (01:01:34):
They have, right? Yeah. After the TWiTitter talk thing you guys, after I was traumatized by that one
Paul Thurrott (01:01:40):
Too, I could see it though. I'm upset that you haven't
Leo Laporte (01:01:42):
Brought that they should hold on. Twititter is now. So Elon's offering $54 and 20 cents, right? Twititter is now $36 and 86 cents, which is you know, pretty clear signal that the stock market thinks this whole deal is could put,
Paul Thurrott (01:01:57):
Well, he's sent a lot of signals that he's this guy, what is he locally? The God of chaos.
Leo Laporte (01:02:02):
He is chaos. Like
Mary Jo Foley (01:02:03):
What? How can he legally get out of it though? Like, well TWiTitter
Paul Thurrott (01:02:06):
AADE into the room. That's
Leo Laporte (01:02:07):
What TWiTitter said. No, no TWiTitter said, no, we're gonna hold him to it. He signed,
Mary Jo Foley (01:02:10):
He didn't ask for due diligence before he signed. This is
Leo Laporte (01:02:13):
What's so annoying. Suddenly
Mary Jo Foley (01:02:14):
He suddenly like, oh wait, are there spam bots? I didn't think that
Leo Laporte (01:02:17):
He specifically waived due diligence in his offer. Now he's doing it and says, well, wait a minute. If I had known, well, no too bad, Elon,
Mary Jo Foley (01:02:26):
You had a chance.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:27):
This is a, a great example of genius, because people are geniuses are terrible at everything else. Other than that one thing they're good at. And I don't, I don't know. I don't, he,
Leo Laporte (01:02:39):
He sent a poop emoji to the CEO of TWiTitter, right?
Mary Jo Foley (01:02:43):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:02:43):
That's grown up.
Mary Jo Foley (01:02:45):
Yeah, no kidding.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:46):
We used to have a president that did the same thing, but yeah, for sure.
Leo Laporte (01:02:49):
No, I don't. No, you know what? I don't think Donald Trump even set a poop emoji.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:53):
<Laugh> okay.
Leo Laporte (01:02:54):
Even
Mary Jo Foley (01:02:55):
Trump Bann from TWiTitter before he couldn't, he,
Leo Laporte (01:02:56):
Even Trump never said a poop emoji. This is a new low for TWiTitter.
Paul Thurrott (01:03:01):
Yeah. All right. There you go.
Leo Laporte (01:03:03):
Any shakeups at the Microsoft?
Mary Jo Foley (01:03:07):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:03:07):
A few. A few. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:03:09):
Yeah. Well this one was kind of not too surprising. So Microsoft ha has had a lot of tur turmoil in the partner channel lately. They've been adding new programs in that haven't been too popular with some of their partners and trying to change terms of existing partnership programs, the guy who was the face of this for the past year, he, he was the one they put out there every time is something unpopular was they're like, Rodney, go talk to the partners. Right?
Paul Thurrott (01:03:37):
The John cable of the partner partner
Leo Laporte (01:03:39):
Pretty much.
Mary Jo Foley (01:03:40):
So. Yeah. Rodney Clark channel chief at Microsoft is taking a new role outside the company <laugh> that was announced this week. Tired
Paul Thurrott (01:03:48):
Of being a punching bag.
Mary Jo Foley (01:03:50):
Yeah, pretty much. I'm gonna be an executive officer at a publicly traded company that is a Microsoft partner, but he doesn't wanna do this job anymore. And who blames him? Right. Microsoft doesn't have a part, a channel chief right now. And they said they will appoint one before July 1st, which is the start of their fiscal. And they better because,
Paul Thurrott (01:04:07):
But also their partner
Mary Jo Foley (01:04:07):
Program is right after that. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:04:10):
I mean, look, unfortunately for the partner program or for the partners, there's a lot less partnering going on these days. Right? I mean, part of the problem with Microsoft doing all these first party services now is that partners are kind of superfluous. So, you know, we, we talk about like the evolution of the partner program, which is the wrong word. It's kind of the evolution, you know, they, they have to invent things that allow partners to make money. That, to me filled like these very short term things, you know, sign people up for Microsoft 365 and we'll give you a little bonus, you know, and you're supposed to get that every year, I guess, but this in the, in the past partners would be servicing office 365 or whatever, back in the day. Yeah. You know small business server installs, whatever they were. And there's less and less I think for partners to do meaning there's fewer ways for them to make money as well. And I think this is the problem. So this must be a terrible job to have to interact with these
Leo Laporte (01:05:06):
People. No,
Mary Jo Foley (01:05:06):
Seriously. I even a channel chief is not a fun job at Microsoft. No,
Paul Thurrott (01:05:10):
It's
Mary Jo Foley (01:05:11):
Gotta be terrible. It is not <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the other problem is, you know over the past few years, Microsoft has decided to kind of go direct with the bigger contracts, which isn't that surprising, right? Like when they talk on the call about multibillion dollar deals and multiple million dollar Azure contracts, these are their contracts, right? Like them going to the customer and par partnering, quote unquote with the customer. It's not partners getting in on the action. Right. That's right. The partners are getting kind of squeezed down to the smaller, mid, mid to small size deals in many cases. And they're not happy about that either. Yeah. Yet, in spite of all this, how many partners does Microsoft have resellers 400,000. Whoa.
Paul Thurrott (01:05:54):
Yeah. Well this is, but this is inertia almost, right?
Mary Jo Foley (01:05:58):
Eh,
Paul Thurrott (01:05:59):
Well it's where they gonna go. Yeah. You know, I mean, how many yeah. You know, there's no other Microsoft that right. But I mean, go, you think Amazon's a better partner than Microsoft?
Mary Jo Foley (01:06:08):
No, I don't. I don't. But I think, I think, yeah, the point is, it's just like, when people threaten to go Linux, like I don't like windows 11, I'm gonna go to Linux and Microsoft's like, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Haha.
