Windows Weekly 979 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat's here, Richard Campbell is here. This was, I think they said, the second biggest patch Tuesday yesterday in Microsoft history. We'll talk about what was fixed and what was added. Also a little bit about the first Snapdragon X2 based PCs. They're starting to come out now. And a big hike in Surface prices. That and a whole lot more.
Leo Laporte [00:00:24]:
Next on Windows Weekly, Podcasts you love from people you trust.
Paul Thurrott [00:00:33]:
This is twit.
Leo Laporte [00:00:41]:
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. Episode 979, recorded Wednesday, April 15, 2026. The Nespresso of the PC world. It's time for Windows Weekly. Well, lo and behold, the heavens have opened. And here they are, the hosts of your show, Mr. Paul Thurot from thurrott.com. hello.
Paul Thurrott [00:01:07]:
Hello, Leo.
Leo Laporte [00:01:08]:
And all the way from New Zealand, joining us by the magic of the Internet, Mr. Richard Campbell of RocknetRocks, Netplex, Rocknet Runnersradio.com hello, Richard. Or should I say, hello, Richard?
Richard Campbell [00:01:28]:
How's it.
Leo Laporte [00:01:28]:
That's not Kiwi.
Richard Campbell [00:01:30]:
No, it's Kiwi.
Leo Laporte [00:01:31]:
Accent is interesting.
Richard Campbell [00:01:33]:
They are interesting.
Leo Laporte [00:01:33]:
Without a doubt.
Richard Campbell [00:01:34]:
There's been some great ads and comedy bits done around the way that accent works. How come you don't have a good morning here? You know, because I left when I was three.
Leo Laporte [00:01:42]:
Oh. Is it in your head, though? Like, do you kind of every once in a while say, no, not really?
Richard Campbell [00:01:48]:
No. Nothing that, that. Making thousands of hours of the podcast, which has just beaten any, you know, character out of my voice entirely.
Leo Laporte [00:01:55]:
You have. When you said podcasts, there was a little Canadian in there. Just a bit.
Paul Thurrott [00:01:59]:
Just a little.
Leo Laporte [00:02:00]:
Just a boot, is it?
Richard Campbell [00:02:02]:
Or Data.
Leo Laporte [00:02:05]:
I say, you know, I say Data, I guess.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:08]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:02:09]:
Because that was the name of the character on, On Star Trek.
Richard Campbell [00:02:12]:
Star Trek character, yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:02:14]:
But it's, you know, we had. I had a good conversation with Jeff Atwood who pointed out that William Shatner pronounced sabotage, sabotage or sabotage completely unacceptable. And apparently that's because he's Quebecois and he. So that's how they say it in Quebec. And there's even a clip of him in a recording session for a Star Trek video game saying sabotage. And the producer says, no, no. Can you say sabotage? And he says, no, I say sabotage.
Richard Campbell [00:02:43]:
Sabotage. That's how that's gonna go.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:46]:
It's like Steve Jobs saying Jaguar.
Leo Laporte [00:02:49]:
Yeah. Why? Yeah. No, I never figured that one out. Sabotage.
Paul Thurrott [00:02:53]:
I don't know. Yeah. Who talks like that?
Leo Laporte [00:02:55]:
I decided, though, after that that I'm gonna say it that way from now on. So you'll now know if I do that.
Richard Campbell [00:02:59]:
It's good enough for Bill, it's good enough for you. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:03:02]:
Mr. Shatner knows how to speak English.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:05]:
Oh.
Leo Laporte [00:03:05]:
Even if it's friendlish. Wow. Patch Tuesday yesterday brought us a load of refreshing patches.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:17]:
I like to use at least two reboot sessions.
Leo Laporte [00:03:22]:
Well, tell me all about it, guys. What's the deal? What's the dealio?
Paul Thurrott [00:03:30]:
So, I mean, if you watch the show, listen to the show, you've been paying attention for the past couple months, there's really not a lot to say because we are now, what, April, so fourth month of the year? Not a lot going on every month from new feature perspective plus, we've already discussed every single one of these things.
Leo Laporte [00:03:50]:
Oh, so these were all like insider patches that just made it to the.
Paul Thurrott [00:03:53]:
Yeah, they made their way through the system. So I think the big one to me is the smart app control thing where now you can toggle it on and off. I find myself doing that a lot, actually. But if you use Visual Studio, make your own apps, that's going to happen. Then most of the rest of it's really minor. It's small improvements to Narrator File Explorer. The desktop supports refresh rates higher than 1,000 hertz, because that's happening, I guess, and some other small things. It's really not that big of a deal.
Paul Thurrott [00:04:22]:
But that's, for purposes of this podcast is not great news. But for people using Windows, it's fantastic news compared to.
Richard Campbell [00:04:32]:
I'm holding up for the hot patch, man. That's what I'm excited about sometime next year.
Leo Laporte [00:04:36]:
Hot Patch Tuesday emergency. Hot patch emergency.
Paul Thurrott [00:04:39]:
Yeah, we're going to have to add like a week C where they fix week B.
Leo Laporte [00:04:43]:
Well, you know, I'm wondering because Microsoft did get access to that new anthropic model, Mythos. They were One of the 50 companies that got reserved access to fix their vulnerabilities before Mythos revealed them to the world. And I'm wondering if you're going to see a slew of resulting fixes.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:00]:
I mean, if Firefox is any indication, we are. You know, actually, this month was. I don't remember the number. Actually, it's probably in the story. Was the second big, long, largest, longest, second biggest number of security fixes ever in a Patch Tuesday update.
Richard Campbell [00:05:21]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:22]:
So maybe that already started happening.
Leo Laporte [00:05:24]:
Yeah, maybe.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:24]:
Yeah, that could be it. But. But yeah, not much to speak of. Let me see if I can find the number that would.
Leo Laporte [00:05:31]:
You know, I'm interested because some people Said that Mythos was, you know, that's all marketing. They're going to have an ipo. And so if it's not all marketing, we will see from a number of
Paul Thurrott [00:05:41]:
companies lots of security fixes. Yeah, security fixes.
Leo Laporte [00:05:44]:
That would be the proof.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:46]:
Yep. Yeah. And I don't think a lot of these companies are going to broadcast that little success. Even though, you know, they. Maybe they should. I mean.
Leo Laporte [00:05:54]:
No, but the patches will be the proof.
Paul Thurrott [00:05:57]:
Yeah, but they can. You know, there are services that will give you a good idea of the actual vulnerabilities. I mean, Microsoft is fairly transparent. But Microsoft did not come out and say, hey, congratulations, this was like the second worst patch Tuesday in history. You know, they don't like, they don't really broadcast that. They should though. I think they put CVE next to
Leo Laporte [00:06:17]:
the security patches or, or do they not.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:20]:
They do.
Richard Campbell [00:06:21]:
Usually in the notes there is a reference to a cve.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:23]:
Yeah, so that would be. But they don't really. But they don't.
Leo Laporte [00:06:26]:
CVE would refer to the.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:28]:
Yeah, the actual ability.
Richard Campbell [00:06:30]:
But now you get into the real question, which is are you writing up CVEs for what my fellows finds or do you just skip that step?
Leo Laporte [00:06:35]:
Well, some have already. In fact, we, we were talking yesterday on, on security. Now One of the CVEs featured an anthropic researcher which was kind of the tell.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:46]:
Right. That it was interesting.
Leo Laporte [00:06:47]:
Something from.
Paul Thurrott [00:06:49]:
I also think, you know, you gotta rate these things. Right. Or weigh them. Right. Because it will depend on whether or not these are like critical security vulnerabilities or which a CVE is. I'm sorry. And then. But there are other fixes in there that are just rated important or you know, even optional, whatever.
Richard Campbell [00:07:06]:
CVEs come in different flavors. Right. They're not all emergent.
Paul Thurrott [00:07:10]:
There are CVEs and then there are CVEs. You know, but there are third parties looking at this for sure. And that's where that statistic for this being the second, the way they say it, second largest monthly release in Microsoft's history. So yeah, actually the speculation is, yeah, this has something to do with AI. So it's good.
Richard Campbell [00:07:33]:
We're just embracing that this is good news. That around the world and all of these major products, they're getting more secure.
Paul Thurrott [00:07:42]:
Yes. And then two months from now they'll just accept everything AI has to say and they'll just put those fixes in without even looking at them. So, you know, everything's going to be great or something. I don't know. Anyhow, Like I said, if you're paying attention at all, there's nothing here where you're like, wait, what? You know, with the small exception being that just as a reminder, they're. They're still shipping 26 H1 updates every month. Although as we'll discuss in a bit, the first of those Snapdragon X2 laptops has finally appeared in the open. So I guess.
Paul Thurrott [00:08:22]:
Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:08:23]:
Framework just shipped an ARM motherboard for their.
Paul Thurrott [00:08:26]:
Really?
Leo Laporte [00:08:27]:
Framework? Which means that there. That must be intended. I don't know, I didn't actually check.
Paul Thurrott [00:08:32]:
Well, yeah, let's look. I'm curious what that means. That's interesting. Okay.
Richard Campbell [00:08:37]:
Yeah, it's a little early.
Paul Thurrott [00:08:38]:
Yeah, no, but I like it. I. Hopefully it's Snapdragon or whatever, but.
Leo Laporte [00:08:43]:
Third part, let's see.
Paul Thurrott [00:08:44]:
Like I would have heard about that. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [00:08:46]:
They just announced it.
Paul Thurrott [00:08:47]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:08:48]:
Here's Geerling's.
Richard Campbell [00:08:50]:
Such a tough time to be putting out new hardware with parts so expensive.
Leo Laporte [00:08:56]:
It's from Met. Oh, it's a. Maybe it's a third party. It's from Meta Computing.
Paul Thurrott [00:09:01]:
Yeah, I see it too. Right. So what is this thing?
Leo Laporte [00:09:06]:
It uses CIX. I never heard of them. 6 is P1 SOC. I wonder if that's the one. Or maybe this is an old one.
Paul Thurrott [00:09:14]:
This is Linux only. I don't. I'd be surprised.
Leo Laporte [00:09:17]:
That's a good question. Huh. The Qualcomm lock in exclusive is gone, is that right?
Paul Thurrott [00:09:25]:
I mean if it isn't, it's about to expire because Nvidia is about to get into this game. But yeah, it doesn't say. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [00:09:34]:
I thought Framework did this. I. I misread the headline. So it's a third party computer company called Meta Computing, but it is a Framework compatible Mobo.
Paul Thurrott [00:09:44]:
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Leo Laporte [00:09:45]:
Replacement.
Paul Thurrott [00:09:45]:
Yeah, that's awesome.
Leo Laporte [00:09:47]:
Yeah. I mean arm, the idea of an
Richard Campbell [00:09:51]:
ecosystem of motherboards for your laptop, that's wild.
Leo Laporte [00:09:54]:
Isn't that great?
Richard Campbell [00:09:56]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:09:56]:
And I mean it's not trivial to put it in, but it's not quick enough that you know, hey, just the
Paul Thurrott [00:10:02]:
fact that they're doing it all is fantastic. I. That's good.
Richard Campbell [00:10:06]:
Do I carry a laptop bag with different motherboards in it just in case?
Leo Laporte [00:10:09]:
Wouldn't that be fun?
Richard Campbell [00:10:10]:
This feels like an intel moment.
Paul Thurrott [00:10:12]:
Hey, I used to carry everyone. Everyone our age has done this. You have a laptop and you have like a. Some kind of slide in bay thing so you could have one that's like an extra HD one that's an optical drive. Of whatever kind, you know, that would all did that kind of thing.
Leo Laporte [00:10:24]:
I mean, what actually is, maybe even a bigger story is the fact that third parties are making Framework compatible motherboards. That means
Paul Thurrott [00:10:34]:
they're the Nespresso of the PC world.
Leo Laporte [00:10:37]:
Any pod, Any pod.
Paul Thurrott [00:10:38]:
Any pod will do. Any pod in the storm.
Leo Laporte [00:10:41]:
As long as it's made by Nestle, we'll take it, right?
Paul Thurrott [00:10:44]:
Yeah. Okay. Sorry, I'm just like. No, I'm just like sitting here enjoying that for some reason. Okay, so I made it funny Patch Tuesday non event last week I think it was, we talked about Microsoft addressing the pain. Well, probably the last two weeks pain points in Windows 11. They, you know, Pavan Davaluri came up with a post about some very specific things they intended to change. One of those things was fixing the Insider program.
Paul Thurrott [00:11:12]:
Right. And so after the show last week, I think Friday probably was, they announced the changes they're going to make to the Windows Insider program. It's important to know that those changes have not occurred yet. I think the schedule is end of August time frame. But if you're familiar with the Insider program, A, I'm sorry, B it's super convoluted but super high level. Not completely accurate. Version is there's a Canary channel which is actually split in two because there's two different paths you can take there. Dev beta, both of which are currently testing 25 H2 builds or build streams build series.
Paul Thurrott [00:11:49]:
I'm not sure what the right term is for that. We have Release Preview which can have any number of builds based on how many supported versions of Windows there are out in the world. So you could have a 24 or a 25 H2PC enrolled in release Preview. And then of course the stable, the General release or whatever the general think it's called, General release, whatever it is, the stable version as I think of it, which is not in the Insider program. So this is. It's a little bit like the.
Richard Campbell [00:12:18]:
There's always been one too many since Canary showed up.
Paul Thurrott [00:12:21]:
Exactly. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:12:23]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:12:23]:
So here's the thing. So as I, as I went through this, I go through. I have the same little cycle of emotions that I go through every single time something like this happens. Where at first I'm like, nice, nice. Oh, wait, what? And then it's like, wait, what about. Oh, you know. So it's like the improvements he announced a couple weeks back, it's good news overall, but it's not quite as simple as he makes it seem in the beginning. So there are two channels, they're Saying they're going to be called experimental, which is going to replace Dev and Canary.
Paul Thurrott [00:13:04]:
And then Beta, I think, is the other one.
Richard Campbell [00:13:05]:
Right?
Paul Thurrott [00:13:05]:
Yeah. Beta, which will replace, is just Beta, but updated. And we'll talk about the differences there. But there's also still Release Preview. Right? So like in the very beginning, it's like, oh, there's only two channels. You're like, yay. And it's like there's three. And actually there's more than three because, you know, they're still going to allow
Richard Campbell [00:13:21]:
people to, I mean, I can, I can work with three. Right. Three is experimental stuff that needs real testing. And this is about to go out the door unless you tell us otherwise.
Paul Thurrott [00:13:31]:
Yes. Yeah. But of course there are so many other problems with the Insider program. Like one of the things that really came to a head when Windows Unarm became a thing again with Snapdragon two years ago. Well, Snapdragon X, I should say two years ago was these things are like one way, dead end roads, right? Meaning you enroll in the dev channel. And the idea is that if the thing you're testing ever ships in stable, you can check a box and you'll get out of the dev channel or the beta channel, whatever channel you're in. The problem is that never happened for any of these things. Right.
Richard Campbell [00:14:08]:
And to be clear, none of these should ever be dead ends. You should not need to pay the machine 100% insider program.
Paul Thurrott [00:14:13]:
I agree. I, I justified this to my own brain in the past by saying, look, if you're technical enough to be in this and want to do this, you should know how to reset a computer, you know, whatever. But look, I, I, without knowing the, the fact of this, I guarantee that a lot of people who were in inside a program said, okay, I'm done with this, I'm going to go back to the stable version. They reset it and they just went back to the last build they were on and whatever channel they were in. Like you, you know, there are ways around that, but it looks at what's on the computer at the time and that's what it determines what to put on there now. And that's what you know. So you can install off a USB key, et cetera, et cetera, but that's a clean install and you blow everything away and it's terrible. So portability, or I guess portability, for lack of a better term, between channels is important.
Paul Thurrott [00:14:59]:
The ability to get out at any time, I think is important.
Richard Campbell [00:15:01]:
Yeah, well, and the point is like, why are you there in the first place. And what does Microsoft get from it if you can't be a mainstream machine.
Paul Thurrott [00:15:09]:
Yep.
Richard Campbell [00:15:09]:
If it's gonna be a side machine, all kinds of tests is just not gonna happen. Right. People ignore, you know, if your insider machine is just a mutant, mangled machine that you need to rebuild right now.
Paul Thurrott [00:15:20]:
Yeah, but then what are you doing with it? I mean, that's the thing. It's. This is the push and pull of the insider program. You know, technical people who probably have multiple computers anyway. I mean, ideally. And the advice will always be, oh, yeah, don't put your main computer, don't put your production laptop in there or whatever, use some secondary laptop. But you also have to use the thing to understand what's different and maybe you find bugs, whatever it is. And so, you know, I think me, and I do this.
Paul Thurrott [00:15:44]:
I think a lot of people do this. Like, whatever. Like this computer I'm using right now is in the dev channel, for example. Like, yeah, I have to use it, you know, so another change they're making is they're going to allow people to move between the channels now seamlessly. Right. This is huge. Um, I, this is a. I don't understand why it wasn't like this.
Paul Thurrott [00:16:06]:
If you, if you know anything about reset this PC, one of the things you must know or would know is that you can reset the computer but keep everything that's like all your data and all your store apps stay there. But it wipes out the os, installs whatever other version and brings all that stuff back. Now, in this case, you actually still have to reinstall desktop apps, but I feel like in the mobile space, iOS, Android probably work that way as well, where, you know, the image for the OS you're using isn't, you know, it's not all commingled on the same disk or partition or whatever, so to speak, with your data and with apps and so forth and that you should be able to swap these things out. And, you know, why wouldn't that just work? Registry is why, by the way. But, but, you know, there should be a way to do that, so we'll see what that looks like. Again, we don't have this to, you know, to say quite yet, but maybe a couple weeks from now we'll be able to talk about that. But the other one, and this is a big one, and this is something I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to see and stable.
Leo Laporte [00:17:04]:
Tell me what you want.
Paul Thurrott [00:17:06]:
What you really, really. Yeah. Is the ability to get all the features they announce immediately.
Richard Campbell [00:17:13]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:17:14]:
Depending on the channel. I think in the experimental channel, they're going to have feature flags. We can just check boxes like you do in a browser to turn those things on if you're in the beta. Those new features are just a beta channel. Those new features are just going to appear immediately. And that's yes, because Control Feature Rollout, which is not just a terrible name because it doesn't accurately describe what's happening, is just terrible technology. It's awful. And, you know, I'm here.
Paul Thurrott [00:17:43]:
This is. That's what I'm here to test, you know, that's why I put the PC of the thing like test, could I test the thing you told me I was going to get? We've had little goofy workarounds. Rafael and some other people have that Vive tool that can enable flags, actually is what they are called internally. But you have to find that information out, figure out the exact command line to make it work, reboot, et cetera, et cetera. And it doesn't always. And there are some features you just can't enable that way. Regardless, you're going to have to wait. They are changing that for the Insider program, thank God.
