May 28th 2025
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-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thorat's here, Richard Campbell is here. We're going to have a little post-mortem for the Microsoft Build Conference last week. We'll talk about Week D Windows 11 updates, including some new features for Paint, Notepad and the Snipping Tool. Also, Windows Update is going to start including third-party apps We'll talk about that and some great browser picks too. It's, all in all, another fabulous Windows Weekly. Next Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is Twit.
00:43
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thor thurad and richard campbell, episode 934, recorded wednesday, may 28th 2025. Okay, jk, yo ho ho, hello everybody. Time for windows weekly. Hello you, no, hello you, dozers. And hello to our hosts. Mr Paul Thurott of Thurottcom. He's in Mekunji, pennsylvania, and coming to us from beautiful Cape Town, south Africa. Wow, richard Campbell, who has flown 22 hours in the last 24 or something like that. I've slept 22 hours in the past 24.
01:21 - Rich Campbell (Host)
It was a couple of days ago, so you're adjusted. I don't know about it. Just, dude, I've been jet lagged for a decade. What do I know? And what brings you to beautiful cape town it was an airplane, it was too far to walk. Yeah, I uh keynoted a couple of including a couple of conferences, so I just did the one in joe berg yesterday and I'm doing the cape town one tomorrow and he gets paid, ladies and gentlemen, to do this.
01:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, this is a great gig, it's an adventure. I'm so impressed. Uh. Yesterday, uh steve and I uh had we're talking about an email we got from uh an engineer who said you know, the problem with the blackout in the iberian peninsula is because they were 90% solar or renewables, they didn't have the inertia of the big turbines. And I thought, god, I wish Richard were here. Does Richard have inertia.
02:17 - Rich Campbell (Host)
They started to do flywheel stabilization now, where they spin up these big flywheels. That's what I said, for exactly that reason.
02:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I said that sounds like disinformation. No, I said, that sounds like disinformation. No, no, it's not disinformation, but it's aimed, it has an agenda.
02:29 - Rich Campbell (Host)
It felt like, yeah, you know, it is an issue right when you sure get these feedback harmonics on in large grid, uh, electricity, the, the inertia of those turbines really helps stabilize that off. But it's solvable. Yeah, it is solvable, you just have to spend money on it. And these, the big flywheels are not cheap, uh, and they're not for bridging.
02:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're for bridging power, they're not power backup right, I understand that, um, and so thank you for joining us for energy weekly, but huh, but it is week d, not week t, but week d.
03:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Let's get back to the lack of energy we usually have in the show please so, ladies and gentlemen, well, yeah, it wouldn't be a an update week if it wasn't all screwed up. So yesterday, as we record this, was the the Tuesday of week D, which, as everyone knows now repeat after me is when the preview updates go out for Windows, right, and so Windows 11, 22, and 23H2 got the same cumulative update. Windows 24H2 didn't get nothing.
03:40 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Well, that's not actually true, but 22 got something. I thought 22 was done.
03:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I did too too, and I looked that up and I, I did too. No, I literally did too.
03:48 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I was like wait, I would look it up too. Pretty sure we were told no more 22 h2 I believe.
03:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, when I looked at it yesterday I don't think I have it here, oh, maybe I do. Uh, I believe it said uh, this october is when it goes out of. Okay, I don't know, I don't, I thought it. I thought it was out of support too.
04:05 - Rich Campbell (Host)
So I was kind of confused. So when 10 goes out, 22H2 goes with it. Yeah, I mean.
04:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I thought that's when 23H2, I don't know what's going on anymore. Don't confuse me with facts. So 24H2 did not get a preview update on Tuesday, but then later in the day or last night at some point it got something a little unusual. Where is it? Yes, Called an out-of-band update.
04:28 - Not JK Simmons (None)
Oh excellent, and this was to fix an issue with Hyper-V platform.
04:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a non-security update, it's just a bug, basically Okay.
04:38 - Rich Campbell (Host)
So it wasn't security vulnerability, it was a breaking problem that they decided to have.
04:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so this might have delayed the preview update.
04:49
So perhaps, while we're doing the show, more likely, tomorrow we'll get the preview update. Well, the moment you're not looking, it'll come, yeah, yeah. So you know, a lot of what I'm focusing on these days is this tsunami of new features coming to windows 11 across various versions of the product 22, 23, now 24 h2, soon to be 25 h2, but also, obviously, all of the windows insider channels. So this is these are the preview updates coming to 23, 22, h2 for instable, rather meaning these will be the patch Tuesday updates that everyone will get, whether they want them or not. So among them are the return of the Windows Key Plus C copilot keyboard shortcut. Fine, oh man, this new drag tray thing.
05:34
So if you're familiar with Snap in Windows 11, you know that if you drag a window toward the top of the screen, you get that little bar that comes down and then it gives you options for snapping. This will do the same for dragged files. So if you want to share them to my phone or to your phone, rather to a compatible app, or you can click more and get the standard share dialogue, and then the rest of this is mostly nonsense. Well, there's configuration or customization settings for lock screen widgets. So remember, over time in Windows 11, they first. I think weather came first, it was all by itself. Then they added the stock watch list sports and traffic and you can either turn them all off or turn them all on, and that's how it is today for most people. But soon, with this update, you will be able to configure which of those appear.
06:24 - Rich Campbell (Host)
In the order they appear in Baby steps.
06:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I guess that's hilarious, and no. And then there's like one interesting feature for IT admins the ability to configure taskbar policies related to pinned apps on the taskbars, and you can actually do things like remove them on the next refresh of policy. So, if you want I mean, this is a really locked down thing. I don't recommend this but if you wanted to prevent your users from pinning certain apps to the taskbar, you could do that. That's kind of fun or whatever. Don't do that, yeah. Don't do that. Don't be that person. You're why people hate IT. Don't do that, yeah. So that's most of it right, and so this is a lot of stuff we've been talking about over the past few months, as you would expect.
07:12 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Still no 25H2.
07:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Nope, yeah, and this is what happens every year. So, as we build, and not this thing specifically, but whatever the milestone might be so in this case we're like, oh, are they going to do 25H2? And it's like we're not really saying tee, hee, hee. And they, you know it's still 24H2, but it's a different build stream, and it's like, okay, but so you kind of look ahead to something like build right, which is the next thing. Or, back in April, we knew that would be the logical time for them to announce a change. Um, that came and went without any mention. So there's lots of indications it's 25h2. That um, that term appears in, uh, you know, in configuration files and stuff like that. It's almost certainly the name of it, but no, microsoft has not said that, because hilarious. So there's that. And in the Insider program, we've gotten several builds since the last time we met. Canary got something new for the first time in forever, and this is something they did announce at Build, which is they're working toward adding support for what they call post-quantum encryption.
08:26
So asymmetrical key encryptions, yeah, and so they've added the first of that work um to the canary channel, and that's an exciting feature I guess you could have fun with.
08:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like pretty much all the ads someday we'll have one of those computing, and no, it's one of those things where, if it works right, you won't be able to tell at all.
08:42 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah, exactly, so it's just encryption that doesn't depend on prime key, so it's not vulnerable to quantum.
08:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and we kind of glossed over this because, honestly, it's hard to keep track of this. But last week at Build they announced about I don't know 1,100 new co-pilot features across Windows and Microsoft 365 and the web and wherever else windows and microsoft 365 and the web and wherever else, but in windows they we have this notion of actions right that will be applied to click to do and other things coming down the pike and apps can register to be. You know, it's just like com, it's like com or any of those kind of object linking technologies where you can basically promote the fact that you are able to handle this type of thing, like we did this in WinRT as well, like for the SharePane. And so now there are new Microsoft 365 text actions. They're testing in the beta channel in 24H2.
09:38 - Rich Campbell (Host)
So if you have a I'm sorry why are we testing N365 features in the Windows Insider Right?
09:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, so I think the little asterisk here and I had hoped to actually have a better understanding of this before we started the show and I didn't have time, but one of the sessions I was watching had a nice grid of. Here are the AI features well, not the actual features, but here are the buckets of AI features that are coming to Windows 11 over the next year or whatever, and which ones require an MPU slash, a Copilot Plus PC, which ones run locally but don't require that, which is kind of interesting, and then which ones just run off the cloud and will work on any Windows 11 compliant PC, right? So this is not part of that talk, but this is actually. Bless you.
10:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm sorry. No, it's okay, I thought I'd turn off my mic. I turned it on.
10:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Sacre bleu. This is one of the ones that kind of crosses things, crosses over into these worlds because, oddly, this, these features, these are microsoft 365 text actions. So you, you're using click to do, you get that purple, pink, blue, whatever thing going on. It highlights all the stuff. You can do stuff with you. Right click some text and you get those actions in the right click menu, right, like you know, summarize with notepad or blah, blah, blah, whatever. Um, they're going to be actions there for microsoft 365 apps like word or excel or powerpoint, whatever that kind of thing. So they're starting to add those.
11:13
It oddly, this first version or this version or this test or whatever, uh, limited to copilot plus pcs. It doesn't make any sense. Um, it's a tops requirement for click to do. There's absolutely no TOPS requirement, right? Unless there's something going on in the Microsoft 365 apps I don't know about, right? In other words, word is this locally installed app that can do things like summarize text and help you write things and redraft and shorten and lengthen and all the other stuff that you can do with text, right? So I don't quite understand that.
11:46
Now it requiring a co-pilot subscription, which can mean a couple of different things. Okay, that could make some sense. So maybe you have a normal windows 11, non-co-pilot plus pc. You're the person who pays for a microsoft 365 family subscription, let's say so you get some number of those AI credits. I feel like I'm talking in a different language as I say this. It's crazy. So you should have that ability. Right, it's running locally, but it doesn't require an MPU. Right, it's part of Word, it's built into Word, which actually technically means it's reaching out to the cloud.
12:22 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I don't know, I'm just all I'm doing, so that needs an mpu like it doesn't need an mpu.
12:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't think it could use an mpu. It was there. I know I don't.
12:31 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I don't understand it yeah, I'll make every pc a copilot plus pc, all will be forgiven richard, I owe you an apology.
12:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Um oh no, the I know I you would. You probably thought I knew everything about windows, but actually, as it turns out cause I actually haven't seen this, this feature yet the ability to customize which widgets appear on the lock screen. You can order them. So you were correct, I'm sorry. Or you asked the question that that is. That is in fact, an option. So I'm sorry, I missed.
13:01 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I missed this new update in the insiders bill. Yeah Well, so I'm sorry I missed it In this new update in the Insiders build.
13:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah well, that will be coming in two weeks to Sable, right Right, so that will be there. That will be part of it. I apologize, there's also this is kind of interesting too, and there's a lot of language around a lot of things in Windows these days, especially AI, but the language around the widgets board to me is kind of curious, because there's this notion of like. We think of this feature as widgets. The thing you bring up is the widgets board. There is this part of the widgets board that is your discovery feed, which Microsoft actually has called a couple of different things over time, but we're going to go with the discovery feed. They have talked about the ability to replace that feed with another feed. There have been no third party feeds, but someday that will probably happen. Right, but now they're using this notion of dashboard. So now you can have multiple dashboards. Soon you'll be able to have multiple dashboards and you can switch between them using a navigation bar on the left, and I don't know what that means. I don't't even.
14:02 - Rich Campbell (Host)
We're talking about lock screen widgets Like how long do you expect me to stare at the lock screen on my Windows machine.
14:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have to blink quick and not see something because mine disappears immediately.
14:13 - Rich Campbell (Host)
That's why I need it so customized yeah.
14:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know this is the type of thing they spend time on.
14:18 - Rich Campbell (Host)
So the retina burn left over from Windows Hello flipping to logged in?
14:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, actually right. Stare at the screen left over from windows, hello, flipping to logged in. Yeah, actually right. Stare at the screen. You log in, then close your eyes and the image of what was on the lock screen comes into your eye, into your eyelids, right, see it and you're like, oh, it's going to be 55 degrees today. Yeah, I think that's how it works.
14:34 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I don't know but then you customize it so it's in the wrong place. So instead, yeah, microsoft down.
14:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah you looked at the other sports. For some reason You're like, I guess I know the Knicks lost last night. I don't know why I need to know that. All right.
14:49 - Rich Campbell (Host)
It's got to be an intern. It's just like keep that guy busy. Make sure he doesn't break any of the important.
14:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Guys look busy. They're doing layoffs. Just keep working. Just keep working on something, it doesn't matter what it is. Most people who use Windows probably know that whenever you install a new app that can do anything, when you open a file that is of a type that that app can open, you'll get an open with dialogue, right, and you can make it appear manually. They can right click and say open with, but this thing will list whatever apps are compatible with that thing you're trying to open, right. So they're testing a recommendation feature inside this dialogue, because there have to be ads everywhere that will recommend an app that's also compatible with this thing. You're trying to do so like a PDF app. If you're trying to open a PDF, obviously that's in the store. So fantastic. I was hoping there would be more ads.
15:39
Something again I have not looked at yet, but I believe was in at least one or two build sessions is this thing I've sort of long predicted is a strong word.
15:50
I felt this was pretty obvious.
15:52
But they put this Windows backup app in Windows 11, I think in 10 as well, and it started off pretty modest and they've been adding a couple of features here and there to it, but now it's going to be part of a PC-to-PC migration experience similar to what's it called Laplink or something like that, where you kind of connect your old computer to the new computer with a cable and you can transfer stuff over, except they're going to be using OneDrive, obviously in the back end, so just an extension of the capability that's already there and this is kind of like one drive, which is actually part of this. They push it pretty hard in settings, right, like when you first uh or in um, well, in settings, but also in setup, I should say, when you first sign into windows, it's like man, you should, really you should bring up a bat. You know you should restore from a backup and you're like, yeah, I don't want to do that, like, yeah, but you should, no, I like a bare metal build yeah, I do too every time.
16:46
But they're super into this and, and you know, I I understand people, normal people well, you know what it is got to bring those cookies across, right like we don't want to give up that tracking information we don't want to start tracking over, can we?
17:00 - Rich Campbell (Host)
just have all yeah yeah, right, that's.
17:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, that's probably some of it, but but you know, I I understand how this could be useful for people. I just don't use it myself. Um, and then the in a really weird way, um, paint and notepad, and then to a lesser degree. This makes a little more sense to me. The photos app have become the poster child children of these AI features in Windows 11, because these are obvious points at which you can, you know, show how generative AI can improve an app.
17:31 - Rich Campbell (Host)
No pad was begging for generative AI. Come on.
17:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so you know, notepad and paint are both examples of apps Microsoft was actively ignoring for many, many years. At least paint's case was going to get rid of, remember, and replaced with Paint 3D, and then they've taken on newfound importance over the past I'm going to call it year or two, two years maybe and they've added a lot of new features. They've modernized the UI. They did a terrific job of that in Notepad. They did less of a good job in Paint, although it's finally in a place where I think it's. It's fine. It's not perfect, but it's better than it was. Um, but now they're adding, uh, truly essential features like a sticker generator and paint, which I think we can all agree is the one thing keeping me from using linux. Yeah, um an object.
18:17 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Select your relief to finally know. I have a sticker generator um it's, yeah, their version of genmoji.
18:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, you know, it's like you. Of course, you use paint for that. Um, so, if you want, like an 8-bit cat or something, that's your way to do that. Um, object selection, which is what you get in something like photoshop, like a fairly isolated um art isolate, a fairly sophisticated tool to isolate individual elements, and in a bitmap image, right, which is, you know, honestly, powerful and useful. And then, oh, I should have mentioned Snipping Tool. Snipping Tool is the other one, actually, snipping Tool in some ways well, that's probably not accurate but it's also very sophisticated.
18:53 - Rich Campbell (Host)
You probably use the Snipping Tool more than just about anybody else, brother.
18:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you're the Snipping Tool king, right.
19:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would use it more than I do if it just captured the mouse cursor right.
19:05
If it just did that one thing. I would never use anything else. But I end up using a variety of tools for that. But Snipping Tool is interesting because, as its name suggests, you can use it to I don't like the term screen snips, but you can create screenshots, right, and you're like, okay, that's fine. And then it's like, well, okay, but you can also create screen recordings, like, well, that's actually very useful.
19:27
And then they started adding these features where, honestly, for myself, I bet the reason I use it most often is to right click on an image and then do the text like the OCR capability. I think it's just called texts. I can't remember the name of the feature, but it's a little icon and it just grabs the text out of you. You copy it to clipboard and put it in notepad or whatever. I use it almost every day. It's fantastic. So this is another one where, when they first did it, I would just disable this all the time. I hated it, and now I actually use it all the time. So there's two new features coming in Snipping Tool. One, oddly, is called Perfect Screenshot, which will never be true until you can get the mouse cursor, guys, but it allows you while you're taking a screenshot.
20:09 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I'm sorry. You want the cursor in or you want the cursor out?
20:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I want the choice Okay. So for me, in many cases, I actually want it in right, because I'm doing screenshots. You're pointing at a button or something like that. I I understand why most people would not want that, but I just want the choice right, so I use third-party apps for that and then also a color picker chart where you can grab a color from an image and then see it in hex, rgb or HSL, which is something that's part of PowerToys today, and it's almost like we'd like to put this in Windows.
20:40
Well where would we put that?
20:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And they're putting it in the stepping tool Of course that's where you need it.
20:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and then if you're too cheap to pay for Microsoft 365, too bad. You can't use this feature because Notepad is going to have AI writing tools for drafting from a prompt rewriting text, all that kind of stuff. You have to have a Microsoft 365 account. So why would you use this app if you're broken notepad? You know?
21:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
um, but this is what I was talking about earlier you can still use it without that right, not this feature. So this is the ai. You need to sign in because, well, they're yeah, so you, yeah, you can sign in with a microsoft account or an enter id account.
21:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It will look at your account and if you have a what they're calling it a it's like a co-pilot subscription which could be okay co-pilot pro microsoft 365. Co-pilot microsoft 365 personal family, whatever, somebody's gonna pay. Yes, as long as you have that, you'll see this feature the night. I mean, I will say the nice thing in a way is well, I don't know if it's nice, but you won't see the feet like the icon or the name or the feature with, like anything like if you you don't have that. So I guess that's okay.
21:45
But it also creates that situation where you know the best if you open paint and you there's a copilot now, a copilot button now in the app because of course there is there's all these copilot features like what you see off that list. Three to five items will depend on what kind of computer it is. So if you have a non-copilot plus PC, you'll see things like generative erase, which has been in there for a while, image creator and then remove background. But if you have a copilot plus PC, you'll see co-creator and then whatever these other features are, they're running.
22:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's really interesting how the divergence of Windows capabilities yeah it's, it must be hard for you because how do you write?
22:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
it's the worst I it's like a flow chart, now everything you do.
22:28
It's just like if this than this, if this than this, infinite number of uh yeah so, yeah, I wish I could remember what someone I I sort of think of it as like a quiet extra skew, you know. So there's like the features you get with home, there's the features you get with pro, and then there's these features you get on top of either if you have a co-pilot plus PC. But I think I don't. Richard, maybe you remember this. I feel like it might have even been you. Someone, I think last week or two weeks ago, said something like this is almost like a new, a different version of Windows. You know, like the co-pilot plus PC version of Windows 11 is almost like Windows 12.
23:06 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah, we thought it would be Windows 12. And I wonder if that's what's really happening.
23:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's an interesting way to kind of draw the line there.
23:13 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Because we figured the only way this LLM was really going to take hold, the way that would make sense, is to be in the center of Windows. There needed to be a copilot-centric version of Windows.
23:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you think they might not go to Windows 12 and just say Windows 11 plus AI, or?
23:25 - Rich Campbell (Host)
something like that. I think Apple decides that when they finally ship another version.
23:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, see what Apple does. Okay, I'm having the last one, well.
23:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean. So I mean Apple moved past OS X, whatever, several years ago, right? So I think they're in 15 now. So I'm going to say five years ago, yeah. So I, I don't know. I mean, I I appreciate them not wanting to confuse users, right, I mean with the understanding they were absolutely confusing users, but that you, when you come up with something, that's a new name, a new version, that's obviously a new version, I should say, because there are actually many versions of windows 11, just like there were even more versions of windows 10. So there's some confusion there. And then the SKUs, and now we have Copilot plus pieces, all kinds of stupidity there. But yeah, I don't know, this branding is hard, especially for Microsoft, and I'm not sure.
24:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you think they've decided or they don't know yet? I don't think they know yet.
24:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And I think part of it is just that you also want to go up with something that's materially, uh, an advance, like something where people can go yeah, okay, I get it.
24:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is a that makes sense speaking of cautionary tale you don't start marketing this stuff till it's ready right yeah, no kidding, right, apple intelligence is looking so good right now.
24:44 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah, these are the part where they have to run it all by legal and so forth. So you sort of hash it out to a point where it's like, okay, these three are acceptable, run them through legal. Yeah, because if you don't, you end up in like the metro situation.
24:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I think my bet and this is just based on what we've seen so far is that they'll they'll punt that decision, so to speak, by just calling this 25h2, which is just windows 11, which you know you could make the argument because these windows versions, whatever is in market supported at any given time, all have the same features anyway. You know, to end users it kind of doesn't matter.
25:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's funny I'm thinking about the Linux world you don't have Linux 12.
25:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, but you have Linux kernel versions, right, you do?
25:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean I guess if you're a sophisticated user, you're paying attention. I couldn't, off the top of my head, tell you what the current kernel version is so you just have. Linux, you have Ubuntu or whatever, and it updates.
25:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I feel like people who make this choice actually kind of do care about that for some reason. They're the type of people who might be like no, I have to have 6.1.1.15, whatever.
25:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There are nerds. There are nerds who pay attention to that. I would say most Linux users probably just update.
25:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think it's 16.10 now I don't know what it is, but. I'll see things like. I have to make this up. I don't remember which one it was, but something like elementary or Zorin maybe, and it's like this is designed for new users. It's supposed to look like Windows to the max, so it's kind of easy to get into, but they don't say Zorin 12. No, I mean, I don't mean that.
26:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I mean, but people of ubuntu or something, and it's like right, right, okay, I mean, does it prevent you from doing anything, or are you just kind of weird like that, like you have to have the well there and that. I guess with linux it's a little weird because there's the long-term service versions, the lts versions, there's the cutting edge versions and then there's an infinite number of distributions, all with different names, but at the same, my only point is that, yeah, I mean, just look at ubuntu, where they don't say where like 15 official distribution versions and apple does, microsoft does, but for some reason in the linux world it's not like you know.
26:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It says ubuntu 16 on it, right it's no it does have name well, they have number, version numbers, 2505 or whatever.
27:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a version, I mean like um I know there are, but I don't think it's a part of the name of the product. Is what I'm saying?
27:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
it's just so. I honestly aside from all the obvious stuff around open source and whatnot if there's one thing that linux has that I think a lot of especially technical windows users would want, it's that thing. You just said, uh, an lts version for anybody, right, because we do have the concept of LTS in Windows, but it's for companies that pay for that subscription and blah, blah, blah, whatever. And I think there are a lot of people who look and they should, because we've just spent half an hour on this new features like blah, blah, blah blah blah blah Coming out and they're like, hey, here's an idea, get me on the LTS, I'll run this exact thing for whatever.
27:41
The time frame is 18 months, two years, whatever. Don't give me any more features, I just want security updates, minimum rebooting, that's what enterprise wants right. But I think that's what a lot of people want too. It's like enough of the churn.
27:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not here for your flashing lights and stuff. I'm just trying to get work done and there's constant updates. When do you want an update, right? Yeah, mac does that too, all bloody time. It's funny the Linux nerds in our Discord are telling me oh no, ubuntu's. Fedora 42 just came out. Ubuntu 24.0.2 is the latest, of course, but I don't Okay.
28:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I stand corrected. Maybe you care. I see both sides of this.
28:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look I Boy do I, I'm sure I want to say this I think the point of Linux is choice.
28:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, right, there you go. That's actually the best way to put it, because, yes, that's what I. I can't remember what I said five minutes ago, but sometime early in the show I made the point. Like I don't care that it's there, I just want to have the choice. You know, either way, right? So, yeah, I think that's what you get with Linux and I think the, especially Windows 11, the it's most clearly defined by your lack of choice. You are getting these new features.
28:53 - Not JK Simmons (None)
You're going to get them all the time, so suck it up you know cause it's coming.
28:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's kind of a. You know it's kind of a tough one. And yeah, let's get into the different versions of gnome and the no all the different desktop environments and the wailing display technology.
29:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, there's a whole definite downside to choice. Yeah, all right, let's take a little time out here. There are uh third-party app updates coming too. We'll talk about that, yeah, yeah in just a bit.
