Windows Weekly 999 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 Thurrott is here. Well, he's not really. He's in Berlin and he's a little bit sleepy. Richard Campbell is in British Columbia. We have lots to talk about, including IFA. It's underway in Berlin and Paul brings back all the news from IFA. NVIDIA made a ton of money.

Leo Laporte [00:00:16]:
It's found a way to spend some of it. And Sonos, they're back, but will you buy one? That's next on Windows Weekly.

Paul Thurrott [00:00:26]:
Podcasts you love.

Leo Laporte [00:00:28]:
From people you trust. This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell, episode 999, recorded Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026. Physical goods. It's time for Windows Weekly. Hello, all you winners, all you dozers. This is the show we cover the latest news from Microsoft and Yes, there is news from Microsoft. But before we do that, let's go all the way to Berlin where Mr. Paul Theriot is sitting in a midnight hotel room.

Paul Thurrott [00:01:11]:
Possibly a prison.

Leo Laporte [00:01:12]:
It could be, it could be, uh, the Stasi have him. We don't know.

Richard Campbell [00:01:16]:
I don't know. I'm familiar with a corner like that with the, with the, uh, curtain on one side and the picture. I've done a few of those.

Leo Laporte [00:01:22]:
You've been there, done that. Paul is of course the host at theriot.com and has written many books and our regular DLM on the Sparks is— Oh, sorry, wait a minute. AI talking. Just forget her.

Richard Campbell [00:01:34]:
Also—

Paul Thurrott [00:01:34]:
Why does she sound like the little girl from Resident Evil?

Leo Laporte [00:01:37]:
What's that about?

Paul Thurrott [00:01:38]:
What's going on? Is that coincidental?

Leo Laporte [00:01:42]:
Yeah, it's just, um, it's a, it's a long story, Paul. Also here, Richard Campbell from Runners Radio. He's at home in British Columbia.

Richard Campbell [00:01:52]:
Yeah, one last show at home, although it's a kind of a stormy day today. Look at that. That's getting meaner out there. Big white caps.

Leo Laporte [00:01:57]:
Oh, they got the white caps. Yeah, yeah. The sunflower's starting to dip.

Richard Campbell [00:02:03]:
Yeah, it's getting rough. You can tell the fall is upon us.

Leo Laporte [00:02:07]:
It is. It's September, our first show of September. Now, Paul, because it's September, I'm guessing you're in Berlin for the annual flower show.

Paul Thurrott [00:02:15]:
No, that's right, at the Tuileries.

Leo Laporte [00:02:20]:
You know, you're there for IFA, right? Which stands for something having to do with Telefunken.

Paul Thurrott [00:02:27]:
Yeah, that sounds about right.

Leo Laporte [00:02:28]:
It's, uh, it's one of the oldest technology trade shows ever. I think it goes back more than almost 100 years, right?

Paul Thurrott [00:02:36]:
Do you know more about it than I do? I don't know. I don't know.

Leo Laporte [00:02:42]:
But what do we see there these days? It was a radio show, that's why it goes back, right?

Paul Thurrott [00:02:46]:
I mean, these days it's mostly— well, it's computers and phones, but it's also all kinds of electronics. If you want to know what's going on with vacuum cleaners, um, You know, things like that. Cars, whatever.

Leo Laporte [00:02:59]:
Dyson toothbrushes.

Paul Thurrott [00:03:01]:
Yeah. Wow. I'm pretty sure that's 100 years old.

Richard Campbell [00:03:03]:
19—

Leo Laporte [00:03:04]:
oh yeah, 1924. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:03:06]:
Yep. Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:03:07]:
It was, uh, originally home appliances and radios as the Berlin Radio Show.

Paul Thurrott [00:03:14]:
That's going to be my focus this year is the appliances. Medical appliances mostly.

Leo Laporte [00:03:21]:
Um, No, you went. Why did you go out? Why? Besides going to Berlin is great.

Richard Campbell [00:03:26]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [00:03:26]:
That's actually really the most, the big reason. But, um, no, I'm here for Lenovo. They're hosting me here this week.

Leo Laporte [00:03:33]:
So, and do they have some announcements there?

Paul Thurrott [00:03:37]:
Uh, yeah, but unfortunately those don't occur till tomorrow, so I can't really tell you much about that. Um, but we'll have some hints about it because there's some stuff coming up that we'll talk about. Um, This is going to be a big show for like the, uh, NVIDIA RTX Spark stuff. Um, for the Intel Wild Lake.

Leo Laporte [00:03:55]:
Oh yeah, that came out or was announced this week that the, the— I have a DGX Spark, which is kind of looks like a Mac Mini, but they're making a Windows laptop. Yeah, the same GB10, Grace Blackwell 10.

Richard Campbell [00:04:07]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:04:07]:
Uh, a process, uh, you know, GPU in it.

Paul Thurrott [00:04:10]:
These are going to be, uh, it's going to be pretty good.

Leo Laporte [00:04:13]:
Yeah. Did they say a price yet?

Paul Thurrott [00:04:16]:
So that's— no one is talking price yet. So my guess is, based on the, like, 3 so far, like, different companies I've heard from, is that there must be an event coming where this will happen. Like, Nvidia's probably asked them to wait, and— or it's happening later in this show and they just didn't tell me. But I—

Leo Laporte [00:04:32]:
every—

Paul Thurrott [00:04:33]:
the 3 companies I've heard from on this have all said, yeah, we'll see, it'll be soon.

Leo Laporte [00:04:37]:
Neither price are available. Yeah, well, the equivalent machine, which is very, very similar, might be a little more expensive because it has a 200 gigabit networking card in it.

Paul Thurrott [00:04:50]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:04:50]:
The GGX Spark is $4,600.

Paul Thurrott [00:04:54]:
Oh, okay.

Leo Laporte [00:04:55]:
So I think it'll be a $3,500 laptop, maybe a $4,000 laptop.

Paul Thurrott [00:04:59]:
I do too. Okay, so that's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah, same.

Richard Campbell [00:05:02]:
That's expensive, but not crazy. Like I was thinking—

Leo Laporte [00:05:05]:
No, because the whole point of it is you can run local models on it and do AI on it. It's, I mean, Forget, uh, what do they call them, a Copilot PC? This can actually run real, real AI on it.

Richard Campbell [00:05:16]:
We're not looking for 40 cops.

Paul Thurrott [00:05:17]:
That's hurtful. And B, yes, fair.

Leo Laporte [00:05:21]:
And it is Windows on ARM. It's an ARM Cortex processor.

Paul Thurrott [00:05:25]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:05:27]:
By the way, before we get into your rundown, and I know we've already distracted by talking about that, I should mention this breaking story that just came in. Google You may remember Google was being sued by the Department of Justice.

Richard Campbell [00:05:40]:
Correct.

Leo Laporte [00:05:41]:
It declared a monopoly in 2025, a year ago. The judge has been thinking about remedies ever since then. This is the trial where we were saying among options presented to the judge by the DOJ is the sale of Android, the sale of Chrome.

Paul Thurrott [00:06:00]:
Well, these are 2 different things. So actually, sorry, the thing that happened today is the ad business, not the search business. Unless something just happened with search too.

Leo Laporte [00:06:07]:
No, no, this is the ad business.

Richard Campbell [00:06:08]:
Yeah, right.

Leo Laporte [00:06:09]:
Uh, the Justice Department was asking that Google be forced to sell the ad exchange, right? Uh, and then also publish the auction, uh, logic. The judge rejected that. Google basically has a victory here. Judge, uh, Leonie Brinkema. Now, I don't know, is this in your rundown? I did— I just— I think—

Paul Thurrott [00:06:28]:
Um, I didn't add it to the rundown, but I did write about it. And yeah, so the problem with it is we don't actually have the full ruling because the judge has asked sides to review it and redact anything that's sensitive information if that was in there by mistake.

Leo Laporte [00:06:43]:
Okay.

Paul Thurrott [00:06:44]:
So some period of time will go by, but the big takeaway is that she's not gonna require Google to sell its ad business, mostly out of concerns that, you know, A, this is massively complicated, it will take years, Google will obviously appeal, and like, well, who ends up with this? Like, what if the, you know, the next company is terrible? So there is going to be an opening up of it. Like, they're going to have to share data with, um, competitors and so forth. So I don't know if that's the, the, the non-divestiture remedy stuff that has been suggested previously.

Richard Campbell [00:07:19]:
We don't know yet.

Paul Thurrott [00:07:20]:
But, um, I mean, I think this is the right decision, to be honest. As much as it's hard to say. I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't have a huge opinion on that, that part of it, but, um, we don't really know the details, so I guess we'll see.

Richard Campbell [00:07:34]:
I—

Paul Thurrott [00:07:34]:
the, the, the similar ruling that occurred in the search side was a complete, uh, just a belly flop on the part of that judge. I don't know what happened there. Like, that, that guy was so aggressively obvious about how terrible Google was, and I was like, eh, it's too messy, I don't feel like doing anything, you know, which is kind of weird. I, I mean, I'm guessing this is not gonna be exactly the same, but I think both judges felt that they really—

Leo Laporte [00:07:58]:
there wasn't really much of a remedy that they could do that wouldn't be worse than the, you know, the cure would be worse than the disease. They both recognize the disease.

Richard Campbell [00:08:07]:
Yep.

Paul Thurrott [00:08:07]:
Oh yeah, no, I mean, both of them were like, no, you, you have— your, your business is operating illegally. This is completely wrong. We have to do something to fix it. And it's like the DOJ in both cases was like, great, let's break up this company. And the judge in both cases like, yeah. I don't know. Yeah, a little complicated.

Leo Laporte [00:08:25]:
So Google skates in both cases. Yeah, I apologize, I conflated the, uh, the search with the, uh—

Paul Thurrott [00:08:31]:
No, it's so many antitrust cases, Leo. How can you keep them all straight?

Leo Laporte [00:08:35]:
You know?

Richard Campbell [00:08:35]:
I know.

Leo Laporte [00:08:36]:
All right, I just thought that since that was a breaking story, we could, we could mention that and move on. So let's move on.

Paul Thurrott [00:08:41]:
I don't think I added it to the notes.

Leo Laporte [00:08:43]:
I don't remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, I didn't see it. I just saw it now.

Paul Thurrott [00:08:46]:
Yeah, it happened right before I had to leave for an event, but yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:08:50]:
So what's going on in the world of Windows?

Paul Thurrott [00:08:54]:
Well, I'm glad you asked, Leo. Um, how do I say this? So last week—

Leo Laporte [00:09:01]:
Oh, just spit it out, Paul. You could break up with us. It's okay.

Paul Thurrott [00:09:05]:
What? No, last week I, uh, I mentioned that it was Week D and Microsoft had not released a Week D update for the first time honestly ever, right? I mean, when you think about it, like Week D is the preview update. It's the They've been doing this for a long, long time. It's the thing that is going to be the next Patch Tuesday. And previous to that, they had released to the Release Preview channel in the Insider Program what was clearly going to be what I would think of as 26H2, you know.

Richard Campbell [00:09:33]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:09:33]:
So I kind of speculated last week that these things must be tied together, that either there's some last-minute thing that was wrong, or they just wanted to hold on to it for a little while. Or if you think about the normal timing for the annual feature release, which is October, We're like just a little bit ahead of that in that I kind of left it at my guess is we're going to see a preview update of 26H2 in September. And then the final release, you know, the public release, whatever you want to call it, the stable release in October, which is, you know, the way it's been for the past several years or whatever. And since then, it turns out that is correct, although the way they're kind of rolling this out is unique. This is the first time they've ever done that. And so what they announced after our show last week is that they have put 26H2 into release preview, right? Which the build basically was there 2 weeks previous, but yeah, I don't know if they incremented the build number. I don't remember anymore. But so if you want to get it, you can just go get, you can just, anyone with a, you know, Windows 11 can go sign, you know, enroll themselves in the Insider Program, add it to the release preview channel, and they'll just get this thing.

Richard Campbell [00:10:44]:
It's 26H2.

Paul Thurrott [00:10:46]:
It's not 26H2 preview release. It's not a pre-release anything. It's the, it's the actual release. And sometime in the next few days, we'll see like an ISO release and yada, yada, yada. But they've never done this before. Like this is literally, they just have never done this. So it's kind of unique, which explains last week. And so there's not going to be a Week D update for August, which is now behind us, obviously.

Paul Thurrott [00:11:13]:
Um, and I don't know what the exact time frame is, but when you— again, when you think about it, it has to be September, October, right? And so my guess is, is what it was last week, that we will see this build make its way into stable, so to speak, as a preview update on Patch Tuesday, which is in, uh, one week from now, right?

Leo Laporte [00:11:33]:
Mm-hmm.

Paul Thurrott [00:11:34]:
And then will be, uh, generally available, if you will, in October, which is you know, like, like I said, is what I guessed last week. I'm still— I'm guessing it again this week just based on that, um, based on what happened. Me, um, I gotta put my screen in dark mode so I'm not lighting up my face here. Um, but it's kind of— it's just interesting. Like, I, I was so taken aback in a way by them not releasing this, you know, anything week 2. I was like, it didn't make sense. And then this happened. I'm like, oh, okay, this kind of makes sense.

Richard Campbell [00:12:06]:
It does beg the question, what happens next week? Right. Yep.

Paul Thurrott [00:12:09]:
Like, I'm really curious. So like I said, my money is we're going to see a preview release or yeah. So, well, okay. So Patch Tuesday, we got to think about this for a second because Patch Tuesday, of course, is, you know, there's going to be security updates, right? And so do we get like a Patch Tuesday stable release that's mostly security updates? Does, you know, we'll see, right? I don't, that I don't know. Obviously, I don't know that. But I would guess, yeah, my guess is this, like I said, my guess is preview update for this thing. But remember, you know, in the world that we've been in since I'm going to say 23H2, You know, version numbers don't matter anymore, right?

Richard Campbell [00:12:42]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:12:42]:
So every supported version of Windows has the same basic features, and literally the same features, really, right? This is an enablement package update. So 20— no, it was 24H2 was a big kind of underlying platform change. 25— am I getting this wrong? Actually, I'm sorry. I think it was 23H2 was that. But whatever the— I might be screwing this up. But 24H2, 25H2, 26H2 are all the same codebase. So Super simple update. You're just basically flipping switches.

Paul Thurrott [00:13:13]:
You do have to reboot, but it's gonna be very quick.

Richard Campbell [00:13:14]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:13:15]:
But again, it—

Richard Campbell [00:13:17]:
But there's still that, and there's still an ARM branch and an x86 branch.

Paul Thurrott [00:13:21]:
Yeah, so we're gonna get to that, one second. But yeah, so if you have, well, I'll just say it now since you mentioned it, but if you have a first-gen Snapdragon X computer, you are on 25H2, right?

Richard Campbell [00:13:35]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [00:13:35]:
You will have, you know, those are modern computers. You're updated to the latest version. You will get 26H2 in September or October. you would. If you're on 24H2 or 25H2 with an x86 computer, you will get 26H2 in September or October, right, or at some point. It will be pretty straightforward. It's the same codebase, really simple, same features, right? You know, you won't notice, you'll have to go look for it to even notice it. I mean, you know, you're not going to see anything.

Paul Thurrott [00:14:04]:
If you're on a Snapdragon X2 computer, you're not getting 26H2, right? When they announced this system back in the spring ahead of the release of the new Snapdragon X2 computers, Microsoft said that there will be some future update that you'll be moved on to, right? And whether that thing is called Windows 12 or Windows 11 27H2 or whatever, you know, we don't know that yet.

Richard Campbell [00:14:26]:
It seems surprising to me, like already just between one version of the Snapdragon and another, they're, they're separating these 2. That's nuts.

Paul Thurrott [00:14:33]:
Yeah. So I know, and we don't really know why. And, you know, and it was very vague at the time. It was just, um, something to do with some underlying platform changes that were unique to that system and we don't, no one has ever discovered anything about that. I don't really know why.

Richard Campbell [00:14:49]:
Yeah. And I'd be curious what the adoption rates are like, which one has more as well? Because lots of people held out for second gen, although admittedly buying hardware right now isn't any fun.

Paul Thurrott [00:14:58]:
Yep. That's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I, I will say because the first Gen X, you know, Snapdragon X was in the market for 2 years and, you know, Qualcomm updated with various different versions of the chips and PC makers actually did go through 2 generations. of their hardware, not the, right, the chip hardware. But, um, I'm gonna guess and say they're probably more first gen, honestly. But I—

Richard Campbell [00:15:23]:
Yeah, that's what I would think, just from a time perspective.

Paul Thurrott [00:15:27]:
Yep. Um, yeah, and so we'll see. I— there's been no hint of what the plans are for that thing yet, but—

Richard Campbell [00:15:34]:
And it's— I mean, it's in Microsoft's best interest to have one code base. Like, it just costs less to operate. Oh yeah, even if there's a lot of if ARM, if x86, you still want one code base.

Paul Thurrott [00:15:44]:
It's, it's not as simple as— so I'm, again, I've kind of forgotten which one was the major platform shift under the covers, but let's say it was either 23H2 or 24H2. It's weird, I can't remember this. But at that, you know, like the big difference there between that kind of update and an enablement package is that the update takes longer to install. You still have to reboot, right? So the computer is offline for a slightly longer period of time, but we're talking a difference of like minutes versus tens of minutes or something, right?

Leo Laporte [00:16:13]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:16:14]:
Big difference. So I, I think there's something about 26H1 and/or the Snapdragon X2 hardware that is bigger than that.

Richard Campbell [00:16:23]:
And we just don't know what it is. That they're not talking about.

Paul Thurrott [00:16:25]:
No.

Richard Campbell [00:16:25]:
And I hate to think it might be security related, right? Like it's also a possibility.

Paul Thurrott [00:16:30]:
It is a possibility. So is it just—

Richard Campbell [00:16:33]:
The underlying texture on all this for me, Paul, is the panic around fixing security bugs. Like I, when I saw the gap, when Dee didn't show up and I'm wondering what the hell's happening in September, I was thinking more about Oh, here comes the patch we've been worried about. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:16:47]:
In other words, this is the security patch apocalypse. And that's okay. By the way, that could be part of this too. I, that I, you know, I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see how many security updates there are next week.

