Windows Weekly 834, Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on Windows Weekly. Leo Laporte is at Disney. So I Mikah Sargent am stepping in, and we have, as you might expect, a jam packed show. First, we take a look at where Microsoft and the FTC stand because tomorrow as we record this show, it'll be Thursday and the FTC will be taking Microsoft to task. Will the deal go through? Will it not? Plus, Paul has some thoughts about the cma. They're not good thoughts. He's very mad at the cma.

(00:00:32):
Also we talk about moment three, and there's a lot of confusion there because it sort of came out before it was supposed to. I don't know. But Paul tries to explain before we head into Outlook, confusion, and of course, Xbox Corner. There's a lot to talk about. Coming up on Windows Weekly

Narrator (00:00:54):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is to,

Mikah Sargent (00:01:05):
This is Windows Weekly with Micah, Sargent Paul Thaat and Richard Campbell, episode 834, recorded Wednesday, June 21st, 2023, the Soothing Sounds of Trains. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by Melissa. More than 10,000 clients worldwide rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit and by Miro. Miro is your team's online workspace to connect, collaborate, and create together. Tap into a way to map processes, systems, and plans with the whole team and get your first three boards for free to start creating your best work yet at miro.com/podcast. And by Lenovo, orchestrated by the experts at CDW to help transform your organization with Lenovo ThinkPads, equipped with the Intel Evo platform for effortless connectivity and collaboration from anywhere. Learn more at cdw.com/lenovo client. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show where we talk, two of the most wonderful Windows watchers in the world every week about things going on with Windows, with Microsoft and everything in between. Oftentimes these days, it's all about regulation. This voice is going to sound different because it is the voice of Micah Sargent, not Leo LaPorte, as Leo LaPorte is wearing Mickey Mouse ears at Disneyland. Yes, it's the land, not the world. The one in California. It's weird that

Paul Thurrott (00:02:47):
He needed a second job. You know, <laugh>?

Mikah Sargent (00:02:50):
Yeah, he said oh boy. I've gotta get outta here, Man. <Laugh>.

(00:02:56):
And with that, let me introduce our Windows watchers first. It's Paul throt of throt.com. Hello, Paul.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:03):
Hello there. Micah <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:06):
How was, how was your commute this morning, Paul?

Paul Thurrott (00:03:09):
It was, it was short, short and sweet. It was not a lot of traffic. I'm eyeballing. It might have been 18 feet <laugh>, you know.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:16):
Wow.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:17):
That's quite nice. I live in a small place. Yes.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:20):
We also have Richard Campbell coming to us from some it's disclosed. It's a disclosed location. Where are you coming from, Richard?

Richard Campbell (00:03:27):
I'm in Shawnee, Kansas. I'm here in near Kansas City. I'm at a conference this week, and so stayed with some friends. This is the room where they do gaming from, hence the glowing microphone and all this fun gear. But I thought I'd hybridize my laptop with their better camera and microphone rig, just to see what we got from that. And and of course, the great back wall. I think that's gorgeous.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:50):
Oh my goodness. I, that's nice. I love that

Richard Campbell (00:03:51):
Back wall. That's, that's fantastic.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:52):
I do have to point out, you did say hybridize, so I think someone has to take a shot somewhere. There you go. That does feel very appropriate for Windows Weekly. So with that,

Paul Thurrott (00:04:02):
Well, I will allow it. Good.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:03):
Good. Thank you. Thank you, <laugh>. Let's kick things off by talking about the latest in what round is this for the FTC versus Microsoft?

Richard Campbell (00:04:13):
Round 47? This is going on. What is this? The, the ben, her merger that's been going on forever.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:20):
I'm hoping it's the final round. Mm. You know, either way, I guess I'm getting a little tired of this <laugh>. Timing wise, this show this week is not in a great place because the FTC and Microsoft are gonna face off in court for several days of hearings starting tomorrow and Thursday, June 22nd. So next week we'll know <laugh>. Right? Hopefully before next week what's going on there. But in anticipation of this, both sides have started filing files, <laugh> filing documents, filing whatever. And oh, the FTC has no case. It's so beautiful to watch them sputter. So the FTC <laugh>, it's, it's just pointing to the same thing over and over again that Microsoft's previous acquisition of Xanax, which Bethesda is part of is powerful evidence in their words, that it should not be allowed to acquire Activision blazing. Right. Because Microsoft, after the acquisition, made some previously planned to be cross-platform titles like Red Fall, which is a piece of crap and Starfield, which is eagerly anticipated and exclusive to its own platforms. So the argument here is obvious that they'll do the same thing with Activision Blizzard. So they shouldn't be allowed to do this.

Richard Campbell (00:05:33):
Isn't this where the FTC says, we'll allow it, as long as you don't do that?

Paul Thurrott (00:05:37):
Yeah. See, that's the thing. And, and this, this is, this is my argument. I I I I you ever watch, so, okay, you ever watch a TV show, right? Or a movie and maybe you know, something about the topic. So for example, I used to work in banks, and so I'll watch a bank robbery movie or whatever, and I'll say, I'll pause it and say, Nope, that's not how it works. You can't do what they just did. Like, that's fake. What's worse than that is when you know nothing about a topic, right? And you're watching a TV show movie, you pause it and you go, you know what? That's not how the world works. I'm gonna look that up. I don't think so. Right? And sure enough, you know, it's, it's like that's not how the world works. It, I, I, I find myself in the awkward position.

(00:06:14):
And just to point out to the FTC what their role is, <laugh>, which is not just to blindly block acquisitions, but see, I don't have to use my own language to do this because Margaret's vesti vestige, right? The EU competition commissioner, who we both, the door just is the best mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And by the way, maybe leaving this office soon to get another job in the eu, which I'm a little freaked out by cause I love her. But stay on topic. Paul <laugh> is <laugh> last month gave a speech where she explained why the EU disagrees with the UK cmma, which is aligned itself with the ftc right. In trying to block or in blocking this. And didn't very elegantly, as I recall too, I referred to it, or I wrote that it was a masterclass incompetence. Mm. So what she basically said is that some people believe that regulatory agencies either have to block or clear mergers, and that's it.

(00:07:08):
And she's like, there's nothing, there's nothing black or white about this stuff. It's, it's, it's all gray area. And yeah. I mean, sometimes a structural remedy, as that would be called, is required. But sometimes behavioral remedies make sense. Interestingly, in the case of the eu, 80% of their conditional clearances of mergers and acquisitions required structural remedies. She says only 20% have required behavioral remedies or possibly no remedies. I, I don't know. So in this case, she pointed out accurately that this acquisition is a positive development for everyone involved. Right. the impact to gamers will be positive because these games will be available more places. The impacted cloud streaming, which is an upcoming market, will be positive because Microsoft has agreed to put their games everywhere. There is no, there is no, there's, once Microsoft has made these agreements, which basically amount to tenure agreements to either bring Call of Duty or other major Activision titles to competing platforms or, and or to bring any cloud streaming games that Microsoft offers to competing cloud streaming solutions.

(00:08:15):
That answers the question. It's fine. That answers it. Literally, she says, this solution fully addresses our concerns. And it has significant pro competitive benefits. For example, Activision Today does not participate in cloud streaming services. It will, under Microsoft, this will dramatically increase the availability of its games to new audiences. And this, that's the thing. So the problem with the FTC t today is that the Biden administration has just gone to them and said, look, we need to be tough on big tech, end of sentence. So they just say no to everything. The problem is they've said no to everything after when all the harm happened by companies like Amazon and Apple and Google and Meta, and the, the company they've decided to pile onto here is not changing the overall picture of the video game industry by making this acquisition, they are improving their lot, but they don't move up in the ratings. They don't become the number two or three player, depending on how you wanna measure it. They don't really change anything except for the fact that they're gonna make these games available to more people.

Richard Campbell (00:09:13):
Yeah. I thought the FTCs job was to protect the consumer.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:17):
Right. And so, right. So what's the consumer harm

Richard Campbell (00:09:20):
Yeah. Providing, yeah. Expanding a market for the games and, you know, putting some remedies in place for the consumers to get a benefit from that. Yep. Kind of sounds like the job,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:29):
And I don't want to pay play the xenographic cart, but I will Sony, the major complaintant here is Japanese Japan cleared this purchase, by the way. Who, what are they protecting? You're, you're preventing a major American corporation, second biggest company in the world from improving its position in the, or positioning its position vis-a-vis other companies. I guess in the video game industry, the major compe co competitors of which in the console market are both Japanese. Right. So what <laugh>, like, so what if Japan was concerned about that they would've blocked it mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but they did not.

Richard Campbell (00:10:07):
And then, and you would've also seen more of a diplomatic issue in general. Right. These are the two major countries for the two major companies. Yeah. Like, then things are a little bit tricky,

Paul Thurrott (00:10:17):
Right? The, the problem with the FTC is that their response to all of this is the same response that Sony gives, which basically when you chip away and chip away and chip away boils down to we just don't want it. Right. And that's not the law. <Laugh>, you know, I'm sorry. So I, my tune on this has not changed over the last several months. There is absolutely no logical or legal justification to blocking this merger that it makes no sense. But, you know, we'll see what happens to court, right? I mean, this is the point of the hearing. So,

Richard Campbell (00:10:53):
And we talked about this last week, but it seemed to me that the FTC play by Microsoft was to get a court heating to get this resolved. That's

Paul Thurrott (00:11:01):
Right.

Richard Campbell (00:11:02):
This is the fast, by doing the court thing, it's a faster way of moving it forward.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:07):
Yeah. I mean, it's, we're what, nine days away from the end of the month, which is also the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, it's basically inconceivable that something dramatic will happen in this hearing, and this thing will just be cleared and off they go. But I suppose there's a small chance of that, because otherwise Microsoft says on the hook for, I forgot the number, but I wanna say $7 billion or some amount of, some billions of dollars that they have to pay to Activision Blizzard because they were not able to finalize this acquisition by this

Richard Campbell (00:11:34):
Time in a year. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. just to add to the pile on here, apparently the New Zealand Commerce Commission Yes. That's the smallest Western democracy in the world. <Laugh> all five and a half million of them. Right. the New Zealand Commerce Commission has said that they have concerns.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:53):
Yeah. You know what their concerns should be that the one pipe of internet that comes to their tiny island is severed somehow. Yeah. Because that would kill cloud gaming pretty quick.

Richard Campbell (00:12:02):
<Laugh>. Yeah. But you know, I, I often describe New Zealand, which is a place I was born as the end of the internet, right? Yes. Like it is kind of in a corner over there. Right. that being said, the commission has only has basically said, we want to do a review they have till July 17th to complete that review. And it could easily just say, we approve.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:22):
Yeah. Okay. I I, I would say New Zealand is small enough that they're complaints in the scope of what Microsoft has fought for here Yeah. Will go unheated <laugh>, you know, I think would

Richard Campbell (00:12:34):
Be my, yeah. I don't, I don't think there'll be a whole lot of consideration there. I can't imagine. In

Paul Thurrott (00:12:37):
Fact, I would even go so far as to say if the ftc, well, the FTC won't allow, but if the courts allow, you know, throw out the FTC suit and I think Microsoft will close this transaction immediately and say the, you know, CMA can figure it out for themselves. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:12:52):
If you, they, yeah. Ask the cma how would you like us to proceed? Yeah. Do you want us to deny access to UK citizens, these products? We can do that.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:59):
Yeah. Just let us know <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So that's happening. And it's a shame it's happening tomorrow cuz I'd really love to see what actually happens in court.

Richard Campbell (00:13:10):
Well, I gotta think, we'll, we'll be talking about this next week, the question whether or not the FTC will ultimately complete the response. Like they, or even the judge will decide. Like, we may not know next week, but I don't know if they're gonna tell televise the, the hearings, but I'm sure it's exciting watching.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:27):
It will probably be like the Microsoft antitrust stuff, where at the very least there will be people in court reporting live on what happens. It'll

Richard Campbell (00:13:34):
Be some summaries.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:34):
Yeah. And the, yeah, the thing we're looking for here is whether looking for like the questions a judge might ask or whatever the panel of judges they have, whatever the situation is because that often indicates where their heads are at and what, what direction they're, they're going.

Richard Campbell (00:13:49):
And I gotta imagine the only question a judge is gonna ask is, what is the harm to consumers?