29:24
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30:17
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31:49
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32:24
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33:17
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34:10 - Rich Campbell (Host)
oh, quarter to nine pm. Oh, not bad, not bad. No, it's not confusing, not so any. 3 am the next day in perth, or anything not that anybody would do that. I don't know who would do that, but uh only insane.
34:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I noticed you set your watch that a local time.
34:25 - Rich Campbell (Host)
That's interesting yeah, I watched you set the local time, computers always set to home time and do you do that in flight?
34:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, the fitbit does it automatically against the okay phone right because you know it's funny, when lisa and I first started uh, traveling a lot I was, I was a stickler I said change your watch immediately on the plane, you don't want to think about what time it is at home. Home time, yeah, yeah. She said no, but I need to know when I can call people and stuff. I said no.
34:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Don't be, calling anybody.
34:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't call anybody, just take it for granted it's the wrong time to call. Yeah, all right, windows update is now going to. I know I have mixed feelings about this. I kind of you know. On linux I like it and on mac I like it. I update with, you know, a package manager.
35:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think this is misunderstood. I think this is part of the. It's like win kit, so it doesn't mean we're switching it over, right? So let me let me just explain how. This my understanding of this, because there's not the explanation for mic. You know not very good.
35:28
So today in Windows, microsoft has figured out all different ways to update the system, right. Obviously, we have an app store. We update the apps you install from the store. We do have Winget, which allows you to install and update apps from both the store and when gets web repository. Okay, we have windows update, which is for installing or for updating the system.
35:51
Also, you know security updates, quality updates, new features that are in the OS, right? So if you think about um, uh, like a feature, like, um, something in paint, you know that's not coming through Windows Update. Right, that's coming through the store. You get an app update there and that's how you get that feature right. So the big change that Microsoft has made in the past I don't know three, four years with Windows Update is that they've separated out OS components and put them into the store so they can be serviced that way. And that makes sense, because a lot of people on OS. You know doing like a lot of businesses especially, are stuck on some version of windows from the past and they want to update those components separately from the OS. Um, and so you know, this is what, uh, apple and um Chrome do and Google does with their mobile OSes as well. Right, same system. You componentize the system, you pull stuff out that you need to update on a more frequent basis and you put that in the store.
36:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Google started this, but they had to do it because Android wasn't getting updated by the carriers, right, right. So they said, okay, well, we're going to take these components, we're going to put them in the store.
37:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They'll get auto updated that way. Yep, yeah, so we did the same thing in windows. It's exactly the same. So when you see it, when you see the headline that microsoft is going to start updating apps through the windows, through windows update, many people's minds immediately go to oh, what's happening to the store, you know? And if you're a little more technical you might be like, well, wait a minute. What's happening to wing store? And if you're a little more, technical you might be like well wait a minute.
37:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What's happening to Winget? What does this mean?
37:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This sounds like Winget. Yeah, it's not that. Yet there's nothing to indicate that this will impact Winget in the slightest Although well, actually I mean not directly right. So, in other words, let's think about an app like Google Chrome. So Google Chrome is, like many Windows apps, not directly right. So, in other words, let's think about an app like google chrome. So google chrome is like many windows apps, it has its own built-in updating mechanism, and what this means is that most people have 37 of these apps on their computers and at any random time or right after you reboot the computer, these update is run. Your computer feels slow because it's all this stuff, or you're getting interrupted by all these things.
38:06
And yeah. So I know, when I come to this computer, to this show, without a doubt every single time I will run um, discord, and it's like oh, there's a discord update. And then I'll run notion and I'll start navigating to the notes and right as I get close, it's like this new version, do you want to install this now or wait? I'm like you know. So I just today I decided to install it and when I came back it was in a different place. I was already like halfway to, you know, to these notes. So they're actually trying to solve that problem. So the idea here is like look, we made a store. It was originally for mobile apps. Almost nobody used it except for farting apps and stupid things. And then, over time, microsoft opened it up to support all kinds of different apps. Right and so today there's all, there's everything, like any, no matter what it is, you could put it in the store, and they announced some win 32 advances for the store actually build. But the reality is some percentage of apps just aren't going to ever be part of that. Right and so actually, I just looked at this today and I see if I can find this quick. But I have a. I created a script that runs Winget to install all the apps that I want when I put together a new computer, right? So, yeah, that's the right way to do it. Yeah, let me just bring this thing up because it's shifting. It's kind of interesting. So there were probably there are 18 apps that get installed, and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven of them come from the web and the remaining so whatever I said, 11 or whatever comes from the store. Right, I prefer to get apps from the store because the updating experience is so seamless. These apps, by and large, they're exceptions.
39:44
One of the problems with Microsoft opening up the store and then app makers agreeing to become part of the store is that they can now choose not to use the Windows Update system. Sorry, the Windows Store, the Microsoft Store system, meaning all kinds of things. Like you might not agree to their volume, what is essentially volume licensing policy. We can install this app on a million computers. If you want Individual app makers say no, I only want you to put it on two computers or whatever it might be, so to make it easier or better for apps to be in the store. They've really loosened the rules there, so there's all kinds of things you could do.
40:27
But I'm looking at this list so, for example, the one big one that stands out to me is Affinity. Photo 2 doesn't do any of the backend stuff with the store. So when I run that app for the first time, it asked me to sign in with my Affinity account. The original vision for the store was you would never do that. You had signed in with your Microsoft account or your InterID account. That passed through all of your rights and you just got into the app and you were good to go. But now they allow app makers it's their choice to bypass that. The other one that stands out is PowerToys, which is a Microsoft app. That app does not get updated through the store. It does not get updated through the store. It has its own installer and you'll see a prompt. It will come up and say hey, there's a new update to PowerToys. If you try to update that app with Winget, I believe that fails. I think it actually says you have to run their install.
41:14 - Rich Campbell (Host)
So there's all these exceptions right, oh yeah, and now you're going to throw a bunch of third parties in there. They're each going to do it their own way.
41:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right. So I think what this is aimed at is third-party software makers, where creating and maintaining a software updating system on your own is either expensive or time-consuming or both, and they're like look, we'll just do this through Windows Update. If you go into Windows Update right now people watching the show know about this, but a lot of people might not If you go into Advanced Options, one of them is receive updates for the Microsoft products, and when you do that I'm not seeing it here, but there's a link usually where you can go to the web and see which Microsoft apps can be updated through Windows Update. Visual Studio is one of them. So if you're running big Visual Studio not code, but big Visual Studio those updates can actually go through the Windows update. Today, I believe microsoft office would be in there, of course, and then whatever, there's probably a list of 25 30 microsoft apps.
42:13
So I think the only change here really unless I'm missing something because they haven't communicated it otherwise is that this thing is in early preview. They're they're allowing third-party app developers to contact them and say, hey, I'd like to get on this program. Let me know what I got to do. You can test it, and the idea is your app is your app and you do your thing. But you handle updating through us and so you provide us with the update and then we blow it out to all of the people who have your app in the world, no matter how they install it. They don't install it through Windows Update, they install it however they install it. So when people ask about Winget, my answer for now, unless I hear otherwise, is you run Winget, install name of app. If that app is installing in the future or, I'm sorry, updating in the future through Windows Update, you could run upgrade and then get an update through Winget if you wanted to.
43:05 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I'm wondering if there's a flag there that says just keep this thing up to date and whenever there's a new version, grab it as opposed to no. I want to keep running this specific version, or even downgrade to a version.
43:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I don't know what the. Yeah, I don't know that they haven't discussed that.
43:20 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Because I could see the store. If you put something for update through the store, it's because Because I could see the store one day if you put something for update through the stores, because you want it always up to date, but I would like to use WinGet to say I want to keep this specific version installed.
43:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, look, you as an app maker in the store could say okay, like Affinity, did this? Like there's an Affinity photo one which is 1X it went to whatever version. And then there's an Affinity two which I think is on 2.6 or something version, and then there's an Affinity 2, which I think is on 2.6 or something, and then someday there'll be an Affinity 3. And you can't arbitrarily choose any version. But if you have the license for one, you get the latest version of that. If you have two, you get the latest version of that, and then someday there'll be a three, like I said. But I don't know how they divide it up. But if you think about how Winget works, I mean it's pointing toward, well, two repositories, one of two repositories, and so in the case of the store, it's just looking and seeing what the latest version is. It's just running that behind the scenes. That's fine.
44:12
I don't think anything changes for web-based apps because I'll just say Chrome. Chrome will never do this, but let's just pretend Google's like yeah, we want to take advantage of this. You know you would say when get upgrade or update Google. You know you would say when get upgrade or update googlecom. And it's probably happening through windows update in the future. You know, but you don't really care. You know, you don't really care.
44:32 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I don't know why you'd mess with the browser update. They're pretty good about that.
44:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm not. That was a bad example, but I'm just trying to you know.
44:37
I look Adobe has their own updating stuff. They have this stupid front end. A lot of app makers have this stuff. So this is just. I really think this is about. You know this goes.
44:48
This is kind of the famous thing with Microsoft and Windows or one of them, which is that you know there would be problems in Windows and they always users will always blame Microsoft. But a lot of cases it's just stuff like this. It's like why is my hard drive spinning all the time? Why is it doing this? Why, how come when I log in, it takes minutes. And it's like, well, you have all these things running. And it's like, well, how come this and how come this? And it's like a lot of it is this kind of stuff.
45:12
So they're trying to, um, get ahead of that. But also, you know, remember who the customers are here. Right, the majority, the big, the important ones anyway, are businesses. So there's also an IT admin element to this, because businesses can now have policies that determine whether or not you're going to get this update or when you get it, or whatever it is Like. They can go in and say, yeah, I see that there's an update for app A, but we're not until we approve it, you hold onto that and they keep running the thing that they have. And that's a big deal, too right, and that's not something. Well, there are ways to everyone. I mean, people manage environments know you can pull an app in and write your little script and you know we're going to do this thing and we're only going to install this version, and blah, blah, blah. You can do those things, but it's a little tedious, right, and they're trying to make that easier and I think this might be. I think it's too it's. I think it's for that.
46:00 - Rich Campbell (Host)
So I don't think it's like a place, yeah it's not.
46:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The store's not going away, it's not replacing when get or when get isn't changing, it's just a. We did windows update for a specific reason. 20 something years ago. We added apps. They've been talking about this, by the way, for a million years. I mean right, um, you know one of the big. I mean it's stupid, it took so long. But a lot of modern computers now, instead of having that app from the PC maker or in addition to well, the updates, you know, like HP, lenovo, like you'll get firmware updates to Windows Update or you'll get driver updates to Windows Update, and it goes through the same process you have to, you know reboot and installs offline, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But you know Windows Update is a known good. Um, globally available service works great. Um, they talk about the eco-friendly nature of it. Like we'll install updates when the electricity's cheap. You know it's like, okay, that's fine, but you know, for for users yeah, I think you
46:57 - Rich Campbell (Host)
hit the main point, which is for the small builder who wants to employ through the store. Take care of my updates. For me, I don't want to do it yep, because there's all this work with.
47:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's bad like look, no one even wants to make windows apps and it's work that makes no money, just cost yeah just like, we'll just do that part for you. It's like nice, like I honestly I think this is uh, yeah, that's fine. I mean cynically, you could be like, oh great, another way to update something windows. And like, yeah, fair enough. I mean, yes, but it's really the same. It's the same. We've had this for a while, like it's. I think windows update is known good. Right, like yeah, for the most part.
47:29 - Rich Campbell (Host)
There are many problems. This one does not rank high at all. I don't think so.
47:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, yeah, so anyway, that's my take on it. But again, when you see the headline, it's like, oh god, like what does this mean? It's like I don't think it means anything bad.
47:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everything's about to change. Yeah, yeah, by the way, here's the uh the discord is telling me. Shortly after our discussion about operating system version numbers, bloomberg said exclusive. I thought that, yeah, apple is now going to use years instead of version numbers, so it'll be mac os 26 next year, right?
48:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know they're copying Microsoft 1995. And I just am not impressed.
48:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think what it really illustrates. But that and what you were just talking about with updates, is how tricky this is, and that's why Linux is. You have a choice. You can run an LTS and a stable distro that never updates except for absolutely needed security updates. I prefer to run what they call a rolling distro that never updates except for absolutely needed security updates. I prefer to run what they call a rolling distro where everything is the latest version. Yep, that's up to you, but that's your choice, right, yeah, and I like that. I like the choice, and I feel like Windows is really not. It's sort of about choice.
48:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Windows has dabbled in every kind of version scheme imaginable. We all know all the jokes, you know this was version six. This was six one. This was six two. How big of an update could it have been? And it's like guys the version number has nothing to do with the size of the update.
48:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's about backward compatibility with software and blah, blah, blah, whatever the path's easy for apple because they just say users are stupid, it's in the back of their mind and we're going to do it for you, you don't have to think about it. Yep, just let us handle it. Yeah, you're not qualified. You're not qualified. Yeah, I mean, but microsoft is both in both camps. They want to do that and they want to give people choice.
49:20 - Rich Campbell (Host)
It's hard and and they have to manage it.
49:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Requirements right yep, it's hard.
49:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They have many constituencies it's hard, but they also make it harder on themselves than others. That's the problem they rarely pick the easy path yeah, microsoft's, I'm gonna be the one that puts the wrench in the wheel.
49:36 - Not JK Simmons (None)
It's like you chew a wheel but yeah, you know, it's like what are you doing?
49:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
but I don't know, that's the way they do things. But yeah, I mean, look, we did the year thing. The problem with the year thing in the Microsoft world back in the day was like people would be running I'll just make something up Windows 98 in 1997. They're like this thing's two years old, but I'm on, I don't have, I have an old thing. It's like there's nothing newer, you know. So you get into that problem and you know, going to come up later in the show.
50:01
But, like I, I think some software is updated too much, there are too many versions and it's like guys like maybe slow it down a little bit, like, um, so you know, windows 10 was going to have, remember, three major updates a year. They went to two, now they went to one, but not really because we do new things all the time, whatever. But, um, you know we've had stupid names for updates, which is always terrible. Microsoft itself will refer to the name of an update as the name of the version of windows, which is incorrect. Um, there's all this naming stupidity, version numbers versus brands, and you know names like linux, where you have something like ubuntu, where it's like 25.05 makes total sense to me, something like windows 11 25 h2. I'm like what okay?
50:45 - Rich Campbell (Host)
you know it's like it's it's close like it's, it's like okay, almost well, I mean, at least if we had three of them in a row now, right, yeah, that helps actually. Right, yep 22, 23, 24. I'm worried we're not going to get a 25 right now.
50:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We're gonna do something else no right, they're gonna be like this one's called q and you're like come on, like what do you know? It's like what are you?
51:02 - Rich Campbell (Host)
doing like it's. This is 11.2 preview edition.
51:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah and you're like, ah, you're terrible, but that's what they do, they're stupid. So I I will see what happens, but this is it's all. It's all reasonably figureoutable or whatever. You know, I mean apple, changing their version numbers to me actually doesn't make a ton of sense, like to I don't even know what the point of that is.
51:26 - Rich Campbell (Host)
The question is are they actually just going to call the current version of macOS whatever year it's in, or are they actually going to ship one every year?
51:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I mean. They ship one every year. They do do that.
51:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, whether they need it or not.
51:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And they have different priorities for different years. This year, we're're gonna make everything work better. This year we're gonna change everything what happens to point updates.
51:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So today, for example, I just brought up some computers. I updated the mac right, so the mac I'm on the beta channel, something, whatever it is.
51:54
So my mac is on 15.5 okay well, I can tell from that version number. There was a 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 probably. I mean they might have skipped one or two here and there, but those things occurred. So I know where it is in the cycle and you check for updates. You have the latest version. I don't need to know when it came out, who cares? So I just I'm on the latest version, right, or at least the latest version I can get on that particular hardware, whatever it might be. You can see like who cares.
52:22
I don't even know why this matters, but other than well, in our world, it matters for IT admins who want to. You know they're supporting a product. Maybe I don't know, we spend a lot of time on this stuff. I don't know. I'm not sure what to tell you, it's just. Anyway, my only point with the Windows Update thing was I saw that and I got concerned and I read it and I was like okay, actually, yeah, like I thought this is fine. I wish they did a better job of explaining it because you know it leads itself to a lot of speculation, which we've already addressed. So I don't know.
52:57
Last week Microsoft I mean in one of a million things announced that Notion was coming to the Microsoft store. So that happened today and that's why I updated my script, because until today I was installing Notion through the web repository with Winget and I just changed the line to you know, get the store version, which probably won't work. I haven't put it on a new computer yet, but that will be on me, whatever, I'll be fine. I know how put it on a new computer yet, but that will be on me, whatever, I'll be fine. I know how to install Notion. If that goes south, it's fine, so that's good. I guess I don't know. This, I think happened late last week. There's a lot of stuff that got lost in all the noise from last week.
53:39 - Rich Campbell (Host)
The build noise.
53:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, signal announced that they were going to prevent recall from screenshotting its app, and they prevent everything from screenshotting the app.
53:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and I, yeah, and I got people you know who I think that's appropriate.
53:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I did right. It was like someone's like see, see, see, you know it's like. I think this is the right security posture for signal. What are you talking about? Like this is exactly what they should do. This is fine. The fact that you can do what they're doing is what proves that the system is okay, at least in this case. Or at least in this case it proves it's okay that they're giving you that choice, you as an app developer. So a user could go in and say look, I want to not include some app, but who's going to do that? Really, the types of people who are using recall aren't really thinking clearly anyway. So let the app do that. If it's a security thing like this is just opt out of it, perfect. So this is another one. It's not controversial, it's smart.
54:36 - Rich Campbell (Host)
It's me.
54:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know, but I got a lot of people who are like oh see, you said recall was fine. They're not doing it. You're like it doesn't matter, relax that.
54:45 - Rich Campbell (Host)
That's not recall anyway well, wait a minute.
54:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, what is it? What is?
54:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't huh, well, recall, remember what recall does right, so recall you know, I understand, but why is anybody?
54:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
this is exactly how it should operate, is the application secure you wouldn't have to do this.
55:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, oh, I see, no, no, that's not it, no, not exactly so, like one I haven't used recall in a while, but one of the things I did test was they one of the things they changed over time, not because people provided a feedback, they were going to do this anyway, but before they actually did go public with it, they started adding the ability to filter out things that were sensitive. But this requires microsoft or the software to understand what's sensitive, right. So I guess I don't know, maybe you're on a business trip and you're browsing a porn site or something like that. I probably don't want that saving to the screenshots because, whatever, for all the obvious reasons and hopefully it does that but I've. I've done things like enter credit card information on a site that should be filtered out, and when I tested it this is months ago it wasn't.
55:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so that's not good.
55:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, it's not good, but it's just a mistake and it's something like over time. It's still. It was still in preview at the time. It just came out Right. So this is something they're trying to improve over time. But if it's really sensitive and you know it's sensitive as a user you can say no, I'm just not going to take screenshots of this thing, whatever that thing is. Or, in this case, an app developer can say no, we're not going to allow you to take screenshots that's how the systems here.
56:07 - Rich Campbell (Host)
We're fighting against that this is.
56:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is entirely appropriate, it's good, it's the right, it's working correctly, I think so. Um, we haven't heard from hp yet, but, uh, lenovo and hp are usually the two stragglers for my uh, horrible time of the time of the quarter where I do all the earnings reports. And Lenovo did chime in and Lenovo man nailed it this quarter and this past fiscal year. Their fiscal year ended on March 31st. A lot of companies do for some reason, and then you have companies like Dell.
56:39
It's like, all right, fiscal year ends on April 23rd and you're like, okay, whatever Dell, but most companies they end at the end of the month, whatever, close to the end of the month, whatever. So March 31st is a common end of date. So this company and I want to make sure I got this for the quarter was $16.9 billion in revenues, 23% gain year over year, and then $69 billion for the fiscal year that ended on that same date, 21 percent up, uh, year over year. Like these are good numbers, like pc is a really good number margins are pretty yeah, margins are pretty small.
57:12
So, uh, in the pc market now, lenovo does more than pcs they are. They sell phones as well. I can't imagine that's a huge, huge business. They don't pull those out. But they also have this growing data center business and services for businesses, etc but I would think the data center would be the low margin business.
57:29
Well, right now it's probably a no margin business because they're investing to grow it. So, yes, their infrastructure solution groups are revenue growth of 63% right to $14.5 billion, 33% right, 14.5 billion. But the operating margins, if you will, were a break even for the second half of the fiscal year and they lost money in the first half. So, yes, they're building that business. But for the PC group that part of the business was 50 billion in revenues for the fiscal year. That's 50 billion of 69 billion. Wow, 13% gain year over year, historically high margins, which 7%, and they didn't provide a figure.
58:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What are Apple's margins? Again, 43, I think something like that.
58:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Wow, I know. And, by the way, these guys are Chinese, so this is probably as good as it's ever going to get. But Lenovo also claimed industry-leading profitability, without telling you what the profits were.
58:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They also gave credit to AI which is interesting.
58:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, they always talk about this, but there's no actual evidence meaning they've never pulled out a figure that said here, look, this thing happened and look how well it did talk about this. But I there's no actual evidence meaning they've never pulled out a figure that said here, look this thing happened and look how well it did. They, they're building more and more of their pcs or ai pcs. Um, they're building like nhp is doing this too, and probably dell I don't follow them as closely but, um, their own ai apps, their own ai, uh, chatbot type stuff, their own ai features. There there's a partnership with intel on some features that are ai based, that are specific to those computers. For some reason, they have cross device capabilities with their phones and tablets and other things which you know. Whatever, that's fine. I mean samsung does that in pcs, tablets and phones as well, but, um, that's kind of interesting to me. Like last year, if I remember correctly, the PC market grew by 1% from a unit sales perspective Not great this year.
59:35
Of course, we have the Windows 10 end of life coming, so that's factoring into this.
59:40 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah, might be more machines being turned over.
59:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and IFA, and then CES and beyond. We've seen, with Lenovo especially, but HP's doing this too a lot more AMD in the mix than ever before, and I think that's a positive sign. The Zen 5 stuff is amazing, right and so anyway, this is good right, I mean this is-.
01:00:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is their growth bigger than other OEMs?
01:00:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I haven't seen HP yet. So that's what I'm looking for. Hp is usually pretty flat, you know.
01:00:14 - Rich Campbell (Host)
But there's also an implication here that the PC market is growing again, maybe.
01:00:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, we're going to get to that in one second. It is for Lenovo. It is, yeah, it is for them. So they gained a point of market share. So they sold 25% of all the computers in the quarter, up from 24 a year ago. Okay, that's good. But again, but 50 billion in revenues, that's stronger than I would have expected.
01:00:36 - Rich Campbell (Host)
That's good that seems good to me For the year.
01:00:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
For the year, yes, for the year, yep, yeah. So IDC today came out there was one for tablets too but they altered their prediction for PC sales for the year, the calendar year and they now expect that PC sales are going to grow. I'm sorry, unit sales meaning like actual units sold 4% in 2025, like up from well, they actually said they had a different figure. The number I use is kind of IDC and Gartner co-mingled, but I think their figure. Let me see if I can find it. Yeah, they said that PC sales grew 1.3% last year. That was their number. Time-sick, yeah yeah, that's flat, Yep.
01:01:20
Yeah, I think so too, yep 1.5 or lower to me Replacement? Yeah, I think so too.
01:01:23 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yep, 1.5 or lower to me.
01:01:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's your replacement right there. That looks on a chart. That's not even a bump, but there's not enough pixels to show that jump. Yes, but 4% is a little bit of a thing and when you think about how the world's been going, it's not horrible. There is this migration to Windows 11, windows 10 end of life. 274 million units is the expectation from them, up from 254 a year ago.
01:01:51 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah you know we're not, I don't think we're ever that a part of a 10 increase overall.
01:01:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, these are big numbers yeah, that's not bad, so they make nice laptops.
01:02:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You think maybe gaming also helped them. They're getting better and better known for their legion line yep, although I one of the weird thing.
01:02:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean I talk about this a lot, but regular laptops now display games great, you know. Yeah, I know, I have an amd system that doesn't have dedicated graphics. It runs. Call it. What are the latest call of duty? Is it 2880 by 1800? All the graphic effects on full, full res uh, 110, 120 frames a second. It's crazy. Like it's stupid good, like it shouldn't be this good. 10 minutes battery life, but that's okay, yeah, no, you don't want to do this.
01:02:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm sorry but yeah, don't do it, I'm better.
