Windows Weekly 925: It's the Shirt

Summary

Podcast Summary: Windows Weekly 925: It's the Shirt

Released on March 27, 2025

Hosts:

• Leo Laporte (Host)
• Paul Thurrott
• Richard Campbell

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1. Introduction and Episode Overview

The episode kicks off with Leo Laporte introducing the topic and the hosts, Paul Thurrott in Mexico City, and Richard Campbell in Redmond, attending a Microsoft conference. The primary focus is on the latest developments surrounding Windows 11 in 2025, the discontinuation of OneNote for Windows 10, and significant advancements in artificial intelligence (AI).

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2. Windows 11 Developments and Insider Program

Paul Thurrott dives deep into the recent updates of Windows 11, particularly the intricate changes in the Insider Program. He discusses the confusing build numbers and the parallel updates for different channels:

• Timestamp [06:31] Paul Thurrott: “Microsoft issued a new dev channel build with absolutely no features. Naturally, I wrote a 6,000-word blog post about this because that's what I do.”

Paul elaborates on the challenges faced with the 24H2 update, highlighting the architectural changes and the resultant bugs:

• Timestamp [13:15] Richard Campbell: “Yeah, so that now all of a sudden these different packs made no difference. They all had the same features.”

He underscores the unpredictability of feature rollouts, noting the lack of a consistent timeline from development to stable releases.

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3. Artificial Intelligence Integration in Windows

The conversation shifts to AI advancements, especially Microsoft's integration of AI in Windows 11:

• Paul Thurrott explains the emergence of "Copilot plus PC" features, which bring AI functionalities directly into the operating system. He mentions features like "Click to Do" and enhanced semantic search capabilities:
  • Timestamp [10:18] Leo Laporte: “Why is it less interesting? Did they hobble it?”
  • Timestamp [19:07] Richard Campbell: “But we'll get it, we'll look at this in a moment.”

The hosts discuss the uneven rollout of AI features across different hardware platforms (Snapdragon X, AMD, Intel) and the implications for users and developers.

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4. Microsoft 365 and AI-Driven Tools

Paul Thurrott addresses recent updates in Microsoft 365, including the introduction of reasoning agents like "Researcher" and "Analyst," designed to automate and enhance productivity for commercial users:

• Timestamp [61:22] Paul Thurrott: “What Microsoft has just announced is essential. They’ve come out with what we now call a reasoning model.”

These agents leverage AI to perform multi-step tasks, analyze vast datasets, and generate detailed reports, aiming to revolutionize white-collar work. The discussion touches on the potential impact of these tools on job roles and productivity.

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5. AI Coding Tools and Developer Productivity

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to AI tools that assist developers:

• Paul Thurrott introduces the Cursor AI Editor, a tool that analyzes entire codebases to suggest improvements, enhance code quality, and reduce redundancies:
  • Timestamp [105:08] Paul Thurrott: “I have a friend who's a developer in the financial services space... he started using it and he kind of came to me and said, I can't believe development is different now.”

The hosts highlight the transformative potential of such tools, emphasizing how they can streamline coding processes and serve as educational aids for improving programming skills.

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6. Deprecation of OneNote for Windows 10

The episode covers Microsoft's decision to end support for OneNote for Windows 10:

• Timestamp [77:53] Paul Thurrott: “Microsoft reminded customers that OneNote for Windows 10 is reaching end of support in October...”

Paul and Richard reflect on the fluctuating history of OneNote versions and the challenges associated with maintaining multiple iterations of the app. They express frustration over the lack of synchronization between different OneNote clients, which has historically led to user inconvenience.

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7. Community Engagement and Club Twit Promotion

Leo Laporte promotes Club Twit, an exclusive membership offering ad-free podcast episodes, access to a Discord community, and participation in specialized events:

• Timestamp [103:29] Leo Laporte: “We got an AI show in an hour...”

The club includes various interest groups such as the AI Users Group, photo enthusiasts, and home theater experts, aiming to foster a vibrant and engaged community.

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8. Advertisements and Sponsor Messages

Throughout the episode, advertisements are interspersed, promoting services like Melissa for data quality, Chumba Casino, Talkspace, and others. These segments are smoothly integrated into the conversation but are omitted from this summary as per the request.

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9. Personal Anecdotes and Technical Glitches

The hosts share light-hearted moments, including technical issues related to Leo's shirt affecting video sync:

• Timestamp [31:12] Leo Laporte: “We are also doing a little test to see if it's my shirt that's causing the sync problem.”
• Timestamp [51:33] Paul Thurrott: “Is everything on big? What's going on here?”

These interactions add a personable touch to the episode, showcasing the hosts' camaraderie and adaptability in the face of technical challenges.

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10. Closing Remarks and Upcoming Content

Paul Thurrott mentions upcoming shows, including a special episode with developer Jeff Hicks focusing on PowerShell and scripting best practices. The hosts encourage listeners to join Club Twit for additional content and community interactions.

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Notable Quotes:

• Paul Thurrott at [06:31]: “Microsoft issued a new dev channel build with absolutely no features. Naturally, I wrote a 6,000-word blog post about this because that's what I do.”
• Leo Laporte at [61:22]: “What Microsoft has just announced is essential. They’ve come out with what we now call a reasoning model.”
• Paul Thurrott at [105:08]: “I have a friend who's a developer in the financial services space... he started using it and he kind of came to me and said, I can't believe development is different now.”

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This episode of Windows Weekly offers an in-depth exploration of the evolving landscape of Windows 11, Microsoft's strategic AI integrations, and the broader implications for both end-users and developers. The hosts provide insightful commentary, backed by their extensive experience, making the content valuable for tech enthusiasts seeking to stay abreast of the latest developments.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat is in Mexico City. Richard Campbell's in Redmond for a Microsoft conference. We'll talk about Windows 11 in 2025. The end of the line for OneNote for Windows 10 and another big week for AI. A whole lot coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is twit.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. Episode 925 recorded Wednesday March 26, 2025. It's the shirt. It's time for Windows Weekly. Get ready winners and dozers. It's the time we gather together to speak with Mr. Paul Farratt from Thorat.com today in Mexico City. Hello Paul.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hello Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Hello Paul. Also with us but this time from Redmond Washington, the host of runners radio and dot net rocks, Mr. Richard Campbell. Why are you in Redmond, Richard?

[Richard Campbell]

That's the MVP summit and I was able to ping a friend at Devrel Studios and borrow studio C. You look great. Yeah, it's a great camera. It's a red dragon I think.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh my gosh.

[Richard Campbell]

And a road and estimates know Nice rig.

[Paul Thurrott]

I shot Brad with a Nerf gun.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that the, is that the event that you guys were building a a pillow fort?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, that was built that might have even been PDC back then.

[Leo Laporte]

That was a long time ago back.

[Paul Thurrott]

I found that video I that that video was on my YouTube channel.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh fun. It was fun.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Long Zeng fell asleep. We built a pillow for it around him and then we used it to. We dive bombed it when Mary Jo was interviewing Tom on. On the show actually.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you any good gets yet Richard? Any big shots?

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yeah, no I've talked to some phenomenal folks but it's all NDA so I can't really discuss anything we're doing here right now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Ah I mean just high level you.

[Richard Campbell]

Know kind of just there's some conversations about artificial intelligence.

[Paul Thurrott]

I knew it.

[Richard Campbell]

Heard of this. Yeah it's been a couple here and there a lot of preview of what's coming to build so.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I'm going to write an article. It'd be a good show exclusive Microsoft to discuss AI at Bill.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, no we're interviewing after this show on intelligent machines a longtime Silicon Valley journalist, Gary Rifkin. His new book is called AI Valley.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, I just pre ordered this.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Oh yeah, it's going to be. I was up to like the middle of the night reading it. It's really good.

[Paul Thurrott]

He. I was trying to remember why he, he factored into was the Netscape, Microsoft stuff or he.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, so he starts at the beginning. I mean, he literally starts with John McCarthy.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, I mean like in his career, like, oh, he's this.

[Leo Laporte]

He worked for Wired.

[Paul Thurrott]

Famous.

[Leo Laporte]

He wrote a bunch of books. He wrote a book about Bill Gates.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

Called something like why Everybody Hates Bill.

[Paul Thurrott]

Everyone's Trying to Kill Bill Gates. Or, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ask him if you could put that in the public domain so I can get it electronically, please.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, I will.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, because a lot of the books from that era, just paper only. They're, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I will ask him that. That's a good point. He, he refers to.

[Paul Thurrott]

He.

[Leo Laporte]

He calls Pascal Zachary his mentor. Refers to him.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's good.

[Leo Laporte]

One of the guys who got him into tech writing. But he also talks a lot about Microsoft and really, if I were to summarize this book. And of course we'll talk to Gary in a few hours and he can do a better job. But I would say a lot of it is how it looked at first, like it would be a kind of typical startup scene in AI with a lot of small companies. And quickly became apparent that it cost so much money. And Microsoft was very adept getting. He calls him Moose, Mustafa Suleiman Moose. Moose. And building up a really strong AI presence and then putting money into OpenAI to make sure it had the lock.

[Paul Thurrott]

That said, you know, I mean, it might have just bought itself. You know, it may have just prevented itself from falling behind.

[Leo Laporte]

But sometimes he's very.

[Richard Campbell]

Got to be in the race to win it. Right?

[Leo Laporte]

So he's very complimentary of. Unlike his book about Bill Gates, he's very complimentary about Satya Nadella and his kind of prescience in saying, you know, we really need to make the acquire Aqua hires and bring people in because we need to have our own AI efforts.

[Richard Campbell]

One would argue their advantage was really the Azure data centers.

[Leo Laporte]

Absolutely. That's where Nadella came from. So he knew the cloud was very good for him.

[Richard Campbell]

First he was the Bing guy, then he was President Server and Tools, which is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Then he was fresh meat, as I referred to him when I met him, as he was in. When he was part of the server.

[Leo Laporte]

Team, he said, it's funny, in the book, he's quoted as saying when he was 21, he did not want to come to the States. Yeah, he was very happy in India, but he got an offer he couldn't refuse. And so he did when he was 21. To get his degree and never left, obviously. But it's a. Yeah, it's a very. It's a really interesting book and it's a. It's the best so far overall survey of what's going on in AI. Although, I mean, it's out of date the minute it gets published, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's going to be like next Tuesday. Maybe it's sometime soon.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, I'll find out. I'm not sure I have a PDF. I don't have the book itself, but it's a good read. I'll save it for you. The electronics.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm going to buy it either way.

[Leo Laporte]

In fact, I'll ask. Send me the PDFs of all your books. I need it for research.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, well, I need it to feed it into the AI so I can get a summary of it and then I can write my review.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, that's another good question. When we talk to writers is how do you feel about AI adjusting your content?

[Paul Thurrott]

But we're going to talk about this. This is going to come up.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it all right? Yes, but first, window, let's kick things off. We'll get to AI and all that stuff in a bit. But first, Paul, let's kick things off with Windows 11 in 2025.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So this is a potentially going to call it pretentious. Pretentious. Is that a word? Weak for Windows?

[Leo Laporte]

Pretentious, contentious or contentious?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, portentous contentious. Well, it's always contentious for sure. Yesterday, I'm losing track of days, but I think it was yesterday Tuesday, which was also weekly preview update day. We'll get to that. Microsoft issued a new dev channel build with absolutely no features. New features. So naturally I wrote a 6,000 word blog post about this. Because that's what I do. No, because we had been waiting for that moment where dev and beta had been in lockstep 24H2, which was the signal that at some point DEV was going to split off and probably go to whatever the next Windows version is 25H2, Windows 12, you know, who can say? And that is what happened. So it's a new build number series, if that makes sense. So previously in dev and currently on beta, if you're in 24H2, the build stream, the build numbers are 26120, whatever. Right. They've moved to 26200, whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

You will be amazed and unpleased to know that it's still 24H2. Yeah. So we could speculate.

[Richard Campbell]

Will never die.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know it's not completely unprecedented, but it is somewhat unprecedented. It's unusual, certainly.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's likely that at some point this will become whatever, right? I mean, there is going to be another version at some point. But the reason I wrote such a long thing about this is that, well, originally I just went into this saying, okay, let me just kind of look at like where we've been and I can just kind of talk about where I think we're going. And it turned into something else entirely. Because last year was unique in the history of Windows in the sense of we're testing this coming version, versions, whatever, of Windows and we've never had a year like last year. So we know that 24H2, for example, there were two releases, essentially. There's one in June that accompanied the Copilot plus PCs, and then there was the one in October that was for everybody. Right. And of course in between then they kept updating it. If you were on X64 and wanted to get it, you could, I mean, you know, not difficult before it was officially released. And then of course there were also the copilot plus PCs themselves, adding another little element of kind of weirdness in there, because in the same sense that we have different features in Windows Home and Pro and then whatever other versions, we also have features that are unique to these copilot plus PCs and they're.

[Richard Campbell]

Plus also the ARM chipset on top of that. Like, they really did take a big bite last year.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, last year was the year that ARM finally became a mainstream concern. You know, it never was before.

[Richard Campbell]

It was always, you can get ISOs yet.

