Windows Weekly 401 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte:  It's time for Windows Weekly.  Paul Thurrott has escaped to Puerto Rico, so Danny Rubino is here along with Mary Jo Foley to talk about the latest news, Windows 10 Mobile, we've got a lot more on that, a new version of Windows 10 Desktop coming next week, and of course an API and SDK for Xbox.  It's all coming up next on Windows Weekly.

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This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, Episode 401, recorded Wednesday, February 18th, 2015.

Better Call Aul

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Leo:  It's time for Windows Weekly, the show where we cover the latest news from Redmond, from Microsoft.  Here's some news, Paul Thurrott has escaped.  Mary Jo Foley is here from New York, AllAboutMicrosoft.com.  Hi Mary Jo. 

Mary Jo Foley:  Hi Leo.

Leo:  Good to see you.   And you have replaced Paul with Daniel Rubino of wincentral.com.  Hi Daniel, good to see you.

Daniel Rubino:  Pleasure to be here.

Leo:  The irony is that Daniel is in the same area.  You are also in Boston aren't you?

Daniel:  Oh, yeah, yeah, about 20 minutes from Paul.  Where he would be normally.

Leo:  But you were in Aruba last week?

Daniel:  About 2 weeks ago actually.

Leo:  You look a little tan still I have to say.

Daniel:  Yeah, I came back pretty dark, so it was a good 5 days off.

Leo:  It's no snow burn.

Daniel:  No, no.  That would involve me going outside.

Leo:  So Mary Jo, where did Paul go?

Mary Jo:  He went to Puerto Rico with his family for vacation.

Leo:  Nice.  I don't think that there is much snow down there.

Mary Jo:  No, he sent me a note and said that it is actually too hot here.

Leo:  Paul is such an Eeyore.  Now it's too hot.  I was too cold, now I'm too hot.  This is Episode 401 representing the area code of my hometown Providence, Rhode Island.  Actually we should do that from now on, we should name the area code instead of the show number.  We were just talking off the air about this $59 7 inch WinBook that I got.  Microsoft, you have to give Microsoft a lot of credit for the $0 Windows on these small screens, but I presume they are also giving away a year of Office, right?  That's part of the deal?  With Bing.  So I bought this for $59 plus shipping from MicroCenter.  

Mary Jo:  Where did you get it?

Leo:  I got it on Amazon from MicroCenter.  It was $70 including shipping, but still good deal and you get a year of Office which means that they are paying me @$2.

Daniel:  Yep.

Mary Jo:  They are, yep.

Leo:  It's unbelievable.  

Mary Jo:  It's not bad.  Plus unlimited storage, right?  Don't you get unlimited storage with that?

Leo:  You know, they don't mention that.  Have they turned that on?  They say that I am getting; well actually, they give you 10GB on Pogo Plug.  But yeah, I'm getting unlimited on OneDrive just because I'm an Office subscriber.  I don't know if that counts.  This would, wouldn't it?  

Mary Jo:  Yeah I think so.

Leo:  I will just look at the certificate here.  Office 365 Personal, so that includes 1 year subscription for one person, this doesn't give you the 5 year deal, latest apps, premium services.  It doesn't say anything about unlimited OneDrive, but we know now that I would be getting that, right?

Mary Jo:  I think.

Daniel:  Yeah, I believe so, yeah.

Leo:  It's kind of remarkable.

Mary Jo:  It is, after all of the years of paying so much for Windows, and Office, and PCs it's like hey, here is a PC, right?

Leo:  And this isn't even junky.  It's much better than I would expect for $59.

Daniel:  And you have the HP Stream which is also doing very well, and I think that is $79 at the Microsoft Store.  That too comes with Office and a $25 gift card to the store; so again, I think that they are actually paying you to take that.

Leo:  Get the Stream, because unlike the WinBook it has a Windows button.  I think that is a big difference.  On the WinBook you have to press a physical button on the side.  You get used to that, but Windows 8 relies so much on that Windows button that I think it is worth that $20 for a Windows button.  It's still such a good deal.  The camera is pretty crappy on the WinBook, its 2mp front and back, but that is good enough for Skype, which is the only thing that I would consider using a camera on something like this for.  It's a similar screen I would say; it's a pretty similar computer to the HP Stream.  The aspect ratio is a little different.  I don't know.  

Daniel:  The WinBook has got a more...

Leo:  The WinBook has a USB, a real USB port too.  You can charge the WinBook with a MicroUSB and then use a mouse and keyboard.  I don't see this on the Stream, it's also got an HDMI plug, it's also got a MicroSD card slot.  I don't know if that is what this is.  It's a slot on the top.  That may be a speaker.  I feel like this is, and the fact that it charges with a MicroUSB is what makes the WinBook very valuable in my opinion.  Here I am in the chat room with it.  Isn't that cool?

Mary Jo:  It's pretty nice.

Leo:  I didn't mean to derail the show, but I had to talk about this.  This is phenomenal.  Alright, subject number 1, well it kind of is this subject. Windows Mobile came out on phones.  Here Alex Gumble again, our Windows guru, he put Windows 10 on this 535.  What is different now on Mobile?

Mary Jo:  Not a lot.

Daniel:  You have the Start screen, and it is like the default one.  It looks pretty normal, but if you go into the settings you can now set the background.  It is a different type of background now.  It gives you transparent tiles or translucent.

Leo:  Well we had that in Windows 8.1, didn't we?

Daniel:   Yeah, but it's done differently.  Before in 8.1 it would put the image on the tiles basically.  Now it's actually combining them.  Joe Bellifori said that they are actually going to do both options.

Mary Jo:  I think that is nice.  They are going to give people a choice of which way they prefer it.

Leo:  You know what irks me just in the slightest bit?  Just a little bit?  I can't put it on my 1520.  Can you put it on your Icon yet?

Mary Jo:  Not yet.

Leo:  These are the high end Windows Phones.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, and you know that it's kind of sad that this inability to put the first preview on many of the phones really marred the whole launch of the preview.  Microsoft said they didn't tell us which phones that is was going to be on because the list was changing right up until the minute that they hit the button, they said, okay, it's available.  So it ended up only being available on kind of the mid and lower range phones.  That caught a lot of people off guard.  So it's available right now for the Lumia 630, 635, 636, 638, 730, and 830.  That's it right now. 

Leo:  But there is a good reason for that, right?

Mary Jo:  There is.

Leo:  It's not Microsoft's fault?

Mary Jo:  No, they said that they are going to be adding a feature called Partition Stitching that is going to adjust the OS partitions to make room for the install process so that they can update the OS in place.  They said that these phones have enough space, but the ones that we had they wanted to make sure that it was going to be a good experience so they are going to be adding those at some point in the future.

Leo:  I see.

Mary Jo:  But yeah, everybody was badly surprised.

Daniel:  It was pointed out that they were going to do a subset of phones, but we didn't get the list so we had to guess which ones.  Joe Bellfori took to Twitter shortly after this happened an sort of did a feedback thing with the audience basically saying that their conundrum was that they could either get it out early, which was about 2 weeks after it was announced, and have it on a subset of devices, or they could have taken longer and made sure that it goes out to everyone.  So it was that trade off that they had to decide upon.  It's not necessarily that one was better than the other, but that was the choice.  So they decided to go early with a subset of devices.  They are kind of screwed if they go either way, because if they took another 4 weeks then people would have complained about that.  They were already pretty crazy on Twitter bugging everybody about this update.  

Mary Jo:  I know, I know.

Leo:  Does Microsoft pay attention to what people say on Twitter?  Come on, really?

Daniel:  Oh yeah.

Mary Jo:  They do.

Daniel:  Well, it's because Gabriel Aul is sort of the face of the Windows Insider Program, and he is really good about responding to people and answering questions.  Having said that, you know, I have to say though, that the Windows 10 Preview for phones, I don't think that people are missing much right now.  

Leo:  It looks pretty much the same.  The background is it, right?  What else is there?

Daniel:  Well if you go to settings, settings is completely overhauled.  It's different.  There are a lot of new menu choices and the photo app is new.  If you go to photos you will see a very different app.  So that's a big one.

Leo:  Let's do it.  Let's take a picture.  I don't know if we have any photos.  That kind of takes the fun out of it.  I will have to take some pictures.

Daniel:   You can take that hamburger menu out.  

Leo:  Yeah, hamburger.  That's all that I can show you.  I could show you the hamburger.  Folder view, coming soon.  Album view, coming soon.  Settings, coming soon.  I will take some pictures.  We will have some.  This is not logged in, I think that Alex did not want to log it into his account.  Is the camera different?

Daniel:  Technically no, but for non-Lumia devices when that does go out to them they will be because they are bringing basically what is known as Lumia camera to all Windows Phones.  

Leo:  I noticed that I have a Nokia button on here, but I want to use the Windows camera.  There it is.  So they will be using the Lumia camera?

Daniel:  Right.

Mary Jo:  What else is new in there?  I guess there is some new speech to text capabilities.  

Daniel:  Which is actually really good.  So you can use, before you could only do speech in certain aspects of the operating system, but now wherever there is a text entry there is an option with the microphone so you can do speech to text, and it's very fast, the engine.  It's eerie how fast it will actually translate what you are saying.  That is really useful.  So you can do emails now, texting, and some messaging, that kind of stuff.

Mary Jo:  You can even say the punctuation now.  I don't think that you could before, could you?

Leo:   That's nice.

Daniel:  Yeah right, no you couldn't.  That was pretty frustrating.  It's still not 100% in my opinion, but you can technically go and add it.

Leo:  I do that all the time on the other platforms where I say new paragraph, comma, exclamation mark, that kind of thing.  That's useful.

Daniel:  Notifications are also being changed.  If you swipe down from the screen the layout is a little different, some of the fonts and the dividers.  You can also dismiss individual notifications now.  So say you have 10 new emails, before you could only clear all of the emails with notification, or none.  Now you can do individual emails and swipe them one away, or if you do them by the category you can swipe an entire category.  

Leo:  By the way, Twitter is useful.  I just got a tweet from Elizabeth Morrisey, @flowerbubble.  She pointed me to Paul's article on how for $10 I can convert the Office 365 Personal on this tablet to 365 Home.  So that gives me the multiple installs and stuff.  I already have Home, but I was actually a little disappointed because it said that you can't use this license because you already have a license.  Come back next year.  So I'm saving the code.  Maybe someday I will be able to use it.  Somebody in the chat room, hellacatm, is asking if they will allow voice recognition in Word?  That's not changed, right?

Daniel:  We don't 100% know, but the operating system, just wherever the keyboard pops up that little unlock you phone pops up, so I don't see why it wouldn't be.  

Leo:  I love dictating.  

Daniel:  The notifications too are going to be interactive now, or actionable a lot of people like to call them.  So if you get a text message...

Leo:  You can respond to it in the notification?  Nice.

Mary Jo:  Oh, we forgot to talk about the pointer in the soft keyboard.  The nubbin as people call it. 

Leo:  Okay, nubbin, I'm going to try to find a nubbin here.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, RichardB just reminded me of that.  He's like don't forget about that.  It's actually kind of interesting.  I'm not sure how much I will use it, but I think that I'm going to use that quite a bit.

Leo:  So this thing?  Oh, where is the nubbin?

Daniel:  I don't think that it is on the tablet.

Mary Jo:  It's only on phone.

Leo:  It's only on phone, alright.

Daniel:  Yeah, so open the messaging app.  Try to create a message and you will see it.

Leo:  Alright, I'm going to create a new message, and oh yeah, it's a little blue dot in between the arrow, z, 123, dot.  What does that do?  Whoa, it's like a pointer.  Look at that.

