Windows Weekly 415 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It´s time for Windows Weekly, Paul Thurrott´s here, Mary Jo Foley. Man Microsoft has bunch of new apps, new Office apps and Paul is going to explain what he calls the quiet transition from the old to the new Microsoft. It´s all coming up next on Windows Weekly.

Netcasts you love from people you trust, this is TWiT! Bandwidth for Windows Weekly is provided by Cachefly at c-a-c-h-e-f-l-y.com.

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley, Episode 415 recorded Wednesday, May 27th. 2015.

Windows Hello Lady

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Leo: It´s time for Windows weekly, the show, I love that new music, hey! Thank you Carl Franklin once again from .netrocks, he rocks!

Paul Thurrott: He does rock. We should get the European version for the football fans if you like Oy!

Leo: Oy! That´s Paul Thurrot he´s from Thurrott,com. That´s pretty easy to remember, can´t get much better URL than that. Did you have that before like, because it´s your family name.

Paul: Yeah when we moved to Phoenix 20, over 20 years ago we had this domain so my family could look at pictures you know, of us in Phoenix and eventually pictures of our kid and you know that kind of stuff.

Leo: But you´ve given up.

Paul: So the archives on the side are a little weird.

Leo: I was going to say you´ve given up.

Paul: You´re looking for Microsoft reviews and stuff.

Leo: Mary Jo Foley´s here. Did you have allaboutMicrosoft.com? You know did you buy it when you were.

Mary Jo Foley: I bought it about 7 years ago when I was coming to ZDNet.

Leo: How nice, so you own that as well?

Mary Jo: Yeah I do, yep.

Leo: Nice, so you guys, now that the recodes been bought by Vox you could go into your own.

Mary Jo: We´re all set to go.

Paul: Well I had my own mini version of that right.

Leo: You do really actually. I´ve never asked you about the business relation but you didn´t exactly just go from Penton to a new company, you have

Paul: Well I did sort of, I mean it´s a partnership but I am also technically an employee.

Leo: But that´s nice though that you have a little something, something!

Paul: Yeah, it´s a little autonomy and it lets me do what I want to do and the big changes are I don´t have this ginormous company that stinks and I don´t have to write about stuff I don´t care about.

Leo: Apparently they forgot to put the non-disparagement clause in there.

Mary Jo: Oops.

Leo: Oops.

Paul: Actually I just throw this that you´re mentioning that I will say you´re right, they did.

Leo: Oops, we can edit that out.

Paul: Listen I appreciate the years of service it was great.

Leo: Good company, good name.

Paul: No they´re the best!

Leo: Quality.

Paul: By the way, I recommend to one and all, please, someday go to penton.com and try to figure out what it is, I dare you.

Leo: What do they do?

Paul: I dare you.

Leo: You know what, they´re still afloat, there´s something to be said for that let me tell you.

Paul: Sure.

Leo: I am in Windows 10, I´m very happy, I installed it last week, I´m in the beta hubijaboogy, whatever it is.

Paul: Yep, that´s it.

Leo: 10122.

Paul: Is that the Irish Parliament? No, what is that?

Leo: That looks like France.

Paul: It does but I don´t recognize it.

Leo: Or is it the UK? It might be Britain, you know what, it might be.

Paul: I don´t know what that is, it´s a little too ornate to be in Dublin.

Leo: It´s pretty, anyway we´re talking, nobody who´s listening knows what we´re talking about.

Paul: Exactly, if someone listening could help us guess what this is.

Leo: I like my wallpaper because I have different landscapes and stuff, Windows 10 picked that right up there, that´s nice.

Paul: That´s not Berlin is it? Is it the?

Leo: The Reichstag?

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: Maybe I don´t know, that dome looks like very Berlinesque, doesn´t it?

Paul: That´s what I mean, the dome part in the back might be the new.

Leo: You know if I had the chatroom on I would know.

Paul: What?

Leo: I haven´t set it up for the Windows yet, I have to set it up. What do use? Xchat? For the thing, for the thing.

Paul: What do I use?

Leo: For chat.

Paul: I just use Skype what do you mean.

Leo: Like all good Microsofties.

Mary Jo: Like Twitter.

Leo: Twitter, that´s what I use, I love the Twitter, meanwhile, now I´ve lost the notes, sorry, oh good.

Paul: I want to know what that place was though.

Leo: Oh, the chatroom´s shouting it right now if I only had access to them. I guess I´ll have to.

Paul: Oh I see, you´re trying to access, I got you.

Leo: Yeah because I don´t have it running on Windows.

Paul: Where would I see this?

Leo: They said it´s Winnipeg, that can´t be right.

Paul: Not even close. Alright, okay so I am ignorant of Canada.

Leo: That can´t be Winnipeg, that´s not, they´re joshing you when they say that. Let´s talk about the mobility of experiences. Actually this is the Cortana and iOS and Android story right?

Mary Jo: Yes.

Paul: Not the Reichstag story?

Leo: The Reichtag, we were talking about this on MacBreak Weekly and I thought very interesting Microsoft has announced they´re going to have, this isn´t new, we knew this before, a Cortana app for iOS and Android.

Paul: It´s official now.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: Tell us about it, it´s the iPhone companion for Windows 10, that´s the official.

Mary Jo: Well first the Cortana app is basically Cortana in app form that´s going to be coming to iOS and to Android, it´s not the exact same Cortana as on Windows phone because Microsoft doesn´t have access to the deeper level OS elements that it would need to do everything that it can do with Cortana on Windows, but it´s going to be able to do a lot of things that Cortana can do. It won´t be able to do things like you say hey Cortana and it´ll automatically respond it won´t do that, and I believe at least for now it won´t allow you to open apps, maybe at some point it will at least on Android but it´s the way that Microsoft is bringing Cortana across platform and I can tell you, I bet Paul has had the same experience I have had this week since they announced this I´ve been like beaten up by Windows fans on Twitter because of this.

Leo: What? Why?

Mary Jo: Because they, I guess, well, for one they´re blaming the messenger right, and they, the Microsoft fans see this as bad, they wanted Microsoft to keep Cortana just to Windows because they said it was a competitive advantage and this was the final straw. I´ve had endless conversations with people just saying you know what, they´re doing it, I´m a reporter, I´m just reporting on it, I´m not defending it, but I do actually think it´s smart of them to do.

Paul: Well sounds like you are defending it Mary Jo I think they should be complaining too.

Mary Jo: Well you know what I think it´s smart.

Paul: What´s your email address again just in case anyone listening would like to know.

Mary Jo: I have one number for you as far as the defense, 3, we are the 3%. Why the heck would Microsoft keep Cortana just on Windows or Windows Phone?

Leo: Good point. Wait a minute, Windows is not the 3%.

Mary Jo: No, Windows is not the 3%, it´s coming to Windows 10 so at some point you would assume it will be on a lot more than 3% of all mobile platforms, at least you would hope that.

Paul: It would be more closer to 30% we´re not talking 50, 75, 80%.

Mary Jo: Right.

Paul: Best case scenario 30%.

Mary Jo: And Microsoft guys they are now a software and services company, they are not a hardware company. They still make hardware, they´re still in the hardware business not out of it yet, maybe never will be but their main business is the productivity and platforms company, how do you become that? You put your software and your services everywhere, that´s why they´re doing this.

Paul: Yep, that´s right.

Mary Jo: There it is, sorry, sorry everybody.

Paul: So, well I mean, right, so I guess in some ways the announcement that Microsoft is going to take Cortana to Android and iOS I mean, why would this surprise anybody? Look at what they´ve been doing over the past year? Every Microsoft product large and small has made its way to these platforms, of course Cortana is going to be part of it. Leo probably knows more about this than we do but if you think about how Google now works on iOS for example it´s probably going to be a similar experience to that meaning you have to explicitly kind of go into the app to have it make any sense because they can´t integrate with the OS at large like the native digital assistance can with whatever platform they´re made for. But yeah, like Mary Jo I´ve seen a lot of that, you can write a post like this and know you´re going to get hundreds of responses from people who are not very happy you know, there´ll be a couple of voices of reason in there. I wrote mine as kind of a joke, I have little a size about making breathing space for people and letting them breathe into a bag or whatever because I know people will respond and that´s fashion I mean, it´s sad but to paraphrase what Mary Jo just said Microsoft´s customers are important to them, Windows Phone customers are a tiny percentage of that and it´s more important to keep those that wider customer audience supported which will requires them to put this stuff on other platforms.

Mary Jo: Yep. Microsoft, the idea is Microsoft doesn´t care these days where their customers are, before they cared that you were on Windows, these days if you´re on any platform and Microsoft has you for even one app or one service, they´re happy.

Leo: They´re happy.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Leo: No, but that´s sensible.

Mary Jo: It is.

Leo: It´s funny because what it reminds me of is the old days of Apple, when Apple wasn´t the dominant platform, of course Apple had to work with other people right, and they had to make iTunes for Windows and all of that.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: That´s just, if you own the entire market you don´t have to cow tow, if you´re 3% you got to make concessions. That´s the way it is.

Paul: Yeah and I don´t actually, to me this is not surprising, I mean, it´s always interesting to me when Microsoft announces something, I thought it would be really interesting and maybe a little bit odd that they kind of commingled this message with companion apps for Phones you know. If you read it, if you read the post.

Leo: That´s probably part of the problem right?

Paul: It reads like Cortana on iOS or Android is a benefit of Windows phone or Windows 10, and it´s like, like sort of.

Mary Jo: You know why right?

Paul: Well of course but.

Mary Jo: They´re trying to soften the blow right?

Paul: Sure.

Mary Jo: Like if you read how they wrote that blogpost it was like let´s bury the lead way, way, way out.

Paul: Yeah, companion app and uh Cortana.

Mary Jo: yeah Cortana on iOS.

Paul: It was just kind of tossed out at the end. Sure.

Mary Jo: Yeah, that´s why though right?

Paul: Right, so the big question is and this is ultimately the complaint you´re getting I believe and that I´m getting which is, okay so they´re going to do this, why would anyone choose Windows Phone? And I threw out an article this morning that is kind of my theory on that and it has to do with the way that Windows 10 is being positioned and it´s not just Windows 10, we´ve talked about this on this podcast before when Microsoft talks about Office 2016 for the PC they very carefully position it as a product for professional content creators, in other words this is not the mainstream way that people consume like personal computing services that happens on mobile devices which exist in far bigger numbers than PCs. But Windows 10 is very much a PC operating system and any of the devices that they´ve talked about so far are basically PCs of some size whether it´s a raspberry pi, which is a tiny PC or a giant Hololens thing with an 82 or 84 inch whatever that is, gigantic PC. So if you think about it in that context, if you go from that little tiny device to that giant device, and all of those things in the middle are PCs, I mean essentially they´re positioning Windows phone and that´s Windows phone with a small p, Windows for phones, Windows 10 for phones, as you know, a PC that can also be used as a phone, you know, it has those phone services, but it´s essentially, it´s not essentially it´s literally the mobile version of Windows 10, it´s just Windows 10. And I think that´s kind of smart because that speaks to the core, if you put it in political terms, of the Windows user base, PC users, and it gives them a chance to benefit in both directions from that kind of innovations that occurred first on the phone or the PC or whatever direction on both platforms or all of these platforms, and maybe this is the solution to growing, you know Windows is a PC platform, growing to PC market in general what´s the difference you know, we´re going to be running Windows 10 mobile on tiny tablets, we´re going to be running it on big phones, tablets, we´re going to be running it on regular phones, they´re PCs essentially.

Leo: Yeah that´s kind of the point too, right?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: I think so.

Leo: Extends the definition of Windows PC.

Paul: I think so.

Mary Jo: I think it´s Windows 10 at the center right? Like, they want it to be, we connect to everything out in the world but we´re like the hub, I feel like that´s how they are positioning it specially with this phone companion app they were talking about right?