[Paul Thurrott]

But we did finally in October. You know, a lot of stuff happened last year. You know, they announced Recall as part of the new AI features. It was the only interesting feature at the time. And now I would argue that actually it's not the least interesting, but it's not the most interesting anymore. They were going to start testing that immediately and then they held off on that until November. Right. So not.

[Leo Laporte]

Why is it less interesting? Did they hobble it?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, because now there are more interesting features. Right. So if you look at the set of Copilot plus PC features that originally shipped in June, most of them were.

[Richard Campbell]

Just not very anything.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, to me, the interesting feature now is something called Click to do, which they did not reveal until September ish. Last year it was described as a feature of recall. And it is something that exists in recall. In fact, that's how they first tested it. But within a month or two it was just added to. Well, this is part of the story. It's not out in public, but in preview. It is available just anywhere in Windows. So you hold down the Windows key and you click anything on the screen and does the AI sparkle thing. And then they have actions related to text and images that you can do on whatever it is you're looking at, right? So it works with everything in Windows. If you have a Copilot plus PC that's enrolled in the dev channel that you know that is running Snapdragon X, it's like a whole series of whatever. And this is what last year was like, right? So I almost had to remind myself of this. I don't know how you guys cope with things that are negative in your life, but for me, not explicitly as a strategy, it's just the way it works out for my brain is I just forget, you know, like I. My brain can hold so much. And so I know vaguely, obviously I have this notion of the history of Windows and all that stuff in my, in my head. But last year specifically, like going back over this was almost like reliving trauma. I was like, oh my God, right? Like this was really, it was crazy, right? So because they didn't go to 25H2 or 12 or whatever, right. I kind of looked at this and I was like, all right, so we have, there are actually three, I guess we call them branches of 24H2 in the world, right? There's 26, 100 series builds. That's general availability. That's what's unstable. Like if you're running Windows and you look at Winver. Actually this is not one of those. It's running. Oh no, Is it? No, this is on a. Yeah, this is on a dev channel. So it's 26.100, whatever. Okay, fine. If you are running the beta channel now and the device channel previously on 24H2 it's 26120. And if you have gone forward with the dev build, as I have now on two computers, it's 26200, right? So actually I left out one of the things that was unique about last year. The other thing that happened was 24H2 came out only for Snapdragon X based Copilot plus PCs mid year.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

But at the time 23H2 and 22H2 were both mainstream supported, stable versions of Windows 11. And I don't remember now off the top of my head when this happened, but at some point last year they started making it so that the end user features in each of these Releases were identical. Right. That was one of the big stories from last year, actually. Right, right.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So that now all of a sudden these different packs made no difference. They all had the same features.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. I mean, 24H2, Microsoft has still been very vague about this, but was actually a major Windows release in the sense that they made a lot of architectural, kind of foundational level changes.

[Richard Campbell]

I had run as shows where Microsoft people said point blank, this is a new operating system.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but they don't really talk about. They do sometimes, but you don't. There's no. Something this big. You think there'd be some huge documentation or whatever it is that explaining all of the ways in which it's different. The way that a normal user might sort of have a hint at that being the case is how many bugs there were. Right. So 24H2 was also unique in that super buggy. Right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Even the final Release, the initial October 2024 release is the version where that menu goes up off the screen in File Explorer. That was the shipping version they had been testing, I think, for several months. It's super buggy. And even today there are stories, not every day, but every week, where, oh, this thing is still being blocked. You can't get it for this reason or this thing is there. Whatever. They're still kind of trying to catch up with that. And I think it's tied in part to these changes they made at a very low level. Right. In October, I believe it was 22 H2 went out of support. And then today, for the most part, 23 and 24 H2 in stable are roughly identical. Are a handful of features that are not present in 23H2 and possibly and vice versa. The big one is the context menu stuff. So if you right click in File Explorer or on the desktop, I should say right click a document or a file of some kind, you get those. Remember the hieroglyphic little icons at the top we all complained about for two years? They fixed that in 24H2. So they have text labels, but that's still not fixed in 23H2. I guess it's coming. They had a delay at. Or whatever. Anyway, with all that as background, that's about 3,000 words of that article, I guess.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I spent hours on this. I went back to September right before 24H2 hit X64 and I looked at not every single Update to Windows 11. This would have taken a couple of days, but because my machine well, now two machines are in the dev channel. I just looked at Dev channel. So this leaves out some stuff. This leaves out new features that were introduced for Windows 11 that maybe went into other parts of the Insider program and not to dev, which does happen. New features that went to Windows 11 with no testing, which absolutely happens. Standalone app updates. Right. We know that Copilot was updated several times in this time frame. Just that one app. And that's not the only app.

[Richard Campbell]

And they weren't as like 24H2 updates. They were just across updates.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. So actually I should say too, if you look at the Insider program like I did, and I was speaking of trauma, they will in this app and we'll discuss this later in the show too, obviously there are these new builds that come out. This is a new build for Dev or Canary, whatever channel. But they also say, well, here's an app update for Paint or Photos or Snipping tool or whatever it might be. And it's not specific to a channel. Like sometimes it will be all of the channels. It's going out to all insiders, which is kind of a hint. It's probably coming soon. Right? Right. Or it will go just to one or two and then it will go to one or two more and then we're getting there. Right. So one of the things we've talked about a lot on this show is this notion that it's not always logical to us anyway. You know, when I look at the Insider program, I think, okay, well, you're going to first the outs. You're going to start in Canary. It's going to work its way through the program. Right. It's going to go to dev, it's going to go to beta, it's going to go to Race Preview. And that's got stable and it doesn't always work that way. So I spent hours on this. I went through every single again dev channel only inside a preview build and documented every major ish feature that they introduced in that build. And I went all the way from September through the other day. The other day was easy. There were no new features. Some of them have many new features, some of them are several, whatever. Then I went back and I looked at on Microsoft Learn, there's a page that tells you all of the features that are in every monthly cumulative Windows 11 update. So when I had so for example, in the September one, one of the things that was in there is Windows Sandbox 2 in preview that arrived in a build in late September 2024, it was released and I have the name of it. I'm not going to read it here. It doesn't matter. But KB, whatever, November 12th still is a preview. So that thing is actually in stable now. It was in testing for roughly two months. It's still in preview in this case. But that's kind of unique. And then I did that for every single feature. And what I came up with at the end was most of the features they tested did make it into Windows 11 at some point. There's no rhyme or reason to it. There's never a trend where on average new features take about two months to get from dev to stable. That's not how it works. They're all over the map. But there's also a really long list of features that have not been released. Right. If you're in the dev channel, you can access these features today, but if you're unstable, you cannot. And that list is very interesting to me because I think that list constitutes what is this next version of Windows. Right. Whatever we're going to call it. And there's all kinds of questions about things like will copilot plus PC features come to PCs with GPUs? You know, this stuff we talk about. But.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

The fascinating thing to me was coming up with this list of features. I spent the better part of the day on this and I finally published it. And all I could think was I got to go back and do this. For all the other channels, there's got to be more. You know, like this is a partial list. But anyway, a lot of it is Copilot plus PC only. Some of it is still Snapdragon X. Only one thing that has been consistently true, and I think this speaks to this arrangement with Qualcomm we don't really know much about, is that new Copilot plus PC features always go to Snapdragon first. Always. At least so far. Okay. And then they will eventually make their way to x64 ARM and Intel. Some of the newest ones have not yet. Right. But you know, things like Recall. Recall came out with Snap to do in November in preview. It still has not hit stable, but sometime within the month it also went to AMD and Intel. Right. But Copilot plus PC only. They added features to it over time. They brought click to do outside of Recall over time again, Snapdragon first, eventually AMD intel app actions. There's all this stuff, but the list is kind of interesting. Not all of it is humongous. I mean for sure, like our major. But I think the recall click to do App action. The modern hello Windows hello experience. Right. A lot of the app updates that are specific to copilot plus PCs paint photos. I don't think stepping tool, I think stepping tools for everybody. Search with semantic indexing. Right. So this is a AI search. Right. Essentially. Right. So it was interesting to see that this thing evolved over time. First came out on Snapdragon only for I think it was documents in the cloud, meaning OneDrive and then eventually went to Photos in the cloud. Then it went to though any kind of file locally as long as the Windows was configured to index the drive. It eventually went to AMD and Intel and there's actually a plug model in there where third party cloud vendors can plug into this. Not yet, but will happen. So if you have Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever, they can choose to support this and you can use Search in Windows. There's multiple interfaces to search in Windows. Right. So there's the search pane that comes up which is tied to that search box that you may or may not have in your taskbar. There's also Search in File Explorer. Right. And so these features went to each of these things at different times, different platforms, whatever. They're still not stable. But interestingly in that case. And we'll get it, we'll look at this in a moment. But the release preview build that just went out I think also yesterday has this feature. So this is actually going to hit stable pretty quick, you know, so it's kind of to me, I mean you.

[Richard Campbell]

Still don't see an order like they don't follow their so called rules of.

[Paul Thurrott]

Going through depth and no rules.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

First rule of Windows 11 dev, you know, Insider Preview is there are no rules.

[Richard Campbell]

Good luck. Yeah. And I wonder if it's just different teams approach differently. Like there's a lot of different contributors going into that stack. But yeah, I mean, where's the gatekeeper?

[Paul Thurrott]

So back when Windows was the or a primary concern at Microsoft, I think it's fair to say, yeah, gatekeeper. I was going to use the term wrangler. There was a per. There was a Jim Elchin, there was a Steven Snofkier. It was somebody who was old.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like back in, you know, someone's like, all right, let's get this stuff together. Right. I think these days you're probably, I don't know, I mean I'm just going to speculate but I think what you just said is essentially correct that yeah, we got a bunch of stuff coming in from different areas. They all have this kind of marching Order like if you can figure out some AI something something, we'll take it.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, that's definitely seen throughout all the teams right now. Listen, you better have AI in there somewhere.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, like again, this wasn't part of this thing that I wrote and I really, I kind of want to go back and do this. But like, you know, you think about something like Notepad, right. So Notepad, semi controversially, although honestly I think they've handled it well, has adopted these AI features. So you can do rewriting the poem thing I was talking about, etc. When that first appeared in preview or in beta or whatever, we don't really have those terms anymore. But in the Insight through the Insider program, I, I guess I sort of assumed it was a Copilot plus PC specific. Right. Because that's where I saw it. But actually those. I'd have to look that one I'm not 100% sure that is either out now in stable or will be any second now. And actually it works fine on a non Copilot plus PC if you have it. And the reason it does is it hits the cloud and it uses those AI credits if you have them and eventually if you use it enough. The. I keep using this Venn diagram thing for some reason, but the Venn diagram of people who use Notepad and then use a lot of AI credits probably doesn't intersect much. But you know, if you are using it that much, you could eventually run out of AI credits and then they would say look, it's time to buy Copilot Pro or whatever they call it. So yeah, even though this, like I said, even though it's incomplete like I. There's a bunch of stuff that I do talk or I did see that was related to paint and photos and actually snipping tool. But there's much more than that and there's much more than that in other apps as well. And now I have to say I'm kind of curious because as we've talked about these updates every week. Right. So every week there's some number of something, you know, in the, in the Windows Insider program I was kind of wrestling with. Like have they. They really shipped like a ton of new features or some new features, you know, and they have shipped a ton of new features and there's a ton that they've tested that have not yet shipped. And I would look at this and argue this reads to me like a second wave copilot plus PC release which is what the first 24H2 was. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it kind of makes me wonder if they're not going to do something similar this year and that they're either waiting for a standalone Windows Day or whatever they do, or maybe it's something tied to build or the AI Day they're having at the campus in a couple weeks or whatever. I don't know. Right. But either one of those would make sense, which is why I think it probably won't be either one of those, because Microsoft doesn't make sense anymore. So it's just the George Costanza opposite Day thing with Microsoft right now.

[Richard Campbell]

So if you're sure that's the right choice, it's the wrong choice. You should do something the opposite of that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no, it makes sense to me. So don't do it. Is that what we're thinking? You know, it kind of feels like that.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and I'm. I'm disturbed at how quiet Qualcomm's been about a new chipset. Like this would be. This is the time to come up with another round. Like, if you're really going to make a run at this.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. So my understanding, and this is just based on sources that I can't divulge or say or whatever, is that September is the time frame for that.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. At least not 2026, because that's what it sounded like at first.

[Paul Thurrott]

I would like to see something quicker. Every time they did an announcement, remember in the beginning they just announced the thing and then eventually like, okay, we're gonna have plus SKUs. And then we're like, oh, my God, you guys are bidding these things. What is this? And there was some number of SKUs. Then there were more. And then IFA came and they announced like the Snapdragon X Elite. And plus now there's this X. So it's like, how low can we go? It's like, I don't know, you seem to keep adding new, I guess, trying.

[Richard Campbell]

To get the overall yield up. And the demand for chips is significant.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Like, all of this is good.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But what I've wanted to see is like a step forward. Right. Instead of just like, you know, meeting. Look, meeting lower end parts of the market is important. I get that. I'm not dumping on it. But, you know, we know that the focus on the first gen was getting the processor where it needed to be and, you know, tied to what Microsoft did with the Prism emulator. They did a great job with that. And the focus on this one's gpu. And you hear these little things that are pointing to where they're going right the announcement a week or two ago where Epic Games is working to bring their anti cheat stuff to Qualcomm and all of the Auto SR stuff the ability to run look we sort of accept most devs are just games are out in the world and no one's going to go back and fix them now. But they're just coded deck 64 so this thing has to work well with emulation.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. And you know it's. It's getting there but yes, better. Better chip would be important as well.

