Windows Weekly Episode 800 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word.
Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley are here. We've got Microsoft earnings lots to talk about, and at the end, a big announcement. It's all coming up. Next, you want, wanna miss this on Windows Weekly podcasts you love

TWiT Intro (00:00:17):
From people you trust. This yes is tweet.

Leo Laporte (00:00:27):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley. Episode 800 Recorded Wednesday, October 26th, 2022. Goodbye. Heart Windows Weekly is brought to you by Nord layer. Nord Layer is a secure network access solution for your business. Join over 6,000 plus fully protected organizations. Go to nord layer.com/TWIT to get your first month free. When purchasing an annual subscription and by Collide, Collide is an endpoint security solution that gives it teams a single dashboard for all devices, regardless of operating system. Visit co collide.com/ww to learn more and activate a free 14 j trial today. No credit card required. And buy it pro tv. It Pro TV's training solutions. Provide professionals and enterprise organizations the education needed to kickstart or advance it careers and upskill through engaging training and virtual labs. Get 30% off when you sign up at it pro.tv/windows and use the code WW 30 at checkout. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show. We cover the latest news from Microsoft, and there's a lot of news today because we have earnings learnings. Joining us for the earnings learnings. Call Bonanza. Bonanza from zd net. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mary Jo Foley. Hello, Mary Jo Foley. Hello, Leah. Good to see you. I give you Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Thurrott. Good to see you <laugh>. And welcome. Well,

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:11):
Thank

Leo Laporte (00:02:12):
You. We had a consummated, eventually <laugh> I'm gonna, I have to say this because you don't have to really, I mean, I have to say that <laugh>, I could save it for the end, but then I think people would get a little miffed without the opportunity to to thank Ms. Foley. It was, it was 2008 when Mary Jo Foley first appeared on the show. Can you believe that

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:40):
<Laugh>? Was that the upside down episode?

Leo Laporte (00:02:44):
<Laugh> <laugh>. Welcome to the Upside Down. Yeah, that's right. I would've thought it was later than that. I meant to look that up. I forgot. Well, thank goodness I did. And Patrick Delehanty did. And, and and we have, we have determined that, and that was not, she was just a guest. Okay. Oh, okay. Did you know Mary Jo? Before

Paul Thurrott (00:03:06):
I have stories to tell Leo, I was gonna save this for the end of the show. You

Leo Laporte (00:03:09):
Could save the stories for the end. You could save the stories for the end. That's fine. That's fine. But you, did you know her? Yes.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:15):
Yeah. Yes, I did. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:16):
Yeah. Cuz she's a legend in

Paul Thurrott (00:03:19):
You'll, you'll enjoy our origin story.

Leo Laporte (00:03:21):
Oh, I can't wait. <Laugh>. There's 38 pages of

Paul Thurrott (00:03:25):
It's a little bit, It's actually a lot like the Fast and the Furious movies, if it makes sense. <Laugh> we go way back. We used to be rivals, but then we became friends. Ah,

Leo Laporte (00:03:36):
Yeah. So the very first episode was May 2nd, 2008.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:44):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:03:46):
Mary Jo Foley, author of Microsoft 2.0. How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post Ga Gates era should play a little bit of Well, I, I won't because you're gonna hear <laugh> be very refusing. You were@internetnexus.com at the time, Paul. Yikes. And win super site do com. Well, that's, that's

Paul Thurrott (00:04:06):
Really okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That was my personal site at the time. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:04:09):
So how long ago this was? That however, was not the beginning of our journey together because it was a little bit later that I don't know why we got this idea. And then she was on the May 30th mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So clearly there was like, there was something going on. Like we really, we really like period. It was probation. And then January 9th, 2009 and February 6th, 2009 mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Then January 10th, 2009 and February 5th, 2010. But it wasn't until July 7th, 2011.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:45):
July 7th. Oh.

Leo Laporte (00:04:46):
That's when Mary Jo Foley became a regular on this program. So it is, that is 2011. Yeah. This more than 11 years ago.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:59):
That's interesting.

Leo Laporte (00:05:01):
You were, you started with us as a regular episode 216. And here we are, episode 800. Woo.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:09):
Whew. <Laugh>. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:05:12):
But I have to say

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:13):
No, I don't know if you guys remember, like, you guys just like hijacked me on air. Do you remember that?

Paul Thurrott (00:05:19):
I do remember that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:20):
I was guessing. I was guessing on the show. And at the end of the show, you and you and Leo said, So what do you think about becoming the co-host of Windows Weekly? And I was like,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:28):
What? Leo, Leo did that of his own volition. I wanna be clear about that.

Leo Laporte (00:05:31):
Yeah. I have no I have no, As you're learning right now, I have no

Paul Thurrott (00:05:36):
Impulse

Leo Laporte (00:05:37):
Control. I

Paul Thurrott (00:05:38):
Called that bow guarding. He

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:40):
Was just like, What? What? I'm like, Can I think about it and give you an answer? Cuz I was just like, so like,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:47):
It's like someone proposing to someone on the jumbotron and the woman's like, I don't know if I want to do this. But pretty much thanks for putting me on the

Leo Laporte (00:05:54):
Spot. Yeah. That is pretty bad to do that on, on the Jumbotron. Yeah. Know <laugh>, I apologize.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:59):
But it worked out. It all worked out.

Leo Laporte (00:06:01):
<Laugh>. Let me I wonder if I have the audio of of that momentous.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:06):
We must, that must be on video by then, right? We did video Pretty

Leo Laporte (00:06:10):
Did. We did. Were we doing video? Yeah, I think we, Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:06:12):
I think so.

Leo Laporte (00:06:13):
I'm trying to get it. I'm

Paul Thurrott (00:06:15):
Like, Mary Jo said one of her early, early episodes, she was literally upside down and we, for some reason we couldn't fix it was

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:20):
No, I had something wrong with my

Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
<Laugh>. I remember that. Remember

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:24):
Funny, you guys, you guys were like, Try this, try this. Andre. Like, No. The whole show I was upside down and I couldn't fix it. I don't, Well, I guess we're just keeping it like this. Okay. <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:06:35):
Those were the days my friends.

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:38):
He's the other good show. No, the other best of MJF was when the guy in my old building was on the roof and I looked out doing the show

Leo Laporte (00:06:46):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Right. And you thought he was killing himself. I

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:48):
Think he was dangling his legs over the edge looking down. And I'm like, Oh. 

Leo Laporte (00:06:52):
Oh.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:53):
I don't remember. I don't remember what I said, but I'm positive it was something like, the only thing I've ever seen outside my window is a squirrel. <Laugh>. I think you could say

Leo Laporte (00:07:01):
That.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:02):
<Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:04):
It would've been something like

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:05):
That. I think you did say that. Yeah. It turned out he was washing his windows outside and got locked out. It

Leo Laporte (00:07:09):
Was, Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:10):
Yikes.

Leo Laporte (00:07:11):
You wanna see video from this old show? This is, yeah. Why not? This is you might be kind of

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:17):
When we were young.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:18):
<Laugh>. Yeah, no, what like Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:19):
You were, you really looked, both of you. And I'm sure I do too. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> looked kind of different. Yeah. Let me see if I can stop playing. I have problems on this Mac with playing video, unfortunately, but Yeah, you looked, you looked really different.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:34):
Well,

Leo Laporte (00:07:35):
I was, Look at you Paul. What the heck? That young guy

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:38):
Paul has hair. What the heck?

Leo Laporte (00:07:40):
Who is that? Brown hair?

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:43):
Brown hair. Say it. Eyes So

Leo Laporte (00:07:46):
<Laugh>. And and well look at me. This is the, we were back in the Kage.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:52):
Yep. Yep. Look at that. The four screen,

Leo Laporte (00:07:55):
The old four screen setup Skype, thesaurus. Very nice. There's Mary Jo Foley. Aw. And you still have that bookshelf?

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:04):
I

Leo Laporte (00:08:04):
Do. <Laugh>. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:06):
Same bookshelf behind me now with different things on it. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:09):
Yeah. Different place though. Cuz you've moved.

Leo Laporte (00:08:11):
Yeah. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:12):
Yeah. Doesn't have a cat then <laugh>. Aw,

Paul Thurrott (00:08:14):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:08:15):
I wish I could get this to play. I don't know. Oh, well, sometime we'll add, you know what? Maybe the editors at the end will add Paul asking you <laugh> proposing on the jumbo tron as it were.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:27):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:08:29):
All right, Sure. Enough of that. Let's get on with the show on, with the show. Episode 800 Windows Weekend. I know. Okay. Dozers. Microsoft Earnings. Was it a good quarter? Paul and Mary Jo? Hmm.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:45):
Curious to see what she has to say.

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:47):
Yeah. So what about that? You know what I, I, in my new job that starts next week at Directions on Microsoft mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the analysts there always answer tough questions with two words. It depends. Nice. And I think I would say the same on earnings because if you look at all the reports about yesterday's earnings, Q1 2023, some people are like blockbuster quarter for Microsoft. Others are like Microsoft and Google showing the way downhill. I'm like, okay. So can both things be true? I don't know. Right. Like they, you know, their earnings were not terrible. But, but all I I I always say this, all the analysts in Wall Street care about is one number Azure, that is the only number they care about, which

Paul Thurrott (00:09:27):
I'll never understand. Not

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:28):
Make Did they make the Azure number or didn't they? They did not. Okay. So as they saw that and they saw Amy giving guidance that it wouldn't be good next quarter either. The stock just dropped.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:37):
Yeah. But <laugh>, Okay, hold on a second. So, so not good means 35 ish percent growth, Right? Like, that's crazy growth, right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:45):
I, No, they're like, no, it should have been like 38 or whatever. The only,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:49):
Yeah, the only asterisks I would give to this quarter. Obviously there were certain businesses that were impacted more than others and We'll, we'll get into that. But overall, I thought it was great given the hard financial times you live in, et cetera. Right. The, the, the issue of course is whether one year from now we're gonna look back on this as the good old days, right? <Laugh>. So Microsoft's still heading up. Google is still heading up actually, and I'm sure Apple, Amazon will see what happens. But yeah, this is a difficult time and we just experienced an incredible boom time in big tech because of the pandemic. So that skews things a little bit. I'll just say any growth compared to a pandemic year basically is incredible given what's going on in the world today. And so I, in some ways I kind of agree with the notion that it was a blockbuster quarter asterisks, given the conditions were existence.

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:42):
Todays right? Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:44):
Yep. Yep. I'm even gonna make a great case for Windows eventually, which did poorly. Yep. Because, well, we'll get to it. I, I I, we'll get to it. I don't wanna ruin that point for

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:56):
Later, but all up, all up. I feel like I also feel like they did pretty well with the hand that they were given in terms of the economy, the exchange rate. You know, as Amy Hood, the CFO brought up the cost of electricity, which is really starting to impact mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, how they run their data centers. So there's a lot of things, supply chain, blah, blah, blah. Right? But they're still selling, right? They're still selling a lot of software service.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:22):
We, we should discuss the the why, right? In other words. Yeah. Why is a company like Google, which I think did poorly relatively speaking Yeah. Compared to Microsoft. Why are those companies so different in terms of how they did comparatively and, and what the future looks like? And I think it's because Microsoft is a much more diverse company now. It is. They have a lot of I, I can't call them low margin, but they, they have a diverse business, I think is just the best way to say it, right? They do, they do things like hardware manufacturing doesn't impact them that that much. They don't sell that much hardware, really. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> most of their businesses cloud services, which Yes. Requires hardware. Absolutely. Of course. And electricity costs and et cetera, et cetera. But they have so many different ways to generate revenues. Google has won <laugh>. They literally have one. Yeah. and then they have a couple, small and

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:10):
Bad market was terrible. Right. Even That's right. Microsoft, they, they had pretty good numbers in search and advertising for the quarter, but they said that market is just being killed right now by all the forces out there. And so if you're at Google and like 85, 90% of your revenues from that, you're in big trouble. Right. <laugh>. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:27):
That's, so I, yeah. You know, I, i, I suspect that companies like Apple and Amazon will do pretty well because Apple has really diversified its business. Not, not quite to the extent that Microsoft has, but dramatically different than say it was four or five, eight years ago, whatever. And then Amazon across has the different types of businesses and they're, they're the backbone of the internet, basically, with aws. So I suspect they'll, you know, they'll, they'll have a downturn comparatively, but they're still humongous.

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:54):
Yep. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:56):
We'll get

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:56):
There. Yeah. Was, was there anything that surprised you in earnings? Like when you saw it, you're like, Oh man, like are you kidding me?

Paul Thurrott (00:13:02):
<Laugh>? What? Yeah, there were a lot actually this, So let me ask you what you think of this. The, not really a theory, but this observation. So yeah, every quarter they released their financial statements. We pour over them, we write our stories, whatever. And then there's a post earnings conference call and they always reveal a lot more information in that call. That's than is in the press release of the slides and all that. And a lot of interesting data came out of that. Not many hard numbers, we'll kinda get to that, that's typical these days. But I, as I was reading through this, I thought, this is good cop, bad cop. If you go back and reread it, Sacha Nadella, and they probably do this every quarter, but it was very pronounced this time because of the situation. Sacha Nadella is like, everything's great, everything's great, everything's great.

(00:13:44):
Here's Amy. This was down, this was down this was down, this is gonna be down next quarter or two. This was down. You know, and it was a really interesting kind of transpo or trans, I don't wait, the word is transposition of the two looks at the same data. Because there are different ways to look at things. You know, you can talk about it, like Microsoft will say, engagement is way up in Windows. Great. How are revenues? Oh, they're not doing that good. You know, so you know, what matters more to the bottom line, What matters to the future, the company, the future of the product, et cetera, et cetera. But that I, that wasn't surprising. It was just the first time I ever sort of saw it. So, Yeah. So clearly. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Usually the finance a couple Microsoft cfo the past couple years, I mean, she's giving a victory parade <laugh>, right? I mean, Amy Hood had nothing but good news to talk about. So this is the first time in a while where it's been like, yeah, a lot of stuff is down or a lot of stuff didn't meet expectations. Yeah. And it was kind, it was an interesting thing to compare how they, the two C level executives kind of presented the company. So that was kind of interesting.

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:47):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:48):
What was your big

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:50):
Surprise? My biggest surprise were the questions from the Wall Street analyst, because all of us in the press we're not allowed to ask questions on this call. Right? Like, we can listen to it, like anybody can, any person can listen to it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But we're not allowed to submit questions. And it's always frustrating to us cuz we're like, Ask about this. Come on.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:08):
All they care about is Azure. Azure, Azure. As,

Leo Laporte (00:15:11):
But that tells you something. I mean, that

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:13):
It does, it does tell you something. But I felt like they were a little more hard hitting than they usually are because if you listen to their usual questions, it's kind of like, Hey,

Leo Laporte (00:15:22):
Great quarter guys. Like

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:24):
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:24):
Great quarter

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:25):
Guys. Yeah, exactly. Like, it's awesome how great office is doing. Could you give us more color on that? It's very light. But yesterday they went in interest, they all wanted to know about Azure. Like, they were like, What is happening with Azure? Why is it down? Why is it gonna be bad, more bad next quarter? Like, what's going on here? Come on.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:41):
So what did you think about their answer? Cause I, I, I noted that too. And, and what did you think about their answer, if you remember it? I, I, I thought the answer was correct. It just as I'm, in fact, it informed my future discussion about Windows.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:55):
Hmm. Hmm. Well, I mean, I, I took away that they said we're still signing a lot of really big multi-million dollar contracts that are lasting over course of years, which makes it hard to really tell you guys exactly how much Azure is gonna grow. Right? Like, because they're variable, right? Like, we don't know when they're gonna close and when and when the companies are gonna take, you know, start consuming the stuff they're buying. So I, I feel like that's,

Leo Laporte (00:16:20):
But it's in the pipeline. That's pretty good.

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:22):
It's in the pipe, it's in the pipeline, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:16:24):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They had some big companies to reveal too, that we're using their various Azure services Wells Fargo, et cetera, et cetera. Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (00:16:32):
<Affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So what were the analysts worried about? Why were they,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:35):
Because it used to be 70% growth, then it was 60%, then eventually it was 40%. Now it's 35%. They're freaking out. That's

Leo Laporte (00:16:43):
What's wrong with this country,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:44):
<Laugh>. Exactly. That's exactly right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:46):
But also, nobody, nobody ever says the law of large numbers saying, I'm like, Yeah, yeah. It's, it's six, it's 30% on a much bigger beast than it was three years ago,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:57):
It's called. Exactly. Well, okay, this is one of the problems with not giving us hard numbers and how much the revenues are for something like Azure, but That's

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:05):
Right. The,

Paul Thurrott (00:17:05):
The thing, no one, I, well, I'm sure there were economists talking about this at the time, but in our little industry, you know, we're, we're not, we're not financial analysts, but we covered the finances every quarter. And this is something we're kind of familiar with. To me it was a gigantic red flag when the four of the biggest companies in the world routinely were, were citing extreme double digit growth in many, many products and services. Like, it was crazy. And

(00:17:29):
That is not normal. It's not sustainable. And it's gonna lead to what we're about to roll into now, which is, you know, a period of, you know, lackluster growth or even losses. And it's almost cancerous in it's, you know, the, the pandemic was a, hopefully once the lifetime event or whatever, but it was a unique event for sure. It was an extreme event. And, you know, Microsoft has spent the past, I don't, 20, 20 years maybe trying to get on a more, at least 15 years, a more level growth pattern. You know, one of the things they did with Windows seven remember, was even out the sales. Cuz they didn't want spikes, Valley spikes valley's. Right. They don't want that uncertainty. But yeah, that's, but the entire point of Azure should be that it eventually gets to that point. But it is still Spike Valley. Spike Valley <laugh>. And because people are still adopting it, they don't know what it's gonna look like. It's still peaks valleys. So I, I don't, I unfortunately, the analysts do write for Wall Street, they represent Wall Street, they're representing shareholders. They're all, that's all they're gonna ask about. And like, Leo, I wish, I wish the focus could be on something else.

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:44):
Yeah. The focus is on the cloud because the cloud is becoming bigger and bigger. You know, the thing Microsoft calls the Microsoft cloud this quarter, it was more than half of total revenues, right? Like, so, Right. The cloud now is more than half of their business. So this is where the analysts are all looking for the future, Right. They're like, this is what's growing. And if you look in the more personal computing segment, which is Windows search and News and Xbox and gaming, that's what's not growing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:19:13):
Well, it's

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:14):
Right. I mean, not right.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:16):
That's a blanket statement. It's either, it's either, yeah. It's either growing much more slowly or is not growing. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:21):
Right. Right. So this depend on, this is why all eyes are on the cloud and Azure and why they're so obsessed with it.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:27):
It's kind of like legacy business versus Yeah. You know, new business, even though there were new hardware devices, there are new versions of Windows, there are new whatever. I mean, obviously there's new there, but, Right. Like I said, I, I, Microsoft was correct to pivot on the cloud. I think this 50 print, 50 plus percent revenue thing proves that. But I think we all saw this coming and we've been building to this day. The, the <laugh> the little chilling remark at the end of the, the call, Amy, who did a little outro, and she said something that was very

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:58):
Thing as me

Paul Thurrott (00:19:59):
<Laugh>, well, it was very similar to what Google CEOs and Pia had said a quarter ago, which was we need to focus on things that are gonna grow. And and you know, it's more critical than ever to invest in growth markets, cloud security teams, dynamics, LinkedIn, none of that sounds, Are they, you say that by the stock market though? I mean, gosh, look at the reflect, you know, how this endless Well, it's, yeah. Yes, because right, so, Right. The, the difference here is between revenues and growth, right? And if you're just looking at revenues, that list of products would be very different. But when you're looking at growth, because that's what drives the stock market, that's what drives the stock price. That was what drives the value of your company. You have to look at growth, and this is the whole problem with our entire world right now and totally quarterly focused, you

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:49):
Know? Yep. Yes. Yep. Right, right. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:52):
Have to, would, I mean, the Republican,

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:54):
She didn't mention Windows. She did not mention Windows.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:56):
Right. That the, Of course not. Wow.