Paul: Well I mean I, I, in the sense that the PC will typically be the most complex but also the most full featured device that people use, it´s the one they turn to when I need to write a school report and it´s really important and I need to print it out or I need to do something for work, it´s important. This is not like angry birds or candy crush, this is something important, you know they are positioning it as that productivity hub you know, Windows 10 is essentially that to go, you know that kind of thing. Productivity it sort of fills the gap left by blackberry if only thematically.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: So, I don´t know, I´m not trying to make lemonade out of this, I´m really just trying to explain it, I´m not trying to express this belief that this is a good thing, and obviously when Windows phone was introduced it was supposed to be an iPhone or an iPhone direct competitor, it´s literally designed to compete for the same audiences the iPhone was going for and it never really achieved that. Of course if you look at what they´re doing today the strategy is completely different.

Mary Jo: Yeah it is.

Leo: Well if you´re a Windows or a Microsoft user you´ve got to be used to change by now.

Paul: Still it´s kicking and screaming days Leo you know.

Leo: Yeah, that might be the nature of early, that shouldn´t be, early adopters should love change, that´s what that means.

Paul: But it´s not, it´s expectations you know, Apple and Microsoft the 2 companies that are both active underdogs long after they weren´t, their users kind of suffer from the same mindset in people, you still get people with huge misunderstandings, Microsoft can´t do that because they´ll be sued for antitrust, it´s like guys that world is over, there´s no circumstance where they really need to worry about antitrust, but on the flip side, Microsoft should just make it Windows only and it´ll destroy the competition is equally out of date, it doesn´t work that way anymore. You know when Microsoft beat netscape 20 years ago they leveraged Windows, they can leverage Windows all they want today. it´s not going to beat Google and Android, it doesn´t matter, it´s a different world so you have to adjust accordingly.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: This is hard to get over the, you´re comfortable, you´re used to the things being a certain way.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I think yeah because for 40 years it was always Windows first, Windows best and it´s only been in the past year, year and a half, that it´s now Windows is one platform of many for Microsoft so you have a lot of unlearning to do about that old positioning.

Paul: Can I pretend to be one of your email complainers because let me just point out that it may be one of many but it´s the last one of many Mary Jo. This is like the type of feedback we get you know.

Leo: By the way, chatroom says it´s College of Fine Arts in Dresden, somebody else said Liverpool, so it´s one of the two. This is what I love about the chatroom, as many opinions as you want.

Paul: College of Fine Arts in Dresden.

Leo: That sounds right. It did look Germanic, didn´t it?

Paul: It does look like it´s in Germany.

Leo: Yeah.

Paul: I´ve not been to Berlin which is why I wondered about that.

Leo: I have been to Berlin but I don´t remember anything like that, but it looked like that statue at the top of the Brandenburg Gate a little bit, that winged victory.

Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo: So.

Mary Jo: I´m Binging it right now it does look similar.

Leo: I´m Binging it? Oh Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: Somebody has to say it.

Paul: Words that have never been uttered.

Leo: You are loyal.

Mary Jo: No, I actually use Google, sorry.

Leo: Oh that´s even worse, she uses Google but calls it Bing.

Mary Jo: I know, I´m just trying to give the underdog, it looks like that.

Leo: Do you remember, you know when the iPod came out Steve Jobs was adamant, we will never make a Windows version of iTunes until everybody explained to him but the vast majority of the universe is Window users and in fact when he capitulated and made an iTunes for Windows that quickly became a majority user, you know, why more?

Paul: That and his decision belatedly to have an app store for the iPhone.

Leo: Yeah, he didn´t want to do that either.

Paul: A lot of people are trying to rewrite history and say oh no, no they were always going to do that, you know they just, and no that´s actually not the case.

Leo: Right.

Paul: And so obviously in the world of 2001 to 2003 having the iPod and having iTunes on Windows is a requirement for that thing to be successful, if Apple were launching those services or products today you would never see it on Windows.

Leo: Maybe not, I don´t know, Windows is still a billion and a half users.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: It´s not that significant.

Paul: A lot of Apple´s customers don´t need to know anything about it or don´t have to exist in that world, you know Apple doesn´t even do something as basic as, well here is a web version of iTunes, you know, that anyone could enjoy. I think they literally don´t do it out of spite because God forbid someone on Android actually try to use it. You know like they don´t have to do it anymore.

Leo: Right. Let´s see.

Paul: Baskets.

Leo: I don´t know what we´re talking about but I´m sure they are.

Paul: So, let me ask you, Leo have you used Google now on iOS which I believe means using what the Google app.

Leo: It´s an app and it´s very similar, that´s actually the closest analogy I think to what I would expect to see from Microsoft, so, you can shout at your iPhone all you want nothing’s going to happen until you launch the blue icon, the Google app.

Paul: That´s what I thought, yeah.

Leo: And then that blue icon.

Paul: It looks like it works like Google.

Leo: See now it´s listening so I can say okay Google, well maybe not, but anyway, Google now cards are here right? But it´s a second class citizen and that´s the problem, Cortana has the same problem because Apple´s never going to let it be the thing that happens when you hit the button, it´s always going to be Siri.

Paul: Well of course, I mean of course. I´ll begrudge them that.

Leo: I begrudge them that.

Paul: A little bit.

Leo: I do. How is, you know, I don´t have extensive experience with Cortana, how does it compare to Google now?

Paul: Oh listen I drove across the country with my dad, it was an i device toting guy, we clashed a bit on this stuff let´s say and his sophistication with the iPhone amounts to where is the closest Starbucks kind of thing.

Leo: Yeah, he´s your dad what did you expect?

Paul: Yeah I would say that they are similar, I find Cortana to be more sophisticated and a little bit more like Google now, which by the way I am really impressed by.

Leo: Is that the kingman, is that the one?

Paul: What´s that? Google now?

Leo: Yeah, I guess it is, if you put a lot of signals into Google it certainly is, I mean if you use Google search and Google count, I use Google mail, the Gmail man reads my mail, it´s great.

Paul: I bored my wife to tears the other morning talking about this kind of stuff because Google is a company or Amazon is a company which you sort of have to not respect on some level but on the other hand you can´t live without, and so how do you mentally or morally kind of deal with the fact that you´re going to use these services or whatever you know it´s like butting your nose in your face kind of thing. I think that Google excels in certain areas that are important to people, one of them is maps and navigation and up to date traffic information and route changes when there´s a better route to take and they just blow everything else out of the water, I don´t think it´s Google maps and there´s nothing else. As far as these digital assistance go, the thing I like about Google now and you just kind of showed a bit there and it ties into Mary Jo´s next bit, is that it´s proactive, that it shows you your day. Google now like Cortana will bring up a screen that says hey by the way, you have a flight at 7pm you should leave for the airport now, you know that kind of thing, like they both do that. I like that kind of, it´s not Siri asking a question, I´m sorry, it´s not you asking Siri a question, although they all do that, it´s more information that might be useful to you and those cards you were showing, we were talking about this earlier Mary Jo and I, on my screen it will show like the weather in Denham, the Red Sox are playing at 9 pm tonight because they´re in Minnesota, here´s the results from last night, you get this stuff that´s useful.

Leo: But Siri does, I mean Cortana does that right?

Paul: But Google has it´s tendrils into your life more than Apple does.

Leo: You give it more signals yeah.

Paul: And my wife uses Google phones like Samsung phones and she´ll often come up to me and say look at this thing that´s on my phone and it´s almost creepy because it does word association in your calendar, your contacts, in your email.

Leo: It tells me when my bills are due.

Paul: Yeah and it´s like you don´t know how it knows that.

Leo: Right. It remembers stuff I´ve searched for, yeah.

Paul: Oh it remembers everything, it´s a sentiate robot.

Leo: Actually I don´t get as much as I´d like, I want more, it shows me how long it´s going to take to get home, it shows me where I parked my car.

Paul: Right so you commute it knows that, here´s your little route, you should go this way today Leo because you know maybe there´s construction on one of the roads you usually take, they´re very good at that kind of thing.

Leo: And the other thing is this, they´re smart because they chose this card like interface and then they duplicated it in the watch so the wearables do the same thing.

Paul: Which I actually really like and they work the same way, the way you´re flicking that out of the way is the same gesture you use, so this to me is something that they get right. Microsoft does a good job, Siri is fine too, but I still think they´re, first of all it doesn´t matter whatever phone you´re using you got to use the thing that´s built in that´s got to be the best possible, there´s no way around that, but I think of the the 3.

Leo: It´s actually a factor in how, of the phones I choose to be honest.

Paul: Yeah, I can see that

Mary Jo: So that brings us to another Microsoft product that we´ve gotten a few leaks on in the past week called Office Now.

Leo: What´s that?

Mary Jo: Well it´s a good question, what is it? At first when I started looking into it I thought maybe it was the new name of what we had called the work assistant before and the work assistant is something that Microsoft´s been building to compliment Cortana that´s going to help you do things like, I need the file for my next meeting get the file and it´ll know it´s in PowerPoint and it´ll open it for you and get it. But know I´m starting to wonder if Office Now is almost more like Google Now, except with more of a focus on what Microsoft´s strength is, right, which is work, and so the same way you´re talking about Google Now being very good with maps and traffic and things around your calendar and email, what if Office Now is that except tied in to everything you have in Office right? And so it knows where your documents are and it can proactively say to you hey you have a meeting tomorrow with blah, blah, blah, here´s who he is, here are the documents you´re going to need for the meeting, here´s how long it´s going to take you to get to the building. I wonder now if that´s what Office Now is, and from the leaks we believe it´s going to come out on Windows, Windows Phone, Android and iOS.

Paul: You know what these guys need to figure out? By the way anyone of these should do this, is what you just said, you´re having a meeting with Bob, here are the documents you need for that meeting, Bob´s wife´s name is Mary, his anniversary was last week, you know, that kind of thing, he mentioned on Twitter that he was upset about something perhaps you can make a joke about it. You know you can almost see where this thing turns literally into the personal assistant from vip or something, like it´s something that´s kind of playing you with information that would in fact be useful to you on sort of a personal level.

Mary Jo: I´m looking at my phone because when I just, you know what´s weird so I had my Windows phone near me and when I said get me the meeting notes for my next meeting blah, blah, blah, I looked at my phone and the screen came up and it said here are your notes for your next meeting.

Paul: That is awesome.

Leo: Love that.

Mary Jo: Yeah, I´m like wait maybe this is going to be next.

Paul: You said I don´t have a next meeting, what´s happening here?

Mary Jo: I don´t have a next meeting so I´m like what is that?

Leo: Isn´t it funny like on the one hand we hate the privacy invasion?

Mary Jo: I know.

Leo: But on the other hand it´s damn useful. See that´s why to me I´m kind of, I´ve gone all in on Google because it´s like well as long as I´m getting some value from it I don´t mind sending them these signals.

Mary Jo: And as long as you can turn it off.

Leo: And you can, you can even, well if you believe them and I do, you can go to the dashboard delete all those.

Paul: Like that slider that does nothing, tracking off wink, wink.

Leo: I think that they understand that to lie about that would be to incur the wrath.

Paul: It´s not a lie Leo, it´s a software and software, we can all agree software isn´t perfect.

Mary Jo: I want the ability to turn off the pieces I want off but not all of it.

Leo: Well the dashboard is very, for Google anyway, is very granular.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: I don´t know.

Paul: As much as I´d like to grand stand and say Google is evil and you know, blah, blah, blah, the truth is I get it and I understand why people use it, look Microsoft boy travels cross country with his dad, tell you what I´m not using here is Drive Plus, you know I´m sorry I like Nokia products, I like the app, I´m sorry I need to get home, I would probably still be driving around Kansas today if I used that thing you know.

Mary Jo: Come on, they´re better than Bing map.

Paul: I use Google, I mean I just use Google maps, it works. And there´s an app for Google by the way.

Mary Jo: There is, the reason we brought up Office Now besides the fact that we´re talking about Cortana is, today on 9 to 5Mac, Mark Gurman has a story about Apple´s working on this thing called Proactive that looks like Google Now. It´s going to go beyond what Siri can do and be more in the same vein as we´re talking about Office Now and Google Now we think. So it feels like all 3 of these companies are moving in lock step right, you had Siri, you had Cortana and now you´re having the next iterations of these where you can do more.

Paul: It´s the new hamburger menu.

