Windows Weekly 354 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley are here with some bit scoops. In fact, turns out Mary Jo Foley's scoop actually pumped Microsoft's stock price up over 40 dollars a share. It's the Foley Effect next on Windows Weekly.

Netcasts you love ... from people you trust. This is TWIT.

Leo: Bandwidth for Windows Weekly is provided by Cachefly at cachefly.com.

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, episode 354, recorded March 19, 2014

The Foley Effect

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It's time for Windows Weekly, the show that, each week, covers Windows, hence the name. With us, Paul Thurrott from the SuperSite for Windows, winsupersite.com; Mary Jo Foley, from ZDNET, allaboutmicrosoft.com. Hello, you two.

Mary Jo Foley: Hello.

Leo: You getting excited about Build? Coming out to the big city? (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah. Yeah!

Leo: Compared to New York, even compared to Needham, Dedham. Sorry. What is the difference between Dedham and Needham? (Laughs)

Paul Thurrott: Uh ...

Leo: Letters.

Paul: Two — well, yeah, three letters.

Leo: (Laughs) Anyway, compared even to Dedham, San Francisco is just a sleepy little fishing village.

Paul: (Laughs) That's right.

Leo: But it's our sleepy little fishing village, so we will go there.

Paul: We have as many Apple stores per capita as you do, buddy, so —

Leo: Exactly, exactly. Precisely.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Are you going to get a chance to visit the wine country or do anything fun; or are you just going to come out here to Build and leave?

Paul: I don't think we're going to have that much time.

Leo: Oh.

Paul: I'm not sure what Mary Jo's planning, but —

Mary Jo: I'm staying an extra day to hang out with some of the TWITS.

Leo: Good. To drink some beer?

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: Here?

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: Well, welcome. And that — by the way, that Build conference is coming up. We will be in studio here at the Brick House April 4, doing a special edition of Windows Weekly if you want to join us. There's plenty of room in the studio. Just come on by. It'd be nice if — you don't have to, but it'd be nice if you emailed tickets@twit.tv so that we could put a chair out for you and put a NEW CAR under your chair.

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: New car not included.

Paul: Right.

Leo: And — but if you don't, we'll find a way to jam you in, though. But nice to have a nice, large studio audience for — this has become an annual event, Paul and Mary — this time I'm here, though.

Mary Jo: Yay!

Leo: Yeah, last time, I was in —

Paul: I'm still confused that you weren't here last year. Who did we —

Leo: I was on the cruise.

Paul: Right, right, right.

Leo: And then, it was just a —

Paul: Pete. No.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: When was Build last year?

Paul: Is that right?

Leo: What time — what —

Mary Jo: No, I think — weren't you in Colorado?

Paul: I think you were at the — you were on the cruise during Connection?

Mary Jo: With your son?

Leo: I was in Colorado. Oh, so it was the same time last year. Yeah.

Paul: Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Leo: Yeah. Because we were doing the orientation for the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he is now ensconced as a freshman.

Paul: Leo?

Leo: Yes?

Paul: What is that?

Leo: It's my monocle. I decided, instead of wearing —

Paul: Why? (Laughs) Why?

Leo: — wearing my monocle ... (Laughs) Because sometimes —

Paul: Hogan?

Leo: (Sings) Hogan, every once in a while ... (Stops singing) And the thing about a monocle that's so useful is when — say something surprising, Paul.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: What?

Leo: Something surprising. Anything.

Paul: Say something surprising?

Leo: Aaaaaaaah!

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Oh.

Leo: I can — it pops out.

Paul: Very good.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) Mr. Creativity there, Paul. Don't take an improv class. My advice to you.

Paul: It's like the classic version of the spit take.

Leo: Yes. No, I — you know, Warby Parker's an advertiser, and they — among other fine glasses they sell, they sell monocles. And I thought, Well, I can't resist that. You probably wouldn't think that, but I — I thought that. So —

Paul: It's — it makes sense in some kind of a strange way.

Leo: Yeah, yeah. A monocle? Well, that's for me!

What should we talk about? I have now, I'm pretty excited to say, OneNote on my Macintosh instead of — you know, I mean, the web interface was great, was fine, but this is real. This is, like, I've got a ribbon, I've got everything I could possibly ever want. And because I'm an Office 365 subscriber, I have — I am told this is the same quality OneNote as one would find on — on Windows. Was OneNote ever on the Mac before?

Mary Jo and Paul: No.

Leo: No.

Mary Jo: First time.

Paul: And it's not — now, remember what they used to do was they'd put note taking in Word on the Mac, previously.

Leo: Right. That's right, yeah. That's not the same.

Paul: Yeah, I don't know. I didn't really use.

Leo: At all.

Paul: But, I mean, I guess maybe that made more sense than investing in a new app at the time.

Leo: Anyway, I'm very happy to have this because it makes it easier to do this show, since we keep our show notes in OneNote.

Paul: And now I can also use a Mac when I do Windows Weekly, so it's nice.

Leo: Yeah. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Something you've been wanting to do, I know, all along.

Mary Jo: Excellent. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: Just looking for that final reason to make the switch.

Leo: (Laughs) Oh, don't say it, Paul. You're going to get the tweets —

Paul: Can you imagine?

Leo: — you're going to get the emails, it's not going to be good. It's not going to be pretty. However —

Paul: I posted stuff about that product and I put a screenshot up, and I heard from a lot of people who were like, "You have a Mac?"

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Sure.

Leo: You are a true technology journalist, always hedging your bets. You never know when a platform's going to die, and you need to move somewhere else.

Paul and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Paul: My room is — my office here is filled with an amazing collection of devices, and unfortunately at this moment in time, I'm not going to show this to you because it's too embarrassing, but there are boxes everywhere. This place is completely — it's awful.

Leo: Well, that's —

Paul: And my wife walked in this morning and she said, "Are we shooting for the [unintelligible] effect here, or ..."

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: I want to be on Hoarders.

"Paul: She's like, "It looks like the back room at a Radio Shack."

Leo: So is — and I never asked you this, and here we are, we're episode 4- — or I'm sorry, 354. That means we've been together, you and I, seven years —

Paul: Sure.

Leo: — practically. Almost into our eights. I've never asked you, is this a —

Paul: Is this the silver anniversary? What are we —

Leo: Yeah. I'm going to give you wood, man.

Paul: That's good.

Leo: Is this a stand-alone building, or is this a room in the back of the house? I've never — I've always — here's what I envisioned. Just — I'm going to tell you.

Paul: This is a — yeah, it's a room in the back of the house.

Leo: Oh, no. You see, I thought it was this beautiful little — in the backyard —

Paul: By the way —

Leo: — beautiful little shed.

Paul: — it's very interesting you say that. I have always envisioned that.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: The other thing I would like to do — I would consider doing for a home office — would be — we have a single car garage, and we have, like, a fourteen-car driveway. I don't know how this works. But —

Leo: (Laughs) Oh.

Paul: I'd like to expand the garage and put the home office kind of above the garage.

Leo: There you go.

Paul: Kind of a barn thing.

Leo: Yeah. You have the little — cute little stairs, you go up on the side of the garage, and —

Paul: Yep.

Leo: — there's a door with a window and a curtain in it, and you say, "Hey, Paul!"

Paul: And I would do it totally — it would be just like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood —

Leo: Yeah!

Paul: — where I would wear slippers and, like, a sweater.

Leo: "Come on in, Leo."

Paul: And I would change it every time.

Leo: "Come on in, Mary Jane."

Mary Jo: (Laughs) It'd probably be bigger than my whole apartment.

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) "It's a beautiful ..."

Paul: Well, actually — so the reason that has never happened — well, actually, I guess there are two reasons; one would just be the cost of it. But the second one is that once you get beyond the "it would be nice if I had this thing" stage, you actually have to do it, and I'm — I kind of lose interest right there.

Leo: Yeah. I always wanted a treehouse. That's where it stopped. That's where it ended. But I would. You know —

Paul: I joked, by the way — when we moved from Phoenix, we lived in a single-floor home, and when we moved to Massachusetts — back to Massachusetts, of course we live in a — what, for here, is a normal home. Like, a two-floor, colonial house.

Leo: Right.

Paul: And now my commute has doubled because now I have to go down the stairs in the morning ... (Laughs) and to my office instead of just walking sideways to my office. Because it used to be, like, ten feet from the bedroom, and now it's, like, 18 feet or something.

Leo: Awwww.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Somebody said —

Paul: I get a little bit of exercise every day; that's nice.

Leo: Yeah, a little bit of exercise always helps. You said — somebody said you'd be kind of like Fonzie, living above the Cunninghams' garage.

Paul: Yeah, exactly.

Leo: "Hey, Mrs. C! How are ya?"

Paul: Except I would, like, own the house, so that would be weird.

Leo: (Laughs) That would be weird.

Paul: (Laughs) Yeah.

Leo: That would be weird.

 

So we have OneNote for the Macintosh, free; and everybody really should download that. It's certainly well worth looking at and playing with. You know, it competes with other products on the Mac, like EverNote, which is pretty dominant.

Paul: (Makes a raspberry sound) Oh, sorry. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) Actually, you know, what's interesting —

Paul: Sorry, is that still a thing? I —

Leo: The selling point on EverNote is that it's on every platform, and now you can say that about OneNote as well, which is great.

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: Yes.

Leo: Every, every platform.

Paul: I guess the way I would put this is, there's a lot of things that have happened in recent years — including some stuff we'll talk about today — that Microsoft kind of innovated on a long time ago; and then, either they gave up on it and now it's coming out in kind of a better form, or they just kind of let it sit there while other things ran all over it. And OneNote is a good example of the latter because Microsoft came out with the original version of OneNote as part of Office 2003, if I'm not mistaken. I remember being quite taken with it during the beta and thinking it was like they had created this product just for me, and for people like me — you know, people who need to take notes, like reporters. And then it kind of just sat there for a while, and it got Cloud-powered eventually, and all that kind of stuff, but EverNote kind of came out of nowhere. They took the idea, they ran with it. They did it on mobile devices, they did it on the Mac, they did it on multiple platforms and everything. And it's nice, at least in this case, that they're kind of catching up. They've seen what's possible with this kind of thing. They already have it all in place, but OneNote is very mature. It's a great product as it is, and so I'm — it's nice to see this happening, in a way, because all too often with Microsoft, you see the Apples of the world coming out with phones and iPads and things, and it's like, "We did this two years ago!" (Laughs)

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: And at least in this case, they're running with it still.

Leo: So I also think it's an appropriate kind of precursor and a way of getting Mac users' attention to an iPad release, right? OneNote for the iPad's been out for a while, but —

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: — but a full Office release, right? And I gather we're close.

Mary Jo: Yeah. We're very close, we think. We think it's next week they're going to —

Leo: Whoa! Really?

Mary Jo: — take the wraps off this, yeah.

Leo: Wow!

Mary Jo: Microsoft's holding a press event in San Francisco next week, March 27 —

Leo: Okay.

Mary Jo: — where Satya Nadella is going to be the host, and —

Leo: Oh, we've got to go to that. We've got to go to that, yeah.

Mary Jo: — it's focused on the intersection of cloud and mobile. Very mysterious, right?

Leo: Hmmmm.

Mary Jo: My sources have been telling me for the past month plus that Microsoft's goal was to get Office for the iPad out before the end of March. So we're getting down to the wire, and it looks like this might be where they announce it.

Leo: Wow, that's exciting!

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: And I wonder if that product will in some ways be thematically like OneNote for the Mac in the sense that, in its initial version, it might not be as full — it certainly won't be as full-featured as it will eventually become. But the Microsoft of old would have waited until it was as ready as it used to — should be or whatever, if that makes sense. (Laughs) You know, the 1.0 release would have been more full-featured and would have been a year later or something, that maybe this one won't come out and — we don't know what form it'll take.

Mary Jo: Right. I mean, if you guys remember this, we've been hearing leaks about this product existing for two or three years now, right? Like, people said they've seen it. I've talked to so many people who say —

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: "I've actually seen it."

Paul: Yeah, fake shots or, we don't know, real shots, maybe —

Mary Jo: Or maybe real, right?