Paul Thurrott [00:18:16]:
And I would love to see this in stable, even if it was some advanced, you know, they could put it in a developer interface somewhere, whatever it is, make it hard to do, I don't care, let me do this. You know, and it's not just me, you know, I write books and I write articles about the stuff like I need to, you know, I want to see these new features as quickly as possible, obviously, but especially in the Insider program. And I think given that we have sort of a pseudo Insider program just built into Windows, which is the. I want to get updates as quickly as possible, and that includes even preview updates. You know, there is an audience of people who actually want to see things as quickly as possible. They should let them see those things as quickly as possible.
Richard Campbell [00:18:56]:
That being said, sometimes when you're developing a feature, there's more than one approach to it and you can't figure out which one. Like what you were describing with this clear pipeline is you're sure of what your feature should be, and so you mature it in that experimental phase and then debug it in the beta phase and then refine it in the release phase. But sometimes you've got to just put two different versions of a feature out into the world and see how people use them to really understand which one's better.
Paul Thurrott [00:19:24]:
Yeah, formally. And by formally, I mean formally, not formally, although it is also Formerly, in the Insider program, they used to do that kind of thing. I don't think they ever used the term A, B testing per se, but it was AB testing, right? Some people would get one implementation of something, some would get the other, they would get the feedback, and then inside of Microsoft, they'd be like, all right, this one seems to be working good, this one doesn't, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, in the Insider program, that makes sense. But by the time you've shipped it in a stable Release for Windows 11 through Windows Update, I mean, again, I'm not saying they have to have a. Like, enable all the features immediately, although that's the way I would do it. But at least give those people or power users or whatever the ability to find a ui, check a box, and say, yeah, I get it, there might be problems. It's okay.
Richard Campbell [00:20:19]:
Yeah. The issue here is that the Insiders are a filtered set. Anybody who'd sign up for that Insider program is a particular type of person. And so if you really want to test on the customer, you got to go outside that channel. Which, again, would be the argument is if you're going to do this kind of testing, you stay away from the Insider program.
Paul Thurrott [00:20:36]:
I feel like there's a cause and effect thing here that, you know, one of the reasons the Insider program exists is that when Windows 10 was occurring, they wanted to be more transparent than the previous Windows team and develop this thing in the open and get feedback and have that feedback improve the product. And that's okay. That's one thing. But there's also the testing angle, which is like, we have this formal program now where potentially, and there were literally millions and millions of people enrolling computers in this thing and testing features and providing feedback. And that's a pretty good base, you know, but even still, you know, back, Whether it was 1998 or 2008 or 2018 or whatever year, you put that thing out in the real world and then new problems crop up. Because this is the nature of Japan.
Richard Campbell [00:21:18]:
Well, and also the different interaction. Sanofsky did this to a group of us when? It is ages ago. I'll tell you how long ago. It's in the IE9 time frame.
Paul Thurrott [00:21:26]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:21:27]:
So there's maybe 100 of us in the room. And he literally says, how many of you use bookmarks?
Paul Thurrott [00:21:33]:
Right, Right.
Richard Campbell [00:21:33]:
In your browser.
Paul Thurrott [00:21:34]:
This is a class.
Richard Campbell [00:21:35]:
100% of the room puts their hands up because according to the Watson telemetry, It's less than 1%. It's just that all of you are in this room right now.
Paul Thurrott [00:21:44]:
That's right. And so. Yes. And by the way, there's that skewing as well. This is why. Well, no, I mean, this is the. We need to move the tow part of the size of the screen thing. It's like the reason that is not there today is because I don't.
Paul Thurrott [00:21:56]:
It's not less than 1%. I don't know what the number is, but it's some tiny percentage of people are using it. It may well be just because I'm complex. Yeah, Right. But by and large, the people that would enable that are not going to be people like my wife or my brother or some normal human being. It's going to be technical people who have very specific opinions, you know, and they can skew product design if Microsoft or whatever companies blindly listens to them. Right.
Richard Campbell [00:22:22]:
Which is why I'm not going to put any dev into bookmarks. The bookmark engine that was in IE8 is the same one that was in IE9. That was his response. It's like, I'm not going to improve this because it doesn't apply to the majority of users.
Paul Thurrott [00:22:37]:
Yeah, but eventually you reach the point where the number of users is so small you actually get rid of a feature. Right. So he made a similar comment. He wrote this in a blog post, and I think he said it publicly on stage somewhere. But when it came to Media Center, Media center was its standalone edition. It was pulled into mainstream Windows versions, and then they got rid of it, probably, I guess, in Windows 8. And he said, look, not only does nobody use this thing, but most of the launches of the app are either by mistake or something. It comes up and people close it within two seconds.
Paul Thurrott [00:23:11]:
So even the people that were launching the app weren't using it. Now, of course, the audience he said this to, every one of them used Media center, and they were like, wait, what are you doing? You know, and that's a. That's a. It's a weird gray area. But. But I think these things, like explain or partially explain why you could, as a normal user, you know, you wouldn't be too normal of a user, but you could go into Windows Update and say, yeah, I want to get these updates as soon as possible. Just install them, you know, and that gives them more reach for that stuff, and then it gives them a couple of weeks to fix it if there's something they see as a problem out in the world for a lot of people. Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:23:54]:
But that's what the insider program is for. You know, it's like it's a weird, it's kind of a weird. I don't know. One thing we've talked about a lot on this show is this notion that, you know, in today's system we have canary down to dev, down to beta, down to release, preview and then out to stable is they never follow that path for new features. And I'm hoping now that we see we won't, I mean, the truth is we won't. But if you think about experimental and beta as the two top level main channels, so to speak, I think we're going to see new features debut in both those channels. You know, there'll be experimental features that may do some, maybe whatever, that never make their way to beta and then out to stable. But I think there's also going to be new features like there are today that debut in beta.
Paul Thurrott [00:24:40]:
And it might literally, because it's not so much that it's experimental literally, but sort of, right. That we know, look, this is going into Windows, barring a catastrophe, like this is not something we're not sure about. Like we think this is going into Windows. And so I'm going to try to mentally be okay with that because the way my brain works is I want it to follow that logical path, but I, I feel like they're going to use both. So, you know, we'll see. I wish we could test this today. I'm really curious about this and if you watch Hands on Windows, I'll definitely do an episode about this as soon as I can. I can't wait to look at this and we'll see, you know, so it's good, you know, now I'm waiting for the next set of builds through the insider program to start giving us some of the changes they, you know, previewed a couple weeks ago.
Paul Thurrott [00:25:36]:
Still.
Leo Laporte [00:25:36]:
That's how it's supposed to work, right?
Paul Thurrott [00:25:38]:
Yeah, supposed to. Yeah, it's supposed to and does are two different things, especially in the Microsoft space. It is that it is good. Yeah, yeah, it's.
Leo Laporte [00:25:49]:
Yeah, you give it to the insiders first, make sure it's all working smoothly.
Paul Thurrott [00:25:54]:
Makes sense to me, you know, so, yeah, anyway, that's good.
Leo Laporte [00:25:59]:
Any hoot you want to take a little, little teeny weeny and.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:05]:
I'm not sure how to answer that one. Yeah, I shouldn't have said it that way.
Leo Laporte [00:26:09]:
Yes, just a little teeny weeny. And then we will be back with more Windows Weekly in just a little bit.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:20]:
I just commented to my wife this morning based on the email I was seeing. That email is Quickly turning into what texts and phone calls already are, which is just completely worth.
Leo Laporte [00:26:31]:
Not stop. It's just not stop now.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:32]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:26:33]:
And we get, and I'm, you know, as a business owner, I'm very nervous because we get emails to accounting all the time.
Paul Thurrott [00:26:41]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [00:26:41]:
With fake bills and, you know, we have, we have a independent bookkeeper. Independent accountant. I can easily see them saying, oh, I must have missed, you know, that conversation. And just saying, well, let me pay it. I could just see that happening. So that training, it's a big topic
Richard Campbell [00:26:58]:
on Run as Radio is like most, most companies I know now will not do any business transactions via email.
Leo Laporte [00:27:04]:
Yeah. Email is just spoiled.
Paul Thurrott [00:27:06]:
It's crazy how they build web workflows
Richard Campbell [00:27:08]:
and things to control that.
Leo Laporte [00:27:09]:
Yeah, it's spoiled. It's really a shame.
Richard Campbell [00:27:12]:
All right. We can't have nice things.
Leo Laporte [00:27:15]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:27:15]:
Yeah. By the way, I have a new email newsletter I wanted to promote. No, I'm kidding.
Leo Laporte [00:27:20]:
How is that? You did move to your newsletter? How's it going? Is it going well?
Paul Thurrott [00:27:24]:
Yeah, it's fine. I don't do it that. I don't do it every, even every week, but every two weeks or so. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. There are people who want to get stuff that way, which I think is why people are attacking email. But yeah, it's. It's fine.
Leo Laporte [00:27:38]:
You know, I think you got to spend some time setting filters up and stuff like that to really raise email at all these days. There you have it.
Richard Campbell [00:27:48]:
The Microsoft ones aren't working. No, no.
Paul Thurrott [00:27:53]:
This is a guy on my site who complains about Outlook not quite every day, but, you know, pretty close. And today I was like, you know, you're not truly going to be set free until you walk away from Outlook, man. You got to just, just let it go, you know, just. It's just say goodbye. It's fine.
Leo Laporte [00:28:09]:
Well, Microsoft got rid of Outlook Light. I guess that's a start.
Paul Thurrott [00:28:14]:
Yeah. We still have the more problematic versions. I wish they could have kept that one and got rid of the rest. Would have been all right. Okay. So Insider program, I mentioned they were changing things. Last Friday they also released new Insider builds or maybe it was early this week, which are still in the old system. Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:28:35]:
So we haven't moved over yet. Canary, like I mentioned, is on two different build sequences or series, depending on whether or not you've opted into the second of those two. But if you're on the normal Canary build, which again, this is why it's
Richard Campbell [00:28:51]:
so complex, the fact that you said normal Canary build is what concerns me. There should only be one.
Paul Thurrott [00:28:57]:
I don't know, like we don't have words for this. You know, it's like if you're on Canary A, you got some features we've already had elsewhere in the Insider program for a long time. So no big deal if you're in Canary B, the one with the optional build series with the high build number. Basically all the same things as the other Canary, but with some underlying platform changes which I think speak to 26H2. They know, again, they're not saying this, but I think that's where this is heading.
Richard Campbell [00:29:24]:
But Canary is just basically hijacked by arm, right? Like it's.
Paul Thurrott [00:29:27]:
For now. Yeah, yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:29:29]:
Been able to integrate ARM into the main pipeline.
Paul Thurrott [00:29:31]:
Yep. Well, you know, and one of the oddities is right now, if you wanted to, you could sign into the Canary build sequence and channel and install that on a next 64 computer. Right. Which is what most people are doing. Right. Most people don't have a Snapdragon computer, so.
Richard Campbell [00:29:47]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:29:48]:
I don't know. Dev and beta, two different KBs, but same features. And this is kind of interesting. There's some minor Windows security stuff, meaning the secure boot certificate status thing. I was talking about the green checkbox. Right. That's in the there new feedback hub. Okay, that's cool.
Paul Thurrott [00:30:10]:
This is crazy, but the bubble screensaver has been updated. So if you have a high refresh rate display that will display normally. I guess it was going too fast before or too slow, I don't remember which one it was, but whatever the big two. Actually those two are related to storage. One is that they've made some small improvements to the UI of storage settings inside of the settings app, but actually have dramatically fixed how that works. So it's kind of cool. Like they've made some low level changes there. They're nice and only from the command line you can't do this from the UI, but you can now format a FAT32 disk up to 2 TB in size.
Paul Thurrott [00:30:46]:
And I think the previous limit was 512 gigabyte, I think. So it's. There you go. That's a modern size, you know, While
Richard Campbell [00:30:55]:
also saying Stop using Fat32.
Paul Thurrott [00:30:57]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely stopped using Fat32, but I suppose, yeah, I mean even like EXFAT would be kind of the better interoperability format to use. But I don't know. The FAT file system literally goes back 40 years.
Richard Campbell [00:31:13]:
It's ancient. Like why are we talking about it at all? Like, holy man.
Paul Thurrott [00:31:19]:
People like It. I don't know. People like familiarity. It's kind of hard to say. I don't. It's curious to me, but I don't know, I've been like. I was babbling about this before the show. I've been using different Linux distributions and stuff.
Paul Thurrott [00:31:30]:
Linux has no problem writing to any of these formats. Like you can. It can handle NTFS and whatever. It's fine. Like, yeah, I don't really see the big deal here, but whatever.
Richard Campbell [00:31:38]:
Yeah, there's really no justification.
Paul Thurrott [00:31:40]:
Well, if you're still running Windows 98 SE and you know, you have a two terabyte hard drive, somehow I don't. I have no idea. I have no idea. This kind of came out of the blue for me, but part of the reason was because I'm in Mexico and whatever. But the first Snapdragon X2 PC has appeared and very quietly, without any announcement,
Richard Campbell [00:32:05]:
sitting on a doorstep in Pennsylvania.
Paul Thurrott [00:32:07]:
Yep, it's sitting there. Yep. Well, it's actually inside my house now. So my neighbor brought it in, but yeah, I can't see it till mid May. I'm going to be here for a little while, but it is.
Richard Campbell [00:32:18]:
I don't know where your priorities are, brother.
Leo Laporte [00:32:19]:
I can fly out. Let me go get it. Yeah, I literally said, closer than either of you guys.
Paul Thurrott [00:32:24]:
I said, I. This has been a. So the first day, I didn't know what it was. Someone delivered something or tried to deliver something, but I needed a signature and it wasn't picked up. And I was like, okay. And then I was like, hey, our neighbor does this. Can make sure she's around, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And then.
Paul Thurrott [00:32:41]:
But this is what it was. And I was like, yeah, send you
Leo Laporte [00:32:46]:
a note saying here it's coming or something. Or.
Paul Thurrott [00:32:49]:
Yeah, eventually. But the.
Leo Laporte [00:32:52]:
I mean, yeah, you know, I think
Paul Thurrott [00:32:55]:
it was supposed to be like, I
Leo Laporte [00:32:56]:
know people think, oh, that must be so great where these laptops appear at your door unbidden.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:02]:
Yeah, it is great when, like when you're sitting here at a desk like I am and I can see the door. But the problem is the door is like 2,300 miles away and it's in a different country.
Leo Laporte [00:33:11]:
I learned how ungrate it was when I visited John C. Dvorak many years ago.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:15]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:33:16]:
And as I'm coming first time I'd ever gone to his house and coming up the step, there's a pile of boxes.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:21]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [00:33:22]:
Of. Because he got everything sent to him because he was very powerful at the time writing for PC magazine.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:26]:
Of course. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:33:27]:
And it was all new stuff. And then I go in his living room and there's a. I mean, I'm not kidding. A three foot high pile of stuff.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:36]:
You could be able to afford out of this stuff. I know. So the management of this is the, is the problem.
Leo Laporte [00:33:41]:
And then he. Exactly. And then he says. I said, yeah, I'm gonna go get a modem after this. He said, oh, no, no. And he said, come with me.
Paul Thurrott [00:33:48]:
Coming to my modem room.
Leo Laporte [00:33:49]:
He rented a space over a gas station. So we went down the block. You can't. It's like Fibromige's closet. You can't get in there. You have to hold the door, hold the stuff back. And he said, yeah, here's a. I think this is a Hayes Courier 26 6.
Leo Laporte [00:34:04]:
Here, have it. And it was like, so. Exactly, exactly. In fact, I learned from that and subsequent experience that I just tell people, I don't want it. Don't send it to me. Me, I don't want it.
Paul Thurrott [00:34:16]:
So.
Leo Laporte [00:34:16]:
And I said, you sent it to me. You have to send it with a return box and a return.
Paul Thurrott [00:34:20]:
Yeah, yeah. So Lenovo does this. We'll see what the ASUS thing looks like. But the HP does this. You know, companies do do that, right? But yeah, the, you know, going back and forth to Mexico, I mean, how, how privileged and wonderful is my life? But I also. We had problems last year. Not this year, but last year. Some stuff didn't arrive here for some reason.
Paul Thurrott [00:34:40]:
There was some kind of custom something, something. It doesn't really matter, but HP was getting a little leery about sending stuff. Lenovo was like, yeah, we'll try it again. Who cares? And so this year it's been fine. But one of the things I did last year was I had machines delivered here, like I think three of them that I carried home on the plane and shipped home from home. So the boxes, the original boxes are here. So I said, it's no problem. I'll just go down to.
Paul Thurrott [00:35:07]:
I think it's FedEx in this case, and I'll drop it off of FedEx, the empty boxes, and they'll ship them from here. And if they don't get there, who cares? You know, they're empty boxes. So I went down to FedEx with those boxes and they pulled this thing. You know, this is the plastic sheath with the paper in it that has the stuff for shipping. But when you ship internationally, there's all these additional pages. And the guy's rifling through the first one and he goes, he looks at it and he picks up the box and he shakes it and he goes, what's in this thing? And I said, nothing, it's an empty box. He goes, really? Because this says it's a $3,000 computer and we're not shipping an empty box if you tell us it's a $3,000 computer. And I'm like, well then you're not going to ship any of these.
Paul Thurrott [00:35:44]:
They're all empty boxes. And I had to, I just carried them back home like a jerk and they're still upstairs. So like, you know, there's that, you know, there's like that problem. Like it's kind of a weird thing. But anyway, whatever, these are my problems. Who cares? So this thing is, like I said, came out of nowhere. I thought we were going to get some kind of a announcement, you know, from Qualcomm or you know what, Microsoft, whatever it is. And nothing.
Paul Thurrott [00:36:08]:
There's been still to this day, nothing. Mobile World Congress came and went. I thought surely this is the. Okay, no, okay, there's going to be something. But there wasn't. So Asus announced this thing. It's a 16 book. 16 inch.
Paul Thurrott [00:36:20]:
Sorry, Zenbook. A 16 is the name of it. Beautiful. Looks gorgeous. I wish I could see it. It's a, you know, 3K display, OLED, you know, beautiful keyboard, float in the middle, blah, blah, blah, whatever. 48 gigs of RAM, which is kind of a curious amount. 2 terabytes of storage, et cetera, et cetera, 2.7 pounds, which is awesome for a credible actually for a 16 inch laptop.
Paul Thurrott [00:36:42]:
Lots of good ports, all that stuff. They're talking 21 hours of battery life. It's probably 12 something, but whatever. Can't wait. Can't wait to use this thing, but I have to wait. The good news is I just got shipment notification from, from Lenovo today. So I have two other x2 based laptops coming here, so I won't have to wait till I get home. So hopefully soon those will arrive and then we can see what's going on here.