Paul Thurrott (01:06:18):
Yeah. Good.
Leo Laporte (01:06:18):
Enjoy
Paul Thurrott (01:06:19):
Yourself. Yeah. Mary Jo's mother said, look, I can't find this quick whatever the sells
Mary Jo Foley (01:06:25):
Can't find the quick assist.
Paul Thurrott (01:06:26):
Yeah. Quick assist. I'm I'm Linn
Leo Laporte (01:06:28):
Mom, open the terminal. And when you sleep prompt, I want you to type these words.
Paul Thurrott (01:06:33):
She's like Mary Jo, I'm trying to figure out this grip thing. Do you
Leo Laporte (01:06:35):
<Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (01:06:36):
Do you know the switches?
Mary Jo Foley (01:06:37):
Do you know about gr can you help me? No, mom, no.
Leo Laporte (01:06:40):
Mom. I've been telling you gotta use a it's not yeah. Okay. Yeah. Little Linnux humor. Little Linux humor in there. Cheer everybody up. <Laugh> okay. Apple
Mary Jo Foley (01:06:55):
I, one more partner thing.
Leo Laporte (01:06:57):
Okay, go ahead.
Mary Jo Foley (01:06:58):
The European regulators,
Leo Laporte (01:07:00):
That's what I was gonna get to cuz apple and the Google have been getting hit hard by the EU and we feel like Microsoft's kind of kind of slipped by in the us, but I guess they're
Mary Jo Foley (01:07:10):
Still not in
Leo Laporte (01:07:11):
The EU still under some scrutiny.
Mary Jo Foley (01:07:15):
Yeah. So there was a change they made in their licensing actually three years ago in 2019, they made some changes that made it more expensive to run Microsoft sofTWiTare on other clouds. So if you were trying to run, say SQL server or even windows on AWS or Google or Alibaba, it w it was gonna start costing you a lot more money. At the time, the only people who complained were the big cloud vendors like AWS, they're like, Hey, what what's going on? And then when customers contracts started coming up for renewal, which started happening in the past year or TWiTo, the customer so saw the bill and they were like, what just happened to our bill? And it was because Microsoft changed the licensing. That's not me for a change. That's surprising. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:07:58):
Oh, now we've got TWiTo urban on
Paul Thurrott (01:08:02):
Modern, lower MCE anymore.
Leo Laporte (01:08:04):
<Laugh> I know I'm like, wait that's how, but wait a minute. The sirens in Mexico sound the same as they do here. They don't.
Paul Thurrott (01:08:08):
Yeah, they do. They're not European.
Leo Laporte (01:08:10):
Yeah, no, darn it. Oh, well,
Mary Jo Foley (01:08:12):
Yeah. But today so Microsoft kind of got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. The European few European cloud vendors went to EU and said, Hey, this isn't okay. They started investigating what Microsoft was doing. So Brad Smith said, oh, sorry, we didn't really realize what was going on and we're gonna fix it. So today there's a giant blog post. If you think Steven Sinofsky used to write long blog post, you should see this Brad Smith blog post. It pulls out all the stops. There's actually a few lines that are actually the meat of it, which is we're gonna undo some of these changes we did. But only for these smaller cloud vendors who are hosting our sofTWiTare for, for their customers, doesn't say anything about undoing the AWS or the Google cloud limitation. So if you're a customer and you're running it directly yourself, without going through one of these smaller vendors, it doesn't help you. I think their hands gonna get forced again. That's my guess about what's gonna happen here because this doesn't go far enough, but it's a start. At least they did something again. They did it because they get caught. Not because they were doing the right thing.
Paul Thurrott (01:09:19):
Right, right. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:09:21):
Well, this is one, I see how they might say, Hey, we're gonna make money on you. If you use our cloud, so we don't have to charge you as much for the sofTWiTare. That's kind of a, I mean, I don't know what it is in the EU. I know it's a pretty standard way of doing business.
Mary Jo Foley (01:09:32):
Right. And they said, if, Hey, Google could do this or, or yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:09:35):
We give you discounts if you using our stuff.
Mary Jo Foley (01:09:38):
Right. Right. Right. So, but the, but the cloud vendors were like, well, wait a minute, like you are letting us do this before.
Leo Laporte (01:09:44):
This is my big problem. Clamp down with the EU. Regulators is really, they're just doing the work of other companies who are pissed off competitors. And it's always, it's always driven by the competition, you know?
Paul Thurrott (01:09:58):
Well, well, right. So this is the antitrust difference beTWiTeen the us DEU and the in Europe is about competition. I guess I'm of TWiTo minds on that. I mean, if you're a small company that's being shut out by one of the big tech companies, there's a little bit of a side issue because those small companies are always European and the big companies are always American, but okay. Get over that for a second. I mean, if there was no place for them to go to be heard, you know, this that's what monopoly does. Right. I mean, I, we kind of need this, someone to look, you know, some regulatory body to look at this. I think the problem is I can't think of a single time the EU has ever said, you know, apple, Microsoft, Google, whatever. It's, they're doing fine. Don't worry about it.
Paul Thurrott (01:10:40):
<Laugh> you know, I think every time they investigate, they're like, oh yeah. Oh yeah, you're right. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. We're changing this. Oh yeah, yeah. This is gonna go every time. So, and then maybe that's fair. Maybe that is literally what needs to happen, but it's it has become a pretty it's the system seems almost, well, I shouldn't say it's game because honestly, I don't know that I've ever disagreed with them what they're doing, but it, it leaves open that possibility that if you can't compete, you can go through regulators and get your way that way.
Leo Laporte (01:11:10):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>
Paul Thurrott (01:11:11):
Maybe. I don't know.
Leo Laporte (01:11:13):
Maybe.