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:59):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:20:59):
Out. Wow. Well, so this out.

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:01):
Okay, <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:21:03):
I gotta, this freaks me out. We, we would've talked about this possibly a year ago this week, or

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:08):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:09):
Some other quarter last year, whatever it was. But there was a moment a year or two ago where Amy Hood was the one who said it. But Microsoft, collectively as a company suddenly realized, they said publicly that the PC is important again, and we're gonna start putting more resources into it. We care about it. Again, that was an astonishing statement from the company that drives this multi-billion dollar industry that's all built around Windows selling computers and all the software and services that run on top of it. It was an incredibly stupid thing to say, I thought. And now that things are inevitably going down again, because of course they are, and for a little while we can say, well, they're still at higher than Preem levels, you know, That's good, I guess. Yeah. but because of the year over year or year of two year comparable doesn't look so hot because the pandemic was incredible for PC sales.

(00:21:53):
Sorry. The incredible, the pandemic was terrible. Now it's like we're all, you know, now we're, we're souring on the PC again. That what I don't want to hear. I don't think they'll come out and say it because they just ignore things to do poorly for the most part. Yeah. But you could almost, I mean, you could almost imagine her saying, Well, you know, maybe the PC isn't that sustainable growth engine. We thought it was, it was just a little blip on the horizon because of what happened with the pandemic. Yeah. Which those two are, those two extremes are both wrong. The PC is an incredible market that's is, has existed for a long time, will continue to exist for a long time, and still drives a lot of the growth that you see in Microsoft 365, which is a huge component of their earnings. And all the software and services that they offer, all the ad stuff, the search and all that, all requires Windows. So it doesn't work. I don't know why they can't just acknowledge how important that is.

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:42):
So this is kind of interesting. We, we haven't talked about this yet, but right before they did earnings a month ago, they quietly made some adjustments to where things go in these buckets that they report <laugh>. Yep. Windows 365, which you just mentioned. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> used to be in Windows commercial, They moved it to, it would Azure. They moved it to Azure. Right. Because it runs on Azure Virtual Desktop. They moved,

Paul Thurrott (00:23:08):
Well, hold on. I I'm sorry to interrupt. Really? Because Azure needs that boost because there growth coming through Windows 365 revenue wise, and they want that applied to Azure. The thing everyone is looking at, not at Windows, the thing no one cares about.

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:22):
Right. And they also move, and that's the real reason. Yep. GitHub cloud revenues move to Azure also. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:29):
<Laugh> and GitHub is in there productivity and license business. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:34):
Right. So you could say, okay, you know, GitHub does, like most of GitHub now does run on Azure. So Okay. Maybe, Right. You could call that part of Azure. Azure Services, right? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:44):
<Laugh>, this is, I I'm not, Listen, I'm not being cynical here. I'm not, and I'm, I'm not blaming Microsoft. We've literally just explained the problem. It they have to play the game. They have to. Right. They will materially harm their revenue, their Yeah. No, their, their, their worth as a company if they don't do this, cuz Azure will grow more slowly otherwise, and it yeah. The whole company will take a hit as will every single shareholder as will the US economy. Right. This is, this is the terribleness of the system. Yeah. It's not Microsoft's fault.

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:15):
Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's hard because the, all all of these things, like we said at the start, you can make numbers, say whatever you want. Like, if they wanted to pad windows, they'd put more thing into Windows. Right. And they'd be like, Look at Windows. Windows is growing,

Paul Thurrott (00:24:31):
Right? Yep. Oh, well actually they did put more things into it. Well, into that part of the business. We get to that. Oh,

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:36):
Yeah. So yeah, they did a little bit <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:24:40):
One time. It was a one time gain, We'll call it,

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:42):
It was, it was maybe a gain. We'll see <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:24:45):
Well, revenue again. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:47):
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so are there any other, like, talking points that you wanna talk about?

Paul Thurrott (00:24:54):
Yeah, so the biggest thing to me that you asked earlier about like surprising or shocking or whatever. Yeah. The biggest thing to me, and this really stood out was somebody asked them in the q and a about ads. This has been a, this has been a thing for me as you know. In fact, one of the things we'll talk about is today or this week or whatever is the anniversary of Windows eight. Windows eight is the first version of Windows that came with ads built into the operating system. And I wrote an article and I said, this is a slippery slope. You don't put ads into an operating system unless you intend to put more ads into the operating system and then more, and then more, and then more. It doesn't, you don't do more and then do less. You're always gonna do more. It's always gonna get worse.

(00:25:33):
You know, this week alone, I highlighted a couple of examples where advertising in Windows in one case and teams in another has just gotten worse. It's, it's really bad. If you look at search highlights today, Let me see if I still have it. Yeah. Search Highlights is one of those things in Windows where I described it as a distraction. It was a kind of a search results thing that was like, based on what happened today in the in history, if you look at it today, it's an ad for Microsoft Edge and that's the slippery slope in action. So I've been, I've been kind of on this topic for a long, well, for 10 years. And anyway, somebody asked him, you know, what's the deal? Sat Nadella said, point blank. We looked at, we have this installed base, how do we take advantage of it? He didn't say this part, but remember they're not charging for Windows upgrades anymore like they used to.

(00:26:18):
Right. No one's buying Windows. So people update their PCs or replace their PCs much less frequently than they used to. So that money is not what it was, so to speak. But they do have a billion to a billion 0.5 whatever people out there, How do we milk them for more money? We do it with ads. And they talk about, the way he's described it is so terrible because he's so robotic. But our owned and operated inventory, whether it is Bing or Search or the Feed, those are the things where you see growth because we put them in front of people in Windows. It's high leverage. It's the top of the install base that's now structurally changed, which by the way, I disagree with. But in terms of growth, in other words, we're milking our, our install installed based with ads. It works. Search and news advertising revenue was up 16% thanks to record daily usage of Edge Start and Bing all driven by Windows.

Leo Laporte (00:27:13):
That's very modern thinking of Windows as your, as your marketing tool. Yeah. It's like my son with this TikTok, you know, I mean it's Yeah, Right. Or or Mary Jo with this podcast, it's a way of

Paul Thurrott (00:27:26):
Promoting

Leo Laporte (00:27:27):
<Laugh> promoting what you're doing. The real money maker.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:32):
That's <laugh>. I need a second. All right. So <laugh> Apple, sorry. No, it's okay. Apple is doing the same thing. Not that we care too much about Apple, but Apple is putting more ads into the store. You know, they're gonna put more ads in front of people. It probably won't be as obnoxious as what Microsoft does.

Leo Laporte (00:27:47):
Oh, wait a minute. Hold my beer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> <laugh>. Apparently I haven't seen it. Maybe cuz I'm in California, but already all the ads are for gambling apps. Yep. I have you seen that? I haven't seen it yet.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:01):
Ads where? I'm

Leo Laporte (00:28:02):
Sorry. In the, in the App store. So what they've added is app. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:28:04):
The app. App store.

Leo Laporte (00:28:05):
<Laugh>. Yeah, of course. There. And now I'm not seeing this, but I'm not seeing it because I think probably it's you know, we're still haven't voted to approve gambling. But so, so you see that, or I just saw, we saw this story. I

Paul Thurrott (00:28:19):
Guess I've never seen, I've just seen a story about it happening. I'm, I'm not, I haven't

Leo Laporte (00:28:22):
Looked. So, so that's how bad it can be, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:28:25):
Well look, the, your installed base is an asset. I mean Yes. How do you take advantage of

Leo Laporte (00:28:30):
It? If you, There you go. Bingo.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:31):
It's, it's not enough to sell something. Someone, once, you know, Microsoft is moving to the subscription model, Windows is not Honest subscription model. So how do we get money outta those guys? They tried Honest ways first, Right. Honest ways. Upsell to Microsoft 365, Sell them OneDrive, additional storage, you know, that kind of stuff. Turns out there are 1.5 billion people using Windows. There are only 60 million people paying for Office 365. Consumer Web, Microsoft 365 consumer. There were probably single digit millions paying for OneDrive additional storage. Okay. So we have this 1.4 something billion. Now how do we monetize them ads is one of those ways. It's, it's just the sad reality. And like I said, we're not paying for Windows. I personally would prefer to pay for Windows and not have those ads. For now you can remove a lot of the things that I consider ads from Windows.

(00:29:22):
It is only a matter of time. It is the nature of the Silk Hope. I keep talking about that, that will no longer be possible through normal means in the ui. I'm sure we'll always figure out ways. But yeah, any who that, that to me was an astonishing acknowledgement of something that some people are gonna think is obvious. But I, to my knowledge, him or anyone else at Microsoft has never spoken like that. Certainly not in a financial call like that. And I thought that was, I thought that was, that to me was the single most incredible thing.

Mary Jo Foley (00:29:50):
Yeah. I've never heard them say it. Like I always kind of understood that that was what they were thinking, but I never heard them blatantly state

Paul Thurrott (00:29:58):
Like, Yeah, it sounds terrible when you spell it out. It's obvious. Right. It is obvious that we hate to admit it. And the reason it's obvious is, like I just said, I would love to pay for Windows. If they offered that 60 million people would sign up <laugh>. You know, like no one is gonna, no

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:17):
One's gonna, You ask Chris Cap this, remember this mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, we last No, actually you asked Chris Capella. Yeah. Right. And you're like, What? Why can't we just have a thing where if you don't want ads, you, you

Paul Thurrott (00:30:27):
Oh, I do remember. That's right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:29):
Right. And he said, because that would admit that the ads are bad. Yeah. And that people That's

Paul Thurrott (00:30:34):
Exactly right. That's right. <Laugh>. You know what though? Listen. this network we're on has an ad-free premium program. My website does. And yeah, it, it's not an e a bad thing to admit that ads are bad. Ads are a kind of a, a necessary evil. And they're offering one of your most loyal customers a way to get around something bad and have a better experience is not a bad thing. That's a premium experience. Yeah. I don't, I think there's ways you can do that. And it's

Leo Laporte (00:31:04):
A slippery slope. Be careful, cuz remember is local television stations. You know, what happens is you get, you've done a double dip. So local television stations used to be entirely ad supported, then they realize they could make money by charging people to be on cable. Yeah. And so now they do both. In fact, who's right? I mean, so many places get ads and charge you. Yep. I gotta be careful what you ask for.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:28):
I know. I that by the way. Exactly. Right. That's the newspaper model. I've been complaining about that for years as well. I gotta just read you the screen. I, this is, if I can find it, <laugh> oh, I'm in the wrong thing. I'm in the wrong place. So in Windows 11, I've seen

Leo Laporte (00:31:43):
That's our years, but that's,

Paul Thurrott (00:31:44):
I know, I know. In Windows 11, No, not just Windows 11 in any version of Windows where Microsoft Edge exists. Yeah. there is this set series of screens you go through when you set it up and you know, it's like, Hey, welcome to Edge. You know, we can keep your stuff in sync. Nice. We can take your stuff from Chrome and, and sync it into Edge. Nice. And then there's a third screen that says, let's make the web work for you. <Laugh>. Like, Okay, everything's checked by default. And what it says is, let Microsoft use your browsing activity to include history, favorites, usage and other browsing data to personalize Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Services like search, shopping, news and ads. You can't choose which of those to do. Actually that's not true. I think this is sunscreen where you can, but every one of these, if you say yes to any of this, you have just given Microsoft permission to track you on the web and violate your privacy.

(00:32:32):
That's what that screen is. It should be called Let's Make the Web Work for Microsoft <laugh>. It's, that's all it is. This, the problem with this thing is if you look through the list, you see what you see is search, shopping and news and then ads. But everyone agrees ads are terrible. But search, shopping and news, it's what it sounds like is if I don't check the box and say, Well, the box is checked, if I uncheck the box, does that mean I don't get search shopping and news and edge? That's what it looks like. And that's not what it is. You get all of those things without, you can turn this off. And, and my advice in the book, and what I'll say now is uncheck that thing and then if you wanna uncheck it later, you have to go to the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard on the Microsoft account website and turn it off. Because by default, Edge Edge, when you go through edge out box experience, you have agreed to let Microsoft track you everywhere you go on the internet for purposes of advertising. That's what that is.

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:24):
Right. It's when you see those messages that say, Would you like your ads customized? So they're more personal

Paul Thurrott (00:33:29):
For you. Yeah. And everyone's like, Oh yeah, that sounds good. No, that's stupid. Don't ever do that. <Laugh>. Yeah. Yep. Oh, I wanna see ads for salad spinners and other things they don't care about. And then I want to turn them off with an ad blocker. But I don't, You definitely don't want personalized ads because you're giving permission for them to track what you're doing.

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:44):
Yep. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:46):
Anyway, that's not earnings related, but it just

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:49):
No, but yeah, it

Leo Laporte (00:33:50):
Is. It's semi related. It's, Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:54):
I mean, this is where, cuz if you're Microsoft, you've got Windows, you see the PC market as tanking. You see, you know, like,

Leo Laporte (00:34:01):
This is good. This is good. Listen Paul, this is good. You see, the PC market is

Paul Thurrott (00:34:06):
Tanking. I was gonna say, I take, I take exception to that term, but it's the PC market is, is what I just described, Azures. It's, it's peaks and valleys right there. The cycle has gone longer

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:17):
Now 30% or, or something. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:34:19):
But it's gonna come back. I mean, people have to buy computers don't, don't, they? Maybe, maybe not. So,

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:24):
So what if they, what if they buy like netbooks than computers and

Leo Laporte (00:34:29):
They,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:29):
Well, one of the reasons they might do that is because they've made Windows more terrible with ads. Right. You know, I, I it's, these are all kind of cause and effect things. I I don't the big question, the PC market is unchanged because of the pandemic. It, the question has always been where does it plateau? Right. The PC market will always be important. It's never gonna be as big as smartphones. It's, it can't be. Right. It's just the nature of that market. Right. There will be other device types that sell more than it. However, most of us need a PC to get work done. That doesn't change. They get upgraded on whatever the schedule is that has changed. Yeah. and by the way, you can monetize that market in different ways, not just by ads. You know, Microsoft 365, which is a huge component of Microsoft's earnings. Most of those people, I would, I don't know, Microsoft has never said they should. I bet 90 something percent of them, I'll do that on PCs. Yeah. It's gotta be some huge number. So the install base there is really helping out a, a core part of their business. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and also part of their cloud business. Yeah. it's important. It doesn't matter if PC sales are down 16% this year or whatever it is. I mean, it does matter, but that's not the whole story.

Leo Laporte (00:35:38):
Okay. Right. All right. Hey, you know what I'd like to do right now? I'm gonna guess. Can I guess, can I guess? Yeah. Are you gonna do an ad? Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:35:47):
<Laugh>. Good job. 16 years. I got it. <Laugh>, I glad you figured this out. Very clever.

Leo Laporte (00:35:53):
That's what this show is. Very clever. Our show today, brand new sponsor. Actually, we wanna welcome Nord layer to the network Nord layer. If you wanna secure your business network, you need Nord layer, Nord layer safeguards your company's network and data with a surge of ransomware attacks. And it's only getting worse. And now your employees are working remotely. They're hybrid. They, this is, this is your nightmare scenario. They work at home on their laptop and then bring it in and connect it to the company Network. Business networks are more vulnerable than ever nor layers secures and protects remote workforces as well as business data. It can even help you ensure security compliance with nor layer. It's easy to start. It takes less than 10 minutes to onboard your entire business on a secure network. Imagine that. If 10 minutes from now your whole business is on a secure network, you'd be Wow.

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Paul Thurrott (00:39:16):
There's a lot

Leo Laporte (00:39:17):
More. I know

Paul Thurrott (00:39:18):
There's a lot more. I know. So, Mary Jo, is there anything else that's set out for you in the results?

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:24):
No, the call, I was very focused on the Azure stuff and, and you know, as said around that,

Leo Laporte (00:39:30):
As is Microsoft, apparently

Paul Thurrott (00:39:31):
This is the world. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:39:32):
Yep. Yeah, I mean I, I just was looking at kind of how they were trying to explain what was going on with Azure and you know, like we said, they talked about higher energy costs in the data center. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they talked about supply chain and foreign exchange rates, You know, more than I think almost half of Microsoft business all up comes from overseas. So if you have foreign exchange rates Right. That are unfavorable, that impacts the company hugely. Which they said during the call yeah. They, there was nothing product wise or strategy wise that I felt like they shared that was interesting on this. It was more just like, here's what's going on. And it, Oh no, I'll take that back. One last thing was they hinted, I feel like they hinted pretty strongly there could be more layoffs. I felt like that. And they kept talking about we need to control our headcount. Like we really grew our headcount a lot last year. Now we gotta move some people around and figure out Yeah. Where they're gonna be prioritized and working on the highest priority things for us. So I'm like, eh, are they signaling more layoffs? I don't know, maybe. 

Paul Thurrott (00:40:34):
Yeah, I well there was that warning at the end of the call and yeah, I, like I said, I thought that sounded very much like what the Google CO's been talking about all summer.

Leo Laporte (00:40:44):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:44):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:45):
Which was focus, focus, focus. And then doing things like canceling the Pixel book canceling Stadia. And it kind of makes you wonder if in addition to layoffs that they might be cuts

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:57):
In certain places,

Paul Thurrott (00:40:57):
Certain places. I, I don't know. I don't have any, you know, ideas there.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:00):
I don't have any inside info on that at all. Yeah. I just, they the, at the end Amy was really playing up like, we know we need to do, we need to do more with less. Like we're telling our customers they do too. And like we have to figure out what are the top priorities, put our people there, focus them on those things. Because they did add a lot of people through Nuance. Like they bought Nuance, they bought Xander, they have all these acquisitions now they get all these, they're about to buy thousands of people

Paul Thurrott (00:41:26):
<Laugh>. Right. What of Act? Right. And that happens, I

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:28):
Know they did save the call. They still think Activision will close mm-hmm. <Affirmative> by the end of the fiscal. So that'll be June by, by next.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:36):
Yep. They also said the guidance they're giving does not assume that it has nothing to, you know, that's cut out of it. It'd be interesting to see how that changes things if it happens.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:44):
Yeah. It would be.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:45):
So I, we talked to Mary Jo and I talked about this a little bit before we started the show, but you know, <laugh> maybe you, maybe Mary Jo remembers, but at, at some point, was it last year they, they gave the last number for the number of teams users and then they've stopped talking about that. Yeah. So <laugh>, I think this was Nadella most likely. Yeah. So <laugh> in his intro, you know, we talked about how Microsoft 365 teams, and I think you said Dynamics or some, some other product line. We were all, we're all kind of part of the same thing and, and we're big and you know, blah blah blah. And then <laugh>, he gave a bunch of incredible soft numbers around teams, which I just thought was an incredible, just a string of factoids. It is used by hundreds of millions of people. Okay. You know? Fair enough. We know that the fact of standard Yep. <Laugh> the fact of standard for collaboration. Yep, yep. Absolutely. this is crazy. We are retaining users. We've gained and are seeing increased engagement too. <Laugh>. Okay. Users interact with teams 1500 times per month on average. I don't believe there's ever been a number like that. So that can't be compared to anything. The average commercial user spends more time in teams chat than they do in email. Oh, okay. <Laugh>, I don't know how to know

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:58):
That daily. Like it wasn't definitive though, right? Like Right. It felt like it was just kind of like a throwaway thing. Like not all the time, just sometimes Right. <Laugh>. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:08):
Right, right. And then the number of users who use four, or Moret, I'm sorry, more for or more features within teams increased over 20% year over year. <Laugh>. Like, is that, I mean, numbers

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:20):
Don't mean anything. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:22):
Numbers that mean literally nothing. I, if you were to put this under a category, I think almost every single one of these is engagement. I think that's what that is. Yeah. I think, I think every one of those qualifies for that term. Yeah, true. But of course what we're looking for is yeah, but how many <laugh>, right? So whatever the last number was years

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:38):
That you add

Paul Thurrott (00:43:39):
<Laugh>. Yeah. So is the number, In other words, if the last number they gave a year a half ago was two 70 million, if that was the figure, I don't remember. And now we have 275 million. Yeah, no, it's kind of <laugh>, you know. Yeah. But the big thing is engagement, I guess. And that's what they talk about with Windows, by the way. That's what they talk about with Xbox. It's probably what they talk about. Well, they don't talk about it interestingly in Microsoft 365, but with all the ads I'm seeing I wouldn't be surprised if it moves in that direction at some point too.

