Windows Weekly 930: Flocculation & Saponification

Summary

Detailed Summary of Windows Weekly Episode 930: Flocculation & Saponification

Release Date: April 30, 2025
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell

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Introduction

In Episode 930 of Windows Weekly, hosts Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell convene from diverse global locations—Mexico City, Melbourne, and their respective homes—to discuss the latest developments in Microsoft and the broader technology landscape. The episode delves into Microsoft's telemetry practices in Windows 11, the company's stance on defending EU enterprises against U.S. government demands, recent earnings reports, the rollout of a new Xbox game titled "Tower Born," and personal anecdotes involving whiskey tastings.

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Microsoft Telemetry and Privacy in Windows 11

Paul Thurrott initiates a discussion on Microsoft's evolving approach to telemetry in Windows 11, referencing Dave Plummer’s recent insights. He highlights Microsoft's transition to free operating system upgrades, a strategy aimed at unifying the user base and overcoming the hesitancy of mainstream users to upgrade due to past reliability issues.

Key Points:

• Purpose of Telemetry: Thurrott explains that Microsoft's telemetry is designed to enhance system reliability by anonymously collecting data on software performance. This helps identify and address widespread issues efficiently.
• Privacy Concerns: While acknowledging the apprehensions surrounding telemetry, Thurrott asserts, “[If] you think Microsoft is lying about telemetry, you should not be using Windows at all” ([11:55]).
• Enterprise vs. Consumer Telemetry: Richard Campbell notes that enterprise environments often block telemetry, potentially masking systemic issues that only surface in consumer setups ([06:53]).

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurrott [11:55]: "If you think Microsoft is lying about telemetry, you should not be using Windows at all."

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Advertising in Windows

The conversation shifts to the increasing presence of advertisements within Windows applications. Paul Thurrott draws parallels with platforms like Notion and Substack, emphasizing Microsoft's broader monetization strategies.

Key Points:

• Integration of Ads: Thurrott critiques the introduction of more intrusive ads in Windows, moving beyond modest placements to more prominent displays within the operating system.
• Comparison with Other Services: Richard Campbell points out that enterprise versions of Windows often remain free from such advertising clutter, contrasting them with consumer-facing editions ([07:49]).

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurrott [07:49]: "They push you to Edge even when you very explicitly say, yeah, I actually want to use this other browser, but I don't feel like Windows is fully on the dark side yet."

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Windows Update Issue: inetpub Folder

A pressing concern arises from a recent Windows update that inadvertently created an inetpub folder in the root directory. This issue sparks confusion and frustration among users, prompting a critical examination of Microsoft's update practices.

Key Points:

• Mystery Folder Creation: Leo Laporte describes the unexpected appearance of the inetpub folder, which is part of a security update ([16:35]).
• Microsoft’s Explanation: The update requires the folder to remain intact to ensure security measures function correctly. However, the lack of clarity from Microsoft fuels user unease.
• User Impact: Paul Thurrott expresses skepticism about the necessity of making such system folders visible, wondering why Microsoft doesn’t keep them hidden to prevent user interference ([19:03]).

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurrott [19:03]: "I just don't see it. Why would they say that? Why create it until you need it to do something actual?"

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Windows Insider Preview Channels

The hosts critique recent changes to the Windows Insider Preview channels, noting a departure from the previously logical progression of feature testing stages.

Key Points:

• Channel Restructuring: Paul Thurrott discusses Microsoft's shift to a channel-based approach, where feature updates no longer follow a sequential path from Canary to Dev to Beta to Release Preview ([53:40]).
• User Confusion: The lack of order in feature deployment has led to frustration among Insider program participants, making it difficult to predict when and how new features will be introduced.
• Critical Perspective: Richard Campbell views this change as an "admission of guilt," suggesting that the disorganized rollout reflects deeper internal issues within Microsoft's engineering teams ([55:22]).

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [54:48]: "But there's no order to this because there's no order in our universe."

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Copilot Plus PC Feature

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Microsoft's Copilot Plus PC initiative, which introduces advanced AI features to a select group of PCs.

Key Points:

• Feature Requirements: Copilot Plus PC requires modern security features such as TPM 2.0 and VBS enclaves, aligning with Microsoft's broader security initiatives ([28:02]).
• Limited Rollout: The feature is currently available only on a small subset of PCs categorized as Copilot Plus, raising concerns about accessibility and user experience.
• User Experience: The frequent prompts to verify identity resemble CAPTCHAs, leading to annoyance among users who desire seamless integration without constant interruptions ([39:47]).

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurrott [39:47]: "I guarantee you, if you actually want to use recall, and if you are actually actively using recall, it is really annoying because that comes up all the time."

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Microsoft’s Relationship with OpenAI and AI Investments

Paul Thurrott elaborates on the strategic partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI, underscoring its importance in maintaining Microsoft's competitive edge in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Key Points:

• Financial Commitment: Microsoft has invested billions into OpenAI, integrating its models into products like Bing and Microsoft 365's Copilot features.
• Competitive Positioning: This partnership positions Microsoft strongly against rivals like Google, which is also heavily investing in AI to challenge its dominance in search and advertising ([92:34]).
• AI-driven Growth: The collaboration with OpenAI has been a catalyst for Microsoft's growth in cloud services and AI-driven applications.

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurrott [135:03]: "But the problem is most people use AI are just normal mainstream human beings. They will trust, already do trust. And they are not going to do this fact checking."

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Microsoft Earnings Report Highlights

The hosts dissect Microsoft's recent earnings report, highlighting robust growth in key segments and substantial investments in AI infrastructure.

Key Points:

• Revenue Growth: Microsoft reported revenues just under $90 billion, with significant increases in cloud services (Azure up 21%) and Microsoft 365 (up double digits) ([75:33]).
• Profitability: Net income surged to nearly $26 billion, reflecting strong operational performance despite challenges in hardware revenue.
• AI Investments: A notable portion of earnings is being reinvested into AI, underscoring Microsoft’s commitment to maintaining its leadership in the field ([134:09]).

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurrott [134:09]: "Here is a summary of the earnings report: revenue less than $90 billion. Microsoft 365 is up double digits, Azure is up 21%, intelligent cloud is up 22%, but hardware revenue declined by 6%."

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Antitrust Issues and AI Competition

The episode touches on ongoing antitrust cases against Google, discussing their implications for the tech industry and potential shifts in market dynamics.

Key Points:

• Google’s Legal Challenges: Google has lost three major antitrust cases in the U.S., notably affecting its search and advertising dominance.
• Implications for Competition: These legal setbacks could pave the way for increased competition from companies like Microsoft and emerging AI platforms.
• Strategic Moves: Microsoft’s AI advancements, bolstered by its partnership with OpenAI, position it favorably to capitalize on any regulatory shifts that may reduce Google’s market control ([73:09]).

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurrott [73:09]: "But is there a version where they lose 20, 25% of it or something? Yeah, I mean, well, and we are."

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AI in Other Products: Duolingo and Beyond

The hosts explore the integration of AI into various consumer products, using Duolingo as a primary example to discuss the benefits and potential pitfalls of AI adoption.

Key Points:

• Duolingo’s AI Integration: Richard Campbell shares an experience with Duolingo’s AI features, expressing concerns about the quality and reliability of AI-generated content.
• Trust and Verification: Paul emphasizes the importance of users maintaining a critical stance towards AI outputs, highlighting the risk of complacency and over-reliance on AI without proper oversight ([130:39]).
• Broader AI Impact: The discussion extends to AI's role in content creation, software development, and other areas, underscoring the necessity for human oversight to prevent errors and ensure quality.

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurrott [130:39]: “You already do trust AI. So when I explicitly use AI and fix errors, it doesn’t change maybe the pure opinion of its value, but it does make the users who are blending with it kinda blind to the fact that errors can and will still happen.”

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Whiskey Anecdotes and Personal Stories

Adding a personal touch, Richard Campbell recounts a recent whiskey tasting experience at Casa Divinos in Melbourne, where he encountered a flawed batch of Glengarrick 21 due to a technical issue known as "sapphirefication."

Key Points:

• Whiskey Tasting Incident: Campbell describes how improper dilution during bottling led to saponification, resulting in soapy flavors in the whiskey ([149:41]).
• Technical Insight: The hosts delve into the chemistry behind "sapphirefication," explaining how rapid water addition affects phenol breakdown, which is avoided in modern whiskey production ([152:12]).

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [151:57]: “And the ultimate example of this was a Scottish whiskey, a Glengarrick 21. And he says, try this. Gives me just a half an ounce pour, a little tiny pour. And Josh got one too. And I smell it and it smells like dish soap.”

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Conclusion

As the episode wraps up, the hosts reflect on the multifaceted impact of AI on technology and everyday applications, emphasizing the balance between innovation and maintaining user trust. They highlight the inevitability of AI's evolution and its deepening integration into various platforms, underscoring the need for ongoing vigilance and critical engagement from users.

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Notable Quotes:

1. Paul Thurrott [11:55]:

   "If you think Microsoft is lying about telemetry, you should not be using Windows at all."

2. Richard Campbell [54:48]:

   "But there's no order to this because there's no order in our universe."

3. Paul Thurrott [39:47]:

   "I guarantee you, if you actually want to use recall, and if you are actually actively using recall, it is really annoying because that comes up all the time."

4. Paul Thurrott [135:03]:

   "But the problem is most people use AI are just normal mainstream human beings. They will trust, already do trust. And they are not going to do this fact checking."

5. Richard Campbell [151:57]:

   "And the ultimate example of this was a Scottish whiskey, a Glengarrick 21. And he says, try this. Gives me just a half an ounce pour, a little tiny pour. And Josh got one too. And I smell it and it smells like dish soap."

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This episode of Windows Weekly offers a comprehensive exploration of Microsoft's strategic moves in the AI domain, the nuanced debates surrounding telemetry and privacy in Windows 11, and real-world implications of AI integration in consumer products. Coupled with personal stories and industry insights, the hosts provide a nuanced perspective on the evolving interplay between technology, user experience, and corporate strategy.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat is in Mexico City. Richard Campbell is in Melbourne, Australia. Yet we gather together in the amazing miracle of modern technology to do a Windows Weekly show. We're going to talk about just the crazy answer from Microsoft about insider preview channels. Apparently they're not supposed to be in any particular order anymore. Microsoft says it's going to defend EU companies against the US Government. Late earnings come in and we'll talk about. Plus a brand new game for Xbox, Tower Born. All that and more coming up next. Plus a great whiskey 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 930 recorded Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Flocculation and saponification. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show we cover the latest news from Microsoft. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce my compatriots on this show. Actually, they're the actual hosts, Mr. Paul Thurat. Thurrott.com. hello, Paulie. He's in Mexico City and all the way from Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, it's Richard Campbell of Runners radio and it's 3am Richard, my deepest apologies. It's getting early.

[Richard Campbell]

We've had time set up. It's 4am now, so we're making progress.

[Leo Laporte]

Will. Will New Zealand be better or worse?

[Paul Thurrott]

Better. Okay, Better in every way. Leo. Every we. No, you know, just.

[Richard Campbell]

I had a really great whiskey adventure this week you guys are going to hear all about, which would be tough to duplicate almost anywhere. So Malevolence has been very good to me.

[Paul Thurrott]

This was, this had to have been still pdc. We were talking to this group of guys. It might have been the same PDC where we jumped behind on the pillows behind Tom Warren that, you know, a.

[Richard Campbell]

Million years ago, you know, as you.

[Leo Laporte]

Do the world famous.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm in this group of guys, they're from Australia, New Zealand, whatever. And we're going, we're just as guys do, just ripping on each other. And some guy goes, he's like, admit it, you can't tell our accents apart. And I was like, new Zealand, New Zealand, Australia, New Zealand. They were like, holy crap. And I'm like, I just guessed. I have no idea.

[Richard Campbell]

But she guessed with certainty. And that's what it takes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like any middle aged white guy. Just absolutely, just.

[Leo Laporte]

I know.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, it was a good one.

[Leo Laporte]

Shall we play a game?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Shall we talk about Windows? You have a. An interesting point you made in the notes today.

[Paul Thurrott]

If you say So I guess we'll find out. I don't know. We've been talking a lot about Dave Plummer lately and that's not by design. He had come up with that Longhorn video thing and I was like, I love this guy. He didn't really add anything here, but he just did a video fairly recently Talking about Windows 11, interestingly. So of course I perk up to this. And what his argument basically comes down to is that in switching over to free operating system upgrades, which was A Technically Windows 10 was the first big one, but it really, in the wake of Windows 8 and wanting to get everyone updated there obviously and get past that, Apple had made Mac OS upgrades free at that point, mobile OS upgrades are free. They're like, all right, we have to do this because no one's upgrading. Right? And Windows had a well deserved reputation for those upgrades being unreliable and you know, problematic. Mainstream users would never upgrade, you know, Windows. So they're all right, we're going to try to get everyone in the same version, Windows as a service, yada, yada, yada.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, but systems were big on we wait for Service pack one, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know, they've been changing the rules ever since, I mean on upgrades and how that stuff works and the upgrades are still free. I don't mean that. But you know, for businesses, depending on the type of arrangement, license you have, whatever, you know, you can skip versions and things like that, they get kind of mealy mouthed about what things are called. It's like Windows 10 actually probably had nine product versions in the course of its life or something which were all were major revs of Windows or version upgrades, whatever. But you know, he gets to a point where it's. Well, you know, we've all heard the adage, if you don't pay for the product, then you are the product. And I was like, huh? Because it's really easy to fall into that argument. Right? It sounds right, it sounds right. And this caused me to go back and look at some stuff because one of those things that I've kind of done a lot over the years is get outraged over things that I believe to be important and then try to step back from the ones that are either completely made up or maybe just exaggerated and say, guys, there are more serious problems in the world than whatever the faux outrage thing you've got going on right now is. So for example, the key complaint against Windows 11 in this area is the forced telemetry, which on the surface of things is, I could see, I Understand it. I would like Windows to have the switch and it could be hoops you have to jump through. It doesn't have to be obvious where you could just say, no, I'm not doing this.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I guess the question is the kind of telemetry, like soft application crashes, misconfiguration, so forth. That telemetry I'm less concerned about than my own, like personal digital 100%.

[Paul Thurrott]

And that's the thing I went back and looked up because Microsoft, as it turns out, has a privacy policy and it very explicitly states what they are sending back to Microsoft about your computer. It's anonymous. It's all about reliability issues. And what they're trying to do is find patterns so that, you know, maybe you have a problem because you have some weird configuration, but if they see that same problem across millions of computers, that elevates it up to the top of the stack. We got to fix that thing quick because it's clearly a problem, you know. So my personal stance on this is what you just said. In fact, I wrote this when Windows. This would have been Windows 10, not 11. When this first came out was, look, if I had the option to turn off all telemetry, I wouldn't. I just leave it alone. I want to contribute in that small way to the overall reliability of Windows. I think most people probably do all.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm saying, most consumers, because most sysadmins block all the machines travel across the firewall.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. And by the way, that issue just came up fairly recently because that's a problem. Right? You've got these corporate standard configurations being rolled out to hundreds of thousands of people. They could be having an endemic problem.

[Richard Campbell]

And they tend to use different hardware than the average consumer, too. So you have whole classes of machine that are all behind the firewall that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are just not being reported.

[Richard Campbell]

No telemetry.

[Paul Thurrott]

So that's. Yeah, by the way, that is an issue. But that's kind of the issue at the other end of the spectrum, I guess. But look, there is advertising in Windows. I was, you know, I coined that slippery slope phrase with Windows 8 where I said, yeah, the ads are in apps, they're in modern apps only they're way at the end of the app. Remember, they used to have these giant panoramic experiences, like they weren't ads up front, but I was like slippery soap. You know, you don't put ads in Windows to put in less ads. In the next version of Windows, you're going to put more ads in and those ads are going to come front and center, they're going to come out of the apps. And that's exactly what happened, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, without a doubt. And again, the thing that system Mints get is they get bare metal enterprise versions of Windows 11 or Windows 10 that don't have a lot of that stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Yeah. I mean this is a weird coincidence, but right before the. As the show was started, before the show started, before we started recording, but we were here and we were trying to figure out video, audio stuff, I was doing whatever I was doing in Notion and I noticed in the sidebar of Notion and it's gone now, but there was a little graphical pop up for Notion Mail, a little ad, got it too. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

I got a full screen pop up that blocked everything.

[Richard Campbell]

Before you do anything important to you, let me tell you about me.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me sell you something. This is right so there now on.

[Paul Thurrott]

The right now, depending on, depending on your personality, depending on all kinds of things. I don't know. Leo, for example, I know said he pays for Notion. So if I was 200 bucks a year, buddy. Yeah. So if I was paying for Notion, that would bother me a lot, right? I don't pay for Notion. I've made the case that I don't understand why I'm not paying for notion. But there are these products that exist and they'll change. I get this, the world changes and things, whatever. But for now, Notion is on that very short list of products I do not pay for that are not insured ified, that give me way more. This is like here in Mexico City especially, but anywhere in the world really. You'll go to like a little dive bar looking thing and they have the best food in the world. And I always make this the same comment, which is this is better than it needs to be. You know, people who come in here and drink cocktails or beers or whatever would be okay with lesser quality.

[Leo Laporte]

It doesn't have to be the best in the world, it doesn't have to.

