Windows Weekly 384 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: It’s time for Windows Weekly. Paul
Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, they’re both here. We’re going to talk about the
newest Windows Phones. Paul has some reviews so he’ll give you the lowdown.
Also, the gotcha for Satya, CEO Satya Nadella had something to say about raises
for women. Mary Jo Foley’s take. And
a whole lot more, coming up next on Windows Weekly.
Net casts
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This is
Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley. Episode 384, recorded October
15, 2014.
Gotcha Nadella!
Windows
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and enter WINDOWS. It’s time for Windows Weekly, the show where we cover the
latest news from Microsoft with two of the most astute, connected, vibrant and
exciting Microsoft watchers in the business today.
Paul Thurrott: Wow. And then also Paul and…
Leo: And Paul and Mary Jo. I was thinking of
Doctor Pizza at the time. No, Paul Thurrott from the super site for Windows,
winsupersite.com. And Ms. Mary Jo Foley. Now Paul
wants to be taller than you, Mary Jo. He’s adjusting his camera. There, now you
match. Mary Jo Foley from allaboutmicrosoft.com. Don’t
touch it now. It’s perfect. This is not a competition, ladies and gentlemen.
It’s good to have you both. Things have calmed down in the Microsoft arena. Merely Satya Nadella talking smack about ladies. And that’s
about it.
Paul: Mary Jo, just to be clear, you owe me a
drink.
Leo: What did you guys have a bet?
Mary Jo Foley: Yep.
Leo: So Paul and Adam Curry, I mean John and
Adam Curry had a bet that I would defend Satya Nadella. Adam Curry said I would
defend Satya Nadella. And now you guys had a bet, what that I would bring it up
before we even got started? Was that your bet?
Mary Jo: Yep.
Paul: Mary Jo had an animated discussion
before the show about which story should be the top story.
Leo: And Mary Jo, what was your feeling on
this?
Mary Jo: Docker.
Leo: Docker?
Mary Jo: Docker CPU
comes to Windows Server. I actually did think that should be the top story.
Leo: You thought that should be the top
story? I still don’t even know what it means but I’m glad you thought that was
the lead.
Mary Jo: You’ll find out later. That’s a teaser.
Leo: Then Mr. Thurrott, you thought that Mr.
Nadella should be the lead?
Paul: Yep.
Leo: The fact that he hates women. Well so
you compromised and you buried the lead.
Paul: Yes.
Mary Jo: Those are even the words that Paul
thought you might say.
Leo: Man I think you should get a gallon of
beer now.
Paul: Don’t put this at the top. He’s going
to mention it right out front and he’s going to say you’ve buried the lead.
Leo: I am so predictable. I’m kind of
disappointed.
Paul: No, I don’t think of it as predictable.
I think of it as familiar and it’s understandable.
Mary Jo: Paul thought he could be the lead too.
Leo: You know it’s funny because what I said
on TWiT on Sunday was I don’t even want to cover this story because I feel like
it’s a little bit of gotcha journalism. Unless you think that this is, and this
is what I said.
Mary Jo: I think that’s what Mary Jo’s argument
is.
Mary Jo: It is.
Leo: Unless you think this reflects kind of
a deep-rooted bias, an institutional bias that Microsoft, or with the CEO of
Microsoft, I don’t feel like he…
Paul: By the way, I waited over the weekend
before I wrote about it. And the reason I did is because it’s too easy to
knee-jerk something like this. And the woman that was interviewed, I can’t
think of her name.
Leo: The Microsoft director.
Mary Jo: Maria Klawe.
Paul: Yes, she said she mentioned that it was
perhaps a Nubian cultural thing and he didn’t mean it toward women, but rather
toward anyone.
Leo: Karma.
Paul: The karma is kind of an Indian
cultural…
Leo: It’s a Buddhist notion or a Hindu
notion, I don’t know which.
Paul: Okay, whatever. Like I said to Mary Jo
last week, you don’t have to be standing in front of a crowd of women in the
event celebrating women. And be asked a question about what women should do
with regards to asking for a raise. I think 99% out of 100 people are going to
get that one right. In fact it would have been very easy for him to say
something basic. That he would have been let out of the room to cheers. So I
think it’s newsworthy that someone who was so careful and calculated. Someone whose very utterances can change the stock price of
Microsoft. Are you okay, Mary Jo?
Leo: They’re coming through the wall for
her.
Mary Jo: I don’t know if you can hear what’s
going on.
Leo: I’ll tell you who hates women, those
guys next door.
Mary Jo: Oh my goodness.
Leo: You know it’s not as loud to us as it
is to you, Mary Jo. So don’t worry.
Paul: I think the ultimate result of this
will be very positive. In other words, the reason he went there was to draw
attention to the fact that there is great in quality, tech in particular, when
it comes to women and income, and raises. Money earned, so
forth. And he may have went about it in not
exactly the best possible way. But you know what, Microsoft’s going to be pretty focused on that, isn’t it.
Leo: Accidently, he made that…
Paul: Mission accomplished.
Leo: John C. Dvorak said he might be right.
Except lawsuits now from women who might have been passed over.
Paul: When he speaks, not only are his words
analyzed closely by many people, but like I said, he can literally impact the
stock price of Microsoft in very horrible ways if he’s not careful. It makes
the whole thing look…
Leo: It was kind of a strikingly tone-deaf.
Paul: He’s so eloquent normally. I think for
that reason alone it’s interesting.
Leo: I feel like it’s gotcha journalism because I can’t imagine that that’s his actual belief.
Anybody, male or female shouldn’t ask for a raise if they feel they deserve
one. That’s it.
Paul: But somebody asked him a question point
blank and he said that. He didn’t say oh that was a stupid response, let me
correct that. He literally let that one hang in the air and left. Maria Klawe
fixed it.
Leo: He corrected it on Twitter.
Mary Jo: He corrected it pretty quickly.
Leo: Because his PR people said Mr. Nadella.
Mary Jo: Yea, and even Maria Klawe who was
interviewing him said, wow I don’t usually disagree with you but dude, what?
Leo: And I’m a director on the board of your
company and you’re saying that. We may have a problem here, Mr. Nadella.
Paul: Anyway, I think it’s newsworthy. And it
certainly is an interesting and pertinent topic. His hatred
of women. No I mean the notion of inequality in technology.
Leo: Okay, so let’s nail this down right
now. You guys know someone you’ve interviewed him, Mary Jo. Do you think he has
a bias against women in the workplace?
Mary Jo: No, I do not. In fact since he’s become
CEO they added a woman to the board so that changed the ratio of the board a
little bit. And they added a women to the senior
leadership counsel at Microsoft. They just published their stats and were very
public about the fact they don’t feel they’ve done enough. They want to get
more women engineers involved. His actions show he’s very attune to this and he
made a huge mistake on the stage and knew it, corrected it, put a memo out. And
we’re done now.
Paul: He’s Indian.
Leo: I don’t want to bring that in.
Paul: His presence alone as CEO of Microsoft
is notable.
Leo: Well that’s true. There’s diversity
there. And the chairman of the board is an African American. And 29% of
Microsoft employees are female.
Paul: Which by the way
actually isn’t that horrible. I think the number is worse for engineers.
Leo: I’m sure it’s worse.
Mary Jo: 17%.
Paul: Without knowing from the outside you
would assume that men outnumber women greatly in these types of jobs.
Leo: Enough said. I didn’t mean to change
your order of stories.
Paul: And it’s because women are so bad at
math.
Mary Jo: That explains it greatly.
Leo: Actually the only reason I brought it
up is because I want to name this show Gotcha Nadella. And now I’ve done it so
I’m going to okay this show’s…
Paul: What have you done?
Leo: I’m going to name this show Gotcha
Nadella. That was somebody in the chat room. Thank you.
Paul: My problem is that, Mary Jo knows my
wife. So she knows I’m married to an extremely intelligent and independent
woman who, let’s face it, doesn’t need me in the slightest. And this is kind of
a constant source of humor because my wife is incredible. And I understand that
women are incredible. I find this to be…
Leo: Oh, careful.
Paul: I worship women.
Leo: I love the girls. I’ve got binders full
of women.
Paul: I’ve got rooms of them.
Leo: It’s a known topic. I’m just trying to
say.
Mary Jo: It is.
Paul: Mary Jo knows where I’m coming from.
Leo: Look, my CEO is a woman who happens to
be my partner, my fiancé, soon to be my wife. And she’s about the strongest
woman ever. She cracks the whip. And there’s no doubt. If I want a raise, guess
who I go to. Her.
Mary Jo: You have to be the one…
Leo: She already told me, work on your karma
kit cause you’re not getting s**t today. As it turns out, men in this place
need to work the karma. Alright enough! I think that the really important
question is does this reflect an institutional bias or a bias in the part of
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Mary Jo Foley, who knows. And I think you made an excellent point and we’ll just leave it there. And
Paul, you’re absolutely right. Even if it did, it won’t from now on. So in a
way this is a good thing. It served as a very important question and now we
know. Girls, ask for a raise.
Paul: Not a horrible time to go work for
Microsoft. It’s like, remember when Jack in the Box had that scare where
people, I don’t know if they were dying or getting sick after they were eating
hamburgers at this restaurant 20 years ago. When something like that happens,
that’s the safest place in the world to eat after.
Mary Jo: It’s actually true.
Leo: I agree. In some ways these
conversations, otherwise what happens is it’s an undercurrent. And it’s good
to…
Paul: Leo, let’s talk about politics and
religion next.
Leo: No, please.
Paul: Here’s what I think.
Leo: You did see the story yesterday about
the Wells Fargo employee who sent an email to the CEO. He, much lower, saying
here’s my case for getting a $10,000 a year raise. And then he sent it to
everybody at the company, all 200,000 employees. I’m thinking that person is
not employed at Wells Fargo today.
Mary Jo: Probably not.
Paul: Well you see actually karma did work in
that case.
Leo: That’s an example, probably should have
asked for a raise from your immediate superior alone.
Mary Jo: Yea.
Leo: And no one else.
Paul: People can’t handle reply versus reply
to all in the email system. Same thing.
Leo: A little blame because there probably
are some magic email addresses. Most companies have magic email addresses that
go to everybody. So a little blame there. Should boys
ask for raises? Our topic next.
Paul: Should boys… no Leo, boys already made
too much.
Leo: Window 10, that’s a much more
interesting topic for our audience. I’m sure of it. You said one million people
have download that preview, the technical preview?
Wow.
Mary Jo: Yea.
Leo: That’s pretty amazing.
Mary Jo: Not bad.
Paul: I was going to let Mary Jo speak. I
think she’s still a little shell shocked from the first topic.
Mary Jo: No, I’m good.
Leo: One million people.