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:05):
<Laugh>. Yeah. The last number we had was 270 million monthly active users. Look at me.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:13):
Remembering of number that

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:14):
January, 2022, that was the last time they gave

Paul Thurrott (00:44:17):
The number. Oh, that was sooner. Okay. That was more recent than I thought. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:20):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:21):
Yep. Okay. There

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:22):
You go. But still yeah, it's a year ago, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:44:27):
Almost. Yeah. So, Yep. Yeah. So that was the other, that might be

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:32):
The other weird number they did was E five. Like I'm obsessed with this. Yeah. Like how many people running the E five skew, which is the most expensive skew in Microsoft 365. And so I asked them this question, I'm like, How many, So how many people you have last, last quarter, you said E five was 12% of the mix of Microsoft 365, which I think is really low.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:53):
What? Say it again. Sorry. What was the number?

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:56):
12% of the total Microsoft 365 mix was E five. That's what they said last quarter. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:02):
Interesting. Okay. I have something to counter that with when you're done. That's okay. 12%.

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:06):
So this quarter they said E five is more than half of the 10 million

Paul Thurrott (00:45:13):
Plus is

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:14):
My counter Microsoft 365 booking. So not all of them. Only the ones that are 10 million and over. So I'm like, Yes. So this number means nothing. You can't compare it to last time. Right. Because Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:24):
That's exactly what I was Yeah. Number. Well, what they've sort of shown you here is the most lucrative part Yeah. Of one of the more lucrative parts of Microsoft. Right? Exactly. It's the, this is, if it is 12%, it's the most important 12% to us because they deliver way more revenues than exactly the, you know, the goons like me who pay for, you know, the family version or whatever. <Laugh>, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. E E five came up a bunch.

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:53):
It did. You know, because this is what, what another thing that Wall Street is very focused on, they wanna know is Microsoft maxing out what they can do with Microsoft 365? Right? So Right. What they mean is, are you selling the most expensive skew to the most number of people and so they wanna see more people on E five, right? Like that's the thing. Yep. They would consider a positive, but instead Microsoft last year was like messing around with what's and which SKUs and E three. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they even admitted on the call, like, we moved some more stuff into E three, but we don't think we did a good job landing E three. So there's still a lot of people on E three. They've gotten a lot of people off E one, but they went to E three, they didn't go to E five. Right. Right. And then you get other people asking all the time, What about E seven? I'm like, there is no E seven <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:46:39):
Be

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:39):
Percent of people on E five

Paul Thurrott (00:46:41):
<Laugh>. It's just like BMWs, you know, there used to be a three series and a five then it was a seven. I know. Then it was the eight and a six. I don't think we're

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:47):
Anywhere near an E seven I, my, my prediction, but Yep. Yeah. <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:53):
Yeah. Well, teams premiums speak to the same.

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:56):
It does the same thing. Right. Teams premium. Right. Teams premium is the way they get around this. So if we can't get people to get on this really expensive skew, what if we can solve a bunch of add-ons, like $10 per user per month That'll add into what they

Paul Thurrott (00:47:07):
Or paying Yeah. What will people buy or what will customers are companies buy. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:12):
Yep. Yeah. But these soft numbers, this is why I pay less and less attention to earnings cuz I'm like, they give you like brutal percentage of some number you don't know. Yeah. Whatever. Yep. <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:23):
So I do, I wanna make sure we cover the more personal computing stuff because this is obviously where my heart is, is

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:29):
Near and dear to your heart. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:31):
Crumbling. It's the smallest business.

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:32):
Let's go. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:34):
<Laugh>, smallest business in Microsoft. So Intelligent cloud, which is Azure grew by double digits. Business productivity, whatever it's called. Online services or business and productivity and business processes. 9% growth, you know, not bad. Yeah. Pretty good. More personal computing slight year over year, decrease in revenues. It actually went down. Overall the problems here were windows and surface both of which had double digit fall dropoffs the surface

Leo Laporte (00:48:03):
More than PC market in general, right? Just

Paul Thurrott (00:48:07):
Probably not. No. I would imagine this is probably less than the PC

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:09):
Market. Less than the PC market, so

Paul Thurrott (00:48:11):
That's good. Well that's, that's, well not necessarily they sell ahead, right? So PC makers are buying licenses for a future sales. But the problem for the pc, Mary Jo mentioned a 30% figure that's for the current quarter. So part of the outlook is they actually think the market's gonna fall even harder in the current quarter. And this is, and by the way, current

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:33):
Quarter 30%. High

Paul Thurrott (00:48:35):
30%. Oh, that's, yeah, exactly. That's a scary, that's a scary, Yeah, that's a scary thing. So it is the, let me see if I can find this, the p the number for, you

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:43):
Know what, I'm just gonna say

Paul Thurrott (00:48:44):
Sales. Mm-Hmm.

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:45):
<Affirmative>, I know I'm a lame duck here, but Microsoft Cloud Weekly has a nice ring to it instead of Windows Weekly. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:51):
So you, you know, I, I feel like someone who's giving up on the show, maybe, maybe

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:56):
I'm

Paul Thurrott (00:48:56):
Helping you, doesn't get a

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:57):
Say I'm helping you <laugh> as your weekly, as your weekly guys.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:03):
I, I, as

Leo Laporte (00:49:05):
You're listening,

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:07):
You're listening. Listen,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:09):
If I was interested in Teams, it would be something you could talk about forever and never run outta topics

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:14):
Teams weekly. You got it. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:49:16):
That's the problem. Is that neither Paul nor I

Paul Thurrott (00:49:19):
Yeah, The, I mean we both just display is over. Can I play games in it yet? I mean, is that happen? We're

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:24):
Gonna do okay Xbox Weekly. It kind of is a joke now, but

Paul Thurrott (00:49:28):
No, we don't wanna do that. No. Cuz that would see, I that would require really paying attention to individual games. And I think that gets kind of tedious would, Yeah. So anyway, but revenues from PC makers were down 15% in the quarter for Microsoft. Right. Overall Windows revenues decline 20%. Of course, you know, you gotta do the, the lemonade moment thing where, you know what, well what's the good news? Well, seeing the larger, larger commercial deployments of Windows 11. Now, finally, a year later, and they cited Accenture <laugh>, I don't know if you know who, what this company does, but they help other companies deploy Windows <laugh>. So they took them a year to do it, then that's <laugh>, that's your good news. So that's kind of interesting

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:08):
What they still, they still didn't give you the Windows 11 number if it was really good. No, they didn't.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:12):
No. Didn't wanna give us a Windows 11 number. Cause it's not really good. It's not really good. Right. Xbox had a surprisingly good quarter, and by, and by good I mean, console sales were up. Game pass subscriptions were up 159%. Those are pandemic numbers by the way. Xbox Hardware revenues are up 13%. Nearly half of the people who have bought the Xbox Series S this past year new to Xbox. This is the type of thing Apple usually talks about. You know most of the people who bought the iPhone, this, you know, this quarter were new to the iPhone. Right. They came from Android. That's a, a nice little competitive point. I'm actually not sure I would've thrown that out, given what's going on with Sony right now. But anyway, that happened. Content and services were down 3%. You know, whatever.

(00:50:59):
But they, they had a hard, Well, yeah, they had a hard number for a game pass. I'm sorry, four Cloud gaming. So cloud gaming is the game streaming service. This is only available to Xbox's Game Pass Ultimate, which is the most expensive version of this subscription. 1499 a month has now been used by over 20 million people up to X since the last time they spoke about this, which was April when it was 10 million people. Now used by doesn't mean monthly active user <laugh>. Right. it means I have this subscription, I'm paying for it. I gave it a shot.

(00:51:32):
Yeah. They might not be, you know, ongoing. You know, we don't know. But this is the future for this platform for sure. So it was interesting to get anything going there. I don't, I can't remember if I mentioned this, you know, the, the devices part of this business was up 2%, which sounds pretty good cuz that's surface. Except it's not Surface. <Laugh> Surface was declined by low double digits. So probably 10 to 12%. That's not good. The growth there was due to a large, the impact of a large hollow lens deal. Wink, wink. Oh. You know, in other words, a one time hit from the Army. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:10):
Oh man. Really? Wow. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:12):
Yep. That's it. Oh, wow. They, they dump, they dumped the hulen into more personal computing alongside Surface. Wow. Yep. So, but I think

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:21):
Officially

Paul Thurrott (00:52:22):
Better. I didn't know the Army has, Well, they paid the bill, Right. In other words, we got like a one time, maybe a two time, I don't know. I dunno know how it works, but it, it, Yeah. This isn't, this doesn't represent profits, Right. This is revenue. So they, Right. They got money in, they applied it to this part of the business. If they hadn't you would've seen a number that was 10 to 12. Four, Well, actually maybe higher, 16%, whatever. We have no way, I'm making up numbers here. I don't know what the number is, but it would've been a higher number. The number for surfaces like that for Windows is gonna be bad this current quarter as well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> also double digits. And I think they said that I can't find it. The the gaming business, which is Xbox will also decline in the current quarter, which is interesting cuz this is the holiday quarter.

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:10):
Right, Right. But I think I, I asked them a little bit about gaming and they said, you know, during the pandemic, everybody was gaming, Right? Like, and now Yeah. Fewer people are gaming as more people are going back to the office and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, life is somewhat returning to normal in quotes. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:27):
Yeah. So I gotta say, I, I don't, I, I said this upfront. I, I don't see what's happening with Windows as bad. And the reason I don't is because it's, you know, cyclical. They're ups and downs. Those ups and downs are further apart than they used to be. We just came out of a pandemic. So we have really bad comparables and we're going to for a couple of years now. The question I have is where the, the plateau occurs. Do we go back to pre pandemic levels? Are we always gonna be a little bit above them? Which would be ideal, obviously. Does this mean that Microsoft should, should release a new version of Windows called Windows 12 in a couple years to do that little artificial boost thing, give PC makers something to sell? I think it was tough on PC makers to maintain any momentum when all they had to sell on their computers was the same version of the operating system, even though we know there were differences mm-hmm. <Affirmative> it's a hard thing to market. Sure.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:18):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:19):
So that was a problem. But I think their big thing about Windows is what I said earlier, is that you have to take into account the usage that it drives across the spectrum. And some of that usage is subscription service based, where you're getting money every month because people using Microsoft 365 primarily maybe you know, one drive additional storage that's gonna be low number, and then sadly adds Of course. So you're taking advantage of a large user base while you're waiting for them to upgrade their pc.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:48):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:49):
Right. And I think that's, it's, it's a fairly healthy business from Microsoft. It's not a great business for PC makers, frankly. I think a lot of those guys are very low margin. Which is why you see so much crap where speaking of ads on those machines. But for Microsoft Windows, I think it's healthy. And given what's going on in the world, we have to keep saying that. Yeah. Down 15% sounds bad, but the, the world is circling the drain. And last year, <laugh>, we're doing a Congo line with the pandemic, you know, so Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:18):
True. It's true. Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:20):
Win Rain seems a little strong, Paul, it's exaggerating. Make a point, but,

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:25):
Okay. No, I think, I think your point is dead on, and, and they would never come out this bold, but they almost did with what Satya said, Windows, the way they're thinking about Windows going forward is a delivery, a delivery vehicle for ads. Yeah. Like, if you say to them, How are you gonna make money with Windows going forward? Yep. It's by delivering ads. This is,

Paul Thurrott (00:55:46):
That's what, this is tough because one of the big concerns I would say in the user base over the past several years, a as Microsoft has transitioned to a cloud company, was when does this happen to Windows? And you hear things like Microsoft 365 or more important Windows 365, and you think, Here it comes, they're gonna start charging me every month, use this damn thing, and this is gonna be the end of the world. And everyone didn't want that. But now you see the alternative, which is, Oh, no, don't worry. You don't have to pay for Windows. You're just gonna pay for it with your sanity. <Laugh>, you know, with these ads that are gonna pop up everywhere. And I so

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:16):
Oh, you're, you're making a great point and you're making me think of something. So, Okay. You know, they, the, what came out at Ignite was that new Windows 365 app that you can pin to your task bar or your start menus that you can like more easily switch back and forth with Windows and Windows in the cloud. Right? Right. But they've already said this app is gonna be built into Windows 11. So what if they say mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, your choice is gonna be, you get Windows locally with ads, or you use Windows in the cloud.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:41):
<Laugh>, you know what I, I, I happily accept that deal with the double right. There might be,

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:47):
It might be Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:49):
Yep. I dunno, maybe interesting. Or I, I guess you could also, I mean, I don't think any of this makes sense. I mean, you could do a thing where you say, Well, we're gonna have these premium features. They'll be part of a Windows 365 subscription. You can optionally offload them onto the local machine, so they'll be local, You know, it's fine. But in order to get those, maybe you have to pay a subscription, Something like that. So Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:11):
Maybe. Sure. I'm digging around on that. I'm, I'm like really looking into Windows 365. I asked them on the earnings

Paul Thurrott (00:57:17):
I'm really curious

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:19):
Of, like, I want numbers on Windows 365. And they're like, It's too early. I'm like, I wanna hear how it's going. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:57:24):
Curious. I bet it's not going great. But I think part of it is integration issues. And I think one of the more interesting things, it's expensive, right? Oh, it's super expensive. That's right. Yeah. It's like 20 bucks a month to start, I think. And you know, it's obviously it's for businesses, not for individuals Yeah. Right now. But the notion of running, I keep coming back to this idea of running an app remotely from the cloud, which is way more interesting to me than running over a Windows desktop and a window or whatever. I mean, I know you can put it full screen, but I don't wanna blast the whole desktop across the internet. I just wanna get that one app that I, my workplace requires me to have. You get into a situation where you have your, bring your own PC thing, You've gotta computer you bought as an individual that's got all your personal stuff on it.

(00:58:04):
But you can bring down an app from work, that's your line of business app, whatever it is. The thing you need to get your work, your job done. They don't get to impact your computer. You still get to work. I, I feel like this is the, the future, you know, if you sign into Teams today, for example and some other apps, one of the questions you'll get is, do you want us to manage your entire computer or just manage this app? And if you're an individual on your own computer, you should always choose just the app because the computer remains your own. And then your workplace can control what happens in the app.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:32):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:33):
So I think this is, I don't know if this is an explicit thing that they're doing down the road, but it's something they used to do on, with on-prem data centers. And I, I feel like it's a natural for the cloud.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:44):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:47):
And I'm sure the money they make in that will go into Azure, because <laugh>, that's all anyone cares about <laugh>,

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:52):
You know? I know. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:55):
Okay. So is that most of it?

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:58):
I think we got it. Oh, GetHub,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:59):
That's of it. Talk about GitHub is an amazing story actually. Yeah. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you should talk about that. Cause they, I'm sorry.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:08):
Talk to you about it. I look they

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:10):
Told you

Paul Thurrott (00:59:11):
<Laugh>. Yeah. And so the funny thing about that is they never explain. They, they used the term a r r. Yeah. And so I just, I'm like, Okay, whatever. And then, then afterwards I looked it up <laugh> and it stands Me

Leo Laporte (00:59:23):
Too. I did too. I'm

Paul Thurrott (00:59:24):
Like, what a annual, Right. Cuz they never, they never explained it. Right. Because this has become such a financial's,

Leo Laporte (00:59:28):
A financial, it's a new term that everybody is Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:30):
Yeah. Annual recurring revenue. Yeah. Right. So GitHub is not what I would call a billion dollar business, but it has surpassed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue for the first

Leo Laporte (00:59:42):
Time. That's like a billion dollar business to me. That's every year, Paul. Yeah. It pretty much is. Well, every year a billion dollars. Right, Right. Okay. Every year. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:51):
Right. Yeah. How much did they pay for up?

Paul Thurrott (00:59:55):
It wasn't that much. Was this? Yeah. Geez. Okay. Now you gonna make me look

Leo Laporte (00:59:59):
Up? I mean, four years ago. Four

Paul Thurrott (01:00:02):
Years. I thought it was like four ish billion.

Leo Laporte (01:00:05):
So that's pretty good, you know? Yeah. I mean, normally you pay what eight to 10 times beta. I don't know what a beta is. But if ARR is billion 7.5.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:16):
7.55 million.

Leo Laporte (01:00:17):
Okay. So that's about right. They

Paul Thurrott (01:00:19):
Good hub, but never publicly released any financial information. So this is, and I, and Microsoft hasn't either for them. Right. So I think this is the first time we've ever gotten any insight into what's going on with this

Leo Laporte (01:00:31):
Company. A remarkable number, frankly.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:33):
Yeah. But the, so the, the thing that's interesting to me about this the most is that most is growth. And this is growth in users as well as just in revenue or in revenue as well, has come since the Microsoft acquisition. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And, you know, we know because we're in this industry, there's a lot of pushback when Microsoft bought GitHub, because you know, a lot of open source people, like, I don't know if we can trust these guys. And I argued, I'm sure we all did at the time. Actually. Microsoft will be a good steward of this. I mean, this is the type of thing that they do well. There are a lot of terms in here. I didn't, I had to look up C I C D, Continuous integration, continuous delivery.

Leo Laporte (01:01:07):
Yes. Big developer thing. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:08):
Yep. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:01:09):
Dev, come on man. Dev, DevOps, baby <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:13):
So over 90 million people use GitHub now up from $28 million at 28 million, sorry, users at the time of the acquisition. Say that

Leo Laporte (01:01:19):
Again? To, to what? 98?