[Paul Thurrott]

Be a Michelin class, but it often is. Like it's kind of strange. And if you apply that thinking to like software services, whatever, the list is very short. Notion is on that list. Substack is to me. And I know there are other issues with Substack, but Substack is this publishing platform that you don't pay a cent for. And if you don't make any money, they don't make any money. Whatever, life goes on. But if you make money, yeah, they make some money. They're hosting your stuff, they don't charge you for Anything. And to me that's very, very good. And that might be the end of my list. I'm not really sure. But Windows is one of those things where obviously it's been shifting and with Windows 10, especially now Windows 11, it's been trending over toward that you're starting to bug me more than you're worth to me kind of problem. But not yet, you know, and anyway. But the point is, are you the product? Right? Like we all know we use Google Maps, they're tracking us. We use Google Search to tracking us. Like we use Google Chrome, they're tracking us. People seem to be okay with that. Most people, because most people use those things. So. Okay, but we, we understand it or we sort of understand it. I don't think we understand it well enough. But, but this notion of like you are the product, right? It's such a pithy short little phrase. It's perfect. I don't think you are the product in Windows, I gotta be honest. Notion has a right is a strong term, but a right in a way to advertise to us. Right. We have these other things we think you might like and it would help us. Obviously Microsoft does some of that in Windows with things like Microsoft 365, if you don't already subscribe, they'll pop up stuff during setup and elsewhere, you know, OneDrive, they want to force that usage to use the cloud and then have to pay for an upgrade or whatever. You know, Edge is maybe the grossest one where they push you to Edge even when you very explicitly say, yeah, I actually want to use this other browser, but I don't know, I don't feel like Windows is fully on the dark side yet, you know, I don't know. And the big argument there though is the telemetry one. And Richard hit it right up front because he's correct. It's, it's anonymous reliability related data. We should all want to send that to Microsoft. If we use this product, we should want it to be as good as it can be. It's not about them seeing what underwear I'm buying or what, you know, we.

[Leo Laporte]

Should all want to send that to Microsoft, shouldn't we?

[Paul Thurrott]

No. I mean, come on, shouldn't we? I mean, no. Just as don't you want the community you're part of to be as good as it can be as long as.

[Leo Laporte]

You trust Microsoft to do what they say they're doing in their privacy policy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's really where it falls. If you literally think that they're lying, that they have put up this, what I would call a legally binding document that could be used against them in court if you can prove otherwise. If you literally think this company is that evil that they lie outright lie, you should not be using Windows at all. Like, at all. So I mean, and that's a decision you can make. Some people do make that. Right. And that's fine.

[Richard Campbell]

Fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think it's a little extreme. Microsoft has all kinds of problems. I don't think there's any. I've never seen evidence of that. I've seen all kinds of crap.

[Leo Laporte]

I think they're no worse. And this is the thing I think Apple gets a free pass on because their marketing is we're the privacy company. But I think all the companies are basically the same.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, you know what's actually worse is when you promote yourself like Apple does, and you say things like, hey, by the way, when Facebook starts up or Google starts up, you get a little dialogue and says, hey, they want to track you. Do you want to stop that? And you're like, yes, I do. You know where you don't get that little dialog and any Apple app, Right. So Apple is tracking you. Apple is following you around the App Store. Apple is showing you ads in the App Store. Apple is actually doing almost everything that these companies we all hate so much do. But they have really good marketing. You know, it doesn't mean they're not doing some things right. I respect a lot of the stuff they do, actually. I mean, this private compute cloud thing to talking about sounds good.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, what's the proof that Apple is at least to some degree protecting your privacy? Their AI sucks.

[Paul Thurrott]

That might be the best proof.

[Leo Laporte]

They don't want it to suck.

[Paul Thurrott]

They'll get there. They will. Apple. You know what the real problem with Apple intelligence is? Is it was the anti Apple way to approach anything. What Apple usually does is they sit back and they watch and they, they look and they see what people are doing and what's popular and they're like, okay, how can we do this? Can we do this in a unique way? Can we do this in a way that is seamless and awesome and better in some something? And then when they get there and it takes years, they, they nail it. They usually nail it. Not 100, but a lot of so many examples of this. This time they're like, just like, like.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, they couldn't afford to miss the wave.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. And you know, looking at it now, a couple of years later, I guess, why, why couldn't they have waited, you know, like they should have waited. I don't think anyone bought a new iPhone to get Apple intelligence. If you did, you're stupid, you're annoyed, you know, sorry.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, the next WWDC is just not that far away.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can tell you that your old iPhone is going to run ChatGPT, the thing you actually want, just as well as your new iPhone. So I don't know. Anyway, yeah, Apple intelligence is a good example of what is ultimately insertification in the sense that it's their corporate policy driving the agenda, even though it's not necessarily what people want their own customers want. In the past, you could argue with most things Apple did that it was in support of that thing, that when you can align with a company that is selling you a product, service, whatever it is, that's a good relationship, you know, And I think most Apple fans especially feel that they have a very healthy and good relationship with Apple. And I feel like when things like that happen, they're like, huh, they're human. That's weird. But also they can make mistakes and that's kind of unusual.

[Richard Campbell]

One of the very few bobbles in confidence we've seen out of Apple in a long time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Trust is tough because trust takes a long time to build up. If you go, I just, I do this all the time because I'm stupid. But like, go back and watch an old video of Steve Jobs defending himself at one of the first WWDCs that he came after. He came back and people are just dumping on him and he's like, yeah, I deserve this, I'm terrible. But to crawl out of that hole, to get to where they are now required many years. And then you have one little screw up and it, it all goes rewinding back for some people. You know, I don't think that's what's going to happen, Apple. But anyway, the point of all this is, is what it always is, really. There's a lot of problems out there in the world and we should focus on those.

[Leo Laporte]

There are more if you're, if you'.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sitting here fuming over telemetry in Windows 11, man, you got to get your priorities straight. This is not a problem. That's my take.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I don't see it in your notes, so I'm going to just broach the subject.

[Paul Thurrott]

I hope we do this every week because we're going to call this segment Leo Points Out Paul's flaws.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's just that we spent a long time yesterday on security now talking about the fact that Windows Update, please replace an empty folder in your root directory called inup and Microsoft said it's necessary. Don't delete it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah, so inetpub obviously is the server. It's not normally unless you install this component right. So this is something I've not even looked at, but I'm going to do.

[Leo Laporte]

So Microsoft's story on this is we need it. It's a security part of a security update. It has to be there. If you leave it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Does it have to be vis.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's visible.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, no, I don't know if it.

[Leo Laporte]

Has to be visible. That's a good question. I temporarily hit it and then I said no, nevermind, I'm not going to do that. If you delete it, the only way to bring it back is to reinstall is to install IIS and then delete it. Install and uninstall iis. If you look at the permission. So it was installed when I did the update and that's. Microsoft said that's part of the update.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, everyone should be seeing this now. If you have a Windows 11 PC you will have this folder. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And it is a system folder. It is owned by the system. So you can't just delete it and recreate it yourself. You have to actually reinstall iis. Microsoft is not completely clear on why it has to be there, but they say they are clear it has to be there.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I feel like. I think it being visible was the mistake.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I agree.

[Leo Laporte]

But maybe it has to be visible. We don't know why it's. What.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, but this has never happened before. I mean this is very strange. Right? This is a very strange problem. So to install iis. Well, let me.

[Leo Laporte]

You have to. I don't know if you could do it in home. You can do it on Pro. You have to go to the additional Windows, the Windows features.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no, I know, I know how you do it. What I'm saying is like I wonder if there is a like Internet if I go into like settings. Yeah, you can't. You can't actually find. Well, let me try. I just want to try different things to see where. If it ever comes up anywhere. Internet information. Yeah, it doesn't come up in search. Yeah. So you have to know to do this. You have to know to go to Windows features which you have to basically search for to find and then you have to go check the box.

[Leo Laporte]

Furthermore, you have to know not to delete it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that's the trick. So when as you're saying so Microsoft.

[Leo Laporte]

Didn'T say, hey, by the way, we're going to create an empty folder in your root directory. Please don't delete it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right? Why would they say that?

[Richard Campbell]

But so, well, why create it until you need it to do actually the update.

[Paul Thurrott]

Let me tell you who has no idea this happened? My wife. And the reason I mentioned that is because my wife is that kind of normal mainstream user who doesn't understand file systems or look at file systems. The fact that this has come up at all says a lot about us. Like we're the ones who are like, oh my God, they added a folder to my file system. You're like, what, how did you. Like, what caused you to even notice that?

[Richard Campbell]

Why were you looking there?

[Paul Thurrott]

That is bizarre. You know, in a way, right? And then you find out what, what it's about. And it was part of a security update like Leo said. And, and that leads me to my question, that is still my question. It's like, okay, why is it visible? Just if you had kept that thing hidden, the 90 something percent chance no one, we wouldn't be talking about this, right? Like no one would have heard about this, right?

[Richard Campbell]

But the 10% would go, why'd they put a hidden folder on?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's even worse, isn't it?

[Richard Campbell]

What are they hiding?

[Paul Thurrott]

And by the way, I mean they're already, we already know they're lying about telemetry. I mean, what will they do next?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it is a little bit. Let's face it, it's a kind of kludgy way to do a security update. I mean, it's clear.

[Paul Thurrott]

It is not kind of anything. That's an incredibly clue. This is the opposite of, you know, one of the first, maybe the only time I was ever involved in like a major hack was that one where you go to your. I go to this folder because I used to have this on my computers all the time. I used to do local web development, whatever. And a local copy of my website would have been there, except I moved it because at the time I had two drives and the bigger one was, you know, where I wanted that. And the attack, which left a file that erased everything in there and left the file said, you've been hacked by the Chinese. And I remember that, yeah, it was a big deal. What didn't impact me because I had moved the folder, right? And so, I mean, I'd moved is was pointing to a different folder on a different drive. So that folder was there, but it was empty. And okay, I don't know. So this is kind of the opposite. It's like no one is installing iis, basically, and now everyone has this folder in their computer for some reason. It's like, what? You're like, no, don't worry about it. It's a security thing. Now I am worrying about it. So maybe you could explain this a little bit better. I've not heard a good explanation for.

[Leo Laporte]

This, nor has Microsoft offered one.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that I am very familiar with. So we're going to get to that. We're going to get to another version of that in a few minutes.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sorry I brought that up. I just. I thought Steve covered it. We should probably mention it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Just. I don't know why we didn't write about it. Sometimes things like this happen and you see it and you're like, okay, what I don't want to do is write three stories about this.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, I understand.

[Paul Thurrott]

So in other words, it's like people are seeing a mysterious inetpub folder on their file system. Like, okay. And then it's like, Microsoft comments on it. You're like, okay, they didn't.

[Leo Laporte]

Now I have to write another story.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then, oh, they released an update for Windows in July this year that gets rid of that folder that we were all freaking out about.

[Leo Laporte]

Now I have to write a third weird story.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to. I don't want to spend time on it from a writing perspective. But, yeah, no, you're right. We should. This is something we should be discussing.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I just made you mention in the show so that you're done, you're over.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's. It's good every week, man. There's something.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, listen, I have two hours away from my wife, and it's like, you've just slotted right in, you know, I.

[Leo Laporte]

Want you to pay attention to me.

[Paul Thurrott]

My wife just walks in the rooms like, what are you screwing up? I'm like, I'm sitting here reading, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I know the feeling.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, God. Anyhow, okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Kevin says. Kevin King says, I've never heard the word Kluge.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, really?

[Leo Laporte]

So he's not obviously.

[Paul Thurrott]

Welcome to our industry, Kevin. I feel like we've been using that. That word has. The origin of that word was the date that Windows was announced.

[Leo Laporte]

I did read a wonderful book, which I recommend to all. I listened to it on audio from George Gilder. It's called Microcosm, and it's really the best book ever. If you haven't read it, Paul I know you love these industry books. It's the best book ever, explaining what a miracle this revolution is. But the reader on the audiobook says kludgy. And he says it not once. Yes, but a bunch of times.

[Richard Campbell]

At least it's consistent.

[Paul Thurrott]

And I want to go, that's like, I don't remember the book, but it was. God. It's probably not the Steve Jobs biography, but some book on Apple. They would say iOS is iOS. And I'm like, dude, come on. Like, you gotta. I get it. Some words are complicated. You know, maybe there's a debate about how things are pronounced, but how do.

[Leo Laporte]

You know AI is not a one DOS dose.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's a one is actually HP Sus, as we call it, HP Sauce. That's how you know it's not AI. Come on, man.

[Richard Campbell]

Clearly.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, on with the show. I'm sorry, I'm going to. Now press the button.

[Paul Thurrott]

Please don't apologize. My wife never does. So. So last week, my door is closed. I'm safe. So last week was weekday, right? In the Microsoft update schedule. We got the Preview update for 23H2, and I predicted that by Thursday probably, or at least by the end of the week, we would get the similar update for 24H2. And we did. They didn't say this, but the interesting thing is it was accompanied by three announcements. So the typical preview update is not accompanied by any announcement? I mean. No, none. I mean, there's none. They don't announce it, they don't talk about it. But in this case, they referred to it as the general availability of recall. Oh, boy.

[Richard Campbell]

What?

[Paul Thurrott]

So that's. Look, I know we live in a world where words don't make mean anything anymore, but. And I know most of Microsoft, not all of Microsoft, by the way. Most of Microsoft still doesn't use these common terms we've used for decades, like RTM and GA and release candidate and all this stuff. You know, those words that had meaning that were important. But general availability is not what recall is in right now. So for one thing, recall is a preview. It's still a preview. It is available to the public, but not automatically. Right. You have to go get it. You have to be a seeker. We called that for 10 seconds. But it's a preview update. It will be in stable in generally available the Tuesday of Patch, Tuesday of. In May, but still in preview, which to me, yeah, generally available in preview is an important part of that sentence. Right. It still hasn't risen to the level where they feel comfortable taking off the Preview tag. So recall, which was announced last May, right before build, right at build, the week of build is now finally something you could get generally out in the world. But asterisks, asterisks, asterisk. Right. Like I said, it's in preview, it's in a preview update, which means you're not going to get it automatically unless you went and flipped that switch. It's only available on Copilot Plus PCs, which they're super proud of for some reason. 10% of some small category PCs are now Copilot Plus PCs. They still believe all PCs will be Copilot Plus PCs, which is a low bar because. Yeah, of course they will. All PCs will just have those capabilities, of course. But this is a tiny subset of the user base. I mean if there are 1 to 1.45 whatever billion Windows users in the world and you know, whatever the number, 7 to 800 million of them right now are running Windows 11 maybe. I mean the percentage that it could install this thing if they wanted to is still single, low single digit. It's really low single digit. So, yeah, generally available, I guess we're calling it. They were super excited to have this announcement.

[Richard Campbell]

So, you know, the other side of this is Copilot plus PC is not generally available.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right, yeah, that's fair. I mean, when they went to x86 in the fall with the new AMD and Intel chips, they were very mealy mouth again to keep using that strange term about it because they weren't allowed to use that term at the time of launch. And they would say over time these computers will get these features. And that is sort of what has happened. It's still happening. One of the new features that's generally available, I'm trying to see where. I don't see in the notes, but one of them at least is available only on Snapdragon based Copilot Plus PCs. It will come to X86 based Copilot Plus PCs probably in June or July. But it's not, you know, it hasn't all just kind of happened. So in any event, I really want.

[Richard Campbell]

A Copilot plus PC to just be a PC.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I do too. I do too. And I, and there, there are some, there's some interesting problems and a lot of them are related to security things because you know there, once you get into things like Windows, hello ess, you have very strict requirements, hardware requirements.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, that's what one is. Copilot, you know that a current full spec PC has specific hardware requirements which is Already true.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

That includes all of the copilot features. That's all. I want my GPU to count.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Why? Why? I mean, you spent several hundred dollars on it and you can kick the crap out of these things. Why wouldn't you? I mean, yeah, yeah, I. 100.

[Leo Laporte]

But remember how much got in? When they said, oh, Windows 11 requires.

[Paul Thurrott]

TP, TPM 2 TBM 2.

[Leo Laporte]

People got upset over that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, mostly all kinds of things.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

TPM has been part of PCs for 20 years. I mean, TPM2 is more recent, but it's more recent like 2011 recent. It's not. It's actually not that recent. This is actually a pretty low bar. But obviously especially you hit our audience, these guys out there running intel fifth generation, blah, blah, and they're like, it runs Windows 11 fine. I don't see what the problem is.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, yeah, that's what they say. It's not a technical requirement. I can run the operating system system.

[Paul Thurrott]

So this is weird. This is actually a little similar to that telemetry discussion. And I didn't get into this part of it, but Dave Plummer said something to the tune of, Microsoft started this automatic telemetry thing with Windows 10. It was especially egregious when it first launched, but then they backed off from that and I was like, I knew a little bit about Windows. I don't remember that. So I went back and looked to see what he was talking about, and that's not what happened. What Microsoft did was they added all the privacy switches you see now during setup. So back then you had to go through settings to try to find these things. But now they give you like a little dashboard thing where you can just say, no, no, no, no to whatever, you know, things you don't want. They didn't change how the system works in the slightest. They just get provided, like a little ui, you know, for you to click things. I think that's what he meant. So in this case, I don't know, it's. I don't. I don't know anything about what's coming. Like, I'm not trying to qualify what I'm saying because, oh my God, there's a huge announcement. I don't mean that. But it is inevitable that what Richard and everyone else wants will happen. Right? That we will be able to use these features across our GPUs, at least. Probably CPUs, too, by the way, depending on the system. Because these things will evolve and they'll be, you know, in the case of a cpu, might be Upgraded to make have that make sense, but also just the system requirements will evolve. Right? So when Windows 11 first came out, they. This was outrageous to people, right? And to me to some degree. Because anyone could run this system on two different computers and say, yeah, it works fine, what's the problem? But this is a case where they actually did change how Windows works, only in Windows 11. And now that TPM 2.0 versus say the 1.2 or 3, I forget what the other version was, what the capabilities are. It actually does require a TPM 2.0. So it's not really outrageous because by the time that happened it was like 2023, 2024, whatever year that thing had, like I said, had been out, I think since 2011, if I remember the day correctly.

[Richard Campbell]

2014 for TPM.

[Paul Thurrott]

2014. Okay, there you go. And there is no such thing as a modern PC that doesn't have it. You know, for the most part. I know some people could build a thing and maybe that doesn't. But PC makers just ship the stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

They just do so by admit to that point. It's like you can't buy an ATX motherboard doesn't have a TPM2 on it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Now that's true for a while. Yeah, I hate to say that. So you would know you, you know that better than I do. I almost didn't want to say that myself because I'm not. I feel like you probably could do something stupid if you really wanted to, but I don't know that you know. Okay, so most people buy a computer, they don't really build it anyway, it doesn't matter. But all the modern chipsets for years and years and years have all supported this. And yeah, in the beginning it was like this feels like you're trying to force us to upgrade. And then the security story they have now and some of it feels super recent. Right. There's the whole Windows. Well, the Secure Future initiative and the Windows Resiliency Initiative or whatever cloud strike caused some rethinks think on some stuff. Windows, hello ess, very rare before copilot plus PC now very common. Not 100%. I mean, I'm not saying it's universal, but it's very common and much more common than it was. So the security baseline here has actually gotten a lot better and they have a good story now. This is not always been the case with Windows. I don't know if you follow the whole security thing at all, but like, you know, we've had problems. And honestly, Windows 11 I think is in good shape right now from that perspective. So that's theory.