Mary Jo: Yea, one million people in ten days.
Not bad. Especially when they were warning people off of it and saying unless
you really know what you’re doing, this is not a consumer preview, not a
developer preview. It’s an enterprise preview. They still got a million people
downloading it.
Leo: People are really interested in this
stuff.
Mary Jo: They are.
Paul: And I think that supports your number.
Mary Jo: They said 200,000 pieces of user
feedback so far.
Leo: Yikes!
Paul: And not all of it was ridiculous like
replace the NT kernel with the current kernel.
Leo: Some of you are slackers. If they have
a million users and 200,000 pieces of feedback, they need to hurry up. What
about the other 800,000 pieces.
Paul: Obviously most people won’t provide any
feedback. I think everyone knows that. But I think a lot of the feedback is the
kind of liking something on Facebook. Where people are looking at the feedback
others have provided and perhaps providing additional information if it’s a
feature request. Or just at least liking it, plus-one’ing it or whatever the
system is. So they can get a sense of what most people want to see happen.
Leo: Right. And so it’s
interesting that people who heard about the keystroke logger apparently were
not scared off.
Mary Jo: Exactly. That story died down after a
bit luckily.
Leo: It just shows you, I wouldn’t
necessarily combine it with some conclusion about how people are just dying to
get out of Windows. I don’t think it’s that either. Look at people love rumors
about the next thing. Every tech blog knows you want to get hits. You talk
about something coming up. People want to be in the know. They love that.
Mary Jo: You want to say you’ve tried it. People
are like what do you think of Windows 10. Well, I like
it, or I hated it.
Leo: Right. So how is that going to work?
Are they going to update it to the point where it’s a consumer preview? I don’t
know. What is the road map on this?
Mary Jo: It’s a little baked.
Paul: We have theories. I think that’s the
way it’s engineered to work. But it’s a technical preview. This is one of those
things. If you have to ask, then you probably aren’t qualified to be using
this. If you can’t handle wiping this thing out and starting over again at the
consumer preview at the final release, you shouldn’t be doing it. It really is
that simple
Leo: You’ll assume that will require it,
right? It always has in the past.
Mary Jo: I wonder though.
Leo: You don’t think so?
Mary Jo: I wonder because they’re doing it
differently this time. And they’re going to give updates throughout the
preview. And even when the preview ends and it’s final, they’re going to keep
doing updates. So I wonder if there’s going to be a way where they say you know
what just keep using what you’ve got. And we’re just going to keep refining it.
Paul: I think there’s a good chance that will
work fine.
Leo: But don’t count on it!
Paul: Even on past betas, Microsoft has said
we’re not going to support upgrading to the final. It always kind of worked.
And people did it.
Leo: What’s different about how they’re
doing it this time that would change things?
Paul: We haven’t seen that part yet. If you
install this build, the first thing you’ll notice if you’ve been installing
Windows a lot. I think I’ve installed Windows 8 approximately 1,117 times or
something. The installer is literally the Windows 8.1 installer. There’s
nothing new. So the way it blasts the OS out of the disc has not changed at
least in this first preview. But there’s this new updating mechanism that we
haven’t seen yet. Because they haven’t provided anything
through it. I think everyone’s eager to see what that looks like. And
there’s this notion, and Mary Jo’s been talking about this through the
podcasts, that Microsoft is walking away from those big bang updates. And will
be slowly slipstreaming bits into the OS over time. That’s something they will
be doing during this pre-release program. We haven’t see what it looks like yet.
Mary Jo: There’s actually a page inside the
build that says preview build. How fast do you want to get the preview built?
And I don’t think that’s active yet but you can set it to fast, moderate, or
slow. You can change the branch where you’re getting the preview bits from.
Leo: Really?
Mary Jo: So there are all these new settings
that we haven’t had before. Before it’s like here’s your
developer and consumer preview. There’s nothing in between those two
things. And here’s your RTM. You’re done.
Paul: Those options mirror what Microsoft is
doing with Office 365 and its business customers. I don’t think this is really
a consumer feature per se, but in businesses you can’t just say look, this is
how it’s going to be. We’re going to blasting updates to everyone’s computers.
On the other hand, you can’t go to the other end of the spectrum which is
letting them do everything they’ve always been doing all along. Which was never provide any updates. And so they have these different
stages in between those two things. So when you sign up for
Office 365 today, I don’t remember the name of it, but it’s sort of a rapid
release program. Where if you want to, you can get
those updates more quickly. But if you don’t, you can put them off for
some amount of time. Not forever, but for some amount of time.
Mary Jo: There’s also the first release in
Office 365 so you can be in the earlier testing group. So you can get stuff
even earlier than everybody else.
Paul: I think the assumption on that side is
because most of it’s businesses, is that most of them
will not want that. They will want the ability to put it off and so forth. So
you have to explicitly go in and make that happen.
Mary Jo: And there will be a way if you really
don’t want the updates to be pushed to you quickly at all, you’ll be able to
say I only want the security updates. I don’t want any new features right now.
So they’re really very focused on letting the IT departments throttle this if
they want to. Which is good because if they didn’t do this,
nobody would want to test this or use it. Because a
lot of companies just can’t have that pushed to them all the time.
Paul: This is probably one of probably many
more that I can think of off the top of my head;
related issues that impact business customers. When I look at Windows, it’s not
just let’s make Windows 8 prettier and better. But business users aren’t
necessarily adopting touch-type interfaces, so they’re doing that kind of
stuff. Businesses don’t necessarily want their users connecting a Microsoft
account to their business account so they can download junk from the store. And
so they changed the app model and they changed the sign-in model so those
corporate sign ins from an active directory domain can
both serve as a connected account that can go to a store and you as a business
can regulate the types of apps that appear on that machine. All of these things
and many more-I just can’t think of this stuff off the top of my head-there’s a
lot of this stuff in Windows 10. There’s sort of a stepping back from the cliff
that was Windows 8 where it was very unilateral. You had to take it. This is
the way we’re doing it. And there’s a lot of that stuff we’re starting to see
in the technical preview particularly. They’re providing options for businesses
and I think that will help. It’s not just like hey it works with a keyboard and
mouse. It’s very obvious. This is other stuff too, that I think is even more important.
Leo: By the way, Paul’s shoulders are set a
little bit broader today because Joe Belfiore actually referred to him in his
blog post. Announcing the million downloads.
Paul: I don’t know why that’s a distinction
of any kind.
Leo: Paul, that’s a pretty big link. See
this article from Paul Thurrott! In his blog post.
Paul: But I know Joe. To me someone on Twitter
is like oh, a corporate vice president mentioned you in a blog. I’m like you
mean Joe?
Leo: So when I mock his haircut, you’re just
like calling him up and…
Paul: No I mock his haircut. He knows it too.
Leo: Other tidbits? Most of these people are
not running in VM which kind of surprised me. That seems like the safest way to
do it.
Paul: Actually you should click on that link
because that link-there’s a guy who’s very helpful to me, who-provided me a
script-based list of what are in fact the most popular requests that have gone
through the feedback system on the Windows 10 technical preview. Some of it is
really just silly stuff. Could you make the start menu more pretty? Oh,
whatever. A little bit is interesting.
Leo: Let us move or disable the new search
and/or task view button.
Paul: By the way that was one of the things I
wrote about. They have these two new buttons on the taskbar find but you can’t
remove them or move them. Or resize them, they take up
a lot of real estate. And by the way, first release I’m sure that’s something…
Leo: The second one is like what? Add a
little information?
Paul: I wrote it. I was going to say as I
wrote there though, you kind of want to make fun of that but again if this is
the type of thing people are worried about right now… that kind of shows you
that things aren’t so horrible.
Leo: 453 people said there should be a
little animation or transition when opening the start menu. What, it just pops
on the screen?
Paul: Does it? Yea, I guess so. And yet it’s
so fast Leo.
Mary Jo: It’s fast. Why would you care?
Paul: Could there be some puff of smoke? Fireworks?
Leo: I always turn off those things because
they slow you down.
Mary Jo: Agreed.
Leo: So those are the top two with more than
400 likes. 300 or more likes: make it easier to use a local account. That’s so
you don’t have to use your Microsoft account.
Paul: Except that, obviously most people say,
well I don’t need to use my Microsoft account. I’m not going to use apps
anyway, who cares?
Leo: That’s a memory from the early days of
Windows is what that is.
Paul: Well but you know what. I think what
people are misunderstanding is that the ability to use what Microsoft is now
calling a connected account. Because the Microsoft account is not in fact the
only account that’s going to work this way in Windows 10. Is basically
Microsoft bringing don’t let the capabilities of a domain account, work or
business account, down to consumers. It is the ability to; there’s all this
stuff built into this that’s wonderful. OneDrive syncing with
the file system automatically. The ability to see your
files even when they aren’t synced and to open them even when they’re not
synced. When they are synced, the ability to use those
things offline. All the excellent settings sync capabilities. But the
app model itself, more and more people are going to be running those apps. And
the way that apps work out in the world today is if you buy Adobe Photoshop-I
just ran into this-Elements, latest version; install it on one PC, type in your
little code. Good to go. I guess I installed the second PC and it said nope,
you’ve already installed it on too many PCs. The Windows store app model allows
you to install it on up to 81 PCs or some crazy number now. It’s basically
unlimited PCs. But the app purchase is tied to your account. It’s automatic.
You’re not typing in codes. It’s one of a thousand things that makes this such an excellent experience. It’s secure,
especially if you use two-step authentication. It just provides all this stuff.
It’s not about getting information from you or invading your privacy or any of
these silly things that people invent. It’s about bringing those
domain, central-management capabilities down to regular users in a way
that makes sense. I’m really surprised by the blow back on the Microsoft
account thing. I don’t get it.
Leo: Well what if you’re not online? What if
you’re in a nuclear submarine?
Paul: Then please, use a local account. I
guess. I don’t know what to say. It’s still there. If you want to use it, it’s
still there. By the way, if you want to use that, just use Windows 7. I don’t
get it.
Leo: I don’t think that’s the answer
Microsoft would like to give.
Paul: Come on, their answer is use the
Microsoft account and stop whining about nothing.
Leo: But if you’re not online, then you
can’t.
Paul: Who is the person that’s not online but
knows about Windows 10 and has to get it for their computer? I don’t understand
what you’re talking about. Yes, if you are living by the Amazon River and
cannot get online…
Leo: There are literally people who maybe
they installed it at work but then they go up to the cabin and now they’re
offline but they would like to still use it.
Paul: It doesn’t require you to be online, it
works fine offline.
Leo: Oh, you can use it offline?
Paul: Of course.
Leo: Okay, never mind.
Paul: I mean you have to be online the first
time you sign in just to make sure your password is correct.