Paul: — have made the rounds.

Mary Jo: Yep. So I think this product's been done for a while, and I think they've been probably rangling with Apple about that 30 percent cut that Apple would take if it were going through the iTunes store, which it will be.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: So probably there's been some worry about that. But my sources were saying earlier this year that even at the end of his tenure, Steve Ballmer had decided that, "You know what? We're not going to wait for the Windows version of the Touch-first apps, and we're going to go out first with Office for iPad." So a lot of people are saying this was Satya Nadella's choice — and ultimately, obviously, it is — but it wasn't some new thing that he put in place, from what I heard. I heard that this was something Ballmer actually decided to do, and now it's coming to fruition.

Leo: Wow.

Paul: It's not the type of thing they could have turned around in 30 days.

Mary Jo: No.

Leo: Obviously not. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Right. (Laughs)

Leo: Obviously not. And it would be — so if — okay, so the Apple 30 percent issue, how do they resolve that? Give it away?

Mary Jo: Yeah. I mean, I —

Paul: No, they pay 30 percent. (Laughs)

Leo: They pay it.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: And they charge 30 percent more?

Mary Jo: It depends, right?

Paul: Well —

Mary Jo: Well, here's what we don't know. Is it going to be free?

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Right.

Paul: That's right. So I mean, you assume it's going to be attached to a 365 —

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: — subscription. So obviously if you —

Mary Jo: I think you have to subscribe, right?

Paul: Acquired that, yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: If you already — if you acquire that from outside of Apple's closed garden there, you're not paying Apple anything.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: But if you want — in other words, you run the app, you don't have Office 365, and it says, "Hey, by the way, you need Office 365." It's probably not coincidental they just announced Office 365 Personal, which you might imagine a lot of iPad users might want to get so that they could run this thing.

Leo: Right.

Paul: If you do it from within the app, you would get the 30 percent —

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: — from Apple.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: Okay.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I think it's going to be a lot like Office Mobile for iPhone, which is that way, right? It's a free app, but you have to have an Office 365 subscription to use it. And I bet this will be something like that. And if you look at what they just did with OneNote for the Mac, and OneNote for Windows especially — the new free version — they're doing this thing where they give you a  free version and you can download it from the respective stores.  But if you want the extra set of features, then you have to either get a subscription or pay more to buy a higher-level license. I bet we're going to see something like that.

Paul: And I — I'm not 100 percent sure about this one because — maybe, you know — because I haven't actually installed the free version on Windows, but the free version on the Mac, you have to sign into a Microsoft account and it attaches to your OneDrive storage.

Mary Jo: OneDrive, yep. I think it does, too, the —

Paul: Yeah. So the paid version on Windows, you don't — that's not a requirement. I mean, they — you know, you can use it as kind of a standalone app that you just — you're — I almost call it a PST file. You're OneNote notes, or whatever, are — could be stored locally, conceivably.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Although that's not the preferred way to do it, but —

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: You know, they'll have that kind of requirement as well.

Mary Jo: Yeah. Also, with the free version for Windows, you're missing some features that you get with the paid version, right? So you don't have the Outlook integration, you don't have the SharePoint support, you don't have version history. And so they're kind of making this tier, right? It's free, but if you want all these extra things — integration with Outlook, for example — you have to pay. It's not free.

Paul: Yeah. And also, it should be noted — the — free for licensing purposes, free for personal use. It's free for students, free for individuals. But if you're a business, you're supposed to be paying for Office in some capacity, whether it's an Office 365 subscription or licensing Office — or OneNote, I guess, you could do that separately otherwise.

Mary Jo: Yeah. So I'm betting — I'm also betting there could be some distinctions, when they come out with Office for iPad, around licensing, right? This — if there is a free version, this free version might be for home and personal use only; and then if you want to use this in a business setting, you have to pay for some kind of a higher-level subscription, or pay for the suite.

Paul: I bet they tie it to Office 365.

Mary Jo: Yeah, for sure. I think so.

Paul: They just came out with that personal version, that will launch in April, that makes sense for maybe the iPad version, iPad OneNote — sorry, Office version launch.

Mary Jo: Right. Yeah.

Paul: They have one PC, one tablet. One tablet right now is Windows tablet. One tablet could very easily become iPad or Windows tablet.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: Do — did they say anything about what March 27 — I mean, besides the fact that Satya Nadella's there?

Mary Jo: No, nothing.

Paul: This was —

Leo: No hints.

Paul: I mean, they haven't publicly announced this.

Leo: Oh. This is all rumor stuff.

Mary Jo: Yeah, they — well, they sent us an invitation.

Leo: Oh, okay.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: What does the — well, now see, if you were Apple reporters, you would be —

Paul: Right.

Leo: — deeply parcing that invitation. Tell me about it.

Paul: Yes.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Is — what colors are in it? Is it —

Mary Jo: No, it doesn't look like that. It's all text. (Laughs)

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: All text.

Paul: It's Microsoft, Leo.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: And it just says — it tells you where to park if coming to —

Leo: Okay. But what does it say? What's the tagline? "Get ready for something amazingly touchable"?

Mary Jo: Nothing. It's not a fancy invite like you're imagining.

Leo: Oh.

Mary Jo: It's just an email that PR sent out that's —

Leo: "Hi. We'd like you to come to an event. Satya will be there."

Mary Jo: Exactly. (Laughs)

Leo: Are you going to come out? Are you guys coming out?

Paul: Whatcha doin'?

Leo: It'd be crazy to come out because you'd have to come out a few days later.

Mary Jo: Yeah, yeah. They're going to webcast this.

Leo: Okay.

Mary Jo: We don't know the URL for that yet, but they are going to.

Leo: And what time is it?

Mary Jo: 10 a.m. Pacific.

Leo: All right. We'll be covering it live right here.

Mary Jo: Next Thursday.

Leo: Next Thursday.

Paul: It's Thursday, yeah.

Leo: Yep. Right before TNT, or during TNT, we'll have live coverage of that event. That's exciting. I think —

Mary Jo: Yeah, I —

Leo: I think that's — I hope that that's it because I —

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: I think that's something that —

Mary Jo: Our sources are saying yes on that. But Bloomberg also did some additional reporting on this, and they said they're hearing it will be Office for iPad, too. But they said there's something else as well. It's not just that.

Leo: Ahhhh.

Mary Jo: And I — I'm kind of curious if they're going to show off Gemini, which is Microsoft's touch-optimized version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote —

Paul: Oh, yeah.

Mary Jo: — for Windows 8.1.

Leo: That would be sensible, to say, "Hey, we're going to do — we're" —

Mary Jo: It would.

Leo: Because otherwise, people will say, "Hey, wait a minute."

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: "What about us?"

Paul: People are going to say that no matter what, but yeah, anyway.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: So there are ways to phrase that. Satya could say something like, "We believe in touch.  You know, obviously with Surface, we've released a touch hardware. We believe in touch for the operating system. And of course, that means we want touch everywhere, including Office. We've been working hard on it, and our first release is for the iPad, but stayed tuned because we also are going to do a version for Gemini."

Paul: By the way, the iPad's been around for two years longer than Windows 8.

Leo: Right.

Paul: iOS has been around for, what, five or whatever years longer than Windows 8. I mean, it's quite likely that this was in development for a long time, like Mary Jo suggested, and that they had a headstart on this version.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: So it makes sense that it would be ready first.

Leo: Yeah. Yeah, but that's logical and reasonable when you say that.

Paul: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah. (Laughs)

Leo: That's not what we're talking here. We're talking the emotional reaction of, "But wait!"

Paul: Right, right. Sorry, I've got to work on that. I'm not very good at that.

Mary Jo: (Laughs) We've only seen this coding Gemini thing in public once. It was — they showed it really quickly last year at Build. They showed PowerPoint, the Gemini version, and they said, "By the way, this suite of apps is coming in calendar 2014." And that's all they said."

Leo: Yeah. Interesting.

Mary Jo: So yep. It could be a very interesting event on the 27th.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Plus, it's really Satya Nadella's first public introduction of some kind of product.

Leo: Yeah. It's big for that reason, too.

Mary Jo: It is. And if you — if you're a follower of the Microsoft stock, they hit a high yesterday because of this planned or expected announcement. They were, like, close to 40, or at 40, yesterday.

Leo: Wow.

Paul: Let me — can I reword what you just said?

Mary Jo: Yes. (Laughs)

Paul: Because I want to make sure that if anyone from Microsoft is listening to this, they actually understand the implications of what you just said. Because of Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft's stock price hit a high of almost $40 for the first time in over ten years.

Leo: Wait a minute. You mean this is Mary Jo's scoop?

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: I — I think — it was a few minutes —

Leo: Mary Jo? You singlehandedly pumped Microsoft —

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah. I just want to be clear. Just so we understand what's really happening.

Leo: Thank you, Paul. I'm glad you clarified this.

Paul: Because she completely kind of pushed that one into the carpet there, like —

Leo: She's self-effacing, which neither you nor I had any trouble with in the past.

Mary Jo: (Laughs) You know what? I just — I know this —

Paul: I would have mentioned it if it was me, but —

Mary Jo: (Laughs) This won't matter —

Leo: "By the way ..."

Mary Jo: This won't matter a whit for my relationship with Microsoft, I have a feeling. (Laughs)

Leo: No, but it matters a whit to the rest —

Paul: Right. It won't matter a whit for my many holdings in Microsoft stock because I don't have any, but —

Mary Jo: Neither do I, so ... (Laughs)

Leo: Very important. Neither do I. None of us do.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Well, you know, I might in, like, a fund that combines a market basket.

Paul: Not if it's a good fund, Leo.

Leo: (Laughs) Well, I do have — I —

Paul: Are you saving for the reverse of retirement?

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: I want to make sure and give all my money away by the time I retire.

Leo: In interest of diversification, yes.

Paul: (Laughs) Yeah.

Leo: No, I — because I have funds that are tied to the overall performance of the market, so Microsoft's probably in

that somewhere.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: That — no one would hold you responsible for that.

Leo: No, I'm not responsible. I don't buy — I don't determine whether it's in there or how much of it and all that. So big scoop, then, Mary Jo. Of course, immediately, Warren and everybody else wrote about it, but —

Paul: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah, everybody else got it, too. Like, we all kind of figured it out within the same, like, fifteen minutes. Everybody was posting, you know?

Leo: So you got — but you figured this out before you got the invite.

Mary Jo: I heard about the invite. I got a phone call saying, "Hey, we're going to have this event on March 27th. And I pinged a couple sources and said, "What is this?" And I heard "iPad."

Leo: Interesting. Interesting.

Paul: There you go.

Leo: Does the invite mention Satya?

Mary Jo: Yes.

Leo: Okay.

Mary Jo: It says, "Satya" — I could read you the invite. Would you like me to? (Laughs)

Paul: This is the second time, by the way, in the past, what, six months? — that the press has received an invitation to go meet with Satya in San Francisco. But the first one was before he became CEO, obviously.

Leo: Right.

Leo: This is a big, big deal.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Mary Jo Foley — see, you buried the lead.

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: Mary Jo Foley bumps Microsoft's stock above 40 bucks, singlehanded.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: It's what we're now going to call the Foley Effect.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: It's the Foley Effect. Ha! Let me write that down.

Mary Jo: I'm looking at the invite now. It says, "Opening remarks will be from Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft" —

Leo: Okay. Good.

Mary Jo: "This is a briefing and news event focused on the" —

Leo: Oh, see, it's news.

Mary Jo: — "focused on the intersection of cloud and mobile computing. RSVP here. Here's where to park." And that's it. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: That's hilarious.

Leo: Where do you park, just out of curiosity?

Paul: In the Oaklands, Leo.

Leo: (Laughs) Is it — where is the event?

Mary Jo: I don't know if I should say that, should I? Because it's a private, invite-only thing.

Leo: Oh. Don't say it. Nope.

Mary Jo: Okay. Downtown San Francisco.

Leo: Okay.

Mary Jo: 10 a.m. next week. (Laughs)

Leo: is it at a hotel?

Mary Jo: No.

