Windows Weekly 976 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 and Richard are here, and we have lots to talk about, including Microsoft's plan to save Windows this year. Does it really need saving? Yeah, maybe it, maybe it does. Uh, we'll talk about a surprise with the Nintendo Switch 2 and how you can get Paul's books for free. That's coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.
Paul Thurrott [00:00:29]:
This is Twit.
Leo Laporte [00:00:38]:
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell, episode 976, recorded Wednesday, March 25th, 2026. Full throttle. It's time for Windows Weekly. Hello, all you winners, you dozers too. Wake up, wake up, wake up. Here's Paul Thurrott from Thurrott.com. Hello, Mr. T.
Leo Laporte [00:01:00]:
Hello, Leo. And from beautiful Redmond, I guess, Redmond, Washington, it is Mr., uh, uh, Richard Campbell of Run His Radio, soon to hit their 2,000th episode.
Richard Campbell [00:01:15]:
We recorded 2,000. It'll publish at the end of April.
Leo Laporte [00:01:18]:
Unbelievable.
Richard Campbell [00:01:19]:
We had a big party here, but I'm in the green room, so I decided I had to wear green.
Leo Laporte [00:01:23]:
Nice.
Richard Campbell [00:01:24]:
You know, every time the MVP Summit is on, I, I grab a studio and shoot from there. But they decided this year to, uh, offer up the studios to whoever needed them, and I couldn't get a 3-hour block. And so I sort of pinged my friends in this space and said, you know, what can we do? And he's like, would you like the green room? I'm sure I'll take the green. Oh, I mean, I'm in the green.
Leo Laporte [00:01:45]:
Nice. You know, it's funny, I've been in many green rooms in many studios. They're very rarely green.
Richard Campbell [00:01:52]:
Yeah, yeah, this, this one is not that green either. I'm the greenest thing in it.
Paul Thurrott [00:01:56]:
When the Grand Moff Tarkin calls and asks you to blow up Alderaan, yeah, I assume you have those controls.
Leo Laporte [00:02:03]:
You know what's interesting? Paul is in a green room.
Richard Campbell [00:02:05]:
Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Leo Laporte [00:02:08]:
So, um, I— we— it was such a big story we even talked about it on Twitter on Sunday. Pavan Davaluri said, sorry, We're gonna fix it all.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:17]:
Well, so it's funny that's the first thing you said because he didn't say sorry. Oh, oh right, that's also one of the little things that comes out of this, right?
Leo Laporte [00:02:25]:
I read into it maybe a little too much.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:26]:
Yeah, well, by the way, there's a lot of that going on, right? Um, and we're going to talk about that. Okay, I'm sorry.
Leo Laporte [00:02:33]:
Okay, well, let's start with Microsoft's plan to save Windows.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:37]:
Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's good. I mean, this is good news, obviously. Um, I— this takes up a lot of space in the notes. We don't have to go through it in this level of detail, but I mean, just the history of this sort of is if you think back to 2015, January, when they had the first consumer event for Windows 10, you know, 6 months before it was released, Satya Nadella came out at the end and he said, you know, we want people to love Windows. And then they've done everything they can since then to make people not love Windows, you know.
Leo Laporte [00:03:07]:
What do you think the chief error was on their part? Was it Copilot? Was it stuffing Copilot everywhere?
Paul Thurrott [00:03:13]:
No, no, no, it was, um, it was the, the— well, it's a cascading series of errors, right? And so, uh, if you speak generally about it, I would say— or to speak generally about it, I would say it is the need to further monetize users that pay for Windows only once and use it for several years, right?
Leo Laporte [00:03:32]:
Which is, in other words, in shitification.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:34]:
Well, uh, it doesn't have to be if it's something that's good for users and they want— that's true— they want to pay for it, make it better, they'll want it.
Leo Laporte [00:03:40]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:46]:
So there's been a lot of heavy hand. Well, a lot of heavy hand of bad behavior. At the time that Satya Nadella said that thing, I wrote an article that was something like, sorry, Satya, no one's going to love Windows until you do this thing. And it was just one of the things that goes into that in certification story. But it's this bundled crapware problem that we have on OEM PCs, like ball PCs basically. But they've really escalated the bad behaviors. Notion is trying— Notion desperately wants to record this meeting. I'm not going to allow that.
Leo Laporte [00:04:19]:
No, Notion, no.
Paul Thurrott [00:04:21]:
This is—
Leo Laporte [00:04:21]:
this is— but you know what? It's timely because that's the problem. Everybody's doing it. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:04:27]:
Yep. If we haven't, um, referenced this before, I strongly recommend that everybody find and watch the Saturday Night Live skit about, um, Uber Eats, uh, wrapped. Which is like a spoof of Spotify raps. And no, but it's awful. Like everyone's like, oh my God, this is so terrible. I don't want this.
Leo Laporte [00:04:47]:
What you ate all year? He's like, what do you mean?
Paul Thurrott [00:04:48]:
I'm number one in nuggets. You know, he's like, how could that be? She's like, you're eating a nugget right now. But the great line in there, which is I just applied everything now, is like, oh no, I know what it is. I just do not want it. Is sort of A lot of the stuff kind of falls into that category. So, you know, in Windows 8 they added ads, in Windows 10 they added forced telemetry, bundled crapware, privacy, you know, while the telemetry is tied in the privacy issues and whatever else. There's a whole list of problems, you know. And in Windows 11 they've escalated it yet again.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:24]:
And so, you know, just as he said that they were taking steps to make Windows so much worse, the big one to me at that time was actually Windows as a Service. And you see the cascading effects of that to literally this month. They just really— we'll talk about this later, but they released an emergency fix for a Windows update that went out this month. And it's just been a chaotic thing going on. We'll talk about this a little bit more later, but they've renamed these monthly updates we get on Patch Tuesday. That's called a security update now. It includes security updates and feature updates. They always do.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:01]:
In my mind, those things should be separate. We'll talk about that later. But Windows 11, they changed the name to Continuous Innovation, and it really was continuous. It was continuous like when you had a bad taco and you can't get out of the bathroom and it never stops and it just goes and goes and goes. And yeah, I mean, you know, we all kind of know the story. By the time— let's see, it's probably like last year, I guess, sometime I, I wrote that Insidification Checklist. I guess it was 2 years ago, and I listed the major issues I had, and I just listed most of them. Um, it's gotten so bad I, I wrote a book.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:40]:
I mean, I wrote a book about this, right? Uh, Deinsidify Windows 11 is a book, you know, um, hopefully, uh, telling people how they can get around all this stuff, right? But as I've been mentioning this year, we had one episode in particular where, you know, something positive has been happening, right? And so if you look at the kind of timeline, I saw the first signs of this myself in December when I was either bringing up new PCs or resetting PCs where that horrible behavior in OneDrive, which led to me 2 years ago or so, 2 and a half years ago now, leaving OneDrive and going to Google Drive originally, then going to Synology Drive. Not completely fixed, but definitely improvements to that issue of forced folder backup on certain computers. And so that was good. And then tied to their January earnings announcement, they talked about 1 billion users. And this is when Pavandaviluri came out and said, one of our focuses this year is going to be on quality and what he called addressing the pain points that are in Windows. We didn't have many details about that, but I could see this happening. The OneDrive thing is part of it. The new security features that are all over Windows, like Quick Machine Recovery, et cetera.
Paul Thurrott [00:07:58]:
All these things we've been talking about, like you can see the rest of the Windows kernel, et cetera, et cetera. There have been positive changes occurring. And the thing about Windows and any product really, but we focus on Windows here, there's always two sides, right? There's the upfront stuff, and that's always been kind of terrible. You know, back when we had like Creator Update and, you know, Fall Creator Update, and they were putting 3D apps in Windows that nobody ever wanted or used. There's that stuff, but then there's the engineering stuff on the back end. And so I feel like the engineering stuff on the back end, especially in Windows 11, was just left by the wayside to the point where I never thought we were ever going to see deep architectural, important, you know, fundamental, foundational, whatever changes. But in the years since, we've actually started seeing it. And I don't know that I can attribute all of this or even any of— well, all of it to Pawan Dave Lurie, but honestly, a lot of it has happened on his watch.
Paul Thurrott [00:08:48]:
And so there is evidence that he's doing some good things, right?
Richard Campbell [00:08:51]:
Let me throw a spin on this for you. Yeah, Terry Myerson leaves the company in 2018. There is no leader of Windows effectively at that point. In fact, Windows gets pulled apart. Client goes into one group, server core goes into another group. Yeah, Yeah, and essentially Windows is in Siberia and it has been ever since, right, until Pei Bang came along. And so effectively leaderless, what's really happened is that every product team that needed to get a hit, right, wanted a, wanted a revenue stream, like, or would push stuff into Windows because they could get away with it without a leader pushing back, give, you know, presenting an overall vision of the product. You just have a lot of different forces getting stuff by, right? Why is the insider builds insane? Because there's different teams pushing into them.
Paul Thurrott [00:09:42]:
I know, I— that will always blow my mind. I, I— yeah, that's a big part of the story. Um, I feel like there are parallels here to the development of Longhorn, whether it was too much happening at the same time and it just wasn't going to work.
Richard Campbell [00:09:56]:
Um, but there's also that you saw this period of it seemed like junior people were writing code in different stacks and deploying it into Windows. See File Explorer. Right, right.
Paul Thurrott [00:10:06]:
Oh, finally. Yeah. So we're going to talk about File Explorer because this is actually a big part of this story. But File Explorer is maybe the best example or one of the better examples of the problems and the possibilities here. But I also, I'm trying to think of parallels to this in other companies. In the 1980s when Apple was trying to push the Mac, It was the Apple IIe that was making all the money. And those people didn't have any say in anything that was going on strategically at the company. They didn't have any— the ear of the CEO.
Paul Thurrott [00:10:41]:
They didn't get to decide what happened. And eventually that thing disappeared. Maybe that— I don't know if that's one good example, but in the case of Microsoft, Windows was the biggest thing in the world. It was Windows only was the strategy. Eventually other things started happening. Office was on the Mac always anyway. It became kind of Windows first and then—
Richard Campbell [00:11:02]:
Not kind of, it absolutely was.
Paul Thurrott [00:11:04]:
Windows first. And then it was Windows best. It should be best on Windows. And then it became just Windows nothing. Not that it wouldn't be on Windows, but it just wasn't the focus as the company expanded out and then just grew exponentially thanks to the cloud. And we'll see what happens with AI now, but different eras. Windows just was not the focus, you know, even though, you know, consistent moneymaker. I mean, if you look at the earnings, I mean, thing, you know, it— I'm sure it's— well, I guess you're not sure, but it's probably dropped off to some degree.
Paul Thurrott [00:11:35]:
But I mean, Windows is a significant several billion dollars in revenue every single quarter.
Richard Campbell [00:11:39]:
But I think there was also a political effort to convince Windows itself, you are not the center of the company, Azure is the center of the company.
Paul Thurrott [00:11:46]:
Yeah. And look, this came up, uh, I think last week, and, and and I'm sure elsewhere, but we're not gonna talk about this too much this week, but Satya Nadella has hired from without, especially in this AI era, pretty dramatically. And you could make the case internally at Microsoft that at some point the best minds, so to speak, or the best employees, the most aggressive career-wise, whatever they are, would not work on Windows because that isn't where the money was and the action and so forth.
Richard Campbell [00:12:16]:
We even said this about Terry Myerson at the time, which is like, is he just the dumping ground for all the bad news? He got Windows, he got mobile, like he got everything that was in trouble effectively. Yeah. I mean, he finally left and nobody was replacing him.
Paul Thurrott [00:12:31]:
Like, the thing I like about—
Richard Campbell [00:12:33]:
imagine nobody wanting to be the leader of Windows.
Paul Thurrott [00:12:36]:
That's a very real possibility, by the way, uh, you know, that that is what happened, or no one qualified, right? I mean, um, I'm not sure Panos Panayotou was qualified to run Windows. I I don't understand what happened.
Richard Campbell [00:12:49]:
Yeah, I always saw him as the surface guy, right? Like he was much more about making—
Paul Thurrott [00:12:53]:
Yeah, and that was just a happenstance. He was a keyboard and mouse guy. I mean, he didn't just come out of nowhere. He came out of less than nowhere. And I don't— that rise will never make sense to me. But it's not coincidental, I think, that the most kind of superfluous surface, if you will, level version of Windows ever shipped on his watch. Windows 11, as originally conceived, was just lipstick on a pig, right? There were no fun, you know, fundamental foundational architectural advances occurring right then at all.
Richard Campbell [00:13:25]:
Well, the argument for Windows 11 is, God, we got to make this look more like OS X. Yeah, okay.
Paul Thurrott [00:13:31]:
Yeah. And, and maybe look like—
Richard Campbell [00:13:32]:
and then as everybody banged against it, they just gave in and backed off. Like, I think there was a vision to 11, it was just not very good vision.
Paul Thurrott [00:13:42]:
Yeah. Right. That would have been a kind of a mobile device UX in Windows 10X, and that just never happened. And, you know, whatever. We take half steps. I don't know. So, yeah. So I'm losing my place here, but Pawan back in January said, you know, said very little, but he said this was a focus for 2026.
Leo Laporte [00:14:05]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:14:06]:
After we recorded the show last week, I think it was late Friday, They came up with a more expansive version of what that looks like. It's a 2,000-word blog post. There's a lot, a lot of good news in there. If you aren't super familiar with what has gone wrong with Windows over the past decade or whatever, you might look at this and say, wow, this is a major turnaround. But like all things, you know, some of this was already happening, right? We've talked about that kind of thing. Some of it is just, um, it's like when you put something on it, like you put a feature in a product so you can have the bullet point. So it, it's something that people can't complain about, but even though no one's really going to use it that much, but it's the thing someone would have raised, you know, like moving a taskbar to different sides of the screen is something that, you know, 17 to 21 people are going to love and the rest of us just don't care.
Richard Campbell [00:14:57]:
Yeah, curve guys, definitely. Of course, one of them being me, but okay.
Paul Thurrott [00:15:00]:
But when you do something like that, what you're showing is that you are paying attention to feedback finally, and not maybe necessarily filtering it correctly because the loudest, noisiest, most complainiest people aren't necessarily representative of the mainstream. Okay. But you know what? Let's not worry about that part of it. Just stepping through what he did say, right? We're going to let you move the taskbar around, right? This is one of the biggest complaints about Windows 11. They're going to improve File Explorer performance and reliability. And this is something, man, you know, Richard brought this up early, but like, you know, here's something anyone can do. I've written about this. This was a tip on the show.
Paul Thurrott [00:15:45]:
I've done an episode of Hands on Windows about this. There's a utility you can run that will allow you to use an older version of File Explorer in Windows 11. So you can use the original one from the original release of Windows 11, which is pre-WinUI 3. You can use the Windows 10 version, which is almost identical but a little old-fashioned looking. Or you can use even— I think this one from Windows 8 and or 7, but either way, all of them run dramatically faster than the current version of File Explorer. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean they copy files faster. It means that when you open this app, you'll see it draw the window and then you can sit there and do the 1, 2 until it draws the home view. If you turn off WinUI 3, essentially use an older version, that happens immediately.
Paul Thurrott [00:16:30]:
It happens faster than you can see it. So tied to this is pushing more and more UIs to WinUI 3. It's like, now I, I, I should point out the asterisk here is that when File Explorer is a special case, right? And so when they first did the WinUI 3 makeover of File Explorer, they didn't use WinUI 3 as we get it as developers out in the world. They had to make a special— well, first, actually, I should say, first they used XAML Islands, which is a way to bridge the two worlds, right? But they had to use— they had to heavily modify it. The shipping version of XAML Islands was not going to work for what they needed. This issue educated the people who make this stuff to make improvements in WinUI 3. The Windows App SDK. But when they went to the full WinUI 3, they also don't use the shipping version.
Paul Thurrott [00:17:21]:
They had to modify that one too. It's not good enough. So what we have is this Frankenstein's monster of a Win32 app, which is probably all C++, whatever, and then this kind of WinUI front end, but only on parts of it. It's on the address bar stuff at the top and the whatever toolbar is there. It's not really a toolbar, but whatever's up there. And then the navigation bar, those are WinUI 3 components. The rest of it is still the old-fashioned stuff. Still slows the thing down dramatically.
Paul Thurrott [00:17:46]:
I got to think every time you call across those layers, you don't— It's what we used to call a thunk, almost, right? If you went like 16 to 32-bit code or 32 to 64 or whatever.
Richard Campbell [00:17:57]:
You had the thunk.
Paul Thurrott [00:17:58]:
Yep. Now I will say somewhere in here, somewhere in this list, there will be a mention of the Start menu, right? Start menu was just overhauled. It is better than it was before. Before. Um, one thing maybe people don't understand, if you bring up Start menu, you have like a pinned view of icons that you— for apps and stuff. And then you've got this— we used to have a recommended thing at the bottom. Now it's just like the all apps list or whatever. Actually, I might have just turned off recommended.
Paul Thurrott [00:18:26]:
I suspect it's still there. Um, let me just look. Yep, I turned it off. So, um, these things are all drawn with JavaScript, right? So this is React Native. Um, it's not Native, really. Uh, the components it's drawing are native, but the, the way it does it is, is web tech.