[Richard Campbell]

So and yeah there's so many things they could be revving and you know they had to make a cut sometime in 23 to get the production into play for 24.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

Like they've had time to make a better chip to realize some.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah they have and but I suspect.

[Richard Campbell]

They'Re mostly pushing on yield that they're trying to improve the the design for EUVL so that they can get the yields up because that takes several iterations and you tend not to build new features in your chip while you do that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, just a couple things. I mean they did go very quickly from that I think it's called is it Onyx, the core processor core of that to use it in mobile. So now there are Samsung devices out in the world and there'll be others soon if there aren't already using this. You know what was what started as PC architecture. Yeah. Intel. Not exactly the fastest moving company in the world.

[Richard Campbell]

No.

[Paul Thurrott]

Has since September released and revved on Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake. Right. And amd which is like the goofy quiet kid in the corner never has anything to say blew everyone away in September with their first gen Zen 5 stuff and we thought well okay, this will be the year. I mean they'll.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, here we go. We got an ecosystem. Right. We got no real players.

[Paul Thurrott]

January came CES they exploded it upwards. They did what I wanted Snapdragon to do or Qualcomm to do and I mean that stuff I still to this I'm having trouble. I don't know if you heard about this, there's some kind of a tariff thing going on right now but I have two computers waiting somewhere in ice or something that I can't get to. So I haven't had a chance to test these latest AMD things. I'm sure they're off the charts but you know, based on what I've read about it it's like they did this astonishing thing with the first gen Zen 5 stuff and then they were like it's three months later, let's do it. Let's do some like, let's do it better. I was like, what are you doing? It's crazy. So they're doing awesome. So. Yes, I. To your point? Like, I. Yeah, I would like to see Qualcomm. Qualcomm's not like a little company. They've been doing this for a while. I mean, I know PC. This is getting. Yeah, this is new. This is a. This is a new. This is a new place. Like, oh my God, people like this.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So anyway, anyway, so yeah, I, I am now firmly. In fact, I almost certainly will do this. I think I'm going to go back and look at the other channels and just to get a more complete picture of this.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm still wrestling with what machine to build. Right. Like I do want to build a machine.

[Paul Thurrott]

It really depends on what you're doing. Right. I look for you. I would save it for most people. I would look at the AMD stuff. I think it's.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, no, I think that's a fair call. And I've not, not had an AMD machine for years and years.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah, they're nice now.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're really, they're really good. They're really good.

[Leo Laporte]

I ordered the framework desktop. I don't know when I'll get it, but that's the AMD AI chip.

[Paul Thurrott]

But you won't get that, what, till April or May or.

[Leo Laporte]

I think they said third quarter, so.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, you know, they're batching it, so.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, and they come through too. Like this has been frameworks pattern all along is build up a big enough batch to get good order structure together.

[Leo Laporte]

Right, that makes sense.

[Richard Campbell]

And they do come through.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yes. I have had many a framework device. This is my first desktop. It's their first desktop actually.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm gonna think of it.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, I want to take a little break if you don't mind. We are also doing a little test to see if it's my shirt that's causing the sync problem.

[Paul Thurrott]

So yeah, I think it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Look and look and see.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is it a lot of shirt? A lot of pride in your work, if you know what I mean.

[Leo Laporte]

That's not pride. That is a serape.

[Richard Campbell]

That's a fantastic shirt. Burke says that Richard is behind by two seconds now.

[Leo Laporte]

Did that just happen when I went on camera?

[Paul Thurrott]

Kinda.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe it is.

[Paul Thurrott]

We apply a black and white filter to you and see if that does anything.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe it is the shirt.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow, that'd be really something.

[Paul Thurrott]

You improved our frame rate by like 3 to 5 frames per second by just.

[Leo Laporte]

I'll go put on a black polo to match Paul and see if it's better. All right, well, we're gonna see if we can keep Richard in sync for an entire commercial. Our show today, brought to you by Melissa. Hello, Melissa. Love these guys for what is it, 30, 40 years now. The trusted data quality expert since 1985. So yeah, 40 years. But what I love about Melissa is they don't rest on their laurels. They're always getting better, always getting more interesting, always getting new features. They've added a lot of AI features lately and now they've just debuted in the Stripe app marketplace. So if you use Stripe, and who doesn't? I mean, when I go out and buy a bagel at Stripe, when I go buy furniture at Stripe, Stripe customers now have access to the same, you know, Stripe users, stripe sellers, I guess I should say, have access to the same data quality services that these big global enterprises are using every day. And it's fully integrated into Stripe. The key features include, of course, address validation. That's what Melissa is known for. You know, it's nice to have it at the customer level because that's where often the first missed keystrokes happen. You know, a transposed number and a zip code or an email that's missing a letter and that could just propagate throughout your whole database and ruin your day. They also have subscription management. They offer smooth management of API keys and subscriptions, which makes it very easy to start with a pay a free service and then transition as you get more comfortable with to paid services. And of course they have comprehensive support. Melissa is known for their support and quality assurance. As a Stripe seller, you'll have direct access to Melissa experts, ensuring high quality service and support. I don't think you're going to need it. It's such a sweet, smooth integration. It really transforms your business. You know that. Enhancing operational efficiency, boosting customer satisfaction, maintaining your overall financial health. Those are, those are the kind of the three tent poles for any forward thinking business. And if you use Stripe, hey, this is amazing. You got an ever expanding tool set at the ready with Melissa. Melissa services, by the way, are absolutely secure. You can reassure yourself on that point. They understand compliance better than anyone. With Melissa, you get secure encryption for all your file transfers and an information security ecosystem built on the ISO 27001 framework. They adhere to GDPR policies, they're SOC2 compliant, et cetera, et cetera. You know, your data is important to you. It's just as important to Melissa, and they protect it like it was their own. Get started today with 1000 records clean for free melissa.com twit and if you're a stripe seller, you really gotta go look at the Stripe app Marketplace and check out Melissa.

[Paul Thurrott]

What a.

[Leo Laporte]

What a great thing to add to both your customer input and to your invoicing. You know, sending the invoice to the wrong address, that's not good. Thank you, Melissa. They've helped our business, and you support us when you use that address. Melissa. All right, Paul and Richard love good.

[Paul Thurrott]

HDR jokes about your shirt in there, by the way, but.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, in the discord.

[Paul Thurrott]

Do you need Dolby Vision to wear this shirt?

[Leo Laporte]

Somebody's saying it's the time code in the shirt. It is a secret message.

[Paul Thurrott]

There it is.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's not.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's not.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's. Well, it's from Mexico. It probably says something like resist. It should, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Right on. I'm really. I, I love these shirts, and it's become my wardrobe now. So I, I. This is a more recent purchase I've been adding to the collection. I think I have 50 of these Abrazzos design shirts.

[Richard Campbell]

Awesome.

[Leo Laporte]

Which means I can go, you know, three months without repeating.

[Paul Thurrott]

Count, go 10 seconds without repeating. I don't even know what that's.

[Leo Laporte]

But they're all. See, that's the thing about black. Black Polos, Paul, is no one knows if that's last year's black Polo or this year's black Polo.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can tell you it's not last year's because it's from Amazon and they don't last that long.

[Leo Laporte]

But, yeah, there you go. If. If. Burke, what do you think? Should I change my shirt? Is that really causing the problems? Wizardling says could you run some tests after the show, Work out how powerful a graphics card I need to upgrade to in order to display Leo's shirt without lag.

[Richard Campbell]

Wearing a 5090 shirt.

[Paul Thurrott]

How many Bothans had a die to.

[Richard Campbell]

Bring that shirt to market?

[Leo Laporte]

I'm gonna go change. You guys go on, please.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, well, in with the 6,000 word epic, whatever the hell that was behind us.

[Richard Campbell]

Your treatise.

[Paul Thurrott]

There's more. Right. So yesterday was the Tuesday of week D. Right. This is something we've probably didn't think about much a couple years ago, but in the Windows 11 era, the more recent years especially, this has become an important thing. Right? So in addition to the four channels that are inside of the insider program, they allow. Well, they want people in stable to flip that switch in Windows Update and start getting updates early. Right. And so yesterday Microsoft released new preview builds for Windows 11 version 23H2. And for Windows 10 it's like. But not for 24H2. But I just said that 24H2 and 23H2 were pretty much on the same path. Right? Same features. And actually if you look at the features that will be in next month's Patch Tuesday update, at least for 23H2, it's going to be 24H2 as well. You'll see. Well, you won't see this because you didn't write the article. I did. But I see all the same features I just documented. Right. So text scaling to more of File Explorer, these new top cards in settings. About GamePad Virtual Keyboard for the touch keyboard, the emoji icon in the taskbar, which is super important. That change to Task Manager. We talked about where they are calculating the CPU workload for processes and other things differently now. And then voice access, which we just talked about. Qualcomm powered Snap Dragon X Qualcomm Snapdragon X powered copilot plus PCs you can now use voice access to with natural language. Right. So you don't have to get the, you don't have to get the text parser exactly right. You can kind of eyeball it. It will probably work. You know, it's using the MPU on the, on the PC and then probably in a month or two it will come to AMD and Intel because that's how we do things. So node 24H2, that's not actually all that unique. Remember one of the other things I didn't talk about that happened last year is that this happened last year a bunch of times, three, four times at least. Where weekday or even Patch Tuesday came and there was no update for 24H2. But then a couple of days later that landed and I wouldn't be surprised to see that be the case and then kind of supporting that is that sometime in the past few days as well. Microsoft released a release preview build of Windows 1124H2. And you're not going to believe what's in it because it's everything I just said. So voice access, gamepad keyboard layout, blah blah, blah. Everything I just said is in this thing. So it's absolutely coming. This is definitely a preview of what we're going to see in Patch Tuesday, but a couple of unique things as well because of the copilot plus PC aspect of 24H2. So the semantic search feature is actually landing in stable next month. And that's fascinating to me because when you think about the I'm going to say major post RTM or post initial release Copilot plus PC specific AI features, this is the newest. They only started testing this fairly recently. I mentioned that they started in little batches where they put it here and then here and then they added different file types. But of the big stuff, which I would throw in, you know, recall and click to do in there. Right. This is the latest and those other two are not coming out this next month. And I, you know, this speaks to what Richard was saying earlier, like there's no rhyme or reason to this stuff. I can't explain that. But. Well, okay, so there's that. Yeah, there were two. There was a beta 23H2 and a canary build. The canary build was just an hour ago. Just fixes mostly. No big deal. And then there were these app updates. And this is the other thing I kind of, I want to. This is I'm particularly interested in because there have been a series of app updates, especially to Paint Photos, Notepad and Snipping Tool over the past, I'm going to say four to six months that significantly enhance these apps. And I want to. Let me just make sure this is the case. No. Well, in the case of the latest Notepad, Paint and Snipping tool features, which were kind of released separately to different parts of the Insider program, in all cases are now available to everyone in the Insider program. And because app updates don't have anything to do with Patch Tuesday typically or Weekd or anything like that, that could happen anytime. But I suspect this stuff is going to be kind of right around the same time as Patch Tuesday. Right. Because it's in Release Preview. So yes. And these are all just the new AI features I mentioned briefly, the Notepad stuff with the rewrite tools going out to everybody, not just Copilot plus PC. There was that consolidated Copilot menu in Paint which they're bulking out now with additional features, some of which are Copilot plus PC specific Snipping tool and has some interesting new stuff and has actually is an app that Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to. That was one of the things I noticed since last September there's been a bunch of updates to Snipping Tool.

[Richard Campbell]

But how many people use this tool? I know we do. But do regular consumers use this tool right now?

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't use it a lot because you can't capture the mouse cursor right One of the new features in this app which you won't see as a user is that it's not. Well, extensible is not the right word. It's kind of API based now for developers. So you as a developer, you have an app. You could say, I want to use this feature from Snipping Tool. Not the app I just want, but I want that feature. You can start doing that with this new release. And that's actually kind of interesting because one of the features it has is ocr, right? So you bring in an image and then gets the text. Like you could say, I just want that. That's actually very interesting to me. I. When I wrote that thing, I wrote I. The thing that occurred to me was like I should write an app that's basically just Snipping Tool, but it lets you put the mouse cursor in it. Because that's. That's what I need for screenshots. Right. So it's the one thing it doesn't have. But there are like little quickie screen capture things you can do with this, that screen recording things. I should say that I actually do use it for. So it's kind of odd to me that my most common usage of Snipping Tool is actually for screen recordings that are typically 8 to 15 seconds long. Because I'm just showing some. Something that's a little more than a still frame, right? Maybe like for my app showing, you know, cycling through the tabs or something. Something you can't capture in a screenshot. And you can post that thing to YouTube in two seconds because they're so small. And now they have the. You know, one of the features that's in this release is the trim capability. Right. So when you create a recording, you can trim it. Right. This is the most basic video editing feature of all time. So we're getting to the point where this thing could be. Could replace other tools, right? Yeah. So I, I didn't understand why they replaced anything like why they even brought this thing. I never understood the point of it. But now that they're kind of bulking it out in ways that are actually useful, it's like, okay, well actually that sounds okay. And then paint, not paint, I'm sorry photos. Which too has seen a steady series of updates over the past several months for both everybody and those only on Copilot plus PC. So you see different stuff in there depending on what you have now integrates with Copilot because of course it does. It has to. There are right click options. This is getting A little overblown. Remember one of the things that Microsoft did in Windows 11 was look @ the menu. The context menus in Windows 10, which often were humongous, cut them all down and everyone hated it. And now they're just adding new features to this thing willy nilly. Like the menu in Windows 11 now is almost as big as it was in Windows 10 and it's about five times slower. So it's wonderful.