[Richard Campbell]

Windows 10 goes out of support in 2025, at which point the TPM2 chip will be more than a decade old.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. It's weird how many of these things interrelate. There's another story about VBS enclaves we're going to get to that ties into this, which another modern security feature requires this kind of modern underpinnings. Not something they're ever going to put in Windows 10. And yes, I still hear, I understand the complaints, like, oh, this Windows 10 would work for five or ten more years, it'd be fine. What's the problem? Yeah, to some degree, absolutely. But for mainstream users connecting to the Internet, doing stuff, yeah, you kind of want to have the modern stuff. And then this is the ideal time to release Recall in general availability because now we've got the host secure thing going on in the underpinnings. Let's screw it up with this feature everyone seems to hate so much. We'll see. There's so much FUD around this thing, it kind of bothers me. To me, the I don't know if it's ironic or just the end game here is like, I've used it and I just don't see the use of it. So I just disable it. I don't ever enable it. Well, I mean, I've enabled it and disabled it, but I just don't see the use case for it for me. So I just don't, I just don't worry about it. But if you do use it, it's like anything else related to security. You know, if someone calls you and asks you for your Social Security number or your credit card number and you give it to them, I mean, it's kind of on you, you know, so there is that aspect to it. But as far as the actual, like security, the steps they've taken to security secure these snapshots. Pretty, pretty impressive.

[Leo Laporte]

It's funny, we had this conversation on Sunday with Daniel Rubino from Windows Central. And you know, in my opinion, there's two camps. There's people. I mean, the reasonable camp, like you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Paul, is the third.

[Leo Laporte]

But there's people say, oh, okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

I was like, I'm curious which camp I'm in.

[Leo Laporte]

Security nightmare on one side and then.

[Paul Thurrott]

The other ones are like, kumbaya, I don't care.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm in the camp where they dumbed it down. I wanted to cover not just one machine, but every one. I use everything I use, it's not as useful oh, that's a different camp.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. No, so you're.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the camp I'm in.

[Paul Thurrott]

That was the. The first. I met the guy who claimed to have made this feature, and I said, I have. Oh. I said, dude, I have some questions for you. And he's like, here we go. And I'm like, no, I don't think you understand what I'm going to ask. It's not. It's not what these other idiots are asking. I said, this feature is useless to me unless I can get it everywhere.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

I want this in all my computers. I want it to sync. And he goes, yes, yes. And he goes, look, we will get there. But he says, we can't do that now. You understand there's going to be pushback on this. I'm like, oh, no, I get that. But what I'm saying is I use a lot of different machines. I want this on my phone.

[Leo Laporte]

Should be on my phone. Your laptop, your desktop. Your tablet.

[Paul Thurrott]

Imagine you're in a. Just a simple. That's our problem because I do have dozens of devices. But. No but. But just normal person stuff. I'm in a store and I'm buying a pair of socks or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

I should know that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I researched this earlier on my computer.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Could you tell me about the green socks I researched and then I can go buy them?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nope. Because we're not crossing that machine divide.

[Richard Campbell]

So I sure do that with one note and loop.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. And look, I mean, there are ways around this, obviously, but I mean, I. Ways around. Well, or just even like browser sync. I guess you could go try to find your history.

[Richard Campbell]

I've been using this in Melbourne, where I go look something up on Google Maps on this laptop. And then when I walk out the door with my phone and open Google Maps, the. The link that's showing for the next thing. The last thing you search for is.

[Paul Thurrott]

What I searched on the laptop. Exactly. And that's. That's the way.

[Richard Campbell]

And you have to have that moment. You're like, it just worked. Like it. Literally, they're there.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So recall's a little trickier because there was such pushback on it when it was first announced. We have to go through this. I don't know. I almost call it a triage phase. It's like we're just going to have to endure it and see what happens. See if anyone actually uncovers some actual. The things I've seen so far that are recent are so stupid, it makes me want to scream. And when you brought up the inetpub folder. I thought you were going to bring this up. And I was like, oh, man, we're going to have to talk about this. And I'll just mention it very briefly. You have to have Windows hello ESS enabled, which means biometric security. It doesn't completely mean that because you also have to have a pin. So you have to have a pin. This is a requirement for any Windows computer that has a password of any kind, right? It has to be a pin. If you bring up a new computer, it doesn't matter what kind a Windows computer, and you enroll your finger, your face or whatever into Windows hello, the next thing you do is you create a pin. You can't get by that. You have to, right? So one of the complaints was what I got. A PIN doesn't even use biometrics. You can get in with a pin. And I'm like, yeah, okay. But the same security still applies. The other thing, this was the most asinine one. They use all these incredible technologies, Windows hello, ess, secure enclaves, isolated ram, the whole thing, to protect these snapshots. And the guy goes, yeah, but I mean, if someone gets the disc, it's just encrypted. I'm like, that's fine. It's. What do you mean?

[Leo Laporte]

It's just that everything's on that disk anyway.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's encrypted is what you just said. Like, what are you talking about?

[Leo Laporte]

Just encrypted.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can't. Look, I'm not saying something isn't or can't go wrong with this. It's Microsoft. Obviously, we could have problems. What I am saying is no one has actually highlighted a problem, a real problem.

[Leo Laporte]

I think maybe that's it is that again, it's. This comes down to I trust Microsoft. And so just the very fact that they're collecting all this information makes people nervous because we don't know how secure it's going to be. But I am on the camp where you dumbed it down to. To respond to those nervous Nellies, and now it's less than useful.

[Paul Thurrott]

So as it turns out, they've also made it harder to use because even if you're okay with using it on a single computer, and this is not. It's not just. It's not just recall, it's just with the Windows hello experience in Windows now, which I guess it's Windows hello ess, but I believe it's going to be the common experience across all computers. It requires an extra step now. And it's really Annoying. It's really annoying. So if you're in your computer and you're like, I need the password for this thing. And it goes, here you go, Paul. Oh, we got to see it. Make sure it's you. And it's like, bling, bling, bling. It's like, yep, it's you. Like, okay, how come we're not going, oh, I got to click something.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it really you? Are you human?

[Paul Thurrott]

Why am I clicking? You see, it's me. Do it.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you alone?

[Paul Thurrott]

No. You gotta. Like an idiot.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's only a matter of time before we have to do CAPTCHAs to log into our computer.

[Paul Thurrott]

I guarantee you, if you actually want to use recall, and if you are actually actively using recall, it is really annoying because that comes up all the time.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, it's like you go through a subway and the door closes on you and you're like, is it really you?

[Leo Laporte]

This is recording everything that happens to me. I wish it could also record everything that happens on my computers. Send it all to whatever, the Russian AI, I don't know, the Chinese. I don't care. I just want to know what I did yesterday. Do you mind?

[Paul Thurrott]

Mind? I know.

[Leo Laporte]

That's all I'm asking. So I really think the world is divided into these two camps and will be increasingly.

[Paul Thurrott]

There will be people who never trust that. So. But that's. Right, that's.

[Leo Laporte]

But there's people who never charge anything on the Internet either, because they don't think it's safe.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't. I don't actually mind that those people exist. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Just don't get them my way.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but what I do, what I don't like is that they're the ones who will write articles and be like, well, you know, you can't trust these people. And now, you know, I'm making this up. I didn't see this there, but maybe in the USA Today, there's like, hey, here's this new feature in Windows. You're going to want to make sure you're disabled. And they're coming from a place of ignorance and they're. They're preaching to people who don't know any better. And what are you doing?

[Leo Laporte]

They're just stirring up.

[Paul Thurrott]

What are you doing?

[Leo Laporte]

Outrage.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't get for views.

[Richard Campbell]

Let's.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's be honest.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think it's cheap and it's unfair. Cheap. And by the way, tomorrow there'll be a recall vulnerability. And by the way, it does. It doesn't mean that I'm wrong on this point. It just means that nothing is perfect. And maybe this was always gonna happen, I don't know. But the reason it's in preview now, the reason it was going to be in preview last summer, the reason they don't call it not a preview, right, is because of this. They want to get it out in front of people and let's see how people use it. Let's see what happens. Because it's one thing to test it in some isolated group, small crowd, whatever, you got to get it out in the real world before you find out. That's one thing we have learned with Windows. You know, you put it out in the world and, oh, there's a whole scenario.

[Leo Laporte]

Billion users who all of whom go.

[Paul Thurrott]

In a different direction and have different hardware, you know. So we'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, I need to take a break.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Coming up, what do Microsoft Windows and Formula one Racing have in common?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, is it a crash and burn thing?

[Leo Laporte]

No. No. It's not what you think.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is it about.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not what you think. Stay tuned. It has nothing to do with crashing.

[Richard Campbell]

That's full on clickbait right there.

[Leo Laporte]

That's good clickbait, isn't it? I'm learning. I'm learning. This show is brought to you today by US Cloud, the number one Microsoft unified support replacement we've been telling you about. US Cloud global leader number one in third party Microsoft support for enterprises. They support 50 of the Fortune 500. And why? Because switching to US Cloud could save your business 30 to 50% over Microsoft unified and Premier support. That's big savings. And it's better. It's faster, twice as fast. Average time to resolution versus Microsoft. And they'll give you information Microsoft may not want to give you. For instance, are you maybe spending a little more than you think than you're aware of on Microsoft Azure? Well, US Cloud is excited to tell you about a new offering, their Azure cost optimization services. Honestly, when was the last time you evaluated your Azure user? It's easy for it to just kind of get a little out of control. If it's been a while since you looked, you probably have some, we call it Azure Sprawl. A little spend creep going on. But good news, saving on Azure is easier than you might have thought with US Cloud. US Cloud now has. This is so cool. And again, I don't think it's in Microsoft's interest to tell you this, but it's definitely in yours. US Cloud offers an eight week Azure engagement. It's powered by VBox it identifies key opportunities to reduce costs across your entire Azure environment. But you're not even, it's not even just automated. You're not alone because you're going to get expert guidance, access to US cloud senior engineers. They have an average of over 16 years with Microsoft products. I mean, these guys are the best in the business. At the end of the eight weeks, you're going to have an interactive dashboard which will identify. It won't do anything but let you know where there are rebuild opportunities, downscaling opportunities, resources, you know, machine virtual machines you don't, you don't even use. Which means you can look at them and say, yeah, I might want to reallocate those precious IT dollars towards something I need. Like you want to increase your savings. Take the Azure savings and put them into US Cloud's Microsoft support. That's what a few US Clouds other customers do and then eliminate your unified spend and the savings go on and on. Here's a quote from Sam. He's the technical operations manager at a company called Bead Gaming. He gives US Cloud five stars and gave us this quote quote we found some things that have been running on Azure for three years which no one was checking. These VMs were, I don't know, 10 grand a month. Not a massive chunk in the grand scheme of how much we spent on Azure, but once you get to about 40 or 50,000amonth, it really started to add up. That's the point. It's little bit, little dribbles at a time, but in the long run, you could really save. It's simple. Stop overpaying for Azure, identify and eliminate Azure creep and boost your performance all in eight weeks with US Cloud. Visit uscloud.com, book a call today, find out how much your team can save. That's uscloud.com to book a call today and get faster Microsoft Support for less. USCloud.com we thank him so much for supporting Windows Weekly. Now do you see what I'm talking about when I say what Microsoft has in common with Formula One? Maybe not. Maybe you don't know. There's a big controversy in Formula one racing, which is a pretty intense sport. You know, those drivers are really the, the head of it passed a rule saying no swearing allowed. And if you swear, we're going to find you. And if you do it three times, we're going to suspend you. Now these are the superstars of racing.

[Paul Thurrott]

I would have a problem in this league.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a little hard to not swear when you're under such stress anyway. Microsoft's doing well. They're not going to find you, but they're going to help you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So apparently so many of us are talking to our computers so much or to AI and using them for whatever purposes, but we're getting these transcriptions and it's not pretty for a lot of us, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. I'm surprised just how mean like this. If you were talking to a person, this is an HR violation. Like, why are you talking to software this way? It's kind of.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hear me, I talk to myself this way.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, she does not say, hey, hey, you know who. Stop.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know.

[Leo Laporte]

She uses the F word every time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because anyone who's used Siri has.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you're just mad.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then she goes, you don't have to be a jerk about it. And it's like, you don't have to be an idiot either, but you are.

[Richard Campbell]

And then you realize you're arguing with software and like, how my life.

[Paul Thurrott]

Listen, you got to get the little wins where you can. Yeah. This is 24H2 dev and beta build, so God knows when this will ever appear. But when you're doing voice typing in Windows, which could be anything, you could be dictating to a Word document, but really it's for AI. There will be, they're testing now a filter, a profanity filter.

[Richard Campbell]

So does it like cartoons swear them out? Is that what's happening?

[Paul Thurrott]

I think it just takes it out. That would be hilarious, actually. Like, it would just go, you know, have like a little sound. What do you think about that? You know, like, I don't.

[Richard Campbell]

That's what the Charlie Brown parents were doing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. So I think that's pretty funny. That's funny.

[Leo Laporte]

Where does the filter. I mean, is it a filter for you or is it a filter for.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't understand what's for you? It's for voice typing, which could be globally in Windows. Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

So if you swear it won't put.

[Paul Thurrott]

A swear word into the type. You could be using accessibility features that recognize.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple does that. They change every F word into duck.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. There's a setting now finally, to remove that.

[Leo Laporte]

It makes me really ducking mad. I just.

[Paul Thurrott]

So in Windows 13, they're going to have a filter to remove. Remove. To bring the profanity back.

[Leo Laporte]

Replace the ducks.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's. It's an option. Right. So you actually have to turn this on.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, okay, now there's some people very offended. I know.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think most of it, you know, when I was a kid, the thing you would. The version of this is you would hear yourself on tape for the first time. You'd be like, yeah, I don't sound like that. And everyone's like, yeah, actually, you sound exactly like that. And now, you know, it's like, I don't swear that much. Like, yeah, you have a problem. Actually. You might have Tourette's. I don't know. So this seems like a fine idea to me. I think it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's fine. It's optional. It's off until you turn it on. That's fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. One of the features that's coming out in the preview updates we now have in 23 and 24H2 and then will come out in Patch Tuesday is a feature that Microsoft hasn't really given a name to, but it's improved Windows Search. They briefly called it semantic search or Windows search with semantic indexing, which I think is a really good term because it goes back to the conversation that Richard and I had about it's not really indexing, but it is indexing. It's a different kind of indexing because you want instant search results. It's not going to then go and scan all your files. It's building an index of some kind. So improved Windows search, for lack of a better term, which is a bunch of things, but built into search in Windows, whether you get it from the taskbar, the Start interface, the whatever the thing is called, Search highlights interface, or from File Explorer, right? Search for files, search for documents, search for photos, search for photos and then all documents that are in a cloud storage. But only OneDrive now, but other cloud services in the future, too. You need to sign in with a Microsoft account to get this feature. For now, they've just started testing the ability to use a work or school account, meaning an entra ID account. So you'll be able to do, I think semantic search is, to me, seems like the right term. But this improved Windows search is coming, you know, again in the future. We don't know when, but sometime this summer, maybe 25H2, whatever it is, is coming too. So the way they dribble this stuff out. This came up a little early in that Copilot plus PC bit where Snapdragon tends to get these things first. And it goes to x64. This one is the worst example. It's like every sub feature of this feature has been tested in different places at different times. It's very strange. So a year from now or something, we'll just have it everywhere. It will work Fine. I don't know. So it's kind of interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, they could ship a thing called Improved Search every week, you know, but no version numbers, no features, just.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is, I should say, is a copilot plus PC feature. You were asking about GPUs, and I raised the ugly possibility of CPUs. But why can't we do this kind of indexing? It doesn't matter if it's slow and it won't be, but let's pretend it would be, because we don't have an mpu. Who cares? It's the index. Let it run overnight. I just. I want the search result to be fast. Right? It shouldn't matter how you build the index, but it's not how Windows works, so. So here's. If you didn't see this, Richard, you'll enjoy this. One thing we brought up repeatedly on the show is the illogical nature by which Microsoft tests new features for Windows. In the Insider program, they have Canary Dev Beta Release Preview. Yeah, they have multiple paths in at least a few of those. Release Preview, for example, could have a Release Preview build of 23H2, 24H2, and Windows 10 all out at the same time. Someone asked online, as someone would. Why? Well, A, what's the point of Canary? And B, what? Why don't new features follow this logical cascade from the top to the bottom? So, Brandon LeBlanc, who I've known for a long time, he's a good guy. I'm not dumping on him for this, but as unfortunately as the mouth of Sauron in this case says, there hasn't been a specific order for a long time now. There isn't a progression like we had with Rings. That's why we moved to channels. Features can and will show up and preview in dev and beta, often before Canary, simply due to the way code flows on our side and the code base.

[Richard Campbell]

So this is basically. It's different teams with different workflows.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I don't know what to say to this. I just saw this right before the show started. So when I read this, I want to go back and read their announcement about moving to channels, because I don't really remember it that way. I'm not saying he's wrong, but I do question it as a rationale. Like, the one thing, the one thing he doesn't say here is why. I mean, I guess he sort of does, but I don't understand.

[Leo Laporte]

How does it clear why you move anyway? It's just.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's what I mean. Like, I don't quite understand.

[Richard Campbell]

It's really an admission of guilt. It's like you can't feel like there's any order because there's no order.

[Leo Laporte]

No order.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, there's no order to this because there's no order in our universe. Okay. I mean, you know, so it's like.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, but there was four stages of entropy. That's all there is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, yeah. They're not racing down the same path. They're kind of just you know, blooming off into different directions, I guess. I don't. So anyway, that's. Again, I'm not dumping on Brand. I like Brandon. I I please.