01:02:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, you plug it in. You put it on best performance when you plugged in. It's awesome and it's. It's just it. I don't know why you would buy a gaming laptop at this point. You know, personally, I mean I don't think you need to anymore. I think that goes away, it's. You know, there'll always be creators, or whoever in gamers too right that want dedicated graphics. I get that.
01:02:55 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I mean I know some devs who always buy gaming laptops. Yeah, Like the horsepower.
01:03:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yeah, and so that's one of the things from Build I wanted to get to. I downloaded 1825 videos from sessions and I think they showed this during the keynote. But there's a command line tool that you run to get the foundry going in Windows and then it examines your system and you can filter the list. It does it automatically but it will tell you the models that are appropriate for your system. It's based on the cpu, gpu and or mpu that you have nice, and you can filter from there and this is something I've done this in visual studio with the um. Whatever that ai toolkit was called is called um, but a similar tool but from the command line, and if you have a like a co-pilot plus b, you could say filter it to ones that are specifically going to run off of the MPU. But the Microsoft models, the PHY models, are designed to work with what you have and I think in a lot of cases you might actually choose a version of the PHY3, whatever they're on now, models that are specific to whatever use case. But I think in a lot of cases you just get the PH fine model and it just works, and that's something I'm still trying to figure out.
01:04:08
I was hoping to do this before the show, but you could you know, if you're writing like a notepad app, like I am, and you want to do rewriting stuff in the app, I mean, if you, if the user has an MPU, it can run off of that. If they don't, you could have it run off the cloud or off the cpu, gpu, whatever you have. Like there's a like. This is actually getting fairly easy to do for app developers and it's just a few lines of code, so it's kind of an extension of the, the windows copilot runtime stuff I did back in probably february when I finally came up with a preview version of that. That's being renamed and so this is what windows ai foundry now, but it's more sophisticated than it was before and it's easier if you're a developer to add that stuff to your app. Like it's actually pretty good, we have our computers, no for the uh club.
01:04:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We have our ai user group on the first friday of every month. So it'll be a week from friday and I kind of hoping I could show some Claude code vibe coding yeah, in there. I'm gonna do it ahead of time just to see if it works. But right, it's pretty, it's pretty interesting. I have to say it's really interesting. I.
01:05:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I try not to bore my wife with my work. Stuff right, but but look at that it's going fast yeah, or I'll be like look, I made a text editor.
01:05:27
She's like that's, that's cute, that's nice you know, but but but sometimes things don't we already have text editor at home yeah, she's like you have one, isn't one in windows or something? Are you an idiot? Like anyway, uh, but, but sometimes things will happen in the world where I'm like you might want to see this, like you might want this. So some of the google stuff I showed her and I showed her some of the what's the video thing?
01:05:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
vo, vo, three, holy cow you're like the world is changing I mean honestly, I think this is a problem.
01:05:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I jurassic park probably came out in 1993, 91, somewhere in that time frame, and I saw that movie and I thought they can make anything you can imagine now, and by they I meant ILM you know, those companies supercomputers over many months. Now I, with an iPhone or something, can make anything Like it's unbelievable, like that's a. That is. This is. There were still people listening, watching us, who were like I still think AI is a scam and I'm like I'm telling you, you know, pay attention, this is moving so fast, it's oh it's crazy.
01:06:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've been. Uh, you know, if you're on reddit, if you look at the reddit ai forums, there are a lot of people playing with vo. Vo now does audio, does dialogue, and you can get it to say anything you want in any situation you want. And it's's as far as I can. I don't know you want to see. Let me see if I can find some.
01:06:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Richard, you got to get Oren Thomas in your show. I'm sure you already have at some point.
01:06:54 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I have.
01:06:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
he's on my list Get him now and ask him to talk about his AI avatar stuff, because it's specifically for training scenarios where you have like a it's you talking about some topic and maybe doing a screen grab, screen recording kind of a thing. It's supposed to be astonishing Like it's uh and his little workflow for little I shouldn't. I'm belittling it, it's not a little word his workflow that he created, where it sounds like him when he talks and looks like him on the video, like this is. This is. I think this will be of interest to people, um, just generally, but also if you are doing stuff like this for work and maybe you don't like to be on camera or whatever, yeah, you know it's funny.
01:07:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Lisa is asking, uh, anthony, yeah, to create a video with her which she doesn't have to show explain to clients how the ad system works is she says what if, can we do it with ai and I?
01:07:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
well, you've seen. So two cto co's, whatever. They have made videos for shareholders where it's not them. That's not good, I know well you. But come on, this is the tip of the iceberg there. Those videos were amazing because you would. If you showed that to anyone, they'd be like obviously that's the guy. No, it is not so.
01:08:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
These are theseio-created clips with dialogue. This is from the chat GPT subreddit.
01:08:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We can talk no more silence.
01:08:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, we can talk.
01:08:14 - Rich Campbell (Host)
We can talk.
01:08:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We can talk.
01:08:15 - Rich Campbell (Host)
We can talk with accents.
01:08:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I think that would be marvelous. Yes, it is very fun.
01:08:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I like this one. They're like you know, we're not real. He's like well, you know, this plane isn't real. Yes, we can talk. Yes. We can talk.
01:08:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We can talk. We can talk.
01:08:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, Bob no.
01:08:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, there's one. We can talk as cartoons. Amazing, imagine all the narrative possibilities. We can sing talk.
01:08:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is all AI, I know talk. This is all ai, I know it's insane, I it's insane.
01:08:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's talk. It was only two years ago. What are we going to talk about now that we can talk?
01:08:52 - Not JK Simmons (None)
I have pixar should just announce spaghetti. And now, right now.
01:08:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's incredible like they could talk. Yep, um, there's another one that has uh, it's just influencers and fake influencers doing really stupid, scary things. Yeah, like diving into the lava, yeah diving in the lava and I showed it to Lisa and she said why are they doing that? I said they're not. They're not. Yeah, we're in an interesting world. I don't know what it means. I mean, I really don't.
01:09:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We talk about it, uh, and we will uh in just a bit on uh, on um intelligent machine honestly the biggest red flag is when the guy believes in the prompt theory, like, really, we came from prompts. Wake up, man you want to convince me that this perfect creation behind me is the result of ones and zeros.
01:09:48 - Rich Campbell (Host)
A binary code and nothing more. It makes no sense.
01:09:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Imagine you're in the middle of a nice date with a handsome man. And then he brings up a prompt here and he's like what?
01:09:58 - Rich Campbell (Host)
We just can't have nice things.
01:09:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're not prompts. Some of it is, I guess, blocked.
01:10:04 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Where is the prompt writer? To save you from me? Where is he?
01:10:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh, I don't know what happened to that. Uh, that's interesting tells you we're just ones and zeros. This video is no longer available. Right in the middle of why does it? Right in the middle of me playing it.
01:10:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like hey reports on the video kill it kill it.
01:10:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's weird, I can see the thumbnails.
01:10:26 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Oh wait a minute, here's some more god whispering in my ear, to tell a story. I write what I want. I have free will. Remember that I know for a fact we're made of prompts deny it all you want the internet is made of tubes and we're made of prompts, because nothing makes sense. I know we're made of prompts Because nothing makes sense anymore. We used to have seven fingers per hand. I remember it clearly. Now we just have five fingers per hand.
01:10:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He's getting a laugh for that. By the way, that was five minutes ago. Yeah, I know, that's what's astonishing Like this is not 40 years later, this is like 40 minutes later.
01:11:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was a video said that said, what if?
01:11:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
ai characters refused to believe they were ai, yes, which is beautiful, which is yeah, I've seen this one, that's all good. Amazing, dustin, listen to me, you're insane. I love you, man, but you're wrong. I love. There's always the he's like these, don't?
01:11:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they don't look real, they're moving it's like no dude, they look amazing, like it's they're real. If they're real, oh my god, dude, I don't think they're distinguishable.
01:11:30 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I still get uncanny valley twitches. Do you get a little bit about them? Yeah, it's a little cringe I don't know.
01:11:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think that's what they're. I think that's what they're getting by you know it's so close though. I mean maybe you can still kind of tell maybe but it, but it's so close. Look, I showed Stephanie some of this, like I said, and the comment was like these are better looking than most movies we've seen. They've gotten to the point where Depth of field.
01:11:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yikes, I mean, it's incredible, it's crazy. We live in interesting times. All right, let's take a little break and then we'll get back to Microsoft.
01:12:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
When you come back, we won't even be here, it'll just be out. Someone's already trained on us.
01:12:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, a year from now. We don't have to be here. Right, you'll write the thing in Notion, we'll send it to Anthony. We'll just do it.
01:12:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We've already trained our voices.
01:12:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They've already got our what we look like I'll just be wearing the same black shirt all the time and it will be fine. It could already have happened. No, I'm just kidding, we're not props, or am I?
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Uh, let's see. Do we have richard back?
01:16:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't see richard hit the singularity I'm all right, there he is.
01:16:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just had to restart, it's all magically he restarted and everything is good, fine and well. Yep, all right. Thank you, richard. I'm sorry, we had to keep no, that's fine.
01:16:33 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I'm coming from the other side of the world.
01:16:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's amazing you know, by the way, that's another thing we just take for granted.
01:16:40 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I'm in new zealand works. I'm in south africa works like it's ridiculous what a world we live in.
01:16:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's very easy not to, not to, you know, just kind of say oh yeah, early 2000s.
01:16:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I used to tell we'd go to Europe all the time. We'd be like what's going to put this over the top is someday I'm going to be able to get off this plane, turn on my phone and just use it. And like the first iPhone I remember I took it to Europe and was scared to death to even turn this thing on. There was no sense of like airplane mode or no, and you'd get a bill this big, oh yeah yeah.
01:17:09
They say people would get these paper bill bills that were like two feet tall and I'm like I can't they fixed that can't do it yeah it's been. That's gotten a little bit better. You know, now you get off the plane you're like welcome to mexico, wherever you are, and it's like everything's fine, everything just works.
01:17:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, it's nice so I I really enjoyed, uh, kind of a week later, mic, microsoft's build Keynote and Google's. I think Apple's going to be interesting. A week from Monday they're having their WWDC.
01:17:38 - Not JK Simmons (None)
I still haven't. They're not going to mention AI. They got nothing.
01:17:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know what they're going to say I think they're going to go skeuomorphic again.
01:17:48 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I think they're just going to look at the lovely leather textures on my screen, by the way that may be why they're going to go to this new naming convention because they want the press trying to push people pay no attention to the ai.
01:18:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's the hand waving thing like don't you know? Yeah, well, someone's, like you know, look over here, look over here. Meanwhile, it would be incredibly credible of them, though, to just address it, and say hey, say something we fell short but we wanted to land with siri. We're going to get it right this time.
01:18:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's happening what something but they could say and should say is but don't worry, because you can use everything that's out there right now on your mac, on your iphone and we're an open platform so you can swap in chat cheap.
01:18:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm just kidding, that's hilarious, oh but no, they work with everybody.
01:18:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, I mean, I'm in the apple world and I use all of the above yep, um, so you know, and you'll be able to use an agentic browser, it won't be safari, no well, it will be in 2032, but you know, maybe yeah they could also say you know, we decided that your privacy was paramount, and so that slowed us down, that we're not happy with the outcome Right.
01:18:54 - Rich Campbell (Host)
We need to be better.
01:18:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean this is a classic example of a problem of your own making. I mean, you live by this sword, you're going to die by this sword.
01:19:02 - Rich Campbell (Host)
We said this from the very beginning. They felt like they had to say something last year.
01:19:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
By the way, I like the messaging from Apple. I know that there's some subset of people who are like, yes, this is aligned with how I do things. I like it. But I think we also all should recognize that most people do not care in the slightest. They're like I have given my soul up so I can get Google Maps to get me to this place in the fastest possible way. I don't even care, and I think they need that off switch in the iphone or whatever where they said look, I don't give a crap, just do it like, just make it work. Everybody would flip it. I think so I do, and that would that's. I guess they lose their marketing at that point. But yeah, I, that's what I think that's what most people actually want.
01:19:46
I know it's terrible. I wish they didn't want that, but they, but they do, I think you mentioned perplexity.
01:19:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There, you know, their ceo says, oh no, we're gonna take all that information and we're gonna show you better ads because we're literally sharing with the chinese as I speak to you.
01:20:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah you know like there's a funnel between here and beijing.