Mary Jo:  You know how hard it is to get the cursor in the exact spot that you want?

Leo:  That's actually...

Mary Jo:  Yeah.

Leo:  So I'm going to type a line, and I can go character by character back and forth.  That is very, very nice.

Daniel:  Yeah, especially if you have multiple paragraphs.  You can bounce around a lot easier.

Leo:  Will they do that in Windows 8, 9, 10?  Okay, this is Windows 10 Mobile, what is the other thing, Windows 10 Desktop?

Mary Jo:  Windows 10 Desktop.

Leo:  Will they do that in Windows 10 Desktop?

Daniel:  I don't know, that's a very good question.  Mary Jo, do you have any...

Mary Jo:  I don't know.

Leo:  On a desktop you don't need it, but on a tablet it would be...

Mary Jo:  It would be great.

Daniel:  I want Swipe.  I want Swipe to come to tablets.

Leo:  Oh yeah, that’s where you swipe out.  You can do that on the phone.  Yeah, this is the, you spell not by tapping but by drawing on the keyboard.  I love that feature.  That's not available on Windows 10 Desktop either?

Daniel:  No, not yet.  But I would love to see it on 7 inch tablets.  It would be really useful.

Leo:  See, this was, I think really this was the whole problem with Windows 8.1, was that you have these 2 form factor for hardware and a single operating system.  Windows 10 seems to kind of make that better.  Do you think that they will be less likely to do stuff that will be specifically for tablets then?

Mary Jo:  This Mobile 10 version that came out on the phones that will actually run on small tablets that exact operating system.   

Leo:  So this 7 inch tablet will next time have Windows 10 Mobile?

Mary Jo:  Right, right now you can't install it on those but you are going to be able to.

Leo:  By the way, if I decided, if I just felt like, because I am a bold, I like to live dangerously, if I decided, because look, this is the 7 inch HP stream, and Alex shoehorned Windows 10 into it, finding drivers and doing all sorts of tricks.  I could do that on my Lumia, right?  My 1520?  I will just put it right on there.  Let me just try it right now.

Mary Jo:  No Leo, don't brick that again.

Leo:  This is a new one.  This is the second one.  No, don't brick it?

Daniel:  So it can be done, but the trick is that if you are flashing or installing another image, basically a Lumia 630's OS image on to the 1520.

Leo:  No, no, no, no.

Daniel:  It works if you do it right, but people have been bricking their phones, and we don't know the long term repercussions, if any; there could be.  What I tell people is that at least right now it isn't worth it.  Even I haven't done this, because I have it on a few devices, Windows 10 on Phone, and it's just nice.  I would not put it on my daily driver on my main phone, not yet.  You can go buy a 635, at least in the US, for $50 from AT&T or whatever and just go install this.

Leo:  I think that is what Alex did.  I think that this is just a spare phone. 

Daniel:  If you can spare $50 you will be so much better.  You can do whatever you want to that phone, and it just isn't worth putting it on the 1520 right now.  Unless you have 3 of them, then go ahead.

Leo:  I only have 2, so...

Mary Jo:  I have been watching Gabe Aul's Twitter stream, and he is answering so many people who have bricked their phones and he's telling them don't do it, don't do it.

Leo:  How do you spell Gabe Aul?

Mary Jo:  @gabeaul

Leo:  Gabe Aul.

Mary Jo:  Gabriel Aul.  He is the head of the Windows Insider Program.

Leo:  We should all follow this.

Mary Jo:  Anybody who listens to this podcast should be following him.  

Daniel:  Definitely.

Leo:  Because he is tweeting like crazy, 2 more hot fixes out, 2 new hot fix going, time for Gabe Aul to tweet.  Good morning everyone.  So today, no this was yesterday, he was doing like a Twitter storm, sharing about new phones, sharing news about new builds when I can.  So he is answering questions on Twitter.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, everybody was saying, you know, when is it going to be on this phone, when is it going to be on that phone.  He is telling them, you know what...

Leo:  Better call Aul.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, I love that, better call Aul.

Leo:  It's kind of a cheesy PhotoShop, but what the heck.  Now I know how to spell his name anyway.  Well good, just following him.  Excellent.  Let's see, what else here?  Rooms, there are some people in the chat room upset about this.

Daniel:  Yeah.

Leo:  First of all, what is Rooms?

Daniel:  There are basically little virtual rooms that you can set up with other Windows Phone users, although technically they were some interoperability with other operating systems, but the true experience was on Windows Phone.  So say that you have a family, you can create a family Room.  You would invite them to it, and you could share things like a calendar, you could share photos...

Leo:  So it's not just group chat.

Daniel:  And group chat, all that stuff.  Conceptually it was a brilliant thing and they really did promote it when it first came out, but it never really caught on, and I think that part of the problem was that there were just not that many Windows Phone users.  We are sort of like ships in the night, right?  So you would have to...

Leo:  Your whole family would have to be using Windows Phone.  How likely is that?

Daniel:  Yeah.

Leo:  I didn't even know what Rooms were.

Mary Jo:  It's on Windows Phone 8.1 too.  It's just something that I never used.  Man, I heard from everybody who used it yesterday.  I heard from them on Twitter.

Leo:  Well if you were using it that would really be a lot of functionality lost.  Where would I find rooms in Windows Phone 8.1?  Is there a Rooms...

Mary Jo:  One way that you can find it is through the People Hub.  

Leo:  Okay, I remember that, yes.

Mary Jo:  And you can add people from your contact list.

Leo:  Yes, I have done that.  I have a Best Friends button.  Is that it?  No?  What is Best Friends then?  Do you know about that?  What is Best Friends?

Mary Jo:  I think that is what, Groups?  Is there a thing called Groups?

Daniel:  Yeah, Groups are...

Leo:  Yeah, you can Group, and then what is new among my best friends.

Daniel:  Yeah, that's a little different.

Leo:  That's something else?

Daniel:  That's not a room.  That's just basically a way to track.

Leo:  Like track them, like a specialized People Hub?  But in People, I could create, I'm trying not to show anything to, there is it, Rooms.  Family Room.  Invite someone to your room.  Gee, if I only knew somebody with Windows Phone.  Daniel, would you be in my family?  Mary Jo, could you be in my family?  

Mary Jo:  Sure.

Leo:  We could have a faux Family Room.  Okay, you can privately share calendars, photos, group chat, and notes all right here.  Well that's neat.  

Mary Jo:  It's a nice idea, but number 1 I don't know how many people used it.  I tried to ask if they were discontinuing it is because nobody is using it.  Nobody really wanted to go on the record saying that.  But I bet it wasn't well used.  The other part that we don't know is what is going to replace it?  Microsoft is hinting there is something coming with Windows 10 that is going to replace it.  I'm guessing Skype or GroupMe, or those two things in combination maybe.  

Leo:  GroupMe is a Microsoft product?

Mary Jo:  Skype bought GroupMe and then Microsoft bought Skype, so now they own it.

Leo:  Because people in the chat were saying that they could use GroupMe to do the same thing.  That's across platform, which would make it more desirable.  

Mary Jo:  Right.  But so far they haven't said yet.  In March, next month, they are taking away Rooms.  I don't know if they will tell us in March what replaces it in Windows Phone 8 and 10 or what, but if you created a room you can still keep it.

Leo:  Oh, you just can't create new ones.  Okay, so before you update your phone make a Room. 

Daniel:  I don't think that you need something to replace it.  The GroupMe stuff is kind of interesting because in Windows 10 the messaging app is, like the way that Skype works in Windows 10 is sort of interesting.  Skype actually integrates with your messaging app now.  It doesn't do it in this build now, but it is coming, so the idea is that the messaging app itself can be updated through the store, and they are going to allow interoperability with other services, I think VOIP services, but Skype is one of them.  So during a conversation you will be able to switch from Skype to SMS with a contact.  So that is sort of bringing back an old feature that we used to have with Windows Phone like say the Facebook Messenger.  I don't think that it will work with Facebook, but I think that it is sort of where they are going with stuff, and now they own GroupMe and it’s figured that GroupMe could be a part of that as well.  I honestly don't know what their plans are, but because the big thing with the Windows Phone 10 Preview is not so much what you see, it's all of the underlying stuff.  The fact that a lot of the core apps in the operating system can now be updated through the store directly is a huge change for them because now they can not only do OS updates to carriers, they can push out updates through these apps and add features that way.  It's going to be a much more interesting model I think than the monolithic operating system where they couldn't even touch the browser and the other core components of it.  It's funny too because I have a lot of people complaining about it.  They look at the Windows 10 Preview for Phone and they are like, "this is all that they have done for 2 years?"  "What have they been doing?"  

Leo:  It's all under the hood.  

Daniel:  You do realize that they operating system that is running on your phone is the same thing that is running your tablets and PCs now?  It's kind of like something that is not consumer facing so we will have to see what they are going to do in the next few months.  

Leo:  Does it feel faster?  Does the experience improve some way that is tangible?  Or not really?

Daniel:  No, actually it depends.  There is still a lot of optimization that needs to be done, and that won't be done until later.  Scrolling on the Start screen could be jittery.  Yeah, certain apps like in settings and stuff like that, the new languages that they are using to write the universal apps are much faster and zippier than the previous versions.  I think the final product, yes, will be very fast.  I think that it will be faster than what we currently have.  

Mary Jo:  But there is a lot of things that aren't in there.  Spartan, the new browser is not there yet.  The touch enabled Office apps for Windows Phone, like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the new versions of those aren't there yet.  Those are going to be built in when the phone is done.  With Skype some of that stuff isn't there yet.  So it's very early in this preview.

Daniel:  Yeah, no Outlook either.

Mary Jo:  Right, now Outlook.

Leo:  Alright, I'm going to ask one question about Windows Media Center.

Mary Jo:  No.

Leo:  Please.  

Mary Jo:  I know that someone is going to ask it.

Leo:  Yeah, the chat room wants to know about Windows Media Center.  I know that Paul and Mary Jo don't want to talk about it, Daniel, any chance you want to talk about it?

Daniel:  No, I think that what Windows Media Center did can be replicated in the operating system.

Leo:  Just do it.

Daniel:  I think that it's kind of cool that MKB support, Flak support, gapless playback, all of that is coming now to Windows 10.  Even like Flak and MKB, because it's in the Windows 10 desktop, it's also in Windows 10 Phone.  That's all native now, so they are definitely doing a lot  more of the media stuff, and what is really kind of cool about Windows 10 with what they are doing is it really is a more dynamic system.  It's almost crowd source built, and when people really want certain features you can actually tell Microsoft to do that and vote on User Voice.  They literally can just build that stuff in there.  

Leo:  They are just saying that.  They are not going to listen.

Daniel:  The User Voice stuff is really interesting.  I almost find, I don't know, Mary Jo, how do you feel about this?  Part of me, I really like the idea that this operating system is sort of being crowd sourced and built up.

Leo:  That's just PR.  Really?

Daniel:  No, no, it's true.

Mary Jo:  I think that it is partially PR and partially real.  Remember, we are coming from a very shell shocked experience with Windows 8.  

Leo:  Yes we are.

Mary Jo:  So whatever they do, even if they listen just a little bit, it is going to feel like a lot.  But I think that there are certain things that even if the User Voice community says that they want it they aren't going to do.  

Leo:  Like what?  Like Windows Media Center?

Mary Jo:  Like Windows Media Center.

Leo:  Because I guarantee that there are like 10,000 votes for that.

Mary Jo:  At least.