Paul Thurrott (00:13:53):
Yeah. And then you'll hear a cricket chirp, <laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (00:14:00):
I mean, and with all of these, it always feels like it gets dragged out and out and out and out and out depending on Yeah, no, regardless of whether the outcome is what one might want. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So this seems to be, I mean, we, yeah. You'll still be talking about this even after this next ruling.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:18):
Yeah. I mean, yes. I, and there are other things to consider, like, when we talked about this, I think last week or the week before, you know, what does Xbox look like if they don't get this acquisition? You know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Microsoft is trying to paint a pitch where everything's fine, I think I would argue otherwise. But you know, there's that. But if you're, you know, if anyone's a sports fan especially football is like this, I would say American football, where you can watch a game and nothing's happening. It's really, it's boring. The score's pretty tight. It's a low score, nothing's happening, and you're like, all of a sudden you're three minutes away from the end of the game. And there's a lot of scoring now. A lot of chance plays, a lot of stuff happens, you know, a lot of long ball.

(00:14:57):
And that's what this is like, it's like we've had 18 months of various back and forces in the news here and there, but like, this thing is just dragged on, and now all of a sudden it's reaching this weird crescendo where the whole thing is on the line now, you know? And it's just a, it's a weird, it's, it's a weird ending. I would've, I did expect it to take a while because this acquisition does merit some form of oversight. And you know, that, and that's the thing. I mean, you know, the ftcc talks about concerns. Like anyone who looks at this logically should have concerns, of course. But I feel like Microsoft has addressed those concerns. I think that's kind of the point. But I, I thought it would not sell through. It would take, it would take time. You know, you want to give it the time it deserves.

(00:15:39):
But I, I'm, I'm shocked at the couple of countries that have said no, and especially shocked because their rationale makes no sense, no sense. I listen, I I, I'm not closed-minded. I'm, I will listen to evidence, I will change my mind based on evidence, et cetera, et cetera. No one has ever come up with some salient reason why this doesn't make sense. It just, other than, again, it's, it always will. I just don't want it. <Laugh>, you know, there are people who are like critical of Microsoft. They're a big company to say like the second biggest company in the world. I get it. You know, the big get bigger. I, I get it. But that it's also not illegal and <laugh>. Right? It's just, and

Richard Campbell (00:16:23):
It's, the thing is, it doesn't have to make sense. What you have to do is prove harm. Right. And if you can't prove harm, then there's really no excuse to block

Paul Thurrott (00:16:30):
This. This is honestly an ideal situation if you care about any of these games, because Microsoft is now bound by the law to make sure that these games appear on as many platforms as possible. They've reached legal agreements, not just with regulatory bodies, but legal agreements with other companies to make sure that their products and services end up on those other platforms. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:16:57):
The strongest argument here is that the consumer is better protected by this merger than they were before.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:03):
That's right. That's right.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:06):
Hmm.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:07):
Yep.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:08):
Anything else you wanna say about this upcoming court case before, or I guess latest part of it before we take a quick break?

Paul Thurrott (00:17:17):
Well, I'd just like to reiterate how much I can't stand the C m a <laugh>. I hate those guys. The burning passion, unelected idiots. But no, I guess not <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:28):
All right. Well, we will take a quick break before we come back with loads more here on Windows Weekly. Yes. If you are just now tuning in I'm Micah Sargent filling in for Leo LaPorte who will be back very soon, presumably with lots of I don't know, Mickey Mouse lapel pins. I don't know what happens. You go there, what you get these days. Oh man. I know. When I went way back in the day, I came back with a little signature book filled with the signatures of all of the characters which was nice. I'm sorry, how old were you at this time? I was in kindergarten. Good, good. So yeah, six years old, something like that. Alright, let us take a break. So I can tell you about Melissa. We're bringing you this episode of Windows Weekly.

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Paul Thurrott (00:21:20):
I, I asked you earlier if, how old do you need to went to Disney and you were in kindergarten, which is the right answer. <Laugh>, I, it reminded me of we had friends out for New Year's and talking about Washington DC and I, I love dinosaurs. And we went to the Museum of National hi, a natural history, and I got to get a picture of myself writing a dinosaur. Oh, that's awesome. And my wife's friend, I put it in the notes, my wife's friend said, oh, that's cool. How old were you? And I said, I don't know, 35, 36 <laugh>. She was like, what? <Laugh>, because she assumed I was a child. Right. And I actually, I was literally the one six foot tall person in a line of children waiting to get a picture on a dinosaur, which I did. So,

Mikah Sargent (00:21:57):
Aw. See, some, some things make us children again, right? For you, it's Ed. I saw dinosaurs.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:03):
Yeah, dinosaurs and trains. Oh, anyhow.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:05):
Sorry about that. I didn't know you were a trained guy, huh?

Paul Thurrott (00:22:07):
Oh, yes, yes. Follow me on Instagram. <Laugh>. It will be a disappointing never ending collection of trained photos. Yes. Anyway, so people who are fans of this show or who have been following along will know that Microsoft released WI Moment three, as we call it to stable last week, meaning through Windows update. And you will then be confused to discover that Microsoft yesterday, <laugh> released Windows 11, moment three Hmm, to the preview channel of the Windows Insider program, which should trigger a record scratch confusion moment in everyone's brain. So, welcome to my life. And when I tell you, you know, I've, I've been bringing this topic up all year and I, I, I feel like some people don't fully understand it, but there, there used to be able to speak very definitively about what, what Microsoft was doing.

(00:23:03):
And then sometimes you could say, well, this was logical, or it wasn't logical, but at least you could explain it. And this year it's turned into something where I just, I can't explain it. I can just, just backtrack and kind of go through it and try to figure it out and, and whatever. So without belaboring the point, because honestly, I find this topic incredible, incredibly tedious right now, I'll just say that. Microsoft, one of the ways in which Microsoft updates windows is through something called a controlled feature release or a cfr. And this is something that can appear at any time on different computers. It's deployed randomly. And I mean that literally, and what that means is if you have two computers, one might get the feature, one might not, even though they're on exactly the same version and whatever, that's the way they do things.

(00:23:46):
I, I, please don't ask me why or what the rationale is. I, I just don't, I can't, I don't know. So when this initial release of moment three occurred a week ago, I noticed, and I saw in my feedback to the article that different computers were getting different sets of these features. I also noticed that not the full feature set that had been promised for moment three was released on any of the computers that I had. And I think what happened this week maybe suggests why. So for some reason again, who knows why Microsoft released some of the moment three features a week ago. They are now, they have not said this, right. I have to <laugh>, I'm just educated guests based on what I do know about their release schedule, are almost certainly gonna release it on Patch Tuesday next month.

(00:24:32):
And here's my rationale for that. They released it to the final phase of the Windows Insider program this week. Next week is Week D that's when they released preview updates, right? So it makes sense that it would ship slip from, or not slip, but go from release preview into stable preview. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> meaning if you have to go choose to get it two weeks after that is the normal schedule. Week B in July, that's Patch Tuesday, that's when it's gonna come out. That's it. It makes sense. <Laugh>, other than the fact that I thought they already released this thing, so I don't know what to tell you anymore. They literally don't discuss any of this stuff. They don't explain it. It's confusing. I I it's illogical. It's maddening. I, I don't know. So that's where we're at. So they don't even acknowledge it, that they don't acknowledge, they don't even, it makes no sense.

(00:25:18):
What blows my mind is the only semi acknowledgement of this staggered release schedule is <laugh>. Microsoft wrote, and I'll just quote it as part of this update, we are enabling the new features and enhancements that began gradually rolling out last month, but last month is May mm-hmm. Not June, not one week ago. Right. So if you click on that, the, if you click on the link, wait, is there a link? Yeah. If you click on the link, it goes to a May 24th con Windows configuration update, which does actually include some of the, some of the features. I'll just leave it at that. I, I don't know what to say. I don't know anymore. I, I, I feel like I have spent too much time in my professional life saying, I don't know. But as troubling as that is, to me personally, I can at least rest easy knowing it's not my fault, <laugh>, that it's not some laziness on my part. I, I don't know, because I don't think Microsoft knows, I don't think they understand what they're doing. I literally, I literally don't think they know what they're doing. I'm

Richard Campbell (00:26:23):
Trying to figure out, I mean, they've only had three moments so far. Yeah. Has any of them been the same mechanism? Like I think they've all been different.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:32):
They have all been different. Yep. before there was a what do you call it? Like, one time is coincidence. Two times is Oh, yeah. How does that go? Yeah. What, you know, like I, the first one and the second one both had similarities where there was a preview release. Even though back then they weren't calling it, that some people were seeing features. Remember we talked about the OneDrive stuff that happened in November. December is maybe one of the first big things. The search pill was one we talked about a lot. I, I felt like they were settling into a rhythm. And, and at some point, I, I forget the dates now, but I'll say March probably. They kind of came out and said, Hey, we, we established a schedule by which the preview updates won't come out in the third week.

(00:27:13):
They'll come out in the fourth week. That way they'll be perfectly between the two week bees from intervening months. And okay. Okay. Like, I, I mean, whatever, like that's, at least it's a statement about it. Like, it makes some sense, I guess, whatever. But yeah, since then features has been appearing. It's, I don't know what to, I really, I just don't know what to say. I don't, I'm, there's no rhyme or reason to this. I don't, there is no person that could come out and say, I got it. This is what they're doing. Like, it's, that doesn't exist. What's the Ian Fleming quote?

Mikah Sargent (00:27:47):
Oh, there it is. Once this

Paul Thurrott (00:27:48):
Happenstance. Once this happenstance. Oh, twice as coincidence.

Mikah Sargent (00:27:50):
Sorry. Yeah. Three times. Oh, no. Enemy. Action.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:54):
There you go. Yep. It is, it's definitely, well, somebody asked if somebody was on Twitter was talking about whether or not this was malicious, and I was like, no, it's just incompetent, you know? Oh, come

Mikah Sargent (00:28:05):
On. Yeah. Malicious.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:05):
It's, it's, it's malicious is, there's

Mikah Sargent (00:28:07):
Another quote. Don't attribute

Paul Thurrott (00:28:09):
To you need, you need some intelligence for maliciousness, you know? Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:28:12):
What is it? Don't attribute.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:12):
It has to be a strategy. Don't attribute

Richard Campbell (00:28:14):
To malice that which could be explained by incompetence. There we go. You go often attributed to Napoleon, but that's doubtful.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:21):
Yeah. Okay. It's perfect though. It's right. You know. Yeah. I think it's incompetence and that's just based on everything I know about the team that's doing this right now. So it's, it's troubling. It's great. Hands. Hold on, hold

Mikah Sargent (00:28:32):
On, hold on. I just have to pause here. I don't know, Paul, if you're familiar with the term throwing shade mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but there was some major shade <laugh> that you just

Paul Thurrott (00:28:41):
Threw there. Oh, I, well, well, sorry. If you're suggesting what I said was in any way passive aggressive, let me just make it fully aggressive. <Laugh>, I think these people are fricking idiots and they, they literally have no idea what they're doing. And it's just complete mismanagement. It's incompetence.

Mikah Sargent (00:28:54):
And is it just that no one cares? That's on the end. But I don't mean internally, I mean externally. Right? No one's complaining cuz no one care. Why doesn't, I

Paul Thurrott (00:29:03):
Feel like it's bring your child to workday, but it never ended. And there are kids just throwing switch and we switches. We have no idea what's happening. But do, there's absolutely no reason not to just release these on some formal schedule. Right? There's no benefit to not doing that.

Mikah Sargent (00:29:18):
Are there forums somewhere where people are going, why is that? I guess it was on Reddit, but Reddit shut down. So I'm just trying to figure out <laugh>. Cause Microsoft is so big on, we pay attention to the telemetry, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:30):
Well, okay, but that's, that's telemetry theater, right? So Microsoft is, makes a big show of explaining how much they love feedback. Got it. But there's very little evidence of them acting on feedback, at least in this part of the company. And I, I, I should be clear about that. Microsoft is a huge complex company. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this is a very specific part of it. There are parts of Microsoft that are incredibly well run. And I don't mean to what do you say? Cash shade. Throw shade. Yeah. On other parts of Microsoft or all of Microsoft. It's, it's, it's more complex than that. But there's this little,

Richard Campbell (00:30:01):
I mean, you go back to the Sinofsky era. Yeah. Sinofsky was big on telemetry. Mm-Hmm. Like, he was the guy who said, yeah, I'm not gonna ask the users anymore what they want. I'm gonna watch what they do and we're gonna act accordingly. Yeah. and I I also on

Paul Thurrott (00:30:15):
Maliciousness <laugh>, yeah. You know,

Richard Campbell (00:30:18):
I, that myerson deviated much from that either, but to me it feels more like the folks that created the insider program. Those folks are gone.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:27):
Right? There

Richard Campbell (00:30:28):
Are different. And so here's the insider program with new people in charge.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:32):
The insider program has originally envisioned as originally launched in October, 2015. Was an engineering group. And it was an incredible moment in time where we actually got insight into what it was like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> inside of Microsoft to deploy software before it ever went to beta testers to the public. Yeah. And it was such a wonderful short-lived thing, but it was, at that time, that's what it was. It it was engineering. It was really them opening the Cano kimono. It was a reaction to the Stassi style OVS years where everything was secret. And they said, look, we're just gonna show you how we do it internally, and you can be part of it. You know whether or not that group responded to feedback better or more than the OVS group. I mean, I guess we could debate that, I don't know.