[Richard Campbell]

But two of the people and you still can't find the thing you're looking for because it's an icon at the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Top of the bottom. So yeah, when you have selected a file, a group of files, one of the options in there is Share, which is an icon. And but now they also have like a menu for it. So if there's a compatible app that you can share that thing with, it will be on the menu. So you can go share WhatsApp or whatever app. They're doing this with Photos as well. So the Photos option in there probably, I think it today, if you look today, if you right click an image, it probably says Edit in Photos, I would imagine. But in addition to Open with Photos. Right, but there's a Photos submenu and now that will have options like Edit with Photos, Erase objects with Photos, Visual search with Bing, you know, they're bringing forward these kind of integration things. And so that Photos menu, not menu toolbar, I guess at the top used to be, you know, kind of the Windows 10 style, white icons on black or black on white, depending on the color scheme. And then they started adding things to it. Right. The first thing I think they added was like a clip Champion icon, you know, and now they have design and it's got color. Yeah, they're color. Exactly. Completely inconsistent. You know, it's beautiful. But now Copilot is in there as well. And the Copilot button will expand over time with new, you know, other features. But it does things like, you know, tips for editing photos, framing suggestions, etc. It's going to, you know, it's going to do what AI does. I guess it's. So they're just starting to test that, but I would expect that to keep going. And then I mentioned OCR in snipping tool. They have brought that capability to or are bringing, I should say this is still Insider program, but they're bringing that to Photos as well because of course. Right. I mean, this is a tough one because, you know, a couple years ago one of the big conversations we would have had is you look out at Microsoft Office Right. Which is part of Microsoft 365. And there's all these different subscriptions. There's. We used to have different versions of the suite, but now we really. We still do, actually, but we really just have different versions of Microsoft 365 subscriptions, but we have different versions of these apps. So just Microsoft Word, there's a version on the web, there's a version on all the mobile platforms, There's Windows, there's the Mac. And one day, some version of Word gets some feature, whatever it is, doesn't matter, like transcription capability, whatever, and it's on the web first. Right. And then one day it's like, oh, now it's in Windows. And then two years later, it's like, oh, we put it on the Mac. You know, like, it was really hard. It still is hard to keep track of where features are. And I feel like with the AI stuff, we're starting to get there. Because if you think about ocr, which is the ability to take an image and if there's text in it, get the text out of it, copy it to the clipboard, you know, open it in notepad, whatever. Okay. I would argue, you know, paint photos. Snipping tool has it. That actually. Snipping tool, I think had it first, but then there's click to do. Click to do. Just brings it to everything. Why are we even putting this in apps?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you know, like, and get different teams and they. And they haven't coordinated with each other.

[Paul Thurrott]

So. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So we're getting from missing Bill Gates again. He would seem to be the only guy who could look across all the teams and say, y'all are building the same thing. Figure it out.

[Paul Thurrott]

And.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know anybody else does that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this. Every Aussie had a big problem with this, too. Like, he would always have to set up five teams to all do the same thing and let him fight it out. It's like, guys, we don't need five Microsoft Sync products. You know, we need one or whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, well, and it's one thing to fight it out in private, but when everything's going into preview, so that we're all being slung back and forth on this stuff, like, it just. It looks bad and it's frustrating.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's. Yeah. You just describe my entire career these days, Richard. That's beautiful. Yeah. So I'm. I'm trying to. I'm trying to figure it out. I can't. Look, when this is something like the features of Office, right, Which span so many apps and services, I can't My brain can't. I can't do it. But I look at Windows 11, I think, okay, I could probably handle this, you know, but not really, right? Because, you know, there's. What you see, I had to. When I was writing that article, I had the. One of the dev laptops that I was writing on, and then I had a. Like, what I'll call a stable laptop. And they were so different. Like just something like File Explorer. File Explorer. Let me see what it looks like on this one. File Explorer on this computer. Which is what? I don't even know what this one is. Doesn't matter. Yeah, this is the. This is the new one, right? So this is 200 tabs inside of it. I don't mean tabs like for documents. I mean, the Home View has tabs for things like favorites, recommended, shared, et cetera. Some of those, by the way, brand new, Recommended and shared are fairly recent. Things that I don't think are unstable. At one point, I got up and I just walked to my wife's office and I said, could you just open File Explorer real quick? She did. And I was like, yep, that looks nothing like what I'm seeing in there. Fantastic. And that's a. You know, that's a tough problem. I mean, for someone like me. Like, I have a book and it's like, how do I write about this? But maybe more or maybe more common. You're an IT admin, have to support a bunch of users, or you're just the tech guy in your family, and they always come to you and it's like that guy is used to knowing what they expect to see, and now it's like, spin the wheel, Bob. What do we got this time? File Explorer is a great example because there's so many features that have come online, but sporadically and not to every computer over the past several months, and there are more coming, and so it's just hard to keep track of. But it's just something I'm trying to do. This is where I'm drawing the line for. I'm like, okay, come on, you can do this. But I can't. But I'm trying.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm trying. So, yeah, interesting question is, should an operating system be consistent to all users or not?

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know what the answer is, but, yeah. By the way, I've. I've. I got a black shirt. I hope that's.

[Paul Thurrott]

How'd you find something? Is that your wife's shirt? What did you get?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I have five shirts.

[Paul Thurrott]

Here.

[Leo Laporte]

So I made a black shirt. I don't know if that's gonna help overall with the. The Kodak.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, Leo, I think there's a small problem.

[Leo Laporte]

What's that?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, one of your collar tabs. Oh, no, it's the giant rainbow.

[Richard Campbell]

Whatever the hell in the background.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are you in the Matrix? What's going on?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh my God, the shirt is spreading.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, it left. This is the same shirt that leapt off of the shirt.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

We've entered into like a sci fi horror movie, I think.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, all the color went out of the shirt in. Into the room in my background.

[Richard Campbell]

That's it.

[Leo Laporte]

Should I do a spot now or do you want. You want to talk about the photos app too, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, we got it. We got it.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, let's do a little. Are you okay, Paul?

[Richard Campbell]

Everything's fine. We're fine.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's. Let's do a little. Little break and then we'll come back with more of Windows Weekly. By the way, does this background change the sink at all?

[Paul Thurrott]

Is everything on big? What's going on here?

[Leo Laporte]

All right, I'll turn it off and we'll just continue on as if nothing happened. But I did put on a black shirt because I think maybe that'll help.

[Paul Thurrott]

We'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

It seems like the shirt shouldn't really screw things up. I mean, it just seems on the face of it.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, but if my experience with Windows teaches us anything, it's that making sense has nothing to do with it.

[Leo Laporte]

Nothing to do with it. I know computers, they're. They're a ones and zeros.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's how we make magic.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a mystery, you know, it's not a mystery how we. This show gets to you. Our show today, brought to you, and I mean literally by Cash Fly. I've been saying it for years. Bandwidth for Windows Weekly is provided by cash fly at C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y.com TWIT. We love CashFly. They're our CDN content delivery network. For over 20 years, CashFly has held the track record for high performing, ultra reliable content delivering, serving over 5,000 companies in over 80 countries. And we're one of them. We've been using Cashfly practically since we began almost 20 years now. We love their lag free video loading, the hyper fast downloads, the friction free site interactions. It's the only CDN built for throughput. I'll give you example. Cashfly now offers ultra low latency video streaming that can deliver video to over a million concurrent users with sub 1 second lag less than a second. Lightning fast gaming delivers downloads faster with zero lag, zero glitches, zero outages. And if you've got a website or any anything that's serving images, you'll love this. Automatic mobile content optimization. It optimizes images automatically so that there's a copy of the image for every size screen. Your site will load faster on any device and look great. Now the other thing that was important to us especially because we were a new podcast network, we didn't really know what the bandwidth was going to be like from day to day, month to month. Cashfly was really flexible with us. They gave us flexible month to month billing for as long as we needed. And then once we kind of got a handle on when we're going to use bandwidth and how, we got discounts for fixed terms. And the thing is you get the same thing. The key is you design your contract when you switch to Cash Fly. Cash Fly delivers rich media content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs allows you to shield. We've been doing this for a while now shield your site content in their cloud. So we just upload shows to the Cashfly cloud, which ensures a 100% cash hit ratio. That's fantastic. And with Cashfly's elite managed packages, you're going to get the same VIP treatment we do. It's which is I could say great. You get a dedicated account manager will be with you from day one, ensuring a smooth implementation. Reliable 24. 7 Support when you need it. Look, learn how you can get your first month [e-mail] TWIT Let me say it again. Bandwidth for Windows Weekly is provided by Cashfly at C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y.com thank you, Cashfly. As we near our 20th anniversary, there's. There are some people in groups I'm super grateful to. Of course you, Paul. You've been with us since practically the beginning. Cashfly has been with us since the beginning. April 13th is the 20th anniversary twit. And one of the things we're going to do is and we're getting some really great submissions. We've asked people who watch, who've been watching for a long time, how they discovered twit, how they watch twit, you know, just to send us a little short video of yourself and tell us a little something about yourself. Because I want to honor the. We got a great community and I want to honor the community and we've been getting some great ones. I just got a guy in Canada riding his combine harvester.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice. I love it.

[Leo Laporte]

He's out doing his farming and he's watching Windows Weekly in the combine. I think that's so cool. So if you've got, you know, if you've got an interesting story to tell. Somebody wrote me a poem. There was a guy in a boat. You know, people from all over the world send us a video. There's a couple ways you could do this one, just post it on your favorite social media. We watch them all and twit. Or maybe it'd be better. And that way we'll know to look for it and we'll find it. You can also email us. Email me leoville.com and send me the video. Or send me, better yet, don't send me the video, but a link to the video on OneDrive or wherever you store it. And then that way we're going to get as many as we can and we'll kind of put them into the show on April 13th. That's coming up just a couple of weeks. All right, back to the show we go. Microsoft 365, is that Windows? No, that's everything but Windows. No.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, pretty much Windows is in there too.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Actually Windows is part of it. Yeah, you do get a license.

[Leo Laporte]

That's why I don't understand what that name means. Am I weird?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, you're not. This shouldn't be so confusing. But it is.

[Richard Campbell]

It's why they switch from Office 365 Office to Microsoft.

[Leo Laporte]

It's Office, but it also includes Windows.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah. So Microsoft 365 is that umbrella term for all this stuff. Does include the commercial versions of Microsoft 365 can include licenses for Windows.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, never mind. I know I should never ask the question.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I mean, just, I mean. But to that point, part of the financial reporting change that Microsoft made almost a year ago was to reorganize where that money from Windows goes. And now though the money, the revenues that are generated through for Windows through Microsoft365 actually go to Microsoft365 are reported as part of that business. They're not reported as part of Windows, which they used to be. Okay, so further confusing matters. We have a metric ton of AI news today and some of it is Microsoft 365 related, as it would be. So I put it into the Microsoft 365 section, I guess. So we'll start with that. The first two are topics that are not exactly near and dear to my Heart, but I think are still interesting. And the first is that Microsoft has released two reasoning agents. I have a note almost to myself about this later in the show in the AI section, I'm sure, but something about this, when you think about AI in the recent era and how quickly it's evolved, we had AI chatbots and then Satya Nadella especially. But. Well, especially to me actually. I mean everyone's talking about this. The next wave, you know, so to speak is these agents, right? These AI services that will work on your behalf. You prompt it to do whatever it is, it goes off and does something, it comes back when it completes that task. Or maybe it has a question. Whatever. Find funny thing happened on the way to that future deep seek. Oh, look at me, I said it right. Came out with what we now call a reasoning model where it actually kind of shows you how it's thinking through solving the problem. You asked it and people love this and now everything's going reasoning. We'll talk about that. But what Microsoft has just announced is essential. Well, no, it is literally to reasoning agents. So it's like the, you've got your reasoning in my AI agent kind of a thing or whatever. And these are agents that use reasoning models to do multi step whatever it might be on your behalf. So one of them is called researcher, which you could probably figure out what that means. And one of them is called analyst. These are very much for Microsoft 365 commercial customers using Microsoft 365 Copilot. Right. And so you know, we've seen these kind of things like deep research is one of those big terms that comes out of AI these days where you can use this AI for really complex tasks. This is a quote from oh God. Chief Marketing Officer AI at work Jared Spitero who said you could use this to build a detailed go to market strategy based on the context of all your work data and broader competitive data from the web. Yikes. AI is not going to take your job, it's going to take everyone's job. It's going to be one AI because I don't. At what point am I, what am I, what's the role I have in this? You know, and then there's the, the second one which is. Which is what, Paul? Oh, analyst, right. So same thing, you know, you're pointing at a lot of data and it comes back and it analyzes. It's kind of like a big data version of what is the summary of this document. You know, it can do visualization, look at purchase patterns, you know, all this stuff, revenue projection, etc. And yikes. So of course, right? Google's doing something like this. OpenAI is doing something. This is going to be, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

This is, it's a, it's a race to automate portions of white collar work.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Yeah, this was, I don't know if I even reference, I must reference it somewhere in the show. But I wrote an article last, the past week about AI and web browsers. Yeah, we will talk about this, but I don't want to give this away for later. But it basically boils down to if AI is going to do everything that I do, what am I going to do with all this free time? I'm going to have all of that. It's getting kind of weird. I'll be like, hey, I could, oh, you got it. Okay, sorry, sorry. Like, I don't even think I have a role anymore.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, it's, do you think that's going to happen? Do you?