Richard Campbell [00:18:43]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:18:43]:
And it's slow.
Richard Campbell [00:18:44]:
So React Native is called that because it's not actually running in a browser, right? Yeah, there you go.
Paul Thurrott [00:18:49]:
Yeah, right. I guess React Chromeless was too, you know, confusing. But yeah, um, going from JavaScript to WinUI 3, maybe that would be a performance improvement. I mean, we'll see. We're going to find out, you know. We'll see.
Richard Campbell [00:19:01]:
Uh, it strips a couple of thunks away. That's all it does.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:03]:
There you go. Yeah. Similar improvements to widgets, although to me the problem with widgets isn't the way it displays things or how you can or cannot have a feed and actual widgets side by side. It's the quality of the stuff in the widget feed, which all comes from MSN and other related things. It's garbage.
Richard Campbell [00:19:22]:
It's the same garbage that's in a blank Edge browser.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:26]:
That's exactly right.
Richard Campbell [00:19:26]:
Now on the side of your screen.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:28]:
Garbage.
Richard Campbell [00:19:29]:
You got to turn it off.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:30]:
Never addresses that. He said that he's going to allow people to skip Windows updates for more time without saying how much time. So if you're familiar with this UI as a human being, because businesses get different capabilities here, but you can go— actually, let's go and look at it. If you go into Settings and go to Windows Update, there's a— it says pause for 1 week. And if you click it, it will say pause for 2 weeks. You click it again, pause for 3 weeks. Click it again, pause for 4 weeks. And that's as far as you can go.
Paul Thurrott [00:20:00]:
So does that mean you're going to be able to pause updates for 5 weeks, 7 weeks, 50 weeks? I don't know. We don't know. I should probably— I desperately want to kind of do this out of order in a way because I'm listing what he said, but then I'm listing the issue. So I'm just going to mention here the thing I mentioned up front, which is that Microsoft recently renamed these updates, right? And so we have a security update that goes on Patch Tuesday. We have a preview I think they just call it preview update, but preview security update that goes out on the Tuesday of week D. And then we have whatever, you know, sometimes there's emergency updates, other updates, whatever. My feeling is that you, Microsoft, should separate those things. Security updates should be semi-mandatory in the sense that you either do have to install it right away or you only get a very short pause time on it because it's important, especially if it's a zero-day type of thing, right? Sure.
Paul Thurrott [00:20:53]:
Whereas feature updates, maybe you could be a little more lenient on how far out it goes. Tied to this though is this notion of CFRs, these controlled feature releases, which are not controlled in any way, but are instead random, where I feel like you should have a box that says, I actually want the new features when they're like right away, you know, on kind of the flip side. Because the problem is you download this big update, you get the security updates, you get the feature updates, they're in the system, but they're not enabled, you reboot, And randomly tomorrow, 2 weeks, a month, whatever, I still have computers that have the old Start menu. You might one day wake up and have a new feature. And it's like, guys, there has to be a better system for this, right? Tied to this is the Windows Insider Program, which is a big problem, right? In an engineering-based software development environment, right, the way this would work is that Canary would get the features first, people would test them, provide feedback, and they might or might not change them, go to dev, go to beta, go to release preview, go to the weekly update, and then go out in Patch Tuesday. That would be the progression for every single feature Microsoft adds to Windows, and they do not do that, as we discuss endlessly. He didn't say they were going to fix that, but he did say they were going to make some changes there. I think most of it is tied to my earlier complaint, which is that as a Windows Insider, where you say to me, okay, You're going to download this new build.
Paul Thurrott [00:22:16]:
You're in the dev channel or the beta channel, doesn't matter. And here are the 17 new features that we're going to add to this thing. 16 of them are on a CFR. You're going to get them whenever you get them because there's no way to speed those things up. And there are actually some workarounds for some, some but not all. But let's just say you can't do it. And I believe what they're going to do is actually let people get the features right away. I think he doesn't say that exactly, but I think the point is to, to give you more, um, uh, transparency into what's actually happening and then let you pick the thing that makes sense for you.
Paul Thurrott [00:22:48]:
I think what he's really saying is there's going to be a version of that, there's some step toward that.
Richard Campbell [00:22:51]:
I mean, the reason for CFRs is because you want to A/B test.
Paul Thurrott [00:22:55]:
Yeah, you don't do that stable, you know, like—
Richard Campbell [00:22:58]:
yeah, I mean, the other part of this is how do you get the feedback? Like, what are you even learning? Yeah, CFR, the whole CFR channel should be an opt-in. You want to be part of the experiments. We can't tell you what features you're going to get because it's supposed to, you know, so glad you said opt-in.
Paul Thurrott [00:23:13]:
By the way, my number one point that I will make later, but is about opt-in versus opt-out. Um, it's, look, it's hard. Any platform you have, um, so you get like an iPhone, like iPhone, the iPhone got the iOS 26.4 update. You reboot your phone, it takes 17 hours to install, and then it, a little thing comes up says you have new features. You know, the Pixel does this Chromebooks do this. It's like Microsoft doesn't want to annoy you unless it really wants to annoy you, and then it has no problem annoying you. It's like, maybe show us what's new. I don't understand not doing that.
Paul Thurrott [00:23:47]:
I mean, to me, that just makes sense. But again, it's hard not to editorialize in every one of these things. They're going to make more relevant recommendations in Start. Nobody wants recommendations in Start. Now, you can turn it off, right? This is an opt-out.
Richard Campbell [00:24:05]:
Yeah, really relevant would be not at all.
Paul Thurrott [00:24:07]:
Yep. Don't like this, turn it off. One of the big complaints I had that got me off of OneDrive, aside from the thing I talked about earlier, which is the folder backup thing, is that you would launch Word and I would configure it to— and by the way, it's 117 steps to get to this point, but I would configure Word exactly the way I wanted it. And one of the ways I wanted it was you're going to save to the desktop by default, and the desktop is not backed up with folder backup. which is a local folder, it hates that. Yellow banner across the top, an info bar, "You should be saving to OneDrive." If you save to OneDrive, this thing would auto-save, which by the way could work fine on the local file system, they just didn't do it at the time. I think they do do it now, by the way. There was no option that you could say, "Okay, thank you," but it would just keep coming back every time you did it and there was no option, "Okay, I get it.
Paul Thurrott [00:24:52]:
Don't show me this." You have to understand that for me to make this change, I have to know what I'm doing to even get into this thing to find it. I, I obviously know what I'm doing. I obviously want this to be this way. Leave me alone. You know, there's a lot of that kind of harassment in Windows and in Windows apps, and I just— it makes me crazy. So, okay, um, a lot of latency reductions throughout. So context menu, the idea here is you right-click and it actually appears. You know, you don't do a 1-2 step beat, right? File Explorer, like we said, uh, Start menu Yada yada, all that stuff.
Paul Thurrott [00:25:27]:
Okay, reduce resource usage across the board. This is throughout the system, the built-in apps, etc., etc. This is good for just, you know, freeing up resources is always good. Um, I think this is tied a little bit to that Xbox mode slash gaming handheld stuff, right, where they have the full-screen experience. You don't want anything running in the background. Honestly, that's good for a lot of people, and you know, maybe there'll be some sanity there. We'll see. He called out the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Paul Thurrott [00:25:54]:
Who are you getting feedback from? I like this is the look, is it a little hard to install? Yes. Should it be a little hard to install because my grandmother shouldn't be installing this?
Leo Laporte [00:26:06]:
Yes.
Richard Campbell [00:26:06]:
Yeah. So it's really a dev tool, right?
Paul Thurrott [00:26:09]:
Yeah. I mean, like, okay.
Richard Campbell [00:26:11]:
I mean, that's what we're used to paying.
Leo Laporte [00:26:12]:
I wonder if it's because the real motivation for this is people moving to Linux. And yeah, I think they want to make sure that you know, hey, Linux is going to be great on Windows, right? I don't—
Paul Thurrott [00:26:24]:
right, look, Linux is always going to be— no, you're right. It's— that's why it's— that's why it exists, right? It's for developers to keep them from going to Linux or keep them from dual booting, right? Um, you get this familiar toolchains and all that stuff if that's what you want. But, you know, look, it's like— it's a virtual machine. It's always going to be something like that. I, you know, we'll see what happens there. But I don't know, I don't think Grandma's going to be like, I'd really like to run the Linux version of the game.
Leo Laporte [00:26:51]:
It's too hard.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:52]:
Yeah, you know, it's like, okay, I— so we'll see. It's too darn hard, whatever that means. Yeah, I want to run Linux, but it's too hard. Yeah, um, lots of reliability improvements, etc. Windows Hello, um, this one confused me at first, but I did raise this issue, um, you know, in the past 3 months or so, whatever it was, uh At some point in Windows Hello, it became the authentication method for passkeys, right? And passkeys became the way that your identity on the PC is stored if you sign in with a managed account, meaning a Microsoft account or an Entra ID account. So, okay, that's good. But you could have facial recognition, you could have a fingerprint, you can do a PIN obviously. But the thing is, it does that, you know, the little dialogue comes up, the eyeballs look for you.
Paul Thurrott [00:27:36]:
It's like, okay, we found you. And then you have to click a box to get through it. And it's like you just added a step like this. This is like, what do you call it, the UAC control that they started in Vista, but with an additional step. And we hated that. You know, like we hated it.
Richard Campbell [00:27:56]:
Okay, before I do what you want, agree with me about something.
Paul Thurrott [00:28:00]:
Yeah, it's you. Click here to make sure it's you. But it's me. You know, to me, it should just— you should just go through. I don't know. Yeah, maybe that will be part of that fix.
Leo Laporte [00:28:06]:
We'll see.
Paul Thurrott [00:28:09]:
There is a speed issue. I will say this. Okay, so this is all good news, right? But here's the problem. So the next morning I woke up and I was like, all right, I'm going to write something about this. I'm thinking I'm mostly— what I'm going to say is this is mostly good news and I'm sure I'll find a couple of little things. And I was like, well, where do I start? And I'm like, I know where to start. I wrote this Windows 11 certification checklist. Let's check it against the list.
Paul Thurrott [00:28:35]:
They only address One of the things that I mentioned, like, uh, which is the Windows Update chaos bit, right? And then only partially because we don't actually know what they're doing, and I have further suggestions there, right? Forced telemetry, never mentioned. Forced Microsoft account sign-in, never mentioned. Bundled crapware, never mentioned. Forced Microsoft Edge usage when you choose another browser and it still launches Edge when you go through search, through widgets. There's another insight, whatever the other thing is. For Microsoft Edge harassment, whether you choose it or not, to choose a Microsoft-friendly configuration that will open you up to more privacy issues, not addressed. The hardware requirements, not as much of an issue today, frankly, but at launch, that was a big thing with Windows 11. I would say between Windows 11 and TPM 2.0 and the way that the world is and all those security features we mentioned, it's kind of necessary.
Paul Thurrott [00:29:30]:
Copilot plus PC has much more aggressive demands for hardware resources, 16 gigs of RAM, I think it's 512 gigs of storage, et cetera, at the MPU obviously. And then the OneDrive behavior stuff, which like I said, was already kind of partially addressed, like the update that I started seeing in December, which by the way, to this moment, they have never discussed publicly, right? Which is crazy. So Richard mentioned opt-in because Richard could read my mind and it makes me insane. It occurred to me as I was looking at the high-level issues, I said, you know, one of the big problems here is that too many things in Windows are opt-out, or you have to go find a fix or a switch somewhere in settings or a workaround or whatever it might be, right? And so the big exception to this is Recall, right? So Microsoft introduced Recall almost 2 years ago. Instant furor over this crazy privacy problem. You know, they spent— they delayed it for months. Um, I don't know that it's even— I think it's still in preview. I don't, I don't know anyone who uses it, but I think it might still be in preview.
Paul Thurrott [00:30:34]:
It doesn't matter. Um, they made no material changes to it technically. Everyone stopped complaining. There have been no security vulnerabilities and no hacks or anything since then, but whatever. But they did make one important change. They made it opt-in, right? They were originally going to make it opt-out. They were going to enable it by default, tell you during setup they did it, and then you'd have to go figure out how to turn it off. And that's the wrong— I think we can all agree that's the wrong approach.
Paul Thurrott [00:30:56]:
And there's a lot of that stuff in, uh, Windows. Actually, you know, apologies, I gotta take one step back. I didn't mention one of the big ones. And, um, when Leo said up front, he said, oh, I apologize, I said, actually didn't say that. Um, this is— this falls into this.
Leo Laporte [00:31:10]:
No apologies.
Paul Thurrott [00:31:11]:
There's no apologies. Um, is Copilot. Um, the news in the headlines I saw everywhere was Microsoft is getting rid of Copilot in Windows or scaling back Copilot in Windows or whatever. And I gotta tell you, that's not happening.
Richard Campbell [00:31:27]:
It's not what he said.
Paul Thurrott [00:31:28]:
They are gonna remove the Copilot icon from places where it doesn't belong, like Notepad, but that doesn't mean they're removing the writing tools that are in Notepad that are AI-based and may or may not require a Copilot or a, what do you call it, Microsoft 365 subscription, right? So there are AI features in Paint, in Photos, in Notepad, and Snipping Tool, and wherever else in Windows, right? Edge, you know, is another one. There's a Copilot icon in every one of those places. And what they've said is we're going to get— we're probably going to get rid of the Copilot icons. We understand that people are a little incensed every time they see it. They get like, you know, it makes them crazy. Um, I think most people don't see it or care, you know, right? Yeah, these— we're talking about like the people in the Insider Program, I guess, or enthusiasts, which is, you know, all 100 of us or whatever.
Leo Laporte [00:32:18]:
Yeah, my position on AI is you can leave it in, just don't force it down my throat.
Richard Campbell [00:32:24]:
Don't make me use it.
Paul Thurrott [00:32:25]:
Yeah. So I would like, when you look at like just 3 apps, I'll just use as an example. So in Notepad, very easily you can go to settings and turn it all off. If you don't want any help writing assistance, summaries, whatever, you can turn it off. It's nice. If you go into Paint, you cannot, but there are registry-based ways to turn off some of that stuff, but not all. It is a Copilot icon, which is the wrong way to think of it because you've made Copilot the feature, right? Whereas the features are the things that are under that menu, which are remove the background or help me create a new image or whatever it is. To me, those are functions of the app, and we can debate whether they should be something you could turn off or disable, whatever.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:06]:
But the Copilot bit of it, It never made any sense to me. And then same thing with Photos. Photos is unique because you can't actually turn off any of those features. You get what you get. You have some AI-based features on any computer. You get more with a Copilot Plus PC feature computer, but there is actually no way to turn that stuff off in Photos. And I would argue for a photo editor, that's where people are going to want to use AI, but it doesn't get in your face. I mean, you, you, there's different tabs.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:38]:
You can just not use it. I mean, what's the big deal? But back to opt-in. Yeah, look, no one wants a system that's constantly asking if you want to use a feature, right? That's annoying. And so finding the balance here is tough. I don't think we should underplay that. The right way to do this is difficult and may vary and will vary by feature, right? Really think through this. I think the issue is—
Richard Campbell [00:34:04]:
By product, by user, right? Different people approach these things different ways.
Leo Laporte [00:34:08]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:34:08]:
I mean, there's all these like just ridiculous UIs in Windows where, you know, during setup it's like, hey, how would you like to set this up? Are you a gamer? Are you a programmer? And you click that box and it installs a couple of stupid icons. You know, one of the things it could do is say, oh, he indicated he's a developer or some kind of power user. Don't put this stuff in his face. He'll figure it out. Whether if you're a general, you're like, "Oh, I browse social media and I like to browse the web or whatever." Like, okay, maybe you need a little help, a little handholding, but they don't do that. They just do superficial stuff. And maybe that will be part of it. I mentioned control feature releases.
Paul Thurrott [00:34:46]:
This is a huge problem. And I really do very strongly believe Windows updates should be split between security and features and they should be have different policies, right? Different timeframes for pausing them or not taking them or whatever it is, you know, but they never address that.
Richard Campbell [00:35:06]:
I mean, you can go further with the security updates. Like, is this a laptop that you take out into the world? This is a desktop that always lives inside of a perimeter. Like, the security hits differently in those contexts.
Paul Thurrott [00:35:18]:
That's true.
Richard Campbell [00:35:18]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:35:20]:
Fundamentally, what we're asking for is like actually do the work to make this thing better rather than put superficial features on the surface that just annoy most people.
Richard Campbell [00:35:34]:
Or ask them questions they don't know the answers to.
Paul Thurrott [00:35:37]:
Yeah, and don't give them a way to say no. And I mean no forever, stop. I don't understand that. Even the OneDrive feature, change that I talked about before, you should be able to at any time go in and say, do not ever turn this on. I just don't want this. I know what it is. I do not want it.
Richard Campbell [00:35:59]:
I've closed it every single time.
Paul Thurrott [00:36:01]:
Yeah. If you're going to enable a feature like that, you got to put something up that says, look, here's why you might want to do this. I feel like a lot of mainstream users would look at that and say, yeah, I do want to do that. Thank you. Might make sense for them. It might make sense for a lot of people. But for people like us, people listening to the show, the answer is no. What are you doing? If I want that on, I will turn it on.