Leo:  There are some things that for technical reasons or business reasons that they are not going to respond to.  On the other hand, if you say that you want the Start Menu to be purple they might do that.

Daniel:  They are being pretty responsive to some things.

Mary Jo:  Here is an example.  Let's talk about the Icons, because people are really hating on the Icons right now in Windows 10.  They are like these look like crap.  So many people are saying that.  But are they really going to change them between now and final?  Maybe.  Are they going to do it the way that users want?  Maybe not.  Or maybe.  We don't know.

Leo:   You know, that is a cheap way to respond to users.  Right?  What does it cost to have that deal?

Mary Jo:  They have the whole Metro Design Language.

Leo:  We have a Design Team, we are saving a lot of money.

Mary Jo:  Yeah right.

Daniel:  The design language in Windows 10 is, I don't know how to describe it right now.  I don't want to judge it too much because I don't feel like we are seeing the whole picture of it, but what we are seeing on phone is definitely a move away from what we have been doing on Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8.  The Hamburger Menu is so controversial for some people.  That's a perfect example of, I don't know, the Hamburger Menu stuff is pretty universal, it's on web browsers and it's on Android, but the problem with a lot of people right now is that it is on the upper left hand corner and when using the phone one handed you cannot reach across.  Right now on Windows Phone is very efficiently built, all of the menu stuff is at the bottom.  So you can just use it with your thumb as you are holding it.  Including Internet Explorer, which has the address bar at the bottom, which they moved originally from the top to the bottom because it was just a lot easier to use.  But now all of that stuff is moving to the top of the screen.  A lot of people are complaining about it.  

Leo:  I'm a lefty, so the Hamburger Menu is positioned perfectly for me.  Exactly where I want it.

Mary Jo:  They made it just for you.

Daniel:  The counter argument of course is that none of this has effected Android or IOS. So you can complain about their menu systems being ineffectual and not good looking and yet they are completely dominant in the marketplace.  I get the argument of how people want it, but I'm not sure that it matters at the end of the day.

Leo:  Yeah, and also do you really want an operating system designed by a committee or do you want a clear specialty design?  I feel like you want a clear voice.  In fact that was maybe a little of what was wrong with Windows 8 is that they tried to please too many people.  Or maybe that it tried to please Steven Sinofsky.  

Daniel:  I think that is it.

Leo:  You know, it's funny because we are right in the middle of a resign of the website, and there is a lot of debate about Hamburger Menus in general.  First of all I should explain what a Hamburger Menu is, because it doesn't look like a hamburger, its 4 lines or 3 lines.  It's a little square with 3 lines in it.  That is an abbreviation for there is a menu under here.  It's a menu icon.  But apparently studies show that people don't really get that, and most often don't click it, and are puzzled by where the stuff that they are looking for is.  I'm glad that Microsoft is doing it.  They did the 3 dot, and Android does the 3 dots as well.

Mary Jo:  I don't think that is very intuitive either.

Leo:  We decided not to use a hamburger, but to use the word Menu...which is pretty explicit, right?  That is on a big screen, it has to be mobile responsive, though, so when it shrinks down we just use a hamburger there and hope that because it's mobile people are more comfortable with the idea of a hamburger.  That is a debate among designers, this stuff is not, you can't just throw it against the wall and say how do you like that?  There is a lot of thought that goes into this.  Alright, let's take a break.  GDR 2, do you want to mention that?  It's out.

Mary Jo:  GDR 2.  

Leo:  Who cares?

Daniel:  It exists, it's there.

Leo:  Here comes GDR 2.

Mary Jo:  Remember that there was going to be an update to Windows Phone 8.1?

Leo:  We don't call that update 2.

Mary Jo:  No, we don't.  But we should.  

Leo:  I'm sorry Mary Jo.

Mary Jo:  But it never came out.  

Leo:   That would imply that there was an update 1.

Mary Jo:  Which there was.  I'm just saying.

Leo:  So it will be out when?

Daniel:  We don't know too much.  Those documents that came out from Microsoft, that's mostly for OEMs and manufacturers.  It has to deal with hardware changes.  Basically if you are going to build a Windows Phone those documents are for you.  What it doesn't address is the actual consumer facing features, which is what most people would be interested in.  So we don't know the actual changes.  I don't expect anything huge to be in there, but there could be a lot of new menus and features added and we just don't completely know the story yet.  I understand that it has been paired down as they basically refocused their resources on to Windows 10 development, which makes sense.  I wouldn't be surprised if at Mobile World Congress that we hear more about this.  

Leo:  You say that it supports video conferencing that is separate from Skype or Link or something else? 

Daniel:  Yeah, this is for carriers.  They can basically build in their own VOIP apps that can support this.

Leo:  The carrier has to do it?

Daniel:  I'm not sure if this affects Skype or what it is for the long term, but this is a sort of a thing that carriers can do.  If you look at Windows Phone 8.1 right now under the dialer under settings you can set a default video app for video calls.

Leo: So this is video over LTE is basically what it is.

Daniel:  Right now it is just Skype and it is grayed out, because right now there are not apps that can integrate.  I think that this might be part of that.  

Leo:  Is there demand for basically what this would be is video phone?

Daniel:  That's a good question.  I don't know.  Mary Jo knows more Enterprise stuff.  I would imagine that with world conferencing I would imagine that businesses would use them.

Mary Jo:  This has something to do with Skype for Business, right?

Leo:  Every IOS device comes with FaceTime.  All Macs have FaceTime. 

Mary Jo:  Microsoft is going to build SMS and Skype together into Windows Phone 10, I mean Windows 10 Mobile and I also think into Desktop.  I'm not sure about Desktop though.  They are doing a lot of things to help people bridge consumer Skype and the Skype for Business.  One of the last things that they had to do was find a way to bridge the video capability.  I don't know if this is what is connected with that or not.  

Leo:  So it is a business thing, not a consumer thing.

Daniel:  The big thing is not so much the direct video stuff, it's the actual conferencing that you can have multiple video streams like on your phone.

Leo:  I see.  Without carrier support, which what do you really have?  Nothing, a lot of nothing.  Let's take a break, Daniel Rubino is filling in for Paul this week.  Daniel is from WinCentral, windowscentral.com.  He is also on the Twitter @daniel_rubino.  Mary Jo Foley is from AllAboutMicrosoft.com.  Lot's more to come, but first a word from our sponsor, ITProTV.  I know that for those of you who are in IT that keeping your skills up is an ongoing process as the tech world changes all the time.  If you want to get into IT then it's the same thing.  Even more importantly, you might want that piece of paper, that cert that says to a future employer that you know your stuff.  You could go to an expensive technical school for that, you could go to a bookstore and spend hundred on manuals, or you could try this, ITProTv, the fast, and easy, and I have to say, entertaining way to get your skills up.  They are on the air right now.  I see the red blinking light at ITPro.tv.  Let's see what they are talking about right now.  By the way, you may say gee, that looks an awful lot like what you are doing.  Well they kind of modeled it on TWiT, which I love.  I'm not logged in.  I will log in.  By the way, you see the prices?  Very affordable compared to going out and even buying a few manuals; $70 a month, $570 a year.  I'm going to give you a special deal in just a second.  Let me log into my ITProTV account and see what they are talking about right now.  Every week they add 30 hours of content.  They have a lot of features that are going to make it very easy for you to learn.  We talked before about the measure up practice exams.  Those are worth $79 and they come free with your subscription.  I'm a big fan, let me show you this, of the virtual machine.  So if you don't have a Windows Server in your back pocket maybe it's a little hard to get going learning all of this stuff.  They have got a sandbox environment for hands on practice and learning.  All you need is an HTML 5 browser.  That means you can do it on Chromebook.  You can get your Windows Server running, you can get your clients running, you can mess them up as I always do, really screw things up bad and then just restart.  No big deal.  It is fantastic, and it's all included with your subscription.  You also get to interact with the hosts via chat during the show.  Somebody is watching it via the WinBook 700, that's what I have.  That's kind of cool, too, that's another great thing that you can do with ITProTV, watch not only on your computer, but on your tablet or your laptop.  If you subscribe for a full year, just pay ahead, not only do you save a lot of money, you also get DRM free downloads so that you can consume offline if you get on a plane or whatever.  Corporate group pricing is available.  Their clients include HP, UCSD, Penn State, Stanford, many other schools and colleges, and groups that support our military and our veterans which I think is really, really great.  Hundreds of hours of content; Apple, Microsoft, Sysco, A+, CCNA Security+, MCSA, CISSP, PowerShell, Linux+.  By the way, their player, and I think that they are putting a new player in right now, that is probably what is going on here, is going to have Chromecast support.  So you can put it up on the big screen or use Roku, they have a Roku player now too.  Now, here is the deal.  Check out itpro.tv/ww because you are a Windows Weekly viewer.  That is itpro.tv/ww, you can get a 7 day free trial and save a lot of money.  When you use our offer code WW30 you get 30% off which brings your rate down to, if I do my math right here, less than $40 a month or $399 for the entire year.  But you get 7 days to have your run of the place too, which is really great.  There's Don sitting with me on the TWiT set.  They are big fans.  We love them.  We have been with them since the very beginning and they have grown like crazy because they have provided such a great source.  Go to itpro.tv/ww and learn more about ITProTV.  By the way, not only do we have the WW30 subscription, the 7 day trial, 30% off, but as you reach your year mark, they are celebrating their anniversary, they are going to reduce your subscription rate even further.  Starting in month 13 they bring your cost down to $24.95 a month, or $249 for the entire year.  Lots of people are using ITPro to keep their skills up, a lot of people are using it to get a great job.  I want you to try it today free for 7 days; itpro.tv/ww.  By the way, don't worry, there is no risk.  It's easy to cancel.  I know that you are going to want to, but isn't it nice to know that you have to be happy.  Tim and Don are really great about that.  Itpro.tv/ww, don't forget that offer code WW30.  We thank them for their support of Windows Weekly.

Daniel Rubino is here from Windows Central.  Mary Jo Foley, we are talking Windows.  Hey Daniel, in the snow.  Mary Jo, it's not as snowy in New York, you are not so bad, right?

Mary Jo:  We got a little snow this week but not much.

Leo:  It's not blocking the way to Rattle and Hum?

Mary Jo:  No, no.  That path is well cleared.  By me.

Leo:  Cleared with beer.  Next week Windows 10 Desktop Preview release.  Wait a minute, I thought we already had the Windows 10 Desktop Preview?  There is going to be a new release?

Mary Jo:  I'm just guessing this.  I'm guessing this because Microsoft has said that right now they are on a roughly monthly release schedule for updated Technical Preview Builds for Windows 10 and also for Windows 10 Mobile now.  I don't think that we are going to see it this week.  There are still 2 days left of this week, so I can't say for sure, but I'm betting it's going to be next week that we are going to see the February Windows 10 Desktop release for the preview.  

Leo:  Oh great.

Mary Jo:  Right now those 2 things are not in sync.  We just had the Windows 10 Mobile Preview, and then we are going to have the Desktop Preview.  I don't know if they ever will be in sync or not, or if Microsoft will keep those 2 things separate and just try to catch one up to the other.

Leo:  How different are, I mean they are different on top, but isn't the runtime the same underneath? 

Mary Jo:  It is.  The runtime is the same, a lot of the features are starting to converge, the tools are going to converge.  That's how you have all of these universal apps that work across different form factors that run Windows 10.  But right now they are not the same operating system.  Windows 10 Desktop is different than Windows 10 Mobile, even though Microsoft is just going to call them all Windows 10.  

Leo:  Right.

Mary Jo:  Just to keep it really confusing. 