Leo: Does it never time out? Like if I never
got back online, will it work?
Paul: It will be fine. It cannot require you to
get online.
Leo: The reason I want it is because my
Outlook password is really long and complicated. And I don’t want to have to
enter that each time. But of course they give you the PIN.
Paul: You want to sign into the machine and
have it work that way.
Leo: Right. But you still have the PIN
option, right? So what I do is I use my Microsoft account, which is 28 or 30…
and then I put a PIN and I use the PIN to log in.
Paul: Same combination I use on my luggage.
Leo: My ex-wife’s birthday. Is it the same for
you? Add tabs to file explorer.
Paul: Yea, okay.
Leo: I can’t access the charms say 296
people.
Paul: They based it on 29,000 people that
said hooray! That’s just a misunderstanding. They’re not always available.
Leo: But you have to do WINPC.
Paul: It’s a technical preview. They already
said we’re going to make this part.
Leo: Okay we’re going to stop with this one.
293 votes for make a beautiful boot screen.
Paul: I know. It’s the one thing I’ve always
felt ruins Windows.
Leo: Ruins it!
Paul: It boots so quick. I wouldn’t even call
it booting. It basically snaps awake. It’s actually a little shocking. I don’t
get people, Leo. I’m sure I mocked that one.
Leo: If you didn’t, I did. So updates every
month if you opt-in. If you flipped that switch. It’s
by default switched on, right?
Mary Jo: Right now you can’t even access those
more granular things.
Paul: There’s a bunch of little things that
are weird in Windows 10 just because it’s a technical preview. For example in
Windows 8.1, you get this crazy widescreen Bing search experience when you
search for anything. So your files are in there but there’s all this Bing stuff
in there. You can turn it off. It’s one of the things I do turn off in Windows
8. In Windows 10, if you search through the search button on the taskbar, when
that search thing comes up, there’s a trending now column that has photos from
the web. And it’s stuff like Keisha files lawsuit,
Think before Tweeting, NASA’s jack-o-lantern. Like what? In this build, you
can’t turn that off. It’s in the release notes. This is something you will be
able to turn off. But for now you’re stuck with these Bing trending, whatever
these things are. It’s awful. So it’s a technical preview. You know, it’s okay.
Mary Jo: So the next, after we start getting
these updates however often they come, monthly or whatever, then around January
2015 some time, we think we’re going to get the consumer preview. So what I’m
hearing what we’re going to get then, it’s a lot of stuff. You’re going to get
the consumer preview of this same Windows 10 desktop that we have now. But
you’re also going to get the consumer preview for the combined phone/tablet SKU
that I hear inside Microsoft they call Windows Mobile. Just to keep things
really confusing. Because that was the name of the phone operating system
before they did Windows Phone.
Leo: Yea, 6.5.
Mary Jo: But that’s the name they use inside.
They talk about threshold desktop, then they talk
about threshold mobile. And we’re also going to get a consumer preview of
Windows Server at the same time too. All this puzzling
January time frame. And then they’ll keep updating those bits once they
push that more major update. And they’ll just be updating, updating, updating
until they do… I don’t even know if you’ll call it RTM at that point. But it
will be the equivalent of RTM. Sometime in the spring, summer, early summer.
And then we’re done. On to the next thing. Which
probably won’t be Windows 11, it will probably just
stay Windows 10. But with constant updating.
Paul: All these new cat names.
Mary Jo: Yea, no cat names.
Leo: Speaking of cat names, the RTM in Gold
Master, apparently what the meaning of that has been devalued because Apple is
now on its third Gold Master for Yosemite. They should have had a Lead Master,
a Bronze Master.
Paul: Their experience with that and iOS 8
and that big problem they had with 8.1, I think you’re going to see the next
versions of their OSs, they’re going to do the stuff Microsoft is doing right
now. I think they’re going to be much more public about it.
Leo: You currently are. Yosemite, they’re
public. And I’m using the public beta. You didn’t have to sign up for anything.
Paul: It’s like the sixth release or
something, isn’t it?
Leo: Oh yea.
Paul: But I think this shows them. Because if
they hadn’t done this, these are the problems that would have happened after
they released it. Which is what happened with iOS. I
think this will have a positive impact. Much like the Satya
Nadella thing that I’m never going to stop talking about.
Leo: That’s later in the run down. Alright
right after Docker, Paul, okay?
Paul: Okay, sorry.
Mary Jo: Yea, let’s get our priorities straight.
Leo: Wait your turn! I’m interested because
Google has now announced their next Nexus phone. It’s a Nexus 6, and six
inches. It’s the same size as the 1520.
Paul: Right, by the way you’re one of three
people on earth that even know that fact. So thank you for saying that.
Leo: Well you know, I’ve been practicing with my dead 1520 just to get used to putting it in my
pocket and holding it in my hand.
Paul: That’s so sad.
Leo: It’s like a stretching exercise.
Paul: It’s like a pet dies and you turn him
into a pillow and put him on the couch. Just to keep him around.
Leo: It’s good.
Paul: Sometimes I just have to hug it and
cry.
Leo: But I remember how much I loved that
six-inch screen. I think with Apple going 5.5, and Google going now to six...
Paul: One good thing about the six-inch
screen on the Nexus is they’re keeping the 5 around.
Leo: Right, because it is awfully big.
Paul: On the tablet side, they have a new
9-inch device that’s replacing the 7 and 10. And so there is some debate I
think on the phone side about the right size of the screen and so forth. Some
people just naturally fall in love with the really big screens. I think a lot of
people don’t.
Leo: You need both. And 4.7 in my opinion, I
don’t know why, it’s just the perfect size. It fits in the hand nicely.
Paul: Yep.
Leo: Having said that, I like big screens. I
cannot lie. And I think it’s because those other brothers can’t deny that a big
screen is a tablet almost. And it should be as big as you can reasonably put it
in your pocket.
Paul: That was one of the things I tried with
the iPhone 6 Plus when I was traveling with it to
different places. It kind of can.
Leo: Well we’ll talk about the new Lumia’s.
You’ve had some hands-on with it, Paul. We’ll talk about the next version of
Microsoft’s flagship. It’s kind of funny saying that for the Lumia’s, the
Microsoft flagship phone.
Paul: It’s a flagship with air quotes around
it, but yet.
Leo: You saw the Finnish prime minister who
said Microsoft has killed our economy. I hate them.
Paul: I started an awesome response to this
and the reason it’s awesome is because it’s what I would’ve said if I would
have thought of it first. Which is Microsoft didn’t kill Nokia. Nokia killed
Nokia. And that happened before Steve, I’m sorry.
Leo: Kind of the truth. The truth hurts. Our
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Weekly. It’s Paul, look, it’s Paul Thurrott and Mary
Jo Foley! Look! Hosts of Windows Weekly, they’re here.
Paul: Look at us.
Leo: It got real quiet in your apartment,
Mary Jo.
Mary Jo: I know. For a second.
Paul: I’m picturing them working on the side
of the thing, like…
Mary Jo: I know. As soon as she starts talking,
bang!
Leo: Oh that’s mean.
Paul: it’s go time, boys.
Leo: Okay, let’s talk Lumia’s. I’m kind of
surprised. Microsoft hasn’t really jumped on the pure view bandwagon. The 1020, the 41-megapixel. They seem to be pushing more
toward mid and low-end phones. Is that right? Am I correct?
Paul: Well that’s where they’re seeing
success. Low-end of the market. Last year the
best-selling Windows device in the world was a Lumia 520 which is a $99 device
to start.
Leo: And a great device. To be fair, it
really was a great product.
Paul: So I guess the trick for this year is
how do you take that success at the low-end and continue it, but also try to
push those consumers up a little bit at least. I don’t think it’s reasonable to
think that most people are going to be buying very high-end Windows phones.
Like they do with iPhones, it’s just not going to happen.
Leo: And you’ve got, looks at the two new
ones. The 830 and 735. Tell us a little about those.
Paul: So these are both what I would call
mid-level devices. They’re not really low-end devices, they’re not flagships.
But they’re kind of in the middle. Microsoft divides the market a little
differently. They in fact think of low-end and high-end and so low-end for them
is anything that costs under $200 to acquire.
Leo: Unsubsidized.
Paul: So these phones are right in the middle
is what they are. The low-end phones, 530 now and the 630,
635, in the Lumia’s. And in the high-ends, we haven’t seen a new one
since April. But the 930 falls into this category. And the
Icon of course. The 1520, and even the 1020 if
only by a…
Leo: I think the 1520 is a real winner. I
still love that phone.
Paul: When you look at the specs of that
device too, it really stands up well today.
Leo: It’s still a flagship.
Paul: Yes, and I think a lot of people, Mary
Jo would probably agree with this, had kind of wished the Icon 930 was
basically a 5-inch version of the 1520 in the sense that it had that thin form
factor. That would have been nice. I can only guess why they didn’t do that. I
think part of it is the battery. But it wouldn’t have worked, so the Icon and
the 930 are thick devices. And so the 830 is down-level from those devices.
It’s got a real mid-level processor. It’s not a high-end; it’s still quad-core
but, and I don’t want to say, but 400? Kind of in the middle
of the road, 1GB of ram, 16GB of onboard storage. But what it is from a
style perspective is it’s the Icon. It’s the 930. But like really thin.
Leo: It’s got that square metal frame.
Paul: Yes, it has that same design philosophy
or whatever. The neat thing about it is that back panel comes off so you can
replace the back with a different color green, white, black, or whatever. You
can also replace it with a flint case which is awesome. It comes with built-in
wireless charging so there’s no worries there. But it
also means you can get at the battery. That alone makes it nice. But it also
has, what sort of looks like it might be, a high-end pure view camera. And sure
enough, they talk this thing up. Unlike those other high-end phones, this
camera doesn’t take two shots every time. One for sharing,
one for saving. It just takes the one shot. It’s still pretty slow to
take photos as these cameras often are. And it really isn’t of the same quality
as you would see on the 1520 and Icon 930, or 1020. But it’s very good. I have
to say it’s kind of touch and go. I’ve been comparing it with the iPhone 6
Plus, and it depends on the situation which one is better. I would say overall
so far, actually the iPhone has pulled ahead. But they’re pretty close. And the
fact that the iPhone is a very high-end camera and this one is not. That kind
of speaks to the quality, what they’re trying to do here. It does have optical
image stabilization. It’s nice. But again the ability to pop that back off is
the big thing. The thing I started taking exception to is that they have this
other phone, like 730 and 735. If you look at this thing, it’s got that classic
Lumia polycarbonate styling. It looks like a $900 and $920 whatever. It’s so
light, it’s so incredibly light. And that whole color part, it just pops up.