(00:31:14):
But but the fact remains that, you know, Sinski's Group would ship very small number of pre-released milestones and this is what you get. And they would base the updates on, on telemetry, like you said this group is like, we might ship builds all the time. You might get one every week. You know? This is the way it used to be done, by the way, if you were on the Windows 98 bed. It was what I remember very clearly in 98 se as well, every Friday there was a build. That was how that worked. You gotta build external to Microsoft every week

Richard Campbell (00:31:43):
Which was what was happening inside. Anyway. They're just exposing it to more people.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:46):
Yeah. Yeah. There are different ways to do things. And I think, you know, in any organization like this, they are gonna be react reactions to the past. People come in, they wanna set their own little agenda, doing their own thing. But yeah. So this new group running this now and the insider program is still a thing, but it's, it's a marketing exercise now, and it's run by unprofessional people who I have no idea what they're doing.

Richard Campbell (00:32:08):
It's, I think part of, part of the challenge is Microsoft Windows is no longer center the company. They actually have a freedom to do more. Yep. I think there's a lot of moving parts. It's a big group of folks. I honestly think what we're seeing is the residuals of more than one team pushing bits out.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:24):
This is like a daycare center where the adults left and never came back and they forgot the kids were there. And now it's kinda like a, a a Lord of the fly situation. Oh goodness. Yeah. It's a little bit Lord of flies a little. I don't know what's going on over there. What do they call the Neverland boys? The thing that makes it the, the thing that bugs me. Well, the thing aside from the obvious things that would bug me about the situation, cause I care about Windows, right? I want this to be high quality, et cetera, et cetera. The leadership over there just keeps talk, speak endlessly about how much quality matters. And, you know, and like, it, it's, it's, it's it's sort of, it reminds me like when Google does a, like io or where they'll walk out and they'll say, nothing matters more to us than our users privacy and security <laugh>. And then you wait for the guy just to burst out laughing. Like, are you kidding? <Laugh>? Are you that tone deaf to what the world knows about you? Do you actually not know that? We know that you're not doing that. Like, I, it, it's very much like that. It's a

Mikah Sargent (00:33:15):
Person wearing a fur coat and saying, I would never kill an animal. It's like, no.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:21):
Wearing the fur and it's literally bleeding. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>, I

Mikah Sargent (00:33:24):
Still got that.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:24):
Yeah. And it's like, anyway, I, I, someone asked, you know, do I, are you

Mikah Sargent (00:33:28):
Feeling a little resentment about the fact that you've spent years of your career explaining things for this company? Like in place of the company explaining themselves? I,

Paul Thurrott (00:33:38):
Listen, I've had a great career outta explaining what Microsoft's doing, and I, I should never lose sight of that. Like, I the, the thing that bothers me now though is I don't, I, I'm in the awkward position where I clearly care more about this than the people Oh, okay. In charge of it. Okay. And that should never be the case. That should never be the case. I, these people should get up and only think about this stuff. This should be what they do it and, you know, you have one job, do it right. Kind of thing. I don't understand. I have other hobbies and things that I do too. This is one thing, it's a big thing, but it's not my primary concern. I would like to think that if this was my primary concern, this thing would be trans running on time to beat that metaphor to death. But that is

Richard Campbell (00:34:19):
The Lord of the Flies quote, that the world that understandable and lawful world was slipping away.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:26):
<Laugh>. Right. Right. There you go. So I have to

Mikah Sargent (00:34:28):
Say that when you said that, Paul, I know you'll probably roll your eyes a little bit, but that did give me goosebumps a little bit because I, I actually, I feel that, not not in this necessarily, but just sort of that, that moment of going, why is it that I, this person on the outside Oh yeah. Seems to care more about this than the people who are actually doing it. Yeah. Yeah. That would be something that would make you

Paul Thurrott (00:34:49):
Yeah. I don't, I, and I, I, look, I, everyone gets a little maybe too excited about, like, me ranting about something like, like I'm the the, the history teacher from back to school, you know, <laugh>, he really cares about what we'll never know. You know, like, I don't, I would like to you to believe that I do care, of course, but I want you to know what I care about, and I want you to know that it's real. And I don't, it's not just like, I, I don't, I'm not just waiting for something to go off on. I would love to have a calm week where everything went right. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, that would be wonderful. I just feel like those things are fewer and far farther between now than they used to be. And like I said, I can't say it anymore. Clearly. I don't think these people have any idea what they're doing. And it's, it, it makes me crazy. It really does.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:32):
I think sometimes when someone ends up sort of getting that that, that, that narrative about them, which is mm-hmm. <Affirmative> the narrative for you from some listeners is that you get grumpy, then they may not Yeah. Hear what you're saying or when they do hear what you're saying.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:50):
Yeah. Right. That makes me sad that people Yeah. That, that happens. And you're not,

Mikah Sargent (00:35:53):
I can see that're you're not speaking in hyperbole here, and I think that's important. No, I think Richard, you you sort of helped to back it up and kind of touch on it, which is you know, this incompetence that comes from what potentially is a bunch of teams working on. The one thing you talk about them pushing out multiple teams, being able to have the ability to push things out mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and sort of dig into what these little details are behind that lead to something like this happening, it seems every week. And so, yeah, I think if, if people can take a moment and hear what you're saying, and I real, that's why think Yeah. You just said is important, important. I

Paul Thurrott (00:36:29):
Mean, <laugh> granted, I mean, I'm walking around with a sandwich board and the town score with nothing else on <laugh>. I, I understand, I understand. Looking the other way. I get it. But yeah. And I, whatever I just, I, I, I, every time I think I have a handle on what's happening, something like this happens and it's like, mm. Okay. And there's no clarity coming. Right. There's no, you know, what will happen is they'll release something and they'll, they'll cart John Cable out of whatever closet he lives in for the rest of the year, and he writes some long blog posts about everything's great, <laugh>, you know, and it's like, okay do you use a Mac or something? Because I honestly, I don't think I, everything's great

Richard Campbell (00:37:06):
Now. I mean, the real thing you're waiting for is a, is a push like this that knocks machines offline so they can't be fixed.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:14):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:37:15):
And, and then, you know, it's like the eye of Soran will pivot back towards that

Paul Thurrott (00:37:20):
Machine. Sure,

Richard Campbell (00:37:21):
Sure. What are you doing?

Paul Thurrott (00:37:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe that's, and they

Richard Campbell (00:37:23):
Will build some policy.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:25):
Yeah. Maybe if windows was so screwed up, it stopped people from accessing their ai, someone would pay attention to it.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:31):
Oh yeah. Or suddenly, I don't know, the whole ad that you wouldn't be able to see those wonderful b news stories that pop up anymore.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Pay, I just, I just redid the widgets chapter in the book yesterday, literally. And I haven't posted yet. It doesn't matter. But hoping, you know, against all hope that maybe this thing has gotten better. <Laugh>, lemme tell you, you know, not so much <laugh>, it's just the, the lowest quality collection of crap ever assembled in one place. It, it's, it's astonishing how, how terrible it is. Like it's, I, I don't even, don't, I, I'm bringing it up now like an idiot, but it's yeah, just the could this, could this be news? Is that too much to ask? You know, it's always these listicle things from real, really low quality. You know, you're never gonna believe the 10 things that happened on the blah blah, blah movie, or a seven things. An older person should never say he was younger, blah, blah, blah. Or like Paul thought, you're never gonna believe what this, this

Mikah Sargent (00:38:31):
Cocktail. You'll never believe what happened next. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:38:33):
Yeah. Exactly. I'll tell you what happened next. They fell asleep.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:36):
<Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:38:38):
I

Mikah Sargent (00:38:39):
Dunno. Listening to train sounds.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:41):
Yes, exactly. The soothing sounds of trains.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:44):
Alright, well there's more here with this moment.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:47):
I didn't intend to spend that much time on that. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:49):
I'm trying, trying to move, move us along here cuz yes, apparently, oh boy. We're still, we're still in church. It's time for the next sermon cuz we need to chat.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:57):
I talk about, keep this one short. I'm just, I don't re Richard May, maybe you remember, I don't remember if this came up before, but there was a recent I think it was an insider bill blog post where they talked about how they were gonna get rid of the chat icon in the Windows 11 task bar. And what they were gonna do is just replace it with the, like the teams consumer icon. Like it'd just be a normal icon. Right. And I think most people looked at that and thought, yeah, who cares? Nobody uses consumer teams anyway. It's terrible or whatever. And here's, here's the, here's the, the quiet kind of, I'm gonna throw this in a different direction cuz this is, this chat feature was actually kind of awesome. And it's, it's an update to the Meet Now functionality that's in Windows 10.

(00:39:40):
And it's meet with two E's, not m e A t now it's not like an anti PTA thing, <laugh>. And basically it was a pandemic error response to the fact that we were all at home and stuck and couldn't talk to each other. You know, this is the time when Zoom kind of exploded and became the biggest thing in the world. So this is Microsoft's reaction and it's a good idea. And then when does 11, it's an even better idea cuz it's front and center. It doesn't require you to actually kind of use teams in other words, like have all your contacts in there and all that stuff. You could literally type in anyone's email address or their phone number. They'll get a text or an email. It'll give 'em a link and they can connect. If they have the teams app on their phone, they can use it.

(00:40:16):
If they don't, they'll go to a website. It works fine. And it's just a way that you can instantly get in touch with anyone and have a text, audio or video chat at no cost to you. It's great. It's actually great with one asterisk, well actually two asterisks <laugh>. One is that nobody uses it. Right? and I I, for people who care about this stuff, I assume most people like watching the show probably just get rid of it. They, they hide it. They don't ever wanna see it. And the other asterisk is that Microsoft completely bungled team's consumer, they used it, they replaced Skype with this product, but they didn't integrate with Skype. Like, you, if you use this, you can't connect to your people on Skype. That should have been the baseline for this product. If you don't do that, then keep Skype in Windows. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And you keep it there until you can do that. Not

Richard Campbell (00:41:06):
That they take Skype away, it's still there. Just again, nobody uses it.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:11):
Yeah. You know, it's, so

Richard Campbell (00:41:12):
It's been neglected.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:14):
Yeah. And I, and then I again, maybe there's a third asterisk is the obvious thing that now there are two apps called Teams that have very similar icons and very similar UIs that do not talk to each other, do not connect to the same group of contacts and all that stuff. Don't have the same permissions or app store or whatever this is. Yeah. And dear God, it's Windows RT all over again. It's a thing that looks like teams that isn't teams smart. Yeah. So I

Richard Campbell (00:41:37):
Don't, I don't know why they put that name on it, much less had a separate thing called chat on top of that, you know? Yeah. Like good luck finding stuff, but I, but again, it's like you often get these little teams that whip something out and it gets pushed into the box. Right. And then it's an orphan.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:51):
It's a great screenshot and it's a great like bullet point when you're talking about what's new and Windows is 11. Like this notion that you can instantly and for free talk to anybody in the world at any time. And here look, here's a video preview that looks, it looks neat. It it, yeah, it sounds great. And it's just was never used by anybody,

Richard Campbell (00:42:12):
But certainly the import of Skype into a new app so that you didn't have Skype around anymore would've made more sense.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:20):
The idea there is that whatever people are out in the world using Skype, maybe they're on Windows 10, maybe they're on a mobile device, is you have this new client in Windows 11 and it just automatically connects to those people. Yeah, sure. Shirt it isn't all, it is Skype basically. Right. To Skype. It appears to be Skype. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they never did that. And by the way, to this moment, I don't know that they even have plans to, to do that. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:42:41):
Crazy. Yeah. And, and just as a kicker, like the underlying audio video, Kodak for Skype is the same one for teams, right? Likely is the same one for team consumer, like they're sharing code code anyway.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:53):
Is I, I, yes. I look, I'm sure there are technical difficulties that I don't understand. I I I'm not

Richard Campbell (00:42:59):
Gonna say, oh, identity problems at Microsoft perished the thought. Why would we have any problems with identity at Microsoft?

