Windows Weekly 840, 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.

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell are here. The EU is added. Again, now they're investigating teams. We'll talk about the latest canary version of Windows and some nice new features. And yeah, there's a lot of Xbox news as well, plus a delicious brown liquor. All that and more. Coming up next with Windows Weekly Stay here.

Speaker 2 (00:00:25):
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:35):
This is Windows Weekly with Richard Campbell and Paul Thurrott. Episode 840, recorded Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023, Buried in Corn. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by ACI Learning. Keep your team's IT skills current visit go dot aci learning.com/twit. Twit listeners will receive at least 20% off or as much as 65% off an IT Pro enterprise solution plan discount based on size of team. And when you fill out their form, you'll get a proper quote tailored to your needs. It's who? Hello? Microsoft Ians you, dozers and winners. It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thra is here from thra.com. Back in the homeland, the Heart of America. Macun, pa. I don't even know where I live anymore. <Laugh>. That's just, we can you get good tacos in Mackenzie. That's the thing I care most about. No, no. <Laugh> You cannot, you can get good hotdogs in my country. Oh, I know. Mad dogs baby. Mad dogs. Mm-Hmm.

Richard Campbell (00:01:43):
Excellent train spotting too. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:01:45):
Yes. Yes. All the time. Day and night. That's Mr. Richard Campbell. He is the host of run his radio.net rocks. He is joining us from the great Pacific Northwest in Coquit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, British Columbia. And together they will talk about the latest Microsoft news, of which there is some. It's nice. Microsoft. Well, August is often kind of the, well, I guess it is the doldrums. Yeah. The dss. It's not gonna be this year for news. Activision blizzards happening. Yeah. There's all kinds of stuff going

Richard Campbell (00:02:21):
On. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, it's funny, I I I was on red on campus on Monday. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I was talking to a few different teams. You said, you know how we normally go kind of quiet Yeah. In you know, August, guess not this year. There's a bunch of teams going flat out for stuff. They wanted

Leo Laporte (00:02:38):
Ai. Is that the AI thing going

Richard Campbell (00:02:41):
That I it's certainly part of it. And, but it's, it's the number of different teams that are impacted now. They're impacted is interesting. So I, and the campus is not recovered from the pandemic. Like, it's still pretty quiet. There are pockets of activity here and there. There's certain popular buildings that are fun to hang out in, but there's lots of people working like the responsiveness on email, which normally is difficult this time of year. Yeah. Now everybody's still working. Isn't

Leo Laporte (00:03:06):
That interesting? Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:03:08):
Yeah. It's a strange year. Yeah. No choice

Leo Laporte (00:03:10):
About it. Yeah. and also, you know, in national news, so normally reporters would be what, at the, at the beach trying to find the lifestyle. Yeah. Martha's Vineyard lifestyle stories. <Laugh>, but no, not this, not this August. Yeah. let's let's start with Windows. It's for the best. It is for the best. Because you guys and Idle Hands are the devil's workshop.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:34):
Yeah. Well, I don't know. Everyone's so excited about the summer because the kids are off and everything. But the reality is you wanna be, if you wanna go somewhere, you wanna go some other time of year, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:03:45):
Oh, yeah. Stay home. Yeah. It's crazy, crazy out there. Yep. can we, can we talk about, I don't know, what do you wanna talk about <laugh>? What, what, what's on your mind? You guys had a great conversation, which we will by the way produce and put on our twit plus feed for the club members. Okay. <laugh> before the show about Sun and about GitHub and about all sorts of interesting stuff. That was great. I

Paul Thurrott (00:04:11):
Said this in the Discord chat and just for the benefit of others. I mean, I, this is just Richard and I,

Leo Laporte (00:04:19):
This is like, what

Richard Campbell (00:04:19):
Is what we're Nothing unusual. Yeah. Well, you were talking,

Paul Thurrott (00:04:21):
I

Leo Laporte (00:04:21):
Went, I thought it was interesting you were talking about how GitHub these days is, is a path to employment at Microsoft. But I think it's true in general. You know, there, the advice that you give every programmer is make sure you do a lot of commits and get stars on your GitHub page. 'cause, 'cause Companies are looking there. That's where they look. 'cause That's real work. Go ahead.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:43):
No, go ahead.

Richard Campbell (00:04:45):
It's not the only mechanism by far, but it's certainly a simple one that says, if there's no better way to show your competent programmer to write code. Yeah. Right. And have it out there where this, the, you know, it's, we don't think about it this way, but the original name of GitHub of GitHub, like its catchphrase was social coding. Right. That it is a kind of social media for developers and where we communicate about software and we support each other in software. And the fact that Laura, you know, there's a plus and minus to this. There's certainly been a theme on Net Rocks for a long time now of what happens when the tech giants show up to this space. Right. And you go from independent folks who are working on their side projects in GitHub to Microsoft FTEs working 40 hours a week all through GitHub. Like all of C is now developed through GitHub. Exactly. All of.net. Yeah. It's got pluses and minuses. Like it has consequences.

Leo Laporte (00:05:37):
But even Google, so Google has this new web integrity initiative, which is really code for nasty. I'm glad I

Paul Thurrott (00:05:44):
Wasn't drinking when you said that,

Leo Laporte (00:05:46):
<Laugh>. Yes. But, but where did they post the manifesto? You know, where did the theses get hammered onto The door was on GitHub, you know. Yeah, right. It has become the public square for coders.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:58):
Really? I can't wait for Eli Musk to buy buy it and call y or something. Oh God. Please. You know, God,

Leo Laporte (00:06:03):
Heaven fend. Did you see he just did a deal with Las Vegas for 48 more miles of holes, if you've ever been, if you get a chance, have you guys done this? Taken the boring companies? It goes from it's only one hotel to the convention center. Yeah. And a 45 mile bumpy ride on a, in a Tesla <laugh> three to a car.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:27):
<Laugh>. It's

Leo Laporte (00:06:28):
The most absurd. He like reinvented subways, but did it worse. Sure. and now Vegas is giving him

Paul Thurrott (00:06:38):
Well, Tex answered a PT Barnum, it continues to amuse, but I the, I don't, I, we didn't wanna talk about this, but I, I would say the issue with Twitter, as I will continue to call it, screw you Elon. Yeah. Is that, aside from all the obvious stuff billions of dollars in values down the tube, blah, blah, blah, whatever, is, there's an essential service element to Twitter that people don't talk about enough. Where governments of all sizes relied on it to communicate with citizens in times of crisis or whatever. So they should

Leo Laporte (00:07:07):
Use GitHub. That's what I'm saying. That'ss how we

Paul Thurrott (00:07:10):
Got into this. And that's that idea. So I, yeah, a lot of them are starting to like, I don't think Mastodon has gotten the No, no, the mainstream kind of volume needed

Leo Laporte (00:07:19):
For that. There's no incumbent, there's no new, there's no new replacement,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:22):
Unfortunately. Yeah. But this is a, this is a big loss and it's

Leo Laporte (00:07:25):
I agree.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:26):
It's a problem. So, yeah. I

Leo Laporte (00:07:29):
May, but like I said, maybe GitHub could be the, the new town Square

Paul Thurrott (00:07:33):
That's actually not, it's very interesting.

Leo Laporte (00:07:35):
Well, LinkedIn, you know what link another Microsoft property, LinkedIn is definitely a winner from this. Yeah. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:07:41):
So the, the thing about Twitter though was it was sort of like changing channels on a tv. Like, I, I, I, people could just get to it and see it. News articles could link to it. And, you know, I, I think these other, I guess you could do this on GitHub. I don't know about LinkedIn, but they need a, there has to be like a a, an open public

Leo Laporte (00:07:59):
Feed. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:00):
That doesn't require you to sign in and,

Leo Laporte (00:08:02):
Right. Well, Elon ironically turned that off briefly. I think it's back on. But you had to be logged in to see

Paul Thurrott (00:08:08):
Oh, he's just genius. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:08:09):
What a genius. No genius. Yeah. Glances, that's the meta choices is very much like the old Twitter. It's kind of jolly and fun. Lots of brands, lots of news organizations signed up in the, in the, you know, early flurry. And now they say about half those people have just stopped using

Paul Thurrott (00:08:25):
It. Well, of course. I mean, it's, you know, what's the opposite of inertia? That's what it has. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:08:31):
Entropy, whatever.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:32):
The entropy. Yeah. I dunno. It's not, it's worse than that. It's like a, like a kind of go backwards. I don't know. Yeah. We'll see, I think you know, Facebook meta, whatever has the the volume, you know, to make it successful, but, well, I,

Richard Campbell (00:08:46):
I think what threads plugged into was it's 2023, nobody got time to build another social graph. Right. Like, you're done. Right. And so, migrating an existing social craft is smart. Like, we'll at least look at that even

Leo Laporte (00:09:01):
If we're not happy experience. Yeah. They boost up Instagram and and of course they launched with a hundred million strong

Paul Thurrott (00:09:07):
Instagram. They makes me crazy. I I spend 90% of my time on Instagram telling it why I don't wanna see this ad. But you post or the suggestion

Leo Laporte (00:09:14):
Prolifically Paul on,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:16):
On Instagram. I know, because I like the idea of Instagram. I've always used it for photography. It wasn't, not, it's vaguely know. It's funny. People know me from the tech world, and so people will see some picture and they'll say, oh, what's that computer? Or, right. What phone are you using? And it's like, that's not really the point. Right. <laugh>, you know, <laugh>. But that's okay. I mean, it's just, I, I dunno, it serves a purpose. It's, but I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:09:41):
Yeah. All I get, I don't, maybe it's me. Maybe like Instagram knows me mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but all I get on Instagram is ads. Like, like this. Yeah, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:49):
Yeah. Old men

Leo Laporte (00:09:49):
Doing share exercises. It

Paul Thurrott (00:09:51):
Doesn't, there was a, there was a, there was a wonderful moment in time when Instagram actually would show me ads that I cared about. Yeah. Not <laugh>. It, it lasted about six months. Yeah. and it was fun, you know, and now it's, yeah. It's right. All

Richard Campbell (00:10:04):
I see are Then you switch to brave and broke everything.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:07):
Exactly. All I see on Instagram now are basketball shorts. You know, like a short videos. I don't, well,

Leo Laporte (00:10:13):
This is an, this is actually an interesting question. We were talking about this yesterday on security now mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's giving you ads that based on your demographic, it thinks you'd be interested in. Yeah. Same with me. I get a lot of erectile dysfunction ads. Sure. And I think that that's, Steve was asking,

Paul Thurrott (00:10:31):
It's, it's stupid.

Leo Laporte (00:10:31):
Do stupid, do advertisers think that targeted advertising works and all the evidence? Is it it's not.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:37):
Right. All the evidence is It does not. Yeah. It's not, I just got away. This little mint has been sex life altering. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:10:43):
Yeah. I get that one too.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:45):
There you go. So we're in the same demographic. Yeah. Excellent.

Leo Laporte (00:10:47):
Over 50. Give me these stuff. And chair exercises.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:53):
I mean, I don't even know to say this. I <laugh> this is, they were,

Leo Laporte (00:10:57):
For a while, it was once every 10 images. Now it's, I think every third image.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:01):
Oh, no, it's awful.

Leo Laporte (00:11:02):
It's, it's everywhere. It's, yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:04):
I, you have to force it to see your feed, you know? And I don't like that.

Richard Campbell (00:11:09):
Yeah. That, that whole mechanism. And, and you also lay this on TikTok as well, which is TikTok D doesn't care what your feed is. It's gonna show you stuff and watch what you do. And bit by bit, all the other social media have migrated works.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:21):
Yeah. Which is appreciate, I appreciate the honesty in that, you know, that works. You know what it's,

Leo Laporte (00:11:25):
And it wasn't overwhelming with that. And you're

Richard Campbell (00:11:26):
Not qualified for an opinion.

Leo Laporte (00:11:27):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:11:30):
Yeah. You're a product. Be quiet.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:32):
Shut up. Product

Leo Laporte (00:11:33):
Up

Paul Thurrott (00:11:33):
And shut up and be a product. Shut up and consume.

Leo Laporte (00:11:37):
Yeah. I get this one too. This is some by the way, somewhere, it says not a Doctor <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:43):
Yeah. The one you were showing earlier. I see all the time. It's the the Fat

Leo Laporte (00:11:47):
Men t-shirts for

Paul Thurrott (00:11:48):
Fat Men shirt shirts for fat men. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. How do they know? Is it, is it a is it, like, is there some science involved where like, from different angles? I actually look thinner is like,

Leo Laporte (00:11:57):
Well, I think that's, they don't understand how creepy this feels. Yeah. Yeah. It's a real turnoff anyway. Clearly we have reached the third stage of fication and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. And almost all of these networks. And

Paul Thurrott (00:12:15):
So it's the phase where you're laying in the coffin and you're not quite dead, but you see them lowering the cover and you're like, wait, I'm still here. And it's too late.

Richard Campbell (00:12:22):
It's, well, you know, you're stuck between do I fight back keeping the lid open? Or it's like, ah, I was tired. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (00:12:27):
My analogy is, you know, when you ring out a washcloth, you get some of the water out. But if you really want to get the money out of people, you gotta fold it over twice and just, you know, really squeeze. And then you're gonna get every penny out of your consumers. And I feel like I'm the washcloth getting,

Richard Campbell (00:12:45):
Are yous, are you sufficiently rung

Leo Laporte (00:12:47):
Out yet? Yes. I'm highly ran. Funny. Anyway, let's talk about a happier subject. Let's talk about Microsoft. The

Richard Campbell (00:12:54):
Canary Build. That's happy subject.

Leo Laporte (00:12:55):
Yeah. The Canary Build. There you go.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:58):
Whoa. Hey, speaking of things that have too much advertising and them Windows

Leo Laporte (00:13:02):
<Laugh>. Oh, it's, but see, it's not nearly man as bad. And so I think maybe that's one of the side effects of all of this. You know, Philip k Dick had a great short story about ads on every surface, and it's really become that way. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And one of the, one of the side effects of that is even something like Windows, which it should be ad free, a little bit of ads. See? And they can say, well, it's not as bad little bit, it's not as bad as Instagram.

Richard Campbell (00:13:25):
Yeah. this is what I fear I might, from the enterprise versions of Windows, is that the enterprise stuff really doesn't have much of this at all. The Ltsc as I'm hanging up this infrastructure.

Leo Laporte (00:13:35):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:13:36):
You know, I'm afraid I'm gonna get exposed to all of it while I haven't been.

Leo Laporte (00:13:39):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:40):
Yeah. I, yeah, we, okay. I mean, this wasn't on the topic list, but Yeah. So a long time request of people is, could I just pay for Enterprise and not get this crap? Right. And or pay something, you know, pay as part of Microsoft 365, pay as a separate subscription, you know invent a name that doesn't make it, it look like you're deifying it, when in fact you are. You know, somebody asked me actually Friday about what happened to the Signature PC program and, and how does that relate to Surface and all that kind of stuff. And I, you know, the irony of Signature pc, which was a program Microsoft had back in the windows, start the Windows seven days, I guess was that they wanted to show PC makers not to put crap on the computers. So they would literally take boxes of computers, open 'em up, put a clean image on them that had no crap wear, sell 'em to customers, and then say, see, like, this works. And now Microsoft doesn't do that anymore, and they put their own crap in Windows. So it's kind of come full circle <laugh>. And it's, it's, you know, it's sad. It's just, it's crazy. Like how much the world has changed. But, you know, that's, that's the market.

Richard Campbell (00:14:49):
Maybe we need a bot that every time it sh you show an ad, it automatically generates a letter to that company saying, I'll never buy your products. 'cause You

Paul Thurrott (00:14:56):
Advertised here. Yeah. I, yeah. Just

Richard Campbell (00:14:58):
Make it easy to constantly

Paul Thurrott (00:15:00):
Just

Richard Campbell (00:15:01):
Remind them, you're, you're not wasting my time and money.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:04):
Yeah. I, I <laugh> there's so much like, oh God, we could, we, we could just do an entire show on this certification thing. I spent I bet, two years reaching out to Google every day in the morning about why their newsfeed, which is supposed to be tech. 'cause That's what I'm looking at, is some story about menopause or women's relation, or some nonsense, whatever it is. And like, this is not a tech story. Anyone would know this. I, I How do we trust your ai if you don't? So anyway, nothing. It's not gotten better. Look what Microsoft. So now what I've

Leo Laporte (00:15:35):
Microsoft look what Microsoft recommended for me today. This is talk about link bait. This was in my little you know, notification.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:42):
The lower left.

Leo Laporte (00:15:42):
Oh god damn. Does Yellowstone return tonight? By the way, if you, if you click this? 'cause I had to, oh, it's, it's back. It says, no, it's not.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:49):
No, it's not <laugh>. That's the terrible, that's the article.

Leo Laporte (00:15:52):
Yeah, yeah. No, actually, no, it's not

Paul Thurrott (00:15:56):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:15:58):
Okay. You, thank you Microsoft for recommending that. Very useful. Oh, and by the way, it opened an edge.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:04):
Yeah. As someone who has to write headlines, I, I react very viscerally to bad headlines. And I mean, I make fun of 'em on Twitter every day. I can't stand, it's, it's such

Leo Laporte (00:16:15):
Blatant link bait. It's like,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:16):
Yeah. It's just, I can't stand it. And, and the worst example these days is the weather stuff, you know? Oh, 150 million people in the pa you the path of whatever the name.

Leo Laporte (00:16:25):
Yeah. I love that one. I love that one. It's hot. It's a hundred million people under heat

Paul Thurrott (00:16:30):
Warnings. We have all, we've all just been treated to a month of stories about how freaking hot it is in Phoenix. And lemme tell you something about Phoenix. It's always, it's actually always this hot. Always. It's always this hot. Yes. When we lived there in 19 93, 20 years ago, right. 20 years ago, 30 years ago that first summer we had 70 something days in a row. Over a hundred degrees. Yeah. My sister flew out. The plane could not land because the tar, it was 126 degrees outside, and the tarmac was only rated to 124 or whatever it was literally a semi soft liquid had to wait for that to happen. Ooh. She landed, told me she brought a sweater because she heard it was cold in the desert at night. And I said, yes, it may get down to 111 this evening. <Laugh>, I don't think you're gonna need the sweater, honey. But <laugh>, your friends used to live there in

Leo Laporte (00:17:17):
College. I fell for a woman who lived in Phoenix. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I briefly moved to Phoenix F for one week, because after the week of 113 degree days, I said, yeah, I am. I, I love here. And no amount of love. I you're great, but not

Paul Thurrott (00:17:33):
Here. I twice, I lived in Phoenix for about six years, twice. Walked out to the mailbox to get my mail in sandals and burned my feet through the sandals because the ground was so hot. Holy cow. Yeah. And holy

Leo Laporte (00:17:46):
Cow.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:47):
I also, it's a weird play. I was just, I remember, I just remember this the other day. We walked out of a supermarket, literally the first week we were there, and there was, there were machines outside. So it was a Coke machine, Pepsi machine, and the water machine. And the water machine was only 25 cents. I was like, oh my God, that's obviously what I want. So I put the 25 cents in the machine and a gallon of water gushed out all over the ground, because you're supposed to walk up to it with a, put a bottle under it. You need dope bottle <laugh>. It wasn't, I wasn't getting a glass of water. I was getting a gallon of water for a quarter though. It was a deal. Did you put your under, is this the surface of Mars? What is this <laugh>? You know? Anyway, we have, we have friends who still live there, and we were talking with them recently and they said, you know what?

(00:18:25):
Yeah, it's okay. So it's 110 every year, whatever it's built for that. It's, I mean, they know it's, it's 108 every day forever. It's been like that for 35 years. Yeah. It, it's, the difference between 108 and 110 is no two settings on an air dryer and a hot and a hair dryer. Really? Yeah. I mean, it just doesn't matter. It's hot. We get it too hot. I, I loved all the stories about tourists who went to Death Valley to experience the hottest temperature and then died. Those are, I was gonna say yeah, worked. The name, the name is Literal <laugh>. It's, yeah. It's, it's not a Death Valley. Yes. Oh. So it's not just a catchy name. It's <laugh>. It's, it's a dry heat. Yeah. Should we, we're gonna California, should we walk through Death Valley or Fun Valley? <Laugh> <laugh>, which yeah, let's try the death one.