Mary Jo Foley (01:11:14):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:11:14):
I don't know. Yeah. All I notice is that blog post is like 8,000 where the line
Mary Jo Foley (01:11:18):
It is, it's such a long post and most of it has nothing to do with the matter at hand. It's just like all the investments they've made in Europe and how they're having
Paul Thurrott (01:11:26):
Europe. No, it's a lot of handwaving the idea is to distract, right? Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:11:30):
He's a lawyer, Brad Smith. He's the head lawyer at Microsoft.
Paul Thurrott (01:11:33):
He doesn't usually do this though. This is, this is unusual for him. Something this long,
Leo Laporte (01:11:38):
But this is for the public, not for regulators, right? Or,
Mary Jo Foley (01:11:41):
Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, and you know, it, it's really hard to tell that that you, they aren't really undoing the crux of what the problem is. I, I read it a few times. I'm like, I think they're fixing it. And then west Miller, who's a directions on Microsoft analyst said, nah, they're not really fixing it. They're what they're doing is they're fixing it for a very narrow category of customers and not the bigger complaint, which is if you're a customer or a partner running directly on AWS or Google cloud or Alibaba, it doesn't do anything for you. So,
Paul Thurrott (01:12:12):
Right.
Mary Jo Foley (01:12:13):
Yeah. And I'm guessing somebody will go back at 'em and point that out and then maybe there'll be another 8,000 word blog posts. Right. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:12:24):
For the rest, the rest of us. Yeah,
Mary Jo Foley (01:12:26):
Exactly. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:12:28):
Let's let's do little Xbox thing and take your time. Cuz my $30 sandwich is here. So
Mary Jo Foley (01:12:35):
What is your $30
Paul Thurrott (01:12:36):
Sandwich before I get started? I
Leo Laporte (01:12:37):
Hear about it. You, you wanna see it?
Mary Jo Foley (01:12:40):
What I hear what
Leo Laporte (01:12:40):
It is. Oh, look, what, what did you get? Is that AOA AOA.
Paul Thurrott (01:12:44):
Skaska
Leo Laporte (01:12:45):
So jealous. What you, what flavor did you get?
Paul Thurrott (01:12:47):
Can I always go? Can you like
Leo Laporte (01:12:48):
Cant? Yep.
Paul Thurrott (01:12:49):
So when Mary Jo was out Galvan around the courtroom or whatever she was doing, I used this as a cocktail because my wife has made a cocktail version of this. Yes, yes. Which tastes exactly like this. I hope there is a vodka. I hope so. But I don't think there is, anyway, this is arrived. So you buy these on the street and that, you know, that cost nothing.
Leo Laporte (01:13:06):
I'm so jealous. I know. And, and one of our chatters in the discord you saw at Mary Jo posted a sandwich, he's having, I said that looks as good as my $30 sandwich. He said, yeah, it was 55 Besos. It was like TWiTo 50. So this is a $35.
Paul Thurrott (01:13:23):
Yeah. Well you're in,
Leo Laporte (01:13:24):
It's a whole steak. Mary that's. What
Paul Thurrott (01:13:26):
Happens when you live in California
Leo Laporte (01:13:27):
Later? You don't want this. Trust me, Mary Jo. Trust
Mary Jo Foley (01:13:29):
Me. Tri tip. Is that tri tip?
Leo Laporte (01:13:32):
Actually it's a rib. They say a rib. It's a little bit. That's a little
Paul Thurrott (01:13:36):
Bit. That looks pretty good. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:13:38):
<Laugh> if I were with you, Paul, we'd be going out and having tacos. Trust me.
Paul Thurrott (01:13:43):
Oh yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:13:43):
Oh, I'm so jealous. So jealous.
Paul Thurrott (01:13:46):
It's not bad.
Leo Laporte (01:13:46):
Did you bring an Xbox to Mexico with you?
Paul Thurrott (01:13:49):
No, I, I <laugh>. Didn't think I was gonna be here. This,
Leo Laporte (01:13:52):
Yeah. You kind of moved in down there.
Paul Thurrott (01:13:54):
This
Leo Laporte (01:13:54):
Is good.
Paul Thurrott (01:13:55):
Yeah. I mean, if we didn't have cats, we could just stay here. I or a dog. Is
Leo Laporte (01:13:59):
I don'unno is anybody taking care of the animals?
Paul Thurrott (01:14:02):
Oh crap. No. Yes. we have, yeah, yeah, yeah. The dog is at a like a kennel type thing. And the, we have a, a niece who is coming over.
Leo Laporte (01:14:10):
That's what keeps us from from traveling all the time is Lisa's cats.
Paul Thurrott (01:14:16):
Well, cats are easy. Dogs are a lot harder.
Leo Laporte (01:14:18):
Yeah. Lisa wants a dog, but we keep saying no when 'em we can't,
Paul Thurrott (01:14:21):
We can't. No, we always said no because of this. And it's really expensive. This dog is like a hundred dollars a day. I mean,
Leo Laporte (01:14:26):
Well, kennels are not nice for dogs either.
Paul Thurrott (01:14:28):
Well, this, this one's actually is pretty nice. Yeah. You got a fancy, she loves it. She goes running in to see the people. Oh, go
Leo Laporte (01:14:34):
To MC JIS town. Dogs
Paul Thurrott (01:14:37):
Loves it. But, but by the time she's been there for a while, you know, she's ready to come home too.
Leo Laporte (01:14:42):
Yeah. Well what are you gonna do? Are you gonna go in tomorrow now or United tell you when their
Paul Thurrott (01:14:47):
Flights? No, we changed it to Saturday and we didn't have flight, so we couldn't do Wednesday or Thursday. We, you know this, then we have a work thing tomorrow. And then we said, well, if we're gonna, well then there were no flights Friday. We
Leo Laporte (01:14:59):
Build this tomorrow. Right?
Paul Thurrott (01:15:01):
No build starts
Leo Laporte (01:15:02):
It's next week.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:03):
Monday or Tuesday.