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, I think it's already happening right now. Yeah, I, I, yeah, yeah, I, there's this, you know, obviously there's always this spectrum of responses to this kind of thing and there will always have those people like, yeah, it's fake, it's a, it's a fraud, it's not real, it's not that serious. And then there are the people like, oh my God, this is Terminator. It's happening. They're taking over the world. You know, and obviously it, we're, we're going to be somewhere in the middle of that.

[Richard Campbell]

But yeah, there's an issue discussion going on about what an, a artificial generalized intelligence actually is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Last year sometime Microsoft announced something called Microsoft Copilot for Security.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, first it was Security Copilot, then it was Copilot for Security.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, My comment at the time was why don't you just make your products all secure? We don't. And they were like, no, here's an idea. Why don't we make six or 15 of them? And so now it's called Microsoft Security Copilot.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it is actually a suite of AI agents. Microsoft made six of them, its partners made five of them. And I think that's all I'm going to say about this because seriously, dear God, Microsoft.

[Richard Campbell]

No, it's going to continue. I've talked to other teams now. Like each team contributes into this space. And I got to say, from an administrative perspective, this is really interesting because most admins aren't full time security people. A full time security person, they put on the tinfoil hat Once a month.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no, you're 100% right. I. Leo said something earlier and I, I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was. And I said, well, we're going to talk about this kind of thing later. And it was something about writing an AI. And I. And I think part of the, the resistance to AI is that people have these kind of, you know, the egos about. And they're like, I am. I am the person that does the writing if I'm a writer, or the coding if I'm a coder or the adminning if I'm an ad. Whatever and whatever that word is. But, yeah, the truth is we're all good at things and we're all not so good at other things. And if you kind of accept the notion, I think it's correct, that AI ultimately will save you time. How about using it to save time doing something either that you cannot stand doing or you're not good at or whatever it is? And so, yes, in this case, in the same way that you would go into the cursor AI editor and say, examine my code base and tell me where I could improve the code quality or reduce redundancy or whatever it might be, you could do that with security, look at my environment and then have it come back and say, okay, well, Bob over there doesn't have two FA going or whatever it might be.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, well, and we've done this show on Run as where it's exactly that. What's the most pressing, you know, your view of my Azure tenant? What's my most pressing security risk? What should I address? Now?

[Paul Thurrott]

The most basic and commonly said thing about it and this sort of work is these are people that want to be proactive but are always reactive because stuff happens.

[Richard Campbell]

They're in the pounding surf.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And this is the type of thing, it's not the only thing, but is may be a way to get to that ideal where the stuff that's hard or bad or maybe is lurking in the background, you never know about whatever it might be that might later cause that reactive thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is something I could help you with.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you do a bit. You get a little bit of time to do a little bit of preventative work. And if this tool would help you focus in on the best preventative work you could do.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

So maybe the pounding surf subsides a bit and you have a little more time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So the, the non AI version of this that I think anyone, if anyone has ever done or is right now doing any Kind of admin it pro type work is the best practices work that Microsoft used to build into its management consoles and probably still does. Right? So you have this kind of list of things that you can go through manually and say, well, okay, is everyone get to a vein. You're like, sure, green, but you know, you know, but now this is something that will do it for you. And not that it will necessarily set everything correctly, but rather that it will come back with that report like you were saying and say, look, this is what's wrong. You need to focus on this. This is job one, whatever that thing is. Super helpful because before in the pre best practices era, Microsoft had best practices, but they were written in books or they were written in documents and you would have to as the admin like, all right. And then they built it in the product and now they're building it into AI and Right.

[Richard Campbell]

And in theory, although I haven't seen an example of this yet, but you're going to have a just do it button sooner or later, right? That it's going to say, hey, you've not configured conditional access to restrict by geography.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm going to just do it. This whole show is going to culminate in my second app pick, which is what you just described, but for developers, because one of the choices you get when you use Copilot, GitHub, Copilot or the cursor, AI, whatever it is, is this. Rewrite this and then it shows it to you and you can look at it. Do it. You know, I mean most of the time you're gonna be like, oh, just do it. I wrote this garbage and you made it look pretty and small and it does the same thing. Do it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know? Yes. So I think you're right. I think you're. I think you're correct because. And this, this is the hurdle I think we all have to get over collectively. Like whatever it is you're doing in life, like wherever you're at now, they think I'm the guy.

[Richard Campbell]

As the cloud came along, the guys who like spinning screwdrivers got really grumpy. But there were other things from the do and as Exchange online became obviously the better way to go and we moved all our work, our Exchange workloads, that those Exchange guys are still working. They're not doing the same job, but they still take care of mail. They just take care of it in a different way and actually arguably a better mail system as a consequence because they aren't wrestling with Dax and, and distribution blocks and all of Those sorts of things. That's already been dealt with.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And if you were actually that exchange guy, God help you. You know, your life consisted of two to three year cycles where you spent that whole time doing whatever migration and fixing all the problems. And they were like, time to go do it again.

[Richard Campbell]

Now it's time for the next version. Yeah, thank God they're only every three years because that's how long it takes to get it stable.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. All right, now we could bring it down a notch. This one kind of came out of the blue and I have to say I'm not 100% on board with this. I don't quite understand it. Microsoft in the past week announced what they call companion apps for Microsoft 365 commercial. They run only in Windows 11. They require Windows 11. They're only in Preview right now. And so you have to be. I think you have to be in the. Yeah, the Microsoft 365 Insider Program beta channel to even access this today. But if you were familiar. Well, actually what they look like a little bit is like phone apps. So they're like these little mini apps, you know, the companion apps for specific things. Today those things are file search and people. And you know, you could make the argument we have tools for those things. Right. Microsoft is right now building out file search in Windows 11 for the umpteenth time in this case to handle semantic search with AI. And we're doing. We'll talk about this later. You know, the OneDrive copilot for OneDrive stuff. Why are we doing this kind of thing? Like, what's the point of this? They're almost. They're not widgets, but they're kind of small, focused apps. There was an app called People, remember, in Windows 10 and it's basically disappeared in Windows 11 and now literally has disappeared. But, you know, contact management. Right. There are going to be more of these things. These are just the first two. That sounds like a threat to me, but I don't know, I'm not really.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, now we always need another companion, don't we?

[Paul Thurrott]

Look what I'm looking for. Could I have more icons in my. Yeah, I don't have enough that I don't want or need, you know, so, I mean, they look pretty enough, but when I look at this and I think A, superfluous and B, if you're going to do this, it should be maybe be in Windows unless the intention is to put them elsewhere. Right. Because not all of your customers use Windows, but I don't think they're ever going to do that. So I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and you get to who's the team who can build stuff from like this right now and then, you know, the M365 guys are firing in all cylinders.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And. And tied to what we were discussing earlier, I do think there's going to be a kind of. Not a comeuppance, but like a. A consolidation in the future. At some point we're going to have built out all these different ways to do things and we're going to want to.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and to be clear, there's already a consolidation happening internally. There are way more of this than you're seeing Fed publicly facing. But I don't disagree. It needs to consolidate more. It come. There is a political game here about who's being the best AI person in the company. So everybody wants to show off their thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

I didn't put this in the notes for some reason I must have missed it. But one of the other things that happened in the space just the other day, maybe yesterday, was OneNote. I'm sorry. The new Outlook, which I think we can all agree everyone loves. No problems there. Everyone wishes they could just roll it out faster. Microsoft is now making it a part of the default install of the desktop apps for Microsoft 365 in new deployments. This is going to be controversial. Some secrets and some circles. It's going to be installed alongside the other OneNote. Sorry, Outlook. I mean, if you're on Windows 11, which everyone will be, you're gonna have this app already. I don't quite. Again, this is another example. I don't quite get it, but I almost wonder if they're doing it just to see how it goes with, you know, see what happens. Because you're giving admins the capability through policy to disable this or to just have one or the other, or to have them both. Like you have a choice. But the default, unless you change something, is that you'll actually get both. And maybe they're just hoping, you know, maybe it will go better than they think. You know, everything's gonna be fine.

[Richard Campbell]

It'll be fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's gonna be fine. So I mentioned copilot for OneDrive. I. I don't follow the commercial space maybe as closely as I could. I was under the impression that this would have shipped at some point. It has not. So there's. Oddly, even though they talked about it in the consumer sense only vaguely and much later than they did in commercial, Microsoft is starting to roll out copilot in OneDrive for people who have a Microsoft 365 family or personal subscriptions to the consumer side only for the account holder. Right. Which is something we've seen with the other copilot stuff. So if you are the guy paying or the person paying for the family version or personal sometime over the next whatever period of time on the web only because again, these things roll out. How they roll out, eventually this will be in Windows. Well, that's coming in, we just talked about this. It's coming in Windows too. But yeah, you'll be able to use copilot in OneDrive for Web at first to do things like summarize documents, you know, compare to.

[Richard Campbell]

This is OneDrive for web.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

When it's quote unquote built into Windows.

[Paul Thurrott]

It'S going to be. Yeah, it's going to be in both. Right. But yeah, yeah, this is to me, like with my own kind of very basic application development stuff that I do. I look at this and I think to myself, you have just, you're doing this everywhere. Microsoft with these copilot features. Like they must have what I would call a giant switch statement. But you can think of it as like giant if then else statements, whatever. Where it's like, is he a copilot, whatever customer? No. Okay. Does he have a Microsoft 365 subscription? Yes. Which kind does he have this one. Okay. Is he the guy paying for it? No. Then you don't get it. This like, like, like these features, like just the, the code just to manage what people see.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's got to be a hairball at this point, you know, everywhere in the Microsoft, you know, environment. Right. And it's, it's only going to get worse. But anyway, I'm, I'm interested to see something like this happening at all. Like I said, I, I believe as soon as April, still the question is.

[Richard Campbell]

What will it do on your personal account? Like, what do you want to. What is a copilot? What's the point on your, on your OneDrive?

[Paul Thurrott]

What, what I would want from it is for it to at one point basically essentially index my. Yeah, whatever part of OneDrive I tell it to index.

[Richard Campbell]

Where's that picture of my dog?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah, or in my case, like I have my, I have 30 years worth of documents that I've written about Microsoft and Windows. Whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I want to go to it and say because I have to do this research myself manually. This is what we're just talking about. Right. I want to go to, I want to have a little chat Thing come up and say, okay, give me the layout, the entire history of like OneDrive and all the times I've written about it and give me links so I can go find the original documents and summarize this on maybe year to year or something and then have it, you know, spit that thing out and say, okay, now I can use this as, you know, easy reference to write whatever it is I'm writing. That is not one of those features. Right. So I think that is something that will, you know, what do we call this when you. There's so many AI terms I just forgot. When you, you train the AI only on your specific data, that is called grounding. Right. I want basically a version of whatever it is copilot that's grounded on just my data.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

But no, this is pretty basic stuff. If you, in fact, if you look at the rewriting stuff that's in Notepad, which I think we can all agree is a fairly basic application, it's kind of on that level. So you can select up to five documents and summarize them. You can select up to five documents and compare them. I think it can do a table output. But I think the best use for that. Well, maybe one of the good use cases would be I have two different versions of this and we've kind of lost track of what's what. We can compare them like that kind of thing or just ask it questions, which is what I'm talking about. So. But it's grounding on one to five documents. Right?

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

I have probably a hundred thousand. I don't know what it is. Whatever the number is a lot.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. Probably not. What would be a normal consumer range.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Oh, no. I completely understand why I might have to pay for this. Like if that's what it, you know, if it has to be a commercial, whatever, I'll do that, that's fine. But I would like to see that happen anyway. I'm surprised to see this coming to consumers this soon, but that's, that's good. And then we can finally squeeze out into the non AI part of the office or Microsoft 365. Wow. Yeah. I know this is not a big deal and I didn't even realize this was possible, but if you're working on a Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint document on the web version of those apps, you can share them to people using a link. Right. Because it has to be saved in OneDrive and the person you're sharing them with, one of the options you have as the person sharing is they don't have to have a Microsoft account. They don't have to sign into anything as long as they have this link. They can view the file now if you want them to edit it or leave comments. Yes, they have to, you know, reasonably they have to have a Microsoft account. So they've added this ability to the mobile versions of those apps on iPhone and iPad. So I assume they also mean what I would call the Microsoft 365 app. Or maybe that's the Microsoft 365 copilot app now where Word, Excel, PowerPoint are in the app as well, not just standalone. Right, but it doesn't say that explicitly, but I assume that's what they mean. But yeah, it's just a way to from those versions of the client share anonymously essentially. So in a read only format. Microsoft is clinging to the Office stuff is like the final frontier of giving up on all this proprietary stuff they have. But okay. And then this is not actually new news per se, but Microsoft reminded customers through in this case through the Microsoft 365 Message center, which is where I saw this, that OneNote for Windows 10 as we now call it. I think that might be its seventh name. I don't remember how many permutations went through anymore. Is going to reach end of support in October and if you're in an.