And again, so you can get at the stuff in the back. You can change the case and
do whatever. But this phone has two things that the 830 lacks. Even though this one is probably less expensive. I don’t
know what the prices are but the screen is actually a little nicer on this
device. Evan though it’s smaller and brighter.
Leo: The 735?
Paul: Yea. And it has this awesome from framing
cameras for selfies and Skype. Whereas the 830 just has your typical front
camera. So what it does is kind of a widescreen camera. You catch more of the
sneaking around.
Leo: Yea, HTC or somebody’s doing that.
Paul: HTC just launched a phone that actually
has yes, very similar to this. In fact I think the specs on that camera are
better than this one. But you know, very inexpensive. The thing that’s shocking
about this is if you used the 920 in particular, or 900, or 800, or whatever,
you look at this and think I know this design. I’ve seen this. I’ve owned this
phone. Then you pick it up and it shoots up to the ceiling it’s so light. It’s
crazy how light this is.
Leo: You say it’s filled with helium.
Mary Jo: Does it feel cheap?
Paul: No, it doesn’t. It’s awesome. It lacks
a dedicated camera button which is a problem on a lot of their phones. The 830
does have that button. I think it’s great. I love this phone. This is a problem
because I really like both of these. And I would say actually of all their new
model phones, most of them are quite good from a quality perspective. The only
exception is the 530 which is the really low-end one. It’s kind of terrible.
Leo: And they’re still selling the 1520,
right?
Paul: Yep.
Leo: In fact someone said there is a 1525
coming to T-Mobile. There is a variant.
Paul: I hope so. I have heard nothing about
it.
Mary Jo: Me neither. People keep asking us,
where is the next flagship going to come on T-Mobile, on AT&T, on Verizon?
We’re not hearing about any coming, right? There’s talk that the 930 is coming
to AT&T pretty soon. So that would be a true flagship on AT&T.
Paul: Which one?
Mary Jo: The 930.
Paul: Oh, I would love for that to happen. I
would buy that phone immediately.
Mary Jo: That’s a pretty active rumor.
Paul: This has that kind of perfect sized
screen and it’s how is this thing mid-level. The processor, the RAM, the
storage, the camera, the screen; it’s not 1080p, it’s 720p. And it looks great. It’s not a big deal. Although again, when you compare
it to the 735, especially at any kind of an angle, the screen is not as bright
and beautiful as the lower-end one. And I find that aspect of these phone to be strange.
Leo: Are they still using O-LED screens, are
they all O-LEDs?
Paul: I can’t remember which one is which. I
want to say one’s IPS and one’s… I can’t remember which ones are which.
Leo: Well there you go. That’s the lineup
for the rest of this year.
Mary Jo: Let’s talk about Verizon though.
Leo: You’re a Verizon customer.
Mary Jo: I am. I use an Icon. And late last week
WP Central, I think it was, was the one who found out from a support rep which
again we can’t say this is 100% true, but the support rep told them or somebody
who was talking to them, that the Icon is being retired. The Icon is the Lumia
929, the only Windows phone flagship on Verizon right now. And I spent all day
Friday trying to find out if this was true. Because the
Icon’s not even listed anymore on the Verizon Wireless page at all. I
tried to get Microsoft to comment. They were trying to get Verizon to comment.
And all they could get is they still have them in stock and they’re selling
them. And that’s all they’re going to say about it. So that’s a little
disappointing for us on Verizon.
Paul: More than a little. Let me think about
this before I say it. I think the Icon is the only Nokia flagship that has
launched in the United States this entire year.
Mary Jo: Unless you count that HTC M8.
Paul: Nokia, I meant Nokia.
Mary Jo: Oh, Nokia, yep.
Paul: The HTC you’re referring to is a really
nice phone. The camera’s not the best. And I don’t find those two devices to be
directly comparable. I would choose the Icon every time, it would be a very easy decision.
Mary Jo: I actually find it a much harder choice
between those two devices. Except for the camera. The
camera just throws it completely into the Icon’s favor. But I like the look and
feel and the way the battery life, I like everything else about the HTC M8 more
than I like the Icon except for the camera. That’s the one thing.
Paul: Yea, no it’s thinner. It’s lighter,
smoother, and feels better in your hand. It has that awesome kind of case you
can get. There’s a lot to love about it.
Mary Jo: So the Verizon thing is just maddening.
We don’t even have Windows Phone 8.1 yet on the Icon.
Leo: What?!
Mary Jo: They finished that operating system in
March or April of this year. Verizon still hasn’t pushed it. We don’t know
Cyan. No word on when it’s coming. No word on Denim. Those two firmware updates
for 8.1. We can’t get any information. It’s totally in Verizon’s hands.
Microsoft says they don’t even know when they’re going to push it to us. And
now with them retiring it, everybody’s wondering okay, so then what happens to
firmware updates and software updates after that.
Leo: Verizon is so frustrating. And yet,
they really have a great network.
Mary Jo: They do.
Leo: So it’s hard to give them up.
Paul: They have really treated the Windows
phone like a second-class citizen.
Mary Jo: They really have.
Leo: They’ve treated everybody like a
second-class. Verizon is maddening for everybody across the world.
Mary Jo: But they have such a good service.
Leo: Their connectivity is great. I love
T-Mobile but you know it’s hit and miss.
Mary Jo: It is. And here in New York, AT&T
can still be hit or miss compared to Verizon. So yea, I’m still on Verizon. But
I got to tell you, after this I’m wavering now. And I was even saying this to
Paul. Okay here are my choices, I’m either going to go Android next on Verizon
or I’m going to dump Verizon and go with AT&T. And I don’t like either
choice. But I’m kind of stuck now. You guys should see my inbox with people
like screaming about this. They just are like does Microsoft know? Can you give
me an email address to write to somebody at Microsoft?
Paul: Even before this show I got this email.
I would, before I would choose AT&T if you’re switching to Android
personally. But for you, I assume your cell phone is your phone, right?
Leo: But Verizon screws Android users too.
Don’t worry, they’re not getting updates either. It’s
Verizon.
Paul: You want to make sure AT&T works in
your home.
Leo: You go to an AT&T store, they’ll let you take it home for two weeks without a
restocking fee. You say, it doesn’t work in my house;
what are they going to say? Oh, no you still have to use it.
Paul: Then you go to AT&T and guess what, AT&T hasn’t had a flagship release since November
of last year. And so AT&T certainly has more choice in some newer choices. But not any reasonable high-end flagship kind of phones.
Leo: These guys still act like monopolies
really. They just don’t care.
Mary Jo: And it’s hard because Nokia was gone
from the U.S. market for so long. So they’re having to
rebuild their relationship pier with the carriers and it’s just been such a
frustrating, slow process. It’s crazy! You still walk into a Verizon store and
they won’t sell you the product. You go in and say I want a Windows phone and
they’re like no you don’t. Okay, why is that still happening?
Paul: AT&T has been great with that
regard. I think I made the anecdotal observation weeks ago now that I walked
into T-Mobile and literally witnessed them selling the Windows Phone to a guy. Which almost threw me out of my shoes. But AT&T in Denim
at least has been fantastic. Across the board, I mean the service there is
great. They’re really knowledgeable. But there’s none of that baloney. You
don’t want Windows Phone. They’re interested when you bring up the Windows
Phone. I’ve not had that experience so again I think it varies from store to
store.
Mary Jo: It’s frustrating. I put in my post, it’s just so hard to be a Verizon customer if you’re a
Windows Phone user. It’s just really, I don’t know. I don’t know what anybody
can do.
Leo: I think isn’t it true across the board?
Who’s better? As you say, AT&T doesn’t have a flagship.
Paul: AT&T has always been better. This
year has been odd. By the way, I can’t blame AT&T per se, because Nokia and
Microsoft has not released a flagship phone.
Leo: You know what, they’re all in love with the iPhone. They just can’t stop staring at the
iPhone.
Paul: I think AT&T would have gotten the
930, but it was a Verizon-exclusive as the Icon. And they probably had some
time element tied to it. And it’s possible that Verizon expiring the Icon is the six-month anniversary. And that indicates that maybe the 930 is
happening. And that’s a little middle finger to Microsoft or whatever.
Mary Jo: That’s a theory a lot of people have.
That the reason they’re retiring it is because now it’s going to come out on
one or both other carriers.
Paul: So that’s nice. So then now the 930 is
available on AT&T and of course the complaint will immediately turn to can
we get a flagship that’s less than six months old? This thing has been out
since April, I want to say, the 930. In Europe anyway.
Leo: Someone in our chat room said you think it’s bad being a customer. You ought to try working
for them.
Mary Jo: Yea, I could see that.
Leo: You have my deepest sympathies.
Paul: But is it an iPhone, Leo?
Leo: What about the HTC One? You should get
that. That’s a nice phone.
Paul: No it’s the camera. That’s the one we
were talking about.
Mary Jo: The camera, boo! The camera is so not
good.
Leo: You don’t like the camera?
Mary Jo: Terrible pictures, terrible in
low-light, fuzzy.
Leo: It’s supposed to be really good in
low-light. I wonder what’s going on there.
Mary Jo: We’re spoiled. We get the 20-megapixel
camera on the Icon.
Paul: That’s true. I read a lot of these
articles online where people will say hands down the iPhone 6 has the best
camera on the market. And I’m like okay.
Obviously there are things about it that are awesome and it does a lot really
well. But from a pure quality standpoint, that’s absolutely not the case. And
the past two summers, I’ve been to Europe for three weeks plus and used a Lumia
both times to take all my vacation photos. They’re stunning. You saw a bunch of
them on Facebook, both of you. You can attest the fact that, I don’t think
anyone looked at my vacation photos and thought wow you’re really using a
low-end camera there, Paul. They came out nice. And I wouldn’t feel comfortable
doing that, I’m not sure I would do it with an iPhone either. There are only a
handful of phones I would use as cameras in that fashion.
Leo: Well we disagree a little on that, but
that’s okay. That’s the way it is.
Paul: In the iPhone 6 camera app, it’s
wonderful. There’s a bunch built of stuff into it. I think that the feeling on
the Nokia side, aside from the speed, is the requirement of having additional
apps to do all that stuff. You want a panorama, there’s a panorama app.
Leo: I think the out of the box experience
on the iPhone is still better than anything else out there.
Paul: Right, I’m just talking pure quality.
Leo: Take it out, take a picture. People are
going to be happiest with the iPhone.
Paul: When you’re looking at a picture on
your phone screen that’s one thing. When you put it on your
computer, that’s nice. When you zoom into an iPhone 6 photo, you see
kind of a weird, almost water-color patter in the background of it. And when
you compare that to a Lumia, it’s like well, there’s a serious quality
difference there. Not that any one of these things couldn’t take wonderful
photos.