01:20:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's hysterical, yeah so, uh, talk about agentic browsers. Are you going to move? You were the one who introduced me to Arc. Loved Arc. I knew this was going to come up.
01:20:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
By the way, I spent some time with the Zen browser over the past week. This is the Firefox.
01:20:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I'm using right now.
01:20:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And I like it. I've always liked the UI and there's nothing more divisive than this UI. I. Part of the problem with arc slash Zen now is that it's such a leap from what people are used to with browsers so they really haven't changed in 20 plus years. They're even saying that it was too much of it's, too much of a context shift for a while and some people just don't get it immediately Like Nope, you know, and I actually I do understand it. I. It took me a little while to get into it as well. Like it's, you know, familiarity is not overrated.
01:20:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's important. Well they're killing ARK and they're.
01:21:01 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Well they're not, they're kind of leaving it, they're being careful not to say that I mean they're they're.
01:21:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
they're not adding new features to it, which I think they kind of already said, but they have this new agentic browser called Dia right, which they the acknowledgement on their part is like look, we went too far afield with this. It was too unfamiliar to most people, these guys, everyone who worked at this company, and friends and family who were like I kind of want to use this product you're making to support you, and I don't understand it, you know, and that was a problem. So, yes, I will see what they do. The problem is the browser company is like 17 people in Brooklyn. I'm not sure what they're going to be able to do. We'll see. They did come up with this thing. That was very innovative, but the problem for them is going to be that everyone else is going to do this stuff.
01:21:50
And Opera today just announced Neon, which is a name it used before, by the way, but it's upcoming agentic AI web browser and these two things sound exactly the same. And it's fascinating to me that you know Microsoft at Build talked about further integration with Copilot in Edge, not just in the sidebar, but it's going to be in the tabs, in the search box. It's going to be all over the place, right, because of course it is. But Edge is fundamentally terrible and you should never use it. But that's not where I was going.
01:22:20
Edge is fundamentally a traditional browser that has all the traditional browser features and it's from one of the big companies. It's from a platform maker, so there's a protectionist element there. That is the reason Google was so slow getting this stuff going with search, which now I feel like they're getting there. But the fast movement stuff is going to occur with these smaller companies, right. So we'll see. But Opera Neon is not available publicly. It's in a private preview you have to sign up for. I don't know anyone who actually has it yet. They just talked about it today. But it is all those agent things, right? So what?
01:22:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is it so? Give me an example of how that shows up to me.
01:22:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I actually like their thinking on this, and what I mean by that is, yes, they make a browser. So on one hand, you could say, well, of course they see the world through the browser. They're a browser maker. It's like not exactly like the way that we interact with the web, and the web means a lot of things. Right, the web is apps, but also services. It's where we go to read and browse and and learn things, buy things, you know, whatever it is, um it, it actually makes sense, and this is what the browser company kind of came to over time was like take this thing that people are used to and then turn it into something that can better interact with all these new capabilities that will be available with AI, right. So there's the basic stuff, where you're reading an article and it can summarize and this video is not very useful.
01:23:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What is it? A bunch of robots? I don't understand. It's not very good, it's pretty.
01:23:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's the um. They're robots.
01:23:48 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I don't understand.
01:23:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not very good, it's pretty silly. There's the ability to take actions on your behalf and I don't know. Two, three months ago they announced something called the browser operator for Opera proper, if you will where it could do things like automatically, like fill out a form or go book a trip or shop on your behalf, but doing so locally, only in the browser. Right, so that's your option. It doesn't have to do it that way. But if you care about security and privacy, which a lot of people who use things like brave or vilvaldi or opera, whatever, might right um, you can configure it so it only works locally and to do those things on your behalf, okay but then there's the.
01:24:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's this video's useless.
01:24:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's not great, but the the third bit is um, using what they call a cloud computer, which literally is a on-the-fly VM hosted on their European servers. That will you give it a task. And these are the big tasks. These are the things you might use, like the research feature in a chat, gpt style chatbot to do. So you say something like I want you to do, like research this particular topic, or I want you to go off and find the best price on a thing, but take a long time.
01:24:58
You were talking about making a video game.
01:25:00
Make a video game, make a personal website that will give me live updates on these particular stocks and compare them and keep me up to date as things change, right?
01:25:09
So this is the multi-agenic kind of approach where the agent-based AI on the back end will break the task down into subtasks and then let these things all run simultaneously and you can have it go at multiple tasks too.
01:25:25
But if you just think about a single task, like you might think of a task like I'm going to do a dream vacation two weeks long. It's going to be all over Europe, or whatever it is like, have it, break it down into all those parts and find all the places, find all the right things to do, find all the right time of the year, whatever it might be, and then it comes back and the point of that functionality is that that doesn't all happen locally, it doesn't even require you to be online. It's going to happen for you in the cloud, in the backend. So the next time you come in, it's like hey, we got an update, you know we did this thing for you, or this part of it's done, or we have a question, or do you prefer this or this? Because we found two options that we think might be good or whatever it might be, and so right now, this is all kind of theoretical in the sense that this is going to be a paid service, though.
01:26:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, that's what it says it's a yeah, okay.
01:26:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I wasn't sure.
01:26:12 - Not JK Simmons (None)
I'm actually not 100 sure yeah, I mean they're gonna chart well, that makes sense.
01:26:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But it makes sense. I mean, like we pay for things like chat, gpt, yeah, whatever. So this is the integrated approach. Like this is the company that makes the browser saying this is how we think this makes sense. And I, I look at this and I'm like I think this actually does make some sense.
01:26:29
I back around the time that um arc had come out on windows finally and started getting good and, you know, never really hit the quality level, the Mac version, whatever. I started really thinking about like web browsers and how they hadn't really changed that much over the years. And what does it mean to be a web browser in the AI age? And you know, of course it's progressed. I mean, you know stupidly since I wrote this stuff, but it is interesting to me to see these smaller companies saying we got to really kind of start over here. This is going to be a little different. We'll have the basic shell of a browser. We'll do bookmarks and all the fun stuff you like to do and you understand, but it's going to have these advanced capabilities. So I guess the question here is like what's the right entry point for this? You know, the browser company sees the browser as the operating system of the desktop, like it's. Like. I know you have a Mac, you have Windows, but really most people are doing most of their stuff in this thing and so that kind of makes sense. You know Microsoft sees it does it both ways, because they have things, they have both right, so they have the. They have both right, so they have the stuff in the browser, they have the stuff in the os and then they have the stuff in their apps because that's their big. You know microsoft 365, google is. Google is like pelting the internet with every imaginable service because they have stuff everywhere right there's. You know, search is huge, but they have like gmail and photos and all these popular I don't know what the numbers are, but like billion or 2 billion plus user services. A lot of entry points there, right, and so I don't know. You see little things like you get if you have Google photos. A couple of years ago you got the ability to like erase something out of a photo and at first it was a little smudgy and weird and now it's like perfect or whatever it can be. Um, these things advance pretty rapidly. So I don't know.
01:28:12
I think the basics of this stuff is I get flight alerts, like for Mexico. So I just told my wife today literally like, hey, flights for July are low, according to Google flights. We should look into this. But you could actually set it up and say like, look, we want to fly in July. It doesn't matter when. We want to be there for X amount of time. If it hits this price point, it's this airline and we can get you know. Whatever it is the seats we want, just do it like book it. You know, don't come back and ask, just do it. And um, right now, I think a lot of people hearing that including me, by the way are like, yeah, I would not do that, not yet, but in six months or a year, yep, and then in a couple years we're going to wonder how we ever survive without this like this. Is this going to be the normal way to do things?
01:28:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you would give it a credit card and say go ahead.
01:28:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Not right now, but that's what people are going to, not right now, not right, yeah, at some point right. But yes, that's going to happen, right, yeah, yeah. So, uh, yeah, it's, it's we've. You know a know Microsoft pushed this off with that co-pilot Bing AI at the time, but co-pilot thing they did in February a couple of years ago. We've gone through these different waves. You know Microsoft has terrible names for things, but we've kind of hit the agentic era.
01:29:22
The big message it built, aside from Free Palestine, was the multi-agentic thing Agents working in concert to this one's good at this, this one's good at this, whatever it is, and then working on your behalf. The extensibility stuff where you can plug into online services to get the things you want. Like it's important for, I don't know, for flights or whatever. It needs to integrate with the airline I use whatever for me to do that thing. Like, if my airline is the one that doesn't buy into this, I can't do it right, but I think you would.
01:29:56
It would be suicide for a business not to integrate into this stuff. You may get something. You make it like a prompt on your phone, like hey, um, ai just called and they're like they're trying to book flights. You is this okay, you know, um, we were away last weekend with my sister and my brother-in-law. I tried to use only because I saw it as an option. I went into Google Maps, went to a place book a reservation and it said Google Assistant for some reason. But it said Google Assistant can call this business if you want to try to get a reservation, do you want us to try it? And I'm like, absolutely, I want you to try it. I'm like, absolutely, I want you to try it. I was like yep, and, by the way, it did nothing. It didn't work, it didn't work.
01:30:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, See, that's why.
01:30:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But I was like all I can imagine was some yokel in like upstate New York.
01:30:36
It's like hi this is Google AI calling You're like well yeah, right, whatever, dude, but yeah, but it's weird now it's if you have a Pixel phone, you've done something. You may not even realize. This is what happened. But someone called you one day and Google somebody, I think said to the person hey, richard's busy right now, or whatever. I've used that. Who are you? Do you want to leave a message? And if it's a scammer, they're always like nope. But if it's someone who actually does want to reach you, they're probably like what the Like? What was that? But they're like, hey, it's Bob or whatever, like just trying to reach you. And eventually that becomes normalized, just like seeing a person with, like, a Bluetooth headset walking around, talking to the air. At first it's like what is this?
01:31:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's amazing how fast we get used to this. Yep, yep, mild out.
01:31:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I'm kind of fascinated by this and of course the speed at which it occurs is a big part of it, and it's just the speed at which it advances Like it's crazy. So it's very interesting to kind of see that One of our Rocks Issue.
01:31:42 - Rich Campbell (Host)
episodes from Build is with Debbie O'Brien, who's one of the Playwright people, which is a testing tool for browsers, and they've now got a playwright mcp so you can write prompts that will pop a browser open and navigate it for you and right right, nice, you know, it's funny in the early days of that show we were deep into the evil, like in the early days of computing.
01:32:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know if you guys felt this. I always felt like it's going so fast, I can't keep up, I'll never know everything.
01:32:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh my God, I'd give anything for that slowness and then it got slow In the last 10 years.
01:32:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
15 years it's like, yeah, I can keep up.
01:32:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
In the 1970s, we were promised a future without paper, future without paper.
01:32:32 - Rich Campbell (Host)
yeah, I'm drowning in paper right like I don't that never. I was going to be flying in a car by now. Yeah, you know, I'm not drowning in paper because me like, my printer, like everyone else's, is broken yes, so mine works fine.
01:32:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just don't have any ink, uh yeah, I'm not drowning in paper so much I think we have, but you know what I'm saying.
01:32:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But we but we we stuck with paper for the next three last a long time.
01:32:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah said yeah, we'll have a paperless office. This is when we have a paperless bathroom.
01:32:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yes, and the Japanese are like we've had that for 20 years. Yeah, I do now. And my bum is curiously warm right now, you know.
01:33:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So yeah, Anyway, I kind of have mixed feelings because I don't feel like I can keep up with AI. I'm working as fast as I can.
01:33:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Last week, was the most overwhelming thing I've experienced, possibly in my life. And it wasn't just Bill and the announcements and whatever the stuff with the protesters, it wasn't just that Google happened and that was a fire hose of stuff.
01:33:28
And look, we've all been overwhelmed in our lives at one point or another. But I I came out of that week and I had I had 13 hours before I had to get in a car and drive up to new york with my sister and my brother-in-law and I was like I can't, I can't focus. Um, we had an event, or we had I had an event, I should say in the afternoon, I think on saturday, where they were all hopping out of the car to go into some winery and I'm like I'm going to take a nap. They're like what are you talking about? And I slept in the. I fell asleep. I was like boom. And I fell asleep like instantly. And my sister was like I don't think anyone's ever slept in the back of this car. I'm like I'll tell you, it was great.
01:34:03 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I passed exhausted, yeah, and I just, and you took like a 20 and just popped awake again.