Mary Jo: Oh no, don´t say that. More hate mail, no.

Paul: In other words, it´s not so much each of these guys is copying each other although I think there are elements of that, but I mean it´s also fair to say that when it comes to certain types of products, there are natural ways to do things and it shouldn´t be surprising that they´re all solving the same problems that they all might have similar features right? The presentation of this Proactive thing looks interesting to me because it looks like Google Now kind of.

Mary Jo: Right, and also what Office Now probably is going to be too, which will be hey here´s your meeting tomorrow, here´s everything you need here´s where it is, knowing proactively.

Paul: So how´s that going to work? You say like hey Office and then it pops up?

Mary Jo: No, it sounds like it´s wired in, that there´ll be like this helper thing that when you say I need my files it´ll know like here´s the most recent file you worked on, because if we look at what is Cortana right, it´s Bing plus other things on top right, there´s natural language capabilities on top, there´s machine learning, there´s all these things that take Bing just kind of like the underlined search and make it more tailored, more personal and I think that´s what you have to have to make all these things work right? It´s not just search, it´s search plus these extra things.

Leo: Yeah. Search plus, that´s a good name.

Mary Jo: Search plus, somebody probably has that.

Leo: Windows 10 now with search plus.

Paul: You know what´s better, nothing with plus in it is ever worse than its predecessor.

Mary Jo: No, never.

Leo: You know I wonder if in the internet age consumers are no longer fooled by new and improved?

Mary Jo: I think they´re still fooled.

Leo: I don´t think we´re smart.

Paul: In keeping with the conversation about apps being updated every day and honestly I think a lot of us just don´t even pay attention to it anymore. Do you ever really pour over the release, we might because we´re in the industry, but I just put the battery back in a Samsung device, turned it on for the first time in 2 weeks and spent half an hour updating apps and whatever and my God it´s amazing how many are updated or you know, have been updated in that time period, and each one of them, not every one of them but a lot of them have really long release notes you can expand the view and see what was updated, I mean, who reads that stuff? I think we´re just kind of, uh it´s updated, yeah.

Leo: Oh yeah, you know I have mixed feelings, remember Microsoft got a lot of heat for overdoing the updates right? That´s why they moved to the monthly cycle.

Paul: Sure.

Leo: But apps are often updated daily.

Paul: Almost daily, yeah.

Leo: Yeah and people don´t complain about it, what´s the difference? I guess it´s not an operating system.

Paul: Actually here´s one that Microsoft people will appreciate, my wife and I both use Duolingo which is a great app.

Leo: Love it.

Paul: The hilarious thing about it is how much it differs from platform to platform, it´s almost pathological, and if you think, let´s put it in kind of a Microsoft context, every time a new version of Windows would come out people would rail against the changes to the start menu because they were often arbitrary, it´s like they put all the commands in a blender and just put them in different places every time just to keep us on our toes and you would kind of look at where stuff was and sometimes there would be a little popup menus and sometimes it would happen in line and sometimes this would be here and this would be there, they´d turn off this view and you could put it back if you wanted to, it just seems so arbitrary. That happened once every 3 years, Duolingo gets updated every week, differently on at least 2 of those platforms.

Leo: I know.

Paul: And keeping up with the changes is like, sometimes I´ll go, I use it on the iPad I´ll get used to that then you load it on Android and you´re like.

Leo: What?

Paul: What is this thing?

Leo: What the heck?

Paul: And then you look at it in Windows Phone and it´s completely different again.

Leo: Yep.

Paul: The rate of change is astonishing.

Leo: And we somehow tolerate it I guess because it´s behind the scenes.

Mary Jo: And I think also, because we´re consumers on this sense right? And we´re people who like change.

Leo: Not business.

Mary Jo: Right, businesses don´t love that.

Paul: And by consumers we really mean are live beta testers of software.

Mary Jo: Exactly.

Paul: Let´s see how much people will get enraged by this change, oh not to much let´s keep going in this direction.

Leo: But there´s a certain group and I´ll wager it´s, our viewers and listeners are preponderantly in that group who celebrate it and I can´t wait, you know what are people bitching about? The fact that Den ham didn´t come right? We want the updates.

Mary Jo: Right.

Leo: It´s new, it´s shiny.

Paul: Okay, right, Denham´s a great example, someone will have like a Lumia 1020 and they know they´re not getting the camera updates, they don´t like it but they understand it. But man are they burned when they don´t have that software update, it´s like, well what are you looking forward to here exactly? What do you think´s going to happen?

Leo: Magic, my life finally will be okay.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: Right but then you have on the other hand business users who say you know what I want on Windows 10, I want the ability to lock everything down so I never get any new features once Windows 10 comes out.

Paul: By the way, that´s why I love business computing.

Mary Jo: See that´s why you love it and you wish you could cover.

Paul: The world that invented supergluing USB ports, I mean.

Leo: You might wish you had these days.

Mary Jo: You know if you have mission critical apps, you´re running mission critical system I get why this is happening.

Leo: I do too.

Paul: You would think a mission critical system would be more resilient to change but what do I know.

Mary Jo: But no. Plus you know, like banks, okay take a bank, how many thousand of in-house apps do they have and if they get a certain update and it breaks everything inside and you´ve got it on you know a hundred thousand users systems, it´s not fun.

Paul: Sure, the systems that banks are using are not.

Mary Jo: New.

Paul: So yeah. You´re also talking about an industry which I worked in banking for several years.

Leo: Oh did you?

Paul: Yeah, I used to string public WiFi hotspots between buildings so that they could communicate with the branch across the street after an acquisition.

Leo: Wow.

Paul: Just would horrify you if you knew some of the stuff.

Leo: Did you want to talk about Proactive, this rumored Apple, is that what we were talking about?

Mary Jo: We mentioned it kind of in passing; this is a rumor.

Leo: Oh this is the Office, when you talked about Office Now this was the, okay.

Mary Jo: This is Apple´s equivalent of Office Now.

Paul: We try to throw an Apple count in every episode Leo.

Leo: I´ve been missing that.

Mary Jo: This might be a WWDC announcement they say, so they say.

Paul: Would make sense.

Leo: Oh everything can make sense, Apple could do anything, look they made a watch, they sell 30,000 of these a week, for no apparent reason except that it´s an Apple watch. No one needs this.

Paul: That´s the problem with the LG watch, doesn´t have an Apple logo on it.

Leo: I love the LG.

Paul: It doesn´t matter Leo.

Leo: My wife tells me it´s fugly, which is a word I´ve heard a lot lately, so I´m wearing the Apple watch. Somehow, you know there is a reality distortion field, I was doing MacBreak Weekly yesterday and they somehow convinced me to buy another one and then fortunately I came to my senses after the show and I cancelled. Thank God they have a back log. Because it was so pretty it was the black one with the black, it was so pretty I really wanted it. It´s the reality distortion field, I don´t know how they do it.

Mary Jo: Something in the water out that way.

Leo: That way?

Mary Jo: California.

Leo: Everyway!

Paul: Apple´s hardware is gorgeous, it really is. I think the only issue I have with the Apple watch is how unnecessary it is, I mean, everyone needs a smartphone, tablets have great utility, computers have great utility, we all want to watch TV in the living room and that kind of stuff, well not mary Jo because you know.

Leo: She has no living room.

Paul: Most people.

Mary Jo: I have no living room and no TV.

Paul: Apple watch is like, uh, we gave up on jewelry years ago, we´re not really.

Leo: I know it´s so strange.

Paul: I mean something that makes text, you know, answering a text message slightly easier you know, I really don´t.

Leo: It doesn´t make it easier, I just want to say, you still have to, it´s fiddley.

Paul: Slightly different, sorry.

Leo: It´s not easier, you have to go hee, ho, talk, hello, I mean it´s not easy, it´s more work.

Paul: I also think that this thing´s a big beta test, we kind of mentioned in passing this notion that Google Now and the watch have the same gestures and work the same way with the cards and have a similar UI. I think it´s attractive but I think it also works well, I think the Apple watch UI and I say, to be completely ignorant I don´t own, I don´t have one on hand or whatever but based on what I see it´s a completely new UI.

Leo: And it´s weird.

Paul: It´s different, it takes some training, and I would´t be surprised to discover over time that they maybe make that a little more familiar.

Leo: Well, there´s a clock, everybody understands that, oops, Mashable is live oh crap I put Periscope on here, now I´m getting Periscope alerts every 5 seconds, but watch this, you tap that and that´s a UI. What the hell!

Paul: It looks like a fungus is growing inside the software.

Leo: We´re talking about the icon cloud if you tap the crown that you get and you can zoom out on it which is, oh that´s really handy, give me the overview.

Paul: A kaleidoscope, it´s pretty.

Leo: It´s pretty.

Paul: What does your app layout say about you Leo?

Leo: I know people who arrange their app layout by color, and then you can zoom in.

Paul: But in the middle ages those people would´ve been hung as witches.

Leo: This is, I don´t think this is a good UI. I´m sorry, I just.

Paul: I don´t either and I think that´s the point, in other words this seems experimental to me and honestly that´s a little weird for Apple because they usually seem to kind of nail it from the user experience stand point, I mean well I don´t see myself at some point but I wouldn´t be surprised if they don´t.

Leo: This is my favorite, the calculator. Now that´s useful, hey.

Mary Jo: There you go.

Leo: Hey.

Paul: You have to calculate the tip and then tell the guy I can´t afford a tip because I bought Apple watch.

Leo: I bought a watch, your tip is zero.

Paul: In fact you owe me $17 dollars.

Leo: Anyway, I´m wearing it, it worked. Ah, let´s take a break and when we come back we´re going to talk more about Microsoft’s quiet transition from the old to the new. I don´t know what that means,

Paul: It´s not that quiet because of Mary Jo.

Leo: She´s loud, tell everybody about it, it´s a leak and more Microsoft Office productivity apps, one click, clip, I didn´t sleep much last night. One clip and revolve.

Paul: Still waiting for Office thud to show up.

Mary Jo: Yes, I like that one.

Paul: Office thud, you´ve been thudded.

Leo: You´ve got thud.

Our show tonight brought to you by, your dinner tonight, by Blue Apron. We love this idea, we all, look, I like to cook, I have a feeling, I know Mary Jo likes to cook, even somebody like Paul Thurrott likes to cook once in a while, but the problem is we´re busy, busy people, we have to, we can´t sit you know we´re in our jammies, we don´t want to go shopping but we would like to make dinner, that´s where Blue Apron comes in. They will send you everything you need to make an amazing dinner for 2 or dinner for your entire family for less than $10 a meal. Delicious ingredients, everything´s fresh including the meat, the fish, the poultry, but it comes in their beautiful refrigerator boxes and once, you get the recipe card, once you cook it you feel like I am a master chef. It is incredible they work around your schedule and dietary preferences, and they source only the best seasonal ingredients that´s why the menu´s different all the time, for incredible meals. Curry spiced chicken thighs and stir fry noodles. Does that sound good? Once you go to blueapron.com so you guys got your, because I wanted to make sure you got Blue Apron boxes. You got your boxes. And what did you make Paul?

Paul: So we had, it was 3 meals, and one of them was hake which is a white fish with rice, it wasn´t rice, but like rice flakes I guess on top and vegetables, great sauce. One of them was a sort of a meat and potatoes kind of thing like steak tips with fingerling potatoes. And the other one was really interesting it was a, I´m going to get this wrong, it was a ground turkey, they were like patties of ground turkey with a wheat based kind of, I don´t know to call it, a pebbly kind of like a cous cous kind of thing but based on wheat, I forgot the name of it.

Leo: Oh bulgur maybe.

Paul: That was it.

Leo: Yeah, Mary Jo and I know about bulgur.

Mary Jo: I do.

Paul: Okay so this was unfamiliar to me.

Leo: I love bulgur yeah.

Paul: Yes and so the thing that struck me about this stuff across the board was first of all the quality of the ingredients which was incredible, just absolutely incredible, the variety which is amazing, the fact that, especially with the turkey one, it´s something we would not have sought out and made on our own and we liked being challenged just by the food.