Richard Campbell [00:16:58]:
So yeah, that's why that we usually see that in D. D is what gives you the indication of how many hundreds of patches there's going to be. The fact that it didn't appear just gives me a chill.

Paul Thurrott [00:17:09]:
Yep. No, I was like, you know, like I said, I was very confused. Like last week I was like, this is kind of unusual. It's not, it's, It's not, well, it's not completely unique in the sense that the Tuesday of Week D has passed without an update, but by Wednesday, Thursday, whatever, we always get it. And this time we did not get one at all. Like that's actually never happened since they started doing this. Maybe tomorrow, maybe, but. Yeah, so we'll see.

Paul Thurrott [00:17:41]:
But yeah, that's interesting, right? I don't, I don't know. So by the way, semi-related to this, I put this in the notes just because it's kind of, it's semi-interesting. There are no unique features to 26H2, right? You don't, you're not going to update this thing and get like, oh, here's this thing I didn't have before. It's like, if you, well, meaning, I mean, there are, there's like the new Start menu and the new taskbar, but those are going to 24 and 25H2 as well, right?

Richard Campbell [00:17:59]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [00:17:59]:
Like, that's not actually unique to 26H2. So you may get that, that as part of the update and think, oh, this is like a new thing. And it's like, well, you know, technically those are available everywhere. But there are some, What I think I wrote, how do they call it? Well, presets, I guess I would call these like configuration presets. I don't think these things apply to people who upgrade, but when you get a new 26H2 computer, there are going to be several features that are enabled by default that were not enabled by default on previous versions of Windows 11, and they are all security related.

Richard Campbell [00:18:31]:
Yes.

Paul Thurrott [00:18:31]:
Right?

Richard Campbell [00:18:32]:
Yeah, I noticed that.

Paul Thurrott [00:18:33]:
Yeah, point-in-time restore is one. There's a memory integrity feature that's actually been in Windows 11 for, I want to say, 3, Plus, yeah, maybe even longer.

Richard Campbell [00:18:40]:
But off by default.

Paul Thurrott [00:18:42]:
But it's off by default, right?

Richard Campbell [00:18:44]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:18:44]:
And, you know, with these types of features, you can, as an admin, if you're in a managed business environment, you know, determine whether or not those things actually do appear. But if you're a consumer, you buy a PC, you're just going to— this is just going to happen.

Richard Campbell [00:18:57]:
You're never going to even know about it.

Paul Thurrott [00:18:58]:
No, you won't even know. It doesn't matter until you need them, I guess, is how I would say it. Like, you're not going to know that point-in-time restore is occurring, but when you actually need to restore the PC, that's going to be really nice it's there.

Richard Campbell [00:19:09]:
Sure, it's going to be a good feature, but you're walking around. What does Microsoft know that made them say we should turn that off by default now?

Paul Thurrott [00:19:16]:
Yep. Yep. Admin protection is in there. There's a bunch, right? So there's a bunch of different things. So that, that's the big, that's right now the big change. But when you think about, you know, like, like you were just kind of hinting at the possibility that maybe this 26H1 thing has some kind of something, something security related, which is interesting because that could be the case. And I—

Richard Campbell [00:19:36]:
breaking update. Yep.

Paul Thurrott [00:19:38]:
It's right. Yes. That's a really good way to put it.

Richard Campbell [00:19:41]:
That's what it is.

Paul Thurrott [00:19:41]:
Exactly.

Richard Campbell [00:19:42]:
You know, that's what it is.

Paul Thurrott [00:19:43]:
What it is.

Richard Campbell [00:19:43]:
You know, what did we— what was the big deal about service pack 2 XP back in the day? It was a breaking update. Well, stuff that used to run is now going to have a UAC dialog popping up.

Paul Thurrott [00:19:52]:
It's going to be something like that, which itself was just super disruptive, you know?

Richard Campbell [00:19:56]:
Yeah. Um, questionably executed.

Paul Thurrott [00:19:59]:
Yep. And tied to that is this notion that since 26H1 has come up, right? So if you have a Snapdragon X2 computer, whether you're in Stable or in the Insider Program, you're getting features usually a month later than the general populace, so to speak, right?

Richard Campbell [00:20:15]:
Mm-hmm.

Paul Thurrott [00:20:15]:
Like, if there are new features in Windows 11 2425H2 in July, you might get them in August, you know? You don't get them in July. Like, that's never happened. And I think that's— there's something— it's like, well, why? Like, it's a different codebase, right? So, even though it's the same features, and they will arrive eventually on 26H1, there's some additional testing that has to occur.

Richard Campbell [00:20:38]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:20:38]:
And they've never caught that. They've never caught up, and they're not catching up with this release either. So—

Richard Campbell [00:20:44]:
And for a long time, I mean, it's been a single code base is cost effective. That's the real motivator. But now it might be more security related than ever before. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the other thing, the other possibility with the whole memory integrity thing is they've run it in the wild long enough with enough people testing it that now they have confidence to say you can turn it on. Uh, it should be on by default because it is a more secure way to go. It's just coincidental that it's lining up during the security—

Paul Thurrott [00:21:10]:
All the hardware-based security stuff. I mean, most, most of this work was done like a decade plus ago, like a long time ago, right? But it is, yeah, it's kind of interesting. There's a new one that's been around. Well, new-ish.

Richard Campbell [00:21:19]:
Yeah, you almost wonder if it just got lost that we never got around to go default on. And now with all the things going on, you're like, you know, if that had been on, A bunch of these things wouldn't happen.

Paul Thurrott [00:21:28]:
Yeah, I mean, look, even this year we always talk about these pain point things that Microsoft is working on, but the thing people kind of conveniently forget is that actually Microsoft has been working to improve the security of Windows 11 for at least 2 years, right? They had the Secure Future Initiative and then the Windows, uh, whatever that's called, the Windows Resiliency Initiative, whatever, which is part of that. And then more recently, uh, provided updates about like actual specific features which are now in Windows, like Point-in-Time Restore, Admin protection, which is sort of in Windows but is coming, and some other ones. But, um, you know, this is, you know, that happened first. Like, they've actually been working on that for a while, which I think also speaks to your speculation about 26H1. I think there's something, I think there's something to that. But I, I say that I'm, I'm guessing. I don't know that, but it makes sense. Um, and then, you know, to support this notion yet again, uh, there were, so The Release Preview builds, because there are actually multiple versions of it, but it is now 26H2.

Paul Thurrott [00:22:27]:
So like I said, anyone can go get that. But since then, they have released 2 26H1 builds to the Release Preview. No, that's not true. Sorry, to the Windows Insider Program, to Beta and Experimental, but both for 26H1. And when you look at what's in there, you're like, what is this stuff? Like, this is like, it's either it's some, it's a compilation of things that were like, In previous builds, you know, for 24, 25H2, and then some ones that I'm not sure I've ever seen before, including one which is awesome. Anyone who's ever used the Windows Recovery Environment and could not connect to the wireless network, and then had to plug in a cable because for whatever reason, no one knows why this happens. But you see this actually sometimes when you set up Windows 11 as well. Like if you don't use the images on the computer, and you do some kind of a Tiny 11 build or whatever thing, you might have to plug in a cable to actually get this thing to work.

Paul Thurrott [00:23:19]:
They're actually going to pull in known good Wi-Fi networking profiles into the WRE, the secure— the recovery environment, which is brand new. Like, I, I'm not aware of them even talking about this. I could be wrong, but I've never heard of this before. It's the type of thing I've wanted for like, you know, 10 years maybe. I mean, it's so obvious. Like, I don't understand why this doesn't work.

Richard Campbell [00:23:44]:
Now. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:23:44]:
And they're actually adding it.

Richard Campbell [00:23:46]:
That's cool.

Paul Thurrott [00:23:48]:
There's also this thing, this is kind of, this is strange because this is also security related, really, right? Microsoft took over the management of printer drivers, right? This was a big thing.

Richard Campbell [00:23:58]:
They are actually— Trying to get somebody inside of Microsoft to be willing to talk about printed protective mode to sysadmins and good luck.

Paul Thurrott [00:24:05]:
Like, it's hard. I think it's because— I always get stonewalled. Yeah, no, I think there's something going on here because they're actually removing it temporarily. from 26H1.

Richard Campbell [00:24:14]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:24:14]:
And they're going to bring it back. So there's something going on there where it's like something went wrong.

Richard Campbell [00:24:19]:
The security problems around printers was huge, and we— yeah, I just don't know if they got it nailed. And I think they were having enough problems before the LLMs got in there. Now the LLMs are in there too. Goodness knows.

Paul Thurrott [00:24:31]:
Yeah, I feel like it, it, it has the vibe of like, we got this, we got this. What's happening? AI? Oh no, we don't got Like something, something went south, you know?

Richard Campbell [00:24:39]:
Yeah. Mythos took one look at that and went, guess what?

Paul Thurrott [00:24:43]:
Yeah. So if you're in 24H, 25H2, which is everybody, you know, mostly like 99-something percent, whatever, you're not going to notice this. It's fine. I don't know if it's fine, but it won't be disruptive. Like it's just going to be the way it was. But if you're in 26H1, God help you, um, and are enrolled in the Insider Program, they're going to take it away, which is really kind of weird. Um, and then they'll bring it back.

Richard Campbell [00:25:06]:
Yeah, who knows. We'll get— hopefully they'll build a path forward some way or the other. Yeah, it's, it's perfect timing for the whole, uh, you don't have to pay this machine to get off the preview build now because this may be the preview build that has no path.

Paul Thurrott [00:25:20]:
Yes. And the thing I, I really like about this too, so it's semi-tied to that, like I've noticed that— I think I mentioned this last week or a week, 2 weeks ago— that that is now a pretty consistent thing. Like you go into the Insider interface in Settings and say, like, I want to get out of here when this version of Windows ships. They haven't changed the language, right?

Richard Campbell [00:25:38]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:25:38]:
And then you reboot and check for updates. Like, you actually get the stable update. Like, you just get it. It just happens every time. Like, it's really good.

Richard Campbell [00:25:45]:
Nice.

Paul Thurrott [00:25:45]:
And when you, when you go to the— if you just enroll a computer right now in the Release Preview Program, you know, reboot, whatever comes up, like, the thing that you— the update you get is called Windows 11, version 26H2. It's not some build number. It's not a preview update. It's like, this is 26H2. Like, it's, it's kind of interesting. Like, it's, it's very, um, it's, it's weirdly clear. Yeah. You know, like it does, it's never really worked this way before.

Paul Thurrott [00:26:13]:
So it's kind of, it's kind of cool that it actually works. So that's happening.

Richard Campbell [00:26:18]:
There's so many forces acting at once here between Pavan taking over and, uh, and the security crisis and the general change and shift and the introduction of Arm, like, I thought we finally had a handle on this and now we don't.

Paul Thurrott [00:26:33]:
Yeah. Well, look, I, I always try to like think through the intent of these things, you know, and the thing I've kind of come up with, like with the pain points in any event, is that, look, I, there's something going on, you know, there's a reason for this. And the reason is not you and me and whoever else complained about like, I can't move the taskbar, you guys are terrible. Like they're like, yeah, whatever, nobody cares. But they're actually doing this work now. And it's like, look, just accept the gift for what it is. Let, let ride this wave as long as it lasts. And if it, look, in the end, if there's a bunch of work that will happen in Windows because of security, because of AI, awesome.

Paul Thurrott [00:27:09]:
I mean, it's gonna be semi-difficult to maybe go through some of these updates. I guess we'll see what next Tuesday looks like. We'll see what, whatever the Friday update.

Richard Campbell [00:27:17]:
Been waiting for the bad update for the trouble, the trouble child. Like it just seemed inevitable to hit one. And maybe that's there.

Paul Thurrott [00:27:22]:
I think we're gonna hit more than one, but yeah, but, but it, look, it's, In the end of the day, I mean, if you care about this stuff, like Windows will be better on the other end of this.

Richard Campbell [00:27:33]:
And so much software is getting better. It, you know, I think, I think we'll look back at this as an amazing time, but right now it's really hairy.

Paul Thurrott [00:27:42]:
It's chaotic right now. But you know what the thing is? I, there's so much of Windows that was just not touched for so long. So long, you know? Yeah. When, if you think about Even since Windows 10 came around, and there was a lot of work, you know, to bring that thing out and whatever. And then, you know, once you get that thing there and it's fine, and then all of a sudden Phone is gone, and, you know, why does this UI look this way, and blah blah blah, whatever, people start complaining about small things. Like, are you going to get rid of Control Panel? Are you going to— like, you added dark mode, but half of Windows is still always light mode.

Richard Campbell [00:28:14]:
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:28:15]:
Are you ever going to fix this stuff? And it's like, yeah, you know, you don't really hear about that. And like today it's like, no, we're fixing that stuff. And it's like, wow.

Richard Campbell [00:28:21]:
So I think they've— they, with Pavan in place, they've decided to take control of the code base again in a way they just hadn't. And by the way, you know, I'm sorry, you know, as, as, as Windows stopped being the center of the company, I'm abundantly aware, like, there was genuine pressure on the folks there to say, to like, you're not the center of the company, which usually doesn't go. And a lot of them left. Like, God knows how much talent walked out the door at that point.

Paul Thurrott [00:28:46]:
I know. Over many years too. It's, it's really, it's rough. But the thing, here's the thing, like there's so much legacy. So we, I make this, I joke about it in a way. It's really not funny anymore because of all the AI kind of security stuff. But, you know, Windows as this archaeological dig of different, um, uh, eras of technology that are just intertwined.

Richard Campbell [00:29:06]:
Generations of developers.

Paul Thurrott [00:29:08]:
Yep. But the thing is like, you know, so you hear it like Microsoft's like, okay, we're going to update all these legacy UIs. We're going to use WinUI. Which is the most modern stack. I'm not saying it's great, but whatever, it's the modern stack. And you're like, yay, whatever, they're fixing this thing that really bothered me. But honestly, the impetus for this is almost certainly AI has found all these security vulnerabilities in this legacy code, and there's no one around who can fix that. They have to get rid of it.

Paul Thurrott [00:29:35]:
And I think that might be why. I think that literally might be why. And you know what? Great. Like, whatever.

Richard Campbell [00:29:40]:
Tell me the downside. This is all good.

Paul Thurrott [00:29:41]:
Yeah, if you went to talk to any kind of normal mainstream version, you know, person who uses Windows and you're like, hey, has it ever occurred to you that like this hackers would be able to break into like a printer driver and do something horrible to your computer? They'd be like, what are you talking about? That's crazy. You're like, well, yeah, as it turns out, this is actually a serious problem and now we're fixing it or we're trying to fix it. But that's not unique to printer drivers or whatever, the printer subsystem. It's all over Windows. And that's the thing. So it's like, hahaha, we have like a, you know, archaeological dig of all these different strata of technology. used over many decades, but you know what, now that's a freaking huge security problem. We have to fix it.

Paul Thurrott [00:30:18]:
So yay, they're fixing it, I guess. Awesome.

Richard Campbell [00:30:23]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:30:24]:
Woohoo. So to speak. I don't know.

Richard Campbell [00:30:28]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:30:28]:
Would you like to take a little pause for the—

Paul Thurrott [00:30:30]:
Yeah, sure.

Leo Laporte [00:30:32]:
Station identification, and then we can continue.

Richard Campbell [00:30:35]:
All right.

Leo Laporte [00:30:36]:
In fact, I want to know more about the hardware at IFA.

Paul Thurrott [00:30:39]:
I know. I wish it's, you know, tomorrow you're embargoed. The show technically, I don't think the show even starts technically till Friday, but like some companies announce things a little early. I don't know. But yeah, there'll be more next week.

Leo Laporte [00:30:52]:
You've been before. You've been many times, I'm sure.

Paul Thurrott [00:30:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:30:55]:
And it's a good show. Everybody seems to like it.

Paul Thurrott [00:30:58]:
I love it. I love, yeah, I love the whole thing.

Leo Laporte [00:31:00]:
Partly because it's Berlin.

Paul Thurrott [00:31:01]:
Mostly because it's Berlin, if I'm being honest, you know, it's 99%.

Leo Laporte [00:31:05]:
World Congress in Barcelona.

Paul Thurrott [00:31:07]:
Exactly. Like these are not horrible places to be, but yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:31:09]:
And Cannes Lions in the south of France. You pretty much got it.

Paul Thurrott [00:31:14]:
That's all you need. Can't say I've ever run that rack, but, you know, someday.

Leo Laporte [00:31:19]:
It's the masters of conferences.

Paul Thurrott [00:31:23]:
Yes. It's, what do you call it when someone wins like the I Got of whatever awards?

Leo Laporte [00:31:29]:
Yeah, it's like EGOT.

Richard Campbell [00:31:29]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [00:31:30]:
Triple crown of tech conferences.

Paul Thurrott [00:31:32]:
Right, right. All European.

Leo Laporte [00:31:34]:
I can't say I've been to any of those 3, but someday I dream. Someday I will grow up and be a real tech reporter. Paul is in Berlin. Richard is in Canada. We are in— oh, and Paul's got a little, uh, Gewürztraminer there. Just a little, little something something. What the whistle?

Paul Thurrott [00:31:53]:
I went to an event before the show, which is why we started this thing late, at which I was supposed to be served dinner, and they didn't serve dinner and I had to leave.

Leo Laporte [00:32:03]:
I was like, Are you starving, sir?

Paul Thurrott [00:32:06]:
Well, no, my wife, uh, Stephanie bought me some— got me some dinner, which I was eating voraciously while you're doing the ad. And then, you know, you can't just eat food. You have to wash it down with something.

Leo Laporte [00:32:17]:
Of course.

Paul Thurrott [00:32:19]:
I mean, I'm not an animal.

Leo Laporte [00:32:21]:
No. Um, that sounds wonderful. Did you have a little Wienerschnitzel? Some Kartoffelschlag?

Paul Thurrott [00:32:27]:
Earlier. Oh, some— yeah, some currywurst.

Leo Laporte [00:32:29]:
Currywurst, of course.

Paul Thurrott [00:32:32]:
It's gonna be a good week of German food for sure.

Richard Campbell [00:32:34]:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Leo Laporte [00:32:36]:
Famous currywurst.

Richard Campbell [00:32:39]:
Love a good Weisswurst. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:32:42]:
Weisswurst, the white sausage.