Paul Thurrott [00:37:08]:
But how exciting. Yeah, it's exciting. I'm really looking forward to these computers and they're arriving at a great time with all the memory stuff, so it's going to be good. So IDC in the past week has come up with two reports about Q1 so far. They'll probably do one for tablets too, but we've got PC sales and smartphone sales. PC sales are. We're actually up 2.5% year over year, which is a little surprising except their belief is that this is people buying ahead of even more component price rises and that this is going to fall through the floor. Yeah, people are aware of it.
Paul Thurrott [00:37:47]:
The second half of this year is going to be a bloodbath. Yep. So, okay. I mean, I don't know what do more with less is going to look like in the PC space. I think it's really going to work out to sell less, you know, because it costs more.
Richard Campbell [00:38:03]:
I think that's going to be the extended warranties. Right. That's what they're doing. And, and that's going to put more pressure on the vendors because often when these machines break and need to be warrantied, they have to be replaced.
Paul Thurrott [00:38:12]:
Yep.
Richard Campbell [00:38:13]:
Nobody repairs anything anymore.
Paul Thurrott [00:38:16]:
Right now more recent computers are more repairable than they've been in a long, long time. And so that's kind of a nice trend. But yes, it's fair to say there's probably a lot of computers out in the world that are not repairable in any way or only in minor ways, but we'll see. Part of that Microsoft promise to fix the pain points in Windows is lowering resource usage, which you can kind of view in terms of the full screen experience or the Xbox mode as we're going to call it now, where, you know, you have a little gaming device, handheld gaming thing and it's, you know, you don't want other stuff running when you're playing games. But this is going to benefit everyone now, especially in a world where probably most mainstream computers out in the world have 8 gigabytes of RAM. Probably, you know, maybe 16 is getting there, but that's going to slow now because of all the costs and we'll see what happens. But kind of a night.
Richard Campbell [00:39:08]:
Nobody has 48. Why do you have 40? 48.
Paul Thurrott [00:39:10]:
I know 48 is a bizarre, it's a bizarre number. I don't know. I don't, I don't know. This one is so Remember with the X2, there's multiple versions of the chip like they did last time. So there's a plus with whatever number of cores. There's the elite like they had last time, but there's also this elite extreme. Right. Because you know, whatever, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, whatever it is.
Richard Campbell [00:39:31]:
But the, the difference between everything on this chip works. So it's extreme.
Paul Thurrott [00:39:36]:
It's extreme. Yep. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like when you eat cereal and the color doesn't exist in nature and you're like, is this going to dye my insides green or something? Like what is this? The difference there is that they Build the RAM onto the die. Right. And that speeds up. So that's how they get it faster. It's not that the chip's faster, although probably it's a little bit faster. But the big thing there is the ram.
Paul Thurrott [00:39:56]:
And so, yeah, 48. I don't know. I don't know. Theoretically, I remember Qualcomm saying back last September, there is no. Well, there's some limit, but there's no real limit. I mean, no realistic limit on what you could do RAM wise. But I'm sure at that time they were like, you know, we're going to see 32 gigs, whatever, 64 maybe. But I guess 48 is the happy middle.
Paul Thurrott [00:40:17]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:40:17]:
Presuming they're binning. That was etched as a 64. And one of the banks is bad. So now.
Paul Thurrott [00:40:23]:
Okay. Yeah, I like to. Yeah, it's like buying a car with one flat you like. The rest of it's fine.
Richard Campbell [00:40:31]:
You didn't need all those wheels. Come on.
Paul Thurrott [00:40:33]:
Yeah, right. Come on, you got two arms. What are you doing? The smartphone thing, though, is interesting because same rationale, same problems. We all know the issues. We get this war in Iran for some reason, we've got the component prices, everything's going south, but the sales of smartphones have actually fallen year over year, and they're predicting much more dramatic shortfalls for the remainder of the year. And they actually said in this case that the problems that the smartphone industry is facing right now are worse than those that were experienced during COVID 19. Yep. And come on, we came out of that pandemic.
Paul Thurrott [00:41:11]:
I don't think anyone. I think the only. If you were of a negative mindset, I think the thing that would be going through your brain, because it was going through mine, was like, okay, when's this going to happen again? This event that has never happened in my lifetime and it feels like ancient history is now happening. And of course, once it happens, you're like, all right, well, I guess this is the new normal. When's the next pandemic? And the next pandemic was a component shortage. So, you know, whatever. Crazy. Just like Snapdragon X2.
Paul Thurrott [00:41:43]:
One other thing we've been waiting for all this whole year is Nvidia to enter the PC market with its own chipsets. Right. They have this partnership with Mediatek, they have a separate partnership with intel, but that. I think the fruits of that, so to speak, are happening later in our x64 base. But the chips that they're working on for PCs, which would be like Snapdragon chips, Are ARM based, right? Of course. But they'll have their Nvidia GPU stuff going on. We still don't know when that's happening. We'll see what happens.
Paul Thurrott [00:42:12]:
I saw the hint of maybe we'll get an announcement soon on this, but there was a rumor from a publication called Semiacurate that Nvidia's been trying to
Leo Laporte [00:42:22]:
get a classic publication name, Semi accurate.
Paul Thurrott [00:42:26]:
Actually they're pretty good. They come up from time to time. It's a pretty good name. It's truth in advertising. They're trying to acquire one of the leading PC makers. Right. Which can only mean Dell or HP. Right? Lenovo's not selling all their PC.
Paul Thurrott [00:42:41]:
They have an incredible range of ThinkPad, IdeaPad, whatever. I don't think they're going anywhere. That's their primary business right now. But the next two down are HP and Dell.
Richard Campbell [00:42:51]:
I saw that, remember?
Leo Laporte [00:42:52]:
Why would Nvidia want to buy a PC maker?
Richard Campbell [00:42:54]:
Diversification.
Paul Thurrott [00:42:56]:
So diversification. But I asked the same question about Snapdragon with Qualcomm, with Snapdragon, which is like, look, you sell billions of chips every year to mobile device makers and now you want to sell tens of millions of something to PC makers. I mean, what's the, what's the upside here right now for users? The upside is humongous. I mean, there's no doubt about it. Like, why like Nvidia, the biggest company in the world, wants to get into the lowest margin, you know, lowest volume, personal computing device market. Yeah, I don't, I can't, that I cannot explain. But if you look at, you got
Richard Campbell [00:43:37]:
this much money and it's all based on one product, you should get some other products under your belt.
Paul Thurrott [00:43:42]:
Right? And of course Nvidia came up out of the graphics market, graphics card market for PCs. That was their whole thing and still is. I mean, and I will say to this day, I mean this laptop I'm using right now, I've got another one out there with Nvidia. Dedicated graphics is absolutely the best experience if you're a gamer. There's no doubt about it. Like it is awesome and it's true on Linux too, for whatever that's worth it. Definitely the best experience. So I suppose to move the PC forward, which again, why, why would they care, you could have ARM based chips with Nvidia graphics and then suddenly you get this thing that is going to be appropriate in markets where today Snapdragon is kind of on the border.
Paul Thurrott [00:44:21]:
Right? Engineering workstation type stuff, but also gaming PCs. And if anyone can make that happen. It's actually Nvidia. So from my perspective on the outside it's like please do this, please do this, please do this. But I don't know how they would do this. So HP, their primary market is PCs. They also sell printers. It's not exactly, but we'll call it, 2/3 of the revenue is from PCs, 1/3 from printers.
Paul Thurrott [00:44:46]:
Printers are going nowhere. I can't imagine Nvidia cares about printers. I suppose they could split that up again. HP is like Legos at this point. They've been split up a couple times. But maybe the Dell one is interesting to me because Dell's biggest thing thing right now is cloud based or data center based AI chipsets.
Leo Laporte [00:45:05]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:45:05]:
And servers. Sorry, not chipsets. This is their big growth thing. And we're also at a time where AMD explicitly stated that they intend to be in that space too. And they are in that space. But I mean they want to be a leader in that space. Meaning they'd have to take on Nvidia to a degree that they have not yet, but they obviously doing great with PCs. To me right now, x64 space, I would say they make the best chips.
Paul Thurrott [00:45:29]:
But why would these guys, why would they? I, I can't say, but I could picture Dell saying that it's time spin that thing out like IBM did a million years ago with Think Pad, Think Think center, whatever. They had the Think line of computers, right. They sold it to Lenovo and then they move on. They go on and be this thing that is completely different than Michael Dell selling computers out of his dorm room in college. Right. But, but it, but you can see how that kind of escalates and gets to that point. And like that could make sense.
Richard Campbell [00:46:04]:
The Dell plays a double win for them. Right. There's more data center activity. All of that's good. But they've also been trying to build their own PC and failing. So buying a PC team is a good way to sort of straighten out the ship on that.
Paul Thurrott [00:46:17]:
Yeah, I mean it's possible. It's just a rumor. I don't know if this is happening. There are other PC makers that I think would be interesting. The most obvious one maybe is Asus, the company that makes that laptop. I was just talking about the problem with Asus is they don't really have the same kind of distribution and visibility that Lenovo, hp, Dell have. Right. Those companies have huge infrastructures for building and shipping and supporting computers.
Paul Thurrott [00:46:46]:
Asus is a much smaller company. But you know what other one might be interesting by the way. What about Microsoft Surface? Yeah, right, yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:46:58]:
Peel that business off.
Paul Thurrott [00:46:59]:
Yep. We're going to talk about them in a bit actually probably next I guess but Surface has never been profitable. Surface has never risen to the ranks where they show up in any market share chart of any kind. They're bundled in with a bunch of other small companies in other. And so even though it's made by Microsoft, which is one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world, Surface as a line. Kevin, stop making Surface jokes. God damn it.
Leo Laporte [00:47:29]:
Where is he making Surface jokes?
Paul Thurrott [00:47:33]:
That's the second one today. Don't think I didn't notice.
Leo Laporte [00:47:38]:
He's a poster. He likes anything that can give him
Paul Thurrott [00:47:40]:
an opportunity to punish. I laughed. It's okay. I felt as my train of thought oh so but it's just never been successful as a business. Right. And you know, maybe Nvidia is the shot in the arm that this thing needs. I would like to see it survive. Frankly.
Paul Thurrott [00:47:58]:
I love Surface computers. I mean my Surface laptop, the one I have now is the is still my favorite laptop right now which is why I didn't bring it here to Mexico because I hate myself and I miss it every day and I wish I had it here but I, you know the problem is I have so many, you know, I get to review computers and whatever but so yeah, we'll see. I, I, I, I don't. One of these companies I think denied that any talks had occurred. But I will say that like shares of Dell and HP both jumped by double digits when this report went out. It's like interesting and if you know these are publicly held company so they have shareholders and investors and you could picture someone saying hey, I like, you know Dell's. Dell would be the more obvious of the two unless they spun off the printer thing and you know, just sold the HP PC business I suppose. But that's man, that's really interesting.
Paul Thurrott [00:48:58]:
This is never going to make up any shortfall that Nvidia may face in the future when the AI stuff has, you know.
Richard Campbell [00:49:05]:
No, but it might make that landing a little more interesting.
Paul Thurrott [00:49:08]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:49:08]:
Yep. Sooner or later this, you know and arguably it's already underway all these bit all of the AI centric companies are off by, you know, significant numbers and if it goes down this gracefully the rest of the year that would be awesome. It just seems sooner or later investors will it'll drop like a stone.
Paul Thurrott [00:49:24]:
Yeah, we're seeing signs that it's. There's some infrastructure like Nvidia has not suffered in any way yet. No, even Amazon we'll talk about later. I mean, you know, when you think about the companies on the back end supplying the infrastructure, literally the shovels. Yeah, Yeah. I think those guys are going to be okay. It's the, you know, it's the. It's the people, the companies trying to sell AI to customers.
Leo Laporte [00:49:45]:
Oh, yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:49:48]:
So I don't know.
Richard Campbell [00:49:48]:
But by that token, while you've got a stock price that high as Nvidia, you do a stock swap to buy groups of businesses you want after the crazy is over.
Paul Thurrott [00:50:00]:
Yes. And there's. Right. This is the. You're so far above what would have been your kind of traditional value that this doesn't cost anything. My only issue, though, is I know from so many years of doing this that PCs are really low margin. I even thought you could imagine something like, okay, two thirds or more of Dell's PCs sold every quarter, every year, whatever, are to businesses Dell owns. I believe it's alienware.
Paul Thurrott [00:50:32]:
Maybe sell off that part of the business and just get out of the consumer part. Right. And sell. Because the alienware stuff, they're going to want to use Nvidia GPUs anyway. There's a little more of a mesh there. But the problem is that's one of the few parts of the PC market where their margins are actually acceptable. Right. You don't get rid of the part of the business that's actually delivering the profits that keeps the whole thing afloat.
Paul Thurrott [00:50:55]:
So I don't. I don't see that happening. But that's a thought. The more I. The more I do think about it, I mean, I feel like Surface might be an awesome choice. Yeah. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:51:07]:
And I could see. I could see Satya wanted to unload it, too.
Paul Thurrott [00:51:11]:
Yep. I'm surprised he hasn't already. I'm. I'm sure there are many things that go into this that I'm just not privy to, but it is somewhat surprising to me that, yeah, this is every. And Mary Jo and I still have this conversation. Sometimes I'll say something like, I'll text her or she'll text me and I'll be like, hey, did you see this thing? And one. Or either one of us will say, oh, did they kill service? You know, it's like, no, no.
Richard Campbell [00:51:35]:
Service has been in serious jeopardy since Panos was gone. That was Panos.
Paul Thurrott [00:51:39]:
Yeah. And it was in jeopardy before then. Right. I mean, the reason he left was because they cut, you know, the budget and they. We can't have this many models. This doesn't make sense. It's not working out. You know, I, I really don't think this is anyone's fault per se.
Paul Thurrott [00:51:53]:
I don't know. I don't. You know, they've tried so many different strategies to make this work and the computers are mostly very good.
Richard Campbell [00:52:00]:
I. I'm working from Run1 right now, but we happily traded in for that Asus machine you're talking about.
Leo Laporte [00:52:08]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:52:09]:
Yep. Well get wait a week because there might be an Nvidia GPU version too which is like. That's kind of interesting.
Richard Campbell [00:52:15]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [00:52:16]:
Okay, so while we mentioned Surface, I suppose we should move on to that bad news for anyone who sees the show notes. So like Leo or Richard or anyone in the discord who sees this early. When you see the, when you see this is a top level heading for Surface, it's going to be bad news. I'm just going to throw that out.
Leo Laporte [00:52:38]:
Otherwise I'm not going to talk about it.
Paul Thurrott [00:52:39]:
It's not a lot of like, oh, they announced new computer. I mean it happens. But I mean. So two bits of bad news unfortunately for Surface. One is that Microsoft has been forced to dramatically raise the price of all their computers because of this component crisis. Right. And depending on the model, $300 more per model or more in some cases. The Surface.
Paul Thurrott [00:53:05]:
Let me see if I can find it in here. The. This one's not too bad actually but this, a 15 inch surface laptop, 16 gigs of RAM, 256 of storage, which is. I upgraded mine but no, it's not enough. But you know, I think mine was. It might have been 20. No, it's 32 gigs of RAM and a terabyte of storage. It was close to $2,000.
Paul Thurrott [00:53:26]:
I don't remember the exact price, but the pre. The original price on this since launch almost two years ago was 14.99. That one is now 15.99. So it's only 100 bucks. That's not too bad. But like a surface pro 12 inch and this is the newer version 16 gig 256 went from $800 to 1040 a 1050. So $250 more and so depends on the model. This is bad timing obviously.
Paul Thurrott [00:53:54]:
The, you know, Apple just came out with this little MacBook Neo that everyone's all Google going over. It only has eight gigs of RAM whatever. But things like 600 bucks, you know, these are not necessarily in the same class and I get that. But I don't know. It's a tough bit of timing. It's not Microsoft's fault and you know to my point earlier, remember Microsoft? Humongous but Surface tiny. So Apple can wield some amount of economic power when they walk around to get deals for components and stuff. And even they're having problems.
Paul Thurrott [00:54:27]:
Right. We saw that they've certain high end configurations are not available from them either. But they have a lot more say in their future than Microsoft does in this space because they sell so many more devices. So these companies obviously want to do business with Apple and Microsoft in the PC space. It's like, I'm sorry, you sold what, 17 of these things last year. I mean it just doesn't register the other one. This won't impact too many people. But according to Zach over at Windows Central, Microsoft has stopped manufacturing the service 3.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:00]:
This is two screen sizes, right? 1585 inch.
Richard Campbell [00:55:05]:
These are corporate devices.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:07]:
Yeah. And they were a huge hit.
Richard Campbell [00:55:09]:
Like Microsoft screwed this market up. Like.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:12]:
Well, the pandemic happened, right? I mean part of the problem here was like before the, you know, when they started doing Surface Hub and they went through, I guess three generations, whatever, or they were about to do three, I think when the pandemic happened, well,
Richard Campbell [00:55:24]:
they found out they came up with this beautiful design device even from the very first generation of this walk up screen that replaces your projector and stuff in a meeting room you could.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:34]:
And everything else. Yes, yep.
Richard Campbell [00:55:35]:
And then. And it was a hit and everybody wanted one and they couldn't manufacture them. They built this thing. And by the way, how to build, make, make them.
Paul Thurrott [00:55:41]:
One did want one. Like my company tried to buy two of them. One for me, one for Brad so we could use them for the podcast and we couldn't get them. You know, there was a real supply problem there. But then the pandemic happened.
Richard Campbell [00:55:54]:
The three versions are because they tried to make one they could actually finally make. But at that point now there's like five competitors to the thing. The Logitech Viewport does everything they can do and more and you don't have to use flipping teams.
Paul Thurrott [00:56:05]:
I don't think they sell this anymore. But Google offered something called like a jamboard which was like a. Yeah, like a $300.
Leo Laporte [00:56:11]:
You know, they killed it also.
Richard Campbell [00:56:13]:
Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:56:13]:
I don't think it took a long
Paul Thurrott [00:56:15]:
time ago, but the idea was solid at the time because. Because at that time people would meet together in a room and have a meeting and so you'd all be there and there was no user associated. But you could walk up and you could sign in yourself, it could do Windows hello and everything and you could sign into your stuff and show your stuff. And people could come in remotely because you would have one or two people maybe from outside the office and they could be on screen. And it made sense. But then everyone went home. It was like, now we get this 84, 85 inch, whatever, this custom computer.
Richard Campbell [00:56:44]:
Nobody wants it in their home.
Paul Thurrott [00:56:47]:
No, no. So I went in my home.
