Windows Weekly Episode 794 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. We kick things off with Paul throt and Mary Jo Foley with a rant about, I don't know, something I'm <laugh> notifications. I guess we'll also talk about a couple of new builds that just came out. And we're gonna take questions from the audience, some really good questions, including what was Paul's first multiplayer game, all that coming up next on windows, weekly podcasts you love
TWiT Intro (00:00:28):
From people you trust. This is,
Leo Laporte (00:00:38):
This is windows weekly with Paul throt and Mary Jo Foley episode 794. Recorded Wednesday, September 14th, 2022. The Fator windows weekly is brought to you by infra scale infra scale delivers industry leading data protection through backup and disaster recovery. Visit infra scale.com/twit to sign up for a free demo and see how INFR scale protects your business today. And by Lenovo orchestrated by the experts at C D w to help transform your organization with Lenovo ThinkPads equipped with the Intel Evo platform for effortless connectivity and collaboration from anywhere. Learn more at C dw.com/lenovo client and buy, click up the productivity platform that will save you one day a week on work guaranteed. Use the code windows to get 15% off. Click ups, massive unlimited plan for a year. Meaning you can start reclaiming your time for under $5 a month. Sign up today@clickup.com. But hurry, this offer ends soon.
Leo Laporte (00:01:50):
Okay? Dozers. Here's your chance. It's time for windows weekly. The show we cover the latest news from Microsoft. All you winners. Take a look at this guy on the left. He's more of a dozer that's that's PT, Paul Thra of thra.com, lean pub.com and many other coms on the right. Mary Jo Foley, all about microsoft.com. That's a ZD net blog, a ZD net joint. As we say together, when we mush him together, you get <laugh> a giant ball, a windows reportage, and that's what this show is all about. Windows weekly sandwich, a when there's weekly sandwich. Hello, Paul. Hello? Are you grunt? I'm getting there. Okay. I'll be okay. Just checking Mary Jo. Foley's also here. Paul, you should be excited. The new iPhones are here. Well, they will be day after tomorrow. Sure. Yeah. I've been not gonna get one. I've been you not no. Mary Joe Foley. I know you will. Yeah. I already ordered like four
Mary Jo Foley (00:02:58):
<Laugh>. One of each one for every member of my household. SRA gets one. I get worn
Leo Laporte (00:03:04):
Friends. I'm I'm really liking the new new always on lock screen and got like a swipe.
Mary Jo Foley (00:03:10):
Okay. But what about that weird button thing? The digital island or whatever that thing's called?
Leo Laporte (00:03:15):
I'm sorry. Fantasy island. You mean? No. Yeah. Fantasy dynamic. Yeah. Island
Paul Thurrott (00:03:21):
Island.
Mary Jo Foley (00:03:23):
Okay.
Leo Laporte (00:03:23):
It's it's the island. Every phone wishes. It could be.
Mary Jo Foley (00:03:27):
I just see that. And I'm like, why?
Leo Laporte (00:03:29):
Well, I'll tell you why cuz they got a whole punch and they don't want admit it. I
Mary Jo Foley (00:03:33):
Know. That's why <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:03:34):
And but if you're gonna, I mean, look, honestly, I think it's clever of apple to take a, what would be a negative and turn it into, or at least attempt to turn it into a
Paul Thurrott (00:03:43):
Possible yeah, but this, what would be clever if they just gave it to everyone? Because if, whether you have a whole punch or not wouldn't you want, why would just have the same notifications
Leo Laporte (00:03:52):
We've already talked about this for those of us with the old iPhone or an iPhone 14 or 14 mm-hmm <affirmative> plus it ain't a dynamic island. It'd be a dynamic peninsula because it's attached to the top of the screen. And so it wouldn't be as cool. In fact it would just look kinda like your notches bulging, which no one really wants <laugh> so, so not, it, it makes sense with the, you ask legitimate question, which is why didn't they do it with the iPhone 14 and 14 plus that I don't know that, that I can't tell you.
Paul Thurrott (00:04:26):
Well, you know, apple, apple, that's my only answer
Leo Laporte (00:04:30):
Apple mm-hmm <affirmative> look I don't expect you guys to know or understand what it's like to be an apple guy.
Paul Thurrott (00:04:41):
Well,
Leo Laporte (00:04:42):
<Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:04:43):
To live in that world. Sure. Where everything can I just, I just wanna be in the meeting where like there, you know, the apple engineers or VPs or whatever, like, you know, everyone hates this notch thing. All the Android phones have had these tiny little, whole punch things. Yeah. And some guy in the back's like, I have an idea. Why don't we make it? So it changes size all the time and it's dynamic. And then there's all this stuff going on in the middle of it. Even when you're doing something else, Hey, let, let's turn this thing to annoys people into something that Hey, really annoys people.
Leo Laporte (00:05:13):
Actually we were just before the show, we were talking about that, cuz you were trying to, or Mary Jo was complaining about all the notifications that keep getting added to your, is that in the charms bar? Is that on the or that's on the Rightm theres, what do they call that? Come on. Charms.
Mary Jo Foley (00:05:28):
Charms. <Laugh> charms.
Paul Thurrott (00:05:29):
I know it's not 2012 anymore.
Mary Jo Foley (00:05:31):
The programs band on the show.
Leo Laporte (00:05:34):
Yeah, but they don't, they don't pop up. They just show up in the side there. Right? Or do they pop up
Mary Jo Foley (00:05:38):
And then you just see, no, you get a little notification that says now adding blah, blah, blah notification. I'm like, why I, why
Leo Laporte (00:05:45):
<Laugh> because they think it's a smartphone. I think this is
Paul Thurrott (00:05:47):
Honestly will just globally turn off notification.
Leo Laporte (00:05:49):
It's the smartphone notification.
Mary Jo Foley (00:05:50):
This is a couple I want, yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:05:52):
Couple. I want say this is how they get you. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:05:54):
I know. It's
Leo Laporte (00:05:56):
The smartphone notification of the world. That's tough, but
Paul Thurrott (00:05:58):
I don't even want most notifications on my phone. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:06:01):
You
Mary Jo Foley (00:06:01):
Know? No, same. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:06:03):
Mm-Hmm
Paul Thurrott (00:06:03):
This is I, every time I get a new phone, I spend the first month just turning off notifications as they happen.
Leo Laporte (00:06:08):
Yeah. Same in fact for some time, that was my advice to everybody. When you get a new phone is go into the notifications. Just disable 'em for everything. Yeah. And then judiciously,
Paul Thurrott (00:06:19):
Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:06:19):
Judiciously turned
Paul Thurrott (00:06:21):
The off. So you're you're proactive. I was reactive.
Leo Laporte (00:06:23):
Yeah. Well you might, I mean, look, there's some things you want notifications for texts, right?
Paul Thurrott (00:06:29):
Yeah. But you know, most notifications, I see what it is. And I'm like, really? <Laugh> like, I, I, I interrupted what I was doing for this. Yeah. You know, Amazon's like, Hey, did you know? We have, we're selling a new book on Kindle. Really?
Leo Laporte (00:06:41):
Yeah. But then you can't,
Paul Thurrott (00:06:42):
That's
Leo Laporte (00:06:43):
Fascinating. I mean, am I wrong? You can go to the menu. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>
Paul Thurrott (00:06:46):
You can, can turn it off
Mary Jo Foley (00:06:49):
Ones you want. Right.
Leo Laporte (00:06:50):
But you could say turn off notifications for individual that's right. Like, okay. So I'm seeing windows help. I don't want windows. Hello notifications. Hello? No. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:06:59):
So did you, Leo did you know? Yeah. You can sign up with your face.
Leo Laporte (00:07:03):
Yeah. Did you know? I did know that I do it. So why would I want notifications to remind me that? Right. On the other hand I have discord notifications. I like those. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. So you, so there's things that you leave on.
Mary Jo Foley (00:07:14):
Yeah. I just feel like I had it all set the exact way I wanted. Right. Right. And then like this week I got two notifications about new notifications that I didn't even choose to add to windows. Right. <laugh> I'm like, wait,
Paul Thurrott (00:07:28):
Why
Leo Laporte (00:07:28):
Are these
Paul Thurrott (00:07:28):
On when I was a young man and, and everything was based on paper every year, the bank would give out a little calendar book and in the calendar book, I'd write down people's phone numbers and obviously my meetings and whatever else I had to do. And then every year you'd get a new one, you know? And I always love that thing, but I can, I can tell that notifications make me insane on digital devices because I've literally turned off calendar notifications. I, yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:07:50):
That's what you would, you might want.
Paul Thurrott (00:07:51):
I'll just, I know, I know. But I'm like, I'll just, I'll just remember. I'll just remember, I can't deal with these notifications cuz in the beginning you're like, well I'll, I'll turn off notifications for events that I create. Cause I know I'm not gonna, you know, forget I'm going on a flight or whatever. But after a while I'm like, you know what? I'll just look at the calendar every morning. Yeah. Like, you know, like I used to like 50 years ago or whatever. Right. You know, there's no reason to be notified throughout the day because I have
Leo Laporte (00:08:15):
Well, but
Mary Jo Foley (00:08:16):
Coming up and I'm
Leo Laporte (00:08:17):
Betting you leave that on the phone. You leave them on. Right? Nope. They're
Paul Thurrott (00:08:20):
On you. Don't I turn 'em off everywhere. Yeah. Wow. No, because like I said, I, more than nine times outta 10, something interrupts me usually on a phone, it windows is a lot less frequent, but I'll look at it either way. And I'm like, no, I, I, I don't, no, I don't want that. Whatever that thing is. No, I know.
Leo Laporte (00:08:37):
I guess people would say, well then you're not a busy man
Paul Thurrott (00:08:41):
Really. Well, let me I'll put my word count up against anybody, but no,
Leo Laporte (00:08:45):
No you're writing, but you don't need to, you don't need to be reminded. It's too busy. Your calendar to get writing.
Paul Thurrott (00:08:50):
Yeah. Okay. But I, some
Leo Laporte (00:08:51):
People have so many events that they have to do that. Okay.
Paul Thurrott (00:08:55):
Well I feel bad for those people <laugh> and everyone, I understand that everyone's different. I'm just saying in my particular case, I, I find myself increasingly I haven't done it yet, but I've really seriously considered just turn off notifications. I don't care anymore. I
Leo Laporte (00:09:10):
Don't care completely. Yeah. Yep. Oh, a lot of ex productivity experts say that's the way to get things done. The, I know that and disabling, are
Paul Thurrott (00:09:18):
We all frazzled amount these days? I mean, yeah, no, but seriously are we like, I, I, I feel like the constant noise coming in from every direction is problematic. I'm not a psychologist.
Leo Laporte (00:09:29):
Right. And our discord B Jones says, that's one of my problems with teams. I turn it off. And then I, it gets an update and then it's back on. So you're right. That's that is annoying. It should be stickier than that. I agree. You know
Mary Jo Foley (00:09:39):
What? That's like focused inbox cuz I have to bring that up every episode
Leo Laporte (00:09:43):
<Laugh> so I can ran moving.
Paul Thurrott (00:09:45):
I've been traumatized by this thing.
Leo Laporte (00:09:48):
No, you know, this is actually a problem with all computer solutions, hardware and you know, is that they don't honor you.
Paul Thurrott (00:10:00):
Right.
Leo Laporte (00:10:01):
They don't. And I think increasingly what's happened is companies are doing what's best for them. Not for the user <laugh> yes. And so it's better for them.
Paul Thurrott (00:10:13):
So delightfully obvious and yet, so is insightful. It's like
Leo Laporte (00:10:17):
It is delightfully
Paul Thurrott (00:10:18):
Obvious. It's it's sad that you have to remind people of that, but you're right. You are absolutely right. Yeah. Well, and that's actually, it's important to remember intent, you know, even what, it doesn't matter if it like a focused in box like Mary Jo hates or this dynamic island thing, whatever happens to it in the future or notifications in general, I think it's really important. I always talk about this, you know, understand the relationship you have with technology or the company that made it or whatever it is. And this is a great part. This is really a part of that. You, you have to think of the intent.
Leo Laporte (00:10:46):
Yeah. What
Paul Thurrott (00:10:47):
Was the why? Why,
Leo Laporte (00:10:49):
Why would they do that? Because they certainly,
Paul Thurrott (00:10:50):
They do this thing.
Leo Laporte (00:10:51):
They certainly could do. They should say, oh, you turned off teams clearly you don't wanna see teams. We won't ever turn it on again, but no they're proactively every update, turning it back on.
Paul Thurrott (00:11:02):
Hey, turned off teams. Let's send 'em a message in word. He'll never suspect
Leo Laporte (00:11:05):
That <laugh> <laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:11:06):
Is there a way to turn that off? No, there isn't. It's hilarious. <Laugh> yeah, no it's it's yeah. That's
Paul Thurrott (00:11:13):
I don't know. Just, I, I, I need, look, I need to focus for my job. I, I have to write. And so if it's people I work with, you know, eh, Paul, Paul, Paul, or, or not even Paul, Paul, Paul, it's just a, a small team of people and they've got something else going on, but I'm in that group. So I'm getting those notifications and they don't ref they don't have anything to do with my me at all, but they're still interrupting me all day. I mean, I think the cumulative effect of that over the course of days, weeks, years, you know, whatever is, is very negative. <Laugh> this is some, so this is, I'm getting a little sensitive
Leo Laporte (00:11:46):
Of this dynamic island because that's
Paul Thurrott (00:11:49):
Another one of those things that's like this.
Leo Laporte (00:11:51):
Yeah, yeah,
Paul Thurrott (00:11:52):
Yeah. And I, and I, I I compared it and I, I, the more I think about this, I think the more accurate, this is people who use Mac O S will remember when the first version came out, when an application issued a notification it's doc icon would bounce and it would never stop. You had to manually go to it and look at it before it would stop. There was no way to turn that off. Now, obviously people complained <laugh> and then they fixed it. But in the beginning, that thing would do this. And to me, that is the ultimate example of an interruption. You're focusing on whatever it is you're writing in my case or reading or whatever it is. And this other thing is like, hello, hello, hello. It's like that scene with Stewy and his mother and the family guy, you know, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, you know, and it goes on for seven minutes. Cause it's the family
Mary Jo Foley (00:12:36):
Guy. I'm curious. Have you, have you tried in windows 11? The thing that was called well, it's had all different names, quiet hours or focus. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:12:43):
Right. Do you not disturb and focus? Yeah, yeah,
Mary Jo Foley (00:12:46):
Yeah. Does that work for you or
Leo Laporte (00:12:48):
Not? I turn it on and leave it on.
Paul Thurrott (00:12:50):
Right. So interestingly, one of the weird things about windows 11 and probably the most recent version of windows 10 is that mode is on by default when you install or, you know, come up in windows 11 for the first time. One of the things I was sort of, I don't wanna call it researching, but I was curious how long would this thing stay on forever? <Laugh> it literally stays that way until you turn it up. Yeah. It never goes up. So, okay. That shows a little bit of foresight on someone's part. So yeah, I guess you could <laugh> you could argue that the person who turns it off is to blame or whatever, but I feel like, well, you know, it is the, it's the thing Mary Jo said, you do want some of them. Right. So for example, you do, if I turned off all of the notifications on my phone, wouldn't I still want a notification when one of my children or my wife, or one of my best friends or whomever texted me or called me. Right, right. Or you say something like, you can configure a phone, like we have quiet hours between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM. But if it's my wife yeah. Put that through because that's obviously she's not gonna call it one o'clock in the morning
Leo Laporte (00:13:52):
Phones do. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:13:54):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, this is, this is what makes it hard. And, and so when I say like, I I've thought about just turning them off globally, but haven't, that's, that's why, because yeah, really what you want to do is turn off notifications in a smart manner. And it's just not, it's not very, it's not very easy.
Mary Jo Foley (00:14:12):
No, it's not <laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:14:14):
And then you'll install something, you know, whatever it is, you might need the utility. For reason it
Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
Requires constant attention is what you're saying. Yes.
Paul Thurrott (00:14:20):
You don't like, it's never, you're babysitting it. And it's it's instead of technology, that's helping you it's technology that needs to be managed continually. And I already have a career, you know, like I don't wanna spend all of my life managing this, but you, but I think we do. And we just accept it. So
Leo Laporte (00:14:37):
I was looking at the rundown, wondering where is Paul's rant gonna be today? And well, it started the show, <laugh> it wasn't even writing
Paul Thurrott (00:14:44):
Rundown through it right. In my lap. Well, it's just, it's a pet
Mary Jo Foley (00:14:46):
Peeve of mine. Get it out of the way. So the
Leo Laporte (00:14:48):
Question
Mary Jo Foley (00:14:49):
Is,
Leo Laporte (00:14:50):
Is this what Microsoft thinks people want based on its research or are they acting contrary to what they know their users want because it's in their business interest. And if it's the latter, I think that's bad. I think that's reprehensible. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:15:05):
You know what I think it is. I cuz I've thought about this with focus on box a lot. I think, I think they periodically reintroduce this because they think, okay, you shut it off, but you know what? We've made it better or yeah. Maybe you would like to try it now. Right. And like, I feel like they're like
Leo Laporte (00:15:21):
Chance,
Mary Jo Foley (00:15:22):
Right? Mommy. I feel like that's what's
Leo Laporte (00:15:23):
That's cuz creators, critters love their creation. And so no. So that wouldn't be no nefarious that would just be you know, misunderstanding.
Paul Thurrott (00:15:32):
And I know you'll be surprised. I took that direction. Very surprised. Microsoft obviously wants windows 11 in particular, this is windows 10 too. But let's just say windows 11 to be more like a mobile operating system, you know, simpler. Yeah. And that kind of thing. And this do not disturb stuff is really big on phones. You know? So obviously we have, you know, where are they looking for inspiration for ideas and look logically, you can say people work on computers, they need to focus. That's where the name of that thing came from. Let's add onto this mode. This do not disturb mode. You do something
Leo Laporte (00:16:02):
That I think that's what they would say they did. I mean, they gave you do not disturb. I mean, what do you want?