Richard Campbell [00:32:46]:
So how do I get an invitation to this show, man? Why aren't I hanging with you?

Leo Laporte [00:32:50]:
You should.

Paul Thurrott [00:32:50]:
This is a cool place to hang out.

Leo Laporte [00:32:52]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:32:53]:
I love Germany so much.

Leo Laporte [00:32:55]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:32:55]:
I was telling someone else this, like, um, the people here— so you see this in like Mexico, the people are really, really obedient, right? So something like, um, COVID happens and they're like, you have to wear a mask. And everyone's like, yep, we're wearing masks. They're still wearing masks. Like, they, they just like whatever the government said, they're like, yep, we'll do it. And like here, they really follow the rules. And, uh, yeah, you'd be like, you walk up to like an intersection and there's a crosswalk and they have a little, you know, red Andalman guy with, you know, if you can't walk, you know. And so everyone's just waiting. It's like 20 people there, you know, you're looking down the street, you don't see a car.

Richard Campbell [00:33:28]:
Not a car for miles. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:33:30]:
And you're like, is there some reason we're not going? Like, I don't understand this. But I mean, they're just very— they really just adhere to the rules here.

Richard Campbell [00:33:38]:
Would never. Yeah, we'd never.

Paul Thurrott [00:33:39]:
So I walked and there was a gasp, but you know, what are you gonna do?

Richard Campbell [00:33:43]:
You savage.

Paul Thurrott [00:33:45]:
Yep.

Richard Campbell [00:33:46]:
It's from Boston. Of course he walked.

Paul Thurrott [00:33:48]:
I'm like, what's your freaking problem, man? No, but, um, yeah, it's just, it's a different, it's a different way of doing things. That's okay. It's fine. I like it. Anyway, so, but we're here. So IFA is happening eventually this week. This is one of the, I would say the 2 big times each year where there are major PC announcements, you know, there are also phone announcements, although, you know, Samsung, the big players do their own events, right? And so at least the, I should say the non-Chinese big players do their own events. I mean, Um, so there's going to be a bunch of phone stuff as well, um, and then whatever other devices.

Paul Thurrott [00:34:27]:
But—

Richard Campbell [00:34:28]:
Nice.

Paul Thurrott [00:34:28]:
Unfortunately, as of the time of this recording, um, I can't really talk about most of the things I know. But Acer, uh, was the first of the kind of big PC makers to come out with a bunch of, a bunch of stuff. And true to IFA, they have like a, you know, like a smart scooter of some kind. They, they're bringing back the Packard Bell brand for like a fun set of like, like turnstile— like turnstiles.

Richard Campbell [00:34:51]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:34:52]:
Uh, sorry, not turnstiles. Um, turntables. Turntables. Vinyl, you know, like vinyl record players, whatever. Like the speakers and keyboards and like kind of fun stuff for, you know, whatever they're doing with Packard Bell. But that's not really the big announcement, right? So they have, you know, modern computers that are thin and light and, you know, based on whatever chipsets, including some wild— a bunch of Wild Lake, uh, Wildcat Lake, which is the new, uh, Intel Core, I guess what might have been called probably 16th Gen by this point, but is not called that anymore.

Richard Campbell [00:35:22]:
Wow. Wildcat Lake.

Leo Laporte [00:35:23]:
Wow.

Richard Campbell [00:35:23]:
They're really running out of names.

Paul Thurrott [00:35:25]:
Weird name.

Leo Laporte [00:35:26]:
Is there really a Wildcat Lake anywhere?

Paul Thurrott [00:35:28]:
I mean, probably that's kind of the Intel way of doing things. But, um, if you're familiar with, so Panther Lake is the latest of their Core Ultra chips, right? Panther Lake is amazing. And especially with the high-end versions where they have the high-end kind of Intel Arc B-series graphics, like which are, I mean, just about as good as, you know, any dedicated graphics chip, you know, for normal things, for like games and things like that, like really, really good. Um, so while Cat Lake is based on that architecture, it is, you know, not as powerful or anything, I mean, obviously. And, um, it also doesn't consume as much power and it's kind of, you know, you can use it on thinner, lighter, kind of lower performance type devices. So we're gonna see a lot of that stuff.

Richard Campbell [00:36:08]:
Mm-hmm.

Paul Thurrott [00:36:09]:
So when you see like Intel-powered devices that are gonna sell for 8 with 8 gigs of RAM and kind of take on the MacBook Neo. That's what it's gonna be. It's gonna be that kind of thing, right?

Richard Campbell [00:36:17]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [00:36:17]:
So you're seeing a lot of that.

Richard Campbell [00:36:19]:
And then beside that are 96 gig like Spark copies.

Paul Thurrott [00:36:22]:
That's the thing. So, um, because Acer went out with this publicly, I will tell you that, um, I, I have seen some NVIDIA, you know, RTX, um, Spark-based computers, uh, so far, I would, you know, um, and they're awesome. And what's really interesting, in a way is that Acer, to my knowledge, at least so far, is unique in that they're not shipping a laptop. They're shipping a, a small form factor, like kind of mini workstation.

Richard Campbell [00:36:54]:
Like a NUC. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:36:54]:
Yeah. It's bigger than a NUC. It's, it's, but it's, yes, but it's like a, yeah, it's not like a big desktop or tower.

Richard Campbell [00:37:00]:
It's not an ATX motherboard or anything like that.

Leo Laporte [00:37:02]:
No.

Richard Campbell [00:37:02]:
It's a small form factor.

Paul Thurrott [00:37:04]:
So, I mean, so they've said some stuff about this, right? And so I feel comfortable relaying it. So, um, like a, a 6,144-core Blackwell up to 20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU, up to 1 petaflop of AI compute, up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory, right?

Leo Laporte [00:37:27]:
Wow.

Paul Thurrott [00:37:27]:
We don't know exactly when they're gonna come out. We don't know exactly how much they're gonna cost. I've tried to pry here and I, Leo mentioned up front, like he said, $3,500, $4,000. That's kind of the vibe I'm getting. $3,000 to $4,000 is my guess. But you're going to see versions.

Richard Campbell [00:37:44]:
Who's going to come up amid a price first and they're all going to adjust.

Paul Thurrott [00:37:49]:
Right. I feel probably okay saying like, you know, there's a lot of kind of local AI demo stuff with these machines, which is really interesting. It wasn't so long ago that to do something like to make graphics using AI, and this would have been cloud-based AI 2, 3 years ago. Um, what was that thing? It's like Mid— Midnight— Mid— Midnight Journey, or what was it called? The, um, Mid— is that the name?

Leo Laporte [00:38:15]:
Midjourney.

Richard Campbell [00:38:16]:
Midjourney.

Paul Thurrott [00:38:16]:
Yeah, for the images.

Leo Laporte [00:38:18]:
Yeah, Midjourney.

Paul Thurrott [00:38:19]:
Yeah, so you'd have to like sign on like through Discord or something and try to figure out how to get into that. It was really complicated and kind of weird.

Leo Laporte [00:38:25]:
Yeah, it feels like 100 years ago.

Paul Thurrott [00:38:27]:
I know, it was like, remember when we were 7 or 8 years old and like there were grasshoppers jumping in the grass and it was like summer all the time? Remember those years? Oh yeah, it was 2023. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:38:37]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:38:37]:
So, you know, and then obviously in cloud-based AI, like you see the, you know, the progression there, right? So on the Microsoft side with Copilot, but, you know, and Nano Banana most recently with Google and, you know, the stuff OpenAI has done, et cetera, where, you know, today you can create like these things that are basically photographic quality and they're, you know, fairly amazing, right? And if you look, if you have a Copilot+ PC, you could do this yourself today. do image gen locally in the Paint app or whatever. It's garbage. Like it's complete garbage. Like, um, but the stuff I've seen on these, uh, NVIDIA RTX, um, Spark computers is freaking astonishing.

Leo Laporte [00:39:17]:
Like it's awesome. Yeah, they're basically the same as the DGX Spark I have here.

Paul Thurrott [00:39:21]:
Yeah, it's really impressive.

Leo Laporte [00:39:23]:
But it's in a laptop form factor. I don't know if that changes how fast it can run because of cooling, but.

Paul Thurrott [00:39:28]:
Yep. So I think what you're going to, so, well, Acer announced like a, like a desktop form factor, which is unique to my knowledge. I think in the laptop form factors, you're going to see different kind of ranges of capabilities, but this one is, this one's pretty much like at the top of what they're saying these things will do, right? So 128 gigs unified memory, et cetera, like the 20-core NVIDIA Grace GPU, CPU, sorry. And then whatever the, you know, the Blackwell RTX GPU, which is just insanity. It's got, it's awesome. Like it's awesome. And I, I'm curious how Nvidia and then these PC companies are going to sell this stuff because I honestly, like, you know, like everyone I've talked to has said the same thing. They're like, you know, it's, we're not gonna like, this is not about gaming.

Paul Thurrott [00:40:17]:
But I'm like, it is about gaming though, isn't it? Like, it's about gaming, right?

Leo Laporte [00:40:20]:
Like, well, you certainly could.

Paul Thurrott [00:40:22]:
Yeah. Well, except, well, they're, they're ARM-based, right? So one of the problems is like today, games are on the PC are all made for x86, right? I mean, like pretty much 100%. So you can emulate that stuff and it's okay. Like, you know, if you have a Snapdragon X2, like some of that stuff's pretty good, like especially older games or whatever. But, um, I think Nvidia has the market clout in the, in the GPU world with game makers to be like, you're doing this now. And I think you're gonna start seeing like native, uh, ARM games because of Nvidia. And I think those things will run pretty good on Snapdragon too, right? So I think that's gonna change things. But But the only reason I mentioned that is because games are like a really good demo.

Paul Thurrott [00:41:00]:
So if you're familiar with like a modern, like Call of Duty game or whatever, like what that looks like and runs like on really good hardware with like a really good NVIDIA GPU, you're gonna have something to kind of baseline it against. And I think you're gonna see that kind of thing. But to me, the, the, one of the demos like about local AI with graph, you know, just image creation is like, You know, it's not, it's, it's not like it's immediate. It's not like you type in a prop and it just appears, but it's, it's, you know, several seconds or whatever. But it's like the, it's just the quality is like off the charts. It's like really, really good. And I think this is gonna, this is interesting. So I don't think it's gonna, I don't think it's gonna be like a big unit sales thing.

Paul Thurrott [00:41:41]:
Like, I don't, you know, it's not gonna be like the takeover for x86. I don't think that's gonna happen, but. But this is raising the bar pretty dramatically, um, for local AI on the PC space.

Richard Campbell [00:41:53]:
Mm-hmm.

Paul Thurrott [00:41:53]:
So it's, it's interesting and we'll see. Um, but, uh, so far all we have is the Acer thing to go off of. But like I said, it, you know, Acer has some cool stuff. They have like an e-paper external display. There's like a triple display thing for laptops where like 2 displays go off the side, one goes off the top. You know, they have, there's a lot of really cool stuff going on there actually. So. Um, it's worth kind of looking at that.

Paul Thurrott [00:42:15]:
But I— tomorrow, the next day, you know, into the weekend, we're going to see more and more of this stuff. So, uh, you know, next, next week we'll, we'll talk about that a little bit more.

Richard Campbell [00:42:25]:
Um, yeah, I imagine we're gonna get most of your IFA stories next week's show for episode 1,000.

Paul Thurrott [00:42:33]:
Yeah, right, right. Um, you know, it's weird, right?

Richard Campbell [00:42:38]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:42:40]:
And then I wasn't sure really where to put this stuff, but just some kind of app stories because I can't have like 5 app picks at the end of the show. But 2 years ago, you know, the European Commission was trying to determine which digital platforms were considered gatekeepers under the terms of the Digital Markets Act, right?

Richard Campbell [00:43:02]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [00:43:03]:
And this is the, you know, their kind of new, like, modern antitrust kind of thing, right? So, you know, Windows is a gatekeeper, right? iOS gatekeeper, right? Safari gatekeeper, I think. Google Search gatekeeper, right? But then there's kind of like edge cases, pardon the pun, including Microsoft Edge, right? Like, or Microsoft Bing, where, you know, from a kind of a numbers perspective, meaning like number of users, you could make this argument based on their definition of what a gatekeeper is that like this thing should be considered a gatekeeper. But the European Commission considered this kind of range of issues around these things and determined in the case of Edge and Bing that even though they met the standard, so to speak, or the threshold for, from a usage perspective, they really weren't gatekeepers because they're not, you know, they're not dominating in any market. They don't have appreciable market share. Like, you know, there are other players that are much bigger than them, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it was about 2 years ago, February 2 years ago, probably. They kind of came out and said, yeah, no, Microsoft Edge is not a gatekeeper. So Opera issued a formal complaint and said, no, that's nonsense.

Paul Thurrott [00:44:10]:
And they make a really good case. Opera's thing is like, look, they are the definition of a gatekeeper. You have to use Edge to install our browser.

Richard Campbell [00:44:19]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [00:44:19]:
And what they wanted the EU to do was what they're doing in mobile in the EU, which is have there be a screen in the front that says, hey, here are your browser choices. And the European— EU General Court ruled today that, sorry, Microsoft is not a gatekeeper. The European Commission did a really good job of trying to figure out what their actual market penetration was, yada, yada, yada, what their influence was, whether them being bundled with Windows is in any way unfairly giving them market share, etc., etc. And the truth is, this thing is garbage market share. They're not doing great. So the reason this stinks if you're a Windows user is that, if you're not in the EU, I guess, really, because in the EU, you can uninstall Edge, right? Like we can't do that here in the United States or anywhere else, or if I were in the United States. And I guess that sort of solves the problem, but you still have to install a browser. Like if you uninstall Edge, you still have to get that thing on there.

Paul Thurrott [00:45:18]:
And like, I know how to use WinGet, but normal people don't. And how do you solve that problem? And I kind of feel like they should have dismantled the gatekeeper, but they did not. So Microsoft around the world is still forcing people who choose Chrome or whatever browser they like to use Edge in certain circumstances, right? When you click on a story in widgets, when you click on a search result that's a web result, et cetera, et cetera. There's still several things that cause Edge to kind of come up. And the truth is, yeah, you still have to use Edge to install a browser. If you're a normal person, that's like how you do it. I mean, that's fair, but I don't know, whatever. So I have a little book called De-Entshitifying Windows 11.

Paul Thurrott [00:45:56]:
I'm just saying, you know, if you want to— I'm not, you know, I have a solution to this problem. I'm just throwing it out there, you know. It's too bad. But anyway, they made a good faith kind of attempt to stop that from happening and failed. This one could have gone in different places, but Visual Studio Code, if you've ever used this to write in Markdown, you know that it supports Markdown natively. It supports it in the code editor, meaning that if you know how to type Markdown, it will kind of color code the symbols correctly and do that kind of thing. And you can also bring up this preview pane where you can see the 2 things side by side, right? So you have the code on one— well, I guess for you it would be the code on one side and then the rendered kind of HTML view on the side. And it gives you a good look of what that thing would look like in the final output.

Paul Thurrott [00:46:42]:
But I didn't even know this was coming, but the latest version of Visual Studio Code, which by the way used to be released on a monthly basis, I think is actually now weekly if I'm not mistaken.

Richard Campbell [00:46:52]:
Or every other week, yeah. Lots of products are going up to a 2-week cycle from a 4-week. Again, I think it's because of the security issues.

Paul Thurrott [00:47:01]:
This just kind of got lost because if you follow Visual Studio Code and if you actually pay attention to the announcements about new versions, what you will see is that most of them have something to do with like AI agents and that experience and how that works in the editor and all this stuff, and that's great. But lost among all this stuff is in the latest version, I think still to this day, of Visual Studio Code, they added what I call a full Markdown editor. What that means is it works like a what-you-see-is-what-you-get, like a Typora-type app where you can edit in that render view.

Leo Laporte [00:47:34]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [00:47:35]:
You're seeing it formatted like a Word document or whatever. You can do Ctrl+B and it will bold bold the text. And, you know, it's like, it's— they've turned this thing into like a, like actually pretty excellent writing tool.

Richard Campbell [00:47:47]:
So it's sort of GUI-style Markdown.

Paul Thurrott [00:47:49]:
Yeah, exactly. And it's really neat the way it works because as you type the Markdown, it stays Markdown until you like hit a space or get past it. And then it like formats it on the fly. It's actually fairly unique. There are actually other Markdown editors to do that, that do this. But, um, I've never, um, you know, among the big ones, like, this is fairly unique. It's, it's a neat, it's a neat feature. So, um, it's free, you know, so that's kind of cool.

Paul Thurrott [00:48:16]:
You have to know how to, and, you know, you have to put it in that mode, so to speak, and then you can have it always be in that mode. But so it's a little bit of work, but it's, uh, it's actually very full-featured. It works great. Like, it's really neat. Um, the, uh, the Brave web browser, which I has somehow been a pick like every other week for the past few months. They just added a new feature where you can add, uh, up to 5 free email aliases through the browser. So if you go into like a web form where you're gonna like sign up for an account somewhere, it'll actually prompt you and say, hey, here's a free email alias, just use this.

Leo Laporte [00:48:47]:
Mm-hmm.

Paul Thurrott [00:48:47]:
And they'll forward it to whatever email address you want. Um, eventually they're gonna have a premium option where you can pay like some, probably a monthly or annual thing where you can have more than 5. But for now they're doing the free thing just to kind of to get, you know, get that going and whatever. So that's cool. So if you're using Brave, that's awesome. If you're not, this might be something that puts it over the top. Firefox just came out with a major set of new versions across all platforms, but the version on iOS is kind of interesting because they're using some iOS platform features to do integrated ad blocking. It's not as good as, you know, what you might get with an extension per se, but it's better than nothing.

Paul Thurrott [00:49:23]:
And good, you know, good for them. So whatever. I mean, it's an iOS app, whatever, but maybe, I don't know. Um, and then we have some, uh, earnings, you know, because we're—

Richard Campbell [00:49:34]:
because these things just don't happen again.

Paul Thurrott [00:49:37]:
Yep. Um, the only company that's actually making real money in this AI era is Nvidia, and they continue to do so. So $96.2 billion in revenues, up over $5 trillion. Uh, I don't know. I mean, they're starting to do a little bit of, uh, dancing around trying to, you know, make this, you know, I, I, there's no way this gravy train keeps going, right?