Richard Campbell [00:56:50]:
But I'm.
Leo Laporte [00:56:51]:
No.
Richard Campbell [00:56:51]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:56:51]:
I knew I was thinking that when you said it, but yes. So, you know, in the beginning it was custom OS. Eventually they allowed you just to install Windows 10 on it. Remember, they tried to recover after the pandemic. I will say the last two gens, as opposed to the first two where they did the screen. We could get the smaller screen, but put it in portrait mode and have three of them side by side if you wanted. And you know, just really beautiful machines. But.
Richard Campbell [00:57:19]:
But again, they had it. This is very much. Microsoft has a tough time making a product. They come up with ideas.
Paul Thurrott [00:57:26]:
That's right.
Richard Campbell [00:57:26]:
Right. That demo phenomenally. But when you start to make it at scale and create an ecosystem and so forth, it just struggled. So it's funny, there's parts of the company are very good at that and this was not one of them.
Paul Thurrott [00:57:38]:
Yeah, I think. Tell me if I mentioned this already and if I did, I apologize, but I just watched a Ray Ozzie interview on the Computer History Museum channel, which is awesome. The channel, because they interview luminaries. They're always like two, three hours long. You know, they're excellent. And this interview was maybe four or five years ago. And he was. Of course, he went to Microsoft when they bought Groove.
Paul Thurrott [00:58:04]:
He brought over, well, brought up a group, but he became chief software architect after Bill Gates stepped down from that role. He is the reason that Azure exists. Right. I mean, he was like, we got to do cloud computing. We're doing this. You know. And anyway, he. His whole thing was there were three things in there and the only one I can remember right now was he was talking about the end to end encryption that he had in Notes and then eventually in Groove as well.
Paul Thurrott [00:58:32]:
And how he did this three times. He said today we would call this. And the thing he called that was Bitchain or Bitcoin. What's the technology behind bitcoin?
Richard Campbell [00:58:44]:
Blockchain.
Paul Thurrott [00:58:44]:
Blockchain. And I was like, this is the history of Microsoft in a nutshell. I think there was in the same way that I wrote a book called Windows Everywhere that's about all of the programming things that occurred behind the scenes that were either Microsoft taking initiative or reacting to other forces. And industry and that guided the development of Windows. I think there's an incredible series of stories to be told about all the times that someone at Microsoft or Microsoft or whatever, however you want to say it, invented something, came to market first, in some cases failed mightily. But this thing was later proven to be the right approach. You know, it's just that they're not good at that part of it. It's the productization problem that's.
Richard Campbell [00:59:25]:
And you got to stay in it long enough to actually get the market in place.
Paul Thurrott [00:59:28]:
Yeah. It's kind of fascinating.
Richard Campbell [00:59:30]:
Apple also made the Newton. Right.
Paul Thurrott [00:59:33]:
Like, yeah. By the way, I'm sorry to interrupt, but Microsoft's not unique in this space. I don't mean that they're any unique. I'm not even positive they're the worst or best example of this. But it's just that, you know, this is the space we're in. And I, any one of us, anyone. Richard I know right now, I'm sure is in his brain is like, yep, I probably come up with 20 examples of this. Like, it's, it's, it is rather fascinating.
Paul Thurrott [00:59:54]:
And you know, Surface Hub is. It was a great idea
Richard Campbell [01:00:01]:
and it ultimately is delivered because now the Ciscos and Merakis and Logitech World deliver that product at a very tight margin. Just the sort of space that Microsoft
Paul Thurrott [01:00:10]:
shouldn't be in any way. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:00:12]:
And they pioneered a product.
Paul Thurrott [01:00:14]:
Yeah. Microsoft and Apple today share a problem, which is that we used to. It's. Ten years ago, we would have said, look, Microsoft's not going to greenlight anything unless you can prove it's going to be a billion dollar. The number is much higher. It's way worse than that now. And that becomes a problem because there are fun little things, little to them. Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:00:35]:
That could be successful. This is one of the conversations you might have around Xbox, like, would this thing be better as a standalone business where whatever the margins are, whatever, however that works makes sense for that company. Where maybe it doesn't make sense for Microsoft, where if you can't make this thing work at their scale. No. They just lose interest in it, you know.
Richard Campbell [01:00:56]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:00:57]:
So it's, it's, it, it's, it's interesting anyway. It's too bad. But Surface Hub was great. I also think they evolved it in a really great way, honestly. And then, you know, the pandemic. So whatever. But I bet some smaller company could have made a go of this. Just like the jam war thing that's Google bought probably would still be around today if Google didn't buy it, you know.
Richard Campbell [01:01:21]:
Yep, you're totally right.
Paul Thurrott [01:01:23]:
Maybe, I don't know, maybe this is not related to anything we just talked about, but I didn't know where else to put it. Microsoft just announced a. Where is it? Oh, sorry, this is us only. But it's called the Microsoft College offer. So if you're a college student from today. April. Yep, April 15th through June 30th, you can buy one of the eligible PCs that work into this program and you'll get 12 months of Microsoft 365 Premium, which is the most expensive one. 12 months of Xbox Gameplay's ultimate, also the most expensive one.
Paul Thurrott [01:02:02]:
And a custom Xbox controller that you design yourself through that program that Microsoft has for the Xbox Design Lab just for buying the computer. Right. So yeah, prices are probably a little higher because of the component thing, but you know, Game Pass ultimate is 30 bucks a month, so times 12. Microsoft 365 Premium, I think I want to say is $20 a month, $200 a year. I mean these are pretty valuable. And then an Xbox control, a custom controller, the standard Xbox controller, 60, 70 bucks. But a custom controller could be as much, I'm sure as $100 or whatever it is, it's more expensive, but that's not bad. And of course they're hope, they're hoping that you'll keep paying, you know, you'll start paying I guess afterwards for some of these things.
Paul Thurrott [01:02:48]:
Well, for the one of the two subscriptions at least. But it's good value. I mean I, I actually just signed up to go back to school so I could take advantage of it. I'm going to spend $12,000 for one semester and get $300 back. But you know, it's whatever. I'm not good with money. Yep. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:03:05]:
No, but I mean, if you need it anyway, it's like, why not? I mean it's. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So there's some good news. Not Surface related. Although maybe a Surface computer is one of the eligible computers. I will look.
Richard Campbell [01:03:18]:
You would hope.
Paul Thurrott [01:03:19]:
I bet. It has to be better be. It is. It is. It is. Yep.
Leo Laporte [01:03:24]:
Is it worth going to college just to get one? That's the question.
Paul Thurrott [01:03:28]:
Well, I mean the way AI is going, eventually it would be because. So it's like they can't sustain these like college prices. Like it, like, I don't know, this is like staying at home, not going to school and using AI to somehow make money is like the new version of like day trading. I think it is.
Leo Laporte [01:03:45]:
It's exactly what it is.
Paul Thurrott [01:03:46]:
One out of every thousand people, like, spectacularly successful. And the rest of them are, like, getting divorced because they just mortgage the house again and, you know. NFTs. Exactly. Yep. Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:03:59]:
It's going to be big.
Paul Thurrott [01:04:00]:
It's going to be huge. Just not for you.
Leo Laporte [01:04:03]:
I feel like, nice to have a computer, but should you really give a kid going to college an Xbox game? Pass. Ultimate. That really seems.
Paul Thurrott [01:04:11]:
I think it's a tacit acknowledgment that this person is not only going to be learning while they're away. Yeah. I mean, they'll be learning the tea bag, I guess.
Richard Campbell [01:04:19]:
Here, let me ruin your first semester for you. No problem.
Paul Thurrott [01:04:22]:
Exactly.
Leo Laporte [01:04:23]:
Bill Gates spent most of his college years playing bridge.
Paul Thurrott [01:04:26]:
Right, Right. Yeah. These kids will use the AI and Microsoft 365 Premium to write all the papers and they'll play Call of Duty all day. It'll be great.
Leo Laporte [01:04:34]:
I just. I don't. I feel like sending a kid to college with a game machine or a game pass.
Paul Thurrott [01:04:41]:
This is what they have to offer, you know? Yeah. I mean, I guess you could also look at like, if you bought one of those Surface computers that just went up maybe three or four hundred bucks, the value of this exceeds that and you could say, well, you know, maybe at least I'm getting it back this way.
Leo Laporte [01:04:54]:
Yeah, I got something.
Paul Thurrott [01:04:55]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:04:56]:
All right. Little break, then we'll talk about AI developers. We got the back of the book. We got brown liquor. We got it all. Because you're watching Windows Weekly. Aren't you smart? So glad to have you here with Paul Thrott. And maybe next year, Paul will join Richard and me as we head out to Zero Trust World.
Leo Laporte [01:05:14]:
It's a lot of fun. I'd like to do all the shows out there. It's a great time. And we'll get probably.
Paul Thurrott [01:05:20]:
I would probably would have. Yeah. I don't know. Remember, I think you were just.
Leo Laporte [01:05:23]:
It was hard because you were already in Mexico, and I think it was just hard.
Paul Thurrott [01:05:26]:
Yeah. But I mean.
Leo Laporte [01:05:28]:
Well, they have airplanes now.
Paul Thurrott [01:05:30]:
Yeah. Yeah. I know the world. We live in a world of wonder.
Leo Laporte [01:05:32]:
I actually, Elon wants to do rockets. Right. So that you could fly from Mexico City to Orlando in, you know, three minutes.
Richard Campbell [01:05:40]:
Oh, no, that. I want it for this flight. This is 15 hours on a 787. It'll be flat 45 minutes in Starship.
Leo Laporte [01:05:47]:
Can you imagine that?
Paul Thurrott [01:05:48]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:05:49]:
You know, I believe he will actually do that.
Richard Campbell [01:05:51]:
I. I know promises a bunch of. There were a bunch of problems, let me tell you. Oh, are there? Oh, yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:05:59]:
Were you excited watching Artemis too? Watching the landing?
Paul Thurrott [01:06:02]:
Oh my God.
Leo Laporte [01:06:03]:
Splashdown.
Paul Thurrott [01:06:03]:
I get a whole time I thought,
Leo Laporte [01:06:06]:
I wish Lisa and I were sitting there watching it going, wish Richard were here to tell us.
Paul Thurrott [01:06:09]:
Did we talk about this project Hail Mary thing, by the way? So the movie, did we talk about this?
Leo Laporte [01:06:14]:
I don't know if we talked about.
Paul Thurrott [01:06:15]:
The movie's out. It's absolutely worth seeing some differences obviously with the book. I find it detailed, of course. Of course. I mean, but there's also an additional plot point in the movie that's not in the book, which I thought was kind of interesting. But it's a good movie for today because we're so like anti expert, anti science. And this is yet another example of, you know, it's all science, baby.
Leo Laporte [01:06:35]:
So Lisa and I had a friendly dispute. I thought I said, this is as good as the Martian or maybe even better. She said, no, no, the Martian was better. And so we watched the Martian at home a couple nights ago. The Martian was better. The Martian's amazing.
Paul Thurrott [01:06:48]:
And the book is better than the movie in both cases. Yeah. Andy Weir isn't brilliant, but Andy Weir is amazing. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:06:54]:
I think somebody said he's got a short story, a project here on my short story.
Paul Thurrott [01:06:58]:
I heard this. Yes, that's right. Yeah, I don't think it's out yet, but I think this. Yeah, he's. I think he's talked about this.
Leo Laporte [01:07:04]:
That's cool.
Paul Thurrott [01:07:05]:
Yeah. Anyway, both these things to me are inspiring in this day and age.
Leo Laporte [01:07:08]:
We need that hope and inspiration. Inspiration. And you know, the good news is the funding and the new budget does keep the Moon program going. The bad news is all the science that NASA does, which is absolutely critical, has been cut. 700 million dollar budget cut.
Richard Campbell [01:07:23]:
Well, hasn't been cut, it's been proposed. Proposed.
Leo Laporte [01:07:26]:
And they tried this last year.
Richard Campbell [01:07:28]:
Congress sets the budget and Congress stopped
Leo Laporte [01:07:30]:
them last year and I hope they.
Paul Thurrott [01:07:31]:
Well, they do now
Leo Laporte [01:07:34]:
for the time being.
Richard Campbell [01:07:35]:
And Jared Isaacman is all in on this, right? Like, he's like, look, he's using Artemis very much. A promotion for. This is what.
Paul Thurrott [01:07:41]:
Of course, this is the best promotion ever for NASA in this day and age.
Leo Laporte [01:07:44]:
Good for the US as a country, it's good for the world and it's
Richard Campbell [01:07:48]:
good for our hearts.
Paul Thurrott [01:07:49]:
Just.
Richard Campbell [01:07:50]:
I wrote a talk about three years ago on becoming a space faring civilization. And since Artemis 2 hit the water, I've had three requests for it.
Paul Thurrott [01:07:59]:
Yeah, nice.
Leo Laporte [01:08:00]:
I'm still skeptical about the whole notion of us living out there, but we got to do the exploration.
Paul Thurrott [01:08:06]:
There are things you have to take the first steps, you know. Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:08:11]:
Anyway, let's talk about AI dev.
Paul Thurrott [01:08:13]:
Yeah, all of that stuff. A week or Two ago, Microsoft AI, which is working on its own foundational models, released three big models, Image 2, Voice 1 and Transcribe 1. And then this past week they released a smaller, faster, more efficient version of the image model called Mai Image 2. Efficient, of course, which I, I think this is them. They're starting to roll here a little bit, right? This stuff looks great. The image generation capabilities are actually pretty fantastic. They're up there like, they're like, I
Richard Campbell [01:08:50]:
think they're getting, I don't feel like they're doing a consumer push on this at all. It's in the foundry. It's very much for, you know.
Paul Thurrott [01:08:57]:
Yes. And Yep. Yeah, you could use this in your own products. I guess this is. But I. They're starting to get more. Well, I guess AI companies have technically always done this to some degree. But as we move from like these big models that do everything to big model, you know, meet maybe medium models that do one thing specific, right.
Paul Thurrott [01:09:17]:
They start to talk about like where you might use these things, right. So you know, when you say something like this is for an audience that needs high quality image generation at speed and scale, you're like, what does that mean? High production workflows for E commerce, media and marketing. Real time and conversational experiences like chatbots and rapid prototyping and creative iterations. Right. Which is a lot of the stuff that when you have a conversation with an AI chatbot, you and you're kind of working through whatever the problem is, you're kind of doing that kind of a thing. And it's like, okay. And maybe because this thing is so much more efficient and thus less costly, you could use this to work your way up to the point where you're ready to go to production if you're a company or whatever it is with whatever marketing campaign or something. And then maybe you push it through the more expensive, slower moving but better full size model.
Paul Thurrott [01:10:06]:
Right. And again, this is like one of those orchestration things. I mean, today we all do this thing, we like click the little box, the model choice thing comes down. We're like, yeah, I want this one to be fast or I want you to think, or whatever the choices are. And I sort of feel like this kind of fits in there for these kind of workflows. So it's just interesting to me that they're starting to be more regular about their releases and announcements and stuff and also more specific about who can use it. Did I not include the link on this? I didn't. Okay, it doesn't matter, but I'll just get it out of the discord.
Paul Thurrott [01:10:44]:
Last week I think it was the Amazon CEO these days is. Is Andy Jaffe, I think, but following in the footsteps of Jeff Bezos. Releases like an annual letter to shareholders which is usually like a celebratory high fiving of how great everything's going. But the past three years he's talked a lot about AI and this year he talked a lot about why they're spending $200 billion on AI infrastructure. Right. I'm going to make fun of this briefly, but I actually do think Amazon is one of the few companies where this kind of spending is going to make sense. But because of the success of AWS broadly. Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:11:22]:
Yeah, I just do. I just.
Richard Campbell [01:11:24]:
I've been firmly in the position that Amazon, Google and Microsoft are utilizing the AI hype cycle to expand their lead in data infrastructure so that there'll be no competitors. It's, you know, the same. The same way that you can't start a new cell network today because you could never get the land of the tower.
Paul Thurrott [01:11:42]:
If you are. If you think about cloud, AI, sorry cloud computing today, meaning not first party services, but other companies and services are using that infrastructure. It's Amazon, big Microsoft in there and sort of Google. And it looks to me like this is like when the dust settles now it's AI, cloud based infrastructure. I think it's going to be the same basic layout.
Richard Campbell [01:12:10]:
No, I think they just use this as a chance to get so far ahead that nobody will ever come close to catching up again. These three companies will be providing compute for the planet for the foreseeable future.
Paul Thurrott [01:12:20]:
Yes. Now the other thing though is his because he got pretty specific. You can see how far behind it is is from a. We're actually making money on this perspective right now and that's very interesting to me. AI companies are starting to use a term which I've, you know, it's been around for a long financial term called run rate. And run rate is. Let's say you could Microsoft Service. Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:12:48]:
Microsoft Service just had their best quarter ever. We have an annual run rate of X billion dollars a year, meaning in the one quarter that we killed it, if you multiplied that by four, that's what run rate is. Right? Right. And it's not accurate unless somehow it's going to keep growing. But for a lot of products, kind
Richard Campbell [01:13:07]:
of accounting that Enron did before the.
Paul Thurrott [01:13:10]:
Okay, thank you. It's like, so you cherry pick the best quarter. You know that like maybe it's a holiday quarter because it's a consumer product. It's going great. You know, it's going to fall off a cliff in January, but at the end of December, you're like, you know, we just had an annual run rate of whatever. It does not mean that next year you're going to declare that many, you know, that amount of revenues. And by the way, also to be clear, just, I'm not a money guy, but revenues are not profits. So.
Paul Thurrott [01:13:37]:
But we're just talking revenues. This is just money in regardless of the cost of making that money.
Richard Campbell [01:13:41]:
But I also see, you see the transformation of these companies away from being software companies to becoming infrastructure companies. The same. Same way a real estate company.
Paul Thurrott [01:13:52]:
Yeah. And by the way, when we talk about Microsoft in that way, you know, they're looking at Amazon for the inspiration for this. Totally. That this is the company that proves how this can work because they do it at such scale. They're also an incredible logistics company. You know, we've already had all these.
Richard Campbell [01:14:07]:
They were always a warehousing business at low margins that happen to have a web front end. They're better at that than the other guys.
Paul Thurrott [01:14:13]:
They're better at it than any airline, any shipping company like UPS or FedEx or the United States Postal Service, which is hilarious. I think they still use horses. Right. Whatever it may be. I mean, it's kind of astonishing. So, but here's, but here's the numbers, right. In AWS's best ever quarter for this, they just hit an annual run rate of $15 billion. Okay.
Paul Thurrott [01:14:39]:
So whatever 1/4 of 15 billion is. So it's 3.5 billion.