Paul Thurrott (00:43:05):
Yep. Well, I, and the other interesting thing here, it's, it is kind of a, a shit show frankly, is, I think we talked about this, is this notion that the teams client on mobile lets you connect to the both the consumer and business sides. You have to switch your profile. It's, it's not seamless, but in one app you can go back and forth between consumer and work, but

Richard Campbell (00:43:22):
Only any phone.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:23):
Only any phone. So, I mean, are you, are you telling me that the, the highly extensible team app that is a platform could not accommodate this <laugh>? Like are you serious? But yeah, I, yeah, I guess that's what we're telling us. I, so, I don't know. Anyway, the not as big of a deal as the last thing I, I honestly, the, the sad thing to about this to me is that the chat bit was actually really good. Nobody knows cuz nobody used it and Microsoft somehow sat silent because they were just too busy pushing teams and let Zoom kind of run away with the consumer mindshare during the pandemic. And that should have been a time for them to shine too. But they didn't do it. That's all.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:05):
All right. Any more here with with the moment?

Paul Thurrott (00:44:10):
The moment? No just a couple of related things. There, there was some beta channel bills, the Insider program last week. No major changes there, although notifications it looks like are gonna change in an interesting way. I actually don't find notifications in Windows to be particularly annoying and maybe it's just the apps I use or I don't do much to turn off notifications. I use web apps for things like mail and calendar. So I don't really get those kind of things. But apparently some people find that very annoying. So I guess if you use the mail app or whatever, you might get a, an annoying number of notifications. So they're gonna put some controls in there so that windows will actually notice that you're not interacting with notifications and we'll just start showing you less of them just so that's fine.

(00:44:53):
No big deal there. And then the last one was, and this is really semi-related, is we know that the the Meteor Lake generation of Intel CPUs will start arriving this fall with the desktop chips and then the mobile chips next January. We know that these will be the first generation of Intel chips to include integrated AI engines like AMD is doing now with some of their chips. And now Intel is saying that they will rebrand these things, basically dropping the letter I and then <laugh> adding a, an ultra line for kind of the higher end processors. I don't actually know what this means to the current designations where they have U P H series processors. Right? If you think about those things, I would say that, you know, U series processors are mainstream p slash eight series processors are probably premium and maybe those will be ultra processors going forward.

(00:45:46):
This is just shuffling the chairs into Titanic, frankly. Right, because what's the difference what these things are called <laugh>? Like in a way, I don't, I don't know, I don't think anyone's shopping intel stickers when they look at PCs, right. Frankly, <laugh>. Exactly. I mean, you wanna avoid like core I three or like anything that says Pentium or Seron or whatever the low end names are now obviously, but, you know, core I five, chlor, I seven, Corri nine, whatever, like yeah, fine. <Laugh> I think for most people, whatever. I don't think, but

Richard Campbell (00:46:18):
No, I, it's just Core five and cor,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:21):
There's no, I in core Richard, come on. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

Richard Campbell (00:46:26):
And, and the only nines now are ultra nines.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:29):
Yeah, that makes sense. Right? I guess. And the only threes are non alter or whatever. So I, I guess, I don't know. I don't really, I don't, I just thought, this doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but we'll see. We'll see what it looks like when they come out. So like I said, desktop will happen first. That's usually what Iffa maybe September, October. And then the the portable chips that's come out in at CS or announce the cs.

Richard Campbell (00:46:56):
Ah, build a new workstation in the fall and tell y'all about it.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:59):
<Laugh>, there you go. Make sure it's an ultra chip set.

Richard Campbell (00:47:02):
I think so. Yeah. And I think it's, I'm gonna go mini tx, like something compact.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:07):
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:08):
All those old school Intel stickers I saved will be

Paul Thurrott (00:47:11):
Single board computing. Very

Richard Campbell (00:47:13):
Exciting. Oh no, you'll be able to sell 'em on eBay. Yep. Like there for sure. They'll be, they'll be hot

Mikah Sargent (00:47:17):
Vintage intel stickers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> $500 a pop. Alright, let us take a quick break before we come back with more confusion on this week's episode of Windows Weekly. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by Miro, which can help you stave off confusion. Miro is a fantastic online tool that can help make sure that you and your team are all on the same page. So let's let's think about this. I'll, I'll sort of pose a question for you. Are you and your team still going from tab to tab, from tool to tool, from window to window, and in that context, switching, losing brilliant ideas and important information along the way? Well, why not try Miro? Because with Miro, that doesn't need to happen. Miro is the collaborative visual platform that brings all of your great work together, no matter where you are, whether you're working from home or you're in a hybrid workspace, everything comes together in one place online creating that one great product needs in input from everyone.

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Paul Thurrott (00:51:21):
<Laugh>. I wish. Yeah. So this is, this is a topic I'm not outraged about. Oh, okay. So it has that benefit. However, I thought this just an all rage show. Like, it's, oh, don't worry. All the rages, oh, there's rage coming. It's just not from me. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So Microsoft announced recently that they would replace the mail and calendar app in Windows 11, specifically with the new Outlook, which is a web-based version of Outlook that's coming soon in late 2024. This sounds smart to me. The mail app, calendar app is actually fine in Windows 11, but the mail app, which is in Windows 10 and 11, is a steaming pile of crap. It's terrible. And it is, it's like a, it's a Fisher Price toy. It's ridiculous. And it's needed replacing for a long time. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, in mailing calendar, we have something called Microsoft Outlook, right?

(00:52:12):
Which is the full Outlook client that's been around since 1997. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and is the center of many people's lives, right? A lot of old school kind of Microsoft guys. This is, this is their entire life. It's an outlook. I don't use full outlook as I call it. I find it to be too complex. But the other issue is that it's just not really friendly toward non-Microsoft accounts. And so, and I, unfortunately, unfortunately, or unfortunately whatever, I have to use a Google account every day for my primary account. So it's just not good for that. And you know, after trying all kinds of different things, I basically just use web clients. And I, I pipe all of my email accounts into a single place. I configured Gmail so that I can respond. If I get an e like an email to my Hotmail account, and I hit reply, it replies from Hotmail, right?

(00:52:58):
So I just have one place to go for emails. It's fine. But that's just me. This <laugh>, this announcement, and I, I would've bet big money this would never have happened, generated an unbelievably negative response from a lot of people. Apparently there was a world of people out there who loves the mail app in Windows 10 and 11 for some reason. And they cannot believe that Microsoft is doing this. Now, here's the thing. This app has been in development for years. They're not doing this until next October, November, somewhere in that timeframe, not this October, November, like 20, 24. This is 18 months away. And and people will bring up these issues that it, you know, with the app. And the two I hear the most are, it's not touch friendly and it doesn't support offline, which actually is a, is a problem.

(00:53:49):
It will support offline. Microsoft has already announced that. And the touch thing is a little strange to me. I, I, this is a small audience, right? The, the number of people who actually use touch devices regularly, and that's their primary interface, and that's how you're doing email every day. That's gotta be a tiny number of people. It sounds like people are just, this is the, this is the <laugh>, the history teacher guy from back to school. He's, you know, he's passionate, but we don't know about what, like, I I don't actually know where this anger comes from.

Richard Campbell (00:54:18):
I, I think I, I know what it is and I don't even know why they did this. Yeah. The logical thing to do is to say, Hey, starting in September of 2024, when you install a new version of Windows 11, you're gonna get an Outlook client instead of a separate mail and, and calendar app. Yep. And stop there.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:35):
You could actually, I would take it one step further and say, we will continue to provide the old apps to the store. So if you Sure. Why not for some

Richard Campbell (00:54:42):
Reason, go get 'em.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:43):
Yep. You can get 'em if you want. They do that with the Photos app.

Richard Campbell (00:54:45):
I think the only thing people are outraged out is you said, Hey, starting September 24, we're gonna take something away from you. That was free.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:53):
It said something terrible though. But it's

Richard Campbell (00:54:55):
Just, it's why's

Paul Thurrott (00:54:55):
We're gonna take, take away your melanoma, like this

Richard Campbell (00:54:57):
Wound <laugh>. Like, why do this to yourself? You get nothing from it. Yeah. Just say, and here's the point. You do want to phase out the old apps. They don't want to support the UWP apps anymore. That's the truth. Yeah. Right? They want those apps gone. So let them die. A natural death.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:13):
They're doing it on a really protracted schedule, though. I mean, it's not like, it's not like they're like, Hey, by the way, in six weeks this thing's going away. No, this is like a year and a half from now.

Richard Campbell (00:55:21):
Yeah. But either way, she needs to tell someone who take something away. They're angry. Yes. So don't do it. They are right.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:27):
They are angry.

Richard Campbell (00:55:28):
Yeah. So don't do it. Just put it out there. And then w as it gets used, say, Hey, usage on the old apps is, is drop down low, we're gonna stop supporting them. But you do it as a fee, you make it perceived as a feedback loop. I don't know if it's actually gonna be true or not. Right? It's not even important. Right. The real issue here is don't do the, we're the large corporation and we're gonna tell you what you like, kind of move. It's a dumb thing to do. So, and it buys you nothing.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:55):
Here's what's weird about this. The, well, there are a lot of things weird about this. The way this was announced was through the admin center for Microsoft 365, which is not a consumer portal. No. It's for businesses. Now, the reason for that is that there's an Outlook organization inside of Microsoft 365, and they're in charge of everything called Outlook. And there's a lot of different things called Outlook outlook, obviously the, the app I described as of Microsoft Office, the big app outlook on the web, which is the commercial web client outlook.com, the consumer web client, and then the Outlook mobile clients. But as it turns out, mail and calendar are considered Outlook clients. They're the consumer versions that ship with Windows. Although you can connect your business account to them actually. So that's, you know, that's like how they announced it, right?

(00:56:46):
So I think, I think a lot of people who didn't really look at it closely said, well, hold on. Wait, what are you doing? Are you, you're getting rid of like the full Outlook client? And that's not actually what it says <laugh>. Right? anyway Microsoft responded to this very quickly. I just went off on a 15 minute ramp up, ran rant about Windows 11. I can assure you I'm never gonna hear from anyone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But this got Microsoft's attention because this is part of Microsoft 365. Remember I said different organizations to run a little differently mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so a day later they said that they were gonna they saw the feedback and they're gonna reevaluate. And then a day later, meaning today, they came back and said, no, no, we're still doing it. <Laugh>. So, but the thing is, they, they reworded the, the announcement that's part of this Microsoft 365 admin portal to be a little clearer about what exactly is happening, right?

(00:57:40):
You have the option, well, I'll get this, I have a tip about this later, but if you run a mailer calendar today in Windows 10 or 11, you should see a switch up in the corner that says, use the new Outlook. Right? You can, you can flip back and forth today so you have the option to at least try it. Anyway, the clarity here is this is, this is actually not particularly clear, but let me get through this. Users who have a Microsoft 365, I'll just leave it at that subscription with access to the desktop apps. So that's everything. But Microsoft 365 basic, right? Which is only web apps can use the new outlook for Windows don't have to use, but they can use. So if you're paying Microsoft customer, unless you get the cheap commercial version which your workplace is providing, you can use this app with that account.

(00:58:23):
Right? Okay. Good. Users who do not have a Microsoft 365 subscription with access to the desktop apps, basic will have to use their outlook on the web. Of course. That makes sense. Cuz that's what they get access to. They get access to the web apps. Those are the commercial customers, right? So this doesn't impact them. They can use it. They don't have to. Users will be able to use users. This, now we're talking, this is actually consumers, I'll just, and I'll word it that way. Consumers, anyone, individuals, will be able to use the new outlook for Windows client with any personal email account, meaning outlook.com, gmail, et cetera. Even if you don't pay for a subscription that covers anyone who just bought Windows, or sorry, bought no one buys Windows, someone buys a Windows PC or owns a Windows pc, they have Windows 10 or 11.