Richard Campbell [00:49:59]:
I mean, but yeah, but everybody's waiting for the blink, you know?

Paul Thurrott [00:50:02]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I, for all the money that's like being handed back and forth between all these companies, the one, the company, like I said, that like you actually have to buy hardware to make this happen. So they're actually making money. Like it's like real money. Then God bless them. I mean, whatever. So I don't know why they're getting into PCs, but who cares? Uh, they're doing great.

Richard Campbell [00:50:20]:
Gotta keep the money moving. They only—

Leo Laporte [00:50:22]:
actually, they have an interesting strategy. I will probably talk about it on Intelligent Machines. Yeah, today they bought Hugging Face for $13 billion. So that's a little—

Paul Thurrott [00:50:31]:
so that's official, by the way.

Leo Laporte [00:50:31]:
It's profit.

Paul Thurrott [00:50:32]:
Yeah, it is official. So they did do it.

Richard Campbell [00:50:34]:
Okay.

Leo Laporte [00:50:35]:
And, uh, uh, they are, uh, they, they put, I think, $10 billion into a company called Poolside. which is developing local models, open weight models. They have their own open weight models. And it looks pretty clear that Nvidia's strategy, which I think is really smart, is to promote open weight AI models because guess what? They run best on Nvidia hardware.

Richard Campbell [00:50:57]:
That's right.

Leo Laporte [00:50:58]:
They're getting more like Apple. I think they're looking at Apple and they're saying, you know, Apple gave away the operating system, right? Gave away the software because you bought the hardware and then we're locked into Apple's ecosystem.

Paul Thurrott [00:51:10]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [00:51:12]:
And that's what I think NVIDIA is saying, you know, it wouldn't be so bad if people had to use our hardware.

Richard Campbell [00:51:18]:
Yep.

Paul Thurrott [00:51:19]:
And I would like to—

Leo Laporte [00:51:20]:
the intelligence was free.

Paul Thurrott [00:51:22]:
I want NVIDIA to do the Netscape thing where they're like, runs best on NVIDIA, and they have like a sticker and you put it on.

Leo Laporte [00:51:27]:
Like, they don't even have to because they don't know CUDA and it's proprietary, right? Uh, you know, models come out first usually for CUDA. Eventually somebody rewrites them for MLX so you can run them on an Apple. Apple's making a run at them with these new Mac Studios. It's going to be a very interesting, um, next—

Paul Thurrott [00:51:44]:
I mean, they— Apple, you know, I mean, it's fascinating to me that they're so far ahead in this way because they were doing it on phones. They, you know, they brought the chips to the computers, and the use cases on computers like 3, 5 years ago were not that great. Like, I mean, it's like we, we could do like image processing or something. It's like, okay, but, but now, like, they're just— because they've been doing this for so long, they're actually really well position for this, right?

Leo Laporte [00:52:08]:
They have a laptop that competes directly against the RTX Spark, which is 128GB M5 Max. Yeah, it's expensive, roughly $4,000, $5,000.

Paul Thurrott [00:52:21]:
And, you know, well, but see, they have kind of like a raw horsepower thing they're bringing to the market with these NVIDIA RTX Spark machines, because it's like we just had 2 years of like NPUs and yay, you know Copilot Plus PCs. It's like, okay, that's nice. Anyway, uh, we're bringing the battleship into the party and, uh, we're just gonna like just level the whole playing field. Well, they could, of course.

Leo Laporte [00:52:41]:
It's interesting because bandwidth actually is fairly slow in these Sparks. Yeah, it's 273.

Paul Thurrott [00:52:46]:
Yeah, but compared to what you could do on like off an NPU or whatever, I mean, it's still like—

Leo Laporte [00:52:51]:
Yeah, but look what Apple's offering. Apple's new, uh, Studios are 1.2 terabytes a second, right? They're 4 times faster.

Richard Campbell [00:52:59]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:53:00]:
Now there's other issues that make, when you're running local LLMs, I'm learning all of this. There's other issues, but I just think they have such a good story.

Paul Thurrott [00:53:11]:
No, they do. They do. They absolutely do.

Leo Laporte [00:53:13]:
But I'm just saying Nvidia's gonna say, okay, here we go.

Paul Thurrott [00:53:17]:
It's on. Exactly. And I think just by virtue of being Nvidia, they're going to just draw attention. Like there's no doubt about it.

Leo Laporte [00:53:24]:
So it's really, it is a great time for us as consumers, you want that kind of competition. You want them fighting.

Paul Thurrott [00:53:29]:
Yep. Yeah, Microsoft has spent the past 2 years promoting Copilot+ PCs. Yay, whatever. And, you know, you might have one app, well, like one feature in one app that does something really a little bit faster. No one notices. But these things people are going to notice. Like, it's like, oh yeah, they're—

Leo Laporte [00:53:44]:
Well, I'm just really curious because, uh, you know, the Sparks that I bought were Linux-based. They run a special version of Ubuntu from NVIDIA. I wonder if Microsoft came to NVIDIA and said, we'd like you to do a Windows version.

Paul Thurrott [00:53:57]:
I bet it was the other way around. And I think NVIDIA said, I bet NVIDIA was outraged that these Copilot Plus P things ignored GPUs. And they were like, you know what? We're just going to blow you out of the water. You can jump on board or not. You know, look, if you want, we can just, they can ship with Linux. You know, you make the call. We don't know yet, but that's how I imagine it. I don't, I don't know this, but yeah, that's how I imagine it happened.

Paul Thurrott [00:54:19]:
And by the way, I'm sure. I'm sure you could put Linux on these things. In fact, I think that might even be an option.

Leo Laporte [00:54:26]:
I honestly, I don't even care because the way I run the Sparks is headless. I don't ever see them.

Paul Thurrott [00:54:31]:
Okay.

Leo Laporte [00:54:32]:
They're just a server in the corner that I connect to. You know, I don't see what operating system's on there. That's a disadvantage Apple is going to have because you have to run macOS, which is not a server operating system.

Paul Thurrott [00:54:43]:
No, but I feel like there's a lot of Mac Minis and racks that are not, you know, they're essentially headless, right? Even though that's not really the primary use case.

Leo Laporte [00:54:51]:
Like, I think that was the story in the information said Apple stumbled into this.

Richard Campbell [00:54:55]:
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte [00:54:56]:
And then in a little paragraph that they buried, it said, and by the way, NVIDIA, rather OpenAI seems to be buying thousands of these for post-training, right? That most of these Macs are not being sold to end users, but they're being sold to AI companies.

Paul Thurrott [00:55:11]:
Sure. Right.

Richard Campbell [00:55:12]:
Who doesn't know about the price architecture, right? Like, yeah. by accident from, as a manufacturing efficiency back in the original M1. And they put the memory on the die and said, let's just share it.

Paul Thurrott [00:55:26]:
I mean, I'm just, I'm just kind of fascinated because like, you know, Google actually did this early on too. They don't get a lot of credit for this. Before there were MPUs, you know, Google had these like, um, uh, I don't even remember what they were called, like Pixel kind of chips that would like, would speed up like image processing or whatever it was.

Richard Campbell [00:55:45]:
They're called TPUs.

Paul Thurrott [00:55:46]:
Yeah, but well, but they, they had like—

Richard Campbell [00:55:48]:
They were the tensor units.

Paul Thurrott [00:55:50]:
Yeah. Yeah, but they had an early, like the early versions were very specific. Like they were just in certain pixels and they had like, they, you know, were just for that. And like Google, and I think that Apple was doing kind of the same thing. Like you have this kind of super low power chip, but you wanted to do something that's kind of powerful and like, and you know, they call it a neural engine or whatever, but it's like optimized for this kind of thing. And they, you know, in the beginning it's just like, look, this is just about, we just want the photos to look better or whatever. And it's like, cool. But now it turns out like that thing is awesome, like for just general purpose AI.

Paul Thurrott [00:56:21]:
And so they're just like uniquely placed to like to make that work.

Richard Campbell [00:56:24]:
It's good.

Paul Thurrott [00:56:24]:
It's, it's, it's kind of fun. I mean, it's neat.

Richard Campbell [00:56:26]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:56:26]:
That they did it.

Richard Campbell [00:56:27]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:56:28]:
Which is why it's kind of cool that Snapdragon came to, you know, PCs, right? Because they had, you know, they were doing that work as well, right? Obviously. But following Apple, I think in that case. Anyway, I think, like I said, I don't think the RTX Spark PCs are going to like, you know, change the market for like mainstream computer users. But I think this is about putting the PC as a platform back on the map for local AI and in a way that maybe didn't happen with NPUs, if that makes sense. I don't know.

Richard Campbell [00:56:59]:
Yeah. Well, like I said, we're still struggling for the significance of the NPU in any way. when the GPU is there, it's a monster and it tears it up. Like, I, I still— we— I keep asking folks like, well, what's the real difference between an NPU and a GPU? And it's like, arguably the NPU is simpler.

Leo Laporte [00:57:17]:
Yep.

Richard Campbell [00:57:17]:
But it doesn't— we've never— where's my $2,000 tops NPU? Like, okay, it's simpler, so give me a $500 one that stomps a 5090.

Paul Thurrott [00:57:29]:
Yeah, the, the, um, the comment I had made about these NVIDIA RTX Spark computers was that this is like the EV of computers. Meaning when you think— when you hear about electric vehicles, you're thinking, okay, so if you were to convert like whatever the mileage is into like miles per gallon or whatever, you're like, okay, so these things are like get 100 miles per gallon. You're like, yeah, yeah, that's cute. But what we're talking about is like raw power. Like you step on the pedal and this thing goes 100 miles an hour in 2 seconds.

Richard Campbell [00:57:54]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:57:55]:
And it just blows away every You know gasoline, you know powered vehicle on Earth, and it's like no, it's it's really about kind of like torque and raw power, and and I think that's what I think that's what it's going to do. I think it's going to become you know in the beginning it's like a supercar, like not many people can afford it. It's really not for the mainstream, et cetera, et cetera. But it may be enough to kind of push us as a market or industry or whatever into this future that like I think. the whole world has just been resisting, like, and maybe it hasn't been ready. I don't know. But I feel like, like the local AI thing will start to make sense here because of these guys. So I don't know.

Richard Campbell [00:58:32]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [00:58:32]:
We'll see. We'll see.

Leo Laporte [00:58:34]:
I have lots of thoughts about this, but I won't belabor it.

Richard Campbell [00:58:36]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:58:37]:
No, I mean, I, we'll save it for I Am.

Paul Thurrott [00:58:40]:
Okay.

Leo Laporte [00:58:40]:
Um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's really interesting.

Paul Thurrott [00:58:43]:
Um, yeah, it is interesting.

Leo Laporte [00:58:46]:
I mean, I spent a lot of money on these Dual Sparks and I honestly think NVIDIA's And then Apple 2 weeks later comes out with these studios, right? And I honestly think Nvidia is gonna come back with a Spark 2.

Richard Campbell [00:58:57]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:58:58]:
Because they're not gonna let Apple steal their thunder.

Paul Thurrott [00:59:00]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:59:01]:
Yeah. Problem is, Ramageddon. Where are you gonna get all the parts?

Paul Thurrott [00:59:04]:
Yeah, right. Yeah. So, right, I mean, these are gonna be— these are gonna be very expensive. I mean, compared to normal computers.

Leo Laporte [00:59:11]:
That's the answer, I guess.

Richard Campbell [00:59:12]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:59:13]:
Although, if anybody has access to Nvidia GPUs, it would be Nvidia, just like Apple has access. Yeah, Apple parts. It's the RAM for both of them that's tough.

Paul Thurrott [00:59:25]:
Yep, yep, yep.

Leo Laporte [00:59:27]:
Um, live in interesting times.

Paul Thurrott [00:59:29]:
I didn't, I didn't bring this up, and now I can't think clearly at this point, but, you know, Lenovo's earnings were probably a week or two ago. Uh, Dell and HP both reported their earnings this past week. These are hard to compare because Dell's earnings are going gangbusters. It has nothing to do with computers right Mm-hmm. It's all AI, data center servers, etc. 2/3 of Dell's revenues now are not PCs. If you were to look at their revenues from 2, 3 years ago, it was probably 50/50. And then, 5, 8 years ago, it was probably mostly PCs.

Paul Thurrott [01:00:01]:
This has turned around dramatically. Lenovo also is going gangbusters on that side. But Lenovo has some advantages in the PC space because they're the biggest PC maker. They do doing a really good job with that stuff. They increased their lead over the No. 2 player in this past quarter, which is HP. It's kind of interesting. HP, which is primarily computers, it's probably 75% or 80% of their revenues are from PCs.

Paul Thurrott [01:00:30]:
Well, it's at least two-thirds. Their revenues actually went up 12.5%. It's because they're just charging more for computers. They actually sold— I don't remember the number. It might have been 16% fewer computers, which sounds terrible. But their revenues are up 12.5%. By selling fewer computers and charging more, they actually did better than they did in the year-ago quarter. They're still behind Lenovo from a market share perspective, because Lenovo didn't fall as hard.

Paul Thurrott [01:01:03]:
Comparing them to Dell is weird, too. Dell has the server stuff, like AI infrastructure, traditional servers, storage, etc. But the client thing is not just computers. I mean, it is mostly computers. In fact, it's mostly commercial computers, computers they sell to businesses. But I don't know, it's weird because Dell's client business technically, or literally, I guess, by revenue, is actually bigger than HP's. HP has more market. They're selling more computers than Dell.

Paul Thurrott [01:01:34]:
So I don't really know how to make— I don't know how to make that make sense. But, um, all of Dell's client business, so to speak, is $15 billion, which is just shy of— well, that's— but that's also HP's revenues, right? They're like the same. They're basically the same. It's kind of curious. I mean, HP makes Printer ink too, which is like, whatever. Like nobody cares about printers or ink, but, um, they do have that stuff. I don't know. Anyway, the PC is in a little bit of a downturn from a unit sales perspective, but I like that they're making lemonade from it.

Paul Thurrott [01:02:13]:
Um, you know, let's try. It turns out charging more is working out pretty good.

Leo Laporte [01:02:17]:
You know, you know, it's ironic because I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, where Dell's frozen lemonade was a very popular—

Paul Thurrott [01:02:25]:
Nice.

Leo Laporte [01:02:26]:
I think it still is. Beverage or drink or— well, it's frozen, so it's a treat.

Paul Thurrott [01:02:31]:
We have a big frozen— is it, uh, she can't hear me.

Leo Laporte [01:02:34]:
Dells is great. And they would— you'd get it in a cup. They had a truck that would go around and then— yeah, and you get it in the cup.

Paul Thurrott [01:02:40]:
They chip it out of the thing.

Leo Laporte [01:02:41]:
It's like shave ice, you know, with lemon. But it's— and then they put a half lemon on top. There it is.

Paul Thurrott [01:02:47]:
There it is.

Leo Laporte [01:02:47]:
Yeah, shop at the sign of the lemon.

Richard Campbell [01:02:50]:
Wow. Dells with one L.

Leo Laporte [01:02:52]:
One L Dells.

Richard Campbell [01:02:53]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:02:53]:
So that Dell has a long history of making lemonade out of lemons, just not the same Dell. No, that was so good. Of course I grew up on it. I mean, it's really funny.

Paul Thurrott [01:03:04]:
Yeah, I got a little—

Leo Laporte [01:03:07]:
I, I was watching, you got a little snack in there, which is good.

Paul Thurrott [01:03:09]:
I have to—

Leo Laporte [01:03:09]:
I didn't have dinner.

Paul Thurrott [01:03:10]:
It's like I'm trying— well, this is like a, like a doner kebab thing, but—

Leo Laporte [01:03:15]:
Oh, the doner in, uh, in, in Germany is great too. The Turkish food, it's so good.

Paul Thurrott [01:03:19]:
It's not bad.

Leo Laporte [01:03:21]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:03:21]:
Isn't it funny? I don't, I don't sleep on planes though. Like I, no. Um, and our flight left at like dinnertime, which is too early. And so I didn't sleep on the flight at all. So when I, when I arrived, you must be exhausted. I had a meeting like at noon that day and I went in there and I was out of my, I was like out of my mind. And I could see the guy looking at me and he's like, are you all right? And I'm like, yeah, I'm fine.

Richard Campbell [01:03:44]:
Why?

Paul Thurrott [01:03:44]:
And he goes, I don't know. You just asked me a question about that. Nothing to do with anything I just said. And I was like, yeah. Okay. I don't know. But I also had to say, like, I just, I couldn't understand. Like, some, some guy right next to me was talking and he had— and I realized suddenly he asked me a question.

Paul Thurrott [01:03:58]:
I'm like, I'm sorry, what was that? And he asked me, he asked me 4 times. I'm like, I, I don't even know what you're saying. And the guy next to him is like, he asked you and it was whatever the question was. Like, oh yeah. I was like, I don't know what's that like. And so when I finally got back to the room, like, I was trying to do something and I was like, you ever like fall asleep on your laptop? Like your head bangs off the laptop. You're like, what's going on?

Richard Campbell [01:04:19]:
Keyboard imprints on the forehead. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:04:21]:
Yeah, so last night I slept like 8 hours, so last night was great.

Leo Laporte [01:04:25]:
Good.

Paul Thurrott [01:04:25]:
But the day before was not good.

Leo Laporte [01:04:27]:
It was just not good. So you've been there a couple of days?

Paul Thurrott [01:04:29]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:04:30]:
It takes me about 3 days to kind of get—

Paul Thurrott [01:04:32]:
that's just jet lag. Well, even today, I mean, yeah, I mean, even though—

Leo Laporte [01:04:36]:
I don't know how Richard is in a different time zone every—

Richard Campbell [01:04:39]:
I'm just— I don't know.

Paul Thurrott [01:04:39]:
That's what I mean. Like, when I—

Richard Campbell [01:04:40]:
that's all—

Paul Thurrott [01:04:41]:
when I talk to— when I talk about like how much he travels, like, I don't understand it because I'm basically his age and I, I can't do it. Like, I can't.

Leo Laporte [01:04:48]:
Like, it's not just a time thing, I swear. Somebody said it's your soul leaving your body behind.

Richard Campbell [01:04:55]:
That's a William Gibson thing. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:04:57]:
It catches up later.