Richard Campbell [01:14:43]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:14:44]:
They're spending 200 billion this year on that. So that's the delta. Right. And that's. But not profit. Right. Abhorrent taught us that the more you use something, the more efficient it becomes.
Richard Campbell [01:14:57]:
Yeah. But we tend to think of the burn rate of software companies as lost money. If I spend $200 billion on development like that, 200 billion is gone. They're spending 200 billion on land build.
Paul Thurrott [01:15:09]:
Yeah. And on every. On physical.
Richard Campbell [01:15:11]:
They are physical assets.
Paul Thurrott [01:15:13]:
That's right. There's a whole world of Amazon that I'm never going to learn about because they just don't care. But they make their own GPUs and GPUs and they do that too. Right. They've got the. In Amazon's AWS infrastructure, you can use their stuff. I'm sure you can use Nvidia stuff. I'm sure it's everything.
Paul Thurrott [01:15:29]:
Right. They're a big tent for this kind of stuff and I just don't care about that. But man, he went into great detail about this and like Microsoft is talking about the commitments they have over the next year that justifies this spending. I point out that 100 billion of those commitments commitments is from OpenAI, which to me is, you know, the wimpy school.
Richard Campbell [01:15:53]:
That is lost money.
Paul Thurrott [01:15:54]:
I'm sorry, but like, yeah, you're just never going to see it. You know, maybe I'm wrong. I, I don't know. I don't feel good about this.
Richard Campbell [01:16:00]:
But if you're paying, if you're buying compute resources that's lost money, like that money has been consumed. I hope you did something useful with that compute resource.
Paul Thurrott [01:16:10]:
Yeah. I mean, hopefully they can utilize that. No, you're right. Yeah. It's just spent. Yep.
Leo Laporte [01:16:15]:
So Bezos said something kind of interesting about all of this about investment in the AI stuff. He said, you know, you think of investment, you think of building, you think of buying this as verticals. You know, you build a business to build an operating system. He said AI is more like electricity. It's a horizontal. It covers every industry. It's not vertical.
Paul Thurrott [01:16:37]:
Oh, so it is like Enron.
Richard Campbell [01:16:39]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:16:39]:
Right. Investing in AI is investing in, you know, in, in so much more.
Paul Thurrott [01:16:46]:
Right.
Leo Laporte [01:16:46]:
Because it's going to be ubiquitous now.
Richard Campbell [01:16:48]:
Of course, the great thing about building data centers is you don't care what the workload.
Leo Laporte [01:16:52]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [01:16:52]:
The compute is fungible. Right. You'll replace the compute routinely. It's cost of goods.
Leo Laporte [01:16:57]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [01:16:57]:
It's the infrastructure and its positioning on the, on the data pipeline, power, resources that matters.
Leo Laporte [01:17:02]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:17:02]:
The thing is there, there's this inevitable move toward lowering the cost of this in the cloud. Right. And you see that through whatever efficiencies, through AI models themselves, becoming more efficient, whatever it might be.
Richard Campbell [01:17:14]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:17:15]:
There's this push for local AI everywhere because if when that can work offline and B, it gets very good, like, you know, the, the quality gap between a local model and its cloud equivalent, so to speak, was probably years and then it was months and now it's fewer months. And like they're getting to the point where micro, you know, the, they didn't say this, I'm making this up. But the Mi Image 2 efficient model is as good as OpenAI blah, blah, blah, dall E whatever was a year ago or something. Maybe it's probably not but let's just pretend. I mean, at some point, some orchestration of these things will make this less of a disaster financially than it is right now. I just don't. I just don't know when that we're going to cross this line. I don't.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:04]:
No one can show us a graph. We're like, see, see, see, it's coming. You know, all I keep seeing is a big difference between the money coming in and the money going out. And again, not a money guy, but
Richard Campbell [01:18:16]:
if you're focused on quarterly shareholder returns, you have concerns.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:20]:
Yes, yes, you do. So we'll see. I'd like to see. I'd love to see Amy Hood, I guess someone at Microsoft make this kind of justification and really go into this level.
Richard Campbell [01:18:30]:
They're the ones that. Who blinked. Right. Because they were out first and they had locked up a lot of good locations with good power allocation, so forth, and actually pulled back on a bunch of them, which Amazon and Google and company immediately gobbled up. Now they're being criticized for letting those go. So it's like you can't win for losing. You. You did all the right things.
Richard Campbell [01:18:48]:
You got ready for a huge spend. People were freaking out about the huge spend, so you backed off, though they're mad you didn't do the spend.
Paul Thurrott [01:18:56]:
Yeah. So there's a great profile of Amy Hood in Bloomberg. If you subscriber can somehow read that. Definitely worth reading. But yeah, she talks about that exact thing, you know, like the it. And it's kind of interesting because I, you know, depending on how you look at it, I think she technically runs Microsoft right now.
Richard Campbell [01:19:14]:
Technically. Yeah. She's had control of that company since the pandemic.
Paul Thurrott [01:19:17]:
Yeah, yeah. No, I've said this many times. Like, we tend to think in terms of CEO, of course, all the time for everything. But I think when you look at Microsoft of the modern era, I don't think it's the Satya Nadella era that we've been in since 2015.
Richard Campbell [01:19:29]:
She's the principal part of this transformation away from being a software company and into an infrastructure company.
Paul Thurrott [01:19:34]:
Yep.
Richard Campbell [01:19:35]:
Which, the numbers matter so much more. Margin matters so much more. Forward investment matters more.
Paul Thurrott [01:19:42]:
Yeah. And that's, you know, this isn't why I keep thinking, like, when are they going to get rid of service or whatever. But Surface is, you know, such an outlier when you look at margins and centrality to the business, so to speak, or whatever it is, overall strategy. I mean, at some point they're going to start picking those things off and the Only question is really like, how they do it, because whether or not you believe Xbox or whatever should be rolled off into a separate company or whatever, to me, that business is big. Well, no, it is. It's literally it doesn't die. But there are other outcomes for Surface. There also are other outcomes that one of them, sadly could be it just dies.
Paul Thurrott [01:20:20]:
I mean, they should wind it down.
Richard Campbell [01:20:22]:
They wouldn't be the first time.
Paul Thurrott [01:20:23]:
No, I mean, so that's a possibility there. But anyway, a lot of money, a lot of money there in AI infrastructure spending. Google sometime in the past six months or so released an app called the Google App for Windows for some reason, primarily kind of a search app, but it's now rolling out worldwide. It does provide some Gemini capabilities, AI mode, et cetera, et cetera. But it's very much like a Google search app from the old days when they had a desktop search app. Remember this? Back when everyone was doing this, including Microsoft, but now today they released a Gemini app on the Mac. And I'm like, guys, why would you have two different apps? But the Gemini app on the Mac is exactly what it sounds like. It's Gemini, right? And so it works exactly like the version of the web, but you don't have to have it tab in a browser and you can interact with stuff that's on your desktop.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:19]:
You can do the vision thing, which is useful. And I don't understand why they haven't released it on Windows, so I assume they will. But I also don't understand why they have a different app that doesn't quite do the same thing. And whatever, nothing makes sense. So that happened. And then Anthropic, they're like the new Microsoft, I guess. Like they released add ins for Excel and PowerPoint recently, right? Checking ass. They released one for Word now, of course, in beta, and it works like Copilot.
Paul Thurrott [01:21:51]:
What is the sidebar? There's a Copilot button up in the ribbon that's right next to the copilot button. Because of course it is. And a friend of mine who's inside
Richard Campbell [01:22:02]:
those teams saying, because that must be anthropic anyway. Oh, yeah, they're losing their minds. But, you know, they. The explanation was great. It's just like they were trying to build a comprehensive solution and Anthropic said, what's the five things people need?
Paul Thurrott [01:22:15]:
Let's do that. This is fundamentally the problem with Microsoft software development that I think this company needs to get past, which is the solution to every problem is a massive platform. It's like you're Totally right. Like you said anthropic. Exactly right. They're like, no, like. And by the way, a lot of it came out of them, you know, like people who work there, like, look, I use Word every day or whatever. What are the things I want to do with the AI? It's like, here's the list five.
Paul Thurrott [01:22:43]:
Everyone agreed those are the top five. And they just shipped it, you know, Microsoft, meanwhile, is putting up scaffolding. Right.
Richard Campbell [01:22:49]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:22:50]:
It's astonishing.
Richard Campbell [01:22:52]:
This building is going to be 70 stories. Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:22:55]:
Microsoft slowness has always been problem. So I'm going to start interrupt. But in the AI era, dramatically worse because these companies are just like.
Richard Campbell [01:23:02]:
Anyway, the other thing that's happened is you're seeing anthropic accelerate away from everyone. Like they're clearly using their own tools and making them better. Better than anyone else is at this point.
Paul Thurrott [01:23:12]:
That's right. Which by the way is interesting, is
Leo Laporte [01:23:16]:
OpenAI is worth something like one and a half trillion.
Paul Thurrott [01:23:19]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:23:20]:
But you know what?
Leo Laporte [01:23:20]:
Anthropic is only 300 billion.
Richard Campbell [01:23:22]:
Yeah, that's gonna.
Paul Thurrott [01:23:23]:
But if this is inertia.
Leo Laporte [01:23:26]:
Yes. It takes time.
Richard Campbell [01:23:27]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:23:28]:
And. Right. That's what I mean. Like, in other words, zooming. Yeah. OpenAI created the Kleenex brand of AI and have the opportunity now to disappear. No, I mean, it's bizarre.
Richard Campbell [01:23:40]:
Generic.
Paul Thurrott [01:23:40]:
Yeah, it's really bizarre.
Richard Campbell [01:23:42]:
Once upon a time, the word Netscape meant browser.
Paul Thurrott [01:23:45]:
Right, that's right. That's right.
Leo Laporte [01:23:47]:
Well, but I wouldn't write OpenAI yet because, I mean, they're trying. They realize, oh, we should have done more enterprise, and they're freezing now.
Paul Thurrott [01:23:55]:
Apple needs a Microsoft every. Yeah, you know, whatever you want to say. Everybody needs an Internet Explorer, whatever it is.
Richard Campbell [01:24:02]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:24:02]:
And you know, they just. OpenAI just released their cyber security version of.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:06]:
Oh, that's a weird coincidence.
Leo Laporte [01:24:08]:
Yeah. Interesting, isn't it?
Paul Thurrott [01:24:09]:
Allegedly, internally, their strategy has turned completely to fighting anthropic, which is chase.
Richard Campbell [01:24:14]:
Anthropic. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:15]:
Yep. You don't.
Leo Laporte [01:24:17]:
But, yeah, yeah, it's kind of not as good to be in second place. Chasing. Well, I mean, when you were in first place, so that's true.
Richard Campbell [01:24:26]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:26]:
No, that's fair.
Leo Laporte [01:24:27]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:27]:
So. But I haven't seen off.
Leo Laporte [01:24:29]:
And you know what? Neither one has revenue outside of AI and they have huge losses, so it could very well be Amazon, Microsoft, Google. It could be any one of these.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:40]:
That makes them a good target for save money.
Richard Campbell [01:24:43]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:43]:
Yeah. I mean, look, these companies are building assets of a sort. They're like intellectual property assets, I guess. I mean, there's, there is value to what they're doing, obviously.
Leo Laporte [01:24:53]:
Oh yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:24:53]:
I mean, it's just that the, the, you know, it, you know, we talk about like flying. Richard just flew to New Zealand. I mean, you know, what Richard didn't do was get on the backstage of three rockets, go up into space and then shoot back down. Like there's different ways to solve a problem, you know.
Richard Campbell [01:25:09]:
Sure.
Paul Thurrott [01:25:10]:
And AI right now is just super top heavy, expense wise. Whereas, you know, airplanes have been.
Leo Laporte [01:25:16]:
We're really seeing how compute constrained it all is. I mean, anthropic, can't keep up with the demand at all.
Paul Thurrott [01:25:22]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [01:25:22]:
Yeah, but this is also where you've been in this mode of just grab more market, ship more features, don't worry about efficiency.
Paul Thurrott [01:25:30]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:25:30]:
And now they, you can see you're going to have to pay your bills soon. So efficiency suddenly gets more important and features that matter get prioritized, features that don't get cut.
Paul Thurrott [01:25:41]:
I think I brought this up before the show and I don't know if we were live, if anyone even heard this, but, but at least between Richard and Kevin, and I was saying, I referenced Leo last week, was talking about how many developers now aren't using an IDE or an editor. They're working in the AI thing. Whatever it might be. Whatever they're using.
Richard Campbell [01:25:59]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:25:59]:
And they're kind of having a conversation. I might be doing with speech, I might be typing, it doesn't matter. But they're iterating through a software project, whether it's updating existing software, creating something new, whatever it is. And that's the workflow. It's completely different to how we've been making software for the past 40 years. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:26:14]:
You talk about companies being left in the dust. Cursor and Repl IT and gravity.
Paul Thurrott [01:26:19]:
Oh yeah, they have this moment. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:26:22]:
No, we don't use that anymore. We just do it.
Paul Thurrott [01:26:24]:
You can't overstate how fast this market is moving.
Leo Laporte [01:26:27]:
Initially it was. You would ask and it would get some code and you paste it into your editor.
Paul Thurrott [01:26:32]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:26:33]:
And then they did with Copilot, the autocomplete, but now they got a little easier.
Paul Thurrott [01:26:37]:
But they're doing MCP and they're doing whatever, whatever agents and whatever. And they're. Yes. Behind the scenes. The thing. The thing, people, if you're not a developer, like you use Visual Studio, whatever you use, there's a compiler somewhere in the background and you have fancy buttons and UIs and stuff, but ultimately what you're doing is press. You know, there's a Compile script that's going out and guess what, understands that script AI really well. And you know, old school people like me and a lot of developers, I suspect, are, look, look with this, with some suspicion and whatever, but the thing is like this actually it works.
Paul Thurrott [01:27:12]:
And this is going to be how a lot of work occurs.
Leo Laporte [01:27:15]:
Not this is what my coding looks like now. The AI is doing all the editing and I'm just, I'm just talking to it. I'm saying, I'm saying, hey, do that.
Paul Thurrott [01:27:26]:
You could be walking around in a bathrobe making an omelette, but you're talking to AI and by the time you've eaten the omelette, you've created like an app, you know?
Leo Laporte [01:27:34]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:27:34]:
Well, before you finish eating it, actually, it's awesome. It's pretty quick. So.
Leo Laporte [01:27:38]:
But publishes it to GitHub.
Paul Thurrott [01:27:39]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:27:40]:
And so this is me, by the way, after all of that. This part's me.
Paul Thurrott [01:27:44]:
I love how you compliment it. You're like, oh my God, you're the best.
Leo Laporte [01:27:47]:
I don't know why I do that.
Paul Thurrott [01:27:49]:
You know what? I bet most people do it. I do it. It's hard not to say thank you
Leo Laporte [01:27:54]:
or it's kind of impressive when it does it, right?
Paul Thurrott [01:27:57]:
Yep. Oh, yeah. But the point is, if you think about where the center of work was for anybody, whether you're a developer, it's an IDE maybe, or you're a knowledge worker, as we used to call it back in the 2000s, right. You're working in Outlook every day and Word and whatever the apps are, I feel like the center of this thing is going to shift to these. What we think of as this chatbot is not the right term anymore, but they're becoming like more full featured apps. And I haven't looked at this yet, but if you look at the new Claude Desktop update, which is described as being for supporting parallel agents. Right. The idea is that you're sending these things off on these tasks and they're doing it in the background, but you have to have some kind of a UI for what does that look like? We already know that Microsoft's idea for that in Windows is, you know, these things will look like apps and they'll have notifications and that makes sense in that context, but.
Paul Thurrott [01:28:52]:
Pardon the pun, but. But if you can work already in a chatbot again, which is a terrible term, maybe those things evolve to become more, which is awful. Like Outlook.
Leo Laporte [01:29:08]:
Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:29:09]:
Look at the video that Anthropic made describing how this new cloud code desktop app works and what I see when I look at this thing is an app like Outlook, it looks like it's like a giant front end for work, you know, and like they're building something new, I guess. Yeah, it is new. I mean, it's new but familiar, I guess, in some ways. Right.
Leo Laporte [01:29:31]:
But Google added a Chrome extension yesterday that lets you save your prompt and now it's just a drop down menu if you're doing the same thing over and over again. So it really is a very.
Paul Thurrott [01:29:44]:
There's definitely like a benefit to familiarity, especially, you know, if you're using what we would call a legacy tool at this point or whatever it might be to move you forward, you make it something familiar to you and that makes sense. I like the Windows 11 approach. I think it looks like it's okay, it seems fine. But then I look at this kind of thing and I think, this is the ui. This is the UI you'll see on your phone, it's the UI you'll see on the web, it's the UI you'll see on your computer. And they'll all interact with each other. You could from your phone, right, Control your PC through some computer use thing, which is a big thing now. And that's the one doing the heavy lifting maybe, because obviously a big screen, you can sit there and type in it, but you could be out in the world.
Paul Thurrott [01:30:25]:
You're like, I have an idea or my agent sent me a notification and it's on my phone because that's where I am. It's becoming the. Maybe UI isn't the right term, I guess user experience, maybe. I don't know. It's a workspace now. It's like a. Well, I just call an operating system, frankly, a platform.
Richard Campbell [01:30:42]:
The developers are complaining about being product managers now.
Paul Thurrott [01:30:47]:
Yes. Yep. I don't remember. This is not in the notes and I don't remember the term Adobe used. I didn't write this, but I think I got it. They're adding multiple agents and an AI assistant to Firefly, which is their thing. They also work with third party AIs and agents and essentially as a, what you used to be maybe was a video editor or a graphics artist or whatever it might be, but you become a creative director, you know, like you look at a photo and you're like, no, this is like Richard was too blue. Like, let's get rid of the blue, let's crop it, let's emphasize some shadows or whatever it might be.
Paul Thurrott [01:31:27]:
You're gonna say it like that. You don't know the workflow for the buttons and where things are in sliders and you don't, you're not doing the work anymore.
Richard Campbell [01:31:35]:
You know, it's like you're standing over the shoulder of the developer.
Paul Thurrott [01:31:38]:
Yes.
Richard Campbell [01:31:39]:
Pointing.
Paul Thurrott [01:31:41]:
Which I mean isn't horrible, I suppose. I mean there's always going to be people who. We've already seen stories where developers are like, I forgot not to write code, you know, which is bad because actually you do have to look at the code. But. And I don't know how serious that is. But yeah, I think this cloud desktop thing, if you guys have not looked at it and I haven't, I've only looked at, at the video. I'm going to look at this today later. I think this is a peek at the.