Leo Laporte (01:15:04):
Oh Tuesday. Okay. Tuesday next week. Okay.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:06):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:09):
I gotta be back for that. <Laugh> gotta
Leo Laporte (01:15:10):
Be back for that. We know we had
Paul Thurrott (01:15:12):
To do laundry. I, we don't have a laundry machine yet, so we had to go find a oh
Leo Laporte (01:15:15):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:16):
That cost. We did all our laundry for $3. It was funny.
Leo Laporte (01:15:19):
Anyway.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:20):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:15:21):
It's you don't need a washing machine.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:23):
Right? I know. That's why I said, said, why are we spend 8,800 bucks on a wash? Yeah, really?
Leo Laporte (01:15:28):
What fun? Yeah. Fun. Let's talk Xbox.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:33):
Yeah. So this goes back. I don't this, I don't remember how far back this goes. Some number of years ago. I think Brad might have been one of the first people to write about it in the transition with Xbox and all consoles from disc based to digital. There's this one big problem, which is that people have libraries of discs and they want to own those things digitally like that. We wanna be able to send 'em in or something and get a credit. And you know, some system and Microsoft has been working on something for a long time for this need. It's a, it's a real need, it's it? And I don't have any discs anymore, but during the Xbox 360 era, that was when I made that transition. And I had a bunch of things on disc that I just wanted digitally it's. So it's so archaic to have to stick a disc in a drive just to spin the thing up and get it going. So Xbox for me personally, I've been all digital, Xbox won an Xbox series X and S but that's not true of a lot of people. So Microsoft has been, we know this has been working for some systems, some solution for people of libraries of disc based games to get those games digitally. And I
Leo Laporte (01:16:42):
Gamer remember when you and mark would go to best by midnight to get the latest call of duty. I mean, there are certain, there's a certain,
Paul Thurrott (01:16:49):
It was cool. Yeah. Yeah. It was fun. I'd wake him up. He was like, you know, 10 or 12 years old or whatever. It's so cute. I'd wake him up at midnight every year and we'd drive over to best buy. Yeah. It was fun. And I remember, you know I don't remember which year it was, but I do remember the first year we didn't do that. <Laugh> and I still woke him up and we downloaded the game and, you know, <laugh>, it was still fun. And he, I think he still appreciated, but it's not the same, you know, as, as gone there. Not, not at all. Yeah. Yeah. What I, you know, I only play college duty basically. So what I've done over the years is as those older college duty games became less expensive digitally. I would buy them on sale or whatever.
Paul Thurrott (01:17:23):
So I actually have everything I want now digitally, but that's, you know, more other people obviously do different things. So there's a site or a blog or whatever called game ran that found a Microsoft patent that basically describes this system, what they're trying to do. So I'll just read this. This is their description. And it says, the owner simply appreciate the feel of their, I'm sorry, that's sofTWiTare owner show validation of optical discs using a secondary device is the name of this patent. And the idea is they, they have some system where you can plug it in. It reads the unique code that is on every disc, cuz every one of those is in fact unique. And it will facilitate the access, the switch of physical media to a digital license essentially. And this is actually kind of a big deal for some of the newer consoles.
Paul Thurrott (01:18:12):
I don't know, Xbox one, but Xbox wasn't there a disc list version of yeah. At least one previous generation system and, and Xbox series S of course is dis list. And so there's an issue right there. So they, they are working on it. It's on the way, hopefully <laugh>, you know it used to be called dis digital. That was the original name. Yeah. I'm sorry. Xbox one S all digital console. Yeah. But three years ago. So this has been a need for a while. I, I think it's finally gonna happen, at least this suggested, so we are working toward that future and let's see it is the middle of may. And I know that cuz for some reason, I'm still in Mexico. And that means we have more Xbox game pass titles. They usually release a bunch or at least now it's a bunch I should say at the beginning of the month.
Paul Thurrott (01:19:01):
And then again in around the 15th. So they've done that. You know, increasingly I look at these lists, I'm like, I don't know, but this year there, or this sorry, this half month, this, this period, we, there are TWiTo big ones for me. Jurassic world evolution TWiTo is kind of a big one. And then sniper elite five first person shooter. That's kind of interesting. There's also <laugh> farming farming simulator 22. I don't know who plays these games, but anyway, there's six, 12 ish games coming out beTWiTeen the 15th and the end of the month. So as always take advantage of your subscription Bethesda, which is now part of Xbox, right, has delayed TWiTo of their major titles star feet field and red fall leading to a case of what I now will call halo Infinitis <laugh>, which is you've told the world that something's gonna arrive and now it's gonna arrive a year later or at least some time later.
Paul Thurrott (01:19:58):
So both of these games were originally supposed to arrive this November and them not arriving. November's obviously gonna cause a problem for the holiday selling season, cuz these were eagerly anticipated. But they will both now ship sometime next year. So we'll see, hopefully we'll get warthogs and other halo type things to make up for it. I have no idea. And then this is just kind of interesting because Sony is transitioning their PlayStation subscriptions over to be something more like Xbox game pass, right? So some time ago, I think last month they announced three tiers of what they're gonna still call PlayStation plus there's PlayStation plus essential extra, it's a terrible name and premium. And so these things vary beTWiTeen 9 99 per month and 1799 per month. And they all have different perks and, and whatnot. But the big question is like, what are the games, you know, that are gonna be released via the service, this new version of the service, which is coming up later this year.
Paul Thurrott (01:20:53):
And so they announced that list. It's a big list of both first and third party partners. I mean, it's, you know, the in charter games are in there. I mean, I'm not as big on the on the Sony side of things, but you see some of the classics like assassin, creed, Val hall, third party title, Batman Aham Knight Farry three N four, you know, et cetera, cetera. So it looks like there's a lot of stuff, you know, I expect this thing to be competitive. I don't think that Sony's subscriptions were all that competitive in the past and they weren't exactly the same as Xbox game pass. And it looks like they're kind of lining 'em up more like that now with the most expensive version, having game streaming and all that kind of stuff. So if you're on the Sony side and you've been feeling jealous about Xbox, which I completely understand because Sony is terrible. He'll be getting better. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Sony's good too.