Leo: These are night pictures I have from
Vegas. These are with the 1520. These are remarkable pictures. They’re very
good.
Paul: Yea, I think those are 1520 shots. The
Lumia went through a rough patch over the past year for low-light shots. This
was always supposed to be one of the things that it was really good at. And
that was not my experience at all. When we were in D.C. over the summer, I was
struggling with that. And used a third-party app instead
because it was so bad. In the Cyan and the Denim updates, they have
improved low-light dramatically through firmware updates.
Leo: These are great shots. I’m looking at
your Barcelona pictures. These are great shots. The color is rich. The detail
is great.
Paul: I don’t think anyone would ever, you
don’t get into that conversation where it’s like well when did
you take it. What is the distance like? They’re fine.
Leo: But do you have super slow mo?
Paul: Yea, but it requires another app. And
that’s what I’m talking about. In other words, the things that the iPhone
excels at are the fact that-well speed by the way-I don’t just mean an
automated thing where it’s taking a bunch of pictures. We actually do have that
on Windows Phone. You manually on the shutter, click, click, click. It will
take photos that quick. As quick as you press it, it will take the pictures.
That’s really impressive. And then the ability to have all that stuff in that
one app and not have to go to different apps. And
think what app do I need for this one thing.
Leo: These are great. Even when you zoom in,
they really look good.
Paul: Those are the Facebook pictures.
Leo: Degrading it. Where do you put your
pictures besides Facebook? Anywhere else?
Paul: Not for public contention.
Leo: Put some samples up on Google Plus or
somewhere where they don’t recompress.
Paul: I tried to do this on Flickr but when
you look at them on Flickr, I’m pretty sure Flickr is doing something to them,
too. I’ve got to figure out a way to do that. I don’t have any axe grinder, I’m not trying to sell Nokia products. I will
happily put up all the photos taken with the iPhone. And with the 830, you know, whatever. This is just my own experience. The iPhone 6
camera is fantastic.
Leo: I just got an update to my Android One Plus One and they now shoot.
Paul: I thought you pulled up the 1520 there
for a second.
Leo: It looks like it. They’re all slabs of
glass. But this now does camera raw like the Lumia’s. To get
the raw sensor data. Now you really can, if there is a weird, people go
off and complain about purple casts on the iPhone. You can fix it if you see
weird stuff. Alright, we’ve been waiting. We’ve put it off too long. Docker.
Paul: Finally.
Mary Jo: I was like when are we going to get to
the Docker story?
Leo: Not quite yet. Because we’re going to
take a break and when we come back… it’s called a tease, Mary Jo! We save the
best for right after the IT Pro TV ad.
Mary Jo: Alright.
Leo: Docker,
coming up in a second on Windows Weekly! Our show today brought to you by Tim
and Don. I feel that way with some of our advertisers, especially with IT Pro
TV. It’s not some company. It’s Tim and Don. Maybe it’s because they keep coming
here. They come out whenever they can. They were clearly influenced by TWiT. In
fact, they freely admit that. Tim and Don were IT instructors in the business
teaching people how to get their certs for MCSC and all of that. And they saw
what we were doing at TWiT. They actually saw a talk I gave at NAB. And they
said, hey what if we did the same kind of thing. Only focused
on IT training. And I see they’re on the air right now; they have a live stream;
they do about 30 hours of new content every week. I'm going to log in,
that way I can show you what's going on. They have courseware all of the
subjects that you want. I'm logging in right now, that's what that sound
is. They have some advantages over just taking a technical course.
For one thing it's at your convenience, right? You can watch on
your computer but also on your mobile device. If you buy the year
subscription which is really the best deal you can even download this stuff and
watch anytime that you want. Even their set looks like TechTV's old set, I love it. ITProTV,
they have the amazing, I really like this, web interface to their virtual
machine sandbox lab. I guess we are waiting for them to show up.
Any computer with an HTML 5 browser, including Chromebook, you can set up
Windows Server, set up clients, break it, all of that to practice. You
can also take the measure up practice exams, there you
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Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, Leo Leporte, talking Windows. Here we go, the moment you
have all been waiting for; it's Docker time.
What is Docker?
Mary Jo: Okay, now I can tell you this may seem like a story that is really
boring and not a big deal, but when I heard that Microsoft is going this way, it's
huge, this is a huge deal. So Docker is, a lot of times you see people describe it like a shipping
container, like a physical shipping container. It is a container of
technology, a new container of technology that lets people develop, distribute,
and deploy applications more easily. It is open source. It is being
made by a company named Docker, Inc. That's the
company behind this Docker, this new container that
we are talking about. It's really a popular technology in Linux.
This week Microsoft did an alliance with Docker, Inc where they are going to create a
version of their own container technology that is going to be part of the next
Windows Server. Docker and Microsoft together
are going to put the Docker engine on top of that.
So this is going to let the people in the .net and the Windows world
start using Docker containers to build, deploy, and
host their applications. You can either choose to put your Docker containers on top of Windows Server on premises or
you are also going to be able to put them in Windows Server on Azure so that
you can run them in the Cloud. I know it sounds kind of obscure, but this
is like a really, really new hot trend in Cloud computing especially.
Everybody is jumping on the Docker bandwagon
lately. IBM is in there, Microsoft, Google, and all of the Linux vendors
like ConnocheatOS and Red Hat, everybody is really all excited about Docker and
containers. It's been a big criticism of Microsoft that they haven't had
a play here and that they haven't been keeping up with this particular trend,
but now that they are here everybody is saying, wow, here it comes. I've
seen a number of people covering this today saying, yeah, it's so far away, though. It's not far away because we know Windows
Server Next, which is where this is going to start showing up, is coming out by
mid next year. So it's very close relatively speaking that Microsoft is
going to be playing more actively in the space with Windows Server. So
that's why I was really excited.
Leo: No, in fact there are a lot of people who are excited about this,
too. Linux Journal says that the containers are the future of Cloud, not
virtual machines. Containers are the way that we are going to move
forward. Ed in the chat room said that it's about time we got Docker on Windows. He's very excited about it.
This feels like a Satya Nadella thing, kind of opening up a little bit to
the idea that there are other choices including open source choices out there.
Mary Jo: Yep, and Scott Guthrie too, how he runs Cloud and Enterprise, he
has been a big open source backer at Microsoft. I'm sure that he had a
big hand in making sure that this happened. If you had told people that
the Microsoft world, just even like a year or two ago, hey Docker is going to come to Windows Server; people would have just laughed. They
would have. They would have been like right, ha, sure. Even being
able to run Docker on Linux on Azure people would
have been like you are crazy, that's never going to happen. But here it
is everybody; Docker.
Leo: Yeah. It's more lightweight, it starts up faster, and it is
just an easier way to do things. It's still essentially virtualization, I
think.
Mary Jo: It's like an alternative to virtualization, I think. That's
kind of the way that it's played. So it's interesting.
Leo: Does it use Hypervisor or not?
Mary Jo: Well, you know, it does not use Hypervisor, but you are treading
on an interesting question. So how do they do it, right? When you
see pictures of what the architectural diagram looks like you see server, host
operating system, then the Docker engine. There
is no Hypervisor layer when they talk about that. There has to be still
this container technology, though, and so Microsoft says they are building some
kind of new container technology that is like the base layer under Docker into the next Windows Server, but they won't tell us
what that is.
Leo: On Linux it would be running a daemon, there would be a daemon
running.
Mary Jo: They are both daemons I guess, like there is going to be a Windows
Server daemon and a Linux daemon. There's like this layer underneath that
we don't know what it is. In the Linux world it's LCS is what the container technology is called, Linux Container Support, but
Windows is what we don't know. There is going to be some sort of Windows
container support, but Microsoft is not sharing yet what that actually is in
terms of the functionality.
Paul: Isn't there a show coming up at which they might reveal this
information?
Mary Jo: You know, TechED Barcelona is just around the corner. Perhaps we will hear more.
What do you think?
Paul: That's what I'm thinking.
Leo: It's kind of weird, you are sharing the
kernel in a way.
Mary Jo: You are, yep.
Leo: Now when you spin up an instance on EC2 or on Azure you've got to
boot up, you are running an operating system on a virtual machine. This
is a little much more lightweight and you are going to start seeing these.
Paul: This is the ActiveX control, too.
Leo: Don't say that.
Mary Jo: No, no, no.
Paul: Nothing goes wrong when you make something lightweight.
Mary Jo: It's pretty big.
Leo: I’ve got to say, I feel like, okay, Scott Guthrie, but I feel like
Nadella's deep understanding of Cloud, and of openness, and of business is helping a lot in making this kind of thing happen.
Paul: I think that this is Microsoft's management strategy, you know, this
becomes a unit of management, of things that they manage with System Center and
possibly into partnerships?
Leo: Speaking of partnerships, StreamForce is
going on this weekend in San Francisco, the big Salesforce conference with
Microsoft.
Paul: Why are we not there for some stupid Microsoft show?
Mary Jo: Again this week.
Leo: Again this week.
Mary Jo: Well next week they are going to be there again.
Leo: Are you coming back?
Mary Jo: No, we are not coming back. Next week is when Satya Nadella
is going to be in San Francisco again doing some kind of announcement about
Azure. We don't know exactly what it is.
Paul: Leo, I learned something by going to San Francisco that week.
Leo: What's that?
Paul: It's how to say no. I've said no twice since then.
Mary Jo: Right, we don't need to go to everything.
Paul: Yep, I don't have to go to everything.
Mary Jo: And they are going to webcast that thing next week, so we really
don't need to go. This week it was Salesforce. Microsoft and
Salesforce announced their initial partnership back in May and they said, oh,
we are going to start collaborating more and we are going to do a lot of
integration. It was kind of vague, kind of fluffy. This week they
actually gave us some more real data points about what they are doing.
They are actually developing together a Salesforce1 app for Windows.
So there is going to be an app that works on Windows Phone 8.1 and
Windows 8.1 especially optimized for smaller tablets, like 8 inches and under,
that is going to be the Salesforce CR1 app for Windows. So that's kind of
a big deal because as we said recently on the show there are not enough metro
style apps that are real apps in business. So here is an example of one
that is coming. It's going to be out next year. They talked about
integration that they are doing with Office around Salesforce files, and
SharePoint, and OneDrive for Business. They are even building a new
version of the Salesforce app for Outlook and doing some more things around
Para BI and Salesforce integration. So they are really doing things.
The partnership wasn't just all words. All of the things that they
are going to talk about this week are going to be deliverables in early to
mid-2015 for the most part. It actually is working. Salesforce and
Microsoft, even though they do compete very strongly on the CRM front, are going
to come up with some apps together that I think a lot of business customers are
going to be pretty excited about.
