Windows Weekly 911: A Back-End Guy

Summary

Windows Weekly 911: A Back-End Guy – Detailed Episode Summary

Release Date: December 11, 2024
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell
Podcast: All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)

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1. Introduction and Hosts

The episode kicks off with Leo Laporte welcoming listeners to Windows Weekly, hosted by Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell. The trio sets a relaxed and engaging tone, briefly touching upon the holiday season with decorations and personal anecdotes before delving into the main topics of discussion.

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2. Microsoft Windows Updates: Patch Tuesday and 24H2

Final Patch Tuesday of 2024

Paul Thurrott begins by discussing the latest Patch Tuesday released on December 10, 2024. He mentions that this is the final Patch Tuesday for the year, emphasizing the significance with the statement:

“So the final patch Tuesday of 2024.” [03:42]

He elaborates on the updates included in the Windows 24H2 release:

• Jump Lists in Start Menu: Enhancements allow users to see jump lists for applications directly in the Start menu.
• Taskbar Time and Date Display: The time and date display has been shortened by default, removing the seldom-used notification bell icon.
• Android File Sharing: Introduced over Wi-Fi, enabling users to access their Android device’s file system directly through File Explorer without a cable connection.

Paul reflects on the chaotic nature of Windows Updates throughout 2024, predicting continued instability into 2025:

“This is kind of the final... feature set, slice in time for the year. But as we're about to discuss, there's actually a lot more coming.” [05:08]

Chaos in Windows Updates

Both Paul and Richard express frustration over the complexity and instability introduced with the 24H2 update. They compare the multiple deployable branches to a chaotic mess, making it challenging for Microsoft to maintain reliability.

“It's looking like... you're walking back with a giant plate of spaghetti and you trip and it lands all over the place.” [06:04]

Paul criticizes Microsoft's approach to updating Windows, highlighting the dissonance between the mature, legacy desktop platform and the relentless introduction of new features.

“Microsoft just can't stop throwing stuff at it.” [07:03]

Richard concurs, noting the technical and political challenges faced by Microsoft:

“It's a combination of technical and political issues.” [06:49]

The hosts lament that businesses are hesitant to migrate to Windows 11, citing instability and the ongoing issues with Windows 24H2.

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3. ARM-Based PCs and Enterprise Pushback

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Performance

Paul highlights the advancements made by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors in the PC space, praising their reliability, security, and performance. He contrasts this with the ongoing struggles of Intel and AMD in meeting the demands of modern computing.

“They solve a lot of problems with reliability and security and, you know, performance and all that kind of stuff.” [12:32]

Challenges of ARM Adoption in Enterprises

Despite the technical merits, ARM-based PCs face significant resistance in the enterprise sector. IT administrators express concerns over hardware compatibility and the need for specific, often legacy, applications to run seamlessly.

“The pushback against ARM in the enterprise... is in some ways misguided.” [12:32]

Paul argues that decision-makers within organizations, driven by executive visions for modernized hardware akin to consumer devices like the MacBook Air, are pushing for ARM adoption despite legitimate concerns from IT support teams.

“A lot of the change that comes in organizations actually comes from like C class executives who are like, hey, there's this thing called the MacBook Air and it's awesome and you're going to support it.” [11:26]

Rumors of Expanding ARM Options

There are rumors that other companies like Nvidia, MediaTek, and AMD are developing their own ARM-based PC designs, potentially challenging Qualcomm’s dominance. Paul shares insider information suggesting an extension of Qualcomm's exclusivity with Microsoft, hinting at future competition.

“Qualcomm's exclusivity arrangement with Microsoft has actually been extended.” [14:08]

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4. Microsoft Copilot Features: Recall and Click to Do

Introduction to Recall

Paul introduces Recall, a new feature integrated with Microsoft's Copilot, designed to capture and manage system snapshots. Initially limited to specific Copilot Plus PCs in the dev channel, Recall allows users to take screenshots that can be analyzed and searched later.

“Recall is sitting here taking screenshots or snapshots of your system.” [25:45]

However, the user experience has been criticized for its intrusive nature, requiring constant re-authentication through Windows Hello, thus disrupting workflow.

“The user experience is terrible, actually. And the biggest problem with it is that anytime you do anything, you have to authenticate with Windows hello.” [66:12]

Click to Do Feature

Alongside Recall, Click to Do is a feature that scans screen content for actionable items, presenting users with options to interact with the detected text. Recently updated to work beyond the confines of Recall, Click to Do aims to provide more versatility across the operating system.

“Now that works everywhere. And there's kind of a fun rippling water, purple and pink animation.” [27:03]

Despite these enhancements, the features are plagued with usability issues that hamper widespread adoption.

“They're like, hey, you really need something, you know, but the way it works, it's like you close the app and you have to authenticate again.” [66:12]

Security Concerns

While Microsoft emphasizes the security aspects of Recall, security researchers remain skeptical, questioning the robustness of the implementation and the actual security benefits.

“And we'll talk about that actually after whatever ad break as well.” [27:03]

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5. Microsoft Store and Win32 App Updates

Store-Managing Updates via Winget

Microsoft has updated the Microsoft Store to allow Win32 app developers to opt into a system where the Store manages app updates using Winget. This shift aims to streamline the update process, providing automatic background updates without user intervention.

“If you want to allow the store to update your app, it will do it for you. It uses Winget somehow under the covers.” [35:06]

Benefits and Challenges

Paul praises the initiative for simplifying the update process for developers and users alike, citing reduced manual update prompts. However, concerns linger regarding the security implications and the potential for supply chain attacks.

“Or you have a lot to hand off. It's like as an app developer, I can put my app in the store for free. They don't even have to manage a website. They just have to manage the update infrastructure.” [35:48]

Richard adds that while the concept is sound, practical implementation and security assurances need to be robust to gain trust within the developer community.

“And there's an angle on this about supply chain attacks, but we have no evidence that Microsoft's going to be especially careful for what's in their store.” [36:30]

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6. Phone Link App Updates

Microsoft has expanded the Phone Link app to include support for iPhones, though with limited functionality compared to Android integration. New features allow for file sharing over Bluetooth, although group messaging and comprehensive photo sharing remain unsupported.

“But they're adding support for file sharing. So I tried to get this and I haven't. It's one of those CFR type features.” [28:15]

“It's going to work similarly to that feature that they just released in 24H2 for Android phones.” [28:44]

While the updates enhance cross-platform compatibility, user experiences vary, and full feature parity with Android remains elusive.

“You can't go, like once you... when you connect it to a PC, you don't get all your previous conversations.” [29:29]

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7. Partnership with Meta: Windows 11 on Quest 3

Microsoft has partnered with Meta to bring the full Windows 11 experience to the Meta Quest 3 VR headsets. This development allows users to access their Windows desktop in a virtual environment, enabling tasks such as browsing, application use, and multitasking through virtual desktops.

“Microsoft announced today they're bringing the full Windows 11 experience to Meta Quest 3 and 3S.” [30:06]

Potential Use Cases and User Experience

Paul speculates that while the integration is innovative, practical use cases in productivity and workflow remain to be fully realized and tested by users. The collaboration signifies Microsoft's ongoing efforts to expand Windows' presence into emerging technologies like virtual reality.

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8. Outlook Updates and User Experiences

New Outlook Interface

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the revamped Microsoft Outlook application. The updated interface, built on web technologies, introduces a more streamlined and visually appealing design. However, users express mixed feelings about the changes, particularly regarding personalization and functionality.

“It is pretty nice.” [62:00]

Paul notes that while the new Outlook retains essential features like email, calendar, and contacts, the user experience can be inconsistent, especially for those relying on extensive customization.

“It's actually really nice, it's pretty nice.” [48:42]

Ads and Accessibility

The free version of Outlook now includes advertisements, which are presented as email messages. This move has been met with criticism, as it disrupts the user experience and compromises the professional nature of the application.

“But the problem with this app, the big problem to me is that if you don't have a paid Microsoft 365 account, commercial or consumer, you're going to see ads and those ads will appear as if they were email messages and that's not good.” [48:53]

Additionally, the shift towards a web-based model raises concerns about data privacy and the integration with other browsers, despite Microsoft's efforts to make Outlook more accessible across platforms.

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9. Intel's Challenges and Future Speculation

A heated discussion unfolds around Intel's recent corporate changes and the future of the company in the personal computing industry. The resignation of CEO Pat Gelsinger sparks debate on whether Intel can recover from its technical and strategic missteps.

“I think intel might literally have the worst board in the history of big tech.” [78:03]

Paul argues that Intel's inability to innovate and adapt its manufacturing processes, particularly lagging behind competitors like AMD and Qualcomm, signals a decline in its industry dominance.

“Intel as we know it is over.” [79:09]

Richard adds that the board's composition, largely consisting of non-engineers, hampers Intel’s capacity to navigate the complex technological landscape.

“Companies in general tend to have crony boards... but Intel's board is made up now largely of non engineers.” [78:07]

The hosts speculate about possible outcomes, including acquisition by Qualcomm, restructuring, or potential dissolution, painting a grim picture of Intel's trajectory.

“Intel as this force that was 50% of the personal computing industry called Windtel, I think it's over.” [82:12]

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10. Game Preservation Efforts

The conversation shifts to the importance of preserving classic games. Paul highlights open-source projects aimed at revitalizing older titles like Half-Life and Tomb Raider, enabling them to run seamlessly on modern hardware with enhanced graphics.

“These projects are making these games work well on modern hardware, upskilled graphics, etc.” [123:00]

Richard appreciates these efforts, acknowledging their role in maintaining the legacy and accessibility of beloved gaming classics.

“It's like you buy the game, you have the actual game, so you’ve paid for it... They’re keeping these older games going.” [123:00]

The hosts emphasize that while these preservation projects are technically challenging, they are vital for the gaming community and cultural heritage.

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11. AI in Browsers and Competition

Microsoft's Copilot vs. Google's Gemini

AI integration in web browsers is a central theme, with the hosts discussing Microsoft's Copilot features in Edge and Google's Gemini. They explore the competitive landscape, debating which company is better positioned to leverage AI for enhancing user experience.

“Paul, you have to say, Thread. I know. We've all lost the thread.” [147:56]

Paul asserts that Google has a strategic advantage due to its deep integration with the search engine and vast data resources, positioning Gemini as a formidable competitor to Microsoft's offerings.

“I feel like Google's the one company that has all the parts in place. It's really kind of up to them to not do this.” [116:13]

User Experience and Future Prospects

Leo Laporte demonstrates firsthand the AI capabilities in Apple’s Vision and Google's Gemini, showcasing how current AI models interact with users and integrate with existing web infrastructure. The discussion highlights the potential transformations in how users interact with browsers, moving from traditional navigation to AI-assisted interaction.

“What could go wrong?” [15:44]

Richard expresses enthusiasm for the evolving AI features, though acknowledging the growing pains associated with integrating complex technologies into everyday tools like browsers.

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12. Xbox News and Updates

Fortnite’s New 5v5 Shooter Mode

The episode covers Epic Games’ introduction of a new 5v5 first-person shooter mode in Fortnite, marking a shift from its traditional battle royale format. The hosts analyze the potential impact on the gaming community and the technical challenges of scaling the game’s backend to support smaller, more competitive matches.

“It's a very Counter Strike type of game.” [137:38]

Paul notes that the new mode could attract a different segment of gamers, blending elements from other popular shooters to create a unique experience within the Fortnite universe.

iFixit Selling Xbox Series X/S Repair Parts

iFixit’s initiative to sell official repair parts for Xbox Series X and S consoles is another highlight. This moves aligns with the growing trend of hardware repairability and user empowerment in the gaming industry.

“IFixit is selling official Xbox series X and S repair parts.” [136:18]

Richard appreciates the effort to make repairs more accessible, reducing the need for professional interventions and extending the lifespan of gaming hardware.

“This is kind of a big thing in our industry now where you can get like the toolkit and whatever, you know, rights parts...” [136:18]

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13. Club Twit Membership and Support

Leo Laporte makes a heartfelt appeal for listeners to join Club Twit, emphasizing its critical role in sustaining the podcast amidst uncertain revenue projections.

“We’re down to some tough times ahead. But the bright light is our club.” [152:00]

Club Twit offers benefits such as ad-free versions of shows, access to exclusive content, and participation in community events within the Discord server. Leo highlights the importance of community support, aiming to reach 5,000 new members by year-end to cover a significant portion of the podcast’s operational costs.

“We expect that some people come in late and so forth. That's happened last year. But really, really, we're down to some tough times ahead.” [152:00]

The hosts encourage listeners to consider Club Twit as both a means of supporting the show and as a valuable resource for exclusive content and community engagement.

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14. Game Preservation and Open-Source Projects

Paul Thurrott delves deeper into the significance of preserving classic games through open-source projects. He mentions efforts to maintain and enhance games like Medal of Honor and Tomb Raider, ensuring they remain playable and enjoyable on contemporary systems.

“These projects are making these games work well on modern hardware, upskilled graphics, etc.” [123:00]

The hosts underscore that such initiatives not only preserve gaming history but also allow new generations to experience foundational titles that shaped the gaming landscape.

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15. Closing Remarks and Upcoming Segments

As the episode nears its end, the hosts touch upon personal projects and upcoming segments, such as the Ugly Sweater Show, where they plan to don festive attire. They also briefly mention app picks, book recommendations, and community engagement through various platforms.

The episode concludes with a mixture of light-hearted banter, promotional content for sponsors, and a reiteration of the importance of community support through Club Twit.

“Our next show will be next week, actually next week.” [56:57]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Paul Thurrott on Final Patch Tuesday:

  “So the final patch Tuesday of 2024.” [03:42]

• Leo Laporte on Windows Updates Chaos:

  “Imagine taking a proactive and this is the key deny by default approach to cybersecurity.” [36:30]

• Paul Thurrott on Intel’s Future:

  “Intel as we know it is over.” [79:09]

• Richard Campbell on ARM Adoption:

  “I just don't see ARM in the Enterprise yet.” [12:37]

• Paul Thurrott on Game Preservation:

  “These projects are making these games work well on modern hardware, upskilled graphics, etc.” [123:00]

• Leo Laporte on Club Twit Support:

  “We need you to participate. My goal before the end of the year, to get 5,000 new members.” [152:00]

• Paul Thurrott on Microsoft’s Copilot Features:

  “The user experience is terrible, actually. And the biggest problem with it is that anytime you do anything, you have to authenticate with Windows hello.” [66:12]

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Conclusion

This episode of Windows Weekly offers a comprehensive exploration of the current state and future prospects of Microsoft’s Windows ecosystem, the challenges facing Intel, advancements in ARM-based PCs, and the evolving integration of AI in daily computing tasks. The hosts provide insightful commentary on the technical difficulties, strategic missteps, and innovative solutions shaping the technology landscape in late 2024. Additionally, they emphasize the importance of community support through Club Twit to sustain ongoing podcast production amidst financial uncertainties.

For listeners seeking in-depth analysis of Microsoft products, enterprise IT challenges, and the intersection of gaming and technology, this episode serves as a valuable resource, blending technical expertise with engaging discussion.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thuratz here. Richard Campbell is here. We're going to talk about Recall. It's finally here, but Paul says it's not so hot. Actually, we'll also talk about AI. A lot of AI news. Apple Intelligence 2 came out today. Gemini advance came out today and so did Copilot Vision. Interesting. Plus, Fortnite goes five by five. I don't know what that means, but Paul will explain next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is Twit.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurad and Richard Campbell. Episode 911, recorded December 11, 2024. A back end guy. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show where we get together and talk about everything going on at Microsoft. You know, fortunately it's not just me doing all the talking. Joining us right now, to my right, left. Left to my other over there.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know what I thought I was going to see over there either.

[Leo Laporte]

It's Paul Farat.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know where you look.

[Leo Laporte]

Therot.com and then there's Richard Campbell from Run is radio dot com. Hello, guys.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hello, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Mary. Mary. You see, I got my. The lighting of the official Christmas trees. Yeah, they're bottle brushes. It was the cheapest thing I could find.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nice.

[Richard Campbell]

They're not going to last season anyway.

[Leo Laporte]

I think they look good. So I wanted something small because, I mean, I can't have a ten foot tree. You wouldn't see nothing. Yeah, right. So I found. These are the smallest I could find on Amazon. We did a whole search. Nice, Paul, I like how you've decorated your facility.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I've got my. What do I have? I don't have anything. What do you mean?

[Leo Laporte]

And of course, if you live in Madeira park, as Richard Campbell does, a star suffices. Oh, look at that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, there you go.

[Leo Laporte]

He's got the misty mountains in the distance. If you ever had to dump a ring in Mount Doom, I know where.

[Richard Campbell]

I think I know where I'd go. That's Texada island out there. We had some snow on it earlier.

[Leo Laporte]

It looks like there's still some. That's beautiful.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So, Paulie, what I didn't do, lead us not into temptation, but lead us into Redmond with the latest news.

[Richard Campbell]

Temptations there, without a doubt.

[Paul Thurrott]

We're going to continue the Lord Temptations.

[Leo Laporte]

Later with Richard at the end of the show. That's what the temptations are.

[Paul Thurrott]

Redmond being the mines of Moria. That is halfway between here and Mordor.

[Leo Laporte]

I think everybody knows Steven Stofsky was an orc.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, he was. He was a wizard.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, he was the wizard.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. It's just a question.

[Leo Laporte]

Was he the white one?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm not sure.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you know, the. The tale grew in the telling. It's hard to say.

[Leo Laporte]

Yesterday was patch Tuesday.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So yesterday there was at least 10.

[Leo Laporte]

Day in there, I think.

[Paul Thurrott]

I thought I was gonna have the story to tell this morning where this build, this new Update for Windows 1124H2, is not going out reliably because I have two computers I wasn't getting, like, no matter what I did, I was, like, looking for firmware updates. In one case, installed a firmware update, I'm like, all right, this is. It will not install. And then I realized I had put those computers on the dev channel and that's why they weren't getting the build. So there's no problems? Actually, I've installed it on several PCs, but yes. So the final patch Tuesday of 2024.

[Richard Campbell]

Ooh.

[Leo Laporte]

When you put it that way, it sounds monumental.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, it's the way I sort of think of this is. This is the final. Or. There's nothing final when it comes to Windows versions, but I feel like this is what Microsoft wanted to get out in 24H2. You know, the remaining features that didn't quite make it. I can tell you that. That bug in File Explorer where the menu opens up and goes off the top of the screen, not fixed. That's hilarious. So I guess we're waiting on January for that one. But they've added the jump lists in Start so that when you right click on an icon for an app that has jump lists, you'll see them there as well. The shortened form of the time and date display in the taskbar is on by default now. And that gets rid of the little bell icon for notifications because nobody uses it. And it makes the. Well, makes the time and date smaller, so it takes up less space over there. Android file sharing, which I've not. Whoa. Was that true? No, I can't remember. I don't think I've experienced it yet. But this works over wifi. So if you've connected your Android phone to phone link, you don't have to be connected to it. It will. With a cable. It will just let you access the Android file system directly from File Explorer, so you can browse around and download files, whatever, so. And then some other less exciting stuff, but yeah. So this is kind of the final you know, feature set, slice in time for the year. But as we're about to discuss, there's actually a lot more coming.

[Leo Laporte]

It's kind of this year.

[Paul Thurrott]

No. Well, in the Insider program, yes, but in stable, no. So this is stuff that will start appearing in January. I would think that's coming up. But there's a lot more. And I, you know, this year, I think one of the big stories of the year, in my space anyway, in our space, is that it was a very chaotic year for Windows Updates. And based on what I'm seeing just today, that's absolutely going to continue into 2025.

[Richard Campbell]

So, I mean, part of me is just like, this was 24H2, which was this incredibly big bite, even without the copilot plus PC thing and the whole ARM thing, like even you took that off, this was still going to be.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's still a mess. I agree 100%.

[Richard Campbell]

Then you add ARM into the equation and whatever deal they actually cut with Qualcomm and just made it hard. I gotta think at one point there were three deployable branches of 24H2, which is two more than you should ever.

[Paul Thurrott]

Ever, ever have and three more than Microsoft can handle with any reliability. So, Yeah, I agree 100%.

[Leo Laporte]

Would that set the dev channel or. I mean, what are the three different.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, he meant. He doesn't even mean the Insider program. He means just in stable. So does how does that work? Oh, there's one for enterprise copilot plus PCs, no normal PCs, and then am Intel X whatever X64 copilot plus PC.

[Leo Laporte]

So, yeah, starting to look a lot like Linux.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's. I don't know what it's looking like. It's looking like the. You're walking back with a giant plate of spaghetti and you trip and it lands all over the place. And every once in a while you still find, like a little more of it somewhere else. Yep, that's what the year's been like.