(00:59:10):
They, they, they can get the SAP and they can use it with their Gmail account for free. Now, what they don't say there is you're gonna see ads, by the way, and you will see ads <laugh> if you're not paying for it they give you the option to pay for it. It's, I wanna say it's about $2 a month if you wanna just not see ads in the app. But whatever. And that's, that's, that's what's changing at the end of 2024. This is not changing today, although you can't do all that stuff today. That's, that's a year and a half from now that that is the minor change that is occurring. It will replace the mailing calendar app and Windows. Right now, the original announcement said Windows 11 specifically, I would be surprised if they didn't mean all supported versions of Windows, meaning Windows 10 11 and probably by that point, or getting close to then Windows 12 as well. Right. this is not a big deal, <laugh> No, this is not a big

Richard Campbell (01:00:03):
Deal. I think, I think you hit it. It's just bad communicating.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:06):
Yeah, I guess, I mean, it's a lot of,

Richard Campbell (01:00:09):
I'm, I'm also a big believer in like, don't make all the decisions be affected by the initial set of decisions. Offering a a new and better client is fine. And then at least show, hey, people are using this, they really seem to like it. We're gonna reduce support on these things. Like, this is smart people doing dumb things in the sense that they figure out the end game and they need deliver the whole end game rather than let people come along for the ride.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:41):
Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's, we are <laugh>, I feel like people today are trained to be so antagonistic, antagonistic so quickly mm-hmm. <Affirmative> any affront that we, it's like we're, we're, we're, we're not just sensitive. We're sensitive to things that don't even have anything to do with us. You know, like we're, it's not even over, I dunno what you call that. It's, we need a different word for it. We're not overly sensitive. We're like ridiculously sensitive. And anyway, I, this is a positive move, actually. I don't quite get it. I, I've looked at the responses. I mean, I, people will say, you know, it's, oh, it's the worst thing ever. And, and I'll say, explain. And they'll, they'll put their little list up there and it's like, I, you're really getting, they're like, look at this. There's an area of blank space here in the ui. And it's like, yep. <Laugh>, like, whatever. Anyway, this is not a big deal made into a big deal. I cannot wait until the end of 2024 when we can talk about this again, <laugh>. In fact, let's promise never to talk about this again until the end of 2024

Richard Campbell (01:01:45):
<Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:49):
Okay. I mean, that, that's, that's fair. Yeah. Amazing. And so this is where I ask is, is that all you wanna say about, about it?

Paul Thurrott (01:01:56):
It is, that's all I wanna say. Okay. <laugh>. Okay. Well

Mikah Sargent (01:02:00):
Then let's

Paul Thurrott (01:02:01):
Also, I still hate the UK cmma. There you go. Eat those guys. <Laugh>. I don't know if I've stressed out enough.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:10):
What do you feel about AI

Paul Thurrott (01:02:13):
<Laugh>? I'm mixed on ai. Okay. yeah, so this happened while we were recording the show. So I haven't really read a lot about this. This is not related to the Activision Blizzard stuff, but Google has comp formally, or I should say Google has filed a formal complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission alleging that Microsoft has used its dominant position in enterprise offer to push customers toward its other cloud services, meaning Microsoft 365, et cetera. Yeah, that sounds about right. <Laugh>, I don't I don't to tell you. So yeah, probably <laugh> Microsoft, Google also AC accused Microsoft of this in the eu. And this, you know, this is probably one of those examples of regulatory bodies kind of working in lockstep a little bit, which makes sense, right? Across different jurisdictions. So we'll see. It's fair to say that I, well, I wanna say, well, actually, I wanna say, I should say that I think Google Cloud, which is that part of Google, you know, the part that's not advertising based, you know, the part that makes no money, those guys they were a tiny, tiny company in many things, right?

Richard Campbell (01:03:24):
They, yeah, they've made it up to a couple of percentage points besides beside advertising. I think it's 90% ads

Paul Thurrott (01:03:30):
And yeah, it's 80 something percent. Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's pretty and everything else. Yep, yep, yep. I, it's one might argue that Microsoft, or sorry, Google has used its dominant position in search slash advertising to push customers towards its cloud services. I don't know, maybe, I don't know. That sounds crazy <laugh>. Anyway we'll see what happens. I, I will say, look, I mean, Microsoft, if Microsoft is dominant in any market, I don't know how you define this market, but I would say it's the enterprise or productivity or whatever you wanna call that if you look at Google a or what do they call it today? Google Workspace compared to, say, Microsoft 365, this is like the death star versus a single X-Wing. They're completely different sizes, so, you know, they could be right. I'm not saying they're not right. I, I'm just saying that the UK CMA can go No, I'm <laugh>. Sorry.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:32):
Oh boy.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:33):
Im sorry.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:34):
Yeah, you know, it's fine. Cma. alright, well, anything else with that or, yeah, a couple wanna talk about the cyber attacks? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:44):
Yeah. So we didn't, I don't know that we talked about this too much on the show, and I don't think I even wrote about this at the time, but early in June there were I wanna say at least two outages across Azure, Microsoft 365 teams, et cetera. And yeah, whatever these things happened from time, time to time, I guess Microsoft's dominance of this market did not prevent that from happening. These, this past week, Microsoft revealed that this was in fact distributed denial service attack. So it was a like a cyber attack. And I don't know that they said, you know, malicious foreign actor, I don't know. It's a, it's the, it's the group called Storm 1359. I'm afraid to look up that year to see what that relates to, if that's what that is. I don't know. But anyway, it was just a, it, it's what all ddo o s attacks are. You basically throw a bunch of traffic at it and then CloudFlare steps in. So I don't <laugh>, I don't know what, whatever, but obviously Microsoft does their own thing there. Anyway, that was, that, that's all they really said about it, but,

Mikah Sargent (01:05:52):
Oh,

Richard Campbell (01:05:54):
To see that they admitted that it was a, that it was an attack, I guess you have to say why your outage happened. So the fact that that attack was sufficient to actually impact their cloud, it's interesting.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:06):
Right?

Mikah Sargent (01:06:07):
Yeah, that's a good point that it did pull it, you know, it was

Paul Thurrott (01:06:11):
Sophisticated enough to Yeah. To, to hurt Microsoft. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:06:15):
That's kind of scary. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:16):
Yeah. Yeah. <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:06:19):
Alright, well do you wanna tell us about opera? Because I don't hear you talk about you, you do talk about a lot of browsers. Yeah. And it's kinda interesting to see opera make the show.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:29):
Well, this is interesting because of what they're doing. Right. So opera has re-architected their browser, honestly, on the back. And the big deal here is they're going with kind of a multi-threaded compositor, which is a, a a first for a major browser. I think there might be some others that do it, but Chrome Edge, you know, brave, I guess Pro probably don't do this. So this, there's some performance benefits to that, that they're modularizing it, or as Microsoft would call it, componentizing it, you know, so there's some benefits to that. This will help them add more features, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing they're pushing, of course, is this integration of their Aria ai, which is based on chat G P T and they're calling it the first native a browser AI ever. Right. Microsoft and other browsers offer kind of AI capabilities in a sidebar, but this is integrated right into it.

(01:07:19):
The thing that's kind of fun about it is when you're using this browser, you can bring up a, an interface that's similar to the one you would get in terminal or Visual Studio code, where you can type in commands. So you can type a Windows Key Plus Control and it actually brings up like a, it looks like a text box in the middle of the browser, and you can just ask questions and the questions are answered in the sidebar. So you can go back to whatever you were doing. Oh. And then you can go over there and continue that conversation. Yeah. So obviously when you're talking third party AI, as I will refer to this the question is gonna be how good it is. This one's based on chat G P T 3.5 and they also bring in live results from the web to kind of keep it up to date.

(01:08:02):
Cuz we know one of the problems with the Chachi TP stuff is it only goes back to a certain time or goes forward to a certain time, I guess. So it's, it's interesting. I just wanted to, I just wanted people to know about it. I'm not switching browsers or like that, but I think it's, you know, we know that AI is gonna change everything. And I, I, and I say that in a small sense that AI will be marketed at in every product that we ever use. And you know, to some of these things will be great and some of them will be questionable. And I think putting AI into a browser actually makes some sense.

Mikah Sargent (01:08:36):
I agree. There are a few places where I think that it works more than others. And sort of having it at as close to the base level as I can is where I want it to be able to regularly pull from it. Yeah. Because right now, yeah, I, in the instances where I want to use it, I've gotta pop open a new tab or new window, go do something mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and then pop back. So I think it's a good idea.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:58):
Yeah. One of the things that Richard and I, and I think Leo were all kind of very interested in at the Microsoft Build conference last month was this description of how Microsoft would roll out AI over time. And they talked about the first implementations, the the copilots as being the side-by-side interface that you would've like a pane that opens up on the side and it doesn't, you know, you're still using the same old apps and the same old system, but on the side you've got this thing, and the next one, the next phase is where it becomes integrated more. It's, it's inside, I guess, I can't remember the exact language they use, but this feels like a, a, a bridge between those two worlds. It's it literally will open a sidebar. So the, the UI is you know, it, it's side by side, but it's also a new browser engine and a new browser architecture. And it is integrated in a, in a different way. And it feels, well, I haven't, I haven't used it a lot. I'm not, like I said, I'm not switching to it, but it has the feel of a more integrated way of doing AI in a browser than say, opening a sidebar and asking it a question there. Interesting. It's just interesting.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:02):
I agree. All right, well it's actually I believe time for Xbox Corner. Yay. Yay

Paul Thurrott (01:10:13):
Or Boo because the first story unfortunately is that we knew this was coming, this has been hinted for a long time, but the Verge had a story today that Xbox Series X, which is the high end version of the Constable and Xbox Game Pass, will be getting price hikes next month. I had kind of assumed these price hikes would be tied potentially to the Activision Blizzard acquisition, you know but I guess we'll see. So remember that Sony raised the prices on its PS five everywhere, but the US I think last year. Right. and it turns out that Microsoft also will not be raising the price in the us but if you live basically anywhere else in the world or most places in the world starting in August, the price is gonna go up. So,

Mikah Sargent (01:11:00):
Oh, that was unclear to me. I didn't realize. So they're leaving it in the us but it's elsewhere. Yeah, yeah. Is why, why do you think is are the best sales in the US So they are making up for that elsewhere, or you have any guess as to why they feel comfortable raising it elsewhere?

Paul Thurrott (01:11:18):
Yeah, so I I I've been reading a lot about, we're gonna get to this at the end of the show too. I've been reading a lot about and watching videos about kind of the history of personal computing and video gaming and so forth. And one of the things that's pretty consistent over the years is that products, the tech products are always cheaper in the United States for some reason than they are in other countries. You, you, you can't as an American travel somewhere to buy cheap tr tech and bring it home. That's just not a thing, you know, although I've had people do home swaps at my house and back when we lived in Massachusetts especially, and they would bring empty suitcases so they could bring home stuff from the United States back to their home in Europe somewhere, where these things were much more expensive.

(01:11:59):
So I don't know if that, I don't know what the, the machinations are there. I I don't know if it's yeah. Just tied to like strong US dollar or whatever. Although right now, I dunno, if you're following the financial news these days, <laugh> the US dollar is you know, is in, you know, we're in kind of a, we're not calling it a recession, but we're having, we are certainly having some pricing problems. I think there would be a, excuse me, a major backlash for these products, biggest countries, if they ever tried to raise the prices here. I just don't think that's a, I don't know if it's a sociological thing. I just don't, excuse me, I just don't, that's not the way that electronics go, so to speak. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, typically ever pretty much. So I don't, I don't know.

(01:12:44):
I mean, I just, I I, I just know that this is, this is common for some reason. And like I said, Sony did it with the PlayStation five. One thing that does go up in price though, were the services, right? And that's something we all kinda struggle with. You know I don't have this as a story, but, you know, Spotify was supposed to release like a HiFi version of their service, and they were gonna charge five bucks more a month. Apple, which subsidizes their service through their hardware sales released HiFi, you know, essentially, or, you know, all the, all the different music tiers they have. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, just no added cost. So they had to kind of hold off on those plans, and now they're rejiggering this to have like a better premium plus whatever they're gonna call it. I think they're calling it sub premium, which by the way, best brand ever version of the product that will have other stuff.

(01:13:29):
Not just the hi-fi music because they're trying to avoid that. But the, yeah, I mean, everything, Netflix has gone up a lot in recent years. All of the tv services like YouTube, tv, et cetera, have gone up big time over the past few years. And I just, I think we've collectively understood that this game Pass thing, which is typically 9 99 a month for everything, but Ultimate was always gonna kind of go up. Like this was always gonna happen. So that will be happening. Although I should do, do, do, do, do, do. It doesn't say us specifically. So this is a third party report. So Microsoft hasn't announced this, but apparently if you live in Norway, Chile, Denmark, Switzerland, or Saudi Arabia, those pri the prices are not going up there, <laugh>. So

Richard Campbell (01:14:13):
It occurs to me that the new price for the Xbox Series X is the same as the PS five.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:17):
There you go. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:14:19):
Which seems unwise considering how much more popular the PS five

Paul Thurrott (01:14:22):
Is could not agree more. Yep. Yep. Like

Richard Campbell (01:14:25):
Given, you're gonna spend the same amount of money and in Canada that's $650, I think you'd buy, it's five

Paul Thurrott (01:14:33):
Canadian to us, right? So $650 Canadian today is about 400 and we'll call it four $95. Yeah, a little under 500. And then an Xbox Series X, how much does that cost in the us Is it more than 500 bucks? It can't be more than it's gotta be. It's probably $400. Is it? I know what the

Richard Campbell (01:14:54):
X for an X?