Leo Laporte (01:21:46):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:21:46):
You know, if you could buy one, they'd be great.
Leo Laporte (01:21:48):
Well, you can, you can, that's the thing, you can get a PS five more readily, I think, than the next place. Oh, you
Paul Thurrott (01:21:52):
Can serious.
Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:21:54):
Oh, okay. All
Leo Laporte (01:21:55):
Right. We got both now. I'm really happy. Although I made myself, I nauseated myself playing no man sky. Yeah. and I just, I had to go lie down. <Laugh> really? Yeah. Wow. It's like, like, okay, I'm not
Paul Thurrott (01:22:09):
Playing now. Is that because you're spinning in space or flagging upside? I really,
Leo Laporte (01:22:13):
You know, I was running around the radiation was getting through my suit. I couldn't get enough iron to fix the thing. And I was just,
Paul Thurrott (01:22:20):
I mean, you know, it doesn't actually affect you physically, right?
Leo Laporte (01:22:23):
No, no, no. It's it's inner ear. It's the whole thing. But I've had that, had that happen with halo, the master chief collection, some games for some reason do it. So you, I played hundreds of hours of ahe without that.
Paul Thurrott (01:22:33):
Oh my God. My life would be over. If that ever happened
Leo Laporte (01:22:35):
To me, I think it's yeah, maybe it's is it the first person thing? I don't know. I don't
Paul Thurrott (01:22:39):
Know what it's. There's definitely a, I try to, when VR was still kind of a new thing, this was a decade or ago or whatever. I tried to like an unreal engine kind of first person shooter. It wasn't really a game. It was just like a demo. And I, I almost vomited. Yeah. Before I could get the headset off, like it was horrific.
Leo Laporte (01:22:56):
I there's something in the way they design games, some games do it to me and some don't I'm not sure.
Paul Thurrott (01:23:01):
Oh, that's interesting. Wow.
Leo Laporte (01:23:02):
I'm not sure what it is, but
Paul Thurrott (01:23:04):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:23:04):
Anyway, that sounds terrible. Yeah. It wasn't fun. <Laugh> yet. Fortunately, I went and had a delicious cup of trade coffee and I felt so much better afterwards. Let's find a coffee. You will love with trade coffee. I just got some in the mail, but I wanna show you real quickly. This is our sponsor, by the way that's quiz because, and you're gonna wanna do this, you know starts with, how do you make coffee at home? We use an arrow press. What's your experience? Coffee level. I think I'm a total coffee nerd. Now, do you add anything to your coffee now? If I were a total coffee nerd, would I add milk or cream flavored creamer or spices? No, I'd take it black. Like a real coffee nerd. Medium light. Dark roast. Yeah. How do you like your coffee to taste classic and traditional hint up something different.
Leo Laporte (01:23:57):
I defer to you. I defer to you. And then I like to get whole being, cuz I ground grind it myself. So you take the quiz and they're gonna start sending you. This is kind of the craft beer of coffee. They're gonna start sending you coffee and they partner with it comes to you directly from the best craft roasts in the country. So let me see. This one is from something Wisconsin. Viroqua. Is that a town in Wisconsin? Viroqua Wisconsin. So again, this is probably something I would never have in the normal course of event. Oh. And I love it by the way, cuz you can really smell that coffee. Oh, smells so good. Just roasted just for me. Mm. This is the big dipper. Organic, rich and fudgy. Oh boy. Tasting those fudged brown butter and vanilla wafer, man. I love coffee. Doesn't it? How life without coffee would just not be living. So this is this is cool. It's fair trade paying farmers more, a hundred percent solar powered. This is really cool. Like the small wood Western town we call home. We know you don't have to be big to make an impression that little bug in our bag is a Cicada. There it is there big Omnis hum sparks a sense of mystery in us. Wow.
Leo Laporte (01:25:27):
Wonder state coffee. Should we open it up? Try a little bit of it. All the bags have good excellent ceiling, but they're always fresh. Let's just take a look at this delicious medium roast coffee. I just, these are all independent businesses, big cities, small towns like this one from wonder state coffee, trade customers make a difference for these independent roasters. They're often the biggest source of new growth for them. So you're helping these little guys do some really interesting, innovative things. Trade coffee is gonna send you freshly roasted beans. They're up to now 60 different best craft roasters in the country. And we've we've had a lot of bags of trade coffee and it's been different every time. It's really fun. It's really fun. You don't have to be a coffee snob to be a, a trade lover. But if you know, and you know, when coffee's just right, you're gonna be very happy.
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Leo Laporte (01:27:25):
You will love. I'm gonna go right out there and grind this myself and have some right now. Drink trade.com/windows. If you love coffee, $30 off your first order, plus free shipping discover the amazing variety of craft roasted, fresh roasted beans. You can get it ground. We always like to get at beans cuz we grinded ourselves, but you can also get it ground from trade drink, trade.com/windows. I thank 'em so much for their support of windows weekly. I almost wanna just eat this out of the bag. <Laugh> this looks so, so look Paul's Paul's sucking away. It is. Ah, Greca that's
Paul Thurrott (01:28:09):
Good. Delicious,
Leo Laporte (01:28:10):
Delicious.
Paul Thurrott (01:28:11):
That's some good
Leo Laporte (01:28:12):
Frika. <Laugh> I want some cantaloupe AWA Fresca. I'm so jealous. That sounds so good right now. Oh, it's 85 degrees in Petaluma. We need it, but some St I'm gonna make a little trade. That's what I'll do. Let's start the back of the book with our tip of the week. Mr. Paul, throt your Paul thet. <Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (01:28:32):
So I was just told this has been around for several years, but I, I think it's magic and I love it. And I wanted to share it with other people, which is most people are probably familiar with street view and Google maps where you, you know, drag the little yellow guy down one of the streets and you look around and I believe if you go to denim and find the right neighborhood, that's still a picture of me walking down the street. Oh, that's fine. In a certain number. Yeah. I happen to be there when the Google car drove by. But what's interesting about that of course, is that Google goes out and redos these, this, these images from time to time. And so there's now a history of images and one of the things you can do a street view on the web, on your PC or Mac or whatever is you can actually bring up a scene, bring up a street view and then go back in time and look at it over time. And so I decided to do this because I'm tedious. I'll just keep talking about Mexico. With the apartment here, you, I, I did a street view of the apartment. That's how
Leo Laporte (01:29:25):
Far back did that go?