Paul Thurrott (01:01:21):
No, 28 to 90 90. Right. So, Wow. Yep. 90 million GitHub had a public goal to reach 100 million users by 2025. They were obviously gonna have no problem doing that. They'll do that easy. They've been able to li leverage Microsoft Scale to grow more quickly. Right. That makes sense. It's running on Azure now. Blah, blah, blah. So they're, Yeah. So C I C D what was that little data point I was looking for? I can't see it. But there were a lot of company, a lot of major companies now using GitHub like Toyota, North America, you know, Phillips, Ford TWITlio, Daimler, State of California. Autodesks. The

Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
Interesting, a couple of interesting things. I I think of, first of all, remember when they bought it, how everybody said, Ah, that's it. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna have anything to do with it. I'm going to GitLab. That didn't happen. In fact, quite the opposite. I imagine a lot of those corporate users are brand new users. And remember That's right. You can use GitHub for free.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:17):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:02:19):
In fact, it's pretty good for free. They give you a lot for

Paul Thurrott (01:02:22):
Free. I, I used it for those programming projects I did. I used them for the book. Yeah. The, the two books actually they hosted

Leo Laporte (01:02:28):
Get they host your website for free.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:30):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:02:32):
Free. Free. Right. So

Paul Thurrott (01:02:34):
That's how they get you though, Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:02:35):
That is how they get you. Yeah. Cause I, I, I had a free cap for a long time, but you know, it's cheap. I think $5 a month or something. It's not expensive. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:42):
To get, But you know what, that's, that's the definition of a good service, right? Yes. You use the free version, you find such value in it. You hit the point where it's like, okay, you have to pay for some reason, but you look at what you get for paying and you say, Yeah, you know, it's worth it. This is a no-brainer. This is what, to me, this is what Microsoft 365 is for most people, although

Leo Laporte (01:03:02):
I use for

Paul Thurrott (01:03:03):
Backup a million

Leo Laporte (01:03:03):
Individuals I use, I mean, there's so many things you can do with it. Yeah. I wonder what their they talk about what their expenses are. I mean, cuz this is revenue a billion. No. You know. No, no, no.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:14):
They'll

Leo Laporte (01:03:14):
Never do that. No.

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:15):
And they fold it into Azure.

Leo Laporte (01:03:17):
It's part of Azure.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:19):
Of course it is. Right. Azure is like the black hole. That's just gonna suck in everything that makes money at Microsoft.

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:25):
You know what we get throw of the Azure number. Let's put GI help over there. Yeah. Awesome.

Leo Laporte (01:03:29):
<Laugh>. Yep. You know, it's interesting is that GI was originally created by Linus to Vaults for Lennox.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:35):
That's right. Has a Right. As a version control system, right?

Leo Laporte (01:03:39):
Yeah. Yeah. And of Linus and a bunch of others I'm sure. But Yeah. And he doesn't get royalties for this cuz he opensource it. Yeah. Right. So I'm sure Linus is doing

Paul Thurrott (01:03:48):
Full. Yeah. But he makes it, he makes it up in volume.

Leo Laporte (01:03:50):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. <Laugh>. That's how that works. Amazing. What a story.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:55):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:03:56):
That was the right acquisition. I You can't say that for LinkedIn. You can't say that.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:01):
Linkedin. I will. Linkedin

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:02):
Is they,

Paul Thurrott (01:04:03):
Every quarter, I swear to God, they'll, they'll say productivity bit, whatever that, But the reason we had growth was because of Office and LinkedIn. You're like, No, LinkedIn. That's, that is not, that's not true. I mean I've, LinkedIn is,

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:16):
I've asked so many No, I've asked so many times, Is LinkedIn profitable? And they're like, We don't really have anything to say on that. I'm like, Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:04:22):
Okay. The LinkedIn stuff is nuts. I, there was a big thing. I I did a thing on LinkedIn. Lemme so I can find this. Yeah. This is like they pro they provided, by the way, I will say LinkedIn is the rare example of them providing hard numbers. 875 million members strongest growth internationally to, I think Mary Jo's point earlier, someone said something about this about how a lot of their growth is coming international. Yep. they have newsletters that they offer have over 150 million subscribers up four times year over year. Members have added skills, 365 million times to their profiles over the past year. Up 43% year over year. Those are all, those are all numbers. Three numbers, right? Well, the but the real numbers now. Yeah. The thing we don't know is like a hundred, 875 million members does not, also, does not equate to monthly average users. Right. Right. My guess is that TWITtter, which is probably still in the 300 million range, probably has more active users than LinkedIn. But LinkedIn on paper has more.

Leo Laporte (01:05:19):
Oh. LinkedIn has to be much more valuable. Cause first of all, TWITtter's free and you pay, you pay LinkedIn a prof, LinkedIn, it's very expensive.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:28):
You can be free on

Leo Laporte (01:05:30):
It Can be free. Yeah. But I know, Yeah, they really encourage you. Like they do things like, Hey, wanna know who looked at your profile, Huh? Yeah. You wanna know, Huh? Sure.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:39):
Well they're getting good at advertising over there. So

Leo Laporte (01:05:42):
<Laugh>, LinkedIn's different too. It's clean is different. It's business focused and there's a lot of good content as well as the people you

Paul Thurrott (01:05:49):
Need. Are you suggesting that if I pay for service, it gets clean and professional and Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:05:54):
There's still spam and junk on LinkedIn, but not nearly as much. Is

Paul Thurrott (01:05:58):
That Seems like a good idea to me. I like

Leo Laporte (01:06:00):
That. Yeah. Lisa loves LinkedIn. I I will never have to look for a job again. God willing. Yeah. So I I actually got rid of LinkedIn, but anybody who's in business and, and you know, wants to, you know, network, that's the place to do it. Yeah, they are. And if you're

Paul Thurrott (01:06:15):
A journal, some people live on it. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
Not. That's how we find out for who, who doesn't work for somebody. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:21):
Exactly. You

Leo Laporte (01:06:22):
Go to LinkedIn. Yep. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:24):
Yeah, that's absolutely right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Microsoft has owned two tools that to me seem to be designed for journalists, OneNote and LinkedIn. <Laugh>, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:06:34):
Only one works, I guess.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:37):
I guess it's a, it's a market I guess.

Leo Laporte (01:06:39):
I don't know. Yeah. You know Lou Maka, who does there this week in enterprise tech and was on the TWITt this weekend. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> apparently has been using Loop.

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:51):
Oh, that guy

Leo Laporte (01:06:52):
Loves it. Tell him

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:53):
To hook us

Leo Laporte (01:06:54):
Up. I know. Hook us up, Lou. He, he's just great. You're gonna love

Paul Thurrott (01:06:58):
It. Can't wait. Yeah, I'm gonna love it.

Leo Laporte (01:07:00):
He's on the office team, so I think he

Mary Jo Foley (01:07:02):
Probably Yeah, I know. Gets

Leo Laporte (01:07:03):
That helps a little priority there. But

Mary Jo Foley (01:07:05):
He probably has a legless avatar too. <Laugh>. He

Leo Laporte (01:07:08):
Probably has. Who doesn't, who doesn't? Now

Mary Jo Foley (01:07:12):
We don't,

Paul Thurrott (01:07:12):
I can tell I'm not at home. Like, keep in bumping my head into the microphone.

Leo Laporte (01:07:16):
<Laugh> Microsoft's financial outlook for Q2 and beyond.

Mary Jo Foley (01:07:24):
Yeah. It's just not great.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:25):
<Laugh> not

Leo Laporte (01:07:26):
Great

Mary Jo Foley (01:07:26):
In a nutshell. Yeah. That's, they're, they're being very pessimistic. They typically are pessimistic, like they're on the conservative side when they give guidance, but they're giving some pretty harsh guidance for the next s

Leo Laporte (01:07:37):
Yep. Yeah. Kind have to

Paul Thurrott (01:07:38):
Do that, Right. Tips.

Leo Laporte (01:07:39):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:40):
Yeah. I, Well, you want, because what you want to do is exceed your expectations and then say, Oh, you know, we're just such a great company we didn't know, You know. But the problem is, yeah, some of the numbers are really bad windows and surface I noted. And then yeah, Xbox two single digit for Xbox. But yeah. High 30, you know, 30 ish percentage, whatever that means. Like 37 to 39% dip in revenues for windows. Ew.

Leo Laporte (01:08:05):
That's

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:06):
Not good. Yeah. That's not great. No holidays. Azure, by way they said is Azures gonna be down five per five points in the next quarter. So that's also not great. 

Leo Laporte (01:08:14):
No kidding. Wow. Yep. Yep. That's not, Growth is down. That's down. Is down,

Paul Thurrott (01:08:19):
Down is down.

Leo Laporte (01:08:21):
That's right. It's so confusing. Cause sometimes they say, Well, our growth I know was down.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:24):
Right. Growth, it's no,

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:27):
No, no percentage of points. They also sometimes conflate those two things. It's very confusing. Well, constant currency. I never wanna hear that term again in my life.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:35):
<Laugh>, I, I wish I had a, an extension in my browser that would remove every reference to constant currency. <Laugh>. I I I'm sure there must be a why do they even, I don't even know why they add it, because

Leo Laporte (01:08:47):
The currency better. You

Paul Thurrott (01:08:48):
Can't No, I understand that. I, I'm sorry. Let me, let me rephrase. I mean, I do understand that part, but another words, See things would be awesome if we were, if we didn't have to deal with the currency fluctuation. Exactly. Hey guys, you chose to incorporate the United States. I'm sorry. The, you know, sorry, the going gangbusters right now.

Leo Laporte (01:09:02):
That's how it works.

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:03):
Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see how it goes. But yeah, they're, they're being pretty pessimistic, but they're also saying, you know, we're trying to help customers basically get through this. And so we're helping 'em optimize costs and it's gonna hurt us that we're doing this, but yeah, we gotta do it cuz Yeah. When people keep going to the cloud, so. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:26):
Yes. And they will,

Leo Laporte (01:09:27):
They

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:27):
Will. On that Sherry note, that was <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:09:31):
Well, no, this is we did have some learnings from these earnings. That's, there's a lot to stay there.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:37):
I thought this was a really interesting one. And you know, I, I get the pessimism, but you know, I, like I said, given the way the world is going,

Leo Laporte (01:09:46):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:09:46):
This is pretty solid and this, this company is set up for, for future growth, but it's also just set up to survive. It's so, it's so diverse as a business. And that was the smartest thing I think they've ever done. You know, they were kind of the one product, maybe we call it two, three product company for a long, long time and they finally kind of woke up to that.

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:06):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:10:10):
Who else? This was a big week for earnings. Lots of earnings.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:12):
Yeah. I don't wanna spend a lot, a lot of time on this, but I, but Google and Spotify also announced earnings, alphabet. I, I should say I always look at Alphabet for a couple things size compared to Microsoft. So 69 billion in revenues compared to 50 for Microsoft. So they're a bigger company. But almost 80% of their revenues comes from advertising. Right. I think it was 79% if I remember. And Google Cloud was 6.9 billion in revenues. So, you know, what was the <laugh>? I don't remember the Microsoft cloud number, but it was probably 25 billion. 26 somewhere

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:47):
There. 5 billion or maybe 27. Yeah, it's like around

Paul Thurrott (01:10:49):
There. So we can compare those right there. I mean Google Cloud is just a, a distant third, you know, in that market and still is. They've been more aggressive than Microsoft so far about cutting products. They actually grew their, I didn't write this in my story, but they grew their employee base pretty Dr I think by 10,000 people in the quarter somehow. It's like, I think that's gonna have to stop <laugh>. I don't know what they're doing there, but anyway, that's kind of interesting cuz this company's been pretty aggressive about cutting costs. Yeah. And then why do I include Spotify in this? I have no idea. So <laugh>, actually, I can't think of any reason this, we don't have to talk about this too much, but Spotify has 4 64 50 6 million users

Paul Thurrott (01:11:32):
And 195 million of which are paid subscribers. And now they're complaining that Apple is stopping them from getting their audiobooks stuff into the, into the app. Because Apple will not approve it for the store. Cuz Apple is the most terrible country company on earth. And I wish people would kind of wake up to that

Leo Laporte (01:11:49):
<Laugh>. It's getting worse, I have to say. So this story here is really creepy because they did approve it. Oh, did they, They did approve it for Spotify. They, Spotify had a books, they approved it, they went through and then Spotify did an update and all of a sudden they unapproved it and said, Oh, you can't do that. So did they not notice or did they, what? They changed your tune? I think this is Andy competitive. This is starting to Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:12:15):
I do too. They're, this is the Apple playbook, right? Yeah. You have very unclear rules. Yeah. And then you arbitrarily apply them to your competitors you know, when they have a, a product or service that compete with what you're doing.

Leo Laporte (01:12:27):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:28):
So anyway, I just, I I don't know why I included that notes. I wrote the story, but I, it doesn't really matter to us.

Leo Laporte (01:12:36):
Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:38):
Sorry, <laugh>. I was padding the notes. I didn't think we had enough to talk

Leo Laporte (01:12:43):
About. We're getting off, off topic.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:44):
I know. I got so excited. I was

Leo Laporte (01:12:46):
<Laugh>. Don't pad the notes dude. There's plenty to say to Pat 'em. No need

Paul Thurrott (01:12:49):
To. I don't know. Yeah, I know. That was stupid.

Leo Laporte (01:12:52):
Apple's earnings are Thursday and I can tell you right now, they're gonna have the best quarter of e of Ever. Cuz they always Do you

Paul Thurrott (01:13:00):
Think they always do? They always

Leo Laporte (01:13:01):
Do. Well this isn't the big, Let's see, you know, it is the big iPhone quarter, isn't it?

Paul Thurrott (01:13:06):
Yep. wait, no, it's a little bit iPhone. Yeah, they'll, little bit. Yeah. They'll this'll

Leo Laporte (01:13:10):
Benefit over, isn't it?

Paul Thurrott (01:13:12):
They'll benefit over too.

Leo Laporte (01:13:13):
Yeah. So typically these two quarters are very, this quarter that we're in and the one previous are very big.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:20):
I think it's gonna be huge. And you know, the news this year is the big version of the non-Pro 12 isn't selling, but that's what happened last year with the mini version, so.

Leo Laporte (01:13:28):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:28):
Yeah. Who cares? It's gonna be

Leo Laporte (01:13:29):
Fine. Well, what's actually, it's good news for Apple because the 14 Pro isn't selling because everybody want, or 14 plus isn't selling. Cause everybody wants a 14 pro and that's, that's selling like hot cakes.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:42):
And then next year they'll actually do USBC and everyone will upgrade because that's what we've wanted for five years. Yeah. You know what's finally

Leo Laporte (01:13:48):
Admitted it. Yeah. We gotta do it. Yep. Yep. Jaws Greg Jaw. We said Yeah, of course we're going usbc. Oh, thanks. Thanks. and somebody else said, but asked about touch on Macko. I said, We'll see what happens.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:06):
Oh my God, though. Stop. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:14:08):
They usually say no. Absolutely not. Never. No way. I think it was Craig Federighi says, Well, we'll have to see.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:14):
Oh, think are they're horrible <laugh>. God, they're so horrible. What would it be like to follow this company?

Leo Laporte (01:14:22):
Right Joe, you're gonna look forward to never having to thinking about Apple. Ever. Ever. I really

Paul Thurrott (01:14:26):
Am. It's gonna be kinda great again. It is. I gotta admit it's so terrible. That's awful. Gonna be kind of great <laugh>. Nobody wants a microwave and a refrigerator until we sell it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Or whatever the comparison was with Toaster and whatever.

Leo Laporte (01:14:43):
Little break here. And then more to come, we have the back of the book. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. We have our typical Microsoft 365 section at dev section.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:54):
I'm gonna sing a rendition of Wind Beneath My Wins Wings. Wings for Mary Jo. Yeah. that'll be nice Lord. Yep. <laugh> know my here. You thought I already hit? Wait until you hear this thing. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:13):
Our show today brought to you by Collide. We like collide. I love Collide. And I know this is a little bit of a challenge for some IT professionals. If you could put a plexiglass wall between your users in their technology, you probably would accept is really, is that the right way to do it? It's, it's, look, I am very sympathetic. The challenge with device security is it's always been hard to scale. The bigger you are, the more edge cases, right? You introduce the easier it is for the, some pretty big issues just to kind of escape your notice. And then all of a sudden you notice and it's a problem. And then, you know, remote work, which isn't over, is it hybrid work. And the challenge got exp exponentially harder. Whether you're a fast growing startup that needs to graduate from managing device inventory in Google Sheets, Guilty or an enterprise trying to speed up service desk issues.

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Maybe if you really, you know, were ambitious to learn about. Think about it as a, if a Linux vulnerability is exposed tomorrow, will, how many machines will you have at risk? And how quickly can you get to them? Can you file a ticket with a team that manages your MDM and then wait for days for the report to get back and then send a mass email and then say, Please open the email and please apply the patches. No, with KA collide, you have real time access to your fleets data. And instead of installing intrusive agents or locking down devices, collide takes a user focused approach. And I think this is the one thing that is, that can be challenging, but I really want to tell you this is the right way to do it. It communicates security recommendations to your employees directly on Slack. You know exactly what's going on, but now you're enrolling them as you know, your lieutenants, your, you're, you're, you're, you know, you're a, your assistants in this time of need.

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Hey, you know, Joe, I'm, and it says this by the way, it doesn't say it from you, which is really nice because it's in the Slack message. You know, we noticed your SSH private keys in your download folder. You might, you might wanna put that somewhere else. It tells 'em why it's important, how to fix it, and now they're on the team. So this is a solution that really works for everybody. You can answer every question you have about your fleet without intruding on your workforce. Visit kaly.com/ww to find out how K O L I d e.com/ww you if you follow that link, gotta follow that link though, WW right. Put that on there so you can hook you up with a goodie bag, including a T-shirt. This is one of 'em. This is my favorite though, cuz it takes a little while. I like t-shirts that you have to decipher.

(01:18:56):
This is another collide T-shirt. So you got a bunch of pinocchios flying across the screen. Their nose is getting bigger and bigger, and then there's one without a big nose and it says Honest security. That's all. And then in the back it says collide.com. That's a nice t-shirt. They've also got stickers put on your laptop. And when it's time for a beer, <laugh> collide. Ghoster. They get us keeping that there. Yeah, <laugh>. They, they get you, they get you IT professionals, right? This is all you have to do is activate a free trial, K O L I D e.com/ww collide.com/ww. Thank you so much. Collide for, I think doing the right thing, which is getting users involved in the fix and I love it that they're cross-platform. And thank you so much for supporting what weekly and you support us when you use that address right collide.com/dub dub, Microsoft 365. Anything to report there? Indeed. Woohoo. No, you know it. Oh yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:07):
Yeah, a couple of random things here. So everybody, well most people probably know that the Windows subsystem for Android is part of Windows 11. It just quietly came out. Preview, apparently, probably hysterical. Yeah, no news story, whatever. When Microsoft announced Windows version 22 H two, they were talking about having 50,000 apps in a store. <Laugh>, I don't, I I checked recently, it was 57 apps I saw. That's gonna be a big change whenever that happens. But, you know, someday it will be available in 31 markets soon as well. But on the GitHub page, speaking of GitHub for the Windows subsystem for Android, they published a roadmap. I'm not sure if this is for the first time, but they have published a roadmap and one of the big things that's on there is Android 13. And I'm not sure what that's gonna do for you, because really this thing exists just to run apps, but it will be there picture and picture support file transfer, which I assume is between host and guests.

(01:21:07):
 That'll be kind of interesting. So if you do stuff in that environment, but it's not like you're bringing up an Android window, right? It's, this would be within apps. So if you have apps that do kind of a file access, I assume what that means is you'll be able to transfer files down to the operat, you know, the Windows operating system. So some interesting stuff there. But really I'm just waiting for this 50,000 app thing. I can't wait to say it. Although <laugh>, given the quality apps in a store now, all it's gonna do is make it harder to find good ones. So we'll see

Leo Laporte (01:21:36):
50,000 apps, 25,000 of which are malware.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:39):
Yeah. Yeah. More than apps

Leo Laporte (01:21:41):
Of which are FARD apps. Yeah, exactly. The rest will be great.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:44):
Yep. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:21:45):
The rest will

Paul Thurrott (01:21:46):
Be fantastic. So Google also recently announced that they're going to end support. This is I think the third or fourth time they've announced this. I guess they're gonna carry you through this time for Windows seven, for Chrome <laugh> starting in February, 2023. So Microsoft, as you might remember, had an extended support program for Windows seven that is expiring in January. Extended security update program, esu. That is, I think the same day around the same time that Windows a one support will end, probably not coincidental. And they want everyone on Windows 10 or Windows 11, of course Paul, that's gonna be

Leo Laporte (01:22:22):
Rather Steve was so upset about CRO support for really seven. Yeah, he's still, he's still using when he's not running seven. Oh, that's the, he's on 10. No, he's on, well he has seven is he has some tens and some elevens. But the main, his main machine, the pro machine he writes code on

Paul Thurrott (01:22:38):
Is Windows seven. Well, if you miss the Windows seven look and feel, I mean look into window blinds, it works on Windows 11. It's think one of The's.