Leo: It really is a new Microsoft.
Mary Jo: It really is, right?
Leo: I can hardly believe it.
Mary Jo: Mark Benihoff working with Microsoft
instead of criticizing them? Wow, huh, how about that?
Leo: Next Scott McNealy will say, hey, I've got an apartment in Redman
and I'm moving in. God, that's amazing.
Mary Jo: I know, it's pretty
different.
Leo: Let's see here. No, we are going to skip over this thing
about Satya Nadella hating women and move right to...
Mary Jo: We already did that one.
Leo: We did that one. We are going to move to...
Paul: Actually, I just have one more thing about politics and religion.
Mary Jo: Could somebody block him please?
Leo: I have these cartoons of the prophet here, I thought maybe you would like to see them.
Paul: I was thinking with Mary Jo before this show that we should have
had Alex make a lower third for her that said conscientious objector.
Leo: Just say CO.
Mary Jo: I was going to make my own little flag and waive it during this
segment, but I don't need to.
Leo: Mary Jo, have you ever asked for a raise?
Mary Jo: Yes I have in fact. I guess that's why I wasn't so appalled
by this. I've asked for raises. When people ask me to speak for
free I say, you know what, I am self-employed, and I
don't speak for free. I'm sure you can find some money for me, and they
do.
Leo: I do the same thing.
Paul: I've always relied on karma, and I've always been screwed, so...
Leo: The karma guy, that's my job.
Paul: Karma doesn't work. That's been also one of my life lessons.
Mary Jo: Karma is Boston is Karmar.
Paul: It does not work the way you think that it works.
Leo: Is it Karmar Chameleon? Qik, q-i-k Qik,
was an independent video technology; I used to use it on my smartphone.
Skype bought them, is that what happened? What's going on here?
Mary Jo: Yeah.
Leo: A while ago I think.
Mary Jo: Skype bought them before Microsoft bought Skype. Just a few
months before that happened. In 2011 they bought the video messaging
company Qik then they never really did anything with
it. Microsoft bought Skype, it kind of just hung around, and then this
week they launched an app called Skype Qik.
They claim it doesn't use any of the technology from the original Qik.
Leo: Good, because it was terrible.
Mary Jo: That's good that they are not using it then. What it lets
you do is have these little short vignettes that you record, like 42 seconds or
less, and you can send them back and forth between your Skype contacts using
their phone number. It's meant to be kind of a fun interim app, not quite
a full Skype with somebody, but a little kind of message.
Leo: I think this is great, it's video sharing.
Mary Jo: Yeah, video sharing meant to be fun, not really meant to be a businessy thing at this point.
Leo: No, they are showing all kids basically.
Mary Jo: Yeah, you can record these really short ones like 5 second Qik Flix they call them so if
somebody sends you a message like do you want to go to dinner tonight you can
send a little downer face like, no.
Leo: That's fun.
Mary Jo: Yeah, it's cute.
Paul: This speaks to my core demographic right here.
Mary Jo: It does, both of our core demographics.
Paul: Mary Jo and I just Qik each other all of
the time right now, like send each other like little videos like I'm shopping
for a shirt, which one do you like better?
Leo: You are not likely to use Qik.
Paul: No.
Mary Jo: And the messages also do the self-destruct after two week very
similar to other ones that we have seen.
Leo: Oh, it's another one of them.
Paul: So if it's embarrassing it's only temporarily embarrassing.
Leo: Temporarily, Qik Messenger, wait a
minute, this is Skype Qik.
Mary Jo: Like if I sent a message to Paul and a group of other people, and
I was like oh, I wish I didn't send that then I can go in and delete it off of
everybody's phone myself.
Paul: So you just mentioned that this Qik thing had been purchased. When you said that I thought, oh, that sounds
familiar.
Mary Jo: You remembered that, right?
Paul: I am really fascinated that this thing dates back to 2007.
Leo: It's ancient, yeah.
Paul: Yeah, that's crazy.
Leo: I used to use it. There were a whole bunch of ways to do video. I streamed stuff with Qik,
too. You were able to stream it live.
Paul: Really?
Leo: There was social cam from JustinTV, there were a whole series of these the idea being that you can use your phone.
We are interested in these because of the live video streaming, so I
played with all of these. Qik was pretty good,
it was okay. Robert Scoble used it a lot that
should tell you something.
Mary Jo: That tells me a lot.
Paul: Yes it does.
Mary Jo: Not things that I want to know.
Paul: Yes it does.
Mary Jo: Nah, I'm kidding. He used it in the shower.
Leo: It's hard to find. Somebody is saying that I can't find it
in the Windows Phone Store. I had the same problem on Android because
when Qik went out of business a lot of people usurped
the name.
Paul: Oh no Leo, you misunderstand, they have a slightly different
problem on Windows Phone which is when you search for exactly what something is
you can't find it. It's a hilarious little Windows Phone feature. I
believe that if you type in Skype Qik that will work.
Mary Jo: Skype Qik, yeah.
Paul: If you just type in Qik then have a nice
one.
Leo: I just installed it on Android.
Mary Jo: IPhone also surprisingly.
Leo: I wonder if it will remember my old Qik account.
Paul: That would be funny.
Mary Jo: Hopefully not.
Leo: Yeah, I don't really want to see it again.
Mary Jo: Because it's a very different app them claim. They claim it's all different code. It uses Skype backbone
now.
Leo: Right, I mean this was 3G maybe 2G network. The video
quality with streaming was terrible.
Mary Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Well they've already got 100 downloads on Android. I've
never seen that sticker.
Paul: All of them Microsoft employees testing it.
Leo: I've never seen that sticker, 100 downloads. I've seen 100
million. This is just 100, the 100.
Paul: Well it's early days Leo.
Leo: Well it just came out.
Paul: It will get there.
Leo: Not only is Qik brand new, it's the very
first app from Skype.
Mary Jo: Right. That's a good point to bring up. Skype has all
been focused about Skype, and now this is their first sister companion app.
Leo: Oh look, it's rocking out.
Paul: When you search for Qik it doesn't
even come up in the results.
Leo: Right, search for Skype Qik.
That's why they call it Skype Qik.
Paul: People.
Leo: People, come on people.
Paul: Actually Skype Qik just, this is
amazing.
Leo: It's so 80's. How do I stop this? Oh, it's making the
Skype sound.
Paul: You've got to cut loose.
Mary Jo: There you go, Paul's favorite sound.
He loves that sound.
Paul: The never-ending Skype chirp. I know this is available for
Windows Phone but I can't find it on Windows Phone.
Leo: Oh boy, let's take a break. No, let's keep going. It
just verified itself. It's kind of cool, I will play with it. Any Surface news Paul?
Paul: Just a little. Patch Tuesday has historically been the
firmware update day for Surface, and each month many times it's been all of the
Surface devices, sometimes only some of them. This week Patch Tuesday
came and the only device that got firmware updates was Surface 2 which is the
year old RT device. If you use the Surface Pro 3 you know that there was
a pen firmware update a few weeks ago which allowed a pen configuration app,
which is really just very basic right now, but I think it's going to improve.
The interesting part about this set of updates I think is that Microsoft
revealed on their update page for Surface Pro 3 that they were going to try to
fix the Wi-Fi problem that has been dogging Surface Pro 3 users since there has
been a Surface Pro 3. I don't know Mary Jo if you pay attention to this
or have thought about this, but I think this is like their 4th attempt at
fixing this problem. I'm not clear that they are ever going to fix it.
Mary Jo: Which is worse, and because it is not effecting every Surface Pro
3 user, but the ones that it is effecting are having really bad Wi-Fi
connectivity issues, like saying that they can be down for minutes where they
can't connect, or every time they come out of hibernation or sleep they can't
connect, and it's not just some little Wi-Fi speeds aren't good. It's not
that, they just cannot connect at all.
Paul: Yeah, it's like it literally disappears. I posted this
on Twitter the other day, but you can buy a tiny USB dongle Wi-Fi adapter for
under $10 which is really neat except man, the Surface Pro 3 only has one USB
port on it, and that is really irritating. But yeah, you have to wonder
if this is a more endemic hardware issue maybe akin to the stuff that you are
seeing on Apple devices where the antenna is just not strong enough.
Leo: Yeah, Apple has never had good Wi-Fi.
Paul: I don't know. I can't wait until they fix it. I guess
we will see how it goes.
Mary Jo: Are you having trouble with yours or not; because not everybody
does.
Paul: Leo did you send me a Qik?
Leo: Yeah, and it should have
had a link to the Qik in the Windows Phone Store. You got it. He's getting the Qik. It's video text messaging is
what it is basically.
Paul: No Leo, it's Skype Qik.
Leo: So we are waiting for a fix
for the Surface 3 Wi-Fi issues.
Mary Jo: Yeah, it's coming they say.
Paul: Still.
Mary Jo: In a number of weeks. You know what? I will give them this, at
least they gave people a heads up this time because it was good that Patch
Tuesday didn't come and go, and there was nothing, and they didn't say
anything. At least they told people that.
Paul: Yep. Tap the header to record a
new video. I'm sorry, I'm so excited.
Leo: You can respond to me. Respond to me.
Paul: I can't see here how you
sent it.
Leo: Maybe I didn't send it to
the right number. I have two numbers for
you, one is work and one is mobile.
Paul: Okay.
Leo: Wait a minute, Qik Flix, record a bunch of 5
second videos and drop them into any chat, anytime, or you can make your own
animated GIFs. I'm going to make a Qik Flix.
Mary Jo: Yeah.
Leo: Let's see, this is going to
be my Qik Flix. So that's a smile. Wait a minute, stop. See, it's confusing because
you tap it. Now I have a smiley Qik.
Paul: Mary Jo did you install
this?
Mary Jo: I don't have Windows Phone
8.1 because I'm on Verizon, so...
Paul: Sorry.
Leo: So Paul, should I send it
to 415 or 715? Which one is the one that I
should send it to?
Paul: Neither one of those is
right.
Leo: That's the last 3 digits,
no?
Paul: Oh, wait, say those again.
Leo: 415 or 715. I sent it to 715, the phone
ending in 715.
Paul: 970 is the number. You don't have that one?
Leo: I don't have that number
at all.
Paul: 415 is the home number.
Leo: 715?
Paul: That must be my old number.
Leo: 7715 that must be really
old. Alright, so basically I
can't send you one. Are you sad, probably not.
Paul: A little bit. A little bit.
Leo: Phone call? Are you calling me right
now?
Paul: Sorry, I've got to take
this, this is important. Hey Leo, let's talk about
Satya Nadella some more.
Leo: That's my ringtone. Oh man,
go away.