Paul Thurrott (00:16:07):
My argument is if I sit down at, in front of the computer, this is the thing, this, this is a very personal, this is no, this is, I understand this is just me, but I use the computer to work. So when I sit down in front of the computer, I'm working, when I step away from the computer, I'm doing other things. So to me I'm always focused. <Laugh> like I, to me, the computer is about focus. So all this other stuff is just noise. And and I wish my phone had some understanding that I was using a computer and it would turn off its stuff. Like I shouldn't have to. That's what I mean. I have to manage it. Like I have to go to my phone and be like, all right, how do I tell my phone? I'm in focus. I literally have no idea. I think there's a lock screen now for this, for some reason, I don't know. You know, it's, it's it, it becomes so top heavy and I don't look, I'm a fairly technical person. I don't completely understand it. Yeah. How would I expect my wife? Who's very smart, but that doesn't care about technology or my mother or my brother or any normal person you care to mention, how would they do this? I don't
Leo Laporte (00:17:01):
It's death by a thousand paper cuts. Yeah. And really that is the normal user's experience of technology is there are many, many, and in fact, I talk about this on the radio show, there are many minor annoyances that add up to making you without even maybe knowing it unsettled and disliking your experience. Yeah, that's right. And that's why I tell people on the radio show, if you hit an annoyance, fix it right then to avoid this death by a thousand paper cut syndrome. Because otherwise I, we all know what that is. I'm trying to think, you know, of course there is an operating system that doesn't have commercial goals, that's Linux and the same thing does happen. Not nearly as much, but does happen in Linux because a designer says, well, this is probably what you would want. And
Paul Thurrott (00:17:46):
Then, but that's not really the issue with
Leo Laporte (00:17:48):
Linux people then stand up and say, no, no, that's not what we want. And, and, and usually it's turned off. So
Paul Thurrott (00:17:52):
Yeah, I, I think for most people though, Linux would have other issues that would, <laugh> kind of present themselves before that. Right. Like it it's
Leo Laporte (00:18:00):
I think that's an old fashioned perception to be honest. Okay. I'm not here to proselytize for Linux. And I don't want to do that, but I do think
Paul Thurrott (00:18:07):
I perception
Leo Laporte (00:18:09):
Of, oh, this is a geeky finicky, hard to use. No, no,
Paul Thurrott (00:18:12):
No. I don't mean that. I think it is. I mean, I think people are kind of stuck in their ways with whatever apps they use and if you're using mostly web based apps and stuff, like obviously anything would work in Linux would be a good choice. Well,
Leo Laporte (00:18:21):
That, and that's one of the reasons why it's kind, it's kind of growing and popularity, cuz most people aren't using desktop apps anymore. They're using online apps and well,
Paul Thurrott (00:18:30):
I mean <laugh> the top, you know, eight or whatever apps on windows, they better are all native apps. I mean, one of them is a web browser for sure in
Leo Laporte (00:18:37):
Business, but I mean home users, they do almost everything, including their email in a browser, otherwise you,
Paul Thurrott (00:18:42):
They should be. I gotta hope so. Yeah. Like I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:18:47):
I don't know. I, I
Paul Thurrott (00:18:48):
Don't know. There's nothing. There's no perfect source.
Leo Laporte (00:18:50):
I think we shouldn't really care about operating systems honestly. And I think that, that we're getting we're heading to that. Well,
Paul Thurrott (00:18:55):
Leo is the coast of Ashoka wins weekly. I could not
Leo Laporte (00:18:58):
<Laugh> oh yeah. That I forgot. Oh yeah. A show about windows. Oh yeah. Oh yeah,
Paul Thurrott (00:19:05):
No, I, I we're. We definitely heading to that future
Leo Laporte (00:19:08):
<Laugh> and, and I think that many
Mary Jo Foley (00:19:09):
Years we've said that though, I'm
Leo Laporte (00:19:11):
Thinking about it's the year, the Lennox desktop every
Mary Jo Foley (00:19:13):
No, no, just like the idea, like no, one's gonna care about operating systems anymore.
Paul Thurrott (00:19:18):
Okay. But on the desktop, for example, if you do use the web, right. If you're using a, a Chrome edge, brave, whatever that type of browser, the experience is probably so similar day to day, just with regards to quality and look and feel of the apps using that moving between operating systems is probably not that big of a deal. The problem on mobile is like he could say, well, people shouldn't care about operating systems, but what they care about are the apps they use. And if you go between Android and iOS or whatever, and there's some material difference in the apps that you use the most. And there are, in my case, for example, I find myself liking this one better for this and this one better for that. And mm-hmm <affirmative>, there are these kind of differences that do make one be better, you know, subjectively than the other. And I, I think it just has to do with the immaturity of it. It's they, they haven't been around as long, maybe, you know, on windows, Mac and Linux, right? These things are burn around for decades. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> maybe they just had more of a chance to mature.
Leo Laporte (00:20:11):
I think there is a risk here and it's a risk that we already know about. It happened with advertising on the web where advertisers grew so rapacious that people just started blocking them. And I think there's the risk that if people start to perceive operating system companies, Microsoft, particularly mm-hmm <affirmative> as doing what's in their interest, as opposed to what's in my interest as a user, there's gonna be some kind of a revolt, unless people just put up with it and it's death by a thousand paper cuts that might even even be worse. People say, oh, I hate using computers. I hate 'em. I hate
Paul Thurrott (00:20:42):
'Em. I don't remember when this no. Yes I do. In 2001, Microsoft added product activation to windows XP, right. That was a major
Paul Thurrott (00:20:52):
Kind of initiative on their part to prevent piracy. Right. That was the point of it. Before that these, this notion of ULAs and you're signing an agreement. And if you actually looked at it you would see, you gave away all your rights. You don't own this thing. It's not yours meant nothing. But once that happened, you get into a weird area. Microsoft now you've, you know, you've agreed to a Yula, you know, Microsoft could stop sending you updates tomorrow because you violated some term of a, a Yula. You never even read. Yeah. You know so ads are just the latest in a long line of awfulness from the platform makers, you know, it's just one thing, really in a long, long list,
Leo Laporte (00:21:34):
What do we do? <Laugh> what do we
Paul Thurrott (00:21:36):
Do? Suck it up. And we do well, we, you know, what we can do, the three of us is try to help people overcome the most terrible stuff. Right? I mean, we can at least try to educate people what we can do. But you know, I think the frustrating stuff is we still run into these problems. Like we can somebody just, can
Leo Laporte (00:21:55):
Somebody write a program? You know, we talked about that program that, that couple weeks ago that goes through all your privacy settings and, and sets them all. And even on that program, they say, and by the way, every time you update windows, you're gonna run and rerun this program. Yep. We're
Paul Thurrott (00:22:09):
Gonna do it all, which is awful. Think about windows, actually, the, the slim nature of that is so terrible. It it's, this is one of those things that's not worth com you know, compiling the list, but there's a list to be made of what goes back to default when you install a new version of windows, which by the way will happen sometime in the coming weeks, when windows 11 version 22 H two occurs, you will be upgrading to a new version of windows, even though Microsoft won't talk about it like that. And some of the default that you had changed in the interim will go back to what Microsoft wants them to be. Right. Sometimes they'll be obvious. You'll notice it. And sometimes they'll just be silent in the back, you know, like those privacy settings. Well, no, that's, I mean, that's, that's not great. <Laugh>, you know, that doesn't actually make a lot of sense, but that's what's gonna happen.
Leo Laporte (00:22:54):
Yep.
Paul Thurrott (00:22:54):
I don't know how we got on this topic.
Leo Laporte (00:22:55):
No, it's a great topic especially today, because we don't have very much to talk about <laugh> we will by the way, be taking your questions.
Paul Thurrott (00:23:05):
Well, not if we spent an hour on this thing, <laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:23:10):
Head over if you're it's club TWI only although we can take written questions from the IRC. So I will read your question in the IRC, but if you're in club TWI, we actually can see and hear you head over, not yet, but to the open mic channel, you'll see under the live window. And once you get over there I guess we'll figure out a way to call on you, but it's over on here on the left, the open mic channel on the show that'll be coming up in about a half an hour, hour and a half, three hours. Depends on how much more ranting there is, but we will let you, you know, and, oh,
Paul Thurrott (00:23:45):
I could just line me up like a little toy,
Leo Laporte (00:23:48):
Prepare your questions. Now
Paul Thurrott (00:23:51):
You wanna talk about spam on your phone. You wanna talk about the little pixel that's in every email that lets them track you, or the, the fact that I get like 120 different reach outs from fake PR firms every day via email,
Leo Laporte (00:24:04):
You you're, you're busy, but if you guys ever wanted to come on my radio show and just do it, <laugh> just do 10 minutes. Yeah. You would hear what real people are asking. Yeah. And it would be fun. We could do that. We could do that anytime you want. Just let me know. It would add to your national fame,
Paul Thurrott (00:24:21):
White national thing.
Leo Laporte (00:24:22):
Add one bit <laugh> let's talk windows 11. There was a build 2, 5, 1, 9 or seven.
Paul Thurrott (00:24:30):
We have literally four builds to talk about. Since the last time we recorded this show, somehow there have been two
Leo Laporte (00:24:36):
Builds. Have that happened. Is this H two, is this 22 H two? Or
Paul Thurrott (00:24:39):
This is post 22 H two. So all of 'em actually, right. So two builds to the dev channel. One was last Friday. One was today and then two builds to the beta channel, which was earlier this week kind of off schedule, frankly. But they're doing alternate build. So it's the same, it's a, it's the same basic build, but some one has the new features and one doesn't have the new features. So I don't even care anymore to explain what that means, but they,
Leo Laporte (00:25:06):
Paul, you have to care just fake it till you make it. Dude. It's, <laugh>, it's hard to explain this in irrational way that isn't making it even more. Well,
Paul Thurrott (00:25:15):
I'll tell you what I'll I'll I'll do the dev part of it. And Mary Jo, if you would like you can do the, the beta
Leo Laporte (00:25:20):
Show. Oh, excellent. Fair, fair. Yeah. Split
Paul Thurrott (00:25:23):
It away. You don't have to think about the, the splitting of the build. So the build last week was basically about bringing back the tablet optimized task bar that Microsoft had tested for 22 H two, but cut it. Wasn't gonna make it in time. This is a good idea because this
Leo Laporte (00:25:37):
Do they call it the tot? They,
Paul Thurrott (00:25:40):
They should,
Leo Laporte (00:25:41):
Is it a tiny tot?
Paul Thurrott (00:25:42):
Well, remember that with windows eight, there was a no, I with windows 10, there's an explicit tablet mode. Yes,
Leo Laporte (00:25:48):
You could right.
Paul Thurrott (00:25:49):
Push your PC into tablet mode. If you wanted to. Even if it wasn't a tablet,
Leo Laporte (00:25:52):
Whatever. And, and something like the the surface studio you would, if you'd detach the screen and go, oh, that's right. I know what's going on.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:00):
It would, it would happen on automatically you're in tablet mode, continu continuity would occur would, would put it into tablet mode if that's how you configured the system, cuz you could determine how that worked. And that was a pretty good idea. But I think the, the notion, I don't like the idea of taking away manual tablet mode, but that continuity bit was a good idea. And so with windows 11, they've taken away manual tablet mode, but essentially speaking, if you detach a keyboard, like you said on the surface pro
Leo Laporte (00:26:27):
What if I tap it with a pen or I touch the screen? Would that do it?
Paul Thurrott (00:26:31):
No. No, it really it's really about the keyboard. The idea. And the reason you go into a mode, even though the iPad, iPad, I know you look
Leo Laporte (00:26:38):
In the UI actually iPad. If you have an apple keyboard or any keyboard and you attach the smart connector, it goes, oh, okay. It won't show its keyboard. You know,
Paul Thurrott (00:26:46):
It's soft. That's the point. Yeah. We're not gonna cover up part of the screen. Although, you know, windows, I mean, tactically, you can, you could put the onscreen keyboard there if you wanted it. But
Leo Laporte (00:26:55):
Yeah, there's a switch to do that. Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:57):
So I, I would say in windows 11 today, the no sh like what happens when you detach a keyboard is almost nonexistent, frankly. And now what they're doing is well, what they were always planning to do and now are going to do again, apparently is have a task member that customizes itself based on whether or not you're in tab. Again, they sort of don't call a tablet mode. And in fact, in one place, Microsoft literally has said, we got rid of tablet mode, but it actually, if you use this feature, it calls it tablet mode. So I'm gonna call it tablet mode, but it is a tablet optimized task bar that will appear when you're in what I will call tablet mode, which is a computer that has a detachable keyboard where you have literally detached the
Leo Laporte (00:27:35):
Keyboard mode convertible, which switched around unaccountably has followed the trend at ZDNet and CNET and redesigned itself in some horrific way. <Laugh> it looks like it's broken <laugh> right. But so I won't pay attention to that header, but I will. It just so
Paul Thurrott (00:27:50):
Much. Well that, that header. Yeah. Yeah. What,
Leo Laporte (00:27:52):
What that's so crank
Paul Thurrott (00:27:53):
It's it's nice. Cuz it's like, it's like half the pixels. You need to read the word
Leo Laporte (00:27:58):
<Laugh> everybody's everybody's doing this now with this kind of bread crummy thing. They got the, they stole this from ZD then anyway, they say Microsoft was all right. Look, they even have your slash Mary Jo. I would Sue them. I
Paul Thurrott (00:28:11):
Know they're probably just using the same WordPress theme. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:28:14):
That's
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:14):
Probably yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:28:15):
<Laugh> by the way, Matt mul, I got, I get some announcements before we get to the verge. Matt Mullenweg. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> who created WordPress and is now the CEO of automatic will be on twig next show. Okay. Later today. Nice. And you'll be very interested to know. Oh, was it over now? What? I think Miguel de Kaza was on floss weekly. Was that this
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:34):
Morning. Oh, oh was he really? Yeah. Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:28:36):
Nice. Was that talking about or was he doing next Tuesday or Wednesday? I don't know. That's you know, you gonna have to watch the show.
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:44):
Okay. No
Leo Laporte (00:28:44):
Cares. Curious.
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:45):
He's been very cagey about
Leo Laporte (00:28:46):
This. He left Microsoft. We knew that
Paul Thurrott (00:28:48):
He's gonna go back and work on that. <Laugh> I almost call it that. No file manager application again, right? Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh> so
Leo Laporte (00:28:55):
He
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:56):
Loves apple. This guy loves apple.
Leo Laporte (00:28:58):
You think he's going to apple?
Mary Jo Foley (00:28:59):
I, I don't think he's gonna go to apple, but I could see him doing something like an apple, like related
Leo Laporte (00:29:05):
Startups. Miguel became famous in the open source world because I
Paul Thurrott (00:29:07):
Was gonna say he probably loves open source more than he
Leo Laporte (00:29:09):
Loves. He created net clone for Linux, which became Zamarin and Microsoft wisely, I think hired him. And he did a lot of good stuff for, they bought him Microsoft. They bought him. Yeah,
Paul Thurrott (00:29:20):
Though. By way, here's an alternate history. I, I will, I would say that Miguel Deka, a single handedly saved.net for one. Yes, because Mike that's right. They were gonna, they were gonna kick it out of a.net out of windows eight. There was some basic, they just pulled it forward. They didn't do anything with it, but they stopped doing.net best APIs for developers starting with windows eight. And because he had done the work to bring.net to mobile.net lived on and now.net is a cross platform. Open source framework. Yeah. Again, he wasn't like he didn't do all the work. I don't mean like that. There were hundreds I'm sure of people at Microsoft who made this happen, but it couldn't have happened without what he did. And I think that's incredible. But on the other hand, this cross platform developer framework they have now, which is called Maui, which used to be Zen's forums is a pile of crap.
Paul Thurrott (00:30:09):
<Laugh> it is really bad. And it's, I, I think they've spent the past several years trying to get it better for Maui. Right. And, and, and Maui is definitely an improvement, but it has a long way to go. And unfortunately that stuff isn't, isn't great. I'll just put it, I'll just leave it at that. Maybe it gets great over time, but I feel like he, you know, he kind of came and went now for Microsoft. He had an incredible long lasting and historic contribution, which I think is amazing. Yeah. I really curious,
Leo Laporte (00:30:39):
Stoked when they said we were gonna have him on that's just so cool.
Paul Thurrott (00:30:42):
Yeah. I mean, they had tried to hire him for almost a decade before he eventually, maybe before a decade before he eventually went there. But I'm, I'm super curious to see what he does next.
Leo Laporte (00:30:52):
Yeah. Not a lot of, not a lot of people could say, you know, or I know I was legendary and open source. I was legendary Microsoft now what's next apparently.
Paul Thurrott (00:31:00):
Well, I told you
Leo Laporte (00:31:02):
Show, I didn't see the show yet. I'll see it when I put it out. But he did say in the show, he is not crazy about Apple's app store vetting process. So he might love apple,
Paul Thurrott (00:31:10):
The non transparent
Leo Laporte (00:31:12):
Yeah. Well, he's not alone in that regard. That's for sure. Anyway, the point of the verge was getting, this has become a very discoursive episode. <Laugh> I apologize. Let's pop the stack and go back to what we were talking about, which is detachable keyboards and, and the to, oh yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:31:28):
We completely disagree with this assertion. By the way,
Leo Laporte (00:31:30):
The verge says Microsoft was right. All along more companies are embracing the form factor that the service pros famous for IE, the detachable keyboard,
Paul Thurrott (00:31:38):
Except they aren't <laugh> that's absolutely not true. It's
Leo Laporte (00:31:42):
Del just announced one didn't they?