[Leo Laporte]

This is his response to Sean Endicott from Windows Central, who said it does seem like the various insider rings are out of order.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, this is in our world. This is the complaint, people. Will Richard has asked this question out loud many times. We all wonder about this, like, why have this system if you're not going to use the system? It seems like the right way to find bugs or whatever it might be is to have it go through all of those channels in order and then hit stable and to have the greatest possible outcome of success.

[Richard Campbell]

And I just would look at, from the political perspective that the folks who set up that order have moved on and nobody took charge of it. And so it's whatever you have access to, you'll deploy to.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I see little glimpses of this, but I feel like a lot of the engineering has left the building, and sometimes that's not the case. I don't mean to stump on the whole system, but it. 99% of it easily, you know, and it doesn't feel like there is a. Like an adult. No.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it also speaks to. What is Canary really? Canary is really one team couldn't get out of any of the three existing channels, and so they made a new one.

[Paul Thurrott]

And what's your pure view exactly? We don't know yet. We're working on stuff. I don't know. What do you mean? And it's very strange.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm making the thing with this stuff, and I'm only allowed to, you know, get my bonus if I ship. So I'm gonna ship.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, there's a point to be made that there's kind of an industry accepted industry meaning for these.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Things.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that you. I mean, this is what I've been saying, though. Like, it's like words matter.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, words matter.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what you just said.

[Paul Thurrott]

But they don't. In our world, they don't anymore. Right. This is what I Mean, like, it's like, I, I, I. Why even use these names if you.

[Richard Campbell]

Because you do get to pick which one of these you want installed on your machine.

[Paul Thurrott]

You call Canary Random Uselessness. And then maybe would make more sense.

[Leo Laporte]

Because I'd like to subscribe to that, please.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's like you never know what you're going to get. It's like a box of chocolates, except all those little crazy cherry things no one wants. Like, I don't. But they have this exciting new feature over here in Dev Will join Jeff. Idiot. Yeah, we don't do that here. We do stupid things here. I don't know. Like, but that's not what they say. It is what they do. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and we were, back in the day, sold this idea that there are progressively less stable versions between these choices and depending on your tolerance to instability, you can pay.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. If you want to be the case. It is everywhere else in our world. Everywhere else. If you look at any web browsers that have like Canary Channel and whatever other channels anywhere in software development, the Canary version is always the first one. There's a reason they call it Canary, by the way. There's a dead yellow bird in the bottom of a cage. This is where you put new features first when maybe they're not quite baked. Except in Windows 11 or the Windows Insider program.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I can't, I don't know. Anyway, so did he answer the question? I. He answered the question. I don't. He still didn't answer the questions.

[Richard Campbell]

I guess is maybe answer the question left and resulting in less satisfaction. Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right, right.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, other than that part that says at least I'm not crazy.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm so glad you addressed it. And now I want to. I hurt myself anyway, that's whatever. Welcome everyone to my world. Okay. Microsoft has always been less aggressive than, say, Apple at deprecating and then removing features specifically from Windows. In this case, that has changed in recent years. They've gotten more aggressive. Windows 11, I would say the last two versions especially, we've seen kind of rapid fire deprecations. And just this past week they announced. Well, there's no announcement. They don't make a big thing. But it's, you know, if you go to the Microsoft Learn site, you can see the deprecated Windows feature list. You'll see that the Maps app has been deprecated and will be removed from the Microsoft Store in July. I mean, not literally no one, but no one uses this app. I will Say literally no one should ever have used this app. It never made any sense. I mean like writing books about Windows 10 and then Windows 11. I would kind of half heartedly cover it because I kind of had to. It was part of the operating system. It's like I don't understand what this thing's doing here. No one's going to use this now I'm going to hear from all of you guys that do use it. So thank you for that Paul, for saying that a lot. But. But to me it makes sense. This shouldn't be part of the operating system. It doesn't make any sense. There was some back end stuff they had done with Bing Maps as an API and moving that into Azure Maps and semi related to this.

[Richard Campbell]

But yeah, you were saying they're getting more aggressive is like it still seems to be a pattern of only remov apps that nobody's heard of. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And right. Which is the cynical commonality that we have in our industry is no matter what it is like some, it does not just Microsoft, some company will announce they're getting rid of some features, some apps, some cert, whatever it is and someone inevitably on some social media channel somewhere will say they still make that. Yeah. And that's the problem because you know like when Skype. Microsoft killed Skype. Microsoft this coming month retire Skype, this really good brand.

[Richard Campbell]

It's been a week.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's happening quick. There were still people saying that about.

[Richard Campbell]

Skype and I'm like dude, I've made more Skype calls in the past month out of pure nostalgia.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Did you enjoy all the spam and the AI bots?

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. And crashing.

[Paul Thurrott]

And that will cause the. Or cure the nostalgia problem really quick.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Just have a reminder, you stopped using this for a reason.

[Paul Thurrott]

There's a Maps to me. Makes sense, right? We're getting rid of Maps, it's fine. But there's another thing they're getting rid of and this one they don't really explain this well either. And I'm kind of logic to my way through what I think is the rationale here. But there's a security feature called virtualization based security enclaves. VBS Enclaves. Right. I mentioned it briefly up front. It's part of the platform that is Copilot plus PC. It's part of now this Windows resiliency initiative I think is the name of it, which is itself part of the broader security whatever initiative. Microsoft, who knows the new version of trustworthy computing, whatever, zero trust, yada yada. Yada, this is when David Weston pops up all of a sudden and starts talking about security in Windows, right? And you're like, okay, cool. Windows 11, like I said when it first shipped, didn't really have anything that required any of the hardware they said you needed. But now this is one of those features where these things are all tied in together. So secure Boot 2, PM2, VBS enclaves, windows, hello, ESS, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, build on the things that came before, Secure, boot, whatever. But these things all are part of the same thing. To me, the way that this has been shipped to the public was Copilot PC. It's what Microsoft uses to separate, literally separate the memory and the storage for your snapshots. Right. It's part of the security model for recall. It has been since day one, by the way. They didn't ever change that. But it's going to be something that's just in Windows. Right. But when they added it to Windows, they added it to all supported versions of Windows 11, which at the time included 23H2, and they're deprecating it in 23H2 and older. But there are no older versions that are supported anymore. I don't think this is actually necessary for 23H2. 23H2 is exiting support in October imminently.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So yeah, why not? I wish they had explained it a little bit because I kind of had to work my way through that argument. I think that is what it is. But in the sense that, like Windows hello ess, here's a good one. In the sense that Copilot PC is the canary, if you will, for the Windows hello ESS coal mine. That's true of these other security features too, right? VBS enclave, et cetera. So I know there are lower level OS features or whatever and other features of the OS that use VBS enclaves, but right now they're either relegated to pilot PCs or to high end corporate PCs that honestly they're probably most companies probably even using this stuff yet. So there's kind of no reason to support it back on the older version that's about to disappear anyway. So I do think, I think that's it. It was a weird thing to see them deprecate. Very random security. Yeah. But then it's like, wait, so it's 23H2 and older, which is 23H2. They never brought it to Windows 10. And they won't. Okay, it's probably fine.

[Richard Campbell]

And I wonder if they're finally getting to a feature set of features with like hey, this is really problem to do. Regress, employ, deploy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's just right.

[Richard Campbell]

So we're not going to.

[Paul Thurrott]

They did make that by the way. There was that platform shift low level with 24h2 that they never really talked about. That may tie into this as well. And it may tie into that conversation I had earlier about the but Windows 11 not living up to the needs of these hardware requirements in the beginning but then actually getting there. I mean maybe 24H2, if you will, is the is where they actually always wanted this to be or whatever. I mean crowdstrike is the real reason some of this is happening. But whatever the rationale, I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

My message has been pretty clear. We're not going to do anything to avoid another crowdstrike. That's not a thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, it's a cynical take on it. I mean I. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Am I simple or am I wise? I'm just not sure anymore.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean it's. I was concise and correct. I don't know. I, I. Yeah, I mean right. Sure. What a world.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Sometimes the power just blinks.

[Leo Laporte]

As we pause for this philosophical moment, I'd like to take an opportunity to talk about a sponsor you can reflect well, I talk about Cash Fly. When we say as I have for gosh, 15 years bandwidth for Windows Weekly is provided by cashfly@ cache flashly.com I mean it. We literally are brought to you by CashFly. For over 20 years, CashFly has held a track record for high performing, ultra reliable content delivery, serving over 5,000 companies in over 80 countries. We'll make it 5,001 because we've been with them practically since the beginning, certainly since the beginning of our shows. Cast wise. The only CDN content delivery network built for throughput. I mean that's what they care about. Ultra low latency video streaming delivers video to over a million concurrent users. They've got lightning fast gaming, delivers downloads faster. Yes, but also as you play, zero lag, zero glitches. If you have images on your site or in your content, you'll love Cashfly's Mobile Content Optimization which automatically very simply optimizes all the images for all the possible screen sizes so your site loads faster no matter what device. The thing that made a big difference to us, we were just starting out as a podcast network. We didn't know what our bandwidth was going to look like. It was very spiky. So Cashfly gave us and they will give you flexible month to month billing for as long as you need to figure that out. And then discounts once you figure it out for fixed terms. The point being, we designed our own contract when we switched to Cashfly. So will you. Cashfly. By the way, we're excited. We've moved over now to Cashfly's Pure Storage. This is brand new for Cashfly. Patrick, our engineer, just, I think, got everything moved over. We were talking about IT yesterday. Pure Storage is the IT pioneer that delivers the world's most advanced technology data storage technology and services. Which means as a Cash Fly customer, we're getting performance, reliability, flexible scalability, and predictable pricing. This is so great. Cashfly is replacing all of its legacy systems with Pure Storage's cutting edge technology, which means Cash Fly has achieved a 5A 500% boost, 5X in compute power and reduced power consumption by nearly 90%, slashing operating expenses while enhancing delivery speeds for its customers worldwide. I think we are now entirely on Pure Storage. Right, Patrick, you moved everything over. Cash Flies modernization. It's kind of cool because here's a company that's been around for two decades, but they are on the cutting edge. In fact, it's a pivotal time because they're preparing to further enhance their object storage solution. This new offering promises to redefine how businesses manage, store and scale unstructured data with unparalleled speed and reliability. I couldn't be happier to be a partner, and I think you will be, too. Cashfly delivers content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs. They allow you to do what we've been doing for a long time now. Shield your site content inside their cloud so there are no cache misses. You get a 100% cash hit ratio. And with Cash Fly's elite managed packages, you get the VIP treatment. Your dedicated account manager will be with you from day one, ensuring a smooth implementation and reliable 247 support when you need it. I. All I can say is we could not be happier. And I know you will be, too. Learn how you can get your first month [e-mail] twit that's. I'll say it again. C A C-H-E F L Y.com/twitch. Thank you, Cash Fly. We couldn't do without you. All right, back to Windows Weekly. Mr. Paul Thurat, Mr. Richard Campbell. What is this corporate stuff?

[Paul Thurrott]

It's a new segment. I figured this show wasn't boring enough.

[Leo Laporte]

And actually, we're gonna get quarterly results in about an hour, right? Something like that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that's going to come in hot. That'll be interesting. So I don't know if anyone's following world affairs. I'm not sure how to even walk into this. We have tariffs now in the United States. They're reciprocal. I think they appear to be designed to punish our partners or something. It's very strange, but Europe has begun looking at whether they could reduce their reliance on the United States and US Technology, which is tough because US Technology is big tech. Right. It's pretty much all of it. Yep. Although China would like to do something about that. But anyway, so there was this brief moment here where I thought the EU is going to ordain some Linux distribution as what everyone had to use or something. And it looks like it's not going to go in that direction. But I don't think anything was announced today. But there was a chance that as early as today that you might have come out and said, look, look, the truth is there's not much we can do about this. You know, we kind of rely on the United States. But to reassure their customers in Europe, Microsoft has issued a statement of sorts explaining what they would do.

[Richard Campbell]

This is.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know if you. This is. They're saying EU os.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. So that's the thing I don't think is actually going to happen now.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, it says this. It is not a project of the European Union.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

But it should be okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't think they're going to.

[Leo Laporte]

It ain't going to happen. All right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. You know, look, I mean, you know, Libra Office, or whatever it was called, Open Office was. Did great for Munich. They're all. I don't know, they.

[Leo Laporte]

So they switched back, didn't they?

[Paul Thurrott]

They did, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'd love to see that work. I honestly, I think that'd be great. But anyway, I was hoping to see something like that, but I don't. It looks now like this isn't going to happen. So. Yeah, Microsoft obviously is not number one in cloud computing, but. But they do a very good job about building data center capacity in the locales where they do business. And of course they have these data protection boundaries, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, we live in a world where people fly through the United States or to the United States and get, you know, their phone searched and they end up in a camp in San Salvador or whatever it is. And Microsoft is basically saying, look, we're going to protect your data from the United States government. If they try to access your data, we're going to take them to court. And we're going to prevent it. I don't know that that's enough if you consider that the courts in our country are probably in the government's pocket at this point. So I don't know. I don't know. But it's an interesting thing. I mean this is a problem for Microsoft if big customers in other parts of the world start walking away. History has shown us that when you do things like prevent the Chinese from accessing the latest cell phone and AI chipsets, that they learned how to build them themselves. And instead of having the intended effect, what you've done is taught these places to not rely on you anymore. And companies like Huawei and other companies that are in networking and in smart devices, phones and computers and all that are just making their own stuff. It could happen in Europe, I guess, if it gets bad enough. But this is Microsoft's attempt to make.

[Richard Campbell]

Prevent that or my help reassure their customers perhaps.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. In other problems, Google has now lost three major antitrust cases in the United States, which is an astonishing sentence to even say Epic online search and now advertising for three weeks. And I think we're in week two of three. The judge in the search case, which is the most damaging one so far, potentially damaging, is having hearings for the remedy phase. Right. Like what will be. I call it a punishment. It's kind of a simplistic term. But what are we going to do about this? Like how are we going to prevent future abuses? We've seen a number of companies line up to say I would love to buy. Oh, is Chrome for sale? I would love to have Chrome. Let's. How much do you want? How much you want for Chrome?

[Richard Campbell]

Like we'll take Chrome wasn't open one of them.

[Paul Thurrott]

OpenAI is one of them. Perplexity DuckDuckGo which claims it can't afford it. Yahoo has said they would do it.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm still trying to figure out what Chrome is worth because on the ears last time I looked, they don't sell it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. Well, Chrome is one of the avenues of distribution that works in their favor for making search the default and then all the advertising revenues that come off the back of this. So, so tied to this. Google Alphabet announced their revenues the other day. They're doing pretty good. 90 billion in revenues for the quarter. 90 billion in one quarter.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

Advertising related revenues were almost 67 billion of that figure. So 74% of their revenues come from advertising.

[Richard Campbell]

How's that income diversification thing going there, guys?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I will say so the businesses, they have that are not ad related, which is subscriptions, platforms and devices, you know, Pixel and all that stuff is 10 billion in revenues, up double digits, you know, 16%. Google Cloud 12.3 billion in revenues up 22% also double digit. So non advertising based revenues from this company were about 22.6 billion, which is about 25%. You know, it's not bad, but it's not 90 billion. So I don't, I mean I don't see a version of this where Google loses advertising revenue or anything like that. But is there a version where they lose 20, 25% of it or something? Yeah, I mean, well, and we are.

[Richard Campbell]

Definitely, I mean even before the AI wave you had a lot more product searches being done on Amazon and, and a lot of content searches done on Facebook. Like they've been encroaching for a while.

[Paul Thurrott]

The big threat for them is the one that's happening right now, which is AI. And a lot of people are using OpenAI ChatGPT especially, but whatever. And yes, but this is the argument Microsoft made in their antitrust case 20, 25 years ago, whatever it was, that you know, the thing you don't understand government or court or whatever judge is that there's always, it doesn't matter how dominant you are, there's always another player right around the corner who's going to out innovate us and enter some new market or whatever it is and put us out of business. But what we don't want is for you to ride that out by continuing to dominate the market that you illegally own now and abuse your customers, your partners, your competitors, prevent innovation, et cetera. It's like, yeah, it could happen. The fact that this is problematic for them, which it is, is okay, but it doesn't obviate the past 20 years of what you've done. So there's a big thing going on there. But this is an incredibly successful company. Microsoft is going to announce their revenues in the next 30 minutes or so. And I bet it's not $90 billion. It's going to be a big number, but it will be close. But they make a lot of money on advertising.

[Richard Campbell]

But I also think this is a pattern of antitrust that turns into, to a consent decree.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, and I think we must have talked about this last week. I think the smartest thing Google could do and Apple too, and whatever else is settle with the idea of like, look, we get it, something's going to happen. You know, we should have a say in this outcome. You know, Google, their CEO came up, was on the stand and testified today. I didn't put this in the notes, but like, you know, his, his argument was Google's argument, which is like you have these remedies that the US government has suggested. Taking away search, making us give our results to partners and competitors or whatever, yada, yada, yada, amounts to a de facto divestiture of search, meaning you're forcing the company to break up. And it's like, yeah, that is what it is. You're right. You know, it's like, well, we spent all these years, you know, on research and, and we have all this intellectual property and now you want us to open the kimono. And it's like, yeah, that is what we want. What's your point? Like, you didn't just do something good, you did the bad thing too. You know, you don't just get to keep benefiting from it. So, you know, we'll see. I agree that the, what the government wants is extreme, but you might make the case that it needs to be extreme because the abuse is extreme. It's kind of hard to say, but I don't know. We'll see what happens. I don't think it, I don't think the worst case outcome is what's going to happen, but whatever. They're big and they're going to fall, I think. And speaking of big and going to.

[Richard Campbell]

Fall, you know, they're going to negotiate. They've been failing so far, but they're trying to get to that threshold where they got to make a deal, I presume, like at some point they just have to make it.

[Paul Thurrott]

If only there was some precedent, maybe one from the industry that could guide them in this.

[Richard Campbell]

Where's their Brad Smith going? Guys make a deal, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, maybe his. Maybe it's Brad Smith. Maybe this is where he should go. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

He needs a new job. Great.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, they'll see. Intel also reported their earnings. Maybe the less said about that, the better.