Paul Thurrott [01:32:07]:
This is a UX for the future, I think the first step, I think so. It's very interesting. Speaking of which. So I don't know where I saw this and I didn't write about it and I might still. But there's a report, a rumor that Microsoft has figured out a way to monetize AI agents. And this is so Microsoft. This is the most beautiful, perfect Microsoft thing of all time. And it just to kind of explain this, back in the day when Microsoft was selling server operating systems that you would buy for a thousand bucks or whatever it was, and then you would buy these per seat licenses for users, it was per server, right.
Paul Thurrott [01:32:44]:
But at some point in the late 90s, probably the early 2000s, they started coming out with multi core servers, right. Today multi core, everything is everywhere. I mean your phone probably has 17 cores in it. But at the time everything was single core. And then it went to double core in the server first. And they were like, all right, we got it, we're going to do is we're going to charge per core. Right? So if you had a more powerful server, you would pay more for this Windows Server at the time. And of course they didn't invent it.
Paul Thurrott [01:33:11]:
But I think we can agree Microsoft has perfected the notion of per user per month licensing for software where you have Microsoft365 subscribers inside of an environment. Some of them are like the frontier guys or the, what do you call it, we call the frontline workers. Some of them have much more expensive plans because of whatever jobs they have to do. They have all these different tiers. And so Microsoft reportedly has looked at agents, you think about agents doing work on behalf of users. And they were in their, their idea is we could do that same per agent per month charging for AI and I can't imagine. I mean it's. Look, you're using, it's using the resources.
Paul Thurrott [01:33:50]:
I mean I have to say that might be Microsoft's best contribution to this market. Not because it's good for anybody, but because it's a way for them to make money. That actually kind of makes sense and is.
Richard Campbell [01:34:05]:
Yeah, it's just that, you know, the agent wasn't responsible for the software, the person was. So ultimately the license rolls up to the person.
Paul Thurrott [01:34:12]:
Yeah, yeah, but, but in the same way that you might make it an
Richard Campbell [01:34:15]:
agent capable license, like there's a bunch of ways to.
Paul Thurrott [01:34:18]:
That's what I mean. It's not going to be a user license. In other words, like if you, you have this like span of tiers of Microsoft 365 below frontline or whatever the cheapest one is, you would have like these agent tiers, you know, that aren't as expensive but can add up to your E5. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's not going to be the only thing like you. In fact, I would imagine to use that license you would have to have an associated user license of whatever level.
Richard Campbell [01:34:43]:
Probably.
Paul Thurrott [01:34:43]:
Yeah, definitely. That's like I said, perfect. Microsoft then a couple of dev things real quick. Net 11 continues to roll out really predictably. Preview 3 is here. I don't see anything interesting in it.
Richard Campbell [01:35:04]:
I think when Preview 2 came out, you're saying I don't know what's happening, what's going on. I said just relax. And early now I'm a little more worried. I think this reorganization of the dev div into core AI, the exodus of leadership. I don't know who's deciding what to put in the box right now or they just working through their lists.
Paul Thurrott [01:35:25]:
I mean I want to be fair here.net as a technology is mature to some degree. I mean, you know, are there a lot of 11?
Richard Campbell [01:35:37]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:35:37]:
I mean. Right. Are there fun features coming? It's not a. I think is this, this one's going to be a, like a short term release, I think. Right. Or long term, I can't remember. I guess it doesn't matter. But so maybe the timings, it's.
Paul Thurrott [01:35:51]:
It's okay. Like it's not really a big problem. I'm sure we're still going to see all those incredible performance advances, etc. Etc. But this, you know, not for the first time raises that question about the, like how this software is developed and released. Like do we actually need an annual thing like this? Like, I mean, I mean is. Does it. Maybe it's just a semantics thing.
Paul Thurrott [01:36:10]:
Like we're calling it Net 11, but if we called this Net 10 Service Pack 1, would that be better in my brain somehow? I mean, maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe it doesn't matter. You know, Windows 31 was a huge release. Windows, you know, 2 wasn't or whatever. Like, I don't know.
Richard Campbell [01:36:25]:
I mean, part of this is they want people to keep moving to the new version. The biggest thing you get out of new versions is they're faster. Yeah, you're right. The cadence is questionable. Yeah, more questionable.
Paul Thurrott [01:36:37]:
Yeah, we're getting to the point now,
Richard Campbell [01:36:40]:
I don't know that there are a number of large features under development that may or may not make any given release. Like there are features that were. There are pieces of it that showed up in NET nine that still haven't been released.
Paul Thurrott [01:36:52]:
Now it is.
Richard Campbell [01:36:55]:
Not everything fits an annual cycle.
Paul Thurrott [01:36:58]:
Right. And the flip side of this is it's possible by the time Beta 1 arrives or whatever milestone that some potential big feature does get to the point where like, yep, we're going to be able to do this 11 timeframe. And then you're like, oh, okay, now it's like maybe two months from now.
Richard Campbell [01:37:14]:
My argument up till now is that there's a big bang coming. A big bang feature coming. They're grinding on. It's not going to show up in previews maybe.
Paul Thurrott [01:37:20]:
Yeah, it could. I mean build is still coming and there's time to learn. We'll see and speak Build. Sorry. Yeah, so Microsoft posted the build session catalog and I jokingly here I was. Maybe the new native app strategy for Windows should be just vibe coding, like how to describe to GitHub Copilot exactly what you want in a Windows app.
Richard Campbell [01:37:45]:
It's working for hands, goodness knows.
Paul Thurrott [01:37:48]:
Yeah, I need to pay more attention to that stuff because I'm kind. This is kind of curious, but there is some Windows related stuff in there. I mean we've had some tough years obviously, but a lot of it is AI on Windows, obviously using agents to build WinUI 3 apps, which are the most, you know, the modern. That's the modern platform and they're still talking about this developer optimized experience on Windows. This is something that went back to Windows 10 when they added WSL. WSL notably was one of those things that Pavan, the Windows subsystem for Linux, if you didn't know what that meant, is notably one of the things that pavan mentioned which from a pure numbers perspective, a billion Windows users there probably Aren't many using wsl, but they're people that matter because they're developers and you're keeping them on Windows. There have been many initiatives in windows over 10 and 11, most of which I think have kind of fallen flat. You know, like the Dev hub thing and all the stuff they've been trying there, but there's.
Paul Thurrott [01:38:51]:
They're still trying, you know, they want to keep developers in Windows. So I mean, that sounds fine to me but you know, we'll see. There are going to be some big WSL things coming, so build seems like the obvious time frame for that. At least we're learning about that.
Richard Campbell [01:39:04]:
It's a small show. It's two days. It's a small venue. Being Fort Mason, like it's a different
Paul Thurrott [01:39:11]:
date or a different month. You know, June, May.
Richard Campbell [01:39:15]:
I think that was just availability.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:17]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:39:17]:
And it's a totally different team that's working on it too. So it's just.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:21]:
Yeah, it's a different show. Yep, we'll see what happens. I mean, look, it's. There's no avoiding it. It's gonna be a lot of AI. Right. But I, I'm gonna inevitably pay attention. See what they say about Windows 1.
Richard Campbell [01:39:31]:
See, but I, I don't think I'm going. I don't think you're going. We're just going to watch.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:36]:
I mean, we'll see. I mean again, I'm. I'm still, you know, possible in the next month or less I could get some email. This explains why it would make sense for me and maybe I'll agree to go, but I. Right now. Yeah, I have no plans.
Richard Campbell [01:39:47]:
Right. You have to sign up for the opportunity to go. You can't just buy a ticket. Okay.
Paul Thurrott [01:39:52]:
Yeah, that sounds great.
Leo Laporte [01:39:53]:
Is there a lottery or does it automatic?
Richard Campbell [01:39:56]:
Probably because I do not know the answer to that, but I know it's just.
Leo Laporte [01:40:00]:
Is it like seeing Paul McCartney at Apple? It's like you have to.
Richard Campbell [01:40:04]:
Yeah, it's something like there's a big.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:06]:
How long have you been at Apple? Ten years. Oh, that's not enough.
Leo Laporte [01:40:10]:
Not enough. No. Mr. Jobs,
Paul Thurrott [01:40:14]:
I don't see you on the list. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [01:40:18]:
I know I'm not on the list. That's. That's all I know.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:23]:
Google IO, May 19 and 20 this year. Also a two day event. Right. Live in Mountain View. This. They. They've been doing it at the same place for a while. Also a bunch of AI agenic, blah, blah blah, Android anywhere.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:37]:
You know, you get the idea. So whatever. And then what is this Oh, I put this one at the end, so I think that's. Yeah, I attempted my. A clickbait. Clickbait headline in the show notes because no one will see it.
Richard Campbell [01:40:55]:
But, you know, I saw it. Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:40:59]:
Just someone. If you've smiled for one second, you know, two hours ago, it's worth it. It's. It's just. It's going to be a lot of AI, Right, instead of some. You know, and I think there's probably a lot more Android at Google I O than there is Windows at build, frankly. But on the build. Sorry, on the Android front, I'm kind of hoping we get some information about this aluminum OS thing, which is their desktop laptop based Android thing.
Paul Thurrott [01:41:28]:
But I don't know. I see a lot of agents and agenc. Web apps. Agenic Android apps, you know, so. Whatever. But. Okay, but there we go.
Richard Campbell [01:41:43]:
Go some.
Paul Thurrott [01:41:43]:
Somehow we got through this. Who we know.
Leo Laporte [01:41:49]:
I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of coding. Do you mind? I just want to talk to my assistant a little bit more and.
Paul Thurrott [01:41:54]:
No, it's fine. I'm sure he's more interesting than I am. No, no, he's definitely more complimentary.
Leo Laporte [01:41:59]:
He's much nicer, actually. We were playing with this with. I call him Obi Wan for obvious reasons.
Paul Thurrott [01:42:06]:
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Leo Laporte [01:42:07]:
We were playing with this yesterday on Security Now. And Steve, does he always have to put emojis at the end of everything? I said, well, I told him to do that. I can't. I could have.
Paul Thurrott [01:42:14]:
Well, yeah, that's actually an important tip for any AI thing. It's like, you can tell it not to suck up so much.
Leo Laporte [01:42:20]:
You know you can, but I. I don't mind.
Paul Thurrott [01:42:25]:
Yeah, no, some people love it. Some people.
Leo Laporte [01:42:27]:
Some people.
Paul Thurrott [01:42:27]:
That's part of the draw, whether they even realize it or not. But like, yeah, my wife was testing Gemini and I think. I think she's been using Copilot, which I'm vaguely embarrassed by. But she. She showed me this thing and she goes. It said. They're like, that's an excellent idea, Stephanie, as a professional writer, you know that. And she's like, what the hell is this? Yes.
Paul Thurrott [01:42:48]:
And I was like, you can tell it. You can tell it to stop sucking. You don't have to.
Leo Laporte [01:42:53]:
There is actually a GitHub repo that gets your AI, your cloud code to talk to you. Like a caveman, Use few words. And the theory is it's using fewer tokens as well, so saving you.
Paul Thurrott [01:43:06]:
Well, yes, that's huge. But I. Interaction, though. What I. What I'm looking for is that thing I always talked about with the Google smart screen thing, which is like, okay, it sounds like what you want to do is never show this photo again. Dude, just freaking do it.
Leo Laporte [01:43:19]:
Do it.
Paul Thurrott [01:43:19]:
Yeah, just do it. And that would be the mode I would want, the just do it mode.
Leo Laporte [01:43:23]:
There's a balance. What does happen is there is this kind of back and forth. So you kind of want to have some mutual respect. That's why I say please and thank you. Just because there's some.
Paul Thurrott [01:43:33]:
I do do that. I do do that. But I do find the going, you're an idiot. No, I. To be clear,
Leo Laporte [01:43:42]:
I know it's.
Paul Thurrott [01:43:43]:
It's good. It's good practice.
Leo Laporte [01:43:45]:
I'm perfectly well aware.
Paul Thurrott [01:43:47]:
It's. No, I mean, meaning I could really strong. If someone's bringing you stuff and you never say thank you or bump into someone and you don't say excuse me or whatever.
Richard Campbell [01:43:56]:
I just, I end up on the other side of that when I see people interact rudely with software. It's like, this isn't good either. Yeah, you know?
Paul Thurrott [01:44:03]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:44:04]:
No, I think a mutual respect, one programmer to another, you know, I don't know.
Paul Thurrott [01:44:08]:
Mutual. But yeah, whatever.
Richard Campbell [01:44:10]:
Do not. Yeah, do not compare yourself to software. It's not.
Leo Laporte [01:44:13]:
What's really interesting is there is some evidence that some manner. Ways of interacting with it work better than others. That if you treat it like a team member, that's better than if.
Paul Thurrott [01:44:26]:
Let me say you're a senior program. Let's say it's. It's 40 years ago and you're in an office, right. And there's that young kid and he's sucking up to you all the time. And eventually what you realize is this guy wants my job. Like, this is what he's doing, you know, he's softening me up. And I feel like the AI has that feel to it. Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:44:45]:
Which of course plays into the big fear with it. One of the big fears with a. I don't know. I don't know if it's real or not, but.
Leo Laporte [01:44:52]:
Well, my latest thing is I really like it. I like to talk to it as opposed to typing, and I like it to talk back to me. As you can tell.
Paul Thurrott [01:45:01]:
Do you do it like out in the world? Like, do you walk around with your phone and stuff and talk?
Leo Laporte [01:45:05]:
I could because it supports telegram and my watch supports it. I can talk. So after I finish my meal, as I just did, I will say lunch. Apple for lunch and 4 ounces of Cabot's cheddar. Cheese and 2 ounces of sliced turkey.
Paul Thurrott [01:45:26]:
Yikes.
Leo Laporte [01:45:28]:
And then it will come back and it will say.
Richard Campbell [01:45:30]:
It will usually say, you're so sad.
Leo Laporte [01:45:32]:
Clever.
Paul Thurrott [01:45:33]:
I was going to say that's what. If the AI was modeled on me, it would go. Yikes.
Leo Laporte [01:45:38]:
It says, logged lunch. Here's what I added. Okay. And then it shows it. And then usually says something like, oh, good. Good job on the carbs.
Paul Thurrott [01:45:48]:
You know, okay.
Leo Laporte [01:45:50]:
The mat. The apple's the main carb hit, but you're still in reasonable shape for the day. It says, wow. So the next thing. But that's on text. So the next thing. What I like to do is have it talk to me.
Paul Thurrott [01:45:59]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:46:00]:
And I found out I can talk to my Sonos speakers. It can talk to them. So. And I have speakers in the whole house. In fact, I just bought some more so that I have.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:11]:
Oh, you're saying the speakers will pick. Have microphones.
Richard Campbell [01:46:14]:
They have microphones.
Leo Laporte [01:46:15]:
No, I don't care about the microphones. I have the microphone. I want the return audio.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:19]:
I got you.
Leo Laporte [01:46:20]:
So now wherever I am, I can. Even if I'm typing something, it could talk back to me.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:25]:
Now, is this driver. If you move around the house, will it go to the right speaker?
Leo Laporte [01:46:29]:
Or is this funny that you just mentioned that? Because that's exactly what I've been talking about with it. I want you to route audio to the speakers nearest me. If you can match the machine, I'm onto the speakers. I'm near. And I'll do a lookup table.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:42]:
Yeah, I was going to say that the most Sona speakers. Not all, but most have microphones. They could.
Richard Campbell [01:46:48]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:48]:
Oh, they have names. There you go. I don't know, but they can detect.
Leo Laporte [01:46:51]:
Yeah. I don't know if I can access the microphone. I actually haven't. I haven't played with that.
Paul Thurrott [01:46:55]:
It's very granular of a location data. Do you want to give this thing. It's like you're not just in Petaluma. These are your exact coordinates within your
Leo Laporte [01:47:04]:
home, what room I'm in.
Paul Thurrott [01:47:05]:
You know? Yeah. There's a map of the house. Tell me. Show me the speakers.
Leo Laporte [01:47:08]:
You know, he had such good secops.
Paul Thurrott [01:47:11]:
Except it looks like you program this entire app from a toilet in the second floor.
Leo Laporte [01:47:16]:
I'm like, I don't have speakers.
Paul Thurrott [01:47:17]:
What is your job? What?
Leo Laporte [01:47:19]:
Explain to me whether a speaker frees up.
Paul Thurrott [01:47:22]:
What are you doing with your time?
Leo Laporte [01:47:24]:
Although. Well, so it's a kooky idea, and it's really more a toy, but I like the idea. Of ubiquitous computing that I want to be able to say computer, this is the dream.
Paul Thurrott [01:47:33]:
Right. Wherever you are. Exactly. Yeah. Right. And want to sit down on a plane and say it to the thing in front of you and have it just be.
Leo Laporte [01:47:41]:
I can actually say to my watch, hey, I've got Craig Mod coming up on Intelligent Machines. Prepare a briefing for me with some good questions. And it will do that. It puts it in my. It likes Obsidian. So I have it put it. My Obsidian.
Paul Thurrott [01:47:52]:
Yeah. Because it's marked down.
Leo Laporte [01:47:54]:
So it just writes a markdown file that I could see in my Obsidian. It makes it very easy. And so that's the idea is it does some work, you know, or.
Paul Thurrott [01:48:01]:
So you guys have seen Veep, right? The TV show?
Leo Laporte [01:48:04]:
Love it.
Paul Thurrott [01:48:05]:
One of the unbelievably funny show, but one of the great bits of it is like, Julia Steyfuss is the vice president for most of the show, is walking around, that other guy's following her and whispering into her ears, saying, oh, this guy's the premier of whatever kind. That's what you're asking. You're doing that.
Leo Laporte [01:48:24]:
Tony Hale is so good, but Claude won't have a bag with all my medications.
Paul Thurrott [01:48:28]:
No, no, of course, but. Well, but you could tell you we're the closest medicine drop is or whatever.
Leo Laporte [01:48:33]:
You can now go on Alibaba and order a bipedal humanoid Robot for only 14. Fifteen hundred dollars, I think. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. $4,500. But that's still.
Richard Campbell [01:48:45]:
It's a bargain. It's a bargain.
Leo Laporte [01:48:47]:
Can't do it.
Richard Campbell [01:48:47]:
Okay, we got. You got Intelligence machine is in 45 minutes. Right.
Leo Laporte [01:48:50]:
Oh, crap. We got to get some whiskey in here. Ladies and gentlemen, you're watching the fabulous, the wonderful Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell, who's keeping us honest. Let's move on to the.
Paul Thurrott [01:49:04]:
When did Richard turn into Lisa? What's going on?
Richard Campbell [01:49:06]:
I know, I know.
Paul Thurrott [01:49:09]:
All right, well, Xbox, this will be.
Richard Campbell [01:49:12]:
I'm happy to go along.
Leo Laporte [01:49:13]:
No, I'm not, though. You're right. I have a guest. You're right.