Daniel:  Seriously.  Actually Microsoft just rolled out 2 updates for Windows 10, and 2 of them are apparently in preparation for the next update.  So it look like they are getting the groundwork ready for probably next week.

Leo:  I'm confused.   So they have just rolled out 2 updates?  What am I getting next week, another update?

Daniel:  These are software or hot fixes, they are not OS updates.

Mary Jo:  They are like hot fixes.

Leo:  So next week I'm going to get what I got last time but it's going to be new?

Mary Jo:  With new features.

Leo:  With new features.

Mary Jo:  We think that it will be fixes.

Leo:  It will be an update for those who are already running Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Mary Jo:  Right, and if you are not yet running it and you want to jump in you can jump in with the February preview.  A lot of people are curious, sorry Daniel.  I was going to say that Spartan was the one, right?  Everyone is wanting Spartan.

Leo:  So we don't yet have the new browser?

Mary Jo:  Nope, not yet.  I'm betting it is not going to be in this next release, but I don't know that for sure.  I just think that it is still a little early.  

Leo:  How can you tell the difference?  Is the UI different on Spartan?  Because a browser is a browser, right?

Daniel:  It's going to look different.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, we really haven't seen much of Spartan.  We have seen some leaked screen shots, but no one outside publicly...

Leo:  I just don't want to be disappointed.  Fireworks are not going to go off, the web is not going to look better, it's going to have a new UI and maybe the engines will be better and different because they forked it and tried it and whatever, but it's just another, come on, really people are going I can’t' wait to get Spartan?

Mary Jo:  You know what, it's going to be more like Chrome and Firefox.  It's going to be lighter weight we've heard and it's possibly going to be supporting extensions we've heard, so it is going to be different from IE even though it does have the same rendering engine as in IE 11.

Leo:  Right.

Daniel:  Well you have the Edge HTML Engine, though.

Mary Jo:  Right, the Edge HTML Engine.

Daniel:  So that's actually in the Windows 10 preview, you can actually enable it now.  That kind of tricks the web out there, the web can't see it as not being an Internet Explorer browser, it sort of changes some of the user string agent stuff.  It's going to be, yeah, they are supporting a lot more standards now including streaming standards for video and dynamic streaming.  It is a completely new browser, it's going to be like the foundations of it are different.  The UI I think they are going to keep minimum basic, you will have just a couple of tools.  But yeah, some of the features are kind of neat, like the ability to annotate kind of directly on a webpage with a Pen.

Leo:  That would be different.  Yeah, that's right, that will be different.  

Daniel:  Inter Word integration.

Leo:  People with Pen versions of Windows will be excited.  I've heard about that, that's kind of cool.  What about those annotations, do they come back when you come back to that page?  We don't know.

Daniel:  No one knows.

Leo:  No one has ever used it.

Mary Jo:  I think that what happens from the leaks is that you can annotate the page, it stores it on OneDrive, and then anybody can access it even if they don't have Windows and see those annotations.  

Leo:  Oh, so you can share them.

Daniel:  Yep.

Mary Jo:  Right, that's what we have heard.  Again, no one has seen that publicly.  

Leo: Oh, I take it back, there is reason to be interested.

Mary Jo:  It could be cool.

Leo:  But you don't think that we will be getting it next week anyway?

Mary Jo:  I don't know.  I think that it is early.  

Daniel:  Yeah, I agree, I agree.  I think that everybody expects around March or April.  That kind of thing.  I think they are still just kind of building.  The cool thing about this browser too, and Mary Jo might be able to give more details, it that it is a true app and it's going to be updated through the store as well.  So right now Internet Explorer is kind of difficult to update through the operating system.  I think that it is a little bit of a bigger chore.  It's going to be an actual app, so just as you run to the Windows Store right now...

Leo:  That's how it should be.

Daniel:  And it should be the same way for phone too, so everything is going to be the same and unified.  So it's going to be kind of cool.  If they want to change the browser, if they want to change another standard, they can just push that out without having to roll up, like they really got away from the service packs, right, that's like really old.  Now we are doing more frequent updates.  Even a lot of the stuff will move to the store and happen as system app updates.  

Leo:  This is something exciting to get.  

Mary Jo:  Yeah, yep.

Leo:  We kind of skipped ahead and did WDGS already.

Mary Jo:  Yeah, we did.  What did Gabe Aul say?

Leo:  This is going to be a new feature of the show apparently every week.  What did Gabe Aul say?

Mary Jo:  I know, you know what he is really good at is that he has been answering everybody on Twitter.  He has been dropping little hints about this might happen, this might not happen, but not giving away the farm.

Leo:  Microsoft needs that guy.   Actually every company needs that guy.  Larry Herb used to do it.  I don't know how active he has been in the Xbox arena.  

Daniel:  Oh yeah, he is still there.

Leo:  That was the single best, Xbox PR was sucky, it still is, but Larry is great.

Daniel:  And he is still running his blog.

Leo:  That face, that real human face, adding that even to something as big as Windows, is important I think.

Mary Jo:  I agree.

Daniel:  Definitely.

Leo:  It can't be just lip service either, it has to be someone with real knowledge who can give you, you know it's not just a PR job.  You are aren't going to get Joe, Joe B. is too busy to do this.  There is no way that you are going to get Joe B.

Mary Jo:  Gabe was funny, he was giving hints about when they are going to drop the Windows 10 Mobile Preview, and what was his hint?  It was something so crazy.   Yeah, 1316, yeah if you can decipher this clue, 1316, and nobody could get it, it was in Octal, right?

Leo:  In Octal?  Okay, he gets his geek street cred then.  What is his title?

Mary Jo:  He is the head of the Windows Insider Program.  He has another title too.

Daniel:  Officially it is a long thing, it's something that I haven't memorized.

Leo:  It's something that he doesn't put on his Twitter.

Mary Jo:  He in the Operating System Group.  He is very involved, and he knows more than anyone what is coming.  

Leo:  By the way, the Insider Program, good on Microsoft for doing that.  That's how you get Windows 10, you have to join that program.  That's part of this whole new public face.

Daniel:  They even have some of their support engineers who work on Windows 10 on some of their forums directly helping people.  So when people have questions or talk about design...

Leo:  Oh really?

Daniel:  We have official badges too on our forum.  

Leo:   Windowscentral.com, that's great.  

Daniel:  So they definitely are a lot more interactive with the community, and if you talk to employees they are a lot more happy this way.  They are a little more free to be that public face, to actually answer people, you know?  They have to be careful, of course, not to say things and commit to them publicly if they can't deliver, but because of this preview stuff; what I love about the Preview Program by the way, is the fact that we can get away from leaks.  Leaks still happen, but now it's kind of cool.  We don't have to think about what is coming in Windows 10?  Every couple of weeks they actually push out this operating system and anyone can use it, so it's like less of a secret, you know?  

Leo:  Let's see, what else?  That was the, we will get a graphic made up and some music, the WGAS segment.  Gabe Aul, g-a-b-e-a-u-l on Twitter. Office news?

Mary Jo:  Yeah, Leo, I'm super interested in what you think of one of the pieces of Office news that came out this week.

Leo:  Alright.

Mary Jo:  So Microsoft said that they were opening up the Touch First version of Office, and they are starting with Office for iPad and Office for iPhone to more Cloud storage providers.

Leo:  Right.  I saw that.

Mary Jo:  Including iCloud and Box and others.

Leo:  DropBox probably.

Mary Jo:  DropBox, DropBox was already in there, Google Sales Force.

Leo:  GoogleDrive?

Mary Jo:  Not so much.  

Daniel:  Not yet.

Leo:  If they would do that I would be impressed.  That's alright, everybody probably has one of those other third party services.

Mary Jo:  So it's kind of interesting, because what you can do is that you can edit and store.  Let me double check this so I say it correctly.  You can open, edit, and save documents from these services.  If you are on Office for iPad and you want to open, save, or edit a document that's in iCloud you can do that now.  

Leo:  So it's essentially a pier to OneDrive, right?

Mary Jo:  Except you can't create.  

Leo:  Wait a minute.

Mary Jo:  If the document is already created, I think.

Leo:  So wait a minute.  So you would create anyway in the app, you are not going to create, you create and save?  You don't have to save it to OneDrive first?  That would be weird.

Mary Jo:  I think up until now you did and there were duplicate applications.

Daniel:  Even on phone it was like that for a while.  You couldn't create a document.

Mary Jo:  Here's the thing.  This guy, Joe Casares, you know that I'm disappointed that Office for IOS doesn't allow for saving newly created documents to iCloud.  It edits and saves what is already there.

Leo:  How do you get it to iCloud if that's the case?

Mary Jo:  Right.

Leo:  That doesn't make any sense.  

Daniel:  You drag and drop?

Mary Jo:  Yeah.

Leo:  No, you can't just put a document in iCloud.  It has to be associated with something.  

Mary Jo:  You can't just like drop a document in there, right?

Leo:  No, you have to open Office and try to, well this is new, right, so I won't be able to tell what it is doing.  

Mary Jo:  So what is enabling this is that in IOS 8 Apple has opened up some of these app extensions.  So Microsoft has basically paid backing onto those.  

Leo:  Right, you can't really blame Microsoft, at least on IOS for limitations, because...

Mary Jo:  No, it's on whatever Apple opens up.  

Leo:  Although most apps, in fact Apple's own app, not Apple's own apps, but most apps allow you to save to a bunch of storage providers.  It's not unusual.  I use an app called Mailbox that lets me put attachments from you know, OneDrive, DropBox, Vox, all of the other storage places.  So that's not a limitation of IOS in most respects.  Saving might be.  That be something that Microsoft can't get.  Okay, so we are going to have to do some research.  

Mary Jo:  I'm looking at the list of extensions.  The document provider extensions let you do import, export, open, move.  

Leo:  But not save.  Import export...

Mary Jo:  Import, export, open, and move.  

Leo:  I don't know what it means.  I don't know what it means.  We will have to wait until they do it to find out.  Believe me, I will be howling if I can't.  I use OneDrive.  First of all, I applaud Microsoft for being open to the idea that somebody might want to use something other than OneDrive.  Although if you have an Office subscription you have OneDrive.  It probably is one of those that it works best with OneDrive.  I don't know a lot of people that are clamoring to use iCloud.  Maybe really hardcore IOS people are, but Apple has done such a hash of iCloud.  Most developers, in fact, have to do iCloud support, but they end of putting another storage provider's support in because iCloud is so bad.  

Mary Jo:  Yep.

Leo:  Well, I have nothing to add.  I will try it when it comes out.  When does it come out?

Mary Jo:  I think that the IOS part is available now I believe.  

Leo:  Did I get it?  Alright, let me look.  Let me see if there is an update for Word.  Okay, cool.

Mary Jo:  So anyway, it's yet another interesting piece for Microsoft's cross platform strategy.

Leo:  February 16, 2 days ago, I got an update to Excel and Word.  Word has iCloud support, as you said, open, edit, and save.  Save is in there.  Open, edit, and save, but you can't create.

Daniel:  That's not create, right, you just can't create documents.

Leo:  If I make a document, if I open a Word, type, and then try to save it I can't save it to iCloud?  I have to save it to OneDrive and then...

Mary Jo:  And then move it or export it.

Daniel:  This used to be like this with Office on the phone where I think that there was no way to create a new document.  You can open documents, edit them, and save them, but there was no way to create a new one.  I think that it was probably the same thing here.  The document already has to already exist on the server, but then you can open it and save it.  But you can't create a new document on the device and save it to the Cloud.  You have to do it like on the computer.