(00:19:08):
That sounds, you know. Okay. I'm gonna try one more time. Canary. Yeah. Sorry. <laugh>. What? Wait, what? Canary. Alright, so last week Microsoft released a new bill to the Canary channel of the Windows Insider program that brought in features from the dev channel. So no big deal. This is all the stuff we know is coming the modernized file, explorer, home experience, you know, passkey support, never combined mode of the task or whatever. So the theory with the Canary channels that this will be Windows 12, so it kind of makes sense that any features that go to Windows 11 will eventually show up in, in Windows 12 too, right? Mm-Hmm. It's the next version. Windows 11. Mm-Hmm. So, nothing, nothing new there. More interesting is right before the show started, Microsoft dropped new builds for the beta channel and the dev channel. Now, I, this the thing we kind of get it, have to get into our brain right now, because for most of the time, this is not the case.

(00:20:06):
But right now, the beta channel actually equates to a very specific version of Windows. The next version, which is Windows 1123 H two, which is also moment four, right? This enablement package that's gonna turn 22 H two into the next version of Windows. Cool. but that means that as they add features to this channel, we're not, not 100%, but we're pretty sure these are gonna be features of 23 H two. So some of the features they added in this version, for example, are Windows copilot, right? Which was, I think we previously tested the dev channel only, if I'm not mistaken dev Drive which they announced a bill this past year. Some interesting narrator, Excel integration some new voice access text authoring features, which I sort of assumed were always the point, which is you're using your voice not just to input text, but to prompt for corrections and so forth, right?

(00:20:59):
Which is kind of cool. There's a password, exper password list experience for Windows of Love for Business. There's a new Screencast experience. People probably don't even know Windows has this, but if you have a wifi equipped computer, you can do something that's like Chromecast today that actually uses Miracast. It's Miracast. Yeah. Yeah. They're improving that experience. The presence stuff I've talked about in the past where right now, third party PC makers are the ones that have to add this functionality to the computers. But the idea is that Windows will now sense when you are approaching and leaving a computer and will do things with the screen and also enable Windows Hello, instantly, right? If you're using the camera experience, which is really cool. So if you're interested in 23 H two it, it might be worth looking at the posts that came out today about this new beta channel build, because this is, this is it, like, this is, this is gonna be the next version of Windows. Yeah.

(00:21:56):
Yeah. I just hope there's not too many ads <laugh>. Oh boy. So in my <laugh> in my notes, I mentioned lots more. And if you scroll down to the end of this post, I don't, I don't know if this is in the post Laurent put on my site, but there is, lemme scroll the way down. It's a big, big post. There is some interesting stuff coming to the start menu. I think it was moment three that added that little bit of advertising for OneDrive. That's off of the profile menu in the, in the start menu that nobody really thinks about. Actually, I'm seeing it right now. So when I bring up the start menu, there's a little orange kind of highlight on my profile picture. And when I click that, I wasn't sure exactly what it was gonna say, but I knew it was gonna be about OneDrive.

(00:22:37):
It says, back up your files, folders, like documents and pictures to be saved to the cloud to help keep them safe. And then I can start the backup there. I'd recommend that nobody ever does this. Not that nobody ever uses this feature necessarily, but that you don't make this decision here. I don't understand <laugh>, this is like a basic kind of usage decision. I, as I, I just had this conversation with Stephanie before we flew home from Mexico. She was saying, I gotta download some stuff to a computer so I can use it offline. And I said, if using your computer correctly, everything you need will be offline because you're syncing it with OneDrive, perhaps. And that's one of those ways you can work. So I guess I'll be having a class on that soon here at the home if anyone wants to join in mm-hmm.

(00:23:17):
<Laugh>, but <laugh>. Anyway Microsoft wants to have people, you know, back up their important folders. So, documents, pictures videos. No, no, no documents. Oh, desktop dust, desktop documents and pictures at the least. Some people are also seeing the additional folders, music and videos. That's one of those weird things. Anyways, presume all those things could just be synced to OneDrive. Like, why make people think about this? Yeah. You know what that's happening. I, and I say that not knowing it's happening, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative> based on the trajectory that we've seen so far. It's kind of like Microsoft accounts like why even give people the option not to use a Microsoft account? And they're like, they'll, they'll get there. And now they're getting there. Yeah. And what you just said, I think falls into the same category.

Richard Campbell (00:24:01):
As long as they make signing up a Microsoft accounts, account's not so painful. You know, we've had them for so long now, try making a new one.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:10):
I, I, well, <laugh>, I make a new one for the book every year. Yeah. And it's always amusing to me.

Richard Campbell (00:24:15):
It's got, there were worse periods. It's gotten better. Yeah. But it's still not great.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:21):
Oh, and also, I, I can't can I, no, I can't do this from here, but speaking of advertising and Windows, sign up for a new Microsoft account, never use it. And then look at it in six months, you will have 1100 messages in your email inbox, all from Microsoft, right. Promoting Xbox and OneDrive and Microsoft 365 and everything else they offer for a consumer. It's like, it's, yeah,

Richard Campbell (00:24:39):
I flagged those all as spam, but it never seems to work.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:42):
Yep. Yep. <Laugh>. Well, right. So that's, I don't know how we we're gonna off weird tangents today, but anyway, so to your point, I'm sorry. So I, I was saying in the start menu, there's already this sort of start of like advertising we're actually doing well. So that the thing I just meant, like advertising OneDrive or whatever not, right. There's also Crap ware, which is its own form of advertising, right? Yeah. When you see icons for, you know, WhatsApp and Spotify and whatever else, like that's, those are all sponsored, right? So they get nice prominent placement in the start menu. If you click on it, it's not actually installed, it will stall at that point. And you get to use it and, you know, I don't know what the kickback there is, but 1 cent per click or something mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, who knows. But there's actually, there's gonna be some interesting kind of hover and right click experience for files in the start menu, which I think is kind of cool. It's Microsoft, so they're not doing it universally, but like, for example, with Word documents that you see in the recommended section when you, most over there will be thumbnails, <laugh>.

(00:25:39):
Wow. Interesting. Kind of Apple-like, yeah. Yeah. And then there's also a right click, or there will becoming a right click option. If you right click a file, you'll be able to share it from there. And that uses the system-wide share functionality that I believe I am the only user of in the entire planet Earth <laugh>. But I use it a lot. 'cause I share files with myself when I'm taking

Richard Campbell (00:25:58):
Screenshots. I mean, I cannot get used to the Windows 11 context menus. The whole I icons for your, for your most common tasks, which are so small, you can't find them. And

Paul Thurrott (00:26:08):
So when discernible, you don't know what they are.

Richard Campbell (00:26:10):
Yeah. And you stare at the, and so you start to list wondering where the thing you want to do is. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:15):
When, when Microsoft was working on the metro design language for Window, well, it started earlier than that, but, but they started promoting it with Windows phone series seven, seven series. They likened it to, the reason they called it Metro is because this is the type of iconic, I can never say this word, iconographic. I, iconography, iconography.

Richard Campbell (00:26:34):
Iconography, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:35):
Iconography that you see in the world in transit stations, like trains, airports, whatever. And the idea is people in Europe especially, this is all kind of Europe centric, but it's not just Europe, but this is Asia everywhere in the world. But you show up in a one of these stations, and you could be from any country speaking, any language mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, we don't all have that common language experience, but anyone could look at the icons and know exactly where to go. They don't have to be able to read the words. It's a good idea. But it only works when we understand what those things are. And to your point, you know, when you right click on the on an item, actually, you don't just right click on the desktop and you get those weird icons at the top. Those are the most commonly needed choices. And they're not called out with words. Right. And what

Richard Campbell (00:27:19):
Make the most commonly needed choices. Yeah. The hardest to discern. And

Paul Thurrott (00:27:23):
Yeah. And it's also, and, and I don't wanna get into the weirdness of navigation like that. A pop-up menu is a vertical menu of choices, but this thing is a horizontal toolbar of sorts of choices. And it forces you to kind of do this thing, which is not, I think, how most people think when they're right clicking or something, but whatever, Microsoft. So anyway, yes, there's gonna be a lot of there's gonna be a lot more popups. They're gonna be doing popups for for apps, which Microsoft already does. You, everyone probably, I assume by this point, has seen the popup over the search bar that says, Hey, did you know we got binging stuff going on? Be sure to click here. You're gonna see that for the Microsoft 365 app, which is what used to be the office app. And,

Richard Campbell (00:28:08):
You know, it occurs to me that the right thing for them to do is to, Hey, you know, the, in theory, it's like all of the regular stuff has an icon, and then the stuff is still, the, the other stuff is still in the list. And you're used to looking for the list. They should hide the list behind an icon too.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:23):
They, so you, you

Richard Campbell (00:28:23):
List clicking is just a string of icons. Yeah. And the last icon is the one for the other. Right. Now they've made other easier to find than the things That's

Paul Thurrott (00:28:31):
Right. Right. In other words, they know what people click on the most. They, instead of putting those up front and center and forcing power users who need weirder things to click once to get to a new menu, they put that stuff up front, I guess, in some bid to get people to see and use it. I don't know. Yeah. No, it's it's too bad.

Richard Campbell (00:28:51):
It's bad.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:52):
Yeah, it's bad. So anyway, there's that. So we got, like I said new dev and beta channel bills today, beta channel maps to 23 H two. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. There you go. Excellent. So that's the Yeah. <Laugh> such as

Richard Campbell (00:29:08):
It is No, I, I mean, I, I really do feel like there's progress being made and all these different angles. Like it feels more like there's a win 12 out there than there ever been before for a long time. This is just speculation from my crazy friend from Pennsylvania. Right. But now it's starting to look like there might actually be a thing there <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:29:24):
So, okay. Yes, I agree. And about your crazy friend especially. But yeah. I, and, and realistically speaking, it's August. So this thing that is 23 H two will be finalized this month. It has to be here. We are probably not far away from what essentially is the fi the final feature feature set, but also what is essentially the final code with bug fixes and whatever to come. So Yeah.

Richard Campbell (00:29:50):
And then security patches after that, like you, but to your point, 23 HD should be the last rev of what? Of 11, essentially? I think so.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:57):
Except for, from a a hardware software compatibility standpoint. Right? Yeah. They're not changing the underlying code. So and not, you know, for all the complaints I have about Microsoft and Windows, and especially these days, like that's good. That's good. Like, this is well, where you want that they're

Richard Campbell (00:30:14):
Getting a, i i as, as annoying as this year has been around Yeah. Understanding what they're doing. I'm almost starting to feel a groove.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:24):
Yes. Maybe

Richard Campbell (00:30:24):
They've gotten there.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:25):
So we talked about that white paper, remember two, three weeks ago, whenever that was, that they put out about updating. And it wasn't a statement of strategy and intent. It was literally an explanation for what we've been doing as Microsoft for the past eight years. Right. And making up as we went along mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So now that, now that Windows 10, are they

Richard Campbell (00:30:44):
Supposed to write it out a hundred times? Is that what that actually

Paul Thurrott (00:30:46):
Was? <Laugh>? I think. I don't, it was, it was a version 1.0. You saw that. You, you called that out. Yeah. It was like version 1.0 really? You could be kidding me. But, but okay. I mean, that's fine. And I feel, and we've talked endlessly this year, this calendar year, about how much the, the way that Windows is updated has changed. I mean, it, it almost every month there's like a, a, a, a difference, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that seems to have settled down finally. I mean, that knows they'll change it again, but whatever. So as we kind of enter into this 23 H two thing Yeah. I, I, like you said, you said it, I think you said like they, they've reached a groove of some kind. I agree. I I feel like they, after a lot of experimentation and not really knowing where they were gonna land,

Richard Campbell (00:31:28):
Well, I still think there's a VP who finally called the ball. It's like, you three teams get in the room here. Sure. Now write down what you did. Tell the world. Right. Go forth and sin no more. And the sin has ended.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:43):
Yeah. I mean, I, again,

Richard Campbell (00:31:45):
I I'm not gonna say they're repented.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:47):
No, no, no. <Laugh>. And we're never gonna get a an apology or an explanation, but

Richard Campbell (00:31:51):
No, I think you got it. D one.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:54):
Yeah. V one is, yeah. It's like you imagine they were like rock paper scissoring who was gonna have to write it. And it was like, Bob was like, oh, come on. You know, like, I gotta write it again. No,

Richard Campbell (00:32:05):
No. This is very much a breakfast club moment. You're the smartest one. You do,

Paul Thurrott (00:32:09):
You seem to understand this. You, you talk about this like it makes sense. I think you should write it. Yeah. So anyway, good for them. Yeah. So look forward to 23 H two, kind of finalizing in some way this month. This that will definitely happen. Well, <laugh>, I should, sorry, I should never be so definitive. That will almost certainly happen. Let's,

Richard Campbell (00:32:29):
Yeah. And that's something else happens, in which case, you,

Paul Thurrott (00:32:31):
Unless something else happens

Richard Campbell (00:32:32):
That happens, in which case you'll complain bitterly about

Paul Thurrott (00:32:34):
It. <Laugh> Exactly. Thought,

Richard Campbell (00:32:35):
Well, there was a plan here, boys <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:38):
And then we got two interesting CPU quarterly stories, well, I was gonna say quarterly revenue stories mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but Yes. From C p U makers. Right. And both of them are interestingly similar. And so it was actually profitable again after not being profitable for two quarters in a row. In fact, I think it was the quarter before they had their worst downfall in corporate history, if I remember correctly. That

Richard Campbell (00:33:04):
An Intel recession, is that what we should have called

Paul Thurrott (00:33:05):
An Intel recession? <Laugh> An intel recession is kind of like a, the opposite of a real recession, I think. But but anyway, so Intel stronger than expected. Earnings still major drops, like client computing business was down 12% year over year, but also better than expected. And they started talking about the future. And, and not just in vague ways. Like, you know, Intel sees over 300 PC designs coming on the 13th gen course chip set this year, blah, blah, blah, whatever AI is coming. We know that they're building, they don't call it this, but they're building an M P U into their chip sets. Yes. We've known that for a long time. But they indicated as part of their earnings report that the PC market is gonna begin rebounding in the second half of this calendar year. And you know, again, no, no actual sign of it.

(00:33:53):
But when Intel says that, I mean, they, they would know, they see the orders coming in it seems like PC makers and we're also buying again mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So that's kind of interesting. On the flip side, we have a m d, same thing. Smaller company, but same issues. Their profit actually fell 94%. I don't worry too much about the profit stuff, but their revenues fell 18% year over year. And sort of like Microsoft, you know a M D has some number of businesses, business units, I think it's five. Their client business, which is PCs, is the smallest now. It used to be, I think 50% of the company, if I'm not mistaken. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and the revenues there declined 54% year over year to under a billion dollars. Wow. I, I'd have to go look and see the last time that was under a billion. But you know, weaker PC market inventory correction on the PC supply chain, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Yeah. where Intel said that they had 300 PC designs coming this calendar year, A M D said they have over 100 and they sp but they specified commercial PCs, which I take to mean business PCs, but

Richard Campbell (00:35:01):
Okay. I

Paul Thurrott (00:35:02):
Suppose it might just mean Right. Consumer. All right. That's what I'm, it seems like it's probably a hundred total. I

Richard Campbell (00:35:07):
Wonder how much of the, the CHIPS Act impacts this too, because I think Wall Street was reacting strongly than building new fabs and not building them in the southeast Asia.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:19):
Yes. Actually, we should get back to that one second. 'cause I skipped something about Intel, unfortunately. Anyway, in Intel or a M D also said they expect growth in a second half a year. In fact, they specified double digit growth to both their data center and client segments, which is the PC market. So that's good. Yeah. So I skipped over this other thing. I didn't write about this myself, but I saw a, someone pointed me to a story that was in Tom's hardware today, that Intel has filed a permit application outlining its plans for expanding its Gordon Moore Park campus in Oregon. To the tune of how much, where's the figure <inaudible>? Is there a figure? I thought there was a figure, maybe there's, I thought it was the

Leo Laporte (00:35:57):
Next billion, $1 million.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:59):
Yeah. I'm not really. Okay. Actually, I guess there isn't a figure. I thought there was a billion something figure. It's probably

Leo Laporte (00:36:03):
In the billions. Of course.

Paul Thurrott (00:36:05):
It's probably, it's

Richard Campbell (00:36:06):
In the billions.

Leo Laporte (00:36:06):
Yeah. You know, it's also telling, you didn't mention this, but Arm now is, is looking at doing a I P O. So clearly there's a feeling that that

Paul Thurrott (00:36:16):
Silicon is

Leo Laporte (00:36:16):
Back, baby.

Paul Thurrott (00:36:18):
So Leo would know this and, and possibly Richard too. Sorry, <laugh>, but they were going to i p o before remember.

Leo Laporte (00:36:24):
Well, and they were trying to find a buyer SoftBank.

Paul Thurrott (00:36:27):
Yeah. And, but after that, you know, one of the things they thought about doing was, we'll, just I p o. Right? And actually the market was so bad. They re they Yeah. Went back on that. So the fact that they're talking about that again, you're right. Suggests yeah. This stuff is coming back.

Richard Campbell (00:36:40):
Availability of investment, essentially. You know, the crazy part is this, you and I would argue that the raise in interest rates has now make it more feasible for IPOs to be successful.

Paul Thurrott (00:36:49):
That's that.

Richard Campbell (00:36:50):
'Cause Once upon a time. Yeah. The, one of the reasons that you did an initial money was cheap at IPO in the first place, was to raise money mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to do something big. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But when you were borrowing money at virtually nothing, you could borrow billions. Like, there's nothing you couldn't borrow.

Leo Laporte (00:37:03):
Even companies like Apple and Microsoft that had plenty of cash were borrowing because That's right. It was so cheap.

Richard Campbell (00:37:09):
Exactly. Even if they would just turn around and buy stock back with it. Yeah. Right. Like really? That's because money was crazy cheap. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:37:15):
Yeah. Arm. So money's

Richard Campbell (00:37:16):
Not quite so cheap. A bunch of these mechanisms are gonna start working again.

Leo Laporte (00:37:19):
Corn to Bloomberg arm is looking at a 60 to $70 billion valuation in September on Nasdaq for an i p o.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:28):
Part of that evaluation, no doubt is tied to Qualcomm paying them extra royalties because they want a PC business so bad that they tried to end run around Arm and Arm did not like that.

Leo Laporte (00:37:38):
Well, Apple's still an arm licensee. I mean, the M one is an arm design.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:42):
I was, I was joking. That's that's a tiny portion of

Leo Laporte (00:37:45):
Yeah, well, no, it's all part of it. Right. But mostly, I mean, what we're seeing is that Sun, sun wants to desperately get outta this business. So maybe it isn't a bellwether. Maybe, maybe he knows something we don't know.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:58):
<Laugh> Well, I arm is interesting. I I I'm trying to think if there's anything quite like them analogous in the PC world or whatever, Nvidia, I don't think there is Nvidia

Leo Laporte (00:38:09):
As a, as a design

Paul Thurrott (00:38:11):
File, right? Yeah. But in other words, we don't have a, so back at like 20 years ago-ish, we used to have this notion of like, ODMs, these companies that would create reference designs for laptops and computers, and then companies like Dell and HP and whoever else would buy them and just kind of use them. And every once in a while you would actually see an example of a computer that was exactly the same form factor, the same exact design. So like Compact. And HP at one point had a tiny 12 inch laptop that they were literally identical. Yep. and that's, you know, kinda like a Mercury, a Ford kind of a situation. It

Leo Laporte (00:38:41):
Still kinda happens. There's a company in China called Cleo that if you look at it, you can, when you go to Cleo, they have a configurator and you can, you can, but it's all white labeled. So nobody buys Cleo laptops. They make 'em, and then you configure 'em to be kind of more

Paul Thurrott (00:38:58):
Unique and, and you're like, look, look, I got an HP Yeah. <Laugh> Exactly. In China. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:39:03):
That's right. And Quantum, quantum makes the laptops for Apple are used to, anyway. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:39:06):
The, the O D M market, such as it was 20 years ago-ish, it was probably about exactly 20 years ago, of course, those companies all became PC makers. Like ASUS is an example of one of those companies. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they just started making computers. And I kind of wonder with arm playing a, a sort of O D M role in that space because they make reference designs of chips and they companies build off of those things, right? There are different generations. One of the things that Qualcomm did get caught up in, I think, aside from not trying to pay for the license, is that ARM has started making PC reference designs. And I'm sure part of the deal there is Arm wants Qualcomm to build their PC stuff off of that, but Qualcomm bought a company called Dubia, and I don't think they want to do it.

Leo Laporte (00:39:47):
Maybe we could get a knock out of arm. That would be nice.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:50):
And an arm, an arm

Richard Campbell (00:39:51):
Knuck. I'd buy an arm Knuck, I

Paul Thurrott (00:39:52):
Would Oh, a silent Knuck.

Leo Laporte (00:39:53):
I'm very Well, isn't that kind of what Uck, the what? Microsoft's development?

Richard Campbell (00:39:58):
Yeah, the Vesta. Yeah. Basically that's, that's kind of basic. That's what it was. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:40:03):
A little bigger than a

Paul Thurrott (00:40:04):
Yeah. Okay.