Richard Campbell [01:04:58]:
Yeah. Mine never does. It's been tangled in a knot over Mongolia for like a decade. It's just stuck there.

Leo Laporte [01:05:02]:
It feels like that. It feels like a part of you is missing.

Richard Campbell [01:05:05]:
I got a couple advantages. One is I fall asleep absolutely anywhere. I cannot tell you how many flights where I'm asleep as we pull off the gate, I wake up as it lands.

Leo Laporte [01:05:15]:
See, that's so nice.

Paul Thurrott [01:05:16]:
I've experienced that exactly one time in my life and it was the greatest day of my life.

Richard Campbell [01:05:20]:
Yeah, that's normal for me. That's why I always take a window seat because I end up leaning against the wall and I'm out. And I think that must be the saving grace, right? It's just like, no, I cannot tell you how many flights I've just never participated in, slept the whole thing.

Paul Thurrott [01:05:38]:
Well, that's the dream, but I can't.

Richard Campbell [01:05:40]:
But I think that's just because I've been jet-lagged the whole time so I can fall asleep on demand anywhere at any time.

Paul Thurrott [01:05:46]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [01:05:49]:
I'll correct myself. Uh, they tell me that the Hugging Face deal has not been closed. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:05:56]:
Okay.

Leo Laporte [01:05:56]:
Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was advanced talks. I thought it was closed, but apparently—

Paul Thurrott [01:06:01]:
Well, the information I think reported that it happened, but I looked— when I looked it up, it was a day or two ago. I was like, it didn't happen yet, but I wasn't— it could have happened.

Richard Campbell [01:06:08]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:06:09]:
Who's going to turn down $12.9 billion?

Richard Campbell [01:06:13]:
Well, who's going to turn down a successful exit in the insanity of the AI hype bubble? Like, take your win.

Leo Laporte [01:06:19]:
It's gonna get—

Richard Campbell [01:06:20]:
yeah, yeah. Now, to be clear, it's going to be Nvidia stock, which means you've got minutes to sell it, right? Like, you're still in the— you just, you just converted a non-tradable stock into a tradable stock, and you should trade it.

Paul Thurrott [01:06:34]:
And it's a rocket ship. Yep, yep, yep.

Leo Laporte [01:06:36]:
Yeah, I don't know, you might regret it. You might look—

Paul Thurrott [01:06:39]:
That's the thing. I would— I mean, maybe sell part of it.

Richard Campbell [01:06:41]:
Oh no, I sold $12 billion worth of stock and it could have been $30 billion.

Paul Thurrott [01:06:45]:
Whatever will I do?

Leo Laporte [01:06:48]:
There's a— so there's a $1 billion retention package for Hugging Face employees.

Paul Thurrott [01:06:53]:
Yeah.

Richard Campbell [01:06:54]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [01:06:55]:
So, uh, they're, they're really serious about like keeping the—

Richard Campbell [01:06:58]:
Trying to keep it together. Yeah, it's in it. You know what, everybody touches Hugging Face. Like, it's, it's—

Leo Laporte [01:07:04]:
everybody uses Local AI. Down— I'm downloading models from Hugging Face all the time.

Richard Campbell [01:07:08]:
Oh yeah, that's—

Leo Laporte [01:07:09]:
they have more than 3 million models. That's where the models live.

Richard Campbell [01:07:12]:
That's where you go.

Leo Laporte [01:07:12]:
That's the repository.

Richard Campbell [01:07:14]:
That is where your LLM is is going to direct you.

Leo Laporte [01:07:16]:
Yeah.

Richard Campbell [01:07:17]:
When you're trying to do anything local.

Leo Laporte [01:07:19]:
It's 10 years old. The last funding round they took was 3 years ago. They were valued at $4.5 billion. So this is triple that. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:07:28]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:07:29]:
Yeah.

Richard Campbell [01:07:30]:
Depending on who you're talking to, this is either a bargain or a steal.

Paul Thurrott [01:07:33]:
There it is.

Leo Laporte [01:07:34]:
That's Hugging Face.

Paul Thurrott [01:07:34]:
I like their fun little, um, logo because when I think about Hugging Face, I think about that alien thing like attaching to your face.

Leo Laporte [01:07:40]:
Yeah. No, it's not Not that hug. And by the way, I did buy the Micro Duck. They're selling a $399 robotic duck.

Richard Campbell [01:07:49]:
Nice.

Leo Laporte [01:07:51]:
That you—

Paul Thurrott [01:07:51]:
you—

Leo Laporte [01:07:51]:
they have a virtual world you program it in, and then you download it to the duck. It's an AI duck. I can't wait. Won't get it till the end of the year, but, uh, pick up socks.

Paul Thurrott [01:08:04]:
It just runs around the house singing Disco Duck all day long.

Leo Laporte [01:08:07]:
There it is. You could play soccer. I only bought one. Everybody says, oh no, you gotta buy 2 so they can play together.

Paul Thurrott [01:08:14]:
No. It's like when you have cats, you need 2. They gotta, you know, have something to do.

Richard Campbell [01:08:18]:
Or otherwise you're the other cat.

Paul Thurrott [01:08:21]:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:08:23]:
All right. As long as we're talking AI, what, uh, what else is going on?

Paul Thurrott [01:08:27]:
Well, first of all, um, how much time do we have? I just want to make— I don't want to run over here. Like, what's the—

Leo Laporte [01:08:32]:
Uh, we got an hour, hour and a half, 2 hours.

Paul Thurrott [01:08:35]:
Oh, we're good.

Leo Laporte [01:08:35]:
Okay. Well, plenty of time.

Paul Thurrott [01:08:37]:
Okay. Okay.

Leo Laporte [01:08:38]:
We're in great shape.

Paul Thurrott [01:08:40]:
Okay. I'm glad to hear that. Um, I'm not, but that's okay.

Leo Laporte [01:08:45]:
Uh, you can go as long as you can.

Paul Thurrott [01:08:48]:
Okay. I will then. Um, Sony and Warner have sued Anthropic for stealing music for all their obvious reasons. Um, yeah, I bet they did. So we'll see what happens. Um, I didn't have the time to get this in the notes because I think I might've read about this on the, in the Uber on the way back to do the show, but like, I I, uh, the US government, and I believe the US Department of Justice as well, like, uh, came out on the side of the New York— no, sorry, of OpenAI in that case where, you know, they stole all the content from the New York Times and they're like, oh no, this is fair use. It's like, uh, no, it isn't. But, um, that's kind of interesting.

Paul Thurrott [01:09:29]:
So, you know, we'll see, we'll see what comes of this. But Anthropic infamously, you know, settled with authors to the tune of, I think it was $1 $1.5 billion. Was that the number? Yeah.

Richard Campbell [01:09:38]:
Which was a bargain for them, honestly.

Paul Thurrott [01:09:41]:
Yep. And this is, if this is true and it is true, right, is way worse and way more, um, probably a lot more money. So we'll see. It makes sense. I'm surprised it took them so long to do this. Um, there's also been an update to this, which I haven't even looked into, uh, deeply yet, but, uh, Gemini Notebook, which used to be called NotebookLM, which is the, one of the really kind of cool products that's come out of Google in this AI era that I don't think gets enough attention. They're adding a set of functionality they're calling Expert Intelligence, because everything has to have a name now with intelligence in it.

Leo Laporte [01:10:14]:
Mm-hmm.

Paul Thurrott [01:10:14]:
But the idea here is that you have these notebooks in Notebook— I'm sorry, Gemini Notebook now. And you bring in content, which could be documents or whatever, like we do. And you ground the AI in that thing, and then you work on some project based on whatever that thing is. And they have had for now, for I think a year or two, this notion of like professionally made notebooks that are made by content creators that are high profile, like it could be a university or, you know, whatever kind of like professional content. And now what they're doing is they're going to— their expert intelligence is essentially like a way for like third parties to kind of integrate with this. And they're integrating with their own service. To start, but Google Play Books, which is a maker of ebooks that most people probably don't actively use, but it makes sense they would start with this because they own it, right? And so they're working with authors and publishers to bring in content from ebooks. So you buy— the idea is you buy an ebook from Google Play Books, you can then add it to a notebook and ground the AI in the content in that book, and then whatever else if you're doing other things.

Paul Thurrott [01:11:19]:
And it just works. You can share it with others, but they of course have to own the book, so they'll make sure that they buy the book from Google Play Books, etc. But they're going to open it up to third parties as well and other types of content. And they have authors, uh, like people like Michael Pollan and so forth who are working with them, who have created these professional notebooks based on their own content, right? Um, this is like, you know, it's, yeah, it's like, this is a good idea. Like, um, I think this is actually kind of cool. Um, and not really related, but it's AI sort of. Um, you know, Sonos switched 2 years ago, screwed over all their customers by changing the app dramatically, and everyone hates them for it because they had to come up with a pair of headphones that nobody really wanted, has spent the past 2 years on basically an apology tour. They've really slowed down product development.

Paul Thurrott [01:12:03]:
They killed a bunch of stuff. They got rid of their CEO. They have this new guy. They just announced their first, what I would call, major new set of updates, which includes some new hardware, like a new Beam soundbar and a a new, uh, generation of headphones, which, you know, have whatever interesting features, who cares. But the big thing is they're updating their OS again, which everyone should be skittish about. It is. But the new version of their OS is going to be an open platform for AI. So the way Sonos works today, if you don't have one, is you can use the, like, the Sonos, um, I think they just call it like a digital assistant, whatever that is.

Paul Thurrott [01:12:39]:
The idea is you can talk to your speakers and say, play this playlist, or play me music, like, whatever it is. So So kind of like Google Assistant level technology. And then it integrates with third-party or previous-gen assistants. Like I think it was Alexa and Siri, probably not Google because those guys have like a legal thing going on. But now they have this open platform and there's an MPC server and they're going to allow you to automate whatever you want to automate. And they're using AI for some other interesting things related to things like you— they're using like ultra-hisonic like sound or ultra— sorry, high-frequency sound to locate speakers in a room and then like configure them for like, you know, Dolby Atmos surround sound or whatever. And like, it's kind of— it's actually— it's like, okay, like this actually sounds pretty cool.

Richard Campbell [01:13:24]:
So yeah, the Sonos interaction with your phone when it's configuring, where the speaker makes a noise that your phone can hear, right? It's really compelling.

Paul Thurrott [01:13:32]:
Like, yeah, it's interesting, right?

Richard Campbell [01:13:33]:
Like, it's stylish too.

Paul Thurrott [01:13:35]:
Yeah. And, and so I— it makes sense, you know, Sonos is a relatively small company. Like, they shouldn't have their own assistant. That's kind of stupid. So they just kind of opened up—

Richard Campbell [01:13:43]:
they were using Amazon for the longest time, right?

Paul Thurrott [01:13:45]:
So they're like, now you like maybe use ChatGPT, use— well, it doesn't matter, it's, it's MPC, so you can use anything you want. And right, you can automate and you can like have it, you know, make playlists based on music you like and blah blah whatever. Like, I, I'm like, okay, like this actually sounds kind of interesting. It's kind of cool.

Richard Campbell [01:14:01]:
Yeah, it's interesting to think in those terms. Like, I've got Sonos in here with a pretty heavy-duty Home Assistant setup, and I mostly just just use the music assistant in Home Assistant to send commands to the Sonos on what to do. But Sonos is, you know, synchronization and so forth is great. The problem is that they blew up their software a couple of years ago, and they finally have limped their way back. And in the meantime, a dozen inexpensive competitors have come along.

Paul Thurrott [01:14:26]:
So yeah, uh, like, like smelling blood in the water, you know, basically.

Richard Campbell [01:14:30]:
No, you blew— you wrecked your own market.

Paul Thurrott [01:14:33]:
So this is interesting to me because this possibly— I think it was before they screwed up their app. Like, in fact, I'm sure it was. I had written this thing, it was like, Sonos, I, I love you, you gotta make up with Google. Like, I get it, I know they stole your stuff, I get it, like, I believe you. Yeah, blah blah blah, whatever. But they really kind of like hosed half their user base because when you're on an Apple device, iPhone, iPad, whatever, you can just use AirPlay and target all the speakers. It works awesome. Yeah, you used to be able to do that from Google, like Android or whatever, and now you cannot.

Paul Thurrott [01:15:01]:
And no, so that means you have to use their app. So when their app comes out and it's garbage, you're like, frick this thing. Like, like, it's so irritating on Android.

Richard Campbell [01:15:09]:
The disaster— I don't know, I've always had opinions on this disaster because it smelled like they used a contracted service to build their software and that contract blew up and suddenly they had to have a new team and they couldn't use the old software. But you know, the logical thing to do was to spend enough time building the new app because that happens until you're in parallel. But I think they hit some kind of wall legally and just like, oh, we're cutting across and eating it.

Paul Thurrott [01:15:32]:
And they made— now they're gonna have to do the math on how much that costs. Yeah, they made a big mistake by like, we— they just shipped that thing without keeping the old one in place, which was just a huge problem.

Richard Campbell [01:15:41]:
But yeah, and I think that— and why would you do that except that you couldn't not do that, right? That it was going to cost— you thought it would cost you more to get another year out of the old software than what it cost you in customers for screwing thing up.

Paul Thurrott [01:15:53]:
Yeah. I mean, look, they made all the right happy sounds and everything, and, and I don't know, I, it's hard to know.

Richard Campbell [01:15:58]:
Yeah. Without, without ever actually being honest.

Leo Laporte [01:16:02]:
Right.

Richard Campbell [01:16:02]:
Like in the age of authenticity, the correct thing to do is say, hey, we got into this situation. We're really sorry. We're fixing it as fast as we can. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:16:11]:
I mean, they eventually got there, but, um, but look, they've also mostly, yeah. So I, but the thing that's one of the things that's interesting to me about this update is this like kind of end runs around the problem with Google because, because this is an open platform. You as a user, if you're like, well, I pay for Gemini or use Gemini, whatever, you can be like, fine, I'll just use Gemini with this thing, which is kind of what you wanted on the Google side, right? Anyway, right? So they're never going to partner together, probably. I mean, we'll see, but they don't have to anymore because now it's an open platform. So, you know, for AI. So if that happens to be the AI you use, well, guess what? You'll be able to, you'll be able to control it.

Richard Campbell [01:16:48]:
You just surface an MCP and off it goes. And, you know, same thing, my, my HA should be able to get to their MCP and give it instructions.

Paul Thurrott [01:16:54]:
You can choose whatever. Yeah, whatever one works, whatever one you're using should work fine. Like, it's great. Like, I— that's, to me, is very cool. So I'm gonna— it's not like a bit like this, the Sonos 27 OS or whatever it's called, is not available as we speak, but, um, should be available by the end of the month. And I'm actually— I'm kind of curious about this. I'm—

Leo Laporte [01:17:11]:
yeah.

Richard Campbell [01:17:11]:
Well, it'll be interesting to see how hard they force it down people's throats too. So everybody's a little jumpy about Sonos these days, right?

Paul Thurrott [01:17:20]:
So the two, right, so the, the two problems here are you hear Sonos OS update, you're like, what? Like, hold on a second. Like, you know, yeah, you got to get by that. But the other one is just like, there's, there is still this crowd of people are like, they hear AI and like, no, the last thing I need is another company jamming AI down my throat. And it's like, well, hold on a second, actually they're handling this right. Like, yeah, if you don't want this, you don't have it.

Richard Campbell [01:17:41]:
Don't turn it on.

Paul Thurrott [01:17:41]:
Don't worry. Like, We're not just turning it on. Like, you have to go choose it. You pick your AI, you go, you do whatever you want.

Richard Campbell [01:17:47]:
Like, but if you don't want it, you know, it's also not a simple hoop. It's not turn it on, here it is, right? Like, which is the way they did Amazon back in the day. You've gotta spend some time configuring and hooking up.

Leo Laporte [01:17:57]:
I have been using my Sonos, in fact. So I was one of those people who said, I will never buy another Sonos device in my life.

Paul Thurrott [01:18:03]:
Me too. I know, I know.

Leo Laporte [01:18:05]:
And then, uh, it turned out it was really easy for my agents to write to Sonos.

Paul Thurrott [01:18:11]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [01:18:13]:
It turns out it's not a— it's just a post. So I've been using the Sonos and I have Sonos— the house we bought had Sonos speakers already built in. So every floor has a set of speakers. In fact, occasionally you'll hear the AI voices coming through the ceiling. So I said, hey, well, you can tell where I am based on where my iPhone is paired, which Wi-Fi access point, use that Sonos speaker to talk to me. So now it talks to me in the gym, the living room.

Paul Thurrott [01:18:37]:
As you move around the house. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:18:38]:
As I move around.

Paul Thurrott [01:18:39]:
No, it's actually pretty cool, I think. Yeah. And I, and so I had the same reaction you did, but you also have this— in my case, I like, you know, thousands of dollars spent on these speakers, several of them. It's like, I'm not just going to throw them away or give them away or sell them. I like— I, I'm going to use them till they're gone or don't work or whatever, or whatever it is, right? Like, it's— I'm not going to knee-jerk just— there's— it's not like there's a plug-and-play something else that makes as much sense. But I feel like they've kind of clawed their way back to which was the original um, you know, value proposition other than like, you know, sound quality, lossless audio, blah blah blah, whatever.

Leo Laporte [01:19:10]:
Sound quality is actually good, you know.

Paul Thurrott [01:19:12]:
It's very good. But it's— but to me, but it's also like the— it's like agnostic. Like the idea is like if I use an iPhone or an Android phone, it shouldn't matter, should just work. And they kind of lost that because of the problem with Google. But I feel like now with this, they're actually getting it back. And it's like nice. Like they've kind of erased the problems. Like it's, it's interesting.

Paul Thurrott [01:19:29]:
It's taken a while. Yep. Yeah, um, this should work. This should work great for everybody. So that's good. It'll be interesting.

Leo Laporte [01:19:35]:
Even if you hate it, they do make decent speakers, you know.

Paul Thurrott [01:19:38]:
That's good. Yeah, that's the thing. I had—

Leo Laporte [01:19:40]:
yes, so I had— so Apple HomePods, remember how they said, oh, you know, this is the best thing ever, we have this anechoic chambers and we've tested it all? And I set up next to it, I set the Sonos, little Sonos.