Paul Thurrott (01:29:26):
Yeah. In this case to 2008. Yes. Yeah. So in, yeah, you should look at the pictures. It's really cool. So in 2008, this neighborhood was all TWiTo to three story buildings. That's all that was here. And obviously sometime in the interim Mexico decided you could go up to six stories. So as you go forward in time, what you can see is like developers. Well, in this case, the developer bought this little building, which was a TWiTo story building with shops in the ground floor and a department above bought it, raised it <laugh> tug a hole in the ground and put up a six story high rise with a TWiTo floor garage.
Leo Laporte (01:30:02):
Oh that's hysterical and
Paul Thurrott (01:30:03):
That's
Leo Laporte (01:30:03):
Yeah. It's incredible. So are you in one of the original floors? I wonder,
Paul Thurrott (01:30:07):
No, cuz we're in the six floor, so oh, okay.
Leo Laporte (01:30:09):
Yeah. Yeah. Well you'd think it'd be the top TWiTo floors. It's so much more important. See,
Paul Thurrott (01:30:14):
Yeah. So it what's interesting is up and down the street, like even on the left, it's kind of hard to see, but that building across the street from us, the green one yeah. Has gone up a couple floors. The building beyond it has gone up as the same height desires. But if you look at that first picture, they're all basically TWiTo or three, you know, TWiTo or three stories, that's it. Right. And you know, Mexico, a lot of, a lot of the zoning is so different from where, you know, from where I live. And I always appreciate, I'd like to see this kind of thing where you have shops in the bottom and then you have apartments above. Right, right, right.
Leo Laporte (01:30:40):
Love
Paul Thurrott (01:30:41):
That. So we don't have any shops, but I don't think they're really doing that with the new stuff. But up and down this street, there's a lot of this going on. And so, and in fact, when we went to breakfast this morning, actually that last bit you can see the tower in the back there on the left is another six story building. Yeah. And right across from us. And that wasn't there in 2008 either. So you know, this neighborhood is, is changing. I mean, there's no doubt about it. And all that empty sky you see around us on the side that could be, that
Leo Laporte (01:31:08):
Could be gone
Paul Thurrott (01:31:09):
Very, very different in a few years. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:31:11):
You were in one of the nicest neighborhoods though in Mexico. You're in Roman
Paul Thurrott (01:31:16):
North. It's nice. I think so. Yeah. That's it's
Leo Laporte (01:31:17):
Nice place. Really nice. That's cool. We had at one point and I think it's lost forever at the brick house. We had a guy come in and do 360 S of the whole thing. Yes, yes. And you could do a 360 walkthrough, but I don't, I don't think it's there anymore
Paul Thurrott (01:31:35):
Because the office is probably different now.
Leo Laporte (01:31:37):
Yeah. Too bad. I wish.
Paul Thurrott (01:31:40):
So they'd do that obviously for malls and for airports and you know, that's so cool. The inside stuff is really cool too. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:31:46):
It's really a neat thing to be able to walk around inside. But yeah, I think that probably as soon as your business leaves that area. Yeah. That's that? Oh, well, but I still have this street view. I bet I can go back in time in the street.
Paul Thurrott (01:31:59):
You oh yeah. It's amazing. Like the, the house we used to live in indem, it only goes back to 2012 for some reason. I didn't look at the house we live in now. I bet that goes back even less time. But you know, depending on the area, like you could pick a famous, well, you, you wanna pick a place that's changed I guess. And I think this, this street we're on here is a great example of it because this place is changing dramatically. You know, the place I Live's here's the old place doesn't change. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:32:23):
How do you go back in time though?
Paul Thurrott (01:32:25):
Up, up left under up it this little clock thing. No, no, right there you go. Click on that to bring it down. Oh. And it'll give you the dates and then click on the picture to show the old picture. Oh Like you can yeah. Click on it to bring it full screen. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:32:39):
This before we moved in or no, this was after we left. It only goes back to 2011. Yeah. Oh no. This is us. Yeah. You know, this is, we're doing the construction. That's right.
Paul Thurrott (01:32:49):
Yeah. So people, if you don't know about this, I mean, you might wanna go look at your house or yeah. You know, something, but you know, you could see it, you know, but the whole, the old house we lived in, the people painted it. It looks terrible, frankly. And you can go back and see how it looked when it was nice. And then it's terrible. Yeah. Look at that. I didn't know about this.
Leo Laporte (01:33:06):
That is a nice feature. Yeah. It's a good old days. All act pick of the
Paul Thurrott (01:33:14):
Week. I know that has nothing to do with windows, but I just thought it was kinda
Leo Laporte (01:33:17):
No, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Cause I can look at the old brick house.
Paul Thurrott (01:33:21):
Yes. Yeah. I think a lot of people will be surprised by this and then there'll be people like, dude, this has been around for, you know, 10 years. Okay. So I've been thinking a lot about alternative browsers. Like I always do, but the just because there are TWiTo news stories that, you know, don't actually impact windows uses all that much, but it reminds me that, you know, Vivaldi and brave are, are, are the TWiTo I'm kind of thinking about. So Vivaldi just did their second deal with an automaker to put their browser into a new car or new car is I think there's different models in this case from Reno. You have to be parked <laugh>, you know, you're not gonna be driving around, but the idea here is, you know, maybe you're a traveling salesman. You have conference calls, you can do it from the gorgeous, huge screen that's in your car instead of bringing out your phone or a laptop or whatever.