Leo Laporte (01:22:45):
No, Steve, Steve is not a superficial guy. <Laugh>, it's not about the look and feel.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:51):
I, Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:22:52):
It's about, I don't know what it's about.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:54):
See, this is, listen, he cares about security. There is no way that Windows seven is as secure is Windows 10 or 11?

Leo Laporte (01:23:00):
There's no way. I'm sure he's not, he's not paying for the extended security up. No, no, no, no, no. Right. He just

Paul Thurrott (01:23:06):
You know what this is, this is a really smart guy who is gonna try to outthink the industry and he is probably one of the smartest voices in his part of it. But you really, I I feel very strongly when it comes to security especially, but just compatibility, I mean everything but security. Yeah. You gotta stay up to date with the latest version of the os his I remember.

Leo Laporte (01:23:28):
I what do you think about his contention though, that Google's just do, There's no technical reason why Google is stopping to is not offering Chrome on seven now. Right?

Paul Thurrott (01:23:36):
Listen, they tried to do this at least three times in the past there at, I don't remember the exact number or the exact date, but it, at one of those events, what they said was, we still have, it was a really low number, like 20 million, something like that. People Yeah, yeah. That were using Chrome on Windows seven. Actually that might have been early 2020 when that happened. So it was something like that. So they've tried to do this a few times. Honestly, I think linking this to the expiration of support for a version of whatever operating system makes sense. I

Leo Laporte (01:24:05):
I it makes sense. It's a good

Paul Thurrott (01:24:06):
Time to do. Why, why, why, why would Google have to support a version of Windows of Microsoft isn't supporting?

Leo Laporte (01:24:11):
See, you know, that doesn't make sense. The irony of this is Steve's bread and butter is spin. Right. Which hasn't been updated since 2004 and requires dos. I'm not kidding. Yeah. Requires, So it ships with free dos and in order to use it, you have to boot up to Doss and around spin right. From Doss. So I think he is of the opinion that you should continue to support <laugh> Elder.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:34):
I would say, I would say, and I would say this to Steve, I would say, you know, there's an entire industry out there that's not using Doss and maybe

Leo Laporte (01:24:41):
<Laugh>, he's working on it. The new version won't require dos, I don't think. Okay. <laugh>, you don't think,

Paul Thurrott (01:24:47):
When I talked to him, I remember he, he was looking into arm I think he was talking about learning arm assembly language, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, good. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:24:55):
He loves some time ago. But I mean, gosh, the difference between arm assembly and 80, 86 assemblies night and day doesn't like about arm. Well, what he doesn't like about it is he says with, with one, one Intruction on X 86. Yeah, I can, I don't know what it was, Do a complete multiply and it takes 10 on arm cuz it's Right, you know, reduced instruction sets. So you have to kind of assemble thing and he doesn't like that. So,

Paul Thurrott (01:25:21):
You know, if you want less verbose code, I mean there are higher level languages to say.

Leo Laporte (01:25:29):
What about Rust <laugh>? I think Steve likes rest. Steve likes Rust. He's a rest. Oh, okay. Well I don't think he uses rest, don't get me wrong. He just likes the, he likes the concept. Yeah. Mike

Paul Thurrott (01:25:40):
Likes I do too. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:42):
Who doesn't? Yeah, Russ never,

Paul Thurrott (01:25:45):
Never. He used it, but

Leo Laporte (01:25:46):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:25:47):
Whatever.

Leo Laporte (01:25:47):
I started learning it. I got the, you know, when the rest was new and I got the programming on rest and all that. And it's a, it's, I don't, you know, cuz I'm a hobbyist if I

Paul Thurrott (01:25:58):
Work. What, how you, from a language point of view, like what do you compare it to? What does it look like?

Leo Laporte (01:26:03):
It's a lot. So it's a little bit like a Java. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> in terms of the verbosity it's, is it

Paul Thurrott (01:26:12):
Abra language of semicolons?

Leo Laporte (01:26:14):
Yeah. Yeah. It's c like everything is C like now. Yeah. But okay. It's statically typed. There's a lot of security built in. There's garbage collection. It's But actually it's a actually not, it's not garbage collected Exactly. But there's do, they're doing some memory management <laugh>. Okay. It's interesting. I think it's a really cool language written by Mozilla. They wanted to do something that they could do a browser and very secure.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:35):
Oh. When they gonna need something to remember them by

Leo Laporte (01:26:37):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:26:40):
Too

Leo Laporte (01:26:40):
Much. It's a, it's a, it's a good language if you were in a team as a professional programmer. I think it makes a lot of sense as an individual programmer.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:49):
I don't like writing, I've never looked at it, but I don't

Leo Laporte (01:26:53):
Job markovich. If Markovich likes it, it's, Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's perfect for team much better than c plus plus my opinion. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:01):
The work he's doing, it probably does make sense. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:27:03):
Yeah. <Laugh> much better. And Lenox colonels are gonna have rest in it now. And I imagine the, you know, anyway, it's a, it's a, it's a good language, but so is C Sharp. So is tight script. Microsoft has some very good modern languages.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:18):
Yep, yep. Although C Sharp it's already 21 years old or whatever. Mm-Hmm. You know.

Leo Laporte (01:27:24):
Well, you don't wanna, Okay. I'm using a language that's as old as I am.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:29):
<Laugh>. Well, there's something to be said for stability.

Leo Laporte (01:27:31):
Exactly. I was telling Steve this yesterday code that if I had written, I wish I had learned Lisp in the eighties, but if I had written a program in the eighties in Common Lisp, it would still run today. It hasn't changed. There's something to be said for that. Yeah. it does mean that the newest stuff, you know concurrency and stuff like that, there are libraries and it's a little trickier, but I like the idea of stability. I'm not against that. I'm not, I'm not using Windows seven. Not that crazy <laugh>. Anyway what else here? What else, what

Paul Thurrott (01:28:12):
Else? We were talking about this office app transitioning to a Microsoft 365 app. There was very little information about it. Microsoft has not posted a video showing off what this is gonna look like. It looks a lot like the office app <laugh>, frankly. Yeah. But, but, but the thing, well the thing to remember here is they're gonna use the same UI across three different places, right? So it's the office app on desktop for Windows. There's the office app on mobile for Android and iPhone and probably iPad or whatever. And then office.com on the web. So this is gonna be the common ui. We've talked a lot in the past about how these things were often very close to each other. Even the, with the Windows 11 start menu by adding that recommended section is getting a little bit like the office app. But they're gonna finally do this all, you know, one thing, it's gonna be the same everywhere. So it looks fine. I think what's gonna happen is I don't know if what the timing is, November, I think we'll wake up up one day, they will auto update. We'll open it and say, Oh look, it looks different <laugh>. You know. But anyway, there is a video out there on YouTube if you want to take a look at that. It's called introducing the Microsoft 365 app. So it should be easy to find. And

Leo Laporte (01:29:14):
Then, yeah, Lou was funny about that again, cuz he works in the office team. The mescal Yeah. The web mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And he said, yeah, we were a little, little perturbed about losing the name office, but I said, well don't worry cuz Paul and Mary Joe said it's still, it's going nowhere. It's still nowhere. Yeah. He was

Paul Thurrott (01:29:31):
Relieved. He's not the first person of the first group at Microsoft that has watched one of their brands subsume, you know, be subsumed by Microsoft. You know, remember it happened to Surface devices, they got rid of the Surface logo in Surface branding. Yep. Yeah. That's what happens.

Leo Laporte (01:29:46):
Speaking of Surface Surface Duo getting a little

Paul Thurrott (01:29:50):
Upgrade. Now I am a notable critic perhaps of these devices, but I gotta say this is an interesting idea and I really like where this is going and that not so much for dual screen devices, which I think are goofy, but rather to some future surface device that runs Android. Right? So what Microsoft is doing is they're upgrading Surface dual and Surface DU too. So it's both generations to Android 12 L and this was kind of a weird interim version they did over the PA over the winter last year where they took Android 12 and they adapted it for large screens, split screen, folding screen, Chromebook, whatever, devices. Right. And Google's been doing a lot of work in their own apps to make them look good and run good on those types of devices. It's been a big push of theirs for the past year.

(01:30:32):
Now, Android 13 has come out since then, and I believe it incorporates all of the stuff from Android 12 L but I think L stands for large <laugh> by the way, not light or whatever. Okay. So it's getting Android 12 L Okay, cool. It's not Android 13, but it's a, you know, it's a push forward. But the big thing they're doing, and this is what I agree with completely, this is such a good idea and I'm, I'm surprised they just didn't do this from the beginning, although I, I guess there were little elements of it, is they're doing a visual refresh of the UI that it includes two new apps, well, two apps settings, which was there already in quick settings, which is something that's in Windows 11. And they look like the versions in Windows 11. They're also updating across the system for icons, colors, UI controls, et cetera, to look like Windows 11.

(01:31:18):
So the, it's not there. I don't think it's gonna be there completely in v1, but over time the goal is to make this thing look as much like Windows 11 as possible so that people who use both systems can move between them more seamlessly. And this I think points to a future where, I'm just making this up now, but if you imagine like a Surface go type tablet instead of running Windows, which is not great in low memory situations, et cetera, offer a version with Android instead. And now you've got all these Google and Microsoft apps that run full screen and look great, Right? And you can have a keyboard and a track pad and all that stuff. So I think I, I wouldn't be surprised if that that isn't where they're going with this. I'm not saying there won't be a future duo device, although I'm not really sure there needs to be, frankly. But I think this is a good idea.

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:08):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:09):
Mary Jo is not

Mary Jo Foley (01:32:11):
I like your thinking. Nope. I like your thinking on this and, and I, I just have stopped covering the duo because I don't really have many readers who care about it. I mean, there, there are some enthusiasts who are all in on the duo, but yeah, I just don't, when I write about it, it gets no traffic. Nobody cares. And so I like your idea that maybe that they're continuing all this work and investment. I mean, they have a huge team. I don't know how many people, but like, they put a lot of people on this Android team at Microsoft. And what are they working on? Right? Like you just working on the Do

Paul Thurrott (01:32:41):
And I, Right? This is, this has come up in the past too. I mean, probably when they released the duo, which was Yeah, I would've said something like, Look, I don't think dual screen devices make any sense. However, Yeah, I do think Microsoft making Android devices can make sense because it's a vehicle for Microsoft 365. Right. And they've done a, you know, they do whatever you think of their customizations, it certainly has a unique kind of look and feel to it. But I think one of the things they got right in Windows 11 was the UI I think, or the ux I should call it the well ui, whatever it is, the look and feel of Windows 11. I think it's pretty, it's modern. It's nice, It's, it's calm, it's all the things they say it is, you know, But you could apply it very easily to I think to Android and, and maybe, you know, that's, that's an idea.

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:23):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can connect to Windows 365 in the cloud on an Android device.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:29):
Yep. Yep. Yeah. They have all the Android native apps and why

Leo Laporte (01:33:31):
Not? Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:33):
It's better than having an Android or an Amazon app store on Windows. You know, like at least this thing is real Android and it can run, it runs the Google Play store, so you get all the apps mean that's what people want. So I think it makes some sense.

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:46):
Does it run the Google Play Store?

Paul Thurrott (01:33:48):
Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. It comes

Leo Laporte (01:33:49):
With it. It's just regular, it's regular Android device.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:52):
It's the only thing I, I mean if it didn't, it would even make, it would make even less sense. No, that's, I thought

Mary Jo Foley (01:33:56):
They would using Android Open Source Open?

Leo Laporte (01:33:59):
No, no, it's not Ussb. It's it's a Google device. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:02):
Yeah. It has all the, Yeah, it comes with Chrome and Google search is the default. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:34:07):
Huh. Okay. You can get the original one for $320 now on Amazon <laugh>. Not the, not the new one. Not the current one Last. Last one.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:16):
Well, I give 'em a little credit for updating both of them. I, you could imagine them saying we're only doing this for two. Yeah, yeah. You know, the more recent one.

Leo Laporte (01:34:22):
Yeah. So for if you wanna try it, you know, it came, the original Surface came with 10 du Duo came with with

Paul Thurrott (01:34:28):
Tens. Yeah. They've always been behind on this stuff. I assume the last one came with 11. So 12 was last year. 12 L was probably finished in February or March.

Leo Laporte (01:34:37):
I look, I look at it every year, I'll be honest. Mm-Hmm. I'll look at it. If they come out with a three, which I'm sure they will, I will absolutely check it out. I love the idea. I feel like there's something there.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:49):
I like the idea of a Microsoft and Android, a device. I d you know, dual, dual screens. Goofy.

Mary Jo Foley (01:34:55):
Well, the camera, the camera is so wonky on that. Yeah, yeah. Like how you

Leo Laporte (01:34:59):
Take a picture. That's why the next one might be better. At least they have a camera this time. Veruna said, I just got my Surface duo today. Android 12 L is really good with it. It's a nice companion device. He's an R

Paul Thurrott (01:35:09):
Irc. There you go. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:35:10):
It's a companion device, so that's telling, right? Yeah. It's not his main Yeah, it is.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:14):
No. Well, yeah, it is. But I, I think they could make Anand Android device that would be a device, not just a Convey. I think it they could do this.

Leo Laporte (01:35:21):
Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah, you, there's some Oh, you mean just like a, like a regular

Paul Thurrott (01:35:25):
Phone? Yeah, like a tablet. Just like a tablet.

Leo Laporte (01:35:27):
Two obviously a Oh, a tablet.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:28):
No, not a phone. Be make a tablet. Yeah. That's a good make AAR with like Surface Pro today can be had an arm or X 86 much rather have Surface go in the future. What if Surface Go could be had in Android or X 86? Let's

Leo Laporte (01:35:41):
Face it. Yeah. Android on Arm is better than Windows on Arm, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:35:48):
Yes. <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:35:49):
Yes. It's, I think you have to say yes. Maybe not forever, but I think for today

Mary Jo Foley (01:35:53):
I think you do. Definitely.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:54):
Yeah. Yes. It's

Leo Laporte (01:35:57):
More of mature. It's more performant.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:58):
Yeah. It was designed to run on this platform, so

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:02):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:36:02):
There's no app issues, et cetera, right? So

Speaker 6 (01:36:08):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>

Leo Laporte (01:36:13):
10 years ago today. What happened?

Paul Thurrott (01:36:16):
We're not gonna talk about that. So look at your

Leo Laporte (01:36:18):
Xbox <laugh>.

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:19):
No, we're

Leo Laporte (01:36:21):
10 years ago.

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:22):
10 years ago at midnight. Yesterday I was standing in Times Square.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:27):
Yeah. So was I

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:29):
Waiting for the Microsoft store?

Leo Laporte (01:36:31):
Were you just as a giant Elmo?

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:33):
I was,

Leo Laporte (01:36:34):
Neither of us were.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:35):
He's getting a

Leo Laporte (01:36:36):
Little, And

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:37):
We, we wanted to get a Surface RT to check it out and Windows eight was launching and it was like, all

Paul Thurrott (01:36:44):
Right here, you bought one, You bought an rt, didn't you?

Mary Jo Foley (01:36:47):
Yep, Yep. And Pano signed my box that it, it came in. Yep. So that was 10 years ago. Today I told Paul, I put an Easter egg in the show notes, and the Easter is the link to the story. Oh, what?

Paul Thurrott (01:37:01):
It,

Mary Jo Foley (01:37:01):
It's an interview with Steven Sinofsky.

Leo Laporte (01:37:04):
No. Ah,

Paul Thurrott (01:37:06):
That's where you,

Leo Laporte (01:37:07):
That's so bad.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:08):
You know what? You're off the show.

Mary Jo Foley (01:37:10):
Wait, the reason I linked it is because the person who interviewed him at ours, Technica asked him about how did it feel to get negative press reaction to Windows eight. And he cites Paul Thro in the story.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:23):
Really? Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:37:24):
He

Paul Thurrott (01:37:24):
Says, Don't, don't tell me

Mary Jo Foley (01:37:26):
You wanna hear this.

Leo Laporte (01:37:27):
He says, That's son of a bitch, Paul

Mary Jo Foley (01:37:30):
Thurrott not what you think. No. He said there were reviews and first looks that were glowing about the product. For example, Paul Thro treated Tweeted, Hello, Windows eight, this is iPad you win. That's what he quoted. You.

Leo Laporte (01:37:42):
Oh, Paul, I'm so sorry.

Mary Jo Foley (01:37:45):
I didn't wanna bring it up earlier in the show because I knew it

Paul Thurrott (01:37:48):
Was He did that to hurt me.

Mary Jo Foley (01:37:50):
<Laugh>. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:37:52):
Did you actually,

Paul Thurrott (01:37:54):
It sounds like something I would say. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:37:56):
It's, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:37:57):
A little premature. He didn't mention, I

Mary Jo Foley (01:37:59):
Say he didn't mention the change and feeling around that. I, this whole interview is very interesting. It's like somebody kinda, Well, I trying to rewrite history right

Paul Thurrott (01:38:08):
About, I, you know, of course went over my history windows thing over the past year. And when I got to this era, I, I was of course looking what at what I wrote at the time. And I, I can see what I was doing, which was, and I did, I actually said this explicitly like, <laugh>, this release is so insane that all you can do is just hang on for deal life and just go with it. Like, it's like this is happening whether no matter what I say. So just gotta just go with it, you know? And I think it's,

Mary Jo Foley (01:38:33):
It's <laugh>. It's, it's interesting. You can cherry pick things, right? Like he cherry picked that quote and also he's like, You know what, nobody gives us the credit for the fact that people love this Windows eight thing. I'm like, No, they didn't. People were screaming about it, like, don't come to market with it. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:49):
Right,

Mary Jo Foley (01:38:51):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:38:51):
Look at you. Scooter X, his Google FU is excellent.

Mary Jo Foley (01:38:55):
Very. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:58):
September 13. Wow. Metro TWIT looking that long. Zangs up. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:39:03):
Man. Metro TWIT. Wow. Wow. That was his TWITtter client. Yep. <laugh>. That was a very fanciful quote for my iPad. <Laugh>. Very

Paul Thurrott (01:39:15):
Well, you know, this is the whole toaster refrigerator thing. Yeah. Like you know, Apple ceo, Apple Executives made fun of the the tablet thing with Windows eight. Yep. And then they made an iPad Pro, and they look like jerks

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
<Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:30):
You know? Now granted, they got some things right. I, they got lot of stuff wrong though. I mean, I, from the point of view of a, like a productivity scenario, the ipro Pro even today is still very, is very stilted. It's gotten a lot better. But, you know, the iPad at the time, I, we, we knew people who and there were people in my company at the time who were trying to make an iPad work for work back in the early days. So USB keyboard, there was no mouse or anything like that. They'd have like this whole setup with like a stand. And so they could like, lean it up and look at it when they were typing and everything. And I remember this guy I work with, actually, it was Sean, You know Sean. He said he said, Well, Paul, I can get real work done in an iPad. And I said, Then you're not working hard enough. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:40:10):
I agree. <Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:40:11):
You know, if that's true, then you're not doing an, I mean, that's crazy.