Paul Thurrott [00:36:24]:
You know, um, I don't know what I have to do. Do I have to pass a test? Is there a little like a 10-question questionnaire where I can go through and prove that I know what I'm doing and you can stop harassing me? I mean, whatever, I just do something, you know. And I already mentioned the other stuff in here, the Windows Insider Program, which doesn't make any sense. We'll see what happens there. And then his solution to all of the performance and what he calls latency problems, which are just the differential between when you click something and when it actually does the thing, which is performance. The solution to him is WinUI 3, which by the way, he writes with no space between WinUI and the 3, which if you look at the documentation, there's a space. But it's— Fun.
Richard Campbell [00:37:05]:
Okay, Dad.
Paul Thurrott [00:37:06]:
Well, he's an engineer. I'm just saying. I don't know. So look, overall, yes is the good news. Someone looked— I feel like what I've created— I didn't set out like, oh, this stinks. I'm going to make a list and blow this thing out of the water. That wasn't my point. I actually thought it was going to mostly address my issues.
Paul Thurrott [00:37:27]:
Right? And then you went and compared it against your list and realized that Yeah, and then some guys like, oh, some people are never happy unless they have something to complain about. I'm like, listen, I would never be happier than if I had nothing to complain about when it comes to Windows. Um, unfortunately, I, I created this list 2 years ago. It doesn't address most of those issues. Like, I, I kind of wish it did, you know. So we'll see. I mean, look, there's a whole year to come, well, or 3 quarters of a year to come, and, uh, we're gonna start, you know, we know about other things I didn't mention, like Xbox mode is coming, etc., etc. So We're going to have a chance between April and the 26H2 release, right? So there's about 6 months there if you're in the Insider Program, which I suspect a lot of people on the show are, to see what this looks like.
Paul Thurrott [00:38:12]:
And I bet it's going to be better than it was.
Richard Campbell [00:38:17]:
Yeah, but we're only at the beginning of this. What happens with the next round of feedback? And, you know, other people, if you really are listening and we see the results, I think a whole lot of more people are going to start talking.
Paul Thurrott [00:38:26]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:38:26]:
Is there any example of Microsoft doing this before?
Paul Thurrott [00:38:30]:
Well, sure. Yeah, I mean, this is a regular—
Leo Laporte [00:38:33]:
in other words, this is kind of a regular—
Paul Thurrott [00:38:35]:
yeah, so XP SP2, yeah, is probably the best one.
Leo Laporte [00:38:39]:
That's right.
Paul Thurrott [00:38:39]:
Big public push. That was one they felt they should have and could have sold, and, you know, but they did the right thing, so to speak.
Leo Laporte [00:38:47]:
They fixed XP.
Paul Thurrott [00:38:48]:
Um, that's the biggest one, I would say. But they did a similar thing. Yep. Oh yeah, yeah. The server was even worse in some ways, although obviously XP impacted more people. Um, but yeah, it's interesting that this year Apple is sort of doing the same thing, you know.
Leo Laporte [00:39:07]:
Uh, Apple's done this before. Yeah, there's new updates like the Snow Leopard update.
Paul Thurrott [00:39:12]:
Yeah, exactly.
Leo Laporte [00:39:13]:
Yeah. Um, in some ways the difference between— we talked about this on Sunday on Twitter— between Apple and Windows— we've said this many times— Windows really has a legacy support issue. They have to support all the same users. Famously.
Paul Thurrott [00:39:28]:
Yep. Yeah, I would say Windows 7 falls into this category. Windows 7, which is Windows Vista Service Pack 2, um, definitely falls into this. They did this with Windows 8.11 and all the other releases until we got to 10 to fix 8, right? Um, but, and then I, I guess I would— I mean, I guess, um, trustworthy computing might fall— well, trustworthy computing is what led to XPS, but 2. Um, the Secure Future Initiative, which is part of— or sorry, the Secure Future Initiative, which bleeds into the Windows Resiliency Initiative, whatever it's called, um, which led to some of those security features I only glossed over earlier, um, which is I think part of this broader effort, you know, to fix this thing on the back end. Um, it's, it's, it's good, you know. How do you fix problems without acknowledging that you made mistakes? Is maybe a masterclass in communication because I don't blame Pawan Daveuluri, but— and he's certainly not— well, he could, but he didn't throw any of his predecessors under the bus. But it's fair to say that you don't make this many changes suddenly without people noticing and being like, well, what have you been doing for the past 10 years? Not him personally, I mean the Windows team or whatever.
Paul Thurrott [00:40:44]:
Yeah, um, I don't know, it's a fine line. But it's— look, it's net good news, there's no doubt about it. But you know, some of the big— if you really think about the big problems, you know, like the, the chaos of Windows Update, we'll see. Um, this year so far, by the way, pretty good, right? Um, the OneDrive stuff, you know, pretty good, not great. Um, but bundled crapware, suggestions and recommendations, essentially ads everywhere, not talking about that. Forced Microsoft sign-in, not talking about that. Um, that forced telemetry— I'm not talking about that. Uh, so I, you know, I, you know, yeah, it's still— it's better.
Richard Campbell [00:41:21]:
It does feel like progress.
Leo Laporte [00:41:23]:
It's getting better all the time.
Paul Thurrott [00:41:25]:
Yes, yes. The problems I raised are the Linda McCartney of this scenario. It's like, I like what you're doing, but I have a problem with this.
Leo Laporte [00:41:36]:
It's not the Yoko Ono of this.
Paul Thurrott [00:41:37]:
Yeah, that's true.
Leo Laporte [00:41:39]:
Could be worse.
Paul Thurrott [00:41:40]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [00:41:41]:
You're watching Windows Weekly, and I am so glad you are with the now— I think we're going to call him Happy Paul Theroux. Jolly Paul Theroux. It's a whole new— not making any apologies here, but—
Paul Thurrott [00:41:55]:
No, no, no, no. My complaints of the past were warranted and religious in nature.
Leo Laporte [00:42:01]:
And Richard Campbell. From RunAsRadio, of runasradio.fame and.NET Rocks! 2000th episode. Fame, so glad you're here. Let's continue on. There is other Windows 11 news, I think.
Richard Campbell [00:42:16]:
Yeah?
Paul Thurrott [00:42:17]:
Yeah, and this is all terrible.
Leo Laporte [00:42:20]:
So much for Jolly Paul. Well, that was fast.
Richard Campbell [00:42:23]:
That was the good news segment. Let's talk about the bad news segment.
Paul Thurrott [00:42:26]:
I was actually surprised there wasn't— Maybe I missed it, but I felt like there must have been a canary dev beta something between now and last week. I didn't see it, so I don't know. But they, you know, January was kind of infamous in Windows, not quite Windows 2000 SP4. I think it was famous or infamous, but the January Patch Tuesday update required Microsoft to ship two emergency fixes patches. And now we've done another one for the March Patch Tuesday. Ironically, this one prevented people with Microsoft accounts from signing in, which, you know, the people who can't stand having to sign in with a Microsoft account must have found ironic and/or terrible, but whatever. So this, what they call it, I think they still call it out-of-band update, like a— yeah, it's not a zero-day exactly, but it's an emergency. It's an out-of-band, meaning it's not happening on the Tuesday, right?
Richard Campbell [00:43:22]:
They're not going to wait.
Paul Thurrott [00:43:23]:
Yeah, it's right. This is important enough. We can't wait until next Tuesday, next month.
Richard Campbell [00:43:30]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:43:31]:
So anyway, that's out. I don't, I don't know that I've experienced this problem. And I sign in with a Microsoft account on all my PCs. So I'm not sure what to say. But I feel like if you were prevented from getting into Microsoft Teams and/or OneDrive, you might be like, you know what, maybe I'm better off.
Richard Campbell [00:43:49]:
Just a hint.
Paul Thurrott [00:43:50]:
Yeah, maybe I'll take the hint. Exactly.
Leo Laporte [00:43:52]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:43:53]:
Um, um, and then, uh, there is one Windows Insider release, at least, like I said, unless I'm missing something. But if you are in the Canary or Dev channels or have a PC enrolled in one of those channels, you will start to get a redesigned Feedback Hub. And I say start to get because guess what? It's a CFR. Because seriously, Microsoft, get the freaking message. Anyway, um, I, it's been modernized with, uh, WinUI 3. Uh, I don't have anything to say about this. I don't really care. Whatever, Feedback Hub.
Paul Thurrott [00:44:27]:
Um, whatever. So that's it. That's what we got. Um, I suspect— well, I think they might have even said, but someday soon, uh, probably before the end of this week, we will start seeing at least some of this stuff appear through the Insider Program, and we'll see how they communicate this, right? Because I think—
Richard Campbell [00:44:48]:
I'm hoping they reorganize the Insider Program.
Paul Thurrott [00:44:50]:
There are hints that that's coming. Um, and just for people who are unaware of this problem, aside from what I said earlier, which, you know, this is natural bleed down, right? Um, between today— now this changes all the time, and this makes me insane too— but like, um, Dev and Beta are both testing different build streams, branches, trunks, whatever it is. Of 25H2 right now. The feeling is that we will eventually switch to 26H— well, we will, right? We'll switch to 26H2 on dev at some point. Um, but then Canary's testing 26H1, which no one is going to get unless they have a Snapdragon X2-based laptop, which by the way, still none have shipped yet. Yeah. And you can test it now on an Intel or AMD-based PC through the Insider Program, and it's like, what? And they get the features last. Like, I don't think there's been a single feature.
Richard Campbell [00:45:44]:
I can't imagine this stays. I think as it gets scrutinized, like, I suspect they're going to reorganize it.
Paul Thurrott [00:45:49]:
Yeah. And I'm missing one too because they split something else where, well, release preview because of the nature of release preview, if you, you could have any supported version, there'll usually be two. So today it would be 24 and 25H2. Like you could have a 24H2 PC on the release preview channel. Or 25H2 PC on the Release Preview Channel, you would get, I don't know if it's the same update or different updates, but you get the same features, right? That's how that works. Like, that's okay. But I feel like they split, was it, maybe it was the Dev Channel. I can't remember, but they split, like, they have two different, the 25H2 is in two different channels, but then one of the channels is split and it's like, guys, just, this is not difficult.
Paul Thurrott [00:46:33]:
Like, but they, I don't know, they make it complicated. It's very strange. I'm—
Richard Campbell [00:46:37]:
this flurry of failed patches is interesting because it's been on Pavan's watch, right? Like, are they rushing? Have they interrupted the testing flow? Is it a, you know, rebellion against new leaders? I'm not like— it's really weird.
Paul Thurrott [00:46:53]:
I don't—
Richard Campbell [00:46:53]:
I'm not gonna usually mess up these patches, and then they've done a string of them.
Paul Thurrott [00:46:58]:
Yeah, I don't I don't know. I should say upfront, I don't know. I'm going to just kind of guess that part of it might be that they're starting to touch parts of Windows they have not touched in a long time, and that there isn't this institutional memory protecting these things from happening because the people that understood how this stuff worked before are long gone.
Richard Campbell [00:47:22]:
Well, and yeah, you know, you hit an interesting point. Maybe there were some folks who left when Pavan came in.
Leo Laporte [00:47:26]:
In.
Richard Campbell [00:47:26]:
And one of them was the guy with all the engineering stuff in his head that knew how to make sure patches didn't break, and now they're breaking.
Paul Thurrott [00:47:33]:
I mean, well, part of— we alluded to or mentioned this, but part of the reorg that occurred back in, I guess, September was they brought back in Windows Core and Server, and now they're all on the same team. And so when you think about those things being part of Azure and going out on a more leisurely schedule, meaning probably once a year, frankly, Um, they could be introducing code into Windows on a monthly basis now, which, which just hits at a lower level. And maybe, you know, it's— I, I don't think they're doing major things every single month or anything like that, but, um, it might just be like— I think it's tied to what I said earlier. It's just they're hit— they're starting to touch things that don't get touched a lot, you know?
Richard Campbell [00:48:13]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:48:13]:
And, uh, that might be this, that might be the— I'm just, I'm on the outside looking in, so I don't know, but I That's my, my kind of gut feeling on that.
Leo Laporte [00:48:24]:
All right, all right, all righty.
Paul Thurrott [00:48:27]:
Almost an hour on Windows. It's pretty good, it's pretty good.
Richard Campbell [00:48:30]:
It's a lot of Windows for Windows Weekly.
Leo Laporte [00:48:32]:
It's a lot of Windows.
Paul Thurrott [00:48:33]:
I'm so sorry, everybody.
Leo Laporte [00:48:34]:
A lot of, a lot of Windows. Um, Windows Weekly, yeah, with Paul Thurrott.
Paul Thurrott [00:48:40]:
Sometimes it happens, you know. What are you gonna do?
Leo Laporte [00:48:43]:
On we go.
Paul Thurrott [00:48:44]:
We go.
Leo Laporte [00:48:45]:
Don't let me.
Paul Thurrott [00:48:46]:
All right, there is a, uh, a new version of Visual Studio Code out, and of course now I can't see it on this computer, so I'll get back to that in a moment. But actually, I think there's a pretty big update here. Um, I haven't written about it yet. Um, Microsoft announced TypeScript 6.0. So TypeScript is the Anders Hejlsberg-created superset of JavaScript that adds type support, like formal type support, if you are. Yeah, strict.
Richard Campbell [00:49:15]:
It's pre-compiler.
Paul Thurrott [00:49:16]:
Yeah, right. I feel like— I don't actually know, I should know this. I feel like— is TypeScript just written in TypeScript? Is that how they do this?
Richard Campbell [00:49:26]:
I mean, it is now, but yeah, that's the essence of it, right? And now the point was that, yeah, for presenting certain structural behaviors to code that it generates, that makes for more reliable JavaScript.
Paul Thurrott [00:49:38]:
Yes. So—
Richard Campbell [00:49:38]:
It's a big organization. It's like all of Google's Angular is written in TypeScript.
Paul Thurrott [00:49:42]:
The whole, I mean, look, the whole world runs on JavaScript, right? I mean, this is important. And it, like, people who are serious about JavaScript, you know, are probably using TypeScript. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:49:52]:
It's about maintainability.
Paul Thurrott [00:49:54]:
Yeah. So last year, Microsoft announced that they were moving TypeScript to a Go language-based implementation. This was gonna take some time. And TypeScript 6.0, which was just released, is the last release of the original kind of architecture of TypeScript. TypeScript 7.0, which the.NET team or whatever team this is, I'm sorry, it might not be.NET, whoever announces, said is actually coming sooner than you may think. So there's a TypeScript 7 coming that will be based on this Go language. The compiler will be much faster. There's gonna be various improvements there.
Paul Thurrott [00:50:28]:
There'll be some deprecations, right? And some problems I'm sure too, but so that's happening.
Richard Campbell [00:50:34]:
Well, you gotta know that it's been in parallel, like they've been experimenting with a Go implementation for some time. And so it's kind of a finish your feature pipeline in the existing model while you're trying to catch up the other ones.
Paul Thurrott [00:50:46]:
I gotcha.
Leo Laporte [00:50:46]:
Okay.
Richard Campbell [00:50:47]:
I mentioned the teams are split in half. So yeah, it's probably happening quickly because it's all about feature and behavior parity.
Paul Thurrott [00:50:53]:
Okay. So the Visual Studio Code update, which just installed on this computer, a bunch of stuff related to agents and that AI chat experience, but also just the basic editor, which now supports an integrated browser. It's had the integrated command line and whatever other capabilities for a long time. There's actually a lot of stuff going on here. So I don't know what's the— Oh, well, you talked about this. So this was on a monthly release schedule so that typically on the first day of the month, you would get the previous month update, right? And they're actually accelerating this because I feel like Visual Studio Code is a huge deal. And the one Microsoft tool or app or whatever you want to call it that is like popular in the open source space, you know, it's big on Linux, it's big on, you know, with web devs and people that might not necessarily lean into the Microsoft stuff. I was going to use this as a tip, but then I ended up replacing it, so I'll just mention it here now.
Paul Thurrott [00:51:51]:
Microsoft last year created something called the generativeaiforbeginners.net course. It's an online course, you get from GitHub. And now they have a major update to this, which takes advantage of things that debuted in.NET 10 and has lots of, I think the whole thing's been rewritten, frankly. So if you're a developer and you want to learn how this stuff works in.NET across the board, from just the beginnings of like using generative AI in your own apps or whatever, going all the way up to like agents with the Microsoft agent framework and responsible AI, etc., etc. So that's available on GitHub. It's free for anybody. So that's, that's cool.
Richard Campbell [00:52:34]:
Awesome.
Leo Laporte [00:52:39]:
All right, I gotta, I gotta interrupt you one more time and say you're watching Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell. And now let's talk AI.
Paul Thurrott [00:52:49]:
It's hard to refute what you just said.
Leo Laporte [00:52:53]:
You know, you sound great when you're upright.
Paul Thurrott [00:52:55]:
Thanks. Don't cry. You're so ugly when you cry.
Leo Laporte [00:53:01]:
I should explain, by the way, that that is a reference to something that you didn't hear that happened before the show. We were trying to get— I don't know, you have added a windschutz, a windscreen to your mic, which is nice. And then we were trying to get, you know, get your voice to sound as good as possible. Kevin King, our producer, said, "Just sit up." And you did, and it sounded better. And he said, "You sound great when you're upright." And I thought, "I hunch." That should be a show title.