[Richard Campbell]

I. Come on, flat earnings is good news.

[Leo Laporte]

Flat earnings is better than.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it has been.

[Paul Thurrott]

The problem is like 10% of the announcement. The rest of it's really bad. So these guys are going to hit rock bottom. There's no doubt about it. They're planning on it. They're counting on it. So they've lowered their prediction for the coming quarters and the stock took a dump. The whole thing is falling apart. So I'm trying to find something good in here. Revenues from PCs declined 8%. Revenue from AI chips for data centers are up 8%. Intel Foundry, which is not really part of these earnings, but they're up a little bit. But these were small numbers honestly, comparatively speaking. So I don't know. There was a tsmc I think broke ground on a third new facility in the United States and it's this awesome gigantic Death Star looking thing. And then out in Ohio there's a lonely piece of rebar sticking up out of the ground with like a cricket, you know that's the new intel plant that's never going to get built. I don't know. It's just, it doesn't look good, but I don't know. And then I don't even know why I put this in here. Samsung's doing, I guess their new phones are doing great because people don't know how to buy good phones. I don't know. So they're doing fine, I guess. Too much, too much, too much editorializing and then we'll, we'll get back to this when it happens. But Microsoft is going to announce their earnings during the show, so of course that's a rule. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, they used to do it like the day after the show, which I thought was inconveniently timed and then they proved me wrong. It could be worse. So anyway, we talked about build coming soon. Richard and I are going and.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I wanted to ask you if you. Oh, so you're going. Are you going to do something there?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we'll do a show from there.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm working on the schedule so I've got a, I've got a block out.

[Leo Laporte]

Space because we were going to do the keynote in the club but you probably busy at that time.

[Richard Campbell]

That would be Monday.

[Paul Thurrott]

Let me, let me, I need to make sure, Let me just make sure before I agree to do anything like that. But. Well, it's gonna be busy.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, if only I could say things like that. No, I'd be doing it. I'll be there anyway. But we'd love to have you but. Or you can even pop in. Right. So that's actually 9am Pacific. We have it down for on Monday the 19th.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So we're going to stream that in our discord. Look, I'm going to be there. I'll be doing my thing. If you want to join us, that'd be great. If not, that's fine. I understand.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no, I would like to. Let me just. I'm just not sure if we have any record possible.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you there? So you're there as guests at Microsoft doing stuff for them or.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I'm, I Mean, I'm just going as press, but.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, your requirements are.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Like interviews and stuff? Yeah. Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, they might. I don't. Let me just see. I'm not sure what.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, let me know, let me know. It's no hurry.

[Richard Campbell]

Theoretically, we're in the audience at Build for the Q. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm hoping I'm not in the audience, but, yeah, that would be one of the possibilities for sure.

[Leo Laporte]

If you're in the audience, you can join us, be in the audience. We'll be in the audience, too.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is kind of interesting because Google I O and Build are overlapping this week. They're on the same basic days. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

It almost seems like it's super deliberate. Like they.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's absolutely super deliberate because Google has their own place for this. They could do it anywhere at any time, and they did. They pick the exact same time. And it's like, okay, fine. Okay, fine. You're making people like me choose which one to go to. This one is easy for me. I've got, obviously going to go to the Microsoft event, but, you know, there are a lot of people like, oh, I got to think about this.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we have to stream. I have to get up early both days because we have to stream.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

The next day, the Google keynote.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, for the first time ever, I think Google is going to have a separate Android event before Google I O. Usually that's weird. Yeah. Now I think it's tied to. They changed the development schedule for Android. They used to ship it late in the third quarter and then it would go into devices later. They cited unnamed partners and their schedules and they meant Samsung. Right. Because Samsung does the one big bang event for the S25. They just did in January. But they had been doing like a foldable event in the late summer, early fall. This year they're allegedly going to have it early in July. And now that the schedule for the next version of Android makes sense for that, they're able to, I think, move it where they wanted to put it. So I think that's why they're doing it and maybe that's why they're having a separate Android event, because this will be rtm. This will be when this thing is finalized, like the next version of Android. Android is going to land nine months after the previous one, not a year. So it's basically forward about a quarter. Now. This also allows them to focus heavily on AI. And if you look at their session schedules, this Android stuff in there, of course, I mean, Android is a big platform. For them. But it's like build. It is all AI. It's AI. It's AI, AI, AI, AI, AI. So this makes me wonder, what about Surface, right? Like last year Microsoft announced Copilot plus PC the day before build but at their campus. And they announced two new Surface devices. The first two Snapdragon Xbase computers.

[Richard Campbell]

And this is. These are post Panos devices.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So big deal.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I mean maybe, maybe we need like a Windows Copilot plus PC something event. I don't know. So we'll see. We'll see. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

Anyway, nice if they would tell us.

[Paul Thurrott]

I wish I had a secret to tell you. I just, I don't. I do not. But I'm waiting. You know, I'm going to build. There is a pre show thing that night and it's not like this, it's not like a Copilot plus PC like announcement or anything. It's like a, you know, nothing. It's like the type of thing they usually have. So I don't know. I don't know. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And like I said a year ago, they were, this is Copilot PC now. It's been like, it makes sense. This is about the time to come out and say hey, hey, here's a.

[Paul Thurrott]

V2 or comes the next hardware.

[Richard Campbell]

And I'm chomping at the bit to get into the Qualcomm chip stack. But I'm not going to buy the old chip, I want the new one. Where's the new one?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, so it's been a steady stream of more of the same chipset, you know, like lower end versions, fewer cores hitting that, like lowering the price which by the way is important, I'm not dumping on it. But yeah, people like us are like, okay, but where's the good stuff? Like I want, you know, where's the one with the, the new GPU or whatever, right? Like we want to see this stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

Get me to 100 tops.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, a lot of rumors around this. I've been hearing September, I just saw something that I think is very much related, which is that Qualcomm is going to ship the next gen Snapdragon for phones in September, which aligns to what I've heard for the PC chip. And that makes sense because those will be based on the same underlying chips. So maybe, yeah, maybe that is the plan. We shall see.

[Richard Campbell]

Not in the build time frame. They're not on a one year cadence, but then neither Intel.

[Paul Thurrott]

And the problem is when you hit a one year anniversary, like we're about to. And the next gen is not happening for another. Whatever that is. Three, six months.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not a lot of excitement in this world right now. You know what I'm saying? So it's like I kind of wish there was something that they could announce, even if it was something. Well, not even if. I mean, this would be not great for, for Qualcomm, but like there are these rumors about MediaTek and, or Nvidia and, or other companies maybe getting into the windows on our chip space, which would bring competition to this part of the market, but also require these companies to kind of play off each other. And, you know, maybe Nvidia would come out the gate with really good graphics or whatever, you know, like as you would expect of that company. So I'd like to see something like that too. But I don't, I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

If wishes were fishes, we'd all be riding bicycles.

[Richard Campbell]

And I still have the sense said all those different variations of the Snapdragon are really them trying to increase yield.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, they're binning. They're binning more aggressively. You think?

[Richard Campbell]

Well, you got to get up to 90% if you're going to make some money. Right. So they find a way to trim the chip to make it usable. And you had vendors looking for a less expensive chip anyway, like there's a market and you've made poor quality chips.

[Leo Laporte]

So why not perfect sell them to the Chinese? That's what I.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, the big thing on the V2 is revised design so that it prints more reliably. Right. Like, I think it's a huge part of the TSMC story is their engineers changing the design so that those very high density chips actually come up more reliable. And it takes a few iterations to get there, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, let's take a little time out and we will come back with more excitement. I just want to give Microsoft time to get its quarterly results out before the show's over. I don't think that's going to actually happen. You don't have to save those earning learnings for next week.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, they're out. Oh, no, no, sorry. It says get. I. Sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Get ready, get ready.

[Paul Thurrott]

It says get notification.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. So that's 20 minutes off and then there's usually a delay after that. And got to get his hair did and all.

[Paul Thurrott]

More of a shine.

[Richard Campbell]

All polished up. Yeah, all polished up.

[Leo Laporte]

I just, since we mentioned the club, I thought I'd just throw in a little pled, a little pleading, a little begging to get you to join Club Twit, because we're doing some great stuff in there. Let me just tell you what you get. First of all, it's only seven bucks a month. And if you sign up today, you will be grandfathered in at that price, indefinite forever, even if we have a price increase. And I have to say, you know, the way the economy's going, we might have to do a price increase at some point this year. We want to grandfather you in. People did say we really want that yearly commitment. And personally, I was the one fighting against it. Cause I felt like, well, now I'm stuck here for another year, but all right, I want to do it. So we brought back the yearly plan. 84 bucks for a year, 7 bucks a month. What do you get? You get ad free versions of all the shows. I think that's reason enough. But you also get access to our club Twit Discord, which is a great hang. Not everybody's in there. You don't have to join, certainly. But enough, I would say 10,000, maybe. I don't know. Patrick knows how many people are in the club right now. And we do a lot more in the club than just get together and chat. There's chatting all the time because it's a social group. But we also do special shows in there. For instance, Friday, 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern. Chris Marquardt will do his monthly photo roundup. We do a review, give you a new assignment, talk about the latest photography news. We also have Micah's crafting corner coming up on the 14th next week, or is that two weeks? I think it's two weeks from now. That's at 6pm on Wednesday. He does it every month. And it's just a chance to get together with Micah. And he's doing some crafts. You could do your crafts. Stacy's book club is the same day, not the same time. And actually that's that afternoon. We're going to do her book pick of the month. Your book pick, I guess. She gives you three people vote on them. And I really like the one we're doing this this month. The word for world is Forest. Marissa K. Le Guin. It's a novella, so it's pretty easy read. So if you haven't picked it up yet, get it now. There's a great audio book version, but you could also read it in paperback or hardcover. A very good, I thought a very interesting story. So we'll be, we'll be talking about that. As I mentioned, we're going to start covering keynotes in the club only this is to avoid takedowns and strikes against our YouTube and Twitch channels. They haven't come from Microsoft, let's be honest, they're coming from Apple, but. Well, why not? So we're going to do Build in the Discord. That's as I mentioned, Monday May 19th, 9:00am Pacific. We're going to do the next day Google IO in the Discord. That's 10:00am Pacific on the May 20th. Oh, in between then a little break on Friday May 23rd. The giz whiz Dick did Bartolo stopped by. I want to help him celebrate 2000 episodes. I'll break out all the old jingles. We've got some great memories for that. That'll be a lot of fun. Our AI users group is always the fourth Friday of the month, May 23rd. This month, just a couple. Last week we did it. It was really fun. Anthony showed how he's making all those cool moral panic videos we use on intelligent machines. Lots of fun. If you're interested in AI, I might show how I use Claude code. I think this next coming episode is pretty cool. And then on the 9th of June, WWDC 10am and we are going to do the keynote and the State of the Union. Micah and I will do that. That's just part of all the fun you get in Club Twit. Seven bucks a month. I think it's a. I mean for. What is it? Eleven shows a week? All the extras. There are 12,554 club members. But how many are in the Patrick or in the Discord or members of the Discord? I think it's less than that. Not everybody goes in there. Anyway. We'd like to have you in the club, please. Twit TV Club Twit. If you're not already a member, join the fun. Scooter X. Just getting around to put it. We put in links as the show goes on. By the way, Kev does. Kev Brewer does it. Scooter X. So you can follow along. There we go. 7,456 people in the Discord from the club. Please join us. Please. Twit TV Club Twit. Join today or that kitten will get a spanking. Back to Windows Weekly.

[Paul Thurrott]

There are research firms, there are consulting firms and then there's forced Forester.

[Leo Laporte]

Meet Today's [e-mail] and Paul Thurot. You may. Did I mute you? No, I did not. You maybe muted yourself.

[Paul Thurrott]

I muted myself.

[Leo Laporte]

You may take it away, sir.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I didn't write about this, but there's a report in the Wall Street Journal about the relationship between Microsoft and Open AI, which is mostly what I call duh and, or hello. It's all very obvious. But there's some interesting stuff in here because the story is fascinating. This will generate a new round of books about Microsoft, I think, in the near future where they see this up and coming company, Kevin Scott, gets that relationship going. They invest a billion bucks, they invest another 10 billion.

[Richard Campbell]

But I didn't think they thought it was that important. I think Kevin Scott was just looking for workloads for Azure and it was an opportunity moment.

[Leo Laporte]

It was a customer. Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it worked out so well. Except it kind of lucked also.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

There's some little details in here that are kind of interesting because they, you know, you can. Anyone could probably step through most of the history, but like this author claims that there was a period of time at the height of this relationship where Nadella, Satya Nadella. Excuse me, a little dry here. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft and SAM altogether, and the CEO for most of this of OpenAI. We'd like text each other all day long, like five or six times a row like little girls and like, what's.

[Leo Laporte]

Going on, Sam, what's your name?

[Paul Thurrott]

What are you wearing today?

[Leo Laporte]

Are you wearing.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, but like, Sam Altman would actually take screenshots of these chats and post them to the internal slack at OpenAI just to speed things along. Yeah, it's just bizarre. Right? So Microsoft does the big reveal of this work with what at the time was Bing AI, but like Copilot. Right. And at the end of that year when Sam Altman was briefly ousted from OpenAI.

[Richard Campbell]

Ah, yes, dark Fox.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is referred to internally as the blip. The blip. That's quite a blip. But not surprisingly, this, you know, Nadella immediately said, look, we need an insurance policy here. We can't, this can't happen. Like, this is. And you know, some of the stuff they had said publicly is actually really fascinating. If you go back to this time, Microsoft was like, we'll just hire all of you. Like, yeah, come on, come here. So OpenAI may have. I don't think they would have disappeared, but most of those people I think would have followed Sam Altman quite. Yeah, yeah. And. And it turns out that's a successful strategy because it's what Microsoft did a little bit later with inflection and Mustafa Suleiman.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

The guy who now runs the Microsoft AI org, apparently it was that month so this is November 2023, where Sam Alton is out. And they're like, all right, what? Like, where can we go? And his top choice at that point was Mustafa Sulaiman. Right. Like, what can we do? And they started talking and then I don't remember the timing. I want feel like it might have been March, maybe the next year, but. But whenever it was last year, they hired him.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you're exactly right.

[Leo Laporte]

$650 million they paid for him.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. Well, because you're not buying the company, sort of, but you're getting the guy.

[Leo Laporte]

One of the three founders. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And most of the employees like that company basically disassembled.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. It was an aqua hire.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. You know, the second of two major examples of this kind of thing with Microsoft in the past three, four years. Like, it's kind of bizarre. That itself is really kind of crazy. Now, this report claims that one of the first things that these guys ran into from Inflection when they got to Microsoft was like, actually, it's going to take a while. Turns out what these guys are doing is really good and it's going to be hard to duplicate this. And we had rumors, I would say, in the intervening year, every once in a while, like, Microsoft's models are getting close. Microsoft's models might be just as good as OpenAI's we got. And by the time they had that AI event, I guess it was early April. Yeah. Tied to the Microsoft 50th anniversary. My question was, are they going to talk about that? And they never talked about that. They still rely on OpenAI, obviously, to some degree. But the other big break was, of course, when OpenAI. OpenAI keeps making demands. Microsoft, we need more. We need more. We need more. One of the things I'll be looking for in the earnings today is what Microsoft says about the cost of AI and the CapEx cost. You know, it's been roughly $20 billion a quarter. Are we going to see a scaling back of that this soon or not? Maybe it's going to happen eventually. There are reports Microsoft has never acknowledged where they were in early agreements to build up capacity in whatever parts of the world or whatever data centers, and have just walked away from those deals. They don't need that capacity anymore. But the big problem to me here. Oh, by the way, I don't know if this is in the report, but I also have something put aside. That part of Microsoft's agreement with OpenAI allows them to block this corporate restructuring that OpenAI is trying to undergo, where they become a for Profit company. I'm not saying they're going to. In fact, I don't know that anyone is saying that, but apparently they have the power to prevent that from happening, which would be a weird alignment with Elon Musk when you think about it, but it's probably not going to happen. But the issue there, though, and the reason you might want to think about that, is that these two companies are the ultimate example of competitors and partners. Right? They're the coopetition thing. And in this article they have some cool graphs or some good graphs, and one of them shows the. This is something, I think it came out with the Google Anti Insert Remedy hearings, where Google has given figures for how good they're doing or how well they're doing with Gemini. And depending on how you look at this, it's really, really good or really bad. But they're like half an OpenAI maybe from a usage perspective. But the thing you have to remember about Google is they're giving Gemini AI Advanced away to basically everybody. So you buy a Pixel phone, you get it for a year. If you buy Chromebook plus, you get it for a year, whatever it is. So that stuff might run into a wall in the near term. But OpenAI's numbers are off the charts, like, really good. They're just upward, you know, like Rocket Trajectory. And Microsoft's copilot numbers are the copilot. Right. The, the AI chatbot thing have never grown. Like they're 20 million compared to 300 million monthly average users or weekly whatever numbers. And that's a big problem that seems.

[Richard Campbell]

To be true of most other models. Like, my debate here is, is OpenAI that good or do they have the brand recognition?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of the first one and a lot of the last one, for sure. I don't know how. I don't know. Well, there must be objective opinions about this from people who actually use these things. But the problem is.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I don't know how objective they are, brother. Like, I'm always asking folks, what are they using and why are they using it? And they can never put a finger down on.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because it's. It changes. It does this. You know, like, Brad this morning to me said, oh, I've been like, addicted to this Cursor AI thing. And I was like, okay, but yeah, it's great.

[Richard Campbell]

But Cursor AI has been out for months. Like, I think there's an illusion that we're moving fast and it's OpenAI that's creating that illusion with constant Announcements.

[Paul Thurrott]

I. Yeah, I feel like the alt. The end game here is pretty obvious which is that these things will all be roughly in the same place at some point. Right. And that it's. It is going to come down to marketing and partnerships and deals to get into different and very effective FUD.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. Like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that's marketing service. Yes. So OpenAI is clearly winning the race right now. And for Microsoft it's a little bit awkward because they've taken OpenAI products. This is a little harsh but kind of rebranded them as copilot products. They build on top of it for sure. They talk about the secret sauce they have and they do extra stuff and, and they have all the Microsoft 365 tie in stuff which is great and very good for them and for corporate customers, et cetera. But they do things like give away things that OpenAI charges for and none of this has moved the needle. And I think this is the, in the Microsoft space, we're very happy with the fact that Microsoft finally has a good brand for something. Like Microsoft is horrible at branding.