Leo: Exactly, yeah, these are things you probably wouldn´t make just off the top of your head.

Paul: Right, most of them. That picture you just showed is really indicative of the quality, you look at that and you think yeah right, it´s going to be flash frozen stuff, no. This is really high quality stuff and my wife is a foody and rights about nutrition for living was very cynical about this and was really ready to rip it you know apart, and actually came out and said you know we´re not going to do this right now because we have awesome fresh local food in the summer, but when it´s winter and we´re tired of yet another rue vegetable and yet another roasted whatever let´s do this because the quality and variety of the food is amazing.

Leo: And you see, this is the recipe card, it´s coded stock so you keep it. What did you make Mary Jo?

Mary Jo: I made, so I got the vegetarian box.

Leo: Oh they have one? I was worried about that, good. Pescatarian or vegetarian?

Mary Jo: I got vegetarian.

Leo: Okay.

Mary Jo: And I made a polenta with mushroom dish that was really nice, I made a vegetarian bibimbap you know the Korean rice bowl.

Leo: No, I don´t.

Paul: Nope, but go ahead.

Mary Jo: It´s a rice, it´s like a spicy rice underneath and then you have all these different vegetables that you cook separately and you put a fried egg on top.

Leo: You´re making me so hungry.

Mary Jo: They even give you the eggs, like the eggs came in the box.

Leo: You get parsley, like a sprinkle of parsley.

Mary Jo: Even sesame oil and soy sauce in little bottles.

Paul: And that´s the thing that´s neat about it, you get exactly what you need for that recipe.

Mary Jo: Yeah that´s what I really like.

Paul: Imagine if you said to yourself I´m going to make these 3 recipes, I´m going to do these myself. You would have to buy a bottle of each of those things that you would never use again.

Leo: Exactly.

Paul: Or would have to force yourself to use that stuff and I think that´s cool.

Mary Jo: It´s exactly the right amount of stuff which is great because especially when you live by yourself when I buy like a head of kale, it´s so much kale.

Leo: You never use it, yeah.

Paul: We all have that problem Mary Jo, I can´t tell you how many times

Leo: There´s never a situation where you don´t have too much kale.

Mary Jo: We always have that issue, like using it up before it spoils.

Paul: Drowning in kale

Mary Jo: But this was just like, I had some Swiss chard in the box, there were like 4 leaves.

Leo: I know, it´s amazing, isn´t it funny?

Mary Jo: I know I was like okay.

Leo: I never had so little, but at the same time it´s exactly what you need for that recipe, look we could go on and on, will you try it for us? BlueApron.com/Twit. You know this was unsolicited, we tell our host you don´t have to chime in on ads, this is not, but I´m so glad you guys liked it because we love it, it´s really great.

Paul: I wanted to mention this, In fact I´ll probably write an article about it.

Leo: Oh my God!

Paul: I occasionally write, we took pictures of all the stuff, it´s really kind of amazing. It´s kind of like a better living through technology kind of thing.

Leo: Make a sway.

Mary Jo: Blue Apron Sway.

Leo: Sway, our worlds collide. BlueApron.com/Twit. Your first 2 meals are free, try it today. You see, I wasn´t making it up. Moving right along ladies and gentlemen, the old to the new, this is a leak Mary Jo discovered.

Paul: Not like a vegetable leak but an actual leak.

Mary Jo: Not those leaks.

Leo: Snooping around the campus, you gave a great tip by the way for the screen saver which we used last week.

Mary Jo: Oh God, did you use that one.

Leo: Yeah I loved it, how you get your, like, your info?

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Leo: It´s great.

Mary Jo: I did a little tip about how to try to find out about a Microsoft code name, because a lot of times we get tips like you know someone will say oh the code name for this is blah, but you need to try and find is this real or is this person going to trick me, the way you go about it, there are a lot of little tips and tricks.

Leo: Do you also feel like you have to protect your sources like?

Mary Jo: Yes.

Leo: Because Steve Jobs supposedly would do this, he would tell people different things and wait to see what got leaked and fired the person who leaked.

Mary Jo: It happens.

Paul: He was such a great guy, wasn´t he?

Mary Jo: It happens at Microsoft too.

Leo: Oh I´m sure every company, there was a rumor and I could never confirm this, that Microsoft I mean Apple when they hired somebody new that they were unsure of, would assign them to a phony project for like 6 months and waited to see if anything leaked out about it before they trusted them and you know what, knowing Steve Jobs, I´m not, that wouldn´t be impossible, I wouldn´t be surprised .

Mary Jo: Yeah, I haven´t heard that at Microsoft.

Leo: No, that´s going a little too far. So, yeah, what is this leak?

Mary Jo: So we should first give credit where it´s due, there´s this guy who nobody, none of us, I don´t think, know who he is, his Twitter handle is @h0x0d, he goes by the walking cat and he is some genius about finding Microsoft stuff, he goes into files and looks for names and he pastes stuff into Pastebin and like just like goes nuts finding stuff and then he´ll say Mary Jo I found this, see if you can figure out what it is.

Paul: We both follow him for a reason.

Mary Jo: We all follow him for a reason, whoever this guy is, none of us know who he is.

Paul: We assume it´s a him, I don´t know why we said him.

Mary Jo: I think it´s a him, I don´t know, yeah.

Leo: How interesting.

Mary Jo: So he found some references to a couple of new Microsoft apps, remember we were talking the last show about Flow, which we had found out was a lightweight email and chat application, he was one of the people who helped unearth that. But now there are more, he´s found more and one of them that he found was One clip, One clip is like a web clipboard that you can use across all your devices Windows, iOS, Android, and so if you had something that you wanted to bring with you, you know use it on another device, like say you had a password, not a password necessarily because you wouldn´t want to do that but like say you had like a sentence for me, like a sentence I wanted to paste onto an email on another device, I would paste it into this clipboard and be able to use it across my devices. So this is a real Microsoft product that they´re building, we found out that´s it´s being built by the Microsoft garage which is the incubator that they have on campus that does experimental apps. So that one´s out there and I think he even pasted some codes so that people could download it and try it even though it´s not available yet officially. Another one that he found was called Revolve and we had heard about Revolve before, that is another Microsoft garage app, but he found that there is going to be a Windows Phone version not just an iOS version of this. Revolve is this kind of app that lets you know about contacts of yours before you´re going to meet with them, it gives you details about people who might be in your next meeting, again this is a garage app so it´s experimental, something that´s meant to kind of be in mobile first type app across platforms.

Leo: That´s kind of like that Cortana feature you were talking about.

Mary Jo: Yeah in a way, right, yeah.

Leo: Your next meeting is, and here´s what you should know.

Mary Jo: And here´s the people you´re going to meet with and here´s something about them so that you don´t go in all unprepared.

Leo: Don´t you feel like this is s Steve Ballmer feature?

Paul: This sounds like, what´s that favorite Dr. Seuss´ book? Oh what a great success you´ll be.

Leo: Oh the places you´ll go.

Paul: Yeah, oh the places you´ll see you know, that´s how they should style it like that, it should look like a Dr Seuss theme , it would be so awesome, oh the places you´ll go, Today you´ll be going to lunch with Bob.

Mary Jo: Look at my blogpost because it has kind of that kind of an image too, we´ve got a screen welcome to revolve. There´s a guy in the center of the circle and then there are all these little things around you know with are like calendar and contact information so you can find out everything about this guy you´re going to have this meeting with. It tells you, it kind of combines your calendar and your contact information together. So those 2 apps are apps in process, then there´s even more, there´s this app I heard about from another contact of mine, not Walking Cat but someone else, called Highlander, that´s the real code name, and Microsoft´s had other things code named Highlander before so I guess.

Leo: What´s the Highlander slogan Paul? You must know that.

Paul: There could be only one.

Leo: That´s what I thought.

Mary Jo: Right so obviously there´s more than just one since there are multiple Highlanders.

Leo: Oh this is cute, Revolve looks just like the Apple watch, great.

Paul: That´s creative, isn´t it?

Mary Jo: It´s not that bad, is it?

Paul: People are circles Leo, don´t forget.

Leo: Well you tell me so let me show you the interface I´m thinking about on the Microsoft watch that I think looks just like, oops, when you tap it.

Mary Jo: The Apple watch you mean?

Leo: I mean the Apple Watch, you tap this, you get your circle of people.

Paul: It looks um.

Leo: Similar?

Paul: Similar is maybe not strong enough of a word.

Leo: Well, anyway, I´m sure they were thinking of this long before Apple ever did.

Paul: Yeah sure.

Leo: Oh the places you´ll go.

Mary Jo: Skype uses a lot of this.

Paul: Starting with your meeting with Bob, at 10. Seriously, this is a great idea.

Mary Jo: If you look at Skype, no Skype and Skype for business are changing everything to be in circles too so Microsoft´s going to circles too.

Leo: Really?

Paul: Not just Skype, it´s all across Microsoft, this is their new thing.

Leo: You know a circle really is just a form of rounded rectangle.

Paul: That´s true. Apple should sue them.

Mary Jo: It´s half of a hamburger.

Paul: In fact it´s a perfectly round rectangle

Leo: A completely rounded rect.

Paul: The natural evolution of a rounded rectangle.

Leo: Yes.

Mary Jo: Okay back to Highlander guys.

Leo: Sorry yes, please.

Paul: I actually spit there, thank you for keeping us on track.

Mary Jo: Okay Highlander´s kind of interesting, come on, it´s a lightweight project management app, so you now Microsoft already has a thing called Project which is a fully feature project management app, this is meant more for everyday people, more like a task manager/project management thing. It keeps track of your to do´s and the progress you´re making on different tasks. This is an app Microsoft´s building at least for iOS, probably across platform, I´ve even gotten a couple of people that say they´ve seen it. One guy says it´s being used inside Microsoft by people with iPhones, I don´t know. That´s another one, another example of Microsoft building this new category of mobile first productivity apps.

Leo: On iOS.

Mary Jo: On iOS, and then there´s maybe one more, I got kind of conflicting tips on this one, it may be called Flip or it may not be called Flip.

Leo: Clip or Flip?

Mary Jo: Flip, F-L-I-P. And this sounds like a lightweight document collect collaboration kind of app that may include what´s in Flow so some of that kind of chat functionality but also specific to documents so if you´re collaborating with someone on a document you can work together in a lightweight way across again iOS, Android and Windows. I don´t know where that one is added if it´s actually being used or still in development or just under consideration but all of these things are examples of, you know Microsoft is doing these new kinds of productivity apps, just kind of throwing things out there, I think seeing what sticks, seeing how it´s going to take off on different platforms and if it does maybe making it part of their Office suite of offerings someday like they did with Sway right? They threw Sway out there on iOS, they did a web version, and now they´re rolling it out to Office 365 because people like it.

Leo: Oh they are? Oh good.

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: When is that happening?

Mary Jo: So I think you´re going to see that happen more and more, people will start, you know, they´ll throw that out there, see how the reception of these different apps is and if it is well received, turn it into something more as part of their whole stable of apps.

Paul: Right, and that´s happening right now by the way Leo.

Leo: Oh good.

Paul: Sway on Office 365

Leo: So it´ll be desktop Sway that´s great.

Mary Jo: Yeah, but still no Windows Phone Sway yet. Maybe one day, half a year.

Paul: It´s about mobility of experiences Mary Jo.

Mary Jo: Yes.

Paul: Anybody?

Mary Jo: So what was your quiet transition realization Mr. Thurrott?

Leo: Good question.

Mary Jo: I´m curious.

Paul: That Microsoft moving its traditional Office productivity solutions to mobile platforms seems like a big deal but actually it´s fairly obvious, you know why do bank robbers rob banks? Because that´s where the money is, why would Microsoft put Office apps on iOS and Android? That´s where users are, but that´s old school, the old way of doing things. I mean those apps came up out of a world where we kind of went to a place, sat in front of a computer, it had a keyboard, a mouse, a screen and we did productivity work. What´s the new productivity? It´s these smaller mobile apps and that the couple of apps that we knew about at the time, the original app,whatever it was, that had leaked the week before, I said was the tip of the iceberg that we´re going to see tons of these little apps mostly on iOS and Android, and that´s what we´re talking about here, all the things that you, you know this person has leaked and if you´ve written about it, it´s exactly what I predicted a week ago, a week before that. These things are the future.