[Leo Laporte]

So, yeah, it's.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, it's a combination of technical and political issues. Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's which, you know, I guess is classic Microsoft, really, in some sense. I think the issue here is twofold. I mean, one is this notion that Microsoft's biggest customer base by far is business customers who don't want any of this crap. And two, Windows just in general is a mature, one might say, legacy desktop platform and really should not be updated to this degree. We understand what people use Windows for. It's optimized really well for that kind of thing. And man, they Just can't stop throwing stuff at it.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I thought they are feeling around for what their relevance is too. Right. Like this is no longer the focal point of Microsoft and so in some ways a little more freedom and it's also a different team. Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, freedom is like home alone. Like the parents have left and they forgot something. You know, in other words, it's like a lack of parental or adult supervision.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, we could call that, which I.

[Paul Thurrott]

Guess we could call it freedom.

[Richard Campbell]

But I was just trying to be positive here, man.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, okay. Yeah. So I don't know, you know, I. At the end of the show I'll have some of my a little bit of year end recap stuff. I think there might be a little bit more of it still in the middle as well. I mean this is going to come up next week and in the future. But you know, I'm looking back at this year and it's like I can't believe what has happened here. I had some guy on one of the social networks write me and say, you know, as someone who supports whatever number of desktops these changes, I mean it's really hard to keep up with the help calls and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, I have a 1200 page book about this subject. I, believe me, I understand your pain. It's like it's not, it's not even possible to stay up on it.

[Richard Campbell]

So lots of folks, lots of sysadmins holding 11 out.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right, right.

[Richard Campbell]

That's the reality.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which kind of makes. Okay, that's another element that makes this a little strange, honestly. Because you could argue up until now that and especially with 24H2 which as we discussed last year has some architectural changes under the hood that make it superior in some ways, especially from sort of a security footing to its predecessors that they've arrived at this thing that was maybe the vision all along just to give them a little bit of credit they don't deserve, but whatever. And this is when the businesses are going to start migrating over to Windows 11 and Mass.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the time to stabilize and slow down. And there is just no evidence of that. You know, it boggles.

[Richard Campbell]

No, you know, recognizing the system in mantra is change is good. You go first.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yes. Right. We're both going to jump out of the plane together and then they push you off.

[Richard Campbell]

You're not going to go to 11 until 24H2 settles down and you keep looking over there going, settle down yet. And you know what?

[Paul Thurrott]

Not. So that would be a great sign to have like in an IT admin's office, if they had offices anymore, which would be like, this one doesn't go to 11.

[Richard Campbell]

No, I might have to make that show.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's a pretty good name for like a T shirt slogan or something.

[Richard Campbell]

As we close in on people actually having to pay for extended support for 10, you know, late next week, then.

[Paul Thurrott]

We'Re going to find out what really.

[Richard Campbell]

We're going to really have a meet. We can have an excuse of a show that this is. This one doesn't go to 11.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Because the other play on this, and I think this was part of the whole Snapdragon event, was is there an excuse to shift hardware? Is there hardware that I need to make my workers more productive? And It'll come with 11. In fact, you won't have a 10 option.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. There you go. Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

And that's the other angle on this. It's like I'm not going to migrate any of these machines. I'm going to buy new, my 10s are going to phase out as they're replaced.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I suspect lots of organizations will do that actually. Or are doing that maybe not so much on arm. Although we're going to talk about this in kind of what. I'll think of what I think of as the second segment. But regarding arm, the pushback I always get on ARM is from IT admins. It's from people who support these organizations that often have kind of esoteric needs, as I think of it. And I'm not talking about, you know, custom apps or whatever. I mean, they're maybe in manufacturing and they have specific hardware compatibility requirements, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that a lot of the change that comes in organizations actually comes from like C class executives who are like, hey, there's this thing called the MacBook Air and it's awesome and you're going to support it. You know, that kind of thing.

[Richard Campbell]

That was the old iPad story. It's like I will be using the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, the iPhone too. Right?

[Richard Campbell]

Figure it out.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. You have to figure it out. Right. So there are these guys that are sort of guys is maybe the wrong term, but people in the IT space who are kind of resistant to change and for good reason. I complimented them last week, I think. But then you've got the decision makers who are saying, hey, that's fun, but we gotta move on. So I think that the. I think the pushback against ARM in the enterprise, such as it is, is in some ways misguided because when you think about the things that are important. And that's true whether you're an individual or a business with multiple machine, you know, multiple groups of people, whatever. The Qualcomm based PCs solve a lot of problems with reliability and security and, you know, performance and all that kind of stuff. I mean it's, it's. Yeah. So we have this one app in manufacturing over here that doesn't work great. Well, you could leave Bob on that stupid intel computer and put the rest of us on the modern thing, you know, is something that could happen.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I just, I think I don't see ARM in the Enterprise yet. Just.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, No, I don't either. I'm just trying to rationalize it, you know, I. Yeah, this not even on.

[Leo Laporte]

Laptops, not even mobile.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, but I think this is how it happens. I think what happens is someone in a position of decision making power finally comes down and says, guys, you got to figure this out. These things are way better. Yeah, I have multiple review units in that are brand new to me since I've been home from Mexico City. None of them are Snapdragon based. I don't remember the exact number, but this meteor is one meter lake, one lunar lake, at least one amd two, maybe two AMD is whatever. And they're varying degrees of whatever. But one thing they all kind of share in common is they don't always come right on. And the little I thing for Windows, hello, does its little bug eye thing and then it's like hold please or whatever it says, waiting, waiting and then it just fails, you know, and then you have to type in your pen to get in. And that never happens on Snapdragon computer. So like, I get it, they've made some steps forward, but it's still x64, it's still got all that cruft. And I'm still seeing a lot of the same problems, so. Yeah, I hear you. But you know, if you like fan noise and you want to heat up your bedroom at night, I mean, yeah, an intel computer is great.

[Richard Campbell]

We got a machine for you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we have a bunch of them actually. This is a lot of them, so we'll see. You know, CES is coming up, obviously Qualcomm at some point is going to do a Gen 2 on their Snapdragon X stuff. We'll see what happens.

[Richard Campbell]

But we're into December now, so the whole idea of this was maybe a six month deal has got to be over.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I was at a press event yesterday in New York and I was talking to someone else who does what I do. And this is someone I trust. And I don't want to say their name because I'm not sure if this was something they want out publicly. But they have heard now that Qualcomm's exclusivity arrangement with Microsoft has actually been extended. So there are interesting. Yeah. So there are rumors that Nvidia, Mediatek, even AMD are working on designs for PCs. ARM based designs. ARM holdings has talked and, well, has formally expanded into PC reference designs that they want OEMs to use as well. And, you know, we'll see. This is just one person, you know, like I said, I trust, but I don't know. I have never heard anything about this directly myself, so I don't know. I will say that even if it is just Qualcomm for whatever amount of time, there's no doubt in my mind that what they did this year is borderline magical. I believe it might have been handed down by aliens. I'm not sure, but.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you being facetious or are you actually.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's that good. I find it painful to not be using a Snapdragon computer.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, I just do. I love everything about them.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you'll be happy to know I've sent the lovely dev kit on its way to you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Santa will be bringing it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

You have a chimney?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, we have an electric fireplace. That's fine.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll drop it in there.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. Just drop it on that? Yep. I wouldn't leave it there, but there's some kind of weird exhaust thing to it. I don't know, prevent us from poison or something.

[Leo Laporte]

The two. No, I'd be very. So you have a choice, obviously. You have intel laptops and you have Snapdragon laptops. And for you is the choice.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it was a problem in Mexico because I had these devices to review before I left to come home. And I had a hard time not using the Surface laptop that I brought. And it's a problem now because I'm back and now I have a bunch of them and, you know, I. It's, you know, how do you, like, you know, you use something that just works, it's silent, the battery life is forever. And then you turn over here and you get punched in the face and you're like, well, I wonder which one I'll use tomorrow. You know, like.

[Leo Laporte]

But are there things you can't do with it that you can do with Intel?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So one of the big. One of the other trends I discussed this past year that I think is notable for this year is that the newer x86 chip sets from intel and AMD, well, more specifically, I guess maybe the graphics chipsets that are integrated are actually good enough to play AAA games now. And that's kind of amazing. I think that's kind of a game changer. This is an area where Qualcomm has advertised a lot, but I don't think they've really lived up to it. It's a very unreliable experience. I did just install Half Life 2, which is a 20 year old game by the way, on the Snapdragon. It plays fine, it looks beautiful, it's full res, whatever, everything's on high. But it's a 20 year old game, whatever. But it's running in emulation, seems to work great, works with a controller, et cetera. But as far as playing the latest Call of Duty or whatever, it's not. I wouldn't even try. That's ridiculous. So maybe they get there eventually, but that's not for everybody. I mean as far as just general productivity, what I would call mainstream, you know, PC tasks, it's, it's right there. It's great.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And the compatibility is only going to get better and more and more stuff is going to be compiled for ARM anyway. Like it's just going to become part of your normal cicd pipeline. Will include an ARM build.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this is the, I mean when I referenced the basement last week, I think it was. And you know, you hear from someone on social media, I'm like, you know, Intel's dead. X86 is terrible. Got to go past this. And he's like, well, and then some guy will name like an app, say, well, this is like the thing that proves you wrong. It's like this app. So I have to look up the app. I've never heard of it. It's some kind of an audio studio app that professional musicians or recorders use. Whatever. I've never even heard of the thing. I don't remember the name. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, I guess we could just abandon the platform because this one app that nobody uses doesn't work. Or here's an idea, maybe the makers of that app could port it to ARM and then it would just work better. How does that sound? I mean, we'll get there I think is the point.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and of course you bring up an audio video app because it gets into all of those wacky drivers that often this software pokes down into Ring zero and it's not going to emulate well, it's going to be problematic.

[Paul Thurrott]

So this will come up in my app pick this week I think. Let me just check. Yeah. One of the things about Windows and ARM is that Microsoft has very stringent driver requirements there and companies that are in that space have a hurdle there as well. Not that they're trying to make it hard on them, but they want this stuff to kind of respect the platform and do the right thing.

[Richard Campbell]

And we also see Microsoft taking control of drivers in general these days more and more because it's just now they get the tech support calls so they're highly incented. Just make sure there's a reliable reference driver that works every time even if it doesn't have every feature.

[Paul Thurrott]

It might even have a security component to that decision. You know that driver driver installers at least could be a vector from malware.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Or whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

But no, it's absolutely a problem.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Yeah. So.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's the nature of not controlling the hardware. Right. Like this is your trade. If you live in a walled garden like Apple, they are controlled. They of course they build all their drivers. They're the only game in town.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's right.

[Richard Campbell]

But if you're going to have an ecosystem then you have to deal with this variation in quality.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. This is, this was the problem with NT in the early days. Microsoft originally intended to switch over to NT1 full version before they did.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a big part of the disaster of Vista and the disaster problems in winning like.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. They changed the driver model. Well there was a rumor that Google is switching to Android all in for Chrome OS but it is not a rumor because they announced it that they're bringing the Android the part of Android that is the driver stack to Chrome OS. Because third party developer hardware makers support Android explicitly all the time because there are so many of those devices and Chrome OS like eh, you know sometimes, sometimes not. So you know well and the argument.

[Richard Campbell]

Is because operating systems are less important. We just have no tolerance. Yeah, I have no patience for this. I'm not here to use an os. I here have stuff to do. So the OS just. You should comply and that means consolidation. There should be fewer.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, there you go. Yes, I agree. So 24H2 it's going great. Everything's fine, no worries there. We're having a fine time but they're screwing with it. So we're going to have plenty of problems in 2025.

[Richard Campbell]

So when did they start on the net? When did they finally leave that thing alone and move on? To the next one.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, good question. I don't know if anyone could figure out the Insider program right now. I'd love to hear about it, but they say certain things. Beta Channel is built off of 23H2 right now. Dev is built off of 24H2 and Canary is like, na na na na na na na na na na. We have no idea. Nobody knows. So yeah, that's where we're at. Speaking of which, there was a new Canary build today. Nothing. And nobody knows why they even have it. But three big things have happened over the past. I'm going to call this. Well, actually, I was going to say 24 hours, but actually one of these is from last week. So the first one happened yesterday. Microsoft is changing Copilot what in the notes I say is the 17th time. That's a rough estimate. I think the actual number is close.

[Richard Campbell]

You thought you were exaggerating, but it's pretty close.

[Paul Thurrott]

Remember, they rushed this thing to market to get it out into 22H2 before 23H2 came out, forcing it on everybody. It used to be a pain. It's always been a pain. Sorry. But a sidebar, if you will, at the side of the screen at some point they made it resizable, then they made it into a window. They moved the icon three different times. Then they changed the UI completely and got rid of the Windows integration stuff. And one of the consistent complaints across all that was like, hey, this thing's actually just a web app, which means you're running an instance of Edge in the background. And that's true, even if I choose to use Chrome or Brave or whatever browser I have. So they've made it a native app. And I'm going to put air quotes around native because really it's a native wrapper on the web app. So you still have an instance of Chrome running in the background. Still Webview too, but it has some new functionality. It's a little different looking. It has a new always on top mode called Quick View, which uses the. One of the most used keyboard shortcuts in Windows, which is Alt Space. I think Alt space is popular because it's what Apple uses, essentially. They have a different name for that key, but it's the same keyboard for their. I'm sure they call it Spotlight Search. So if you want to launch an app without, you know, going and clicking through stuff, you can just hit Alt. Well, it's whatever it's called, Command, whatever that squiggly thing is. Space.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then, you know, the Bar comes up in the middle and you type. So PowerShell, not PowerShell, PowerToys run uses this UI. I think there's a startup tool that uses it as well. By default, uses that keyboard shortcut. So they'll respect the keyboard shortcut if you're using it somewhere else, but if you aren't using it, they'll give it to Copilot now instead of Windows key plus C, which no one is using and it used to use because you know, Microsoft. But anyway, this thing runs on top of other windows and that's kind of the point. So you were in the middle of doing something and you want to access Copilot all space. You type over here all space to close it again or just escape, I guess, and then you're back in the app and it's sort of that side by side experience without it taking up the space on the side. So you just kind of get it when you want it.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And this one is available in all of the insider channels right now, which is something they've been starting to do this past year. Instead of working its way Canary Dev down through the channel, they're like, well, just machine gun it to all the channels at once and release it in two days.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, what could go wrong?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, nothing's ever gone wrong with Copilot, so it should work out fine.

[Richard Campbell]

So if they had to revert them all too, then what?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, reversion rules are different. That's right. Speaking. Well, I don't have this in notes, but Michael Rander was telling me on Twitter X that he's had a computer in the release preview for months with the checkbox, get me out of this. When this thing is released. And it's just, you know, this is one of the problems with the insider program. It's never, never hits that little milestone. Well, nothing is ever done.

[Richard Campbell]

The real question is, of the folks that are working in that space right now, who even knows how to do that or that they should. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the entire point of the foundation trilogy. It's like we have this technology from the past and nobody knows how it works and it just kind of. Some of it persists. And I don't know, they really got to fix that because I like the idea of people going into the insider program to test things. I think it's a good thing to do if you want to, but they need to give you that exit hatch. And the problem is it's in the UI and it just doesn't work. And to me, that's beyond irresponsible that's just not right. Okay, so there's that. And then late last week, probably on Friday, Microsoft released a new build of the dev channel that adds support for Recall. And let me turn off the spotlight on my face and click to do for AMD and Intel based copilot plus PCs, meaning those based on Zen 5 or Lunar Lake or newer. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So it's and one update. So if you already installed this, like I had done with a Snapdragon X computer, you update to this new build and now click to do works outside of Recall. And so the way this worked before for that one build was, you know, Recall is sitting here taking screenshots or snapshots of your system. You can go flip through them and look for things, search, et cetera. If you get to a screen that has text on it, whether it's text in a graphic or just text that was on the screen, like a webpage or whatever, Click to do kicks in and it does that kind of purple pink animation that's suddenly very common to all AIs. And all of the text is highlighted. Then you get these actions you can do. Right. Click to do things with that text. Right. So that's cool. But that's the type of thing that should work like everywhere. Right. It shouldn't be locked into Recall. And so in this new build, Click to Do kind of escapes the confines of Recall. Now that works everywhere. And there's kind of a fun. Let me see if. I think it's just hold down the window key and click the mouse button and wherever it is on screen, the mouse cursor, it will do that little kind of rippling water, purple and pink animation. And then it looks at whatever app that is, looks for all the text, gives you that little animated selection view and then you get those options and you can do all that.

[Richard Campbell]

So magic.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, exactly.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not the first time Arthur C. Clarke has rolled in his grave. But you know, whatever. I will just point out because I feel obligated to, for all the haters haven't heard any security problems to Recall, even though it's out in the public. It's kind of weird. And we'll talk about that actually after whatever ad break as well. But I just feel obligated to say, you know, we were so concerned about this thing and contacts matters. Nothing. Yeah, it's working fine. Right before we started the show, Microsoft released yet another thing, I think across all Windows Insider channels, which is new support for the iPhone in the phone link app. So today the iPhone is pretty basic compared to Android. In fact, it's incredibly basic. I think you get text messaging, but not group messages. There's all these limitations. The photo stuff is gone, but you can get that through the photos app. And I think it might be. I think maybe phone calls and then notifications, which is pretty useless. But they're adding support for file sharing. So I tried to get this and I haven't. It's one of those CFR type features. So it's not really.

[Richard Campbell]

You don't know what machine it'll show up on.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't have it on any right now, so I'm trying. Should I try it here?

[Leo Laporte]

I wonder if I can.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So the way. What do you. So if you have a machine that's in the Insider program.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I don't.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, yeah, that's the. That's the first thing. It could be any channel and then you have to. I believe you. You're probably going to get a phone link, app updates, which. I, by the way, got one this morning. I thought this must be.

[Leo Laporte]

I did. I did get one this morning.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I think it was to support this, but it's not. It's just not enabled. You know, it's one of those features they have to flip a switch or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So this is going to work similarly to that feature that they just released in 24H2 for Android phones, which is that you'll be able to share files between, in this case the iPhone and your PC without having to go through like a UI. That's nice. Inside of the app. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Phonelink works kind of better with, obviously with Android, but.

[Paul Thurrott]

It kind of works.

[Leo Laporte]

But it does. I mean, it does some stuff. We were talking about this yesterday. Steve Gibson wanted a way to do text messaging on his Windows PC from his iPhone. And I think it would work fine. I think it does work fine for that.

[Paul Thurrott]

It does. Yeah, it works. I mean, I would say fine is.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe a bridge too far.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, there are things that don't work. So you can't go. Like once you. When you connect it to a PC, you don't get all your previous conversations. They don't show up like they do on Android. If it's a group text, the text will appear as individual text between two people instead of the group.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's weird. Okay, so it's not perfect.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's not perfect because it's on Apple. But. But yeah, better than.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you blame Apple?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, Microsoft blamed Apple. Yeah. Oh, okay. They would have implemented that two Years ago.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, Apple isn't. Yeah, that makes sense. They're not.

[Richard Campbell]

Apple has their own way and they're not real. Sherry.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. And then also this happened so recently I didn't have time to even write about it. But Microsoft announced today they're bringing the full Windows 11 experience, or they have brought the full Windows 11 experience to Metacore Quest 3 and 3S. What does that mean? And. Yeah, what does that mean? So it's like I said, I haven't even had time to look at this, but what I believe it means is that you get a Windows 11 desktop floating in space, you can click on it. But I mean, looking at the pictures, it also looks like there's kind of like individual app capabilities as well, but there's one screen where he's got three different desktops and different app floating in each, three taskbars, et cetera. So, yeah, I don't know. Remember that there was a. When, I don't know, a couple years ago, probably Microsoft announced they were bringing Microsoft 365 to Meta. Meta briefly had their own kind of productivity apps and services they were going to do on Meta, on Quest rather, and then they got rid of that. And I think this kind of paved the way for Microsoft to kind of go in a little deeper on this partnership. So you can access a local Windows PC, basically stream it, or if you have a Windows 365 Cloud PC up in the cloud, stream that as well.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I like the idea of no visible screen. Right. That it is put on a pair of goggles and can anchor away as long as I can touch type because I can't see where my hands are.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right, that's right. Is that true? I don't know. I've not used one. I'm not really sure. Is it kind of an AR experience? We can see through it.

[Richard Campbell]

No, it's VR.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no, it's VR.

[Richard Campbell]

They're VR headsets.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. Well, yeah, so, you know, Microsoft's not really doing their own mixed reality stuff anymore. So they've partnered with the obvious choice.

[Richard Campbell]

HoloLens is in an interesting state of suspension. They have a bunch of products out there that people are using. So they've held onto the last of their hololens too, to replace units that fail. They're not willing to sell to any new customers now. They don't want to restart the production line.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know.

[Richard Campbell]

And last time I talked to anybody there, they're like, we're waiting for better hardware. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Ships.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Which is Actually, the last thing I heard too. Same thing. Yep, yep. They had a minor update ready to go. And it was just like, we don't feel like this is enough of a jump to bother.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and again, I feel like the military distracted them in HoloLens. Like there was a HoloLens 3. It was the one built for the army that they canceled the last that they.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right. They canceled for everyone else. Yeah, yeah. This week's 24H2 issue of the week is that the Google Workspace sync plugin for Outlook. And I believe this is Outlook Classic. But look, based on a screenshot, there.

[Richard Campbell]

Is only one Outlook. Then there are terrible pretenders, some of which are made by.