[Richard Campbell]

Organization, it's the wheel version. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Used to be the one that had the. It's funny you remember that. Yeah, so right. That's an important part of the history of this app. So originally it was the Metro experiment. Mx. Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

No, you know, it's funny, I saw the other day that Microsoft's terminating Support for Windows 10 October 25th.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Yeah. And this is, you know, they want people to be outraged again because we haven't calmed down yet from the new Outlook or from Copilot, but this one was years in the making.

[Leo Laporte]

So yeah, we knew.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And there's a whole convoluted history to this app because it came up out of as the one. Well, one of two Metro apps they made for the Office team did for Windows 8. And then when Windows 10 came around, they were going to redo Office as these. Well at the time universal apps. It had a kind of a radical radial menu which is what Richard quickly referenced earlier.

[Leo Laporte]

But just to be clear, OneNote for Windows 11 is not gone.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, OneNote for Windows desktop still exists. So 2016 was going to be the last version and then whatever the word. And after twice. Right. 2021 probably came back and then at some point they Made that the primary client again and deprecated the old version, that OneNote for Windows 10, the one we're talking about now, and unifying the clients, whatever that means. And they didn't really have whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

So what's going to be left?

[Paul Thurrott]

One note for desktop. One note.

[Leo Laporte]

There's that, there's that radial menu that weird.

[Paul Thurrott]

It was, you know, it was. I'm not saying it was better or whatever, but it was, it was a team of people looking at something touch based and pen based and saying, right, how could we do something here, you.

[Leo Laporte]

Know, that made sense on the Surface Studio? Because it had that radial dial.

[Paul Thurrott]

The pen. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And the pen. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Yeah. It was context sensitive and it was, it was a good idea. It didn't last, but it was interesting. Anyway, it's going away.

[Leo Laporte]

So what? So. And you and Mary Jo used OneNote for forever on the show.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And I, I actually preferred OneNote for Windows 10 for a long time, but on either client we always had those sync issues where we couldn't edit a dot or a note in real time.

[Leo Laporte]

That was, I mean, that's probably a huge problem.

[Paul Thurrott]

Put up that for years.

[Leo Laporte]

Team app to not be able to use. It is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. No, so it's. You know, one time my mother called me and she said, hey, I sent you an email. Did you get it? And you know, we used to have to do the, that version of that. Like she text me and say, hey, let me know when you're out of the notes so I can get in there and. Stupid. Anyway, they tried. Anyway, I use Notion now, so there you go.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, whatever. And of course there's always Loop.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So I use Notion now and.

[Leo Laporte]

Too soon.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm so excited about Loop when they announced it and it just.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm open, you know, we'll see. But right now, no.

[D]

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[Leo Laporte]

All right, let's talk AI.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, so we're pressed for time, so I'm going to go through this very quickly.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

A to Z. I won't slow you down.

[Leo Laporte]

We got an AI show in an hour.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm not, I'm going to skip over my little editorial thing about agenc browsers and blah blah, blah, because we don't really have anything there that's happening per se. But Sam Altman announced a leadership shift. He's not stepping down as CEO, but he's off putting a lot of his CEO responsibilities to three other people, especially one.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And to focus on product and strategy. Right. This is. This company's trying to go from a non profit to a full pro, you know, so he's going to do all.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that because four or five was a little disappointed people and people are saying, Where's 5O? There's pressure on them, isn't there?

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. Yeah, of course. But the thing is, you know, I feel like this is true of all the big AI companies right now. Just when you think like, oh, someone else just leapt ahead, they announced something the next day and it's like, yeah. Because the other thing they did might have been the same day actually was they announced a GPT4O based image generation capability for ChatGPT, which is like next level. It's amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you've used it.

[Paul Thurrott]

I've only seen it. I've not used it. Okay. But it looks amazing and I don't know, I think they're gonna be okay. But. Yeah, but you know, every time you see anything from OpenAI where it's like, oh, we're switching stuff around. Here we go again. I Don't know. I don't trust them in a way, but I think they to be fine.

[Leo Laporte]

There's got to be such intense pressure at this time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Google is adding AI search to Gmail. You'll be able to tog it, toggle it off if you don't like it. But based on my experience with AI search and photos, you'll want to switch to a different email client because it's terrible. So I don't know, maybe that will get better over time. But right now I got to say that that stuff does not work. And I'm. I'm not like an AI skeptic at all. It's just that stuff is garbage. Google back in, I want to say February, released the Gemini 2.0 models across the whole family. They just released the first 2.5 model, which is a reasoning model, which they call a thinking model. But in experimental, it's only for paying customers. But over time we'll get more of the 2.5 stuff, so they're kind of going in that direction. Today Amazon announced a feature called Interests for its mobile app on iPhone and mobile web app select subset of U.S. customers only. More U.S. customers later this year. I, for some reason have it, even though I'm in Mexico, so I was able to take a look at it. The idea is that you can use natural language to do a product search and then it will come back to you later when things change. Like if there's a price change or a sale or, you know, something, a new product in that category, whatever it is, I can't tell you how good it is right now because it just came out and it's going to take a few months to see where that stuff goes. But that looks potentially interesting. Apple is through, Mark Gurman is probably going to be bringing Apple intelligence to its iPhone and AirPods. But that will be through the iPhone, right? Because these things, you know, it's a processor from a box of Cracker Jacks, so there's no way it's going to be able to do that on the device. But, you know, they'll have cameras and other sensors and things and fun. We don't have time really to go in depth on this, but Apple is being sued for advertising Apple intelligence features that didn't exist. I think it's kind of nonsense, honestly, because if you go back to WWDC last year and look at what they announced, they've actually released everything except for this conversational series.

[Leo Laporte]

It was the ads, though, that were all over the NFL. The Bella Ramsey Ad that still it can't do. I don't think it's a reasonable lawsuit, but Apple is getting some egg on their face for promising and not delivering for sure.

[Paul Thurrott]

And they're doing a shift, they're shifting executives around, all that kind of stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, that's a big deal because they made a big deal when they stole John Jandrea away from Google. He was their AI guy and now.

[Paul Thurrott]

He'S been pushed out and he's out.

[Leo Laporte]

Because he hasn't been able to make it work. And they brought in, weirdly, the fixtures. So they had Kim.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, the guy from.

[Leo Laporte]

The guy, Mike Rockwell, he did Vision Pro. Right. But he had, he wanted to quit before. And he doesn't strike me as, I know, a techie kind of guy. He's more an operations guy. I think they're in trouble. I don't think they've got anybody.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think their trouble is self inflicted in the sense that they're going to do this in the most privacy, you know, faithful way. And that's hard.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe that's hard.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

The so called context aware AI that they've used.

[Paul Thurrott]

Siri, you've used it by mistake most of the time.

[Richard Campbell]

It's terrible.

[Paul Thurrott]

Literally just today, I'm on the bed. We had to eat lunch early today because of the time shift and when do you want to leave? And I said, I don't know, but two hours from now. I was joking. And then Sherry goes, okay, I'll set an alarm for two hours. And I'm like, you idiot. No, I never said you.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I didn't want that. Siri, what month is it?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, it depends on where you live, Leo. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. Okay, now that's the worst thing. I said it right into the phone. The Siri over my, like in the other room answered.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the part of the demo where Steve Jobs is like. And it just works. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, Darren Okey, who is one of our adepts, AI adepts, says he has used the image generation in 4.0 and it's very good. It's especially good to make small changes.

[Paul Thurrott]

To an existing image that's actually so as good as the. Whatever image generation stuff is, I often want to go back and say, this one's good, but could you, you know. Right. And actually that's a, that's a good capability.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's something a lot of people want to do. It's basically photo retouching.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. WDC is scheduled now for June 9th and that week of June 9th. I'm sure there'll be some AI in the keynote, but I don't think it's going to be like last year. We'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

Is there going to be an apology tour? Is it going to be. What are they going to do?

[Paul Thurrott]

They have my version of this is where they go, look at me now we're talking about this.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Are they going to pay no attention to that?

[Paul Thurrott]

IOS 19. Yeah, exactly. So I'm sure they'll have to mention it, but I don't see as much. Opera upgraded, actually four of their browsers today. The Opera one, Opera GX and Opera. What's it called? The little one?

[Leo Laporte]

The calm. The calm one.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, the calm one. Damn it. Opera. What's it called?

[Leo Laporte]

Opera Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's it. And with a bunch of new Aria AI features, including like tab management where you can speak or more typically type natural language. All the stuff you'd expect new UI on Opera, for Android, for Aria, not iPhone yet, but that I'm sure is coming. So that was this week in AI. In about five minutes. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what, we got a three hour show coming up. You don't have to get it all in. There's going to be plenty.

[Paul Thurrott]

I was actually kind of surprised as I went through the show notes, like how much there was, you know, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

All that anybody's talking about right now. It's all.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's, you know, it's happening. I mean, it's happening.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's. That was my question earlier. Is, is it going to happen or are we gonna five years or ten years down the road go. Well, that wasn't. That was a bomb.

[Paul Thurrott]

That was. I really think it's gonna happen. Yeah. All right.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what did happen?

[Paul Thurrott]

Mm.

[Leo Laporte]

And actually a little credit to Steve Ballmer for this. The Xbox.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. So there's actually a bunch of stuff going on with the Xbox gdc, you know, they've started talking about stuff for later in the year, et cetera, et cetera. But there's been hints of this kind of stuff. You know, use the Xbox app as kind of the UI on Windows for games and they want to work with all the different stores and so forth. And they put up a screenshot somewhere that had Steam in the Xbox ui. Steam is not on Xbox, or Steam is not available through the Xbox app, I should say, on PC. And the thought here is that this is tied to. They want the Xbox app to act as the hub for these other Stores. If you have games from the Epic Games store, Steam, whatever it might be that, you know, maybe you're on one of those little gaming handhelds and that's the ui, like that stuff will all come up through the app.

[Leo Laporte]

Do gamers want that? That actually does seem convenient if you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Were an Xbox, meaning Xbox platform, not console, but Focus player. Yeah, I mean I. The two edged sword of the PC in many ways is the availability of all these stores where you can get different stuff and then the weirdness of having to remember like okay, I bought this game, where and how do I go get? You know, like it'd be nice to have one place for that. Right? This is the dream everywhere. It's the dream for Apple TV type devices. It was the dream Microsoft had for Windows Phone. Like we'll just have like one texting interface and everyone was like, yeah, that sounds great. Except for the companies that make those apps and services. Right. So we'll see. But this is. Yeah, we'll see. That's all I'll say there. So I haven't had time to program, process this too much but Xbox cloud gaming is a feature of Xbox Game Pass ultimate or I guess Game Pass ultimate we're calling now. Sometime in the past six months, ish, they added the ability to stream your own games. Remember this is something I've been promising for years. Today they've added seven new games to this including the just released Assassin's Creed Shadows which we'll go with briefly later. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, so that's that. Back to the notes. Where are we? Oh yeah. So Minecraft had an event, had a Minecraft Live event over the weekend. I tried to watch this and I found the host to be kind of tough to deal with. But remember they were going to do this big ray tracing update thing and then they kind of didn't and now there are third party things to do it. So they are actually going to make a bunch of graphical updates to this game starting with something this year called the Vibrant visuals upgrade. Which doesn't make it not look like, you know, it's not. It doesn't look like, yeah, it doesn't go like 816 bit or anything like that. It's faithful to the graphics which I think is what people want and there.

[Leo Laporte]

Are add ons that will make it look like a modern game. Yeah, and I think you want Minecraft to look like Minecraft.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think this looks beautiful. Like the thing that they're talking. So they're talking about. It's worth watching if you Go look up Minecraft Live on YouTube. This is segment you can see for this. It's really nice looking. You can not install it. You can turn it off. If you do install it, you don't have to get it. The initial version will be on Minecraft Bedrock Edition on selected platforms, which. I don't know what that means. They haven't said yet. But it will be coming to other Minecrafts.

[Leo Laporte]

It looks mostly like a lighting update.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So one of the things is in the video they show when you build a house, you have glass windows. Now the light will shine and light up whatever's in its path accurately. Right? Like, yeah, you know, like a game created 30 years ago, but it's Minecraft. I mean, you know, whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

It makes it prettier, I guess. So, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft is in the. This is on the console. So the Xbox Dashboard, which, you know, in many ways might be coming closer to the Xbox app on Windows and vice versa. Right. But in the Xbox Insider program, they're testing this kind of a new game hubs interface that basically gives you everything about that game, including like all of the download, you know, the DLC and whatever you can get for it and help with the game, et cetera, et cetera. So I. Whatever. Okay. Like, I don't know. They just do. This is. Someday we'll figure out Xbox, I guess, is the. Is the plan. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which is the game they were listening back in December, is coming to the PS5, which we already knew, but now we know it's coming on April 17th. I think that's all the news. I am trying to think if there's anything else to this. No, I think that's it.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's perfect timing. Okay. Very nicely done, Paul.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then I didn't write this up, but I'm kind of interested in this because the latest Assassin's Creed game, which is called Assassin's Creed Shadows, takes place in Japan. Looks awesome, right. Has been delayed a couple of times. Finally came out last past week, a little less than a week ago. Apparently had over 2 million players in the first two days. So it's doing better than every Assassin's Creed game except for the one that came out during the Pandemic, which is Valhalla. Right. And that one was the perfect storm of timing and all that stuff. But it's doing better than basically every other game in the series, so.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's massively multiplayer. It's not.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's different. Like, yeah, they.