Paul Thurrott [00:53:28]:
Somebody in a bar, not last night, two nights ago, whatever, some guy, I know him, this was not a random stranger, but he referred to me as dos metros.
Leo Laporte [00:53:37]:
Two meters.
Paul Thurrott [00:53:38]:
Meaning I'm 6 feet tall.
Leo Laporte [00:53:40]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:53:41]:
Thus about a foot taller than everybody else in the city.
Leo Laporte [00:53:45]:
So it's nice to be the tall guy.
Paul Thurrott [00:53:47]:
I'm like, Señor Dos Metros.
Leo Laporte [00:53:50]:
That would be a good show title too.
Paul Thurrott [00:53:54]:
It's kind of weird, but, um, are you 6 feet tall? Yeah. Oh, I don't think about it too much, but here I think about a lot because I can look over the crowd. My wife likes to go on the metro, uh, the, um, subway here at the metro. Um, there's a couple cars at the end of the each chain of cars that are for women and children.
Leo Laporte [00:54:13]:
Oh yeah, I think so.
Paul Thurrott [00:54:13]:
Sometimes if it's super busy, yeah, my wife will go in there and she's like, I go in there and all the kids are staring at me because I have blondish hair and blue eyes and I can see like over everyone's hair.
Leo Laporte [00:54:23]:
Giantess.
Paul Thurrott [00:54:24]:
Yeah, it's like, she's like, I feel like a freak.
Leo Laporte [00:54:28]:
You know, I don't think they would want to call me Los Cinco, uh, Dieces.
Paul Thurrott [00:54:32]:
Yeah, it gets complicated.
Leo Laporte [00:54:33]:
It doesn't, that doesn't really have the same ring to it.
Paul Thurrott [00:54:37]:
Well, I referred to him as, uh, uno y medio metro.
Leo Laporte [00:54:42]:
Half a foot, half a meter. Yeah, I love it. This is like a language lesson and Windows Weekly, right?
Richard Campbell [00:54:49]:
There you go.
Paul Thurrott [00:54:50]:
Spanish is harder than C++. That's all I'm saying.
Leo Laporte [00:54:53]:
Um, is it really?
Richard Campbell [00:54:54]:
And 2 meters is like 6'6", so yeah, it's actually taller.
Paul Thurrott [00:54:58]:
Oh, I'm not that tall.
Leo Laporte [00:54:59]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:02]:
I'm probably shorter now, actually. I'm sure, I'm sure I'm shrinking at this point.
Leo Laporte [00:55:05]:
I am definitely shrinking. Yeah, uh, we were at ARSEC yesterday and somebody had a mechanical bull on the show floor.
Richard Campbell [00:55:11]:
No, no, no.
Leo Laporte [00:55:13]:
And Lisa very gamely hopped on and rode it. And then the guy says, what about you? And I said, dude, I'm almost 70, you do not want me.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:22]:
I was gonna say, I, I hurt my back getting out of bed the other day, and I'm not joking. Like, are you kidding me?
Leo Laporte [00:55:28]:
No, no mechanic. That's a young person's job.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:31]:
I get queasy watching other people do stuff like that.
Leo Laporte [00:55:34]:
Yeah. I took a massive fall on the beach at my place with the dog. Oh, no.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:38]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:55:39]:
Yeah, let me tell you, I'm pretty purple. Oh, I know.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:42]:
I tripped on a tree trunk here in Mexico City about a month ago, and I was all purple and black and blue and yellow. You know, it's all about the bruise.
Leo Laporte [00:55:51]:
All up and down the side here.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:54]:
I hate what this show has become. Just saying that we're all old.
Richard Campbell [00:56:00]:
It's not good.
Leo Laporte [00:56:01]:
Fortunately, AI can make us over thanks to DLSS 5.
Paul Thurrott [00:56:05]:
It's like sentences no one says with any amount of seriousness. It's like, you know what the good thing about getting old is? Shut up.
Leo Laporte [00:56:11]:
No, I don't want to know.
Paul Thurrott [00:56:13]:
No, there's nothing good.
Leo Laporte [00:56:14]:
There's nothing good. Well, surviving, I guess.
Paul Thurrott [00:56:17]:
Well, I guess. Yeah. Even at some point that becomes a chore. It's true. Like, God, it's true. Enough, enough world.
Leo Laporte [00:56:24]:
It's really God's joke on us all is, you know, we outlive our body in effect.
Paul Thurrott [00:56:32]:
Yeah. And that's not good. Well, we all have to realize the only the good die young dream, you know? Like, I made it. It's like, you must be horrible. It's like, yeah, no, I'm pretty bad.
Richard Campbell [00:56:43]:
Pretty bad. Yeah, you hit that point where you're like, okay, you're right. Youth is wasted on the young.
Leo Laporte [00:56:47]:
That is true. That is true. All right, enough, enough. Sorry, let's just get back to Windows.
Paul Thurrott [00:56:56]:
Yeah, so last week we talked about two reorgs at Microsoft. One of them had to do with Mustafa Suleyman, who runs Microsoft AI. So Microsoft AI at that time had two major things it was working on. One was the consumer Copilot slash AI stuff, and the other was the foundational models that it hopes one day can replace, or at least augment, whatever they get from OpenAI. Elsewhere. Now Microsoft AI is just that latter bit, and he's focusing on that. And they've released models, but they've released their second generation. It's called MAI, like Microsoft AI.
Paul Thurrott [00:57:28]:
Image 2 is their version of Nano Banana or whatever the other image generation models are, and it is quite good.
Richard Campbell [00:57:38]:
But it's specifically about realistic imagery, right? It's not a real good cartoon Tune tool. But yeah, but you know what, I mean, you want to dive directly into the uncanny valley, we're here to help you.
Paul Thurrott [00:57:49]:
Yeah, so I've started— yeah, I've been trying to use this when possible. Um, this is interesting, like, this is a good one. And yeah, this is for content creators or whatever, you know. And for people like me who just want an image for their web page or whatever, yeah, um, I often say to whatever AI I might be using at the time— I've been using like Gemini a lot lately, obviously Like I'll specify, I want a photo. I don't want a cartoon. I don't want a watercolor. You know, I want this to be photorealistic. And that is what I'm looking for.
Paul Thurrott [00:58:19]:
So to me, that's pretty good. This isn't in the notes, but semi-related to this, Adobe has their Firefly family of models and they work with third-party models. But they're actually, if you use this, if you have an Adobe, whatever subscription, you can train it on the images you've created so that it creates everything in that style, which is important for, you know, brands obviously, but even for people like me, I would, I don't use it, but I could, you know, I might be looking for a certain look and feel and like I feel like that kind of thing is important. So that's kind of cool. There's a lot of, you know, work in this area. And then this is the last thing in the section. I'll just do this next because it's semi-related. OpenAI Semi-surprisingly announced that they were killing Sora as a standalone product.
Paul Thurrott [00:59:09]:
This is their video generation model that turned so many heads when they first released it 2 seconds ago. I don't know that they said this, but I assume that this is tied to their sudden desire that maybe we should make a little money. And they're going after the enterprise, right?
Richard Campbell [00:59:26]:
More relevantly, they're looking at Anthropic making money and going, Maybe we need to do more of that.
Paul Thurrott [00:59:34]:
And so they're focusing more on enterprise, less on individuals making fun cartoon images of themselves in a certain Japanese anime style or whatever it might be. So, okay. There are obviously many other companies are making those already, including Adobe, by the way, but also Gemini and Google, et cetera. So there'll be plenty of choices for that stuff. Um, I lose track of timing on things, but, um, Qualcomm and Arm went to court over the licensing between Arm and Qualcomm, but also Arm and Nuvia, right? The company that Qualcomm acquired.
Richard Campbell [01:00:14]:
They acquired, yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:00:15]:
Um, Arm— or Qualcomm wiped the floor with Arm, uh, in this. And one of the allegations was that they had lied to them because they assured them they weren't making their own chips. And Qualcomm said, "Yeah, you are making your own chips." And one of the follow-ups, because there's another court case coming between these two companies, is going to involve this. And today Arm announced, "Hey, we're making chips." Yeah, we knew.
Richard Campbell [01:00:40]:
We know.
Paul Thurrott [01:00:42]:
So they have their first customer. They collaborated with Meta on this. Meta is going to use some of this stuff. The thing there is, this is interesting because this represents a big shift for them. So ARM in the very beginning, I think, what was it like Acorn or something or back whenever it was in the '80s, they were making chips for mobile devices, I guess. It evolved over time to basically be a licensing company. And so they come up with the designs for the cores and the architecture of these processors and then licensees like Qualcomm or Samsung or or whoever else can either just take them and use them, which I think some companies do, or they can modify them heavily in Qualcomm's case, right, for their own special needs. And this thing scales across different, you know, workloads or form factors all the way from—
Richard Campbell [01:01:31]:
Yeah, and then they go off to the foundries to actually have them made.
Paul Thurrott [01:01:35]:
Yes. So them, I would say, returning to actually making their own chips is very interesting. They're not targeting devices or computers. And things like that. This is for data centers. They're very careful. I've read a couple of interviews with the guy that runs Arm now, who by the way came from NVIDIA interestingly. Hmm.
Paul Thurrott [01:01:54]:
Yeah. We're not competing with NVIDIA. We love NVIDIA. They do think this is going to be a problem for the Intels and AMDs of the world, companies that are pursuing x86 or x64 now based data center AI. We'll say, ARM makes sense in so many scenarios just from an efficiency/performance per watt, however you want to say that, that you could make an argument. You have the smallest of it, like a little iPod type thing that we don't really have anymore, or a phone or a computer like a Mac, or now these Windows Snapdragon computers, or data centers where, by the way, they suck up tons of electricity and require massive amounts of power. Having those things be more efficient makes a lot of sense. Right.
Richard Campbell [01:02:40]:
And when you're going to put a chip into a data center, it just looks different. Like Microsoft's Maya, which is their AI chip, it's like the size of a dinner plate. It's huge.
Paul Thurrott [01:02:50]:
Yeah. And so interestingly, ARM is pretty big too. It's like, you know, it's like what even if you went back to like the 386, 486, whatever, they weren't this big. Like these are big.
Richard Campbell [01:03:01]:
They're big, big. Because they don't need to fit in a laptop or anything like that. The main— their main issue is cooling, right? Is there, you know, how— give it as much surface area as possible so you can pull the heat out of it, right?
Paul Thurrott [01:03:15]:
Right. Um, so interesting. Um, I don't know, let me see if there's a list of these. Yeah, so OpenAI, because they have to be in everything, uh, SAP, Cloudflare. Um, Cloudflare is the secret behind the internet still working. SK Telecom and some others will have said they will deploy these CPUs in their data centers to support agentic AI, whatever. We'll see.
Richard Campbell [01:03:41]:
So, I mean, Arm has always been designing chips. This is clearly a chip they've designed, but rather than go to a partner to go get a customer to do the manufacturing, they've gone and gotten the partner directly. It's Meta, and then they've gone to TSMC or Samsung and had it made.
Paul Thurrott [01:03:58]:
I think they see this as an opportunity, obviously. I mean, they see this as an opportunity to make more money, right? So if this is successful, they will, you know, they're going to compete with their own customers, right? You know, we all love when that happens. You know, Surface is like that on the Microsoft side.
Richard Campbell [01:04:11]:
Well, if they heat the market up enough, they could even exit the market on the licensing value alone, right?
Paul Thurrott [01:04:16]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:04:16]:
But I suspect they were struggling to get one of the Qualcomms to do this, and so it's like, fine, we'll do it ourselves.
Paul Thurrott [01:04:23]:
Well, plus you'll be back. There's been a little falling out there.
Richard Campbell [01:04:26]:
Yeah, yeah, they're not really—
Paul Thurrott [01:04:27]:
because Qualcomm also has its own data center plans, right? They're working on this kind of thing as well. Um, the interesting thing to me here is just like where this might be applied. Like, uh, the CEO of Arm I think explicitly said, look, we— this is— Amazon has their own chips, um, they're not going to use our chips. Microsoft has its own chips, but they also do use other chips. So it's going to be— we'll see. You know, Microsoft seems to be more We'll see. No one said Microsoft, but I feel like of the big 2, 5, whatever they are, Microsoft is the one that maybe you could see happening. Google's never going to deploy this.
Paul Thurrott [01:04:59]:
Google has their own chips. They do their own thing. But there's a big world out there, right? This isn't just these 3, 4 companies, whatever. There's a ton of these companies and you never know. I mean, I do think ARM is the future.
Richard Campbell [01:05:13]:
Not to take a cynical spin on this, Paul, because I usually count on you for that. Maybe somebody on the board at Arm said, if you don't put AI into this company in some way, you guys are all going to get fired.
Paul Thurrott [01:05:23]:
And so maybe we should make that a flagship. I'm going to have to paraphrase because I don't remember where I read this, but like I said, I read a couple of interviews about this from the CEO. And he said, he's like, I used to work at Nvidia. He's like, so you come from this world of you build things, you have to physically make them, you store them, you have to ship around the world. It's like there's all this RMA and all this stuff you have to think about. And it gets to Arm, he's like, what do we do? Oh, we have 11 people and we license a design. Nice. You know, he's like, it's super simple.
Paul Thurrott [01:05:55]:
He's like, why would I want to go back to this horrible world? And it's like, well, because the opportunity is that big, right? It's, you know, it's a big, it's, you know, it's like, why would Nvidia that makes graphics for PC gaming cards want to get into data center chips? Oh, I'll tell you why. Because they're the biggest company in the world right now.
Richard Campbell [01:06:13]:
Like, so giant piles of money, that's why, right?
Paul Thurrott [01:06:16]:
You know, more options is always good. I don't really understand the architectures of various chips, but the way I understand it is that obviously the GPU stuff that NVIDIA makes has its certain architecture and whatever. But I feel like the actual processor bit, um, in data centers, by and large, like, you want that to be ARM. Of course you do. Like, and NVIDIA does have some ARM designs, at least. I don't— like I said, I don't really know too much deeply about that. The new Microsoft stuff, which is, um, first or second gen depending which one we're talking about now, is ARM-based, right? I mean, of course it is because they understand this. Um, Google, God knows what they do.
Paul Thurrott [01:06:51]:
They're, they think their own thing going on, whatever they're doing.
Richard Campbell [01:06:53]:
They have their TensorFlow.
Paul Thurrott [01:06:54]:
Yeah, yeah, like TPUs or whatever, but I don't, but I don't know what the architecture is, right? Um, Intel and AMD on the PC side, presumably up on the data center side, have Created what I would call hybrid designs compared to the way they used to do things so that they take on elements of the ARM-type architecture where you have big cores, little cores. Depending on the chip we're talking about, you might even be able to turn off cores when they're not needed to save electricity and power. This stuff is— and whatever we're talking about, it doesn't matter what the architecture is, the company, whatever, the goal is always going to be the same thing, which is maximum performance on demand, but also maximum efficiency. And run this thing as cool as possible and for as less money, few money, for as little money, there's the word.
Richard Campbell [01:07:43]:
And part of this is the pursuit of trying to be profitable is you're going to have to gain efficiencies wherever you can find it and more efficient processing helps a lot.
Leo Laporte [01:07:53]:
Yep.
Paul Thurrott [01:07:53]:
I mean, look, if this is successful for ARM, I would not be surprised to discover that this leads to other things. I don't know I don't know. So I keep saying this, I don't know. But ARM has what I would call reference designs, but I don't know that they span every potential use case there is. I know if you just look at Qualcomm and you look at the way they describe their business, they have chips. The big one right now for them is phones and mobile devices, but phones really, right? And then you have PCs, you have automotive, you have IoT, other, I would call it like IoT and other spaces. And they're looking at data center, and I'm probably missing some. But the point is, these chips, whoever designs them, whether they come from Arm in like, here's an IoT reference design, you can build off of that, or they just have whatever their V9 or whatever they are now, Arm V9, whatever.
Paul Thurrott [01:08:44]:
This is it. We have a couple, whatever it is. And Qualcomm is the one doing that work to build them for all these special use cases. I don't know. It doesn't— I don't know. If you know anything about Intel or AMD to some degree, they build up and down the chain. Intel has left certain markets for whatever reasons. Intel used to have some ARM stuff, by the way, for IoT mobile devices.
Paul Thurrott [01:09:09]:
Yeah. XScale, right? I think it was ARM, I think. But it doesn't matter. So we'll see. Anytime a company competes with their own customers, gets interesting. So yeah, we will see. I'm sure.
Richard Campbell [01:09:25]:
And again, it's like you, you, the same way Microsoft started making laptops is they kind of weren't happy with the laptop market for Windows. Uh, you, you're basically building reference designs and you can drive you, if your ecosystem grows and puts pressure on you, you could back out of that market. And if it doesn't, you can end up owning that market. Like both ways work. You're just open to, okay, what do you guys want to do here?
Paul Thurrott [01:09:47]:
Yep, yep.
Leo Laporte [01:09:50]:
Uh, it's gonna matter when Elon builds his chip fab on the moon. You just might as well give up.
Paul Thurrott [01:09:56]:
Well, I mean, if you're going to build it on the moon, start in Arizona.
Leo Laporte [01:09:59]:
And then it's actually starting in Texas. Did you see this?