01:34:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh yeah, Well they scared the living daylights out of me. When they came back, the door opened. I almost went flying out the side, but I was, oh my God, I was so tired, anyway, anyway, you're watching.
01:34:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Windows Weekly. This is the exhausted but now refreshed Paul Theriot. I'm getting there. This is the exhausted but now refreshed Paul Theriot. I'm getting there Richard Campbell is with us from Cape Town. We are so glad you are here and watching. Did you watch? Speaking of watching, did you watch the Johnny Ive Sam Altman video? Sam Altman, wow, yeah.
01:34:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I forgot how much I hate him. His pukey British voice was like uh, bad memory from the past. It's like we tried to make the aluminium bend to our will, or whatever he says, and it's like uh, shut up, so the consensus seems to be that they're gonna that he's designing and there have been some leaks.
01:35:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A thing you a pendant you wear around your neck. Okay, that uh keeps track of everything that's I mean open.
01:35:13 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Ai needs a piece of hardware like that's not a bad idea right.
01:35:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know if it's worth six and a half billion dollars. Oh, sorry, that's, it wasn't dollars, it was stock so right, 6, 6.5 billion bitcoin, or whatever yeah, well, in fact, uh, mike elgin on sunday said you know, this is really the real benefit is that OpenAI dilutes its stock so that it can make the purchase, the move to nonprofit easier. So it really, you know, but they've been working together and it made sense and I think they'll do something like a pendant, like the Rewind pendant, something like that.
01:35:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We're going to find out. I mean, chatgpt, to me, is just such an accepted thing. It's become tissue. All of a sudden, it's just what it is you know, for so many people like normal, non-technical people. So, yeah, seize the moment. I mean, why not all the time?
01:36:04 - Rich Campbell (Host)
yep most of that I mean I worry about that because there's llms are a dime, a dozen now, right like yeah believe you're racing ahead, but there's a point where it's not going to matter. You have to do something else.
01:36:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wear my little pendant all the time. Yeah Right, sometimes I, sometimes I even talk to it. Are you there, little buddy? Are you there? Good friend, my little pendant buddy, my little pendant buddy, are you there? Let's see if he's. He's just waking up. He's in the back of the car. I think, yeah, like.
01:36:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Johnny Ives and Sam Auburn. A fun way of interacting with your devices.
01:36:37 - Not JK Simmons (None)
It's great to have that friendly connection with technology. If there's something specific you want to talk about regarding your devices.
01:36:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He's that actor right, the guy who was in the Spider-Man movies. Yeah, it's JK Simmons. He's in the ads on.
01:36:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
TV for whatever insurance company. That guy, what's his name? Are you JK Simmons from the State Farm Company?
01:37:02 - Not JK Simmons (None)
I'm actually not JK Simmons, but I can see how that could be confusing. I'm your AI assistant, here to help with whatever you need. What can I assist you with today?
01:37:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, jk Okay need what can?
01:37:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I assist you with today. Okay, jk, okay, jk, I call him. Literally, he'd be.
01:37:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
JK. That's amazing.
01:37:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's obviously. I think this is one of the things that's starting to happen. For instance, ChatGPT does not have good voices. They're all annoying.
01:37:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
AI voices, or the alarms of Scarlett.
01:37:31 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Johansson. I wish they still Yep AI voices. Ai voices are like the alarms on your phone or the rip-offs of Scarlett Johansson. Well, I wish they still offered that.
01:37:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But you go through every one of them You're like no, no, no. And then you get to the end You're like all right, so like I got to pick one that's not yeah.
01:37:51 - Rich Campbell (Host)
But see, I like it to be talked down to. That's how I just relate to that. You know, I have one friend who has this perplexity set, so it sounds like a, a very annoyed teenage girl. Perfect, literally every response starts with a sigh and an eye roll oh, that would make me insane audio eye roll.
01:38:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love it. Uh, I've tried all sorts of things with chat gpt, so if you can do that, I'd be good. I guess you could make it part of the standard prompt Talk like a teenage girl.
01:38:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean we're going to be able to train these things on some voice in a movie and escape from all the IP problems, because no one's going to know, it's just going to be on your device Like who cares.
01:38:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Exactly it should be, whatever you want it to be.
01:38:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep. So if you're looking for Scarlett Johansson, you can make that happen. You just got to watch some of her terrible movies and then you'll be fine, right, duckai, what's that? Yeah, so Duckai is DuckDuckGo's AI, so it's tied to DuckDuckGo search, right, DuckDuckGocom, whatever. So you know, as one of those kind of companies, like little tech companies they're like look, we're going to open this up to whatever models are out there. You have a choice of models. We recommend this for this, this for this, whatever.
01:39:06
Everybody wants to be perplexity, yeah Well, but you know they have a like, they have a privacy focus right, which I think a lot of people kind of relate to, right, so you can pick your own model, right. Um, but gpt40 mini now supports um web search as part of it. So, uh, you can do it two ways. You go through search and then you can get like more info through AI, or you can go through the AI chat bot and then you can get search results directly. So it's kind of two ways to get the same end, I guess. But that's an interesting idea.
01:39:38
I mean I GPT for oh mini, whatever but, and of course it's DuckDuckGo search, which also whatever but yeah.
01:39:49
I mean this, this is a uh. This company, to me, is like valve, in that in valve's case, they never finished half-life 3, although that could be changing. In duck, that ghost case, they never finished this browser which I was always super interested in, but it doesn't even support extensions and all these kind of basic features. It's like, guys, you gotta get, like you gotta finish the thing, but they're obviously jumping all over. Well, search and now ai. So, um, it's fine, like this, is this, this there's, there's, there's room for this. I mean, which of these wins out? I guess? I guess we'll see. I don't know, I'm not really sure there. Um, if you were worried about google losing money on ai, uh, no fears, they're going to add advertising to everything. They solved it. They cracked that computer science problem. Um, so you're going to start seeing ads, uh, in the ai overviews. Well, I know, I'm relieved that was how do they stay in business.
01:40:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Really how? How, thank god, google you know, I knew they'd get it. There's some smart people there, so so that's good.
01:40:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I just did some web browser stuff real quick. Vulvality 7.4 is out, desktop and mobile now Slightly different features than every single platform, because seriously, I'm sorry.
01:41:01 - Rich Campbell (Host)
We've been talking about web browsers for half an hour now. I know I'm just blowing through it.
01:41:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Firefox 139 is up because they update every four weeks for some reason, maybe move to a four-week schedule seriously, or a six-week schedule rather, I don't know what's going on there, but yeah, so a lot of these, I think, second-level web browsers are all going to do the same thing. They're going to give you a choice of AI, they're going to let you integrate with the thing you want to use. You could do local or cloud or hybrid, and that's going to be the model. And if you like the monolithic thing, chrome is there and edge is there, and you'll be fine if that's what you want.
01:41:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that's your choice, nice yeah, uh, okay, you know what this means.
01:41:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's xbox time play the halo sounds oh, I think most people are super excited for the co-pilot for gaming assistant. Um, and I'm sorry, I can't even go with that wow there's that teenage eye roll he tried.
01:42:08
He tried God damn it, microsoft, of course, but anyway it's available now in beta on Xbox, on iOS and Android, not on the console, not on PC. I mean, obviously it's coming Now. What you would use this for on a mobile device is actually kind of unclear to me. But the point of this. I look at the game assist feature. That's actually Edge. That's part of the game bar, that's part of Windows.
01:42:37
A lot of people kind of made fun of that and I actually see the point of that, because I do this. When I play a single-player game and I can't get past a certain point, I will swap out, go to the browser. You know name of game, walkthrough level, whatever level. I'm on right, Like everyone does this. So having that come up in a fairly seamless way you know game bar is one button click or you know Windows key plus GOA to me makes sense. I think it was. But when they do this maybe I don't remember when they did this they, some time ago they demoed this gaming copilotilot for gaming and the idea there's you're running through the game and it's like hey, that you know, it's like watch out for that, whatever the thing is in minecraft and blah, blah, it talks, you know it kind of interacts with you and you're like, yeah, I don't know, we'll see so yeah, that's, that's very uncanny valley too, right like, yeah, that's a little weird but I don't know.
01:43:26
You know, I in the sense that copilot. Copilot will be the chatty sidekick in the comedy adventure movie that you're watching, or something Like the guy who's just there to like the Tom Arnold character in what's that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, true Lies like, where he's just saying funny stuff on the side. I would actually kind of enjoy that guy, like if that's what it was. It's like I don't need help with the game but just keep going Like you're funny, keep talking. That would be okay. So we'll see where that goes. But they're starting it on the lowest impact platform imaginable. This I don't know. If this happened. I feel like we might've talked about this briefly, but the Federal Trade Commission dropped their attempt to block well, to unwind the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
01:44:08 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Right, so after more than a year they finally gave up.
01:44:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, it took a regime change and yet another court loss. I don't think this organization is 0 for 4 against Microsoft now, but it was unprecedented, literally in the history of the FTC. Usually when they lose the court case to prevent a merger in this case, they drop their control.
01:44:31 - Rich Campbell (Host)
The judge was pretty angry with them even before this last. It's just crazy.
01:44:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Like could you waste more taxpayer money? Like, yeah, no, we're the U S government, we could figure that one out, but like they, you know, my argument against this was always that like hey, look, this is not about like I would like the industry to be a certain way. It's like you look at this objectively and like they're not. This isn't breaking any laws. It's not creating a monopoly. Microsoft made an incredible number of concessions to the, to various regulators, to, you know, put their games everywhere. Obviously, they were never taking call of duty off. You know, playstation, whatever.
01:45:03 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I don't know. I mean I don't want to do this, but that would take them. Fine, that's not what they did.
01:45:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Maybe spending $69 billion was insane but we're not so insane that we're going to take our best-selling game off the best-selling platform that's run down Like we'd never make money on it.
01:45:24
Where do you think the 69 billion came from? Yeah, like exactly 69 billion was, was that? You know we don't do that? Um, so yeah, I mean it's weird. For all of the kind of recriminations here, it was the shortest little. Uh, it's an F, it's called an FTC order, it's just a. It's really, it's private. I mean they publicize it but it's just their own little thing. And then there was a tweet from Brad Smith, just like two sentences, like that's how this ended. It's like it ends with the big, like the, I was gonna say, biggest, the smallest whimper imaginable. It's like the biggest acquisition by far in Microsoft's history and it was so hotly contested everywhere in the world. And it's just, this is how it ends. It's like, yep, it's over. It's like it's over.
01:46:14
You bought them last October, like, of course, it's well, it was last October or the year. Yeah, I guess it was last October. It feels like it over for a while. Yeah, I the the. The time frame of this was more compressed than I remember it, because living in this, it felt like it was going on forever. Oh, yeah, you know, um which is a great joke about Oklahoma, if a doctor ever tells you only have a year to live, move to oklahoma because it's going to feel like a freaking lifetime anyway, um, okay, so the other thing that happened, you know, tariffs, not tariffs.
01:46:41
We don't know what's going on there, but we do know that, uh, nintendo's launching the switch to any day now, or what is. What's the date. It's happening, right, or what's any minute, yeah, any minute. So sony is, of course, having a sale. So they just raised prices on the playstation 5 in many countries, uh, and the accessories, and now they're having a a sale. They're not calling it the switch sale, but you know that's probably what it is. And so in the united states, for example, um, you, uh, the starting price of the playstation 5, the discless version, is 399 um, which actually sounds kind of reasonable to me.
01:47:17 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Um yeah, because the switch is what? 450?
01:47:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, it might even uh switches the which is amazing, cheaper than the switch 2, yeah, yep wow.
01:47:27 - Rich Campbell (Host)
So this is more importantly the switch 2 is not cheap. Like the switch was, an inexpensive handheld, this is not yeah, yeah.
01:47:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So yeah, it used to be, um, yeah, like reasonable price for super convenience, and then you know all the versatility of that console and now it's like, yeah, now it's expensive. You're like, you know. So if, then, if this thing I still want it 300 bucks, I would have been like no brainer. I would have bought one day one at 425 450.
01:47:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm like they're testing the strength of their uh exclusives like do you have to have mario?
01:48:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, and then some of those games are like what? 80 bucks, I think right, yeah but the math works out.
01:48:05 - Rich Campbell (Host)
There's 20, 50, 100 hours of play in most of those games. It's worth it. You can buy a Switch for each game.