Paul Thurrott (00:31:43):
Oh, no, it doesn't matter that they exist. What I'm saying is if you look at PC sales, you don't see these things out in the world. These are not one. These are not even double digit. Yeah. And by the way, I know someone's gonna say, well, what about the iPad? Yeah. The iPad can do this, but how many iPads actually do do this? Like if you have an iPad, how many people are actually using it? Like this, it's a very small number. I it's, there's nothing wrong with this kind of convertible functionality, I guess, but this is not mainstream. And I would, you know, Microsoft start, well, it wasn't exactly surface pro, but if you go back to the original tablet PC from 2002, I don't think we can call this a success. <Laugh> right. I mean, this is, this is not done well overall, you
Leo Laporte (00:32:24):
Know what else is not a success. The verges redesign <laugh> this is horrible. Oh, it's a dark, you know
Mary Jo Foley (00:32:31):
What? It looks like. It looks like wired back when wire was doing those crazy issues that were super hard.
Leo Laporte (00:32:36):
And then now on the right, they have, this is a story stream feed. So it's like Twitter for verge story.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:44):
This is, this is distract. This is what I was just talking about. I came here to read this story and you're distracting me with this other stuff. <Laugh> what, why would you do that?
Leo Laporte (00:32:53):
Oh my God.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:54):
Yes. I, but
Leo Laporte (00:32:55):
What is, so Mary Jo, you might have some insight. I mean, first it was CNET, ZD, net, and CNET owned by the same red ventures company. Right. So I thought, well, that makes sense. And I, I, as I said I really liked the, the ZD net redesign. This looks like somebody saw it and then they made 'em blindfolded and then they tried into it on the verge. I
Mary Jo Foley (00:33:21):
Know what's going on there. When I looked at it, I'm like, Ooh,
Leo Laporte (00:33:24):
Ow <laugh> but why is everybody
Mary Jo Foley (00:33:27):
Redesign black background? The black background? I'm like, Ugh.
Leo Laporte (00:33:29):
But if this is the new style, I'm gonna look so dated. I'm gonna have to redesign as well.
Mary Jo Foley (00:33:34):
No, you know, people redesign cuz they, they, they get bored. Right.
Leo Laporte (00:33:37):
They're they get bored and they figured
Mary Jo Foley (00:33:39):
Research in a while.
Leo Laporte (00:33:40):
Let's
Mary Jo Foley (00:33:40):
Let's do it. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:33:41):
Chat room says the verge is completely given up on life. <Laugh> <laugh> <laugh> wow. All right. So taught the tablet oriented,
Paul Thurrott (00:33:52):
Right? Oh, right. Sorry. We only got through too. So this, this was in the build from last Friday. Sorry. that was the, the, no that's okay. That was kind of the big feature that was, is coming back apparently. And, and we don't know when, but in the future. Yep.
Mary Jo Foley (00:34:05):
And why is my question? Right. Like I know like there are people out there who want windows to get more touch friendly mm-hmm <affirmative> but does it mean there's like a new class of PCs or tablets or something coming that we don't know about? Because right now, even if you have a two in one, you know, where you can remove the keyboard, nobody removes it. Right. Like people are like, yeah, I do. And I watch a movie or something. Okay. But like, it's not like everybody takes the keyboard off. Right. <laugh> and I'm just right. Why are they making it more touch friendly? Like, is there a new group of things coming that need
Paul Thurrott (00:34:39):
This? You will remember this because I know you enjoyed this quite a bit. But back when we had the conversation around laptops and touch screens, and I said, I finally have come around to your way of thinking on that, you know, this caused me to reevaluate a lot of the, a lot of things your whole way and one of the things. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. And it's always a sobering experience. But one of the things I was thinking about with regards to laptops and reviewing hardware and all that stuff is, is the topic we're actually talking about right now. This is actually a BA this is the background of why I just said what I said, which is mm-hmm <affirmative> PC makers. You know, they, they try to differentiate their products from each other and obviously from apple and from Chromebook, whatever. And mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's astonishing how many convertible laptops I get in for review mm-hmm <affirmative> and it's be compared to how often I actually use it in that in some non laptop form factor, which is like lit literally zero point something percent like it's right. Almost completely zero.
Leo Laporte (00:35:36):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:35:36):
I know there are exceptions. I'm not talking about people who are artists or note takers. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, he's obviously there are times when that kind of thing is fine, but the truth is these things are so compromised for most of these use cases. So for example, like a, a 13 to 16 inch convertible laptop where you flip the screen around and you turn it into a, a giant thick, heavy tablet has a stylist, you can pop out of a garage. So it sits there. It's charged all the time and everything. You never have to worry about losing it, cuz it's in that little garage thing, but it's the size of a toothpick. And so you're writing on this thing, that's the size of an Spen or smaller on some giant screen. And you're telling me that some artist or some student or knowledge worker is gonna take notes using this little stupid. I don't think so. And, and I, I'm not gonna like take points off of a review because the devices are convertible. But I, I seriously can I have my doubts about the thinking at PC makers who keep going along with this thing because yeah. People might be buying them, but do you have any notion of what they're actually doing with them? I, I can't guarantee this exactly, but I, I semi guarantee high 90% never use it for anything other than a laptop.
Mary Jo Foley (00:36:50):
Right. Full story. Remember when M when Microsoft first came out with the surface book and everybody's like, oh, that's gonna be so cool. Like, you can take bottom part off. And I'm like, why would you though like, like show me why. And, and they stopped doing it because nobody was doing it. Right. And so right. We're back to touch again. And I'm like, okay, you can have, well, by the way, you can have windows 11 and windows 10 tablets, but
Paul Thurrott (00:37:15):
<Laugh> listen for Mary Jo. When Mary Jo's gone, she'll be remembered for many things. But I think her number one legacy <laugh> is gonna be the term lability. And I, and this is just a common sense approach to someone has showed me a product and everyone around me is going, oh, oh, oh my God. That's amazing. And she's like, yeah, but can you put it on your lap? <Laugh> yeah. She's the only one who this question. And then she put it on her lap and it fell off <laugh> and no one, everyone else was like, oh my God. Oh my God, you can
Mary Jo Foley (00:37:45):
Take up this. People said, it's cuz your legs are too short because no, it's
Paul Thurrott (00:37:49):
Your fault as 12. It's your fault. You're lapping it wrong. It's not me. <Laugh> it's your fault. No, so I, I, I, I experienced the same issue. I'm I'm six foot one. I can't use this thing on my knees either. So it's not height. It's not her knees or her like side, whatever. It's just, this is compromised for the number one use case for this device. You've you've made this thing that can do this thing. That yes it's okay. It's impressive. But, but the percentage of people that need that versus the percentage of people who need the thing you pointed out immediately, very small doesn't mean it shouldn't exist, but it does mean this doesn't replace the laptop. That's what it means. It could establish itself as some kind of a niche part of the overall business. But that's all it is. And you know, when you, again for the iPad, I know cuz the iPad guys, hold on, hold on. We can do it too. Yeah. Yeah. You can. But 90 something percent of the people use iPads use it as a tablet and that's it. Period. You know? That's true. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:38:48):
It's
Paul Thurrott (00:38:48):
It's obviously true. It doesn't mean it shouldn't do the thing.
Mary Jo Foley (00:38:51):
No, you hit the nail on the head PC makers wanna differentiate. Right. And so how do you differentiate? You come up with these weird things that can fold in three places and four places you can like, right. Turn it inside, out, flip it around, like the yoga, like, okay, there are use cases for this. I'm not saying there are none, but right. If you just made a great laptop that could be used on your lap that had great battery life, you've got a winning product right there, but nobody wants to do that. Cause it's boring. Right? <laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:39:18):
I look, I, the pandemic show apparently showed Microsoft. The computers still matter. The hilarious, but those computers are, they're just computers. They're laptops. They're just, they're just normal computers. I, I will say, you know, a week or two ago, I think it was last week. We talked about the Lenovo fold the new version of 16. Yeah. That one is kind of interesting because it is a laughable 13.3 inch laptop and it's normal, you know, curve form with the hardware keyboard on it. Or if you have the space, you could open it up, put it on a kickstand that's built in I think, and detach the keyboard and use it over Bluetooth. And then now we have, now we have a new form factor, which by the way is very interesting. You know, who didn't invent that form factor Microsoft. <Laugh> the people who keep bragging about their ability to create new form factors. They did not invent that form factor. So they had this minor hit with the surface pro, which by the way, they didn't invent either. But whatever, we can give them the, they formalized it. That's fine. But I, I, I don't, that is not the future of computers. I'm sorry. Right. It's not, not the surface pro it's not how many years has that thing been around. This is the 10th anniversary of surface pro and the, you know, who money youth anniversary of the tablet PC this year. Right?
Mary Jo Foley (00:40:33):
We, we talk about this a lot. Privately Microsoft loves to design products for itself. A lot of times like it like a lot of especially software and services. Like when you look at what they're building, I'm like, they're building it because they need it as a giant company. And you know, this is a service they need probably a very small subset of their customers need it. But I feel like surface pro is kind of like that. I feel like it's a great device for people who are on the road, like sales people or people who are executives, who, who like they open their device and they need to type like, yeah, great idea. Like a one line email, and then they close it and they don't reopen it for like a, another couple hours. Cause they're in meetings and they're going around for those people. I think that is an awesome device. But for people like us like, or people,
Paul Thurrott (00:41:21):
Well, I'm sorry for people like for, for normal people. <Laugh>, you know, for most people. Yeah. By the way, here, let, let me ask. I just, just occurred to me as you were talking, what do you think the impetus was for this tablet? Optimized task bar feature, right? What, what, what an earth would possess Microsoft to even bother? So I have two, two op two choices you
Mary Jo Foley (00:41:40):
Could yeah. Give me a series. Cause that
Paul Thurrott (00:41:42):
Could, it could be, it could be both of them. Yeah. One is there are, there's still this kind minority people still bitching on every time anything tablet comes up because windows eight was better than whatever's come. Since there are people who are convinced of that, Microsoft has done everything. I, I actually think the side swipe stuff is better in windows 11 than it's ever been. I don't know what they're talking about, but okay, fine. Granted, I don't use the tablet form factor a lot. That's that's one just to shut those people up, like we're gonna keep trying to optimize this thing. <Laugh> but actually this is what made me think of it is what you just said. Microsoft did make surface, right? So every time you see a Microsoft guy on screen, not every time, but most times they're using a surface device. I bet a lot of people from Microsoft use surface pieces. Right? They do
Mary Jo Foley (00:42:23):
<Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:42:23):
They probably do. So do you think there is some internal thing at Microsoft where people using these devices are weighing the feature set to their needs, which doesn't reflect the planet. You know, in other words, like a bunch of people at Microsoft, you know, a hundred thousand people at Microsoft using surface. They're like, guys, we can have more, we can have more tablet features. We use surface devices, but out in the world, nobody uses surface devices. Right? So they're adding this feature and everyone else is like, what is this thing? I'm never even gonna see this. What, what, what is the point of this?
Leo Laporte (00:42:55):
I dunno too bouncy keyboard. I, you know, I just,
Mary Jo Foley (00:42:58):
Yeah, it's too bouncy. Yeah. It's too bouncy. And, and whenever you see pictures of them using the surface, which always cracks me up to prove you can use it on your lap, you always see them like on a couch, like laying in this weird position with their legs out in front of them cross, like at the angle,
Paul Thurrott (00:43:12):
It's like a SHA lounge where back like 117 degrees. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:17):
<Laugh> yeah, maybe, but, but I keep feeling like there's gonna be another reason they're doing all this extra work to turn it into a tablet. And I think either they have another tablet coming, like a surface branded tablet. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> maybe a dual screen tablet, maybe something like that. Or OEMs are telling them, we need you to optimize this for touch because foldables are getting more important or this or that. Like, there's a reason they're doing this. And I wanna know the reason I'm curious.
Leo Laporte (00:43:49):
So bill Belichick can throw it like a Frisbee.
Mary Jo Foley (00:43:52):
Exactly. Right. There's a real reason. See that that's the actual
Paul Thurrott (00:43:57):
Reason. There's a man who has a healthy relationship with technology.
Leo Laporte (00:44:00):
<Laugh> you know, Hey, I need to take a break. So let's do
Paul Thurrott (00:44:05):
That. I just, just to be clear, you, you, we have gotten to the first bullet in the,
Leo Laporte (00:44:09):
You're not gonna any time. You're nickname, the time just you guys are cracking me up, you know what? You gotta have the confidence in your ability to BS for any amount of time. It is you've show a lack of confidence. You said, when you say, oh, we have to take questions.
Paul Thurrott (00:44:23):
If you had said to me, we need to BS for an hour. I would not be able to do it. But all you really did was line
Leo Laporte (00:44:28):
Me up. But I'm taking question, baby. I think think the questions are really fun. Like we, we, no, we'll do it. Get some really good ones. We'll do it. We do because we love our audience. Unlike Microsoft, we care <laugh> about our users. No, we care and I'm sure Microsoft does too. Right? <laugh> our show today brought to you by in front scale. I want you to get the name right on this one, because this is something you're gonna want to use. Especially as the statistics for ransomware start going up and up and up. It's just, it's it's very disturbing. According to beta news.com cyber criminals can penetrate up to 93% of all company's networks, not just big business, either 46% of SMBs have already been a victim of ransomware attacks. Almost half. This is why you need the right backup. I always say this.
Leo Laporte (00:45:25):
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Leo Laporte (00:46:17):
Yeah, it'll, it'll actually back up. It'll back up your virtual machines. And it even enables site to site failover with orchestration in the infras scale cloud. So, you know, if Detroit's down, you can bring Denver up the key though, and this is a word you gotta remember when it comes to ransomware to key hackers away, you need immutability. Immutability is at the core of how the product is designed. Your data is encrypted even in storage and no one can touch it. No one can touch it. If you don't have the key, forget about it with in for scale backup and disaster recovery, you'll be ready for whatever comes your way. Whether it's a server crash, human error, malicious activity, natural disaster. According to Gartner, the average, this is the scary stat. The average cost of downtime caused by a, any incident, a local or sitewide incident across alls industry sectors, $5,600 a minute, a minute, about $330,000 an hour, $330,000 an hour.
Leo Laporte (00:47:23):
That's the average cost. So it's important. You get up, up and running fast, right? That's why in for scale backup and disaster recovery is so good. Clients and partners like MSPs, VAs, trust, INFR scale, backup, and recovery solutions to help their business stay running, eliminate downtime, eliminate data loss. It's the most cost effective enterprise grade data protection solution. More than 65,000 companies use in for scale. Your company should that way. If disaster strikes your applications, data, your systems are recovered and available in record time, cuz remember $330,000 for every hour of downtime. That's a lot of money. Their award-winning world class support is there of course, to ensure your business is protective 24 7. And now it includes SSD at no extra charge. So backup and recovery fast, whatever your data, whatever your environment, infra scale provides continuity and resiliency for your business. Visit INFR scale.com/twit I N F R infra scale S C a l.com/twi. Sign up for a free demo. Find out more. See how INFR scale protects your business today. It is the solution. Don't waste a minute though, cuz remember every minute's 5,600 bucks INFR scale.com/twit. We thank 'em so much for supporting windows weekly. You support windows weekly when you use that special address. Remember now that way they know you saw it here. Inro scale.com/twi. Okay. Bullet 0.2 <laugh> is Mary Jo gonna take this one? This build?
Paul Thurrott (00:49:04):
No, this is the second half of a
Leo Laporte (00:49:06):
We're still on the we're still on the first build. Okay. We're
Paul Thurrott (00:49:09):
Gonna, this one come
Leo Laporte (00:49:11):
On. No, no, no, no, no hurry. No worry.
Paul Thurrott (00:49:13):
I'll make this one quick. So just today we got, we meaning the dev channel got bill 25, 2 0 1. The marquee feature here is something that they're calling expanded view for widgets, which is basically the full screen view that Microsoft showed up last June when they first talked about windows 11 or July or whenever that was. So it's not quite full screen, but it basically takes, you know, so instead of that little, you know, pain, you, it basically fills up most of the desktop. And if you use it in expanded view, it will stay that way. So every time you launch widgets it will go into that view or not depending on how you configure it. And then you can also get an ISO if this of this build, for some reason, if this type of thing is meaningful to you and that's about it.
Paul Thurrott (00:49:59):
Oh, and then I'll just real quick. This was not in a new build, but if you're in the dev channel the calculator app has been made arm 64 native. If you're using windows and arm, which you aren't and the media player app has a shortcut in it as does the photos app, by the way, if you've not seen it so that when you're watching a video that's assuming it's not a, well, it wouldn't be. If, if you're watching a video on me media player, you can click a link in there now and edit that video using clip champ. Everyone's favorite new video. Edit it. Good.
Mary Jo Foley (00:50:27):
You like clip Chan, right?
Paul Thurrott (00:50:29):
I do. It's a good app. Yeah, it's cool. Actually, I just fun of the name. Yeah. It's a stupid name, but it's a good, good app.
Mary Jo Foley (00:50:34):
It is. Yeah. <Laugh> good. And then beta the beta channel. This was the hard one to explain. That's why Paul gave this one to me. That's why
Paul Thurrott (00:50:43):
I get that. <Laugh> that's exactly right.
Mary Jo Foley (00:50:45):
So in the beta channel testers are getting one of two builds. Every time a beta release comes out and they're separated by one number. So this, this past week, there was 2, 2 6, 2 1 and 2, 2 6, 2, 2. So they are identical in terms of what's in there for features, but in one of those two, the features are off. And one of them they're on by default. And the reason Microsoft's doing this is to sh for them to test, is it possible for us to send these releases out with features off or features on which kind of tips their hand and going into the future saying at some point they're gonna start delivering windows this way, right? With features turned off, features turned on and people will have the option to switch back and forth, or it pros will be able to like set group policies to turn features off and on. Okay, that's fine. So and the builder came out last week. There were a couple small-ish changes, although maybe Paul will think this is bigger than I do. <Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:51:43):
Okay.
Mary Jo Foley (00:51:44):
I think it's a temporary change though. Testers no longer able to uninstall apps with interdependencies, like games installed via steam. Right. I think that's temporary though. The way they were describing it.