Mary Jo: They are and you know what´s worth pointing out because people bring this up every time, these apps that we´re talking about, we think they´re all free, everybody says okay so what is Microsoft getting out of putting these apps on iOS and Android? Like if these, like if Revolve is free on iOS what does Microsoft benefit?

Leo: They make it up in volume.

Mary Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Thank you for stealing my joke. That´s exactly right.

Mary Jo: They get hooks on you, they hook you.

Leo: They hook you, yeah.

Mary Jo: Like you´re somebody who´s like oh Microsoft oh their apps are terrible right, and then you try one, all you need is just one little hook and then you´re like, oh, that Revolve app, that was okay.

Paul: Listen, if you use Android, grab the next lock screen it´s amazing. I mean, they make some, I don´t want to ruin my pick for later but they have some amazing stuff on other platforms.

Leo: This is not old either, I mean not new either right? They did it with PhotoSynth right?

Paul: Yeah.

Leo: That was a perfect example of an app, gosh this looks great, wow Microsoft made it!

Paul: How the hell did PhotoSynth sneak out during Steve Ballmer ten year in Microsoft you know.

Leo: The labs man.

Mary Jo: It was, I think it was one of those labs like Windows live labs or one of those things.

Paul: Sure.

Mary Jo: Kind of under the radar type thing. But then, okay so say even then Microsoft gets their hooks into you right, still what do that get out of it? Their big plan, like the master plan is at some point they want to drive you to the product that they´re going to use as subscription product right? So even though these things are free the hope is at some point you´ll use the free things and then you´ll say oh there´s a version, I just want this one feature so I´ll pay them you know $5 bucks a month to lock this one feature, then you´re in, then you´re captured.

Paul: What are we going to do to get you in this car today.

Leo: But that´s also a time honored, well time honored for the last few years, freemium, that´s how everyone works, this is a, this is, everyone knows this works.

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: Right. Well Microsoft applying it to their most cherished software platform is kind of amazing.

Leo: Yeah, they have to give away something they used to charge for right.

Mary Jo: Yeah. Right.

Paul: Well there´s a lot of precedents for that in the software world too. I mean Netscape did it and those guys did great gang busters.

Mary Jo: Adobe right? No, how about Adobe though, like you know putting more things in the cloud right? Some things free but most not. getting you hooked in.

Paul: Yeah.

Mary Jo: So that´s what they´re doing now more and more. I think we´re going to hear more and more leaks about productivity apps, I have one other one I´m working on that I won´t spill the beans on yet but, there´s another one.

Paul: You know Office to us and to our grandparents, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Office to a new generation of people coming up into the world maybe these apps or some other apps that we don´t know about yet, it´s going to be a different thing and you know, again, they´re consuming computing resources on little screens and that they carry in their pocket, it´s a different world.

Leo: It’s interesting because there’s so many of them. But they’re all little, and this is kind of going back to the original, they’re cute, nuclear computing model that UNIX was behind. Lots of…

Paul: One command does one thing.

Leo: Yea, and I kind of like that model; although then you get hundreds of apps on your device and it gets a little out of hand.

Paul: No, Leo, then you get OLE on your device and everything is screwed. You need some inter-process communication service.

Leo: Yea, right.

Mary Jo: OLE…

Leo: OLE! Object Linking and Embedding.

Mary Jo: That’s a blast from the past.

Paul: Those were the days.

Leo: Whatever happened to that?

Paul: Well, the things she just talked about, OneClip is just the logical extension of that, it’s OLE applied to the operating environment of today, which is the internet. I want to start, I want to copy and paste something to my PC, and then walk out to the car, or I should say copy it on my PC, paste it into my phone, and keep going. Hilarious, what could go wrong?

Leo: What could possible go wrong? Forty more hardware maker deals to bring Microsoft Apps to Android devices.

Mary Jo: This is interesting…

Leo: This is like what I got with my Galaxy S6, where I got Skype, OneNote and OneDrive built in?

Mary Jo: Yep, exactly. So Microsoft’s striking more of these deals.

Leo: Ok. That’s good, makes sense. They’re all tablets though, that’s a little interesting.

Mary Jo: Yea, that is interesting. So they announced this week that they have 20 more. And of the 20, I think you probably recognize 2 names, LG and Sony.

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: The other ones are more regional OEMs, I have never heard of any of these. Cube in China. General Procurement in the United States. Grupo Nucleo in Argentina. So there are all these different tablet makers, some making just tablets very specifically for particular markets. But Microsoft says they have struck deals with them. They’ll be putting a combination of Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype on these tablets in the near future. So now they have 31 of these partnerships. They already had had, who, no, Samsung, they had, right?

Paul: Dell.

Mary Jo: Dell, yep. So they’ve got a few big names mixed in with some of these regional names.

Leo: Samsung’s THE name, right? I mean…

Mary Jo: That is, right. Yea.

Paul: Yes.

Leo: And I have to say, well I begrudge, you know, bloatware on my phone, but having Skype, OneDrive and OneNote was not, I didn’t perceive, that was value, I didn’t perceive that as bloatware.

Mary Jo: Yea. It’s no Candy Crush Saga.

Leo: It’s not like the Verizon app. Actually if that had come with Candy Crush Saga I would have already been hooked.

Mary Jo: You’d be ok with it.

Leo: I would mind that. Talk about freemium, there’s a freemium success story.

Mary Jo: I know, right. Yep. Very true. But if you look at, what’s Microsoft doing? They’re circling the wagons, right? We’re talking about, first they’re bringing apps like Cortana to Android. At the same time they’re doing this kind of, these kind of deals, where they’re doing bundling deals with Android table makers. Then they’re even doing that deal we read about earlier this year with Cyanogen, where Microsoft’s building custom versions of certain Microsoft apps that Cyanogen will include in their Android distribution. So, Microsoft’s trying to figure out kind of how to circle the wagons around Android. And, you know, the way they’re presenting it is, “We want to have our apps anywhere you are, even if you’re on Android.” But, really, it’s, I think they’re just trying again to see which of these, which of these strategies is going to work and help them compete in this market where they’re lagging way behind Android and iOS.

Leo: Strategy, imagine that! What a concept.

Mary Jo: Strategy. I know, crazy!

Paul: Better than tragedy.

Leo: Yea. Alright, anything I should be looking for? I’m still using 10122. I see 10125 has been leaked.

Paul: Has it?

Leo: Has it or has it?

Paul: Yes it has.

Leo: You’re the experts.

Paul: Yea, I mean it’s not a major change from the public release, other than the fact that you can get it on ISO form and do a clean install which I really prefer to do. So a few small changes.

Leo: Oh, good. Even on the data you would do a clean install each time, or?

Paul: I would, I think that a lot of the, I mean it’s obviously valuable to get a few back related upgrades, but not from BETA to BETA upgrades. I mean, I think a lot of the gunk you see, and I still see this on Windows Phone, by the way, I talked about the disastrous last build of Windows 10 for phone. If you clean install that on the same device it’s actually not horrible. And that’s very interesting to me. So I think on a well-used device, you know, that could be problematic, but anyway. Yea, this one has some interesting small things in it. There’s, Microsoft had talked about a universal back button that they were going to put on the task bar, and it never kind of appeared. And they started adding back buttons inside of apps, and I thought, “Well, maybe they’re not going to do this.” But, actually it’s in 10125, and it only appears in tablet mode, where the icons clear out of the taskbar and you just have, just kind of the standard set of buttons. And one of them now is a back button. So it works like the back button on a Windows Phone. Just gives you a way to navigate by touch.

Leo: I actually like that.

Paul: Yea, I think that’s pretty cool. You’ll be delighted to discover that the start menu gets a hamburger, I’m sorry, the start screen gets a hamburger menu.

Leo: It’s about time.

Paul: Yep, and that brings up that kind of all apps list, and you know, the recently accessed apps and all that kind of stuff. That’s pretty cool. I also noticed, because I installed it in the VM, that when you install it in a low resolution device, you get one column of apps, of tiles I should say, and it looks, it looks not exactly like, but a lot like Windows Phone, which I thought was kind of interesting. Updated icons, this is actually, it’s such a small thing, but the truth is, there’s been a lot of uproar over the crazy icons that Microsoft has been testing in Windows 10. And so in this build, they’ve actually really toned them down. They were really bright and glare-y looking.

Leo: How funny.

Paul: And now they’re just, they look more like the icons, to me, that are in Windows 8.

Leo: Do you think that was the intent all along, or this is in response to the uproar?

Paul: This is absolutely in response to the marketplace, people were freaking out. And beyond that, it’s just fit and finish stuff for the most part. A couple people…

Leo: Getting close, you think, to the release?

Paul: Yea, it’s a lot of fit and finish, and that’s the point. Windows Hello has actually been available in Windows 10 for a while, I use it on my ThinkPad X1.

Leo: Why do I always want to call it Windows Helllloooo! Windows Hello! I don’t know…

Mary Jo: I hate that name.

Paul: Someday, Leo.

Leo: It’s a terrible name. Helllloooooooo Windows. Hellllloooo!

Paul: It’s got the little eyebrow things that kind of look around.

Leo: Hellloo! I don’t know why.

Paul: If you scan your finger in correctly, it will kind of, what’s going on here, you know.

Leo: That’s the, that’s the new sign on stuff.

Paul: Right. So the fingerprint stuffs been around, I’ve been using it on at least three different builds, but I believe what’s new, I think the thing that people have noticed is, there’s a way, it doesn’t work if you don’t have the correct hardware so it doesn’t work, but there’s a way to set up face scanning, so you can get that going if you have the right hardware.

Leo: Yea, you have to have the Hello camera, which nobody does yet, right?

Paul: Right.

Leo: But that’s like we talked about last week, is it worth waiting for Windows 10 machines to use Windows 10?

Paul: I honestly don’t think Windows Hello is what’s going to put it over the top. Although, I think that its, well, no, but it will be a nicety. It will be a convenience.

Mary Jo: Yea.

Leo: Somebody said its Windows Hello Lady!

Mary Jo: The companion app is not in this build, right?

Paul: No, it’s not.

Leo: That’s Hello Lady! That’s the companion app.

Mary Jo: That is.

Paul: I wouldn’t be surprised to see that app just appear, you know, that anyone inside of preview could get. Or maybe it appears, you know, in a build, I don’t know. It seems like the type of thing they could throw down at any time. And who doesn’t want to throw down?

Leo: Throw down, throw down your Hello! Lady! Pretty Lady!

Paul: We’re never going to get out of this loop, Mary Jo.

Leo: No, we’re stuck. Once you go Jerry, you never come back. Windows App Studio Beta.

Paul: Yea, so I don’t know, did you write about that? I’m sorry, I don’t remember who did this. Is this yours?

Mary Jo: No. I did not.

Leo: It’s all yours, Paul, sorry.

Paul: Damn it.

Leo: Damn it.

Paul: no, Microsoft has a really cool web based app maker that I’ve talked about a lot and recommended in the past, and it supported Windows Phone apps originally, in fact I think originally it was called Windows Phone App Studio or whatever. It later supported Windows 8, 8.1 apps whatever. And now in the latest version of it, it supports Windows 10 Universal Apps. And it has all the universal app controls you would expect, it does like auto-scaling and auto-layout for device orientation, screen size and all that kind of stuff, that’s pretty cool. And then it has a bunch of features that are true of all apps that you might make. And I was interested to see among them are two things that I think are kind of a big deal. One is you can use the Bing Maps control now when you’re on apps, which is really neat. But they also have the ability to query, they don’t really call it the Xbox Music control, I haven’t looked at this yet, but what it says is you can now query the Xbox Music catalog. So, I think one of the types of apps that’s kind of a big deal with this free and simple to use tool, is you make an app about your favorite band. And what this would allow you to do is link to their albums, to their songs, and then when people click that link, that music would play on the music app on Windows 8, 8.1 or 10. And so that’s new. And that’s kind of an interesting thing. So, it’s still a BETA. This things been a BETA for years, I don’t know whenever it comes out of BETA. But as of today, I guess, if you go up there, you can now create Windows 10 apps with it, which I think is the big deal. And I believe that is for phone and PC, yea, those apps.