[Paul Thurrott]

We're going to talk about that, Richard. Okay? So get out of the basement, buddy. No, is not working. So there's, you know, because it's 24H2, it's terrible. There was an update under the covers to the Microsoft Store last week that allows Win32 app makers to opt into a system where the Store will manage app updates. So what that means is that in the beginning, in the very beginning, they were all modern apps. Everything happened to the Store. That was the deal. Remember, you could do like a one click install, one click uninstall. Nothing was left behind, all that kind of stuff. And then over time, they've added support for all these different app types. So now if you have like a Win32 web browser, like Firefox or Chrome or whatever, you can put that in the store if you want, no problem. But after you install it from the store, it's up to that app to maintain whatever the updates are. Right? And so browsers are a good example of an app that has their own updating system, et cetera. But honestly, to me, one of the key advantages of the Store is that it handles this stuff. It handles it automatically. It happens in the background. You don't have to think about it. It's nice. You know, for example, when we start this show every week, Notion always has an update. Now for some reason I have to update Notion and then Discord always has an update. So it's like I sit down at this computer or launch these apps, it's like you got to install an update, like, here we go. So the store helps get rid of that little phenomenon. But I don't know how this works. In fact, it was just announced. But basically, if you want to allow the store to update your app, it will do it for you. It uses Winget somehow under the covers, which is interesting. I Always saw Winget in the Microsoft Store not merging. I don't mean that, but being ever more complimentary that the store is what Microsoft always wanted for its kind of servers, which was that it's really just this command line environment. But the store in this case is the ui, the front end that people can click on if they're.

[Richard Campbell]

Winget is your command line way to do updates. So Store is the repository.

[Paul Thurrott]

So store is going to kind of handle that like. Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

There's another context here, which is the battle over updating company machines. Right. They're trying to. They're deprecating WSUs.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

There's like four different ways to do updates, but there's generally a push to. You should do this to the store with whitelisting or blacklisting. Like that's what they want, except that none of their customers want it. But, you know.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, and then this business segment you're talking about is the type of the audience that's going to have a lot of Win32 apps, and those apps are going to have their own updating model, model, et cetera. So this way it's like the repository, like you said, where you acquire the app is the store. But then it's almost like a middleman that sits there and it just runs winget update against the app just to manage the update. And like I said, however it works, whatever you have to do as a developer, I don't know, but I would imagine this is going to be a lot simpler.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and there's an angle on this about supply chain attacks, but we have no evidence that Microsoft's going to be especially careful for what's in their store. Right. Like you blocked a supply chain attack by being.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, Microsoft had a rich history of screwing up security. I might agree with you. Oh, wait, there was a time when.

[Richard Campbell]

They were doing it. Well, it's just not this time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. I think that time might be now, by the way. They're doing pretty good right now, but, you know, it required them to get kicked in the face a couple of times, which is what happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, they're a little bit like the TSA in that regard. It's like, okay, we got the message, we'll start solving that problem now. Yeah, we'll see what happens. But I, I don't know. I like this. Seems like a pretty good idea to me.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's a long, careful process because you've got to go through folks that have spent a long time building up an update infrastructure they trust to Say okay, now what are. In some ways they've even forgotten what was important about the way they were doing it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You gotta say, do you have the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Original credit requirements again? Right. It's like did you start your company to manage an email infrastructure? Are you selling widgets here? Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So you need to host your own update infrastructure. Is that the best way to do that?

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean the more that you can hand off.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. It's like as a, as an app developer, I can put my app in the store for free. They don't even have to manage a website, you know, let pay for that. Right. And then I can have them manage the update infrastructure. Yeah. This sounds like, this sounds excellent to me. You know.

[Richard Campbell]

Right? Really, you take the whole company down, then it's not funny anymore, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah. You're so serious.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I mean the upside to that is then you can blame Microsoft for being down. Like that's the whole reason people use cloud in the first place. It gives you somebody else's fault.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right, right, right.

[Richard Campbell]

But you still, you know that this is what it makes admins jumpy is an update came out in the middle of the night. I didn't properly configure controls over that. It deployed and now my ticket center is filled with tickets.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the conversation I had with the guy on whatever social network, which is. He's waking up to that in Windows.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, I mean we can joke all we want about, you know, Microsoft changing the location of the copilot icon on the Taskmart. The reality is you have real human beings turn on the computer and like what the freak? What? Like what is this? And they're calling or texting or what do they do to get help and they're putting out wasting time and spending money, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, no, it's a great one showing up at the office and there's 300 tickets sitting in there and there were none when you went. When you left the office last night.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. I experience a minor version of that when I look at my comments every morning. It's great. That's great. Let me get the coffee and then I'm just going to throw it in my face. A lot of face damage today for some reason. Okay. Tied to the year end stuff I've been going through. I've noticed something interesting. In fact I think I noticed this first on the. Yeah. The Surface laptop, which is a Windows on our machine, which is that because of the way I do things, I often go back and use other products instead of the ones I Prefer, right. So I'll use other web browsers instead of Brave or, you know, whatever. I do this kind of thing a lot. I'm always trying to keep up on this stuff. And then when it's something that's in Windows and is in the book, and Edge is a complicated one for me because I hate it with a hot burning passion. But also I have several chapters in the book about it. I have to kind of stay up on it. So sometimes I suck it up and I run Edge. And I've noticed something with Edge lately and that something is that it doesn't really suck anymore. And there's. There's always been this kind of duality in the Microsoft space. It's true in Office/Microsoft365. It's true in Windows, it's true in Edge where they support some form of. You sign in with an account and it syncs your settings.

[Richard Campbell]

Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Except it only syncs some of your settings. And so, for example, Microsoft Word, which is an app I used over 30 years, basically does not save the configuration that I put it into, which involves a bunch of things going through options and going through the different dialogues. And I have to kind of redo that every time I run that app. Now there actually is a way to save that, but just bear with me on that one. Windows is the same thing. You know, Windows 8 introduced a bunch of really good settings, sync, setting, sync capabilities. It got better in Windows 10 and then in Windows 11 they started taking them away. And so there's less than ever. And it's not transparent. It's actually not really clear what settings sync. So if you do things like customize your taskbar, uninstall certain built in apps, that's not, that's not syncing. You know, every time you sign into a new computer or whatever, you're getting the stock, you know, experience. That's kind of what they want. So Edge works the same way.

[Richard Campbell]

So I find every time you get an OS update, it goes back too.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's exactly which is tied into this app still working on, which is basically like a. You could think of it as a user state vigilance tool. Like you reboot after a OS update or monthly update, whatever it is. And then it says, hey, by the way, they changed this configuration over here, right? Like I. This is something I actually need. Because I'm trying to understand that list as well. Like that, right? Not just the list of things that actually do sync, but the list of things Microsoft resets after an update because they do absolutely do that for sure. So Edge is exactly the same. There are certain. In fact, there's a million features in there. It's a little daunting, but there are certain features that don't sync. So for example, if you like the workspace icon up in the title bar there, if you don't use that feature, you get rid of it and you go to a different computer, it's back. And so there's kind of a hundred of those things. So I spend that time and I go through the UI and I don't like using sleeping tabs, for example, but whatever. I turn things off, I turn things on, I change things. I use the Google search engine instead of Bing and whatever. And then you get to this thing that's pretty good. Like, it's pretty minimal. You know, it's not bad. But I've noticed that this thing is actually really fast, which is not something I've said about Edge possibly ever. Maybe the very first release of the Chromium Edge, because it was so stripped down, maybe that was pretty fast, but it's, you know, it's kind of big and heavy and slow and whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Bulk up.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. So I went. I'm like, I have this vague memory that they were working on something with this regard. And sure enough, back in May, they announced that they were replacing bits of the UI with this new technology, which speeds things up dramatically, like double or triple X performance improvements. And it's doing like one component at a time. And they've never talked about it since. So I don't have any thing I can point to and say, hey, this is, you know, this has definitely changed. But here's what I can tell you. When you open something, like if you open the menu and go to Browser Essentials, that thing appears so fast, it almost makes a sound, like, it's almost like bam. And one of the things that, like, objectively has always been slower in Edge and just kind of bothered me was History, which is Control H and Downloads, which is Control J. In Edge are these kind of weird floating panes. And in Chrome and other Chromium browsers, you're just full window, just another window. Yeah, yeah. Those things appear really fast. Like, if you type Control J, you can see it kind of. It almost like jumps out at you.

[Richard Campbell]

It's excited about it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's really. This has not been the experience. So they've actually done something optimization and they talk about it, but it's. I'm starting to see it, I'm starting to experience it. I've Read it, I wrote about it and I'm like, whatever, I still hate it. And I've been. I used Edge on a couple of, you know, one computer that's like, this is interesting. I wonder if it's just on arm. I used it on x64. No, this thing, it's better. Like it's actually working better.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, the main thing I've noticed with Edge these days is I don't know. So I'm using Edge, right? Like there was a time there where it's like, oh, dang, I opened this in an Edge browser. Like, that's why it's being.

[Paul Thurrott]

There are things to like about Edge if you like the Windows 11 aesthetic, which is kind of a combination of, well, general style, the way things look, but also just the fonts and the menu that settings in. More Menu. And Edge is the correct kind of size and scale for the OS based on your setting. Whereas in Brave it's just like this tiny two point thing, you can barely see it.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe it's because Brave isn't so good or something.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, Brave doesn't spend a lot of time on the front end. It's not just Brave because I've also been using. Right now, for example, I'm using Chrome and the Chrome menu is also just a fixed size. It's nothing special. But if you compare the size of that menu in Chrome or Brave or whatever browser, this seems about right.

[Leo Laporte]

This is it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's correct. Like it's bigger, but it should be bigger. Like these things are not scaling. You know, Edge, all browsers support like a UI scale kind of a feature. Obviously does not impact that menu. It should. And so Edge, that's one thing Edge has always gotten right, which I really.

[Leo Laporte]

Like because I always scale everything big. But the menu stays the same, but.

[Paul Thurrott]

The menu stays small and that's where you really notice it. And so on Edge, to me, I don't know, you can see it for yourself. To me it looks correct. It's definitely bigger is the way I would set the text and whatever they do text rendering a little difference. Although I think they've shared that with Chromium since now it's just a browser.

[Leo Laporte]

Browsers are browsers a browser. Right, Leo?

[Paul Thurrott]

Leo? I mean, yeah. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Are we looking a little too deeply at the size of the fonts in the menu?

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, well, if you're 58 years old and you can't read it. No, I mean, I guess you're right. Yeah. I mean that's the. That's part of It, I mean I, it's like, wow, I could like this. You know, I. To me, Edge, you know, everything is a. Every relationship. You know, it's like pros and cons and then sometimes when they're negative enough that's when you kind of walk away. And for me Edge has been in that negative category. But lately I've been looking at it and this is a big turnaround for me because I, I wrote an entire chapter of the book about how to fix all stupid stuff they screw up. And I have to say I think it slid over the other one that might fall into this category for some people, not for me. But it's only because I use web based. Email is the new Outlook which is the subject of more hate than maybe anything Microsoft has done since. I don't know, Bob. I don't even know what this equates to.

[Richard Campbell]

I just hate mockery. Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I mean I think it might be the unicorns and the flowers in the ui. It might be. It's a little too cheerful or something.

[Leo Laporte]

It's very pretty.

[Paul Thurrott]

I love how much you can customize this thing. I really do. Like, it's kind of crazy how beautiful it can be. I don't like using an app for email and stuff but it's Outlook so it's email calendar contacts to do all this stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

It's going to make out look familiar. Should I let it make out look familiar?

[Paul Thurrott]

I would not allow that. Yeah. What we're going to do is like double the resource requirements. It's going to load.

[Leo Laporte]

I want the generic look. So this is the generic look. The one.

[Paul Thurrott]

But go with that one. I'm just sticking to just the look and feel of it. Don't select, don't open it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's pretty.

[Paul Thurrott]

But go up to whatever the menu is and go to Settings and go to just customizes ui.

[Leo Laporte]

Really weird. This bar, this toolbar. Okay. And now I can customize the look.

[Paul Thurrott]

At general probably and then whatever the appearance. Yeah. Like.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, unicorns. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, but I mean but honestly like these. It can be quite attractive. You know it's actually pretty nice.

[Leo Laporte]

It's kind of cool. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So you know it's better than the.

[Leo Laporte]

Old way it was.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So the problem with this app, the big problem to me is that if you don't have a paid Microsoft 365 account, commercial or consumer, you're going to see ads and those ads will appear as if they were email messages and that's not good. I do not like that. But I'm paying for it, so that's not a big deal. I know there are certain features that businesses rely on that either are half implemented or aren't quite there yet. But if you haven't done it. There was a great. Well, there was an Outlook session at Ignite. It's worth watching. They've made a lot of strides toward the stuff that they want. Businesses that businesses want. They're going to start making it opt out for small businesses in early 2025, but not for big businesses.

[Leo Laporte]

At least it put its own Microsoft store ad in the junk mail.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no one's buying the current buying ads on Outlook, which is the hilarious side story to this. Right. They're all like house ads.

[Leo Laporte]

Unsubscribe. Thank you. Oh, now I have to go to a website.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't want to do that in Edge probably. But anyway, I. Look, I'm not going to use the new Outlook, but other than because I have to write about it for the book. But it is pretty. I look at it and I'm like, you know, this is actually pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. It's going to take me a little while to get used to this ribbon up here.

[Paul Thurrott]

So if you don't, if you, if you're an old school Outlook guy, you can turn it to the old ribbon, too.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what I should have said, right? That's when I, that was my option. When I, when they said, do you want it to be like the old way? I should have said, yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no.

[Leo Laporte]

I want to try the new way. I can change my density.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

I like that, roomie.

[Paul Thurrott]

You are my density.

[Richard Campbell]

All right, I'm gonna switch on this machine.

[Leo Laporte]

It's perfect.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm sorry, I wasn't actually trying.

[Leo Laporte]

We weren't, we weren't advocating anything.

[Richard Campbell]

I will, you know, I'll message you and curse you. I know where you live.

[Paul Thurrott]

I hate it.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, you know, I've got the writing machine, which is. I'll stay with the old one, but on the, on the video machine, what.

[Paul Thurrott]

Do you use on your phone? Do you use Microsoft Outlook?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Yeah, but you don't have a choice there. It's bad no matter what you do, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

It's just a question.

[Paul Thurrott]

Consistently bad on iOS and Android.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And that's the thing I like about Outlook. Classic. Like, yes, I hate this thing, but it's the hate. I know, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Now what you've done is you've made this, you know, a. I do not need unicorns in my email.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, please it is a weird fact of history that they updated Outlook on the Mac years ago. Yeah, like three years ago. Ish or whatever it was. And I don't use that either. But my understanding is that app's pretty damn good. Like it's supposed to be really good. And I would imagine on the Mac it's not like this web app like we have in Windows, like this is the new way on Windows, but on the Mac it's probably just like a native Xcode app, whatever. And I think they were trying to go for a similar experience on Windows, but they're using web technologies but which freaks people out for some reason.

[Richard Campbell]

It definitely feels reacty, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But the thing is they moved to the web model React whatever for Office and Outlook, extension, add ins, whatever years ago. So I mean making the whole thing consistent.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and one of the things you got to think of in terms of is dev resources. Right. You know these React devs don't want to write code in C anymore. Like they just don't if they have.

[Paul Thurrott]

To say, I look at JavaScript code and I'm like, it's like, yikes.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm sorry you said JavaScript and code in the same sentence.

[Paul Thurrott]

And everybody got a little well, hey look, I came up out of Visual Basic. I've been dealing with that kind of thing for a long time.

[Richard Campbell]

I've got lots of friends doing advent of code and doing each different event in a different language.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, I've seen people do that.

[Paul Thurrott]

I was hoping you were going to say the polyglot version. Visual basic six.

[Richard Campbell]

None of them in JavaScript. One of the guys did it in GW W basic. I think he did number two in GW basic.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you could do number two in GW basic. I wouldn't want to do recursive stuff in GW basic.

[Richard Campbell]

No, no, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you should tell we have a private leaderboard for the club twit if they. Yeah, advent of code is so much fun. I actually streamed my first five days live. Four days live. No, five. I can't remember. But then it got hard and so I'm not going to let anybody see me trying to solve.

[Paul Thurrott]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's going to be in one line.

[Paul Thurrott]

There is the two scariest things you could do in life is kind of open your heart to another human being. That's number two. And number one is letting people see your source code code in public. And it's like, yikes. And it's like people are like, are you some kind of a fricking idiot? Which Is not one you want to hear from either one of those audiences.

[Richard Campbell]

But, like, I think it's a whole. It's one thing to just. To put the code up on GitHub where the people could see it, but to stream while you write, it was.

[Leo Laporte]

It was scary.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the. Yeah, Jeff.

[Leo Laporte]

But I just acknowledge that I don't. I'm not a pro. I'm just.

[Paul Thurrott]

I try to. Every time I write anything about this, I always try to stress, like, just a reminder I'm a writer. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

It actually went pretty well. I solved them all in real time, under two hours. And it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of help from.

[Paul Thurrott]

I've never done this.

[Leo Laporte]

Coders. Advent of code is super fun, but it's challenging.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, gets harder.

[Leo Laporte]

Every day gets harder. So there's 25 days. It's an advent calendar, and we're in day 11, and there's two parts to each day.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

The nice thing about it, if you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Do a little chocolate. Chocolate at the end, is that there's.

[Leo Laporte]

No chocolate, no booze, nothing. Just the set. But it is. You know what? It's a big dopamine rush. When you do write the code. Oh, they don't ask for the code. They just ask for the answer. You put in the answer.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like a Udacity course or something. It's like you get. Yeah, you got the answer and you.

[Leo Laporte]

Get a gold star when you're right. So that's even better.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And your input set is different from person to person.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Everybody has it.

[Richard Campbell]

So you can't take someone else's output and put it to yours. In fact, it's. It's in there. If you do that, it goes, you know, this is correct. But for somebody else's output, you should say that. Yeah. Oh, and it literally asks you, like, you wouldn't be cheating, would you?

[Leo Laporte]

That's somebody else's answer.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

There's the guy who does this. Eric Wastel is so brilliant.

[Richard Campbell]

So, so brilliant.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And there are a lot of coding challenges out there, but I think this is the best. It's the one I look forward to all year.

[Richard Campbell]

It's really fun.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

It's pretty special.

[Leo Laporte]

And I am not by any means. I haven't finished. I've never gotten all 25.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I am deeply immersed in a rest interface to have current tide data show up in Home Assistant.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you should stick with that.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's hard enough.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's Python, so I'm hating myself at the same time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, okay, but at least all the AI seem like they're optimized for Python, so you could at least get help.

[Richard Campbell]

If you needed getting help.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. In fact, Stephen was talking about this yesterday on Security now, he actually asked an assembly language question of ChatGPT and got an interesting little conversation and eventually useful code.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is not a complex thing, I'm not trying to say that, but in thinking about taking my Net Pad app to a multi tab interface, one of the things I have to do is I've got the system where there are certain states that are like the document, the document name, is it saved, et cetera, that are just global to the app, but now have to be individual to each tab. Right. So it's dynamic. You don't know how many they're going to be, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm like, I'm going to have to make a C class for this. So I did it and it seems like it's working great. And then I published an article about it. And then the next day I was like, anthropic came out with an announcement. They said, hey, we're good, you know, it's better for this now. And I'm like, I should. I. So I wrote a really detailed, I want a class. And she sharped it and it was exactly the same. And I was like, nice. Yeah, that was really. That was a nice little.

[Leo Laporte]

That's affirming.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that was really nice. And I grant, again, it's simple. It's. I'm not trying to prop myself up too much, but it was really nice to have that happen.

[Leo Laporte]

I always wonder when I'm looking at code generated by an AI, if there it's just somebody else's code that it ingested entirely possible. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

With tokenization, the correct answer on stack overflow as a service is still worth paying for. You know, like I have anyone who has ever spent time. And then you're like, okay, this is going to be it. Definitely. Like, no, that doesn't work. And then you read for like, oh, someone already said it doesn't work. And then, you know, and two hours later you're like, what was I doing? You know, like, that's, that's the typical overflow. Yeah. I mean, we've all done this way.

[Richard Campbell]

Down the rabbit hole.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. So, yeah, I'm sure you're right.

[Richard Campbell]

And you always have that moment where you step back and like, am I even attacking this the right way? Like, why am I doing this?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that's 50% of the answers on stack overflow are. I don't even know why you're trying to do this. Yes. And it's like, dude, listen, I am just trust me. I need to do. Yeah, thanks for the help.

[Leo Laporte]

That's why we recommended our sponsor, Experts Exchange, because you don't get that weird. Like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that happens. That is so common. Yeah. So common. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Or answered 10 years ago.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

This was another threat. Yeah. Why didn't. Yeah, because I'm not omniscient. Omniscient or omniscient.

[Richard Campbell]

Omniish.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like something.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, let's take a little time out and come back with lots more of this chocolatey goodness that you think of as windows.

[Paul Thurrott]

This daily chocolatey goodness.