[Richard Campbell]

Thanks GitHub.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean whatever. But they took, they ran with it. Right. They did that with Surface. Right. Surface was this kind of stupid thing that nobody wanted. It was expensive and they moved it into something else that's less expensive and stupid. Doesn't matter. But Surface is a good brand. It was, you know, Skype was a good brand. Xbox is a good brand.

[Richard Campbell]

But they also overutilize them like they do sully the brand in the sense that they use the name everywhere.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the company that named everything they were making Windows something including something called Windows Media Player from Mac, which you had to know no one would want. I mean, think so. It's. Yes. This is what happens when you can't do something right your entire life. And when you get it right, you just beat it to death. But it doesn't seem to be working. And I think, you know, this is not a, this is not an epiphany. I mean this is obvious. These two companies are going to have. It's going to be ugly. You know what I mean? Like this ends badly. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean you hope that they. I mean clearly the press is for Microsoft to have a good enough model that you're simply not dependent on OpenAI. I don't know that that's come true yet, but I also don't know that we have a good assessment strategy anyway.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

I think so much of this stuff is perception of the model, not reality of the model.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think you're right.

[Richard Campbell]

It turns out to be what the product is every time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So this is true of anything but AI. It's. It's the easiest thing to try. So someone will use one chatbot and ask us some questions like, oh, look at this thing. It's terrible. It's the worst. And then they move on to something else. And maybe they get a good answer, someone else, and they use it for a little while and they're like, this is good. And it's like, well, what about that other thing? Like, oh, that's garbage. Like, well, when did you use it? It was like 36 hours ago. That's way too much time. You don't have an opinion anymore. Like, these things have been improving so fast.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, well, no, again, I'm not convinced that they are. I believe that is part of the hype process.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, that's fair enough.

[Richard Campbell]

Right? Because it's really hard to measure improvement.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. So I don't. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they'll. You know, I'm sure someone has already ported Chat GPT to the Commodore 64 or whatever. You know, I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

I played Doom on my dishwasher last month, so. Yeah, I love it.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's good. For some reason, every story today has ties to this Google antitrust case, which was not actually part of the show notes. But Motorola was it last week. Recently announced their new phones, which normally I wouldn't pay too much attention to, but the Razer phones are kind of cool. There's a little compact style, you know, flip phone.

[Richard Campbell]

The original cool phone.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But now in smartphone form. It's good. It's cool.

[Leo Laporte]

I love the Moto X's too. When Google first bought them, they were excellent.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, they used to do like, the wood on the outside and you had all these different.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. Remember that? Yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It was fun. Like, I had a bamboo cover, like, for one.

[Leo Laporte]

So they make a flip. Now that's kind of interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're cool. So. But the reason I wrote about this particular thing is they have partnered with 4. Is it 4 or 5? 4. Four different companies for the AI features in their phone. And this came out during.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what Apple should have done.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, they will. This. It is what Apple's to do, by the way. But for now, Perplexity has been trying to get on phones for the past couple years and Google has been blocking this. Right. So Google.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I didn't know that. Really?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So this came out during the antitrust remedy hearing. So Google, which is trying to complain to the court that we should just be allowed to do what we've always done, is doing what they've always done in search, but they're doing it with AI. So what they want is for all of the phone makers to, to bundle Gemini, not to bundle OpenAI or Perplexity or Anthropic or whatever else. And they've been successful, but because in.

[Richard Campbell]

The midst of an antitrust lawsuit for that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. No, I know it's, you know, pot, kettle black, or as you know, the old Greg Kinnear joke, you know, it's like riding a bike, you know, just. It's easy to fall into this behavior. Right? Yeah. But now this stuff is out in the public. And so Motorola announces these new phones. They have some variety of AI features, some of which seem kind of interesting, some of which are like whatever. But they've been very specific, mostly about which AIs they're using for which features. So they've partnered with Google, Meta, Microsoft and Perplexity, and they're using them in different ways. These will be the first phones that actually allow you to use Perplexity as a chatbot on a phone that's built in. Like it's going to be built in, it's going to be able to replace search.

[Leo Laporte]

This is great. I'm so excited.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's really interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what I do on the desktop now.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and congrats to Moto for actually being clever about the implementation.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So the reason this is good like this, what this is, is a good example of something that's hard to prove to people otherwise. Right. So when you think about antitrust, it could be Microsoft with, with ie, and they're like, what are you complaining about? They made browsers free. That's a good thing. Or Google Search is the best. Like, who cares if they're, you know, they do special deals with all these companies, it's the only choice and blah, blah, whatever. Like who cares? And it's like, well, who cares is like when you see what happens when you don't allow that. This is like innovation occurs. Now, it doesn't mean every one of these is good. It doesn't mean any of them are good. It just means all of a sudden when you are given choices, you know, things can happen. And those things that can happen might not be the things that that dominant company would ever want to happen. Not just because it's not their product, but because it just from a business standpoint, it doesn't make sense now you have innovators dilemma.

[Richard Campbell]

And like, why would I disrupt my search market, which is actually the ad space I sell around your search? Because you're going to use the chat bot instead. I don't know where to put the ads.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's why they sat on AI, because they designed or invented or whatever a lot of this stuff years ago. And we're like, ooh, this works really good. And it also makes Google search way less viable. So they sat on it, you know, so companies that aren't trying to protect a dominant product don't sit on it, you know, they go forward. So anyway, again I want to be super clear. I'm not saying any of this is any good, but I am saying some of it looks pretty good. Like this seems pretty good. And the overall kind of strategy, whatever it is, like, yeah, and they're doing a manual version of this orchestrator thing that I've been talking about forever, which is we have these features we want to do. We have all these AIs we could use. What if we use this for this and this for this and this for this? Because those are the things that are good for those things.

[Richard Campbell]

Sounds like something Apple should have done about a year ago.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it sounds like something Apple's going to do about two years from now. 100%. I mean, yeah, they'll get there, you know, and when they do it, they'll do it in that Apple way and it will be, you know, it'll be great.

[Richard Campbell]

Maybe, I don't know, it'll be shiny.

[Paul Thurrott]

It will be shiny. And it will all buy new iPhones or. Yeah, iPhones. It will be fine. So the duolingo thing, man, I don't. God, these guys. I. So I use duolingo every day. I just surpassed like a two year streak. I hate this app so much. I hate it.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. Well, I hate it every now because you're using AI, Is that why?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, I just want to be clear about this thing. I. I pay for it, I use it every day. It's like a taskmaster.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like I'm in that boat going across the ocean and he's like, have.

[Leo Laporte]

You tried the competitors like Babel? I mean.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. And I just keep going back like an idiot to this thing and here's what happens.

[Leo Laporte]

Really?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's the, it's the big one. You know, I get stuck in this race. It's always someone named Susan or like some woman who's studying English maybe, and she lives in Spain and she's like somehow got 30,000 points in one day when it's only possible to get maybe 2,000. And, you know, it's like you just find yourself like every day going, you know, like, it's just, it's. It makes me insane. But I will say, this app, like, there was a time when I finished the lessons they had for Spanish and French and they went back and I think I did French the second time or something. I don't remember now. I will not live long enough to finish anything they do because there's so much content there now.

[Leo Laporte]

They just added a bunch of stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

And that's the thing. So the other day, this blows my mind. The CEO of this company announced internally that they're going to get rid of all their contractors and replace them with AI. And they're like, no, no, don't worry, don't worry. We're not getting rid of any of you guys. You guys are important. But we are going to teach you how to use AI to get rid of the repetitive stuff and make your lives easier and all that stuff. And yeah, probably in six years, we're going to get rid of you too. But the point is, for now, you have nothing to worry about. But he uses this industry language. I read this to my wife just to kind of see how this read to her. And he said, one of the best decisions we made recently was replacing a slow manual content creation process with one powered by AI. And then you hear the record scratch and you're like, what does that mean? You mean you got rid of people? A slow manual content creation process. This is the thing where I said, remember, I can make graphics for my website using AI. I can say, give me four images of this thing. If one of them is perfect, I'll use it. If one of them is close, I'll say, this is pretty good, but make it a little different. And then it gives me four more and it just doesn't cost me a cent. And I have an image, but I also have a friend, one of my best friend's wives, who's a graphic artist. And if I went to her and I said, make me four high quality, photographic quality images of this thing that I'm going to describe to you with my mouth. Do it in 10 seconds, and then I'm going to tell you to correct one of them and give me four more. Can you do that? And she'd be like, what are you talking about? I can't do that.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm like, right, I'll see you in a month.

[Paul Thurrott]

She is the Slow manual content creation process that the guy from Dual Lingo just mentioned. It's impossible. The other thing he said, this is the other AI term. He said it would take us decades to scale our content to more learners. Scale, that's good. Anyway, they're getting rid of people is the message one. They. Here's the problem with this, okay? He told employees this, they posted this letter. They meaning duolingo, the company, not like a leaker to LinkedIn. Like they were proud of it. And then one day later, they announced 148 new language courses, all of them created with AI.

[Richard Campbell]

You're like, wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

And they literally referenced this scale comment. It said our first 100 courses took 12 years to create. And now in about a year, we're able to create and launch almost 150 new courses.

[Richard Campbell]

All right, now this is the question of quality. It's a course, but is it good?

[Leo Laporte]

Here's the problem. Yeah, probably it's just as good.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's probably just as good because they.

[Leo Laporte]

Stole the content that was created by humans, ingested it, and now they just reminds me.

[Paul Thurrott]

The notion that some number of monkeys given some number of years could create Shakespeare is of course nonsense, but everyone's familiar with that. Everyone is likewise familiar with the fact that there are only a certain number of notes in the world. And so that if you threw them into a blender, you would come up with Stairway to Heaven, which actually, by the way, is the way they made that song. But anyway, you know, whatever the works.

[Leo Laporte]

Of the Beatles, there are currently many monkeys working on recreating Shakespeare. At monkeys. Zip. I own one of them. And he's doing. I love it.

[Richard Campbell]

He's doing.

[Paul Thurrott]

He's doing a great job. Well, you know what, let me tell you something that that monkey doesn't scale and slow content creation. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, nice. You could. There's no doubt that AI trained on the music of the world will create music that we like. You know, it will be similar. It will be nearly identical in some cases. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wonder why.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of course they're going to. Of course they're going to be able to. You know, this is like I said this about Call of Duty. Richard has been talking about this notion of using AI to create maps or open world environments where there's like an infinite number of quests and new characters and new things happening. And I think about it in terms of Call of Duty and it's like, look, we have this body of work that dates back 20 years plus. Now we know what Multiplayer maps resonated with people. Feed it into the AI and say, make more of these. And I got to tell you, the problem with this is as a user of this or a gamer, I guess I hear that and I think, oh, God, please do that. Because some of the maps that humans create are garbage and they take a long time. They don't scale. And then, you know, new Call of Duty comes out and you're like, all right, hooray. Let's see what they got. You're like, oh, six maps? That's all you got? Why can't Call of Duty launch with 150 maps? It will, you know, so. This is outrageous. All right? This freaks me out. This is horrible.

[Leo Laporte]

And I hate the way of the world.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, it's absolutely the way everything's gonna go.

[Leo Laporte]

You probably, the people who made, you know, horseless carriages are probably, you know, for a long time. In fact, there was a great blog post that said the original automobiles, Steam automobiles, were designed to look exactly like carriages.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of course, just like all of Apple's UIs were meant to look like a felt, you know, cover, you know, game thing or whatever. And it's like, this is how you. This is how people make transitions.

[Leo Laporte]

At some time. At some point, the buggy whip manufacturers are going to have to find a new thing to make.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right?

[Leo Laporte]

It's sad, it's bad, it's terrible.

[Paul Thurrott]

But it's.

[Leo Laporte]

But it's the way of the world.

[Paul Thurrott]

Let me ask you this, though. Why do you hate horses so much? Like, what's the.

[Leo Laporte]

Have you ever had a horse?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, they're. I mean, they're. Yes. That thing could kill you by twitching its tail. It's. It doesn't make any sense.

[Leo Laporte]

They're expensive, they poop everywhere.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're mean, they.

[Leo Laporte]

They have given.

[Paul Thurrott]

They have their own ideas.

[Leo Laporte]

But even if you have a sweet horse, it's not as easy as the thing in your garage right now.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. It took a while to get there, but it did. I don't think anyone's aiming to go back. You know, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

It's challenging. Look, nobody should lose their job, ever. That's for so many of us. That's not just our.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we don't self worth.

[Leo Laporte]

It's how we live.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nobody thinks about this, like, so probably because it's a hard problem. I mean, you know, when all the Appalachian jobs from coal and, and steal and whatever else were going away, it's like, well, what are we going to do? My family has been doing this for Generations. I have kids and a family and a house and whatever. And I'm living in a place where now there's fracking occurring or whatever it is. And it's like, well, you should learn how to write software code. Yeah, no, my life has prepared me for that path. And then, yeah, two seconds later, AI comes along. You're like, well, now what am I going to do?

[Leo Laporte]

Thing we told you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I don't know. How do you. How do you feel about building data centers? I mean, could you do that? Yeah. I don't know. There's no good answers here. But this duolingo thing freaks me out because one of the things I'm going to do after I get off the show is go open up my app and curse to myself. And maybe Copilot can get rid of that later and use this app that I hate so much. But it's also kind of inevitable, you know?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's brutal.

[Leo Laporte]

It's hard. It's really hard.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't. It is hard.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know what the answer is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no, right. You know what? There is no answer. That's the problem. The net goal here is that the impact of any technology will be positive in the long run for most, if not all people. It doesn't always happen, but that's the goal. There's always going to be those short term problems that no one wants to think about because there is a way we're doing things now and those jobs are going to go away. It happens every time. Some of the jobs are ridiculous. I always use the example of the, well, Stagecoach driver or the woman in the tiny skirt walking around the tray selling cigarettes and tea and stuff in the back of a plane. We don't see that anymore. Maybe in Asia, I don't know. But we don't see that anymore. It's a stupid job that shouldn't exist. And it doesn't mean I wanted to take it away from the woman whose job that was. That's not the point. But we look at it now from the future and we say, oh, I can't believe we did that. But we did.

[Leo Laporte]

Meanwhile, my monkey is trying to recreate Shakespeare.

[Paul Thurrott]

How's it going? Not a single ear out of this guy.

[Leo Laporte]

We just got all of the four letter words in Shakespeare. My monkey's pretty good. Let me see. Here's a sentence he wrote. I utter a coat of trees to sate. How's wage while Rae SF have been axed.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's close. Okay, that reads like an insider blog post by which I mean poorly.

[Leo Laporte]

Look, he made up canvas. Revenue liking assessed strange and accused.

[Paul Thurrott]

Astraea is a good one.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a word.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm not even sure that's true, but it's okay. Sury er is a tough one.

[Leo Laporte]

On the time the word Sawyer appears in Shakespeare one time.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

The monkeys have written it 17 times. It was first written by Roppo Crisco four weeks ago, but mine did it as well. Some of the monkeys are not working super hard. Yes, some of them are working.

[Paul Thurrott]

The ones. Those are the contractors. AI is coming for you, buddy.

[Leo Laporte]

Some are typing with their feet.

[Paul Thurrott]

Banana. See you later.

[Leo Laporte]

But see, this is my monkey. He has earned many things, including a gold typewriter.

[Paul Thurrott]

I like that he has a jaunty little hat.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, he earned that cowboy hat.

[Paul Thurrott]

I also like that somebody cut the corners off of a sandwich.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, he also earned that. Yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

He doesn't have. The typing style is a little off.

[Leo Laporte]

It's random.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is he wearing mittens?

[Leo Laporte]

He's monkey paws. Little monkey paws.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, boy.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, yeah, that's my monkey. Would you like to touch my monkey?

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

And now HR is on the phone. What's that from? That's Mike Myers, right? Mike Myers the monkey.

[Leo Laporte]

Now is the time on Sprockets when.

[Paul Thurrott]

We die this is the time when we dance. I always say yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Saturday Night Live.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So we have an HR filter alongside the profanity filter.

[Leo Laporte]

We need that. I need that.

[Paul Thurrott]

I need the Mike Myers filter.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, God.

[Richard Campbell]

Elbows up.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is just like this week in Apple Intelligence at this point. Just more reorgs over there. It. It looks like what Apple is finally doing is orging AI the way they've org'd everything in the company, which is very different from the way Microsoft or probably Google does things, which is in Microsoft you have a Windows team. In Apple, they don't do that. They don't do it per product. They have these cross product teams. It's part of the reason they're able to make these experiences that work across the different platforms. They might have a group that's working on, I don't know what makes them, AI thing or whatever. Right. And you're like, okay, well where can we use this? It's like, well, iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch or something, you know, whatever it might be. So they just continue reorgang and God love them, I don't know. They'll get there. We have a lot of.

[Richard Campbell]

It speaks to how anomalous the Apple Intelligence announcement was that they didn't already have a team in Place.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Richard Campbell]

They hadn't built anything.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, so Microsoft earnings are out, so I'm going to skip the rest of this AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh they are. Oh boy, here we go. We waited long enough. Only 13 minutes after close.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, revenue, like I said, less than 90 billion. Yeah, less than 90 billion, which is what Google had. Revenue was $70.1 billion, up 13%. Double digits. Net income almost 26 billion. Up 18%. Again, double digits. I need to go look at their data to get anything like super important out of here. Like I said, the big thing for me is going to be what they're spending on AI and how they address it. If they do, we'll see. Windows OEM and devices revenue increased 3%. That's honestly good for Windows. Content and services from Xbox is up 8%. Search and News advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs. Which means that's not revenues because revenues, it doesn't matter. Oh no, that is revenues.

[Leo Laporte]

I guess it's just not net net profit. It just cost them so much, they didn't make anything.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, they're probably giving that money away. Microsoft 365 continues to go gangbusters double digit across commercial and consumer. So it's as it always is, is what it looks like to me. I mean do they have typically double.