Richard Campbell (00:40:06):
Small form factor one way or the other. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:40:08):
Yep. Funny. Anyway. Did I

Paul Thurrott (00:40:11):
Take us down

Leo Laporte (00:40:12):
A rat hole? I'm sorry. I apologize. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:40:14):
No. We're, listen, the show's been nothing but rat holes. That was a minor rat hole at best. I <laugh> honestly, it was kind of on track. The, I guess the point of the Intel a m d stuff is that the, the, the two biggest PC makers in the world are not doing great right now, but both of them said the second half this year is great chip

Richard Campbell (00:40:30):
Makers. Yeah. Yeah. But we, we, we've seen this ripple through, right. All of the PC makers announced their bad news. Yeah. All of the, you know, now you've got the tech giants, those, their bad news while still making billions mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and now you've put the, the, the the hardware makers, the c p makers doing it as well. Yeah. Yeah. I think what you're finally seeing is the reports that, that show the post pandemic effect, right. The, the overbuying undery supply chain stuff has all passed through now been reported out, and everybody's expecting a closer to functional global economy in the second half of this year.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:05):
Yeah. And the trick going forward, and this is true of all things, but I I look at this from so many perspectives, you know, PC sales every year or whatever, is what this looks like compared to pre pandemic levels. In other words, if we, if we take out a, a two and a half year chunk and to say, yeah, and this doesn't happen, <laugh>, you know, what does the trajectory look like? Because in some cases I think you're gonna see things return to kind of a normal trajectory, but it's gonna be interesting the markets that don't. Yeah. Like what, what do we leave behind because of this shift? I don't, I don't know. I don't have any,

Richard Campbell (00:41:39):
Well, the, and the big one for me, and I'm, you see this <inaudible> everywhere, is who's adapting to the fact that interest rates are up? Like, who's over leveraged in their lending, you know? Yeah. Who's able to restructure their financing? That's what's killing companies right now. And even banks, like the Silicon Valley Bank really comes down to you refuse to refinance based on new interest rates, and you waited a year until you couldn't.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:03):
Right. That and other Mismanagements <laugh> can lead

Richard Campbell (00:42:07):
To you in the second half.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:09):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't put this in the notes, but I, I, I saw a report in computer World that I kind of pulled aside in pocket to read later mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I probably would've written about this on the flight home from Mexico, but a a C m A thing happened that we'll talk about later in the show, and I spent most of the flight writing about that. But it was, the headline was windows is a declining ecosystem. And I thought to myself, you know, okay, fair enough. I mean, it is, you know, in some ways, but I'm gonna read this thing. I'm gonna give it this time, you know, and, and <laugh>, it's what saying it was all Leo is a dying organism. It's a Yeah, exactly. Right.

Richard Campbell (00:42:47):
Aren't we all?

Paul Thurrott (00:42:47):
Yeah. But yeah, we're all, we're all on the wrong side of the bell curve, but, you know, that's so trivial as to be a useless observation. Yeah. But I wanted to see, I, I'm like, okay, what does this mean? Like, and so the more you look into the story, first of all, it's based on a conversation with a single guy. He used to run a company called jf. JF is an M D M A mobile device management for company that for Max, for Apple Services, only Apple devices. <Laugh>, of course, he doesn't <laugh>. So what he's saying is like, you know, we had 4,000 customers and 3 million devices like 10 years ago or whatever, and now we have 72,000 customers and more than 30 million devices, apple is clearly gonna win the enterprise. Oh, please. And I was like, ah, wow. Oh, I don't, geez, that's a, that's not a great data point.

(00:43:25):
Wow. <laugh>. So I looked it up. And the, the comparable product on the Microsoft side is something called Intune. Yes. unlike j f Intune is not biased against which products it can manage. It manages everything. So Windows, PCs, Mac, Linux Android, iOS, I, iPad, whatever, it doesn't matter. It manages everything. Microsoft does not supply usage numbers for MD or for Intune, but they do supply information about a business called Enterprise. Where is it? Enterprise something, something mobility. Sorry. Which for some reason, we, we talked about this, we did the earnings every quarter. They call out the exact number of seats they have. And so some, some percentage of Intune usage goes through Enterprise Mobility. Enterprise Mobility is a set of services built on top of Microsoft 65, 365, that involves mo other things Intune, right? So it's not just Intune, but some percentage of Intune is inside this business.

(00:44:20):
That business has 256 million seats. It's been growing at double digit percentages every quarter, forever, and ever and ever. It's never not grown that fast. It is eight and a half times the size of Jamf <laugh>. Hmm. It's not the only m d M thing in the world, but if it was, Jamf would have 11% market, or sorry, 11.7% usage share compared to enterprise mobility, which again, is not all of of Intune. So I see a future where Microsoft actually dominates the enterprise. I know, I know, I know Nous, I know. Crazy talk, Mrs. Honestly. But here, but here's the thing. I I, I do think there's an interesting case to be made. We're, we're here for, I'm here for Windows. Like Windows is my thing, right? But imagine a world in which Windows continues to decline. Imagine a world in which other device types become more popular over time.

(00:45:10):
What does this world look like for Microsoft? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this is a pretty good world. Yeah. It's a lot like the world where Xbox is no longer hardware, because this allows Microsoft to play to its strength, which is cloud-based services and service, a bigger audience overall than when they dominated the market with this one product that had kind of a limited size to it compared to what we have today. So if Jamf is right and Apple devices, I think it's gonna be Apple devices and Google devices and Samsung devices and Google services and whatever else. But if Apple is just sort of wins on the hardware side somehow, if the Mac, which has been stuck at seven point whatever percent usage market share, sorry, for the past several years, despite Apple, Silicon suddenly surges double digits, takes over m windows, whatever, I think Microsoft still wins this world because Microsoft's goal is to get everyone on a subscription service where you get paid every month, where it gets paid every month. And instead of you buying an on-prem server one time upfront cost, whatever, you service it yourself, you know, and you pay, you pay for that, of course. But Microsoft doesn't really get too much out of that. They've kind of moved the model here and in this world that this man invented this science fiction and wishful fee thinking, I think Microsoft wins this world too. So, I mean, maybe he's right. <Laugh>, he, you know, even

Leo Laporte (00:46:27):
To, in his defense, he's not saying Microsoft is doomed. He's just saying it's not gonna be a Windows centric world, I don't think in 10 years. I don't think

Paul Thurrott (00:46:34):
That necessarily. Yeah. But he also says Apple isn't gonna win the enterprise that I dont think, dude, Apple's not gonna ever

Leo Laporte (00:46:39):
Win the enterprise. But it's, you know, you could, yeah. It's

Paul Thurrott (00:46:43):
Not a window centric world now mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. That's right. That's right.

Leo Laporte (00:46:47):
It's Ella's been saying since his tenure began,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:51):
Right? Yeah. And, and the, the simple math on this is when Microsoft ruled the world, and, and when Windows rule the world mm-hmm. When Windows was personal computing, you could go back and look at a Microsoft quarterly earning statement, annual earning statement, you could see how much they made, how much profit it was, how much, you know, whatever. And you could compare it to just the more personal computing business at Microsoft today, which I keep telling people is the smallest business at Microsoft. Right. And I guarantee you that it, that today's more personal computing business isn't just LA larger isn't just bigger by revenue. It is almost exponentially bigger that the, the numbers that Microsoft reported in the late nineties and early two thousands today look so infinitesimally smallest to be humorous. And I, you know, like the entire, there was a, I think it was a quarter I just saw I can't remember the exact year, but, or very early two thousands, 5 billion in revenues for the whole company, and it was a blockbuster record setting quarter, you know? Yep. More personal computing last quarter by itself was 13 billion all by itself, and it was the smallest part of Microsoft. So yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:52):
I'm, I'm very tempted to bring to you mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the little rant that Steve Gibson did yesterday. Okay. He, he had just read David Meyer Hansen's blog. Remember that? 37 Signals in Hey, their whole company. Yeah. Spent millions on the cloud, and he said, cloud's ever over? It's stupid. I'm gonna run everything on prem. I love it. And Steve used this as I think a, a clarion call to everybody should move off the cloud <laugh>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and go on prem did really? Yeah. Well, he said, look, I run he runs a colo which is another kind of antiquated idea. He has

Paul Thurrott (00:48:29):
A colo,

Leo Laporte (00:48:30):
He has his own

Paul Thurrott (00:48:31):
Hardware. I used Use a Colo in 1996 in San Jose. He's got

Leo Laporte (00:48:34):
His own hardware in level threes three but he owns the hardware. So I said, well, that's kind of the cloud. He said, no, no, I, that's not a cloud.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:42):
No, unlike the cloud, it depreciates <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:48:46):
But he says, whatcha talking about? He says, why should you rent computer capability when you can own it, I guess,

Paul Thurrott (00:48:55):
Because you don't need it all the time.

Leo Laporte (00:48:57):
That's kind of was the point I made. I said, well, look at ai, you know, you need a lot of capability to generate the model. He said, yes, exactly. But then you can run the model locally.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:08):
Wow. This is I

Leo Laporte (00:49:09):
Love that. It's some old fashioned, he's a old fashioned that's Yeah. Yeah. This is,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:13):
And really there's, you know, there's

Leo Laporte (00:49:15):
Cloud, the hardware

Paul Thurrott (00:49:17):
And that product. Yeah. And there's cloud, the

Leo Laporte (00:49:18):
Architecture.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:20):
This is, this is coming up because of ai, AI has forced us to, for the millionth time, do this evaluation that we always do when something big happens where we debate the pros and the cons. And if you get caught up in the cons, you stop seeing the pros. Right? Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:49:37):
That's a good point. It's, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:38):
It's the, it's, it's like you know, when cars arrived and like all of a sudden people aren't using horses for transportation or whatever. And of course, like the horse guys are like, horses are always gonna be around. You guys are stupid. Like, you know well,

Leo Laporte (00:49:51):
They weren't wrong. You could still ride a horse <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:54):
You still can, not in the town,

Leo Laporte (00:49:56):
But <laugh>. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:58):
The hitching, you know what I'm saying? Hard to find a hitching

Leo Laporte (00:49:59):
Post these days. Not in Petaluma. A for some reason, people have kept their hitching posts, so they're, I love it all over

Paul Thurrott (00:50:05):
Town.

Leo Laporte (00:50:06):
It's very quaint.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:08):
Deadwood, which is a fantastic TV show that dead ended too soon, had a great scene where they're standing out on the porch and the Bo swear engine says, what, what's going on over there? And they're putting in the, the, the polls for the telegraph. Right? And this is not in the same episode, but there's a, there's an exchange where, you know, I don't understand what is this? And it's basically about instant communication that when you get a message, you can reply right back. And he said, why would I wanna reply right back? I need time to formulate my response. <Laugh>, you know, <laugh>. And it, like, he didn't understand the point of it. Right. but of course, that type of thing is transformative. And this is what technology does. You know, it makes things that were impossible before possible. It makes areas, technology that brought Phoenix Water, which we're now running out of mm-hmm. Is what made it possible to put a gigantic city in a place where there was no water. That's technology. That's what it does. Now, in that case, we might argue that was bad, but

Leo Laporte (00:51:01):
Has consequences.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:03):
Yes. But the goal, like, I, I think I just said this last week, is it, it, the net sum of this should be that the, the positives outweigh the negatives. And that's the, that's what pro, that's how you define progress <laugh>, right? That, and that's what technology is at its heart, is about driving progress, however you wanna define it, you know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:51:22):
And you like your your idea of, if you focus too much on the negative, you'll miss the positive. I think I'm maybe guilty of that with ai.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:31):
Well, I'm, I, I made a career outta it, focusing on the negative. So I'm really good at it. <Laugh> you know, I, so I sort of recognize it, you know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:51:39):
Negativity for fun and profit.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:40):
Yeah, exactly. Well, you love, well,

Leo Laporte (00:51:42):
John c Deak was the poster, the poster boy for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. His default was, eh, that's no good. Nobody wants that. Right. <laugh>. And 99% of the time he was right, because that's mm-hmm. <Affirmative> often. Right. But he missed, like, he hated the mouse when it came out. No one wants to use an analogy.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:59):
That's amazing. It's a classic. I take

Leo Laporte (00:52:00):
Your hand off the keyboard. That's crazy. That's crazy. And there are still people, by the way, who feel that way. I understand that. Mm-Hmm.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:05):
<Affirmative>, I very much try to keep my hands on the keyboard that I bought the first months. I could, the first second it was available. It's, I think it's here to say it's still necessary. I don't think

Leo Laporte (00:52:13):
Anymore. Don't. Maybe, maybe.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:15):
Yep. Anyway I don't forgot what we were talking about there, but <laugh>, it's, you know, I, we

Leo Laporte (00:52:22):
Were talking about Steve's rant. I don't want to bring it back. Oh, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:52:24):
Yeah, yeah. On the

Leo Laporte (00:52:25):
Cloud. I,

Paul Thurrott (00:52:27):
Yeah, I don't look people who are on tech podcasts don't have to always be futurists, and they don't always have to be Luddites. You know, we can, you, you as intelligent people or whoever, as intelligent people can evaluate things and make their own decisions. And maybe some things fall on one side of the corner or the other. I mean, I, you'd also, you don't wanna be too starry-eyed about

Leo Laporte (00:52:48):
It. No. And I would say, I would defending Steve that his attitude is because remember, he's focused on security. Tried and true is always Yes. Almost always gonna be more secure.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:58):
Hey this, here's a story from 2023. Google is thinking about doing an, an air gap for some of their engineers. I saw that. <Laugh>, I mean, what are we talking about as an experiment in 19? Yeah. In 1996, Microsoft got some military certification for Windows NT for security that only applied when the computer was not connected to anything in the room by itself, with a lock on the door. It's secure. Like

Leo Laporte (00:53:23):
Now it

Paul Thurrott (00:53:23):
Is like, so yeah, it's secure now. I mean, you know, in case it in cement, it will be even more secure.

Leo Laporte (00:53:28):
They are, I think that the, the when I read the article, they're gonna be allowed, the intranet, they're gonna be allowed access to the Google, the Google network, just not to the outside world, because a lot, but that, you know what? Google's intranet is so vast and all the codes is

Paul Thurrott (00:53:42):
There, is there porn on the intranet? I mean, you gotta make sure it's at least a, a fact of the

Leo Laporte (00:53:47):
Internet might be. I was thinking of making my employees all use HB 35 calculators just as an experiment. Let's see how that, nice. Let's see how

Paul Thurrott (00:53:54):
That works. Sure. And they're, they're, they're all gonna like, put 'em upside down. So it says boo or something. The human, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:54:02):
The human mind, ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case. They're gonna

Paul Thurrott (00:54:05):
Find the toilet every time.

Leo Laporte (00:54:07):
Simple, simple things every time. Alright, let's take a little break. You did the a m D story, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So let's take a little break. 'cause I see the next segment is gonna be about Microsoft 365. Yeah. And this might be a very good time to talk about our fine sponsor. They sponsor the studios a c i learning and IT Pro merged. And that's really been an amazing journey for both and is giving you as a customer so many more options. I'll give you an example. Managed service providers, MSPs. Now Russell, who's I see in our parking lot, he's here. He is, he's always here on lunch day. Actually he's here every Wednesday. It is just a coincidence, I'm sure. But he runs a team of techs, right? Those techs need to be up to date on all of the latest technology.

(00:55:00):
The best way to do it. A c i learning for a number of reasons. Of course, they're getting the content, they're getting the learning, but they're also enjoying it. They love it. They're entertained while they train. It's short format content, 7,200 hours now to choose from. That's a big jump. Plus it's on demand, which means m s P teams can train when it's convenient for them, and they're short enough. You could do it during a lunch break or you know, on the way home. You can listen in the car, that kind of thing. You already know the name it Pro I know now part of a c i learning it. Pros, expanded capabilities. Provide more support for M S P teams by keeping their courses updated in all areas of it. That includes, yes, Microsoft Cloud, A W Ss CompTIA, and so much more.

(00:55:49):
When Proud M S P leaders said, quote, I had 110 engineers in the field. Not unusual, right? We had dozens of IT pro accounts last year alone, they passed over 40 certs. That's a great feeling. It means your teams are engaged, they're learning, they're getting better all the time. One of the reasons we know, one of the ways we know that a c i learning's content is good is it's completion rate. It's, it's 50% higher than the industry average because people enjoy the videos and they're engaging and informative that, you know, it's, it's a perfect, it's the sweet spot. Msps also love the Practice Labs where they can test an experiment before deploying new apps or updates without compromising the live system. They love those practice labs because you know, it's a great place to try stuff with no cost, no risk, right?

(00:56:43):
You know, in fact, if <laugh>, if you set up a Windows server, windows clients, and you can do it in an HTML five browser and something goes wrong, you close the tab. That's what I do. And poof, it's gone. Also, the MSPs love the practice tests. Take the exam before you take the real thing. It's a great way to prepare. A C i Learning has a new tool, they call it Insights. This is very handy. It identifies your team's weaknesses, which gives management and, and frankly, team members the assessments. They need to decide what to do in their professional development. You know, what courses to take, what areas to work on. You can identify skills gaps, empower your team, personalize your training, all to protect and improve your business. A c i learning it keeps your business from risking redundancy by consistently offering the most up-to-date certifications and courses available.

(00:57:37):
Provides you with a personal account manager to make sure you aren't wasting anyone's time. Your account manager works with you to ensure your team only focuses on the skills that matter to your organization. So you can leave redundant training behind a c i Learning also holds I s o certification. So, you know, you're receiving the world class training your team deserves. Keep your team's IT skills current visit, go dot aci learning.com/twit. Twit listeners will receive at least 20% off and, and, and as much as 65% off. It all depends on how big your team is on the IT Pro enterprise solution Plan. Just fill out the form. You're gonna get a quote that's, that's, you know, right for you. So you'll know how much you're gonna save ahead of time. Go dot aci learning.com/twitter, of course, for individuals. But for teams too, nothing beats ACI Learning. Go dot aci learning.com/twitter. We thank you so much for supporting Windows Weekly. Alright, gentlemen, let us move to Microsoft 365. What do you say? You know,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:38):
I'll tell you what I say, what you say. This is, this is the golden age of antitrust, and I love it, <laugh>. Oh, you don't, no, you don't. I can't get enough of antitrust.

Leo Laporte (00:58:45):
Don't lie. You hate Le Ka. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:46):
I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. I love everything about it. I, there's a, is a topic that's gonna come up twice today, which is a definition of market, right? So one of the tools that antitrust regulators have when they try to charge, in this case, like a big type company with abusing a monopoly or whatever it might be, is that they can narrowly or broadly define a market as they wish to prove their point, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So for example, you could say Apple has a 100% monopoly on app distribution on iOS. It's true, right? There's the market pretty much to which Apple would say, yeah, but hold on a second. We're only some percentage with broader market for smartphones. And we're not even the biggest maker of smartphones. Samsung is, so, what the heck? Not the

Richard Campbell (00:59:31):
Large style operating system if you actually combine all the Androids, like,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:36):
Yep. Yeah. So anyway, the, the, the, the definition of a market is kind of what you want it to be. It's like lying with data. You can, you can define it however you want. So obviously the company involved is gonna try to define, in this case, define a market broadly to make themselves look smaller. And the antitrust regulator will try to define it narrowly to make it look like you're, you're more dominant than you are. So, with that idea in mind, <laugh> the EU announced this past, I think it was last Friday, probably late last week, that they are indeed gonna go forward with a formal investigation into Microsoft bundling teams, into with office, actually in Microsoft 365, right? In, in the subscription offerings. They actually don't care about standalone versions of office. If you go to a retail store like it's the 1990s, and you buy a copy of office, nobody cares about that.

(01:00:27):
Can you do that? I don't even think you do that. I, I don't know, <laugh>, it's like, I've heard people do it. I, I don't know. I think the most common way to buy a standalone version of office today, honestly, is like some online discount thing, where you can get like a a lifetime access to Office 2021 for just 39 or $49, or whatever the nonsense is, right? You can only sell it one computer. It's, it's never updated. Like the Microsoft 365 versions of the app, it's not really a great deal. But some people, you know, Steve Gibson's in this conversation kind of still prefer that it's, I'm not, you know, I'm not dumping on it. It's, it's not what I would do, but you mean

Richard Campbell (01:01:00):
My immediate, dang it.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:02):
<Laugh>. Yeah. So three years ago, slack, right before they were purchased by Salesforce, literally less than six months before, I believe issued a complaint to the European Commission asking them to investigate Microsoft for this exact business practice. I've written an extensive kind of rebuttal <laugh> to this whole thing, right? But the, the idea here is that the easy, the, the European Commission is not saying that Microsoft's guilty, that will come later if it happens right now. They are going to assess whether Microsoft may have breached EU competition rules in their words, by tying or bundling teams with its populous suites for office, well, office 365 and Microsoft 365, right? So this again, I think comes down to this kind of definition of market. Like what's the market here?