Leo:  I haven't logged in on my Microsoft on this, it's going to take me a little bit to get it set up.  While you are talking I shall endeavor to get this set up and let you know what it will do.  

Mary Jo:  So another piece of Office news this week was around the Outlook apps for IOS and Android.  These are the apps that were formerly known as Acompli.  Microsoft bought Acompli email apps back in December.  Then a week or two ago they released those apps and called them Outlook.  They have done little else to them except rebrand them at this point.  This week they have said that they are starting to invite some of the updates to these apps that they had promised.  One of the first things that they are doing is enabling password control for these apps because this is an IT requested feature and something that may prevent some of these apps from being allowed into Enterprise shops because they don't have this kind of capability.  So they are building in the PINWalk password enforcement using Exchange ActiveSync first.  That is one of the very first things that they are going to roll out.  They are doing more around remote wiping of devices to lock that down.  They, of course, are going to do one of the obvious things that they mentioned a week or two ago.  They moved the Outlook Cloud Service off of Amazon Web Services and put it Azure.  Right now it is running against an Amazon Web Server.  They are going to do more they say in the coming weeks and month supporting local syncing of contacts, doing more localization for different languages, and moving the preview label from Outlook to the Android version of the Acompli app.  So they have got a lot of things coming.  They know that for the Enterprise they have got to do a lot of things to gain acceptance of this app.  Even though consumers really love it and many business users love Acompli they know that it has to be locked down a lot more for Enterprise organizations to let this app into the company.  

Leo:  I apologize for calling that guy a moron.

Mary Jo:  So he's right?

Leo:  I'm not going to go so far to say that he is right, he's just not a moron.

Mary Jo:  That's a weird connect, or catch with that, right?

Leo:  Right.

Daniel:  What we say of the new Outlook in Windows 10 at the Microsoft event it looked very much like this Acompli app.  So what I think that what we are going to see in IOS and Android is going to be very much what is coming to Windows and Windows Phone, especially that Swipe feature.  The PIN stuff is really interesting because on OneDrive on IOS it actually has a PIN lock option, which is actually really nice.  It's not on Windows Phone.  So that stuff still needs to come over to our side, so it's going to be kind of fun.  That's why I like watching IOS and Android apps, because it really is like looking into the future for Windows.

Leo: All right, so I have created a Microsoft word document, and I’ve signed up to…

Mary Jo: Nice document!

Leo: Yeah, well this is my apology to the guy. Where’s save? I don’t even know where save is! Maybe if I go back here, I’ve signed up to drop box. Oh! Save as, document one to drop box. And it’s saving it. So I didn’t see iCloud on here, but it does work, I was able to save this to drop box, and it says drop box here. One drive, one drive. These other documents are saved in one drive, but document one is saved in drop box, let me open it and there it is in all its glory. So I was able to create, save, and round trip it.

Mary Jo: I wonder if it’s different in IOS. This is always,

Leo: This is an IPad.

Mary Jo: I mean… Sorry in ICloud.

Leo: In ICloud, I don’t even see I cloud as a service I can add. Maybe there’s something on my IPad.

Mary Jo: Maybe that’s something that hasn’t been updated yet.

Leo: Well it does it to drop box. I don’t see why it wouldn’t do it to ICloud unless they want to be jerky jerks about it. To use a Paul Thurrott phrase. Am I signed into ICloud here? Let me just check and make sure, I think I am. Yep, huh.  Huh.

Mary Jo: To be continued.

Leo: So it doesn’t even offer me ICloud, and this is updated on the 16^th. So I don’t know. It did offer drop box and it was, I was able to create, save to drop box, and reload, so that all is wonderful.

Mary Jo: It’s a good start.

Leo: Yep, don’t know what it means.

Mary Jo: We’ll know more as this rolls out.

Leo: Time will tell, as they say.

Mary Jo: Time will tell.

Leo: Time will tell. Have they said anything about what they’re going to do with sunrise? They bought the calendar app.

Mary Jo: No, they haven’t really said much about that. I asked them if they were going to have a Windows phone version, or a Windows version of sunrise, and they said yeah, you would guess that we would have a Windows phone version of sunrise. We have nothing to say there.

Leo: They should, because actually sunrise is awesome.

Mary Jo: They should.

Daniel: I think it would be once again, they’re going to take parts of it and put it, because they showed us the new Outlook calendar they’re working on for phones, and it’s really impressive. It’s like this beautiful, colorful, much more feature filled calendar app. And so I imagine whatever is unique about sunrise, which I’ve tried once or twice, but I don’t use it on a regular basis, but whenever they sort of put that in there, the complicated stuff they really like the swiping and inbox management features. I think that they’re doing is sort of taking certain features and they’re going to build stuff into Outlook.

Leo: Yeah, that’s what I would do, right? Because Outlook is all about not just email, but calendar and address book too. Although a company had calendar features, which is kind of the weird part about all of this. I would have thought they’d buy an address book program.

Mary Jo: Maybe they will. They seem to be buying up a lot of mobile programs right now. People have been asking me if they’re going to integrate a comp lea with sunrise and create a single app. I don’t think that’s a plan but I don’t know. Not sure.

Leo: Not sure. Don’t know.

Mary Jo: Nope.

Leo: Alright, updates.

Mary Jo: We’ve got to talk about the Android rumor?

Leo: What’s the Android rumor?

Mary Jo: I don’t’ know if you covered this too, Daniel, but there’s a rumor early, I think it was late last week that Microsoft might have negotiated a deal with Samsung to put some of Microsoft apps and services on the upcoming Samsung Nexus 6. Did you guys cover this at all?

Leo: Yeah.

Daniel: I roughly covered it.

Leo: I don’t’ know if you covered it, but we did.

Mary Jo: The galaxy S6. So it was a sight called Sam mobile and they said Galaxy S6 will remove the preinstalled Samsung apps, like Svoice, Shelp, Snote, and scrape book and replace them with OneDrive, OneNote, and the Office Mobile apps and possibly also a skype.

Leo: We thought this was very interesting, and it makes a lot of sense from Samsung’s point of view.

Mary Jo: It’s kind of crazy though, right?

Leo I think it’s a bit to get in the enterprise, I think it’s great. The crazy part is maybe Microsoft doing this, but from Samsung’s point of view, Samsung has been trying to get enterprises from Knox and other places. That’s their secure store. If, you know, Google services, if you didn’t want to use Google apps, Google calendar, you know, Google key for note taking and stuff, if you wanted to be in the Microsoft universe, you pretty much, there really isn’t a good Android choice, so this is great. I think this is a very smart idea. And frankly these apps are better than the Samsung apps. The one thing maybe not, I mean I don’t know, I use a note four with the stylus, and so the Samsung apps are tuned for the stylus, but OneNote does that, right? It supports pressure sensitivity and stuff like that. I would love to see this.

Daniel: I think this is part of the… Sorry, I was just going to say I think this is part of Nadella’s bigger plans which we’ve been seeing a lot of lately, which is make peace with a lot of these companies like sales force, Bach’s and everybody. All these companies are coming out like oh my god the new Microsoft is so awesome and so good to work with. That’s why I think this story has a lot of credibility to it. We knew Samsung and Microsoft had this lawsuit thing going on. They want to settle it. I think Nadella is like let’s just get this settled and let’s make a deal, and I think it’s good for everyone. Because Samsung’s products are still highly recognized and it’ll be a huge win for Microsoft to get their stuff on there.

Lisa: The question of course, is can Samsung do this? Doesn’t Google require you, if you use their store, or some, or even maybe just android itself to carry all Google stuff.

Leo: That’s different.

Mary Jo: Is it? Okay.

Leo: Yeah, so there’s two ways to be Android, One is to be open sources AOSP Android with no google services. Nobody wants that, except somebody who doesn’t want to pay anything for services, because then you’d have to duplicate all the services. A few companies have done that. The other way to go is you say yes, google, you can certify this, you have to run google series in the back ground, the google store, But we’re not talking about replacing those. We’re talking about the crappy Samsung apps. So I imagine, so Google, so Samsung has both. Samsung has Google apps, and Samsung apps for calendar, for email, for browser, for a lot of things. So if you replace, not the google apps but just the Samsung apps, I think that’s a win. Nobody, I don’t’ know anybody who says, oh golly, I really wish I had those Samsung calendar apps.

Daniel: Right: Well this was the bigger thing, right? With Samsung a couple years ago. They were becoming, what I find fascinating about Samsung is they run their own developer conference for Android, They have their own ATIs.

Leo: They have their own store! They have a store!

Daniel: Yeah. They were set to sort of take over android. And when you talk to them behind the scenes, they’re like Android is basically ours. They were going to take it away from Google.

Leo: It was.

Daniel: And google was getting a little worried with that stuff, with that new UI, and so they made this deal, but now Samsung is kind of getting around this deal, and now making a deal with Microsoft.

Leo: Nobody wants to be beholden to just one company anyway right?

Daniel: It’s all about leverage.

Mary Jo: The other part of this that makes this a little bit more believable to me too, is right before this leak happened, Microsoft and Samsung settled their Android patent case.

Leo: Right.

Mary Jo: And nobody would talk about what the terms were. It was like, yep, we settled and we’re not saying anything else. So what if the settlement required Samsung to do this?

Leo: No! Required? Why would Google do that? Google Hates Microsoft.

Mary Jo: No I mean Samsung.

Leo: Oh Samsung said, Google, by the way, we want to be able to do this.

Mary Jo: No if Samsung said to Microsoft, alright…

Leo: Oh to Microsoft!

Mary Jo: Alright, we’ll settle our patent suit with you.

Leo: What’s the term?

Mary Jo: And Microsoft says, hey, if you bundled our apps, we’ll just say, all’s forgiven.

Leo: The funny thing is it was the settlement of the Google Samsung suits that everybody assumed was why Samsung backed off Tauzin and..

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: So these lawsuits man,

Mary Jo: You never know what’s really happening.

Leo: I think you don’t have to look much further than consumer appeal to understand this. Everybody I’ve talked to says I would be very interested in an S6 with Microsoft instead of Samsung apps. Instead of the Samsung crap apps.

Daniel: And then you throw in that rumor with Microsoft investing in cyanogen mod.

Leo: Right. That’s interesting.

Daniel: And Android, you know... And droid apps, and Windows. Microsoft’s got this weird strategy of swiping away Googles Android from them. It should be interesting to watch.

Leo: Okay! Exciting. By the way, I’ve now created many documents in Microsoft word. I’ve saved them on the IPad, I’ve saved them all over the place. I took a Microsoft word document, that was saved on OneDrive, opened it, saved it to drop box, but I don’t know why, I don’t have access to ICloud at all. So,

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: I don’t’ know what that story is, but at least if it’s drop box, yeah, that’s exact pear with one drive. No difference. Is that not new?

Mary Jo: No, the drop box agreement they had in place, that was the one that they already had, but then there are all these other new ones, the ICloud, the box, the sales force are all new.

Leo: This is so weird, because it does say ICloud support.

Mary Jo: Yep. Can you go through your app and go into your iCloud from there? And like try to edit a document.

Leo: I don’t see ICloud at all, maybe there’s a setting somewhere that I have to attach. I cloud, drive on photos mail, keychain, I don’t... I don’t know. I don’t see anywhere. Let’s go to the. Apples weird because like they store settings for programs, not just in the program but in the settings for the operating system, so let me go see if there’s a separate Microsoft word switch.

Mary Jo: Even if it’s there, it’s super hard to find, right?