Paul Thurrott (01:34:09):
It does all the sync stuff with your, if you use it on desktop or mobile, that's, that's kind of neat. I think that's kind of cool. And then brave has a, a feature that's available on the desktop called privacy hub. And now they're making it available on iOS and I think it actually might be on Android already as well. And this is basically a thing that will give you an update about how many trackers they're blocking. You know, the idea behind brave is that this thing is private by default. You don't have to add extensions and all that. And so they're building all these security and privacy features into all of the versions of their browsers. And now they're doing it on iOS. So if you're a brave user and you are missing out on this in iOS, I think, I think this wasn't an Android already. It's definitely on desktop. You can access it everywhere basically. So that's
Leo Laporte (01:34:55):
Cool.
Paul Thurrott (01:34:56):
That's cool.
Leo Laporte (01:34:58):
So I'm looking at our, our house, but
Paul Thurrott (01:35:00):
Yep. So you can't stop doing it. This is it's can't stop. Can't stop
Leo Laporte (01:35:04):
In a way, because we live in a cul-de-sac I didn't expect any street view, but they've in fact been there four times in the last three years. So I guess they map everything.
Paul Thurrott (01:35:14):
Yep. It really varies depending on the place. Yeah. For some reason. Yeah. And then there are places like I went, I looked at Paris cuz I love Paris, but the truth is they've been all over Paris for, you know, thousands and thousands of times, but it doesn't change that much. Yeah. You know, depending on
Leo Laporte (01:35:28):
A hundred years from now, it'll be really great though.
Paul Thurrott (01:35:30):
Yes, exactly.
Leo Laporte (01:35:31):
<Laugh> 200 years. Just,
Paul Thurrott (01:35:32):
Just wait,
Leo Laporte (01:35:33):
Just wait. <Laugh> it's gonna be Mary Jo Foley. Would you like to give us an enterprise pick of the week?
Mary Jo Foley (01:35:41):
I would. I didn't know about this until somebody told me on TWiTitter, but Microsoft's product evaluation center where you can download things for a set period of time to evaluate it. Mostly used by businesses is broken and it's been broken since at least May 11th. So people have been trying to get things like windows, client 90 day evaluation, windows server, 180 day evaluation hardware kits, configuration manager. I heard SQL server, all these things that people routinely download to evaluate you. Haven't been able to get them because the evaluation center's broken and there's no ETA on a fix. Luckily there is a way you can still do this. If you go to tech, community.microsoft.com search for an article called accessing trials and kits for windows eval center workaround the author, Heather Olson's pulled together a bunch of download links. So people can still continue to get these evaluation additions of these products because there's no ETA and no explanation about what's wrong with the eval center. I think this might be handy for people who do need to download these for work purposes, to check things out before they decide if they're buying them or not buying them. So yeah, at least there is a workaround and I don't have any more details for you about what happened or weird why this happened
Leo Laporte (01:37:09):
Is is this everything or just a sample subset of the whole
Mary Jo Foley (01:37:12):
It's I don't know. There's people in the comment saying, oh yeah. SQL server broken too. And wow. I'm like, oh, like a whole bunch of products you can't download at the moment from the eval center. I don't know if the entire eval center's down or what is happening, but at least there are some links. Yeah. Through this blog post.
Leo Laporte (01:37:29):
Yeah. Interesting.
Mary Jo Foley (01:37:31):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:37:32):
You have some code names
Mary Jo Foley (01:37:35):
I do. And they're Linux related Leo.
Leo Laporte (01:37:37):
Oh, how exciting.
Paul Thurrott (01:37:38):
Wow.
Leo Laporte (01:37:40):
Yep. <Laugh> so
Paul Thurrott (01:37:41):
I thought, I thought I knew you
Leo Laporte (01:37:43):
<Laugh> oh, she hates apple and she loves Lynox
Paul Thurrott (01:37:48):
<Laugh> this is a pretty
Mary Jo Foley (01:37:49):
Weird story.
Mary Jo Foley (01:37:51):
This is a pretty weird story. I'm gonna give you the whole, how I found this story. How, how I found out about this, because it's very weird. So when I was looking through the build session list, one of the sessions had the word Microsoft Linux distros I plural in the description and I'm like, wait, isn't there just one CBL Mariner, common based Linux Mariner that Microsoft created a couple of years back and uses internally whenever they need a Lennox kernel to develop a product. So I'm like, wait, why is this I plural? So I started doing a lot of searches and I found a blog post from a guy, let me get his name because he did all the heavy lifting on this Hayden Barnes who works at SUSE. He somehow found out there's another Microsoft Lennox, distro. That's called C B L Delridge.
Mary Jo Foley (01:38:44):
So CBL D so now there's the CBL M which is CBL Mariner. The one we already knew about, and there's this other one, C B L D CBL D is something Microsoft built in 2020 it's based on Debian. It's a custom Debian distribution that Microsoft built to use for their own Azure services internally. Right now Azure cloud shell is supposedly I think that the only thing I see listed as using this Hayden went through all this back. He like figured out how to build, how to build this. And then he went and found all the links to it in GitHub. And then he even researched the code name. So Delridge is the, is the actual name of a district in west Seattle. So that's where the Del Ridge name came from. And inside Delridge is version it's version 10, which was codenamed Quinalt Quinalt is in the Olympic national park in Washington state. It's a, it's a valley. So yeah, there's all these weird things. I'm like, wow, there's a whole other Microsoft Lenox distro that no one as far as I know, has ever talked about, huh? Written about wonder what it's for. And here it is. It's. Well, it's for the Azure cloud chill, but what my question is, what else is it for? Right, right. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:40:03):
That's really interesting.
Mary Jo Foley (01:40:04):
Yeah Hayden Hayden burns kudos to you, man. You were like the detective. I don't even know how you found this stuff, but it's amazing.