[Leo Laporte]

It's so good. We are going to do it again, by the way. The next show will be a week from today. It'd be the 18th, but the following show we're not going to do.

[Paul Thurrott]

That was quite a cliffhanger there. Our next show will be next week, actually next week.

[Leo Laporte]

But then they'll have Christmas Day off. That will be a best of which the shows are working on right now. And then it's New Year's Day, so you're gonna have days off.

[Paul Thurrott]

I was out with somebody and we were talking about the holidays and someone says something about Christmas being on a Wednesday and I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. What?

[Leo Laporte]

What?

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm like, I. Obviously, the way the calendar works is this had to have happened before. I cannot remember having a Christmas off. I can't. Like both of those days.

[Leo Laporte]

Eight years ago.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, that's what my wife said. She, the smart one was like, well, Paul, he's like every year like, yeah, thanks, thanks.

[Leo Laporte]

But yeah, who remembers eight years ago?

[Paul Thurrott]

Right? That's what I'm saying. I don't remember it at all.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So you get two weeks off. Just remember that.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm probably just going to sit here and talk for three hours to myself. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Me too. What do you think? I just come up in my attic and I turn on the lights.

[Richard Campbell]

I'll just log in and we can talk to each other.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. Like Richard's actually there. Like, what's going on?

[Leo Laporte]

We should do a show. Just not record it or.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. What are you guys doing on Christmas Day?

[Leo Laporte]

Nothing. Watching football, probably. Our show today, brought to you by those wonderful folks at Threat Locker. You ought to know about Threat Locker if you are in business and there are threats. There are, you know, to zero day exploits. Microsoft Patched one yesterday. And supply chain attacks keep you up at night. Well, they, you know, they should be probably. But I have a way you can get a good night's sleep. Harden your security with Threat Locker. Worldwide companies like JetBlue Trust Threat Locker to secure their data and keep their business operations flying high. And you know, if you check it out, you'll see first of all, great reviews from all over. But you'll also see it's very affordable. It is the easiest, most affordable way to set up a zero trust on your network. And I think this is exactly the right way to protect your most valuable stuff. Imagine taking a proactive and this is the key deny by default approach to cybersecurity. That means every action is blocked, every process is blocked, every user is blocked. Nothing can happen unless authorized by your team. So you know, it's the opposite of a blacklist, it's a whitelist. You only say, you explicitly say they could do this and this but not that. And that is, that is. You know, I think I first heard a zero trust with Google started using it. It is the best way to protect your network. And the great thing about Threat Locker it only does this. It gives you a full audit of every action. So you, this is great for risk management and compliance. Their 247 US based support team fully supports you getting started, onboarding and beyond. So what you're doing is you are protecting your network completely, right? You're stopping the exploitation of trusted applications inside your organization. You're keeping your business secure, you're fully protected from ransomware. Organizations in any industry can benefit from Threat Lockers Ring fencing. Ring fencing isolates critical and trusted applications from unintended uses or weaponization. It also limits. This is so cool. Attackers lateral movement within your network. They just, it's like a brick wall. It's so good. Threat Locker's ring fencing was able to foil a number of attacks the traditional EDR couldn't. You remember the SolarWinds Orion attack? Remember how many companies were bit by that? Well, what you probably didn't read was it was completely foiled by ring fencing. Companies using ring fencing had not a fear, not a worry, not a care in the world. Threadlocker works for Max too. So your whole network can be protected. Get unprecedented visibility and control of your cybersecurity quickly, easily. And I have to say I was blown away by how cost effective it is. Very affordable. Threat Locker Zero trust endpoint protection platform offers a unified approach to protecting users, devices and networks against the exploitation of zero day vulnerabilities doesn't matter if you've never heard of it. Threat Locker blocks it. Get a free 30 day trial. Learn more about how Threat Locker can help mitigate unknown threats and at the same time ensure compliance. Visit threat locker.com we thank them so much for supporting Windows Weekly. And we thank you for supporting Windows Weekly by going to that site. And if they say, hey, where did you hear about Threat Locker? You say, well, I heard it on windows weekly. Threat locker.com thank them for their support.

[Richard Campbell]

All right.

[Leo Laporte]

I've been playing with Outlook, by the way, since you and I put my fast mail in it. It downloaded. I was very quick. I actually kind of like this. You're right.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's not bad. It's astonishing, like, how much hate this thing gets. And when I use it, I'm like, honestly, this is pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

Now, this is not the Office Outlook, though. This is the Outlook that comes with Windows, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. But it's going to replace the Office Outlook.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Over the next couple years. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm sorry, I got fixated on when Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday.

[Leo Laporte]

Was it eight years ago?

[Richard Campbell]

It's not as regular as you think. Because of leap years. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

That's why I said eight, not seven.

[Richard Campbell]

Because 2019 was the previous one and 2013 was the one before that.

[Leo Laporte]

Six years.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay, but the next one will be 2030.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

And then it doesn't happen again until 2041.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yikes.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I won't be here for that.

[Richard Campbell]

Are you sure?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I'm thinking probably not.

[Richard Campbell]

Are you already booking that day off?

[Leo Laporte]

I. No. I ran an app that said I'll be dead. My Death day is March 17th. I'll be here for that one.

[Paul Thurrott]

I see. Well, we'll do Advent of Code or whatever it's called in your honor.

[Leo Laporte]

Do it without me. Although if I am here for that, celebrate good times.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You might be a machine model though, right?

[Leo Laporte]

I think that's a very possible. AI is moving quick. It might be any day now by 2040.

[Richard Campbell]

Would you have a copy of Leo and some software? Yeah, I mean, the great news is we can reboot them too. So that's excellent.

[Paul Thurrott]

It'd just be like the two Google voices going, hey, so today there was a story about this thing. It was really interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. Windows 1229, it's awesome. Have you tried the new Outlook 100?

[Paul Thurrott]

He's like, so I should reboot it now. Okay. Yeah, this is like the real one. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think I know that he trained.

[Richard Campbell]

It he'd still be in the Insiders program.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow, that's a remarkable, remarkably accurate production.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, don't press the button.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, God.

[Leo Laporte]

Paul's referring to something that happened many years ago, before leap year was.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's hard to imagine, you know, like, you might talk about, like, one time, you know, one time you were in the cottage, you moved to this other studio. But I think of it as more like at one time this whole thing was run off of a laptop that he was using during the recording of the podcast, which, in retrospect, maybe wasn't the smartest thing.

[Leo Laporte]

I had audition running on a laptop Windows laptop that was both recording and doing all the stuff. And it got a Windows update. And I said, paul, should I hit return?

[Paul Thurrott]

And I was like, no, not now. And he's like, okay, I'm clicking. I'm like, no, don't. Just died. The whole show just.

[Leo Laporte]

Leah's gone. He'll be back once it reboots. Leo's exactly where you left him.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's talk about recall, shall we?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So I mentioned that Recall is Now available on x64 in the dev channel right now for everybody, only on the latest Copilot Plus PC hardware. I have spoken in the past about how Microsoft and third parties keep talking about all these changes they supposedly made to it, but I can also point you to the documentation from May and say I'm actually not sure they made any substantive technical changes to Recall, but it is still important that it's opt in, not opt out. Right. Which is the model you should follow.

[Richard Campbell]

I really wonder how many users there actually are.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. It's probably not too many. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Because how many. How many Copilot Plus PC machines are out in the wild?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And then how many other small.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then how many people and what subset of that is putting them in the Insider program?

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Very small.

[Richard Campbell]

Very small.

[Paul Thurrott]

That said, I mean, it's been a lot there. You know, this is another one of those things. For all the hate in this case, there are a lot of people who are like, yeah, actually I'd like to use this thing. And, you know, they don't. They're not super loud about it like the haters are, but they're, you know, so there's Some people are doing it. I'm doing it. Certainly, like I said earlier, it's. The security stuff's pretty quiet. You know, you don't hear anything. I. Regardless of the number of people using it, those security researchers, the guys that were all over this thing, like cockroaches you have to think they've been all over it and don't hear anything from.

[Richard Campbell]

Those not so sure, because those types don't tend not to have the hardware. It's one thing to snatch a copy of the code and run it your own way and break the snot out of it. It's another thing to actually go, you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Think they're even lazier than I think they are. That's interesting. Okay, fair enough.

[Richard Campbell]

Are they lazy or are they broken?

[Paul Thurrott]

They can be both. But I will say in using Recall, actually, there are problems with this thing. They have nothing to do with. Well, they have actually, they have everything to do with security or a lot to do with security, but not the problems people are imagining. The user experience is terrible, actually. And the biggest problem with it is that anytime you do anything, you have to authenticate with Windows hello, and it's Windows hello ess, right? So it's that more secure thing. It's the secure underpinnings, yada, yada, yada. But it's like you close the app and you're like, oh, wait, I want to go back. And it's like, oh, you got to authenticate again. And the way that it works is it doesn't just authenticate. You. You have to then click the button to okay. It kind of like the way Windows hello works in Chrome. If anyone does that to protect their access to their or any Fido key implementation. Good lord.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a parable.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's pret. It's not great. And then the other issue is just the UI itself is kind of amateurish. I mean, it's kind of weird. If anyone's ever used File History in Windows, I don't know when that debuted. 7, probably 7, 8, 10, whatever. It's that it's the same UI. It's not great. And it takes a ton of screenshots. I will say the screenshots don't take up that much space. That was one of the big worries, right? And so on my computer, I think I have. I think I have a terabyte of storage and I haven't changed anything in this regard. So I think the default storage it sets aside for this thing is like 150 gigabytes it can use. It's not using all of it. It's only using about. I think it was 2 gigabytes or something like that. And I'm not ever aging out screenshots or anything. I'm keeping everything. So it's not really be taken up that much space. I mean, that was one of the big concerns, too. Non security concerns. But the ui, like I said back in May, when I talked to a guy who claimed to have created this thing, I said, yeah, I got some questions for you. And he's like, here we go. And I'm like, no, no, these are not the questions you think to me, because I use multiple computers and I think a lot of people use multiple devices. Regardless, for this to be truly useful, I don't want my activities locked to a single device. I want across all my devices.

[Leo Laporte]

This is what's unfortunate. It's like the security scare made it less useful.

[Paul Thurrott]

But to be fair to Microsoft, they were doing this before the security scare. They said, look, we know that and we will do that. We will have controls for enterprises and all that stuff. It was going to come out in a preview and it is now only in a preview. So their point was, we know we have to be secure with this thing, so we're going to lock it down. It's going to be local only on the device. And I was like, yep. And that is completely useless to me. And he's like, yeah, I hear you. I get it. Don't worry, we'll get there.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, there's the whole enterprise side of this, which I just think could be huge.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So in the enterprise, like their initial, this reminds me very much of Windows Phone. It was like almost. No, not almost. It was literally antagonistic to enterprises. So the way they originally presented this was, look, it's going to be on there. If this is an enterprise device, the enterprise cannot touch it. It's up for the user. They can do whatever they want. And they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? That's crazy. So that's not the way that is anymore. Now they're allowing it's off by default, like I said. But enterprises have controls through policy to control it or not. And you can, as an enterprise, go in and say, look, you're not taking screenshots of this app or of certain types of information. So for individuals, like credit cards and whatever other things, but. But for businesses, it might be something different. Obviously they have different things you might not want captured on these screenshots, which can't go anywhere anyway because of all the security controls on the PC. But whatever. I get it. I mean, look, I don't think there's anything stopping a user from taking a screenshot of the screen when that thing's on screen and sending it an email to someone. I mean, there's a whole path of stupidity that can occur. But as far as the underlying tech, it seems to me if anything it's. It's almost too locked out. Like it's a little.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes, it's impairing its usefulness.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, you can do this yourself. On. Well, if you have Windows hello ess, I think if you go into like the Settings app for example, and go to. I don't think this one has it, but if you go to Accounts and then sign in Options and I don't have it. But yeah, you'll see normal Windows hello. There's an option that says if you've been away, when should Windows require you to sign in again? And the default is 15 minutes. The default on ESS is every time and you cannot change it. Right. And that's a pretty big difference. Now you as an individual could set Windows hello to work that way and then you'll have this experience I'm talking about. Let me tell you something. A day will not go by before you turn that off. It is horrible.

[Richard Campbell]

No, and it's the problem.

[Paul Thurrott]

Heavy handed.

[Richard Campbell]

It's what bad MFA looks like. Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. Yes, exactly. So there I. There, that's. Look, it was always going to be Windows hello ess. That was always going to be the experience. Nobody changed that that was what they envisioned. We just didn't know it. And here it is and it's not great. That's all. You know, to me it's just, it's a pain. I'll just say they look, I think they've overcorrected. So I get it.

[Richard Campbell]

I think you're still right that it was always going to be like this.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, it definitely is. I can do the documentation. Like it was definitely like. And you. No one would remember this, but at some point, one of the delays over the summer and then they came out and said this is how we're going to change it, you know, And I was like, I don't think you're changing anything. I went through the whole list and I went back and looked and there was only one thing I wasn't sure about and it was the Windows hello ess. This thing, it was this whether it was going to make it happen every time. But if you go back to the main documentation, it was always Windows hello ESS as a requirement, which means this always was the requirement. So that I've learned since then. So yeah, there was literally nothing substantive. I mean, I'm sure just use the.

[Richard Campbell]

Facial recognition feature so that, yeah, it reauthenticates, but it reauthenticates without interrupting you.

[Paul Thurrott]

But it does interrupt you. That's the problem.

[Richard Campbell]

I know. It didn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

Doesn't need to. Yeah, I agree.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it just means people won't use it. Right. Like you.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's what I. That's. That's my worry is that it's, you know, for all of the concerns.

[Richard Campbell]

That's one way to solve the security concerns.

[Paul Thurrott]

Make it too.

[Richard Campbell]

Nobody uses.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The other one. I mentioned this in passing last week. Since then, I looked it up. So there was a. I saw this report in PC World. This is what's happened to journalism in our little field. PC World. Right. Used to be a print magazine. Right. Used to have people you knew and loved. Yeah. So they wrote a story and it was like, hey, Microsoft's gonna start threatening people with unsupported hardware by putting a watermark on the Windows 11 desktop if the PC is unsupported, if there's any hardware that's unsupported.

[Richard Campbell]

I always did that.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I was like, yeah, that's always been a thing. So I went and looked at up since then. Oh, I should say it's written they're either partnering with or bought a German tech blog. And so it's this tiny post, or maybe it was Swedish. Swedish or German. And they're quoting another Windows blog that had this big story about this. And it's like, I don't think you guys know what you're talking about. So I went and looked it up, and when I wrote the first version of the Windows 11 field guide, I had a tip in there about how you could turn it off. And I eventually got rid of it because I never actually saw it appear on any computer. So I thought, well, Microsoft's not going to do this anymore. So when I looked it up. So when I wrote that the first version of the book came out in October 2022, one year after Windows 11. Right. The first example of the exact language on that page that talks about a watermark dates back to July 2022. All right, so it was six months before I wrote the book. The first version of the book, it was over 18 months ago now. Or about 18 months ago now. This is not new. So people are acting like, oh, my God, they're closing the reins. It's coming. It's like, no, they've been talking about this for a long time.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Because win 11 shipped in 21 and they had the TPM2 requirement from the outset. And then we got around that. So I always wondered if they just.

[Paul Thurrott]

Weren'T enforcing Microsoft, I mean to this day documents ways that you can get around these blockers. They actually document how you could do it, which is kind of strange. But you know, you, they're acting like you're, you're swearing an oath. Like, it's like you have to promise that you understand that you might not get like updates, which has never happened.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

You might get a watermark on the desktop, which has never happened.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, like, like. And then you have to, you know, raise your hand, put your other hand on a Bible or something and it's like, I don't. That's not really what's happening here, I promise. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, that's not new.

[Richard Campbell]

Whatever. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then this one will probably be the most controversial of the three I have here, which is that.

[Richard Campbell]

Is it editorial?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, editorial. I think intel's toast. I think it's over. I think the reason and what triggered. I, I've been kind of leaning in this direction, you know, for a while. I'm not exactly Nostradamus here. I mean, you can see what's going wrong with this company. But the thing that did it for me was we taught when that Monday occurred a week ago Monday where we woke up and they're like, hey, Pat Gelsinger is retiring. It's like a really fascinating. And then you find out, sure enough.

[Richard Campbell]

The board gave them an option.

[Paul Thurrott]

Leave or we'll fire or you'll be leaving. So you think, okay, something's happened. Some partner walked away, some milestone wasn't hit, some promise was unmet, some. Whatever it was, something happened and they got an offer from Qualcomm they can't refuse or something happened. So obviously the next thing we're going to learn is that they're chang. The strategy is changing. That's what's going to happen. The strategy is exactly the same. The, the people who are co. Running the company now. The two co. CEOs.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

These two non engineer idiots.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are like, oh no, we're not changing the strategy at all. Okay, so what, you gave this guy three and a half years to implement this incredible turnaround and you're not. What. Why did you fire him? What was the problem? You know, he was the guy that lobbied the US Government to get something called the CHIPS act to happen. He didn't lobby them to get the money. He did. But first he said, you know what you guys should do? You should give us money. And it worked. Yeah, that's what he did. And he got rid of that guy. Really?

[Richard Campbell]

No, I Mean when you're going to restructure a company, you need a restructuring CEO, not an engineer CEO.

[Paul Thurrott]

But that's why I believe Intel's dead. Because when you. Now that you're talking restructuring, there's the minor stuff, there's these little other businesses like mobilized security and whatever else that intel has that. Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

Which they've been shuffling a bunch of them off anyway.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. That's what. Which is part of this because I think like Pat Gelzinger's been working toward this. Remember Pat Gelzinger was the guy who started reporting Foundry revenues as if it were a separate company. Company.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't think there was a clear sign ever that this was the future. Yeah, right.

[Richard Campbell]

I just don't know that he had the political clout to actually do it. So he was dancing around it. Right. It's that. That's the difference. Okay, well and I also think the, you know, you were just listing off all the possible ingredients. Qualcomm did suggest they were interested in bits of it. AMD is main suggestion. Like all the pieces are there.

[Leo Laporte]

It might really be.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, without a doubt. I think intel might literally have the worst board in the history of big tech.

[Richard Campbell]

Companies in general tend to have crony boards. Right. Cronies of friends.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but these are crony boards. But Intel's board is made up now largely of non engineers. They're just like the guy who was the CEO of Intel before Pat Gelsner. His name escapes me because who cares? He didn't do a single frickin thing. Was not an engineer. Yeah, he was. He was the CFO of like three or four different companies before he came to Intel.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

And he didn't do a single friggin thing in two years.

[Richard Campbell]

I think it's part of the challenge there is. Do you know how to do work the politics to get this done. What is the tool you have in your pocket? Do you know how to raise money? Do you know how to close the deals? Right. Can you get through the regulatory requirements you're going to have? DOD is going to have an opinion. FTC is going to be all over this. Like this is not a small thing to pull off the dismantling of a giant.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but. So I'm agreeing with everything you're saying. I just want to be clear. I'm not disagreeing about any of it. But this is part of what leads me to this inevitable kind of conclusion. I. Intel as we know it is over.

[Richard Campbell]

Is over. But it had been for a while. I would also say this yes. Gelsinger was probably retired because they went off the Dow. Like that's a statement, right? When, when they came off the Dow, he was done. He had no, there was no. It doesn't matter what he was doing.

[Leo Laporte]

We're all engineer to be unhappy about that. That's why the board.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, look, the board is. They're responsible, the shareholders, I mean, their purview or their whatever, their point of being is completely different maybe from that of the engine.

[Richard Campbell]

You got a couple of calls from a couple of those larger pension funds saying, wtf dude? Do you know how much stock I have to shift now? Of course, because this fund's rules mean only Dow companies.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's fine. I'm just saying. But the point here is that intel as this force that was 50% of the personal computing industry called Windtel, I think it's over. I think that's over. And when you look at this inevitable shift where these things drift apart, you've got a foundry business that cannot keep up to TSMC to save its life, and you've got a company that is still the biggest, but floundering master of the smallest pond in personal computing, has done nothing right for the past several years, technically. And I think. And now at the worst possible time, two things have happened. Amd, which should have taken this over, has restructured itself to focus on cloud computing and AI and not on PCs. And Qualcomm happened with Snapdragon X. Like I said, aliens handed down this technology and so now we have this out as an industry, this thing that is actually technically better.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised at all if an entity takes over the licensing for the X86 and they actually run it through some other fabs and make some really phenomenally good versions of.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I will say the little asterisk here is AMD has done such a phenomenal job with Zen5 and it's weird because they just, they're just not emphasizing this too much. Their, their graphics business is like next to nothing. You know, they're, they're really making this AI push now. But that stuff, that's also their board.

[Richard Campbell]

Hammering them to be. To keep the stock price up. We don't want to get delisted either. Right. Like they're, yeah, they've all got their fights here. This, this political.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's too bad because Zen5 is very good. It is very good. It's not, you know, it's not quite, it's not Qualcomm quality, but as far as just, you know you need that compatibility, whatever you're okay with, you know, two thirds of the battery life or whatever. General performance across the board is unbelievable.