Paul Thurrott [01:10:03]:
Yeah, there you go.
Leo Laporte [01:10:03]:
Perfect. Of course, massive. But you know, I don't cover stuff nowadays when Elon says he's gonna do it because let's just wait until he does it.
Paul Thurrott [01:10:14]:
What I would call a shit-talker. He's just— He likes to be.
Richard Campbell [01:10:19]:
I am working on a talk on data centers in space and going through all the logistics on this.
Leo Laporte [01:10:23]:
Oh, I think that would be—
Paul Thurrott [01:10:24]:
When you do it though, you have to say it like this, "Data centers in space." Space.
Richard Campbell [01:10:29]:
And then so far it doesn't make any sense.
Paul Thurrott [01:10:33]:
So do you think we will have data centers in space or smart glasses that make sense first?
Richard Campbell [01:10:38]:
That'd be smart. That's gonna win.
Paul Thurrott [01:10:41]:
Flying cars, uh, paperless office, anything. Um, yeah, I don't know.
Leo Laporte [01:10:45]:
We're gonna have flying cars this year.
Paul Thurrott [01:10:47]:
Okay.
Leo Laporte [01:10:48]:
We're gonna have AI glasses next year. We're gonna have data centers.
Paul Thurrott [01:10:52]:
To have flying cars though, we have to have flying life, self-driving cars, because I can tell you—
Leo Laporte [01:10:58]:
oh yeah, that's why we don't have—
Paul Thurrott [01:11:00]:
yeah, I own, I own a place in two of the worst places for drivers on the planet, Pennsylvania and Mexico City. And, uh, and it's bizarre because in both places, very nice people.
Richard Campbell [01:11:11]:
Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:11:11]:
They get behind—
Paul Thurrott [01:11:12]:
situation awareness whatsoever. Oh, they turn into imbeciles. Like, it's—
Leo Laporte [01:11:15]:
they change.
Paul Thurrott [01:11:16]:
It is. It's like this— it's like a drug gets sprayed in the car and they just turn into idiots. Like, it's bizarre.
Leo Laporte [01:11:22]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:11:23]:
Um, so yes, they have to be self-driving. Then that's fine. That's fine.
Leo Laporte [01:11:28]:
Then we'll be happy.
Paul Thurrott [01:11:29]:
The cars here will be flying at like exactly 6 feet, so— because that's over everyone's head, and it will hit me all the time as I go by. Great. Yeah, take the Metro. Um, I gotta get to the Metro is the problem. But yeah, um, so in over in Apple land, um, so they announced previously that WWDC 2026 will be held from June 8th to 12th. Uh, Richard, do you remember what, uh, Build— oh, Build's the week before.
Richard Campbell [01:11:58]:
That's right.
Leo Laporte [01:11:59]:
Didn't they overlap like last year? I think they did.
Richard Campbell [01:12:01]:
Well, usually been overlapping Google.
Leo Laporte [01:12:04]:
Yeah, Google, that's right.
Paul Thurrott [01:12:05]:
Yeah, yeah, Google is May 19th to 20th, right? So usually, uh, Build is in May, but I think their change of venue, you know, they couldn't get in where they wanted to get. Actually, what do you think?
Leo Laporte [01:12:16]:
This year it would make sense for Google and Apple to overlap because the big AI announcement Apple's going to make is that Google's going to be running the show, right?
Richard Campbell [01:12:25]:
I don't—
Paul Thurrott [01:12:26]:
they're probably not going to emphasize that too much. Um, well, yeah, so Based on my understanding of how this company operates from a marketing perspective. But I think it was just today or yesterday, I don't want to tell you yesterday.
Leo Laporte [01:12:38]:
Mark Gurman.
Paul Thurrott [01:12:38]:
Mark Gurman, who by the way, super reliable when it comes to this kind of stuff. We've been talking about this conversational Siri, whatever they call it, ever since June 2024. It was going to release later in the iOS at that time, what, 25? 24, 17, what the hell the number was. Never happened. Um, yeah, we got—
Richard Campbell [01:13:02]:
okay, the demo was total smoke and mirrors, like, yep, straight up FUD. Like, I just don't expect Apple to do those things.
Paul Thurrott [01:13:08]:
Yep. Um, yeah, I think that, uh, this will be better remembered because Apple is such a consumer company, and then the, the market today is so much bigger than it was at the time. But that was very much like the Longhorn, um, announcement in 2003. It was this amazing— it's just amazing. It was a great show, like it was well done as a demo. And then they gave us a build and it's like, this doesn't look anything like this. What is this? Like the thing they did on, on stage was like a, uh, I forget the name of the product now. It's a, it's like a presentation pack.
Paul Thurrott [01:13:38]:
It was fake. It was just— it wasn't real code, right? And, um, that's, you know, what Apple did. Um, so in iOS 26, like I don't remember anymore, um, 27, the new iOS. Well, but the new— the one we have now Like in the initial release, the big innovation was that if you hold down the power button, you get like a pink and purple thing going on, which is really pretty, but it's still as stupid as Siri ever was. And they've gone through different things. They wanted to do Anthropic, remember, but I think they were gonna charge too much, meaning they were probably gonna charge what it was worth. And Apple was like, we don't actually pay people for anything. We're gonna find out a system where they can pay us.
Paul Thurrott [01:14:15]:
And they found it in Google. But Gemini's fantastic, so it'll probably be good. Originally, iOS 26.4, which just came out yesterday, was going to have some of this, and that got delayed again because it keeps getting delayed. But what Apple people are going to get is essentially a standalone Siri app that's going to work like a chatbot, which, or in Apple language, will probably look and work like the Messages app, right? With stupid bubbles and whatever, but whatever, Apple. And there's going to be some deep-level stuff as well. And whatever. And so we'll see. I mean, I'm sure it will be great eventually.
Paul Thurrott [01:14:51]:
Um, it's good timing too because Microsoft is busy not putting Copilot everywhere, and they're like, Siri, all the things. It's like, okay, I don't know.
Leo Laporte [01:15:00]:
Mango lady, get your mangoes.
Paul Thurrott [01:15:04]:
So since you can hear that, um, that happens.
Leo Laporte [01:15:08]:
That's like a baby crying, but I know it's a recording.
Paul Thurrott [01:15:11]:
It's famous. So it was a little girl who recorded this, she's an adult now, she's famous.
Leo Laporte [01:15:15]:
Oh really?
Paul Thurrott [01:15:15]:
Um, every trash— it's a trash collector truck. So the thing that's driving around is a pickup truck. There's like a mattress and some stuff in the back. It's always preceded with a mattress. I don't know why. But, um, if you have junk you want to bring down, they'll take it, and I think they'll pay some small amount. But that goes by 3 to 5 times a day, right? Everywhere in the city.
Leo Laporte [01:15:36]:
And what is the baby— what does the little girl say?
Paul Thurrott [01:15:38]:
It's I don't— oh, lavadoras is washing machines. What she's saying are the types of things they'll take.
Leo Laporte [01:15:44]:
Washing machines, mattresses, washing machines.
Paul Thurrott [01:15:46]:
Yeah, yeah, it's a list of the types of things they'll take.
Leo Laporte [01:15:48]:
It's so—
Paul Thurrott [01:15:49]:
it's terrible. Now I'm used to it, right? So I've gotten used to it.
Leo Laporte [01:15:53]:
This is everybody, I'm sure, in Mexico City.
Paul Thurrott [01:15:56]:
But this is like— I, I, I hate noise so much. Like, I, I was like, I don't know if I can be here, you know? But I've gotten used to Yeah, the thing is, it didn't just happen now because it depends on who's home at the time, but there are two dogs in our building. When that thing goes by, they're downstairs, they go, they hate, they hate that sound so much. It's one of like 7 or 8 regular sounds, but it's the only one that causes the dogs to freak out. And they just like, in the building, sometimes there'll be two at once going, it's like the pitter-patter of little feet.
Leo Laporte [01:16:30]:
When your kids are young, you don't know how much you're going to miss it when it's gone, right? And this is the sound surrounding you, the sounds of life, the vital, exciting life of Mexico City.
Paul Thurrott [01:16:42]:
It's true, I guess, or something. I don't know. Yeah, sure, let's go with that.
Leo Laporte [01:16:48]:
Uh, you know what, I just want to thank you for sharing it with us.
Paul Thurrott [01:16:51]:
I didn't intend to.
Leo Laporte [01:16:53]:
I'm sorry.
Richard Campbell [01:16:54]:
Uh, no, I, I got— I made smile every time I was there, every time I heard it.
Leo Laporte [01:16:58]:
I think it's great.
Paul Thurrott [01:16:59]:
We lived in Mukunji, we lived next to a train track, and I was in a Zoom call or whatever with some company, and we're talking, and this guy goes, is that a train? I was like, oh my God, I can't believe you can hear that. I'm like, yep, that's a train.
Leo Laporte [01:17:12]:
Sorry. I am— my, uh, my, um, uh, Starlink Mini is coming in the next few days, and I swear to God, maybe it'll be next week, maybe it'll be the week after, I'm going to test it out. I'm going to do it. I'm going to sit out and the back deck, so you get all the sounds of life of Petaluma. Okay, coming in.
Richard Campbell [01:17:32]:
Well, ambiance of Petaluma.
Leo Laporte [01:17:33]:
Yeah, you get the Sonoma aroma. I wish we had a way of sending you that.
Paul Thurrott [01:17:39]:
Yeah, why does it always smell like lavender here?
Leo Laporte [01:17:42]:
No, it doesn't.
Richard Campbell [01:17:43]:
It's manure.
Leo Laporte [01:17:44]:
That's exactly what it is.
Paul Thurrott [01:17:47]:
Well, it could be a weird thing.
Leo Laporte [01:17:48]:
We have mushroom farms, actually.
Paul Thurrott [01:17:50]:
So you have a lot of breweries, right? Breweries, the exhaust that comes out of these places, like if you make coffees like this too, is worse than any diesel truck imaginable. It's the grossest.
Leo Laporte [01:18:01]:
We have both coffee roasters and breweries in the building.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:04]:
Yeah, so if you ever walk by a place like that when they're effluing into the world.
Leo Laporte [01:18:07]:
Plus chicken farms, which have a certain thing.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:10]:
They sure do.
Leo Laporte [01:18:10]:
But there's nothing like the mushroom farms because I think once or twice a year they spray them with liquid manure.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:18]:
Oh good.
Leo Laporte [01:18:18]:
So it aerosolizes.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:19]:
And then you're creating what is essentially mold.
Leo Laporte [01:18:22]:
It's a fungus, okay?
Paul Thurrott [01:18:23]:
Yeah, a fungus, yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:18:24]:
It's a delicious fungus, but it's a fungus. So it aerosolizes it and it pervades the neighborhood. So I wish that there's no, even with the Starlink Mini, there's no way I could transport that lovely aroma to you.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:43]:
No.
Leo Laporte [01:18:43]:
That's probably a good thing. That's good. That's the next generation of podcasting.
Richard Campbell [01:18:50]:
Awesome. We're going to go on the road, Leo. You're going to have— you're going to be online.
Leo Laporte [01:18:55]:
But yeah, well, we're— we're— we got two, two vacations planned this year, which we can ill afford, but we're going to do them anyway. One is to Hawaii in May. So I got this for the trip to Hawaii because I would like to keep doing the shows even when I'm on. Just like you, just like you, Richard. You Yeah, and you have a Starlink Mini, right? That's what you use sometimes. Yeah, yeah, I got the, um, so as you mentioned, I think last week, you have to have clear sky, and I don't know if there's trees and stuff, but what I got is the magnetic car mount. So I thought, well, if I can't get clear skies, I will stick it to the car. We're getting a Jeep.
Leo Laporte [01:19:30]:
Yeah, drive to a clearing, and I'll be doing the show from the—
Richard Campbell [01:19:34]:
yeah, from the car.
Paul Thurrott [01:19:35]:
I'm coming from a parking lot with a clear view of the sky.
Leo Laporte [01:19:39]:
I'm sure you're in the—
Paul Thurrott [01:19:40]:
But I am in Hawaii. This is tied to the fungus.
Leo Laporte [01:19:41]:
It might be in the lava fields because there's no trees in the lava fields.
Paul Thurrott [01:19:44]:
There's a fungus that grows on corn that they call huitlacoche in Mexico. It's a fungus. And it's actually a delicacy. Some people will try to call it Mexican truffle, which is ridiculous. But the most common term— Because what happens is—
Leo Laporte [01:20:01]:
So like corn smut is what it's called?
Paul Thurrott [01:20:03]:
Yeah, right. People will be like, "What is this thing?" And it's like, "It's fungus." They're like, "Yeah, I don't want that." No, it's really good. So now they call it like corn mushrooms, you know?
Leo Laporte [01:20:10]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [01:20:11]:
And it's like, that's more appealing.
Paul Thurrott [01:20:12]:
Yeah. No, it's, uh, no, it's just, uh, I love it though.
Richard Campbell [01:20:17]:
Oh, I love it.
Paul Thurrott [01:20:17]:
Yeah, it's so good. Although I keep trying to tell these people, butter and salt, guys, come on.
Leo Laporte [01:20:22]:
That's all I need. Then you got it.
Paul Thurrott [01:20:24]:
I don't, they don't think you're done.
Richard Campbell [01:20:26]:
The butter, mayonnaise, and tajine.
Leo Laporte [01:20:28]:
Oh yeah, tajine's good. I love that.
Richard Campbell [01:20:30]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:20:32]:
All right, uh, where were we? I'm sorry, did you talk about Sora yet?
Paul Thurrott [01:20:35]:
Yeah, we did.
Richard Campbell [01:20:35]:
Yeah, let's see.
Leo Laporte [01:20:36]:
I hardly knew ye. You know, I'm pretty convinced that it was really— it was very fast growing and it was huge, and then we all tired of it really quick.
Paul Thurrott [01:20:46]:
What's up?
Leo Laporte [01:20:47]:
And probably nobody's been using it.
Richard Campbell [01:20:49]:
I think they're cutting it because it's costing them money.
Leo Laporte [01:20:51]:
Well, yeah, and they have— reportedly they have— they've just announced they have a new, uh, director of AGI. They, uh, they're, they've got a new AGI division. Apparently the next model, uh, which I think will be GPT-6, is, uh, is sentient. So they want to make sure they have enough GPUs.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:10]:
Yeah, don't wake that thing up until you're ready for it.
Richard Campbell [01:21:13]:
Yeah, they all said sooner or later Altman has to declare AGI, or he loses his job.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:18]:
I think that, uh, the CEO of NVIDIA literally just declared AGI.
Leo Laporte [01:21:22]:
Yeah, yeah, he said it's, it's good. Well, he says it's going to happen. Jensen says it's going to happen. Did he say it's happening? He did.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:28]:
He said we pretty much achieved it. He said we pretty much achieved And I guess you would have to say that, right?
Leo Laporte [01:21:32]:
It's true in a certain— in certain arenas, uh, you know, and it's true with certain people, you know, just, you know, generally good at everything except Richard.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:47]:
Richard being an extreme example, like unusual.
Leo Laporte [01:21:50]:
Yeah, yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:50]:
Look at the typical voter in the U.S., like, we've already well exceeded their intelligence.
Leo Laporte [01:21:55]:
I mean, well, that's right. It's where is the bar, right?
Paul Thurrott [01:21:58]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:22:00]:
Um, anyway, yeah, I think they did. I think you're right, Richard, that it was expensive. They want the GPUs. They're very much now, especially now because of the war, GPU constrained, because, uh, helium is made from natural gas. Natural gas is now, uh, cut off to some degree, and there's a real— going to be a real helium shortage. So chipmaking is going to be suffering. So whatever supply issues there have been to date are going to get much, much worse. So I think OpenAI is probably—
Richard Campbell [01:22:30]:
makes you wonder about giving up the strategic helium reserve, huh?
Leo Laporte [01:22:35]:
Is there one?
Richard Campbell [01:22:36]:
There was, yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:22:37]:
Not anymore.
Richard Campbell [01:22:38]:
One of the, one of the reasons we had this whole crisis around helium in the first place is that the American government had this huge helium reserve and they decided they didn't need any more, so they just slowly sold it off.
Paul Thurrott [01:22:49]:
I guess they just let it go into the atmosphere. What did they do with it?
Richard Campbell [01:22:53]:
Yeah, have the whole country have a squeaky voice. It wasn't a good— that wasn't a good idea. So they sold— they, you know, that was your supply of helium, was emptying the reserve off, and instead of doing the expensive part of separating it from natural gas. But now we're back to separating from natural gas.
Leo Laporte [01:23:07]:
Well, and, uh, yeah, TSMC and all the companies that make chips are very, very nervous about this whole thing. So yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely a structural reason reasons why Sora was probably not the best use of their money.
Richard Campbell [01:23:22]:
Yeah, I think, you know, they're, they're only charging $20 a month for paying GPT, you know, OpenAI.
Paul Thurrott [01:23:29]:
Yeah, you've made enough pictures of you hugging your dead grandmother, we get it, you know, or whatever.
Leo Laporte [01:23:37]:
The, the biggest one was a, a Regency drama recreated with people wearing ducks on their heads instead of hats, but the ducks did have hats. And there, for some reason, was a llama playing a flute with a duck.