Richard Campbell (01:01:53):
Yeah. Why, why is a bundle is a bundle? Why is teams just not part of the bundle? Like everything else? Like, how are you discriminating these two things?

Paul Thurrott (01:02:00):
Yeah. So the way

Richard Campbell (01:02:02):
The words in

Paul Thurrott (01:02:02):
There, yeah, no. So, well, a monopoly and antitrust is all about size, right? So if you are the dominant player in a market, if you have a monopoly or are otherwise dominant, 'cause again, everything in mm-hmm. <Affirmative> antitrust is pretty squishy. You are beholden to different rules than an up and coming co a small company, you know? So in like this market, slack was a small player. It still has a minority market share compared to teams, or should say usage share, right? The number of seats or whatever it is out in the world. Yeah. there were lots of parallels between this case and the Microsoft antitrust stuff for the late nineties, early two thousands, right? Bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, right? Same idea. We're trying to get into this new market. We're bundling to get ahead, we're leveraging this dominant product that we have.

(01:02:48):
It sounds very similar, but man, does this thing fall apart when you really look at it? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and it, and, and I hope the EU looks at it to this degree. So among the problems with this case is that Teams is not actually a brand new thing that Microsoft created, because it heard of something called Slack. Although that certainly was an inspiration for them to go in a certain direction with the functionality teams, is the success. They did same by Slack at one point. They did. Which by the way, also speaks to, that's a thing that monopolies try to do, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they tried to buy Netscape too, by the way mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And when that failed, they went to the bundling thing. So that's actually a parallel, and that's an important one to remember, but Microsoft had solutions dating back over 20 something years that were this product link, Skype for Business, et cetera, et cetera.

(01:03:32):
Like the original name of teams, if I'm not mistaken, I think was Skype teams. I think that was the original internal name for this product, right? And to your point, when Microsoft tried to, or was talking about buying Slack, I think for about $8 billion, bill Gates was one of the big voices that said, are you crazy? You have everything in place that you need to beat this thing right now to make it. You don't, yeah. You already have it. The other thing is that Slack and Microsoft 365 commercial largely target different segments of the market. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that is most of the revenues and most of the companies that Microsoft attracts are what I would call Fortune 500 or mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Enterprise type businesses. Where Slack gets into that part of the market. I don't have a good name for this, but it's new in small businesses.

(01:04:17):
It's the people who are younger, who came up with a world where they were using Google services at school. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and probably Google devices, frankly, like Chromebooks and things like that. And they are doing this kind of ad hoc thing where they're like, I'm gonna use Notion because it's free or cheap. I'm gonna use Slack because it's free or cheap, depending on, you know, the size of your company. Yep. They don't look at big infrastructure like Microsoft has, right? Yeah. So you could make this argument. Yeah. I mean, they, they bundle teams with Microsoft 365, no doubt about it. They bundled a bunch of things into Microsoft 365 that never garnered a response from anybody, or a complaint from anybody, but whatever. They already had something that wasn't called Teams. That was teams before. Right? So they've always had a communication collaboration slice.

(01:04:59):
Yeah. In there way before Slack ever existed. You could argue, I mean, Slack's big innovation, I'm not saying they invented it, but the thing that they rode to success on was that younger people prefer more immediate forms of communication collaboration. Right. Whereas older people prefer email <laugh>. Right? So one of the, the central disconnects between a, a company like that would be a Microsoft shop and a company that might be a Slack shop, is, is that kind of age experience difference. You know? And when you get as old as me, you don't want to hear from anybody at all in any form. Yeah, exactly. Right. Start enough notifications, right? That's the <laugh> Yeah. That's the third level. That's the next level marketing. Hey, what, so right. Why did my phone make a sound? I, I thought I turned that all off.

(01:05:45):
<Laugh>. so one of the, I think the big successes of teams aside from the, oh, I, and I should say one of the other big differences between teams and Slack is that, yeah, the first version of teams was very much like Slack. A sort of a chat focused collaboration tool that built off the stuff they already had, but very, very quickly this thing added so much more functionality. Yeah. It's a full platform. It runs apps. It's a completely different kind of thing. I actually think, and this is where the definition of market comes in, I don't think these things compete in the same market. I really don't, I don't think they compete with each other. The, the pace of innovation, the amount of innovation that Microsoft demonstrated, and I, and by the way, before the pandemic, like the pandemic was absolute, I've described it this way so many times, Steven Rose and I had this conversation mm-hmm.

(01:06:29):
<Affirmative> about, and, and I mean in 2020, that the pandemic would and did act as an accelerant for industry trends that were already happening mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and so in Microsoft's case, they did a tremendous job of bringing in this new type of solution, the Slack type of solution into their productivity suite that could integrate with the way people were already doing things. And so you could have these organizations full of younger and older people, and we could collaborate on the same projects in the way that we preferred <laugh>. It's, it's kind of a, it, it's honestly a form of in, of innovation of its own kind of, of its own kind. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the thing is, the, the EU in this case called out Covid, they actually made a point that Covid played a big role in this. The reason being that teams usage exploded during Covid and Slack usage did not, not to the same degree.

(01:07:25):
So the numbers I found was in March, 2020. Now, right at the start of the March, 2020 is when you were trying to get home from my house in the beginning Yep. Beginning of the lockdowns. Yep. There were 44 million teams users. So that's 2017. That's in six years, they got to 44 million users. Right. The world lockdown in 2020. Since then, and, and this is three years, Microsoft's added another 256 million users. So there's over 300 million users of this thing. Right. I got, I lemme see if I can find the figure for Slack. Da, where is it? I can't find it's, but I have a figure. So that's, it's a small fra Yeah. Yeah. no. Here, it's because different pe no, it's, it's somewhere between 30 and 40 million. Okay. Daily active users.

(01:08:16):
It went up. But here's the thing. Covid was that thing that lifted a lot of boats and the tech fear, it is fascinating to me that some companies benefited greatly. Zoom, for example, huge. And some didn't. And Slack is one of the ones that didn't. And so when you look at, like, what happened with Slack, first of all, they were purchased by Salesforce before the pandemic. So they have all the resources of a ginormous company. Yeah. Just like a o l purchased Netscape kind of undercutting the we can't compete thing. Well, if you can't compete, then why were you worth the whatever billion you were worth to Salesforce? And it was multiple billions, by the way, whatever it was. Did that Yeah. AOL bought Nightscape in that's the wrong here. And it doesn't matter for $4.2 billion during the Microsoft trial Salesforce bought Slack in 2020 for $28 billion. That is over three times the amount Microsoft was gonna pay for it three years earlier. Yeah. It grew value enormously. Yeah. All of these things I, I

Richard Campbell (01:09:15):
See. Tell me where you're sad, you know? Yeah. That man hurt you. I mean, that being said, the you should do the investigation. I just suspect the investigation should come back and say, tough luck on our cup.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:27):
This is, yes. In the same way, look the Microsoft Activision Blizzard deal was a huge, is is a huge thing. It needs regulatory oversight. It, it, every one of those agencies needed to do what they did. And

Richard Campbell (01:09:37):
Even the 10 year thing is not a bad idea. Like, declare that you really are, you're going to address this.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:43):
Honestly, that's what's wrong. Platform problem. That's what's gonna push it through. Yeah. So, on the but this is same thing I, I, I feel strongly this needs to be looked at mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And when I looked at it, I came up with all that nonsense. I dispute it. So I I, I sort of looked at all the points they were making, the questions they were asking, and it's probably more in the article. It's a huge article, but you know, there's, there's a lot of kind of back and forth. But I mean, the, ultimately, I think, you know, did Microsoft create teams because of Slack? Yes. Yep. There's no, there's nothing wrong with

Richard Campbell (01:10:15):
Well, and also that their customers wanted a collaborative tool. Yes. Right? Yep. I mean, that's why they were considering buying it in the first place. We need a collaborative tool.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:22):
The central harm to Slack's business, I guess, is that Microsoft, by not charging extra for teams, right. Is giving companies an incentive not to spend extra on Slack, because we already get this thing for free. So even if it's not as good, it, you know, that's, there's an anti-competitive element to that. And that's fair. Right. The problem is Teams is much better than Slack, <laugh>. It's much bigger than Slack, Lisa. It's, it's, it is now it's more akin to the type of solution that managed enterprises would want. Yes. Because they, and it

Richard Campbell (01:10:51):
Fits, they are reacting to their customers.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:53):
That's right. It fits in nicely with the entire ecosystem. That is Microsoft 365 mm-hmm. <Affirmative> it is, like I said, an apps platform. Now. It is, you know, it does, it's, it's a, you know, a floor wax and a,

Richard Campbell (01:11:05):
And toing. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:07):
It really is. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:11:08):
And it, like, we've done shows on Dev for Slack, like your ability to add functionality to it, to customize it the way you want to, like Yeah. You, it, it happens to also be a chat tool. Yes. But that's not its principle

Paul Thurrott (01:11:23):
Thing. Right. We saw this thing that people liked in Slack, and we said, that's interesting. We have this whole suite of collaboration and communication experiences, which at this time we're called Skype for Business. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we could add that feature. This is the thing I always said. You remember Call of Duty, right. The biggest shooter for, you know, 15 years running or whatever, and then all of a sudden these Battle Royale games showed up. Yeah. Pub G and then the big one, Fortnite. Fortnite just destroyed the market. Yes.

Richard Campbell (01:11:50):
And, and they weren't the first, you

Paul Thurrott (01:11:51):
Know, bug first. No, they weren't the first, but for some reason that one landed, right? Yeah. And so I, from, as the per, from the perspective of a Call of Duty user, which in this case is the Microsoft 365 side of this fence, I said, and I said, and they did. I said, what is this? Why is this even big? This isn't a game, it's a feature. Hmm. This is a, is a type of game they could easily add to Call of Duty and have it be one of the 117 types of games you can play within Call of Duty. By the way, that's exactly what they did. It's called War Zone. Right. They give it away for free, just like Microsoft does with standalone teams. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if you want it. And it's part of this bigger thing called Call of Duty that you pay for.

(01:12:29):
So here's this giant thing that's expensive, that has warzone as a feature competing sort of against this thing called Fortnite, which is free, which is like Slack, a small thing, you know? And I'm sorry, like, so is did Activision Blizzard le leverage some dominance they have in the first person shoe to market and blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes. But they haven't beaten Fortnite, <laugh>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> interestingly, right? Yeah. warzone is hugely successful. I don't know the numbers, but it, it, there's a millions and millions of people play this thing every single day. Yeah. But it has not defeated Fortnite. No. So what's the difference between Fortnite and Slack, aside from the fact Fortnite is free, it's that, that those people continue innovating. And this is the thing where at Netscape dropped the ball in the browser wars that people don't like to talk about. 'cause It's all about abuse. But I feel like Slack dropped the ball too, when, when Microsoft made the teams more than Slack. Slack kept Slack, slack. And Yeah, that's one way to compete. I'm sure some people like that small little one thing. Does one thing type solution add? Well now,

Richard Campbell (01:13:27):
Now that they've had six years inside of Salesforce, but they really have no excuse. You're on a platform Yeah. That actually needed all that capability too.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:36):
Right? Right. So, yeah. I mean Microsoft is dominant in the space. I agree with that. They did bundle the product. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I, I think that the differences in the markets that they actually target is, I would

Richard Campbell (01:13:49):
Argue their customers expect the product suite to keep growing. That's why they pay every

Paul Thurrott (01:13:52):
Month. Exactly. Exactly. That's the central promise of it. We just talked about standalone office, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, why would anyone do this? One of the things you don't get with standalone office is all the functional updates. Yes. Microsoft literally updates all parts of Office and Office 365 and Microsoft 365 every single month. Yeah. When you buy standalone office almost weekly. Yeah. It's crazy. That's the promise of it. That's why people pay that fee. Yeah. And or it's one of the reasons, right? Slack does, I know Slack, I'm sure Slack improves. I don't mean it like that, but Slack is this. It's a really narrow product that does one specific thing. And only small companies would ever gravitate towards something like that, because you don't pick stuff out of the air and choose this for this, this for this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and kind of hope they all integrate. When you're a big company, you just don't Yeah. That, that's not of interest. That's

Richard Campbell (01:14:42):
Yeah. The cu the, the, the customers want one throat to

Paul Thurrott (01:14:46):
Choke. Right. <laugh>, they want There you go. To

Richard Campbell (01:14:48):
Come from one place.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:50):
That's a good way to put it. <Laugh>. Yeah. That's funny. Anyway, so that, that's happening, I, like Richard said, I, I, I don't know that I would, I expect, but I think the proper outcome of this investigation is to say that yes, Microsoft exhibited some of the expected behaviors of a dominant you know, party in a business mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, however slack made mistakes that the, the definition of the market that these two products compete in, which I think is the most important, but frankly is completely different. Yeah. you know, I, I, you know, I'm trying to think of it. You can write words with Notepad, or you can write words with Microsoft Word. Do they compete with each other? I know they're both Microsoft products, you know, not exactly, but, you know, slack is to notepad as teams is to Word. Of course. It's a much more powerful, complete package with more features, and it does a lot more. Yeah. So that's my take. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:15:45):
It's gonna be a failure to compete. You don't, and you don't get to use anti-competitive because you

Paul Thurrott (01:15:49):
Failed to compete. Yeah. I, I, right. I, I failing to even try to compete. I mm-hmm. <Affirmative> might be their biggest sin, you know? 'cause I, I feel like that's what happened. But yeah, that's my take on it. I use, by the way, use Slack and Teams every single day. Yep. I, I like Slack for what it is Sure. Is. I wish I didn't have. Is it a mistake

Leo Laporte (01:16:09):
To say that it's only Slack or only Sony and the Activision thing? I mean, could is a mistake? It also be, well, I'm, I'm saying could it also be the anti competitiveness stifles any new competi as well? I mean, it's, I mean, aren't they supposed to be looking at that too? I mean, it's not

Paul Thurrott (01:16:28):
So you know, <laugh>, so, so many things come to mind. I'll just use one example. One, one quickie, one Microsoft got into trouble with antitrust, not, sorry, with antivirus vendors when they started talking about, and then implementing an antivirus and anti-malware and windows. Right. Got it. Microsoft through its inaction, created a, a huge business for companies like Norton and Symantec and whatever else to come out with. Products that fixed a problem that Microsoft created in Windows. They went back and forth on this for a while. I suspect there was, there was some financial something, something that happened. But the basic deal was that these companies, by the way, still exist. There's almost no reason if what you need is spyware, malware, you know, virus, whatever. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> control and Windows to buy a product. So why do they still exist?

(01:17:17):
What's the, there's, how could they be there? We already have this in Windows. It's because they expanded into other areas of security and privacy. And they offer a bunch of other functionality. I don't personally need or want that kind of thing. I don't necessarily, I don't, I don't like the overhead of it, but to some people, a lot of people, these businesses are doing pretty good. It's a, that's an option for you, right? You buy McAfee, whatever. It's, well, that's the platform model. And I think mm-hmm. If you said Microsoft was a pure platform play and didn't No, no, but let me end user products, they would do even better. They would be even more stimulating to the economy. I guess what I'm saying is, when Microsoft turned teams into a platform, Slack's response was to do nothing. Right? Right. So, like, if you just wanna keep doing the old thing, right? Where your entire product is a feature of something that Microsoft gives away for free as part of Microsoft 365. I mean, God love you. There is a market out there for Slack, and, and that market is that small business thing. I was talking about startups, new businesses, small businesses.

Richard Campbell (01:18:15):
Yeah. Well, I, I work with folks that are using the Google Suite for stuff, and they use Slack as their, as their chat and collab too.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:23):
Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Right? And that's what I'm saying. You're, you're kind of picking it. If, if Google were to add a Slack like feature to G or a workspace G Suite to G Suite, yeah. Probably have actually, but whatever slack could not sue them because Slack Google does not have a dominant position in this market, in any market you choose to define there. Right. they're a minority player in pro in office productivity or whatever. So it's stupid for Google not to, I wouldn't be surprised to discover they already have. I actually don't know. But I don't care either. I'm not, I I would never use that, but yes. But workspace is a great example of the same type of business that mm-hmm. <Affirmative> small businesses are looking at. They're like, I'm gonna use these guys for email and documents.

(01:19:05):
Maybe I'm gonna use these guys. Like, I might use Notion for note taking. I'm going to take Slack for collaboration. And I've, I've collected these ad hoc tools that probably have some integration pieces for sure. But they're not as deeply integrated as that one one neck to choke. 'cause You put the, you know, the Microsoft full stack mm-hmm. <Affirmative> infrastructure, you know, essential service sitting there on the backend. I think these are different things. Those businesses are gonna grow up, by the way. And they may, it's possible that the app service providers that they use will grow with them. Right. I, I

Richard Campbell (01:19:40):
Really questioned what's the remedy at this point, too? Slack has already been acquired. You're really gonna, you

Paul Thurrott (01:19:46):
Know, so charge

Richard Campbell (01:19:47):
Microsoft to find, like, this is, where does this

Paul Thurrott (01:19:49):
Go? Yeah. So this is based I, I don't wanna call it rumors. 'cause I, I believe it was the Financial Times that reported this two, three months ago. But apparently when this was in sort of a, a smaller not unofficial, but not the formal informal investigation, we'll, we'll call it, you know, they alerted Microsoft and Microsoft said, what's the problem? And they said, well, you know, you're doing this thing to Slack. I mean, we'll, we'll, okay, what do you want us to do? And they were like, raise the cost of office when you include teams. So Microsoft was like, all right. And they sent in a submission where they said, we will raise it by this much. And the EU said, that's not enough. And that's why this formal investigation started because they couldn't reach a settlement ahead of time. They just couldn't reach. It was a number. And so, if that's true, and I think it is, you know, based on the source that means that it was, it basically came down to a per user monthly dollar amount, essentially. Right. the difference in price between a version of Microsoft 365 without teams and one with teams was not enough.

(01:20:54):
Yeah. And by the way, are we, who are we helping here? So you're gonna help a competitor and by raising the price of a product to customers, I, I, I mean, and by the way, I remember when you, when antitrust was about harm to, to the consumer, depends, you know? Right. It's a matter of perspective. The EU is heavily on com competition. They want fair competition above consumer, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. Above. Yeah. Above you like user harm. Yeah. Right. So yeah. A little, little pro little con there, I guess. I don't know. Anyway, I think that's insane. Okay. So that's, that's that. I don't know too much about the story or why you would necessarily need this, but Microsoft, just today, I didn't get a chance to look into this deeply, but they added spatial audio support for meetings to Microsoft Teams. No, I could tell you why. Another feature that No, no, that's cool. Oh, so we're in a meeting with six people, and

Leo Laporte (01:21:46):
When Joe's talking, he's over here. And when you're talking, you're over there. So everybody's placed within the

Paul Thurrott (01:21:52):
Sound sphere. So I don't like it. It's like you're sitting <laugh>. I'm again. Well, no, I'll tell you why. Deeply suspicious. I'll tell you why. So one thing when we moved into the last house, we're in we have, you know, we have a soundbar on the tv, and I put rears and we use Sonos stuff. So it was like Sonos, little Sonos ones. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we put 'em in the rear. And we tried that for like a week or so. And for the rest of the six years we were there, we did not use those speakers in that capacity. So when we moved here, and I, I couldn't remember why, right? So we moved into this apartment. I was like, Hey, you know, we don't have as much rooms, as many rooms to put speakers in. I, I, I think I'll put those speakers in the rear again.

(01:22:29):
And you actually can kinda see one up here. It's like, it's a little Ikea version of a Sonos One, whatever they call it, Simon think, whatever. Oh yeah, I see it. Yeah. And I said, okay, let's do this again. Like, I, I don't know why we weren't doing surround sounds. Surround sounds cool. Surround sounds terrible. <Laugh>, and, and no, and here's why. 'cause In 90, no, I, it's something I should love. But the truth is, in 90, 70%, you really are an old man. Paul, I'm, no, no, no. I'm gonna, no, I'll explain this. No, I, I have a reason. I, I, listen, I love Star Wars and movies. I want stuff all around me. I love that stuff. Right? The helicopter blows by. It was, you know, awesome. Like, who wouldn't want that? But the vast of the content that we enjoy, TV shows, whatever surround sound is very infrequent.