[Leo Laporte]

It's Not a single player.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, they've tried to get this. You know, they. They. They waited to get it. Right, Right. So it's kind of cool. It's a different approach and you have all of the.

[Leo Laporte]

Different time. Time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it looks good to me. I wanted to. I. I thought I was gonna. I have, you know, Game Pass. I'm like, obviously, I'm just gonna install this in Game Pass. Game Pass is the one place it is not. You know, you can get it on PC through Steam, Epic Game Store, and I believe through Xbox, Microsoft, obviously, you can get it on the consoles. I don't think it's on PS5. No, it is on PS5. I'm sorry. It is on PS5. Yeah. But it's. It's going kind of Blockbuster. It's good. Like, I'm glad to see or not Blockbuster. It's doing great. Like, it's. I think it's in a solid place. Like, there were fears that this thing might have been delayed a couple times too many, and maybe we were done and actually seems like it's doing good. So I'm kind of happy for that. I'd like to play this game.

[Leo Laporte]

I showed a video I may have been mistaken about. I don't know if that video was the new one or a montage of old ones. Yeah, I was gonna say the scene.

[Paul Thurrott]

You showed was like a Roman thing. And I was like.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So the new one is all Japan, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but it's all, like. It's. There's much more going on with it. Like, most of the previous games were really kind of consistent. So the Odyssey, the one that I think was the one that took place in. Or was that Origins? I'm losing track of which one's which. But the Egypt one, you know, Egypt. Right. So this one, though, it's like all kinds of different terrain and weather. There's snow and rain. There's, like swamps and mountains and, like, it's. They're really trying to make it looks great. All right, here we go.

[Leo Laporte]

I have real video now. If I can pull it up, I have real video. This is the new game. Oh, they're showing. This is comparing. You know what? Something's wrong with this stream because it's all blocky.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's all blocky and glitchy.

[Leo Laporte]

But this is not right.

[Paul Thurrott]

But it has, you know, all the kind of familiar elements, you know, climbing buildings and swinging from building to building and assassinating people. Like, in this one, they go through one of those paper walls and, like, you know, stab the guy yeah, it looks cool.

[Richard Campbell]

It's also Ubisoft's last chance. Right. Like, they've had some serious failures in a row. Like, this is it for them.

[Paul Thurrott]

I honestly think this is them proving they can still do it for some sale to someone. Hey, Microsoft, I don't know if it's too soon, but maybe you could buy Ubisoft.

[Leo Laporte]

Probably not.

[Richard Campbell]

They bought everything else.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think they need any more. God, it was so hard for them to get Blizzard that it seems risky to do any more at all.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

There is a big fuss about the game because the male character is black in feudal Japan, although that was based on a historical character, except for that part where the historical character wasn't a samurai.

[Paul Thurrott]

There was a thing where the premier or whoever leads Japan now came to this company, said, you got to make some changes to this because I guess you could go into a temple and destroy anything. And they were like, you can't let people destroy everything. And so I guess half the stuff in there you can destroy and half you cannot.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, what it was, was one of the characters went in and one of the players went and killed all the priests in a temple. And then there was a big fuss about you. This is bad. And so it's like, okay, well, we won't let you put priests in temples.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it's just a weird asymmetrical cultural thing. It's. It's. It's like, it's fine. Like, I mean, to me, this is fine. Like, you want to be correct. You know what they call it with that country? It's fine.

[Richard Campbell]

But he. But, you know, Skull and Bones, like, Far Cry 6, they've had a lot of fails. It's. They're running out of money.

[Paul Thurrott]

The last several Far Cryers are like. Like, whatever. This is a game. And the problem was Far Cry 4.

[Richard Campbell]

Was so incredibly good. Like, it was going to be tough to make it anyway. Yeah, well, it's bad. Bad.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was five. I tried. It was the one I almost played all the way through on Stadia. It was like a combination of terrible game and terrible, you know, whatever. Stadia.

[Leo Laporte]

Try to do a Stadia. Oh, man. I still. I think I still have my asterisk or whatever. What was the Amazon one? Astra subscription.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, Amazon's still around the Luna.

[Leo Laporte]

Luna. That's it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. No, that's still kicking her. In fact, Luna is one of the places you can get Assassin's Creed. The new one. Yeah, it's on. It's. That's One of the stories. You can get it in if you're that stupid. But I don't recommend that. But that's fine.

[Leo Laporte]

But. But wait a minute. The EU said streaming gaming was the next big thing.

[Richard Campbell]

It's very.

[Paul Thurrott]

I feel like when we discussed this that it was very clear this was not going to be the next.

[Leo Laporte]

You debunked it, I believe. All right, Back of the Book is just around the corner. We're going to get your tips, your picks, your app of the weekend. Yes. A little bit of brown, like, just for you from. Looks like this is Dutch.

[Paul Thurrott]

Belgian. Belgian.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, it's Flemish. Well, we'll get to get to the back of the book.

[Paul Thurrott]

Gotta crane my screen.

[Leo Laporte]

Just. Yeah, just messed that up in just a bit. But first, if you enjoy the hijinks, and I know you do here on Windows Weekly and the other shows we do, I want to invite you to join the club. I'm talking about Club Twit. Seven bucks a month, you get ad free versions of all the shows. You wouldn't even get this pitch. You get, of course, access to the Club Twit Discord, which is a heck of a hang. Lot of fun. It's where people go to talk about the shows and watch the shows during the shows. But it is also a place you can go at any time of the day or night to find some nice geeky people. I'm in the Bracket city section that we just created. Chocolate milk Mini Sip said we had to have that. We have a wordle. We have. Let's Play. We have a couple of Minecraft servers in. Let's Play. So there is more than just the shows. We also have special events coming up Friday. It's the AI Users Group. Anthony Nielsen does this. Anthony, I'm gonna be a little bit late for that, but I missed it last time. I don't want to miss it. This is where people like Darren and Anthony and all of our regular club members come in and talk about how they're using AI. AI tips, prompts, that kind of thing. That's coming up Friday. The AI User Group, Club only. We also have the photo time with Chris Marquardt on April 3rd. That's a week from tomorrow. Home theater geeks recording Micah's crafting corner. Micah has moved on from the miniature kitchen creation. He's now going to do Lego plants. So if you bring your Lego or you're knitting or you're painting or whatever it is, you're coding and join a kind of cozy little hang with Micah that's April 16th. Coming up, we're doing another coffee segment with the coffee geek, Mark Prince. Liz Happy Beans will be joining us. She's no, no, no. She's an expert. So you know on beans. So we'll talk about that. Anyway, this is an example of why you might want to join Club Twitter. I mean, all that for seven bucks. That's pretty, pretty good deal. If you're interested, find out more, go to Twit TV Club Twit and sign up today. We it also most importantly, makes it possible for us to keep doing the shows we do to keep the people employed, keep the lights on. It really helps us out in the long run. So please Twit TV Club Twit and join the fun with the best all.

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[Paul Thurrott]

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[Leo Laporte]

Paul Back of the book Time app or tip? I guess we'll start with a tip couple of tips.

[Paul Thurrott]

PC Game Pass and Game Pass ultimate both have among their kind of list of perks something called in game benefits. It's like games with benefits. It started as paid games only and then they added some free games like free to play games that have in game benefits. And now they've added a bunch more. And it looks like this was I had a hard time finding out what this even meant, right. Because this is like one of those kind of esoteric word features you don't really see that much. And it turns out that that was not me. It's hard. They really don't document this very well. So now they're updating the Xbox UI in the app and then on the console so that you can better find these perks and find out what they are. So this is list of perks. They've added a bunch of new games that have perks. So when you're a member of one of these subscriptions, you get these additional features. So it could be things like levels or outfits or that a character might wear or weapons or whatever. It might be like things you would normally have to earn in the game. You know, as you play, you can get just for being a subscriber, it's like cheating. It's fun. And then Amazon is having a spring sale right now, so we have our little page about that. But every, you know, it's probably a bunch of this stuff and definitely worth looking at. So if we're holding off on whatever device purchase, especially in electronics, much of that stuff's on sale.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. All right, so in the app space, two things. Google Drive for Windows is now out, generally available on Windows, on arm. It's been in beta since, I think, November. I've never had any problems with it. I use it every single day. It's been great. But now it's generally available. So if you are on a Gmail, like a personal Google account or Google workspace, it's everywhere. So that's happening. That's good. And then I wish I don't have it in front of me, but I keep mentioning this Cursor AI editor and this is the thing I said earlier, but we're going to come back to this. I'm not going to go on and on because I want to make sure Richard has time here. But this tool is actually kind of amazing. So there's a lot of, like program repair, AI type things, right? Like GitHub Copilot, which is great. You could just have a window, you know, with Anthropic or chatgpt also. Fine. Sometimes, though, that's a little bit of work. Right. And so I know, like on the Mac, which I've not tried, they're integrating Chat GPT with programming tools like Xcode, right? So that you run these things side by side and they interact and they understand each other. With Cursor, what you can do is open the folder that contains your project and depending on the language and the, you know, framework, whatever you're using, you might be using visual Studio code anyway, and that's what this is based on. So that works normally. It's great. The thing I'm working on right now is just full visual Studio, but I can still open the project in this editor and then I could just say, hey, I would like this to be more efficient. I would like to improve the code quality. I want to reduce the dependency. Or not, I'm sorry, the redundancies that are in here, because I know I'm reusing code in too many places, etc. So just before the show, I did this with my, you know, the app I'm working on, and it gave me this enormous excellent to do list, which is the second time I've done this before I did it. Well, I tried to do it for a specific part of the app. I ended up doing it for the whole version of the whole app. But this, that was not the latest version of my app. So since then I've incorporated a lot of the changes that suggested before. And now I have this thing that it spit out and it is astonishing. It is so good. I'm going to see if I can use it for free. You can use it for free. I mean, you can use it. It has a free tier.

[Leo Laporte]

A lot of people are raving about this lately.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm already kind of blown away by the AI coding stuff. Like, it's been really good. But the ability to. The question I asked in the beginning was I said, this is what this thing does. It's C, it's wpf. This is what it's trying to do.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not common lisp, I'm sad to say.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sorry. At this point, it's almost as old.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Really?

[Paul Thurrott]

It really is. But it, I, you know what I said, I, you know, I wanted to be more efficient. I want the code quality. I had this list of things I wanted and it said, okay. And it said, okay, it looks like. And it would literally spit stuff out. It says, it looks like you're doing tab management in the file tab. So see which I am. It looks like you're doing this here. Blah, blah. And it was like. And it took, I want to be generous here, three seconds, five seconds. It took longer to spit out the text than it did to generate it. Like it was. It's amazing. So I haven't gone through all of it yet, but I kind, you know, you have to, right? You have to look. I'm like, oh, my God. Yeah. I'm like, yep, yep, yep, yep. And I don't know, I. People, I, you know, I keep kind of repeating myself, especially on the code side of it. But if you're not using this. Not maybe not this tool specifically, but AI to assist you in coding, you're doing something wrong at this point. Like you're. You're punching yourself in the face.

[Richard Campbell]

Unemployable at this point.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Because productivity, you really need to figure this out.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow, that's kind of amazing.

[Paul Thurrott]

You've got to figure this out. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's really good.

[Richard Campbell]

And they. And they're just not that hard to get into.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Like, they're everywhere and you can. So wherever you're currently working, you can use them. And the productivity boost is 30%. Like, it's not a little.

[Paul Thurrott]

I have a friend who's a developer in the financial services space. Obviously there are big concerns there around regulatory requirements and customer data privacy, et cetera. But they are using GitHub, Copilot, and they have specific. I don't know if they're. I'm not sure how they. He just described it to me, but he had the same thing. He's a very cynical person. He kind of went into this, like, ah, yeah, whatever. And then he started using it. He was like, oh, my God. And he kind of came to me and said, I don't know if you've heard of this. I'm like, dude, are you kidding me? Like, he's like, one time he came. This is 10 years ago or something, but he went. He's like, dude, let me tell you something about Microsoft. I'm like, I'm just going to hold it. Just stop right there. Do you have nothing you can tell me about Microsoft? No, but he was, you know, but he is a professional developer. That's what this is. Career. And he was like, I can't. I can't believe development is different now. Yeah. And it's all. It's also one of those kind of things. Like, I could have been doing this six months or a year ago. Like, I. Now I wish I had known about this earlier, you know. It's really good.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it wasn't as good six months ago. It's really good now.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm gonna have to try it.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a movie.