[Leo Laporte]

Digit increases every quarter?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. That's amazing. That's as low doubles, I mean low, you know, 10 to 15%. But yes. Yep. Yeah. You shouldn't be able to grow this much when you're this big.

[Leo Laporte]

That's amazing. Yeah, I mean that's the thing. It's 10% of billions. It's not, you know, many billions. Yeah, many billions.

[Paul Thurrott]

Almost 30 billion from productivity and business processes. That's Microsoft 365. Intelligent Cloud, which is Azure, was 20, almost 27 billion. That one's up 21% by the way.

[Richard Campbell]

That's crazy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft 365 part was up 10% because.

[Richard Campbell]

The AI wave was about, hey, our cloud growth is slowing. This is a perfect time to jump on another horse to keep the numbers high.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

So for people like me, it's of course personal computing and that's a smaller increase, 6%, but still up.

[Paul Thurrott]

At least it's increasing. I mean the smallest part of the company and it's 30, 13.4 billion.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't that funny? That's the smallest part of Microsoft, the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Part that used to be Microsoft. Gaming revenue overall up 5% year over year. Hardware revenue declined again 6%. By the way, that was probably double digits before. So that might Be evening out. Finally. I guess you bought them out at some point. And that's most of what I can tell you right now because I need.

[Richard Campbell]

To nearly 10 billion in stock re buybacks.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

Remember when they were spending all that.

[Leo Laporte]

Money on building new data centers, dividends and share repurchases? 9.7 billion in one quarter.

[Paul Thurrott]

In one quarter. I'll compare that to. I think we talked about this last week, but I went back and looked at the amount of money Microsoft had earned in a fiscal year right after their antitrust ruling in the United States and then looked at one quarter of earnings from Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. And it's an order of magnitude difference the size of these companies today. They're not comparable. This is completely different. You know, $70 billion in the scope of big tech will put them in third place, I guess behind Amazon. No, fourth place, sorry. It will be Amazon, Apple, Google and then Microsoft from a revenue scale. So fourth, fourth biggest company by revenue this quarter, approximately 80 times the size it was. No, not by margin, but yeah, I mean, I guess we could look at net income and kind of see where that falls. But this is a humongous company.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Making boxes and successful.

[Paul Thurrott]

Stupid, stupid big company. Yeah, but again, how many layoffs did.

[Richard Campbell]

They have in that quarter?

[Paul Thurrott]

That's the thing. The trick's going to be in the nuance and the nuance is going to come a little bit in the, the, the post earnings conference call that doesn't start for another 45 minutes, I think. And you know, and then the 10Q filing. So I'll, I can't do that now, obviously I'm on the podcast, but I, I'll look through that stuff. It's. We'll see, we'll see how I can, if what, if anything I can pull out of this.

[Leo Laporte]

But next week, next week, earnings learnings.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right.

[Richard Campbell]

It'll only be 5am when I'm on.

[Paul Thurrott]

What time is it? I don't want to take up too much. There's a bunch of other stuff in AI. This is not a big learning of any kind. But every week when I put these show notes together, it's like AI, AI, AI, AI, AI. It's like, geez Louise. So I just pulled two, maybe three of these things that I think are important because this is just appearing everywhere. Right. So Google doing AI overviews in YouTube. Spotify using AI to make playlists. Adobe using AI obviously in their models, but now adding third party model support. DuckDuckGo has a thing called Duck AI which nobody knows about which supports real time switching between different models so you don't have to have a new conversation.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what Perplexity does. Now, instead of giving you all the models to choose from manually, it says we'll pick the best model.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Which is what people want.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then one of the.

[Richard Campbell]

How do they measure best?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, yeah, I don't know. And maybe it's cheapest from. Maybe best means.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. Best for them. Maybe.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe results are still excellent. I do kind of miss the ability to say I want to use AI for this. We get a payoff from Notebook lm.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which kind of came out of nowhere about a year and a half ago. Just a creepy AI generated podcast with the two hosts, Jon Tilly, talking back and forth to each other. Has been updated continually since that point. They just released. They have something called audio. Well, no, I'm sorry, that feature is called Audio Overviews. That thing now supports over 50 languages. Wow. So for example, so the Spotify AI playlist, I'm mixing things up. Do I mention. I don't even mention pocketcast. So pocketcast released AI generated podcast transcripts for those podcasts that don't have their own transcripts. Right. This is something Apple added about a year ago to Apple Podcast, but only on Apple devices. Right. Pocketcast is cross platform. And so I looked at that today and yeah, guess what? It's great. You know what I mean? Of course it is. Of course it is. And this is what's happening. It's crazy. So now what you can do is write something or steal something. Don't write it. Why would you write something? AI will write it. Right. Get something written, feed it into NotebookLM Create an audio overview which is a podcast. Translate it into 50 different languages.

[Leo Laporte]

50 different languages.

[Paul Thurrott]

Then feed that into Pocket Cast and let it make an audio, a transcript of it. If this works, should be the original source material. That's how you know that it works. Done round trips, nailed it. But not really.

[Leo Laporte]

I honestly still believe that this is good for podcasting. This isn't bad. This is good for understanding content. But human. This isn't going to eliminate human crafted stuff. In fact, I think will make it more valuable because it's going to be more costly to do. It's going to take more energy and if it's better, it'll be more valuable.

[Paul Thurrott]

Anyone who's ever gone to a farmer's market or bazaar or whatever it is, and you can buy homemade goods, whatever they are like here, they make these intricate baskets. People toil away at this for days. And then it's like, here you go. 20 pesos cost, like 25 nothing. And they spent half their life on it. You know what I mean? Like, those types of things, it could be anything. It could be a drawing. Like, you'll see people make it more valuable. Yeah. Those things will become more of. Those will be the things people save. Those will be like the keepsakes.

[Leo Laporte]

Studied German in high school. He could be doing duolingo, but instead he pays a tutor a couple hours a week.

[Paul Thurrott]

What's wrong with this guy?

[Leo Laporte]

Because it's better. Of course, it's much more expensive. So for people who want a cheap, simple thing, duolingo's fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

But that's for the math. Right. So my wife does duolingo, but she also does a. It's like a zoom based thing. Yeah. Where you're a human being.

[Leo Laporte]

If you go out in Mexico City and you go to your taco bar and you talk with the guys, you're going to get a better.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, my God, yes. Plus, you learn all the slang and how to swear. So now when someone cuts me off, I'm like, my daughter lived here in Puebla.

[Leo Laporte]

She came back and said, now you speak Spanish. She said, well, I do.

[Paul Thurrott]

I swear in Spanish.

[Leo Laporte]

I have to be very careful because when I say things, people get upset because I speak a very colloquial Mexican Spanish. That is pretty profane.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. The U.S. equivalent is. You're from Boston. Austin. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, what are you doing?

[Paul Thurrott]

You're like. You're a Mex hole, as we call it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

But she's fluent, right? In a real world way.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right? Fluids and fluid.

[Leo Laporte]

No AI is ever going to teach you that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right, Right.

[Richard Campbell]

I've a Polish friend who learned English from an English person. And so she speaks English with a.

[Leo Laporte]

Beautiful accent, I bet.

[Richard Campbell]

With an English accent.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think AI is. I don't think AI is a bad thing. I think it.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I don't either. I.

[Leo Laporte]

And in some ways, it makes human created podcasts, I'm hoping, more valuable. We'll see.

[Paul Thurrott]

I say that. Right? I say this all the time. But, like, I keep talking about AI in my crowd. There's a lot of convincing that has to occur. They're still not sold in this. They're very.

[Leo Laporte]

People are scared, and rightly so. People are scared, but I'm always like.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, you don't understand. Like, if you're rejecting this at this point, you're really. You're just not paying attention. You got to get in, you got to get in there, blah, blah, what's happening? And then it's like, well, how do you use a. And I'm like, oh, I don't use AI what do you mean? I. That's ridiculous. No, I mean I. And.

[Leo Laporte]

But before the show, if we have time. Yeah, before Intelligent Machines. Last week on Intelligent Machines, we had a good friend of mine, Harper Reed, talk about how he uses Claude code to code. I played with it. I do week. I will show you what Claude did.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

It's mind blowing.

[Paul Thurrott]

I won't do it anymore. It's funny the way you say that. Like, what have you done?

[Leo Laporte]

What have you done? What you did is in seconds what took me months to code.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, so my, yeah, my, my experience. So that's the one area where I have used it. And if you think about it, writing software code, writing text. I mean, what's the difference really? You're creating something, whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, yeah, it's not exactly carving a long ship by hand.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean the way I write it is, but, but. Okay, fair enough, whatever. But for some reason, reason I can't make that leap yet. I'm not actively blocking it. I just don't. It never occurs to me to do that. For example, the transcript from today's call will come up for the Microsoft thing. I'm not going to feed it into AI and be summarize this for me. I'm going to read the damn thing to me. That's how I do things.

[Leo Laporte]

But Sandra, after you read it, you might do that and I bet you you'll get some interesting points out of it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Someone on Friday asked me a question. I do a weekly con thing about trusting AI and his opinion was that like we. We're never going to be able to trust AI And I said the problem is we already do trust AI So you don't. I get it. But you're the exception and you think.

[Richard Campbell]

You don't while still actually trusting when.

[Paul Thurrott]

You'Re in fact using it and you just don't realize it. So when I explicitly use. I have what I would consider it's not a danger sign, but it's something just to be mindful of. AI has been so successful for me with the coding stuff. I don't use it. Sort of like write giant blocks of code or anything. I write code and then I'm like, could you improve this? Could you do this? Whatever. And what happens is that causes you to trust it and that trust makes you a little bit blind to when it screws up.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I can't. There's no way I can demonstrate this here. But imagine a giant block of code. Could you make this more efficient, more concise, whatever. And it returns a single line of code. And if I'm being perfectly honest with you, and I try, I would a. I know for a fact I would never write that code ever. Even being apprised of it now. I don't like it. It's too. It's too. It's too. It doesn't read right to me.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I test it, I know what the outcome's supposed to be and it works. So I'm like, great. And there it's in my app. Fine. But the thing is, flash forward two weeks, I get another similar code. Whatever. I'm like, awesome. I'm debugging and blah blah, blah. And I'm like, I'm not getting the answer. It's 50% wrong. Like 50% of the time it's wrong. It's always going one way when it should be branching somewhere. So now I have to go and look at the code that it generated that I had just trusted and assumed by this point it would just be right. And I have to parse this and I can't read this very well because it's super curse and I have to look up how tertiary operators work.

[Richard Campbell]

You can say, what does this mean?

[Leo Laporte]

That's what you do. You can ask it to say, do.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not ask a thief how he stole your stereo. So anyway, what I figured out was it was wrong.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

One of the branches did the wrong thing. It was just wrong. So I was able to fix it. And this is what people will say. They're like, oh, see, you need a human there. And like, yeah, you do. But the problem is most people use AI are just normal mainstream human beings. They will trust, already do trust. And they are not going to do this fact checking. And that is a concern until it gets so good it doesn't matter anymore, I guess. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

But it also speaks to a younger generation of developer that are using these tools and doing the two way street back and forth on. Is this correct? What are the side effects? Like you, you're pretty much pitting one LLM against another.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well that's like a Steven Wright joke, you know, I bought a humidifier and a dehumidifier, put them in the same room and let them fight it out.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, so it looks like you're.

[Leo Laporte]

Summarizing the I gave Perplexity and chatgpt the Microsoft results They came up with fairly similar conclusions.

[Paul Thurrott]

So what do we got? Microsoft is nailing it.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that what it says? Demonstrate robust growth across its cloud and productivity segments. Driven. Driven by strong demand for Azure and Microsoft 365 significant investments in AI infrastructure underscore the company's commitment to maintaining its competitive edge. That's kind of bland, isn't it?

[Paul Thurrott]

This tells me you did this with the press release. Is that what this is? This is a summary? Yeah. Because this reads like something Microsoft would write.

[Leo Laporte]

It feels like the press release. Of course it is. OpenAI. Let me see. This is perplexity and their brain mode says reinforces a position as a leader in cloud and AI. With Azure's AI driven growth outpacing expectations companies diversified revenue streams spanning Office 365 LinkedIn Dynamics, Windows, Xbox and advertising provide resilience against market fluctuations. This is actually a little bit better, to be honest. The substantial shareholder returns and robust profit.

[Paul Thurrott]

Really Wordy.

[Leo Laporte]

It's wordy.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

In your head. Sri. But you've been committed.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a little hype.

[Paul Thurrott]

That little strategic partnership with OpenAI bit is interesting because. Did it get that from the press release?

[Leo Laporte]

I first refusal rights on new AI for a leadership. I don't know.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is what I'm saying.

[Richard Campbell]

Like that's kind of the new OpenAI deal.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, but. No, it is. You're right. But what I'm saying is. Was that in the press release? I can't imagine.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, it may, you know, Perplexity does in fact use, you know, searches and so forth. So I didn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's getting. It's getting additional information right from outside of the. Yeah. Okay. So actually that's good because that's providing context. That's what I mean. It's providing context. Exactly. That to me.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me ask it. Should I buy Microsoft stock?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. Yes. Would you like to give me access to your checking account?

[Leo Laporte]

We can handle that for you. It's telling me this is the deep research. So it's doing that deep seek thing where it explains what it's doing while it's doing it. Oh boy. This might take a while. So I will. I will let you continue on.

[Paul Thurrott]

But what is this? This is crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

This is kind of the thing that is the latest thing is this tells it what it shows its work.

[Paul Thurrott]

Basically thinking. Thinking, Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I will review Microsoft's valuation metrics, Dividend yield, market cap, P E ratio, forward EPS revenue forecast. Okay. The user is asking. Let me start by looking at the search result.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is. Stop Just right now I'd be like, stop.

[Leo Laporte]

Put a graph in there.

[Paul Thurrott]

Stop.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't keep up. Look how fast it's going. Holy cow.

[Paul Thurrott]

Leo, I just want to remind you and everyone else you asked it a yes or no question.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Should I buy? That's.

[Leo Laporte]

That's all you're showing us? How much of data, like Sancha Nadella.

[Paul Thurrott]

Was born in India in 19.

[Leo Laporte]

No. Here it is. A cautious buy for long term investors. So, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

The stock's current pullback, 7% down year to date, likely represents a buying opportunity with a three to five year horizon.

[Paul Thurrott]

Was it airplane or something? The guy's like, you know, tell me the story. Start at the beginning. Is okay. First they were dinosaurs, you know, it's like, okay, but.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. I think, you know, I don't know. It makes mistakes. But you know what? Humans make mistakes too, in greater proportion.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, for sure.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

But it covers it well in language. It looks like an Accenture report.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it will only enable us to make those errors at scale.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Faster than ever before. Ladies and gentlemen.

[Paul Thurrott]

You thought we were inefficient, but now, now we're killing it.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, we only have half an hour left, so.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, I got. Sorry, I don't want to. I'm the one here, so let me. I'm going to be quick.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a one item Xbox line.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, right. Well, there's nothing to say there. There's a game called Towerborn. It's available in preview.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it a tower defense kind of a thing?

[Paul Thurrott]

The name is all I know about this thing.

[Leo Laporte]

It is side scrolling Brawler. According to.

[Richard Campbell]

Of course not a tower.

[Paul Thurrott]

Why they called it Tower something. But the reason this is of note is it's actually an Xbox exclusive, meaning Xbox the platform, not the console. But it's only, you know, Xbox, PC and game pass.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, look, they're side scrolling and they're brawling.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, there you go. Oh, this is old school.

[Leo Laporte]

It's kind of cool looking.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it is actually. I kind of like that.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like if you took Mortal Kombat and made it a side scroller.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the thing I always said about Overwatch, which was at a time when it was hard for computers or consoles, whatever, to generate these 3D graphics and everyone's moving fast. It's like they made this cartoon looking game like. Yeah, there you go. Like these are easy to draw, you know, and the action could be fast and, you know, whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, the animation is more important than the Fidelity.

[Paul Thurrott]

And plus, I think it's kind of fun. Like it looks good. Absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. That's kind of the lesson of the last few years.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, this is the switch. That's what the switch taught us, right? Yeah. You guys are like trying to do 4K 8K. What, are you kidding me?

[Leo Laporte]

Here's an idea mode because of Uncanny.

[Paul Thurrott]

Have a good game.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't want it to look more realistic because it ends creepier. Let it be a little less realistic and it's more fun. All right? Trading shouldn't have barriers. When Robinhood started, it was built to make trading more accessible. Now Robinhood offers more sophisticated trading tools. Experience the future of trading on Robinhood Legend, the all new desktop platform that harnesses intuitive design to deliver a seamless experience for traders. Free to use with a Robinhood account, Robinhood Legend is designed for how you trade with powerful charts including custom intervals down to the tick and over 80 indicators and drawing tools. Trade all your favorite assets including popular stocks and ETFs all in one place. Take your trading to the next level by customizing your layout in seconds and even enter and exit positions in one tap right from the chart. With up to 8 charts per layout, the future of trading is fast, powerful and precise. Experience it now on Robinhood Legend. Sign up today. Investing is risky. Robinhood Financial LLC Member SIPC is a registered broker dealer. Other fees may apply.

[Paul Thurrott]

There are research firms, there are consulting firms, and then there's Forrester.

[Leo Laporte]

Forrester combines research based insights with hands.

[Paul Thurrott]

On guidance that's focused on your needs and goals. Whether you're looking to align your organization.

[Leo Laporte]

Or transform your business through generative AI, Forrester is on your side and by your side. Meet Today's [e-mail] you are watching Windows Weekly, friends, and I am glad you have put up with us for this long. It's almost over. Your pain, your suffering, your mellow.

[Paul Thurrott]

Have I apologized yet on this episode? I feel like I owe an apology somewhere. No?

[Leo Laporte]

We're so glad you're here. Both winners and dozers. We do Windows Weekly every Wednesday 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. We stream live on seven platforms. We're not on TikTok today for reasons, but if you're in the club, hard, computer science, YouTube, Twitch. I'm chatting with people in both those X dot com, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. And we're working on TikTok. So watch live if you want. But of course we're also available on Demand at Twitt TV WW on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Paul, it's time for the famous back of the book and your tip of the week.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, I'm going to be brief here. Again, I want to give Richard the time he deserves. I don't remember this came up. I think I did this last Friday, but I was trying to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows on a Surface Laptop 7 Snapdragon. Right. Got into not a blue screen of death, but a blue screen, which meant that my recovery environment was corrupt or something.