Leo Laporte (01:40:14):
I'm a huge iPad fan and I really love the iPad Pro, but I think it's nuts even today with the iPad Pro and the keyboard and everything to make it your computer. It's not a pc. It's not intended to

Paul Thurrott (01:40:25):
Be. Right. Right. I use an iPad every single day. I have for years. Love it. I use it to read. Yes. That's what I, that's

Leo Laporte (01:40:30):
What I, I use it, I use my iPad. We to read, I use my iPad Pro for photo editing with a pencil. It's incredible. It's better than a pc. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But instead of saying, This is the future of computing, Apple should just say, this is a, And I think in their hearts, this is what they think. <Laugh>. This is a tool for a certain kind of computing. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:40:49):
That's right.

Leo Laporte (01:40:50):
I love, I

Paul Thurrott (01:40:51):
They haven't helped matters by, you know, know they have those, you know, what's a computer as what's, what's a whatever. Yeah. It's like, ask your mother. She knows <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:40:58):
Those. No, no.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:59):
That's a mistake.

Leo Laporte (01:41:00):
But I don't think that's how they feel internally. I think they understand that they're two different Yeah. Things for two different uses.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:06):
Well, it's not like they're not selling something else that is a computer that's, So, it's weird about it. They're advertising against a product they already make too. That's doing pretty well. Thank you very much. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Anyway, so yeah, that was it. That was Windows eight was something we had to get through <laugh>, you know, We did. And we did. Yeah. And we did,

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:24):
We did.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:26):
Well, thank you for that.

Leo Laporte (01:41:28):
A dramatic reading from the RS Technica interview with Steven Sinofsky.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:33):
I'd like you not to do that.

Leo Laporte (01:41:34):
<Laugh>, bring it to Life. Who designed the tile based metro interface?

Paul Thurrott (01:41:41):
Oh.

Leo Laporte (01:41:42):
Did you consider any alternatives? No, I'm not gonna read this cuz it's too horrible.

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:47):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:49):
I just left it there for Paul to look

Paul Thurrott (01:41:50):
That his answers right there are his, everything that was wrong with this product. It, it's, it's amazing to me after all these years how we can still get everything wrong. Yeah. You know, it's like, you know, what about Metro? It's like we wanted to have a similar design language. No, you should have had the same design language, you idiot. Like, instead of working with that team, why are you making me do this? <Laugh>, I'm sorry.

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:11):
Sorry. I shouldn't have done this. I

Paul Thurrott (01:42:12):
Know. Freaked me out. No, it's

Leo Laporte (01:42:14):
Okay. I should. The most interesting thing about the press reaction to Windows eight was how that reaction has been revised over time. <Laugh>. Yeah. Nope. as well, as soon as they started using it, they started revising the product, Did what it did in the market. And I'm not in any ways this is,

Paul Thurrott (01:42:28):
This is, this is lacking in context. This is, this is about the thing we just talked about. People trying to use an iPad for work. People forget what an iPad was like that year. Well, it was brand new. People were trying to use it with a keyboard. They were trying to, you know, pretend that it was a computer that's, it's not a computer.

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:44):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:44):
That was, I mean, this is just whatever <laugh>, this just con this is just context. Yeah. I'm never wrong. So that doesn't make sense. No, this

Leo Laporte (01:42:51):
Is very revisionist. You're right. Mary Jo. This is totally revisionist history.

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:56):
No, I remember, I remember how many articles I wrote leading up to the launch of Windows Eights from quoting all kinds of people who have, who are Windows users going, I'm not gonna use that. Like, you can't use it with, with a keyboard. Like, what, what the heck is that

Leo Laporte (01:43:09):
<Laugh>?

Paul Thurrott (01:43:10):
I mean, you can go back and write. You can, what I wrote is available. I mean, I, I remember talking to the guy who designed this thing and we talked about this. He didn't have words. He didn't have words to describe the UI parts. And I said, this thing has a name. He said, No, it's, it's just charms. And I had that moment where I was like, These people have no idea what they're talking about. They have no idea. Yeah. They don't know what they're doing.

Mary Jo Foley (01:43:31):
No one knew how to use it. They didn't wanna embed any instructions in it because they wanted people to figure it out and just make it in quote, pretend it was intuitive.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:38):
We've told this great, great story about a year after Windows eight, where you and I were in New York for probably a surface launch. And we were standing with Frank Shot, I think at the flooded you, you know, New York thing. They had remember it flooded. Yeah. I think that's where it was. And you said, Oh, it's a big anniversary coming up. And Frank said, What's that? And he said, Well, it's the anniversary of when he left the company. And he's like, Oh yeah, okay. And I said, Well, there's an even bigger anniversary coming up. He says, What's that? And I said, Well, whatever the day was January something, his NDA runs out and then he can start hiring people from Microsoft and start his next company. And then Frank said, I just hope that whatever Steven does next is just as successful as Windows eight. Woo. It's still the

Leo Laporte (01:44:24):
Best,

Paul Thurrott (01:44:25):
It's still the best quote I've ever, ever does.

Leo Laporte (01:44:27):
Sick burn. Wow.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:29):
Yeah. It was the best, It's still the best thing anyone's ever said in my presence. Beautiful. Brilliant. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:44:36):
How has your opinion of Windows eight evolved or changed over the past 10 years? There? Ours asked Mr. Sinofsky first. So, so much of the feedback about Windows eight focused on removal of the start menu, the little menu, which we knew at the time had reached its functional limits. Did you

Paul Thurrott (01:44:53):
Know? Oh really? Cuz we're still using it today. Eddie,

Leo Laporte (01:44:55):
The start menu 10 years ago, it reached its functional limits.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:58):
Yeah. He knew that. Yeah. They should have asked customers what they thought about that before they did it.

Leo Laporte (01:45:04):
So in many ways, I think the feedback overplayed the role of the start menu get this much the same way the early Windows critics overplayed the removal of Sea Colon back slash from the core experience, <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:45:20):
I cannot express how much I hate this

Leo Laporte (01:45:23):
Person's

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:23):
Just gonna go, he's gonna have some cocktails tonight and then he is gonna go back and read this and we'll see the results.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:28):
I'm not, I'm not gonna go back and read it. I'm not, I've already heard too much of it.

Leo Laporte (01:45:33):
You've heard enough right now. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:35):
Right. More than you wanted to

Leo Laporte (01:45:36):
Hear. And we're very excited to announce the the new co-host of Windows weekly with a lot of experience in the field. Windows <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:46):
Oh

Leo Laporte (01:45:47):
Man. No, no, I wouldn't do that to you Paul. He

Paul Thurrott (01:45:50):
Was in Boston briefly for some Harvard thing and I invited him over to dinner with the hope that my wife had poisoned him. But

Leo Laporte (01:45:56):
That's kind of you. That's generous. Nice.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:59):
Yeah. Yeah. Did he be like that scene in Hannibal? No, he he declined

Leo Laporte (01:46:04):
<Laugh>. So worried that he would be poisoned. No doubt. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:08):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:46:10):
Wow.

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:13):
Anyway. Good times 10 years ago. 10

Paul Thurrott (01:46:16):
Years ago. What? Wink. We've come a long way baby.

Leo Laporte (01:46:20):
I mean, it's funny because even this week I talked about mm-hmm. <Affirmative> how app cuz Apple is trying to grapple with a similar thing of, of you know, what, what, what do we do on the, it's going the other way this time though. What do we do on the iPad to make it more like a desktop operating system?

Paul Thurrott (01:46:40):
Well, that was actually, so that was always the big debate. Is it better to start with something big and complex and bring it down? Or is it better to start with something small and scale it up? Apple did do the, bring the big down to small with the iPhone. Right. That was based on the Mac. So they stripped out everything you wouldn't need on a mobile device. That was kind of an inter they worked. But honestly, I think the better approach is to start simple and small and build on assuming you do a good job of it. Right. You have to do it in a

Leo Laporte (01:47:05):
Well, and as I said, a measured way we've been here before, there's a cautionary tale called Windows eight. Yep. And Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know,

Paul Thurrott (01:47:13):
There's no, and Apples made a lot of mistakes along the way. I mean, remember their initial, the initial way they handled like keyboards and, and track pads and the stage managers thing they're trying to do now, which isn't working very well apparently on iPads. You know, it's, it's hard. It's hard to, meeting in the middle is hard. It's, I think you're gonna have difficulties either way, but I bet there are a lot more iPads in the world than there are Windows tablets.

Leo Laporte (01:47:40):
Yeah, Totally. Well, unless there, unless surface,

Paul Thurrott (01:47:43):
I would include surface in that.

Leo Laporte (01:47:44):
Oh yeah, Probably.

Mary Jo Foley (01:47:45):
Definitely.

Leo Laporte (01:47:48):
Let's talk a little developer stuff here. You got something to talk about there?

Mary Jo Foley (01:47:53):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Project Volera is here.

Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
It came out Woohoo.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:59):
Looks good too.

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:00):
5 590 $9.

Leo Laporte (01:48:03):
This is the, the development kit mini kind of like a mini computer,

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:08):
Like a macin kind of, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's called Windows Dev Kit 2023 is the official name has a Snapdragon eight CX Generation three in it. It has 32 gigs of Ram five 12 gigs storage, wifi, six ethernet, three SBAs, two SBCs, one mini display port. That's what you get. So you can hook it up to your monitor. This is,

Paul Thurrott (01:48:31):
That's a lot of computer for that much money. That's, it is, that's the most recent version of the Snap. It's not a, I thought it was gonna be one of those what do you call it? Like a six series snapdragon process. I know. This is the flagship. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (01:48:42):
Oh it is. That's good. Right. so this is aimed at developers like Microsoft is trying to get developers to buy this so that they can bring their apps natively to arm, windows on arm. They can build 'em, test them, run 'em. A lot of people who are not developers are interested in this and buying it. So my point is, I don't if you're just, if you're an enthusiast, Sure. I say yes. Like if you wanna play around with this, if you're anybody who's not an enthusiast, a normal person to not buy this, which is an arm is not ready, it is absolutely not ready. Like, let's just be so clear. It's so not,

Paul Thurrott (01:49:21):
I considered doing this podcast on that laptop, which is based on the same chip set. And then I real, I was like, you know, I, I don't like, I have enough problems. I'm in a different country. My connectivity's not that great. Yeah. I'm gonna add like another wrench into this bike wheel, you know? Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:36):
Right. <Laugh>. Yeah. You don't need to,

Leo Laporte (01:49:38):
Don't think of it as a wrench. Think of it as a plane card. Paul <laugh>. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:42):
Did you buy one

Leo Laporte (01:49:44):
Or?

Paul Thurrott (01:49:44):
No, but I No, it's tempting, isn't it? But it's tempting. It's available. It's a good looking computer.

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:50):
Now. This

Paul Thurrott (01:49:51):
Would be the way to go if you wanted to see what Windows and Arm was like, I

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:54):
Guess. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:49:55):
Except for one thing. So one of the big advantages there right. Is supposed to be the battery life and the touch stuff. And Exactly.

Mary Jo Foley (01:50:01):
I,

Paul Thurrott (01:50:01):
Yeah, it's kind of a tough thing. I mean, I, the think Pat, I just reviewed, I don't remember off the top of my head, but it's, it's north of a thousand bucks to start, you know, it's gonna screen.

Mary Jo Foley (01:50:11):
It is. Right. So I, I was talking to Rich Turner, who's at Microsoft, who's doing a lot of work on this device. Like it's his baby pretty much. Right? Oh wow. Okay. He's out there like defending it, answering questions about it mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I just said to him, Okay, he kept saying, We're gonna change your mind. I said, Okay, change my mind. Like, why? Like, why do you think a normal person would want this? He goes, Well, no, no, actually no, it's not for normals, it's for developers. Mostly for enthusiasts who wanna kick the tires of Windows Unarm at this

Paul Thurrott (01:50:41):
Point. The smartest thing they did was it, it comes with 32 gigs around, which is crazy. Right. I think the laptop I have is probably 16, which I think is about right, because you need extra memory for emulation and, you know, to kind of help overcome some of the performance stuff. This thing will run Visual Studio soon. There's a, it will run it now preview, there's a mm-hmm. <Affirmative> a preview version of Visual Studio, Full Visual Studio that has fewer workloads, but it does all the C sharp stuff. Like if you wanna do Windows forums and wpf and uwp, it does all that. So if you wanna do desktop development, it's there. And I c plus plus too. I'm sorry. And I mean, I've tried it, it works. It seems to work fine. It's not like I'm creating like a web browser with it or whatever, But but yeah, I mean, I

Mary Jo Foley (01:51:27):
Sure, I'm just gonna say if what else happened this week on the hardware front was all the reviews started hitting of the Surface Laptop five and the Surface Pro Nine devices. Some people got the arm based surface programs. Yeah. Some got the Intel more got the arm than the Intel without a almost without exception, the people who are hitting the arm not ready one were like, this thing's not ready. Like Yeah. That Microsoft thinks this is ready, Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:51:49):
<Laugh> Yeah. No, I yeah, no, I came to the same conclusion. I didn't get the Surface Pro Nine, but I, like I said, I have the Think pad and it's like, you know, it's definitely better than it's ever been. Yeah. There's no doubt. It's noticeable.

Mary Jo Foley (01:52:00):
Everybody says that. Yep. Everybody

Paul Thurrott (01:52:01):
Says there's also, there's things where you, you alt tab and nothing happens and you wait and you wait and it finally comes up. Or you click in a browser tab and then the window kind of freezes up. Yeah. You wait and it comes back, You know, But it's, Or you launch an app app launching is the worst. Like if you have a, an emulated app, you, the little picture comes up with the app and you wait and you wait and you wait. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:52:21):
It's just no, I, I was, I was like, railing about this on TWITtter this week, and somebody said to me, I'm using an arm base Windows laptop and it works great. I'm getting like 26 hours of battery. I'm like, Okay, explain how, how are you doing now? Yeah, no,

Paul Thurrott (01:52:34):
You're, you're outta your mind. It's absolutely not.

Mary Jo Foley (01:52:35):
Well, the screen brightness is at 30% and I'm not have, I don't have any tabs open to my browser. I'm like, Oh, there we go. <Laugh>. Okay, cool. Right. Like, not a real world use for me. Maybe for some people. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:47):
<Laugh>. Yeah. You, this is, this is actually the Windows version of the thing I was describing with the iPad earlier, where you're trying to contort a device. Yeah. In this case a PC to behave like a single tasking laptop. Yeah. And it's, it's like, you can do that I guess, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I isn't, there's already a tool that does this really well and it doesn't have to single task and it's less expensive. <Laugh> and it's called an iPad. And there's a reason they sell so many of 'em cuz they really just work.

Mary Jo Foley (01:53:13):
Yeah. You know,

Paul Thurrott (01:53:16):
Anyway, anyways. Horrible. I don't mean to say like that. It's, it's

Mary Jo Foley (01:53:19):
Cool there.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:19):
It's better than it's ever been. Yeah. It's good for

Mary Jo Foley (01:53:21):
Developers, it's great, it's great for developers who think there is some viability at some someday there, this platform will be interesting. It's not today. It's someday the

Paul Thurrott (01:53:29):
Prop. Yeah. So the problem is you can flick a switch in Visual Studio and target arm in addition to X 86 and X 64, but it doesn't tell you how it performs. You, you need to get the thing in the debugger and see where the hold ups are. And it, it, having that native device is important. And I bet most people, people will play with it, but the reality is they're not gonna sit there and use it day to day. They're gonna remote it, the app onto that thing and then use it just for that app to see what it looks like. I, I think that's how most people are gonna do it, because you still have to see how the app works on your, you know, on the most important platform, which is X 64. So it's, it's really just a device to kind of add to your network with a screen, you know, or maybe not with a, probably with a screen and use it that way, I would imagine. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But it's, and then on that note, it's a powerful computer. It's less expensive than a laptop, most of them. Although you could probably buy a cheap laptop that would have the, that low end chip set, which no one should ever buy. So I think it makes sense. It looks great too. It's a nice, looks

Mary Jo Foley (01:54:30):
Like a nice beer. It looks really nice. Yep. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:35):
But don't, there's no SIM card. I bet. That's the other thing with these <laugh>, well the Windows in arm device. No, seriously. Think about it. It's multi-touch pen, potentially laptop form factor, battery life. And then so connectivity, which is something you really don't see that's, that's in that box. No, it's not. It's what I'm saying. These are the things that's missing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's not a device to be used. People who buy it's for developers. It's for developers. That's

Mary Jo Foley (01:54:57):
Right. That's right. It's called the Windows Dev Kit. That's the name of this machine. Right? Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:55:03):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:55:03):
Although I, I guess you could argue a developer might want to be playing with LTE or something. I

Paul Thurrott (01:55:10):
Don't know. Well that's actually, that's one of the things I'm kind of thinking here. So you're a developer in your targeting arm, depending on the app. I mean, I think the goal is we have millions of apps out in the world that run on X 64, X 86. We want them to run effectively on arm. We want them to use that, I forget the name of it. E C something, the X 60, the technology that lets you get into an X 64 project, add arm code to it to fill in the gaps rather than starting over from scratch with arm. Right. It's mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's a kind of a halfway house between, you know, full native arm and full date of X 64. So you want 'em to do that. And you have to have something to do it on <laugh>, you know, to see that. But you, you, I don't, like I said, you can't just check a box. Like you have to make sure it runs. It's not enough. Just it, the apps already just run. We know that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> they have to run well, but the problem is the people using these apps are gonna have touch screens, laptops, LTE or 5g, maybe pens. And there's no way to test that stuff on this particular device. So it's, you know, it's a, it's a cheap way to get it done, but it's maybe not the full experience.

(01:56:20):
It's not bad. You're

Mary Jo Foley (01:56:21):
Gonna buy one. I think. I

Leo Laporte (01:56:22):
Know you're gonna buy. He will.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:23):
I do want, I do want one. He will. I do want one.

Leo Laporte (01:56:26):
Yeah. It's just a matter of time. Yep. <laugh>. But you, one thing you have already, Paul, and you probably should talk a little bit about it, is that fabulous new Xbox Series X just sitting right there. You know what Xbox Series X spells?

Paul Thurrott (01:56:43):
I

Leo Laporte (01:56:44):
<Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:46):
I like

Leo Laporte (01:56:47):
<Laugh>. Nothing.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:48):
Nothing. No nothing.

Leo Laporte (01:56:49):
Okay. It's time for the Xbox segment.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:53):
Whereas I will call it the last Xbox segment that Mary Jo will need to endure

Leo Laporte (01:56:59):
<Laugh>. Yes. for that reason. I'm gonna keep the camera on her the whole time. Usually I <laugh>, usually I switch away from Mary Mario. So she

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:07):
Can, I'll just say I've started drinking my beer

Leo Laporte (01:57:09):
Pick. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:57:11):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:57:12):
Oh

Leo Laporte (01:57:15):
<Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:57:16):
Actually, there's not much to talk about. So the first Xbox story, we actually talked

Leo Laporte (01:57:20):
<Laugh>. You're welcome. Can I borrow your gong, Mary Jo? I think I'm a beat <laugh>. I

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:24):
Know. I should have rung it today. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:27):
I haven't needed to be Gonged.

Leo Laporte (01:57:29):
No, you haven't. You

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:30):
Haven't. Mostly

Paul Thurrott (01:57:32):
A couple times. Not

Mary Jo Foley (01:57:33):
Today. <Laugh>. You're good.