Paul Thurrott (01:14:56):
It's an, it's 4 99. 99. Yeah, that's 4 99. There you go. I don't, maybe it's, it could just be exchange rate based.

Richard Campbell (01:15:05):
Yeah, it's, it's pretty close. The, the reality of the course as Canadians are very good at buying stuff in the US if they need to. Mm-Hmm. Cuz we're very gonna buy. So you try and keep it pretty close to parody.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:14):
Yeah. Us and Maxx or Canada and Mexico benefit from in Canada in us all benefit from having the same power plugs and voltage and all that stuff. So it's like electronic

Richard Campbell (01:15:25):
And, and a shared trade agreement. So,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Electronics are night, they're easy to bring across the border. So, yeah. But again, I'm not, you, you'd never, I would not like I would sneak Sonos speakers into Mexico in my luggage, not saying I've done that. Rather than buy them in Mexico, because they're so much more expensive there, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, everything is, all electronics are, God, help me if I ever like, lose my phone while I'm in Mexico, you know, I'd have to buy like an A series Motorola or something, <laugh>. This is, you know, this is, is expensive.

Richard Campbell (01:15:55):
Keep a spare.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:56):
Yeah. I curious. Okay. Sorry. We'd spend a lot of time on that. <Laugh>, so in a, in a weird, I I, I, this is one of those things, like, you hear it and you're like, oh, I thought they would've done this already. Microsoft confirmed in an interview with Axios that they have stopped creating games for Gen eight, Xbox, which is Xbox One. Actually, gen Xbox One is probably Gen 6, 7, 8, but whatever meaning new games that ship from Microsoft Studios will not run on Xbox One. One of the weird things that happened between the move from Xbox One to Xbox Series S, X and S is that the branding for ga like what ga you know, what games work is kind of unclear because they're basically the same architecture mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So it's easy to make cross compatible games. You know, when you went from Xbox 360, which was based on Power PC to Xbox One, which was X 86, essentially, that's a much bigger deal, right? Making that transition. So x those games would be like Xbox 360, Xbox One, and now the games are basically Xbox <laugh>, you know, meaning all new supported Xboxes. So for the past few years, it's been Xbox One plus Xbox Series Xs for the most part. And so this is Microsoft just kind of indicating that they're moving on to the current generation entirely, which I don't think many people will lament the passing of the Xbox One, per se.

Richard Campbell (01:17:22):
How many games does Sony make for the PS4 these days?

Paul Thurrott (01:17:25):
<Laugh>. Yeah, there you go. That's, I don't know, <laugh> maybe they, they probably make some, I don't, I don't know. Yeah, that's a good impression. Yeah, that's so, sure. Yeah. I'm not so sure either, actually. But, you know, third party games are gonna continue to support the console where it makes sense. But there, there will be a time when like, you know, the next Call of Duty title or the next whatever title, don't know what else, whatever else, you know, we'll come out and say this, this one's gonna be the one where we move forward entirely to the new generation. But Microsoft is already doing it. So I, I would expect anything that comes out this holiday season from Microsoft Studios will be current gen only, which, you know, like I said, I don't, I don't have an issue with that. Speaking of games, no one plays halo Incidents, <laugh> they're still trying.

(01:18:11):
God love them. They just announced last week and released, I think today or yesterday season four. They're very proud of themselves. Last season, three and four were delivered on schedule, which is great because the original game was delayed by a year, and then season one was delayed by at least six months. I don't remember the exact timescale there, but they're getting back on schedule. Everybody. I will say this, you know, I, I, I've been <laugh>, I gave up on it. I, I'm actually on the Final Boss, and I just can't, I can't deal with it. But I've been playing Halo Infinite. It's kind of a tedious game, frankly. But I think the big deal for these seasons is not the single player campaign, it's the multiplayer stuff and the all the different game modes that you play with other people. So, you know, this new game mode's like Infection, which is, well, it's a classic game mode dating back to Halo two. So that's, that's here now. New maps, new Forge updates, that's the the game level editor, et cetera, et cetera. So man,

Mikah Sargent (01:19:06):
Increasingly it feels like all games are getting so focused on that

Paul Thurrott (01:19:12):
The seasons. Yeah. The,

Mikah Sargent (01:19:13):
Yeah. And keeping people playing it with other people as opposed to the stories. I like the stories.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:18):
Well, yeah. So I think there's different ways you can keep games fresh. I mean, I think in the old days when games were smaller, you just release a new one every so often, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, assassins Creed games used to come out like once a year, or, you know, every couple of years. Call of Duty comes out every single year, basically. It seems unsustainable. These games cost like a billion dollars plus each to make, they're like, well, or millions of dollars, I'm sorry to make. And they're, you know, they're like major Hollywood movies. Hundreds of millions. Hundreds of millions. Yeah. I'm sorry. I the, yeah, you keeping them in the market longer and supporting them longer makes sense. I will say for the Microsoft Games Studio stuff they've done a great job supporting existing titles for long period of time. See, A Thieves is maybe one of the best versions or examples of that rather gears, the latest Gears games have been like that. They just, you know, they support 'em for a long time, like longer than you might expect. And I think that's that's, it's not horrible. It's not a, it's not a bad thing to do for, you know, flight Simulator obviously has seen all kinds of free updates do world updates, et cetera. So they're good about that stuff.

Mikah Sargent (01:20:25):
Do you have Room for Flight simulator in, in your new place?

Paul Thurrott (01:20:29):
In my life? <Laugh> in your life? <Laugh>,

Richard Campbell (01:20:33):
Well, you, you've been around Micr for this. He hasn't unpacked his Xbox yet. He's been Xbox free for months.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:39):
What? So I've been Are you doing Paul? I, yeah. Actually it's pretty healthy. So for the past since March 2nd, I've been playing games only occasionally in on the pc. Not on the console. Oh. it helps that Halo Infinite is such a crappy game cuz it stopped me from playing all the time. Like, it's, I actually credit Halo with this this capability for me. So it's been good. But I've been playing like older games too. I've been, I I've actually played quite a bit of Doom three again. Oh, nice. Which is an awesome game. You know, it's nothing like Doom one and two, but really scary, kinda atmospheric, you know, you gotta use the W A S D keys and then Mouse and everything. It's like old school, but it's you know, it's, it's cool. That's all good.

Richard Campbell (01:21:22):
I actually picked up a pre-release game that has totally captivated me. Oh, what's wrong? Called Dredge

Paul Thurrott (01:21:30):
Dredge.

Richard Campbell (01:21:31):
It's on Steam. It's still not the first bits came out in March, but it's, you're in a little boat. Oh. And you're, you're doing a little fishing and you can pull stuff off the bottom and there's a bigger story going on. Right. But it's a little cartoony and, you know, it's, it's very atmospheric.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:51):
Yeah. This looks a little bit like Oxenfree Uhhuh.

Mikah Sargent (01:21:54):
It does have oxenfree vibes. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:57):
Interesting.

Richard Campbell (01:21:57):
I have it's, it caught me and it's got a story, you know, like, just like you said,

Paul Thurrott (01:22:04):
Right? Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:22:05):
You're playing a thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:06):
Right. It's got a not a horror vibe, but almost like a mystery kind of thriller vibe to it. Oh,

Richard Campbell (01:22:13):
Believe me, at nighttime on the sea, it's a little, it gets pretty terrifying

Paul Thurrott (01:22:18):
There. That's good. That, but that's, that's good. That's well done then. Yeah. Nice. One game actually, I've been meaning to play and haven't is that bla Black Mesa Port of the Original Half-Life, which is un

Richard Campbell (01:22:26):
Steamed. Oh, that's so great. Yeah. Oh

Paul Thurrott (01:22:28):
God. Played, I mean, the

Richard Campbell (01:22:30):
Graphics are super vintage. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> again, you know, the love affair you have is from the original game. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:36):
I played

Richard Campbell (01:22:36):
That. And storytelling.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:37):
I played that through easily a dozen times. Easily. Yeah. Easily.

Richard Campbell (01:22:42):
Great storytelling there. Great world

Paul Thurrott (01:22:44):
<Laugh>. Yes. I wish they would do more with it. Idiots. Anyway. They're making

Richard Campbell (01:22:50):
Millions on Dota two.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:52):
Yeah. Oh God, please. Yeah. I wish. I don't care about in the slightest. No. so let's see. We're well into the second half of the month. So Microsoft has announced the second wave of games coming to Game Pass across, you know, PC console and Cloud. Nothing major. Maybe need for Speed Unbound, although I have not played a need for Speed game. It's possible. The last one I played, I actually, I think it was a mobile game, which if I'm not mistaken, I finished it might have even been, it sounds impossible, but it might have been on Windows phone. Is that possible? Wow. What? I think it might have been a Windows phone version of need for Speed maybe? I think so. If it wasn't, it was something very similar. Yeah. Window need for speed. Hot pursuit. Hot

Mikah Sargent (01:23:37):
Pursuit. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:39):
No, that isn't it. It might have been, there's one called Undercover. Maybe that's the one need for speed Undercover. That sounds more, I think it was that one. It doesn't matter, but I actually, whatever, whichever one it was, I actually finished it, if you can believe that. I Yes. Any who? All right. The rest of it, I don't know. I really don't know. I don't recognize any of these.

Mikah Sargent (01:23:57):
I was gonna say none of those titles

Paul Thurrott (01:23:59):
It's weird, right? I've

Mikah Sargent (01:24:00):
Never heard of

Paul Thurrott (01:24:01):
At all. This happens a lot. Yeah. Arcade Paradise I assume is actually classic arcade games, so that might be

Mikah Sargent (01:24:08):
Interesting. Oh, that looks like it could be kind of fun. Yeah. I don't know that I want to play a game that's just called Fist. It has a terrifying looking bunny rabbit with, with a biomechanical fist.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:24):
Sure.

Mikah Sargent (01:24:24):
I'll skip it. Thanks.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:26):
It looks like a red microphone.

Mikah Sargent (01:24:29):
<Laugh> red glowing microphone, <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:31):
Nobody would do that. That's not a

Mikah Sargent (01:24:32):
Thing. Yeah. Why would anyone ever

Paul Thurrott (01:24:36):
My brother. And then finally there's an ID at Xbox Showcase coming on July 11th. Id at Xbox is Microsoft or Xbox's indie game segment. So that's k it's kind of a neat follow up to the game showcase they just had last week except that was all major publishes. So this is indie publishes and don't write off Indie publishes some of the best games ever published Totally ever. And not just on console, but wherever came out of this type of thing. And, you know, super Meat boy. And what was that? Fire Watch was an amazing one. There was a lot. Is a Oxford Free actually is one. We just talked about Oxford Free. So anyway, there's something to pay attention to if you hear about games.

Mikah Sargent (01:25:22):
All righty. Let us take another quick break before we come back with the back of the book. I do wanna tell you about our next sponsor. It is Lenovo orchestrated by the experts at CDW who are bringing you this episode of Windows Weekly. The helpful people at CDW understand that as the world changes, your organization needs to adapt quickly to be successful. So how can CDW keep your business out of the curve? Well, with Lenovo ThinkPads, these powerful devices deliver the business class performance. You're looking for thanks to Windows 10 and the Intel Evo platform. With your remote teams working across the country and around the world, collaboration isn't a problem because Lenovo ThinkPads keep your organization productive and connected from anywhere. Plus C D W knows your workforce has different work styles and needs flexibility, which is why Lenovo ThinkPads are equipped with responsive tools and built-in features that let your team work seamlessly across their favorite tools. Now just think about that for a second. And let's not forget about security. These high performing machines protect at the highest level with built-in hardware to guard against modern threats without slowing your team down. When you need to get more out of your technology, Lenovo makes seamless productivity possible. CDW makes it powerful. Learn more at cdw.com/lenovo client and thank you Lenovo. Orchestrated by the experts at CDW for sponsoring this week's episode of Windows Weekly. We are back from the break, and it is time for the back

Paul Thurrott (01:27:02):
Of the book. So I mentioned the new Outlook app earlier, and I'm sure you're already all looked at it and I already hate it, but if you didn't the way you get it, oddly, you can't just go to the Microsoft store or online somewhere to download it. What you have to do is run a Microsoft Outlook, the full client or better mail and or calendar app and Windows 10 or 11, they'll, you'll see a switch up in the right corner says, try new Outlook flip it, it will restart. You'll get the new outlook. It's very much like outlook.com or Outlook on the web. It is in fact web-based. It's a nice interface. I I think for the core three use cases, which are of course, email, calendar and contacts, great. It pretty much works as you would expect. It's got a nice ui, et cetera, et cetera.