Leo: No. Okay. That's all. That's fine. Say no more. Say no more, say no more. I don't think any of us got an invitation, so we'll just have to — maybe we'll Skype you in after the event or whatever.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: All right.

Paul: Well, I —

Mary Jo: We could do maybe one of those play-by-plays with you guys, like —

Leo: Well, if you want to do this —

Paul: They are webcasting it, I think, too —

Leo: — we would love it. Yeah. So what we normally do — you know, we do the little Mystery Theater, Science Theater 3000 stuff. If you want to be one of the heads, or two of the heads, we'd love it. Sometimes, you know, like, people want to pay attention to the announcement.

Mary Jo: Yeah, that's tricky, too, right?

Leo: Yeah, because you're —

Mary Jo: I'm trying to listen to the — (Laughs)

Leo: You've got a file immediately after, right?

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: So  — yeah.

Paul: Sure. Or immediately during. Whatever.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Well, that's — in effect, we're filing. That's how we file. (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: We play the video, and we talk about it. So it's easy for us. Anyway, you're invited. That's exciting. So how do you think the world's going to react to this? In particular, the iPad-using world?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Are they going to say, "Oh, finally!" No.

Mary Jo: Well, you know, it was —

Paul: I don't think it's going to be like that.

Mary Jo: I don't either. And people complain when — I remember when Office Mobile came out for iOS, people were saying, "Oh, but you need an Office 365 subscription. Ugh."

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: And I think you're going to see something similar to that if that is indeed a requirement.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: People aren't used to thinking about things like that.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: They're just like, "Hey, I want to pay one time for an app and put it on my iPad and be done."

Leo: Right.

Paul: Also, I kind of wonder how fringe-y that kind of use really is, on not iPad in particular, you know? That — I know you can attach an Apple keyboard or any keyboard to it. They have keyboard docks and keyboard cases and stuff. But I kind of wonder what — and the overall usage of an iPad, where entering text into Pages or whatever —

Mary Jo: A spreadsheet? (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah. Is — you know, how common is that, really?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: I suppose, for people who are giving presentations, maybe they make the presentation on their Mac and maybe they put it on their iPad so they can go do it that way, and they can do light edits and things like that. But I don't — I don't know; I mean, I'm just guessing, but it doesn't seem like that's a huge percentage of what occurs on an iPad. I think it's important that it's there, and I think it's good that it's there. But I don't — I don't think it's going to set the world on fire.

Leo: No.

Paul: And I — and that's sad, in a way, because this is something that Microsoft maybe could have been on top of two years ago.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: Yeah. It depends — you know, it really depends a lot what the app is like.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: If it's like — I mean, if it's a very — kind of — not dumbed down, but very simple interface, kind of like the Word and Excel apps are on Windows RT, it might get a different kind of user. I mean, we're not expecting it to be, like, every bell and whistle in Excel is suddenly on your iPad. That wouldn't even make sense, right? I mean —

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: — you're not doing those gigantic —

Paul: But that's — that goes to my comment earlier about OneNote, in a way.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: If you look at OneNote on the Mac and you look at the percentage of stuff that it can do — because people use it for five minutes, and they say, "Oh, that one feature I need all the time — you know, the ability to embed a PDF file or whatever it is is missing. It can't even print."

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: You know, that kind of thing. Those features will come over time. I — it's possible that Office on the iPad is going to be in that kind of weird middle ground. It's not — it's obviously not going to be full-featured Office.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: But it needs to be much better than Office Mobile.

Mary Jo: Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, I — the audience I see looking for it are people who are standardized at work on Office, right, and they want to come home and be able to have the true document fidelity and at least a pretty good subset of the capabilities if they want to do something at home.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Or if they want to take their iPad with them on the road, if they're in sales, marketing, whatever. I think those are the people who are most interested in this. It's not your everyday user who's like, "Oh, I have to have Office on my iPad."

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: I will voice the fears of the Windows generation because there is a remote chance, I suppose, that — what if this thing is — what if it's really good? You know?

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: I mean, what if it actually is really good?

Leo: No. I don't think you have to worry about that.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: And what if this is the final point because, "the only reason I was still using a Windows laptop is because they didn't have this."

Leo: No.

Paul: "And — oh, wow, now I don't need the Windows laptop anymore."

Leo: We know that —

Paul: I don't see that happening, but —

Leo: — an all-touch interface is not a good — I mean —

Paul: Well, but if you — in other words, you could —

Leo: I understand. What if they solve these issues and it's wonderful, and —

Paul: Yeah. Well, you see little things. You know, OneNote for Windows 8 has got these kind of radial menus; they're actually really nice. It's possible — I mean, a lot of people still jump all over the ribbon stuff that Microsoft did, but that's an area where Microsoft innovated where people didn't think it was possible to innovate any more.

Leo: Right.

Paul: You know, with an Office productivity suite of very mature applications.

Leo: Right.

Paul: 20, 25-year-old applications. You know, the radial menu stuff in OneNote — I think it's only in  OneNote — OneNote, the modern version of OneNote. There's another example where — well, that's interesting. You know, everyone thinks Metro's so dumb. But look at this.

Leo: Right.

Paul: This is pretty sophisticated. You never know. I mean, the Office guys would be the ones that could pull it off.

Mary Jo: Yeah. I think Office for iPad's going to look more like Office for Windows 8 than it's going to look like Office for the Mac.

Paul: Oh, yeah, I do, too.

Mary Jo: I think it's going to be more like that, right, than it is going to be, like, a full —

Paul: Yeah, no, I — I meant from a level of functionality standpoint.

Mary Jo: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: But that's — yeah. I mean, I don't anticipate Microsoft making any massive, surprising changes in UI, right? Like, some sort of breakthrough —

Paul: I don't know. That's the question. In other words, do they —

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Do they work with the existing iOS 7 interface widgets? Do they do their own thing? Do they do something that will maybe make this look like it does on Windows, which I think is what Mary Jo is suggesting. And I think it's probably true, by the way, that they'll have a common touch UI that they work — use across devices. I don't know. You know, in some ways, how sophisticated this is will tell us how serious Microsoft is about being kind of holistic about their devices and services strategy.

Mary Jo: And also how serious they are — as we've heard Satya Nadella saying that they are also a software player, right? Like, this is a software play and a services play. And I think Microsoft kind of got away from calling itself a software vendor, but as we saw this week with the OneNote for Mac and Windows, they still are very much a software company, and they're good at making software. So they shouldn't really completely distance themselves from calling themselves a software company.

Paul: Yeah, I agree.

Leo: Okay. Well, we'll know soon. This is good.

Mary Jo: We will.

Leo: This is good stuff. This is the stuff of which dreams are made of. No.

Paul and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: Sorry, that's something else.

Paul: OneNote on the Mac certainly is.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: Well, I have to say — okay. I don't know if — well, OneNote on the Mac is a bellwether. If we assume it is, it is — it's very ribbon-you.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: So it's not — it is — I mean, if you use this as a way of saying, "Well, how is Microsoft thinking about putting this on a different platform?"

Paul: Well —

Leo: This looks just like — I mean, I feel like I'm on Windows, frankly.

Paul: Yeah, but I actually think — so here's the thing. So obviously, that's a ribbon user interface; it's much better than the Mac Office 2011 product. It's less cluttered and clean-looking.

Leo: It's what — I expect the next Office will be exactly like this, right?

Paul: Yeah. I think the ribbon makes sense on the Mac for the same reason that it makes sense on the Windows desktop, right? Because this is a mouse and keyboard productivity environment. You can bunch up commands in a small space. It's okay; you're clicking them with a mouse. So I think that kind of consistency is fine. This isn't as hoaky as — you know, for that brief moment in time, I think Office 6 or whatever they wanted to have a common code base between Windows and Mac. And of course, that meant that the Mac version was going to be ridiculous and bad. It's not like that. I mean, it's — it's a Mac product. It still has a menu bar at the top. And some people noted on Twitter, "Why is there a command here on the ribbon? The command is in the menu." Because Mac people expect the command to be in the menu. That's —

Leo: Well, but that's kind of, I think, the disconnect for me. Which is, we've got a ribbon which really feels like a menu —

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: — and then, as a Mac user, I've then got the menu.

Paul: So —

Leo: And I just feel like that's kind of a disconnect.

Paul: It shouldn't be because I think what you're — the way that you're thinking of this is, This is like the Windows version.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: But the right way to think about it is, This is like the web version.

Leo: Okay. Okay.

Paul: So this is — this is a commonality that has nothing to do with making it less Mac-like and more Windows-like; it's about making it consistent regardless of platform, regardless of how you choose to access OneNote. You know?

Leo: Okay.

Paul: That's all.

Leo: I can accept that.

Paul: I don't — in other words, this isn't like — remember when Microsoft and Office had a — and maybe it's still there. They had Windows Live Messenger.

Leo: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: On the Mac.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: That's disrespectful. (Laughs)

Leo: That's disrespectful, yeah.

Paul: That's ridiculous.

Leo: Well, it's just not — the whole — we're talking about native vs. non-native. And —

Paul: It's disrespectful to the platform.

Leo: It's non-native. It's non-native.

Paul: In other words, it's not being true to the platform.

Leo: Yeah. It's non-native.

Paul: I don't like to see that kind of thing. This doesn't reek of that to me. I suspect — I don't know what kind of Mac you have, but I bet this thing is very compliant with high-resolution and Retina displays, and all that kind of stuff.

Leo: Oh, yeah, it does all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul: And I think this is a — probably a very well-written Mac program.

Leo: Well, that was the wrap always on Office on the Mac, until more recently, was that they had their own memory management.

Paul: Yes.

Leo: I mean, they — really, it was not in any way a Mac app.

Paul: Right.

Leo: It was a — its own thing.

Paul: It's almost like a p-code thing running in a —

Leo: Right.

Paul: — closed sandbox environment or something.

Leo: I think this is kind of un-Macish because you've got these rows of buttons. We've got the tabs, we've got the ribbon, we've got these buttons here for "Open," back and forth, and then you've got your — overlaid your Mac menu. I just — it doesn't feel native.

Paul: Well — yeah. In the old days, Leo, I and Microsoft would have just told you to suck it down. You know, too bad.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Paul: But today, what we're saying is, it's really just about a unified platform.

Leo: Yeah, yeah. I'm not — I'm not complaining. More what I'm saying is, that's why you may see a collective yawn for the iPad community. Really, it's going to depend what they do, but it's — just, if this is the bellwether, then what Apple's going to do is say, "No" — or what Microsoft's going to do —

Paul: Oh.

Leo: — is say, "No, we're going to make a — our program" —

Paul: Again, if this stuff had just happened years ago — and it is an indication of Microsoft's lack of influence — that in, I guess, 2011 in the wake of the first — I guess it would have been 2010, in the wake of the first iPad that Steve Jobs was kind of enraged by the claims that the iPad was only a consumption tool. He pushed —

Leo: Right.

Paul: — the iWork guys to get that stuff going in some kind of a sophisticated way on the iPad. Five years earlier, he would have gone to Microsoft, and would have begged, borrowed, and stealed to make sure that Office appeared on iPad 2.

Leo: Right.

Paul: But of course, by that point, they had — you know, they were de-Microsofting themselves. I mean, it's — the world has changed. It's too bad that Microsoft didn't seize that opportunity. But I think the Microsoft of 2010, they weren't ready to make that —

Leo: Right.

Paul: — that leap quite yet.

Leo: Right.

Paul: Because Windows 8 was going to save everything, baby.

Leo: Uh ...

Mary Jo and Paul: (Laugh)

Leo: Well, this — that's why I think it'll be very interesting to see what they do, but —

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: And don't be disheartened if the — if iPad users go, "Well, that's nice." I mean, really, don't you think this is an application for Windows users who want to use an iPad more than anything else?

Mary Jo: Yes.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: And that's why I think it has to kind of give them some concessions, right? (Laughs)

Leo: Yes, exactly.

Paul: By the way — yeah. Windows PC users that also use iPads — we call those users.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Paul: (Laughs) So those are just people. I mean, that's —

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: A lot of people.

Paul: That's the way it is, yeah.

Leo: Yeah. Okay.