Paul Thurrott (00:51:57):
I couldn't actually, I couldn't tell the way they set cuz there were, there are two things tied that there's also, it won't be possible to repair 1 32 apps in the settings app. That's that one
Mary Jo Foley (00:52:08):
Has to be, this is a temporary, right? This is, this is a temporary restriction. So maybe it's just that one that's temporary. And then both of them have a set of fixes that go along with them. I don't know. I've kind of stopped paying attention to the beta channel. I have to admit, because I feel like it's almost all fixes. There's this confusing features off features on thing. And I feel well
Paul Thurrott (00:52:29):
And wax on wax, I've
Mary Jo Foley (00:52:30):
Said it before. I, I feel like we're kind of losing the plot in windows insiders anymore, cuz I'm like, okay, we get the beta channel. They're testing things that may never go go into the product or they may, we don't know. Beta channel also may go into the product may not, but they're testing in this parallel way with two sets of things going out every time release, preview channel, that's the safe one. If you wanna test something, that's going to go into the product, the next version of the product. That's where you go. If you, if you care about having the set of features that you're testing match, what's gonna show up in the product. But it's, I feel like it's just gotten so complicated. Then there are like the apps are on their own testing path and it's just, I feel like I used to really understand the insider program and it was very clear cut and now I do not. Right. So
Paul Thurrott (00:53:15):
Yep. No, a hundred percent. Yeah. It, it the insider program is like what happened to windows 10, which was the idea was good in the beginning. And I said, this will be, be nice, cuz it will really simplify things. There will be one version of windows that most people are on, but then they release two versions of windows done every year and then eventually one, but right. And there are, there are more supported versions of windows out in the world now than there ever been ever in history. There are, there are more. And then if you look at the insider, that's
Leo Laporte (00:53:42):
An interesting statistic. Really?
Paul Thurrott (00:53:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Mary Jo Foley (00:53:45):
No. Cuz if you think about what's being supported, like when you see patch Tuesday, come out, you're like, look at all these versions. They're patching like windows seven is still being patched.
Leo Laporte (00:53:53):
Right. Unprecedented really. That's cool. Actually. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:53:56):
Well, I mean think that, so
Mary Jo Foley (00:53:57):
It's frightening. <Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (00:53:58):
The myth about windows is that a new version comes out every three used to come out every three years. Right? So that happened during one time period. But, but let's say, let's say that somehow magically is the case. I mean, in, in 10, in the 10 years of active support for any version of windows, there could be three versions of windows. And then I guess for one year, maybe four, depending on how that works out schedule wise. But that's there are many more versions of windows supported today and it it's just it's when you consider enterprise education, home pro windows 10 windows 11, you know, it gets, it gets very complicated. Yes. Now they've, they've done work to try to simplify it, but they've also done work on the flip side in the insider program to really make this complex. So not only do we have the three channels, none of which mapped to a version of windows anymore, which is like whatever
Mary Jo Foley (00:54:50):
Well release preview, I guess does. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:54:52):
Okay. Maybe, maybe, but some of them, at least one of them I think released preview could you could be on windows 10 or 11, at least one of them, the beta channel, there were two separate paths with features, turned on, features turned off. It it's gotten very complex. It used to be we're testing this version of windows, we're testing the next version of windows. You're like, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And I think they had so many defeats getting promised features into the product that they really over maybe overthought it. It's complex
Mary Jo Foley (00:55:25):
Then and the di well in the discord right now, we're having a big discussion about the British called F when you're like faffing around. So I feel like the windows insider program feels like Microsoft's kind of faffing around with what's going on just to use it in context. I think
Leo Laporte (00:55:41):
It sounds dirty. I'm not sure we should. I don't know. We're gonna have to
Mary Jo Foley (00:55:44):
No, no. It's it means unnecessarily complex. Like if somebody, if you say that, it's just like, what is this person doing? You know,
Paul Thurrott (00:55:51):
This is like the Mensa episode of the Simpsons we left. We left this person in charge and they have no idea what they're doing. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:55:57):
<Laugh> fing around. I like that
Mary Jo Foley (00:56:02):
To make this. I have a few British friends who use it. Yeah. For a couple British friends of mine use that. And I'm like, I gotta work that into a story cuz it's such a good term.
Leo Laporte (00:56:09):
An overcomplicated task, especially one perceived as a waste of time.
Paul Thurrott (00:56:14):
Yes. So it's a lot like it's
Mary Jo Foley (00:56:15):
A, it's an app term here. Isn't it
Leo Laporte (00:56:17):
<Laugh> or according to the Cambridge dictionary to need a lot of effort or cause slight problems. Maybe a lot of effort to cars, slight problems.
Mary Jo Foley (00:56:28):
Stripping
Leo Laporte (00:56:29):
The walls was a real F
Paul Thurrott (00:56:31):
We're gonna separate the CHF from the FAF.
Mary Jo Foley (00:56:35):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:56:36):
To Diddy daddy,
Mary Jo Foley (00:56:38):
Julie D Diddy. Another good one to
Leo Laporte (00:56:40):
D today, especially before leaving the house to be on time somewhere. Oh, that's how I use it. <Laugh> I can't decide between these two jackets to wear to the movies. Which one? Where is my black hat? Oh wait, let me get my phone. Do you know where I put it? Oh, and did you feed the cat dinner? Oh
Paul Thurrott (00:56:58):
God, this is like half of every British drama ever made.
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:02):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:57:04):
Stop your F in. We got relief. Right right now
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:07):
Around Leo stop.
Leo Laporte (00:57:09):
I, my li I live to Fs. My life.
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:15):
Fing is Fator by Leo Laport. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:57:18):
I'm the Fator. I like it. I like it. This is good. I, I, it's
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:23):
A fast, it's a word you need in your
Leo Laporte (00:57:26):
Pre
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:26):
Work. You do you need this work? Do
Leo Laporte (00:57:28):
I say far Forna? Alright. Are we done with the beta? Have we faffed? Yes. Efficient
Mary Jo Foley (00:57:34):
We around on this enough? Yes.
Leo Laporte (00:57:36):
Or all right. Yeah. Thank you. Alright. Get yourself to section two surface. Well, we kind of did this one really, but we can do it some more. Well,
Paul Thurrott (00:57:48):
I just wanna throw this out as kind of a, well, I don't want this to turn into 30 minutes, but yes, please. Google. <laugh> the verge recently reported that Google has killed their next pixel book, which is a Chromebook laptop. That was pretty far along in development. They, the team has been scattered to other parts of the
Leo Laporte (00:58:06):
Company's so sad.
Paul Thurrott (00:58:08):
Yeah. Now as I'm, I'm, I'm a fan of pixel, the brand and the products, not just the phones, but the other pixel branded products. I think with the pixel book, the first one was, I think it was called the Chromebook pixel. I think it was the first time to use the word pixel in a brand. I think it was the first pixel fiber. I
Mary Jo Foley (00:58:25):
Got I to test one of those. Did you get one of those? Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:58:27):
Google
Mary Jo Foley (00:58:27):
Gave it to me. The test. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:58:30):
The,
Paul Thurrott (00:58:30):
Well, you're talking about the the prototype one, the black little
Mary Jo Foley (00:58:33):
Guy. No, the, the, the first time they came out with a pixel based piece
Paul Thurrott (00:58:38):
Pixel. Oh, I never used the, I didn't use the Chromebook pixel, but I did briefly own a pixel book.
Mary Jo Foley (00:58:46):
I think they, I think they saw me talking about how I use PCs and like, you're the perfect person to use you are. They were correct.
Leo Laporte (00:58:52):
They
Paul Thurrott (00:58:53):
Were correct. I still think you would be very good. Yeah. You could get a lot of use out of a pixel book
Leo Laporte (00:58:57):
Now
Mary Jo Foley (00:58:57):
They're getting rid of it, maybe so like yeah. And
Paul Thurrott (00:58:59):
It makes you
Leo Laporte (00:59:00):
Scared.
Mary Jo Foley (00:59:01):
It makes you scared about the phones, right? When you see them doing this with the PC you're this is well,
Leo Laporte (00:59:05):
Well,
Paul Thurrott (00:59:06):
Because well,
Leo Laporte (00:59:07):
Google's problem in a nutshell, everybody's scared of music, anything they make.
Mary Jo Foley (00:59:11):
Yep.
Paul Thurrott (00:59:11):
Right. So I, first of all, you have to think about why they did, this is what we talked about earlier. Like what, what was the intent here, right? Why are they doing this? And then how does this kind of impact things more broadly? Right. So the, I think the, in the intent, well, the report says the intent is to save money. In other words, they looked objectively at what, all, what things were costing and said, this is not gonna have a return. We need to get rid of this thing. That's a harsh bit of news for fans of Chromebooks in general, I would say, but also as specifically pixel books. And then you think about the Google's wider strategy. They spent the past year telling you that big screen, Android devices are gonna be the next big thing. And yeah. If they did to Android, what apple did to the iPad, which was bring the desktop version of their web browser to it, wouldn't a Android based laptop slash tablet, detachable, whatever, make a lot of sense.
Paul Thurrott (01:00:07):
Maybe that's kind of interesting. Yeah. But I was also just because I'm kind of in this world, I was really interested to see how people were reacting to this. Right? So meaning Google slash Chrome slash whatever websites and blogs mm-hmm <affirmative> and a lot of people were saying exactly the same thing. This is fine. Everything's fine. Yeah. The, the pixel book came around at a time when Chromebooks were around, but they were cheap and plasticy and terrible. And they wanted to show that this could be a nice laptop. I think the first one was way too expensive, but whatever they made, like, look, here's a luxury Chromebook. And they kind of established the notion that this could be a thing. Now, Chromebook hasn't taken the world by fire, but they, they, there are beautiful Chromebooks today, right? So mm-hmm <affirmative>, if you want a Chromebook and you could go to HP or Dell or Lenovo, they'll sell you an $800, whatever.
Paul Thurrott (01:00:54):
And it's, they're beautiful. They, and they have convertibles with pens and everything you would want. It's all there. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it kind of made me think about Microsoft though, with surface, right? The PC industry did not have this problem. PC industry had cheap PCs, expensive PCs, premium PCs, and gaming PCs. They had all these different options and everything. And then Microsoft, for some reason, entered in the market and said, we're gonna make a PC too. And it kind of, it's weird because you can justify why Google did pixel book. I don't think you can justify why I still, all these 10 years later, I have no idea why they did this. All they did was harm their relationships with their biggest partners. Well, it's, you know
Mary Jo Foley (01:01:33):
Why they said they did? Why they right.
Paul Thurrott (01:01:35):
Well, okay.
Mary Jo Foley (01:01:37):
They said they did it because PC makers weren't taking risks. Yeah. And trying new things and they needed to,
Paul Thurrott (01:01:43):
Which is a great thing to say about your biggest partners.
Mary Jo Foley (01:01:46):
<Laugh> right. Like we hate our partners. You're doing terrible designs and they're really lazy. So let's get in the market and give them some competition. <Laugh> no, actually at first they got in the market to show them how it was done. Yeah. That was their intention. They
Paul Thurrott (01:01:58):
Wanted miserably
Mary Jo Foley (01:01:59):
Them. Right. They wanted people to copy 'em they're like, okay. To make this right.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:03):
<Laugh> so there was a little bit of learning on both sides, but more, I would say on Microsoft side, because there one issue that PC makers had with Microsoft is they would go back to Microsoft with every release of windows and say, Hey, you have this problem. You need to fix it. And they're like, we're not seeing it. We don't really, this is not an issue. But then Microsoft made their own PCs and they were like, holy crap, <laugh> we get this really bad problem. We need to solve this. And they also found out how hard it was to make hardware that's reliable. And it actually works. They had all those power management issues, obviously with surface pro four and the surfaces book, I think it was the first one. You know, that was, it was a learn. They never should have went through this, this, the, the partnership that Microsoft has had and had with it, PC makers was the right approach for this product line.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:51):
And I think, you know, Chromebook maybe has matured to the point where Google has gotten there and maybe this is okay. I feel bad about it. Cause I like the pixel brand or whatever, but I kind of get it. But I, again, I look at Microsoft, I'm like, I still, I just don't see the justification. There's no, there's no surface device that has taken the world by storm. The, the minor example of surface probe, cuz yes, the PC makers have copied that design. If you like that design, it's kind of inarguable that you can't get a better version of surface pro from another company though.
Leo Laporte (01:03:22):
Right. But Microsoft makes money on it. I don't think they do. We don't know if they money on
Paul Thurrott (01:03:27):
It. I don't think they do.
Leo Laporte (01:03:28):
I mean, I'm sure Google doesn't lose money on the pixel book. Well maybe we don't know if they
Paul Thurrott (01:03:33):
Actually, I'm pretty sure they do. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:03:35):
Yeah. So if you sold a thousand of them and it, but it cost you 5 million to market and design. Right, right. Then there's no point doing it and that's probably the case. Do you think Microsoft's in that, that upside down on surface, you think there're somewhat upside down. Okay. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:03:51):
No, they're definitely upside down. They're definitely.
Leo Laporte (01:03:53):
So they get any other subsidiary benefit from it, like as a reference design or something like that. Yeah. I mean, that's what they say.
Paul Thurrott (01:04:01):
Well, not a financial benefit,
Leo Laporte (01:04:03):
Just not a financial benefit, a spiritual benefit to yeah. You know, is it good for the brand or something?
Paul Thurrott (01:04:09):
Well for, okay. So for Leo, I think mentioned earlier, one of the things he doesn't like about the surface pro is the bouncy keyboard, right? Yeah. Lenova or HP, I know off the top of my head makes a version of surface pro with a very stiff actually Lenovo does too keyboard. That solves that problem. That's one of those things. Yeah. So if you, you want like a ThinkPad keyboard keyboard. Yeah. On a non bouncy kind of a yeah. Keyboard cover to it situation. Lenovo makes that for you. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but that's the point? I mean, whatever they thought they were gonna do to the PC industry, I think they've kind of made that point. I, I don't believe they did anything to raise the quality of premium PCs at all. I think those things were already happening. There's kinda something to HP and Dell. Yes. There's kind of a precedent for that to say that
Leo Laporte (01:04:52):
They dropped signature PC, they dropped the stores. There's a precedent for this. If it's not. Yeah. If it's not changing the world in the way they want. Yep. And you're losing,
Paul Thurrott (01:05:03):
It would be, yeah. It would be embarrassing for this to fail. It was embarrassing. That's a good point. The Microsoft story that had to have been what a horrible PR hit. Right. And the gloating that must have occurred in Cupertino. Cause
Leo Laporte (01:05:15):
They were all across the street from apple stores. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:05:18):
Right. Right. Well,
Mary Jo Foley (01:05:19):
You know, no, but if, but if they were really making
Paul Thurrott (01:05:22):
Karma is tough.
Mary Jo Foley (01:05:23):
No, no. If they were really making decisions like we're talking about like, based on just share, like, are we making money? Are people buying it? They would be, are they would've abandoned the do already. Right. Like that would be like in a landfill right. Somewhere. Right.
Leo Laporte (01:05:37):
They have
Paul Thurrott (01:05:38):
Maybe they have, we don't know that they haven't. Well, that's
Leo Laporte (01:05:40):
True. Rumor. I think
Mary Jo Foley (01:05:42):
Rumor is next year for, for 2 0 3.
Leo Laporte (01:05:45):
I, I would say with the duo, they're saying, look, we have a vision for where the market's going and we want to really, this is why, by the way, Google did a pixel book. We wanna forward that vision. Yes. By making this product. Yeah. So that others get it and go for it. But, but that job done mission accomplished for the pixel book. Yeah. And, and you know, what mission accomplished
Paul Thurrott (01:06:05):
Mission accomplished site. This is like IBM has successfully completed its run of the PS one or the, whatever the PC junior. Remember, you know, you try to, you try to phrase it like, as we did it, we did what we want. You know,
Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
This is the goal and we got it.
Paul Thurrott (01:06:18):
I can't believe that's what they wanted.
Mary Jo Foley (01:06:20):
No. When they first came out with the surface, I kept getting tips from people who I'm convinced for probably OEMs and sheep's clothing. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> right. Yep. <Laugh> who are saying, Microsoft's gonna dump this. Like there's no way this continues. I think they're gonna get outta this market. I hear, I hear they're gonna get out of surface. And I kept saying, I'm not hearing that and they haven't. Right. And I think at this point, they're not going to, I think they're sticking with that at this point. Okay. I don't think they're getting that as surface.
Paul Thurrott (01:06:46):
Well, I, I, Microsoft and Google have publicly made some of the same, you know said some of the same things. Like we're gonna focus now. We're gonna, you know, and Google, I mean, one of the things people don't like about Google, which Leo said was they seem to cancel things at the drop of a hat. But on the other hand, yeah. Sundar Peche did say, we need to focus. And this, you see the, maybe the inevitable outcome of that is products that if you're a stadia fan, for example, you gotta be a little worried right now. Like that's not been a huge success. It would be reasonable for Microsoft to take similar steps. I'm I'm literally not saying they should can't kill surface. I don't mean it like that, but I meant it more as kind of a mental exercise. Like you look at what Google just did.
Paul Thurrott (01:07:33):
You look at the rationale for this product in the first place, you can make a case for what Google did, but you look at what Microsoft did. And I, I still can't reconcile them ever doing this. Like the, that they even made surface to me makes no sense that they have made some great products. By the way, I, there are surface PCs that I still love and would be happy to use every day. You know, if they work properly <laugh> but they made some great products. That's another fact that kind of unrelated I'm just, but do they sell well, are they ever in the top 10 or five of any list of anything? I, I don't think they are.
Mary Jo Foley (01:08:10):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:08:11):
You know, I don't know. I, I just a, it's just an open question. I don't mean it. Yeah. I'm literally not arguing.
Leo Laporte (01:08:16):
They should. It's undoubtedly a question being asked in the boardroom.
Mary Jo Foley (01:08:19):
Oh, for sure.