Richard Campbell [01:23:51]:
As one does.
Leo Laporte [01:23:53]:
So thank God, you know, we made the world safe for that.
Richard Campbell [01:23:56]:
This is what technology is for.
Leo Laporte [01:23:58]:
You're watching—
Paul Thurrott [01:23:58]:
AI slop without people, you know, just saying.
Leo Laporte [01:24:02]:
You're watching Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell. Now time for, I believe, and if I'm not mistaken, the Xbox segment, the long-heralded much awarded.
Richard Campbell [01:24:15]:
Wow.
Leo Laporte [01:24:16]:
Halo accompanied.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:18]:
Curiously religious.
Leo Laporte [01:24:20]:
Deeply religious Halo segment.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:24]:
Yeah. So, Reverend Thurrott, uh, we're gathered here today. Uh, yeah, so, uh, Microsoft has begun discussing Project Helix. This is the next next-gen Xbox console based on a PC, like most of this.
Richard Campbell [01:24:42]:
Is this all Asha Sharma?
Paul Thurrott [01:24:44]:
This one is not her, uh, this— at least this discussion. But yeah, she's been, you know, obviously a key part of that so far. But, um, uh, someone who is— it's just someone on the team, a general manager at Xbox, talked to IGN about what they talked about at GDC, essentially, right? One of the things I, I've been meaning to deep dive into, and it's just so complicated, is Um, Microsoft has kind of opened up the Xbox Developer Program. Like, previously you had to like submit a proposal and explain why you would get like a hardware, like a prototype console, and you could develop, you know, your game or whatever. And for Project Helix, because it's a PC, this is going to be wide open. It's basically anyone's going to be able to do this.
Richard Campbell [01:25:28]:
And they're kind of like publish a specification for—
Paul Thurrott [01:25:31]:
yeah, they've already—
Richard Campbell [01:25:32]:
machines, I think they pretty much Yeah, they've already kind of done it, right?
Paul Thurrott [01:25:35]:
So there's, there are still questions about the directionality of PC/Xbox console compatibility, but Microsoft has said explicitly that this Xbox Project Helix will be able to run PC games. They've talked about using other stores. So you buy a game, the store, I'm sure, will just be there in the dashboard if you want it to be, but you could download a game from Steam or buy a game from Steam, whatever, download it from your library, et cetera, play on there. And then the question, and this is the thing I keep looking for, I don't quite see, although this has been rumored and kind of talked around a little bit, is the continuation of the Xbox Play Anywhere, the kind of build once, run anywhere, the original Java dream is gonna be that, well, what about Xbox games on PC, right? Now for that current, that gen as it occurs when it becomes the current gen, I think these things are going to be basically the same thing. So it's not that big of a deal, but we have this backwards compatibility thing, which is incredible on the Xbox side. And it goes back to the original Xbox. So there's many games, OG Xbox 360, Xbox One, and into the new gen, the current gen, where if you have it in your library digitally, it works, you know, work on the new console. So bringing that stuff to the PC would be amazing.
Paul Thurrott [01:26:56]:
That to me makes this ecosystem— that's like the final piece of the puzzle. I think it makes sense regardless, but that's when it really makes sense. So the discussion that this guy had with IGN, I don't think expanded on anything they haven't already said. It's just that a lot of it is locked behind this kind of complicated or complex developer site that they have, Xbox Developer, and whatever. And so we'll see. But, you know, obviously on an actual Xbox, regardless of the architecture, you're talking about something with basically instant-on capabilities, background updating. You press a button, you get in the game and you play using a controller every single time for the most part. I mean, I know you can do other things, but mostly a controller.
Paul Thurrott [01:27:37]:
And it has that kind of— it's not really curated, but I guess I'd call it a streamlined experience. And so if you're interested in targeting a console as a developer, it may make sense to start there. And then build it out for other platforms. But I also kind of wonder now, there's been a real renewed emphasis on the PC as kind of the best gaming platform for real, you know, for big games, like AAA games, not like, not little mobile games, but like real games. And I wonder if the reverse isn't going to be the best approach or the approach that companies are just going to take, you know, because that's what's going to make sense. But we'll see. We'll see what Sony does with the PS6, et cetera.
Richard Campbell [01:28:18]:
Um, in the end, it's the most number of seats for your code to run on, right? Like, that's—
Paul Thurrott [01:28:23]:
yeah, I mean, right. I mean, the most is to support all the major, you know, like PC plus the consoles, right? But yes, but yeah, if you, if you wanted to select one, yeah, increasingly the PC is the one that makes the most sense, which is fascinating because, you know, it's the most complicated, it's the most expensive, it's but it also has the biggest headroom and can be infinitely expanded, etc., etc.
Richard Campbell [01:28:49]:
So yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:28:50]:
All right. And I am somehow on the wrong notes. That's— no, I'm not. Here we go. All right. Um, and then, uh, this just happened as the show was starting. So I haven't— I've only barely been able to look at this, but the March Xbox update is out. And very interestingly, um, if you go back and find the notes or the show where we talked about the last monthly update, you will probably notice there wasn't anything related to the console per se, right? Um, this one is almost all about the console, right? Oh wow.
Paul Thurrott [01:29:19]:
And it's almost like they're like, we're back, we care about you, we really do. Um, so there's some stuff, it's just, uh, for Insiders right now, but we'll be rolling out broadly probably in April. But, um, changes to the dashboard, you know, custom configurations, that quick resume settings thing we talked about where you could do it per game, which is the way it should have always been, et cetera, et cetera. Dynamic backgrounds. And so they're starting with a couple of games that I think are all within the Microsoft Games family of studios, but Crimson Desert, Sea of Thieves, and Towerborne have dynamic backgrounds. So it's like the Vista Ultimate Extra thing. What was that thing called? The background thing that would actually, it was like a video almost. It would kind of move.
Paul Thurrott [01:30:03]:
It wasn't a picture of rain. Is raining, you know, like actually an animation of the rain, right? Uh, that kind of a thing. Um, they're adding some stuff for the handheld compatibility program, so, um, they're going to better visually identify those games which have been optimized for handhelds, but also have added— actually, those 3 games, uh, interestingly, the 3 games I just mentioned with the dynamic backgrounds are the 3 games that have just been optimized, um, for gaming handhelds, meaning right now Xbox Rogue Ally, but soon many, many others. Um, there are now over 1,500 games that support Xbox Play Anywhere. And Play Anywhere today is basically Xbox console— or sorry, PC and console, but also the handhelds, right, which are PCs. Yes. But, um, the idea here is that it's optimized. It doesn't just work, like it actually is optimized for each of those platforms, which is great.
Paul Thurrott [01:30:54]:
That's a lot of games. Um, and they also added games to, uh that stream your own game program. So this is the one where you have a game collection in Xbox Cloud Gaming. Sorry, you have a game collection in the cloud, I should just say. If you have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, or Essential subscription, you can now stream over the cloud from a library of over 1,000 games that you own already. So if you own the game, you bought it at one point, you don't have to install it on a device, you can just stream it. And this month they added, I don't know, 20 games it looks like, including some recent ones like Marathon, the new version of Marathon that just came out, Resident Evil 7 Biohazard, which is 2 games ago, but still a modern game. Let's see if anything else stands out here.
Paul Thurrott [01:31:44]:
No, those are the big ones. And then there's more. Actually, Resident Evil's coming soon, sorry. Yeah, several games are coming Soon, including Super Meat Boy 3D. I didn't even— is that the original? Is that the regular Meat Boy, or is that new? New issue?
Richard Campbell [01:31:57]:
Super?
Paul Thurrott [01:31:59]:
It is super, and it's 3D. Um, they're also—
Leo Laporte [01:32:02]:
this is scary almost.
Paul Thurrott [01:32:04]:
I know, it's weird.
Leo Laporte [01:32:05]:
Is he made of meat, or does he throw meat, or is meat—
Paul Thurrott [01:32:09]:
yeah, he's made of meat.
Leo Laporte [01:32:10]:
Um, I guess we're all made of it.
Paul Thurrott [01:32:12]:
It's a fun little platformer. It's, it's cool.
Richard Campbell [01:32:14]:
I—
Paul Thurrott [01:32:14]:
it's been a while since I've seen the way What am I—
Leo Laporte [01:32:17]:
I can't remember what the science fiction story was where the aliens—
Paul Thurrott [01:32:21]:
like, I think it bleeds. Yeah, meat.
Leo Laporte [01:32:23]:
And we, we were sentient meat.
Richard Campbell [01:32:26]:
They can't kind of—
Leo Laporte [01:32:27]:
they can't figure it out. It's like, yeah, they're made of meat.
Richard Campbell [01:32:31]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:32:32]:
Someday we're gonna, we're gonna puzzle an alien, you know, uh, civilization that discovers it. Like, they're made of meat? Like Soylent Green?
Leo Laporte [01:32:41]:
Sentient Meat? Yeah, Meat Boy. He's sentient meat.
Paul Thurrott [01:32:47]:
It's made of meat. Uh, oh, and then, um, so as they bring games to Xbox Cloud Gaming, right, which is the streaming service, those games to date have been running basically on an Xbox Series X, and they're optimized for a console. So if you stream it to a phone or a tablet, this is a smaller screen, you're using touch controls unless you add a controller. And so they've been adding more touch controls across these games when they're played in this fashion, which is great. I think this requires the developer to say okay. I don't think they can just do that, but I could be wrong about that. But they also support wired USB mice and keyboards. So you can kind of go in the opposite direction if you want to.
Paul Thurrott [01:33:31]:
Like you go to a PC, I guess, you're streaming it. And if you have a PC and a mouse, you can use that with the Xbox game. right? And so they're, they're doing that, you know, um, obviously— well, maybe not obviously, but it would be nice if they just added Xbox game compatibility. That's the one I'm really looking for. Uh, tomorrow we're— as we record this, it's Wednesday, March 25th, but tomorrow on the 26th, they're having another virtual event, they being Xbox. And this is a partner preview event. It's going to be Sega and some other third-party developers. They're going to show off new games from these studios.
Paul Thurrott [01:34:05]:
Uh, there's an up— there's updates to existing games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl, uh, is getting a big update, and we'll see what that entails. But that will be tomorrow, and it seems like they're starting to do these pretty regularly now, right? Which I think is great, um, because the ongoing press on Xbox is like, nothing ever happens, that's not bad. And, uh, you know, they're talking about new games and stuff.
Leo Laporte [01:34:25]:
So it's interesting.
Paul Thurrott [01:34:27]:
Yeah, 2 months ago, so since the last one. And then in the bad news department, sort of, I guess, um, you know, obviously the gaming industry has been kind of a tough space for the past couple years. Um, there have been these success stories though, like the Switch 2, which was the fastest console, like fastest selling console in history when it first came out. Um, their fiscal year ends next week, and their expectation was that they would sell at least 19 million units. They will do that. It will be somewhere in the 19 to 20 million. That's cumulative since the launch last—
Leo Laporte [01:35:01]:
That seems like a lot.
Paul Thurrott [01:35:02]:
It is a lot. Yeah, it's way faster than the original Switch. But the question with the Switch has always been, well, the Switch 2 rather, is like, okay, yes, I mean, there's built pent-up demand. It's going to, you know, it's going to— of course it's going to do good in the beginning, but I don't think anyone expects it to ever surpass the original Switch as far as total sales over lifetime, right? It's more expensive. You know, it's, it's just never going to get there. It's a higher-end device, but they've already cut production, um, which is a little scary because this thing has been out less than a year, and you would think that you would never hear a story like this, um, in the first— like, I'll call it 9 months-ish. Um, but in the current quarter and then heading into April, they're actually cutting back on, uh, production. Part of it might be tied, of course, the price increases that were triggered.
Paul Thurrott [01:35:50]:
That's what I would think.
Richard Campbell [01:35:51]:
You know, I mean, it's just part supply.
Paul Thurrott [01:35:54]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [01:35:55]:
So what— it was already expensive. What were they selling, uh, initially?
Paul Thurrott [01:35:58]:
So I don't remember this. After they announced it, they raised prices kind of across the board, including all— most of the peripherals as well. But the problem for the console itself is RAM, right? It's not just components broadly, but actually like the system itself. It's like a big part of the cost is the, you know, the RAM. Like, that stuff's gone not— I always want to say exponentially. It's gone up 2 to 3x or whatever the time, you know, whatever the number is. But that, you know, impacts the profitability of this thing. And at some point you price it high enough where people are like, yeah, I'm just going to stick with the thing I have, you know.
Leo Laporte [01:36:31]:
Yeah. So it's, it's funny because I, I tried to get one but I couldn't. Uh, you can buy it and get it.
Paul Thurrott [01:36:38]:
I was gonna say, but you can get it today if you don't mind paying for it.
Leo Laporte [01:36:41]:
I mean, well, it's 400 $50. I, I don't know.
Richard Campbell [01:36:46]:
That was the— I thought that was the intro pricing.
Leo Laporte [01:36:49]:
Yeah, maybe the same.
Paul Thurrott [01:36:51]:
Okay, I mean, that's $50. That's great. I mean, that, you know, look, if the Steam— if somehow, uh, Steam or Valve or whatever announced, okay, we're going to sell this Steam— what's the same computer called? The Steam—
Leo Laporte [01:37:02]:
Steam Machine.
Paul Thurrott [01:37:03]:
Steam Machine.
Leo Laporte [01:37:04]:
It's gonna be $999.
Paul Thurrott [01:37:07]:
People would be like, yikes. You know, I think people would not be surprised by that. But $450 for a Switch 2, if you look at Xbox, PlayStation prices—
Leo Laporte [01:37:18]:
yeah, I don't know.
Richard Campbell [01:37:20]:
I don't know that you could actually get one for $450 right now.
Leo Laporte [01:37:22]:
Okay.
Paul Thurrott [01:37:23]:
Yeah, I don't actually know.
Richard Campbell [01:37:24]:
I'd be really interested in, you know, just start like just looking on, looking on Amazon. There's no listed prices. It's all, you know—
Leo Laporte [01:37:32]:
oh, that's Canada, baby. It's, uh, in the US it says available tomorrow.
Paul Thurrott [01:37:36]:
Yeah, I could get it delivered tomorrow, but I'm not in the US. Let's see what that looks like in—
Leo Laporte [01:37:43]:
How much will the— what is it? Il macchino vapore. How much will that cost?
Paul Thurrott [01:37:50]:
So it's about 10,200 pesos. So that's $500.
Richard Campbell [01:37:56]:
Best Buy US has it for $450.
Paul Thurrott [01:37:58]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:37:58]:
So they didn't raise the price, or did they? I don't know. It seems like that was the price.
Richard Campbell [01:38:03]:
No, that was the intro price.
Leo Laporte [01:38:04]:
Yeah, for sure.
Paul Thurrott [01:38:04]:
So in Mexico, should I get one? $575.
Leo Laporte [01:38:07]:
I guess this is the question everybody's asking.
Richard Campbell [01:38:09]:
Beautiful. They are beautiful machines. Like, the screen is phenomenal on them.
Leo Laporte [01:38:12]:
Is it?
Richard Campbell [01:38:13]:
If you're used— if you're going to use it, by all means.
Paul Thurrott [01:38:16]:
I like the idea of a console that you could just take with you and then plug into your TV and use there like a normal console, so to speak. Um, but I would like to see more of the kind of Call of Duty, you know, that type of thing occur.
Richard Campbell [01:38:30]:
I mean, I'm sorry, it's Nintendo. Yeah, I know, I know, but I mean, you're playing Zelda, you're gonna like it.
Leo Laporte [01:38:36]:
Don't they have Call of Duty? I thought they did.
Paul Thurrott [01:38:39]:
No, no, yet they used to a long time ago. I always remember, uh, Call of Duty 3 had— you could use the nunchuck thing to throw a grenade. You would actually flick the thing and it would throw a grenade because, you know, the reason I'm playing a video game is I want to have a—
Leo Laporte [01:38:54]:
do you have a Switch 2? You seem He seems like he'd be the natural Switch 2 owner. I do not.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:00]:
Kevin, you're a child. Um, you're a child.
Kevin [01:39:05]:
I have too many games that are like from the past 10 years that I need to finish first.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:11]:
Yeah. So what do you play games on?
Kevin [01:39:15]:
I haven't played video games in the past like year and a half.
Leo Laporte [01:39:18]:
Yeah, you grew out of it. See, he's out of my show.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:21]:
How dare you. I have priorities. I played a game as recently as 5 minutes before I got on the camera.
Leo Laporte [01:39:26]:
I love gaming and I feel guilty when I play. There's— it's like, oh no, I should be using— doing Claude or practicing the piano.
Richard Campbell [01:39:33]:
So much work to do.
Leo Laporte [01:39:34]:
There's so much— there's so many things I should be doing.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:37]:
I think the same way, but I'm always like, there's so many people to kill.
Kevin [01:39:39]:
I'm not going to start a game if I don't have time to finish it.
Leo Laporte [01:39:43]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:43]:
Yeah. Well, right. So this— right. This is the challenge. I kind of— I sort of— I don't know, a month ago or something, I The reason I play Call of Duty is I can get in and out. So if I'm sitting there playing Call of Duty and Microsoft announces something important, I can be like, yep, I'm out. It doesn't matter. I don't have to remember where I am in the story and what 2 of the 3 things I got to get to the next section, whatever it is.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:02]:
Like, I don't have to worry about it, you know.