(01:23:12):
And it's always weird. Like, you'll be watching a show sound effects dialogue, and then all of a sudden music will swell behind you. Yeah, no, you're right. And you're like, is there, you're like, what's going on? Like, what is that? Lisa always gets to somebody at the door because she, she surrounds exactly the speaker fire. And I, so I don't have anywhere else to put these speakers, honestly. I could just not use them. But like, I find it to be more annoying more often than it is beneficial. Maybe that's the fault of the people making it. I mean, imagine if you're in a meeting and everybody is in a different place in the room, that's I am. So, I am, that's exactly what I imagined. So imagine this, you're in a meeting, right? There's this guy, Bob, he doesn't talk a lot, you know, we're all talking, we're doing interaction. It's in some kind of a three D space now. There's a voice behind you over here. It's Bob. And he's like, Hey. And you're like, what the, it's like, why, why, why do I want people around me? <Laugh>? Like, that's weird. I, I, I already do this. Like, this is haunting me when I enjoy stuff. Now. You want it to haunt me when I'm working? I don't, I just don't, I'm not sure this is a good idea. That's, I mean, when

Richard Campbell (01:24:15):
Surround Silent Works, you don't even realize it works. Like it just shapes the, what you're, what you're pointing out is when it works poorly. And one of the

Paul Thurrott (01:24:22):
Reasons it's hand handed most of the time.

Richard Campbell (01:24:23):
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, it's usually not the show itself, it's the simulators. You have those speakers. Yeah. And so the system tries to come up with a way to use them. Right,

Paul Thurrott (01:24:32):
Right. Ideally, I would have a, a series of speakers and it would be a smoother kind of a transition, but all I have is front and back. So it's like bam, bam. You know, it's like dumb.

Richard Campbell (01:24:39):
It's just, listen, we have soundbars now with audio shaping. That's right. Just buy a soundbar. Don't

Paul Thurrott (01:24:45):
Be almost Exactly, exactly. Get rid

Richard Campbell (01:24:45):
Of the back speakers. Yep. And the big biggest thing that soundbar does, right, is when there is surround sound, it knows how to bounce it around. You give the effect. And when there isn't surround sound, it doesn't do

Paul Thurrott (01:24:54):
It. I tell you, if anyone surprises me and meeting like that, the next time I meet that person in in person, I'm gonna punch 'em in the face. <Laugh>. It just, you know, this is something it's not putting up with that. We

Richard Campbell (01:25:05):
Do do this on do net rocks, right. That I, my, my voice tends to be left bias. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Carl's voice is right. Bias, the guest is more centered, and it's to create the effect that you're sitting at a table overhearing a conversation. Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:15):
I like that. Okay. We've played with that. That's a Yeah, but that's a stereo effect. Essentially.

Richard Campbell (01:25:20):
Yeah. Well, it's, it's same, different. It's spatial. It gives a, a sense of space.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:25):
Alright, well, I haven't tried this. I mean, I, this is I, I just, this, soon as I saw this, I thought of this surround sound thing, and I thought, you know, this, is this done poorly? This could bite you or the

Richard Campbell (01:25:38):
<Crosstalk>. Oh, yeah. Without a doubt. You're absolutely right.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:41):
Yeah. So, we'll, we'll see. Maybe it will be literally spatial, like everyone's in front of you, but, you know, some of the kind of meeting room stuff they came up with during the pandemic, and I don't remember the exact name of it, but it's like you're in a crowd, in a

Richard Campbell (01:25:54):
Yeah. They,

Paul Thurrott (01:25:54):
They in the theater or whatever there are people behind you, <laugh>. Yes. And, you know, I, I don't

Richard Campbell (01:26:00):
Know. Yeah, no, you, you want it to make your eyes point to the right direction on the screen in front of you. Yes. A little left bias or a little right bias. So you tend to be able to find the voice correctly, because any more than that, you're, you are, you have my clearance to stab people. It's fine. I have, I

Leo Laporte (01:26:17):
Also

Paul Thurrott (01:26:17):
Think we need

Leo Laporte (01:26:18):
To put you guys in the stereo left and right. So, oh boy. Anybody listening at home in stereo, suddenly Paul has diminished into the corner <laugh> and, and, and Richard

Paul Thurrott (01:26:28):
And

Leo Laporte (01:26:28):
Bob and Richard. Yeah. Richard is playing the role of Bob <laugh> jumping outta nowhere.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:34):
What are you a serial killer? What, what do you want?

Leo Laporte (01:26:37):
Do people like that? I don't know. I mean we've played with it. By the way, I'm in the center as I should be. We, we've played with that, but I think it's distracting a little bit. So maybe that's what you're saying. Well, if

Richard Campbell (01:26:50):
You, yeah, the whole point is you're not supposed to notice. It's supposed to

Leo Laporte (01:26:52):
Feel that. Oh, I made it too extreme. All right, let me, let me lemme tone it down,

Richard Campbell (01:26:56):
Because you know what's not, also not natural. Mono monos not natural either.

Leo Laporte (01:27:01):
Well, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:27:04):
I feel like most of the podcasts I listen to are probably mono.

Richard Campbell (01:27:08):
Yeah. You listen, I, I I've been making a show for 20 something years of the guy who actually has education in audio engineering. Like, I'm not gonna

Leo Laporte (01:27:16):
Argue.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:16):
Well, I'm not arguing with her. I'm just, I'm just saying. I I didn't mean it like that. I mean, I'm, I'm, I suspect the ones I listen to mostly are,

Richard Campbell (01:27:23):
A lot of people just don't think about this stuff. Yeah. I really don't. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:27:27):
We, at one point we did an a a true Dolby surround. This was when Dolby had a technology called headphones surround, and we actually had a Dolby engineer come in and we recorded it in headphones surrounded, which most people can't hear, frankly. You have to have a special decoder and stuff. Yeah. It was fun. So I will leave the rest of the show. I'll leave you Richard, slightly in the right <laugh>.

Richard Campbell (01:27:50):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:27:51):
And I'll leave Paul slightly in the left. It does help do, does do little shape, a little shape. It helps you distinguish speakers a little bit, which is not good. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:28:01):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:28:02):
<Laugh>, tell people, tell me what you think, folks. I don't even

Paul Thurrott (01:28:05):
Know. I didn't mean to this to be controversial. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:28:08):
We may not offer our shows in stereo because that doubles the size of the file.

Richard Campbell (01:28:13):
It does. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:28:14):
Yeah. So we may, I don't know. I'll have to, Patrick, what do we, I think we're stereo in some places, but I'm not sure. I don't know. So you don't

Paul Thurrott (01:28:23):
Offer like a, a mono or stereo

Leo Laporte (01:28:26):
Choice? No, I think, you know, I obviously, and maybe this is less important now, but it's

Richard Campbell (01:28:30):
An audio file. It doesn't

Leo Laporte (01:28:32):
Long, it's still pretty small. But in the early days, people were concerned about that. Steve Gibson still offers a 16 kilobit version of the show.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:41):
Yeah, but how much, how many

Leo Laporte (01:28:42):
Like Thomas Edison up on, on a cylinder,

Paul Thurrott (01:28:45):
He's using his,

Leo Laporte (01:28:46):
He's got

Paul Thurrott (01:28:47):
Lamb, his on-prem infrastructure is grinding away overnight.

Richard Campbell (01:28:51):
<Laugh>. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:52):
Spitting out a 16 K audio bar. Even

Leo Laporte (01:28:54):
Our engineer, Patrick Delehanty says, I forget <laugh>, it

Paul Thurrott (01:28:58):
Still works on a compact checking Compact. Compact. I pack checking. That's the standard. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:29:02):
Well, you know, 'cause I really don't wanna overstress my 56 K modems. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:29:07):
Listen, there were people at, at one time who, who were bandwidth impaired. We called them and we did offer that 16 kbit version.

Richard Campbell (01:29:14):
I, you know, the first few years of Donna Rocks primary listening method was burning to c d. Yeah. We need to format fit on CDRs because we could listen in their car.

Leo Laporte (01:29:23):
I had to keep shows to 70 minutes for that reason.

Richard Campbell (01:29:25):
Yeah, exactly. Which

Leo Laporte (01:29:26):
Clearly <laugh> has gone by the wayside.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:29):
Not back when we used to write it to acetate <laugh>, we could only do 40 minutes before the ad.

Leo Laporte (01:29:37):
I always thought it'd be fun to, I agree with you, Richard, that I always thought it should have some spatiality

Richard Campbell (01:29:42):
Give a little shape.

Leo Laporte (01:29:43):
Shape is good, but I just don't know <laugh>. I don't know who gets it that way, to be honest.

Richard Campbell (01:29:50):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:29:51):
Yeah. Or who cares? Tell me if you care. Oh, Patrick says our audio files are mono, no

Richard Campbell (01:29:56):
Files are mono <laugh> question, question is answered. And the

Leo Laporte (01:29:59):
Reason is, it's half as big. Even if you don't use post channels, you have to have enough bandwidth for two

Richard Campbell (01:30:05):
Channels. Well, you wouldn't, you know, you don't want to stress out that gigabit ethernet. You've got <laugh>, like, be very careful. We

Leo Laporte (01:30:10):
Got listeners in all sorts of situations. I don't wanna make 'em suffer a for a

Paul Thurrott (01:30:15):
Minor. Well, I, by the way, a lot of people are gonna be on cell streaming in the car or something like that. It's nice to keep it that. I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:30:21):
Video, Patrick says he thinks video is stereo, and I think the stream is stereo. Interesting. I'll ask, I have to ask John about that one. But he's busy enjoying his chicken ulu, so nice. It was Indian too, as

Richard Campbell (01:30:36):
You

Leo Laporte (01:30:36):
Do. Love it, as you do.

Richard Campbell (01:30:38):
Should we talk about Unh about Sean in the, in the discord and the unhappy education folks? Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:30:45):
Yeah. So I, somebody told me that Google did something like this recently as well. And I will say that Microsoft's rationale for this teeters on the edge of, in credibility, because they keep talking about security and all these other things. And it's like, I, the real reason is storage is expensive. So

Richard Campbell (01:31:04):
Yeah, no, there, there's never been unlimited storage. It's not actually a thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:09):
Yeah. So Microsoft 365 for education is kind of a group of products. There is a, a set of subscription offerings where I, I actually don't know this for sure, but I, my my belief would be that they probably mirrored what they do with the commercial and consumer offerings, which is every user gets a terabyte of storage, I would imagine something like that. As of one year from now all school tenants are gonna receive a hundred terabytes of free pooled storage across OneDrive, SharePoint Exchange. Right? Meaning, so your email's gonna be in there as well, right. Little controversy there. But with an additional of 50 or a hundred gigabytes of pooled storage per paid user for a three and a five subscriptions respectively this means that schools are going to have to manage storage a lot more than probably they don't do it now at all. Imagine

Richard Campbell (01:32:01):
They don't do it all because it's free and unli and quote unquote

Paul Thurrott (01:32:04):
Unlimited. Apparently most schools don't use even a tiny portion of what they were offering before anyway. And you can purchase additional incremental storage or move to Azure if you want something more cost effective. So that's the kind of the, the bone they're throwing. There's also a set of offerings that Microsoft has had called Office 365, A one and A one Plus. And these are free subscriptions for schools that qualify because they can't afford to pay for, you know, a, a paid offering. Right? So you qualify for this. The difference between the two was that a one was the web apps and a one plus was the desktop apps, the whole suite. And this was for, so if you're school qualified, every student, every teacher got Office 365 plus the download desktop apps for free. Right. they're getting rid of that <laugh>, so there's no more a a plus.

(01:32:56):
So now going forward, they're going to have after the license expires in about a year or less, depending on where you were you'll be moved, or you can move, I should say, to Office 365 A one, which is the web app version. Right. Still free. Or you can get a significant discount off of the commercial pricing of Office three or Microsoft 365, whichever version of I, I, they're probably called a one, a three, A five, I think. Probably something like that. Yeah. and then the oth the storage change is also coming to the A one subscription. So again, I don't know what it is today. I'm guessing it was terabyte per user. The no Cost Office 365 a one subscription will be like the others' 100 terabytes of pooled storage, effective February wine in this case, but a maximum of 100 gigabytes per user. And again, this is the free

Richard Campbell (01:33:46):
One, so it's what you get with the free OneDrive accounts anyway, although I've not found strictly enforced. Right. If you go over it makes sad noises at you, but it never stops you from having files.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:58):
Okay. Yeah. I I, I think they're, you know, they're tightening the

Richard Campbell (01:34:03):
Yeah. The link here. I think after a while it starts to really getting grumpy with you, but

Paul Thurrott (01:34:08):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:34:09):
Yeah. I think we're hitting the end of the road on it is just like unlimited bandwidth from your I S P. Right. These are all lies. They've always been lies.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:17):
It's also now the

Richard Campbell (01:34:17):
Lies are being manifest. Also, I

Paul Thurrott (01:34:19):
Don't think any of this stuff started during the pandemic. I think some of these things are a decade or moral. I, I think these have been around for a while, but I do also feel as we leave the pandemic, the kind of tech freebie thing is, you know, has been going away for over a year now. Right. The the, the Zoom stuff was a little more liberal. You know, the team's premium now is chunked off into a paid service. Like there, some of that stuff was something we got for free during the pandemic. Like there was some, there were some niceties for those of us stuck at home during the pandemic from these companies. And I don't know, what's the phrase? Something's coming home to roost or something, I don't know what it is, but the,

Richard Campbell (01:34:56):
The chickens, you wanna have the chickens come home to Roo,

Paul Thurrott (01:34:58):
The bill is coming home to roost, whatever. It's, but yes. Yep. So

Richard Campbell (01:35:02):
Reality is upon us. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:05):
Yeah. Yeah. It's the wake up call. It just feels like a, it's a, it feels like a bait and switch, obviously, I think to users to school. Any

Richard Campbell (01:35:12):
Change does any change downward. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:15):
Like, you just gave this away for free, so she could do this to us now. And it's like, I don't think, and part of their

Richard Campbell (01:35:20):
Argument also is people were abusing it.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:23):
Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:35:24):
Right. Yeah. But that's, you know, it's always hard to take away stuff. You

Richard Campbell (01:35:27):
Gotta be, it always is. Yeah. Judicious

Leo Laporte (01:35:29):
About giving things away because mm-hmm. <Affirmative> then you can not really, it's hard to take it away afterwards.

Richard Campbell (01:35:35):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:35:35):
I know this

Richard Campbell (01:35:36):
For, you know, it's one of the real common conversations I have with bins in on the, in the run context is stopping controlling how much dis space employees consume. Right. Wastefully making copies of things over and over and over again. Yep. Just to make one change, you know, that sort of stuff. So that it's, it's wildly

Paul Thurrott (01:35:55):
<Crosstalk>. I'm actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna write about this soon. I hope I've got the structure of this, but just from like, the perspective of an individual where you have a terabyte of storage on OneDrive and because this seems so vast and never is never gonna go away or whatever, you fill it and then it's completely disorganized and it's a mess. What's the, how do you fix something like this? It's very difficult. So it's kind of an interesting problem, but it's something people are gonna want to get ahead of. It's not the same. You know, my, actually, we were landed on the plane coming home, and my wife's, you know, turn your phone connected again, and she said, oh, I keep getting these messages from Google. I've hit my storage limit and I need to go up to the next level. And I'm like, okay. And she's like, is that, should I do that? I'm like, what's your, what do you mean what do, what's your alternative? I mean, she was probably paying for a hundred gigabytes, and so it was like a dollar a month or a dollar 99, and now it's gonna be 200 gigabytes and it's gonna be like 2 99 a month. It's like a buck a month or something.

Richard Campbell (01:36:53):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:53):
I was like, how long you think about this? So that's, that's not the same problem that, but once you have filled the, like a terabyte of storage, it gets a little more complicated, especially on the Microsoft side. And at that point, you mean you might want to evaluate what it is you've got up there. And if it's disorganized, which I think it is for a lot of people, it's gonna take some work

Richard Campbell (01:37:14):
To get ahead those. I, and I keep, you know, I keep talking about, you know, my house. 'cause You, but you've naturally never spent any time here. You the other one.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:19):
Yep.

Richard Campbell (01:37:20):
But, you know, we built a dedicated storage room under the deck that it's of substantial size, the Florida seeing shelving on it. Right. And when that room was full, you have too much stuff.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:30):
Exactly.

Richard Campbell (01:37:31):
Right. It was time to get rid of.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:32):
Well, I thought so. I mean, I, I, I don't remember the exact number, but I, I the alleged size of the house you, that you visited, where I lived was mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, 31, 3500 square feet, whatever, not including the unfinished basement, which was over a thousand square feet and the two car garage. Right. All of which were full of crap. And now we have to move this, I'll call it 5,000 square feet of stuff into an 1100 square foot apartment. <Laugh> <laugh>. So I don't know how good you are at math, but I gotta tell you, there's no version of that equation where this works. Yeah. And it's you have to get rid of stuff, you know, you just have to,

Richard Campbell (01:38:03):
And that's, and let be very clear, you didn't need it.

Leo Laporte (01:38:06):
How do you G r o I mean, do you call do you call the junk kings or do you call my We

Paul Thurrott (01:38:13):
Did. Oh my

Leo Laporte (01:38:14):
God, so many. My daughter told me, you don't have to die to use an estate auction. Right. Surface <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:20):
That's right. Well, and by the way, just pretend you're

Leo Laporte (01:38:23):
Dead. And they come in that

Paul Thurrott (01:38:24):
Yeah, that's smart. On one level, but it's actually smart on another level. Because one of the big problems we, we do, we make as people is dying and leaving our kids with all the crap they

Leo Laporte (01:38:35):
End having to do. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:37):
It's so much better to get rid of that. Agree. Agree. I told my parents this many times, I said, listen, if you don't specify what's important and what isn't, when you die, we're gonna put this truck and the house. We're gonna, we're gonna shake it until everything comes out of it and we're gonna throw it all away. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was thinking

Leo Laporte (01:38:52):
In the middle of the night last night, it's funny that you should say that. I have the Oxford English dictionary. Right. <laugh>, I bought, I bought the 30 volume. It's not the one with the magnifying glass. It's the full, it's beautiful. It's on my shelf. Sure. I very rarely, like once every five years consulted. It's nice to have. Yeah. If you know, you wanna know the etymology,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:11):
And by the way, if the world goes south, it's kindling for a fire that might keep you safe and Well,

Leo Laporte (01:39:15):
And I did. I bought it in my thirties. I thought, this is super cool to own this. Sure. I also have a world book encyclopedia that's above it. There's no that

Richard Campbell (01:39:25):
I point out You have the internet.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:27):
So is he. I don't really the before under this bookshelf buckled at this point. How does

Leo Laporte (01:39:31):
It's, it was funny you should say that because the shelf did collapse at one point. <Laugh>, of course, because there's a lot of

Paul Thurrott (01:39:37):
That's heavy. You're like, hold on a second, that's a load bearing encyclopedia <laugh>. Like, what are you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:39:42):
But it breaks my heart to get rid of it because it's so wonderful.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:49):
Yeah. You gotta get all that. I don't, the the emotional thing is yeah.

Richard Campbell (01:39:52):
It's also wonderful to have pictures of it too. Yeah. I mean, one of the things in the, in doing this great movie, she's consolidated the kids' stuff down to the each have a tote. That's right. It starts with birth certificate and ends with like university graduation. Right. But that perfect. But it's all,

Leo Laporte (01:40:08):
Everything

Richard Campbell (01:40:09):
Else was, was scanned.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:09):
Yeah. It's all per

Leo Laporte (01:40:10):
It's perfect. Yeah. That's what Lisa does too. She says one folder with all of it, you know, just the, you know, a sampling of all of it.

Richard Campbell (01:40:18):
This is a tote. It's full of paper and you, but you can carry, it's the right

Paul Thurrott (01:40:23):
Side. My son has inexplicably through no action on his own, gotten a series of promotions that the company he works for and now has an office. Yeah. <laugh>. And it's become like a joke. Like, it's like next week you'll be running the company. But anyway, his office, he doesn't have anything to put on the walls. And we said, no problem. We have a bunch of stuff we can send you, you can put on the walls and it's gonna, it's just all his stuff. Like childhood drawings and <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:40:46):
And this I drew in third grade, here's a, here's here's a plastic vase I made for my mom in

Paul Thurrott (01:40:52):
Well, yeah. Like, you're your participation award in little league. You know, that everyone got, you know, like we have a lot of stuff employee at, so coworkers gonna come in and and say,

Leo Laporte (01:41:01):
Is this stuff for your kids? No, no.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:02):
Me. No, it's mine. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:41:04):
I really think there should be a service where people come in and they just go through this stuff. You can, you can hide your head. You can go away for a week, and then you come home and everything's simple and you forgot that you had the

Paul Thurrott (01:41:17):
Well you That's right. This is very common. Is is

Richard Campbell (01:41:20):
Deification, is that what this

Paul Thurrott (01:41:21):
Is? Yeah. It is a, it is a very common bit of advice that basically says, you know, put the crap in a box. Put the box outta sight. Yeah. Like some amount of time. It could be a month, a year, three months, whatever. And then when you look at that thing again, you realize you didn't need a single thing and it just throw it away. That's how

Richard Campbell (01:41:35):
That storage room works. Every box, that storage room had a date on it.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:39):
You're guys That's right. It's

Leo Laporte (01:41:41):
Aging. And

Richard Campbell (01:41:42):
As soon as the box was three years old and you didn't even know what was in it.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:44):
It's like, same thing with clothes.