[Leo Laporte]

Five years from now, will X86 be gone?

[Richard Campbell]

No.

[Paul Thurrott]

So it never goes away, but then like that. But you know, businesses will keep it there, just those code bases. But the point is, is it influential? Is it evolving to some point? That is interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

But it hasn't been for ages.

[Leo Laporte]

Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I know that's. No, I know, but you're right. But it has been kept in market by inertia. If you look at like 250 million.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's going to stay in the market of inertia for longer too.

[Paul Thurrott]

See, I don't.

[Richard Campbell]

What you're. All you're seeing here is that the vertical integration model is over for Intel.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm arguing that that's what's going to change. Like that. Intel has maintained this incredible control over the industry through paying companies off. Right. There was a three year period where Dell was profitable only because intel paid them. Right. Which is their bottle and they can't do that anymore. No, they don't have the money. That's what I'm saying. That's what I mean. Like intel and then x86, like. Yeah, no, you.

[Richard Campbell]

And so you're talking about the bankruptcy model. The very slowly, then all at once. And maybe this is the all at once.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is my point. Yeah, I think I. And I think x86 goes with it. I think we collectively of an industry, just like Dave Cutler looked at x64 and said, Yep, this is the way forward for 64 bits at that time, 25 years ago, whatever it was, Windows.

[Richard Campbell]

On Windows was the paper.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right? Yeah. And this is, look, Apple, this is a sad reality of our existence. Apple has shown us the way so many times and we hate them, we resent them, we're jealous of them. And they did it with ARM and they did it on the PC with the Mac. And can we just wake up and get the message for once, like, this is the way forward. They showed us how to do it.

[Richard Campbell]

Well and it felt like they had a grand vision. They were just trying to make money and they knew the phone was the win for them.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, no. I mean when they did the Mac, in other words, by the time they got to the Mac they were like, oh my God, which Mac across the board? The M1 Mac. The Apple.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So the fully integrated sock is without a doubt Cooks opus. Right. Like the thing that Tim Cook did. That was not something that I was thinking even on the radar.

[Paul Thurrott]

You'll never have. I know Tim Cook is interesting because Jobs obviously Jobs, I mean it's like iPhone, ipod.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. But he was always.

[Paul Thurrott]

But Apple Watch and Health and this thing. Yeah, this is non engineer. This is a not. Well, sort of an engineer I guess technically. Was he sort of an engineer?

[Leo Laporte]

No, he's not an engineer, he's a supply chain guy. But you could argue that he single handedly kept the PC, the desktop computing alive.

[Richard Campbell]

Relevant.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know at a point where he had the key to killing it. That blows my mind.

[Leo Laporte]

They even, they even were talking about.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. In 2011. Steve Jobs or actually. Yeah, no, Cook went. I think it was his last met.

[Leo Laporte]

TSMC in 2011 and the TSMC chairman, he just. His autobiography just came out and, and Cook said to him when can you make me a desktop chip?

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And what do you need to make it. They funded euv, they funded all that stuff and it is, it's an investment.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. When your biggest customer shows up and says I need something, you're like yeah, all right, what can we do? Yeah, Microsoft doesn't have. Or intel certainly doesn't have that capability.

[Richard Campbell]

So yeah, intel always thought it was best to have it in house. But that's because they started all of this.

[Paul Thurrott]

This of course. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It was just innovative dilemma, that's all.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the usual. Was the same kind of company. It's like our manufacturing facilities all over the world are our biggest strength or your biggest anchor. Well, you're $7 anchor.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. There's strength until they sink you.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, both are entirely true.

[Leo Laporte]

So we're talking in the discord. You probably see it. System 76, which is a Linux desktop integrator, has a beautiful desktop. Jeff Geerling's reviewing it right now. The Thalio, they've been making it for.

[Paul Thurrott]

A year, a few years.

[Leo Laporte]

They make it in the US they control all the hardware. They also make their version of Linux for it, a version of Ubuntu.

[Richard Campbell]

I.

[Leo Laporte]

Think probably at this point. But they're saying would you buy this? There are very few x86 PCs that I would consider at this point.

[Paul Thurrott]

Point. Yeah, well it depends on what you. So look, I. Nothing is absolute. You know, like I mentioned, like one of the cool things.

[Leo Laporte]

Unless you're a gamer. If you're a gamer.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's an example. Like if you're, if you're going to play games on a PC, which is, you know, a shift I've made myself over the past year, year and a half, whatever. Yeah. Snapdragon's not going to do it, you know, but that's the thing. Like we're acting like all of us have one thing that we use for everything. And I think a lot of these people that are, yeah. Don't playing games on computers probably have a couple.

[Leo Laporte]

It's their gaming PC.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. If you got to say Apple's coming.

[Leo Laporte]

For you too by the way. More and more, you know, they still are way behind on AAA games but oh yeah, definitely, that's definitely in their roadmap.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm playing Valhalla, which I bought a Linux machine to play back into Covid. I'm playing on a Mac now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Native Steve or Tim Cook, money guy. He's clearly done this calculation. We could make the iPad replace the laptop. We could, but we're not gonna do that. But we don't need to and we don't need to. For fans of that platform it's like what are you doing? Like the stupid mouse support they added at first and then the, you know, the half ass keyboard stuff and then eventually they get there and you know, 12 years later you're like oh, this is the thing you should have done a million years ago, but you're finally getting there. But why don't they take that extra, extra step? It's because they've looked at this and said, well the Mac is actually a better business in that regard and what we would lose by doing this would be greater than what we would gain.

[Leo Laporte]

And they don't need to. They can have two platforms.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well I, there's a touch platform and.

[Leo Laporte]

A non touch platform.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So a hardware based company sees the world in terms of hardware.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft made their big bet with Windows 8 that we could do one thing that would do everything. I don't remember the history exactly but I feel like it didn't work out too great. But it doesn't mean it was a bad idea. It might mean the implementation was wrong.

[Richard Campbell]

Talk about some of the execution elements.

[Paul Thurrott]

There's all kinds of stuff. Yeah, but there are different approaches. But yeah, here we are all these years later, literally 10, 12 years after Windows 8 and 14 years after the iPad and Apple. They're making money other ways too. But they still approach it like we're this hardware company, we want to, you know, you use this device for this, you use this device for this and then you know, people, obviously people get work done on an iPad but those people must work at like a play school or something.

[Leo Laporte]

But no, I think it's pretty clear that's not a Productivity tool despite what it could be.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. That's the thing for photography.

[Leo Laporte]

My iPad Pro is kind of a nice platform but yeah, it's not going to replace my desktop.

[Paul Thurrott]

But even simple things like iPad Pro, the latest version comes up awesome hardware. A new version of Final Cut Pro. You're rendering video and then you go to look at an email and the video stops rendering. It can't run that background task. It's like guys, come on throw us a bone. You know it can like that's crazy.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. I have to wonder if intel gets dismantled the licensing for x86 goes into a separate entity.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

They now can go to any fab they want. The chip prices drop prop in half because they're not being propped up by Intel's pricing and cost of manufacturing and it becomes an actual really inexpensive way to build a PC.

[Leo Laporte]

So I think that's an interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I mean this doesn't change my whole intel is dead shtick. But look things last. The Z80 went out of production fairly recently. You know the MAS 6502 didn't last quite that long but it was in market for forever. We have Raspberry PIs that are running these. I think they're Broadcom low end kind of RM chips. Whatever. Like there'll always be something for something. You know there's that stuff is there But I think just for mainstream I will see. I mean I, I can't. There are. There are possibilities we can't really foresee but I don't. I just don't see intel emerging on the other side of this like anything close to.

[Richard Campbell]

Not the vertical integrated business. No the.

[Paul Thurrott]

I just.

[Richard Campbell]

The brand may hang around but I think the. You know it's not an innovative design. It doesn't need vertical integration. It can be made less expensive.

[Leo Laporte]

I think we talked about this last week. GE is a model here.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I mentioned Polaroid did not survive. Licensed conglomerate.

[Leo Laporte]

They subredded to three parts healthcare and I don't get nuclear plants or something but they really. The general electorate we knew for a century is gone.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

It's.

[Leo Laporte]

It's split into parts and that's what's going to happen intel, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

I think so. I and I when. When this event occurred last week it wasn't clear but the more time that goes by little bits, you know the board will start talking a little bit. Are those two CO CEOs and you're like they don't actually have a plan. You know.

[Leo Laporte]

So They've announced CO CEOs.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

They both said they. They literally said, oh no, we're not changing the strategy.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, you are.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes, well that's because they are.

[Leo Laporte]

They M A guys.

[Richard Campbell]

No, they were existing board members.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Oh, interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

So they're interim.

[Richard Campbell]

They're trying their. Interim. Exactly. They're trying to search, but it's.

[Paul Thurrott]

Can you imagine the quality of the people that are gonna like would ever be interested.

[Leo Laporte]

They were floating a rumor that Johnny Surugi, who's chief of hardware at Apple actually.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Would be. But you know what? Johnny's gonna go. Yeah, right. No, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, they're not looking for an engineer. They're looking for a restructure, an M. And a guy. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Or gal. They're looking for Marissa Meyer. No, I think she's available.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm pretty sure she is.

[Richard Campbell]

They're going to need someone who knows how to work with the FTC, who can deal with the DoD concerns, who can piece this company out into places that will keep everybody happy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's the big thing. Like supposedly.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, they'll make a lot of money doing it. They will.

[Paul Thurrott]

The award from the CHIPS act, assuming they hit their milestones, is based on intel staying together, apparently. And I think that's nonsense, but I would imagine that allowing the foundry, which to me is the healthy, more potential part of the company, to go off and do its own thing and get that money and help it do that would actually make some sense.

[Richard Campbell]

Sure. As long as they can fill the pipeline.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well.

[Leo Laporte]

And the fabs are still.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's duv. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. There'll always be legacy nodes you can make. Hey, my PC is running an M12.

[Paul Thurrott]

I just mentioned Raspberry PI. We need someone to make those chips. I mean, you guys will be great for that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Richard Campbell]

Low margin business, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

What was. It was like the three or four year period where they couldn't get past 10 nanometer was probably the time like it was like intel as a company had a stroke and no one saw it.

[Leo Laporte]

I saw it. We talked a lot about.

[Paul Thurrott]

Everyone saw it. I'm sorry. No, but I mean they. But nothing happened. Like nothing changed. No, but it was sat there in stasis for.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they could. They were stuck.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. It's too bad.

[Leo Laporte]

And people are putting out three nanometer chips and they're at 10.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, I know.

[Leo Laporte]

They're just.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I think they've. They might have seven. No.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. Do they?

[Paul Thurrott]

I think.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know if they do. Do they?

[Richard Campbell]

It's a relativistic measure anyway.

[Paul Thurrott]

It Is.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not really anymore.

[Richard Campbell]

It's become a marketing term.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

But yes, they definitely had a tough time doing the tech part of the TikTok.

[Paul Thurrott]

So Leo, you mentioned in the discord that you were worried about like Linux on all of them.

[Leo Laporte]

So the system 76 is our Linux desktops. They're beautiful, but it's. And they do have. In x86, I'm sure they have AMD and Intel. They certainly have amd, but apparently they have ARM versions. But would you buy a Linux on ARM at this point? I don't know.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not today, but as long ago as, I don't know, February or maybe March of this past year, you know, Snap or Qualcomm. It was very public about the work that they're doing.

[Leo Laporte]

They're working with them.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. Oh yeah. They've been doing this forever, since they started this chipset. So they're actually part of that community. They have a. I don't know. I don't know what the organization's called, but they're making sure that there were drivers for Linux for all of the hardware components. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And since system 76 is making all the hardware, presumably they're using hardware that is, you know, that can be work with. I mean, I would assume. Should I buy one and just find out? No, I'm going to watch Jeff Geerling's.

[Paul Thurrott]

I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't do this now, but I. But this coming year I. These are beautiful computers.

[Leo Laporte]

They're so sweet. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I mean, look for. I mentioned earlier, like, you know, these use cases where like obviously x64 makes sense, like gaming. I would say for now, Linux. False. This category. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Sort of because of the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Just for compatibility. Just.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean scientists would buy this, right? There's. These are people with hardcore big jobs they need to get done and like that. I mean, I don't know who they are.

[Paul Thurrott]

We're not even sure they're people, honestly.

[Leo Laporte]

What are they if they're not people? They're scientists.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Well, if they're using Qualcomm harder, they might be aliens.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's my new theory. All right. They know something.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, I'm going to take a little break. A little breaky.

[Paul Thurrott]

Po.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you mind?

[Paul Thurrott]

Nope.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought we would be. There would be more of this, but I'm ready to. Wait a minute now I have to rearrange. Put Paul in the middle. Okay, there we go.

[Paul Thurrott]

You.

[Leo Laporte]

There's some things.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I feel better.

[Paul Thurrott]

You should.

[Leo Laporte]

You should be in the middle. Yeah. There's just some things that have changed in this world and one of them is I have to do all this myself on a Mac.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hey, sh, sh. You.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually it's in a browser. I could be doing this on Linux. I could be doing this in anything.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Our show today, brought to you by a great company we've been talking about a lot. I had never heard of them when they first came to us and I said, wow, why, why don't more people know about you? And they said, well, that's what your job. So my. I'm doing my job right now. Let me tell you about US Cloud, the number one Microsoft Unified Support replacement. You might say, well, what's wrong with Microsoft? Why do I need US Cloud? Well, well might ask the 50 companies in the Fortune 500 who use US Cloud, why do you use US Cloud? They're the global leader in third party Microsoft Enterprise support. One reason and the reason they said, oh, you should tell everybody it's less expensive. Switching to US Cloud could save your business 30 to 50% on a true comparable replacement for Microsoft Unified Support. But I say, said, I says to them, I says, yeah, but it's not just less expensive, it's better, right? Yeah, they said it's better and faster. US Cloud supports the entire Microsoft stack. They're there, of course, 24, 7, 365 days a year. They respond faster, they resolve tickets quicker for clients all over the world. But I should point out you're always talking to real humans, real engineers in the United States. In fact, some of the best engineers in the United States. I asked them about that. They said, yeah, we have a. We recruit the best people, we give them great benefits, great salaries. We get the best expert level engineers an average of 14.9 years experience. And that's for Break Fix or DSE. They're 100% domestic teams. Your data never leaves the US and here's something that US Cloud does that even Microsoft will not. Financially backed SLAs on response time, they guarantee it. Initial ticket responses average under four minutes. And I could tell you, and you probably know this if you're in the hot seat, if the network's down, something's going wrong and the CEO's calling you, the board's on the line, four minutes even. You know, every minute counts. You're not going to sit there waiting for Microsoft to get back to you. You go to US Cloud in 20, 23, 94%. That's almost all of US Cloud's clients reported saving 1/3 or more when switching from Microsoft unified support to US Cloud. Better, faster, less expensive. From Fortune 500 companies to large health systems, major financial institutions, even federal agencies, US Cloud ensures that vital Microsoft systems are working for over 6 million users globally every day. Now, if I haven't convinced you, maybe this will help. Who uses US Cloud? Big brands. Caterpillar uses US Cloud. HP uses US Cloud. Aflac, Dun and Bradstreet, Under Armour, KeyBank. Even the IT folks at Gartner have chosen US Cloud for their Microsoft support needs. I heard an interview, I wish I have to act this out. I heard an interview with an IT director and he says, and within an hour US Cloud responded with I want to say, four engineers. So not only did they bring the right people to the call, they brought the cavalry. I just felt like, wow, that was amazing. That was unlike anything I had experienced with Microsoft in my eight years of being with Premier here, we made the right choice. That's the quote. When it comes to compliance, of course no one gets it better than US Cloud. ISO, gdpr, ESG compliance. For US Cloud, these aren't just regulatory requirements. These are their strategic imperatives. They drive operational efficiency, they drive legal compliance, risk management, corporate reputation. These are standards that foster trust and loyalty among customers and stakeholders. US Cloud takes this very seriously. The attracts investment, ensures long term sustainability and success in a competitive global market. I'm telling you, you need to call these guys. I'll tell you what, here's what you do. Go to uscloud.com go to the website, book a call, just talk to them. Find out how much your team can save. Get the, get the lowdown. When I talked to him, I was blown away because, I mean, I'd never heard of these guys. And I said, everybody needs to know about US Cloud. So now you know. You have no excuse. Call them. Uscloud.com Book a call today. Get faster, Better Microsoft Support for less. USCloud.com now you know about it. There's no, there's no excuse. USCloud.com all right, on we go with this fine radio program. I like to pretend I'm still doing radio.

[Richard Campbell]

Come to you lot.

[Leo Laporte]

Coming to you live from the basement studios of the United Twit Network. Let's see what's next.

[Paul Thurrott]

Somebody says, paul, why don't you like Walmart? It's because I've been there.

[Leo Laporte]

No, Walmart's good. You get some good stuff at Walmart.

[Paul Thurrott]

I told the story in the discord. My wife made me go to Get a Christmas present for, like, a babysitter at one point or whatever. And I'm walking through hell's waiting room, you know, and I'm standing in line with all these people, and I called my wife, and I was like, you owe me.

[Leo Laporte]

So where was it that you and your son would wait outside when the new Call of Duty came out?

[Paul Thurrott]

Best Buy.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, big difference.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. Those are quality people. Not like the scumbags over at Walmart.

[Leo Laporte]

It's right next door. All right, so today Apple shipped the dopiest update ever. I just want to show you my picture. According to the new Apple AI.

[Richard Campbell]

You look enthusiastic.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm happy.

[Paul Thurrott]

A little bit like that shooter guy, actually, with those eyebrows.

[Leo Laporte]

How about this one? Yeah, it's my Luigi impression.

[Paul Thurrott]

So my wife and I are using Apple and those pictures for our picture on Eternal Spring now.

[Leo Laporte]

Really?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you. But you've been using Mid Journey, and you've been using Copilot. You've been using all of these AI things. The apple is so paranoid. I think about, you know, deep fakes and stuff that they really make cartoony.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're purposely cartoony. And like Pixari, one might say. If you want to.

[Leo Laporte]

Here, let me take a. I'm going to take a picture of you guys, and we can. We can just do a little thing here. Here. All right, this is gonna. This is gonna be good. This is gonna be real good. All right, I got a picture of you guys on here. Now I'm gonna use this photo.

[Paul Thurrott]

So it doesn't. It doesn't do great with multiple people.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, maybe that experience. Maybe that'll be a problem.

[Paul Thurrott]

I had to cut it up to two individuals, but yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So here is Paul as a superhero. I can't really.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It's more like an astronaut.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not actually. It looks a little bit like a wizard.

[Leo Laporte]

You still got that awful smile.

[Paul Thurrott]

I look like Nate Bar.

[Leo Laporte]

Nate Barette as Superman. That's exactly what you look like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

They all have this goofy look.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry.

[Paul Thurrott]

I had a hard time getting one that kind of captured the. Like. Mine was kind of easy, but getting it to kind of capture my wife's. I don't know, it's called, like, Essence or whatever. Was actually very difficult.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that looks like you. Yeah, that's closer. It's more you than Nate Bargazzi. I can make you a race car driver, but you see, so it's additive. So I now have Paul as a race car driver. Superhero with fireworks.

[Paul Thurrott]

I like it.

[Richard Campbell]

Starting to pile up.

[Paul Thurrott]

Throw a windows logo on my chest. And we have a winner.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, I mention this because Apple is clearly terrified of AI, Unlike a certain company we cover here on the show at Google.

[Paul Thurrott]

What?

[Leo Laporte]

No, that's next show.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Google actually just did a big update on Gemini too.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And I haven't had time to look at what's going on. Yeah. So Google announced Gemini one year ago, probably this week, and now they have Gemini 2, and I just don't have any. I can't really talk about it too. Too much because I just been so busy. I haven't had.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what's interesting? I don't know if Microsoft has done this, but Gemini.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Is now using current web information. So, for instance, I've been asking all these guys, like, what's the situation in Syria? Chat GPT says, I don't know.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't have any historic videos.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, Syria was founded in 1872, but, you know. Yeah. Thanks.

[Leo Laporte]

Turn up your volume. It says, why do I. Why do you want me to turn.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. So what's the current situation in Syria? This is a Gemini. I'll do more of this later. Oh, it still thinks I'm talking.

[Richard Campbell]

Sounds good.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is where I have to tell Siri to shut up when no one's talking to you. Stop.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me know if anything comes up. All it got was, I'll do more of this later.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Never mind.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, that went well.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll talk. Google's ads are sad, where they have poor lonely people talking to the chatbot as if it's.

[Paul Thurrott]

You saw the Apple. Apple Intelligence ads where it's like this loser at work, like, fakes his way through a meeting because of AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, guys, what is with these big companies? So Microsoft's not doing that. What's this Copilot vision? Tell me.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, Microsoft is doing that. So Microsoft. Microsoft invented that? Leo, I don't even know. No, no, not really.

[Leo Laporte]

You mean with Clippy?

[Paul Thurrott]

I see.

[Leo Laporte]

You're an idiot.