Leo: Neat. That’s probably what our buddy Dmitri Lyalin is using for our new TWIT app, I would guess.

Paul: Well, the other, ok, so I suspect he’s doing something a little more complex. Well, you can start an app in this tool, and then download it and put it into Visual Studio and go from there, so. You could actually, like for example, today you can’t submit to the Windows 10 App Store, so you would make these apps for yourself now just for testing purposes, but in the future you could take that app, publish it to the store so that anyone could get it, or you could bring it into Visual Studio then add functionality that’s just not possible to do with a free tool, and using other languages, C sharp or whatever. So it’s really, it’s not a little toy tool kit, you can actually make really professional apps and then go from there and put them into Visual Studio.

Leo: This is actually really cool.

Paul: Yea, it’s neat.

Leo: Android has something like this, Google did a thing called Google App Inventor.

Paul: No it doesn’t, stop!

Leo: No, no, this is actually more pro. This is more pro. But App Inventor, kids use it and stuff like that. But so I used App Inventor to create a little app for my tablet for the radio show, to count down, you know, count down when I have to take a break and stuff like that. And it was really useful for that, that was easy to do, and you know, it just counts down and you can put it on an Android device. I probably do the same thing if I had, if I had a Windows device, I’d probably do the same thing.

Paul: I see.

Mary Jo: You might.

Leo: I might.

Paul: I see.

Leo: But, well, ok, look at it this way. I don’t mind this old Nexus 7, it’s a nice big screen, I don’t mind dedicating it to a countdown timer because, right, it’s not doing anything else. And it sits…

Paul: I noticed the app doesn’t automatically orient as you flip it around.

Leo: Oh, man, no I’ve locked it. It does. Don’t knock my app, man. It’s my app, man! 32 application updates, just proving what you said.

Paul: Exactly. See what I’m saying, it really is amazing.

Leo: No, I guess it doesn’t, you’re right. But I don’t care, because… So that’s, App Inventor is much more, it looks like much more primitive than App Studio for Windows. This actually looks really cool.

Paul: Yea, they’ve kept this going for years now. It’s really improved a lot.

Leo: I wasn’t aware of it, thank you for filling me in. And it’s free.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: appstudio.windows.com

Paul: They really want you to make Windows 10 apps, Leo.

Leo: They do.

Paul: Would you just make a Windows 10 app?

Leo: How come Visual Studio ain’t free, man?

Mary Jo: I know.

Paul: Well, it is free. I mean, you can get Visual Studio for free.

Leo: Basic edition or something, right?

Paul: Yea, it’s not that basic, it’s a pretty impressive version.

Leo: That’s all you need?

Paul: If you look at Visual Studio Community, it is basically what Visual Studio Profession was.

Leo: Oh, minus the ability to ship apps or something?

Paul: Right, so, I’m not really sure what their license restrictions. I think you as an individual could ship apps.

Mary Jo: Yea, individual developers can but it’s not…

Leo: But no entity, commercial entity.

Paul: Right, if you were working for a company, you would need to have purchased Visual Studio, yep. I think so.

Mary Jo: Yep, I think so, too.

Paul: I don’t really know much about Microsoft products, Leo, I’m not sure why you asked me that question.

Mary Jo: (Laughing) we need someone who does. Who?

Leo: Who could that be?

Paul: I think that’s what it is. Yea, I think so.

Leo: I believe you. Microsoft is taking its first steps in merging Outlook.com with the Outlook web App. Everybody who has worked in business has used the Outlook Web App.

Paul: And is now seeking therapy for this.

Leo: So Outlook.com is awesome and they have, you know, sweet features, all these nice features.

Mary Jo: Yea, so, we knew that Microsoft has a single team that’s working on Outlook.com, Outlook and Exchange. There’s one unified team now, it’s been that way for a few months. And finally they’re starting to bring Outlook.com together more with Outlook. They way they’re doing that is they’re taking some of the features they debuted in Outlook Web App, and they’re bringing them to Outlook.com. So things like Clutter, you know for de-cluttering your inbox.

Leo: That was in the web app first.

Mary Jo: That was in the web app first.

Leo: See, I was all wrong.

Paul: Or, for Outlook, I’m sorry, for Outlook Web App, like Office 365 there’s Clutter.

Mary Jo: Yea, Office 365, yep. And then they’re going to be bringing other new features to Outlook.com that are going to try to make it feel a little more like the Outlook Web App. But they’re still preserving it as a consumer app. So they’re doing things like 13 new themes for this too. They’re going to be bringing a whole ton of new features over the coming weeks to Outlook.com. Right now just a very small number of people have been in test. I don’t know who those people are. We’re not among those people. Are you, Paul? I’m not. No, but they’re going to be bringing this out. And at the same time they dropped a line into this post that both Paul and I were puzzling over a little bit. I’m looking for the exact line. They said, “We will be upgrading Outlook.com to a new Office 365 based infrastructure.” And so, I was like, oh, does that mean you’re going to put Outlook.com on the servers that Office 365 runs on? No. Is Outlook.com going to share the backbone with Office 365? No. It just means…

Paul: Well, over time maybe. I took it to mean over time.

Mary Jo: Maybe over time, maybe. They never said that. Because I asked them again, I’m like, what does that mean? And so they said, “It just means that the two services are going to be using more of the underlying components in common.” So that will make it easier for Microsoft to update both platforms in a more rapid way. So, you know, you may have seen some stories or posts saying, “Microsoft’s migrating Outlook.com to its Office 365 infrastructure.” It’s not really. At least not now. Your eyes are rolling up in your head, Paul.

Paul: My eyes? Well, I’m trying, I hate thinking about this topic, because it’s confusing.

Mary Jo: I know, it’s hard to get it right.

Paul: And the way they, my understanding is, the short term of what they are doing is consolidating the user experience, so that they look similar, if not identical, they offer a similar feature set, right, so Clutter and some of the other features they bring to Outlook.com I think are good things. But that the goal over time is to consolidate the products, and we will see where that takes us, because, you know, who knows, years down the road. You know, in, I think you used the comparison of Skype and Skype for Business is a good one because they’re never going to be exactly the same, but for the user, they should look and behave the same. I think that’s the point.

Mary Jo: Right. So it’s less of a jarring experience if you happen to use both. Because right now if you do use both, like I do, I use Outlook and I use Outlook.com. And when I go between the two, I’m like, “Which one am I using right now? Ok.”

Paul: Each one of them has stuff that’s better than the other, right? Which I think is the weird bit. Yea, so hopefully they figure that out.

Mary Jo: It’s all coming together. Another strategy.

Paul: It’s all coming together. God, I wish that were true.

Mary Jo: I know.

Paul: It will all come together. This is like conjugating, you know, it will all come together in the future. What is that, future imperfect, future perfect?

Leo: It’s future perfect participle ding dong hula. It will all… it’s the subjunctive tense, that’s all I know.

Paul: Future predictive tense.

Leo: Did you, did you know, you’re a writer, you must know all that stuff.

Paul: Well, I don’t, that’s the problem. I don’t know what they’re, I have a problem remembering.

Leo: Does your editor ever say, “You used a dangling participle, Thurrott. Knock it off.”

Paul: No, and they will never, I would open hand slap that person. How dare you, sir!

Leo: How dare you split that infinitive!

Paul: There are no dangling participles.

Leo: No, see, I have bad memories of the web app. That’s what like, that’s like, Clear Channel makes me use that, when I log into my, once a year, when I log into my company account for the radio show. I have to use Office Web.

Paul: Sure, after the mad scramble for, “What’s my password, again?”

Leo: Oh they, you know what really pisses me off? They change it every few months. So, I never have the same.

Paul: You only access it once a year, so now you’re out.

Leo: It’s like, why am using a password, I never know how to get in. I have to call you every time.

Paul: This is why, when I used to do expenses at Penton, it was like the first time I did it, every single time I did it.

Leo: Corporations are not fun. If I ever get like that, slap me upside the head. I’m sure my staff will.

Paul: It’s like someone we can’t see raising their hand…

Leo: YOU! You made us use what?

Paul: There’s a line of people, like in that airplane movie, all ready to smack you.

Leo: More OneNote apps.

Paul: Yea, so this is just a short one. You know, OneNote has become this open, it’s become every note, let’s just call it every note. It’s available for free to everybody. There’s all kinds of neat stuff there. And so there is a growing collection of OneNote apps. And they’ve added a few more. Well they’ve added three more. But the big one for me, and I haven’t tried this, you actually have to install a plugin, is, there’s a Word Press, Word Press plugin for OneNote. So if you use Word Press, with I do, you would get a OneNote button in the toolbar meaning that you can actually write articles in OneNote, and then publish them into a post and just add a couple, you know, like the title, you know, a few products, whatever.

Leo: That’s awesome.

Paul: Yea, and so it’s really interesting. And it’s interesting what happens when you open a platform like this to extensibility. You know, you see these kinds of things.

Leo: I am, that’s really cool. You know, we’re going to Europe next month, and I want, I really want a way to kind of travel blog. You know, something that…

Paul: Sway.

Leo: What Mary Jo did with Sway was great, but I’m just thinking, I don’t know. I feel like there should be a way, I’ve looked.

Paul: Sway’s not a bad way. Sway is the way.

Leo: Sway is the way. Is it, yea you did if for your road trip. Is it easy?

Paul: Yes.

Mary Jo: It is really easy.

Paul: What you’ll find yourself doing is really playing with it, because there are some neat presentation things you can do. But I think the thing that’s neat about it is you can just keep kind of piling it on, you can keep adding to it.

Leo: I look at an app called Live Trekker that does a GPS track, and you share, you take pictures, it puts it on a map and you can record audio and video and puts it on a map.

Paul: I added maps to mine. I did maps of each drive, each state’s drive.

Leo: Oh that’s right, you had maps, that’s right. But I think.

Mary Jo: You can have video too. You can have video on Sway.

Leo: You can?

Mary Jo: Yep.

Paul: I think the web based approach is the best way. Because that works on any device, including phones, and it’s publically accessible.

Leo: Here’s the issue, though, is connectivity won’t be ubiquitous. So I want something I can do on the phone and then when I get near Wi-Fi will upload it.

Paul: There’s a Sway app for your iPhone.

Leo: Yea, maybe I’ll do that. I’m looking for the right answer for that. And what, I’d ideally like it to go to my blog, that’s why I was interested in this OneNote Word Press thing.

Paul: You can imbed Sways in your blog, too.

Leo: You can? Oh.

Paul: Where are you going, first of all. How many days is this?

Leo: It’s two weeks in Germany, Netherlands, Germany, Hungary.

Paul: You’re going to different locations.

Leo: In all Central Middle Europe.

Paul: Yea, so you could do, are you doing the river thing, by the way? Like a river boat?

Leo: Yea, a river boat. I got my, I’m going to be a gambler. I’m going to play poker and win my fare back.

Paul: It’s not the Mississippi in the 1800s, Leo. But you could do a different Sway for each location, for example. Then you can just have that kind of collection of Sways.

Leo: Alright. I’ll look into it.

Paul: And each one you could do a post. It’s a thought.

Leo: Sam in the chatroom is reminding me of Posterous, which is gone now, but I used that in China. I used a couple of things in China, because China you really have, Posterous would let you e-mail everything to your website. So, China, you had no access to anything. But they couldn’t cut off e-mail, so I was e-mailing all my posts. I want to figure out a way to make that work. Anyway.

Paul: Go look at Sway.

Leo: I think I will. I’m brining, I’m probably bringing an iPhone, I’m not sure what I’m bringing.

Paul: You have to bring one now, you’re going to use Sway.

Leo: Well, and you know, even though it’s completely useless, I have to go with the Apple Watch, because I have to figure out what it’s like to travel with the Apple Watch.

Paul: I couldn’t agree more. And the, you know, it’s 2015, so you’re going to be on this boat on a river.