[Paul Thurrott]

I highly recommend the cursor especially. But yeah, all this stuff is good.

[Leo Laporte]

Unfortunately, it doesn't support Lisp either, but.

[Paul Thurrott]

Lisp. Yeah. Well, I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

It's ironic because Lisp was the first AI language you can change the model.

[Paul Thurrott]

Used on the back end. I mean, I.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it use tree sitter? Do you Know what it's using as.

[Paul Thurrott]

The first of all, you're not even speaking English anymore. I think it's Anthropic on the back end by default.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Anthropic knows common list very well. I can actually ask Anthropic Sonnet does a great job coding.

[Paul Thurrott]

You should be able to do it. But definitely just take a look especially.

[Leo Laporte]

I will look at it. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think a lot of developers, especially in the websites are really familiar with Visual Studio code. So it's a. You kind of go to.

[Leo Laporte]

It's vsc.

[Paul Thurrott]

It is.

[Leo Laporte]

In fact, Darren's saying it's basic. Not much difference between using Copilot in VS code.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, except for me. Like I said, I'm sure there are things that kind of do this, but the examining of an entire. In my case, C Visual Studio 2022, whatever solution, going through every single file and then saying, you should split this into this. This needs to be over here. It's giving very specific instructions across the project. Awesome.

[Leo Laporte]

I love it that it gives you a to do list. Like, yes, here's some things you need to work on.

[Paul Thurrott]

I always thought I was going to do this method by method. I'm like, here's the method, here's the Atom tab method. How would you make this better? But because it can. Can handle the whole thing, to me that's like next level.

[Leo Laporte]

So you can give it your code base and say what can you say what should I work on next?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, literally it gives you priority list.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's exactly right. That's why earlier I was like, this is what I'm going to talk about in the app thing because but for coding, it's exactly that. Yeah, it's really nice. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

I've been asking the Microsoft folks what they're using and Cloud 3.7 is their preferred, it seems. And then I ask them why and I almost don't know that they know. Like it may just be a cliquey thing. Like other things.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is when some. Someone says, you know, you really should use Bing or something or DuckDuckGo. And you're like, okay. And then you go use it and you're like within two queries you're like, nope. It's like, what's wrong? I'm like, you're like, I just no the answer. And I think that's what the anthropic cloud is like. Like you use that, then you go back to whatever Copilot, chatgpt. I'm just code specific here. And it's like, nope, no, that One, it's that one, you know, and maybe that changes over time, but I think right now that is the case. Yeah. You said 3 7. And is that the latest version? Because there was a point where the previous version was the best one or something. But again it shifts.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. But again it's like, how do you quantify this? So I've been actually, we've got a net rocks coming now. It's like, how do you measure the quality of an LLM? Yeah, right.

[Paul Thurrott]

How are you measuring these things? Productivity increase. Like, how do you.

[Richard Campbell]

What's the difference there? And you know. All right, because the thing with going to 37 is it's the most expensive one too. So there's a lot of self, you know, validation here. It's like, latest number, highest cost. Must be better, but must be better.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. Well, when you're starting to take Friday afternoons off every week, maybe that's how you can, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

So I can.

[Richard Campbell]

Any of us get in the bottom of our to do list.

[Leo Laporte]

So you're saying I can again, you said about it, chat with my code base.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly right.

[Leo Laporte]

So I can say like, what should I start? What should I work on?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, what should I work on for? Yeah. I mean, in my case, I've explained what it is. For some reason, I probably don't have to do this. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God.

[Paul Thurrott]

See how fast it does this? And my thing is fairly humongous since.

[Leo Laporte]

I gave it the day one of advent of code. It said, well, since you've completed day one, the next logical step would be day two.

[Paul Thurrott]

Thanks, Siri. You're a lot of help.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, that's right.

[Leo Laporte]

I could add more test cases, optimize the code further.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, my God. Siri's talking to me. What's happening? Oh, no.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't even know what's coming. Let me see. Can I help me optimize the code base. So it does understand lisp?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no, I'm positive.

[Leo Laporte]

Why wouldn't it? Because it's using. I didn't realize it was using Anthropic. So there you go.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, look at this. Look at this. Holy moly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

So I was always thinking it was just kind of like intellisense, but it's more than just auto code.

[Paul Thurrott]

So the most basic functionality that you get from GitHub copilot is what you just. It's basically intellisense. It's like code completion or code correction or whatever you want to call that. Intellisense, I guess. But you can do this. You can Chat, I mean I do in visual studio chat to GitHub, Copa and say blah, blah, blah, whatever. But this thing is doing this entire project view, which to me is.

[Leo Laporte]

This is kind of a mind boggling.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's what I'm saying. It's crazy, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, help me out.

[Paul Thurrott]

So next week we'll come back and you will look a lot of this will be like, oh my God, this is amazing. And maybe you'll find a couple things where you're like, yeah, not really. But I'm curious once you start using this because I feel like it's hard to walk away from this.

[Leo Laporte]

This would be a great learning tool too because of course I solved this day one, probably pretty naively. This is one of the ones I put on and I streamed live. So I'm sure it was very nice. And then it says, oh well, there's some things you can do. You're doing a lot of we can make the parsing more efficient and so forth. And so it makes some suggestions and this would be a great way to learn how to write better code.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, literally that was my point was I have like whatever the method was, I do two loop checks on whatever it is and I'm like, this got to be a way to do this more efficiently. And in that case, I don't remember which one it was anymore, but. But whatever. AI, sure enough, you know, half the amount of code one loop. Beautiful. You know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

First world problems.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow, it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. This would be a great tool for becoming a better coder. I still make very nervous about having a right code, especially if you don't code.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right, right, right. It's great for learning. That's the other thing. So AI is great at explaining.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

And actually I don't know at the bottom of this, but when I just did it earlier, it said these are specific places we could follow up on if you want more detail.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. Variant. Yes. It said that add more optimizations. There are still some possibilities. Wow. I don't code for anything but fun. So this wouldn't make it more fun fun for me, but maybe for a learning.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know, it depends on what you're trying to do. Right. I mean like this, the code challenge that you're doing and so you want to solve it, right. You want to just get the answer. But you might be interested enough in this to say, okay, so I think you just did this basically like I did do this and it's like, well here's a more efficient. You're like oh, that's really interesting. And then you learn this technique that maybe you can apply later.

[Richard Campbell]

It's also good for getting you out of thrashing. Like, if you're stuck on a problem, like, I just can't get these parameters right or anything like that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Absolutely.

[Richard Campbell]

It's great at that.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is a daily occurrence for me. I'm not a professional or good developer, so I'm always like, well, you know, so it's. It's wonderful getting over the hump, you know, for me.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, let's get over the hump and get to the run is radio show.

[Richard Campbell]

For the week brought back one of the legends, Jeff Hicks, who's one of the original PowerPoint folks, you know, but best educator in the space. Well known, and he had a new book out, so I was happy to have him on and talk a bit about behind the PowerShell pipeline. And Jeff really pushed on the ideas around making more maintainable PowerShell. Like, it's not enough to just make it work. Can you actually be able to understand what you did when you go back to it in three months? So some commenting parameter controls, maybe even a bit of testing, just making higher quality PowerShell. And of course, we had to talk about code Copilot, because Copilot help will help you write powershell too. So it. Yeah, good conversation. And his book is, of course, excellent. It's the best insight you'll get on.

[Paul Thurrott]

What was the name of the book?

[Richard Campbell]

The behind the PowerShell pipeline.

[Paul Thurrott]

Thank you, sir.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. If I were a big Windows user, I would absolutely learn PowerShell.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, yeah, it's a superpower.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it is a superpower.

[Paul Thurrott]

Literally.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, one of the. One of the angles we went at was writing your scripts in a way where they pass sets so that you could pipe it from one to the next to another script so that you build up this repertoire of scripts that do core things. You need to pull data sets together that you can then do actions on. So it's just a way of thinking about building more sustainable PowerShell.

[Leo Laporte]

What is our brown liquor for this week?

[Richard Campbell]

So this is Kempish Vir, which was brought to my friend Hannes by my friend Hannes to my home. So I don't have it with me. I didn't bring it across the border. And it is a Belgian peated whiskey, which is weird.

[Leo Laporte]

They make great beer.

[Richard Campbell]

They do. And in fact, the guy behind this whiskey is a beer maker. His name is Guy Pirro, and he started making beer in the 80s in his mother's kitchen. Good enough. That People are like, you need to bottle this and sell it. So he finally opened a Brewery in 1998, because it's not that easy to open a brewery in Belgium, believe it or not, and upgraded all their facilities in 2010. And while he was at it, he bought a still and started making. Started experimenting with whiskey as well. This is in Zandhoven, which is outside of Antwerp. So the, the sad part is that he keeps reusing the name Kempish Vera means the fire of Kempen. The area that he's in is called Kempen and it actually has peat bogs in it too, which is interesting for going for peaty flavors. And so there are beers called Kepis beer, but they make one whiskey and this is the one. It's only a 500 mil bottle, but he does use a bit of peat in the malt, although he buys that Malta already ground. But he has managed to make a deal with Lefroy and he ages for five years in Lefroy Cast. So it's sort of peed on peat. So lots of color, not a real high ppm. This is like a 35 40, which is not bad. Like that's a peaty flavor. But. But the. But taste is really excellent. 46% and only available in Belgium. So it's only because my friend brought it over. So that's why the website is in Belgium. Like they just have no effort at all to export this product so far. So sorry to even show it off to you, but it was a unique, very interesting whiskey that you can only get if you go to Antwerp and buy some.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's an excuse to go to Antwerp. The only thing worries me is also the diamond capital of the world. And that means I better not bring Lisa. Yeah, it's a nice bottle.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. And an interesting product. And it's just they make one whiskey, they make a bunch of different kinds of beer and apparently all excellent, award winning. They make one kind of whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

This one one's a beer in. There's quite a bit of it.

[Richard Campbell]

But yeah, the triple was the first.

[Leo Laporte]

I love triples. I love triples.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, so proper Belgian beers.

[Leo Laporte]

But yeah, looks good.

[Richard Campbell]

Has this whiskey as well.

[Leo Laporte]

So, I mean, beer is not distilled, so it is a very different process.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it is, but. But whiskey before it's distilled is a beer.

[Leo Laporte]

Huh?

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Like you make a wort, you ferment it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And then if you finish it with hops and. And age it, you're making beer. And if you throw it fire it through a couple of stills, you're making whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. So it's just a different final step in a way.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Same frame, brewers use, same wash process. It really varies. Similar. Right. Interesting. Same base product. That's why we always have that line is whiskey is what beer wants to be when it grows up.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, Richard, you survived the challenges.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of red quite a day.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. No, and I think. I think it's all going to come down to this machine. Microsoft decided it was going to be updated whether I wanted to be or not, which is why the fans are cranking on it.

[Paul Thurrott]

The good news is we got a solid 37 minutes to show out of three hours. So that was, you know. Oh, boy.

[Leo Laporte]

And a couple of costume changes. So that's it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

But next week I'll be in Vegas, so I'll be set up in one of the skylops and we'll. We'll do it from there.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, good.

[Leo Laporte]

You'll be able to use Y Max and everything will be fine.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And I'll have my. But I'll have my Starlink. I'll just run my own rig. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

So, you know, we should just get everybody Starlink.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, they'll be the next. Everyone gets Starlink.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Don't get it for me here in Mexico. I don't know if they might.

[Leo Laporte]

Richard Campbell'[e-mail] that's where you'll find the great Powershell episode, but also hundreds of others. He also does a great show.net Rocks with Carl Franklin, [e-mail] He's on the road, folks. Where in the world is Richard?

[Paul Thurrott]

He's on the prowl. Lock your doors.

[Leo Laporte]

Beware.

[Richard Campbell]

Do three weeks in in Australia, New Zealand.

[Paul Thurrott]

So that'll be fun. Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

And I'm just putting the finishing touches on a couple of weeks in South Africa, too.

[Paul Thurrott]

So. Fun. Yeah, fun.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll have a great time. We'll see you next week in lost wages.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Mr. Paul Thurat coming to us from CDMX. He is, of [e-mail] all over the world. T H U R R O T T. If you are not yet a member, become a premium member. There's a lot of great stuff there. You can also buy his books, the Field Guide to Windows 11 and Windows Everywhere. Those [e-mail] we do Windows weekly every Wednesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live on eight different streams. Club members are watching in the discord, but you could Also watch on YouTube, Twitch, X dot com, tick tock, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kick. Eight different ways to watch. But you don't have to watch live. I guess that's the point because we make a podcast out of it. And that's what Kevin's going to be doing for the next five weeks on this episode. He's going to be busy cleaning this sucker up, but then you'll get the, you get the full, you know, the perfect version, not the imperfect week. Yeah, he's going to be working hard to be pretty. There were a few technical issues for those who are watching the edited version. Really? I didn't know that. Those are available at the website Twitter TV WW. There's a YouTube channel with the finished edited videos. Great way to share a clip or a thought or an idea with a friend and help spread the word about Windows Weekly. Of course, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast player and get it automatically the minute Kevin is done polishing it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Up, it will be time for next week's show.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, maybe just in time. Thank you everybody. We will see you next week, you winners and you dozers for another gripping edition of Windows Weekly. Bye Bye.

[D]

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