Paul: So it's not some weird little splinter group over in the corner. I mean —

Leo: They're not mules, you're saying. They can —

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people —

Leo: They can reproduce. Okay.

Paul: — on iPhone and iPad, but they also have Windows PCS. So —

Leo: All right. Well, this — here we go. Here we go. It gets exciting momentarily. And I'd love to see Gemini, the Windows 8 version.

Paul: Yeah, I think that's — now that you said that, I bet they do.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: I bet they do show that.

Leo: Makes sense. He said it's — — see, you're not — I got to get Jim Dalrymple out here to do a little tutorial. You've got to parce, baby. [unintelligible] would look at this —

Mary Jo: It's not a parcing kind of thing. (Laughs)

Leo: No, it is! NO, no, no, there is!

Paul: Because really — I get —

Leo: It says, news. News, that's a word.

Paul: This is — by the way, this is — no, you don't understand. In the Apple world, you can parce. You can — I know what you're talking about. I've seen this WWDC announcement, you know. If we parced this stuff, somewhere in Redmond or in Portland or wherever [unintelligible] is, someone would be made aware of our parcing of this —

Leo: Oh.

Paul: — and they would look at each other and be like, "Wow, we never even thought of that." (Laughs) And it's just —

Leo: (Laughs) Oh, really?

Paul: There's no — there's no guile here, Leo. It's —

Mary Jo: I'm not kidding. There's more in this email about where to park than anything. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: I'm not kidding.

Paul: It's very pragmatic. This is Microsoft.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: They're engineers.

Paul: Like, "We're making people go to San Francisco. How are they going to get around?"

Mary Jo: There's no colors involved. There's no little diagram, or —

Leo: Okay. Okay.

Paul: The Apple guys are walking around in a daze. they don't care where to park. They don't own cars. They have scooters, and —

Leo: They're going, (Makes meditating noise)

Paul: They walk on air. They don't need cars.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: "Channel the great Ghost of Steve." So there is something, though. There will — say that line again. There will be news ...

Mary Jo: Yes. "There will be news at this event around the intersection of mobile and cloud computing."

Leo: There's parceable stuff in there. I know — I mean —

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: — "news" means new product, means an announcement. Yes?

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: In Mobile and Cloud. Okay, that's pretty parceable.

Mary Jo: That could be everything, right? (Laughs)

Paul: Devices and services is mobile and cloud. What do you — I mean, it's —

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: (Laughs) Okay.

Paul: — it's literally devices and services restated.

Leo: It's like — what you're saying is like, "We're going to make an announcement that has to do with Microsoft."

Mary Jo: Yeah, pretty much. (Laughs)

Leo: And that's all they say. All right. Okay.

Mary Jo: And here are the —

Paul: Yeah. You know, "Next Thursday, the world's largest maker of software is going to introduce a new product."

Mary Jo: It has — it says that; that's one line. And then it has four different things with maps, saying "Here are the closest parking lots."

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: And then it says —

Paul: I hope it's a location services thing. That would be funny.

Mary Jo: — "Here's your closest" —

Leo: Are they inviting eight thousand journalists?

Mary Jo: No, it's very small.

Paul: They're going to introduce the next version of Bing Maps.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Clearly. (Laughs)

Paul: Then they're going to say, "If only you had had this version of Bing Maps, you wouldn't have needed the parking" —

Leo: If only! That's maybe it. Maybe — see? Now you're parcing. Now you're parcing with gas.

Mary Jo: There's just nothing else there. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: It's the Mexican food.

Leo: (Laughs) All right, we're —

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Do you want to mention this Surface —

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: — with LTE, which is kind of an iPadish kind of thing to do. Yes?

Mary Jo: Right So this week, Microsoft came out with the expected Surface 2 with the LTE support built in —

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: — for a very robust $679, not including the cover.

Paul: (Laughs)

Leo: "Robust" means expensive?

Mary Jo: Pricey?

Leo: Pricey? Robust?

Paul: Well, to be fair — I mean —

Mary Jo: I know. It's —

Paul: — this doesn't justify it, but that — what is it? $130 more than a comparably-equipped, non-LTE Surface 2.

Mary Jo: Yes.

Paul: That's the same price differential Apple charges for an iPad with LTE.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: Right.

Mary Jo: It's a 64 gig.

Paul: So that makes it right. (Laughs) So there you go.

Mary Jo: Right. They're definitely — they're positioning this as a competitor to the iPad, which you have to remember because as soon as the price came out, people were saying, "Wait, I can get the Nokia Lumia 2520 so much cheaper than this. Why — that has LTE, too. Why would I care?"

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: And that's not who the target market is. The target market is people who want the iPad with the LTE built in. But yeah.

Paul: And I still firmly believe that the Lumia 2520, or whatever it's called, is the first thing that Microsoft gets rid of when that purchase goes through.

Mary Jo: Too bad; it looks like a — well, we both got to try it. It's a nice little machine.

Leo: Is it?

Paul: Yeah, it is.

Mary Jo: Yeah. But Paul found out something very interesting about the Surface 2 with LTE that — I think you're the only one who's noticed. And I confirmed you're right.

Paul: Well, to be — and I want to — I didn't notice this myself. So this is from my readers because, as the Microsoft tool that I am, I reported what they told me, and then people said, "Actually, Paul, this thing has a GPS in it." What do they call it? "Assisted GPS," I think is the term.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: That means that the micro — I'm sorry, the SIM card, silicon, and the slot and all that are not the only difference between this device and the normal Surface 2. Surface 2 does not have a GPS. That's a feature that's also in that Lumia 2520 that Mary Jo's talking about, and to my knowledge — now there are two, but I previously thought that was the only mainstream Windows tablet that had such hardware in it. I could be wrong about that, but I thought that was the case. So it has GPS, too.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Coolness.

Mary Jo: And you would think — wouldn't you have thought Microsoft would really be selling this hard? Because so many people —

Paul: Mentioning it, at least.

Mary Jo: — have said, "Wow, I can't believe the Surface doesn't have GPS." And now it does, and nobody even mentioned it.

Paul: I looked at my — I met with these guys. I got to see this device a month ago or something, and I went back a couple times. I went back after I was apprised of this to see what I had wrote, the notes I took. And they were very clear. There are no differences except for the slot for the SIM and the corresponding silicon. That's what they said.

Mary Jo: Yep. Told me the same.

Paul: I don't —

Mary Jo: So yeah. But it does have GPS. I confirmed it with Microsoft; they said, "Yes, it does." And it's on the spec sheet, if you go through the spec sheet.

Paul: Yeah, you have to really want it to get to that, but yeah, it's in there.

Mary Jo: Right. (Laughs) Yeah. But that's good news because a lot of people wanted GPS on their Surface, and now you can get it —

Paul: So they can find parking on the 27th when they go to San Francisco.

Mary Jo and Leo:: (Laugh)

Mary Jo: Yeah, you need it for that. (Laughs)

Leo: It's not that hard to park, folks.

Paul: I don't know. Well, all those one-way streets, Leo. San Francisco's a disaster.

Leo: Boston is the worst one-way street disaster in the history of mankind.

Mary Jo: Yes, it is. (Laughs)

Paul: That's true.

Leo: It's because it was built before there were cars.

Paul and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: San Francisco, we burned it to the ground in 1906.

Paul: I told — did I tell you what the state cop told my brother?

Leo: Yeah?

Paul: My brother was lost in Boston, and he stopped a cop. I had my own story like this, actually, but his story's better. He stopped and said, "Hey, I'm driving in circles, and I can't get out of here. How do I" —

Leo: "I'm trapped!"

Paul: "How do I get out of here?" And this — this is a state trooper, by the way, state of Massachusetts.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: He said, "What do I look like, frickin' AAA?" (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Except he swore when he said it.

Leo: And say it in a Boston kind of voice.

Paul: You know, he's like, I think he said, "What do I look like, triple f—in' A?" And my brother was like, "Thanks. Have a nice day."

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: You know, like, welcome to Massachusetts. The Massachusetts miracle continues into the twenty-first century.

Leo: That's awesome. Awesome. (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: (Laughs) The Massachusetts miracle.

All right, folks. We're going to take a break. When we come back, lots more. Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley, we're talking Microsoft on Windows Weekly. Don't forget: April 4th, a special Windows Weekly up here in our studios, and you're invited to stop by and enjoy the festivities.

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Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley, Windows on the air, baby. We move on to Build. You're coming out for it. And a very interesting, hot rumor. We talk a lot about Miguel de Icaza and Xamarin. Mary Jo Foley, you have kind of a surprising rumor on this.

Mary Jo: Yeah. Not mine originally, but CRN — Computer Reseller News — reported this week that Microsoft is in the final stages of negotiation that could lead to either an outright acquisition or investment in Xamarin.

Leo: Wow.

Mary Jo: I know.

Leo: Xamarin was based on Icaza's initial .net port, right? That made it possible to do .net on other platforms — Mac and Linux —

Paul: Just Linux first, wasn't it?

Leo: Yeah, it was Linux first.

Mary Jo: Yeah, Linux.

Leo: He's a Linux guy. He did — before he did this, he was —

Paul: Which, by the way, despite that, he's actually a really nice guy.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: Before he did this —

Paul: I mean, I guess it's possible.

Leo: You are such an evil, evil person.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: — he did a very well-known Linux manager, window manager.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Really great guy.

Mary Jo: yeah, he is.

Leo: Actually, he did the whole library for it.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: So he's a super developer. It would — I would imagine that Microsoft would gain most from just having Miguel. Do you think this is about Miguel, or is it about more than Miguel?

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: I think it's about more than Miguel because now they've got the whole company, and they're doing a whole bunch of different tools for —

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: — C-Sharp developers who want to port to iOS and to Android. They even do tools for Google Glass and the new Google wearable stuff. I mean, they're kind of all over the map with it, but they've always been really big backers of .net developers.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: All along.

Leo: Even if it's not for Windows.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: That's great.

Mary Jo: And that's why, at the beginning of their relationship with Microsoft, it was very rocky. Because maybe five, six years ago when they started doing a lot of the stuff, Microsoft didn't want them to be helping people port to anything except Windows, right?

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: So they weren't friends back then. At all.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: And then, as managers came and went at Microsoft, they started getting a little cozier. And last November, Xamarin had a major announcement with Microsoft around a marketing and development partnership —

Leo: Oh, all right.

Mary Jo: — for doing C-Sharp on Android and iOS.

Leo: Oh, mobile.

Mary Jo: Yes.

Leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's big. Yeah.

Mary Jo: So yeah. Now they're pretty friendly.

Paul: They keep holding out for this. Use Visual Studio to create apps that run on an iPhone. Amazing.

Leo: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: That's big, right? Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah. Miguel's not talking. I tried to get him to say something, anything. He just said, "Working with Microsoft has been a delight." (Laughs)

Paul: Really?

Leo: Right.

Paul: Which is how you know he's full of crap.

Mary Jo: "Absolute delight." (Laughs)

Paul: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Huh.

Mary Jo: Yeah, but we were talking earlier — when you came into the show Leo, you were humming a Beatles tune, if I recall.

Leo: Yeah, I was.

Paul: So this is — yes, this is weird.

Leo: What?

Mary Jo: You tell it, Paul. You were there; I was there, too.

Paul: No, go ahead.

Mary Jo: Okay. I'll tell him.

Paul: Well, I mean, for me it's just embarrassing. I —

Mary Jo: For you, it's weird. (Laughs)

Leo: What, did Paul McCartney send you an — a fan letter?

Paul: No. So there's — Don Box, who's another great guy, by the way. And he's still at Microsoft. He's, like, a — is he a technical fellow now, or a —

Mary Jo: Yeah, distinguished engineer at Microsoft.

Paul: Distinguished engineer. You know, he was a guy at a lot of the Build shows, and I guess maybe PBC, I don't remember. But he would be the guy on day 2 who would do all the live coding examples. You know, and —

Leo: Ah. One of those guys.

Paul: He's one of those rare developer types you can also communicate very effectively with in public.

Leo: Love those guys, yeah.

Paul: He's funny, you know, he's a good guy. And Microsoft was — in 2003, right, I think it was?