Leo Laporte (01:08:20):
<Laugh> they should be. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:08:22):
They should
Mary Jo Foley (01:08:22):
Be. Especially as your, your mission as the Microsoft board is we wanna be a cloud company, like all, all wood behind the cloud era. Right. And then you're like, so why are we making PCs? Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:08:33):
Yeah. It's like a low margin business. We're probably losing money on it. Yeah. We haven't exactly set the world on fire. Whether you're talking about inspiring other hardware makers or just selling the damn thing, why are we doing this? We're making all this money over here who cares what device they're using. You know,
Leo Laporte (01:08:49):
You know, I've been reading recently and quite with quite with great interest, you know, Microsoft's vs code strategy. You know, you know, I was a hobbyist program or you are two Paul. Yep. Very aware of Microsoft's free coding platform, not, not visual studio, but vs. Code the li the little boy that's all not by the way on Mac PC and Linux and works great. And they have a cloud version of it. And developers are starting to come to the understanding that be between GitHub and vs code. Microsoft is making a strong play for kind of subscription coding. Like they're putting in so many cloud features into vs code, like pair, pair programming and things. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> that more and more people will kind of move to this cloud platform, you know, for C I C D and all of this, and the Microsofts could sit in squarely there. This is a really good cloud strategy. And I think a lot of developers have been slowly, especially open source developers,
Paul Thurrott (01:09:52):
Sucking. So use ads, if you don't pay <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:09:54):
Well,
Paul Thurrott (01:09:56):
Yeah. A little, a little blinking out in visual studio code.
Leo Laporte (01:09:59):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm seeing some really cool uses though. I mean, you know, you might say as probably I do, oh, I don't wanna get into a proprietary system and yet it looks so good and it works so good. And the interaction and the integration is so good that you
Paul Thurrott (01:10:15):
Go one extensibility is amazing. I think that's one of the things that really sells it. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:10:19):
And they've got this visual studio.com now where you mm-hmm <affirmative> you code in the cloud and
Paul Thurrott (01:10:25):
Wow. I Microsoft's roots are in software development. I feel like they've always done a great job there.
Leo Laporte (01:10:31):
Yeah, no kidding.
Paul Thurrott (01:10:33):
And if you do want to create native apps on whatever platform, you know, visual studio, the big brother is still an amazing product.
Mary Jo Foley (01:10:42):
And then they get dev box coming. Right. Which so,
Leo Laporte (01:10:44):
Well, I don't know about that. I'm not gonna get excited,
Mary Jo Foley (01:10:46):
You know, you know, what's funny. So after the episode where you guys are kind of poo pooing dev box, I heard from so many people who are like, here's why I want dev box. Like, and people had a lot of reasons. They said, you guys are kind of poo pooing, setting up a dev workstation, or how much it costs to have a certain kind of hardware. They're like, eh, you're, you're kind of downplaying that that could be a real reason for people to use this.
Paul Thurrott (01:11:08):
It could be, I'm
Mary Jo Foley (01:11:09):
Just relaying the message since I, unlike you, 2:00 AM not a programmer <laugh>. But
Paul Thurrott (01:11:15):
I mean, I spend more time
Leo Laporte (01:11:17):
Just the messenger
Paul Thurrott (01:11:17):
Configuring visual studio than I do compiling code, but yeah, no, I see what you're saying.
Mary Jo Foley (01:11:22):
<Laugh> no, they, I think, I think that's a great point. They're well
Leo Laporte (01:11:25):
Positioned. They're very
Mary Jo Foley (01:11:26):
Much Microsoft. Microsoft wants everything to be a subscription. Like if that could be the future for them, they would be sitting perfectly. Right. Yeah. And that's why the hardware thing is kind of an outlier, right? Like what you could say. Yeah. You know, that's well you could say their, their finance program for it. Like, you know, where if a surface dies, you can automatically get it replaced. If you buy this certain subscription, blah, blah, blah. You, you can kind of make that argument, but not, it's not the same as the rest of their business. For
Paul Thurrott (01:11:54):
Sure. You're, you're, you're touching on something that I actually think is really interesting because when you look at Microsoft throughout the years, a lot of people would've called Microsoft like a one product company because of windows back to today, it was really kind of a three product company. Eventually it was windows, windows, server office was kind of the big three and these were ecosystems that, you know, kinda built off of them. But the, the problem with those products is that they have life cycles. So you got these big booms in any have periods of real bad downtime. Yeah. Especially with office. I mean, people were not upgrading office at all. And so <laugh> yeah, literally. And so the subscription thing, when you make you think about Microsoft moves to the cloud, it's kind of a higher margin business, all that kind of thing, but it's also the subscription thing leads you to a point of steady income, right?
Paul Thurrott (01:12:41):
Because from Microsoft's perspective, predictable, steady income is much better than spikes and valleys, right. Especially when there are more valleys than there are spikes, you know, so a new windows release, a new office release, a new server release would, would generate a spike of financially, which I'm sure was always a, you know, for a long time was a big deal, but what they want is that kind of steady line of income. And that's what the subscription does. You know, people obviously don't like it in some ways, although they'll, you know, they, they make it advantageous. I think Microsoft has done a good job, for example with Microsoft 365 or office 365, where it becomes almost a no brainer for the people that need that stuff. And it keeps getting better over time. So maybe they can do that with visual studio, you know? Yeah. It's, it's an interesting thing. I, developers are the type of people who would recoil from that the most <laugh> I would say, but
Leo Laporte (01:13:36):
Well, but that's the thing, it's a honey pot you know, you start using GitHub for free VVS code for free. Then you want a little bit more, you want a little bit more and pretty soon you're leaving,
Paul Thurrott (01:13:46):
You get Azure credits and you get this and that. And yeah. And it's total, eventually you're giving Microsoft 85 bucks a month and you don't even know how it happened. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:13:54):
<Laugh> yeah, because you look at this and it's so cool and there's so many things you can do and you go, oh, I really want that. And I want, so there's an open source vs code. You know, you can run that, but you won't get all the features unless you sign in with a Microsoft account and start downloading some of their extensions. And yeah, just, well, it's
Paul Thurrott (01:14:09):
Like great. I mean's Adobe creative cloud. Have you ever looked at the pricing on this thing? Like, oh yeah. I, I, it's something I think about. And then I look at it and I'm like, oh no, no, I can't. What's <laugh> what is
Leo Laporte (01:14:19):
This crazy? Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:14:20):
You know? Right. For what I do,
Leo Laporte (01:14:23):
It's not a honey pot. It's a money pot. There you go. Alright. Yeah. Actually there was somebody put the blog post that I was thinking about from G Huntley visual studio code is designed to fracture fracture. Wow. Fracture.
Paul Thurrott (01:14:41):
That's
Leo Laporte (01:14:42):
Here, I'll give you the, the pull quote whilst. Okay.
Paul Thurrott (01:14:45):
Hold on. Is I, I hope it's clear. I'm not a Microsoft defender here, but I will say this. I questioned what visual studio code was when they first announced it. And the way they described it to me was that visual studio, the big brother thing attracts a certain part of the market. Yeah. But the world has gone in this different direction where it's a lot of it is web development and mobile app development and visual studio. Isn't great for that. And it doesn't speak to people or on other platforms and they wanted a way they, they saw things like Adam and
Leo Laporte (01:15:16):
Which is, which is by the way, GitHub's Adam gone. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> GitHub discontinued in. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:22):
Okay. Weird. Who wants GitHub again? Anyway, but the point is, well, but Adam had its issues. No, but the it's
Leo Laporte (01:15:28):
Clear what they want. They want everybody,
Paul Thurrott (01:15:30):
You
Leo Laporte (01:15:30):
Know, whatever's code. And as you use vs code, you are slowly, inevitably inexorably channeled into the Microsoft
Paul Thurrott (01:15:39):
Cloud. Okay. But this is, apple has made a great success out of doing this giveaway code,
Leo Laporte (01:15:45):
Microsoft, same thing.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:46):
Yeah. Is well serving the developer community with this type of strategy in these products. I mean, we can't argue against it. We just, you know, if it's the right thing for those people, then this is what you should do. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:15:58):
No, no. I think I, I don't, it's, it's a good strategy. It's a good business strategy. I think it's more people saying, oh wow. Like the frog in the pot, I just woke up and it's kind of hot.
Paul Thurrott (01:16:10):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:16:11):
That's all. And you
Paul Thurrott (01:16:12):
Don't have to, and you'll see Steve bomber and he'll be like, see, I told you Lynox is a cancer. I wasn't choking.
Leo Laporte (01:16:17):
You don't have to do it. Hey, I wanna take another break. Don't forget. We were gonna take live calls in our discord and questions from our IRC in about three hours at this pace, we'll be, we'll be there and you will be so, so happy our show today. Speaking of Lenovo, brought to you by Lenovo orchestrated by the experts at C D w the helpful people at CDW understand as the world changes, your organization needs to adapt quickly to be successful. So how can CDW keep your business ahead of the, with Lenovo think pads? Yes. These powerful devices deliver the business class performance. You're looking for thanks to windows 10 and the Intel Evo platform with your remote teams, working across the country and around the world. Collaboration is not a problem because Lenovo think pads keep your organization productive and connected from anywhere. Plus of course, CDW knows your workforce has different work, styles, needs flexibility. And that's why Lenovo think pads are equipped with responsive tools and built in features that let your team work seamlessly across their favorite tools. Now think about that for a second. Now let's not forget about security while we're thinking these high performing machines, of course protect at the highest level with builtin hardware to guard against modern threats without slowing your team down. When you need to get more out of your technology, Lenovo makes seamless productivity possible, and CDW makes it powerful. Learn more at cdw.com/lenovo client cdw.com/lenovo client.
Leo Laporte (01:18:01):
Speaking of I don't know, developers is no, if Knight's not a developer show, is that no,
Paul Thurrott (01:18:09):
It's, this is a developer component to
Leo Laporte (01:18:11):
It. Yeah. Ignites a common.
Paul Thurrott (01:18:14):
Yeah. And this time it's personal. No, this time it's
Leo Laporte (01:18:17):
<Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (01:18:18):
Well, it's, it's sort of in person, but only for a very small group of people who will be going to the Seattle convention center. Those people will pay almost $1,900 for that option. <Laugh> if you choose. And, and I, you know, after two, three years away, I'm thinking a lot of people are gonna be like, yeah. You know, I don't, I don't think I have to go there, but it will still be virtual as well. Right. So it's, I guess we'll call it a, a hybrid event. Anyway. You can register for that. Now it is October 12th 12 through the four 12th. <Laugh> October 12th through 14. Why is that? That's sound weird. It's an October folks. But you can sign up,
Leo Laporte (01:18:54):
But October Fest is not an October folks. So make sure you do October Fest
Paul Thurrott (01:18:58):
First. That's right. That's right. It's confusing. Yes.
Leo Laporte (01:19:03):
Oh, that's it. Huh?
Paul Thurrott (01:19:04):
That's it. Okay.
Leo Laporte (01:19:05):
That's it.
Mary Jo Foley (01:19:06):
I know there's no session list yet. And the speaker list is up and it's all the same people, you know?
Leo Laporte (01:19:11):
Is it online only? Hopefully
Mary Jo Foley (01:19:14):
Now there's, there's some little pockets of in person, right?
Paul Thurrott (01:19:18):
<Laugh> yeah. Yeah. I, it might be, I, I, I wonder how they're gonna handle this because some people they're gonna allow a small group there. Right. I don't know if they're gonna handpick who gets to go? I think
Mary Jo Foley (01:19:30):
They kind of are right.
Paul Thurrott (01:19:31):
They'll just see how many people register or stuff you
Mary Jo Foley (01:19:34):
Have to request. You have to request to go in person. And
Paul Thurrott (01:19:37):
Why do you need to be in Seattle? Exactly.
Mary Jo Foley (01:19:39):
Exactly. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:19:43):
It's in Seattle.
Mary Jo Foley (01:19:43):
Yeah. We're not invited no press or invited. No
Paul Thurrott (01:19:46):
Press. I know. That's.
Leo Laporte (01:19:47):
Is that unusual?
Mary Jo Foley (01:19:49):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:19:50):
I would've thought press would've been the first ones invited obvious me tooly. I know, but I, I don't, I've gotten kind of soft. I mean, not traveling for work. I, I, I don't, I don't know if I want to travel for work anymore. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:20:05):
This
Paul Thurrott (01:20:05):
Is such a common part of our
Leo Laporte (01:20:07):
Spoil sport.
Mary Jo Foley (01:20:07):
It's gotta be a good reason. There has to be some crazy good reason to go <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:20:12):
Yeah. Well, you don't to go anywhere. Mary Jo, the Google pixel event, October 6th in Manhattan.
Mary Jo Foley (01:20:18):
I know. I
Paul Thurrott (01:20:19):
Would love to go to that. See that I would go to
Mary Jo Foley (01:20:21):
It's in Brooklyn. Isn't it?
Leo Laporte (01:20:22):
Yeah's in Brooklyn. You're right. Yes. At the at that Google store at that popup
Paul Thurrott (01:20:26):
Store, Brooklyn is still sort of New York. Isn't
Leo Laporte (01:20:28):
It? It's technically New York. It's a Burra that I said not, it's not ING. It's Brooklyn. Let's get it right. Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:20:37):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:20:40):
You can now, okay. One little bit of developer news, just a little taste of developer news
Paul Thurrott (01:20:46):
From Anon. Right? Right. So most, well, I don't know. I was gonna say most people are probably familiar with some people are probably familiar with something called the windows package manager. This is winge, right? This
Leo Laporte (01:20:57):
Is the new thing. It's great. I want
Paul Thurrott (01:20:58):
Command line. Yeah. I
Leo Laporte (01:21:00):
Want it to be more package manage system.
Paul Thurrott (01:21:01):
Yeah. So Microsoft is adding more to it over time. So one of the things they've added to it is.net. And actually this is a pretty good way to require a.net. I have to say, I tested this on one machine. It's it's pretty seamless. Basically. You just go to the command line. So I should say, wind get is just built into windows now. So if you have windows 11, at least it's just there. You don't have to download it from the store, from the web or anything. It's part of the operating system. And from a command line I used PowerShell through windows terminal, you just type, win, get search microsoft.dot net, like.microsoft period.net. And then it will show you all of the versions of the.net SDK and run times that are currently supported to download. It's actually several of them. I I'm kind of surprised.
Paul Thurrott (01:21:41):
So it's dot net core three x.net five, which is no longer supported dot net six, which is the current version. And then.net seven in preview. And it's SDK and runtime. Both you can pick and choose which you want, and you can obviously download multiple versions.net now does side by side. So that's very easy and it will you can check for upgrade, you know, as you upgrade through winge, if you just say, wind, get, upgrade, any packages you've installed through Winget will be updated if there are updates available. So it's fairly seamless. This is, this sounds like a, you know, you can make your own little dub box this way. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:22:21):
And this is what developers are used to from legs and, you know, package manager should install it all. I like it when get I lock the odd air. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:22:30):
Yeah. The guy who invented it and was ripped off by Microsoft, like should too,
Leo Laporte (01:22:34):
But <laugh>, we don't talk about him, but yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:22:37):
They smooth that over. That's all smoothed over. Did
Leo Laporte (01:22:39):
They? I dunno. I'll ask you that. So they did
Paul Thurrott (01:22:41):
Well, let's just say no, one's talking about it anymore.
Leo Laporte (01:22:44):
Yeah. <laugh> that means they settled somehow. Yeah. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> to the satisfaction of both parts,
Paul Thurrott (01:22:50):
The matter was settled, let's say yes.
Leo Laporte (01:22:52):
Yes. Okay. That's good. That's all you can say.
Paul Thurrott (01:22:55):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:22:57):
Alright. We're gonna do an Xbox thing. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> Mary Jo is gonna go get everybody ready and then we're gonna do your questions. <Laugh> okay. And that will do in both the discord. So if you're in discord, go to the open mic room and anybody in there, you, we might put you on the air. I don't know. And then and then that's that's all I have to say then, then, then that's it. But first.
Paul Thurrott (01:23:26):
Yep.
Leo Laporte (01:23:27):
He Xbox Paul
Paul Thurrott (01:23:28):
<Inaudible>. This is actually some big stories this week.
Leo Laporte (01:23:30):
Oh, good. I'm gonna go get some lunch and I'll be back in an hour.
Paul Thurrott (01:23:33):
<Laugh>. I mean, they're gonna go quick, but this some big stories, so no, it's okay, good. You, you may leave. I will. You, I'm not gonna drag this out, but I'll, I'll
Leo Laporte (01:23:40):
Drag it out. Please take, take
Paul Thurrott (01:23:42):
The time that
Mary Jo Foley (01:23:42):
We require I'll interject and add some
Leo Laporte (01:23:44):
Wisdom. Good. Thank you, Mary Jo. There you go. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:23:46):
So if you've been following along with the halo, infinite drama, you know, that two years ago, this game was about to come out, but then Microsoft delayed it for a year and it desperately needed that extra year. But then when it arrived a year ago, it was also woefully incomplete. Microsoft said, no worries. We'll update it over time. We got this, we're gonna do this and that. And the other thing, they kept delaying. They delayed the new seasons. They delayed new features back in. I think it was August. They announced that split screen co-op was not coming. It's turned into kind of a tobacco and I've never really written or talked about this, but there have been calls for Microsoft to take halo away from 3 43 industries. And maybe give it to another game studio that maybe these guys are just not have not done a good job with it.