Leo Laporte (01:41:47):
Yeah. Same thing with clothes. If you never wear it in three years, even Marie Kondo, who's the queen of this, you know, that was the whole, the

Paul Thurrott (01:41:54):
Whole rage. Oh, that hypocrite. I know exactly what you're gonna say. <Laugh>. I knew it. She was the one I saw that started like,

Leo Laporte (01:41:59):
Yeah. She was the one. You'd pick up a piece of clothing and if it doesn't spark joy Yeah, sure. You get rid. You were ruthlessly get rid of it.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:05):
She would come. Lemme tell you something about a, a single woman who grows up in a 300 square foot apartment in Tokyo. Yeah. No kidding. You don't have anything. Yeah, I

Leo Laporte (01:42:13):
Hear you. So the story I

Richard Campbell (01:42:15):
Before her, because she had kids Once. You

Paul Thurrott (01:42:17):
Had kids.

Leo Laporte (01:42:18):
All the rules. That's right. The story Paul and I saw was that she is now like completely surrounded by junk.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:26):
She, this was the biggest nonsense I'd ever seen in my life. And I'm like, I, when she, when I saw, I was like, exactly. <Laugh>. Now you have, now you have kids. Even we're remind, and you know what, that what that does for me, that sparks joy because you are a hypocrite <laugh>. She says, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Leo Laporte (01:42:41):
This was in this was, she says, I have kind of given up on tidying <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:47):
Oh my God. Seriously, now that I'm a multi-millionaire. Yeah. And I've, based on Johnson's advice. Yeah. Just like every other idiot self-help book writer, she

Leo Laporte (01:42:55):
Says, yeah, my home is messy, but the way I'm spending my time is the right way for me at this stage in my life. That's what we were trying to tell you, Marie

Paul Thurrott (01:43:03):
<Laugh>. And you were like, no, throw the kid in the drawer. If you don't need it, you throw it away. <Laugh> stupid. I'd always, it'd always bothered me. That whole thing. Ah, so funny. She's a fraud.

Leo Laporte (01:43:13):
She's a fraud. She's a, she's a hoarder just like everyone else. I

Paul Thurrott (01:43:18):
Love it. I think

Richard Campbell (01:43:19):
She has been

Paul Thurrott (01:43:20):
Enlightened. Next time we see her, she's gonna be like 250 pounds. There's gonna be garbage all over the floor. Like kids running everywhere. Like feral animals.

Leo Laporte (01:43:28):
You know, <laugh> I do though, I do fantasize about being, having an almost monastic cell with just the things I need. A piece of paper, a pencil a a a m d rise

Paul Thurrott (01:43:42):
Seven computer. You've been alive. Alright. But you've been alive long enough to know that this is how life really works. Which is, I go through, like, I'll just give you one example. I have a, a bin that has cables in it of all kinds. Yeah. You separate the cables. The famous cable put

Leo Laporte (01:43:54):
Piles. Cable drawer.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:54):
Yeah. You do the thing. Yeah. And then you, you're like, alright, this is what I need. I'm throwing everything else out. The next day my wife goes, Hey, do you have a charging thing for my Kindle? And I'm like, I just threw it out. I literally just threw it out. This is, don't worry, Amazon needs meet you new one in a day. No, no. But that's exactly what happens. Like, it, it, and it, it, it's,

Leo Laporte (01:44:10):
It. But that's the rationale for saving all that stuff is Right. I might need it, but most of the time, let's face it,

Paul Thurrott (01:44:16):
You know what, I gave up. I gave up the V G A cables and let me tell you why. Yes. Yeah. <Laugh>, you don't have to tell us why you ain't gonna need it. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's crazy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:44:29):
What does this

Paul Thurrott (01:44:29):
Have to do with anything? Okay, so

Leo Laporte (01:44:31):
<Laugh> <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:44:33):
I'm sorry. Microsoft 365. Again

Leo Laporte (01:44:34):
With the rat holes. Again With the rat

Paul Thurrott (01:44:36):
Holes. No, this was was a related rattle hole. It's just No,

Leo Laporte (01:44:39):
It's good. Okay. Lowers storage. Storage. It was about storage. We're talking about storage. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:43):
It was about storage. Yes. So actually semi storage related. Microsoft announced this past week that they're gonna include Clip Champ with its commercial versions of Microsoft 365. And that may be confusing at first because Clip Champ is a free app that's included with Windows 11. Why would they have to do this? And I don't, they don't actually didn't provide all the details I wanted. But if you were to pay for Clip Champ, which you can whatever they call that subscription, you get three things basic, well, I'll call 'em two things. One is you get a bunch of assets, which could be graphics, special effects text effect, whatever they're that you don't get for free, right? So you pay for that, but you also get storage. And that's kind of an interesting thing because Microsoft owns OneDrive, obviously, OneDrive for business on the business end, SharePoint, et cetera.

(01:45:30):
Like, it's a, why wouldn't, why wouldn't it store this stuff in your OneDrive automatically? I feel like that's coming. So the, the business version of Clip Chat will use your business storage, right? So if you're a, a consumer and you're using Clip Champ on your computer, the files that make up your project, which are, you know, the video that you're making are on your high drive somewhere. They could be synced to OneDrive, you know, if that's how you do it. But they're, they're just somewhere. So if you make a video, 'cause I did this a lot, you publish it or export it, and then you move all those files, either delete 'em or just put 'em somewhere else. And you bring up Clip Champ again. Clip Champ can't find them. <Laugh>. Right. So you'll have a bunch of missing assets. With this system that they're having.

(01:46:10):
At the very least, commercial customers will be able to they'll have all their assets in OneDrive. So it will just, it will always work. It'll, it will be automatic. I, I looked, I don't see anywhere in there any language about the other kind of paid features of Clip Champ, this, this special effects and whatever else the you know, like stock videos and images and sounds and whatever they have. But, so I don't know if that's part of it, but this is actually an improvement over the consumer version. And you could roll this yourself. You could by always storing your assets in OneDrive. But I think that's kind of a cool feature because clip Champ, you sign into your Microsoft account, in this case, you'll sign into your work and school account when your projects sync between your computers. So if all your stuff is on your desktop on one computer and you go to your other computer, it's not gonna find anything. 'cause It's not there. So I think that's kind of a, it's kind of an obvious feature. I I, when they bought Clip Champ, I didn't understand why they weren't just integrating this with OneDrive. And I think they will, I'm guessing they will based on, based on this announcement. So

(01:47:13):
You shall see.

Leo Laporte (01:47:13):
Let's see. It's a great product.

Paul Thurrott (01:47:15):
Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome. Clip chat. Yeah. And I, I told you. Yeah. Yeah. So tomorrow I record HandsOn Windows. I'm doing, I'm trying to figure out if it's two or three part, but it's gonna be a multi-part series and clip chat on the, on that podcast,

Leo Laporte (01:47:27):
Which brings me to this are Clance of the week. No, that's not right. Which brings <laugh>. This is Threads. Mark Zuckerberg just a threat, what do you call it? Threaded? Yeah. A a, a message with his wife, Priscilla. He writes, Hey, Priscilla, did you see the octagon I put in the backyard? Oh, yes, I saw it. It looks awesome. Mark, we have, this isn't real, is it? Yeah, it's, it's Zuck on threads. We have plenty of yard space. Mark. I've been working on that grass for two years. Anyway, that was our thread of the week. <Laugh>.

(01:48:11):
No, I meant to say I pushed the wrong button. I meant to say 'cause you were talking about hands-on Windows. That, that is a mm-hmm. <Affirmative> special show we do for members of the club. And if you're not a member of the Club, I want to encourage you to join. We are now almost 8,000 strong. I'd love to cross that 8,000 number. We are a little more than 1% though of our Total Audience are members. And I feel like this should be more. If you are not a member, why would you want to join Club Tuit? You get, you get ad free versions of all the shows. This show included means no trackers, either. Just completely privacy forward. You also get shows we don't put out anywhere else, like Hands-on Windows with Paul Throt, hands on McIntosh with Micah Sergeant, the new AI show.

(01:48:55):
Jason Howells developing hands I mean, home Theater Geek with Scott Wilkinson. We brought that back for the club this weekend. Space launched in the club, if you will, is now out in the public club. Members really support what we're doing. Plus the club has all sorts of events. Lemme see what Anne's got planned. He's got some great events coming up. In fact, I think this week he's gonna do a live photo critique on Friday, 4:00 PM Pacific. Your, your favorite photos. If you wanna make 'em of coffee, you can, but they don't have to be. We're doing a photo walk at the end of the month, Stacey's book Club at the end of the month. Daniel Suarez is gonna do a fireside chat with Hugh Howie Me. I'll be joining that one September 7th, aunt Pruitt, Lou Mariska, and ask me anything.

(01:49:45):
Our our lead editor and our AI guru Anthony Nielsen's doing a fireside chat too. Those are some of the events we do in the club. It's kind of become, I don't know, the kind of like the Commonwealth Club of the internet. It's a <laugh>, it's a great place. Nice to <laugh> to hear from interesting people. We also have stuff like the great conversation you guys were having before the show, which doesn't make it into the show, but we'll make it onto the TWIT plus feed in the club. Now, I just told you a whole bunch of benefits. What I didn't tell you is how affordable, it's seven bucks a month for all of that. That is, I think, a great deal. $84 a year. You also can do family plans. If you wanna have multiple members of your family members we can give you a discount for that. There's also corporate memberships. Go to twit tv slash club twit to learn more if you want to hear hands on windows. Let's see. I think we should talk about developers, developers, developers, developers as we continue with Windows Weekly.

Paul Thurrott (01:50:44):
Yeah. So anyone who follows.net will be shocked to learn that 88 will launch in November. Oh, wait. They do that every single year. But <laugh>, they're doing it again. So November 14th is the start of.net conf, which is a three day virtual show conference, I guess. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, where, where they will announce, well, not so much announce, but release <laugh> Dotnet eight, and all of the associated dotnet eight products, including Net Maui, the new version of Do Net Maui, I should say. So I, this is actually, it's kind of weird, but this is one of my favorite shows. Like all the other Microsoft shows that are like this. There will be down, you know, you can watch it live if you want, but all that stuff will be made available for download later as while all the sessions and everything is they gonna do

Leo Laporte (01:51:30):
Something? Where are they doing it?

Paul Thurrott (01:51:31):
Well, it's virtual, so Yeah. It's, it's in, it is in Red. There's no actual, but there's no Choice can go. Oh, yeah. But the cool thing Tore doing, they did this with Build and I, I would probably with Ignite, although I can't remember for some reason, but they're actually gonna have at least a 24 hour span where everything they do is live.

Leo Laporte (01:51:47):
Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:51:47):
That's neat. Over 24 hours. So no matter where you are in the world, you can in interact with the people from Microsoft in real time.

Leo Laporte (01:51:54):
Nice.

Richard Campbell (01:51:55):
Yeah. That's the usual thing for Dotnet Comp is that they have sort of a traditional virtual event, but then they do sort of a, a 24 hour community. Yeah. Neat thing. And so MVPs and such can submit to be part of that, and it literally will bomb around the world. Yeah. talking about.net and the new bits Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:52:15):
Get questions in real time from people are on the other side of the planet,

Richard Campbell (01:52:18):
Whatever, in net AI eight is the long term, the next long-term support version of T NetNet, six being the last one. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative> looks to be a very important version actually. It's the one that's gonna

Paul Thurrott (01:52:28):
Yep. Persistent. And this is sort of what rich and I were talking about before the show is the awesome transparency of the Net team. It seems, I, I don't know the exact cadence, but every month <laugh>, there's a new milestone on the way to the final release. And they all have new features and changes and, you know, and the whole thing is created in tandem with the community. So there's a lot of back and forth. It's mm-hmm. <Affirmative> it's really, it's very interesting. It's, it's, it's not the Microsoft, it's not your father's Microsoft, you know, it's kind of the new Microsoft. It's neat. Yeah. It's a level of transparency. It's, it's a sense of transparency, but it's not transparency. It's not even transparency or transparency's sake. It's collaboration. Yeah. It's, it's you know, it's like, it's amazing.

(01:53:11):
So, yeah. I, you know, so I, I I love this part of Microsoft, so it's neat. The exact opposite of what I get from Windows, basically clarity and transparency Xbox. Let's do some Xbox. Xbox. Yeah. Let's do a lot of Xbox. So some big news again this week I'm trying to shuffle around the Activision Blizzard stuff, so you don't ever know where it's coming. But this time it's just coming in the Xbox <laugh>. So we have known for some time now, that is obviously the C M A has gone back and forth. They've done this backtracking thing. It's like a Monty Python sketch. I don't know what's happening over there, but they made their final decision back in April, I think it was blew the world away where they denied this acquisition of the grounds of some future crime thing related to cloud gaming, which is a market that does not exist and probably will never exist, but whatever.

(01:54:03):
So they've already obviously seen which way the wind's blowing. They're trying to step back from that cliff after having stepped off of it, which is interesting and fascinating and funny in many ways. But as part of this process, they asked Microsoft to submit a list of reasons why they should change their mind. <Laugh>, right? So the assumption was Microsoft would offer some concessions of some kind, and Microsoft did not do that. I am fascinated by this. Wow. What they did instead was say, Hey, it's like they're trying to help them save face. When, when you made your decision, you didn't have all the facts. Because what happened since then was there was a several day hearing with the Federal Trade Commission in front of a federal judge, and all this new evidence came out. And that evidence, if you had had it, you, it would've changed your mind, right?

(01:54:50):
So here it is. And so and actually, and some of this is actually you know, quite pertinent. And, and, but the thing is, I, the c m a erred in a way that the EU didn't, by not taking some steps that they should have to regulate rather than just deny, right? So, for example, when Microsoft went to the EU and say, Hey, we wanna buy Activision bl, they were like, cool, what about this cloud gaming thing? And they're like, what about it? And they're like, well, we're afraid you're gonna dominate this market if it ever exists. They're like, all right, here's what we'll do. We'll set up partnerships with every cloud gaming service that's available in the eu, and they can get access to all of our, you know, our key games and everything. Well, it would be for 10 years. And the EU said, yep, that actually satisfies our concerns.

(01:55:31):
And the e the C M A instead, they went through the same thing. And, and the C M A said we don't think that your agreements mean anything. What if you just go back on 'em? Like, what if you literally ignore the agreement you made? Which is like, what, what? So now Microsoft can say, Hey, we have a legally binding agreement with the EU that covers all of the services you're concerned about. It has severe penalties for beach of contract. What they did was they regulated, they made it a legal requirement that we couldn't change our agreement with those companies without going to EU first and getting their approval. Right. So now there is in fact, a legally enforceable element to the agreements they already had that wasn't in place. And the C m A did not ask for, 'cause they, like I said, I think they kind of mailed this one in, but now it's, now it's there.

(01:56:25):
They will protect eu UK companies and consumers. You don't even have to do anything. The EU will do it for you. So there's one that's skill. The EU had concern the see me, sorry, had concerns, which again, nonsense, that Microsoft would foreclose Call of Duty preventing it to go to, you know, Sony or whatever, right? Sony since then, Sony appeared at the F T C hearing and said, you know what? We were never actually concerned about that <laugh>, geez, just crazy we're funny like that. We, we were kidding. Oh, we never actually thought that a lot of documentation came out. There was a famous quote from the circuit judge who said, you people of unearth one 1 million documents and whatever number of blah, blah, blah, and all these experts, and you have not found a single piece of evidence that counters, Microsoft's claim that they would never foreclose on Call of Duty.

(01:57:13):
So that happened. <Laugh>, you know also, and this is an inconvenient truth for these guys. Sony agreed to bring it to, to a 10 year call. Wait, we think it's a 10 year extended agreement with Call of Duty to keep it on PlayStation. So now Sony, that company you are worried about protecting has a guarantee legally enforceable that they will never not have Call of Duty. So that one's just done. And then I promised market definition. This was, this was the big one to me. So I actually, when in my writeup about this, I really went into this a lot. This is an example of antitrust regulators, in this case, the C M A, wanting to narrowly define a market to show that Microsoft could abuse it, because the bigger Microsoft is, the more chances they could abuse the market.

(01:57:58):
Microsoft is saying, you know, the video game market's really big, and we are a minority player in consoles, and we have no presence in mobile gaming at all. We have no presence in casual gaming. We have we're a player in the PC space, but we're not in any way dominant, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. So how do you prove that the market that the C m A believes exists, which is cloud gaming does not exist easy. You talk to people that have cloud gaming services, or did like Google, they got the guy that ran Stadia to come up and admit that Stadia did not exist to compete with cloud gaming services. <Laugh>, it was to compete with PCs, with consoles, with mobile. That was the point of it. And they're like, oh. So I guess that's the market then. It's the whole thing.

(01:58:44):
It's not what the C M A said it was. Nvidia, same thing. Even Sony said it was the same thing. Sony, that guy the guy who runs PlayStation America what's his name? Ryan something, something. Where is this? Whatever that guy's name. Oh, I, it's a later in the article. That's why he, he was the, he invented the Microsoft might take Call of Duty off a PlayStation thing, even when he knew it wasn't true. Said, yeah, cloud gaming's, nothing <laugh> like, it was like, yeah, it's, it's not so market. And where is this guy? I got Jim Ryan, I'm sorry. Yeah. Outspoken critic, right? He didn't, he said there's no way to determine if cloud gaming would ever be a standalone offering. You know, cloud gaming to Microsoft is not a standalone offering. The one big one that exists stadia folded because it didn't make sense, right?

(01:59:31):
It's just, it's, sorry. It's just not a relevant market. Also, documents that came out as evidence in the F T C hearing proved that Microsoft loses money on cloud streaming because the infrastructure's so expensive. In fact there was a story that just came up in the last 24 hours, which I don't have in the notes where people trying to get on cloud gaming can't, because there are too many people using it now. There aren't a lot of people using it. So Brad and I were speculating that the real reason is they need that infrastructure for ai. Yeah. Which is the future of the business, not cloud gaming. Well, it's how they're betting right now anyway. Yeah. Like, but, but yeah, but then there's, I'm sorry, this is one more point that's just like, this gets funny. I I, so their final bit of evidence, a new evidence is <laugh>.

(02:00:15):
This is just legalese aimed at the C M A because the, the reason the C m A can reverse its so-called final decision, is a little bit of legal maneuvering. And it has to do with this notion that if things change materially Yeah. After they information you can, you can come kind of come back. Sure. And so they offered him new information. Yeah. But with the, with the fourth one is not new inf Well, it's, I guess it's new information, but because the FTC and the CMA dragged their feet so long on this mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they had 18 months to figure this stuff out, but they dragged on purpose. And there was this feeling that since April when the C M A said no, that the two agencies were working in lockstep to draw this out so that the July 18th date would happen, and they would just have to be like, I guess we're done.

(02:01:01):
Yeah. But the thing is, so under this is like apparently under the terms set by the C M A, because the two companies had to extend the final date in effect, according to EU rules the C M A rules, they <laugh>, this is a new agreement. It's a new acquisition. Oh, wow. It's the thing that they said no to no longer exists. This is a new acquisition. So you actually have to think about it again, <laugh>. So, and that's according to their own rules. Wow. This one, I find it be kind of funny. So it's <laugh>, it just says a final order, which has the effect of prohibiting or qualifying the completion of the acquisition would be plain pain, plainly unjustified. In other words, you ruled on something that no longer exists, that that doesn't have any basis on this new thing.

(02:01:52):
Because now they've extended it to, I think at the end of, it might just be the end of August, or whatever the time. I thought it was October. It could be. I, I actually, yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I think end of August is the C m A deadline. So yeah, <laugh>, they have a they didn't offer anything new. They just said, you're wrong here because of this. You're wrong here because of this. You're wrong here because of this. And your own rules say that this is not true. So you're wrong there too. <Laugh> and I, I, God bless em, I, you get the feeling I really expected, like a, something like some here's a bone, you know? Yeah. And instead what they did was say, you know, we'll get tired of this, but they're also, but they're following the rules to the letter.