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: — was — really wanted to hire Miguel and get him on board. And Don is part of a — like a lot of programmers, a lot of techo people — are musicians. You know, and they have — he's part of a band, and I think sometimes they get together at these tech events, and they turn regular pop songs into songs about technology.

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: Which is something I'm not —

Mary Jo: Wait, you've got to tell him the title of the band because that's even funnier. They're called Band on the Runtime.

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: That's really their name. (Laughs)

Leo: A play off a Paul McCartney song.

Paul: See, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit when you said that. Like, I —

Leo: (Sings) Band on the Runtime ...

Paul: I love these guys. This kind of thing is a little on the edge for me. So anyway, they were on the top of a —

Leo: Well, you know, David Poke spoiled it for me because he does so much of that.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: You know, the parodies.

Paul: I just don't like that kind of stuff.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: So anyway, rooftop in L.A., downtown L.A., during, I think, Build — PBC 2003, I think it was the Msdm party, something like that, probably. And his — Don Box's band were playing these songs, these pop songs but redone for technical topics, you know.

Leo: Right.

Paul: So (Laughs) Anyway, Miguel was there, and he basically serenaded Miguel with a version of the song "Michelle" by the Beatles, which is what you were singing; but of course, reworded to be "Miguel."

Leo: (Sings) Miguel, ma belle.

Paul: "Please come to Microsoft and work for Microsoft."

Leo: (Sings) Please come to Micro — (Stops singing) Wow. Wow. Oh.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah, so I — yeah, I don't want to get into it. But anyway, so it was — (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs)

Paul: It was just —

Leo: Revolting.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: But it indicated a strong interest in Miguel de Icaza.

Paul: YEAH. Miguel turned them down, obviously.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: But yeah.

Leo: This guy's legendary in the Linux space.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: I mean, he really is.

Mary Jo: Yes.

Paul: Miguel is.

Leo: Yeah. I've admired him tremendously for years.

Paul: Yeah, yeah. And actually, at our — was it the Build Blogger Bash we just had last year? — I was there with Rafael hanging out, and we were talking to different people. This guy kind of comes up, and he's — he's just talking to us. You know, blah blah blah. And I wasn't — I — these events are so — these weeks are awful. A lot of stuff back-to-back. I wasn't really paying a lot of attention, frankly. And so at some point, I finally said, "So who" — I said, "What do you do?" And it was Miguel.

Leo: Oh!

Mary Jo: Oh, geez.

Paul: And he — as he starts talking, I'm — it was like I kind of focused on him for the first time. And then I realized, oh my God. And the way he described himself is hilarious because he's like, "Oh, I'm a software developer. I do stuff that kind of combines .net with open-source technologies, and everything." And I was like, "Oh, my God." (Laughs) Like, what — you know, I just felt like such a jerk.

Leo: Aww.

Paul: I'm like, "Oh, that's what you do."

Leo: "I've never heard of you. Uh, what have you done lately?"

Mary Jo: "Who are you again?" (Laughs)

Paul: Couldn't have had an iota of an ego.

Leo: "You know, I wrote the Delphi Bible. Have you" —

Paul: Yeah, exactly. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Exactly.

Paul: "Oh, let me tell you something about development. After all, [unintelligible] 15 years ago."

Leo: (Laughs) I — that happens to me all the time because I don't remember people's names and faces. But whenever — I'll just give you a little pro tip.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Whenever that happens, I immediately start going, "I'm not worthy!" I bow down.

Paul: Sure.

Leo: "I'm not worthy! Oh, my God, you're Miguel! Oh, my God!"

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: I don't think he would have — honestly, he doesn't appear to be a guy who's looking for that kind of adulation. I mean, he —

Leo: Again, another reason everybody loves him.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: I mean, if he came off like, "I — do you know who I am?"

Paul: Yeah, exactly. I mean, right. He's not — he does not have a jerk bone in his body, from what I can tell.

Mary Jo: Yeah, he's not that way.

Paul: He's a great guy.

Leo: Maybe he'll be at Build Blogger Bash 2014.

Mary Jo: I know.

Paul: I assume we're going to see him very soon.

Mary Jo: I should make sure he's going to come.

Leo: That would be awesome. You're doing it again, this time on April 3rd, the night before you're appearance here. That's really scary to me.

Mary Jo: (Laughs) I know. Us, too.

Paul: We'll be fine.

Leo: It is invite-only at this point, right? In fact, are you full?

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Yeah, it sold out thirty minutes after we announced it last week on the show.

Leo: Wow.

Paul: Just like an Apple event.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: Wow. Well, you know —

Paul: Apple's not the only one that can sell out San Francisco, Leo.

Leo: So many great people are going to be there, including Dr. Pizza.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: Ed Bott, Mary Jo, Paul, Tom Warren from The Verge. Are you going to get a little dust up with Tom, and say, "Hey, Tom, come here."

Paul: No, we get along fine.

Leo: Oh, okay.

Mary Jo: Yeah, Tom's great.

Leo: Oh, all right. Aw, man. I'm pushing it.

Mary Jo: And even some non-traditional bloggers who cover Microsoft are going to be there, who don't always come to these things, like Dina Bass from Bloomberg —

Paul: Like "alternative lifestyle" bloggers? What do you mean?

Leo: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah. (Laughs)

Leo: Yes, the big —

Paul: (Laughs) What are we talking about here?

Mary Jo: Oh, Daniel Rubino's going to be there.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: He's polyamorous, we know that. No, I'm just kidding. Sorry, Daniel. But Daniel was great on this show when you weren't there.

Mary Jo: He was good.

Paul: Yeah, WP Central. Who else?

Leo: Alex Wilhelm from TechCrunch.

Paul: Yep, Alex is great.

Mary Jo: Brad Sams from Neowin.

Leo: Neowin's Brad Sams. That's fun. GOOD, good group of people.

Mary Jo: Yeah, it's going to be a —

Leo: Dina Bass.

Mary Jo: Frank Shaw from Microsoft joked — he said, "Wow, I should just drop a bomb on this event" —

Leo: Oh, that's nice. That's the way to —

Paul: Listen, we say that about the Microsoft campus all the time, big guys.

Leo: Geez, Frank!

Paul: (Laughs)

Mary Jo: No, he — it was very obvious that he was kidding. (Laughs)

Leo: Yeah, but, you know, that really — I have to tell you, that's not — if that's the way he thinks about these guys, that's the wrong attitude.

Mary Jo: No, he didn't — he said— no, no. He said, "This would make an awesome target." (Laughs) I threw the "bomb" —

Leo: No, I don't think it's that much of a joke. I think it's —

Paul: No, he can just — he can walk around the room and just correct everybody.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: This is, like, a target-rich environment for him.

Mary Jo: We — none of us took it in a bad way. We joked.

Leo: Yeah. (Skeptical noise)

Mary Jo: It was all good. (Laughs) Not bad, not bad.

Leo: All right, all right. You guys are —

Mary Jo: And it's — yeah, and then we're going to do the show live, as you already said, and Petaluma on April 4th. So people should come to that, especially if you can't get into the —

Paul: We should say, you know, anyone can come to that. I think we were saying earlier that people should — don't have to, but should — RSVP? How do they do that?

Leo: Yeah, email tickets@twit.tv. It's mostly just so we have a rough count of how many people are going to be there. We can get finger foods.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Things like that. You know, we did beer last time, didn't we?

Mary Jo: Mmm-hmm. We did.

Leo: Maybe we'll do that again.

Paul: Yeah, beer would be good.

Leo: Okay. We'll get a Pony.

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Paul: Actually, we had a lot of beer last time, now that I'm thinking about it. (Laughs)

Leo: Yeah, I think we did. (Laughs)

Mary Jo: Yeah, we did.

Paul: Now that I'm —

Leo: Maybe too much?

Paul: it's no wonder I didn't remember you were there, Leo. I —

Leo: (Laughs) I wasn't there.

Paul: Somebody was feeding me beer the entire time I was sitting there.

Mary Jo: I blame Liz. (Laughs)

Paul: Yeah, definitely.

Leo: I will be there this time, and I'm much looking forward to it. It is my day off, and I am going to come in on my day off just because I can. I can't miss it. Looking forward to it. So if you can't get to Build Blogger Bash, make a little ride. We're about an hour north of San Francisco. You get to visit the Brick House and see Paul and Mary Jo, too. Should be fun. Build is coming up.

Paul: Hopefully some other people. I mean, maybe we can get some other guys —

Leo: Bring them all up.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: Bring them all up. I'll lend you the Audi. You can get ten people in that sucker. Yep. Uh (Hums) Well, we were talking —

Paul: Can we get Frank Shaw?

Leo: You know what?

Paul: What's Frank doing Friday?

Leo: Frank, come up. I would actually be thrilled to have Frank Francis X. Shaw in the studio.

Mary Jo: That would be fun.

Paul: I think I referred to Frank as "the mouth of Saran" on this podcast one time, and he actually emailed me.

Leo and Mary Jo: (Laugh)

Leo: I would say he listens, but I'm sure that's not the case. He has — there are services you can subscribe to that when anybody calls you "the mouth of Saran," you get an email.

Paul: Yeah, yeah. Right. I believe it's mouthofsaran.io. (Laughs)

Leo: (Laughs) If This, Then That. "If they call me the mouth of Saran, then email me."

Mary Jo: (Laughs)

Leo: So for a while we were calling the Nook, the wook because of this potential that Microsoft might in fact do a deal with Barnes & Noble and they spent some money didn’t they? Put some money in there?

Paul: Yes

Leo: What happened with that? Because the nook is going away, the nook’s a flop, right?

Mary Jo: Yes, pretty much.

Paul: Microsoft bump.

Mary Jo: So it was a year ago that Microsoft invested 300 million in a venture that became nook media that was a digital publishing division that was responsible for the nook, and also college content textbooks.  Just recently right after windows weekly last week, Nook filed an 8K that said “Hey, we’re changing the terms of our relationship with Microsoft. There are a lot of things in that that were rejected so we couldn’t see all the details, but one thing it said was that we have the right not to do a windows phone app, and we have the right to stop making our windows 8 app, but we are going to be working with Microsoft on something called the Microsoft consumer reader which immediately makes you think Oh, it’s an eReader, but it’s not, it’s an app. Microsoft demo’d at their internal company meeting last year, a reader app that seemingly is going to work across all their platforms, and it may be branded as Xbox reader even though it’s not tied to the Xbox, they may just be using Xbox as the consumer brand. I think this is where you’re going to see the nook content probably show up, the digital content will be in this reader app that Microsoft is building in conjunction with nook media. So no eReader, guys, sorry; no wook.

Paul: No wook?

Leo: We just want to call it a wook; I don’t think anyone really cares. This is all just because Amazon dominates the space with Kindle, that’s all, nobody needs a wook.

Leo: The other thing’s the Kobo if you want a third party reader I guess, but the Amazon’s got it down, perfect. They nailed it.

Mary Jo:  Sadly, I know Paul really likes the Windows 8 nook app, right?

Leo: Yes, he recommended it last week.

Paul: I picked it just as recently as last week; I guess I put it in the notes. I’m pretty sure they’re doing this just to screw with me because you know; it’s been around for a year or more, and in a weird coincidence, at last year’s BUILD blogger bash, I met the guys who developed this app and they were telling me, you have to try this, it’s much better than the….

Leo: Are they killing them too? Or is it just the app.

Paul: They did the windows app. I told them at the time that I’m sure it’s great, but all my stuff is in Amazon, I can’t really use it.

Leo: See? See!

Paul: But as I noted last week, honestly for magazine subscriptions & things like that which was the point of the tip last week, or the pick, whatever it was, it doesn’t really matter it’s kind of throw away content anyway. You don’t have to marry yourself to one platform for that kind of stuff. So I started looking at magazine subscriptions on the nook. I hope and assume that these things will continue to work on whatever reader that Microsoft eventually puts out. But the one thing I would remind people, is that this announcement that Mary Jo made reference to doesn’t mean that the nook software disappears immediately. It doesn’t erase itself, it’s there & will still work just as well as it did last week. I suspect Microsoft will release their app before we have to worry about it disappearing. It’s not all bad.