Paul Thurrott (01:24:36):
Although what I, I should say, 3 43 has done a tremendous job with the master chief collection. So, and the halo television series also happened on their watch. This was something that was supposed to happen a decade ago. It finally did happen. I think they did a pretty good job with it. I, you know, I'm not really sure, but in the middle of all this drama Bonnie Ross, who's the head of 3 43 studios industries and the person Mo most directly responsible for halo, infinite announced abruptly on Twitter that she was leaving the company. And she said that it was because of a family medical issue, which mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, we hopefully is not, I mean, sounds serious, unfortunately, and we don't know if it's her or someone else and, and what it is, we don't know, but the timing could not be worse. In the mid midst of people calling for someone's head she has stepped up to the plate and said, I'm leaving. And yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:25:28):
But you don't make up the family medical emergency. I mean, that
Paul Thurrott (01:25:31):
Would be, yeah, usually right. It, it wasn't to spend more time with my family. Yeah, yeah. You know, but, but it's still boy, it's just a, it's, it's a tough one. So there's no way to really know. I mean, I hope I hope whatever is going on in her family is something that could be solved and is, has a good outcome. I don't, yeah, I
Mary Jo Foley (01:25:48):
Don't know. But today, today I saw on some sites. I can't remember where, cause I don't pay that much attention to Xbox. Sorry. <laugh> that's okay. Somebody else at 3 43, like a direction director of engineering is leaving now.
Paul Thurrott (01:26:02):
So, and he cited, he said my grandmother died and they're like, Bob, you have like,
Mary Jo Foley (01:26:06):
It looks bad. Like, okay, is everybody jumping ship? Cuz some big thing isn't about to happen? Like what's going on. Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:26:13):
<Laugh> I, I, I think anything is on the table for 3 43 inhaler right now. I, I, I, this is creeping into disaster territory now. Video, I must have said this on a previous podcast. It just sounds familiar. But I feel like video games have become a bit like movies. Nope. That's actually the opposite of what I meant to say. Video games, a little different for movies because movies today don't last for a long time in the theater, they have kind of a big blowout at the beginning and then they disappear. But video games, good video games like hello, infinite potentially could, could be in the market for a long time and they get updates over time. Microsoft's done a good job of that with other games, you know, gears of war sea of thieves. And so on flight simulator actually is an excellent example.
Paul Thurrott (01:26:57):
Minecraft. I could go on anyway. The point is this could have long lasting power, but there's also that thing that could happen where if it's a disaster out of the gate, like Xbox one, you never really recover from that. And you don't wanna do that with your mark E title. This is literally the most important game franchise that Xbox has. It's not even close and that, that might weigh heavily on the decision makers of Microsoft. So we'll see. Anyway, I hope Bonnie Ross's family is okay. I don't know anything about that. Yeah. And one of the commenters on your blog said gave her credit for keeping halo. Continuing after Bunge took off Microsoft didn't really have any plans for halo, but she convinced them to keep working on it. I also, the, the master chief collection is the type of thing where you kind of really, if it's feature complete and all that, you release it and you're done with it.
Paul Thurrott (01:27:47):
You don't really think about it too much more, but they updated that a lot over time and they added new features. They added higher, you know, high res options and so forth. And they've kept that kind of fresh. And so if you're a halo fan, I think overall, you can't feel too too bad about it, but halo infant is tough. I mean, it's, you know, Halo's not like hall of duty. They didn't come up with one of these every year. Right. So it's, it's a big deal when you release a halo. I, this one did not go as well as it should have, especially given just the, kind of the general quality of the game. It's like the kind like, you know, remember the, they did the star wars prequels. The first one, the force awakens was kind of a nice return to formula two or whatever.
Paul Thurrott (01:28:25):
But the first one, it was like, oh, that's cool. Look, towers is back, you know? And it should have been like that, you know? And it, it was in some ways, but I, I don't think they landed it. Another big bit of news, I'm surprised we didn't talk about this last week and maybe I, I must have written about it right after the show or something. But I did talk about the fact that the UK competition markets authority came back to Microsoft that said, there's no way we're approving this BLI activation blizzard acquisition, unless you make some concessions. And I guess you couldn't find this, but the head of Xbox said publicly somewhere, I can't find this. But he said that he had agreed that they would support call of duty on PlayStation for five years past the current agreement in response to this, the current agreement expires by the way AF in, well, three versions of the game later.
Paul Thurrott (01:29:19):
So it could be four years from now, but the head of Sony PlayStation, I should say the head of PlayStation came up publicly is, is his name's Jim, Ryan? Sorry. He said, yeah, that's not what they said. <Laugh> he said, they told us that they would support it for two more years, which is very different. <Laugh> right. So here's the thing I don't understand. This is, this just goes back to the, the conversation we had previously. You just support call of duty on PlayStation. Why would you put a limit on this? It's like you know, Microsoft would agree in the past to produce Microsoft office on the Mac for three years of five years or whatever they agreed to at the time. It's like, just if it's a big deal, like the Mac at the time was not a big deal, really in the scheme of things, but in the scheme of call a duty specifically, but also just video game consoles in general, you don't ignore the PlayStation.
Paul Thurrott (01:30:13):
What are you doing? <Laugh> like, yes. Put it on Xbox. Yes. Put it on game pass. Yes. Make it better if you're an Xbox, if that's what you wanna do, but you don't ignore PlayStation. Like I just don't, I don't know what's going on there. So we'll see, we'll see what ever actually happens. There, but that's a, that's a big one. The rest of these are not as big <laugh>, but still important to note. If you've, if you're an Xbox fan, you know, that Microsoft spent the second half of the Xbox 360 S lifetime and the entire lifetime of the Xbox one, trying to get these things to run at an acceptable speed, specifically the dashboard, there was just something about the Xbox dashboard where this thing just did not run fast. And with the Xbox one in particular, I remember they used to keep, keep changing the dashboard so that to get to a certain point, took fewer steps because that was the only way they could make it faster.
Paul Thurrott (01:31:02):
Like they couldn't actually make the thing run faster. I dunno if it was electron or whatever, but with Xbox series X and S I feel like this isn't quite the problem it used to be, but now they're actually going to insiders and they're saying, Hey, look, we want your feedback. We're going to start throwing out some ideas we have for a change that will happen a year from now, you know, based on what you say, we either will or will not implement these changes. So if you're in the Xbox, inside a program starting with the alpha skip ahead ring, you're gonna start seeing some new layouts. You'll be able to provide feedback. And maybe a year from now, we'll all benefit from it. I look at the screenshot of this thing and I'm like, yep. This looks like the thing I'm using right now.
Paul Thurrott (01:31:37):
I don't, I don't quite see the big deal there. Discord fans who are on Xbox will be happy to know that the on console version of discord now supports voice chat, which is feature, which is one of those things. I'm like, I, this wasn't the case before. What were people doing before? Like they had discord on their PC and they were talking to people that way, maybe. I don't know. But anyway, discord integrates, as you probably know, with the, with Xbox, with the consoles. And so now it supports the voice chat feature. So you can talk to people over discord while you're playing games together. Exactly what it sounds like. We're
Leo Laporte (01:32:14):
Gonna use that in a minute.
Paul Thurrott (01:32:16):
<Laugh> yes, we are not the one on Xbox bay. I guess you could be on Xbox maybe,
Leo Laporte (01:32:20):
I guess so I don't. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:32:21):
I've never used it on Xbox. Yeah. And then lastly golden, I, oh, seven is arguably the first I was gonna say the first console, third person shooter. Let's call it the first successful console. Third person shooter, third person, first person. I'm
Leo Laporte (01:32:40):
Sorry. And, and notably might've been third person and notably cooperative mode. Couch.
Paul Thurrott (01:32:46):
Yes. Split screen split screen. So it, it sort of kicked off the notion that you could play these games on a console. Eventually not long after call duty made its way to consoles. And I think blew that door open, but a lot of people point to golden, I oh seven, which was an Nintendo. What was it? Nintendo we game. No, it was before the, we, it must have been a, what was the last,
Leo Laporte (01:33:09):
That's a good question.
Paul Thurrott (01:33:12):
Yeah. Game cube. <Laugh> 64. I don't know. It was 2000. It must have been like 2000 or late. He
Leo Laporte (01:33:18):
Was Pierce Brasin was oh seven. So that semi yeah. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:33:22):
How old it was. Yeah. The movie came out in 1995. So actually this game came out in 1997. So it was the Nintendo 64. Geez. That's a million. Oh my God. Incredible. Anyway. Yeah. Long, long time ago. So split screen, multiplayer modes four, but
Leo Laporte (01:33:37):
This is gonna be 4k. They've totally remastered it, which is big.
Paul Thurrott (01:33:40):
Right. I'm sorry. So we've been talking about the game, but what's happening to it. So it's coming to Xbox game pass, which is amazing. So it's a remastered version of the game. You're gonna be able to get it on your console if you just wanna buy it. It's also coming to the Nintendo switch if you have that. And it was just announced just a couple days ago, I guess on the Nintendo direct live stream. So that's pretty cool. We don't have an exact date. We don't know what the price is gonna be if you wanna buy it outright. But if you have game pass, you will be able to play this ancient <laugh> like quake era console, shooter game.
Leo Laporte (01:34:13):
Awesome.
Paul Thurrott (01:34:14):
I've never played it
Leo Laporte (01:34:18):
Go. I,
Paul Thurrott (01:34:22):
I don't think that's the,
Leo Laporte (01:34:23):
You shoot the guy and then he shoots back at you. I think before I sing anymore, this is my incentive to get you to join us in the open mic room. It's time to go. How do we do this to our listener questions? You don't need to do anything. My friend, I am gonna start with a question that we got just seconds ago. I asked her to be on the, on the live thing. She wouldn't do it. She said I'm camera shy. Blair Madison 11 in our discord says does anyone know what's going on with the windows insider beta channel? I'm cued for UN enrollment on the next major release yet I'm still getting new builds. I thought the 20, 22 update was done. The window did the windows slam?
Mary Jo Foley (01:35:17):
It's not open yet, right?
Leo Laporte (01:35:18):
Oh,
Paul Thurrott (01:35:20):
Well, yeah. So we, we mentioned our confusion earlier. So the, the, the beta and the dev channel technically are targeting posts 22 H two right now. Yeah. So, and they're not tied to a specific version of windows as of yet. My suspicion is that beta will be is, is being used to test features for windows 11. And that will come, you know, over the next several months, like after the release of 22 H two. Yep. And that dev is sort of what it's been for a little while, which is yeah. We're testing features, but they may or may not happen. We don't, you know, we don't know when and maybe for something next year, you know, they talk, we been talking about moments and we don't know how they're gonna market these kinds of things, but there'll be a 22 H two release. And then there'll be just like we saw this past year. Other features will occur throughout the year. So my understanding is that, well, not my understanding, my guess my educated guess is that that's what beta is. But that raises an interesting point because there's a feature in windows, right? Yeah. Where you could get out of the insider program once that version is released, but it's not tied to a version.
Mary Jo Foley (01:36:29):
I know, you know what I'm betting. They've got, I bet one, whenever 22 H two starts rolling out to the mainstream, which is rumored to be soon. Right. There's gonna have to be an opening in the magic window thing. Right. Like where they say, okay, everybody, now's your chance. Get in, get out, move around. If
Paul Thurrott (01:36:46):
They'll let you in the UI, get, pull out of there and go back to stable or go to one of the other channels. Yeah. So right there has
Mary Jo Foley (01:36:53):
That chance. Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:36:54):
They have, well, they've done it in the past. Right. So that makes some sense too.
Mary Jo Foley (01:36:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm
Leo Laporte (01:36:59):
<Affirmative> they don't call it magic window though. So don't look for that.
Mary Jo Foley (01:37:02):
<Laugh> that's
Leo Laporte (01:37:03):
That's that's
Paul Thurrott (01:37:04):
That's my term. That's
Mary Jo Foley (01:37:06):
That's your Paul Thra TM magic window.
Leo Laporte (01:37:09):
<Laugh> right. Web 34 31 in the IRC. Could you ask Paul why he thinks Xin forms and Maui are a mess?
Paul Thurrott (01:37:17):
Oh, cuz I've used them.
Leo Laporte (01:37:18):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:37:19):
Who knows? Yeah, no Maui is much improved, but you have to re the original Sanin forms is a car crash. It's terrible. <Laugh> it's just really bad. It's just real. It's just tossed together. It, it's amazing that they got it to work at all. I, I think the problem is that, well, we'll see how we'll see. I I've just started looking at Maui. I mean, Maui is really designed to create the same kinds of apps. This is a mobile app framework. It's not a desktop app framework. Right. It doesn't matter what the thing you're making is called. What I mean by that is the controls are all the types of things you would need for mobile apps. So lighter apps, it's, it's definitely better. It's a little simpler. There were real issues around where you had the assets and the and the formatting of those assets for the different platforms that were supported Android iOS and at the time windows mobile. Right. and wind UWP. So also desktop. But yeah, you know, we'll see, I, I, I just feel like it's a lot of catch up in that there are more sophisticated and modern frameworks that do the same thing and more like flutter, for example, which supports more platforms than Maui does and is much further along
Leo Laporte (01:38:34):
Let's go back to the discord and we are gonna head into the voice channel where the
Paul Thurrott (01:38:40):
Handsome sounds like the Brady bunch
Leo Laporte (01:38:42):
Ke brewer is ready and waiting to ask a question, Kev, go he's Mr. Faff, by the way, go ahead, Mr. Mr. Fator
Kev (01:38:50):
Right. It's about the windows 10 versus 11 compatibility issue. I know they said they'd released or relaxed some of the specifications regarding the processes. But there was also a question about the security updates as a result you may or may not get them. Do we know since that was asked if anything's changed?
Paul Thurrott (01:39:14):
Well, no, <laugh> nothing has changed. I don't expect them to formally come out and say, you know, we're gonna support older hardware generations, right? So I, I have, in fact, I just wrote this part of the book. So it's, it's an easy matter to install windows 11 on a system that doesn't meet the hardware requirements. So I tried this on a couple different computers, but I stuck to sixth and seventh generation Intel core processors. I would never personally install windows 11 on a computer with less than, you know, well eight or honestly, 16 gigs around. But, you know, I, I, the notion of putting it on a computer with four gigs of Ram and 32 gigs of storage is kind of ludicrous to me. But you can, you can bypass that TPM, same thing. You know, if you have TPM 1.2 or newer, it will work fine, but the issue you're asking is would they ever, you know not deliver security updates? I, I cannot imagine they, they will not come out and say, we will never do that. Right. Yep. And I'm, I think that's a legal thing, but I can't imagine they're ever not going to deliver security updates at the very least. Right.
Mary Jo Foley (01:40:28):
Right. And the reason, the reason they say it's not supported is they're trying to discourage people from doing that. Right. But they it's kind like they're leaving a window open saying, if you, if you're technical enough, you know how, okay, go ahead. But by saying it's not, not completely and officially supported by Microsoft, they're keeping a lot of business customers from doing this. Right. Because like, no, we cannot take that risk. Like if there's even a small risk, we can't get the security update. We're not doing it. And so they're kind of forcing businesses hands. If they want windows 11, they're gonna have to upgrade the hardware. If it doesn't meet the requirement. Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:41:05):
Yeah. The way I would, the, I'm
Kev (01:41:07):
Sorry, a year old with this setup requires 11 and it's only the, the chip. I think it was stepping from this one. That's the reason I wanted to.
Paul Thurrott (01:41:16):
Yeah. So you as an individual I would say, first of all, it's very easy to do, to get, you know, to get around that limitation. It's interesting because there's a registry change you make to the comput, to the windows 10 PC. It's not on the windows 11 setup disc. Although I think there's a way to do that as well. But the easier thing to do is just go into the registry on windows 10, a single change. Your reboot setup just works after that. It will warn you one more time. Like, Hey, we know you're doing it. Are you sure you want to do this, that kind of thing. But you're a technical enough that if a year down the road, Microsoft came out and said, surprise, we're actually not gonna deliver updates anymore. Your computer's not gonna be secure. You could go back to windows 10 on that computer, maybe sell it or give it away to someone else and do what you want to do on a different computer then. But I, I, I really don't think that's gonna happen. That's we can only make an educated guess, but I, I, based on their behavior in the past with things like windows seven and eight product keys use working to activate windows 10 and now 11, and that's never gone away. I just, I can't imagine there's no reason to, for them to be malicious like that to a few individuals. It just doesn't make sense.
Kev (01:42:22):
Well, that was great. Doesn't sound like too much of a fat,
Leo Laporte (01:42:25):
No FA
Paul Thurrott (01:42:26):
Much of a,
Leo Laporte (01:42:27):
Let me thank you for your active participation in the discord. And especially in the windows weekly Kev posts saw the links to the show notes in the discord channel. I really appreciate everything you do to help us out here.
Kev (01:42:40):
Happy to help.
Leo Laporte (01:42:41):
Thank you, Kevin. Thank you. Let's see. I don't know. Do we have any do we have any other questions
Mary Jo Foley (01:42:50):
We have, we have a question from someone who can't speak it because that's, he doesn't have a quiet background. Yeah. Okay. Robo, this is a, this is a fun question. If Microsoft gave you a marker and a whiteboard and said, draw the ultimate windows computer, what would you be? Drawing question. And are you, are you designing something for a home user or an enterprise person? I love
Leo Laporte (01:43:10):
It.
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:11):
Hmm. That's a good one. You know what I'm gonna say? Of course.
Leo Laporte (01:43:15):
<Laugh> it should be attached to your thighs.
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:18):
Yes. It should be laughable for sure.
Leo Laporte (01:43:21):
It needs a little clip on the bottom that just clips right onto your legs.
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:24):
It kind of, it would be kind of cool. If you had like a, a little pouch on the side where you could just whip it around.
Leo Laporte (01:43:30):
Oh. A sling,
Paul Thurrott (01:43:32):
Like a guitarist when they swing their guitar on their body,
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:35):
But just swing it over and then you're just like, yep. Perfect.
Leo Laporte (01:43:39):
Cool.
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:39):
Yeah, but I say has to be light, has to have at least a 13 inch screen and a really good keyboard. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:43:46):
And good battery light. Describe yes or no. Good battery.