Paul Thurrott [01:19:51]:
Sorry, I, I have 4 HomePods. Let me tell you something, I can't wait to get rid of more than them.

Richard Campbell [01:19:56]:
They're terrible.

Paul Thurrott [01:19:56]:
They're awful.

Leo Laporte [01:19:57]:
They're muddy.

Paul Thurrott [01:19:58]:
The other thing is, the other thing is though, like, we have like awesome like Sonos speakers in Pennsylvania. So like, we're, you know, we'll be in Mexico for 4 months or something. We have these little HomePods, the little ones. They're not great. I mean, they're not great anyway.

Leo Laporte [01:20:10]:
Those are—

Paul Thurrott [01:20:10]:
yeah, but we have bigger— we have the bigger ones in Pennsylvania, but like, whatever. But then we get home to Pennsylvania and I just turn the system on for the first time, play whatever music, and I'm like, holy crap, like, it's just, it's just awesome. It's The whole like, I'm surprised the neighbors don't walk over like, what the hell are you doing in there? It's like the whole neighborhood's like, we always know when the Tharotts are home. Yeah, there must be music night at the Tharrott house. They're just awesome. I mean, they're not my neighbors, the speakers, um, but they're, you know, they're amazing. Like, they're really good.

Leo Laporte [01:20:38]:
I have the little, uh, the ones on the left there, the Era 100s, and they even— those little ones sound pretty damn good.

Paul Thurrott [01:20:44]:
Yeah, they're expensive. Let's, right, let's, you know, so one thing, like, so I have— I only have one of it. I only have one of this speaker, but there's like Move and Move 2. I think those are like the—

Leo Laporte [01:20:54]:
I have Moves in the kitchen, the bigger portable ones, right?

Paul Thurrott [01:20:57]:
Right. Yeah, we bring them outside or whatever. They're awesome. And they can be Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, so they work outside, blah blah blah, whatever. But the problem with those things is you can't use them as, um, rear speakers in a, like, a home theater setup.

Leo Laporte [01:21:09]:
They don't have an input.

Paul Thurrott [01:21:10]:
But now they work because with this new system, now they work. And not only will they work, but it ought— like, in other words, like, maybe you have true. You have them in some other room, you carry them in the room, it detects them, and it makes them the rears automatically. It just works. Oh, that's part— that's part of this new— yeah, this new—

Leo Laporte [01:21:27]:
and you're like, they can pull this off? Okay.

Paul Thurrott [01:21:30]:
No, it's amazing. Like, I, I'm—

Leo Laporte [01:21:32]:
I know, I give them it.

Paul Thurrott [01:21:33]:
I was like, literally, like, like 2 years ago, I was like, nope, this company, I'm done. Like, I'm never— I'm getting rid of all this stuff. And, and I never did because I'm lazy. But, um, and now I'm like, I'm glad I did they didn't, because like, they— it's kind of back to where, you know, the point of the thing to me, you know, sound quality, obviously, whole house audio, whatever.

Richard Campbell [01:21:50]:
But sound quality was never the issue.

Paul Thurrott [01:21:52]:
Nope. And now it's like, oh, they did it. Like, they, you know, they kind of clawed their way back. Like, I love it. Like, I love that they did this.

Leo Laporte [01:21:58]:
Let me back in.

Paul Thurrott [01:21:58]:
I know, that's good.

Leo Laporte [01:22:00]:
I loved Sonos when they first started.

Richard Campbell [01:22:01]:
I love—

Leo Laporte [01:22:02]:
you know, this was the only way you could do party mode. Nobody else had figured that out yet. Now everybody knows how to do that, so that's not special anymore.

Paul Thurrott [01:22:09]:
But, uh, but look, I don't— whatever. You have done everything you can do. Like, you get these giant JBL speakers, you can, you can stereo pair them. Locked in once you hear this.

Leo Laporte [01:22:20]:
It's talking to me. Sorry, through the Sonos speakers.

Paul Thurrott [01:22:22]:
Yeah, Bluetooth is garbage. And then they— but they do this stuff over Wi-Fi and it's awesome. Like, it's— yeah, that's what you got.

Leo Laporte [01:22:28]:
Yeah, so it's part of, uh, it fits in with my home, my HA Home Assistant. Yeah. And it's all part of that.

Paul Thurrott [01:22:36]:
I think it's gonna only get better, honestly. I mean, you're already making it work. I think it's just gonna be better.

Leo Laporte [01:22:42]:
I, uh, you'll appreciate this, uh, Richard. I told my AI agent, do it, run an Nmap on my network, find all the network devices, right? And then make me a dashboard of all of them. And it's this huge webpage. It's not pretty, but it's a huge webpage. Everything.

Paul Thurrott [01:23:01]:
Yeah, right.

Leo Laporte [01:23:02]:
And not just Home Assistant, everything. If it's on the— if it's on the internet, I can control it.

Richard Campbell [01:23:07]:
On the network. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:23:09]:
Yep. Um, this is semi-related to what you said, but you ever have like one of those Twilight Zone moments? So in my case, like, I'm out in the world somewhere last week, I get a notification on my phone, it looks— I look down, it's from Eero. So we have Eero Wi-Fi equipment right here, uh, or in Pennsylvania and in Mexico. And it says Eero CDMX, which is the one in Mexico, has detected a new device on your network. And I'm like, what? It's like—

Richard Campbell [01:23:33]:
and then—

Leo Laporte [01:23:33]:
And you're not in Mexico.

Paul Thurrott [01:23:36]:
I'm not in Mexico. There should be nothing connected to this. Like, what do you mean a new device? So then I spent like half an hour like investigating this thing. I think it was just either the Blink camera or another Eero device reconnecting to the network for some reason.

Richard Campbell [01:23:48]:
I don't know.

Leo Laporte [01:23:49]:
We live in a world of sentient devices, and they're only going to get smarter as intelligence—

Paul Thurrott [01:23:54]:
I know, but it's like troubling.

Leo Laporte [01:23:55]:
It's like, like, it's very troubling.

Paul Thurrott [01:23:57]:
Like, the network— the message I got was like, uh, like, so some— what, what? Like, you know, I had to look it up. Like, I had to figure it out, you know? I don't think anything bad happened, but it was like—

Richard Campbell [01:24:09]:
oh, got your Buzz DM.

Leo Laporte [01:24:11]:
GrokBot. I said make a— so I'm using this GrokBot thing. I said make a voice for yourself and it chose an announcer voice.

Richard Campbell [01:24:24]:
Nice.

Paul Thurrott [01:24:25]:
Nice. You know what you should— you know, there must be a way to do this with AI. Be like, find the dead spot, like the Wi-Fi dead spots in my house or wherever. Like, or find like what are the best loca— like, you know, figure out like do I actually need like a mesh thing somewhere or do I need, you know, like there must be a way to do this. Like the way, like Richard mentioned, the way Sonos does like the, um, it figures out the dynamics of the room using like sound. You know, you can walk around like, you look like a jerk doing it, but like you do this thing with— it tests the microphone.

Leo Laporte [01:24:52]:
Yeah, I did it with the Sonos.

Paul Thurrott [01:24:54]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [01:24:55]:
And you, you— so it's the app on your phone and you—

Paul Thurrott [01:24:57]:
Yeah, it's like Trueplay or something.

Leo Laporte [01:24:58]:
And you're supposed to go like this.

Paul Thurrott [01:25:00]:
Right, like a jerk. Like someone walks in like, are you okay? Are you having a stroke?

Leo Laporte [01:25:03]:
Literally, basically.

Paul Thurrott [01:25:04]:
Like, what are you doing? No, I'm tuning my stereo system, obviously. What are you, you know, what are you asking me?

Leo Laporte [01:25:08]:
What the hell?

Paul Thurrott [01:25:08]:
Yeah, and you're being carted off in like a straitjacket.

Leo Laporte [01:25:11]:
And the stereo's going—

Paul Thurrott [01:25:13]:
Yep, yep.

Leo Laporte [01:25:13]:
I know, it's so serious.

Paul Thurrott [01:25:16]:
Right. So I, we need that for Wi-Fi, right?

Leo Laporte [01:25:21]:
Oh, we sure do. We do.

Paul Thurrott [01:25:23]:
I, I don't know why we don't have this. You're supposed to, you're expected to walk around a building and figure out where to put these things. Like, just tell me where to put it. Exactly. Like it's 2024. Come on.

Leo Laporte [01:25:34]:
Good Lord.

Richard Campbell [01:25:35]:
Come on, man. What's going on?

Paul Thurrott [01:25:37]:
I don't know. It's confusing. Um, and I just kind of random. Sorry about that story. I don't know where to put this.

Richard Campbell [01:25:47]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:25:47]:
But Microsoft, some years ago, I can't remember anymore when this happened, but they have these legacy frameworks like Windows Forms and WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation, that they open source, which is like a nice thing to do for that stuff. And so the community can contribute to these things, improve them, etc. And so they've kind of let WinUI— well, they're calling it WinUI now. So this is like Windows App SDK plus what used to be WinUI 3 essentially. right? Um, has gone through some permutations, um, really slow development, um, lots of problems.

Richard Campbell [01:26:18]:
It seemed like the team got dismantled on it, got pulled into MAUI for a while. Like, there's been this incredible struggle about the right way to handle this UI.

Paul Thurrott [01:26:27]:
Yep. And man, it just never felt to me like it had adult supervision in Redmond. And I, I don't know, but—

Richard Campbell [01:26:33]:
And well, I think part of it was the, the sort of fallout of Windows not being the center, the company anymore and kind of they got in some ways attacked.

Paul Thurrott [01:26:41]:
And yeah, I don't remember how— there's been over the past 2 years at least a couple times they're like, okay, we're gonna get this right, we're gonna figure it out. But at some point the past years, maybe it was a year ago, Bill, I don't remember, but they were like, look, we're eventually going to open source this thing too, um, but we're going to do it in the right way. We're going to do this in a measured way. It's going to take some time. We're not doing this overnight.

Richard Campbell [01:27:03]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [01:27:04]:
And they kind of laid out like this, it wasn't a schedule, but it was like, here are the 4 milestones we have to hit first. And they just hit the 4th of those, which was moving WinUI development, as it's called now, fully to GitHub. So, it's all Microsoft guys, but if you're on the outside, you can actually see what they're doing. So, you can see the pull requests they're making, you can see the improvements they're making, like you can actually see it. So, it's transparent. And this is ahead of them, you know, again, they're planning to open source it. I don't know when that's going to happen. But they actually, I want to say it might've been a year ago August when they announced they were doing this.

Paul Thurrott [01:27:37]:
So it just basically took a year. Like they actually, they did it. Like they're, like they're developing WinUI in the open on GitHub. So, you know, I'm not saying everything's going to be great. I've used WinUI, it's terrible. But yeah.

Richard Campbell [01:27:53]:
It's better than building React for Windows.

Paul Thurrott [01:27:55]:
Like, that's such a low bar. But yeah, I mean, yeah, 100%.

Richard Campbell [01:27:59]:
But you know what was happening? happening. Like, right, I'm glad that WinUI is back. I'm glad that it's in GitHub, that it's being treated like the dev stack it should be. Because you know what else sucked even more? Having to tell IT I want to update Windows 10 so I can push up my WinUI app. That was not a fun couple of years, man. Like, that was tough.

Paul Thurrott [01:28:18]:
I feel like there was more than a couple years, but yeah, it was, it was not good. It was not good.

Richard Campbell [01:28:22]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:28:22]:
No.

Paul Thurrott [01:28:22]:
Yeah. I mean, that was one of the early rounds of improvements, like the decoupling uh, at the time Windows App SDK from like specific versions of Windows 10, which is like, guys, seriously, like, this is the stupidest.

Richard Campbell [01:28:34]:
Tell me you don't know how software development works without telling me.

Paul Thurrott [01:28:37]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you literally have to have some, uh, well, I'm sure it's—

Richard Campbell [01:28:41]:
Well, and I caught it on both sides. On .NET Rocks, we're talking about these great new features in WinUI 3, and on Run As Radio, we're talking about the insanity of devs asking for a Windows update.

Paul Thurrott [01:28:52]:
Well, you do this thing where you're like, all right, I shipped an update to an app and now we gotta make sure all our users are on Windows version, whatever the version build number is. And it's like, yeah, that's not happening. And I, that never made any sense. Anyway, they, they got, you know, look, they, they fixed that. I mean, they did fix that. That was, that, well, that was Project Reunion. I'm sorry, this was, we were talking about, this was the universal Windows platform at the time, right? This was, that was what Project Reunion did, like fix that problem, I think.

Richard Campbell [01:29:17]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [01:29:17]:
And then make them desktop apps, not mobile.

Richard Campbell [01:29:20]:
But that was, and that was part of the thing. There's so many, so many initiatives, right?

Paul Thurrott [01:29:24]:
And I know, I know, they get, they just get lost, you know? It's funny because they were the big ones when you think about like, um, the .NET space. Like there was, you know, Windows Forms, Windows, uh, Presentation Foundation. And then from there it was basically from that, uh, uh, whatever Metro was called, um, the WinRT, like, uh, the Windows Runtime. And, um, and then we've basically been on the Windows Runtime ever since. It's just been different permutations of that. So it's only been, Um, think— I mean, it's been— it's crazy how much time has gone by. It's, it's, it's so weird. Anyway, so look, I'm not— again, I'm not, I'm not suggesting this is going to be perfect, but, um, I, I do feel like they're finally doing the right thing for this, uh, for developers and for everybody, for Windows really.

Paul Thurrott [01:30:07]:
I mean, it's good. So it's getting there. Yeah, I still, still hate WinUI so much, but better than it was, if that makes sense.

Richard Campbell [01:30:14]:
Call it progress.

Paul Thurrott [01:30:15]:
We're not getting anything else. I can tell you that there's not gonna be some future platform.

Richard Campbell [01:30:19]:
And again, anytime I see Windows make a move right now, like I got such a warm feeling about Pavan and, and sort of enabling his engineers again.

Paul Thurrott [01:30:27]:
Right.

Richard Campbell [01:30:27]:
The fact that they went to GitHub, which is not a Windowsy type thing, just says volumes like that. Yep.

Paul Thurrott [01:30:34]:
Yeah. Not right. In other words, we're not talking about a legacy thing that we don't care about anymore. No, this is literally what we need.

Richard Campbell [01:30:39]:
We're trying to find a new way forward.

Paul Thurrott [01:30:40]:
Yeah. We are. are ourselves using this to fix Windows right now.

Richard Campbell [01:30:44]:
Well, and now we get into the real question, which is, are they starting to just respect this idea of we need to care and feed for developers that don't work at Microsoft to be able to build Windows client software?

Paul Thurrott [01:30:55]:
That's crazy.

Richard Campbell [01:30:56]:
Yeah, because it's been so hard, as you know, to build software for Windows. Like, it's just been brutal.

Paul Thurrott [01:31:04]:
Yep.

Richard Campbell [01:31:05]:
Yeah. Yep.

Paul Thurrott [01:31:07]:
I have nothing to add. You are 100% correct. Yeah. 100%.

Richard Campbell [01:31:12]:
Yep. Yeah. That's good.

Leo Laporte [01:31:14]:
You, my friends, have had the— shown the excellent taste to join us on Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell. If you're just tuning in for Intelligent Machines, uh, we're running a little late because Paul is at IFA and everything's shifted a little bit, but we're, we're getting to the end of the back of the books coming up, the Xbox segment. And, uh, then, uh, our Intelligent Machines—

Paul Thurrott [01:31:35]:
Who is, um, who's on Intelligent Machines today? What's the—

Leo Laporte [01:31:39]:
Uh, Div Garg.

Paul Thurrott [01:31:40]:
Okay, sorry.

Leo Laporte [01:31:44]:
This guy is really interesting.

Paul Thurrott [01:31:45]:
I'm gonna need more information.

Leo Laporte [01:31:46]:
He is, uh, well, besides Paris and Jeff, who know, you know, we're gonna be a little late.

Paul Thurrott [01:31:51]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [01:31:51]:
Uh, but we interviewed, we interviewed Div, uh, earlier, a couple of days ago. So we're gonna just roll that into the recording and start, uh, Intelligent Machines as soon as you guys are done, which should be—

Paul Thurrott [01:32:04]:
Okay, so these guys are a little early, but—

Leo Laporte [01:32:06]:
A little bit of a waste of time.

Paul Thurrott [01:32:07]:
No, no, I, I get it. But they understand we're So Jeff has been harassing me for 2 or 3 years about going to a place in Berlin that I've not gone to.

Leo Laporte [01:32:14]:
Oh yes.

Paul Thurrott [01:32:15]:
So he's probably listening. So I want to say just for the record, we, we will go to this place.

Leo Laporte [01:32:20]:
Good.

Paul Thurrott [01:32:20]:
Which is like KaDeWeß.

Leo Laporte [01:32:23]:
Yeah.

Richard Campbell [01:32:23]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:32:23]:
He's always talking about that. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:32:25]:
Like kind of a, like it's a grand magazine type store, like in Berlin that has like a food court kind of thing. That's awesome. So yes, I will do this.

Leo Laporte [01:32:33]:
Jeff, consider yourself warned.

Paul Thurrott [01:32:36]:
Well, or just—

Leo Laporte [01:32:37]:
So, and yeah, if we could keep the— I know it's our last Canadian. Yeah, let's not go all the way back to the Cretaceous era if we can help it. We can, we can start—

Richard Campbell [01:32:50]:
I guess we're going back to BC and I've already done the snot out of the geology of BC.

Paul Thurrott [01:32:55]:
So when you say BC, you mean, you mean British Columbia, not British Columbia?

Leo Laporte [01:33:02]:
Okay, uh, we shall return to Lake America in just a moment, but yes, we are going to the back of the book, ladies and gentlemen. No, no, we're not, we're not, we're not. We have the vaunted, the fa— the famous, the, the truly incredible—

Richard Campbell [01:33:18]:
The theme song.

Paul Thurrott [01:33:20]:
The theme song.

Leo Laporte [01:33:21]:
Yes, Xbox segment. Mr. T?

Paul Thurrott [01:33:24]:
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought there was an ad there for some reason.

Leo Laporte [01:33:27]:
Okay, well, that was the Oh, that was the ad.

Paul Thurrott [01:33:29]:
That's fine. All right. Um, I don't know what's happening.