(01:27:42):
The only thing that gets wrong is something the Microsoft 365 app also gets wrong in Windows. And God, I wish I would fix this, which is, it's kind of a toolbar of other app icons on the sides used to like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, et cetera. If you click those, you'll get the web version of those apps, not the version that's on your computer, which is stupid. I feel like Microsoft is sophisticated enough to figure that out, but they have not. So hopefully they will before it's released, finally. But give it a shot and, you know, give it, give give Microsoft some feedback and don't just be a little whiner on Twitter complaining about it. <Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:28:16):
Yeah. Come on.

Richard Campbell (01:28:18):
I turned it on for a while.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:20):
Yeah. From where though? Did you, are you a traditional Outlook user? I'm a

Richard Campbell (01:28:24):
Traditional Outlook user. Yeah. And I realized how much muscle memory I have an outlook, right when they moved all the cheese. Yeah. So after a while it's like, this is just impairing my productivity too much and I had to go

Paul Thurrott (01:28:36):
Back. I feel like for a traditional Outlook user, this would be like going from real teams to Skype. Yeah. And it, it's like doesn't, you know, everyone's gonna have this thing that they use or whatever need they have and it's just not gonna work for them. I I, they're not gonna get a lot of traditional Outlook ice, but for people using mail-in calendar and Windows, I, I mean, let's step up to the plate and, you know, use a real hat. Maybe

Richard Campbell (01:29:01):
I keep waffling on repaving this laptop just to give it some new life. Yeah. Cuz I then I'm traveling and like paving your laptop and then traveling is dumb.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:10):
I pve your laptop while you're traveling.

Richard Campbell (01:29:12):
There you go. You know, but I want to go full M 365 on it now. Maybe I'll go back to the new outlook on that machine. Yeah, yeah. Because I could eventually develop switch hit skills here.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:22):
I, we'll say, we'll talk when you do that. I'm curious. I I I don't, I don't feel like old Outlook guys are gonna

Richard Campbell (01:29:30):
Be too bad. I know, it's, maybe I can be the exception. I am the oldest of Outlook guys from 97 on. Right. Ran my own exchange shiver. Cuz deep down I hate myself. <Laugh>. and although the way

Paul Thurrott (01:29:41):
To say it is Rehabil, you're like, I ran Outlook back when it was called Schedule plus. Youngster. <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:29:48):
Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. And I, I occasionally will throw that out there when someone asks me for especially Microsoft people, it's like, well, hey, let's meet that shift. I'm like, Hey, hey, throw me an S plus. Right. Just to see how old they are.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:59):
Yep. Yep. <Laugh>. Yeah. The young people who go, huh? <Laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:30:02):
Yeah. Now, now it's teams. It's only teams. There is only teams.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:05):
That's right. That's right. They should call those s pluses.

Richard Campbell (01:30:09):
There you go.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:10):
So the epic of the week is tied to the fact that I'm starting an article series on kind of retro computing and gaming. I kind of went into this reluctantly in a way. Like I, I, I think I've spent the better part of my adult life tamping down this part of my personality. Like, I'm not a fan of people who like coplay like comic book characters or run around with lightsabers and stuff like that. But I'm into all this stuff, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I, now that I'm in this tiny apartment, like the one thing I can't do is I'm not gonna buy like a, like a classic Amiga and like a computer and have it set up. Like I don't have, I don't have room for that stuff. But there is a lot of emulation out there and a lot of different ways to run this stuff.

(01:30:51):
That's actually kind of cool. And and I, like I said, I spent a lot of time reading books about this stuff. I'm, I'm reading a three book series on the Comere history, for example, right now. And watch a lot of YouTube videos. I'm listening, the audiobook I'm listening to is something called Atari ga. No it's not. It's called, it doesn't Matter what it's called. Oh. Once Upon Atari, which is written by the guy who wrote the ET game which is widely heralded incorrectly as being the cause of the video game crash of 1983. Anyhow so I'm gonna start to go down this path. So what I decided to do for the, for the app pick this week is kinda start with something I'm actually gonna write about probably months from now. But it's kind of the, the, the heart of my own retro obsession, which is the Amiga.

(01:31:36):
And there are many different ways to do this. I have actually done in the past a raspberry pie based Amiga. I got a cute little fake Amiga 500 Ks for it. You know this fit around the Oh yeah. Raspberry pie. Yeah. but you can just do it purely in software so you can run all the stuff onto your pc. So the way to do that is through something called Omega forever. There are different tiers of it. If you order the physical product, you can actually get a version that has D V D movies of Commodore history stuff, which I think is very interesting. But even just the downloadable stuff. And you can run images of the different Amiga systems over the years, 1,500, 2003, you know, on and on it goes. So you can kind of experience that in an emulator window like you would do with any virtual machine, but it also comes with lots of apps and games and the, the stuff is just kind of all out there.

(01:32:20):
And so you can bring in image files of games, load them into the emulator and play them, you know, kind of experience the past. And actually it comes with some pre, some of my favorite games are actually from that era are on here, including oid, which I think was the ultimate kind of breakout style game from back in the day. And that was the game my wife actually liked to play. And my wife is not into this stuff at all, <laugh>, but somewhere I have a photo of her playing this game. She liked this.

Richard Campbell (01:32:49):
I remember being in the audience when they first showed the Amiga and that bouncing ball demo that's in the graphic there. Yes. And it's, that's in, there's all, all standing up and applauding cuz that was a miracles what they were doing.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:00):
So there's, yeah, so the bouncing balls in there. There's also the one where it's like a, a robot and he's juggling and the the balls are reflective and what you see reflected on the balls is the juggler and the surface of the thing around him. And it for the day. It was, that was incredible. Now it runs at three 20 by two 40. So it's ludicrous <laugh>, you know, in some ways today. But and, and the fact that you can emulate this massive multi-processing system, you know, the first big multitasking operating system in a PC on a Raspberry Pi is, is tells you everything you need to know about how far the world has come. We actually, but that's what's, that's what's cool. It's easier than ever to do this stuff. So you'd

Richard Campbell (01:33:36):
Hope the Windows emulator would also upscale it too?

Paul Thurrott (01:33:39):
Yeah, yeah, of course it does. Yeah, you can well upscales it, it will, you can play it full screen. I mean, it's, it looks good. I, to me this stuff looks pixels, it still looks good.

Richard Campbell (01:33:48):
That's great.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:49):
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:33:51):
All right. I think it's time to talk about run as radio. What are you talking about this week

Richard Campbell (01:33:58):
This week's show I did with Aria Carley returning, now she's actually on the Windows Update team. And so we were specifically talking about Windows Update for business and Microsoft's general push to get folks using that. But one of the conversations we had, and I think it would be relevant to our show today, was about the fact that Windows itself moving to much more incremental updates with smaller feature updates. Maybe you've heard about this <laugh> and the fact, and you know, and the fact that that is anathema to it pros, you know, that we manage our machines in a consistent state from a tech support world point of view, from a reliability perspective, from an app behavior perspective. And so we're, we're concerned about these continuous updates. Like do we have to build them up? When do we build a test machine and it validate software and so forth on them, push them back out again.

(01:34:48):
And so this got into how Windows update for business manages that a little more effectively. And that this is an ongoing challenge. And I, she didn't say this as much and Ari is very careful. She's, she's a, a very practiced communicator about this sort of things. But I almost feel like we're getting a sense that Microsoft's gonna want us as it pros to allow more of these feature updates to just happen. Cuz there are also some security related updates there too. And security vulnerabilities due to unpatched machines are becoming more and more of a concern. In fact, I'm now foreshadowing next week's show with Samuel Lejo.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:25):
All right. Yes. So go check that out. Run as radio.com. It's where you can find the show and subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. Tell us about the Brown Liquor pick.

Richard Campbell (01:35:39):
Oh my goodness. Well, and, and for those who don't wanna hear about Brown Liquor, like this is a bit of a story and this is the end of the show. So if you don't wanna listen, you don't have to listen. <Laugh> this starts with a whiskey whiskey competition. Now look, there's a lot of whiskey competitions. In fact, I'm always suspicious of any list of the best of anything. It doesn't matter what it is. Although this particular whiskey competition has been going for 14 years, which gives it a little more legitimacy. And it is sponsored primarily by a group called ez which is French for the nose. In fact, it's an organization that specializes in tastes and smells for certain products. They focus on wine and coffee and spirits and you can subscribe to them and get various packages. That's their business. And so they fund this particular competition.

(01:36:27):
It has close ties in Las Vegas and in Kentucky. And in fact, the competition ran finished this past week in Bardstown, Kentucky, which is where Heaven Hill and Elijah Craig and a lot of really great American bourbons live. And the reason I bring it up is because their winner this year, the gold medal was for a Gordon McPhail Connoisseur's Choice 1989. Morlock like what, 31 years old? An A B V of 54.2 degree percent. Listen, I get why this might win based on the group of judges they have. This is a a a whiskey that was put as you make directly into Sherry a a sherry cask, one Sherry hogs, hogs head, and let sat for 31 years. And so there's only about 200 bottles of it total. And if you could find one very in excess of a thousand dollars and now that it's won the gold medal, it'll be worse.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:31):
Still moly.

Richard Campbell (01:37:32):
Okay, so the,

Mikah Sargent (01:37:34):
Before you continue though, could for the, for the uninitiated, why, why was there that big reaction? What, what, what made you go way, you know, cuz you were also hesitant.

Richard Campbell (01:37:44):
I wanted to talk about this because it's so many weird things at once. Okay. For starters, Gordon McFail doesn't make whiskey. Oh, okay. They're an independent bottler. Now they've been an independent bottler for more than a hundred years <affirmative>. And they ha and they've been making this thing called connoisseur's choice since the 1960s. Like, they're a very interesting way to buy whiskey. Cuz essentially these folks know all the distilleries of Scotland and select particular casings and even go this far as to buy new make and casket themselves. Oh, to make whiskey. And so that's a very different thing from buying from a distiller. The sort of typical thing you think about is these are the people who make the whiskey, I'll buy the whiskey for them. That's not these guys. But, and so the fact that they made this own tasking is part of the reason they won the award rather than mortlock the distillery that made the whiskey.

(01:38:35):
Got it. Okay. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, right, which is, it's unusual now, Mort Lock's one of the oldest distilleries, it's just not well known. It's one of the many brand many whiskeys out there that doesn't have a brand. Although recently, only like in 2014, they start being branded. The distillery has been functioning since 1823 out of Dufton. Dufton is a proper part of the space side. That's where Glen Fiig is and Alini is. It's a short drive down from Craig Achi. I've been there many times. What Mo Mortlock distinct for whiskey drinkers from Scotland, cuz again, they were generally not sold anywhere else, is that they do low reflux. Their idea is, we've talked about this in the whiskey making process, and that when you distill, you're using copper stills because you're pulling sulfur from the barley. You're de sulfur it making a little lighter. And traditionally spas are quite light whiskeys.

(01:39:31):
They just tend to be aged in flavorful barrels like bourbon and port and, and sherry. But Mortlock makes what's known as a meaty whiskey. So the way they use their stills minimizes the sulfur pole. And so they take some of the edge off, but they have very, quite sturdy flavors inside of that. And for the more than a hundred years, almost all of their whiskey went into blends. That was also the normal trend back then, you know, for, for a long time that you b blended your whiskeys together. But they are owned by Johnny Walker. So Johnny Walker was actually a person again from the 18 hundreds and his family made whiskey called Walker whiskey. And they, as they were, became successful. In fact, Johnny Walker's still the best selling Scottish whiskey in the world started buying distilleries to, to make their blends. And one of them they bought back in 1923 was Mortlock.