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:48):
Light a
Paul Thurrott (01:43:49):
Computer for you. You're talking about a computer for you. You,
Mary Jo Foley (01:43:51):
I am. Cuz I,
Paul Thurrott (01:43:53):
Because the problem, the problem and the benefit of the PC industry is there's so many choices and that's no matter what your needs are. There's something out there for you. There is. I will say, you know, over time, my wants and likes and so forth have evolved, you know, and changed. We talked about the touch thing on laptop screens and all that I, this year has been interesting because, well, a, like I said, a lot of convertibles for some reason, which I only use as laptops for the most part. This year has been the year of 16 inch laptops. I have five of them. Yeah. Five have five in my house right now. I know it's crazy. By the way, some of them are convertibles <laugh>, which is crazy. But as I get older and I'm not traveling as much, right. That bigger screen is awesome. And a lot of these computers now have, you know, Doby, Atmos, and you watch a movie on this thing and it's incredible. It's better than my TV and, you know, for working, which is the normal <laugh> thing I would do on such a computer just having the bigger screen. It's just like phones. Like the bigger screen is nice. Like it's kind of evolved for me. So mm-hmm, <affirmative>, I'd also, I would definitely go to the laptop.
Mary Jo Foley (01:44:58):
I'd also be interested in a cool all in one kind of thing for a kitchen that's designed specifically for a kitchen. Well so that sounds
Paul Thurrott (01:45:07):
Like it needs touch
Mary Jo Foley (01:45:09):
<Laugh> no, you could do without touch. Maybe voice. How about voice? Like you're
Leo Laporte (01:45:14):
Recipe better. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:45:15):
Right. And
Paul Thurrott (01:45:16):
Yeah, but that's like a, that's a, that's a battleship approach
Mary Jo Foley (01:45:20):
To a it's market. I know. Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:45:22):
But why wouldn't you get a, like a Google or Amazon smart display or something like that. Right. Wouldn't that solve that problem? Yeah.
Mary Jo Foley (01:45:27):
If you could, I don't know. I think it would be kind of cool to be able to have a full PC where you could, if you needed to look up your work look up something for work, but also something that was ruggedized enough, not to get greasy and not to get like destroyed if something spills on it. You know, remember in the old days Microsoft had those home home design studio on campus. And one of the things they had was a PC built right into the counter that was like inside the counter that you could see when you could call it up, when you needed to see it and pull up things like recipe
Paul Thurrott (01:45:57):
There, there was, there was a brief, actually it was the windows eight timeframe. There were computers that were designed for kitchens or for other places, the house like that. And Lenovo made, I think, I believe it was a 27 inch. It was basically a 27 inch tablet that the idea was you would dock it and use it like that way most of the time. But you could, if you wanted to bring it around, I, this is probably not accurate, but you made me think, I have seen screens on a wall in a kitchen twice that were connected to a computer. And both of those times where Microsoft employees <laugh>. Yeah. Now I, that I probably have seen more computers and kitchens than that. This is just what I remember. But
Leo Laporte (01:46:36):
Honeywell, that was like a, you may not remember this, but Honeywell designed a kitchen computer. Yeah. Back in the day. I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for. Mary Jo, let me see if I can pull up a picture for this. I think it has to be voice though, right? Yeah. It was it was in the 1969 Neiman Marcus catalog <laugh> and it was nice. Yeah, basically a table with a, with a computer built into it. Let me set that openness in a new tab, kinda like the big table.
Paul Thurrott (01:47:11):
There was a, there was a wasn't there a gesture based feature where you could wave your hand over there. You
Leo Laporte (01:47:15):
Are screen by the way there I, and your beautiful outfit and your apron. Yep. Your full length apron with the <laugh> Honeywell kitchen, computer. That's unbelievable, which is rather large, but there's plenty of room on it for your basket of vegetables. You just picked from your truck garden.
Paul Thurrott (01:47:33):
It'd be neat. If that thing could double as like a, a scale. So you could measure items.
Leo Laporte (01:47:37):
This was a horrible era, by the way, 1969. If here's the tagline, if she could only cook as well as Honeywell could compute very soles who Supreme her meal planning, <laugh> a challenge. She's what the Honeywell people had in mind when they devised our kitchen computer, she'll learn to program it with a cross reference to her favorite recipes by Neiman Marcus' own Helen Corbit. Then by simply pushing a few buttons, just a few obtain, a complete menu organized around the entree
Paul Thurrott (01:48:13):
Was this thing, $10,600,
Leo Laporte (01:48:17):
$10,600,
Paul Thurrott (01:48:17):
Which in today's dollars is probably like 3 million <laugh> or whatever. Oh yeah, that's crazy.
Leo Laporte (01:48:22):
But good news. It comes with a two week programming course. So you're gonna learn 14. You
Paul Thurrott (01:48:28):
Know, what would've been better for this woman is if she got a job, you know, and didn't have to
Leo Laporte (01:48:33):
Do the take that course and then start up her own kitchen, cell startup. Wow. That is a
Paul Thurrott (01:48:42):
Kitchen. My husband was gonna want a martini when he gets home too. So
Leo Laporte (01:48:44):
Let's and take off that apron, honey.
Paul Thurrott (01:48:48):
Let's get moving on that <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:48:50):
It was only 1969. It wasn't even that long ago.
Paul Thurrott (01:48:53):
That was the best year ever for music though.
Leo Laporte (01:48:55):
71.
Paul Thurrott (01:48:57):
Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:48:57):
I don't know. Leo 71 and 73. I know. You know, there's, ZPL
Paul Thurrott (01:49:01):
Four, three albums in that one year
Leo Laporte (01:49:03):
Alone. I, I know who am I to argue with a guy who has a music night every week. Exactly. I have a question. Can I ask a question? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> okay. Unless did we get Paul's we didn't really get Paul's.
Paul Thurrott (01:49:15):
Well, there was actually, there was one question I saw earlier,
Leo Laporte (01:49:17):
But we didn't get your design for your ultimate PC.
Paul Thurrott (01:49:22):
Oh no, I, I it's, I, it changes, you know, it's it evolves over time, right? This year it's 16 inch laptop, you know? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:49:31):
No, my question comes from the radio show and I maybe got this wrong. Okay. Cause somebody said I just installed 22 H two and windows was 11 and now I have to use a Microsoft account to install. Is there any way around this?
Paul Thurrott (01:49:43):
So given that that's not out yet and <laugh> well, whatever he installed, some version of windows 11. Yeah. And yes. So the answer is yes. Was a way you still recommend that, that rufuss thing. I do not recommend Rufus for that. No I don't. No. Okay. And we, and it no longer works to take it offline. I think so. I think that it just says, no, you have to go online with your micro. I wish I could just say my book will be available soon. <Laugh> and it has three different methods you can use to okay. Get around what I call a a set up annoyance, which, you know, you no longer recommend the rufuss method rufuss works. I think the it's just not the most elegant okay. Of those solutions. Yeah. It's a ISO installer. Probably everybody's familiar with that.
Paul Thurrott (01:50:29):
Yeah. You build the windows, install ISO windows and it has some check boxes. Yeah. This is quick. That's one of the things I really like about it. There there's the there's there you can bypass. So the, the trick is you can actually bypass the network requirement, which bypasses the Microsoft account, ah, requirement. So you can do that on the, on the home version. Yeah. It works with other one and either version windows 11 two, but the thing is, you know, rather than overthink this, like one of the other things you could do is just, there's a way you could, there's a use the Microsoft account know@thankyou.com. Right. That's the one I, that will fail immediately. That works fine. Yeah. Okay. But you know, if you, but for kind of normal people, if you just wanna get by, I, I can't a normal person would never want to get by this, but you could just sign in with a Microsoft account, create a local account, make it an administrator, sign into that account and delete the micro account.
Paul Thurrott (01:51:19):
That's what I said, create a dummy account and just use that works. Yeah. That works fine. Yeah. But know it. Thank you. Dot com. We'll we'll do the trick. Yeah. That's a kind of cool. I dread the day when that no longer works, but that, that for now that does work. All right. That'll do, that'll do pig. That'll do unless. Well, well lemme just, so I just, I wanted to, I saw one earlier in the discard and I just want, I, I don't have a good answer for this, but someone asked earlier why when you search one, drive it won't search within OneNote files. And I, I can't, I can't say like, why, why has Microsoft never made this feature work? It should work. That's ridiculous. Onenote files are not exactly like documents. I, I think it could be a little tricky on that note.
Paul Thurrott (01:52:04):
You can obviously search from within OneNote. But those things are not indexed by this by search. So it just doesn't work. I, I don't know why it doesn't work. It seems like the type of thing that should work and would work. But it does not work. So there's no good answer to it. It's just, you have to open one OneNote to search. There is a OneNote on the web, right. So if you don't, if you're on a computer that doesn't have OneNote, you can still get to your OneNote in one drive using, you know, from onenote.com or just from the OneDrive menu. We'll have it in there as well. King w 27. Did you have a question for Paul? And
King wing27 (01:52:36):
I do.
Paul Thurrott (01:52:38):
Yes.
King wing27 (01:52:39):
Do we have any updates on, because that is a product that I'm interested in that has disappeared.
Mary Jo Foley (01:52:48):
I could tell you what Zach Bowden said, cuz he's been really tracking this. He said instead
Leo Laporte (01:52:54):
Ne was the larger version of the duo that ran windows instead of Android.
Paul Thurrott (01:52:58):
Yeah. Originally windows was poster. Right? Was it? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:53:01):
Right. It was made for 10 X. Yep. And that's why we think it's gone, right? Yeah. I cause 10 X,
Paul Thurrott (01:53:07):
It's no reason a product like that. Couldn't run windows 11. I, I think the logical to successor to, that's not gonna be a dual screen device. It's gonna be a folding device. So yeah,
Mary Jo Foley (01:53:17):
Me too.
Paul Thurrott (01:53:18):
Those things are very expensive right now, obviously mm-hmm <affirmative> but if you look at the first gen Lenovo ThinkPad, fold X one, I think is the full name. That is probably the closest, you know, stylistically size wise, that whole thing where, you know, you have it in that laptop formation and the the hardware he sits on the bottom, just like it would've on Neo. It's not quite full size, just like it wouldn't have been on Neo. But you can also detach it, put the screen sideways. And instead of, you know, you won't have the seam in the middle anymore, which is kind of nice. And just use it in that wireless configuration. So, I mean, I would look at that, but I don't, I, you know, look, Microsoft will have a surface event at some point, right. I mean, we'll there, there's a surface laptop, I think five we're waiting for and whatever else. And I would be, I'll be interested to see what they have to say about dual screen devices because they pushed that so hard for a couple years there. And I, it'd be interesting to see if they just never mentioned it again. I think that would be telling. But we'll see. Yeah. But no, nothing official on Neil for sure.
Mary Jo Foley (01:54:23):
Yeah. There's and there, there are no active rumors I've seen about them coming out with anything like the Neo this year or even next year.
Paul Thurrott (01:54:32):
Yeah. Nice.
Leo Laporte (01:54:34):
Yeah. Newman go right ahead. Thank you. King wing. Hello Newman. Hello
Paul Thurrott (01:54:44):
Newman.
Newman (01:54:46):
Hey guys. Flip my video on here for you. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:54:48):
Thank you. It's nice to see people. Quick
Newman (01:54:50):
Question for Paul. Yeah, it is cool. Quick question for Paul. I was kind of surprised you didn't know that golden. I was for N 64. What was your first multiplayer video game then?
Paul Thurrott (01:55:00):
Well, I played doom, you know, back in the early nineties on PCs. So I, I was lucky enough to
Leo Laporte (01:55:07):
Remember for college old Newman <laugh>
Paul Thurrott (01:55:10):
Well, no, so just, I mean
Leo Laporte (01:55:13):
He may have played it for him to remember it that's a lot, doom was doo.
Newman (01:55:16):
I was trying to be in.
Leo Laporte (01:55:17):
You were trying to be nice. I know. I could tell,
Paul Thurrott (01:55:20):
I stay focus doom required like an IPX SPX net. Whatever's called network that we had that at the college. We used to play the sun Saturdays at night on, oh,
Leo Laporte (01:55:28):
You could play multiplayer doom.
Paul Thurrott (01:55:29):
Oh yeah. Yeah. It
Leo Laporte (01:55:30):
Was fantastic. I love
Paul Thurrott (01:55:31):
That. But I went through every one of those games, you know, duke Newcomb, 3d the quake and Hein and ick and blah, blah, blah, whatever. But for me on the console, I mean, I can't actually remember exactly what it was was, but halo was a big pull for sure. On the original Xbox. And I did have, I did that might, that might be it actually, but I didn't switch to console until the 360 came out for, for a hundred percent. And then call duty. Two was the big one big launch title for me.
Leo Laporte (01:55:57):
We used to at the screensavers we started with marathon, which was a Bungie the back.
Paul Thurrott (01:56:05):
Yep.
Leo Laporte (01:56:05):
And it was on the Mac. We used to have land parties. It was actually really fun to have a TV show with, with a whole lineup of people on computers, playing marathon. And they used to, they used to have fun with me cuz I, they say, come on, go in there, Leo. And then David Prager will have, would've set up like eight of them with rocket launchers around me, you know? And then I'd come in and they'd all launch the rocket launcher the same time and blow me up straight up into the air. Oh that was great fun. So that was, but I did enjoy that. That was my first experience. I have a party
Paul Thurrott (01:56:35):
Free arena on the nineties. Yeah. But that, that game was you amazing play with a key, you could play it with a keyboard and a MOS on the Dreamcast, which was much better than the
Leo Laporte (01:56:43):
Controller we played on real tournament on our ultimate gaming machine.
Paul Thurrott (01:56:46):
Oh my God.
Leo Laporte (01:56:47):
That was, that was so much fun.
Paul Thurrott (01:56:48):
Unreal tournament. All those kids.
Leo Laporte (01:56:49):
And what about you Newman? Where, where did you, where, where was your first multiplayer?
Newman (01:56:53):
Oh, I was a Counterstrike kid. We would do that hack where you could, you could put it in land mode and then there was software. You could run on your computer to tunnel that through the internet Homa and that's how we've were. Yeah, it was hamachi or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I striking
Paul Thurrott (01:57:07):
It, a service that put online that I can't, it wasn't Durango, but it was some weird name like that. And they eventually did duke Newcomb. Same thing. Like in the early days of the internet, you could play these dialup games. Right. And we used to have like the phone, you know, crooked in our neck and we'd be on the computer.
Leo Laporte (01:57:25):
Do PE people still do land parties. Like you would go. Yeah, you would
Newman (01:57:29):
You'd have I do, do you absolutely. At
Leo Laporte (01:57:31):
What do you play? What do you play these days? Noman.
Newman (01:57:34):
Oh, whatever's current. Usually we go back to Counterstrike just cuz it's a classic. That's perfect. Or halo. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:57:39):
Yeah. We used to do
Leo Laporte (01:57:40):
Well Gary's mod. Right? Do you ever do Gary's Mo
Newman (01:57:43):
No. I'm trying to get my friends to buy that. That's still
Leo Laporte (01:57:45):
Strong. It's so much fun. It's
Newman (01:57:46):
Fun. I, I tell 'em yeah. I don't know.
Paul Thurrott (01:57:48):
We'll get that's I hadn't moved. I'd still be going every month down the street to a friend's house to do land park, but it was, I
Leo Laporte (01:57:54):
Remember used to do that. That's right. You do Xbox parties. You bring your Xbox,
Paul Thurrott (01:57:56):
That group still does
Leo Laporte (01:57:57):
It. Yeah. That's cool. Hey Noman. Nice to meet you. Where are you from?
Newman (01:58:02):
I'm from outside Philadelphia. You
Leo Laporte (01:58:03):
Play that electric guitar behind you.
Newman (01:58:06):
Nah, I can't play a tab at all. It was a gift and I just haven't gotten around the <laugh>. You're
Leo Laporte (01:58:10):
Gonna learn it, man. You're young
Newman (01:58:11):
Still. Yeah. To get into it. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:58:12):
And what's your t-shirt I don't, I'm trying to decipher it.
Newman (01:58:15):
Oh this is, this is actually funny. It's it's making fun of electric vehicles, but way back in like the early
Leo Laporte (01:58:22):
The car with a regular Rayovac battery in it.
Newman (01:58:25):
Yeah. And it says a hundred percent. And then under it's like an outline of a Ford GT. It says 150% Uhhuh.
Leo Laporte (01:58:30):
And
Newman (01:58:31):
This says don't charge supercharge. But now that they own an EV it's way faster than the supercharge part that I sold for it. So I love wearing this around town when
Leo Laporte (01:58:42):
I'm driving. Yep. Anytime I see somebody driving around with a Cobra, I say wanna drag. Yep.
Newman (01:58:47):
Anytime. Yeah. Right. And I people want to right?
Leo Laporte (01:58:49):
No, they know better then. Yeah. Hey Newman. Nice to meet you. Thank they'll. Make more noise than you though. Thanks guys. Take care. Take care. That was fun. It's nice. What if you get your, you know, I know not everybody's got a microphone and a camera and all that stuff, but you've got that set up precise when it works. I love it when it works. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I really do. It's really great. Well, thank you for your questions. I think we should take a break and go to the back of the book. What do you guys say? Seem, all right. Did you get, did you get enough? Did you get your fill? Did you go what you wanted? We did. Okay. We did. And it was fun. Really was. I'd like to return to that first topic we discussed and maybe beat that to that first.
Leo Laporte (01:59:23):
We some more <laugh> no more ranting. I'm gonna tell you about click up. This would be good. This would be good. What would you do if you got an extra day, every week in your work week more time to cook healthy meals, work on that novel or my case play a little more Gary's mod or Val Heim with the buds. That's a fun by the way, fun game, but who has time? Right? You, you, you, you gotta, you got a job. You gotta, well, that's what click ups all about the productivity platform that will save you a day, a week on work, guaranteed. That's amazing. Click up started with the premise of productivity was broken. There were too many, oh, you, I don't have to tell you that too many tools to keep track of too many things. And they're all in different siloed ecosystems.