Paul Thurrott [01:49:18]:
So Asha Schmer, the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming, in an internal memo that has been. That's at least one publication has seen, said that Game Pass is too expensive. So she's not completely stupid. In other news, she also said the sky was blue. And yeah, so look, there's expense the cost of the thing, but there's also the value it delivers and whatever. And I feel like previous to ultimate jumping up to $29, 99 cents a month. The value was pretty much there. One of the big problems there was of course getting rid of the day one releases for Microsoft Studio games.
Richard Campbell [01:50:01]:
Yeah, they never could deliver on that.
Paul Thurrott [01:50:02]:
It was just never going to make sense financially. So we'll see. But they're looking at it. To me this feels obvious. So she has in the memo says she's going to go deeper with the employees of that part of Xbox to try to figure this thing out and we'll see what happens. But yeah, game pass was a couple of years there at least was kind of a no brainer. You know, it was so great. And now it, now it's gone into like.
Paul Thurrott [01:50:32]:
It depends, you know, it depends on your needs.
Richard Campbell [01:50:34]:
You have to think about how much you're going to spend.
Paul Thurrott [01:50:36]:
Yeah, it's, it's, it. It's definitely not worth it to me because of the way I play games. But I still feel like it's worth it to some people depending on the tier and you know how they.
Richard Campbell [01:50:49]:
Even if they even were getting a tier one game a year or so, 30 bucks about is too much. Like it's, it doesn't, it's.
Paul Thurrott [01:50:55]:
Oh, it's too. The $30 a month when you do get the day one games, you get all of them. So like actually that's the one where you do get everything. It's. They got rid of it for the other tiers essentially. Right? Yeah, yeah. It's too bad.
Richard Campbell [01:51:08]:
Still a lot man. That's a lot of tier one games in a year. I know
Paul Thurrott [01:51:14]:
there's a well regarded series of games called Metro and I think it's like Metro 2026. Metro 20. I don't remember the exact date numbers next to each of the games but I have started both of them about 100 times each and never got very far. But it's like kind of Soviet Union winter apocalypse. Something has happened, blah blah, blah, whatever. Anyway, there's a new one coming out soon called Metro 2039 and they're going to reveal that game during an Xbox broadcast tomorrow as I record this. So Thursday, April 20th. I'm sorry, April 16th.
Paul Thurrott [01:51:51]:
That will be live streamed on the YouTube Xbox YouTube channel. So I'm actually curious about this one. It seems kind of. It's sort of like like the stalker. Two games are kind of in the same kind of rough, you know.
Richard Campbell [01:52:03]:
Yeah. Type post apocalyptic.
Paul Thurrott [01:52:05]:
Yeah. First person shooter, you know, kind of iron curtain kind of related or adjacent or whatever.
Richard Campbell [01:52:14]:
Lots of, lots of brutalist architecture and bad hats.
Paul Thurrott [01:52:18]:
Yep. Bad weather, you know, probably acid rain. And snow. Anyway, all right, so PlayStation 5 version of Starfield apparently is pretty buggy, so much so that a lot of people are asking for refunds. There's lots of crashing issues, et cetera, et cetera. Microsoft has promised to fix this, just like they promised to fix Windows 11. So I'm sure it's going to go great. Wouldn't worry about that.
Paul Thurrott [01:52:45]:
Everything's fine. If someone could explain Amazon and gaming to me, I guess I'm vaguely interested. But there's the whole prime gaming and they have free games every month and blah, blah, blah, whatever. But then there's Luna. And Luna kind of goes back and forth too. Like if you have a Prime subscription, I think you get some Luna for free. But you can have a Luna subscription and you can get their controller and they used to have game purchases, subscriptions, third party integrations, third party stores like EA Ubisoft, I think GOG were in there and they're getting rid of all that. So I think Luna is basically going to turn into what Stadia was, which means it's probably then going to go away a year later.
Paul Thurrott [01:53:28]:
But it's a, you know, Luna is a. Well, at the part that will be left is the core of it. As I think of it. This is the game streaming service, right. And so, you know, there was a time when Stadia was still around. It was actually the best of those services because the latency was so low between the controller and the game. And I think Luna does something similar. I haven't looked at Luna in quite a while actually.
Paul Thurrott [01:53:53]:
But they're going to get rid of all the third party app store integration, etc. All the other stuff. So.
Richard Campbell [01:53:59]:
So it's done.
Paul Thurrott [01:54:01]:
I mean, that's not how Amazon's promoting it, but yeah, I mean, pretty much, I think so. All right, I. That's my guess.
Richard Campbell [01:54:10]:
Okay.
Leo Laporte [01:54:13]:
There is a game that is tempting me to buy a Windows machine.
Paul Thurrott [01:54:17]:
Oh, what is it?
Leo Laporte [01:54:19]:
It's called. It came out yesterday. It's in early beta. It's called Wind Rose. It is a pirate survival game, kind of like, I think Sea of Thieves. But. But you're. You have to build stick looking and fish and build your own ships.
Paul Thurrott [01:54:35]:
So I just want to be clear, you're not referring to the Italian power metal band Wind Rose?
Leo Laporte [01:54:40]:
No. Is there really Italian power?
Paul Thurrott [01:54:43]:
That's the first thing that came up. When I looked at it up, I was like, what?
Leo Laporte [01:54:46]:
No, I'm so sorry about the name confusion.
Paul Thurrott [01:54:49]:
That's amazing.
Leo Laporte [01:54:50]:
I love, as you know, I love, I love Valheim I like survival games. And this looks like it's got the best of both worlds.
Paul Thurrott [01:54:56]:
Is it Wind Rose or Wind Rose
Leo Laporte [01:54:59]:
with a wind rose up to meet your sails?
Paul Thurrott [01:55:03]:
Ah, yes, yes, yes. Okay, that's funny.
Leo Laporte [01:55:06]:
But it's Windows only. Maybe that's why they call it Windrows. It's for Windows.
Paul Thurrott [01:55:11]:
Oh, nice. Yeah, it's a play on words. I love those.
Leo Laporte [01:55:15]:
Get it? Windows on Windrows. I. I wonder if I could play it with Proton on a Linux box, but I don't know.
Paul Thurrott [01:55:22]:
They don't mention that. Someone will figure that out pretty quick. So probably, yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:55:27]:
Windrows Weekly welcome. It's going to be our new show and.
Paul Thurrott [01:55:30]:
Nice.
Leo Laporte [01:55:30]:
And then we'll do Hands on Windrows and the rest is history. Hey, I just want to. Go ahead.
Richard Campbell [01:55:38]:
Sorry I said I'm probably going to miss a week in September because I'm going to be on a tall ship cruising around the Inner Hebrides.
Leo Laporte [01:55:44]:
Oh, I'm so jealous that's up there.
Paul Thurrott [01:55:46]:
As one does.
Richard Campbell [01:55:47]:
Yeah, that's, you know, Scotland. We're doing a whiskey tour.
Leo Laporte [01:55:50]:
Scotland does. Where are your tweeds? Because it's chilly up there.
Richard Campbell [01:55:54]:
It's going to be chilly.
Leo Laporte [01:55:55]:
Yeah, chilly and damp. Which is why they like to wear wool. Time to go. Head to the back of the book and Paul Thurot with his tip of the week.
Paul Thurrott [01:56:06]:
Paul. Yeah. So now that Microsoft is making the Windows Insider program start to make some sense, if you're listening to your show, you probably care about Windows a little bit. If you have given up on this program and a lot of people did.
Richard Campbell [01:56:19]:
No,
Paul Thurrott [01:56:21]:
not this program.
Leo Laporte [01:56:22]:
Oh, that program. The Insider program.
Paul Thurrott [01:56:24]:
Who would give up on this program?
Leo Laporte [01:56:25]:
No, don't give up on this program.
Paul Thurrott [01:56:27]:
No, it might be time to take another look. So for right now, you can't actually join any of the new channels, but it's worth reading up on what they're doing. And I think it could be as soon as next week, but sometime pretty soon they're going to open this thing up. And I already do this across a lot of computers, frankly. But I'm going to try to be a little more engaged here because keeping track of features coming to Windows has been incredibly difficult over the past two to three years. And I'm hoping that this irons that out a little bit. But also just know that there are kind of a. There is a renewed energy at Microsoft to make Windows better and this would be a way to participate in that.
Paul Thurrott [01:57:08]:
So if you've given up on the Insider program, I get it. But I would take a look at that again and I. Oh, God. I just told. I just told Notion to do some kind of a.
Leo Laporte [01:57:19]:
Did you turn on the AI?
Paul Thurrott [01:57:20]:
Yeah, by mistake. Because it's everywhere now, right?
Leo Laporte [01:57:22]:
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott [01:57:23]:
It reworded the blurb about the Insider program. Thanks. Thanks, I needed that. Don't ever do that again.
Richard Campbell [01:57:31]:
Again.
Paul Thurrott [01:57:31]:
Not a writer, but if you ever freaking touch my writing again, I swear to God I will find you. No, anyway, and then epic wise. Sorry. 2. Real quick. Start connection Explorer is out. It's only part of Object Desktop right now, but it will be available for a standalone purchase soon. What this is is a visualization of all of your network traffic so you can see where things are going from your computer.
Paul Thurrott [01:57:55]:
And it's fascinating, you know, if you do something as simple as, you know, just you sync OneDrive or something, it should be syncing to a Microsoft data center that's pretty close to you because they have those things everywhere. But anyone who's used this has seen like kind of spurious traffic that for some reason ends up in Europe or in some cases in Russia, which is what you don't want to see. And it's neat because it follows the traffic through various loops to kind of see the end game for that stuff. And this is going to be of interest, I think, to a lot of people. So it's basically like a network activity visualizer, I guess, is the thing to say. And then I think I referenced this in the show, but if not, we talked about it briefly before the show. So Scott Hanselman, who I believe is a vice president in Microsoft but is engaged all across the company now, he's doing some stuff. Windows Adjacent has a podcast with Mark Russinovich, Right.
Paul Thurrott [01:58:47]:
They've been talking a lot about Vibe coding. It's one of those topics that, that comes up again and again. And he has a website where he is publishing the apps and utilities that he has Vibe coded. It's called Tiny Tool Town. It's worth looking through. I mean, it's kind of. It's a little goofy. But the thing he just came up with, which someone promoted to me as the greatest idea of all time, is something called Peak Desktop.
Paul Thurrott [01:59:14]:
And what it is is if you've ever used a Mac, if you're on the desktop and you've got floating windows and you can actually click down to the desktop, it actually hides all the windows, they kind of go out to the side and it allows you to interact with the desktop and then you can, you know, move things, rename things, do Whatever it is. And then you click again or hit Escape or whatever, and the windows all come back to where they were. And I was like, well, we already have that feature. It's called Show Desktop. And by the way, Show Desktop has a keyboard shortcut, which is how I use it. And as long as you don't open other windows while you're doing this, if you Windows key +D it again, everything goes back to it was. So I don't quite understand the point of this, but other than the fact that he vibe coded it, which does make it somewhat interesting, and it might be worth just looking at his other tools that he has there just to kind of see what he's up to. 296 tools and counting.
Paul Thurrott [02:00:06]:
The site tells me so.
Leo Laporte [02:00:08]:
Wow.
Paul Thurrott [02:00:09]:
Yeah, maybe worth looking at 52 of which were tagged with the term Windows. So there's a bunch in there for Windows. Yeah, yeah. And it's worth looking at. But seriously, also Show Desktop. I'm just saying, you know,
Leo Laporte [02:00:26]:
is there something under there?
Paul Thurrott [02:00:27]:
Yeah, yeah, there's something.
Leo Laporte [02:00:29]:
Really?
Paul Thurrott [02:00:29]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:00:30]:
Wow, that's so cool.
Paul Thurrott [02:00:32]:
Oh, I just made a Kevin joke. Anyway, so we never did tell people
Leo Laporte [02:00:36]:
his fun, which was quite good.
Paul Thurrott [02:00:38]:
Yeah, Right, right, right.
Leo Laporte [02:00:41]:
Okay. Should we do run his radio? Are you in the mood?
Richard Campbell [02:00:44]:
Sure.
Leo Laporte [02:00:45]:
Mr. Richard Campbell, what's coming up.
Richard Campbell [02:00:48]:
Emily Mancini back for her third visit to run as Radio, which I'm very grateful for. And she's always talked about on the show about various aspects of, like, internal websites, things like that, your intranet, and how companies can distribute information to employees and so on. This week's conversation was about some of the new tooling around measuring the effectiveness of different communications tools for your organization. Like, where do people go look, how do they ask questions if you put out a message, how many people react to it? Those kinds of things. We'd never really talked about that before. And this also dipped into mostly into Microsoft tools. So you're naturally going to end up talking about Teams and Outlook and things like that. But we also got into some of the Viva products, products, including products called Cleverly Engage and Amplify, though apparently we're not supposed to use the word Viva anymore, because branding.
Richard Campbell [02:01:43]:
Anyway, the bigger issue here, irrespective of the product, was this. Are you measuring effectiveness? Are you actually, you know, we do all this work on the public with your SEO and response rates and things like that, but why do the same thing internally? Just to know that you're not shouting into the void or that employees are unaware of what's going on? And you know, the sort of the effects that that have with an organization. It's typically very distributed. People work from home and possibly sometime in the office, just how they know what's going on and what's important to the company. So I'm just very grateful for the conversation. As usual, Emily's thoughtful in this space. And so we. We went a long way down the path.
Richard Campbell [02:02:23]:
Good thinking there. Yes.
Leo Laporte [02:02:25]:
Run as radio episode 1032 from runnersradio.com it came out today. It's tax day in the U.S. you guys probably do your taxes a month earlier, don't you? Like everything else?
Richard Campbell [02:02:38]:
Well, it's a metric conversion, so it's like double it now. 30? No, it's end of the month. I thought.
Paul Thurrott [02:02:43]:
I thought we didn't have to do taxes anymore. Did I miss the memo?
Leo Laporte [02:02:46]:
Oh, yeah. No, nobody has to pay taxes anymore. As long as you're a billionaire, Paul, it's okay.
Paul Thurrott [02:02:50]:
Oh, yeah. Let me check.
Richard Campbell [02:02:52]:
The bigger conversation has been in being down here in New Zealand where when you do your taxes that the government says, hey, here's what we see of your taxes. If this is correct, just sign here.
Leo Laporte [02:03:02]:
I love that. Every other country in the world does it. They send you a postcard. Yeah, we know what you. We know what you made, dude.
Richard Campbell [02:03:09]:
Made.
Leo Laporte [02:03:09]:
Yeah, I think Americans don't like that because we. We're ornery, right? We said we don't trust the government to tell us what we made.
Paul Thurrott [02:03:16]:
Well, we like to cheat, I think is what you're trying to say.
Leo Laporte [02:03:18]:
Oh, yeah, that's it.
Paul Thurrott [02:03:19]:
I think that's the.
Leo Laporte [02:03:21]:
Well, I hope we left you. We left you half an hour. I hope that's enough time to talk about your favorite brown liquor this week.
Richard Campbell [02:03:29]:
Well, because I went. I'm in New Zealand. So we went New Zealand whiskey shopping and. And I found one. And maybe it's funny in the morning, so.
Leo Laporte [02:03:36]:
Because it thinks I'm in New Zealand too. Look at that. It says you're currently in the New Zealand store. I wish. If only. If only. So let's see what you got there.
Richard Campbell [02:03:46]:
The product's called Scapegrace. And let's talk about the name, because originally it was not called Scapegrace. The company was started in 2014 in Auckland and it was called Rogue Society, which.
Leo Laporte [02:03:58]:
Oh, I like that too.
Richard Campbell [02:03:59]:
So this was two brothers in law. How weird is that? So I guess the husbands of two sisters, Daniel McLaughlin and Mark Neal, both in the alcohol business, not producing, but Daniel was doing alcohol promotions in Auckland with one company, and Mark was doing with a company called lion out of New South Wales in Australia. And I think they. They had another partner, Marsha, money guy, sits on the board and so forth. So I think they just saw the opportunity to that making a stylish booze would make a lot of sense. So they started with gin. Very typical. They did contract production.
Richard Campbell [02:04:39]:
So just a little. They had a little office in. In East Lynn, which is a little suburb of. Of Auckland. Did their production down in Christchurch. I did a lot of digging on this because it wasn't immediately obvious as to who was making their booze. And I eventually figured it out as a group called Spirits Workshop, specifically a guy named Anthony Lowry who is on their bottles as their. Their master distiller because I think he's now works for them.
Richard Campbell [02:05:03]:
But he had started the Spirits Workshop around that time frame as well. And his. He has particular style elements that are showing up in both companies. So I sort of gave it away. Specifically they. The Spirits Workshop has a kind of gin still that's very famous in the uk, a John Doerr still. They're kind of a legend. They last a long time.
Richard Campbell [02:05:23]:
They've been or handmade for forever and they make very, very good gins. And Rogue Society gin was an absolute hit going out the gate and, you know, I'm not going to look down on them for doing contract production. That makes a lot of sense. You've got. There are facilities out there that'll do that. You are specifying a lot in your. The alcohol that you're making about what the grain sources are and what botanicals you want to put in. Like there's a bunch of steps that you do tailor your own gin.
Richard Campbell [02:05:49]:
And Rogue Society did very well right off the bat. Again, these are both marketing guys so they knew how to promote their product. The problem is that they were successful enough that they started to get into other markets. And when they hit E U they ran into a company called Rogue Ales who protested their entry into the EU market. And so they needed to immediately rebrand if they wanted to sell in the market. And so they went with stock Scapegrace, which makes you wonder what the heck is scapegrace? And it's a shortening of the concept of one who has escaped God's grace. A rogue.
Leo Laporte [02:06:21]:
In other words, a rogue.
Richard Campbell [02:06:22]:
Exactly. So it's a play on the concept of rogue or a troublemaker with charm. And so the rebrand works just fine. And that's they. And by the way, we had the gin last night as well and it is Excellent. No two ways about it. They make a traditional London dry. They also make what they call a black gin, but you notice the purple gin, you know, when it changes color, when you add taught it to it.
Richard Campbell [02:06:42]:
It's very clich, I think, but, you know, equally as popular. So in 2018 they acquire a John Doerr still. The company that Mark used to work for, lion, actually had a facility in Newmarket, that's in Auckland or outside of Auckland, in distillery that had been shut down since the late 90s. And it had a. Not just a Johns door still in it, but one of the last generation of John Doors that was handmade. It was from 1952. And again, these stills are kind of legend. And I think the reason, and this is what I've been doing, the study on these guys, how I figured out their relationship to Anthony Lowry and the whole spirits workshop down in Christchurch was that they had a John Doerr.