Mary Jo: It was funny, At Nook customer care, someone pinged them right after this came out and said, “Hey, what about the windows phone app?” and this is what they said (on a twitter) “We appreciate your patience, we will launch the best reading experience on Windows phone 8 in the near future.” And then they immediately deleted that tweet but I grabbed the screen shot first.

Paul: By the way, that’s more of a promise that we ever got from Sonos, just saying.

Leo: There is no Sonos app?

Paul: Not an official one, but their investigating it.

Leo: That’s a deal breaker….

Mary Jo: Well, now that Marc Whitten who went there from Microsoft, the former Xbox product officer….

Paul: Maybe they can do it.

Leo: Seriously, I am so invested in this Sonos eco system happily, that that is actually one of the deal breakers on a windows phone.

Paul: Well there are 3^rd party apps.

Leo: Are they good?

Paul: As I have to keep reminding Windows phone users, and as much as this pains me, personally you cannot complain because these guys are targeting 93% of the market. That’s why people wrote Windows apps 10 years ago, it is common sense.

Leo: We’ve been here before.

Paul: We can get indignant about it but we can’t really blame them.

Mary Jo: We should give Mike Bauz a shout out, he’s one of our listeners, and the one who pinged the customer care about that and then quickly deleted the tweet.
Paul: It was a great tweet, it was like their scripted response and then it was like “beep, beep, beep”.

Leo: Not only had they released it, they’ve killed it.

Mary Jo: To me their response actually says; Guess what, this new app we’re building is going to be on windows phone8.

Leo: How are you liking Titanfall Paul, still enjoying it?

Paul: It’s OK, I think there are plenty of fine shooters on plenty of platforms, and I think this is one of them I don’t think this is the next big thing, I think it’s good, nothing wrong with it, but I just don’t think it’s…

Leo: I’m really liking it. I’m feeling like it is in some ways a break thru. I’m not a big call of duty player though, so maybe it’s just me.

Paul: I do this thing where I get together with friends and we play call of duty at night at some guy’s house once a month, and I haven’t gone for the past 3 months now, but we went last night. They’re still on the 360, so I had to turn on my 360 for the first time since November, update Call of duty, and make sure everything was all set. It was interesting going back. One of the things I do when you used to offer anything, you can go back to the previous version – if you’re running windows 8, you can go back to windows 7, or whatever and you kind of note the difference. Is it good, bad or indifferent? I think the sign of a good update is when you miss stuff from the new version when you’re using the old version. And honestly, using the 360 and playing Call of duty I didn’t miss anything. It was louder, the machine, the graphics aren’t quite as good actually.

Leo: You could tell the difference?

Paul: Yes, I’ve been doing the PlayStation version today. PlayStation 4 to Xbox 1; no difference at all visually. Xbox 360 you notice the difference immediately. That’s weird because I played the 360 version and went to the Xbox 1 and didn’t really notice it, but going back you really do notice it. And then 10 minutes goes by and you forget about it, it’s OK.  So I think the one thing I’d say about the Xbox 1 that I missed a little bit was some aspects of the controller, like the bumpers are much better on the new controller.

Leo: The controller I think is hugely improved.

Paul: Yes. I tweeted something about this on twitter today, wish I could find the guy, I apologize for not saying the guy’s name, but he said “Was it $500.00 better?” No, it really wasn’t.

Leo: So how many upgrades for Xbox360 have you purchased?

Paul: Oh at least 8.

Leo: OK, so if we thought about how much money we are spending it would be a different……

Paul: Oh, no! I don’t want to think about it! Please!  One of the best things about the Xbox 1 is you only have to buy one copy of the game now. We were joking last night that this year in November when the next Call of duty game comes out it will be the first year in 5, 6, 7 years whatever that my son & I don’t wake up at midnight, drive out to a Best Buy, wait in line, buy the game, come home, install it, play for a couple hours then go back to bed. I was telling him, I’ll just set the alarm, start the download, go to bed, wake up in the morning & it is there.

Leo: You can do what I did; set the alarm, go to the living room to download it…

Paul: He said you know, that’s not going to be the same you know, can we just get in the car and drive for half an hour & then just go back & play the game? I said “Yeah, we can do that if you want”.

Leo: It was a fine bonding moment while it lasted.

Mary Jo: Did you guys hear that Azure HDInsight has Hadoop 2.2 this week?

Leo: So as we were talking about Titanfall, I just wanted to ….. Nice try, Mary Jo

Paul: like someone just tried to throw a grenade in the room. You know, if she was in the game she would be an assassin like that.

Leo: Yeah, she’s like a sniper she’s a camper I can tell a camper from way back.

Paul: When you least expect it. Two guys bumping into each other, & they’re like dufas’s, then the grenade comes in

Leo: I think your reaction to Titanfall is interesting. It tells me I think that Titanfall appeals more to me, the casual, less than hardcore first shooter, player, more than it does to someone like you that’s really into the Call of Duty.

Paul: Actually I’ve tried to say this a lot, to be clear about this, I do feel like Call of duty has biased me against other games, even games that are very similar. Like Medal of Honor was the thing or Battlefield was another example. These games are obviously very similar but because they’re not exactly the same, they’re a little off-putting to me. That said, I actually think Titanfall’s kind of complex and I’m surprised that a casual gamer could get into these games and understand it.

Leo: I think that’s really a credit to Respond, and of course these two guys used to run Infinity warden and Created Call of Duty, but credit to them because I think they wanted to make a game that would be assessable, but still have some lasting power, and I think that things like wall running, the jump kit, the Titan itself, the game play, some of the weapon’s, makes it very accessible to somebody like me. Like there’s a gun that targets everything in the field of view and you shoot it and they all go, that’s the kind of a thing that a guy like me likes.

Paul: But Leo, can I no scope someone with a noob tube in this game, because I can’t.

Leo: And it has some great (?)* 1:11:09 including by the way, some things you would enjoy, a (?) of a titan, if you can jump on its back….it’s pretty awesome. So it is little things. I just find it a very playable, compelling game. And I don’t think I’m alone because I think It’s bumped sales of the Xbox 1 and it’s done quite well. I think it has gotten people excited, it is a little hectic, it’s one of those. It reminds me of the excitement I felt when I first saw “Unreal” where we were all playing quake 3 –

Paul: And Unreal was like this colorful gorgeous, slick, and it was faster than Unreal tournament, you know.

Leo: I loved Unreal tournament, I played that a lot.

Paul: Yeah, it was like you know- like quake on speed.

Leo: All right, thanks Mary Jo for your patience.

Paul: I thought Unreal Tournament 2004 was possibly the apex of that series and let me explain why…..

Leo: Paul and I are on absolute agreement on this. And someone said this on a really rave review, was it on the Verge somewhere? and one of the things he said it makes games like Halo seem kind of quiet and calm, because there’s so little…..compared to so much going on in Titanfall, it’s just constant, everything. I’m not any good at it-

Paul: Is it called Call of duty Titanfall? Because if it isn’t…

Leo: No it’s not. It’s not! Hey I want to tell you a little bit about my friends, Don and Tim. They were fans originally of the screensavers, became fans of twit. At the time they were training people how to get their certifications; you know A+ certs, and Microsoft certs, Sysco certs and things like that. And they said “What if we did kind of like what Leo does with Twit, only for certification training and I.T. pro TV was born, and I am not only flattered, I think it’s great. Here is the channel; it’s on all the time. They have live broadcasts, they are airing about 20 hours of content every week of live broadcasts, there’s a live chat just like ours you can talk with Don and Tim and other trainers as they’re training, they have a Rochu channel, of course you can watch it on your laptop or your tablet, etc. But one of the beauties of I.T. pro TV is you keep it running all the time, you’re learning while you’re watching. They’ve done such a nice job.

“I want you to visit itpro.tv/ww for windows weekly, that’s their windows weekly channel and find out more about it. Take a look at the episode library for instance. Are you interested in improving your skills to become an I.T. professional, or maybe you’re already an I.T. and you want to learn some more They’ve got the CompTIA, A+, Security+, they’re going to add the CASP certs, the MCSA certs, the Cisco certs., Now the Isc2 stuff, this is great stuff. That’s the episode library, and what’s nice if you go into an episode you’ll see it’s broken down by test sections by goals, so you can even focus on an area you want to learn more about. So here’s an exam objective for the A+ 220-801. …OK, I need to learn more about “explain learn environmental impacts and the purpose of environmental controls” You can actually jump right to that portion of the video and watch CompTIA A+ Safety Procedures. It’s Don & Wes on this one. I think it’s such a great idea, and I’m so flattered that they copied us. They emulated us. It makes it a really easy way to watch and learn. Now, normally this is very affordable. Regular $57.00 a month or $570.00 if you get the 12 month package, they give you a little discount. Even then it’s a specular savings over going to a school for this, or even buying the tests & study materials. We’ll see what’s going on live right now on the studio. They are going to do “Getting started with direct access here”, that’s cool.

“We have a deal. If you use the offer code WW50, you’ll get 50% off your subscription for the life time of your account. That’s $28.50 a month, $285.00 a year, that’s not for the first week, month or year, but forever. You can learn everything you need, forever for 50% off.”

Leo: It’s really good, engaging, and fun to watch, much cheaper than going to I.T. boot camp, easy cancellation policy when you’re done, direct interaction with the hosts, 10 years of experience in e-learning. I want you to try it. Itpro.tv/ww Use the offer code WW50 to get 50% off for life. At I.T.pro.tv. Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, Windows Weekly on the air. Continuing on with our litany of fabulous stuff.

Paul: It is a litany.

Leo: It’s a litany.

Paul: It’s usually associated with something bad isn’t it?

Leo: no…..

Paul: complaints….

Leo: Oh maybe, it’s not only complaints although here’s one Mozilla’s killing Firefox for Metro. They still do desktop Windows, right? I don’t think that’s a reflection on Metro though? Maybe it is.

Paul: OK, so they say it is obviously. Some people are suggesting that there are problems with Windows, that Mozilla does things that maybe this reflects the growing irrelevance of their browser and etc. I guess there are two sides to take, It’s hard from the standpoint of a windows 8 user to feel good about this either way and the one thing I tried to point out in my own write up about it is that it’s easy to complain when companies don’t support your stuff, you know we were talking about Sonos, windows phone for example, but when they actually do support your platform and nobody uses it that’s kind of tough. That said honestly if I was going to blame anyone, I think I’d have to blame Microsoft in this case because this isn’t just a metro app, it’s sort of a metro browser app and browser apps in metro are severally limited by design. I have no idea. They’ve explained it, I can’t tell you anything that makes sense; they are just restricting the way that web browsers work in the metro environment

Leo: is that security? It must be security.

Paul: I’m sure that must be one of the reasons…

Leo: Browsers are the vector for most issues in a computer.

Paul: Yes, and certainly they want Metro not to be the wild west that the desktop environment is in Windows and all that kind of stuff, I got that, but I think at some point you’re just artificially limiting the platform, and harming the users by not letting them do the things they want to do. There are decent versions of Chrome and IOS and things like that. This seems like something that should be better than it is.

Leo: I think really it’s more of a reflection on the kind of people who use Metro.

Paul: What are those kinds of people? What are you trying to say?

Leo: Dummies. No, seriously it’s the same thing with the iPad, there are many 3^rd party browsers on the iPad nobody uses it. You use IE. If you’re using Metro you use IE.

Mary Jo: You know, I’m one of those people who wanted a choice, and the reason I did was because I really wasn’t working very well, the Metro version, with IE11. It’s gotten a lot better I can say in the past months, but if I had a choice, especially Chrome in Metro, I would use that.

Leo: No Chrome either for Metro.

Paul: No, and did they comment about this publically? I know they complained about it at one point.

Mary Jo: Google did? Yeah they complained

Paul: I can’t remember if they ever came out and said it, but I know the one thing they have said about Windows 8, they released the google app and they basically said this is it, we’re not doing anything else.

Mary Jo: I use the google search app in Metro and it’s really handy.

Leo: Why don’t you like IE? What’s wrong with IE?