Leo: Yea.

Paul: Danube River?

Leo: Danube is the, the Rhine, the Main and the Danube.

Paul: Rhine? Wow. So, I bet you have Wi-Fi access on those boats.

Leo: Yes.

Paul: So I think…

Leo: Not super great, but good enough. And of course, my 3G, my 4G will work.

Paul: I think it’s going to be fine. I really don’t think you’re going to have a problem.

Leo: “I think it’s going to be fine,” says Paul. Ok, Paul, I hope you’re right.

Mary Jo: I mean, you could use OneNote.

Paul: I demand that you use Sway. I think it would work. I think it would work for you.

Leo: And it is now, as you mentioned, in Office 365.

Paul: Play with it.

Leo: I will.

Paul: Go to Sway.com.

Leo: I’m going to do a pre-trip.

Paul: Just pretend you’re, just put some photos up.

Leo: See how it works.

Mary Jo: Do a brick house Sway.

Leo: Oh, I could do that.

Paul: Then you have to use song, Brick House.

Leo: Well she’s a brick house. That’s why we call it the Brick House. Somebody suggested, before we moved we were looking for names for it.

Paul: It was either that or She Dropped a Bomb on Me.

Leo: Somebody said, “You should call it the Brick Twit House.”

Mary Jo: Aw, that would have been cute.

Leo: Wouldn’t it? But I didn’t because I didn’t want the scatological implications. But we do call it the Twit Brick House. Because there’s a lot of bricks.

Paul: Yea, I know, I get it.

Leo: It’s actually a wood frame structure. But the Twit Wood Frame Structure House didn’t really sound, it didn’t have that same punch.

Paul: First you did the Hay House, then you moved to sticks.

Leo: Yea, then on to sticks.

Paul: I mean, it’s the logical progression.

Leo: And who could be the big, bad wolf? Let me think. Salesforce. Final thoughts. Salesforce + Microsoft.

Mary Jo: Yea, the timing on this one was pretty crazy. A couple days before Memorial Day, or maybe even the day before, CNBC comes out with a, with a report saying, “Hey, not only was Microsoft the mystery company that was bidding on Salesforce, but they bid 55 billion dollars.” A very precise number. But, Salesforce wanted 70 billion.

Leo: Whoa! Benioff, Benioff, you got some, you know.

Paul: In other words, the delta was two Nokias.

Leo: That’s a lot!

Mary Jo: That’s a lot of money for a company that makes 5 billion a year.

Paul: It is a lot.

Leo: CRM software. Oh my God.

Mary Jo: Yea.

Leo: Is there a multiple that you can always say, you know, this times sales equals your sales price? Obviously not for startups because most of them make zero.

Paul: The multiple is 17.

Leo: Is it?

Paul: It is something ludicrous.

Leo: I’ll take it. I’ll take 17. That’s a good number.

Mary Jo: I mean, I could see the synergies to some extent, like you know, Microsoft isn’t CRM online, Salesforce is, you know. Microsoft would like to be a bigger player there, maybe just take over Salesforce CRM and boom, you’re a bigger player. They’re both…

Leo: Doesn’t Microsoft have CRM?

Mary Jo: Yea, they do. They have Dynamic CRM and CRM Online. But they’re a much smaller player in that space than Salesforce. But, 70 billion? And you have to have Marc Benioff as one as your managers?

Paul: Do you, though? I mean, technically?

Leo: He wouldn’t last.

Mary Jo: That was part of the deal.

Paul: I would say, “I’ll take 70 billion, but you’re out.”

Leo: Right. There you go, that’s a negotiation.

Paul: So, Mary Jo, you would know more, a lot more about this than I do, but don’t you think that Salesforce and Microsoft is a fairly natural co-mingling, and given the future of this company, makes plenty of sense? Granted, 70 billion is crazy, but?

Mary Jo: Well, so, you have to as a, I put my journalist hat on, and I’m like, “Ok, who leaked this and why?” Right?

Leo: Ah, good point.

Mary Jo: Because somebody leaked this to CNBC obviously and there was a reason they did it. The reason is probably they want to either get another company interested or they want to bring them back to the bargaining table.

Leo: You mean, you think Salesforce leaked it? Why would they leak 70 billion?

Paul: I think this is, Microsoft made an incredibly big offer, and these jerks actually wanted more for some reason.

Leo: And Microsoft couldn’t believe it. It’s sad.

Mary Jo: My guess is Microsoft probably was the leaker, but maybe to bring them back to the table with a more realistic number.

Leo: Like put some pressure on them from the board and the shareholders. You asked for what? You turned down what?

Mary Jo: Yea.

Paul: Like a lot of those people would be saying, “Wait a minute, they were going to give us 55 billion dollars and you said no? Seriously?”

Leo: I should look it up, I wonder how much Marc has in the company. How much of that would he get.

Mary Jo: But could you see Marc reporting to Satya?

Leo: No, no.

Mary Jo: You know, there’s been sighted in more places together, like at Build, Marc Benioff was right in the front row at Build.

Leo: Well, partner then. You don’t have to buy them.

Mary Jo: Yea, they’re already partners, right? But part of me says, “Wow, that would be,” and the CNBC report said this as well, “That would have been a very, very huge first big acquisition for Satya Nadella.”

Paul: Right.

Mary Jo: Like, wow, you better be really right about that, that’s more than they were going to sell it …

Paul: But that’s, you’re placing a stake in the cloud.

Mary Jo: Yea, but they were going to, remember when Ballmer was going to buy Yahoo?

Paul: Yep.

Mary Jo: Remember that?

Paul: Yea, Yahoo, that’s hilarious.

Mary Jo: And someone talked him off the ledge at the last minute.

Paul: Right. I think there were people, I mean, you have to think everyone at Microsoft who is trying to, especially the people who are charged with, show me how this is going to make sense, you know, what parts of Yahoo go into what parts of Microsoft? So those people were looking, going, “What is this? Are you kidding me?” I mean, it made no sense at all.

Mary Jo: Yea. Not to mention, I know that Salesforce cloud does not run on Azure. Ok, so, I think it was…

Paul: Not yet it doesn’t. But, what was the Yahoo price? Was it 40 billion?

Mary Jo: 45 billion?

Paul: 45?

Mary Jo: Yep. Remember, at that time the…

Paul: Ok, well I mean, that was several years ago, I mean…

Mary Jo: It was. It was like 2007. Yahoo. I remember because I was finishing my book.

Paul: I mean, if you take away Alibaba, Yahoo was, how big is Yahoo really? I mean, they’re like 2 kids selling lemonade on the corner of the street on a hot day, basically.

Mary Jo: It was so awful. This was awful. I was finishing writing my book about Microsoft and then I put the finishing touches on it, and sent it in as the final. And literally a week later, Microsoft bid on Yahoo.

Paul: This is why you don’t want to write a book with me.

Mary Jo: This is why I don’t want to write a book again.

Paul: Geez, Mary Jo, this is why we write about the past. It’s not going to change.

Mary Jo: I know, it would have been easier, but it’s so boring to write about the past.

Paul: You don’t want to write about the next Microsoft, you want to write about the old Microsoft. See, it’s simple.

Mary Jo: That’s what most people do, but, I foolishly tried something else. Yea.

Leo: The old Microsoft.

Mary Jo: Anyway, I don’t know if it’s ever going to happen, Salesforce and Microsoft. In some ways I’d be very surprised, in some ways I would not be surprised. It fits in with their productivity mission, right?

Paul: Yep, yep. Yea, you know the same way that Skype…

Mary Jo: And it would give them a presence in the Valley.

Paul: Right, right, there you go. And you know, integrates very nicely, you know, Dynamics goes away, and this becomes sales, Microsoft Salesforce, it makes sense.

Mary Jo: Or you just have multiple CRM suites, they have multiple ERPs, so why not CRM?

Leo: What’s ERP?

Mary Jo: Enterprise Resource Planning, you know, all of your financials, manufacturing, all your back end.

Leo: And CRM is Customer, I know, Customer Resource…

Mary Jo: Hey guys, this is what powers the company.

Leo: Oh, I know.

Paul: I’m sure it’s really important like air.

Leo: But there’s BI, there’s Business Intelligence, there’s ERP. Is project management in ERP?

Mary Jo: I think it’s more of finance.

Paul: Leo, why are you, you’re leading her on.

Leo: I know, I’m trying.

Paul: She’s going to answer that question, though.

Leo: It’s more finance, right?

Mary Jo: Yea, more like financials and manufacturing. All of your backend stuff to run your business, pretty much.

Leo: I’ve got plenty of back end. I’m sorry. Moving on, let’s take a break at the back of the book, speaking of back end. Coming up in just a bit, Paul and tips and beer and stuff. But first a word from Prosper.com. I love Prosper.com. It’s a great idea. If you, let’s say, and I’m going to use this as an example, I had, this happened to me when I was a younger fella. You run up the credit cards, right? It’s so easy to charge stuff, buy stuff. And then, but you don’t pay attention to is the fact that the interest on that stuff, if you’re not paying it off every month, which I do now, the interest on it is like double digit. Double digit, it could be like, it’s huge. And you get to the point very quickly where you’re paying nothing but interest. So, along comes, you could borrow money, I guess, to pay if off, from your mom or your brother. Not a good idea, these relationships are much more important than money. You could go to Louie the loan shark down the street, but you like your kneecaps, right? Most people would go to a bank, but banks, you know, personal loans, banks are not crazy about those. There’s a lot of, it’s hard to get them. In comes Prosper. And this is something the internet has really done, and it’s so great. It’s a peer to peer lending marketplace, not a bank. Prosper brings people with money to lend together with people who want to borrow money. And it’s just a great way to get a low fixed, a low fixed rate on a loan up to $35,000, pay off those credit cards. You can actually go to Prosper.com right now. Prosper.com/twit and get your rate quote. You won’t have to give them a whole bunch of stuff, it’s a very simple form you’ll fill out. And no, it won’t affect your credit score. And you’ll find out; how much you can borrow, what interest rate. It’s just that simple. It’s, there’s, you know, you don’t make a phone call or anything. Just go to Prosper.com/twit. And then make the decision. But, I tell you what, if you’re paying 18, 19% on credit cards, this is just a no brainer. Or, you know, there’s lots of other things you might want to do. Fix up the house. Start a business. Prosper.com/twit for a limited time, prosper will give TWIT viewers a $50 Visa gift card with their low interest loan. Up to $35,000 smackers in your account in as few as five days, plus a $50 Visa gift card. Now that’s a deal I can live with. Prosper.com/twit. Give them a visit today and we thank them so much for their support of the fabulous Windows Weekly program, with Paul Thurrott from Thurrott.com, Mary Jo Foley from allaboutmicrosoft.com. We begin our back of the book with our tip of the week.

Paul: I have a few tips. I should also mention, we don’t have an Audible pick this week, but I want to mention that the book, “Losing the Signal” came out this week. That’s the book about Blackberry.

Leo: What’s that? Oh! Yea, we’re going to interview the author, I just got the hard copy.

Paul: Yea, it’s great.

Leo: Is it?

Paul: Yea, I’ve not read the whole thing yet, I’m about halfway through, I’m kind of burning through it. It’s really, really good.

Leo: I gave it to Carson, I said, “Hey, I really want to talk to this guy.” Good.

Paul: I actually have new found respect for Blackberry, as well, as a result of this. Because, you know, obviously they kind of …

Leo: They didn’t do anything wrong though. A lot of other companies, including somebody maybe up in Redmond didn’t do too.

Paul: Yea, the really didn’t that’s the thing. I don’t know what you mean by that. But the point is, no this is a good book. It’s available on Kindle, Audible, paper, whatever. I recommend it. But, and tied into that, spurred on by some e-mails I’ve gotten, I’ve compiled a list of the industry books that I bought on Kindle and Audible over the past, actually two and half years, since the end of, or the beginning of 2013. So that’s available on my site. You know, like Steve Jobs biography, a book about Nadella, some of that stuff. So, these are the ones that I’ve actually purchased, that I’ve read, and that I’ve recommended, either because they are really good books or are just generally interesting for people who are into this kind of stuff. So, check that out.