Richard Campbell [02:07:27]:
And so these guys knew about John Doar and had found a really great John Doer sitting in a building that had basically been unused for 20 years and was about to be scrapped. So they rescued that still. They went to great lengths to finally get a deal. Had to remove it themselves. And then they again in their documentation just said shipped it to Christchurch. But I'm pretty sure they shipped it to the spirits warehouse where there already was a John Dor still, but now there were two. And they spent a few years operating there while they started building their own distillery. And that brings us to the actual facility that starts making this whiskey and so forth.
Richard Campbell [02:08:03]:
So it's a part of New Zealand. You, you probably don't know a lot about like most people think about New Zealand beside beyond Lord of the Rings. You, you know, it's got two big islands. North Island, South Island. North island is very tropical. It's, you know, in a lot of way it's a volcanic island. It has a super volcano on it called Lake Taupo. It's very, you know, lush and green and jungly, great beaches.
Richard Campbell [02:08:26]:
And in the south island is more the farm country. The west side is rugged mountains. The east side are these long rolling green hills covered in sheep. Right. I mean that's, it's cliche, but they know that's what a lot of people know it as. This is not either one of those things. It's the southern part of the south island area they call Central Otago, although the locals just call it the Central. So we're inland in the southern part of south island where it's rather comparatively dry.
Richard Campbell [02:08:54]:
The mountain range is still in the west. But it's high plateaus. The Manitotos are large and with rivers running between the two there. And specifically we're talking about the Coltha river which feeds the central area. And there's an expanding part of that river they actually call Dunstan Lake. So this is kind of the roughest weather you'll find in New Zealand in a lot of respects. It's 45 degrees south on the nose. So you're literally halfway between the equator and the South Pole.
Richard Campbell [02:09:22]:
You get cold winters, you get hot dry summers. The equivalent, if you wanted to look at this is Minneapolis is 45 degrees north. So that's just, you know, most of us think about New Zealand being pretty mild and so forth within a slight column just came through, but not that mild. This is kind of the dry area and the deserty area. Now it doesn't mean that there hasn't been people there for a long time. The Maori people have been on these islands for hundreds of years. News evidence going of Maori hunting and trading in that area, mostly by water. They were big on canoes for 700 years.
Richard Campbell [02:09:55]:
You know, there's a big area. The Europeans only took this part of the world seriously when they found gold. And literally down the road from where this distillery turned out in the area called Bendigo was once the Bendigo gold fields. This is the late 1800s. 1860s was the big gold rush. Today this is winery country and, or and orchards with irrigation. The soils are very good, but it's the harsh conditions that make excellent wine. And this is where they put the distillery as well.
Richard Campbell [02:10:23]:
The big airport down here is Queenston. And Queenston is very much a vacation town. You go here in the winter when you want to go skiing and you go here in the summer to go on the lakes and do water skiing and boating and that sort of thing. They're not alone. One of the whiskies we talked about a couple of years ago now, Cadrona, it's literally on the other side of the valley from where Scapegrace has done their building. So I was, I'm looking at these whiskeys and of course this is their original, what they call their original vanguard. It's got no age statement on it. And just by based on the timing, because they got this distillery built in 2022, this couldn't be more than three or four years old, which should be very fair.
Richard Campbell [02:11:04]:
But as I started digging in deeper and looking at their early productions, I realized they actually released a whiskey in 2019, long before their distillery was built. So clearly they were doing whiskey production with the Christchurch facilities, probably Spirits Workshop. And their first whiskey release was called antipode. And in 2022, just as they were opening this new facility, they did a whole line of whiskies all with Anthony Laurie on it as the master distiller. But their first release in 22 was something called Rise and it was a five year old, which means they must have been laying it up in 2017 because I can do math. So they clearly were working very early on. They were not particularly popular whiskies, but they were, they had certain specific things about them. They were using New Zealand barley and they were aging in French oak.
Richard Campbell [02:11:55]:
So somebody had a connection with European Oak Supply. And that was Spirit's Workshop as well. They did several different releases there. But now if you go, if you're on the site today and you're looking around, you will see none of this. They have essentially erased all their non Central Otago production to focus on the new distillery. Right. They spent 30 million in New Zealand dollars to build this thing. It's one of the largest distilleries in all of New Zealand.
Richard Campbell [02:12:21]:
One of their claims to fame is their very low carbon operation because all of their power comes from hydroelectric power, which is normal in South Island. It's very problem. They have that John Dore still that they're so excited about from 1952, one of the last handmade john doors anywhere in one of the first, only two in all of New Zealand. They're almost never found out of the uk. It's only used for making gin. They purchased a pair of Speyside copper work stills from Scotland for Whiskey making a 5,000 liter wash still and a 3,500liter spirit still. So they're sort of set up to make about 1600 cases of whiskey a year. They were also supposed to open a Visitor center in 2025, but it hasn't opened yet.
Richard Campbell [02:12:59]:
And there's many reasons why that might be the case. So clearly the marketing people have taken over and now that they're making their own whiskey in their own distillery, all mentions of the past whiskies have been erased to focus on this. And Vanguard is the now their new original whiskey release for, for their new distillery. And it has all the hallmarks of their previous experiments of whiskey. It's still Anthony Laurie. There's the master distiller, the guy who used to run Spirits Workshop, which by the way Spirits Workshop still exists and it makes a gin and a whiskey weird. They age in 200 liter French oak barrels, virgin French oak barrels. So they're buying brand new European wood.
Richard Campbell [02:13:42]:
Those are very small barrels at 200 liters which is good because you're talking about a young whiskey maker. They need to age quickly. Plus the harsh conditions of the 45th parallel means it's going to get very cold and very hot. It's much rougher than Scotland so they're going to age pretty fast. So this is probably pretty young stuff. Again there's no age statement on it but it couldn't be more than three or four years old. Unless they're actually taking some of the stuff they made out of Christ Church and adding it to it. But I don't have any evidence of that much.
Richard Campbell [02:14:10]:
It was tough enough just to find out they're even making it there. I'd like to point out that I'm sacrificing myself to all of you at 8:30 in the morning to be drinking whiskey. It is a hardship and what I'm willing to embrace this whiskey one gold in 2025 as the top New Zealand single malt.
Leo Laporte [02:14:28]:
Which okay, you can have a lip jump but you cannot drink the whole glass.
Richard Campbell [02:14:37]:
So no heat is a 40. It's quite low for whiskey. There's no heat on the nose. It's not fiery in any way. Very. This is if there's any criticism for it because it drinks so nicely. It's a little harmless.
Leo Laporte [02:14:50]:
Harmless, yeah. Good for 8:30am yeah, it goes down really nice.
Richard Campbell [02:14:55]:
And again I'm World Whiskey awards winning top NZ single malt. Okay fine. Because your competition was six companies, right? But they got silver for this whiskey in the international wine and spirits competition and that's badass, that's worldwide. So this is pretty good whiskey. It's not revolutionary but for a company this young with this the first runs out of their sills. Just a bit of aging well, it's pretty cool. Like it's pretty cool. And again they're good marketers.
Richard Campbell [02:15:26]:
So you can buy this in the us it's only at specialty shops. There's not very much of it around. I of course got this in New Zealand for about 90 NZ dollars which is about 55 US dollars, 40%. It's a 700 mil bottle. They're not doing the Australian thing and doing 500 mils. But it's also not a 750 because you know, reasons 700 mil bottle. But yeah is available abroad but only by select producers. You got to kind of want it.
Richard Campbell [02:15:55]:
Yeah, I. Why would you buy this? You want a New Zealand whiskey And you want something that's just not. Not terrible. It's not a profound product, I'll give you that.
Leo Laporte [02:16:04]:
It's.
Richard Campbell [02:16:04]:
Listen, there's plenty of bad whiskey out there.
Leo Laporte [02:16:06]:
Pretty good. If it won silver, I mean, it's.
Richard Campbell [02:16:09]:
It won silver internationally. That's badass. Like, well done.
Leo Laporte [02:16:12]:
But yeah, it's better than.
Richard Campbell [02:16:15]:
Anyway, you'll notice I've. I've had this for a few days and half the bottle is gone, so how much could it be? Terrible. Right? But we. I've been. I've been celebrating with my cousins and some friends, so whiskey's getting drank.
Leo Laporte [02:16:27]:
Scapegrace. I love the name Escape Grace.
Richard Campbell [02:16:30]:
And once you Escape Race seemed like a dumb name till you knew the story about Escaping Grace. Then it's like, okay, that's cool.
Leo Laporte [02:16:37]:
I didn't actually know the origin of it, but I did know what the word meant, I guess, probably, you know, I've read the Scarlet Pimpernel or something like that there. You kind of comes back to me. Very nice.
Richard Campbell [02:16:49]:
Yeah. And they are doing a peated, but they're not using Scottish peat. They're doing smoking with Manuka wood, which is very much a New Zealand wood. So it's got its New Zealand character to it. So their anthem, which is the next edition after Vanguard, is this smoky whiskey done with Manuka. So they're doing very museum nice. Yeah. And I'm delighted.
Richard Campbell [02:17:13]:
Again, this is not your conventional whiskey story of. These guys were old school whiskey makers and they went off on their own to make their thing. These are a couple of guys who know how to make popular booze, know how to do their branding, and have grown into making the booze by finding a great guy in this Anthony Lawry and letting him do his thing.
Leo Laporte [02:17:31]:
Go to it.
Richard Campbell [02:17:32]:
Yeah. Well done.
Leo Laporte [02:17:34]:
By the way, if you enjoy these whiskeys segments which appear at the end of every Windows Weekly show, our editor and producer Kevin King has put together a nice playlist of hundreds of these, starting with how whiskey is made.
Richard Campbell [02:17:49]:
Yeah. And then eight. Eight parts of explaining Scottish whiskey that run two and a half hours. Who knew I could talk? Wow.
Leo Laporte [02:17:56]:
And, and, and you're getting close to cat caught up here. So there's a tequila pick in there.
Richard Campbell [02:18:02]:
And.
Leo Laporte [02:18:02]:
Yeah, very nice. That is all. It's something weird from mycloset.com which redirects you to the YouTube playlist for Windows Whiskey. Very nice. This is really hysterical. Kevin, good job.
Richard Campbell [02:18:20]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:18:20]:
I really appreciate it.
Richard Campbell [02:18:22]:
It's very, very good.
Leo Laporte [02:18:23]:
And I really appreciate both of you. Thank you for doing A great show. We do Windows Weekly every Wednesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern Time. That would be 1800 UTC. If you want to watch live, you can of course club members can watch in the club Twit Discord. But everybody can watch if you want on YouTube. That's maybe the easiest. YouTube.com TWit will link you up to it.
Leo Laporte [02:18:50]:
Let's see what else. Twitch, X.com, facebook, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. So seven platforms at the. Those are all during the live show after the fact. You know, we do make, you know, package it up into a podcast. Kevin polishes it up a little bit and we put that on our website, Twit TV WW. There's a YouTube channel that's dedicated just to Windows Weekly and actually that's a great way to share clips of the show. And easiest thing to do though is subscribe in your favorite podcast client, Windows Weekly.
Leo Laporte [02:19:23]:
Just search for that audio or video or both. It's free and you'll get it automatically as soon as it's done. Paul Thurot hangs his hat@therot.com Great place to go to get the latest Windows news. And if you're a premium member, you get a lot that and a lot more. Plus copies of all of his books. Is that still available? Is that still part of the premium?
Paul Thurrott [02:19:42]:
Yes, that's an ongoing perk.
Leo Laporte [02:19:44]:
Ongoing perk. Pike, if you, if you're already a member or you know, or you just want to give Paul more money, get the books@leanpub.com always welcome.
Paul Thurrott [02:19:53]:
Appreciated. Always welcome.
Leo Laporte [02:19:56]:
Richard Campbell is@runasradio.com and that's where you'll also find not only run his radio, but his other podcast with Carl franklin.net rocks. And that's where you find the geek outs, by the way, some good space geekouts on that channel if you search for those. Thank you, Richard. Enjoy your time and tanga.
Richard Campbell [02:20:14]:
Yeah, rest of this week and then off to Sydney for the NDC Sydney conference.
Leo Laporte [02:20:19]:
So nice.
Richard Campbell [02:20:20]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:20:21]:
And thank you, Paul. Enjoy your time in Mexico City. And I'm going back to my meager lunch.
Paul Thurrott [02:20:29]:
I feel vaguely sad about your lunch,
Leo Laporte [02:20:31]:
but that was a great lunch. It was basically a pub lunch. It was cheddar and an apple, little turkey, pickles. It was a plowman's lunch.
Paul Thurrott [02:20:40]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [02:20:41]:
And your negotiations to have the Sono speaker speak to you.
Leo Laporte [02:20:44]:
Yes, we're getting there.
Paul Thurrott [02:20:45]:
Yeah. But did you get like a pint of beer with this or.
Leo Laporte [02:20:48]:
Yeah, no, no, I got.
Richard Campbell [02:20:52]:
Usually comes with a half loaf of rye Bread, Right.
Paul Thurrott [02:20:55]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:20:55]:
I got a pub favorite. It's the 30 grams of protein in a Fairlife protein drink.
Paul Thurrott [02:21:02]:
Okay.
Leo Laporte [02:21:03]:
You know, it's sad what. What lengths we go to to try to live longer.
Paul Thurrott [02:21:09]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:21:10]:
Especially since it's completely futile.
Paul Thurrott [02:21:13]:
Yes.
Richard Campbell [02:21:14]:
Just. Just trying to feel good for those. Life that's right. In the home. Right.
Leo Laporte [02:21:18]:
I just want to make it to feel good. Just. Let me just show you. I'll test the. Let me test the studio speakers again. I want to play it for Paul and. And Richard. Just, just to show you.
Leo Laporte [02:21:32]:
Comes through. The speakers are in the ceiling in this room.
Paul Thurrott [02:21:36]:
Oh, so you've got those like. Yeah, I've got service compatible.
Richard Campbell [02:21:39]:
Yeah. 1, 2, 3.
Leo Laporte [02:21:41]:
So it fills the room.
Paul Thurrott [02:21:43]:
Yeah. Then that says you at least go, Leo. I know. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:21:48]:
A little problem there. I do live with somebody. Oh, shoot. Yeah, it was asking you. It's funny. It did ask me. He says now if you're playing music on all the speakers, do you want me to interrupt? Yes. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:22:03]:
Interrupt.
Paul Thurrott [02:22:05]:
I call that. You call it Bluetooth mode.
Richard Campbell [02:22:08]:
Duck the music and play over and have the voice.
Leo Laporte [02:22:10]:
Oh, I probably could do that. I could say duck the music.
Richard Campbell [02:22:12]:
I think that'd be.
Leo Laporte [02:22:12]:
That'd be the next step in this is. I wanted to. I want to be able to buy voice commands, say read my book to me or play my music to me and stuff like that. I think that that's going to be pretty straightforward. But yeah, you know, I. I try to do little bits at a time. Thank you.
Paul Thurrott [02:22:26]:
Baby steps. Baby steps.
Richard Campbell [02:22:27]:
Is that. Is that home assistant there? Is that ha you're talking to?
Leo Laporte [02:22:30]:
No, that's Claude. Claude's doing it all by itself. But because I do have a home assistant green and I have. Have this ESP32 now which has full home assistant support. Look at that.
Richard Campbell [02:22:41]:
That's a. Sure.
Leo Laporte [02:22:42]:
This is a temperature sensor and then there's a moisture sensor and it's temperature. Oh, this says radar. I don't know what this is. I guess it's a motion sensor.
Richard Campbell [02:22:50]:
It's. It's an occupancy sensor. Like it there?
Paul Thurrott [02:22:53]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:22:53]:
So that's pretty wild. So I. Yeah, I'm setting this up to. To do a little more with the Ha.
Paul Thurrott [02:22:59]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [02:23:00]:
And of course, Claude speaks Ha like everything else, perfectly fluently. Thank you everybody for joining us. We'll see you next Wednesday for another thrilling, gripping edition of Windows Weekly.
Paul Thurrott [02:23:12]:
Bye. Bye.
Richard Campbell [02:23:14]:
And I am headed for dim sum with my mother. Sounds great.
Leo Laporte [02:23:18]:
Oh, yeah, your mom lives in New Zealand.
Richard Campbell [02:23:22]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:23:22]:
Oh, I didn't realize that's why you went there. I thought they were like cousins and stuff. That's your mom's place.
Richard Campbell [02:23:28]:
That too. And I moved. She wanted to move back to New Zealand. She'd been living for a long time, so.
Leo Laporte [02:23:33]:
Nice. How long has she been back?
Paul Thurrott [02:23:34]:
Escape the oppression in Canada, you know, like three years.
Leo Laporte [02:23:37]:
Margaret Carney. What a tyrant, that guy.
Paul Thurrott [02:23:40]:
In his coalition.
Richard Campbell [02:23:46]:
With other countries.
Leo Laporte [02:23:47]:
I loved Mark's speech yesterday. That was fiery to the Liberal convention. Fiery, fiery speech.
Richard Campbell [02:23:55]:
Well, he's. He's had what, five or six politicians cross the floor to join his party now. So he's actually ended up with a majority.
Leo Laporte [02:24:03]:
It's really interesting to watch what's happened.
Paul Thurrott [02:24:05]:
You're suggesting politics can work, you know.
Richard Campbell [02:24:08]:
Weird.
Leo Laporte [02:24:09]:
The right kind when you're let.
Richard Campbell [02:24:11]:
When you're not. Not all about populism and kind of actually trying to get stuff done. So strange.
Paul Thurrott [02:24:16]:
It's. It's one way of doing things that's. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:24:19]:
I think Kearney's turning. I mean I thought he was kind of a non entity and a compromise candidate, but he's actually turning out to be, I think pretty good. Right.
Richard Campbell [02:24:27]:
He's an economist and a diplomat.
Leo Laporte [02:24:29]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [02:24:29]:
And kind of undramatic. Which is weird. Like people are. People ask me, what is he like? He's kind of dull. I kind of like dull.
Paul Thurrott [02:24:36]:
I feel good when I go to bed. I can just sleep. Everything's great. Oh, sounds nice.
Richard Campbell [02:24:41]:
He's got a dry sense of humor. He says things like, you know, I'm a man of the every people. I've eaten an airport muffin.
Leo Laporte [02:24:49]:
Now if Eric Swalwell said that, that would mean something completely different. But yeah, under in Mark Carney's mouth.
Paul Thurrott [02:24:57]:
I think we're ending the show the way we began it.
Leo Laporte [02:24:59]:
Yes. Thanks everybody. It's Richard Daz. The rest of the whiskey. We'll see you next time.
Paul Thurrott [02:25:07]:
I would need it from my mother. So that makes sense.
Leo Laporte [02:25:09]:
Dim sum on Windows Weekly.