Mary Jo: Initially when IE11 came out with the Metro version, it was hanging a lot, like you’d get these blank white pages even on really popular sites because of the way these sites were coded and it wasn’t recognizing IE 11 I guess. And because of how Microsoft’s doing white listing and all that now and people can submit non-working sites for inclusion in their list, it’s better. Much better. But if you go to smaller sites, not mainstream sites; like I go to a lot of cooking sites and a lot of times it just hangs or the site doesn’t come up, things break in the site. I’m not blaming Microsoft, but I can tell you it’s not a great experience.

Paul: There’s a certain kind of web experience that doesn’t work well on touch based browsers and some websites I’ve found this; a year ago today when I would have been looking for a car, I spent a lot of time on car manufacture websites and I remember a lot of the sites didn’t work well with touch because on a regular browser, you would have moved the mouse over something and a big menu would have come down and then you could have selected like a car model from a big grid. You can’t do that kind of thing with a touch, so that’s the car makers not understanding how to properly handle this world but it was like all of them, a lot of sites. And I remember a year ago that was something I was testing and it was a huge problem on the surface.

Mary Jo: I still have mixed feelings about the URL bar being at the bottom like it is on Metro IE. My eye always immediately goes to the top, waiting for it to show up.

Leo: It doesn’t make good sense just to arbitrarily change where it is.

Paul: No, it’s not arbitrarily, where you would hold a tablet; it’s where your thumbs are.

Leo: I get it.

Mary Jo: so it’s great on a touch tablet, not so great on a PC especially if you’re using it with a mouse.

Leo: That’s why Apple did it that way on the iPad because it’s better that way

Paul: That’s interesting; I’ll give a compliment to Microsoft and the mobile version of IE. When I use an iPad and I have to move my finger all the way to the top to go back, I actually find that to be a pain in the butt. I think that’s terrible. And there’s another thing I think is actually pretty wonderful, the modern version of IE, you can swipe on the screen to go back to the previous page. I find myself on the iPad constantly doing that. It doesn’t do anything because you have to go tap on the “go back” button like you do on a regular web browser.

Leo: I think that really it’s not the failure of Firefox or the fault of Microsoft, I think that people just use the built in browser, and at least you can change the default browser on Metro, you can’t even change it on the iPad. But what is the experience like, because I’ve never tried it, of changing the default browser?

Paul: It’s terrible, it’s stupid. There’s just no way we could explain this to you, it’s just so dumb. If you change the default browser, you can’t even use the metro version of value anymore. It’s SO dumb. It’s terrible. That whole system is broke.

Leo: So I think this makes sense, the future of the 3^rd party of metro browser wasn’t right to begin with. I commend Firefox for attempting it.

Mary Jo: I think a lot of people didn’t even know the Beta of the Firefox browser existed.

Leo: We told them but—

Mary Jo: Well, our listeners knew, but-

Paul: The usage was incredibly small.

Leo: Yeah, that’s why they stopped.

Mary Jo: Like 1000 people or something.

Leo: Really! Was it that small? That’s bad.

Paul: It was something where they had data for their desktop versions and it was I don’t want to say billions, but it was some crazy number…

Leo: I’m sure it was. When you’re an open source project, actually any business, but when you’re an open source project you don’t devote resources to something nobody uses, unless those particular people want to keep it alive. That’s the weird thing about developing Firefox on a platform like Windows8 Metro. It’s kind of hard for it to be a real open source project. That’s as close to a commercial product as you can get.

Paul: The closed platform?

Leo: Android wear. Where? Right on your wrist, that’s where or on your eyes. Google has announced that they’re going to have an SDK support Wearables with the android operating system. Motorola already has one that looks kind of neat, the Moto 360. LG is going to make one too, these will be coming soon. Google did not say they would be making one. I bring that up because Microsoft was the first to do those kinds of things right?

Paul: Yes they were.

Leo: Spot watch. I have a spot watch.

Paul: before there was a spot watch, I had a Timex data sync-

Leo: Data link, yeah.

Paul: And you had to hold the watch in front of the screen and the screen would give you this- sort of a wave. It was something that would give you (* a buzz) like a seizure if you weren’t careful.

Leo: and you know why that went out of business? Because everyone went to LCD screens, you couldn’t do that with them. You had to have a CRT.

Paul: Right, because it used the interval blanking.

Leo: Or else these weren’t fast enough to do that with.

Paul: those were the days. I lost my watch on the Salt River outside of Phoenix anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

Leo: I had a spot watch, I had a data Lync, I’ve always liked the idea and I’m waiting for the ….

Paul: I’ve always like the idea, but problem is the watches they made were really big, so you’d have this gigantic thing on your wrist, and the spot watches had black & white, really tiny resolutions.

Leo: The Moto 360 is actually kind of attractive to me.

Paul: I like the google demo video’s, they have a circle version. The square ones look like the giant spot, but the circle one looks kind of cool.

Leo: It looks pretty thick, but at least it is round.

Paul: They have a round UI you can see on this picture, it’s attractive, and it looks nice.

Leo: Basically it looks like their doing squared circles, or circle squares.

Paul: Googles going to get to the point that if it knows your schedule and you’re going down the wrong tunnel of the subway or something it will actually tug on your arm to move you in the right direction—because they’re just that creepy….

Leo: So that’s basically just a google now card, with the edges cut off. What’s interesting, I thought when I saw the watch face oh that’s an actual physical watch face, but apparently not, it’s a screen? That way it looks like a wrist watch, it’s got analog dial, but they can do so much more. And here’s the turn by turn, isn’t that cool. I notice he’s riding a bicycle.

Paul: Yeah, no problem looking down and reading that. Leo: And I love how it can look like a regular watch to the untrained eye.

Paul: I told you my kind of gag about –there’s a lot of cell phone and now smart phone kind of etiquette issues, right? And a lot of companies now you go to a meeting and they don’t want people looking down at your computers even, looking down at tablets & phones. So they’ll tell people, don’t do that, can’t do that, don’t even bring it to the meeting. But, if there’s anything that signals to people that you’re over what their talking about more than looking at a watch, I don’t know what it is.

Leo: I will be in line to buy one to be honest. I wasn’t all that excited about anything else I’ve seen, certainly not the galaxy gear watch.

Mary Jo: What about the Pebble, you didn’t like that one?

Leo: You know I bought it as a kick starter, so I was very early on that and I had it for a while, but I couldn’t really bring myself to wear it because it just really didn’t look that good. Now it did have the time face and all that stuff. I think google now cards are actually…..

Paul: What sells this is google; Samsung maybe. If Samsung had any class, they could pull this off. Apple was a company that could pull this off. Google obviously is. The platform maker is the right company to do it.

Leo: So they’re going to have a Google wear SDK then others will make them. Everybody and their brother said we’re doing a watch too because of Apple; I think. The rumor, never confirmed by Apple that they were doing an iWatch. Is Microsoft thinking about coming back into this space? Or have they learned their lessons?

Mary Jo: Nope, the rumor is they’re coming back in the space at some point.

Leo: See, we told you watches are going to be big.

Mary Jo: Although you know, I’m going to be curious how they come back into the space like exactly what form this takes because everyone’s assuming it’s got to be a watch but I’m not so sure it has to be a watch. I mean, it could be some other kind of wrist devise that maybe is or is not a watch, I don’t know. The reason I’m saying it like that is because there’s a team inside the operating system division at Microsoft that Alex Kipman is heading and it’s a Wearables, I don’t know what other kind of devises, but Wearables mostly and there’s also supposedly work happening in the devises side of Microsoft on some kind of a wearable thing too. And we already know they’re doing the Fortaleza glasses which are the augmented reality glasses that are supposed to work with Kinect and Xbox. So they’re doing Wearables. The question is when do those come out? Do they have to wait for Kratana to come out, which I would think if they’re going along the Google model right?

Paul: I do think voice is something that helps sell this although there’s a scene in the Google promo video that is emblematic for everything I hate about this kind of technology. Which is some guy is on a bus full of people, surrounded by people, gets some alert on his watch, and then starts talking to it. You know, screw that guy on the bus. Seriously, like thank you for respecting the public space we’re all in. It’s like those guys that use to have those walkie-talkie types of conversations on their cell phones because It’s bad enough that I have to listen to your side of the conversation, I want to listen to the guy on the other end calling from Normandy while he storms the beaches to get the Nazis’ out of France or whatever. Like I don’t understand what possesses people to do stuff like that in public, and this just creates another avenue for people to be ignorant which I hate.

Leo: I just don’t think anyone’s going to put a microphone & speaker on a watch. I don’t know, maybe they will. That’s kind of weird.

Paul: You look like a crazy person you know, like people with the blue-tooth, walking down the street, blah, blah, blah.

Leo: We’re used to it now.

Paul: Jerks-

Leo: Talking into your watch…

Paul: I just want to grab that thing off his ear and stomp it into the ground. Problem solved, move on to the next.

Mary Jo: So many people in New York talk to themselves, it’ll just be normal here.

Leo: Are we really ready for people to be looking at their watch that much? I think it feels a little passive aggressive doesn’t it.

Paul: See if I was that woman next to him, I would have upended that cake on to the floor of the bus, and I would have been like “Look, now you know I’m here”.

Mary Jo: Remember that agent watch that is a kick starter project? Kishware on the twitter is reminding me of this. The one was secret labs and house of horology that supposedly has a dot net micro frame work in it right?

Paul: Just like the original spot watch.

Mary Jo: I think that’s what it has inside, I may be wrong about that. But that was something, Scott Hanselman was a big backer of that and yes, dot net micro framework isn’t it. You can write for it with visual studio.

Paul: I think Google’s going to get this one right. The Google now stuff actually works really well. It’s got that creepy thing going on, but it is amazing.

Leo: It’s what I’m convinced Google now was invented for.

Paul: They are going to get this right, there’s no doubt about it. I hope to see some watches that look just like a band though. If you look, like a fit bit; Instead of having that gigantic circle or rectangle thing on it, just have it be the band.

Leo: Well did you like the galaxy gear fit?

Paul: Yes, that one I’m actually a little bit interested in because it does that fitness tracking stuff I think that’s more a priory than having yet another device that tells me the time.

Leo: And it’s kind of a curved thing that looks more attractive.

Paul: You’ve seen the goofy Apple mock-up’s for the curved IOS icons going along the curb.

Leo: Yes, that’s what it looks like. Alright, we’ve got some picks of the week coming up, tips of the week, beer, and enterprise, all of that stuff. Hadoop moment, I think that would be fun, Mary Jo Foley’s Hadoop moment.

Mary Jo: Hadoop weekly, that’s your next show.

Leo: We could do Hadoop weekly; it would have a very small audience, but valuable audience, of Data minors. You know, actually speaking of data, if you think about it, what’s among most important data to you? What your money’s doing, right? And the problem is, it’s kind of hard to figure it all out, even if you’re beginning in your financial life, your financial data is all over the place. Bank accounts, credit cards, but then you add a mortgage & some investments and pretty soon you have four or five sites you have to visit, each with a different log in. It’s kind of hard to keep track of. Personal capital solves that problem. Personal Capital takes all your financial information including all your investments, your retirement, your mortgage your credit cards, your bank accounts, puts them all on one page. A beautiful dashboard so you can see it, Looks great by the way on a Windows8 tablet. They also have apps that you can use. And then you can see where your money is going in your investments, and whether your investments are properly planned, whether you’re paying too much in fees. You’ll save money. Best of all, personal capital is free, visit personalcapital.com/windows right now to get started. They’ll help you invest in things that make sense for your financial situation. Some people say “Oh it doesn’t matter to me, I’m too young” No, the time to start doing it is when you’re in your 20’s. The younger you are the better and if you haven’t started doing it yet, maybe you’d better get going here. Mutual fund fee calculator, 401k fee & analyzer. You’ll reap the benefits. Real-time updates, absolutely free plus get unbiased financial advice and fraud protection too. It is personalcapital.com/windows visit it today, sign up, it’s absolutely free. personalcapital.com/windows. We thank them so much for their support of windows weekly. Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley. Time for us to get our tip and software pick of the week, Mr. Thurrott.