[Paul Thurrott]

So the story a year ago November, Richard and I were at Ignite, and we were like, there's too many co pilots. Yeah. And now there. There are too many co pilots. Like, and it's actually not even co pilots. It's like co pilot features or features that use the word co pilot in the name, where you're like, what the. What is this thing? So Copilot Pro is the subscription for consumers. That's like copilot for Microsoft. 365 on the commercial side. Right. And they're testing, I guess, a Feature with a limited audience of people in the US only who subscribe to Copilot Pro, which has got to be an audience smaller than the audience of people who are using Snapdragon computers, frankly. But okay, fine. And it's only available in Edge. But the idea is that you're browsing with this thing and it looks at what you're doing. Does that say sound familiar? And allow, you know, provides you analysis. So if you want to learn more. So the simplest version would be like a blog post about something. You're like, okay, actually this topic is kind of interesting. I'd like to know more about this topic or something. Right. So it's super limited. Microsoft has gotten the memo on the this thing is wrong all the time, maybe tone it down a bit kind of thing. So it only works for certain sites, it doesn't store personal data, et cetera, et cetera. So I haven't ever seen it. I can just go by what the pictures and video says. But the idea is that it's like every web browser on earth has this now it's basically you're doing something on the web and this can help you do more with that thing. Right. Context aware suggestions based on the thing you're looking at. So I would imagine that the big use case here is going to be shopping, right? That you're the example everyone uses. You know, I'm trying to find a Christmas present for my sister and blah blah, blah, whatever they use, they use this for recall. Actually. Yeah, I was researching pants. You know, I did the green pants thing, remember? Yeah. So that's to me is the big one. There will be other use cases for this but I, I feel like this is just, I think this type of thing to me is just becomes like it's a. Today it's a feature. Well, an experiment that will be a feature possibly in this paid subscription. Shouldn't this just be the browser? Isn't this a little bit like what the browser company was talking about when they talked about their new AI based browser that's coming out next year? This notion that it will help you do these things on the web instead of manually browsing around like a jerk or whatever?

[Richard Campbell]

Well, everybody wants to get in on your shopping traffic, right? That's where Google made their money.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, Yep. Yeah. No 100%. Yeah. And I get it. But this is going to be an example of. I'd be interested to know what the actual numbers are on this, but I feel like there's a huge part of the population that just does the thing they do, which is usually just go to Amazon and search for something there. And I don't know that they're out on the web doing comparison shopping. If you've ever used the shopping features in Edge. I just complimented Edge earlier. Honestly, sometimes it's pretty good. But the majority of the time you'll be on whatever site like on Amazon. It'll be like, hey, we found a better place price for this thing. You're like, okay, great, you can save 30 cents by buying a used version on ebay. And you're like, okay, so you are not helping.

[Richard Campbell]

Let me show you.

[Leo Laporte]

Because Apple Intelligence in theory is doing this, but guess what? They're using Google. So let me show you. Yeah, watch this. So if you press and hold the camera button. So I'm going to take a picture.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of my microphone now you're talking about the. This is the vision. What's this feature called? Vision Intelligence.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, and then they have a search button. So I'm pressing the search button, but the search button searches.

[Paul Thurrott]

Searches. Google.

[Leo Laporte]

Google. It says checking with Google. And by the way, all the answers are wrong.

[Paul Thurrott]

But it probably uses your default search engine. I assume you Google. Oh, that's a good question. You might want to change it to something else just to see what it does. But I bet it goes to your default search engine because I don't think there's a thing there for Google search engine.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm going to say use Bing, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Sure.

[Leo Laporte]

What could possibly go wrong?

[Paul Thurrott]

Somewhere there's a server with like a rusty hinge that's turned on for the first time in seven months. Searching with Google.

[Leo Laporte]

It doesn't search with Google.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, that's fascinating. Okay, there you go.

[Leo Laporte]

They made a deal. That's why. And if I ask, there's ask button and a search button. Ask goes to chat GPT.

[Paul Thurrott]

Interesting. Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, so, well, this is what I look. Curating the best AI for the job is one thing that Apple, you could see them doing that as a service, right? I mean, that's their kind of.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me take a picture of you, Paul, and see what I. If I ask, I'm gonna say ask.

[Paul Thurrott]

Who is this jerk?

[Leo Laporte]

I am saying, who the hell is this? I don't.

[Paul Thurrott]

They could be like, is this a ring doorbell? You should call.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, wait a minute. Look at that. Says this looks like a live streaming session.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, interesting, huh?

[Richard Campbell]

Might be the live. In the corner of the screen.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're like, Brendan Fraser has really gone to see giveaway.

[Leo Laporte]

You do look like Brendan.

[Paul Thurrott]

What's happened to him?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, without the fat suit.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's. Well, I'm working on it, so.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, a lot of people are gonna be playing with this. It just came out this morning, so. Yes, and ironically so did Advanced Gemini. Advanced just came out this morning.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, it's kind of weird coincidence, the Apple Intelligence stuff. This is the bigger release, right? You already showed off the Image Playground thing, which I think is pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

So you use that for your Christmas cards?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, not for the Christmas cards. We have that Eternal Spring site.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So we used it for the little like the little face logo thing or whatever on YouTube. Actually, I don't think I've switched it on YouTube yet, but it's on like www.eternalspringcdmx.com. whatever. What am I saying? Sorry, I lost my. Oh, yeah, so chat. Chat. Oh, it's just a little like a little logo thing.

[Leo Laporte]

But you used Apple Intelligence to do this?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, yeah, I did it on the Mac.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, I had like the beta, you can just click. You don't have to just click through the bottom link.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I say, no thanks. No thanks. Yeah. Oh, look, that's cute.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we made like a little tchotchke out of it.

[Richard Campbell]

Awesome.

[Leo Laporte]

That's cute. It looks like you guys sort of. Yeah, in a creepy, weird way. Oh, here's the big. Here's the logo here up in the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's not. I can't get it big.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's. It's small. Anyway, it's not.

[Leo Laporte]

All right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Let'S see. And then the writing.

[Leo Laporte]

I want the fake picture. All right, go ahead. I'm sorry, I'm.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's worse of it. I mean, to me the biggest. The biggest things are what you already talked about, which is Image Playground, Visual Intelligence, which by the way, if you're an old school Microsoft guy, it's been around. I remember that Lumia. Nokia had a. I think it was called Lumia Lens or.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Google had Google Lens.

[Paul Thurrott]

Google did. This might have been one of the first ones where you were out in the world and it would actually show a pop up. So if you like in front of a storefront, it would say this is the store here. The hours, whatever it was.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's cool.

[Paul Thurrott]

It was kind of like an AR kind of thing on your phone. So kind of an early whatever, which I thought was kind of cool Chat GPT integration, but without requiring you to sign in. And it's supposedly anonymized and all that kind of stuff. So cool.

[Leo Laporte]

But yeah, not the $200 a month version of Chat GPT.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, that's the, That's. Yeah, that's the free version.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Well, if you subscribe, you actually get the paid version too.

[Leo Laporte]

But I mean, I, I pay for the 20amonth. I'm not.

[Paul Thurrott]

Everyone's making fun of this 200amonth thing, but I look at it like a McLaren kind of car. Like it's not for everyone one. But if you can afford it and you think you need it, it's there. And if you look at that and you laugh or you think it's ridiculous, it's not for you. Just don't worry about.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a classic anchor high mechanism, too. Suddenly 20 bucks looks very reasonable.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's right.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a Malcolm Gladwell thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So Google announced Gemini 2 on the same day that we all knew Apple Intelligence was coming. Google, or OpenAI, announced Sora, the kind of general release just a couple of days after Google surprised everyone with a preview of something called veo or veo, which is their generative AI video creation tool.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you feel like the horse race, everybody's kind of neck and neck?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I do. But you said something earlier that I actually think is key to just general AI. And this goes back almost two years now from when Microsoft did that Bing, that thing. And I was like, you know, Google's been working on this for a long time. They have the search engine. They're going to be the ones that put that together. I've been confused why this has not really happened yet. You know, there's things they've done so far, like, here's some AI stuff at the top of search results. And then here's. And it's like, no, guys, come on, like, intelligently look at the thing. People are asking, and then reply accordingly. So it sounds to me like that's what they're starting to do in Gemini. And I think that's really smart. I think that's a key advantage for them. And I didn't write this up, but there was an interview with Sundar Pichai recently where they asked about Microsoft and that competition and AI, and he said they're not even using their own models. I was like, okay, Pretty good. Pretty good is Richard. Are you okay, Richard? Yep. Oh, good. Okay. You were so still.

[Leo Laporte]

He's thinking.

[Paul Thurrott]

I was like, like, he has dropped off the Internet. You were literally not moving. You're like a. Like one of those people who pretends they're a statue and then scares the kids. Like, you were just like, you were just bush. Yeah. You were just like a cowboy guy.

[Richard Campbell]

Nope. Staying on the microphone. That's all.

[Leo Laporte]

So Om Malik wrote a very interesting piece on his blog that's saying basically what you're saying, that browsers are dead, that searches gonna be. Browsers and search are gonna be.

[Paul Thurrott]

I hope he mentions this ARC thing or whatever it's called.

[Leo Laporte]

He did. It's as if that was an interview with the head of the browser company.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Oh, okay. There you go. So I have to say we'll see what Google does. And obviously there are regulatory concerns here as well to think about, but I do feel like Google's the one company that has all the parts in place. It's really kind of up to them to not do this. Right. Google should change Chrome to be this thing that helps you browse and whatever. Like, helps you do the thing or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

This is his new newsletter, Crazy Stupid Tech, which is a pretty good name for a tech newsletter. But, yeah, he talks about his own experience. This is one of the things I love about ohm. I mean, he's been around as long as we have, so he really. He knows the history. And he talks to Josh Miller, who's the founder of the browser company, about dia, this next thing for them. And really, he says, this is the next step. Browsers will be replaced by something. I don't know what AI.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'd have to go back and look this up. But I had written an editorial some months ago based on what Ark was doing at the time, where it was like, this is the most. We just talked about this, the most important, important application on all our devices. There's been no innovation there whatsoever. The most innovative thing is there are, like, smaller browser makers. They're like, I think we're just going to block ads and stuff by default. You know, we're not going to let trackers through. We're just going to do that. And it's like, that's awesome. But it is weird that the fundamental UI has not really changed at all. We have tabs we browse around.

[Richard Campbell]

And the customer is not asking for it either. Like, you really have to have an original idea.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And make it compelling and work with the existing Internet.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, that's true. That's true. Which if you haven't done it, it's worth watching that video that the browser company made about DIA and what they talk about, the kind of, the foundational work that they're building.

[Leo Laporte]

But they're still using a browser.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just the AI clicks things.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's no, you should go. I would go watch this. They're trying to fundamentally change the browser. I almost feel like we're going to call it a browser because that's what makes people comfortable a little bit or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

You've used their arc search on iPhone, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that what they're talking about?

[Paul Thurrott]

That's a component of it. So that's the. You ask it a question and it does kind of a nice formatting thing. Like what is a latte? As though I always use the same example. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

What is a latte?

[Paul Thurrott]

Like a bulleted list with pretty pictures. Explains exactly what it is. It provides links to the sources and all that kind of stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

And it has browse for me buttons.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

So gives you an actual AI synopsis.

[Paul Thurrott]

So for this kind of question, because there is an answer to this and a dear God, if someone could just tell Duncan Donuts the answer. They have no freaking idea. But anyway, there is an answer. There is. Objectively, there is one answer to this question. And they could, they can give you the answer now if you want to know more, you can go find out more or whatever. But.

[Leo Laporte]

And they give you those links.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, and. But I think that's what people are looking for for that kind of question.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's what you said, but that's what's gotten them in trouble because they're not linking back to the source so.

[Paul Thurrott]

Much as just giving you the great screen scraper in the sky. I mean, I, Yeah, they're going to get in trouble for this kind of thing, but that's what people are looking for. The more nuanced question, like the one you asked earlier, what's going on in Syria? This is something you could ask five times over the day and you might get a different answer because things are changing.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. But you won't get an answer for AIs that are not connected today to search to the cloud. Right. That's the differentiator. Perplexity has been doing that forever. That's what the Perplexity search does.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I'm not proposing that this product I've never used or seen is going to solve all our problems, but the browser company guys, and I think Google should do this as well. Microsoft, whatever, should look at these use cases and say Microsoft is doing little pop up things and sidebars and all this stuff and it's like, well, okay, but at some point maybe this thing needs to fundamentally change. Like sometimes I am just browsing the web and that's what I want, but sometimes I'M asking a question, I want an answer. Or sometimes I'm writing something in an online forum or whatever it is like a word processor and I need your help with that thing and it should do something a little different or whatever. And I think that's what we're struggling with right now. And I think this is, this is the time. I think AI is good enough or whatever. However you want to say, it has evolved enough, whatever that I think it will change. It's not just browsers, by the way, but browsers being the most important app. Microsoft got a lot of pushback when they changed the basic UI for Office. Remember in office 2007 with the ribbon. Ribbon bar, which I think most people will look at now and say, yeah, no, I mean, we don't even think about it. It's like, who cares? Cares? But at the time, super controversial. And that was a mature product where people would have said. And I said, you know, it's word processing, it's a spreadsheet. What are you going to do? Like, who cares? But I want to keep adding features.

[Richard Campbell]

But I don't want to show them all to you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Ribbon or like, the truth is I just want to get something done here, you know, and maybe like, I'm a writer, so I might not want those writing. The writing help, but I might need help with using a spreadsheet because I only use it once or twice a year or with presentation, because they only do that three or four times a year. And I think that those are, those instances are where AI, I think could help.

[Leo Laporte]

Richard, do you do that with your presentations? Do you bring in AI, or do you just go down to the library at Madeira park branch and take out a few books?

[Paul Thurrott]

You're right.

[Richard Campbell]

No, I read a lot of Internet.

[Leo Laporte]

But you don't have an A.I. kind of summarize. No, it's risky because you could get bad information.

[Paul Thurrott]

There are technical tools like if, then, if this, then, you know, whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

If this, then that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Or the power. What do you call it? Power apps. Type stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Zapier. Yeah. Yahoo Pipes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. There's all kinds of things like this, right? So these are not Yahoo Pipes. These are not. I miss Yahoo pipes.

[Leo Laporte]

That was a great. That was a great tool.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm. Ahead of his time.

[Leo Laporte]

Ahead of his time.

[Paul Thurrott]

It really was made up pipes. He was the guy who knew that aren't going to reach a mainstream audience. They're just too technical. But the notion, like I use Winget to batch install apps on every PC I use. Right. This is not something like, my wife's never going to do this. I don't care how easy I make. Well, maybe if I made it easy enough. But I'm not going to hand her a PowerShell script and be like, here's how you run it. It's not going to work. But maybe this kind of automation stuff. Stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

I did write a PowerShell script, but I put it behind an icon. It's like when you click on that, it will do the thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. I think that's valuable. I can be valuable depending what it is. Right. So one of the D examples is make me an email. It saw that you were browsing for some gift across multiple tabs. Please send an email to my wife. I want to get her opinion on which of these she thinks is the best choice for whoever the gift is for. For. And it makes the email. In the email program he uses, he doesn't have to tell it because it knows and it has a link to each one of the things in the name and it's nicely formatted and he can edit it before he sends it and yada, yada, yada. Is that useful? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Is it? I mean, I don't know. It's not the way I do things, but I don't know. Maybe.

[Richard Campbell]

Did I use a remote access script to be able to mute her speakers from the other room because she leaves the music on when she goes to lunch?

[Leo Laporte]

Why, yes, that's a good use for home automation. I like.

[Richard Campbell]

It's just a little icon on my desktop.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it say silence?

[Richard Campbell]

I've seen the truck leave, the music's still on. I'm not going over there.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm just going to throw this in as an aside because as a relationship expert, I feel the need to jump in the middle of this, that these things are all pros and cons. And when it comes to the person you've chosen as your spouse, the goal is for there to be more pros than cons. And that that thing may be irksome.

[Leo Laporte]

You solved it. You solved it with a button, by the way.

[Richard Campbell]

I am not.

[Leo Laporte]

Today is all because some guy at Cambridge University didn't want to walk down the hall to see if there was coffee in the coffee pot.

[Paul Thurrott]

God bless him, you know, so little.

[Leo Laporte]

Things from little things. Spring streaming.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, exactly. So there you go. So generally. And then there's a bunch of Gemini crap coming to your pixel Richard, which you can enjoy or try to ignore.

[Richard Campbell]

I haven't even looked at it. It pops up ever. Often wanting to Tell me about it.

[Leo Laporte]

And I'm like, yeah, no, hey, hey, here's an idea.

[Paul Thurrott]

You could use this instead of Google Assistant, the other thing we make that's exactly the same. Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

Which I.

[Leo Laporte]

It is a little confusing.

[Richard Campbell]

Turned off, too.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, but it is a little confusing. Like, you know.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I think these transition periods are tough. I think this is part of the problem. You know, you gotta get used to the branding, for one thing, and the whole way it looks and what it does and yada, yada, yada. But, you know, Pixel has a image generation tool as well. Same thing, a generative AI image creation tool.

[Richard Campbell]

It's integrated into the Home Assistant phone client now. So instead of needing the separate audio devices in the house that you have to talk to. And sometimes they work, sometimes doesn't. She now knows, hey, if I pop open the Home Assistant app and click here, I can give the command to turn off the Christmas lights.

[Paul Thurrott]

And, yeah, my wife would sit in a room with a couch and a table and an Apple TV remote. Tv, for two hours. And then I'd get there and she'd be like, could you turn on the tv? You know, it's like, yep. I mean, I can.

[Leo Laporte]

Lisa uses it as a. As a weapon, actually, against me. She'll say, well, I would know how to use a remote if I ever got access to it.

[Richard Campbell]

I stopped taking the remote. I programmed the remote into my phone. So now I have.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, no, no, I said have it.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's yours.

[Leo Laporte]

Go ahead.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you can have the remote.

[Leo Laporte]

Learn the remote. It's fine. It's all yours. I don't need it anymore. I have it in my phone. All right. Is that everything that we wanted to talk about is. I feel like.

[Paul Thurrott]

So who can say? Thread. I know. We've all lost the thread.

[Richard Campbell]

We did skip the Surface stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh. Oh, yeah, Surface.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, yeah. Just real quick. So Microsoft is not going to make any more Surface Studio. This is the giant.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I know. Isn't that sad? I suck.

[Richard Campbell]

I never wanted their computer. I always wanted that screen.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. And that's what everyone says. And so I mentioned this earlier in the show. I can't remember the context, but I've watched dozens of videos of sessions from Ignite, which is something I do after every big Microsoft show. Right. And two of them were Surface sessions, and one of them, I wanted to reach through the Internet and strangle this guy. But it was just like, like, this is the journey we've been on. Like, that kind of talk. You want to just, like. Just, like, beat that out of them.

[Richard Campbell]

But anyway, sing it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it was terrible. So. But it ended. And then they have a Q and A. And at first, the first thing is like, hey, you know, I wish you guys would make a screen. It's like, yeah, we've been talking about this for 12 years. Everyone wishes they would make a screen. Screen. The problem with the screen is that when you look at the Surface Studio 2, 85% of the cost of the computer was the screen. It's super expensive, so I don't think they've ever gotten ahead of that. So there was Surface Studio, Surface Studio 2, and then 2 +. I want to say, I don't remember if I had 11th gen. I think Intel's a little behind.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, they weren't that new.

[Paul Thurrott]

And so someone asked about this at this. At Ignite, and the guy just. Oh, I just. Oh. Because I knew they were never going to do it. He kind of said, like, oh, we listen to all the feedback. You know, keep it coming. Like, you never know. And it's like. And then they killed the thing, like, two days after I watched the video. And I'm like, I swear to God.

[Richard Campbell]

He must have already known it was dead.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. He knew. Got to be kidding me. So yikes. Anyway, that's upsetting to me.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't. I don't feel. I feel for a guy who knows his products dead, but he had his time slot and he has to do it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a tough thing to do. Yeah, Yeah, I was. I loved that first one, and I wish I could have afforded another one.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no, it's a beautiful computer. I don't personally have a lot of reason. Pull the thing down and write on.

[Leo Laporte]

But you're an artist, though. I wonder if you as, like, could use it as a drafting tape. Could have used it as a drafting table, sort of.

[Paul Thurrott]

Maybe. I still feel like that situation is handled well enough by, like, a Wacom tablet or.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. Well, that was what they were trying to replace. We actually, when it first came out, we gave our engineer Patrick Delahandy's wife, Svetlana. We had her sit down because she does children's books and she illustrates. Yeah, she really enjoyed using it. But she didn't buy one.

[Richard Campbell]

No, I enjoyed that much.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

I think she's welcome.

[Paul Thurrott]

My Surface as a business has not been particularly successful. Right. So they have this one kind of breakout product, the Pro, which has done great, especially since version three, where they got the three by two and everything. Right. And then they have things like. But they probably should have like Surface Laptop. It seems like they should have to have, you know, something like this. I don't think people are buying a lot of desktop computers outside of the gaming space. So you know, when I look at it and I think Surface and I. Yeah. I think stripping it down to the ones that make sense kind of is the right approach and not to have a million different products and you know, logically it's like they probably shouldn't have this thing.