(02:02:30):
Yeah. Saying, you're allowed to revisit this because there's new information. Here is the new information. Oh. And because we've now extended this deal, you need to rere review the deal. These are your rules. Right. We're following your rules. I just, I just love that supposedly this this, okay, so information, documentation words were said did occur during the ftc mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or hearing that did happen. But this is, why wouldn't the C M A have talked to the guy that ran Sony? Why wouldn't the C M A talk to the all? Yeah. This was their, this was their job. The other thing, so the other thing that's funny about this is they, there's supposed to be a time where the public gets to respond to an acquisition like this before they issue a ruling. They did this last year, and they were told overwhelmingly by the consumers who live in the UK by Microsoft's competitors, both consoles, no, not consoles, sorry, in the cloud gaming space, micro Sony's customers who own PlayStations all said, yeah, we don't care.

(02:03:28):
We don't care if they acquire this company. It's not gonna affect us in the slightest. And now <laugh>, they have to do it again. They've already heard this, but now they, they're like, okay, we're open to feedback again. But this time you have four days <laugh>. They're like, we are literally fast tracking this. Wow. During the time in which we're giving you the time to feedback or write feedback, we're going to write the approval for this thing. And we're probably gonna publish it on Friday or Monday or whenever we Oh man. Crazy. So this is what, it's it's crazy. It's crazy. Alright. I'm gonna blow through the rest of this because seriously <laugh>, so it's August or most of this, I should say. Games with Gold, as we know is going away. So Microsoft issued the last games with Gold yesterday, I guess.

(02:04:14):
And you know, two games. We've been down to two games just like it's been for the past year or more two games I've never heard of Blue Fire in, in. This is Why, why its going away. What games? Well, Microsoft can't, there are no more games to offer, right? Yeah, exactly. So publishers have to buy into this. Everyone who has agreed has agreed it's, you know, they ran outta game. So these are the last two games. They were nice enough not to spread 'em out over the month. They're like, you can just have 'em, <laugh>, you know, the whole month. They're free. Just take them. So, okay, good. That's the right way to handle that. That's good. Beginning, beginning of the month. Did I screw up the listing? I did. No, I didn't. Okay. So games with Gold, same thing. Now this runs across pc, Xbox and also cloud gaming. The first set of new games. This time I will say there is a, a, a familiar and excellent title in, in there. It's called Limbo. If you haven't played it strongly recommended, it's kind of a two D side scroller. Creepy. Excellent. The end.

Richard Campbell (02:05:08):
Whoa, I remember this.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:09):
Yeah. The end is very, very hard. The other games I've not heard of I'm a little nervous about the game called Bro for Bro Force Forever. I think those are the guys I see in Roman Norte from Australia. Yikes. bro

Richard Campbell (02:05:22):
Force, bro,

Paul Thurrott (02:05:25):
The really loud guys wearing sandals and don't speak Spanish <laugh>. But there's a bunch of other games have space too, whatever. Okay. <laugh>, oh, final Fantasy 14, excuse me, is finally coming to Xbox. That's

Richard Campbell (02:05:39):
Kind of amazing.

Paul Thurrott (02:05:40):
This is notable because this game came out in 2010, and I want you to think about that for a second. Yeah. 'cause I did say 2010. That was 13 years ago. Yeah. and the story is the micro, the Xbox organization at the time, not the one we have today. In fact, the Xbox 360 was the current concern back then. That's how long ago this is. They wanted to do, so they, as Square Enex, the makers of Final Fantasy wanted to do something a little different with the the way the server platform works for the online games. And Microsoft said, no, this is a closed ecosystem. You use Xbox Live. That's the whole thing. And they would not allow it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And they said, yeah, we're not doing it. And so 13 years went by. Well, there's a new Xbox in team in town run by Phil Spencer. And he's a good friend of the guy. He's not the guy that runs Square. He's the guy that is in charge of this game, I guess the inventor of the game. And he appeared on stage last week with this man at the final Fantasy 14 fan fest, 2023 in Las Vegas, which by the way, was packed to the gills. This is one of the most popular games in the world. Yeah. and it is coming to Xbox Series s nx start in early 2020. So

Richard Campbell (02:06:46):
They, they make the concession, they provided the different

Paul Thurrott (02:06:49):
No one said, but that's the assumption that these guys are like, yeah, you do whatever. We, it's more why would we, we just want the game on our platform. Like, duh. Like, you know, so Yeah. Stop.

Richard Campbell (02:06:59):
'Cause 'cause they're a final fantasy. 16. And arguably that's the last final fantasy. Yeah. Right. So the Quare question is, when does that show up for Xbox?

Paul Thurrott (02:07:08):
Maybe? Yeah. 2033 <laugh>. Well, I don't know. It's, I don't think that's gonna happen. Right? I mean, we'll see. So I can't, I, they didn't talk about that, but for now we're doing this one. There'll be a public beta very soon meaning probably the small by the, by the way. So, yeah. For 14, did I see 16?

Richard Campbell (02:07:23):
Sorry, I said 16. You know, you were, you said 14, but four, I mean, 14, by the way, is a phenomenal game. Like

Paul Thurrott (02:07:29):
Truly. I, I've never even looked at it, but it looks amazing. I mean,

Richard Campbell (02:07:33):
It's, it's, it's a great

Paul Thurrott (02:07:34):
Game. I mean, it's one those kind a particular style, but Yeah, it's like a M M O kind of our, our, what do you call it? Yeah. Roleplaying game. And it just, it has existed online for like, 13 is incredible. I just, I think that's amazing. I, they, yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. I wish Call of Duty was like that. And then, you know, Microsoft used to have a thing called mixer and I'm sorry if, if that caused like a little Twitch in anybody Pardon the plane? Is that the one they paid Ninja 10 million IT dollars a lot. Yeah. A lot. That was a stupid waste of money. Ah, well, well, I think Ninja's laughing all the way to the bank. Oh, yes. Like he did, he did just fine. He just did another deal with Kick. He's, he, he's, it's good to be an influencer.

(02:08:17):
That's all I could say. Yeah, sure. As soon as Drake, you get to do what you want, right? Yep. So Microsoft in the wake of the mix of tobacco partner with Discord, and now they are adding a new feature, which is a big one, which is game streaming to Discord, which to me seems like most of the point of integration. But anyway, they're gonna start allowing pc, no, that's not true. Xbox Console users to stream games to a Discord server. Nice. Yeah. Cool. So that's nice for you Discord fans. And there are Discord fans watching this show, listening to the show, watching the show Discord. They're in Discord even. Yep. Literally in Discord. Yep. that's, yeah, that was my contorted way of saying that. Sorry. English works well too. <Laugh>, so as part of the serviceability thing that's occurring across our industry mm-hmm.

(02:09:06):
<Affirmative> Microsoft is now allowing people to buy official repair parts for Xbox controllers. That's good for me because I, every controller I own gets broken in some way. It's like the thumb six are stuck in one position, or like, I drop it forward and it's kind of all, whatever from hurling it at the screen. It is usually dropping. I'm more clumsy than I am angry. <Laugh>, I like walking the walls sometimes, you know, that don't move. And I don't know. So the repair parts for the Xbox Lead series two controllers are what we have at the start. 23 to, well, no, 1999 to 59, 99, depending on the parts. They're only available to Microsoft, from Microsoft, I should say, directly. I expect that to change over time. And I think we're gonna also see this the series the Elite Series controllers make sense for Repairability.

(02:09:57):
'cause They actually have parts that come off <laugh> and everything. Right. So I don't know how they would changeable. Yeah. So maybe over time as part of this repairability thing, in the same way that we'll be able to like, probably take the battery out of a smartphone and replace it ourselves. Hopefully they'll be able to do this over time with controllers as well. We'll see. <Laugh> and interesting timing given all this Activision Blizzard stuff and the talk of which company is dominant, which is not Sony announced as part of their earnings report last week, that they have now sold over 40 million PlayStation five units, which is an incredible number. How many Xbox, especially given, have been sold? 17 or 18? Oh, so that's a lot more.

Richard Campbell (02:10:44):
Yeah, it's not

Paul Thurrott (02:10:44):
Even half. Yeah. Something like that. We don't know for sure, but, you know, it's nowhere close. The other thing that's happening is you know, Microsoft console sales have actually gone down in recent, I'll call it months, several months. Hmm. Whereas the PlayStation is kind of picking up speed, you know, these things came out at the same time. And you know, so they're literally directly comparable neck and neck and, and Sony's just running away with this one. And this is what happened with the PSS four Xbox One Generation as well, although I feel like the gap between, well, Sony did a NI or Microsoft did a nice thing by releasing new versions of Xbox One over time, right? There was the SS and the X, you know, and I thought that was kind of interesting there. They're going much slower, this console generation with that kind of, you know, reduced cost, whatever additional functionality, like pro version or whatever. Both of them are, but I, Sony seems to be pulling ahead pretty dramatically right now. And it will be interesting to see if this triggers any mid-season, you know, upgrade or whatever you wanna call it next year, maybe. I guess we'll see.

(02:11:54):
I should do the switch. I, I, I move this around to the wrong location, but there's rumors now that the Switch will have a replacement next year, which sounds great. They've talked vaguely about allowing people on the switch to kind of move forward. I hope that means literal compatibility with games. Hmm. We'll see. But it sounds like it's a <crosstalk> not

Richard Campbell (02:12:12):
The way nor Nintendo normally does things.

Paul Thurrott (02:12:15):
Yeah, I know, but I, I, you know, these, these guys have sold like, what, a hundred million units? I think they want to ride that wave. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:12:22):
I mean, I I would argue the only, the only real problem here is if you do split the units, then you're splitting your dev teams. Both products will move slower. Like, you're not gonna ignore the old Switch players.

Paul Thurrott (02:12:32):
So, well, I, I, yeah. Except maybe they are <laugh>. I think the deal with, so, you know, with the Switch is what, six years old? Yeah. There's been some interim other versions of the light version, the <inaudible> version. There was never the four K version. I mean, you could probably, if this is a switch successor, you could kind of look at it. It's be four K. Yeah. Like four K switch. Yeah. I, I, I'm guessing, and by the way, I will say this, I bet it runs Call of Duty, <laugh> <laugh>. So whatever you think it might be. I, I mean, the

Richard Campbell (02:13:00):
Logical thing is it will run the old games so that they at least can emulate the incident.

Paul Thurrott (02:13:04):
That's right. That's right. Yeah. Nintendo has like this online service we can download emulated games from them, right? Yeah. And run like a classic version of Mario or something. And that's okay. But I, these things kind of being right on top of each other it may be a a situation where it's a literal, like a switch to or something I say. Yeah. I cover a lot of quarterly earnings. I don't typically I, or maybe even ever write about electronics arts earning earnings, but now they're gonna be the last man standing <laugh> in this market after Activision Blizzard goes away as a standalone entity. I thought it'd be interesting to kinda look at them and they're doing great. <Laugh>. Yeah. Like this is quarterly revenue is $1.9 billion a gain of 9% year over year record earnings. Huge franchises doing amazingly well. All the sports games, you know, Madden, N F l, ea, sports fc, that's

Richard Campbell (02:13:55):
All of their original money makers. Yep. That racing games

Paul Thurrott (02:13:59):
And then stuff that, and of course the legacy, I just, you know, battlefield, dead space, mass effect, need for speed. The Sims is a, it, it's, they're, it's big. They're net bookings, which they describe as the number of products and services sold digitally or physically up 21%. Live services was responsible for 75% of those revenues. 1.17 million, up 4% FIFA record revenues for the fiscal quarter. It's Star Wars jet survivor survivor's. Huge. Like, so this is just, this is kind of the other Activision Blizzard, you know, the same kind of thing. They've merged or purchased a lot of other companies, et cetera.

Richard Campbell (02:14:38):
You don't think they also had major layoffs last quarter too, right? Like, I, how much of this is really, they've been tightening belts rather than they've been making great stuff because it's the same fricking titles, man. Like Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (02:14:52):
I mean, I was gonna say, I mean, we could make the argument from Microsoft and

Richard Campbell (02:14:56):
Similar, this is what I'm saying, right? This is the old, I, I am loathed to be excited about their earnings when I don't see anything new coming out, just that they've cut.

Paul Thurrott (02:15:06):
So I <laugh> as a former Call of Duty ad addict, I can say I'm not interested personally in sports games, but those are the ultimate example of something that comes out every year, obviously. Right? Yeah. So when you look at games like fifa, N F L N B A live, N H L P G A, and even, well, maybe not U A F C, but I see this, I, I, I, I understand the appeal <laugh>, I guess is what I'll say. Those aren't my type of games personally, but I understand why people probably go back and buy the one every single year. You know, they're just into that sport. It's their thing. That's what they do. So it's a good model. You know, you get people to buy the same thing every single year. It's not a Yeah,

Richard Campbell (02:15:43):
No, it's worked for them. And they've been able to keep those deals for a reason. They've been trying to make hit MMOs since they bought Ultima Online back in the day. Right. Yeah. It's just never, they've never had a big, big winner. Like

Paul Thurrott (02:15:57):
They, yeah. They also, it's funny, they, you own medal of Honor and Medal of Honor is the franchise that actually spewed out Call of Duty. That's where it came from. Yeah. Like, if you want to go back and play the original Medal of Honor, the World War II game and the couple of expansion packs they had for it, that was the team that went on to make the first Call of Duty game. Yeah. there have been some really good Medal of Honor entries since then, but not in a while. And then Battlefield, of course, is the sort of also has Emerge not emerged, but as, as things have evolved, it's also seen as a Call of Duty competitor, although I don't really think they're on the same playing field, if you will. No different. They're different. Battlefield was always bigger maps, more stealth and strategy.

(02:16:39):
Call of Duty was more like yelling into a room with an Axe and just killing everything. Yeah. <laugh>, you know, same, same, same settings, but, you know, different, different approach. And then finally Microsoft is killing the Xbox Console app like this month, which is a little scary. So I think this thing actually debuted with Windows eight, not Windows 10, but it's been around a while. It's a, it's a U W P app, which whatever the console companion, yeah. The console companion app. Yeah. the rationale is that we have, we, Microsoft has something called the Xbox app, and that we don't need the Xbox Console app anymore because we have this other thing. And to which I replay that's not true <laugh>. So the console app, which you have to download from the store now, it's no longer included with Windows, is actually very important.

(02:17:19):
If you play games on an Xbox console and you create screenshots or record videos, and then you want to go to your PC and edit them and share them somehow this is how you did it. You could get your access to your library of recordings. You could check the ones you wanted to download. You could watch 'em in the app. But I mean, you know, the point to me was you could download 'em and then share 'em from there. The Xbox app does not do that. So I, I don't believe there is a way from a pc. I don't think you can go to the web or go to onedrive.com. I don't. I've looked, I haven't found it. So if you know differently, let me know. I know you will. But I believe the only way to do this now is from the Xbox, share it to OneDrive, and then you, then you can access it from a computer.

(02:18:01):
So to me, this is a little bit of a loss. I didn't, it's not like I liked the app, but for those instances where I wanted some footage, and actually I wanted to use it this past week for an Activision Blizz store. I wanted to grab an old shot I had taken of Call of Duty. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I, I'm like, I, I haven't turned on my Xbox and I, oh, I was in Mexico. I didn't have it. So I, I'm like, I don't even know. You haven't plugged in your Xbox yet. You must be at five months

Leo Laporte (02:18:23):
Now. Yeah. Are you? Yeah. How's that going? You really? You cold Turkey, huh?

Paul Thurrott (02:18:29):
Yeah, I am. Well, I've been playing on the PC a little bit, you know, so I didn't play at all when I was away, and I haven't played, I've only been home a day or two days. But yeah, I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna finish. I've been playing like older games. I've been playing Doom Three, for example. I'm gonna finish that soon. I don't understand the nostalgia

Leo Laporte (02:18:45):
Thing. You're not giving up gaming. You're just giving up

Paul Thurrott (02:18:48):
Calls. It's it's a, what I hope is a healthier relationship with the gaming, a healthier relationship. It's, I like that it's less gaming and less of exactly the same thing over and over again.

Leo Laporte (02:18:57):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing that with Val, the OCD reliving Heim, which is probably not a healthy,

Paul Thurrott (02:19:04):
I just read that John Romero book, and I gotta tell you, I'm get you going. Probably gonna play Doom and Doom two again and get you going play again. I loaded

Leo Laporte (02:19:11):
Doom on my switch for that after reading that book.

Paul Thurrott (02:19:13):
Love, love, love those games. And that book is so great. I talked about that last week. But so many details that were just unknown before you, I, you sort of thought maybe Master Doom is the definitive history of this thing, and it's like, actually this is it. He was there and he has a Yeah, I

Leo Laporte (02:19:29):
Haven't read this. I've read Masters of Doom, so I, you saying I should, I should read

Paul Thurrott (02:19:33):
It. Definitely read it, yeah. Yep, yep. It's amazing. Yeah. The only thing in it, by the way, so <laugh>, I'll, I'll eventually write this. I wrote this in a review that I haven't published yet, but very transparent, very open about all of the mistakes he's made and how these things have kinda helped him grow as a person, et cetera. You know, what's not in the book, <laugh>, it's very strange. Very big thing actually. Stevie Case Stevie Vie case was vie out. He mentioned Stevie twice in passing. That's really interesting. In the, in the same paragraph. He, so for people who, dunno, this was Kill Creek. She was a, a profe, like what we now would call an eSport kind of player. She played Quake and Doom and all that stuff and all, she was fantastic. She was an early example of like a, a, a woman who did this stuff.

(02:20:16):
She did like a, for the Microsoft guys, did. She eventually hooked up with Arm Romero, lived together for four years. Think that would've warranted some discussion in this book. It's an autobiography. But she also went, underwent a kind of a personal transformation, kinda like Jay Allied, if you're familiar with him, he was like this little balding fat geek loser. And he turned himself into like a hipster, you know? Did he get implant too? No, he didn't do that. But yeah, so Ste, killer Creek, or Stevie Case was in Playboy. And, you know, she was a rock star in that world. And there's one paragraph of the book where it literally, it says we started Ion Storm and I I, my job was this. Tom Hall's job was this, and Stevie Case was our whatever. And then we went to Monkey Stone Games, I think it was called. And, and Stevie was a developer there. And I was like, I, she was a little bigger than that. She's a big

Leo Laporte (02:21:04):
Part of Masters of Doom. That's really interesting, huh?

Paul Thurrott (02:21:07):
She was a big part of the whole thing, right? Yeah. I mean, she was famous, like really fast.

Leo Laporte (02:21:12):
So maybe, yeah, maybe he didn't wanna, you know, cause problems with his current

Paul Thurrott (02:21:15):
Wife or, yes. I, well,

Richard Campbell (02:21:17):
Heck, she may have even asked to be left out too. You never know. She might have.

Paul Thurrott (02:21:21):
Yeah, we dunno. That's true. Yeah. It's, but notable for her absence, because she really was a big part of the story. Yeah. she, he beat her one time in a famous kind of death match thing, but then she beat him the second time and that was a big thing. It was big news. Like the, a woman has beaten the guy who created the game. It was, you know, it was really good. It was big news. Yeah. Yeah. It was big news, so, huh. Anyway,

Richard Campbell (02:21:44):
There's wild.

Leo Laporte (02:21:45):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:21:46):
Well

Leo Laporte (02:21:46):
Good. Congratulations on your on your withdrawal from

Paul Thurrott (02:21:51):
<Laugh>. It's okay. It's the least of my achievements this year, but thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:21:56):
Very glad. The

Richard Campbell (02:21:56):
Only I've, the, the only thing I've been playing was Dredge, and I got to the point where not only did they get all of the achievements, <laugh>, I've now, you know, challenged myself to complete the least amount of time. Like sure. That's where I'm at with that stupid game. I'm gonna, now I have to stop. Like, that's that you did all the achievements. Now it just gets to finish in a quarter time. There's nothing but illness from here,

Paul Thurrott (02:22:16):
<Laugh>. That's right. Well grab limbo in the game pass. It's good.

Richard Campbell (02:22:22):
Yeah. Maybe I will, I know I've played it before. I, I'll light

Paul Thurrott (02:22:24):
It up and Okay. It's hard. The fi the end is tough. But you probably have to look up how to do it. And to be clear, it'll, I'll be playing it in as p

Leo Laporte (02:22:31):
In the PC master race as per

Paul Thurrott (02:22:33):
Usual. Yeah, no, that's cool. You know, that's fine. I don't, that's not doing it any other way. That's fine. I'm not biased that much.

Leo Laporte (02:22:40):
Guess what's coming up next? It's the back of the book Tips, tricks, brown Liquor all ahead as we continue with Windows Weekly. Paul Throt and Richard Campbell. Let's kick off the back of the book. Paul Throt, you got a tip for us?