Leo Laporte (01:40:12):
<Laugh> well, and I don't know how scooter X found this stuff, our chat mod, but he found the walkthrough. So I have to, I wish I could download this somehow, but this is the walk street. There's all the bricks. Yeah. Yep. This is the the walkthrough service
Mary Jo Foley (01:40:28):
We've been there.
Leo Laporte (01:40:29):
You remember this, right? Yep. You can literally go right in. Yep. And so we, I can't
Paul Thurrott (01:40:36):
Believe the effort that must have gone into dismantling this and just,
Leo Laporte (01:40:39):
I know taking it all lock, stock and barrel. And I told you, you know, how to blur out people's faces, which is, I think that's me sitting there. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but I told you that the, the place now is in federal receivership.
Mary Jo Foley (01:40:53):
Oh, it is.
Leo Laporte (01:40:53):
Yeah. The people who bought it, it was a Ponzi scheme. Well, at least they made you leave, you know, she's in she's in prison for defrauding. Wow. For $300 million in fraud and the federal government now owns that whole building. Wow. Prison. Yeah. It's kind of annoying. She wanted to triple the rent. Now I understand what the whole, like, we couldn't figure out why they were buying this for much more than market value. Yeah. Right. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> well, now we know. Yep. Yeah. It was a beautiful, beautiful old place. Yeah. It was nice. Very, yeah. I was very fond of the Stargate that we had built. These. It was cool. Goes all the way into the back. Can I get back there?
Mary Jo Foley (01:41:34):
Did you guys take all the bricks with you? Or
Leo Laporte (01:41:36):
How did you take? We took a number of them, but they here let's go back around and I'll show you. They were about the back. That's funny. I can go. Yeah. There's the kitchen. This is the wall that we had famous people sign.
Mary Jo Foley (01:41:48):
I
Leo Laporte (01:41:48):
Signed it. You signed it. Look at that. I did the bricks when we, you know, we'd use the money to build this thing and we put the bricks up on the wall here like this, but when they put the bricks up, whoop, hello, something. Oh, there you go. When we put the bricks up, they use regular mortar to mortar, to drywall. So we get 'em down in big chunks with big chunks of drywall attached. So this is the only record that has everything. We have a, a few, we are able to, to, to strip the drywall off of, but a lot of these are lost. Yeah. Sorry to say. They broke and stuff when we were trying to clean them. Yep. So, but the half life symbol there. Yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah. <laugh> so I appreciate everybody who bought a brick and of course this studio exists pretty much exactly. As the old studio did. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> because we were able to take it and move it over here. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yeah. Much to the surprise of the new owners who thought we would be there forever. <Laugh> right. The old owner said, oh, they'll never move. They spent a million and a half dollars building that studio. Yeah. They'll never go anywhere. Well, it turns out a studio is actually pretty detachable
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:01):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:43:02):
It all came on down except the bricks. How about a beer pick of the week? Mary Jo Foley.
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:08):
Okay. This is a fun one. It's from Talia which is the only women owned brewery in New York. The beer is called Haba Haba splash. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:43:23):
Is there habanero in it? Oh, there is. Yep.
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:26):
There
Leo Laporte (01:43:26):
Is O moly.
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:27):
Yep. So this is a fruited sour beer. It's brewed with habanero, tamarin, mango and pink sea salt. So kind of a weird mix. <Laugh> it's, that's like
Leo Laporte (01:43:39):
A
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:39):
Cocktail. Yeah. Kind of like a lightly, I don't think it's too spicy, but somewhat spicy mango type flavor of a beer. Only 4.2%. So a nice light summery type beer. Taya makes a lot of fun sours. They do a lot of, kind of crazy fun flavors. And here's a tip. If you're visiting New York this summer, if you're coming to the big city, there's a new Taya popup attached to grand central. So you, you can actually go out and sit outside in a covered area right next to grand central and drink their delicious beers right there in a big beer garden. I don't know how long it's gonna be there at least till fall, I think. But if you're taking a train at grand central and you wanna buy some beer to go, or if you wanna just meet somebody there before, after a train, you can go hang out at the tole popup at grand central and drink a Haba Haba, splash,
Leo Laporte (01:44:33):
Haba, Haba, Haba. <Laugh> this actually sounds good. I'm glad to hear. It's not spicy hot though.
Mary Jo Foley (01:44:38):
Yeah, not too. It's like kind of hot on the back end. Like you drink it then. Yeah. I've had a few beers with habanero. It's like at the end, you're like, oh, it is a little spicy, but not too crazy.
Leo Laporte (01:44:46):
Little bit, little bit of spicy. Yeah. There's our beer. That means when you hear the beer, you know, <laugh>, it's time to say farewell to our fabulous duo. Our dynamic duo of windows, Paul thro and Mary Jo Foley. You'll find Mary Jo Foley or zing net blog all about microsoft.com. You'll find Paul man about town in Mexico city and who knows, who knows. And of course it's thero.com and his books are@leanpub.com, including the field guide windows 10. And of course they come together every year, Tuesday. Now next week is bill Wednesday. Wednesday. It is next week is bill you, the keynotes are Tuesday, but you're gonna come by and Wednesday explain it all to us. Yes mm-hmm <affirmative> yep. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. So tune in Wednesday, 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM. Eastern time, 1800 UTC. If, if you wanna watch it live, live.Twiti.tv after the fact on demand at TWiTit.tv/ww, there's a YouTube channel devoted to windows weekly. And of course you can get it from your favorite podcast, client and subscribe there. You'll get it every time it's it's done automatically. So you can listen at your leisure. Paul, Mary Jo. Thank you so much, Paul. I, you, I wish you the best in, in, if I'm here next week, something has gone ho very long
Mary Jo Foley (01:46:05):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:46:05):
Or something's gone horribly, right? It's also possible. Yeah. I want that big cantaloupe bag of Fresca. Oh my God. That's absolutely so good. All right. You too. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful week and we will see you next time on windows weekly byebye. I went this weekly. Bye bye.