[Leo Laporte]

But it is too bad they knew better than us. They may not have. They may have sold five in the last six months.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, I think. I bet they. Yeah, they were lucky if they sold that many. It's too bad because this thing was a neat kind of imac alternative that was unique capabilities.

[Richard Campbell]

It was a Halo machine. Right. It was like, here's a high water reference mark. Priced accordingly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, well.

[Leo Laporte]

And it was using. Remember they bought that big. What was it? This big screen touchscreen company.

[Richard Campbell]

Surface Hubs.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Which they still have.

[Paul Thurrott]

Pixel. It was Pixel Art or pixel. Pixel. No, PixelSense. Or is that the.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't remember but that's what they were using in. In the small. It was a smaller version of the Hub. So that was.

[Richard Campbell]

They made a 15. They still make. There's a surface now.

[Paul Thurrott]

There's a 54 inch and an 80 something inch. Yeah, they still make this.

[Richard Campbell]

The 85 is like 30 grand. Like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we tried to buy one and.

[Richard Campbell]

For a long time you just couldn't get.

[Paul Thurrott]

Couldn't buy them. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Because it was the replacement for the projector in the meeting room. Right. Like that's what people wanted them and.

[Leo Laporte]

That'S why they still make them. Because I'm sure there are a lot of.

[Richard Campbell]

Their demand is unbelievable.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And that was a thing. They had their own OS and now you can put Windows on it. You know, they just. It's like, look, it's. It's Windows, you know, like.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Pixar Vision was added. It.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know the name of PixelSense was the name of the display.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Or the display technology which I think they still use as a. Google had.

[Leo Laporte]

A similar device which they had killed a couple of years ago. So.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yeah. Which had a silly name.

[Leo Laporte]

It looked like a play school.

[Paul Thurrott]

Did it begin with a J or something like that?

[Leo Laporte]

It had some silly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it looked like an easel. Like a.

[Leo Laporte]

You could roll it around. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, but that's, you know, in the. In the world where Chromebook makes sense, which is education, like make a low cost Costs, thing like that. Like actually that something like that probably does make sense. Or it did make sense. I bet they announced it in February 2020 and then that was the end of that.

[Leo Laporte]

Display business may be too cutthroat for these big guys. I mean Apple still does. They only make the one display. Yeah, they used to make a lot of.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, but this is. How do you not partner with someone who wants to do this and let's do it.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, here's the more salient point. Every vendor out there who takes displays has looked at this and they see the demand and nobody's made one.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a reason.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, you don't see three by two displays are not a thing. You know, curiously for the best, but.

[Richard Campbell]

Also just the drivers for the pivot. Like all of that stuff. None of this is easy.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I really liked that though.

[Paul Thurrott]

Boy.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it is attractive.

[Leo Laporte]

What can you do now?

[Paul Thurrott]

AT T Mobile get four 5G phones on us and four lines for 25.

[Richard Campbell]

A line per month when you switch with eligible trade ins.

[Paul Thurrott]

All on America's largest 5G network. Minimum of 4 lines for 25 per line per month with auto pay discount using debit or bank account. $5 more per line without autopay plus.

[Leo Laporte]

Taxes and fees and $10 device connection.

[Paul Thurrott]

Charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement due bill credits end if you pay off devices early. CT mobile.com this holiday season, surprise everyone on your list with the best gifts. Tickets to see their favorite artist live. Choose from thousands of concerts and comedy shows, including Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Matt Matthews, Metallica, Thomas Rhett, Trans Siberian Orchestra, Sarah Silverman and so many more. Share a memory together or give a gift they'll never forget. Find the most exciting gift for every [e-mail] gifts. That's livenation.com gifts.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you're watching Windows Weekly. I hope you really like us and you will continue to tune in. We, as I mentioned, we have a show next week that will be the Ugly Sweater Show. I'm warning.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. The ugly sweater from Microsoft this year.

[Richard Campbell]

By the way, drape some leds on.

[Paul Thurrott]

Me or something if you've not seen it.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's not. Is it?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

They did a beast.

[Paul Thurrott]

I like that they're celebrating their failures on the sweaters.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, they do this every year and it's always sold out before I find out about it because I always Want one?

[Richard Campbell]

I think it's all employees that buy them up. Honestly.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sure it is. Capicella always had. Yeah, you know, it's had it. Wait a minute. No, this is wrong. What is this? I went. I searched for Microsoft ugly sweater, and I got this for $1.99. What is it used?

[Paul Thurrott]

Are you using Bing or something? What's going on?

[Leo Laporte]

There's something really wrong with this because it's the $99, and I don't want to buy it. Stop it. Go away.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but just buy it.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what? I just. Windows ugly holiday sweater. Oh, it's in the Xbox shop. That's why.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's see. Let's see this use. Is it really the red ring of death?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, it is.

[Leo Laporte]

It's invisible so far.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's actually a lot less elaborate than previous sweaters. Like the XP1 I thought was kind of fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Something wrong.

[Paul Thurrott]

Paint computer.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just.

[Richard Campbell]

It won't show so funny.

[Leo Laporte]

I might have to turn off the rock says I am not gonna. You should not. Let me just turn off the ad block and see. Nope.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's funny.

[Richard Campbell]

$4 billion.

[Leo Laporte]

There is nothing at the Xbox Gear shop that you want. I just. I don't believe you that it's the red ring of death, but I guess I might have to take your word for it.

[Paul Thurrott]

So just Google it. Just. Xbox Ugly Sweater 2024. We'll do it. Good.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God. It's hideous.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's not good.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my goodness. Let me. Let me paste this link that Kev gave us.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Even the choice of colors is.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. It's terrible. Well, that's the point, right? I mean, it's Xbox colors.

[Leo Laporte]

And then is this, like, a piece of plastic on your chest that turns off and on?

[Paul Thurrott]

I hope so. I don't know. It's funny.

[Leo Laporte]

Truly horrible.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's not good.

[Leo Laporte]

All right.

[Richard Campbell]

Had an article on it.

[Leo Laporte]

That's where I'm. That's where I went. Because they couldn't find anywhere else. So I will always.

[Richard Campbell]

Only for sales of Microsoft employees.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, well, that's it. Okay. They finally realized that Chris Caposello.

[Richard Campbell]

And then no Leo.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

I muted myself.

[Paul Thurrott]

Every time it fails, then I'm like, is it me?

[Leo Laporte]

Is it me? Is it me? This is Windows Weekly. All right, let's do some Speaking of Xbox. Speaking of red rings of death, let's do some Xbox stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

Paulie, there's some news this week. IFixit is selling official Xbox series X and S repair parts. This is kind of a big thing in our industry now where you can get like the toolkit and whatever, you know, rights parts you want, motherboards, power supplies, wifi, whatever. So it's kind of fun if you like to get inside stuff that you shouldn't be getting inside.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's there.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm actually kind of curious to try this one out. So, Fortnite, last week, or Epic Games last week, announced a 5v5 first person.

[Richard Campbell]

Shooter, the normal 20. This is what normal Fortnite is what, 20v20, isn't it?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. It's not like the OG Fortnite. I believe it's a game mode of the most recent version of Fortnite. Yeah. Which I don't actually play. So I'm kind of saying, yeah, probably. But I know it's not. Well, I think it's not OG Fortnite.

[Richard Campbell]

I think it's going five by five is very Counter Strikey. Right. Like, that's what.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, well, very Call of Duty as well. Right. I mean. But yes, given the graphics, it's hard not to look at this and think, like, Overwatch or Counter Strike, maybe. So we'll see. In fact, it's going to start in early Access today. Ranked and unranked modes. One map. They're just testing it for now, but then they're going to add maps and weapons and all kinds of other stuff. But, yeah, that's kind of. This is the. This is a full circle moment.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. Like, the question is, is this harder on them or easier on them? Like having 40 players on a map versus having 10 players on a map, but you're going to have four times as many instances because you've got 10 players per map.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know. I mean, it's.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm thinking I'm such a back end guy. Right. Like, that's immediately what I think about it. So that scale, how well is that going to scale?

[Paul Thurrott]

I feel like Fortnite is like just a kitchen sink, you know, like, they just throw everything at it now.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a money maker.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. The engine for this is not a trivial problem. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

I love it that you think about.

[Richard Campbell]

The back end, Richard, immediately. It's exactly where I go.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a back end guy.

[Richard Campbell]

This is the phone call that I would get. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, say I look at it and I think, think, would this be better than Call of Duty? I don't know. I'm not a big fan of War Zone or what do you call it? Like, Battle Royale type games.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

But like. And this is a. It's five by five, five v five. I. I think when you get killed, you're dead until the next round. But it's only five people, so.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. It's not gonna take that long.

[Paul Thurrott]

Waiting 30 minutes or whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. One guy with a well placed rocket launcher and it was time to take.

[Paul Thurrott]

Out the whole team, I think.

[Leo Laporte]

It does have rocket launchers, by the way. Of course.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of course. I mean, it's, you know, so. I don't know. We talked a little while ago about the OG Unreal Tournament and Unreal being made available for free. I mean, we need a game like this. So it looks. I'll definitely take a look at it.

[Leo Laporte]

I love it that you can dress like the bad guy in the Matrix in a suit and tie.

[Paul Thurrott]

It looks like every other character in John Wick as well. Right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's John Wick, isn't it?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I don't know what it is, but. I don't know. It looks. I think one of the things about first person shooters is that you want to hit some kind of a nice middle ground between quality graphics and then just the performance.

[Leo Laporte]

This doesn't look high quality graphics. No, but it's more like radio or something.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but I think that's the. Right. That might be right.

[Leo Laporte]

Because you're moving fast.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Because in Call of Duty, if you don't have a really good system, it just looks like garbage. Garbage. Like, just make it so that it looks good everywhere, you know, and it's secondary to the performance, I think.

[Leo Laporte]

Ballistic.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's pretty good. Not to be confused with. What was it called? Eck versus Ballistic or whatever the thing was. The movie. Terrible movie. Tony Banderas, anybody? No. Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

Only you.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I was talking about.

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft has been testing the ability to stream your own game with a limited subset of whatever games you might have purchased to your console over the cloud. And they've expanded that. It's still in the Insider program, but it's a bigger audience and I want to say it's a bigger. Is it a bigger list of games too? It's in more countries. No, no, no. Yeah, so you have to have Xbox Live. Xbox Live? Yeah. Sherpa Xbox Game Pass ultimate, which is the more expensive one that supports game streaming, obviously, but it's still in the Insider program. So it'll be a little while before that becomes available to everybody. But it's happening, so that's good. Valve, which is owned by. Actually no, Steam, is owned by Valve. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

That's right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Valve. The Makers of Half Life, it's privately held company. Gabe Newell.

[Richard Campbell]

Billions.

[Paul Thurrott]

Billions. There used to be something called Steam Machines. Remember this? It was kind of a semi open platform. Steam Deck. Steam Deck has taken off pretty. It's doing pretty good and now doing well enough that several PC makers and hardware makers are making Steam Deck like portable gaming PCs with you know, the controller on either side of the 7 to 8 inch screen. Right. I think these new Zen 5 processors are ideal by the way for this kind of device. Good battery life, et cetera, et cetera. Awesome performance. But there have been some leaks recently where it seems like Valve might be bringing back this Steam machine platform, you know, using Steam Oet like the same system.

[Leo Laporte]

That's good because I have some wrinkly shirts and I could really use it.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't think it's that kind of a Steam machine.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I could imagine this being something like, you know, like Linux, like you just put it on whatever. Like I have a mid level, whatever PC that's not doing much. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

They had their own doors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Why open the door to compete with your own device? Right? Like maybe because.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, because making hardware isn't a great business necessarily.

[Leo Laporte]

They make more money I'm sure in the, in the game license licensing, you know. And the Steam Deck has a small screen. I mean the reason I don't use a Steam Deck is the screen is too small.

[Richard Campbell]

7 inch is not big enough for you?

[Leo Laporte]

No, I got a 55 inch monitor.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's where I was going to say I can game on an iPad but I have to be like right up on it. Like I, I'm never going to play like a AAA game on a phone. I'm just.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought you were going to say I could game on an iPad, but I have to be drunk.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well no, college mobile's pretty good. Just saying.

[Leo Laporte]

I keep trying to play the Age of Empires because I love it so much but they've made it such a pay to play kind of a thing that I just, it takes the fun out of it.

[Richard Campbell]

Games have been insertified too.

[Leo Laporte]

They really?

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yep. Google Stadia controller which no one has thought about in a year.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not dead yet.

[Richard Campbell]

Well yeah, it might be pineapple for the fjords.

[Paul Thurrott]

They were allowing owners of these things to turn them into normal Bluetooth, which you should do control, which you should have done by now. But they're extending that time period for one more year. So you have another year.

[Leo Laporte]

I like it that you call it Bluetooth Conversion theory.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wasn't sure how that would fly, but, you know, whatever. It always works. That's all I know. Yeah. And we weren't born this way. That's all I'm saying, so. Well, in this case, you really weren't. You were born as a Stadia controller. Anyway, I read this story recently where Apple, when they were making the Vision Pro, had actually worked up controllers and then decided against it because it was too complex and they wanted one way to do everything and set your own.

[Leo Laporte]

Jony, I've did not want controllers.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that turned out to be kind of a big mistake because this expensive device might have flown with a certain class of users with money called gamers. So now there's a story. Mark Gurman has a story that they're working with Sony to bring the Vision Pro. Sorry. To bring the PSVR 2 controllers to the Gauntlets, which is kind of weird because I didn't. They. I don't know that they discontinued this or they. They're not.

[Leo Laporte]

I think they did. I think they did.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I'm not sure what's going on there.

[Leo Laporte]

We Talked about on MacBreak Weekly yesterday and my sense was they were going to go into old PSVR boxes and to break them off, take the gauntlets out of them.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, honestly. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's not. But.

[Leo Laporte]

But I have to say the Vision Pro owners on. On the show. Paul, I'm sorry. Alex Lindsay and Jason Snell both agreed that this is the right thing to do. You need to have.

[Paul Thurrott]

You do. Yeah, absolutely. This is something we found on HoloLens with Windows Media. Sorry, Windows mixed reality. Same thing like you. You do these pinch gestures or whatever and they're, you know, they work for some things, but when you need. Need whatever. Precision control, especially for game, obviously.

[Richard Campbell]

And spamming. Yeah. When you need to hit the key repeatedly, gestures aren't going to do.

[Paul Thurrott]

You need something a little bit better than that.

[Leo Laporte]

And Anthony Nielsen, who has a Vision Pro for some reason, he says scrolling is tedious after a while just by pinching. You need some hardware, that's all.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the company that said we're never going to put touchscreen on a Mac because doing this thing gets too tiring.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And we made a device where that's the only thing you do.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Just kidding.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, he says they are still selling the. The.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. I thought they. I don't know if they stopped like manufacturing them or something.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought they. I thought, I heard.

[Paul Thurrott]

I thought there was something.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It didn't. It's definitely did the first one, honestly, for what it was, did very well. And then the second one was more expensive, if I'm not mistaken, than the console, wasn't it? It was like stupid expensive.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I like the original PlayStation VR. I was very impressed. Yeah, this is fun. This is good, right? But you had to be sitting down, which was kind of funny. That's.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's probably the safest.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, believe me, that's why they did that. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then I, I threw this one in here because I'm just fascinated by this and I love that this is happening and this is not an isolated thing, but there's, there is actually a lot of this. But this past year there's been all this stuff like Atari refocusing on kind of game preservation, buying most of Intellivision and working, just kind of working on the older stuff. You know, the 20th anniversary of Half Life 2 falls into this category. I just mentioned the OG Unreal and Unreal Tournament. Epic games. Like, yeah, whatever. They're free, don't worry about it. Tied to this is there are a bunch of open Source projects on GitHub and other places that are also working on game preservation. I just highlighted two that I learned about recently and they're both the same. Right? And so.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, look, you've also appled your icon on the rot dot com.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, look at that. Like, okay, you're so cute. Look at that cutie bug. All right, anywho, not sure what happened there, but.

[Richard Campbell]

Sorry, went to a place.

[Paul Thurrott]

So the two games that I found out about recently are Medal of Honor, the original one, and this is the team that went on to make Call of Duty. They left whatever that company was to form probably Infinity Ward and made Call of Duty. But before they did that, they did Medal of Honor and a couple of add ons, and you can still buy this game and those add ons on like good old gamergog.com for like 10 bucks. And the second is, I think it's the first two versions of the original Tomb Raider, which have also been served by various remasters and remakes, et cetera, et cetera. But you can buy those games as well on GOG.com like 10 bucks for both or $6.99 each on Steam or whatever. So what these projects are doing is making these games work well on modern hardware, upskilled graphics, et cetera, et cetera. You have to own the game, right? They're not stealing anything. It's like you buy the game, you have the actual game, so you Paid for it. And then you use our installer and you'll get the better graphics and whatever. And I love this. Like, I think this is such a great idea. Like, I love this notion of, you know, keeping these older games going because they're still, you know, they're like Half Life, the original Half Life, or Half Life 2, or. Or that Black Mesa Conversion. There's a ray tracing update coming for Half Life 2 that I don't believe Valve is doing. I think it's coming from a third party and they're just like, yeah, do it. It's fine. Just put it out.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you ever play the predecessor to Halo Marathon?

[Paul Thurrott]

Marathon? Yeah, the Mac. So, yeah, Marathon was a Mac and.

[Leo Laporte]

Somebody has revived the Marathon trilogy. This is open source.

[Paul Thurrott]

Marathon might predate Doom if it doesn't. It was right around the same.

[Leo Laporte]

We were playing it in 96 on the set of site. Yeah. So I think it was probably right after. But I did.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. You had to have a Mac though, I believe.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it was a Mac game.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yeah. So I have plenty.

[Leo Laporte]

That was the beginning of the Bungie Saga.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, oh, wait a minute.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, because they did Halo after this.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. And that was in the first Halo demo. Was at a Mac event. Like a. Not wwdc, but what are they? Mac.

[Leo Laporte]

In fact, if you go back and play these old games, the one I'd recommend is the multiplayer marathon. It will feel very much like Halo in many ways.

[Paul Thurrott]

You'll say, oh, yeah, that's not surprising because if you've ever played Destiny also plays a little bit.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's true too.

[Paul Thurrott]

Just a little bit.

[Leo Laporte]

Like reasons.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Oops. It's funny.

[Leo Laporte]

Richard's reaching over to get his. I think he has a Master Chief mask he wants.

[Richard Campbell]

No, I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

Nope, nope. I don't. I was getting whiskey glasses.

[Leo Laporte]

I forgot he's all about the back end. Never mind. He's not a front end. Front end kind of guy. He's getting a whiskey glass. You know what that means? We're getting close to the moment you've all been waiting for. The back of the book, kids. And oh boy, he's emptying the whiskey glass now.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, that's clearing his palate.

[Leo Laporte]

He's clearing his palate properly. There might be trouble. Back of the book just around the corner. Along with Paul's Tip of the week. The app pick of the week. The Run as Radio pick of the week. It'll be Richard's brown liquor Pick of the Week. An interesting unpronounceable name.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. We're going to make some attempts at pronouncing these. I practice them repeatedly.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

So that I'll have a chance.

[Leo Laporte]

I do want to mention before we get into the back of the book how important it is now to us that you join Club Twit. We've been looking at revenue projections for 2025 and it doesn't look really good right now. And like, like zero, like we got nothing. So we expect that some people come in late and so forth. That's happened last year. But really, really, we're down to some tough times ahead. But the bright light is our club. So far, 12,000 people have joined the club, which is fantastic. It's been pretty flat for the last six months. Maybe that's the most we'll ever get. I don't know, maybe that's all of the people who really care. But I know it's only about. It's less than 2% of the monthly audience. So I figure there must be a few more of you that care. And if you do join the club, it is more than of course you're going to get some benefits. It's $7 a month. We looked at maybe raising the price, but you know, I want to keep it affordable. It isn't a paywall. It really is just a way of supporting what we do. There are benefits. You get ad free versions of the shows. There is video for shows like Paul's Hands on Windows that we only put out as audio in the public and stuff like that. But if you like what we do and you want to keep seeing these shows and I'm including all the shows that we do, we're going to need you to participate. My goal before the end of the year, to get 5,000 new members. Honestly, the membership we have pays half of our pay payroll. Not even all of our payroll, just half of our payroll. And that's not including me and Lisa as owners. We don't get to take anything until there's a profit and when there's no profit, I'm up in my attic. That's what happens. So please, if you will consider joining Club Twit. Lots of benefits. We do have a two week free trial if you want to see what it's like before you join. You also get access to the Club Twit Discord and we are doing a lot of events, events in the Club Twit Discord coming up tomorrow. Actually, it's Chris Marquardt's photo segment that we, we do once a month with Chris, his photography segment. Mike is going to do his crafting corner tomorrow morning. He's actually building some tiny kitchen or something. But you could do Lego, painting, crochet. Doesn't matter what you're doing next week. And I'm reading this right now and I'm loving it. Stacy's book club will feature James S.A. corey's brand new series. He's the guy did the Expanse. He started a new one, the Captives War. This is book one, the Mercy of Gods. Highly recommend it and if you're a fast reader, you have a week you could read it. So that's fun. We do the book club every couple of months. Lots of other things going on in the club. The Discord is a great place to hang. I really, really, really enjoy the Discord. But the main reason you join the club is because you want all of our shows, including this show, to keep on going. And if you like it, please do me a favor. Be a great gift by the way, for somebody for the holidays. Oh, we don't have a card or anything. You'll have to make your own card. We do have a referral program though, so if you join you get a code. You could put in your socials and everything saying hey, join the club and you'll get a free month for everybody who us. Twit TV club Twit.