Leo: Yeah, okay I would say that I understand pretty well. Allow word to access photos. This is version 1.6, which I think is the most. Help us improve auto format. Yeah, I don’t see… And when I go to word. Hello, when I go to word, I just don’t see a storage method for this. I don’t know. Connected service, one drive, drop box, add a service.

Mary Jo: What about add a service?

Leo: I did, and it’s one drive, OneDrive and drop box.

Mary Jo: That’s the only one.

Leo: Excel? I don’t know. Who care, we don’t’ really care because it’s a windows show. Screw those iPad users.

Mary Jo: Covering Microsoft anymore, it’s like you’re not just covering Windows.

Leo: I know! Isn’t that interesting huh?

Daniel: Yeah.

Leo: Alright, somebody is saying open the tab in the word application and press the more button. I don’t know what that means.  Alright, we’re going to take a break, that’s what we’re going to do. That’s how we’re going to resolve this. Open the tab, and press the more button. All I can do, add a service, I would think would be the one that would give me… but it isn’t.  Oh you know what, maybe because I’m not signed in to one Drive. No, because I was able to open and save to OneDrive. I don’t know!

Mary Jo: It’s a mystery.

Leo: Maybe that’s why you can’t, that’s what’s going on. Our show today brought to you by HipChat. HipChat, we love HipChat. How is your team communicating, friends? Are they using email, and IMs and kind of cobbling together a solution. Maybe a little texting on the side, cloud storage from one of many different providers. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had everything in one place? It worked with everything you’ve got, but it kept track of where you stand? This is HipChat. We love HipChat, it’s instant messaging, it’s video chat, document sharing, screen sharing, system updates, code sharing. And it’s really designed for teams, all in one platforms that are working together. We’re using it with our… I first discovered it when we were using it with our web design team. They’re big HipChat users. It’s an agile, a company that uses agile, and so we were really introduced to HipChat that way. And it’s been great. I live in HipChat now. You know, email, we do a little email but it’s too slow, it’s a synchronize. And meetings? God don’t give me any more meetings. IMS, not great for groups but look at this, HipChat will run on MAC, Windows, Linux, Android, IOS, and you can always launch the web app. Which will run anything including IE and up, to keep track of what’s going on. You’ve got all the people, this is actually my HipChat, the rooms. We’ve got lots of rooms, including our twit team and twit engineering. We are very HipChatted up. HipChat will integrate with the top developer tools too like get hub, Gera, ZinDesk, 57 services in all that HipChat plays beautifully with. They bring your entire project and team communications together in one place. I invite you to go to hipchat.com/windowsweekly, and you can try it for free. HipChat.com I’m going to type this in. /windowsweekly. And you can see all the services you’ll get. It’s fun to set up, you’re going to have a blast doing it. I guess because I’m logged in, it’s not showing that page. Go there yourself, get your team on the same page. There’s a premium version. You can use free forever for the next 30 days, you’ll get the full version of HipChat that includes the bonus features, the video and screen sharing, and it’s free. You don’t have to give them a credit card. Go to HitChat.com/windows weekly. Sign up, click start chatting, invite team members, because it’s no fun by yourself, and you can try it free for 30 days, and for a limited time, the first 100 people who sign up right now, because they’re listening to this show, we’re going to give you 90 days, not just 30, but 90.. 3 months to try HipChat free. HipChat.com/windowsweekly. Your team, your project, in sync instantly. Big fan, I’ve got it on everything. I’ve got HipChat on every mobile device. We continue on, Daniel Rubino is here from Windows Central. Mary Jo Foley from All About Microsoft. Paul Thurot, is in the Mal Dev, no he’s in Puerto Rico, and he’s enjoying the sun and the fun. I don’t see any reason why Paul couldn’t skype in from Puerto Rico.

Mary Jo: With drink in hand.

Leo: With drink in hand. Actually he’d make us jealous, maybe he shouldn’t.

Mary Jo: He would.

Leo: Xbox app development. This was… another thing I saw this morning that got me excited, we would love to have an Xbox app for twit just as we do a Roku app. But Microsoft makes it hard, and frankly, expensive, you could do it on your own, with your own developers, but then you have to go through an extensive communication process. So Microsoft says, you really should use our developers, to go through us with our certified developers, and we were talking 100 grand for an app by the time were all in.  Revision three took a chance, and did it on their own, but then had to get Microsoft to certify it, and that was a pain. I remember Rob Greenly, who’s no longer at Microsoft, but he said, this is expensive. This will change that, I hope. This is from the verge. Is this accurate? Do you think, this rumor?

Mary Jo: Yes, this is a Tom Orns story, and he has a good track record on Microsoft. So he wrote a story this week saying, here’s what we’ve been wondering. We’ve been wondering when Microsoft will put windows 10 on the Xbox. Because Xbox 1 right now it built on windows 8 and we know they’re going to make it a windows 10 at some point so that universal apps will work on windows phones, as well as PCs and tablets. Tom’s sources tell him they’re going to put windows 10 on the Xbox before the end of this year, and that once they do that, people will be able to submit universal apps that will run on the Xbox. So towards the end of this year, they’ll be able to do that. Before that happens there will be an SDK, sort of an SDK preview, that’s going to let people start tinkering with how they can build universal apps that will work on the Xbox. And we know that Microsoft has said ultimately that the goal is to have one store everywhere. So with Windows 10 we’re going to have one store for phone apps, and pc apps.

Leo: We’d love that because we’d make a TWIT app, and we’d have it in all three platforms.

Mary Jo: Right, and you wouldn’t have to rewrite it so much because you can use a lot of the same code, and just tweak it for the correct user interface.

Leo; Right. So this reduces the sort of requirements for Xbox2 or?

Mary Jo: That’s what we think. We think so.

Daniel: It would totally make sense, they’ve dropped a lot of hints about this. The fact that we know Xbox is going to windows 10. I think they’ll obviously tell more of this story at build, E3, and even the JDC conference coming up, there’s a lot to tell here but it sure makes since. If Xbox can run windows, why not have it? It’s actually not just windows, right? Xbox 1 runs like three operating systems so there’s the part with the TV media stuff, the gaming, and then the other part, so they can silo these things off on each other. And I don’t see a reason why this wouldn’t be the case. The question I think is interesting is how useful will it be? What kind of apps are we talking about? For twit.tv it makes a lot of sense, you can put apps on there where I can watch in my living room.

Leo: We’d like to have it be the HBO app, or whatever, the Netflix app.

Daniel: Exactly. But I’m not so sure about other third party apps. Like am I going to use 4 square on an Xbox five?

Leo: Oh, you keep jacking at the same place, Daniel. I don’t understand.

Daniel: Exactly. So there’s some limitations here as far as usefulness and UI and everything, and how we’ll take advantage of them. But still that’s a good problem to have I think, you know.

Leo: It’s a huge advantage, it’s fantastic.

Mary Jo: Entertainment apps is the main, gaming entertainment. I said to Tom, kind of half ingest, what about enterprise apps? What about CRM? If they could make a case for it, maybe there’s some crazy case, you’re working at home and you need to dial into a meeting.

Leo: I’ve got a case for you. Right now, for instance, when I watch the super bowl on my Xbox one, I have an NFL app, or any football game, it tells me how my fantasy team is going. I can see an executive wanting a dashboard, an executive style dashboard on sales or whatever. Don’t executives do that? They don’t want to use a computer but they’d love a dashboard that shows you how to... I don’t know what it is, I don’t do business.

Mary Jo: Power VI on the Xbox.

Leo: There you go. And not necessarily… You’re not going to put excel spreadsheet on it, that’s why a dashboard makes sense, because it’s an informational display, so it doesn’t have to be anything to.. Now Hadoop is already there, so, we’re not worried about that.

Daniel: I want the domino app.

Leo: Domino?

Mary Jo: How about Notepad, guys? Notepad.

Leo: You want Dominos, not lotus domino… you’re talking about…like the 10 spot…

Daniel: Domino’s pizza.

Leo: Oh domino’s Pizza!

Daniel: Well they have it! It’s like in the UK. In the UK there’s a Domino’s pizza app, it’s amazing, you can use connect voice control to order a pizza.

Leo: Yeah! We’ve noticed you’ve been sitting for 8 hours, would you like a pizza, or a catheter? Your choice.

Daniel: And then you can pin it, snap it over, and you actually, they have the pizza tracker, they show being made, and it’s out for delivery and all that stuff.

Leo: But that’s only in the UK?

Daniel: It’s only in the UK for now. It was a different team that built it, but I assume they’re waiting to see how well it does and bring it here.

Leo: Too bad it’s such crappy pizza.

Daniel: Oh I like dominos! I know! It’s not pizza. Here’s the thing, so I lived in New York for a long time so I get New York pizza. New York pizza is amazing but Dominos is the pizza at taco bell. It’s what Taco bell is to Mexican food. No one eats taco bell because they like Mexican food, they eat taco bell because they like taco bell. I eat Dominos because I like Dominos, not because I like pizza. It’s like its own thing.

Leo: No, hhmm. But we’ve always thought, and I’m now ruining this, that we’d have Dominos as a sponsor and right around lunch time a pizza would arrive throughout our shows. Wouldn’t that be a good idea, and we’d have a big dominos box.

Daniel: Drop some hints.

Leo: Yeah, a little product placement wouldn’t be a bad thing.  This little Xbox thing, we’re not going back to the 360 right? You can’t do that.

Mary Jo: I think it’s Xbox 1.

Daniel: Yeah. 360 is fading into the sunset.

Leo: Actually it’s not, is it?

Mary Jo: It’s still around but...

Daniel: Oh it’s definitely around. A lot of people are using it, but a lot of the features and stuff that cominf, like for instance, the streaming to windows 10, that’s Xbox 1.

Leo: I am a huge Xbox 1 fan, and I use it far more for a media center than I do… I mean, I do some gaming, but I mean I love it as a media center.

Daniel: That’s what I do too.

Leo: Yeah, and frankly I love the connect, I like talking to my TV.

Daniel: Turning it on and off and pausing its buy them up, all that, every time I go to a hotel now, it’s a joke and I’m like Xbox on. And I just wish it would do it.

Leo: Sorry Daniel.

Daniel: It’s so convenient.

Leo: I’m still amazed. I go to motel rooms that have Nintendo 64s embedded in the TV. It’s like...

Daniel: I haven’t see that, that’s crazy.

Leo: I could play Spiro the dragon if I really want. I must go to cheesy hotels. Alright, good, well I think this, so this is exciting, it’s an SDK basically… so build is going to be really big.

Mary Jo: Yeah, build this year is going to be huge.

Leo: I can’t wait, and I really am hoping that people will flock to Windows 10 and say look this is a great platform, we can develop for, you know, Xbox, we can develop for mobile, we can develop for desktop, it would be great for me. I’m just thinking about us. One twit app to rule them all would be very good for us, and I can’t think we’re alone in that regard.

Daniel: It’s a great story to tell and what I think is most interesting about windows is 10 a lot of people talk about how are you going to put desktop apps on the phone? Windows 10 for me isn’t so much about the desktop, I think for me windows 10 runs on the desk top is almost sort of like a legacy feature. I think people aren’t aware that the desktop PC as we know it is slowly becoming, actually rapidly coming less important to our daily lives. It’s all about tablets, IOT, phones, Xbox, things like this. And the fact that windows 10 can run so well on those devices, you know, I think is the real story. Again, it can run on desktop but that’s easy now because desktop has so much horse power, you know, if you can get windows 10 to run in a hollow lens headset, or on your smartphone, like, it can run anywhere, and so that’s a big story, you know, it’s more about that, where windows is going in the future, they’re building it so when the desktop PC isn’t, you know, a big deal anymore, and it kind of is now, you can still put it everywhere. Yeah, exactly.