Leo Laporte (02:00:15):
There has to be a better way to get through the daily hustle. Click up is the one tool to house. All your tasks, projects, docs, goals, spreadsheets, and more use the tools you're already using. But you get 'em all in a click up click ups. Amazing. And it could be a team of one. It could be just you it's, you know, productivity still matters. Even if maybe more, if it's just you or a big team, a thousand plus click up is packed with features and customization options that no other productivity tool has. So you can work the way you work best. And it doesn't matter if you're in project management or engineering or sales or marketing or HR, you just set it and forget it. They create a more efficient work environment. And of course you can customize it to your heart's delight as well.
Leo Laporte (02:01:00):
Join more than 800,000 highly productive teams using click up today. How do you get started? Well, it's easy. Go to click up.com. Use the offer code windows. You'll get 15% off click ups, massive unlimited plan for a whole year. Meaning you could start reclaiming your time for under five bucks a month, a whole day, a week. That's nice. Sign up today@clickup.com. Offer code windows offer ends soon. Don't delay. Thank you. Click up for making a great product. That's easy to use and really does what it says it'll do. And for all of you listeners and viewers, all you dozers and winners, please use that offer code windows. So Paul and Mary Jo get credit for this click up.com. Offer code windows, C L I C K U P. Click up. Thank you. Click up. Now we click over to Paul throt I have
Mary Jo Foley (02:01:54):
A request.
Leo Laporte (02:01:54):
Yes ma'am. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> have a
Mary Jo Foley (02:01:55):
Request. I have a super hard stop at four 30.
Leo Laporte (02:02:00):
Oh, let's do yours first. Do you have time? No, no, no, no. Do me first. Okay. We, yes, we should have been doing this all along ladies. First ladies and gentlemen. <Laugh> it's time for Mary Jo Foley's enterprise pick of the week.
Mary Jo Foley (02:02:13):
So my pick has to do with a project at Microsoft. That's called Azure space. I've seen some people joking about what this means. Doesn't mean Microsoft is sending Azure into space. Not exactly
Leo Laporte (02:02:26):
<Laugh> we actually believe it or not. We had the Azure space guy on floss a week ago.
Mary Jo Foley (02:02:31):
Yes. Oh man. That's awesome. So today they had a big announcement for Azure space space. They're adding some new satellite based connectivity services to their portfolio. The newest one is called Azure orbital cloud access. And the way this works is it helps companies or, you know, not just satellite vendors, but also enterprise. It companies prioritize their traffic across fiber cellular and satellite networks. Interestingly, who is Microsoft working with on this SpaceX? That's surprising, right, but SpaceX is the main partner here. Starlink coupled with Azure edge devices is how this all works. And this is now in preview as of this week. Microsoft also was talking today about Azure orbital cloud. No, sorry, Azure. They free named a bunch of these now Azure orbital ground station it's they described this as ground station as a service.
Leo Laporte (02:03:35):
Wow.
Mary Jo Foley (02:03:36):
I know. Yeah. So yeah, they're doing all these different kinds of satellite connectivity. They emphasize this is not just for the satellite industry. It's also for anybody who needs remote access, high bandwidth needs. So if you're in that group of companies and you wanna check it out you might wanna see what Microsoft's doing in Azure space,
Leo Laporte (02:03:58):
Space, space, space, space,
Mary Jo Foley (02:04:00):
Space.
Leo Laporte (02:04:01):
<Laugh> very cool. And watch floss weekly from last week cuz they they had the guy in charge. Oh
Mary Jo Foley (02:04:07):
That's super cool.
Leo Laporte (02:04:08):
Yeah. Yeah. I can remember his name being nice. All right. Enterprise pick number two.
Mary Jo Foley (02:04:12):
Okay. This is super cool. I think if, if they can pull this off Brian dam, who is a Microsoft MVP, put a pointer up to this on Twitter this week patch tuesday.com. If you go to patch tuesday.com it's a group of people who are they're publishing the latest patches from Microsoft that come out on patch Tuesday, but then they want to test them and report their findings monthly to tell you if there are problematic patches.
Leo Laporte (02:04:41):
Wow.
Mary Jo Foley (02:04:41):
Hallelujah. I know. Right? So they're just starting to put this together. They want the community to work with them on this. So if you're a, a company or an individual who is kind of fed up with how patch Tuesday works. So you care about hatch, how patch Tuesday does or does not work, you might wanna join forces with these folks and help them flush out what they're doing with patch Tuesday.
Leo Laporte (02:05:02):
Nice patch, tuesday.com. Yeah. All right. Give us a beer and then we can get you outta here.
Mary Jo Foley (02:05:08):
All righty. It's that time of year, it's like we're starting to see pumpkin beers and Octoberfest beers. So I thought I'd start pumpkin. Some of those beers
Leo Laporte (02:05:18):
<Laugh>
Mary Jo Foley (02:05:18):
I know it's already pumpkin beers started coming out in July, which I hate, but October Fest beers are kind of cool. And this week my pick is from grim brewing in Brooklyn. They make a Marson style beer called fing another good word, like faffing fing
Paul Thurrott (02:05:35):
Faffing and for sting.
Mary Jo Foley (02:05:37):
Yes. So Mars and beer, it it's a Mars. Typical Mars and beer uses German, Vienna and Munich malts. It it's kind of like a light Amber and color tastes like a combination of honey bread. Very light caramelly kind of flavor. And as I point out, it's only 6%. So you could F tune with a few of these. If you want to have a few Fest not a big beer, just like Marsans are these really nice? You're liking delicious German kind of style beers that are, I think everybody would enjoy Fest
Leo Laporte (02:06:11):
Tune with the best of us.
Mary Jo Foley (02:06:13):
Yes.
Leo Laporte (02:06:14):
Grim fisting. I like it. I like it. Thank you, Mary Jo Foley. Get outta here. Right guys away. Sorry to get a run. No problem at all. Thank you. Tell TA Mary Jo Foley all about microsoft.com. There she goes. Ladies. Gentlemen, are you going to the funeral? She's going to London. I know where she is going.
Mary Jo Foley (02:06:30):
That's it. She's got flight. She's getting over right now. She's going
Leo Laporte (02:06:33):
Right now. Okay. Oh boy. All. Meanwhile, I'm stuck with little poly and his <laugh>. No, no. And
Paul Thurrott (02:06:41):
Well now that you've all been drinking, <laugh> you'll enjoy my tip
Leo Laporte (02:06:45):
Pick of the week.
Paul Thurrott (02:06:45):
I'm gonna, I'm gonna tip it. I, I don't know if you, you probably don't have teams for work on your computer. No. So I'm gonna try to
Leo Laporte (02:06:52):
Thank God. No,
Paul Thurrott (02:06:52):
Play the audio through my microphone. But Microsoft reached out to me just as the show was starting and for, let me just actually, let me see if I can just read the way they describe. Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:07:03):
It, it can't be, I mean, I have teams, but it has to be the teams for
Paul Thurrott (02:07:06):
Work. I think it has to be teams work. Yeah. Okay. So I'll, I'll just, I'll play it through my microphone. I think it will work. So <laugh> I don't know why, but this is the description says in a world dominated by video calls, we're all familiar with the sound of an incoming incoming teams call today. We're disclosing something that will make these calls a bit more exciting. I <laugh> oh boy, that's
Leo Laporte (02:07:24):
Debatable. That's just what I want inspired.
Paul Thurrott (02:07:26):
Sure. Inspired by artists and content created Kenny Moore's original team's ring tone called remix. We teamed up with him to make it available in teams and to, to my ears. What this sounds like is a remixed version of the original Skype ring tone. Oh no. And so you can find, if you're on teams, you can find this. Now you click on your profile picture in the top, manage account, go down to calls. And then it's at under ring tones. It says calls for you. The default choice is called default. They have other ring tones. I I've never even thought to change any of these, but now at the bottom, there's a new one called remix. So I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna move the microphone and see if I can make this work.
Leo Laporte (02:08:09):
Oh Lord. Get a whole PTSD right now.
Paul Thurrott (02:08:14):
So that's definitely a remix of Skype. Right? That's isn't that Skype.
Leo Laporte (02:08:17):
It kind of sounds like it.
Paul Thurrott (02:08:18):
Yeah, I think so. I don't. I mean, I, anyway, so you can turn that on. That's my tip. I'm sorry. All right. But <laugh> right.
Leo Laporte (02:08:26):
Yeah. This is it.
Paul Thurrott (02:08:27):
That's definitely a remix. Add the back to it. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:08:30):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's Skype.
Paul Thurrott (02:08:36):
Yeah. I think
Leo Laporte (02:08:36):
So with a big base,
Paul Thurrott (02:08:38):
That will be the only part
Leo Laporte (02:08:40):
Of
Paul Thurrott (02:08:40):
The Skype ever left by the time everything's set and
Leo Laporte (02:08:43):
Done. There's the Microsoft team's video that goes with it. <Laugh> as if you're at a show. Oh, this is just like music. You're at a array. So this,
Paul Thurrott (02:08:53):
This captures the energy of a typical team meeting.
Leo Laporte (02:08:57):
<Laugh> they're all Bob in their
Paul Thurrott (02:08:59):
Heads. Look at. 'em Look at,
Leo Laporte (02:09:01):
'Em go look at, 'em go. It's the Microsoft team's rave.
Paul Thurrott (02:09:05):
This is why people throw computer screens so much.
Leo Laporte (02:09:07):
Wow. Wow. No kidding. No kidding. That's hysterical. All
Paul Thurrott (02:09:12):
Right. That's the that's from
Leo Laporte (02:09:13):
M Microsoft.
Paul Thurrott (02:09:14):
My is awesome. Is
Leo Laporte (02:09:15):
It
Paul Thurrott (02:09:15):
Maybe not? I don't know if you've seen this. Leo is awesome.
Leo Laporte (02:09:18):
Let's see.
Paul Thurrott (02:09:19):
So there's a new mod for the original doom called voxel doom. Oh, that adds actual 3d enemies, items, weapons, et cetera. Wow. Now, if you've played doom, you probably know that when you walk around a dead character, particularly this is when you can really see it, that the sprites of the enemies and these other objects are just 2d, flat things. So if you walk around them, you'll see the flat, like you'll see, it's literally just a flat puddle space. Yeah. Just, yeah, exactly. So what this does is it makes those things 3d. This is basically the technology that made duke Newcomb 3d, which wasn't really 3d either more of an advanced, technically than doom. So they've kind of added it back to doom to me. It, it actually, it, it, I think
Leo Laporte (02:10:01):
It's awesome. I think no, it's really a mess when you <laugh>. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:10:05):
But so it, this video does a really good job of showing examples of you know, the original style and then versus the V version. And it also shows how he did it because the original models were just 2d. So you can't see the back of things. Right. But they're so perfectly done. It's, it's so faithful to the style that it just looks natural and right. And the other thing is, you know, if you've played doom over the it's funny, we just talked about doom. So doom in 1992 or three, whatever year came out was whatever it was, but it was not, it wasn't real 3d. So if there were animal or, or enemies up on a higher space, all you had to do was shoot forward. And if there were enemies there, it would sense that you meant to shoot up and it would just kind of fake it.
Paul Thurrott (02:10:49):
But there have been mods and updates to doom over the years that have added things like most look jumping and crouching, that kinda thing have kind of made the 3d effect better. So this works with one of those things called G G let me get this right. G Z doom, which is the latest version of what used to be called Z doom, which is a way you run doom on a modern computer. Now it supports higher resolutions and all that kind of stuff. You need a paid doom or ultimate doom wa which is the data file, which you basically
Leo Laporte (02:11:20):
You've gotta have it. Everywhere's.
Paul Thurrott (02:11:21):
I mean, you can, for, for less than $5 right now, if you wanted to from steam straight steam. Sorry
Leo Laporte (02:11:28):
That, so when I saw the headline of this and I didn't, I didn't play it. I thought maybe the whole thing was high Rez up, but it's still an eight bit game. It's just that the bodys
Paul Thurrott (02:11:36):
Are now, it's still the original game. Think of, think of all the advanced area. So actually in this video right now, you can see he is using most look to look around. Yeah. It's got a wide aspect ratio. Yeah. Which was not available in the original. Yeah. So now you point up to shoot up. Right. Which is kind of cool. It, it, it basically makes this I mean more modern shooter. Yeah. More modern. Exactly.
Leo Laporte (02:11:56):
Yeah, yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:11:57):
Yep. It's really cool looking. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:12:00):
Details. Did you put an article on your site about it or,
Paul Thurrott (02:12:03):
No, I haven't. I just added this right now. So if you search for voxel doom, you'll find it's V O X E L. I'm not sure if I will write this up actually, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna play around with this. I'm kind of, I'm intrigued by this and
Leo Laporte (02:12:17):
It's on the mod db.com
Paul Thurrott (02:12:20):
Page. Yeah. It's free. Yeah. It's and jeez, doom is free. The only thing you have to pay for is the doom wide. And if you pay more than $5 for that, you've done something wrong. So very easy to get into this. I
Leo Laporte (02:12:31):
Enough, somebody could email it to you. <Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (02:12:33):
That's right. Know, it's crazy. I bought this back in the day from them via mail. So I sent them a check in the mail and they sent me back floppy discs. I, I literally to Mesquite, Texas. I actually, that's how I bought this original doom
Leo Laporte (02:12:47):
Back P in our IRC says I don't, I don't get it. I don't wish I understood the popularity of doom. You wouldn't get it unless you were there. And you, you know, you had gone through, you know, playing, you know, commander keen and the lost planet airman and all this stuff. And all of a sudden doom shows up and you'd never seen anything like it. Now, of course, nowadays, this is like, you know, but I remember how excited I was about pong, you know? And then we'll always have a lasting impression on me cuz it
Paul Thurrott (02:13:15):
Was, I had an amiga. So I knew what good games were like. Right. You know? Right. My wife bought a, an IBM PS one, which was a, a, had four shades of gray. That's how many colors a it, and it had a tiny little screen and a nice keyboard, you know, for the day. But same company that made this game came out with something called castle, Wolfenstein 3d. Yes. And that game did something nega couldn't do. It was in black and white at my wife's computer on a really low end computer. Yeah. Which was raced through these 3d environments that looked like 3d environments, first person environments. And I was just blown away by that. That was
Leo Laporte (02:13:49):
John CarMax genius. That's right, right there in a
Paul Thurrott (02:13:52):
Nutshell. Yep. Yep. So doom is an evolution of that. Quake is a further evolution of that. <Laugh> rage is a further E evolution of that. And these guys that guy created these gaming engines that were used, not just by ID, but also by half of the software industry. It's
Leo Laporte (02:14:07):
The same reason you go to the UDAR hazy space museum in Washington, DC. And you look at the mercury capsule and you go, wow. You know, it all started there. That's all
Paul Thurrott (02:14:18):
Is this literally made of tinfoil. It looks and they, they, they took this thing to the moon.
Leo Laporte (02:14:24):
<Laugh> amazing. Yeah. Right.
Paul Thurrott (02:14:25):
Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:14:26):
So that's
Paul Thurrott (02:14:27):
All, there was nothing bigger than doom in the history of
Leo Laporte (02:14:29):
Yeah. It transformed
Paul Thurrott (02:14:30):
PC gaming. I understand our
Leo Laporte (02:14:31):
Understanding of gaming. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:14:33):
Yep.
Leo Laporte (02:14:33):
Yeah. Yep. Mr. T, thank you. That concludes our
Paul Thurrott (02:14:39):
We're down to Mary Jo. Somehow
Leo Laporte (02:14:40):
We're down to Mary Jo. I'm telling you, she's getting on that big bird to fly to London. I'm telling you she's on her way.
Paul Thurrott (02:14:47):
I bet she doesn't but
Leo Laporte (02:14:48):
Well, you know, she really loves the Royals. I don't know if you knew that that's true.
Paul Thurrott (02:14:53):
She was kind of a, a Monarch type
Leo Laporte (02:14:55):
<Laugh> we're just kidding. Mary Jo Foley writes for zing that at all, about microsoft.com. Paul thro has his own blog@thro.com T H U R R ott.com and his books currently the field guide to windows 10, soon to be the field good windows 11 or@leanpub.com. Indeed.
Leo Laporte (02:15:16):
Every Wednesday we get together, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM, Eastern 1800 UTC to do windows weekly. We invite you to join us. I, you can listen. Of course, after the fact, cuz we put the show out as a podcast. So twi.tv/ww, there's a YouTube channel for windows weekly. There's also, of course, you know, you could subscribe in your favorite podcast player, but if you did wanna watch us live, do that of a Wednesday morning live Twitter TV. And then, you know, I think we, I love taking the questions. I hope we keep doing that, but nevertheless, we still interact with you both at the IRC. That's open to all IRC, that TWI TV, and you heard us mention the club, TWI discord seven bucks a month gets you ad free versions of all the shows, access to the discord, which is humming with activity and all kinds of topics
Paul Thurrott (02:16:04):
Really
Leo Laporte (02:16:05):
Is, oh man, I was talking coding this morning who had had a great conversation going on with Greg Conroe and John Floyd. And it was really, really fun, but we talk about everything. Stacy's book club's in there. Paul's got a show in there. This club only hands on windows. Micah has hands on Mac. We have the untitled Linux show with Jonathan Bennett, the GI fizz with Dickie Bartolo, Stacy HIIN B's book club. So a lot of stuff activity in the club. There's a twit plus feed. That's just for club members. So all of that, I think it's a great deal. Seven bucks a month go to twit.tv/club twit. If you just wanted hands on windows. And if you listen to this show, you really should get that. You can get it by itself for 2 99 a month. And the reason we charge these are new shows they don't have ad support yet.
Leo Laporte (02:16:50):
So to defray the cost of creating these shows to pay Paul and so forth, we either, you know, put, put you, put it in the club and you pay for it that way, or you can buy it individually, but that's what it takes to get a show launched. And that's what we did with this weekend space. And you know, with, if everything goes well, we'll, we'll continue to launch more shows in the club and then eventually push in public. So you're helping us out a lot. If you join twit TV slash club, TWI, Paul have a great week. You too cheer up. <Laugh> FRA some aliens and I will see you next time on windows weekly.