Paul Thurrott (01:57:35):
We talked about 20 million people have at least tried Xbox Cloud gaming as part of the earning segment. So no reason to beat that to death. It is the 25th anniversary, or is coming up the 25th anniversary of the Age of Empire's franchise. So Microsoft announced, this is kinda weird. Age of Empires, two definitive edition and Age of Empires. Four are both coming to Xbox consoles next year. I guess they're like Star Trek movies, <laugh>, the even Liver ones are good as, I don't know. I don't know why it's not one and three. But anyway, they're, those are the two they're bringing. I don't, I've never played Age of Vampires. It's a kind of a, like real, Is it realtime strategy game or yeah, I think realtime strategy. I don't know. I'm not into that kind of thing. So if it's not Call of Duty color me. Unimpressed.

Leo Laporte (01:58:18):
How about driving? You like to drive down the road, see the scenery? And

Paul Thurrott (01:58:23):
I do. What, what is that? Is that the Oh, that's the, It's the logic lg. Oh, the logic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And this is Android based.

Leo Laporte (01:58:32):
Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:33):
So are you using Xbox Game passer or Xbox Gaming? I

Leo Laporte (01:58:38):
Guess. How do I get outta camera mode? Is this on your Xbox? This is Fort Horizon or this is

Paul Thurrott (01:58:46):
A Yeah, he's streaming it from the cloud.

Leo Laporte (01:58:49):
You're playing where? Yeah. From the cloud, right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. I can't figure out how to play it. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (01:58:57):
Back you it back X The read the, That's not red

Leo Laporte (01:59:01):
On your exit photo mode. Yay. Sorry, I was in the photo mode. I just wanna drive,

Paul Thurrott (01:59:06):
Man. So I love, I love these. This game series is the one that is always used for any demoing anything. Oh. Because despite the fact that it looks beautiful, the other trigger, it's for some, it's for some reason, like the lowest bandwidth, you know, whatever. Like, it, it's, it's the one that always runs really well.

Leo Laporte (01:59:19):
<Laugh>, I keep going to the photo mode <laugh>. Cause unfortunately the left trigger is photo mode, Right? Trigger is accelerator. The bottom, the bottom triggers. There we go. All right. There we go. Look at that. That looks pretty good. But this is streaming off the cloud. The streaming. Yeah. Okay. This is off the, is this X Cloud? Yep. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:39):
Yeah. Nice. It's,

Leo Laporte (01:59:41):
Gosh, I'm a terrible driver. <Laugh> don't ever Yeah. Never go. Hey, you must be, have it in invulnerable mode cuz I, I'm basically driven into

Paul Thurrott (01:59:49):
This. No, this is called, we call this Pennsylvania drive mode.

Leo Laporte (01:59:53):
<Laugh> watch out. Here I come. Oh, this is fun. This is gonna a parallel park. Boom. <laugh>. Is that is that Three River Stadium movie? There? All right. Here we go. <Laugh> There. Now I'm

Paul Thurrott (02:00:12):
Right from the right point. That was a good Pennsylvania reference by

Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
The way. You Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome. Where the Mighty Cuyahoga meets the beautiful whoa, whoa.

Paul Thurrott (02:00:22):
Call it the rust belt for nothing. Yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (02:00:24):
All I'm saying. It does look a little rusty, doesn't it? That's pretty good. Anthony's going to give it, give it back though. Right? Why? Because it's not 3 50, 350 bucks is why three 50 Chevy Smackers is why, But it's not, you know, it's very, it's cheaper than the steam deck. It's ha you know?

Paul Thurrott (02:00:41):
Right. But here's the cheapest thing you can do. You already have a phone and you already have a tablet. So buy those controllers that wrap around them.

Leo Laporte (02:00:47):
Yeah. Just get a wrap around. You can do the same thing that for my Android

Paul Thurrott (02:00:50):
Phone. And in fact, I, I have my eye on, there's one for the iPad that I'm like, Yeah, there we go. Oh, there we go. Thank you. So Microsoft they haven't announced any first party. They call them accessories. I think of them as controllers, but I guess controller accessories. So there's different things you can do. There's the, the thing that looks like what you were just doing where you have a phone and then the controller bit snaps around it and you've got the controller bits on either side. So there's a bunch of companies coming up with Xbox specific versions of that controller type. Right. This is for exactly what you were just doing for Xbox Cloud gaming. This is also the thing where you have an Xbox controller. Yeah. And you buy a clip that sits on top of it. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:01:30):
Yeah, yeah. The phone. Yeah, I have one of those. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:32):
Yeah. I tried that. I I probably still have one of those somewhere as well. But the one I really want is made by a company I've never heard of, but it's Riot Pwr. And they make that stretch sheet controller type, but for an iPad. And that would be ideal for me cuz

Leo Laporte (02:01:44):
It'd be interesting.

Paul Thurrott (02:01:44):
Yeah. Much easier to see. So these are all things, this, a bunch of Microsoft has 'em on the Xbox wire,

Leo Laporte (02:01:50):
Honestly, but 12.9 inch iPad on a stand, which I have it on anyway. And the Xbox

Paul Thurrott (02:01:55):
Controller. Yep. There you go. That's,

Leo Laporte (02:01:57):
That's a pretty good gaming system.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:00):
Yes. And you can, I, I'm trying to think if I, I must have tried this. Yeah, it was a long time ago. But you can wire it in too. So if you The usb right? USBC rather. Yeah. Yeah. You could wire it in. So that's gonna be the best we can do for latency. Wire the controller and Yeah. Stream a game on your own, on your

Leo Laporte (02:02:20):
I also have the Luna Control Amazon Luna

Paul Thurrott (02:02:23):
Controller. Yeah. Could probably, I want Xbox to adopt that style where they Yes. The controller connects directly via wifi to the cloud. And what you're sync, you're kind of syncing up the, the display with what's happening with the controller. That has much better latency, much lower latency in my experience than the Xbox way of doing

Leo Laporte (02:02:43):
Things. Is this is, I'm sorry, Mary Jo. I'm kind of prolonging <laugh> prolonging. She's, I'm just drinking. Okay. Drinking. Good. Good. Good.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:53):
Is she drilling? What's happening?

Leo Laporte (02:02:55):
Have you tried all of them? Have you tried the stadium is, I haven't tried. It is history.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:58):
I've, Oh, yeah. I tried Stadia. I tried Luna

Leo Laporte (02:03:01):
And Luna. Have you tried GForce? Both. Both now,

Paul Thurrott (02:03:03):
Yes. But only very briefly. The problem with GForce now to me is it's a PC thing. And I, I, I console is a bit of a stretch. Even, I, I, I think we talked about this a few weeks ago. I think the future of Xbox as a platform is they have to get game makers to agree to target Xbox Cloud gaming when they make a console game. So if you're gonna make an Xbox game today, you have to show that it works on Xbox Series S and X because they have different hardware components and run differently. So you have to optimize it for each. I think the future of that requirement is you also have to target Xbox Cloud gaming, because those things could be on mobile devices where the screen's really tiny and you can't see all these little bits of UI that are in a console.

(02:03:47):
Yeah. Or a PC game. Right. So I'm just making this up. I'm not saying I know anything about this, but I, I feel like this has to be the future because that will make g Games on mobile more viable. Like, one thing Microsoft has done is they've added touchscreen overlays on top of the game. So you can just, you don't use a control, you just have the device. And so you're touching the screen and they have little controls like right on the screen. And I, I don't think that involves the original developer. They have to. Okay. It maybe it does in some cases, You know, maybe it depends on the game, but there is some selection of games that offers that. And I think that's a big deal. But I think, you know, for going forward, they need to make sure that games work equally well, no matter what screen you're playing it on. Cause today you're just taking an Xbox that's up on a cloud and you're, you know, you're <laugh> you're putting the screen. Right. So it's sort of like a 55 inch, you know, 4K display. You've got like a seven inch

Leo Laporte (02:04:41):
Right. Whatever it is. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (02:04:45):
Good. You guys wind it up. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:04:48):
The range is almost to the bottom of the beer. So <laugh> Age of Empires. Two and four.

Paul Thurrott (02:04:53):
Yep. Like Star Trek movies. They only do the even number one. So we don't know why. And then the control stuff we just talked about.

Leo Laporte (02:04:59):
Yeah. It, that was it. Mary Jo? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:03):
Now she's gone.

Leo Laporte (02:05:05):
<Laugh>.

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:06):
No, this is my beer. In

Leo Laporte (02:05:07):
A coffee. Oh wow. Aren't you, aren't we A little fancy? Huh? Fancy fancy. All right. One more commercial and then the back of the book. And a farewell. A fond

Paul Thurrott (02:05:18):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:05:18):
Farewell to one of our

Paul Thurrott (02:05:21):
Own. Me, me, me, me, me.

Leo Laporte (02:05:23):
<Laugh>.

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:24):
<Laugh>. No, no songs will be alive.

Leo Laporte (02:05:27):
<Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:28):
It's, it's actually kind of a song and dance routine. I'm gonna stand up for it, but

Leo Laporte (02:05:32):
<Laugh> I'll sing the course. I'm ready.

Mary Jo Foley (02:05:36):
Yikes.

Leo Laporte (02:05:37):
This episode of Windows Weekly, brought to you by our good friends. They've been with us almost as long as Mary Jo Foley it Pro TV since 2013. It Pro tv it all started. I met at Don and Tim, Don Sette. Tim Broom, the founders at N ap, the National Association of Broadcasters Conference, we're doing a panel on streaming video. And they were IT trainers already. And they saw what we were doing at TWITt and they said that's, you know, ding, light went off and that's it. Pro TV was born, This is back in 2013. They now have a beautiful facility in Gainesville, Florida. Seven studios creating content. I want, I almost want, I wanna say like ours, but really it's so much better. I can't really, I can't really say that. Creating great content that you can stream, just like you can stream us on your computer, on your tablet, on your Roku, your Apple tv.

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Because, you know, it is a constantly changing field. So they're always updating this stuff. I would say, without a doubt, this is the most current IT content anywhere. They're adding new stuff every single day. Shows go from the studio to the library within 24 hours. So courses are always up today and it's very much hands on. You may, it's, you may feel like, well, I, I'll just, I want to touch stuff, yo, don't worry. It. Pro TV sets us itself apart with Hands-on Learning because they have hosted virtual labs. So all you need is a browser. And you can set up a Windows server, set up a Windows. Clients do all. And I love it cuz when I do it and I make a mistake, I just close the tab on the browsers and no one knows. It's great. It's a great way to learn without breaking anything.

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You can also join it. Pro TVs, very vibrant, very fun online communities of IT learners. 220,000 of them. I mean, that's, that's amazing. Sharing forums. Engage with your instructors directly. You'll love the instructors. They call 'em entertainers. They are professionals in the field. So they're working professionals, but they all have a spark. They all have that something, that passion for what they're teaching so that you, it communicates to you. It gives you that passion, It makes it fun and, and interesting and engaging. You can binge all you want with 20 to 30 minute episodes. Anytime you've got a break. You can also access it Pro TVs, searchable transcripts for everything. So you can search and find exactly the information you need. It's kind of like, now it's kind of like a library of IT information and instruction. I think it Pro TV's amazing. Now we're just wrapping up Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

(02:09:08):
 It pro TV every month offers multiple free webinars. You can watch you can watch 'em live now. They've all go, they're all done for the month, but they're still on demand. So you can watch 'em whenever you want. Learn how to be cyber secure at home or around the office. That sounds like one you might wanna share with friends. You know, Tim Broom, the founder, co-founder of IT Pro tv. Our good friend we love Tim says at best himself, somewhere have a picture of me and Tim in the studio. We wanna make life easier for people who want an IT career. Boy, you couldn't express it better. That's, that's the whole point of it. Pro TV and you'll love it. Get 30% off right now when you sign up at IT pro.tv/windows. Use the code ww 30, 30% off when you sign up at IT pro.tv/windows. Use the code WW three zero IT pro tv build or expand your IT career and enjoy the journey. Thank you it pro TV for supporting us all this time. And you, you support us when you use WW 30 as the offer code at it pro.tv/windows. All right, let's see here. Back of the book time. We're gonna start with Paul Thurrott and a tip of the week. Paul. Oops. Your microphone is off. So there we go. Sorry. Now I hear you <laugh>. I try to, I mute myself cause

Paul Thurrott (02:10:32):
I I often

Leo Laporte (02:10:34):
Sneeze

Paul Thurrott (02:10:34):
Burp when you're doing things, you

Leo Laporte (02:10:36):
Know. Yeah. Scream.

Paul Thurrott (02:10:37):
Yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (02:10:38):
Gone.

Paul Thurrott (02:10:38):
Darn. Actually, more often than not, I laugh at something you say, and then I realize I'm being an idiot. No, I

Leo Laporte (02:10:43):
I always, I turn your mic off too, so

Paul Thurrott (02:10:45):
Don't worry. Yeah. Okay. I can see why. So, anywho, for the past two years, I have been waiting for Microsoft to implement what they used to call Simplified Ribbon in the desktop versions of the office apps. I actually had switched to using Markdown for writing my articles for the web. But hearing that this was coming back, I switched back to Microsoft Word and have waited two years <laugh> for this to happen. They did bring a simplified ribbon to one office app on desktop. That's Microsoft Outlook. That's the default now, but it's on none of the other apps. And I keep bringing this up, You know, I <laugh> what's going on with this? You've been talking about it forever. Last week, remember there was a story about dark mode on word for the web. And of course that reminded me that word for the web, like the office apps on the web all have simplified ribbons.

(02:11:34):
That's what I want on the desktop. So one of my readers wrote in and said, Hey, I joined the Office Insider Program on my Windows desktop. I got an update and said, Hey, which ti which style of toolbar do you want to use? And I said, Oh God, I gotta try this. So I've, I've enrolled on three different computers. I've only gotten it on one, but it is coming with some caveats. First of all, it's not called Simplified Ribbon anymore. Now it's just a toolbar <laugh>. So instead of giving everyone the same simplified ribbon, which is what you get on the web, they're doing something different on desktop, which is today. You can minimize the ribbon so that all you see is the tabs across the top. And that's actually what I've been doing for two years, by the way. It gives it kind of a nice minimalist look.

(02:12:18):
But you can add a toolbar to that view. And what they're doing is they're customizing it based on your usage. So the commands you see in the toolbar are the top, you know, 10 or 15 or whatever it is that you use all the time. Oops. And I, I think that's a really cool idea. So that in some ways that's a little bit better than a simplified ribbon. Some people have have kind of said, Well, hold on to something called a quick access toolbar in these office apps. You can have it displayed below the ribbon. You can add commands to it. What's the difference? The difference is this thing is customized to what you actually use. That's the difference that I, to me, this is a huge deal. So I'm hoping to get it on my other PCs. I don't know if you have to wait a little while or whatever.

(02:13:00):
I had to wait a few days on this one. But what you have to do is go into you know, file account, office insider, sign up for the beta channel check for updates. So get in, get enrolled, and eventually you should see a new, a little popup. Say, Hey, we have a good, we have a new toolbar. And then it creates one for you that again, is based on your usage. So I I have been, it's better than the ribbon. So the ribbon actually doesn't go away. You can still, when the, when the ribbon's customized, I'm sorry, is collapsed or minimized or whatever, you can click on the little headers and it brings the ribbon down so you can access all the commands. So that's still there. So you get the, the ribbon header, you have a toolbar underneath it. And if there's something that's not in the toolbar, you just click on the header and you still get the ribbon.

Leo Laporte (02:13:44):
Oh,

Paul Thurrott (02:13:44):
That's great. And then it goes, Yeah, it's perfect. Well, it's not perfect, but it's, it's, it's very good. And it's something, like I said, forever,

Leo Laporte (02:13:51):
Something browsers have had for years. Okay. I know, I

Paul Thurrott (02:13:54):
Know. I

Mary Jo Foley (02:13:54):
Don't know. What do you think? Do you think this is part of the whole revamp of Office and Outlook and stuff? Like, you know, them trying to,

Paul Thurrott (02:14:01):
I don't know. But the thing that kills me about this is they went to all this effort to create simplified ribbons for those apps on the web.

Mary Jo Foley (02:14:09):
They never brought 'em to market. Right. Ever.

Paul Thurrott (02:14:11):
Right. So we have this system now where Office on Desktop looks completely different from Office on the Web. So now they're bringing yet another new UI to the desktop. So it's still gonna look different unless they choose to bring the, I don't know, it's whole thing. I'm just happy to have it. Frankly, I

Mary Jo Foley (02:14:26):
Can't. No, it's nice. Stand home. I love it because I, I, I can never find anything in office because I don't use a lot of these apps a lot. Right. So like, I'm always like, Oh, I know where this is, but I don't know, I don't remember. So it'll be kind of great. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> to have your own toolbar where you're, it's like you're five or 10 use things, right? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:14:46):
And the interesting thing is that if you look at the commands that are in the toolbar, those are the things they have to go to the ribbon for the format. Painter a big one. Highlight some

Leo Laporte (02:14:53):
You that all the time. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:14:54):
Yeah, yeah. But Indenting is a big one for me too. I have to use the, you know, I, I can do bullets and numbered lists just without the thing. But and I don't do highlighting. I'm not even sure where some of these come from, but Format Painter, I actually use, That's a, that's the big one. Like, that's the one I've needed a lot. Yeah. So it's right there. It's right in the front. So good. Nice.

Leo Laporte (02:15:14):
That's not, you know, again, finally this would've been an easy thing to do. I know. Years ago. I know,

Mary Jo Foley (02:15:19):
Right? And

Paul Thurrott (02:15:21):
I can't explain what's taken so long, but I'm just so happy I've been complaining about this for years. I know. It's hard to imagine. It is.

Mary Jo Foley (02:15:29):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:30):
It finally, it finally arrived.

Mary Jo Foley (02:15:31):
You complaining for years, what,

Leo Laporte (02:15:32):
Three years? I know. <Laugh>. So you do have to join the Office Insider Program Beta channel right now.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:39):
Yes. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:15:40):
That's right. But soon, someday.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:43):
Yeah. Like I said, I haven't gotten it on two of the three computers yet, but I don't know what the criteria is.

Leo Laporte (02:15:52):
And your field guide.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:54):
Yeah. I just wanted to quick update on this. I, I still don't have the book version yet, but since I published the initial version to the web about two weeks ago, I've actually added 10 chapters now. I think it's up to about, I think it's 38 chapters. The, the PDF version is, I didn't believe it when I started. I think it's, I think it's 375 pages. It's pretty big. Wow. I'm probably gonna have to split it into multiple documents for the, you know, for the download. Cuz this is gonna be too big. But it's, it's coming along nicely is my point. So

(02:16:24):
 if you are a throughout premium member, you can access the whole thing. If you're not, you can access individual parts of it. If you want to do that, that's fine too. And the app peak App peak <laugh>, the out pick is kind of a weird one. So this thing leaks last week out of Microsoft China. So you know, it's safe. And it's called PC Manager. It's in a public beta. And what it is mostly is a front end to tools that already exist in Windows. And one of them's particularly interesting to me because one of those 10 chapters that I just uploaded is for storage management. And I was really kind of blown away by how many different ways you can do the same things with storage management. And in some cases there are three different UIs for like, DISC cleanup is a good example.

(02:17:11):
And there's a dis there's a classic DISC cleanup tool. Stolen Windows 11. There's a, a disc cleanup interface under storage management in in Windows 11. And then there's this kind of like, it's like a, let me just see what exactly what's called, It's called cleanup recommendations <laugh>. And it's like, it's like yet another, it's really, it's, it's, it's a settings app front end for disc cleanup is what it is. So anyway, this thing pops around and I have storage management and literally it's a front end to disc clean. It's the same exact thing. So Health Check is in Windows Storage Management's in Windows. Process Management, part of Task Manager. I don't know, you know, it's kind of a goofy thing to go in and say, here are the Kill an app this way. But you can do that. Startup app management also part of Task Manager.