[Richard Campbell]

Blue screen of sadness, then.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So that kind of put the brakes on the Ubuntu thing while I tried to figure this out. So on Friday or Saturday, I don't remember, when I just reset. Well, I used the Surface recovery media I'd previously created and ensured worked to recover the system, reinstall all my apps. I was 80% or something done with installing Maps. So I thought to myself, you know, I should probably make sure that recovery environment works. It did not. So I was like, well, maybe I could live with this. It's okay. But of course, I'm me, so I'm obsessing over this. And so Monday, maybe, or Tuesday, Monday, I think I was like, all right, I'm going to kill this thing again. And what I was going to do was use the Windows 11 on Arm ISO download, which doesn't have any of the drivers. Yeah, I was going to use the. Microsoft gives you the drivers for every service device. So that's the download. Right. I'm like, I will just. And that will. Because I can go in and. And reformat the. I can pave the disk. I'll repartition the entire thing. It will have to recreate the recovery partition. This will work. I had to copy lots of stuff back and forth, and in the end, what I realized was, wait a minute. This Surface driver thing is actually called Surface Drive and Firmware. And it's an ex. Well, it's an msi, but it's an executable. You run it. I was like, I don't know, maybe before I blow this away, I should just run this thing and see what happens. It fixed it. Yep. So I spent four days on this and untold hours, and I was getting ready to destroy it again, and I suddenly realized, wow, actually, I can fix this without doing anything. So here's the moral of the story has nothing to do with anything I just said. The details of what happened to me are not important. What's important is I do things correctly on my computer. That when this thing would not come back into Windows and would not boot properly. I did not have a single data file anywhere on that computer that wasn't backed up to the cloud. And that the way I do things is designed to prevent data loss. And it worked like so when this happened to me, because it happened without warning, I was not expecting not to be able to get back into Windows. It was fine. I didn't have anything on my desktop, I didn't have anything in some random folder. Everything important, all the work I do in books, my work stuff for work for the site or whatever, whatever it is, is cloud synced. So if I had to pave this thing, it would have wasted time, would have taken time. That, that stinks. But I could have done it. It would have been fine. And the important thing is I was never going to lose anything. And that's like the best part of it. And I so rarely get to say anything like that because, you know, usually the way you learn a lesson is someone punches you in the face and you're like, okay, maybe I shouldn't do that anymore.

[Leo Laporte]

And your nose is exactly where you left it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I've been punched enough times to know. So anyway, you can read the articles. It's a long story, but the outcome was short.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you going to forget dual booting now? I mean, is that it? It's over?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, but. So it's Wednesday and we're driving. Driving. Yeah, we're flying home on Saturday. And what I'm going to. What I've done is I dual booted Ubuntu and just a normal x64 computer. And when I get home, I will have more computers. I don't want to screw around again with 64.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, don't try to.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, no, I'm going to. No, I'm doing it on Snapdragon, but I'm going to wait till I get home. But I will do it.

[Leo Laporte]

Bravo. Bully for you, buddy. I guess, sure, you could run it on an intel, but why?

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, if I was a commoner, I would do that. No, I mean. Okay. Firefox has a new update every four weeks. I think it's very quick. Like, I think the other browsers are six and they're four. Or is it it four and two? I don't remember, but it's going to.

[Richard Campbell]

Say 17 minutes, but. Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's, It's. Yeah, if you use Edge, you, you.

[Leo Laporte]

Know, it feels like Zen. Browser updates almost weekly now. Maybe even more than that.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like they're training us Just to get used to this. But at least then it's finally in.

[Leo Laporte]

2.0, which is, yeah, pretty exciting. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Two things of interest in this one, if you're a Windows user, which you are, of course they've adapted the. I don't know actually know what they. I've not seen this. It's like they call. They call this UI pop up Windows acrylic style menus for pop up Windows, which is the Windows 11 look and feel. I've not seen it. I've been running Firefox. I don't see it. I don't know. But they're adding profile management. This one's rolling out like, you know, like Microsoft rolls that stuff. So I actually haven't seen this one yet. But you've used profiles on other browsers. So if this was a sticking point for you, there were workarounds like, you know, they had those containers and things like that. But profile management is actually kind of what you want. You know, different account, different bookmarks, different tabs, different browsing history, et cetera, you know, school work, however you want to mix things up. So that's pretty good. That said, don't use Firefox, use Brave, you idiot. Come on, wake up. Should be using Brave. Brave is great. So that's my epic. All right. Sorry, Richard.

[Richard Campbell]

Dude, we got. We're fine. Relax. I'm Biggie.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Ladies and gentlemen, you see that guy on the right? You see the guy in the lumberjack shirt? He is now going to tell you what's coming up on Run As Radio. Are you living in an apartment in Melbourne? Is this like your place?

[Richard Campbell]

No, this. This is a hotel room, but it's got like a washing machine and a kitchen.

[Paul Thurrott]

That thing behind you looks like a.

[Richard Campbell]

It's really nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

You got like a chamber or something, like equipment. Yeah, I stayed in a hotel in.

[Leo Laporte]

In Tasmania that had a bread maker and the maid, when they came in and made your bed, would also restock the bread maker. So they set the timer for 7am and you'd have fresh bread when you woke up.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, that's nice.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the coolest thing I ever. The only hotel that I've ever been in that did that, but I thought it was pretty cool.

[Richard Campbell]

And I've been in lots of hotels, rooms with kitchens, but this one's actually equipped like it has a knife block that has knives in it. And yeah, you could, you could live.

[Leo Laporte]

There, man, you could move in this.

[Richard Campbell]

I think it's kind of a long stay kind of place. I'm on the 36th floor here, so I'm way out there.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice. Yeah, yeah. I was in Sydney for the Melbourne Cup. That's as close as I got.

[Richard Campbell]

Well on run as this week. I talked to Carolina Carrie and this is the fourth show I've done with her. So I've sort of been following her career for a while now. And she changed jobs. She'd been an independent consultant for a long time and she's now joined a large firm firm in Finland. She's based in Finland. That's a financial group where she's now. Her title is Head of Modern Work. So, I mean, Modern work has been this theme we've been doing on runners for the while, for just from a system in perspective. Like, what are we talking about? It was mostly about remote work during the pandemic, but now it's come into this mixture of we're going to spend a certain amount of time in the office, a certain amount of time remote. And how do you unify all the work strategies around that? What do they do different when they're in the office? And so that conversation very much focused on how the contemporary tooling and network demands and security privileges are needed so that you have this symmetry between everyone working remotely from their homes and everybody together in sort of a bullpen setting or a meeting room setting being able to collaborate. So, yeah, she's, I mean, so immersed in it now that literally has been hired to do it full time for a large financial organization. It's a great conversation.

[Leo Laporte]

Lovely, lovely. Now, you promised us at the beginning of the show a little bit of a different whiskey segment.

[Richard Campbell]

I had a whiskey experience this week. Friends, like, it doesn't happen all that often. But it was sort of a friend of a friend moment that I was out for dinner and he said, I really need you to meet my friend Josh. And then Josh said, come meet me at Casa Divinos, which is a store in Melbourne, which I highly recommend that. While it's even called. It's called the House of Wine because they used to do custom bottlings of wine. The proprietor, Jose, has really switched to a focus on whiskey and rum and tequila.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, this looks super cool.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a nice place. And like a place you'd like to hang out at, it would be very enjoyable. And what's funny is I came in, met Josh for the first time. We chatted for a bit. We were talking to the lady behind the counter and I'm like, well, I do this whiskey bit. So I'm looking for A whiskey for this week. And Jose literally came from down from upstairs, down and said, what is this voice I'm hearing? You know, this giant radio voice. And then, why don't you come back upstairs with me? And we went into his private collection and started digging. He had. He's a proper collector of whiskey, which is to say it's all the different editions. So he had 30 or 40 years worth of different LaFroy's. And like, this was the bottling in Japan. This is the bottling from this thing. This is when the licensing rules didn't allow for 750 milliliters. So these are 7 hundreds. There was a limit of a maximum of a liter. So this was three editions each, 333ml. Like that kind of madness, essentially. And, you know, it's always a challenge when you have someone who's really interested in whiskey sort of looking at your collection. It's like, what can I give you? You've never had? Or that there's a new experience. And Jose pulled one on me I've never experienced before. I literally had to research it afterwards. And it was actually bad whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, like, but.

[Richard Campbell]

But bad whiskey from good distilleries.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay.

[Richard Campbell]

So. And the ultimate example of this was a Scottish whiskey, a Glengarrick 21. And he says, try this. Gives me just a half an ounce pour, a little tiny pour. And Josh got one too. And I smell it and it smells like dish soap.

[Leo Laporte]

It wasn't this. Maybe. Maybe it was the whiskey Abbey.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, no, this is later in the story.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, okay.

[Richard Campbell]

When I taste it, it's literally like having my mouth washed out by lavender soap. It was unbelievable how bad it was. It was just shocking. And now I've gone on to read about this issue called sapphirefication, which is.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it turned into soap.

[Richard Campbell]

It did. And the issue here is, and it exists in all forms of whiskey, is when you cut the whiskey with water before bottling. So it never happens with cast strength whiskies.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

There is an issue where if you dilute with water quickly and then immediately bottle, the way the phenols break down and against the ionization of the water can end up making soapy compounds that will ruin the batch.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

Like, as a whole. And so some of the pieces I've read have said that if you're reducing from a, you know, you're coming out of the barrel at 55, 57%, you're going to go down to 43. It should take a month of adding water slowly and letting it Establish and really arguably outgassing, like releasing certain compounds before you put it in bottles. But if you're in a hurry. And this was his argument. This was an old edition of 21 bottled in the 1990s. And they were in a rush and they immediately, they cut it hard, you know, a lot of water, bottled it and ruined the whole batch.

[Leo Laporte]

Did he know ahead of time that it was going to be saponified?

[Richard Campbell]

No, no, no. And again, he bought it long ago. But it's this, and it's one of these areas that the whiskey professionals don't want to talk about. They've ruined whiskey because it doesn't happen immediately. It didn't taste soapy when they put it in the bottle. It's actually over time in the bottle. And so there's 101 excuses about it was mishandled, it was your dirty glasses, like, da da, da, da, da da. And now bit by bit, the research come out that said this is kind of a big deal. And it doesn't happen anymore because I think think they've learned you add water very slowly. There's also an argument for what's the right amount of water anyway? Like, why are you going to 43? And sometimes it's a legal requirement, like, I can't sell in this country if it's more than that. But most of the time it's. You're just trying to get to a nice drinking range and high enough that it doesn't flocculate right in ice because you didn't want a chill filter. And so you got to pick a number to take your time on anyway. I mean, 100% of a digression. But while we were on there, I'm like, no, I'm here for Australian whiskey, which you've got an amazing collection of. And I'd done hellier the week before for all of us here and looked at a lot of different whiskeys, some really neat ones that I still want to get to, like Lark and so forth, A ton of really good Tasmanian whiskeys. But the one I selected was this one here, the Highwayman, and. And specifically their Whiskey Abbey 2024 edition. So whiskey Abbey is an annual whiskey party, essentially celebration at an abbey outside of Melbourne. And they've invited me for the next one, in fact, which is in November, so I'm tempted to come down and do that. But this particular whiskey, the Highwayman, and my goodness, it's so dark, it is made by a guy named Dan Woolley. So Dan Willey's a bit of a Legend down in Australia as a guy who worked in the whiskey business for years and years and years in lots of different roles. But his most famous role is as a brand ambassador for Suntory. And so Suntory owning all kinds of whiskeys all over the place like Maker's Mark and Lefroy and a bunch of others. He retired in 2019, having built up this huge array of relationships to make his own expressions of whiskey. And in fact, since 2019 he's made 50. And this is one of them specifically made for the Whiskey Abbey event last year. So the way he goes, he has all these different ideas about whiskey because he's tried so many and been so heavily immersed that what he does is, you know, pick a particular approach to the grain. He typically works with a particular distillery, the Lord Byron distillery, which was in the New south in New South Wales, about an hour's drive south of Gold coast, which mostly makes gins and rums. But they got all the right equipment and so he kind of comes there and he'll literally make a batch, a single barrel run 200 bottles. They tend to be a bit pricey because they're small. This particular version is straight up barley from Australia. So very localized because it was for Whiskey Abbey. But then it's all about what do they do with the cask. And this particular time he chose to go all sherry. So he did initial casking in a PX cask, in a Pedro Jimenez sherry cask, and then did it for a couple of years and then did a finishing step, a final year in Oloroso and then cast bottled it about 55%. There's only a 500 mil bottle. This is fairly common in Australia because it's pricey stock.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a half liter. Half a half.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So a half liter instead of a three quarter liter. Right. For 250 Australians, so about 160American if.

[Leo Laporte]

You could get it. But I see it's out of stock.

[Richard Campbell]

So is it out of stock already? It was when I was writing this up yesterday. They still had some.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's just, just sold out.

[Richard Campbell]

So just a huge sherry nose, like hello. And for what's probably only a three year old whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

Look how dark.

[Richard Campbell]

How dark. Right. That's all sherry in that.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I bet it's delicious though.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, man. And this is the magic of Dan Woolley. And I hope I someday meet this fellow because clearly he's very serious about what he's doing. For a young cast. Strength like no flare, no burn on the nose, not at all. And when you tasted it, it's all that fruit and leather that comes from that sherry taste. And then just a lot of heat going down. Like it may be seven in the morning, but I'm all warm and fuzzy, you know. What a fantastic whiskey. And this is what we've always wanted from whiskey. And what Dan's really perfecting is, hey, I'm gonna get you to taste this thing and you're never ever gonna have it again. You know, I love this guy, man.

[Leo Laporte]

I gotta go to Melbourne. That's awesome.

[Richard Campbell]

And in five years, 50 different whiskeys.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

And some peded, some not all these different barrel options, but just making one offs. And that's all he does.

[Leo Laporte]

So we said he does master classes, it looks like. So you could, you could go there and do a tasting session.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, we have the new grandchild and one of the conversations was, can we, while the baby's still highly portable, can we come to New Zealand? New Zealand and Australia and visit all the family and so forth. And they asked if I would come with. And now I'm like, well, we're talking about November.

[Leo Laporte]

Geez, Whiskey Abbey is so. Oh, I want to go down with you for my birthday. That sounds awesome.

[Richard Campbell]

So much fun. And in some ways I feel like these 500 mils is perfect.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Because it's a smaller bottle.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

It is part of that.

[Leo Laporte]

It makes it precious. It makes it something special.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And just a sort of one time experience. So. And I'm not taking this home. I'm going to finish this with my friends at the NDC conference here today and tomorrow before if I have to fly out.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that what you're doing in Melbourne? What's the NBC conference?

[Richard Campbell]

This is the tech conference that I do all over the world. They've got their main shows in Oslo. We've done a London one. We've done London and Copenhagen, Porto, Portugal. And then this year, Paul, how do.

[Leo Laporte]

We get on the Richard Campbell gravy train? That's what I wanted. Or should I say the whiskey train?

[Paul Thurrott]

I think we just throw it. Like live podcast. Something. Something. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Surely they want a live podcast there.

[Richard Campbell]

Pretty sure I've made that pitch to you a couple of times, Leo, but can't seem to pry you out of that.

[Leo Laporte]

That studio stuck here.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, apparently.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I'm so jealous. Well, it sounds like you're there for a very good time and I'm so glad you are.

[Richard Campbell]

We've been having a great time. My main talk is today after later on after doing this, I hope you get a nap. I'm doing that. I went to bed early. I'm doing my future of Energy talk but adapted to the state of Victoria. So I've reviewed all the government documentations on power generation here and so I'm going to take the folks through. Here's how your state is currently making energy and what it's going to look like in the next 10 years.

[Leo Laporte]

See, that's great. Wouldn't you like to have Richard dead at your next event?

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

How cool is that? Richard Campbell. Runnersradio.com you'll also find the.net Rocks podcast he does with Carl Franklin there. And of course you find him right here every Wednesday. Thank you Richard. I appreciate it. It getting up at three in the morning for this.

[Richard Campbell]

That's wanted to shower before we get going. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't blame you.

[Richard Campbell]

Got to get up early.

[Leo Laporte]

Paul Thurat, he never showers and that's that's the beauty of Paul Thurat.

[Paul Thurrott]

I if I had a shower here in Mexico.

[Leo Laporte]

Thurat is at therot.com t h u r r o t t.com his books windows everywhere field guide to windows 11 are available at leanpub.com you set your own price. And of course he along with Richard and I will be here every Wednesday. I hope you will too. All you winners and dozers, a special thank you to our Club Twit members who make this possible at TWiT TV Club TWiT. Paul, Richard. Have a great week.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sure.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you going to be in Melbourne next week or New Zealand?

[Richard Campbell]

I'll be on the farm. Yeah. So you'll have that great view of Hobbiton. We'll be back to that Kiwi.

[Paul Thurrott]

Unless everything goes horribly right. I'll be home in Pennsylvania next year.

[Leo Laporte]

You'll be in Macunji.

[Richard Campbell]

Pretty sure you're home right now, Paul. Like let's be clear.

[Leo Laporte]

And a warning to the pilot. He does plan to install a dual boot windows and Ubuntu like but I.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like to do it like in like while we're in flight. You know, just maximum there's a sudden.

[Leo Laporte]

Power surge from seat 16B. You know why?

[Richard Campbell]

Sorry. Flight OS upgrades. That's the way to go.

[Paul Thurrott]

Does anyone know the command line parameters for grep?

[Richard Campbell]

You remind me of the guy who was updating an exchange server on his laptop without the power brick plugged in. It's like there's a race for how fast the battery was going down. Oh no. We were taking bets. It was fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that. That's nerd fun.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, boy.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, gentlemen. We will see you next week on Windows Weekly. Hope we see you all, too.

[Richard Campbell]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Take care, Sa.