Leo Laporte [01:40:03]:
There is no story.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:05]:
It's— no, it's a simple story. It's— yes, the system.
Leo Laporte [01:40:09]:
Them or me.
Richard Campbell [01:40:10]:
It's P-Bagged or P-Bagging. Yes.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:15]:
How many people on my own team can kill me in one match?
Richard Campbell [01:40:19]:
Let's find out.
Leo Laporte [01:40:22]:
Um, uh, yeah, it would be fun to just kind of kick back and do something, nothing for a minute. Yeah, maybe I need a game like Call of Duty.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:35]:
I want to be super clear about this as a, as a Call of Duty expert. Nobody needs Call of Duty.
Leo Laporte [01:40:39]:
Yeah, I thought you gave it up. What happened? You came back? You fell off the wagon.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:43]:
I don't— it's not as bad as it was before. Like, I actually do play the game. I've been playing the recent Resident Evil game.
Leo Laporte [01:40:48]:
Sure.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:48]:
Uh, and some other stuff.
Leo Laporte [01:40:49]:
You can stop anytime, I know that.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:52]:
I have no comment.
Leo Laporte [01:40:57]:
Finally, in our Xbox segment—
Paul Thurrott [01:41:00]:
yes. Oh yes, sorry. And, uh, sadly, more bad news. Um, so Epic Games, which makes Fortnite, which by the way is just about to They're going to release it worldwide on mobile again. It's in some places obviously already, but it's just about to happen. Announced they're going to lay off 1,000 employees. They said that engagement in Fortnite has gone down. Fortnite, that's weird timing because Meta announced and then said, "Yeah, we're just kidding," sort of, that they were kind of not doing the metaverse thing anymore, or at least as strongly as they were before.
Paul Thurrott [01:41:29]:
But you could have made a case, and you still could, that the strongest metaverse, such as it is, might be Fortnite. This might point to a future where this kind of virtual world makes sense. The Neil Stevenson imagined, whatever, virtual world essentially. Snow Crash. Snow Crash, yep. But yeah, the challenges that they face are the same that I think a lot of the industry is facing. He being CEO Tim Sweeney said, look, this has nothing to do with AI. It's that we're not going to try to blame that, which credit to him for that.
Paul Thurrott [01:42:08]:
And his little announcement, I feel it was pretty honest. He said, look, Fortnite is one of the most successful games in the world. It is. We talked about the report from last year and Fortnite is at the top of so many lists. It's crazy. Like so many years later, how big it is and how restricted it's been on mobile, right? But he says, you know, we haven't really delivered consistent magic with every season, which is how they do things now in video games, which I hate. You know, he's like, we're still in the early stages of returning to mobile. We still have to optimize it for, you know, all the smartphones of the world, etc., etc.
Paul Thurrott [01:42:44]:
So I think this thing still has legs, and obviously they have to do more. But he did bring up— I don't see it in this version of the story, but The thing I read was he was saying, look, we've had these challenges in the past. And so when the world went like 2D to 3D, they created the Unreal Engine and Unreal, the game, and then Unreal Tournament, the series of games. And they did the Fortnite thing. And so Fortnite, it's weird to think of this, but at the time, Fortnite was going to be a— originally was designed to be one of those creation type games, almost like a faster moving, more violent version of Minecraft. But then PUBG happened and this notion of battle royale type games and they pivoted. And Fortnite to me still is weird. It's a weird hybrid of— it's battle royale, but you also build— you can build— I think that's pretty cool.
Paul Thurrott [01:43:42]:
Yeah. I mean, it's—
Leo Laporte [01:43:42]:
I love that.
Paul Thurrott [01:43:44]:
Yeah. See, you like it because you like to think, and I, I hate it because I'm like, what are you doing? I just want to shoot someone. Like, he's— what's he building? I have to shoot through a thing he's building? What is this?
Leo Laporte [01:43:54]:
Um, I'm an idiot, but you know, you know, it blows my mind, but the fact remains that there are 1,000 people they can lay off. Yeah, that work on Fortnite.
Richard Campbell [01:44:03]:
What are they doing?
Paul Thurrott [01:44:04]:
Doing? Well, so you're right, so you create a game called Fortnite, but then you have to improve the game. And are they all artists? Yeah, I think— I bet what they were doing— so there's all— I mean, there's a bunch of stuff, right? So there's each season, because Call of Duty is going to have a new season on—
Leo Laporte [01:44:18]:
so yeah, you have a team working on the next season.
Paul Thurrott [01:44:20]:
There's new— there's level— well, not in Fortnite so much, but levels and weapons and, uh, other artifacts and things and, uh, game styles and whatever it might be. I mean, Fortnite has evolved. I—
Leo Laporte [01:44:30]:
because it's on the— it's the Unreal Engine, so the engine's done. They're not—
Paul Thurrott [01:44:34]:
it's not that.
Leo Laporte [01:44:34]:
Yeah, it's not that, although, you know, they're going to go to Unreal 6, so yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:44:38]:
I mean, there's evolution there too, but as far as the game goes, I mean, I will say like, I didn't like this game in particular or really any battle royale game when they first came out. And that would include, you know, Call of Duty has their own version of this, right? Like Warzone. Because you were kind of one and done. So you, there's all this staging and you fly through the air, you drop through the air, you land on the island, you run around, you have to find guns and whatever else. And then you get shot and you're like, great, now I have to wait 20 minutes. You know, like, I hated that. And now it's not like that. So if you play Fortnite today, you get in, and if you die early, whatever, you just enter a new match, you know.
Paul Thurrott [01:45:14]:
And it's more of the, the rapid, uh, repetition thing, which I think is what makes—
Leo Laporte [01:45:19]:
Do you see people are— is he saying fewer people are playing Fortnite now? Um, he's even saying that.
Richard Campbell [01:45:26]:
I mean, that's what they were implying.
Paul Thurrott [01:45:28]:
So this— so he'd— I'd have to I almost want to reread this now.
Leo Laporte [01:45:32]:
Maybe they're not buying Fortnite in-game stuff as much as—
Paul Thurrott [01:45:37]:
Yeah, that's the thing. So it's an engagement. So there's a difference between slowing growth and then falling engagement, I guess, right? So I don't know if it's just slowing. Like, they must— they have— they're on some trajectory where by and large it's been going up. Has it actually gone down, or is it just leveling off.
Richard Campbell [01:45:58]:
It sounds like they're selling less swag stuff and that's impacting them.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:04]:
Which for guys like us, right? I know Richard's a PC gamer, right? I mean, one of the things that is not appealing to this kind of game, and by this kind of game, I mean a game that to me is fundamentally, even though it's not really, mobile in nature, which is the in-game app purchase thing, the box you buy to get the stuff, Almost, um, like you pay your way to success. What do you call it? You know, that kind of thing.
Richard Campbell [01:46:30]:
Yeah, pay to win.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:31]:
I hate it.
Richard Campbell [01:46:32]:
Yeah, the Fortnite stuff was never affecting your ability to play, it was just decorating.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:35]:
No, it was just— yeah, like maybe you want to look like Santa Claus or, you know, whatever the outfit is, you can pay it like 99 cents or some stupid thing. I don't know, I, I just don't—
Leo Laporte [01:46:45]:
you know, Neil Stevenson on Monday wrote a piece because he's of course the guy according to the term metaverse, right? Um, he calls it his prodigal brainchild.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:55]:
So this is his— this is— Snow Crash was probably his third book or something, but it was the first one I read.
Leo Laporte [01:47:02]:
Oh, so good.
Paul Thurrott [01:47:03]:
And it's still the best Neil Stephenson book. Well, other than In the Beginning There Was the Command Line. But as far as his science fiction, whatever fiction writing, it's still—
Leo Laporte [01:47:12]:
I love all of his stuff.
Paul Thurrott [01:47:14]:
Everything he's written was very good. —but then they turned into these—
Leo Laporte [01:47:18]:
—The 7th Super-Robe Cycle.
Paul Thurrott [01:47:19]:
Yeah, which is like 3,000-page books. Annex M is great.
Leo Laporte [01:47:22]:
Seveneves is great. He's writing a new one, Polystan. The second book's just about to come out. That's fantastic. But I'm a fan. Anyway, he says—
Paul Thurrott [01:47:31]:
But he did the Cory— before you say what you're going to say, because I think I know what you're going to say. He did to the metaverse what Cory Doctorow did with enshittification, which is when you hear this term, you're like, "Oh, yeah." You know, like it's like he—
Leo Laporte [01:47:43]:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Nailed it. He says though, the metaverse is quote, "dead." But he says what's happening, the reason Meta is stepping back from it is, and this is his headline, people don't like wearing things on their faces and moreover, don't trust people who do. Right. Which is true. If you go around wearing Meta glasses, people are looking at you.
Paul Thurrott [01:48:05]:
The new glassholes, you know? Like, 'cause you don't know what, there was already, there was a guy caught in court last week, I think. Yes, the Justice case. Wearing smart glasses, getting information through his earpiece.
Leo Laporte [01:48:13]:
Piece. But he's pointing out hundreds of millions of people use the no-goggle metaverse. Roblox, 380 million monthly active users. Minecraft, 60 million. Fortnite, I didn't know this, 650 million registered players. Right. So he says the metaverse is, is doing very well. It's just not with goggles on your face.
Paul Thurrott [01:48:34]:
It's— well, right. So, but in, in that book, and, and what was the earlier— uh, God, I'm losing my mind. Um, The earlier science fiction writer who— oh, I know who you're talking about.
Leo Laporte [01:48:44]:
William Gibson. Cyberpunk. Sorry. Exactly. Yeah. He also had jacking in, right? Neuromancer.
Paul Thurrott [01:48:51]:
You know, the idea that— right, the idea there is that you're— it's— you're not looking at a 2D screen. You're in a— you know, you're— you feel like you're virtually in this— you have a—
Leo Laporte [01:49:01]:
it's right into your cortex. Yeah. So The Matrix, literally.
Paul Thurrott [01:49:04]:
Uh, Yeah. So yes, those things are popular still, but they're essentially video games. Roblox is like its own economy. I don't know what's going on there. But yeah, so this company has 650 million people actively playing this thing and we have to lay off people. It's like, what? But I'm guessing they've stopped spending money, right? Or they don't spend—
Richard Campbell [01:49:28]:
And it costs money to run that rig and you're not paying for it.
Paul Thurrott [01:49:31]:
Yep, I gotta drop it. Doing the right thing, by the way.
Leo Laporte [01:49:35]:
Okay, we're gonna let, uh, Richard go for a moment. I am going to tell you, uh, that this is Windows Weekly with Mr. Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell. And furthermore, I'm going to tell you that this show, as you may have noticed, is essentially an ad-free program. Congratulations! You would— would you like all your programming to be ad-free? It could happen to you. It really could. All you have to do is join the club, Club Twit. And frankly, I think this is— I've always, you know, when we started back 20 years ago, I didn't want to do ads.
Leo Laporte [01:50:09]:
I wanted it to be a listener-supported network. That wasn't in the cards, not for the kind of growth we wanted to pursue. And, you know, to this day we have 13 shows. We still have a lot of programming we do. But increasingly, I think it's possible Thanks to Patreon and the generosity of our audience. People understand the internet isn't free, that more and more people are saying, "Yeah, I'm willing to pay for stuff that I like, that I listen to, that I want. It's worth something to me." And I hope you're one of those people. That's why we created Club Twit.
Leo Laporte [01:50:41]:
For $10 a month, you get ad-free versions of all 13 shows. You get special programming we do only for the club. You get access to the Discord. You get special feeds just for club members, but mostly you get the feeling that you're supporting something you love, that you enjoy, that you want to have as part of your life. And I hope you feel that way. I know we all do, and we would love to keep doing it. So help us out, would you? twit.tv/clubtwit. There's an annual plan, same price.
Leo Laporte [01:51:13]:
You don't get a discount, but there's an annual plan. There's a 2-week free trial if you just want to see what it's like. Uh, there's corporate and family memberships too, which let you have more people at a discounted price. All of that is explained thoroughly, including videos by Micah Sargent on how to, how to use Club Twit, which you should watch because I know Discord especially can be a little confusing to people. You'll find that at twit.tv/clubtwit. You don't have to do Discord if you don't want to. That's not required. You don't have to do anything.
Leo Laporte [01:51:41]:
In fact, there are club members who still listen to the ad versions of the show. You don't have to do that, but, uh, you know, the idea really is you're, you're voting, you're supporting, you're showing your support for what we're doing here. And I hope you feel that way. I, I'd love to get you in the club. twit.tv/clubtwit. Join the cool kids in the club. Now, ladies and gentlemen, Paul Theriot will kick off what we call the back of the book with his tip of the week.
Paul Thurrott [01:52:16]:
Before I do that, real quick, Nintendo just announced that starting in May, and it will start with pre-orders for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Nintendo Switch 2 games will cost less if you buy them digitally than if you buy— right? Which actually makes sense. And while while you were doing that ad block, I was— sorry, I'm sure that will conclude quickly. Um, I was looking through the previous 3, uh, Nintendo earnings announcements because I know that Nintendo, like Sony, will often— well, will always say X percentage of our games were digital, X percent were physical. And I couldn't find it, so I apologize, I don't know what the number is. But, um, digital sales are not as high as I would think at this time frame. So I don't remember what the actual price is.
Leo Laporte [01:53:06]:
People want the little, that little chip that you stick in the thing.
Paul Thurrott [01:53:08]:
I guess people like to have the little pack, you know, the little thing where they can put the little—
Leo Laporte [01:53:11]:
I don't have any of those. It's all— I want everything digital.
Paul Thurrott [01:53:14]:
Like, I don't understand it. But anyway, look, this makes sense. And especially in this era of like these components cost more, right? Yeah. So it's actually better for them too. So it's better for everybody, I think. But anyway, they haven't said what the prices are going to be. Um, retail prices are set by their partners. I mean, there's obviously a manufacturer.
Leo Laporte [01:53:36]:
Uh, are they though? I think Nintendo—
Paul Thurrott [01:53:38]:
no, yeah, that's the price. That's what they say. I mean, you know, I don't—
Leo Laporte [01:53:42]:
and they're expensive. There's like, uh, the Mario Kart was like $70. It was very expensive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is crazy. This is a game for kids. It was $80, right? That's crazy.
Paul Thurrott [01:53:54]:
How much would you pay to stop a child from crying, you know, an infinite amount of money because we're betting on it.
Richard Campbell [01:53:59]:
We're just not screaming. Yep, just quiet, please.
Leo Laporte [01:54:04]:
Crying, okay, but screaming, no.
Paul Thurrott [01:54:06]:
Yeah, I told my neighbor, you know, they invented something called a pacifier, you should look into it. Um, anywho, uh, okay, so tip of the week, Mr. So, um, after thinking this— well, no, part of the reason I haven't done this before is just distribution, so I have my books that I publish myself through LeanPub, which is fantastic, right? And 4 or 5, if you include the Eternal Spring book I do with my wife, current books. I have at time done promotions where if you're a Throat Premium customer, you get the book at the time for free and you have to sign in to LeanPub and then you get the updates through there, whatever. But what I really want to do is just give these books away for free to anyone who's paying for Threat Premium. And now that it's annual only, so someone won't swoop in for like a month and grab all the books and leave or whatever. Um, plus to get the latest version of the book, you have to download it from my site. So we figured out a way, uh, to do this directly through the site.
Paul Thurrott [01:55:04]:
So, um, Windows Everywhere, the, the new one, De-Insidify Windows 11, and the Windows 10 and Windows 11 Field Guides are all there. So if you're a Threat Premium member, you get that now for free as part of your membership. Nice. I guess there's an ad. So you said there were no ads. Um, okay.
Leo Laporte [01:55:20]:
Oh, there's ads on your site. Yeah, I think I had to turn off— not if you're a premium member. Well, I am, but I think I had to— I don't know, we didn't sign in. I'm not logged in because when I do go in— oh, what's happening here? When I do go in, I don't know, something bad happens.
Paul Thurrott [01:55:37]:
Well, we also have a very cheap, like, Threat Lite thing. I think it's like $7 a year or something.
Leo Laporte [01:55:41]:
That's just So you don't get the books for that? No, no, no. How much is the full, the full throttle? I don't even know. What is the throttle?
Paul Thurrott [01:55:53]:
The full frontal throttle? How much is that? $60? I don't even know.
Leo Laporte [01:55:58]:
$60? Yeah, see here, no, it's working now. Here I am, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm able to go into the, uh, premium stuff.
Paul Thurrott [01:56:05]:
Yeah, the big one I had to host on Google because like we were going to do it through the site, but I couldn't— we couldn't figure out it. Like, it's too big. Yeah, I couldn't figure out a way to make it work. But anyway, you get that from Google, you'll see why. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, okay, so there's— nice.
Leo Laporte [01:56:20]:
And that is very generous. That's really good.