Leo: Alright, I had a little salad on my shirt. You know, I think you just made a very interesting statement. Windows desktop is for legacy. I can’t completely disagree with you. I’ve been saying that you know…

Mary Jo: I kind of disagree with that but…

Leo: Pcs are dead but…

Daniel: Well for enterprise.

Mary Jo: Right, enterprise.

Daniel: Absolutely, that will be there for a long time, there’s no doubt. And that’s why it’s important that they keep building for that. But the consumer story is all about it going mobile. And the fact that windows 10 can do that I think is the future proofing they’re looking for.

Mary Jo: The part about windows 10, to me, that’s interesting is they’re also making it a really good operating system for desktops, right? So even though that is, you know, mobile is the future, blah, blah, blah, I just sounded like Steve Ballmer when I just said that.

Leo: She’s so dismissive. This phone thing will never happen, it’ll never work.

Mary Jo: But I think the good part is they have come around to realize, like hey you know what? There’s still a lot of people using desktops with mice and keyboards, and we’re going to make windows 10 good for them too.

Leo: Yeah, I want it all, I don’t want to give up anything. I want it all.

Daniel: I’m excited about the pen story that’s going on, because I have the new…

Mary Jo: Do you really?

Daniel: The HP Encore 2 right, which is the new tablet that was announced at CES, and it uses the new wack com pen they developed and everything. And for me, we’re almost there at the point where I actually do like using a digital pen now as an entry..

Leo: You don’t handwrite things? You mean instead of a mouse.

Daniel: I’m saying for tablets, and note, the surface, and smaller 8 inch tablets. The right to by HP I think, is like a really nice note taking device, It’s not 100% yet, like Lenovo is doing cool stuff with this now where their new app called write it, which lets you in any text entry filed, directly write into the text box, now Windows 8 it pops up a handwriting recognition thing, it’s a little bit clunky.

Leo: If anything is legacy, handwriting is legacy, right?

Daniel: But for tablets it’s a problem, one reason I don’t use tablets a lot is because they’re great for consuming but as soon as you want to respond to an email they become so unefficient...

Leo: Dictate, dilate.

Daniel: Well dictate is a good option, but you don’t always have that. If you’re on a subway or a noisy environment, or you don’t always want people to hear what you’re emailing back to someone, you know for privacy concerns that’s not always suitable.

Leo: Techno Squid in our chatroom is reminding us when Ballmer was asked by Charlie Rose why Apple and Google got it and Microsoft didn’t, it’s because Microsoft was obsessed with the pen, and didn’t understand the finger made sense. But you know, you might not be wrong Daniel, because there’s a lot of evidence that Apple is about to do a 12.9 inch IPad with a pen!

Mary Jo: And there’s that rumor that Microsoft bought intrigue in Israel, right? The company that makes the pen…

Leo: So fingers are legacy.

Daniel: Yeah, people like the…it’s about the technology, if you get the technology right, this stuff makes sense. Up until now, you’d have this little thing stylus for a PDA, and it’d actually hurt your hand after a while, writing it, but now they’re actually making these quality pen devices, and for me it’s starting to come together. Like I said, it’s not 100% there yet but it’s like 90%. I feel like in the next two years this technology will be really nailed down. I bought like Surface 4, whenever that is.

Leo: You know what’s funny, I use the Note four, I love the Note four but I never use the pen. But you know, I guess it’s kind of, my handwriting is so bad.

Daniel: Same. And I can’t draw

Leo: What are you going to do with that? On the TV ads, they go watch this, and the perfect handwriting converts into text. I never see that happen in real life!

Daniel: It’s not about handwriting it’s about the ability to draw and convey ideas.

Mary Jo: It is, right.

Daniel: A lot of people like diagramming.

Leo: I’m not a visual person so maybe that’s… yeah.

Mary Jo: It’s yet another input choice, right? Like we always talk about touch, and mouse, and keyboard, and then you add pen. So you just give people another choice.

Leo: I’ll tell you this is true with the 7 inch tablet I just got.  I really want to use stylus because my finger, it’s like trying to type with a sausage, you just, it’s not...

Mary Jo: I was just surprised Daniel said he liked the pen, I mean I hear from a lot of my…

Daniel: I don’t use it on the Surface, I don’t use it there.

Mary Jo: Yeah, it’s funny because I, up until fairly recently took a lot of note on paper, but now I’m typing more of my notes into Notepad. But I just never really got into the idea of using a pen on my computer.

Daniel: I just like it on the smaller tablets, because as I’m setting there on the couch I can now respond to stuff. And the handwriting recognition is getting good, and the fill of it, it’s clicking with me now. I don’t want, even on the surface pro 3 surprisingly I rarely use the pen, but on certain device I think it does really make sense. Obviously you’re not going to use it on a giant PC or even a laptop, but I think for category devices.

Mary Jo: Well you know, on that new surface hub, that Microsoft showed, that big video conferencing system, that’s built on the perceptive pixel technology, they have enabled that to work with multiple pens. So they think pen even on the giant screen.

Daniel: That was fun, I think up to three people can draw on those at the same time, which was pretty impressive.

Leo: I do think that touch is important. I mean, you know, in fact I even, like when I bought the dell, I got the touch screen. I’m seeing howls now about dell battery life, on the Dell 13, the new XPS.

Daniel: We can get to that if you want, I’ve got two of them so…

Leo: I love it, it’s my favorite laptop of all time.

Mary Jo: So first let’s say what the promise was. What was the promise?

Leo: Well that was coo coo

Mary Jo: It’s always crazy, right?

Leo: 15 hours! It said 15 hours of battery life.

Mary Jo: 15 hours of battery life with non-touch.

Leo: I’m getting 5 or 6 on the non-touch.

Mary Jo: On the non-touch one?

Leo: Yeah.

Daniel: The touch was 11 hours.

Leo: So I’m getting half that. And you know, it’s funny in the old days we would always say just take the manufacture estimate and divide it in half, that’s what you’re likely to get. And an estimate is very hard to prove because everybody uses it differently. Lately manufactures have actually been more, I think, more conservative in their estimates. Apple for instance, usually is pretty close, but I never, you know, I never, I’m getting 5 or 6 hours on a touch, that’s about half what they promised, that’s exactly what’ I’d expect. What about you? What are you getting on your non-touch?

Daniel: So the non-touch, when we covered the Microsoft even a couple weeks ago. I used the XPS 13 Core I5 non-touch version. And I was basically stress testing it, and coincidently enough, I actually forgot the AC plug when we went to this event. Which was miles away from my hotel, so there was no way of getting it. And what made this daunting was the fact that we didn’t know how long this was going to be when we showed up. There were rumors but it turned out it ran about 2 hours and 20 minutes, that’s very long actually for a press conference, when you’re live blogging it along with WIFI, I was using a Bluetooth mouse, I was using adobe light room with a DSLR camera tethered to my laptop.

Leo: Wow! You killed that thing.

Daniel: Yeah, so I was actually really nervous about this, but I dimmed down...on a dell you can dim down the screen to about 20 perfect, which is still fine.

Leo: More than adequate.

Daniel: Yeah and so I did that, and I ended up putting it into the power saver mode on the battery. And at the end of the 2, almost 2.5 hours, I had 74 % battery life left.

Leo: That to me is fine!

Daniel: It was insane!

Leo: I would love 15, but I don’t expect that!

Daniel: For what I was doing, you know.

Mary Jo: But you know what, why are the vendors allowed to lie though?

Leo: Because it’s not a lie. It’s so dependent on what you’re doing. That’s really, I think, but they should, you know, I think good vendors, I thought Dell was good, I think a good vendor, and Apple… I’m going to use Apple as the paragon here, they do the best…they really hit it pretty…when they said the MacBook air 13 inch would get, I think they said 13 hours battery life, it does! I mean maybe its 11 when I really use it hard, but don’t consumers know that these, that YMMV, your mileage may vary. Don’t they know that?

Mary Jo: I guess they know, but when a vendor makes such a big deal out of the battery life, like Dell was like, you know what? This is the one that’s going to be the alternative to MacBook, and it’s not.

Leo: It’s because it’s the broad well chip, and the only promise of the broad well chip, it’s only slightly faster than the haswell. The promise is better battery life.

Daniel: Yeah, and I definitely do, I have the XPS 13 older edition that came out last year, and so I can directly compare them, and, you know, the new broad wells are better in every which way. They’re quieter, they run cooler so it’s a quieter device. They definitely get better battery life. I easily notice 2 to 3 hours more battery life with these two devices. And they are faster, do video better. So for me it’s actually a significant upgrade, but they’re still not quite there, but when you look at the Dell XPS 13, even the resolution on the non-touch is still higher than, one of the reasons why the MacBook air gets good battery life is because the display is actually terrible.

Leo: Low resolution.

Mary Jo: Yeah, right.

Daniel: I’m always blown away when I see a MacBook air how bad, by today’s standards..

Leo; And I expect to lose battery life when I said oh I’m going to get the QHD touch.

Daniel: And that’s what kills it is the display, QHD plus with touch. Now the display they’re using in there is one of the better more power efficient displays on the market today, but there’s still that trade off, you know. So I tell people if you really want… I actually, so I have the core I7 version with the QHD, which is the top of the line thing.

Leo: Wow, what do you get on that one?

Daniel: You get about 6 or 7 hours out of it.

Leo: Okay, that’s good.

Daniel: I think it’s more than adequate for how powerful that thing is. It’s pretty ridiculous. But I would actually tell people the core I5 non-touch, if you’re really concerned about battery life, I use it and I have no problems with it.

Leo: You’re getting what 11 hours? 12 hours?

Daniel: I could easily get, I would say real world, pushing it 9, 10 Horus easy.

Leo: Yeah, I think it’s reasonable for consumers to say Dell you need to be more honest. There’s no standard is there for battery life. No EPA test.

Daniel: No that’s the problem.

Mary Jo: Plus it depends which browsers you run, and there’s so many variables I know, but I just really had my hopes up on this one because battery for me matters a lot.

Leo: It’s better. To me it’s always relative, is this going to be 30% better than the last years Dell XPS? It is. But that’s depending on your use, right?

Daniel: I’m confident I could definitely say you’d get easily 2, 3, 4 more hours battery out of this one than the last year’s model. And for me that’s huge. That makes a big difference. I think after 8 hours the, you start to get diminishing returns of hours. Because I don’t know many people who are going to be 8 hours without AC doing pure work. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but this comes to the tradeoff. Do you want that better display with HD, full HD, or even quad HD, or do you want low…

Leo: I actually just wanted touch, I didn’t want QHD, I wanted touch.

Daniel: I wish they’d have the full HD touch version.

Leo: that’s what I would have bought, and that would give you kind of a nice…are you considering one Mary Jo? Is that?

Mary Jo: No, but I’m always just kind of keeping my ear out for a better battery life machine. I’m still using the Acer S7, which I like, and I’m getting like 5 hours and, you know, that sounds like a lot, but the main thing I don’t want to have to do is carry the power cord, because the power cord on that thing is so unwieldy. It’s really a weird shape and it’s heavy.

Daniel: I would say… The power plug for the Dell is actually about really interesting. I should do a little story on that, because one it’s very small. But it’s cool they did this thing where, you know you always have like the brick for the… and then two wires that come off, right? One to the wall one to the PC. You can actually take the one off on the wall, and there’s an adapter you just put in, and the prongs directly in the brick now, and it folds out. And so it significantly shrinks the size of it both for the cord wrap around and the weight of it. It actually was a cool innovation, sure you get a shorter plug now, but If you’re on an airplane or in a café, it’s actually more than enough.