(02:17:55):
 The security bit, obviously also part of Windows already. But the thing at the top is new. And this is why I think people are comparing it to CC Cleaner. It has a memory usage and temporary file cleanup. Quick link is Click Boost. I don't know exactly <laugh> what is due in memory to clean this up. Exactly. Maybe it's aggress more aggressively killing off sleeping apps or whatever. I, I really have no idea. But it will also do a little bit of storage management. So temporary files is one area of DISC cleanup. It's only one, but it's, this is just kind of a quick way to clear clear up some space both at RAM and on disk. So I don't know what's gonna happen with this app. I don't know if they'll just release it as this utility, like this, or I think this should be part of Windows, frankly. So we'll see what happens. Maybe this is a Windows 12 feature or something, but you can try it now. I don't be completely put off by the Chinese language thing that comes up right in the beginning. The rest of it's in English. But

Leo Laporte (02:18:55):
What <laugh>?

Paul Thurrott (02:18:56):
It's a leak. It's, you know. I know, I know. But it works, you know, It does it do, It does what it says it does. So whether it's

Leo Laporte (02:19:05):
Why's Chinese at the beginning of it

Paul Thurrott (02:19:06):
Is it leaked from Microsoft China. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:19:08):
I see. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (02:19:09):
So the app itself is all US English. It will be, But,

Leo Laporte (02:19:13):
But, but it's nothing new. It's, you could do all of this stuff. One onesie, twosie.

Paul Thurrott (02:19:17):
Yes. Yeah. Most of it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:19:18):
Yeah. I've never recommended seat cleaner because yeah, my POS position has always been, it, it can't do too much or it would break your system. It's too easy to break your system. Right? Yep. So it can only do kind of whatever's safe, which ain't much. Yeah, I would far prefer to use PC manager since, you know, Microsoft's

Paul Thurrott (02:19:39):
Not gonna break. Yeah. It is for Microsoft. So, you know, it's probably semi safe. I

Leo Laporte (02:19:42):
Mean, and you might look at C cleaner and say, Oh, but I can be more aggressive. Don't,

Paul Thurrott (02:19:47):
Yeah. Don't. I think Microsoft has been dealing with questions and complaints about CC Cleaner for so long. Someone finally said, Can we just make one of these things? Yeah. And then we can say, Don't do that. Do this. Yeah. Yeah. I bet that's all it is. But

Leo Laporte (02:20:01):
Yeah, Enterprise pick of the week time with Mary Jo Foley.

Mary Jo Foley (02:20:10):
So Paul probably remembers this. A long time ago we heard Microsoft talking about this thing called the Unified Update platform. They were telling us that it had something to do with Windows. It was gonna be a way that features came to us for Windows. And then any other questions we asked, they were just like, Nope. Sorry, we have nothing more to say. So cut to this summer, there was a private preview that came out of Unified Update Platform U U P. And as of this week, it's now in public preview. So what this is, is it's not a replacement to W SUSS or configuration manager. But Microsoft says U U P will be the format for Windows 11 updates delivered to or via Configuration manager and W SUSS starting Q1 2023. So if you're an IT pro and you're having to deal with this, you need to go test this thing out now because it's now public. They, they have said in the past that u p is a way that they're going to help reduce the size of Windows updates. But they've added some more things now. Automatic corruption repair, they say it'll help with it'll bring more seamless updates, more control over installation time, more battery life lighter, download size, all the things you want in theory. But if you are somebody who uses WSS or Config Man, you wanna go test this public preview now because it's coming really soon. Like first quarter 2023 u u p

Leo Laporte (02:21:48):
You, you,

Paul Thurrott (02:21:49):
It's no udp, but it's pretty good.

Mary Jo Foley (02:21:51):
It is not. Yeah, it

Leo Laporte (02:21:54):
Is not. It's what happens after too much Pier <laugh> Codename Pick of the week.

Mary Jo Foley (02:22:00):
Okay, This is as of today. This is a fun one. So we already talked about Volera being the codename for the Windows Dev Kit 2023 device that we were talking about, the $600 mini pc. But Zach Bowden over in Windows Central found out it's also known as Surface Project a h <laugh>. He looked well

Leo Laporte (02:22:20):
There, you

Mary Jo Foley (02:22:21):
Right. And so we're like, okay, so it was built by the Surface team, which we kind guessed Yeah, but what's the ah, <laugh>, right? Everybody's guessing. My, my guess was arm hopes, like they hope this will make arm better.

Paul Thurrott (02:22:36):
Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (02:22:37):
<Laugh>. But everyone's just guessing and Microsoft's has not said, but when you look at your recovery images for this device, cuz Zach already bought one and has it, it says Surf project a H. So anybody who has a good guess on what the A is, let us know. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (02:22:55):
My mind initially went to a-hole, but

Leo Laporte (02:22:58):
I'm

Mary Jo Foley (02:23:00):
Of course it did. Of course it did.

Paul Thurrott (02:23:02):
I'm guessing that's

Leo Laporte (02:23:03):
Not Oh,

Mary Jo Foley (02:23:04):
I thought arm hardware. But that seems so mundane.

Leo Laporte (02:23:07):
Arm hardware. That's what it is. I hate to tell you. It's

Mary Jo Foley (02:23:09):
So

Leo Laporte (02:23:09):
Mundane. Yes. It's corporate. It's exactly what

Mary Jo Foley (02:23:12):
It is. <Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (02:23:13):
That's gotta Of course. Yeah, that's, yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:23:15):
Of course. Yeah. <laugh>. Let's see. Do you wanna make your announcement or do you want to have beer?

Mary Jo Foley (02:23:22):
We could do both.

Leo Laporte (02:23:23):
Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (02:23:24):
Okay.

Paul Thurrott (02:23:25):
Do the beer first. We're gonna need something to drink.

Mary Jo Foley (02:23:28):
<Laugh>. Okay. <Laugh>. So I found the perfect Beer pick for this week in ways I needed a Halloween beer pick. So I found one and the Can which I posted a picture of in the Discord.

Leo Laporte (02:23:41):
Oh my God. Is that I couldn't figure out what that picture was. Now I know. So, okay, so

Mary Jo Foley (02:23:47):
It's a woman skeleton podcasting.

Leo Laporte (02:23:52):
<Laugh> <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (02:23:53):
Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (02:23:54):
Like how awesome is that? Right? <laugh> like when I saw the can, I'm like, I don't even know what this beer is, but I'm buying it and it's gonna be my bear pick. Luckily. That's interesting. Good one. That's funny. Nightmare Brewing is the name of the brewery. They're in Bayshore, New York. They're known as a heavy metal brewery. They do all their can art is like this kind of insane stuff with like weird themes and their beers have very weird names. This is Seora side. So I have two sisters. I'm not dissing my sisters here with this pick. But that's a hell of,

Paul Thurrott (02:24:25):
But you get it and

Leo Laporte (02:24:27):
It's pretty alcoholic. It's not light beer. It's

Mary Jo Foley (02:24:30):
A 15 five Imperial stout. That's why I'm sipping it in the coffee cup slowly. But listen, what It's brew with honey roasted peanuts, peanut butter, vanilla and ca cow. Right? Oh, so it's pretty, So I was scared it was gonna be really sweet or really peanut buttery. And it's not, it tastes really well blended. And it's

Leo Laporte (02:24:51):
Like a peanut butter cup.

Mary Jo Foley (02:24:52):
It kind of, somebody's like, this is like Reese's peanut butter cups without sugar distilled into a beer. Wow. I'm like, yeah, it's delicious. I've been sipping it very slowly because it's 15 five. But that I figured that's the perfect last beer pick as the co-host because this is my last show co-hosting Windows Weekly. Oh, I know guys. I know. But hopefully I'm gonna get to come back and be a guest sometimes.

Leo Laporte (02:25:17):
Any time you want You are.

Mary Jo Foley (02:25:19):
Aw, thanks.

Leo Laporte (02:25:19):
Always. You

Paul Thurrott (02:25:21):
Know, I don't know about that Leo. Let's see how things go.

Leo Laporte (02:25:23):
<Laugh>. Well, and until then I'm gonna move the ceremonial picture over

Mary Jo Foley (02:25:27):
And we're exactly right

Leo Laporte (02:25:29):
There.

Mary Jo Foley (02:25:29):
Be fury will

Leo Laporte (02:25:30):
Take over. Yeah, you'll be there. Yeah. Underneath your faces, Joe lc. That's okay.

Mary Jo Foley (02:25:34):
That's all right. Yeah. The reason I'm, the reason I have to leave this post is I'm starting a new job next week, full time. I haven't worked full time in 20 years at a job. I'm working for Directions on Microsoft, my favorite Microsoft analysis firm based in Kirkland. I'm staying in New York and I'm gonna be editor in chief. I'm gonna be the editor in chief. That's pretty good. I'm gonna do fun content for them and help them get their content strategy

Leo Laporte (02:25:58):
Together. And you're gonna podcast with them, I'm sure.

Mary Jo Foley (02:26:00):
Yeah, I do. I do like audio only podcasts with their analysts cuz their analysts know all this stuff and it needs to be unlocked and brought to

Leo Laporte (02:26:08):
The public, so Right. Perfect for that. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. For

Mary Jo Foley (02:26:11):
That we're gonna cover only enterprise, no Xbox, only Enterprise

Leo Laporte (02:26:15):
<Laugh>. That's the real

Paul Thurrott (02:26:16):
Reasons. Terrible. Are you sure that's

Leo Laporte (02:26:18):
The real

Paul Thurrott (02:26:18):
Reason? I mean, do you wanna think about that a little

Mary Jo Foley (02:26:20):
Bit? Enterprise licensing all the topics near and dear to my heart and many it pros. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So come over to directions on microsoft.com and watch what happens.

Leo Laporte (02:26:29):
Aw.

Paul Thurrott (02:26:29):
Well,

Leo Laporte (02:26:31):
Mary Jo, it's been an amazing 11 years. It it is a different show without you. Paul and I both agree and we've talked,

Mary Jo Foley (02:26:38):
You know, I bring a civilizing influencer show.

Paul Thurrott (02:26:42):
I I would resent that if it weren't so true. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:26:46):
<Laugh>. Yeah. I mean, you two have become

Mary Jo Foley (02:26:47):
No, it's been so fun, such a team and I've learned so much about like, public speaking and how to do podcasts. It's been fantastic.

Leo Laporte (02:26:55):
Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (02:26:55):
You guys have been great. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (02:26:58):
Thank

Mary Jo Foley (02:26:58):
You. No song, no song, Please.

Paul Thurrott (02:27:01):
I won't sing a song, but I, I do feel, I, I feel like I need to say a few things here. You know, I don't know what people see from the outside. I don't know if they understand our relationship or whatever, but I, you know, many years ago we were rivals and didn't like each other, which is humorous now. Some of the caddies things I've ever said in my life, I said about Mary Jo million years ago, and I hate myself for it, <laugh>. But I just in general, I would say that for me the more you get to know people, generally speaking, the less likable they are. And that has not been the case with Mary Jo at all. <Laugh>. And she's the, a big exception to that rule. And Thanks. I just from a professional perspective whatever I've done in life, honestly, I, I I value our partnership more than anything I've accomplished. Aw. And

Mary Jo Foley (02:27:51):
We're gonna be friends still. Like, we're still gonna,

Paul Thurrott (02:27:53):
And, and we are friends out in real life, which is great cuz we've traveled together. You know, you and me and my wife have traveled together and we'll

Mary Jo Foley (02:28:00):
Continue, continue to do that. We have gang up on Paul constantly. It's like really awesome. It's fantastic

Paul Thurrott (02:28:05):
That part's, you know, if kind of iffy, but the <laugh>, you know. But yeah, we'll continue that. Of course. And we will, I just, I I had a, I can't tell the whole story, but I, I had a real Grinch moment with Mary Jo several years ago when we were traveling and she just told me something about her personal life, whatever, and I, I came home and I was talking to my wife's. I experienced something I'd never experienced before. And I came home and I, my friend's wife at the time was a kind of a self-described kind of self-help girl type person. I said, I gotta, I just gotta tell you, I, I had this feeling I've never experienced in my life before, and I can I just describe it to you? And, and you could just tell me what happened. Cuz I felt really weird. And she said you, after I told her what it was, she said, You experienced bliss <laugh>. And I said, Bliss. She says, Yeah, it's just you really, you just were so happy for someone else unselfishly. Oh. And I was like, Oh. I'm like, okay. I'm like the Grinch, you know, his size, his heart grew two sizes, you know, whatever. So that was my moment for, But you, Anyway, so I love Mary Jo and I Yeah. Thanks. We'll be friends. You know, we'll be friends forever. Of course. And I'm just sorry to see you go from the podcast, but I know,

Leo Laporte (02:29:13):
Thanks.

Paul Thurrott (02:29:14):
You'll still be part of my life, so

Mary Jo Foley (02:29:16):
Be good. I will. I will. And B Jones had the perfect thing to say to all this and the discord. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, She said, You, you know, the boys only wear pants because you're on the show

Leo Laporte (02:29:26):
<Laugh>. So

Paul Thurrott (02:29:27):
There is some truth to that.

Leo Laporte (02:29:28):
It's an interesting angle. <Laugh>, You thought

Paul Thurrott (02:29:32):
About that. I mean, I usually, I I do have my hand in my waistband the entire time,

Leo Laporte (02:29:36):
But

Mary Jo Foley (02:29:37):
Okay. We don't need to know the details.

Leo Laporte (02:29:38):
We really, we call 'em Sweet Paul Thurrott. Yeah. Yeah. Oh

Mary Jo Foley (02:29:43):
Dear. No, you guys have made it so fun. And you know what? I'm gonna be back to guest when you need a guest. Yeah. And you're like, you know what we need, We need some enterprise content.

Paul Thurrott (02:29:51):
Call me. I don't know if we'll ever say that, but we will have you back. You might

Leo Laporte (02:29:54):
Well, I will say that, I mean we, we haven't, Paul and I haven't really, we've talked, but we don't really know what

Paul Thurrott (02:30:01):
We're gonna do. Yeah. We're gonna wing it for a little while. We'll have some guests come on and we'll try different things.

Leo Laporte (02:30:05):
Yeah. yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:30:07):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:30:08):
But it isn't, it's not the same show.

Paul Thurrott (02:30:10):
It's hard. It's, you can't replicate what we've done. And I, it there's a chemistry that you can't invent. It has to be there or it doesn't work. Yep. And Agreed. It's hard. Those things are hard to find. So, and whatever. I'm you, you're not really replaceable. The truth is, I hope we find somebody, I guess. But it's, it's not really ever gonna be the same. It's,

Leo Laporte (02:30:34):
It'll be a different show.

Mary Jo Foley (02:30:36):
Whatever. You know what? He'll still be a good show. They'll just be somebody who isn't always going. Guys, let's get back on topic and talk

Leo Laporte (02:30:41):
The enterprise. That's actually one of the criteria.

Paul Thurrott (02:30:44):
That is one of the issues.

Leo Laporte (02:30:46):
Yeah. Lets draw our next

Paul Thurrott (02:30:48):
Coho. Actually, we do need a third party with a gong

Leo Laporte (02:30:51):
<Laugh>. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:30:52):
Maybe that's the prerequisite.

Mary Jo Foley (02:30:54):
I could pass the gong on. It's fine. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:30:56):
Yeah. It's gonna, it's impossible. Cuz we've looked at a lot of options. It's impossible to replace you Of course. But yeah. Thank you for having, Thank you guys. Gracing us with your presence for 11 years.

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:08):
No, it's

Paul Thurrott (02:31:09):
Been amazing. Well, thank you for putting up with us.

Leo Laporte (02:31:10):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:11):
<Laugh>. I've learned a ton. Like I said, I like amazing. So thank you <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:31:17):
Thank

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:18):
You. It's all good. Good. And you're gonna see me on a show. You'll see me and s Rachis right here. He's like hunkered down. Good. He heard me talking and he's right here. <Laugh> good.

Leo Laporte (02:31:29):
Okay. I guess for the,

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:31):
Those are some winners. It's

Leo Laporte (02:31:34):
Time for me to say goodbye to Mary Jo Foley new home Directions on microsoft.com, where she's the editor in chief.

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:43):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I'll be back as that. And then we can talk enterprise licensing too. Woo.

Leo Laporte (02:31:48):
Oh, be still my heart.

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:51):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:31:54):
Good luck in your new, you're not moving back to Washington State that you're gonna

Mary Jo Foley (02:31:59):
Get to stay where you're No, I get to be remote. Good. Which is great.

Leo Laporte (02:32:01):
Good. That's great. Do you anticipate traveling occasionally to do in person stuff? Yeah. Nice. Beautiful. Kirkland, Washington. Mm-Hmm.

Mary Jo Foley (02:32:08):
<Affirmative>. Very beautiful.

Leo Laporte (02:32:09):
Yeah. Well maybe Lisa and I, when we move up there, we'll see <laugh>. We, we'll have a place for you to stay when you come out and visit <laugh>. How about that? Nice. Good. Paul Thurrott, of course Thurrott.com and field guide to win us 11 coming soon to lean pub.com. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>, we'll be back. We want, we don't want him, but we'll be back next week. 11:00 AM Pacific. 2:00 PM Eastern Time. 1800 UTC live. Tweet tv is the live stream. You can chat with us@ircdot.tv or in our Discord. We've mentioned that several times. That's the Club TWIT Discord, our little clubhouse where we hang out. We just crossed 5,000 members this morning, or I guess late last night. So thank you to all 5,000 Club TWIT members. And I, I couldn't thank you enough. I really appreciate it. Because tho those $7 a month, and by the way, you can give more, we now have added some people said, Well, that's too little.

(02:33:14):
If you wanna do more, we want to keep it affor as affordable as possible. Remember, member full the arm of Patreon that runs this membership group takes its cut. So we, we wanted to make as low as we could reasonably to, and I think seven is fair given you get ad-free versions of all the shows that Discord. You get the behind the scenes stuff, you get shows we don't put out in public like Paul Thurrott, Hands on windows. Please go to TWITt.tv/club and join the club. Going forward. 2023 is gonna be a rough one, I think. And we would very much like to keep growing and going with your help TWIT.tv/club. Mary Jo, we will always be a honored member of the club. And of course, you spend a lot of time in the discord. I hope you will from time to time, pop your head in. Thanks. Yeah, it'd be nice to see you there. Thanks everybody for joining us A sad day, but we'll be back next week. We got a soldier on Paul and I with another gripping edition of Winning. No More winners. It's just dozers now, Paul. Oh boy. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (02:34:16):
That's all. That's left. That's all that's left. We'll see you next time. Bye Mary Jo. Bye you guys. Bye bye. See you soon. We'll see you again soon. Bye. Goodbyes are always hard. I feel like my kids going off to college. Look, she just hung up on us. Oh, she <laugh>. Jesus. She just like pushed the, She's like, Thank God I'm no of those suckers. That's good. Boy. Oh boy. You know what, Leo, we deserve it. We do. We earned it.

Paul Thurrott (02:35:24):
System Center can be fun guys. It can be yes.

Leo Laporte (02:35:28):
Mary Jo Foley. She's the greatest. All about microsoft.com or great ZDNet blog. We welcome her to the Windows Weekly podcast. It's official now. She's going to have to come back every week.

Paul Thurrott (02:35:38):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:35:39):
And Paul finally can go on vacation. Thank you. It's great to have you Mary Jill. It really.