Mary Jo: Paul Thurrott,
this is my message for you.
Leo: What is she saying, what is
she saying? You keep that around?
Paul: Na, na, na, na, na.
Mary Jo: I can't hear you.
Leo: Talk to the hand. Surface, we did it. Mirracast versus Mirracast is our final bullet
point. What does that mean?
Paul: Yeah, I don't want to spend
too much time on this, but Microsoft in the next 30 days or so is going to
release 2 Mirracast adapters. One of them is
aimed at phones and it has this little NFC connection plate, the idea being
that you put the device over by the TV, or HD screen, or whatever, and you put
the little connection plate anywhere and if you have a compatible device you
just touch it to the pad and you can mirror your screen. But they also
have a dongle which goes behind the TV into the HDMI port. It looks like
a Chromecast, right? That's aimed more at computers. It works with
phones too, actually, both of these devices will work
with anything that works with Mirracast. I'm
testing both, it's super hard to test because seriously to convince anyone in
my family that we need to watch TV but only over this connection and when you
put Netflix over a laptop you get that thousand yard stare from the kids.
I'm trying to test it because to date Mirracast has not been a great solution for me. But the tip here is that you may
not need to get a Mirracast device, you may already
have one because Roku just added this capability to all of its devices.
So if you have a Roku 3 or a Roku streaming stick you install the latest
update and you have Mirracast right there.
There's a way that you can cast from an Android device, a modern Windows
PC like Windows 8 plus, or a Windows Phone device. Not all of them, but
the newer devices.
Leo: Good.
Paul: It's a wireless wire.
Leo: Let's take a break.
Paul: Your tune starts to
flatten.
Leo: Dominis patris evitus sancti. Let us gather together to
talk about Citrix ShareFile and then the back of the
book, the good stuff, our tips, our tricks, and beer. That's a reward.
If you are in business and you are sharing files via email attachment
shame on you. I don't blame you really, sometimes it seems like the only way that you can get the contract, the PDF,
the spreadsheet to your clients and your customers. I hasten to point out
that there are risks involved. For instance, any email is basically a
postcard that can be read by any server along the way. Furthermore it's
really easy with the modern file sizes to overwhelm someone's inbox and get a
bounce back; that's no good. Finally, email attachments are how viruses
spread, and we don't want you to do that either. So here's what you do, you go to Citrix ShareFile and you try
it free for 30 days if you are the person in the company that decides this
stuff. If not then tell your IT director, or your boss, or your
co-workers. This is what I use to send files to the radio stations, in fact I will be doing it right after the show
today. Sharing audio ads and bumpers and stuff, I have to do that every
week. I've tried all of the other file sharing systems and this is the
easiest and the best. It does not confuse them. You don't always
know if the person at the other end is technically savvy. With ShareFile it is fine, they don't have to be. You
could send files of almost any size with absolute security. You can
control who can open it, when they can open it, and how long it's good for.
It eliminates security breaches and clogged inboxes. No more
spearfishing attacks. You don't lose control plus all of your ShareFile files are visible all of the time on your
smartphone, or your tablet, or your computer. You just log on to your ShareFile account your use their free apps and there it is.
It really is nice. I am a big fan. I have a couple of ShareFile folders that I automatically sync. You can
use any folder on your computer by the way, it's
really nice by the way. It will just sync in the background. But
you can also upload it, there are a variety of ways.
It's so flexible. If you look at the features and tools of ShareFile you will see that it is designed for business to
make it easy to use with a desktop widget, the Outlook Plugin, and the mobile
tools. It even supports Right Signature eSignatures so it is a great way to get documents signed. Here is the deal, visit
sharefile.com and click the top of the homepage where it says "Podcast
Listeners". Click that, that's the way to try this free trial, and
make sure that you use the offer code WINDOWS so that Paul and Mary Jo get
credit. You will get a 30 day free trial. Tell them what industry
you are in and they will customize it for that industry. Yes, it's HIPAA
compliant, compliant with FCC regulations, and other industries too.
Sharefile.com, click the "Podcast Listeners" link, the
microphone at the top of the page, and use our offer code WINDOWS. Citrix ShareFile, built by business for
business. Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott are giving us the business. Let's start with you Paul, your tip of the
week.
Paul: So actually just have
picks.
Leo: All picks all the time. That's alright.
Paul: Roku Mirracast receiver functionality and a bunch of software picks that are kind of all over
the map. First, right before the
weekend Microsoft released a very early pre-release version of what they are
calling the Analog Keyboard for Android.
Leo: It's so weird.
Paul: My initial reaction to this
was somewhat mocking, but actually as I look at this I realize that this isn't
a horrible idea. In fact, if you look at the video that Microsoft made
about the keyboard and the way that you enter characters and so forth I
actually think it could make sense. This might actually make sense as a
keyboard for Android Wear, you know for a watch. It's super early release,
it's really hard to install, and it requires a lot of scripting and craziness,
so I don't think that anyone normal is going to do it. This is the start
of a really good idea within the context of what it is with a watch and
entering keys for some kind of reason.
Leo: You know, I use Android
Wear. I love my Android Wear
watch. I will try it.
Paul: For example, if you were to
do like, you can obviously interact with it via voice. I think that would be the
normal way. If you wanted to...
Leo: That's the normal way to do
it, right.
Paul: Yeah, so this provides a
secondary input type.
Leo: It's an interesting idea.
Paul: It would be advisable in
some circumstances. It looks pretty good.
Leo: It's clever.
Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leo: And it's created by a guy
named Wolf Kienzle, so it's got that going for it.
Paul: Well, there is this thing
going on with Microsoft Research these days, and I'm sure Mary Jo has noticed
it, these guys used to be the silent partners in the back that never really had
much to say and lately they have been releasing stuff. I think that is
kind of cool. I like the release early even when it's not ready type
thing that is happening at Microsoft right now. I think that it is perfectly
okay for them to do this kind of thing. I like to see Microsoft Research
getting out there in the world.
Leo: Yeah, and across platform. This is more of that
amazing support for other people's stuff. I love that.
Paul: So the second pick came
about because on Sunday, you may recall or you may know, that the new season of the Walking Dead started. The Walking Dead in my family is like the big family event of the
week, like we watch it together with a bowl of popcorn. It is just a
family thing, I don't know, I can't explain it, I can just say that not
everyone likes the zombies and everything but now that Breaking Bad is off of
TV now it's arguably the best show on TV right now. So, anyway, having
gotten into the Walking Dead a few years back I started reading the original
graphic novels that the series is based on. The storylines veer wildly in
many cases, but you can see the influences, and some of the actual storylines,
and so forth. These graphic novels have been collected into collections I
think of 4 graphic novels each. There were 20+ of them at last count, and
I had been buying them on Kindle. So over the previous year I had bought
this entire series and I read the whole thing. So after the show was over
I thought, man, it's been several months since I have read one of these.
Surely one or more new ones have come out, maybe I can buy those and
catch up on the story. I started searching for it on the Amazon Kindle
Store and they are not to be found. The books are still in my collection,
but they are not in the store. You can buy the physical books, like the
paper book. I haven't found out why, although everyone knows that Samsung
is having these issues with publishers now. I don't know if that is
related or whatever, but my understanding is that these books are in fact gone
from all electronic stores, you can't get them on Kobo, you can't get them on
Nook, or whatever, but you can get them on comiXology,
right, with an X. This is a company that I believe was recently just
bought by Amazon.
Leo: Oh, that's right.
Paul: Yeah, I don't usually buy
a bunch of comic book apps on my tablet or whatever, but you can buy the set...
Leo: This is a good one, or was. Everyone is worried about
what Amazon will do to it.
Paul: Yes, so as of now I will
have to say, like having read the graphic novels before on the Kindle where
there is kind of a nice little navigation way that you can go from pane to pane
and so forth, the presentation of this app is superior. It is much better than the
Kindle version.
Leo: Oh yeah, it zooms in on the
panes. It is really good.
Paul: Yeah, and these books, I
don't know if it is true today, but when I bought this latest book, it's only
been one actually; it's significantly less expensive than they were on the
Kindle.
Leo: Yeah.
Paul: And the experience is
wonderful. So it's a Windows Store
App, and I think that there are apps on the iPad too, I didn't really look, but
there is a Windows version. It's a great app, so you
should definitely check this one out, it's really good.
Leo: Ihnatko has been singing its praises for some time now.
Paul: I never really paid
attention to this kind of thing before, but yeah, it's a good one.
Leo: They are smart because what
they are doing is getting people to try it with the Walking Dead, which is
hugely popular, and then people will go, oh, this is cool.
Paul: Yeah, I think they have
Marvel Comics and other things.
Leo: They have everything, yeah,
it's great.
Paul: I don't read like the
superhero type things, but I'm sure that's all there.
Leo: ComiXology now on Windows Phone.
Paul: ComiXology, yeah.
Leo: And one more.
Paul: One more, and this one is from Leon Zem, a buddy of ours from
the Netherlands, and this is a universal app so it works with both Windows and
Windows Phone. More importantly, if you
buy it on one platform you get it on the other, which is good. Monty Python's The Ministry of Silly Walks, which is...
Leo: Are there many apps like
this that are universal?
Paul: This is increasingly
common. They have obviously made it
much easier in the latest version of the platform, and then coming in Windows
10 it's going to be even better. This is a fun little game, but I think
the coolest part about it is that John Cleese is involved. It's like a
side scroller, it's not free, I think it is $1.29.
Leo: $1.29, it looks great. I want this, this looks
great.
Paul: It's fun, you know the Monty
Python guys are kind of doing their farewell tour and I'm sure this is an
attempt to cash in on their fleeting fame, but I don't care. It's wonderful, it's just
great. This is great.
Leo: It looks really fun and you
get to explore 3D London. Awesome. Mary Jo
Foley, I think that it is your turn for a little Enterprise shmenterprise.
Or whatever they call it.
Mary Jo: Whatever they call it.
Leo: Whatever they call it, your
pick of the week.
Mary Jo: My pick of the week, you
know my fondness for acronyms, my pick of the week is MVMC, Microsoft Virtual
Machine Converter, which is a standalone tool for IT pros or solution providers
who want to be able to convert virtual machines and virtual disks from VMware
hosts, or Vhosts, and also to Windows Azure. So
it's one of those tools, you know, you are somebody who is moving or wants to
move your customers off of VMware to Azure Hyper-V this is a handy little tool
for you. The version 3.0 of MVMC came out this week and it adds one other
interesting feature. It lets you convert a physical computer running
Windows 2008 or above or Windows Vista or above on the client side to a virtual
machine running on Hyper-V. So it's a really handy migration tool and
conversion tool. It's free, it's downloadable
from the Microsoft Download Site this week. I've had people ask me before for
the link so we are going to have it in the show notes, it's too hard to give that link over the air.