Leo: Thank you for doing that. You know what? I’m going to tell people that.

Paul: It’s actually hard to do this.

Leo: It is.

Paul: I actually meant originally to do my whole collection, and I got about two years into it and thought geez…

Leo: Goodreads. Man, just use Goodreads. You could use Goodreads and then share it with everybody.

Paul: Oh, that’s interesting.

Leo: That’s the, that’s the Amazon thing. And I think they will import your Amazon history into it.

Paul: Oh. Ok.

Leo: Yea, so.

Paul: It’s too late now, Leo, I’ve gone down the road.

Leo: But that’s Amazon, that’s Audible, that’s Kindle, I mean, that’s a good chunk of what, I’m sorry to say, of what I read is stuff from Amazon, so.

Paul: Sure. I’m actually right now re-reading that Competing on Internet Time book. Netscape and Microsoft allowed these authors incredible access during the browser wars. This is, it’s almost overly detailed, but it’s an amazing accounting of how they developed products at that time. That book is almost too much. It’s crazy how detailed it is. It’s really good.

Leo: I’ve read about half of these, but the rest, I can’t, I mean, I agree with you on all of these.

Paul: Yea, I just listened to Masters of Doom again.

Leo: Masters of Doom, what a great book.

Paul: The dogfight book about Google and Apple I just listened to.

Leo: Another great one. Boy, I felt like I learned kind of a lot of what was going on behind the scenes in that one. About stuff they’re recovering.

Paul: Yea, I love how recent it is, and yea, it’s a good one.

Leo: Good choices. And that’s on your website, Thurrott.com.

Paul: Yep, yep. So last week I talked about, I’m doing a series of tips on Windows Phone, I wrote a bunch more of those, so I’m not going to go through the whole list. But I’m writing almost one a day, so you can check those out. And I also wrote a couple of tips about OneDrive. The reason I want to mention these is just because as we head forward into Windows 10, Windows 10 is not going to have the sophisticated OneDrive sync engine that we had in Windows 8.1. And Windows 8.1 stands alone. It’s the only version of Windows that has this. It’s the only version of anything that has it. The ability to be able to browse your entire OneDrive through the shell, where you see placeholder files, instead of the real files so it doesn’t take up all the space. And then you can selectively determine from the shell which parts of the collection you want to have synced off-line. And so, I started thinking threw this, and I wrote a couple of tips based on how, you know, you might overcome this. And that’s true whether you’re in Windows 7 or 8.0 or in the future Windows 10. And so there are ways to see all of your OneDrive from the shell. One is to map OneDrive as a drive letter, and the other is just to use a 3^rd party utility. And there are a variety of those. But they all have issues, I mean, performance issues, reliability issues, you know whatever, but if the goal is to see everything in the shell, which it is for me, you’re going to want to take a look at those two tips.

Leo: Good tips!

Paul: Then, software pick, I also have two. I just wanted to mention quickly that today Microsoft announced that Office Lens for Android had exited preview. So it’s available in non-preview format, I don’t believe they actually updated it. I don’t think there are any new features. But that’s an awesome app. It’s available on Windows Phone, it’s available on iPhone and Android, that is basically a scanner for everything and it will convert, you know, Whiteboard or receipts or business cards or whatever into text that you can use anywhere. It’s just a fantastic, fantastic app. So, out of BETA. The other one, and this is part of, I haven’t written this one up, but this would be considered part of the clean PC series I’ve been doing this year, is something called Unchecky. I don’t actually think that anyone listening to this podcast needs it for their own computers. But you should install this on the computers of everyone you’re doing service for all the time, all your friends and family. And what this thing does it is automatically unchecks the crapware choices that appear in the typical set-up programs for applications that you’ve downloaded from the internet. So if you download something like uTottent, or Java, or whatever, it will actually automatically uncheck the boxes that are confusing, because they’re purposely designed to be confusing, so that you’re not getting the crapware that is often installed.

Leo: Look at MicroTorrent, oh my god, the crapware you have to install.

Paul: It’s crazy, it’s crazy, so.

Leo: Three different crap things, including conduit.

Paul: Yea, so, I put this one, you know, I put this one on your mother’s computer.

Leo: So it unchecks automatically.

Paul: Yep, it’s a neat little app. For free.

Leo: We’ve recommended that for a long time, I think, on the radio show, because it’s just, everybody should have it. Everybody who installs a lot and, you know you say it’s not for our audience, but…

Paul: I was just thinking that, I should say …

Leo: We all go click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, ok, ok, ok, ok, ok, ok.

Paul: I Torrented that build, for example, just installed uTorrent. And I just went through this. Where you kind of, no. This one’s yes. Ok this one’s no.

Leo: You have to read carefully. It’s not obvious. Like the toolbar, oh, maybe that’s the Unchecky Toolbar, no that’s conduit. But that’s not immediately obvious. Mary Jo Foley has an Enterprise pick of the week.

Mary Jo: I do. My Enterprise pick is SQL Server 2016.

Paul: Of course it is.

Mary Jo: And the reason it’s my pick today, is Microsoft just released the first public preview of this database that’s coming next year. Confusingly, this preview is called CPT2, which is Community Preview 2, even though it’s the 1^st public preview.

Paul: Oh, Microsoft. Don’t ever change.

Mary Jo: I know. And the reason, if you’re curious, it’s CPT2 is because there was a CPT1 but that was a private preview. This is a public preview available to anyone as of today. So SQL Server 2016 is the follow on to SQL Server 2014, and it’s just more of everything that you loved about SQL Server. It’s more performance, has more encryption, it has a new technology that I’m not totally sure how to explain, but it’s called Stretch Database. And the way Microsoft describes that is that it lets you dynamically stretch your warm and cold transactional data to Azure.

Leo: Oh, finally.

Paul: Did you seriously just say that?

Mary Jo: I know. I did, and I cannot explain it any further than that. I guess stretch DB is a thing, and I’m sure I’ll hear lots from people who understand what exactly that means. But just go with it. Stretch DB is in there. Polybase is in there, which is a technology Microsoft has only had up until now in their Parallel Data Warehouse that helps you manage both relational and non-relational technology. So there is a ton of stuff in this, including in this very first public preview. So if you’re into databases I would go kick the tires. You can download it, you can put it in a VM on Azure to try it out, and it’s free. So get on it.

Leo: If you’re into databases, and who isn’t?

Mary Jo: If you’re into databases.

Leo: Actually, for all the protestations, Mr. Thurrott did write the Dell 5-3 Super Bible.

Paul: Of course. I would do it again, Leo.

Leo: It’s kind of a database.

Paul: Hey listen, if the world had evolved to be based on Object Pascal we would all better off.

Leo: Happier, happier people.

Paul: Yep.

Leo: So would Nicolas Veert.

Paul: Programmers would be happier.

Leo: Code name pick of the week, speaking of Nicolas Veert.

Mary Jo: Another Switzerland based code name this week. Basel, B-A-S-E-L is the codename. And this is the codename for the second iteration of the Metro Design Language. So you know how Microsoft had metro with Windows 8? It was a whole, it wasn’t just a look and feel, it was a philosophy. It was pretty much a way of life. It was great, wasn’t it, kind of?

Paul: No not kind of, it really was.

Mary Jo: This is like the whole way we think about design and it was inspired by subways in modern design, etcetera, etcetera. Well, they changed everything up with Windows 10. And there’s a whole different design ethic with Windows 10. And people are calling it MDL 2.0 for Metro Design Language 2. But supposedly the codename of this thing, MDL2, is Basel. I don’t know what the final name is going to be, or if and when we’re going to hear a new replacement name.

Paul: I can’t wait until this city in Switzerland sues Microsoft.

Mary Jo: I know, it’s a codename, people!

Paul: We won’t find out who it is, but somebody has, apparently, the rights to the name.

Leo: But the Swiss know design, I mean just not the Swiss Railway Clocks, but Helvetica and all of that. I mean, the Swiss…

Mary Jo: Yea. So we know the codename at least, so maybe soon we’ll know the real name.

Leo: I think you probably can’t copyright Basel, it’s probably like calling it New York or something, right?

Mary Jo: Do you guys remember when they got sued by the government? Not sued, but taken to task by the government of Fiji because they had the codename Fiji?

Leo: Really?

Paul: This is like Carl Sagan complained to Apple because they used Sagan for the codename of one of their projects.

Leo: That’s his name, I could understand that, but Fiji?

Paul: How would you not want your name to be the codename for an Apple project?

Leo: Actually, same thing happened with Ken Burns. Apple put the, they called it the Ken Burns Effect without asking Ken Burns.

Paul: Is that true, Leo?

Leo: Yea. And he was a little, I’m told he was miffed until they plied him with Macintoshes, then he said, “Alright, alright, alright.” But he was pissed because they didn’t ask him, they just did it. But Apple did the same thing with that Swiss Watch Face.

Paul: That’s true.

Leo: They got sued over that.

Mary Jo: Would you, if somebody at Microsoft wants to codename something MJF, feel free.

Leo: Well, didn’t they name the Foley Effect after you?

Mary Jo: That is. Definitely.

Paul: That’s great. Sounds like a Michael Creighton story.

Leo: Next time you hear footsteps, think Mary Jo Foley Effect. Beer time. My favorite time.

Mary Jo: This is kind of inspired by FIFA.

Paul: As it would be.

Mary Jo: I picked a beer from England, Beaver Town Brewing’s Bloody ‘Ell.

Leo: Bloody ‘Ell!

Mary Jo: Bloody ‘Ell. It just sounded like it works with the whole FIFA.

Leo: Oh, look at that can!

Mary Jo: Yea. It’s a blood orange IPA, and what’s very interesting is, so this brewery is based in England, but they do a lot of American style beers. And this is a very American style IPA, except made with blood oranges to kind of take a little of the bitterness edge off of it. It’s very good, very nice.

Leo: I love blood oranges. I really do.

Mary Jo: Me too.

Leo: They’re red. I mean that’s why they’re called blood oranges. But they’re very sweet, they’re a nice orange.

Mary Jo: Yea. It’s very like nice, dark orangey colored beer. Very tasty, good for a summer day like today here in New York.

Leo: My first wife, back in 1981, planted on our wedding day a blood orange tree. It died. And so did the marriage.

Paul: Rather symbolic, Leo. It committed suicide.

Leo: I thought that was a nice, I think that was a nice thing to do, though, you know. Unless the tree doesn’t make it. That’s not a good sign. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes this exciting, thrilling, gripping edition of Windows Weekly. Mary Jo Foley is at allaboutmicrosoft.com. Paul Thurrott is at Thurrott.com. That’s really all you need to know if you want to keep up on what’s going on with Microsoft. Of course the other thing you want to know is that Windows Weekly is right here every Wednesday, 11:00 PM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern, 1800 UTC on live.twit.tv. We would love it if you watched live, but if you can’t, on-demand audio and video are always available. All of our shows are on the web at twit.tv in this case twit.tv/ww. Look for a new site, I think before the show next week the new website will be up. So, maybe you want to subscribe on Xbox Music or a podcast app just in case that way you’ll be sure to get the show. Well, the website is doing, you know, all of our backend is going through the website now, so. That, you know, the production workflow all goes through the website. So that means if something goes wrong, there will be no show.

Paul: Well, it seems like a good infrastructure.

Leo: What could possibly go wrong? No it is, it’s going to be great when it works, and you know, Patrick Delahanty, credit to Patrick who is, you know, our team, on our team, who’s written the Elroy, we call it Elroy, is the encoder, he’s written the Elroy, re-writing the Elroy code to work with the new website. And once all the kinks are worked out, the editors will sit down and druple, do everything, press a button, everything gets published to all the different places automatically, the website gets updated, the apps too will get updated because we have an API.

Paul: Sounds like you’re describing Tomorrowland.

Leo: It is Tomorrowland. And have you guys seen that?

Paul: What happens next, father?

Leo: I don’t know if it has a happy ending. Someday in the future, the web will publish all your shows. Thanks for being here, we’ll see you next time, on Windows Weekly!