[Paul Thurrott]

Time's almost up on holiday shopping and so are amazing deals at Amazon. You'll save so much on early holiday gifts for the kids like arts, crafts, games and tech. You'll have money left over for some new board games to boost the kids confidence. Ah, you won again. Or that multi voice changing megaphone so you can really spread the chin. Happy Holidays. Oh what fun it is to save. Shop new deals added every day now at T Mobile. Get four 5G phones on us and four lines for $25 a line per.

[Richard Campbell]

Month when you switch with eligible trade ins.

[Paul Thurrott]

All on America's largest 5G network. Minimum of 4 lines for $25 per line per month with auto paid discount using debit or bank account. $5 more per line without autopay plus.

[Leo Laporte]

Taxes and fees and $10 device connection.

[Paul Thurrott]

Charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement due bill credits end if you pay off devices early.

[Leo Laporte]

CT mobile.com doom came out 12-10-1993 so we are actually at the 31st anniversary of the release of Doom.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't that something? It just Means isn't that something something. And marathon came out December 21, 1994. So it was also. It was 30 years ago. Yep, big time of year I guess for releasing games. Time for the back of the book. Mr. Paul Thurat, you got a tip for us?

[Paul Thurrott]

I do, although I just got a an RSS update from Microsoft Learn that told me that they're deprecating another Windows 11 feature nature.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh geez.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which nobody knows anything about. It's in my book. But it's called Suggested Actions.

[Leo Laporte]

What's it called?

[Paul Thurrott]

Suggested Suggested Actions. I'm not drinking, I promise.

[Leo Laporte]

Dina Menzel. Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, so like if you write a phone number or a date in like notepad and then highlight it you'll get little pop up window with actions you can do like call the number with different apps that are compatible or open it in a calendar app or whatever. And yeah, nobody uses this thing. It's going away. So future version of Windows 11 it's getting rid of that. It's not really a tip, just a.

[Leo Laporte]

Little head is that good or does if nobody knows about it that means.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm going to be able to remove one page from my 1200 page book. So that'll be nice. That will save it. Yeah. So tip of the week is I've started publishing my kind of end of year wrap up some of these things. I've broken out into bigger articles. That intel thing came out of that. The. What was the other one that was in today's show? The where is it? I don't remember. Who cares? Oh the. No, not problem. No, I can't find it doesn't matter. Anyway I'm breaking things out. But some of the things are just like single articles. So I'll do something probably about devices, something about books and audio books. But I did my podcast episode, my favorite podcast, 2024 and then like every year I do like a list of the new apps and services and games and stuff. The podcast one is kind of interesting because you know you get those end of year wrap ups from like the services like Spotify et cetera. So I use Pocket Casts and Pocket Cast told me that the top five podcasts I listen to.

[Leo Laporte]

You listen to a lot of shows, Paul. I'm impressed.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well I do and I don't. You know it depends you know. But rewatchables which is amazing if books could kill. And then number three is a little.

[Leo Laporte]

Podcast called.netrocks.net Rock Run his radio right behind it. So you.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah I do like books could kill.

[Paul Thurrott]

Books could Kill is amazing.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice amount of snark there, I guess.

[Paul Thurrott]

And they're super smart. Like what the thing I like about that show is like one of the guys will read like one of those airport books or whatever, like a four hour work week and the other one is not. And then they just talk about it live. And Yeah, I. The fact that these people can come back with what they come back with is.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Astonishing to me.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I like the. So the rewatchables is like a. It's a sports caster who has the Bill Simmons he started.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

He's legendary network that was bought by ESPN is amazing. From Boston. So there's a lot of Boston stuff, but a lot of sports stuff. So there's like these sports humor in this show that I think would be over most people's or would just, you know, you just don't. If you don't know the sport, you're like, what are they talking about? But there was one episode they were talking about. It was Mr. And Mrs. Smith, a movie with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. During that time they were actually getting divorced.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it's like, what do you. He's like one of the guys says, what do you get when you divorce Angelina Jolie? It's like you get Jennifer Aniston in a second round draft pick. He's like, what is. He's like, what is this? It's like you didn't. Like, you're not winning. Like, you know, it's just this stuff like that. Like. Or like there's like the. The Big Chill. There's a tag football game in it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

They analyze it like it's an actual football game. It's classic. I love it. Anyway, that's a good one. The other one was just app services, blah, blah, blah, whatever. By the way, Leo Ia writer, which you know from the Mac is kind of garbagey on Windows. They're coming out with a major new version.

[Leo Laporte]

They just announced it's a great Mac app.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's an awesome Mac app.

[Leo Laporte]

If you like Markup.

[Paul Thurrott]

And I do. And I pretty much write exclusively in Markdown.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry, I said Markup. I meant Markdown.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I know that. I put it in my mouth. So I just repeated.

[Leo Laporte]

It was my goal. That was my goal just to screw you up.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's okay on Windows, but they just announced a major 2.0 complete rewrite. Awesome, awesome, awesome looks. And so you have to sign up to get on it. But anyway, I've been using Typora and then also Visual Studio code for the books. But some of the big stuff this year, like I switched to Proton Pass for password management Clipchamp Premium. I actually pay for it to get 4K output and cloud storage, which is actually the biggest one. I did the Affinity v2 universal license. So I get all their apps across all the platforms they support, which is really big. And then I kind of mentioned, you know, Edge before I wrote about that was the other one. It was Edge. Like I switched between browsers really realistically speaking. But I was, you know, right before I wrote this I was like edges, Edge is like it's not garbage. Like it's actually pretty good. I don't know what happened there.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, this is a nice idea for a year end article. I like this, the apps that you use. Yeah, I like it, you know, because.

[Paul Thurrott]

It, I noticed like I don't two, three years ago all of a sudden like because you know a lot of this, if you go back and look at pictures of my desktop from like 15 years ago, it's you know, standard, you know, most of the apps you would expect. And then like I don't know, two, three years ago it started changing a lot, you know, and last year and this year, but last year especially it changed a lot. There's a lot of, of lot of shifting there, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

So anyway, now this is by the way a feature of the premium thorat.com so subscribe so you can see you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Don'T get in my head unless you pay for it.

[Leo Laporte]

You gotta pay for it, buddy. Nothing's free.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I wish there was a better system, I really do.

[Leo Laporte]

But it's fine. You deserve it. You work hard. You know, if you can join the club, you can can join thorat.com There you go.

[Paul Thurrott]

You need a whiskey Club Richard speaking.

[Richard Campbell]

I might be getting that way. Huh?

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, the curated Richard, you know, monthly subscription.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you get the advent calendar this year?

[Paul Thurrott]

What?

[Leo Laporte]

What?

[Richard Campbell]

I said one to, I sent one to Paul. I wasn't going to send one to you.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I didn't want one because what I did last year, I had a couple of the bottles and I gave it to my brother in law.

[Paul Thurrott]

It made literally have just arrived. My wife literally poked her head and said there's a box here.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you're only 11 days behind so if you drink quickly I'm gonna, I'm.

[Paul Thurrott]

Gonna catch up on during the show. Hold on, I'll be right back.

[Leo Laporte]

It was a nice gift. It's a very nice gift.

[Richard Campbell]

And I went Scottish again.

[Leo Laporte]

But I think that's the Way, you're gonna go Scottish again in a moment. But first, yeah, let's talk about run.

[Richard Campbell]

As raid, bringing back one of my regulars, Angela Dugan, who I've known for many years. And she, funny, she's been in and out of Microsoft several times now. She'll go off and consult for a while and work for an organization and then got roped back into a different role inside of Microsoft. So she's back in again and she's working specifically with the M365 folks with government, with GSS. And so I had been chatting with her separately and she talked about that the GSS is getting to the point of saying, here's what's required to use M365 copilot pilot in government, city, state, county, federal and so forth. And so I'm like, wow, we should talk about that. Because if government can find its way to get to some organizational level of data to be able to use co pilot, then any of us could, you know, so really fun conversation. And it's. I mean, it's all the same kind of problems. It's just their metrics are really interesting because it's about serving constituents and how quickly can you get to a response to the benefit of the constituent. And so they're really set. Sensitive to that. These tools can answer questions quicker with the right operator. So that's the direction we went into. And then just this whole. That government has its own version of OneDrive, their own version of copilot. Like there's a lot of rules around all of that. So if you want to know how government's doing it, that's how they're doing it. I know you're impressed.

[Leo Laporte]

I am very impressed. And I had my mic turned off, so you didn't hear all the oohs and ahs that but a very impressive. And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for some brown liquor.

[Richard Campbell]

Ah, yes, let's. Let's try and pronounce some names there. The easy one on the bottle is Tobermory, which is a. Which is a town actually on the Isle of Mull. The word underneath there, you can see it. It's L, A, L, E, D, A, I, G. The die. It's actually pronounced.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sorry, why are we even discussing that? Obviously.

[Richard Campbell]

Which is Gaelic for safe haven. So this is one of the very oldest distilleries in Scotland. It's on the Isle of Mull. And if you. That's one of the Inner Hebrides Islands, the second largest island, the largest being sky, which is where Talisker is. Mull is just north of Jira and Isla. So which isla being the third largest island. It's. There's only about 3,000 people on the island. It's not very heavily populated. It's kind of tough country there. Although there's been farming there. They found evidence going back into the Bronze Age. So there been humans around that area for sometimes there's a. There's a remains of a fort called Dunard Gaggle which made me think like Lord of the Rings immediately.

[Leo Laporte]

It's spelled Sa. Yeah, but it's pronounced Gal.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, but it's from like 600 BC so predates the Romans and so. But the Tober Mori was. Was formed as a fishing port in 1788 and then a fellow by the name of John Sinclair, who was a kelp merchant because they were farming kelp in the waters off of the Mul Sound, wanted to establish distillery and so he put together Le in 1798. So only 10 years after the town was formed formed, they had their one and only distillery. It was probably a mistake because this distillery has a very checkered history. So he started that up like in 1798. It was shut down by 1837 and stayed shut down for 40 years. Wow it. He dies, a new owner takes over in 1878. It changes hands several more times after that. The Distillers Company, which is one of which eventually becomes Diageo, takes it over in 1916, mid World War I, when there's not enough grain to make any whiskey anyway. At the time they had a lot of light up barrels that they were making into a blend they called Old Tobermory, although the name of the distillery was Leek. Then of course 1930 hits prohibition. The US market tears everything apart. So it shuts down in 1930 and doesn't reopen again until 1972. So another 40 year shutdown. Like I'm really stretching that. They put 1798 on the bottle, right. Like you guys were closed for almost.

[Leo Laporte]

100 years with a few intermissions.

[Richard Campbell]

So the new group that takes it over again calls the Lechig Distillery in tobermory. And then three years later they showed shut down. And in 1979 the Kirk Leven Property Company, which is a consortium of a Liverpool shipping company and also a company that makes sherry and some other overseas interests now fully call it the Tobermory Distillery and they stop referring to le, which nobody can pronounce anyway and they operate for a whole three years. 1982 they shut down again.

[Leo Laporte]

My God, it's snake bit.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And having not been able to pay their taxes, they actually sell off the rack house across the road from the distillery, which gets made into apartment buildings. And then 10 years later, Byrne Stewart Distillers. These are the folks who own Bun Habit and Deanston, which is also around Isley and Campbelton. Take it over in 1993. So this is proper whiskey operators that know what they're doing. They are making a. A sweet single malt there that they use in blend in their blends. So Burn Stewart makes a blend called Black Bottle and they're using it for that. But they decide to start making Lich in 2007. So bring back this peated whiskey. Bernstein gets acquired by the Distel Group, which is out of South Africa. They're the ones who actually own Heineken and they scale the facility up. So now today they can put out about a million liters a year, which is not a huge distillery, but it's substantially. They run on pretty standard. They were for many years kept their iron mash tons, but they switched up to stainless steel ladders which are more efficient. They use Doug for washbacks. Only four of them. They have two sets of stills and unlike most distilleries, their wash and spirit stills are about the same size. They're both 16,500 liters, which is considered in the smaller side. But normally the wash still is about 50% bigger than the spirit still because of yeah, deals. But the large spirit still was an intentional thing. I suspect it's lost in the history. They've probably just got a deal on the size, but it makes for a slower reflux, so really it puts some character into the their style of whiskey. Depending on which they really make two different products. They age in both bourbon casts and sherry casks. Because they have no storage, all of their barrels actually get shipped to the Deanston storage, which is on the mainland, so it's a hundred miles and a ferry ride away. Again, this distillery is remarkably questionable. And then they make two different whiskies. They make Tobermory, which is a unpeated single malt, and they make Lechig, which is a peated malt. Now it makes sense to make a peated malt on the Inner Hebrides islands where the trees don't grow particularly well, but there's lots of peat, so it's inexpensive. That's your cheap fuel for drying your malt. Which is why. Why the sky and islet, all these islands make Peded malts. These days of course you have other ways to make heat with electricity so it's not that big of a deal. But if you're going to make both a peated and an unpeated whiskey in the same set of stills, you have to clean out the still after making peated whiskey or everything tastes like peat. And so literally the Tobermory distillery does a split run. Six months of making Tobermore the unpeated stuff and six months of making lechig with peat in it. And it takes two weeks to clean the distillery to do the switch. Wow. Why? You know it's. They just sort of gotten to this place now. And what's legit about this? This is a 10 year old peated whiskey. It's not as pale as an ARD bag tin. It's got a little more color. They don't color, they don't chill filter. This is a normal peak peating. It's about 30 to 40 parts per million of phenolic content that would be considered a normal peding as opposed to.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

It's normal. It's a normal medium peat. Right. Like octomore can be 150 and that's like a burnt ashtray got smacked into your face. Right. Like you don't want that. But this is nicely pd. Like this is. We, you know we've got the fireplace running here now the, the pot bellies running to heat the house. House. So you want to have some smoke.

[Leo Laporte]

Because it's smoky anyway.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And this is not poke your eye smoke. This is. Yeah. No, there's a fire. Right. You're being heated by fire. It's got lots of fruit flavors in it too. Like it's really a little sweet and smooth. A little bit of heat coming down. This is a Christmas time whiskey, 100% you know and not particularly expensive. You can, you can find this in the US runs about $60 46.3% so that's up there. But I would also point out this is not like a cast strength or anything. They're keeping that number there so they don't have to chill filter. So it doesn't go cloudy with a bit of ice. Not that I'd put ice in this. It, you know you're there for the peat. Just drink it. It doesn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

They.

[Richard Campbell]

You don't really want to do anything else with this at all. Although if I was going to have some fun this would make, this is a nice whiskey whiskey to make a burnt martini with.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah.

[Richard Campbell]

So just take a little Splash of this whiskey, swirl it in the glass, and then drink it because it's whiskey. It's good. And then make your vodka martini, which is to say just cold vodka. And you'll have that little smoky hint of a burnt martini.

[Leo Laporte]

That's interesting. Instead of a vermouth, use some.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. A burnt. Is done with. With a scotch wash. And this scotch is particularly well suited.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, so. And that's not a bad thing, is you're not whisking any whiskey. But it was fine. It was one of those finds in my local liquor store. And I'm like, oh, I've never talked about those guys. And it's the only distillery on Mull at all. So that. That's it. And like I said, it's kind of debatable whether it should be there, but it's there.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you go in and say, hey, give me the Le Chig. Or did you say, hey, you have any of that Ladague?

[Richard Campbell]

No. What? I was looking at the rack, and I said, what is that. That point.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the. That's the solution.

[Richard Campbell]

Then. And then I noticed it was on the Isle of Mullen. I was like, oh, well, that's one of the. That's one of the Hebrides Islands. I've never talked about that. Let's go get it.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, I'd always keep my loop app on my phone to just double check if I talked about this. But this one, definitely not. And then I'm looking at the name, I was like, there's no way that's pronounced Ladeg. So I looked it up. It's like, it's pronounced Le Chig. And I'm like, why? Okay. Because Gaelic is fine. Funny.

[Leo Laporte]

The chick.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Pronounced.

[Richard Campbell]

So what? You know who you give this whiskey to? Someone who likes a Lagavulin or a Beaumar. Give them a peated whiskey they've never had. And it's legit. It's old school. It's made by pros. You know, the same guys who do Bunahaven, but it's from Mull, and it's the only one. And it's not outrageously expensive.

[Leo Laporte]

It's very pretty. Look at the little island.

[Richard Campbell]

Did they make a TV show about. With that particular shot in it about. About the Isle of Mull there, so.

[Leo Laporte]

That it looks like Doc Martin would be shot there, actually. But maybe it's some other TV show.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And.

[Leo Laporte]

And this is the Boats where they. They bring it over to the other side for the barreling.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, in 1798, when they got there, they burned the boats. It's like, you're not leaving this.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't leave.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're here.

[Richard Campbell]

Population is. Like I said, it's only. It's a 300 square mile island. It's not that small of an island, but it's only 3,000 people on it. It's not a big place.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting. Oh, you've brought us a fun little taste of the Hebrides of the inner Hebrides. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And again, an island I hadn't spent a lot of time with because it was the only distillery. So it's great to have a find like that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And you know, for. If you're looking for a whiskey for deficient, who likes peated whiskey whiskeys, this will be special. It really will.

[Leo Laporte]

Very nice. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Paul. Sorry I silenced you during all of that. Were you trying to say things? I pushed the wrong button.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, I apologize, Paul. Paul puts in the chat. Why am I backstage, man? I want to be in front. Put me up front, man.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

It was my fault. No, no, I. It's very complicated.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a lot of buttons.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a lot of buttons and then there's different switches of here. And I've been doing that and I don't know what the hell, where am I going to show up. No one knows this. We do Windows Weekly on Wednesdays. And I know you know that because you're here right now. Unless you're not, in which case you don't know that. So that's what I'm telling you. Wednesdays, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1900, Utah. See, people can watch us do it live. Sometimes they like to before Kevin gets in here and fixes all the mistakes I made. You can watch if you're in the club, on our club, Twitter, Discord. Although honestly it's not Discord doesn't do a great job of streaming videos. So I think a lot of people chat in the Discord and watch on YouTube or Twitch or TikTok or X or Facebook or LinkedIn or kit. You can watch on all those places. If you can't be here on a Wednesday at that time, you can always get an on demand version of the show at TWIT TV WW for Windows Weekly. You can also see a YouTube channel that's dedicated. There's a link at Twitter TV WW. Go right to that YouTube channel. Great way to share clips. If you have a whiskey lover, maybe share that little clip with them and it Helps us promote the show going. You look very smart when you do that after the fact. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast client. Get it automatically the minute we're done. Now, next week there's a show. Ugly sweater day. Everybody wear your ugly sweaters.

[Richard Campbell]

Definitely.

[Leo Laporte]

I have a clippy sweater I shall wear.

[Richard Campbell]

I'll be running on my new rig. Paul wasn't here when I showed this.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. I'm very excited. Richard's going all road, baby.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. I'm gonna tear the. Tear this rig down this after tonight and I'm gonna rebuild with this thing and we'll see how it works for the last show of the year.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, boy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, good news. You get a couple of weeks if it doesn't work because we're gonna take Christmas and New Year's off Christmas Day. There'll be a best of though.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

If it really goes badly. You'll see me from the boathouse next week with the portable rig.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm out here. Is Richard in an outhouse.

[Leo Laporte]

What's happening? It's a boothouse. I think it's fine.

[Richard Campbell]

Everything's going to be fine.

[Leo Laporte]

It's going to be fine. No, it's going to. I use a Rodecaster duo for the audio and I'm very interested in this new.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I'm hoping my levels are finally high enough. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you can. Oh, you can crank this guy like crazy. So Paul Thurat [e-mail]. that's his website. Become a premium member and you get all sorts of great extra content. In fact, you also get the contents of his book. Or you can go to leanpub.com and buy the Field Guide to Windows 11. Windows 10 is inside. Always updated, which is nice. Or his book, Windows Everywhere, which charts the history of Windows through its development frameworks. Very interesting book. [e-mail] Richard Campbell [e-mail] that's where his podcasts are run as radio. And the show he does with Carl franklin.net rocks. And together they are the dynamic duo of Microsoft journalism. Thank you, guys. Have a wonderful week and I will see you next week on Windows Weekly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Bye.

[Richard Campbell]

Bye.

[Paul Thurrott]

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[Richard Campbell]

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[Leo Laporte]

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