Leo: You could Google, I'm
sorry, Bing it.
Mary Jo: You could Bing it. You could Bing it.
Leo: It's version 3 of the
Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter. I think you can find it with that.
Mary Jo: Yes, I think you could find
it that way too. So that's my pick for this
week.
Leo: URLs are passé, just Bing
it.
Mary Jo: How did I miss that
opportunity to say Bing it?
Leo: Bing it!
Mary Jo: Bing it.
Leo: They had fun last night on
Jimmy Fallon with Bing.
Mary Jo: Oh really? What happened? I didn't see it.
Leo: I won't repeat it.
Mary Jo: Okay. We don't need to bring that
up today.
Leo: They were mocking Bing.
Mary Jo: Even we do. We do too.
Leo: Rumor of the week.
Mary Jo: Right, instead of a code
name of the week I'm going to give you a rumor of the week. This is
really interesting. We know Microsoft is continually adding new features
to Cortana and trying to figure out new things that she can do for us.
This one is very interesting to people in business. The rumor is
they are going to make it so that if you are running Microsoft CRM, dynamic CRM
the next version which is coming out in Q4, you are going to be able to start
using Cortana commands with that. So you could actually do things like
say to Cortana, "Could you schedule a meeting for me with so and so?"
or you could say "Could you look up my contact such and such?"
This to me is really interesting because I find Cortana pretty cool and
interesting, but I'm like yeah, I want to see her do more businessy things. I want to see her get more applied
into some of the other applications and not just things like football scores.
I know people like that too.
Paul: I literally just used it
for football.
Mary Jo: See, I knew you would.
Paul: I literally last night just
said...
Leo: Cortana, how did the
Packers do?
Paul: "What is the next time
the Patriots play?" "Thursday night versus
the Jets" Cortana told me.
Mary Jo: But what if you could do
something even better like create follow-up actions with records?
Paul: What could be better than
that?
Leo: It's pretty good. It's pretty good.
Mary Jo: I should give the person
who told me this rumor credit. I can't really say if it's
rumor or fact. His name is Pierre Holsabus, he works for Scribe Software. He is at some
event this week, the Microsoft Dynamics User Group Conference somewhere and he
said they actually said this. This is the first I've heard of it, so if
he is right then the next version of Microsoft Dynamic CRM, the 2015 version,
which comes out this calendar quarter, is going to have this. Pretty cool
I think.
Leo: Here is what Mr. Fallon had
to say last night.
Video playing: You guys have heard that
the search engine Bing has a feature that will predict who will lose in the
mid-term elections? Because if anyone is good at
predicting failure it's Bing. Badaboom badaBing! What's this thing over here, badaboom badaGoogle? You
know what I'm saying?
Leo: Whoa! I'm sorry. And our beer pick of the
week.
Mary Jo: Beer pick of the week.
We had Founder's Day at Rattle and Hum last week. Founder's Beer from
Michigan, they have so many good beers, I've made a ton of them my beer picks,
but this one I had never had, it's called Dark Penance. If you like black
IPA's you are really going to like this probably because it's a double black
IPA, or and Imperial Black IPA. It's very bitter and hoppy, but also it's
a black IPA instead of a double regular IPA. It's a seasonal beer that
Founder's just started doing now. I really liked it since I like bitter,
and hoppy, and I'm a very bitter person. It was perfect for me.
Leo: I like my beer like I like
my CEOs, dark and mysterious.
Mary Jo: Bitter and hoppy.
Leo: I love the aronomous bosh label on it.
Paul: Or as Windows Phone always
corrects it; bitter and hippy.
Leo: Bitter and hippy.
Mary Jo: Yeah, mine too. Even I get that auto
correct. How many times do I have to
fix it?
Paul: Bitter and hippy.
Mary Jo: It's really, really good
though, really tasty. It's not a light beer, it
clocks in at around 8% or 9%, so be aware.
Leo: As you say, quaffable not sessionable.
Mary Jo: Yes, exactly.
Paul: By the way, you might
appreciate this Mary Jo. I've brought her some of
the beer from my favorite brewery, and some of the high alcohol content beers
like Imperial Red IPA, which doesn't have that kind of IPA smell when you bring
it up to your nose or it's not particularly IPAish,
or bitter, or so forth. They did a version of it and they might actually
be switching the version, they let me test it. It's dry hopped, I don't remember the name of the hops but I think it was something
like amerio or amaretto hops or something like that.
Mary Jo: Amarillo hops, yeah.
Paul: I was so obviously a hoppy
IPA beer when you brought it to your nose that I almost didn't want to drink
it, but the interesting thing about it was that it was actually smoother than a
regular beer. He said that the oils in hops
actually can contribute to the kind of viscosity of it, and that, in fact, if
you do a hoppy beer right it can be smooth and not obviously hoppy.
Mary Jo: You know IBU measure in
beer? This Dark Penance beer is
about 100 IBUs. That's about as high as you
can be.
Paul: Super hoppy.
Mary Jo: That's the International
Bittering Unit. But still, I didn't find it harsh, it was still good.
Leo: International Bittering
Unit?
Paul: Is that a defacto signature or and actual ISO type stamp?
Leo: There is an actual IBU?
Mary Jo: Right, so you can gauge how
bitter and hoppy is something going to be? Something with a higher IBU is going to be more hoppy and bitter.
Paul: Mary Jo is 100 IBUs.
Leo: You can tell nerd are into beer if they have got something called the
IBU. That is for sure.
Mary Jo: Exactly.
Leo: Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, as always a great pleasure and a privilege to work with you
on Windows Weekly. We do this show every
Wednesday 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern Time, 1800 UTC. We will shift away
from summer time, that's November 2nd, so you have a few more weeks.
Paul: I just asked Cortana that
last night! I asked her that too.
Leo: Did she know?
Paul: That's true. I literally did just last
night.
Leo: Yes, yes.
Paul: That's amazing.
Mary Jo: When does Daylight Savings
end?
Leo: Nobody knows because they
keep moving it in our country so that it will be a surprise.
Paul: Those are literally the two
biggest concerns I have in the world. Literally the
Patriots and Daylight Savings.
Leo: It's getting dark in the
morning, and you know, that's why.
Paul: That's crazy by the way.
Leo: What?
Paul: Literally those were the
two things that I asked Cortana last night. I'm serious, I really did.
Leo: I believe that. I believe that. Inquiring minds wish to
know. Mary Jo of course is
allaboutmicrosoft.com, that's her ZDNet blog All About Microsoft. Paul Thurrott is at the SuperSite for Windows, winsupersite.com, but you can also
catch his books at the Windows 8.1 book site, that's windows81book.com.
Anything you want to plug? I hear you taking a breath.
Paul: Me? No. I'm sorry.
Leo: Mary Jo, actually I meant
you Paul, but Mary Jo is so quiet.
Mary Jo: I just wanted to say that TechED Barcelona is coming up at the end of October and I
am going this year so anybody who is going to be in Barcelona and might want to
do a meet up ping me and maybe we can do something.
Leo: Awesome, how fun.
Paul: I have some restaurant and
bar recommendations for you.
Leo: I got an email from
somebody who says you are going to be in Norway soon.
Mary Jo: Oh yeah, I am. I'm going to be in Norway,
not Norway, I'm going to be in Stockholm and
Copenhagen in November.
Leo: Sweden? Okay, and we are going to work
it out so that you can do the show from there?
Mary Jo: Yes.
Leo: Good.
Mary Jo: Yes, it's going to be
really fun. They wanted to do it live
from their event.
Leo: Paul, you should go.
Paul: To what?
Leo: To whatever this is in
Stockholm.
Mary Jo: Stockholm.
Paul: I would like to go there
actually.
Mary Jo: Stockholm in November. It's going to be nice and
bright.
Leo: They have like 2 hours of
daylight, it's great
Mary Jo: Yeah, I know, it's going to
be great.
Paul: I think that is cool that
you are doing that.
Mary Jo: Yeah. It will be good.
Leo: That's about all he is
going to say about that.
Paul: No, I would do that. That's neat.
Mary Jo: I'm interested in seeing
Stockholm and Copenhagen, I haven't been to either.
Paul: Well, I would say since San
Francisco I'm not really eager to jump on a plane right now, you know?
Mary Jo: Yeah.
Leo: There is no Hotel Lane in
Copenhagen.
Paul: If only Leo, if only.
Leo: If you can't watch the show
live, we do love it if you watch live, but if you can't please tune in to one
of our on demand versions, audio or video, at twit.tv/ww.
We also put them up on YouTube, youtube.com/windowsweekly.
We put them up on iTunes, on Zoon, whatever it is, Xbox Music, the
podcast apps. You can find it, one of the oldest
podcasts in the world is Windows Weekly. Episode 384, thank you Mary Jo,
thank you Paul, we will see you next time on Windows Weekly. Bye, bye.
We are in like year 8 or 9 or something.
Mary Jo: Are you really? Wow.
Leo: Yeah, they stopped
hammering. Could it be that they
actually finished?
Mary Jo: No, I'm sure that they have
not. It's so unbelievable, it's so, so, so loud in here. We are going into week 2
now, and yeah. Then there will be the
painting. That will be fun.
Paul: Painting will be less.
Mary Jo: But then there's the smell. The smell of paint.
Leo: So London Bob, this happens
every time we have a time change, says, "No, our time
is changing in October." It doesn't
matter about your time, UTC never changes.
Paul: Your time does not matter.
Leo: BST does not equal UTC. That's why they don't call
it Grenich Mean Time anymore, it's UTC. So that never changes. The reason that's why our
record times change is because UTC does not change for summer time, so we will
be actually...
Paul: This is the end of daylight
savings.
Leo: Yeah, we are going to move
the show is what we are going to do because we are going to stay on our regular
clock which is 11:00 am Pacific but it will be 11:00 am PST and that changes in
relation to UTC because UTC does not change. That will happen, I don't care what happens in London, that will happen November 2nd.
Paul: To be clear the first day
this happens, or the first time that we record this show after that, I will be
an hour late because I have no idea what you just said.
Leo: It's confusing, I
understand. I understand that it is
confusing to the whole world. Every time it happens I say
why. It's not that we don't want
to change back to Standard. Let's just leave it at
Standard, no more of this summer time.
Paul: Right now, you know, when
you get up in the morning with the kids it's pitch
black outside. Then we will go back to
light for a little while then it will be pitch black again in the middle of
winter.
Leo: We should just have one
time around the world.
Paul: It should be based around
sunrise. That would be confusing.
Leo: Alright, thank you guys. We will talk next week!
Paul: Bye.
Mary Jo: Bye.
Leo: Bye.