Leo: You’ve never used a mac, have you Daniel?

Daniel: No, I haven’t.

Leo: Apple has been doing this for ten years.

Daniel: Yeah.

Leo: You get both, you get a longer cord if you need distance, and you can snap that off and put just a plug on the brick, and plug the brick into the wall. I do like that, I agree with you. I think this is, I’m pretty happy with the XPS 13, and what I’m hoping is that Apple with its MacBook air will duplicate this design. Because 13 inch screen at 11 inch laptop at 2.6 pounds, that’s very desirable.  Alright, we’re going to take a break. By the way, that’s why you should read reviews on windows central before you buy a laptop.

Daniel: That’s true.

Leo: So you know what the actual battery life is. And maybe Dell you could try to be a little more real world. Just a little more real world though. Our show today brought to you by ZipRecruiter, are you hiring? If you have to do the hiring in your company you know that sometimes that’s a little kind of hard job, all those emails and phone calls. And you really, while you’re in the process can’t expect to get much else done, unless you use ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter is great because it lets you post to 50 plus job boards with one click of the mouse. Including social networks like twitter and Facebook, so you’re going to be able to find the perfect hire, anywhere in the country, in any kind of position, as easy as possible, all the submissions, all the applications roll into ZipRecruiters interface, which is very easy. So you can post once, watch your candidates roll in. You can quickly rank them, rate them, and hire, without any phone calls or emails. You can, ZipRecruiter will make a page, a careers page that will match your websites, and with Zip recruiters premium traffic boost you’re going to get up to 3 times more candidates. You’re going to see a lot more response. Quickly, fast, easily, hire that right person. No wonder ZipRecruiters use over 200,000 businesses. Right now our listeners can try ZipRecruiter free. Get 30% off your first traffic boost, by going to Ziprecruiter.com/windows. That’s ZipRecreuiter.com/windows. And we thank them so much for the support of Windows Weekly. We’ve used them and it really is easy and great and there is 100% satisfaction guaranteed. Ziprecuriter.com/windows. Paul Thurot is in Puerto Rico, lucky fella. But that’s okay, because we’ve got Daniel Rubino. What’s your title at windows central? Editor and Chief?

Daniel: Editor and Chief.

Leo: The big boss?

Daniel: The big boss.

Leo: Head Honcho. Mary Jo Foley, she’s in charge at allaboutMicrosoft.com and together, well as you can see, we pretty much can cover the windows water front.  Who wants to kick things off today? Usually Paul starts this with his tip of the week. You want to do that Daniel?

Daniel: Sure. The tip for this week is for the windows 10 preview for phones. And so one of the big things we’re talking about this earlier with windows 10 is the ability to provide feedback to Microsoft. They’re really interested in this core aspect. And on windows 10 you can do this by, at least on the phone, by holding down the volume down button and power button at the same time. When you do that, what it’s going to do is it will screen shot what you’re doing, and then it opens up the feedback app. And it lets you basically write directly to Microsoft and tell them either a problem you’re experiencing or something you think that’s wrong, or that you’d like to see. And since they value this information so much I think it’s a really, they make it really easy to sort of give them feedback. You can also launch the app separately, so you can also just pen it to your start screen, launch it, you can see what other people are reporting, what’s getting voted, and this sort of thing. This is a direct way where you can actually screen shot and submit it to them. Windows 10 also has on the desktop a similar feature on the web browser where you can actually screen shot. I think it’s a great tool, you know, when people are running this preview, people love complaining on twitter in comments, but the best way to make OS better is to give the feedback right to Microsoft, so I really want to encourage people to do that.

Leo: So it’s the power key and the volume button at the same time. Oh yeah! Cool!

Daniel: It’ll take second and then it actually will launch the…

Leo: Yeah! On android phones, and I think IPhone is starting to do this too, if you shake it really vigorously, like gosh darn it, it crashed again, it’ll do that! That’s a nice, maybe, but the negative on that is it happens a lot by accident. I see you’re shaking the phone, are you upset? Software pick of the week. Daniel Rubino.

Daniel: This one actually came out about a week or two ago, it was the weather channel got… they redid it for Windows, and Windows phone and I happen to really like the new design, and but more importantly this is a perfect example of universal apps for windows. So this is like the ideal division of what Microsoft is talking about. When you download this app on, say, your phone, and then you put your location or whatever, if you go and download it on the PC or your surface, is has a roman profile, and so it’ll pull in those locations without you even touching it. There’s no login or anything like that. And it’s a very similar app experience, obviously the layout is different for the surface for a PC than a phone, but all the UI elements are exactly the same. And the fluidity of the app and how fast it is, is exactly what the windows 10 apps are going to look like, I think it’s a rally, good, a well-designed up but also sort of the future of what Microsoft is trying to do. Apps like this for tweeting and for Twitter is really good examples of how developers can code once and basically write everywhere.

Leo: That’s exciting, very good news. I have a roman profile as well, I don’t know about if you do. That’s a bad joke.

Daniel: I have one of those as well.

Leo: I thought you do. Enterprise pick of the week from Mary Jo Foley. The enterprise pick, as I have said lately is involving Hadoop. Today Microsoft made their Hadoop on Azure service which is called HD insight available for Linux users. So up until now you’ve been able to use it on windows service running in a virtual machine on Azure, but as of today, there’s a preview version of HD insight that can run on a bun two Linux, on a VM on assure, which is kind of mind blowing. Actually Microsoft put out a statistic, I think I’ve seen them sight this somewhere before, they’ve said, we already support Linux VMS on assure and 1 out of 5 of our customer virtual machines that are deployed on Azure are actually running Linux. So they already have a pretty good Linus bas, and this is going to let them take the power of Hadoop and apply it in clusters, Linux clusters on Azure, so it’s very interesting they decided to go with making this available on Linux as well.

Leo: yeah, thank you.

Daniel: This is the year of Linux.

Leo: Well Microsoft owns Linux, so that’s why. Because they own it. By the way, somebody in the chatroom said, no you know, Daniel its volume up. It isn’t volume up, if you do power plus volume up, you do a screen shot only, power plus volume down you do a screen shot and then launch the reporting app. So I checked.

Daniel: I’m not making it up, Microsoft said it themselves.

Leo: He’s not making this up folks, he’s a trained professional. Code name of the week?

Mary Jo: Code name of the week is Passow, which we’ve had as a code name pick before. Passow was the original code name for Microsoft Azure machine learning service, also known as Azure ML, the reason it’s the code name pick this week, it’s been a while since I’ve made it the code name pick, but today February 18, Microsoft made Azure ML it’s machine learning service generally available. So if you’re somebody who wants to harness the power of big data and use some of this data that you’re collecting to do things like predictive analytics and those kind of services, you can now buy Azure matching learning service, and run it right in your cloud.

Leo: And that’s like artificial intelligence kind of sort of thing.

Mary Jo: Kind of, yeah.  It’s such a loaded term, machine loading is kind of a loaded term and AI is definitely a loaded term. But it lets you do things like, the example they sight often is if you’re an elevator company and you want to estimate when you should repair your elevator before it fails, you would use something like machine learning capability to do predictive analytics so you can service things before they break.

Leo: Alright. I just bought a jar of Japanese Mocha. Do you like mocha?

Mary Jo: Oh nice.

Leo: You seem like a mocha lover.

Mary Jo: I love green tea.

Leo: The mocha is the ground up green tea leaves.

Mary Jo: The power.

Leo: Then you whisk it in so you get not the brewed tea, because you’re actually drinking the leaves but it’s powdered finally enough, but there’s all different kinds of…I’ve been putting it in everything but it’s

Mary Jo: It is.

Leo: Its almost 25 bucks for a few ounces. That’s like cocaine prices now.

Daniel: Yeah I was going to say.

Leo: No its not. Not that I would know anything about that but your beer pick of the week has green tea in it.

Mary Jo: Yes. What better way to kind of balance out beer and health than drinking a green tea beer.

Leo: Get some antioxidants in your beer.

Mary Jo: So the pick is from stone brewing in California. And they have something they call the Japanese Green Tea IPA. It’s 10.1%. It is not a light beer. Even though it’s an IPA.

Leo: It’s not seasonable.

Mary Jo: It’s not seasonable.

Leo: But drink more because it’s good for you.

Mary Jo: It tastes really good. You can taste that little hint of green tea at the end. It’s a little flowery like green tea.

Leo: I love green tea, I love it.

Mary Jo: Yep. It’s not a beer where when you drink it you say, wow it tastes like a cup of tea. Not like that but there’s just the influence of tea that makes it very nice.

Leo: Huh. It’s Japanese green tea IPA from Stone Brewing Company.

Mary Jo: Yes.

Leo: And with that, we’re going to be beat a path to rattle and hum, and conclude this edition of Windows Weekly. Daniel, thank you so much for filling in for Paul, who is playing hooky in a warm time.

Mary Jo: Thanks again.

Daniel: I appreciate it.

Leo: Everybody should absolutely go to WindowsCentral.com, and follow Daniel on twitter @Daniel_Rubino and you will keep up on all of this stuff. It’s a great site.

Daniel: Thank you.

Leo: So you were only Windows phone before, and now you’re everything. Is that really what happened, or?

Daniel: Yeah, you know it was a combination of… basically if you owned a Windows phone you’d very likely own a surface or windows… so we start expanding naturally and especially with Xbox, but then coincidently it went with Microsoft unifying their operating system, so…

Leo: Makes sense right?

Daniel: yeah, exactly so you can’t have one without the other anymore.

Leo: I think that’s great. And I have to say I am very tempted to put windows 10 on my XPS 13.

Daniel: It does run pretty well on laptops.

Leo: I’m this close. Mostly because I just hate Windows 8.1

Mary Jo: It’s better than windows 8.

Daniel: True. It is better than Windows 8.

Leo: It is much better than Windows 8, I’ll grant you that. That’s not saying a heck of a whole lot. And I like 10, I’ve been running it in a virtual machine and actually I like it a lot.

Daniel: It’s Cortana so.

Leo: I know, I love the Cortana. And it seems like it’s reliable. It seems like it’s almost production ready. I know it’s very early but…

Daniel: My phone just awoke when I said Cortana.

Leo: Yes Daniel? I’ve been waiting for you to call me. Hello? Hi Daniel. I want her! Mary Jo Foley all about Mircrosoft.com. That’s the place to go for all your Microsoft coverage. We’ve got the best team, I’ll tell you. We got a deep bench. Thank you Daniel. Now is Paul going to be back next week, he’s probably still going to be there.

Mary Jo: He is, he’ll be back.

Leo: One week he goes?

Mary Jo: School vacation.

Leo: Oh school. I’d move there. I love Puerto Rico.

Mary Jo: I like it too.

Leo: It’s a great place to go. Alright, well thank you Daniel. Thank you Mary Jo. Thank you all for watching. We do this show 11 AM pacific, 2 PM eastern time, 1900 UTC every Wednesday on TIWT.tv. You can watch live or get on demand versions after the fact, at Twit.tv/ww, or subscribe in the zoom market place, I’m sorry Xbox market place or wherever it is you get your podcasts. We do have an excellent windows phone, a couple of excellent windows phone apps. Thanks to our independent developers Demetri Allen. Demetri, you want to go to Build, maybe get making universal app, maybe. Just thinking, I’m just thinking. Also an IOS and Android and anywhere. Roku, and anywhere you get your podcasts. Thank you for joining us, we’ll see you next Wednesday on Windows Weekly! Bye, bye.