Paul Thurrott (02:22:56):
Yeah. So we talked earlier about windows Co-Pilot and some other 23 H two features making their way into the beta channel. Leo, as I say this, it's important to me that you not start doing this on your computer. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:23:10):
Okay. I won't. Where's

Paul Thurrott (02:23:12):
That? <Laugh> if you, if you are interested in testing. Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (02:23:15):
<Affirmative>? Yes.

Paul Thurrott (02:23:16):
There's 1123 H two right now. Yes. a way to do that would be to enroll in the windows inside of program and sign for the beta channel, click that box so you can get out as soon as it goes live. Right? You don't wanna be in it forever. But you will get these things, there'll probably be builds every week now. You can check out all the new features ahead of time. And my expectation, I'm just kind of guessing, but, well, I'm guessing it's based on the past is probably in September there will be a preview update version of this that goes out to Stable. And then in October, my guess is that we, we'll see the final release. But it, this is one that should go out pretty quick, honestly. It's not like past releases where they kind of randomly roll it out and see how it goes. And it takes a long time. It's an enablement package. If you qualify for 22 H two, you should just get it. That's the running theory. But if you want it early beta channel is the way to go.

Leo Laporte (02:24:07):
Alright.

Paul Thurrott (02:24:08):
Right. Make

Leo Laporte (02:24:09):
I'm not doing it with the box. You might think I'm doing

Paul Thurrott (02:24:11):
It. I'm not. You don't do it. I'm everyone else though. I'm

Leo Laporte (02:24:14):
Not Box. I'm not doing it.

Paul Thurrott (02:24:16):
There is no announcements. But Microsoft Loop for Windows is now available in the Microsoft store, which is kind of interesting. So when this thing went out in preview there was a web app and there was a there were mobile apps. I know it's on, I think it's on Android and iOS. I I do use it on Android. Spoil Alert in keeping with what we see with Clip Champ and Teams probably, or whatever. But it's a web app. This is the web app. So it's a it's a packaged version of the web app, so it's no different. In fact, it's curiously not as sophisticated as a lot of Microsoft web apps. If you right click on it, you'll get kind of a web menu and stuff. It's, it's not, they didn't announce it. So I, I think they were just, maybe they're just kind of early testing it.

(02:25:00):
But a lot of people were looking for like the app version. This will, this is it and will be it as we move forward. But and this will probably be the way that most people acquire it, whether they know it or not. Right. You're not gonna go to U A U R L in your web browser, although you can. You'll get the app and it will probably come with the browser suite and all that stuff. Sorry, the office Suite. But it's there now if you want it early. So It does, it works. It works okay. It's just, it's just no better than the web app.

Richard Campbell (02:25:29):
Yeah. How do you describe Loop to people?

Paul Thurrott (02:25:33):
Notion with an incredible infrastructure behind it. It's like notion, but running on SharePoint, maybe.

Richard Campbell (02:25:40):
Yeah. Yeah. No, it, and that's

Paul Thurrott (02:25:42):
A highly managed version of Notion.

Leo Laporte (02:25:44):
Do you wanna move to Loop now from Notion?

Paul Thurrott (02:25:47):
Not now. <Laugh>, I, I, I expected before now to have done this, I do think that us moving to Loop will make sense because it's the Microsoft thing. Yeah. It gets with OneDrive and all that stuff. And there are some limits with notion with regards to sharing and also just with the way you can apply styles and things that are actually much better in no loop. But my God, are these things. It it, when when you hear Slack complain about teams and you look at the products, you're like, these don't look at anything alike. I don't, I've never heard notion complain about Loop. They should because Oh my God, it's exactly the same. It's a photocopy. Yeah. It is identical from a UX perspective, you know, look and feel or whatever. Yeah. It's crazy. It's, people may

Leo Laporte (02:26:26):
Not know. We use Notion. Paul uses it and Richard used it to prepare the show. And that's our show rundown and it's worked great. We, for years with Mary Jo, we were using OneNote Loop has been a much, I mean, notion has been a

Paul Thurrott (02:26:37):
Much, OneNote was a disaster. Yeah. I notion's been great. Yeah. We've had one glitch. I think it was right around the time Richard joined. It was a while ago. It's been one problem. It was

Leo Laporte (02:26:49):
A permission thing. It's not, you know, these things,

Paul Thurrott (02:26:51):
They figured it out. My complaint, I complained and they said, yeah, it is not just you or everyone. Yeah, it's,

Richard Campbell (02:26:56):
Yeah. Yeah. There was a moment. You don't know. Yeah, you're right. You actually called Tech Support and they did the right

Paul Thurrott (02:27:00):
Thing. Yeah. And they actually got back to, yeah, they were good about it. But so the the, the re why we just switch the loop other than the things I just said, like, so one of the advantages of Clip Champ that I mentioned was the nice thing about this is it's like, it's in the box. Like I just have Windows and I have my editor, right? It's beautiful. I don't have to install an app. My expectation is that the Loop app will come with Office, which I always install on my computers, or often it's just there to begin with. And it's, it, it, and it's not the reason, but it's one of the reasons, like one less thing to manage and install separately and make sure it's on every computer. Like, it's nice. It's just there is my, and it's not the rea that's not the reason, like, notion is a good enough thing.

(02:27:35):
Obviously. I don't mind. Well, I gotta say, you guys use Notion, right? So how many times have you gone to Run Notion? You click on the icon, nothing happens. You wait, you wait, you wait, you click again, and then it comes up. It's like installing Notion. And then the way I sign in is I have to get a code through email. So, and I have to paste the code into thing. It's like, why does this happen all the time? Like, I'm just, it's, it's, it seems like it's always updating. So it's there, there are some little things. I'm not saying it's like OneNote bad, but there are a couple other things where I'm like, you know, something a little more sophisticated would be nice.

Richard Campbell (02:28:05):
I'll tell you this, from an Office 365 perspective setting, activating the loop

Paul Thurrott (02:28:09):
Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:28:10):
Was you had to set a set of group policies. Like it was not simple to get Luke turned on.

Paul Thurrott (02:28:15):
I that I still don't have the new version of teams for this exact reason. Mm-Hmm. <laugh>. Yep. That stuff is too hard. So when that comes to, well, loop is available to, anyway, anyone can use Loop, right? So yeah, it's out there for a Microsoft account, but the new team's like, yeah, I'd like to be on that thing. Obviously I still can. I I never figured it out. It's hard.

Richard Campbell (02:28:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And it, so it's like you, you only bang your head against the keyboard for so long before you're like, I got other stuff. I

Paul Thurrott (02:28:39):
Think it's hard. So mi because Microsoft can pop something up and go, Hey, do you want us to just manage this for you? What do, do you think

Richard Campbell (02:28:44):
Buddy? Because you do that all the time with stuff I already have. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So why don't you do with the

Paul Thurrott (02:28:48):
Stuff just like the, why don't you just do it?

Richard Campbell (02:28:50):
Yeah. <laugh>, you

Paul Thurrott (02:28:51):
Know, it's just, anyway, I'm sorry, I just screwed tangent, but

Leo Laporte (02:28:56):
Yep. Yep. Mr. Richard Campbell.

Richard Campbell (02:28:59):
Yes, sir. It

Leo Laporte (02:29:00):
Is now your turn to talk about run as radio.

Richard Campbell (02:29:06):
This week's show I talked to Julia, Andrew Cola, who is part of the fast track group. So these used to be the premier field engineers, the folks who are actually out in the field doing this stuff. So I, and I've had a recurring conversation over the past few months about the fact that all of our, all of these system bins, all of our organizations are gonna have to move to win 11 sooner or later. And so you should really start prepping now. So it's, it's fun to talk to the Johann r with Marks on the outside. You know, look at the suite of tools, but this is an insider. Insider. This is someone who's helping big organizations migrate to 11. And so having Julie walk us through using Windows update for business for this was really powerful. 'cause This is the model of a big company doing it where if you set up Windows update for business properly with the deployment services, literally the user's gonna be told, Hey, you're gonna be upgraded to Windows 11.

(02:29:57):
The deadline is like this week, this Friday, but you can pick a time. You know, you want to do it tonight, you wanna do it tomorrow. Like, so it does, you, you, you have some semblance of control. Big part that they, that she was focused on was the A D M X part, the group policy stuff as of a DMX three, they're pretty much 11 and 10 are in sync now. So all of that stuff's been fixed. So it was good to sort of hammer through Okay, that policy stuff's done. Application privileges are the same. Remember that it onto the hood. Windows 11 is actually Windows 10.1, so it doesn't break things. And yeah, just a solid conversation from someone who's been there migrating tens of thousands of seats to 11 on this is how you do it at scale,

Leo Laporte (02:30:44):
Right? Run as radio. Run as radio.com.

Richard Campbell (02:30:48):
Yes, sir.

Leo Laporte (02:30:51):
Let's see. I think we're coming to the end of the show, which means it's bourbon o clock. What do you got

Richard Campbell (02:30:55):
For it? Is bourbon o clock.

Leo Laporte (02:30:56):
What do you got

Richard Campbell (02:30:57):
For us? Well, and I'm not, and I'm not sharing a bourbon with you today, actually. Oh. 'cause I'm sharing Angels Envy.

Leo Laporte (02:31:03):
That's not a bourbon.

Richard Campbell (02:31:05):
No, no. It's a Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, which is not a bourbon. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (02:31:09):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:31:10):
Thanks for the clarification.

Richard Campbell (02:31:11):
Let's

Paul Thurrott (02:31:12):
Idiot <laugh>, let's

Richard Campbell (02:31:13):
Tell that story at the

Paul Thurrott (02:31:15):
Fool Commoner.

Richard Campbell (02:31:18):
It's just so much fun to play with these names like this. But we really should start at the beginning. And if we don't start at the beginning, we have to start with Lincoln Henderson. So Lincoln Henderson, born in 1938. This would be better if you did it in a Paul Harvey voice. There you go. <Laugh>. It all began with Lincoln Henderson in 19 Lincoln 38. What was he? He's a master distiller. He spent 40 years working for Brown Forum foreman. Now Brown for is actually a conglomerate that was built around originally Old Forester, a classic bourbon. Oh yes. Started by George Garvin Brown in brown bags everywhere. <Laugh>. Yes. Who then that He's the Brown in Brown Foreman. One of the only, only six distilleries in the US that was allowed to operate through her prohibition. Oh. To make medicinal whiskey. I didn't know that.

(02:32:13):
One of these days, I'll have to just do a whole prohibition story 'cause it's great. Yeah. Oh, wow. The Old Forester was one of the ones that was there to carry through that. And over time, as they as the brown Foreman group expanded, they bought various whiskeys. Some you may have heard of, like Jack Daniels. They have owned Jack Daniels since 1956. Huh. they actually bought Woodward Reserve twice. That's a whole other story. We'll do that later. So the last time they bought it was 1993, and just recently only in 2017, they launched a specialty version whiskey called Coopers Craft. They also bought the Ben React Distillery, which includes the brands Glen AK and Glen Gau. And they, in 2015, lit up an Irish whiskey called Slain. Once this got to do with Lincoln Henderson. So Lincoln Henderson worked 40 years at Brown Foreman, and he was the person who created Gentleman Jack <laugh>, the first new version of Jack Daniels since the number seven from 1870.

(02:33:16):
So originally released in 1988 to much a claim that he made this lighter version of of Jack Daniels. In 96 after Wood after Brown Foreman had bought Woodford Reserve, he spent three years on it making the new version of what we now know as Woodford Reserve. So that was also part of his legacy. And he did Jack Single Barrel and finally retired in 2003. Hmm. So let's jump to his son Wess Henderson. So Wes Henderson spent his whole life in distilleries, right? His fa dad was always there, and his dad was a legend. He vented these others kind, these other whiskeys. He helped other shows, got off his off the ground. So he kind of didn't wanna be in the distillery business. He actually entered aerospace for a while and stuff. And then he invariably, invariably got pulled back in. He worked more in the consulting level until finally in about 2003, he ended up in a situation with a, a distillery called Chu, which is actually based in Alabama that had been selling whiskey illegally.

(02:34:16):
And their c e o got busted and so forth. And he ended up being on the cleanup team and sort of got him on the straight and narrow and ran a distillery himself for the first time. And liked it enough that he went to his retired father in 2006 and said, we should make a Henderson whiskey. We should do it ourselves. I wanna make bourbon, but I wanna make bourbon a little different. 'cause He loved Scottish whiskey. And so this whole, we only Asian American Oak bugged him. He wanted to do finishing, you know, finishing other styles of barrels, different flavors, that kind of thing. And that's really what Angels Envy is. Angels Envy is made in the bourbon process, except that it spends, its last year in Ruby Port barrels. And that's just heresy. You should be burned at the stake <laugh>.

(02:35:07):
But Lincoln Henderson was involved and Lincoln Henderson is a God. And so everybody had to pay attention. And so in 2011, they launched Angels Envy. And coincidentally, I was doing shows in, in, in Louisville, Kentucky when this was going on, and got to actually see and meet Lincoln Henderson and see him present and talk about Angel Envy and the heresy. That was all, it was all about that. And, and they did so well. They never marketed at all, but just the gravity of the name and a very good tasting drink. That by 2013 they built out a major distillery themselves in Louisville. So normally bourbon distilleries are out in the countryside because they were all wrapped around farms originally. But no, he built it right in the city. And Lincoln was able to be there as it opened and passed away the same year at 75 years old.

(02:35:57):
He was the inaugural, the inaugural inductee to the Kentucky bourbon Hall of Fame. And he's the one who named it, arguably, this may be apocryphal, but apparently Lincoln said when they were making this particular whiskey, says, you know, if the angels share is what's evaporating, it's the Angel's envy that's in this barrel. Nice. So, oh, I get it. I like that. It's nice, huh? Yeah. and so it's not, you can't be called bourbon 'cause it violates the, the, the rules of bourbon by being finished in pork barrels, which is where we get this term, Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Oh. Which, I mean, literally the origi, if you look at the original bottles on it, it just didn't say bourbon anywhere because they didn't wanna break any rules. But eventually folks came around to the side that there's more than one way to make a whiskey.

(02:36:47):
And so we're gonna come up with other names. And there you'll see a lot of variations on the Kentucky Rait. There'll be a Kentucky Rait corn whiskey, which is like an 80% corn and so forth. But now if you look on the bottle, let's say Kentucky Straight Bourbon whiskey, 'cause it does not follow the bourbon rules, but it is delicious. It's better <laugh>. I think I like this. I like the Port. It's lovely. Yeah. I I They have a, like a Sherry finish. Yep. Now they're doing everything A set turn finish. They've got a high R like they're, they're go. So, but the big thing is that Wess Henderson's moved on he's down in the Hall of Fame too, by the way. But he went off, he did a thing with Metallica of off flipping things making this thing called blackened, but and is, and is, you know, close to his own retirement. So it's run by a larger organization and they've been doing lots of variations on this finishing concept. The

Paul Thurrott (02:37:39):
Port finish, that was the

Richard Campbell (02:37:40):
First. That's c Yeah, Ruby Port was their original product. It's my preferred product. I've tied many of 'em. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (02:37:46):
I would, that's probably similar to Sherry. I, yeah. I I really

Leo Laporte (02:37:49):
Like Sherry. So sweet. Maybe Right. Sherry's

Paul Thurrott (02:37:51):
Dryer. Yeah. It just cuts the kinda sharpness of it, right? Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:37:54):
The, well, and they, they use Ruby Port, which tends towards the more fruity side as opposed to a Tawny port, which is more of your like caramel nut notes. So either way, you know, these are just a bit of a fidgeting flavor. Somebody's asking about the Devil's Cut. That's Jim Beam <laugh>. And yeah, it's a funny story. The Devil's cut being what you get out of the barrel after you've drained it is what they call Devil's

Leo Laporte (02:38:17):
Cut. Oh, I see. They have a Cask strength. Angels Envy. That

Richard Campbell (02:38:20):
Might be always do. Yeah. And that's the same thing. Like, you start with your original product and then they just sort to expand the line. 'cause People like experimentation now, you know, they really do an ice

Leo Laporte (02:38:29):
Cider finish. That's hysterical. Yeah. It's funny for you Canadians. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:38:34):
Well, it's not,

Paul Thurrott (02:38:35):
It's not finished till it's finished. <Laugh>.

Richard Campbell (02:38:37):
Yeah. In the, in the original incarnation, they weren't trying to do a lot of flavor matching. So literally they were putting batch numbers on the bottles. And so, you know, batch to batch, they were different. That's sort of that settled down. I think that was a problem. I had one of the original bottles, I don't have it anymore, that the Cork was stamped with 10 10 because it was supposed to be released. Released in October, 2010. Wow. And Lincoln Henderson didn't like what they had made at that point, so they held it and didn't release it till mid 2011, but they'd already bought the corks. So if you got original batch, they had 10, 10 on the, on the Cork. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:39:12):
Huh. This is really I've always liked Angels Envy and I guess I know why now. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (02:39:18):
I don't know that I've ever heard of this. I,

Richard Campbell (02:39:20):
I'm, and again, it's like not promoted at all. They didn't try.

Leo Laporte (02:39:23):
I don't know about it. 'cause Richard told us about it when he was in studio at the Brick House ages

Richard Campbell (02:39:28):
Back in the day ago. Back

Leo Laporte (02:39:29):
In the day. Yeah. Okay.

Richard Campbell (02:39:30):
I don't remember. And then it says, 'cause we had the chance, Carl and I got a chance, got to meet Lincoln Anderson and be enamored of what they were doing.

Leo Laporte (02:39:36):
Wow. That's cool. But

Richard Campbell (02:39:38):
They were, they were also smart. Like they were breaking the rules. And so how did they tackled it in a way that you couldn't resist them? Yeah. Like rolling out the old man, the, you know, the guy who had lit the bourbon industry up and was, and loved what he was making was super excited. The Henderson fa, the Henderson family brand, like, everything about that was great. It was powerful. And it was just an interesting exercise in really helping an industry, I'd argue modernize like that, that in some ways American Bourbon was trapped. And Yeah. When, when the one of their godfathers says, we should do more, you couldn't ignore 'em. Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:40:16):
Yeah. All right. I might have to go to Louisville and visit the factory on Maine.

Richard Campbell (02:40:21):
Fantastic tour. Is it absolutely worth it? Yeah. Oh yeah. And I wasn't there that first day, but apparently they lo they were milling their own corn and they loaded the machining correctly and blew a foot and a half a corn across the whole room. <Laugh>. That might be fun. Buried the room in corn, like all of the mistakes, right? Oh, that might be

Leo Laporte (02:40:40):
Fun. Oh,

Richard Campbell (02:40:42):
That's cool. Yeah. But yeah, it's it's an experience and it's cool that it's in Louisville. Like if you don't, these are guys are not the rebels of the bourbon industry. They love the bourbon industry. They, they cared a lot for it, and they wanted to do more with it. And so all of these moves were important. We a part of a demonstration of a loyalty to the American whiskey making business and just, you know, they could open it up. I mean, I'm putting a lot of onus on a bottle of whiskeys. Just plain old taste good. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:41:10):
It's a good whiskey. Yeah. It's very smooth. Yeah.

Richard Campbell (02:41:12):
But I also, I love the story. Yeah. I love the story of, of a, of an industry icon saying, let's go further.

Leo Laporte (02:41:21):
Richard Campbell rapidly becoming an industry icon in his own right.

Richard Campbell (02:41:25):
I don't know that that's

Leo Laporte (02:41:26):
<Laugh> run his radio and t Net Rocks all@runisradio.com. Great to have you from Coquitlam, Paul OTTs back home in Macey. He is of course, at throt.com, even if he's in Mexico, he is@throt.com and his books Windows everywhere. The newest and the field guide Windows 11 are available@leanpub.com. You set your own price, but they are always worth it. Always worth it. Thank you. And every every Wednesday we get together and we talk about Microsoft right here. You can watch it live. We do it 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern, 1800 UTC at Live Dow tv. If you're watching live chat, live at IRC twit tv, that's open to all. Of course, our club members get their own velvet rope access behind the Velvet Rope in the Club Twit Discord after the fact on-demand versions of this show available at twit tv slash ww. That's our website.

(02:42:19):
While you're there, you'll see a link to the YouTube channel. There's a dedicated YouTube channel. There's also a, of course, an r s s feed. 'cause It's a podcast, which means you can get it in any podcast player of your choice or even r s s reader of your choice. But if you subscribe, and I think that's a good idea, you will get it automatically every Wednesday the minute it's available. And so you'll never have to wonder what to do on Thursday. You got a Windows Weekly. That's what, thank you, Paul. Thank you Richard. Enjoy some Angels envy, and we will see you next week on Windows Weekly.

Rod Pyle (02:42:51):
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle, editor in Chief AD Astra 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 in 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 space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.