Leo Laporte [01:33:32]:
What, you think you have ads on this show? What are you, crazy?

Paul Thurrott [01:33:35]:
I don't know what's happening. It's okay. It's fine. Um, okay. So, uh, it is a new month. It's September. We've got a new set of games on Game Pass coming. Uh, the big one to me is Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which is like Black Ops 5.

Paul Thurrott [01:33:52]:
I think they didn't call it that, obviously, but I believe Black Ops 4. Yeah. 4 or 5.

Richard Campbell [01:33:56]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:33:56]:
6 and 7.

Richard Campbell [01:33:57]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:33:57]:
So Black Ops 5. So if you are in Call of Duty, as I am, and hopefully you enjoyed the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 public beta over the past weekend. Awesome. That main game engine is like Modern Warfare 3. Actually, I think it's 2 and 3. And we'll, I probably will be 4. We'll see what happens there. But Black Ops 6 and 7.

Paul Thurrott [01:34:21]:
So this is the one before that. So I actually, I'm gonna, I'm kind of eager to play this. It's been a while. So, uh, that's coming soon. And then some other games that are not called Call of Duty, so we will ignore them. Um, and I have the wrong link here. So let me see what that story is supposed to be. Oh, this one is awesome, but also terrible.

Paul Thurrott [01:34:39]:
Um, so Atari, like Commodore, exists again, right? It's a different company, but Commodore or Atari, like Commodore, and actually do a much degree than Commodore so far, has been all about game preservation, right? And so these guys have either bought or licensed a bunch of legacy games and game studios and have been bringing these things back to market, et cetera, et cetera. They make hardware. So they have like an Atari 2600+ game console, which is kind of a modern take on that. Um, an Atari 20— uh, 7800+ game console as well, right? Um, fun. But they partnered with Activision. So Activision was the first game console third-party game developer, right? These were former Atari game developers who were tired of Atari not giving them credit for making the games, right? Because Atari was like, no, these are Atari games. They're not made by Larry whoever. They're not made by other people.

Paul Thurrott [01:35:34]:
They're made by Atari. And it was like, yeah, but I coded this thing all by myself. Like, why can't my name be in there somewhere? or whatever. Um, and they, and of course they weren't getting paid, you know, like per unit sale, uh, additional money, any or anything like that. So they, they left and they formed Activision. And Activision, I think the number, I believe over the course of the rest of the 1980s released 39 games on the Atari 2600. And they are re-releasing all of them through Atari in cartridge form.

Richard Campbell [01:36:05]:
Wow.

Paul Thurrott [01:36:06]:
And in— I know, which is crazy. Um, also multiple versions of the cartridge. So the base version of the cartridge, of each cartridge, is like the old black style cartridge, like the black plastic with the sticker on it. And then there's gonna be color-coded versions, and they're coming out with 4 box sets. So, uh, 3 of them will have 10 games each, and then the last one will have 9. But, um, the first one's coming out the end of September.

Leo Laporte [01:36:30]:
And, um, What are you supposed to put these things in?

Paul Thurrott [01:36:34]:
That's— so this is the amazing part, right? So they work with the new Ataris, like the 2600 and 7800 Plus consoles, but they also work if you have an, like, like literally like an Atari console from the 1980s, they work there too. Like, this is insane, right? Um, so this is all really good news, um, until you find out how much it costs, because unfortunately these things are very expensive. So, and by the way, these are games like everyone's heard Sort of like River Raid, Pitfall, uh, Drag Star.

Leo Laporte [01:37:01]:
Not E.T., I presume.

Paul Thurrott [01:37:02]:
No, that was an Atari game. These are like the, like the Activision games, right?

Leo Laporte [01:37:05]:
Oh, these are all Activision.

Paul Thurrott [01:37:06]:
Yeah. Oh yeah. And they're doing like slipcases with like color-coded boxes. It's beautiful. But the problem is like the standard edition standalone cartridges are all $35 apiece. Wow. Um, the box sets are $250 each and they come with like deluxe editions of the games With a bunch of, you know, little gadget, like little physical things.

Leo Laporte [01:37:27]:
This is like a 4K ROM. Why is it so expensive?

Paul Thurrott [01:37:31]:
Because nobody makes this kind of thing anymore. Yeah.

Richard Campbell [01:37:33]:
Well, yeah, this, this is straight nostalgia punching. I mean, the inside of the thing's probably just a little SD card, but I know.

Paul Thurrott [01:37:42]:
Oh yeah, exactly.

Richard Campbell [01:37:42]:
Right.

Paul Thurrott [01:37:42]:
Exactly. That's probably true, by the way. Um, but the box set of all 39 games is going to be $1,000. And by the way, wow, I know.

Leo Laporte [01:37:53]:
Here's the thing, the collector's edition, it is beautiful.

Paul Thurrott [01:37:56]:
Like, they are— they're gorgeous. Like, they really are. There's no way I'm paying. I thought I'm not going to pay for any of this stuff. It's— but they are amazing looking. Like, they really are kind of cool.

Leo Laporte [01:38:04]:
So I, I, yeah, my neighbor has pinball machines.

Paul Thurrott [01:38:10]:
Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:38:10]:
That are more than $10,000 each.

Paul Thurrott [01:38:12]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [01:38:13]:
And he's got 4 of them. I could see him spending $1,000 for the box set.

Paul Thurrott [01:38:18]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [01:38:18]:
It's nothing.

Paul Thurrott [01:38:19]:
You could spend, uh, there's a starter bundle that is like, um, like the new version of the Atari 2600, what, you know, 2600 Plus, like 2 of the new versions of the classic joysticks, a new set of the classic paddle controllers, you know, right? And then, uh, 4 games in standard edition. And it's like $335. And it's like, uh, I think they're going to sell a bunch of this, honestly. It's crazy. But it's also like awesome, but it's, it's just stupid.

Richard Campbell [01:38:50]:
It's crazy.

Paul Thurrott [01:38:50]:
It's crazy. Yeah. It's nuts. I can't believe anyone's doing this. Like, but it's awesome.

Leo Laporte [01:38:54]:
Like there must be a market. Things gotta be a market.

Richard Campbell [01:38:57]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:38:57]:
And when this stuff sells pretty well, which I think it's going to, like, I think we're gonna see more of this kind of thing, like physical cartridge releases, like in, you know, at scale.

Leo Laporte [01:39:05]:
I mean, like in 2020, of course you could play all these games on a MAME emulator.

Paul Thurrott [01:39:09]:
You, oh my God. Yes. These ROMs are out there.

Leo Laporte [01:39:11]:
You could play them on the Internet Archive if you just want to.

Richard Campbell [01:39:13]:
Yep.

Paul Thurrott [01:39:13]:
They're all up there.

Leo Laporte [01:39:13]:
there for.

Paul Thurrott [01:39:14]:
Yeah, exactly. I know. But, but for someone who wants that— look, we live in a world where apparently like young people are buying like vinyl records and, uh, like bringing iPods back from the dead and stuff. Like, I, I don't know, there might be a market for this. Like, this is interesting.

Leo Laporte [01:39:28]:
It's like a weird thing to do for, uh—

Richard Campbell [01:39:31]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [01:39:31]:
Just—

Paul Thurrott [01:39:33]:
I know, I mean, I mean, I, I love that this is happening, and then I see the pricing like, oh, I don't know about that. Like, it's too much. But it's still, it's amazing to me that they're doing this at all. And some of these are, I mean, a lot of these are actually, a lot of these games are fantastic.

Leo Laporte [01:39:50]:
I mean, Pitfall was a fun game. I'm not saying that.

Paul Thurrott [01:39:52]:
Oh, it's great. But like Chopper Command, fantastic. River Raid, classic. Yeah. These are good games.

Leo Laporte [01:39:59]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:40:00]:
I don't know that they hold up to, you know, like whatever we have today or whatever, but, um, but still kind of amazing.

Leo Laporte [01:40:08]:
Kind of amazing, you know, the little—

Paul Thurrott [01:40:10]:
yeah, it's good.

Leo Laporte [01:40:11]:
Yeah, I don't—

Richard Campbell [01:40:12]:
I, I mean, I have a tough time saying this is a bad idea because I know how strong their nostalgia play is with people buying LPs and things like— yep, why would you skip the opportunity here?

Paul Thurrott [01:40:24]:
I know, it's crazy.

Leo Laporte [01:40:26]:
The sound quality is somewhat less than— it's not even—

Paul Thurrott [01:40:31]:
I know, it's Listen, when the Mattel Intellivision came around, whatever year that was, '78, '79, you know, one of the big innovations was they had like white noise for like crowds in the sports games. Yeah. So you hit a home run or something and the crowd would be like, you know, and it was like, yeah, that was like way better than the Atari. Like, you know, it was just, it was ridiculous. But I don't know.

Leo Laporte [01:40:58]:
I'm sorry. I keep getting hit by barrels. I apologize. Nice.

Paul Thurrott [01:41:00]:
You can get, you get a patch.

Leo Laporte [01:41:02]:
How do you jump in Pitfall? I forgot.

Paul Thurrott [01:41:04]:
I think you hit up on the joystick. Well, there's probably the— well, this is the—

Leo Laporte [01:41:06]:
oh, I don't have a joystick.

Paul Thurrott [01:41:07]:
It was like a one button. It was a one button joystick.

Leo Laporte [01:41:10]:
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott [01:41:10]:
So what are you playing it through? Like the web thing?

Leo Laporte [01:41:12]:
The Internet Archive. There it is.

Richard Campbell [01:41:14]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:41:15]:
I mean, it's just like the real thing.

Paul Thurrott [01:41:16]:
Yeah. Don't get hit in the head with the barrel.

Leo Laporte [01:41:18]:
No, but I can't figure out how to jump.

Paul Thurrott [01:41:21]:
Oh, son. Oh, there you go. Yeah, exactly. That's the sound. It basically, it makes 4 sounds. I mean, it's not like new. It's not Dolby Atmos.

Leo Laporte [01:41:30]:
But oh man, I remember I bought this thing. I was so excited.

Paul Thurrott [01:41:33]:
Oh yeah, we stayed up overnight at a friend's house playing this, like, just again and again and again. And everyone's trying to figure out, like, you go underground and it like jumps screens and stuff, and it's like, where does it go? Like, people were drawing maps, you know?

Leo Laporte [01:41:44]:
Come on guys, help me here. How do I jump? Maybe J?

Paul Thurrott [01:41:47]:
Maybe it's just like Shadow of the Beast but terrible looking.

Leo Laporte [01:41:53]:
I only have up and down, left and right. I don't know.

Paul Thurrott [01:41:56]:
Maybe just go up. You don't just go up? Like, like once you're standing still, they go up?

Leo Laporte [01:42:04]:
No, no.

Paul Thurrott [01:42:05]:
Okay, I can't help you. I don't know.

Leo Laporte [01:42:09]:
This is embarrassing.

Paul Thurrott [01:42:10]:
The Atari joystick had one button.

Leo Laporte [01:42:12]:
Oh, wait a minute. Input, general input. This machine— oh, it's got dip switches. Uh, player 1 controls up, down, left, right. What's the button? Left Control or mouse B1. Oh wow, this is a little too real.

Paul Thurrott [01:42:30]:
Oops.

Leo Laporte [01:42:31]:
Return to previous menu. What was it? I forgot now. Return to machine.

Paul Thurrott [01:42:40]:
Left Control.

Leo Laporte [01:42:40]:
Left Control. Okay, because I— if I can just get—

Paul Thurrott [01:42:46]:
oh yeah, it made the sound.

Leo Laporte [01:42:49]:
Oh, whoops.

Paul Thurrott [01:42:49]:
Uh, there's the sound.

Leo Laporte [01:42:50]:
It's a Mac, you can't You can't hit arrow and control at the same time.

Paul Thurrott [01:42:55]:
That's why you got to spend $35 to buy this thing on a cartridge.

Leo Laporte [01:43:00]:
I can't do it.

Paul Thurrott [01:43:01]:
And you get the console, which is a couple hundred bucks.

Leo Laporte [01:43:03]:
Come on, run, run, run.

Richard Campbell [01:43:04]:
Oh.

Paul Thurrott [01:43:05]:
Oh boy. You're going to get a barrel in the head.

Leo Laporte [01:43:08]:
I already did.

Paul Thurrott [01:43:10]:
I love that sound. As soon as that sound occurred, I was like, yep, that's it.

Richard Campbell [01:43:13]:
Like, here you are.

Leo Laporte [01:43:15]:
This is like, oh, you got to jump. Oh, I went in the pit.

Paul Thurrott [01:43:20]:
Never get in that thing.

Leo Laporte [01:43:22]:
Oh gosh, it keeps—

Paul Thurrott [01:43:23]:
oh, there he is. Nailed it.

Leo Laporte [01:43:28]:
Oh no.

Paul Thurrott [01:43:29]:
Oh boy.

Richard Campbell [01:43:30]:
Questionable physics. Questionable physics.

Leo Laporte [01:43:36]:
Questionable physics. I don't know how to let go. Oh, maybe down?

Paul Thurrott [01:43:40]:
No, it's gonna be the button. I'd probably jump again. Oh, there it is.

Leo Laporte [01:43:44]:
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you all for watching Atari Weekly. Aren't you glad that we aren't doing Atari 2600 Weekly?

Paul Thurrott [01:43:55]:
Wow. Like somebody might—

Richard Campbell [01:43:57]:
I mean, I don't know that it does have DIP switches.

Paul Thurrott [01:44:00]:
This Week in 6502 Assembly Language.

Leo Laporte [01:44:03]:
You know, uh, who is it we had on the show? Uh, teaches a course in 6502 assembly language.

Paul Thurrott [01:44:09]:
Who?

Leo Laporte [01:44:10]:
Yes.

Richard Campbell [01:44:11]:
Who?

Leo Laporte [01:44:11]:
Uh, at NYU of all places.

Paul Thurrott [01:44:14]:
What are you talking about? So in other words, I could go online and I could watch like a Stanford course on programming for the iPhone, or I could go to NYU and learn how to program 16-bit.

Leo Laporte [01:44:24]:
Do assembler.

Paul Thurrott [01:44:24]:
I might actually look this up. Wow, that's amazing.

Leo Laporte [01:44:27]:
What's his name? I've forgotten his name. Anyway, this— I'm sorry, poor Jeff and Paris are sitting in the wings.

Paul Thurrott [01:44:32]:
Yeah.

Richard Campbell [01:44:33]:
Sorry.

Leo Laporte [01:44:34]:
They got a warm, a tepid cup of water in a Dixie cup, and it's not good. It's not good. So you're watching Windows Weekly. We want to just briefly thank our club members for making all this possible and encourage those of you who are not Club members, the 98% of you who are not club members, to support the darn show. If you like it, go to twit.tv/clubtwit. $10 a month gets you, uh, ad-free versions of all the shows, access to the Discord, all the special programming we do. You know, only club members will get to see Micah and me covering the Apple event. We don't do that in public anymore.

Leo Laporte [01:45:10]:
We do it in the club only because it's a private event. Uh, just everything else though. I don't believe in paywalls. Everything else eventually, if not immediately, is available. But if you join the club, then you know you're doing your, your part to support this enterprise. twit.tv/clubtwit. We really appreciate it. Now it is time for the back of the book and Mr.

Leo Laporte [01:45:32]:
Paul Theriot. Paul?

Paul Thurrott [01:45:34]:
Thinking about downloading like an Atari emulator on my phone now.

Leo Laporte [01:45:38]:
Um, getting It's just not the same without the cheap plastic joystick in the back.

Paul Thurrott [01:45:42]:
Yeah, you need the joystick. That's true. So quickly, I talked about making a Markdown book. I am in fact gonna publish that soon so that—

Leo Laporte [01:45:51]:
Oh, good.

Paul Thurrott [01:45:51]:
I think if I hadn't come here, it'd probably already be out in some form today, but sometime in the next week. So I won't beat that to death, but it is coming and it will be stupid cheap. If I could give it away for free, like at least optionally, I would, but I don't think I can on Leanpub. But, um, it'll be, it won't, it won't be expensive. It won't be very long either. But anyway, whatever. I won't waste too much time on that. Um, I have this kind of, like everyone does probably, I have this kind of standard set of apps that I install every time I install Windows.

Paul Thurrott [01:46:20]:
And one of the best apps I use is something called Image Glass. And it's just a really nice minimalist image viewer. And I configure it so that, you know, I, it's like T to turn off the toolbar, G to turn off the gallery view at the bottom, and F11 to go full screen, and then it's always like that. So I double-click an image, comes up, it's awesome. This works great. The other thing it's really good at, it does a bunch of things actually, it's a bunch of editing functions. But the one thing I use it for is if I can't, like if Affinity, which I use for most graphic editing, doesn't support a file format, I just load it in this and then save as and save it whatever. And it's awesome for that.

Paul Thurrott [01:46:59]:
So I, I've used this thing for years. I love it. And they just They just like issued a major revamp of the app that's like completely rewritten. They used Avalon to bring it cross-platform. So it's available on macOS and Linux for the first time. I don't think it's quite as full-featured on those platforms yet, but they're gonna kind of work to get it there. But there's also been a bunch of stuff on the Windows side, this performance and blah, blah, blah, whatever. But, um, awesome app.

Paul Thurrott [01:47:23]:
And, you know, I, in my case, because I've been using it for years, I, you actually have to like uninstall Image Classic. 9 and then, you know, install the new version. But, um, really worth it. It's just an awesome, awesome app and it's free. I mean, if you want to pay for it, you can, but it's available for anyone for free. And I, I do— I use it every day. Like, I strongly, strongly recommend it. So check it out if you're not aware.

Leo Laporte [01:47:48]:
Well, ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the part of the show where Mr. Richard Campbell talks about what's coming up on Run As Radio.

Richard Campbell [01:47:56]:
Freshly published today, my conversation with Susan Hanley that we called Reimagining the Intranet. If you don't work in IT, you probably don't think much about this, but most companies actually have an internal network for employee data and so forth. And Susan opened this conversation perfectly. She says, well, what happens if it's not the employee going to the intranet, it's an agent? Right, that you're now talking to your chat agent about, well, how many day vacation days you've got left, and it's now trying to navigate your— the company intranet to answer that question. And off we went for a good, what, 40 minutes or so, just the whole challenge of now there's 2 different entities and what does that even look like and how would we organize information differently to allow those tools to be more successful. successful? How do the metrics work now? Because you're not having the navigation click-throughs and things the same way at all. And ultimately, you know, we get down to the fundamentals, which I always end up with, Susan, which is archive your data, right? Too many copies of the truth, very, you know, all that confusion, which is always true. Like, the fundamentals are still the fundamentals.