Paul Thurrott [01:56:22]:
Well, I mean, you're paying. I mean, I, you know, this is one way to get in. This is kind of the way I always wanted it because a lot— like when I did the— I'm still not done with it, but when I did the De-Enshitify Windows book, um You know, I was publishing each chapter to the site as I did it. And so like, that's, you know, it's like, what, it's sort of, it's not the, it's not like an EPUB or PDF download, but it's, you know, it's something, but it's like, it's the distribution that was the problem. So we kind of figured out how to work around that. So I think it makes sense. Anyway, nice job. Um, I, yesterday, 2 days ago, I don't remember, uh, Firefox or Mozilla released Firefox 149.
Paul Thurrott [01:56:59]:
They had an announcement I think last week about a bunch of new features coming across the next couple of versions and then later on into the year. And they're really working on the quality and making sure that this thing does what their users actually want. And this is a big update. So split view, which we already have in Chromium browsers, yes, but the ability to see two pages side by side on the web in a single tab is huge. Free VPN with 50 gigabytes of data. And then a Firefox Labs feature called Tab Notes where you can have notes associated with a tab. So if you're doing research or whatever, and that will sync between your devices. So if you go back to that, open that site later, you'll be able to see your notes associated with that.
Paul Thurrott [01:57:41]:
So that's pretty cool. And then this is kind of random, but this, Pat, since we last talked, there have been several major browser releases. So Opera GX is, on Linux now, full-featured version, which is kind of amazing. Opera GX, I haven't written this up yet, but they have a sidebar in all the Opera browsers. This one now has Gemini integration built in. If you haven't looked at Vivaldi in a while, the new version desktop has something called auto-hide mode, and it literally, it's just full screen with no Chrome whatsoever.
Leo Laporte [01:58:13]:
Although you could— That's good. I should look at that because it's actually awesome. And that's what I want for the show.
Paul Thurrott [01:58:18]:
Yeah, right, you just see the actual page. It's really nice. Um, you know, like, you could sort of do this in full screen mode, I get, in other browsers, but this one, because it's Vivaldi, it's super configurable. Meaning it's like, I want auto hide, so it's everything off except for whatever, the status bar or something, or whatever. If you want one bit of UI on, you can do that, which is really cool. Um, Opera for Android, they have the Opera AI, which they're now partnering with third parties on, but They've added a reasoning AI mode, which is free, you know, up to with limits. So you can do the reasoning thing. And then Perplexity Comet, which is that AI browser that I think was originally, I'm trying to think where it was.
Paul Thurrott [01:59:00]:
I know it was on the Mac. Was it on Windows? I don't even remember, but it's on iPhone and iPad now as well. So if you're a Perplexity user and use those mobile devices, you can get that too. That's a bunch. It's like one week worth of like, pretty major browser updates, right? It's good.
Richard Campbell [01:59:18]:
Yeah, very nice. Strange, strange. Yeah, strange.
Paul Thurrott [01:59:22]:
Just like, it's unusual. I mean, I've never seen, I've never seen a week like that, you know.
Leo Laporte [01:59:27]:
Well, uh, I've never seen a week where we didn't have a Run As Radio, Mr. Richard Campbell.
Richard Campbell [01:59:34]:
So far so good, right? I mean, somehow every, every 2,000 shows. Yep. Every Wednesday since April 11th, 2007. Yikes. So this week's my friend Nick Chalebois-Laprade, who's French-Canadian. He's from Quebec. He works for Microsoft though. And he's been working for years and years on a technology called Desired State Configuration.
Richard Campbell [02:00:01]:
So back in the day, this was the tool I used if I had a web server farm. Like 6 servers that all, they all have to be configured identically so they behave the same. So that if you're floating between them balancing workloads, it doesn't get weird. But DSC has evolved. It sort of understands configuration settings for operating systems and things like that to the point now where Microsoft's actually pulled it into part of Azure. They call it the Unified Tenant Configuration in Microsoft Graph, which sticks with the standard Microsoft naming strategy of meaning nothing at all. So what is this actually about? Well, you are configuring— you're a system admin, you're responsible for a Microsoft 365 tenant. So you have rules in place like MFA is required and certain conditional access rules and where OneDrive instances should exist and how attachments should be handled in emails, a whole array of settings like that.
Richard Campbell [02:00:59]:
And sometimes those settings can be overridden. Sometimes things drift, they just literally change. And so, uh, M365 DSC is about setting all those configuration settings in place, and then they're routinely monitored and adjusted if they have to change. This is especially important if you're managing a bunch of tenants. So maybe you're a contracted sysadmin who takes care of a bunch of M365 tenants all remotely because it's in the cloud anyway. So you can use this tool to actually maintain keep track of the configuration and make sure it's correct and be able to apply the necessary. So this is just— DSC has been around for a lot of years, but applying to M365 is relatively new. And so the conversation was really digging into like how you do this and get involved in the preview version if it's a problem you're dealing with.
Leo Laporte [02:01:45]:
Well, now I think we have earned a little tipple.
Richard Campbell [02:01:52]:
Yeah, well, I'm at the Microsoft, the MVP conference, so I'm being delivered bottles of whiskey like as we speak. Oh my God. Uh, so yeah, those will come out over the next few weeks. But one of the whiskeys I drank, uh, this— so far this week, they— we're here at the Aloft Element, which is right near the— near campus. It has the best bar by far. And they've been tweaking their stock, and one of their top shelves this, this time around, though it's not especially expensive bourbon, is The Redemption High Rye Bourbon. This is a pretty looking bottle.
Leo Laporte [02:02:28]:
I love it.
Richard Campbell [02:02:28]:
Good looking bottle. And there's a bunch of variants on it. And part of the story will explain why they played with the bottle as much as they have. So this is a relatively recent entity. In 2010, a guy named Dave Schmier and his partner Michael Kandar started making Redemption. Now, they are not distillers. They don't own a distillery. These guys are brand guys.
Richard Campbell [02:02:51]:
but they are plugged into the whiskey industry in the US, and they, uh, came across the availability of some aged casks of whiskey from a company called MGP-I. Now, MGP stands for Midwest, uh, Midwest Grain Products, and the I is ingredients, although it could also be incorporated, so forth. But the MGP-I, um, Now, this company's been around for a long time. A guy named Cloud Craig Sr. founded it in 1941 in Atchison, Kansas. But all he was doing— he was a distiller, but they were just making neutral spirits starting in World War II. And as far as I know, that factory still does that. But along the way, they acquired one of the old Seagram's distilleries, which was originally the Rawson Squibb Distillery, going all the way back to like 1850.
Richard Campbell [02:03:42]:
1947 in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, which was acquired by Seagram's around, around Prohibition times and was scaled up as a very large distilling facility. Seagram's being the Canadian entity, and we've talked about them before, who eventually got into all kinds of luxury goods and essentially bankrupted themselves. And then as the company was being dismantled, all of the liquor products ended up underneath Pernod Ricard, and then Pernod Ricard tried to rationalize all of this and sort of looked at the Lawrenceburg Distillery, says, "We don't need this," and planned to shut it down. But another group took it over, then they had financial troubles, and then MGP ended up acquiring it essentially at a fire sale. But at that time, MGP wasn't really— they were making alcohol, but they weren't making retail whiskey products at all. They do now. It's become a big business for them, and this factory is kind of legendary for producing a huge number of things. So they'd taken over the somewhat broken-down distillery, but it had been in so much trouble for so many years at that point, there was just huge numbers of aged barrels sitting in these warehouses because there had been no bottling going on.
Richard Campbell [02:04:52]:
And so MGP was trying to unload some barrels. And this is where Schmier and Kandar sort of acquire a bunch of them and they called their entity Bardstown Barrel Selections. And started making different bottlings from the barrels they could get from MGP and hit it on this thing called Redemption Rye. You know, in an interview I read from David Schmier, he said there was maybe 5,000 cases a year of rye whiskey being sold when we started in 2010. And then within a year, we were selling more than 20,000 ourselves to the point where he got a bit of a financial crunch and ended up selling the whole group off to the Deutsch family. Wine and Spirits Group in 2015. And now Schmier has gone on to make a bunch of other whiskey brands because he's not a distiller, he's a brander and a bottler. So he buys his whiskey where he can and then comes up with brands around it that people really like.
Richard Campbell [02:05:50]:
Uh, and this has been a somewhat controversial practice, uh, because MGP largely doesn't make its own whiskey products. There's a couple like George Remus and Rossville Union, but they do bottling, production and bottling for all kinds of whiskey. Angel's Envy Rye, Bulleit Rye, George Dickel Rye, Smooth Ambler, High West. They're all made at that MGP distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. And there have been incidences of companies making whiskey and sort of implying that they're making it. This happened with Templeton Rye, where they weren't clear about the fact that it was actually made in Indiana from this massive producer, and they got in trouble with the FTC over it, had to change labeling and so forth, and actually provided refunds to folks. Because, you know, these giant factory distillers, they're considered like cheating in a way. Instead of, you know, everybody wants to believe that the whiskey they're making is, you know, this little distiller, this group of craftsmen are making that whiskey, and that's all there is to it.
Richard Campbell [02:06:52]:
And, you know, some of those manufacturers then go on to become much larger and huge production. And heck, we talked about Macallan the other day, just how huge huge that's become. Or even Jack Daniel's, which, you know, I, I have an appreciation of Jack Daniel's, that they have one facility in, in, uh, in Tennessee that produces all of their whiskey out of one, you know, two pair, a pair of stills. But, you know, MGP, the folks will buy from them and then do their own bottling, kind of conceal where they came from. And that's really quite a bad practice. And, and to be clear, this is not what Redemption Rye is doing. If you read their bottle, it's pretty clear that it's made of the way they're going about it. And they play with language a little bit there about it's an American-made spirit and so forth.
Richard Campbell [02:07:32]:
And all of that is true. It's just not a dedicated still to making that product. That being said, it's a cool bourbon because it qualifies as bourbon because it's 60% corn on the mash bill and then 36% rye, which would be very, very high by most standards. Then 4% barley because that gives you your amylase. In the sort of traditional mash bill, and then they age in new charred oak. It's bourbon. It's made just like bourbon anywhere else. It's just that its rye content is quite high.
Richard Campbell [02:08:02]:
And yet, having had some, and I couldn't bring any in here, but I've happily been having it at the bar all week, it has not got that big spice note. It's a very light, smooth-drinking bourbon that's been enjoyable in a part of the night so far. And I mentioned, going forward. So, uh, not hard to come by. $32 for a bottle, not incredibly expensive for bourbon, but not the cheapest either. And a 46% ABV. It's funny that this is the bottle they call High Rye because they also have a bottle they call Straight Rye, which is 95% rye. This High Rye is only 36%, but it's a high rye bourbon as opposed to actually a rye whiskey.
Richard Campbell [02:08:42]:
But yeah, they— the— it's now just produced by the Deusch family. As a popular whiskey, all manufactured by that massive facility in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
Leo Laporte [02:08:51]:
I always think of bourbon as kind of smooth and sweet, but rye would make it a little bit more tangy.
Richard Campbell [02:08:57]:
Yeah, traditionally we talk about you have corn, which is the sweet side, and but not a lot of flavor. You have a little bit of barley because you need that amylase. So it's not really a flavor component, but it's just part of the chemistry. And then you have a flavor grain in between. Traditionally in bourbon, it would be rye, which adds that spice and character to it. And in some whiskeys, it would be red winter wheat, for example, in Maker's Mark or in Blanton's. And so, yeah, we always associate rye with the spiciness. That's not necessarily how it comes across.
Richard Campbell [02:09:27]:
And I think part of it is that in these large, you know, the small distillers tend not to make rye because it gums up the works in pot stills. Oh, but these large producers who have the enzyme controls and so forth, they can handle rye. And so one of the things you notice about MGP is they make a lot— even Angel's Envy, who has their own distilling facility in Louisville, Kentucky, makes their rye at MGP so they don't have to deal with the challenges of actually distilling rye. So they, they do that over there. Although when they're finished with— when the, when the production is finished at MGP, then Angel's Envy brings it back to their facilities and puts it into sherry casks to finish, which is the Angel's Envy signature, right? That they— I love Angel's Angel's Envy.
Leo Laporte [02:10:14]:
If I like Angel's Envy, would this be a good bourbon to try?
Richard Campbell [02:10:18]:
No, this is— this one's nowhere near associated with Angel's Envy. But just point out the fact that, like, MGP makes a lot of whiskey for a lot of places, right? Although they often will do additional steps to it to finish it their way and do their own bottling, right? But I think the main thing is that MGP has built up the infrastructure to do large-scale rye distillation because it is so challenging. So it's a profitable business for them, and many major producers and well-known Brands like Bulleit and George Dickel and Angel's Envy and so forth leverage MGP's expertise to do their ryes for them as rye has become more popular. You know, Redemption's a funny little group because they were never a big facility. There were literally two guys, you know, a few staff doing the marketing. Good labels, good bottles. Like, you notice right away how good that bottle is.
Leo Laporte [02:11:04]:
Beautiful.
Richard Campbell [02:11:04]:
Yeah. You know, that was their business. And what they were doing was repackaging some produced rye from MGP and turned it into a tidy, successful little business. So we always get into what is whiskey really about, right? And I do love the craftsmanship. And one could argue like the only crafting here was the crafting of that label and how they made the thing look because they were using this bulk-produced rye. Yeah, it's all branding.
Leo Laporte [02:11:31]:
I love the name too, Redemption, and their logo, Choose Redemption, Rise Above.
Richard Campbell [02:11:36]:
And yeah, well, and that's— they did all that play and I did all kinds of research on, is this a family thing or anything? Nope, they fabricated the whole thing, just make it a brand.
Leo Laporte [02:11:45]:
So this guy, yeah, Alan Kennedy, master blender, it's just, it's not— well, and that's—
Richard Campbell [02:11:51]:
he's— so he's going through the barrels that he's getting from MGP and getting to a flavor profile to assemble an addition. But that is— so yeah, every— everyone does that. Like, that is a normal thing to do. Yeah. But when you talk about like the single malt-ness or this terroir, or— no, that's not really the issue here. MGP sits in the in the middle of Indiana, corn country, because they got access to all the materials to produce at scale.
Leo Laporte [02:12:14]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [02:12:15]:
Yeah. And, you can pretty much order to specification like what do you want and how many casts do you want like that and then off you go. Is it cheating? In the end, they're still making a brand, selecting a recipe, getting it produced at scale consistently and making a product that people seem to like for a reasonable price. It's not what I look for in craftsmanship whiskey, but I'm telling you, I keep drinking this stuff like it goes down just fine.
Leo Laporte [02:12:44]:
They also have a wheated bourbon and a cognac cask finish.
Richard Campbell [02:12:50]:
Yeah. So, you know, they're playing around, they're trying some things on. And that's like I said, the original guys have moved on now. In fact, Shamir has got a whole other set of brands that he's been involved in and he's still visible in the industry. But as a guy who isn't bound to a distillery but rather finds sources for whiskey finds a flavor profile that he really likes with a blender, and then does a production run.
Leo Laporte [02:13:13]:
There's nothing else I've learned from these segments. It's that there's a lot of flim-flam and chicanery going on in the—
Richard Campbell [02:13:22]:
There are a lot of different ways to make a beverage that people like.
Leo Laporte [02:13:25]:
Yeah. And you shouldn't probably pay that much attention to it. I mean, Lisa loves her blanco tequila. I know what you've told us now about that, but doesn't spoil her appreciation of a nice margarita.
Richard Campbell [02:13:40]:
So people ask me all the time what's my favorite whiskey. It's like, it's the one in front of me. Like, I've done too many now to think ideologically about any of this. And now you, after my experience of Macallan, drinking from a $10,000 bottle of whiskey, like, it's very good, but it's not something I want every day. Not every day. So I've done the spectrum, I tried them all, and there's stuff I like, stuff I don't. I don't like liars, and these guys aren't lying. Like, they're telling the story.
Leo Laporte [02:14:08]:
We know the story. It's marketing. It's a story, yeah.
Richard Campbell [02:14:11]:
It's a pitch, and it's a real product. Like, this is not colored water with ethanol in it or anything. It's actually—
Leo Laporte [02:14:18]:
I mean, a wise man once said, I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. Me.
Paul Thurrott [02:14:25]:
It's true, it's a low bar, but yeah, okay.
Leo Laporte [02:14:30]:
Uh, thank you, Richard Campbell. Uh, of course, Richard's Run His Radio is at runhisradio.com..NET Rocks 2000th episode will be coming out any minute now, right? Yeah, end of April. And end of April, uh, also at.NET Rocks— I'm sorry, runhisradio.com. Uh, and he joins us every week from wherever he is in the world. This week. And where in the world is Richard Campbell?
Richard Campbell [02:14:54]:
I'll be back home next week, but the week after that I think I'll be in New Zealand.
Leo Laporte [02:14:58]:
So nice, the, uh, the annual summer trip. Yeah. Um, Paul Throt is of course at throt.com. The premium membership gets you even more, which is great, but you don't have to be a premium member to read all the goodness in there. There's lots of good content. It's a great way to keep up on going on. His books, if you want to just get the books by themselves, are at leanpub.com. And, but, you know, become a premium member and then you get the books for free.
Leo Laporte [02:15:25]:
I think that seems like the best, the best deal of all. Uh, Windows Everywhere: The Field Guide to Windows 11, and of course his latest, De-enshitify Windows. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Richard.
Richard Campbell [02:15:38]:
Thank you.
Leo Laporte [02:15:39]:
Have a wonderful, uh, week