(01:40:30):
Now that at that time they owned several, they owned Talisker, they owned Clientes, they owned Du Coburn Dewayne. And then in 25 they merged with the United Distillers Company. Now that was then bought by Guinness, which was then combined with Grand Metropolitan Deform an entity in 1997 called Diageo, which is the largest of the Scottish distillery conglomerates in the world today. And again, very much because of Johnny Walker, even back in the United Distillers days, they owned a huge number of these distilleries that had no brands. And so in 91 United Distillers started making a thing called Florin Fauna series. It wasn't actually named by them, it was named by a, a, a whiskey professional. One of the professional tasters. And this was a line of whiskeys from these unknown distilleries. They had a very standard whiskey bottle with a very standardized label. And they weren't made for export.

(01:41:25):
They had no expert labels on them, so you only bought them in Scotland. And in the very first edition in 91, they had 26 distilleries that you've never heard of, although you may have heard of a few of 'em. Now I'll rattle 'em off Aberfeldy, altmore Almanac, Bennis Braddock, Blair Apal, Royal Broccoli, Kala Kish, Laci de Wayne, Dufton Glen Glen Lan, Glen Lassi, INow Link Moore, Mon Moore, Morlock Hitted bike Rosebank 10 Inch and Ber and a few of those today have brands associated, but back then, none of them did. And in fact, as they became more popular and started doing their own branding, they left the Flo and Fauna series. And as Diageo bought more distillers, which they've done that were unbranded, they would add them to the Flo and Fauna series. So for me, as an aficionado when I was in Scotland, I would also go and try the current generation of Flora and Faunas and being forced to try a dozen, two dozen whiskeys over a couple of days, you know, it's a task, but you do what you gotta do.

(01:42:34):
<Laugh>. The first time I encountered Mortlock myself was a flora and fauna bottling, you know, about 2011 called it was the Mortlock 16 and it was amazing. It was also $50, so it wasn't a particularly expensive. I've gone looking for Flo and Fauna Bottlings of Mortlock today since they went branded in 2014. You're talking 500 to $800 now. It is good. I don't know that it's that good, but it is good. So since 2014, Mortlocks been doing their own bottlings. And so the actual whiskey I want to talk about today is the one you could actually buy from a place like Total Wine. Oh, nice. The Mortlock 12. So this is the current branding that Mortlocks now doing, which they do the square bottle look, it is that big meaty whiskey. They tend to age in Sherry Casks. There are a few different versions, but she talked about $65. Not a cheap whiskey by any stretch of imagination, but it's different. It's a more robust space side than most are made as. And very, I I find it quite enjoyable. This is not, I'm drinking peat, like I'm going Talisker or Lefroy or something like that, that I want a cigar, which I never want <laugh>, but I do want a bigger, more robust whiskey to drink on its own mortlock as well for that.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:51):
Interesting. Wow, I've never heard of this. That bottle's

Richard Campbell (01:43:54):
Cool. And that's why one of the reasons I brought it up when I saw that they were winning, they won this award, I'm like, what's going on? And so it was fun to just read up. And so, well this is a story. I think a lot of people just don't know that there are all these whiskeys out there that you've probably not heard of. Cuz they don't, they're mostly used in blends. Right. Johnny Walker is composed of a bunch of different whiskeys, including Mortlock to this day that you generally don't hear about. That's how they make their living. They do specialty bottlenecks now and again, and occasionally, and because of Mortlocks success in Flora Fauna, they decide to start spending the money on marketing doing custom bottles and become a brand.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:31):
Hmm. All right. That's a, a picture that's in discord. It looks very light. That must not be color accurate. Oh yeah, it does. Looks yellow. It can't be. Right.

Richard Campbell (01:44:44):
Yeah. That might be a, a funny lighting on a, a particular one. Yeah. I would also say that they haven't gotten their consistency particularly identical. So a given bottling of a Morlock 12 is not, is gonna be consistent as an, as another bottling too. It's challenging to get them exactly right. That's an art form all into its

Paul Thurrott (01:45:05):
Own. I'm surprised anyone could do that accurately just by taste, you know?

Richard Campbell (01:45:09):
Well, and they also cheat. They put color in. Right. Which is allowed. And Scott

Paul Thurrott (01:45:13):
It works to Yeah. Yeah. But as far as getting a consistent taste across years, I mean, that's incredible. That

Richard Campbell (01:45:19):
Well, and there's plenty of Scottish distillery stills. Well, there's a few that say, Hey, each edition is different and you know Yeah. Suck

Paul Thurrott (01:45:27):
It up like, like wine. You know, it's just the way that Absolutely. This is the vintage, you know?

Richard Campbell (01:45:30):
Yeah. But they, the first companies to really make a lot of money on whiskey. They, you know, your, your, your Glen Fi of the world, their sales pitch was, it takes every time. Yeah. Yeah. That was the No,

Paul Thurrott (01:45:43):
I get it. I just, I'm just surprised it's that attainable.

Richard Campbell (01:45:45):
Yeah. And that's interesting. And yeah, I don't know that it is, I think it's a remarkable set of skills every time I've got a chance to sit with those guys and look at how they assemble. Yeah. A a given a given addition, I'm blown away. Right. It's just a crazy set of skills. But you know what, I, I am fascinated by the true single cast, like what Gordon McFail there did there with that one barrel waiting 31 years. It's nuts. It's just unreachable. Right. Who's gonna spend a thousand dollars on, on a drink? It's a lot of money. And there's only 200 of 'em in the first place, like for a certain group of people, and I've, you know, know some of those folks. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:23):
Probably what they want. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:46:25):
Yeah. That they want, you know, their whole thing is at Christmas they pour this for the in-laws and like, you'll never try

Paul Thurrott (01:46:30):
This, you'll never have this again. Yeah,

Richard Campbell (01:46:31):
Exactly. Exactly. but that's a pretty high privilege for, for a glass of whiskey. That's good.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:37):
Sure. But

Richard Campbell (01:46:38):
Is it that good?

Paul Thurrott (01:46:40):
Like, I feel like there's a better chance for whiskey to be good over a long period of time than there is for wine. But so many things can go wrong

Richard Campbell (01:46:48):
With wine. I, I tend to agree. And, and let's face it, whiskey does not age in the bottle like wine does. Wine was set up to age in bottles, whiskey ages in barrels. Once it's bottled, it stays the

Paul Thurrott (01:46:57):
Same. Yeah. It's like an ongoing science experiment that could just go wrong at any point

Richard Campbell (01:47:01):
And probably has by most counts. I have a few bottles of wine I've kept for too long, and I'm afraid to open them. Nos.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:08):
Yeah. We did the same and they were all vinegar. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:47:11):
Yeah. I would also say that whiskey will oxidize once the bottle has been opened. And so my general rule is once it's down past half a bottle, sit down with a friend and finish it. I like it. It's, I like it. It's not gonna get better

Paul Thurrott (01:47:23):
Because science. Yeah. This is

Richard Campbell (01:47:27):
With a science cover. I,

Paul Thurrott (01:47:29):
We have to drink it. It's not, we have to, it's not, it's only the right thing to do. Yeah, exactly. <Laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (01:47:33):
It's the right thing to do.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:35):
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:47:36):
Alright, that's

Richard Campbell (01:47:37):
Good. That's my story this week.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:39):
That's a good

Mikah Sargent (01:47:39):
Story. Nice. and that, that brings us to the end of this episode of Windows Weekly. This show records every Wednesday around about 2:00 PM Eastern 11:00 AM Pacific. If you want to tune in to watch the show you can go to twit tv slash live and see it on YouTube live, Twitch, and other places where we stream live. Of course, the best way to get the show is by subscribing or following the show, which you do by going to twit tv slash ww. There you'll find links to subscribe to audio or subscribe to video on your podcast player or gatherer of choice. We're also on YouTube. It's Spotify, it's Apple Podcast, Google Podcast. We try to be everywhere that you, you know, might get your podcasts. And of course that hitting that subscribe button, hitting that follow button is incredibly helpful.

(01:48:30):
And signals to the folks that you know, you're, you're watching every week that you're tuning in. And we appreciate you for doing that. I also want to mention quickly, club twit at twit tv slash club twit. When you head there, you can subscribe to Club Twit, become a member, $7 a month, $84 a year and joining the club, it's a great choice to make because you get a lot of great stuff. First, you get every single twit show with no ads. So it's just the content because you, in effect, are the, the support for the show. You also got that warm fuzzy feeling knowing that you are supporting our shows directly and helping us to keep things rolling along. You also gain access to the twit plus bonus fee that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show.

(01:49:21):
Special Club TWI events published there as well. And the Club Twit Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club TWI members. And also many of us here at twit. We've got some very active members there and active hosts and producers as well. Always a fun time in the Discord. And on top of all of that, we've continued to add more and more value to the club over time. We've got some Club twit exclusive shows, meaning shows that you can only get as part of Club Twit. There's the Untitled Linux Show, which is, as you might imagine, a show all about Linux. You also can get my show Hands on Mac, which is a short, short format show that covers apple tips and tricks. So that's iOS, iPad, os but Mac os all of the stuff. Yes, I'm sure there are some of you out there that are rocking an iPhone, but also use Windows. So that show can be for you. As well as the newly relaunched Home Theater Geeks featuring Scott Wilkinson. It's a great show talking about the home theater, about all sorts of devices you can get, settings you can use, and everything in between. And then the best show you could get at the Club, it's Paul The Rots. Finally Hands on Windows program. You gotta save the best for last, Paul.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:40):
I'm gonna use that as my new ringtone. <Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:50:42):
There you go. Paul, what can people expect on Hands on Windows?

Paul Thurrott (01:50:47):
Oh, boy. So I'm about to go into see, I, where I am recording is different from where the shows are out in the world. I'm trying, this is true. Yeah. I I did an interesting kind of three episode arc, just kind of catching up on things like moment three and the new stuff coming in Microsoft Edge. But I'm about to launch into a, I guess it's a four episode series on the command line stuff that's in Windows 11. So Command Prompt well, starting with Terminal Command, prompt PowerShell Linux, the Linux subsystem for Windows windows subsystem for Linux. And then also wind Get, get the windows Package Manager. So,

Mikah Sargent (01:51:22):
Okay. That's cool. Yeah, that's, that's gonna be a series of episodes. Well, yes. Good stuff. While we're checking out again, all of that at Club twit, TWIT TV slash club twit. So consider joining the club rich Campbell of Run as Radio. Anything you want to plug this week?

Richard Campbell (01:51:41):
No, I'm happy to have folks go to the show. There's more coming. We put it out every week. Haven't missed a day since we started April 11th, 2007. I will have conference announcements in the next couple of weeks, so we'll talk about that one. We we're ready.

Mikah Sargent (01:51:54):
Awesome. Awesome. And Paul throt of throt.com What about you?

Paul Thurrott (01:51:58):
I got nothing <laugh>. He, he's got nothing. Buy my books. Lane pub.com.

Mikah Sargent (01:52:02):
Yes, please buy the books and join the thro.com membership. Right. both great ways to support you can find me at Micah Sargent on many a social media network, or Yes, you can head to chihuahua.coffee, c h i h Hua h hua.coffee, where I've got links to all the places I exist online, social media, the podcast. We

Paul Thurrott (01:52:24):
Need to chihuahua.coffee,

Mikah Sargent (01:52:26):
<Laugh>, I

Paul Thurrott (01:52:26):
Or something.coffee, I

Mikah Sargent (01:52:28):
Guess. Yeah. Right. Isn't coffee such a great option? So yes, you can head there if you want to see what else I'm up to. Thank you everyone for tuning in this week. Again, Leo will be back next week. I don't, I'm, I'm so curious cuz he's, he always comes back with stories from his travels, so we'll see if he's like, comes back with a light saber or something. I know he was looking forward to going to the Star Wars portion of, of Disney, so we'll see if he ha what, what his version of a photo with a dinosaur. Looks like <laugh> Right. Next week. But thank you both for having me today and great

Rod Pyle (01:53:07):
To have you on Micah. Thank

Mikah Sargent (01:53:08):
You. You do a great job. Thanks so much. And thank you everybody out there. We appreciate you. Remember, consider joining the club, tell your friends and your family to subscribe to the show and we will, well, they, we'll be back next week for another episode of Windows Weekly.

Rod Pyle (01:53:22):
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-Chief VAT Astor magazine. And each week I joined with my co-host to bring you this week in space, the latest and greatest news from the Final Frontier. We talk to NASA chiefs, space scientists, engineers, educators and artists, and sometimes we just shoot the breeze over what's hot and what's not. And space books and tv and we do it all for you, our fellow true believers. So whether you're an armchair adventurer or waiting for your turn to grab a slot in Elon's Mars Rocket, join us on this weekend's space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.