Paul: This is from a reader and a listener William Alfred. A very timely tip, we didn’t cover it this week here but I’m sure you could have caught it on “This week at Google”. Obviously that was aimed probably primary at drop box but there are a number of these kinds of cloud services out there now, and with this kind of stuff happening, different deals, different places, people may want to try different services, but getting data from one service to another is kind of problematic so if you are a drop box user and you have lots of stuff there & google drops prices or maybe you want to use one drive because you’re kind of a windows guy, getting the data from one to another is the blocker for a lot of people. I’ve done this in the past, kind of manually download the music, that kind of desktop software then copy over to the new service thing. It’s kind of laborious but actually there’s a service called mover. I’d never heard of it, but it’s a mover IO. It works with a bunch of different services including the Microsoft services like Onedrive and Onedrive for business, but also a Dropbox, box, google drive, Amazon S3 and lots of other ones. It allows you do this back & forth copying of data between the services so if you have a lot of data and are concerned about how you might do that; this is a potentially viable option. I should say I have not actually tried it yet but I thought this was a timely thing to mention especially in light of the Google drive.

Leo: This would be great for me because I keep all my photos on Smug Mug. I could move them over to sky drive.

Paul: And it supports FSTP so that adds a huge number of sites, including your own.

Leo: Cool. How much is it? Is it expensive?

Paul: Let’s find out. Leo, are you looking?

Leo: I don’t know I’m looking. I don’t see a price.

Paul: Maybe you have to join first.

Leo: I don’t see a price here about mover. Migrations, why this works, how this works…I bet they charge you for storage or something like that. They probably have a clever way of doing this.

Paul: Maybe just a onetime fee, I mean if you have enough stuff up there, I’m sure it’s worthwhile. A lot of these services are aimed at individuals.

Leo: Good tip, I want to take a look at it. Your software pick of the week? Oh, actually you have something else too, want to mention that?

Paul: There’s a guy named Bob Tabor, he does instructional videos for Microsoft and he does a bunch of different series. Some of them I’m aware of and have watched, he’s done two sets for Windows phone 7, one for Windows phone 8 and then for Windows and his core class is C# Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners. This is now brand new, so he’s done a new version of this that just came out in the past month. If you’re looking to learn how to program, it’s so much better than it was 20-30 years ago, back whenever it was when I learned how to program. I would have loved to have this kind of thing available at the time. This is such an easy way in and this guy is fantastic. He’s just a great instructor and has got really the right kind of rapport for this kind. It’s just a free video course to learn how to program in C#. It’s on the channel 9 website; you have to definitely check it out.

Leo: Twenty-five parts, that’s crazy.

Paul: Yes, absolutely free.

Leo: Microsoft virtual accadamy.com on channel 9 for absolute beginners. Is Visual Studio Express free?

Paul: Yes.

Leo: So basically you use the free visual studio. You know there’s no reason for anybody at this point not to have the things they want, it’s all out there, and you just need internet access. Very cool thank you for sharing that with us.

Leo: Somebody was telling me that Movers is a buck a gigabyte which is a little pricy.

Paul: A buck a gigabyte, huh, that’s a little pricey.

Leo: yes, I don’t know if that’s accurate. If that’s the case you’ll want to use it a lot.

Paul: If it’s that expensive, you might want to just sink them down to your PC and drag & drop. That works, I’ve done that.

Leo: I wonder if it’s a buck a gigabyte for your basic data set and then you can move it to a variety of places. Software pick of the week, I guess we kind of touched on it, but we’ll mention it again.

Paul: So there’s a bunch of extra stuff going on here with Windows; so the software pick of the week is OneNote. It’s free now everywhere, so you can get it on Windows desktop, the Windows metro version. Windows phone, it comes with Mac, Android, tablets, iPhone, iPad and on the web Office.com, Office365.com. But there are a bunch of other things that are happening around OneNote with regards to this new freebie release. There’s something called the OneNote Clipper. Maybe you know the term for this kind of thing. It’s not a browser plug in, but one of those things that you drag it onto the tool bar and then it becomes a tool you can use.

Leo: It’s a book marklett.  

Paul: So Windows clipper is a book marklett. It works for IE, Chrome, Firefox & Safari on the Mac. It allows you to clip websites that you see so it will copy them automatically into OneNote.

Leo: That’s nice. So you see, they are building an eco-system to compete with Evernote that’s pretty obvious.

Paul: Yes, absolutely. There’s also a new app for Windows phone called Office Lens, this is your basic kind of use the camera to scan things type app. There are other Apps like this, including by the way some things that are built into Windows phone. You can read my free Windows phone book that explains that, but anyway, Office Lens does different types of documents. You can get a white board with a picture or a diagram, a document for text or business card. It adds the text of the thing to text search capability within OneNote, so if you scan in a receipt, you can search for the name of the restaurant or store and it will actually come up to that note where you took the picture. There’s a send email to note feature, what you have to do is go to onenote.com, sign up for it, you need a Microsoft account and what that allows you to do, is from that Microsoft account, email me at window.com. Literally m e. That thing that you emailed will be added to your window notes. So you can get stuff into OneNote for email now. Maybe the biggest bit of this is they’ve added extensibility to OneNote and so now OneNote is a service. It’s a platform, they’ve got a lot of 3^rd party apps and hardware products that work with it like neat scanners, Doxie Mobile Scanners, the Livescribe pen, Feedly and Weave News Reader and many others. One of them is that IFTTT. (If This Then That.)

Leo: I Love “If This Then That”

Paul: It’s awesome, and the type of programmatic that frankly Microsoft should have built into Windows. I love this kind of thing. If you do not use IFTTT then it’s basically kind of a web based copy and paste if you will, but it works with Events so if this happens over here, do this over here. There’s a bunch of those for Windows now including someone built a “If Paul Thurrott posts anything put it in Windows” I’m actually in there somewhere. Rod Trent whom I work with at Windows IT Pro wrote a great article about using this tool to get Windows IT Pro content up into OneNote as well and I have a link to that in the show notes as well.

Leo: I might have to look at exporting all my stuff from Evernote. I’m sure there’s a simple way of importing it into OneNote, I’ll have to look, but this is awesome.

Paul: It’s just a lot of stuff. OneNote has been great, it’s always been great but it’s amazing how this thing has kind of turned the spigot on and there’s really a lot of stuff going on and it’s not just what we’re going to do for you *(off the Mac)* It’s a lot of stuff happening here that’s related to this new release, so it’s kind of a big one.

Leo: Is there a way to import into notebooks?

Paul: To import from Evernote?

Leo: Well, Evernote I can export out as PDF’s or RTF I guess.

Paul: I don’t know, I’ll look into that.

Leo: I don’t see anything on the Mac on that.

Paul: It seems like that’s the type of thing they should be doing if they’re not.

Leo: I’ll be honest, the nice thing about Evernote is of course this eco system and it’s somewhat simpler. It’s missing a lot of features of OneNote, and maybe to me, OneNote feels more like a battleship that can do everything you know, an all in one thing.

Paul: Sometimes only a nuclear weapon will do you know, Leo.

Leo: I’m really impressed. Mary Jo Foley, time for your enterprise pick of the week.

Mary Jo: My enterprise pick of the week is the Microsoft remote desktop apps. The reason I’m picking them this week is Microsoft did another update to these apps for Android, Mac OS, and iOS, this week so now you’re up to version 8.0.5 of these if you go to the stores to get them. The Remote desktop is what lets you connect to remote Windows PC’s and access your resources on those PC’s. It’s actually one of the top 10 apps in the apple store right now as of today. Which is crazy, So OneNote for iPad, this app, the updated remote desktop and OneDrive for iPad I believe are all in the top 10 apps in the apple store as of this week; Three Microsoft apps. The weird thing about remote desktop apps though is, there still is not one for Windows phone, and everybody is wondering “when is this coming”. It is definitely coming, Microsoft has said but I asked again this week and they said “We have nothing to share”. We don’t know if it’s going to come after Windows phone 8.1 is out, of if it will even somehow be part of Windows phone 8.1. I haven’t heard that that is the case but you never know. But these other apps have all been updated this week. All of them have bug fixes, stability improvements and a whole bunch of different things mixed into these updates so you might want to check it out if you’re someone using these apps, already. I have a bonus pick too. We’ve talked about this guy before; He works at Microsoft; named Eric Ligman, if you search him on the web. We’ve talked about him publishing a lot of free e-book links before on all topics and this week he’s got a really great post up on his blog about Office 365 resources. So it’s a whole blog post full of links for free Office 365 books, free tutorials and courses and trainings. It’s got everything you need if you’re just starting to learn Office 365 and you don’t want to spend a ton of extra money. He’s got them all assembled on his blog. So check out Eric Ligman’s blog, I think his title is Sales Excellence Manager at Microsoft. He does a lot of great resource stuff for the community, especially small business Community.

Leo: Good. Ligman. Your code name of the week?

Mary Jo: Code name pick of the week is Hekaton and I made this code name pick because this week Microsoft released to Manufacturing SQL Server 2014 and the main feature in that release is the in memory OLTP engine that’s code named Hekaton. And originally when I looked up “What is Hekaton” looking for the source of the code name, there is three things that I found all referencing Hekaton. One is its Greek for a factor of 100 and that makes a lot of sense because Microsoft says this data base release can improve your performance by a factor of 30. Not 30% but a factor of 30. So it’s a huge performance game because of this OLTP engine that’s inside. The other two meanings were a giant mythical creature and there is also a Dominican Thrash band named Hekaton. In case you wanted to know. I don’t think that’s the origin of the code name, the 3^rd one, but I think the other two are. Microsoft is going to make SQL server 2014 generally available as of April 1 so if you’re someone looking for the latest greatest release of SQL server; it’s on its way.

Leo: And finally, a Hekaton of beer. A Heck of great beer.

Mary Jo: I could not believe last week I forgot to do a St. Patrick’s beer pick. What kind of an Irish woman am I?

Leo: Ach, Mary Jo Foley, you failed us again.

Mary Jo: I did, so I have to make up this week for it, and I decided that of course you could drink a Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day, but why not drink a craft beer, so I picked a beer that we have quite often, it’s O’Hara’s Irish Stout. It’s just a nice basic all-purpose stout from Ireland. It’s just an easy drinking, 4percenter, it’s “Sessionable” as we used our word last week. And that was one of my beers on St. Patrick’s Day this week.

Leo: Ah, O’Hara’s Irish Stout; It’ll make you a man

Paul: Or a woman.

Mary Jo: You know what; there are a ton of alternatives to Guinness that are traditional Irish dry stouts. There are a lot of them.

Leo: Don’t drink Guinness. Friends don’t let friends drink Guinness.

Paul: I was disappointed on St. Patrick’s Day that no one asked me why I wasn’t wearing green because my reply was going to be “I’m Irish, I don’t have to wear green.”

Leo: That’s right, it’s green in me blood. Me blood is green. Me heart is green. Well, it’s too late for St. Patrick’s Day, but still, it’s never too late to have a beer.

Mary Jo: It’s never too late for a beer, or too early.

Leo: We’re going to have some beer, we’re going to find some good beers to have; I’ll consult Liz and make sure we have some good beers for you. When you visit us April 4 in the studio, don’t forget the BUILD is coming up to San Francisco, and on the 27^th in just a few days something else is going on in San Francisco. We will do live coverage at 10a.m Pacific of “ the whatever” Microsoft announces. It sounds like it’s going to be something big and important.

Mary Jo: Maybe we’ll have some more info by the time of Windows Weekly next week. It’ll be one day before the announcement.

Leo: Mary Jo Foley writes about this stuff all the time, she is the queen of the scoop; you can thank her for pushing Microsoft stock price over $40.00 a share. It’s the Foley effect. Paul Thurrott writes for the super site for Windows, he has no effect on Microsoft whatsoever.

Paul: And that’s whatsoever.

Mary Jo: Only negative effect.

Leo: Supersite.com

Paul: Click to take negative effect for the previous decade if you don’t mind.

Leo: Thank you Paul, thank you Mary Jo we’ll see you next Wednesday, we do the show at 11 a.m. pacific, 2 p.m. eastern time 1800 UTC our new time UTC because we are in summertime now and I guess it’ll be the first show of the spring next week. Thank you so much guys, we’ll see you next time on Windows Weekly!