Richard Campbell [01:49:06]:
Well-organized data is the important part. But, uh, yeah, intranets are undergoing a revolution in some respects because Because of the impact of LLMs in it. And so great to talk to, I mean, a lady I've counted on now for a decade to sort of dig into this sort of thing. She killed it as usual. It was a great conversation. We're back in Victoria. Like I said, this is going to be my last Canadian whiskey for a while because finally the summer's over. I didn't expect to do this much Canadian history to the point where I'm like, huh, what the heck am I going to talk about now? But I found this at my local liquor store.

Richard Campbell [01:49:40]:
This is the MacLoney's Island Distillery called Caffna Avon. If you look at it on the website, they call it the Sherry Bomb, and it comes out of Victoria, great whiskey growing area. And I've, when we talked about Sanctuary, I did a whole lot of conversation about the terroir and how the native population evolved in that area and that whole pressure of coming Up north, you know the British Columbia was originally the British side of the Columbia River, going all the way back to that. But the big thing here is that Macaloney's is actually named for its founder Graham Macaloney, who is a Scottish immigrant. And the Scottish immigration in Canada is funny because all the stories we talked about on the East Coast has largely been about the French who got there first. They weren't really colonized. but they got into the fur trade. They worked with the indigenous people, you know, from Louisiana to Montreal.

Richard Campbell [01:50:35]:
And the English were the colonizers. Like, the Scots kind of show up a bit later. It is funny how they ended up with Nova Scotia, uh, you know, literally being New Scotland, but that's because they used the Latin. That's a clever thing. But British Columbia is totally different because the Rockies were basically impassable for the longest time. People just weren't going to come this way. Uh, they came by sea And so, well, we've already done the story of British Columbia becoming British Columbia and the whole Fort Astoria in 1811 at the Columbia River, then Fort Vancouver further back on the north bank, which is where a city called Vancouver still exists. It's just in Washington State, and it's really a bedroom community of Portland.

Richard Campbell [01:51:13]:
You— it's the Hudson's Bay Company starts moving further north when they build Fort Langley up the river in the Fraser River in 1827. And finally, And that is where Victoria City sits today. Nominally, you know, we think of Hudson's Bay very much as an English company. I've talked about it that way, but it's mostly staffed by Scots in those early days for various reasons, but also Orcadians. And you would wonder, what's an Orcadian? Well, they're the people of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. And I think one of the key reasons for this is that the that British are trying to establish a presence in the north. when Hudson's Bay Company was moving ships from England to Hudson's Bay, they would make a stop in Stromness, which is sort of the biggest city, biggest town on the Orkney Islands. And that became a huge recruiting pipeline for them.

Richard Campbell [01:52:03]:
Orcadians are used to extreme maritime conditions. They are, you know, great shipbuilders and so forth. They're also living in a relatively poor part of the world. And so HBC paid better. And so a lot of Orcadians were the line workers with the Scots mostly being the managers for the bulk of the Hudson's Bay Company's existence. I read one paper from a researcher who said that 80% of the workforce at the time were from Orkney communities. There were more Orcadians in Hudson's Bay Company than there were in the Orkney Islands. And British Columbia, before it was British Columbia, because there were so many Scottish people in that, that were the early colonists, they called it New Caledonia.

Richard Campbell [01:52:46]:
That's how much Scottish we're really talking about here. Now, the whole BC thing really emerges after the Oregon Treaty in 1846, where they draw that modern border along the 49th parallel. And now we can dig into a Scottish immigrant, one Robert Dunsmuir, who arrives in 1851. He was born in the Ayrshire in Scotland in 1825, and he learned to mine coal. For better or worse, you know, the coal mining industry emerges in the northern part part of the British Isles in Scotland. And, and that's their business, right? This is James Watt and the mines and all that sort of stuff. That's where this all begins. And though these folks move out because British Columbia, specifically what we now know as Vancouver Island, full of coal.

Richard Campbell [01:53:34]:
Now, the— there's a crazy part of the story where Robert Dunsmuir in 1850 was given 24 hours notice that he could board a ship going to British Columbia. And so in less than 24 hours, packs up his wife and children to load onto the ship for a 191-day journey. So that's out of England, going south, all the way around South America, through the Cape Horn, and up the north coast of the Americas to Fort Victoria. And Robert immediately goes to work as a coal miner. In fact, that was one of the biggest jobs on Vancouver Island. Vancouver Island back then for a Scot immigrant was to mine coal. But our man Robert is ambitious, and within a few years he discovered his own coal seam in the Wellington area. Today, this is near Nanaimo on the island, and he creates his own company and builds out one of the most productive mines on the coast.

Richard Campbell [01:54:34]:
He's also a big promoter, so he's able to export that coal as far away as California. And again, you're talking about the 1800s, the world runs on coal. That's steamships, railways, factories, heating, everything is coal, and he supplies the coal. And so by the time we get to British Columbia joining the Confederation of Canada in 1871, Robert's a big deal. He's one of the, one of the most successful people in British Columbia, one of the wealthiest, and is directly involved in Confederation because one of the key parts of the West Coast joining Confederation was And so he was organizing the railway on Vancouver Island, which they called the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway Project. And now he's like, it's the 1880s, he's one of these giants of industry. And so the language kind of changed. Like, there's suddenly you go from, is he a captain of industry or is he one of the modern robber barons? And it doesn't help that around that time he builds a castle.

Richard Campbell [01:55:31]:
A castle. Literally called Craigdarroch Castle, up on the hillside on craggy rocks overlooking Victoria. The construction starts in 1887. He will not see the completion of it. He'll pass away in 1889. It'll be completed by his sons Alexander and James, and his mother Joan— his— the mother, his wife Joan, will move in in 1890. And this in 1890 is one of the most advanced houses imaginable. Electric and gas lighting, telephone, Speaking tubes, which is the equivalent of the intercom throughout the building, hot water radiators, fireplaces, and municipal water service.

Richard Campbell [01:56:06]:
And, uh, Joan will live out the rest of her life, have 18 years in that house. She'll pass away in 1908. Today, this is a tourist destination. You can go there anytime you want. Uh, and by the way, not the castle.

Leo Laporte [01:56:18]:
If you—

Richard Campbell [01:56:19]:
most people who think of castles in British Columbia will think of Hatley Castle, which Robert son James built in 1900— from 1906 to 1908, uh, better known as Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in all the X-Men movies. Uh, there's a real vibe in Victoria at this time. In fact, there are newspaper articles from that era calling Victoria more British than Britain, where they're big on, on tea time and sort of the garden culture and all that intellectualism.

Leo Laporte [01:56:49]:
Flowers on the street lamps, which I love.

Richard Campbell [01:56:51]:
Oh yes.

Leo Laporte [01:56:52]:
love.

Richard Campbell [01:56:52]:
Yeah, yeah. But also a very strong, like, powerful Scottish culture. Pipe bands, Highland Games, Caledonian societies, Burns dinners, like all of that. And that'll bring us up to modern times where Graham McEwan is this Scottish-born scientist. He's educated in Glasgow. He, he worked in the black and white whiskey facility in Steps as a kid, but then studied fermentation at the University of Strathclyde, and he has a PhD in biotechnology. And while still in England, he worked for Pfizer and Eli Lilly in biotech, but eventually ends up as a biotech scientist in Canada and then ends up on the West Coast. And in 2013, he forms a company called MacLoney's Brewer and Distillers Limited.

Richard Campbell [01:57:35]:
The distillery he calls MacLoney's Caledonian Distillery and the Toit Dogs Brewery. And he recruits the best of the best to set up his distillery. Dr. Jim Swan, who I've only mentioned a couple of times, the man has passed away today. He's a legend. And this distillery was the second to last distillery he ever worked on. And he also had another famous Scots master distiller, Mike Nicholson, as his initial operations. Graham's not a wealthy man.

Richard Campbell [01:58:03]:
I mean, he's a scientist. So he actually does a grassroots funding campaign in British Columbia and gets 270, quote, founder investors involved to build out the facility. And in 2016, they start production. first single malts turn up in 2020 in December. And as soon as he's in production, the Scottish Whisky Association sues him very much like Glenbreton back in 2000. They're very upset with the fact that his distillery is called Caledonian. And Graham mounts a defense and ultimately wins on the fact that British Columbia was literally once referred to as New Caledonia, and he is actually Scottish Scottish-born, and he uses names related to his own history for his distillery, for his products. They end up— it looks like they're gonna lose, so they resolve out of court.

Richard Campbell [01:58:53]:
A few things he does do: he changes the name of the distillery to Macallan Island Distillery, so he gives up on the Caledonia, um, and then goes on to make outstanding whiskey. Uh, we're gonna try the Caithness even today. But his Kildara is actually a, a Irish-style triple-distilled whiskey that won Best Pot Still Whiskey at the World Whiskey Awards, which is no minor thing in 2023. And McElhoney himself won Whiskey Blender of the Year at the Canadian Whiskey Awards in 2025. He's now stepped down as CEO. He's still focusing on the backside production and so forth, uh, but letting someone else lead the company as they're being more successful. One of my favorite stories of this, so it's going to drag me over there to look at this, is he's developing his own peating methods. So most of the time when we talk about peated whiskey, even in distilleries in other parts of the world, they buy pre-peated barley from Scotland.

Richard Campbell [01:59:54]:
Like, that's just the normal thing to do. But not our man Graham. He's got a 2-ton peat smoker, so he can literally do 2 tons at a time, and he's been using peat both from Vancouver Island and from Washington State. His initial rounds of tests came at about 54 ppm. That'd be in the Ardbeg class of peated whiskey. So pretty darn potent. He's also done experiments using sugar kelp. Now, this is a particular kind of kelp that you can eat literally directly out of the sea, rinse it off a bit.

Leo Laporte [02:00:22]:
It's pretty—

Richard Campbell [02:00:23]:
it's too salty, but it's crunchy, it's tasty, uh, and apparently So he's, uh, been doing different experiments. And if you look on the website, you'll find this. Again, the, the bottle I could grab, uh, for this event was the Caphna Avon, AKA the Sherry Bomb. But their An Laoi is their classic single malt. And of course the Kildare I've already mentioned, which is a triple pot-stilled Irish style, although they also make a peated variant, which is crazy cuz the Irish never peat anything, but they're all about the local market. So BC barley, Vancouver Island water, that maritime climate that's very, very mild. Scottish. So lots of humidity and so forth.

Richard Campbell [02:00:59]:
Their operation's relatively small, a 1-ton semi-lauter mash tun, 7 steel washbacks. They have 4 size stills from Scotland, relatively small, 5,500 liters on the wash still, 3,600 liters on the spirit still. This particular bottle is, like I said, it's a, it's a copy of a Speyside. So they're going very Spey on this, which is to say they finish it in sherry casks, Oloroso, and, uh, and Pedro Ximénez. Uh, and it's about $95 Canadian for a 46%, and they do sell abroad, so you might be able to find this. It smells like a Spey, like it— as it should for the way it's made. Definitely that big sherry note. Yeah, that's a Speyside.

Richard Campbell [02:01:45]:
Interesting. Is it got a little peatiness in it? I don't think so. It shouldn't. Speysides would not normally be peated with rare exceptions, but yeah, it's definitely got a stronger, earthier note coming in late. Uh, it's not very old. There's no age statement on this, but consider how recently he's been in operation. There's no way he could make a 10-year-old at this point. And their barrel storage is very traditional, wooden racked, uh, concrete floors.

Richard Campbell [02:02:11]:
They're only stacking 4 high. So a little more protected than your sort of traditional Scottish environment, but I think that's just the space challenges he has as well. But this is an award-winning whiskey from a relatively new producer who has brought a lot of people into to make his whiskey the way he wants to. And for an operation that's barely 6 years old, he's already cleaned up some of the biggest awards in the business and kind of knocked it out of the park. So if you can find a bottle of this, you should grab it.

Paul Thurrott [02:02:42]:
Hmm.

Leo Laporte [02:02:43]:
It looks good.

Richard Campbell [02:02:44]:
Yeah. It's the right, cuz it's got that spey, you know, that I've been in sherry cask color, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:02:49]:
Yep.

Richard Campbell [02:02:49]:
Like there's no two ways about that.

Paul Thurrott [02:02:51]:
Yeah.

Richard Campbell [02:02:52]:
And it's a gold medal winner. Like it's, it's a, a very accomplished whiskey for a very young distillery. But, um, yeah. Now if you're going over to Victoria, I'd go to Sanctuary and I'd go to Macallan.

Leo Laporte [02:03:03]:
A lot of cruises to Alaska from the United States stop in Victoria because Yeah, because of weird shipping rules.

Richard Campbell [02:03:12]:
Yeah, they don't want to enter the US too soon, and so it's easy to stop off there. But I would also say this, you can— and, and, you know, if you—

Paul Thurrott [02:03:18]:
It's a pretty place though too.

Richard Campbell [02:03:20]:
I mean, yeah, if you want to go for English Thai tea, you can do that. But you know what else you could do? Go get a dram.

Leo Laporte [02:03:27]:
There you go. Instead of tea— what's in that teacup? I don't know.

Paul Thurrott [02:03:32]:
Uh, what do you mean?

Richard Campbell [02:03:33]:
But I'm sure it looks like tea to me.

Paul Thurrott [02:03:37]:
I wouldn't put milk in it, but I love this tea.

Richard Campbell [02:03:40]:
It was everything I could do not to drop into a Scottish brogue through this whole conversation because it is—

Leo Laporte [02:03:44]:
You're a Scots Campbell?

Richard Campbell [02:03:46]:
Yeah, I'm a Campbell. I'm one of those Campbells.

Leo Laporte [02:03:49]:
No, are you wearing your tartan? Is that your plaid on your— in your shirt?

Richard Campbell [02:03:52]:
This is not my plaid.

Paul Thurrott [02:03:53]:
His original name was actually Campbell.

Richard Campbell [02:03:55]:
The Campbell does have a little yellow and blue and white in it.

Leo Laporte [02:03:58]:
Yeah, somewhere I have the Dunlap plaid. That's my family plaid, but I don't, I don't have a kilt. I gotta— I've always wanted a formal kilt and sporran and all that stuff.

Richard Campbell [02:04:07]:
It's a lot of gear, man.

Leo Laporte [02:04:08]:
It's not—

Richard Campbell [02:04:08]:
they're not cheap because they know, you know, you're one of the colonists and you'll happily pay a ton for it.

Leo Laporte [02:04:14]:
Yeah, it basically costs the same as an Atari box set.

Richard Campbell [02:04:17]:
So, but yeah, next, next week in Kansas City, the week after that in Oslo, and the week after that is the whiskey cruise. And we're going to be hopping on a 3-masted ship out of Oban, turning around to Islay, and Jura, and I'm gonna go through a lot of distilleries, and I'm gonna take my little Osmo Pocket 3 and get some video for you all. We'll have— sounds great.

Leo Laporte [02:04:36]:
Sounds great.

Paul Thurrott [02:04:37]:
You need to bring a drone. Yeah, you know, drones are fun. Yeah, they are tricky.

Leo Laporte [02:04:44]:
Yeah, tricky.

Paul Thurrott [02:04:45]:
I mean, it's tricky if you care about the law. I don't know, I'm not sure.

Richard Campbell [02:04:50]:
You know, like, after our experience in Vegas using those little cameras, I'm like, I—

Leo Laporte [02:04:55]:
Yeah, that's what that was for.

Richard Campbell [02:04:57]:
I just came home and bought one. I was like, I can't live without this anymore. They're too good.

Leo Laporte [02:05:00]:
We got a cheap knockoff. Well, yeah, it's probably the same camera, just a different label. Richard Campbell is at runhisradio.com. That's where you'll find his podcast, Run His Radio, and .net rocks. And you'll find him all over the world speaking. Where do people go if they want to hire you for a speaking engagement?

Richard Campbell [02:05:19]:
I'm pretty easy to find. I usually get pinged on LinkedIn, actually. In fact, I have a call right after this with a company who saw my AI hype talk and wants it at their show.

Leo Laporte [02:05:28]:
So, yay! See, there you go.

Richard Campbell [02:05:30]:
It's a job.

Leo Laporte [02:05:31]:
There you go. Uh, Mr. Paul Thurott at thurott.com, T-H-U-R-R-O-double-good.com. If you're a premium member, you'll get a copy of all of his, uh, books, a digital copy. Come on, he's, he's not going to put it in a cartridge or anything, but, uh, you could.

Paul Thurrott [02:05:48]:
I mean, for a price.

Leo Laporte [02:05:49]:
For a price, put it on a ROM.

Paul Thurrott [02:05:52]:
Uh, now that I know how much physical goods is selling for.

Leo Laporte [02:05:56]:
Yeah, no kidding. Physical goods. That's this. That's it. Forget this podcasting stuff. I'm putting everything on vinyl from now on.

Paul Thurrott [02:06:05]:
We're gonna do the talkies.

Richard Campbell [02:06:07]:
It's— you can keep it on an SD card. Just put it in a big black container and it'll be good.

Paul Thurrott [02:06:11]:
Yeah, there you go.

Leo Laporte [02:06:12]:
Wait, oh, Windows Weekly, every Wednesday, 11 AM Pacific. 2 PM Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live—

Paul Thurrott [02:06:19]:
This just in from Europe.

Leo Laporte [02:06:21]:
Hello, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Uh, you can watch us live in the Club Twit Discord or on YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Kick. After the fact— oh, did I mention Twitch? I think I did. After the fact, on-demand versions of the show at our website, twit.tv/ww, or, uh, YouTube. There's video there, or wherever you get your podcasts, audio or video, your pick. It's free.

Leo Laporte [02:06:45]:
Of course, if you're a Club Twit member, you get the ad-free versions with chapter markers and all that stuff, the deluxe edition. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Richard. Have a great time in Berlin, Paul. And next week we'll talk about all the hardware you couldn't talk about this week on Windows Weekly.