01:48:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can do this. I don't mean to call it a rationalization, but when someone says, well, an iPhone or whatever Android phone, it's like $1,000 or $1,500. That's crazy. It's like hold on a second, how much do you use this thing? How long are you going to use it? It's like this may be the greatest bargain in tech history if you use it enough. You know. Yeah, but you could do that with anything, right? And so, yeah, if you're going to use this thing and, look, you can travel with it, you can bring it with you and stuff like that. There's versatility there. I really like, but I'm cheap, I don't know. Like, I don't know, I don't know. Does it play Call of duty? I mean, we'll get there, but not yet.
01:48:49
Anyway, a lot of the playstation stuff is called the wild, and that's even better, yep um, yeah, a lot of peripherals are on sale as well, so if you didn't buy one, you were on the edge or whatever. You're not sure, terrace me and my pc master race.
01:49:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are very happy over here, thank you you know, if I were on an airplane like you are, uh, for 15 hours and I know one day that might be the point yeah, I read, you read. Oh boy, you're an intellectual, you're so boring. Do you read kindles, paper books, kindle kindle, yeah, yeah, that's nice because you bring it on the plane and you have a thousand books. You're never going to run out. Yeah, yeah, what'd you read on the flight to South I?
01:49:38 - Rich Campbell (Host)
have a pre-release copy of Gene Kim's Vibe Coding Books.
01:49:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The problem with that is I read that and I want to have a laptop next to it so I can do stuff with it. Exactly, try it out.
01:49:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, you guys, if you haven't read this, this came out fairly recently. It's a book called Apple in China. Oh, former reporter for the Financial Times, this might be the best tech type business. Are you liking it? Love it. It's astonishing. I gotta get it. No, this this is the best book of this type that I've read in possibly 10 years or more. Like it's an unbelievably good. You have to read it. Like you gotta run and get my kobo and order it. No, you're gonna love it.
01:50:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like you're gonna freak out about how good this book is this is the one that got all the headlines because he said you know, basically china could just kill the iphone they could turn off apple right now, right like literally just make it go out of business 51.
01:50:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's no like well, we'll slowly ramp up somewhere else. No, you will never ramp up anywhere. It's over.
01:50:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like they could turn off apple right now yeah, because even if they manufacture in india, 90 parts come from china. That's right.
01:50:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, they do, they can't, they do right now, that's just why this whole this is one of the reasons why this whole notion of like we're going to build this thing in the united states no, you're not. And it's not just because it will be x, whatever percent more expensive. It's not possible, it's not doable, you can't do it.
01:50:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's unbelievable yes, I can't wait to read it. So it's kind of about how apple took, moved to china and invested in china to make the supply chain, to make the iphone. Is that the story?
01:51:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's an element of treason to this story, because they gave China all of their technology to get into the country, which is what Meta is trying to do Right, and what this means is the Chinese smartphone company market exists because of China. Yeah, because of Apple. Sorry, right, like Huawei. Xiaomi. Oppo Vivo whatever.
01:51:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So Trump has a point, then Really Apple kind of sold us down the river.
01:51:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But this happened over the past, you know, whatever 25 years. This didn't happen overnight. Like you can't unwind this, you can't just be like, oh, we're just going to go. No, no, I know there's nothing you can do now.
01:51:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But there's a reason to be a little angry at Apple.
01:51:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It sounds like they're responsible for more employment in china than there are employees in the entire state of california was one of the stats. They've pumped more money into this country's economy than the marshall plan did in europe. Adjusted for inflation by a factor, I think it was five, like it's not, I guess so to be fair, we have to take the blame too, because we kept buying the oh yeah, no, in the same way we're, of course we're the.
01:52:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We made the market if it weren't for us? Yeah, of course they wouldn't have done it.
01:52:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, yeah, this is just like the. I vaguely understand I'm selling my soul to google to get access to those services, but I don't really know the details and maybe I would or would not be outraged if I did. I this book and what apple did, I think will outrage even their greatest fans okay, it's crazy.
01:52:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, gotta read it all. Right, we're gonna take a break. Uh, richard has rejoined the stream again, again, uh. But that's okay because uh, hang on, richard, because brown liquor is coming and you will have a chance to have a refreshing beverage in just a moment, plus our tip and app pick of the week and a whole lot more still around the corner. But I want to take this opportunity to promote our club and to give you some bad news. Well, maybe good news. Give you some news. See that scroll below me that says it's $7 a month for three more days.
01:53:16
Lisa's made the decision and I concur. Costs are going up. The club at this point is 25%. I'm not sure if it's. She gave me the number and I can't remember if it's operating costs or total revenue. I think it's total revenue. But as we start to lose advertisers because of the economic situation, as people start to say I can't spend that money, it's going to become more and more important that we have the club. But I will tell you this this pricing right now $7 a month, that founder pricing is still good. If you have it, you'll keep it, but if you wait three days, it will go up. I think it's $10 a month. I think we're going to. I'm not sure. So right now you need to go to twittv slash club twit Now. I'm not asking for your money, for nothing. You're going to get ad-free versions of all the shows.
01:54:11
You get access to a bunch of really good stuff that we do in the club, for instance, that microsoft build keynote club only, the google io keynote club only a week from monday, wwdc because we're doing in the club. Mike and I are going to bring our lunch and spend the whole day in the club doing the apple public keynote in the morning and the state of the union keynote in the afternoon. Bring your lunch. It's Union keynote in the afternoon. Bring your lunch. It's going to be a long day, but we want to do it in the club. Well, because partly it's a great benefit for club members, but also because Apple will take us down and they've already threatened us both on YouTube and Twitch and we just decided we're not going to take the chance anymore. Keynotes will go into the club.
01:54:52
We do the, you know, stacy's book club, chris Markwart's photo adventure. We did a wonderful thing and if you're a club member, I encourage you to go to the TwitPlus feed and download it. We did a wonderful thing with Dick DiBartolo. It was so much fun. Dick and I went down memory lane last week and you can find me in da club sipping on da bub. Oh, this is another benefit. This is another benefit the fabulous Club Twit Discord. These are great people, people you will want to hang out with. It's my new social network. It's the best place ever.
01:55:28
Let's see what's coming up. We've got a hands-on tech recording. I mentioned ai user group. I'm going to try to do some vibe coding on friday next a week from friday uh home theater geeks. There's the wwzc keynote for the 9th. We've got uh photo time with chris mark right on the 13th, you know, if you want to, mike is crafting corner on the 16th.
01:55:48
If you want to stay up to date on this, subscribe to the Twit Newsletter Club members and everybody. Twittv slash newsletter. It's a darn good deal, says Jay Gatsby. We would love to have you in the club. We really would. So here's the thing Twittv slash club Twit Take advantage of the founder pricing $7 a month.
01:56:11
Twittv slash club twit take advantage of the founder pricing seven dollars a month. It's been that way for four years. It will not stay that way. I think even at ten dollars it's worth it. But uh, it's. And the real reason you do it is if you like the programming and you want to keep this programming going, we need your support. It's think, it's like voting, it's like telling us yes, we, we want. We want to want you to keep doing the things with Dickie D and Chris Marquardt and all the stuff that we do Twittv, slash Club, twit, get in on the founder pricing today. Kids, it won't last forever. Can I say that it won't last forever? All right, now time to the back, for the back of the book. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you mr paul thurot, genius at large his tip of the genius genius, that's small, really um large genius for this tip of the week large but not also.
01:57:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Um, yeah, so I I mentioned some of the stories we did last week about Bill. I've since written articles to that effect. There are two of them now. It's one gigantic stream of consciousness. If you want to know more about that, I realized afterwards too. It's like you know you're seven 8,000 words into this, and it's like I never even mentioned Elon Musk, or you know the kind of isn't that nice, isn't that refreshing?
01:57:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, like he wasn't the biggest problem that week, interesting, wow, yeah, by the way, I, I uh just want a little credit because way back when, before the election, when we were talking about elon and the and and how much he was gonna be part of administration, I said I give it till june oh yeah, no, this guy, he, he turns.
01:57:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think I nailed it like a feral you know, hyena?
01:57:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, I think the time has come. I think, uh, yeah, elon has recently posted he doesn't like the new uh, giant, big, beautiful bill. So I think that's the final, that's the final straw for the president.
01:58:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like okay, I always say this when we watch. They watch the movie where it's like a group of bad guys robs a bank or whatever they do. It's just inevitable. This will never work. Yeah, the problem with bad guys is they always turn on each other. They're bad guys Like you can't trust another bad guy, I want the money. It's like we're all going to be quiet about this right. No one's going to spend the money.
01:58:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like, yeah, no, we got, isn't that the case Every time I watch a heist movie.
01:58:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm just waiting for that moment. Yep, that's how it works.
01:58:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Every time, every time. Anyway, I don't know how we got into this, your tip of the week, my friend.
01:58:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, this is it Fear and loathing in Seattle.
01:58:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay got it.
01:58:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's reasonably. It's not complete. It can never be complete, but a snapshot snapshot.
01:58:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It is for members, though. Right, yeah, I mean you can look. Anyone could read three of my things for free each month if they want to.
01:58:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So you could do it that way. But okay, yeah, it's worth joining if you, uh, if you're interested in a never-ending stream of consciousness, this might be something there were a lot of protests.
01:59:06
I take it that's what mostly what you were writing about that's a big part of it, but it's it's also just about. You know, everything's changing at Microsoft and you know, for people like me it's kind of an out-of-body experience and for people who work there it's become like depressing and sad and weird and it doesn't jive with how successful the company is, like it doesn't at the time of its greatest success, where employees should be running around high-fiving each other and enjoying the the fruits of their riches, they're all scared to death for their jobs. You know it's. It makes no sense. Um, so, um, it's. It's really about that, like just the whole out-of-bodiness of it, if you will.
01:59:44 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Um, anyway, it was best quarter in the company's history and the followed by the worst time ever. You know, isn't that terrible?
01:59:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
it's almost like they looked at last year and they were like hey, followed by the worst time ever. You know, isn't that terrible. It's almost like they looked at last year and they were like, hey, what was the worst thing that happened last year? Was it a layoffs? Let's do more of that. You know it's. It just doesn't make sense and it's gotta be. Well, what's the rationale that? There's no rationale? It's fun, you know it's. It's. It's weird. What are you going to do when times are? Yeah, yeah, I know.
02:00:17
So this is what we didn't see is is well, so one of the hidden stories here is um, if you were there and and look, people posted videos. Like here's someone disrupting something. It's like I saw I think I mentioned this last week, but I saw a headline. It's like you know, protesters have interrupted build three times. I'm like nope, it was at the time of that writing. It was between 25 and 30 times I, I I've heard since then it was more close to a hundred times Like this wasn't a wow, this wasn't a couple of random people Like maybe we'll cause some problems, Like this was an operation, you know. And uh, yeah, it's so who planned this?
02:00:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I. It's a great question Because it sounds pretty organized, doesn't it? Yeah, it does so. Look, there are other Microsoft events coming down the pike. It's going to get worse.
02:01:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's going to get worse and unfortunately, that day maybe it was the day we did the show that Israeli couple from the embassy were murdered in Washington DC were murdered in Washington DC. Someone at the show, probably that same day, said to me well, they're not going to be violent like these people are against violence. I'm like I don't know. If you understand how hypocrisy works. There's absolutely no reason why it couldn't go in that direction. I never felt unsafe. I want to be super violent.
02:01:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not over-dramatizing anything.
02:01:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It doesn't take more than one person to be violent in a crowd I think I told the balloon story with the alarms, I think I'm sure last week yeah, the alarms.
02:01:37 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah, so good it was a balloon with alarms on who cares.
02:01:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's.
02:01:40 - Rich Campbell (Host)
That's innocuous but it was very clever and it was completely different from everything else and remember back when people were throwing like pies at celebrities and it was the thing and it's like oh, it's cute, it's funny, like bill gates cut in the face of the pie.
02:01:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's hilarious. What if it wasn't a pie, right? What if it was acid? What if it was a bomb? What if you know, whatever? And so this is the problem. Like I think this stuff doesn't. This stuff just gets worse, right, this is no why, microsoft, are they? Particularly well, because governments and militaries are using their computing services to run their operation but I'm sure they're using amazon and google's yep so google by the way.
02:02:20
So google did their event. There was a lot of security there and there were protesters outside. Um, they didn't get in, I guess. So that worked out okay. They were in some outdoor amphitheater, whatever. Yeah, they were sure. But amazon, google, mic, microsoft, they're all going to keep having events and this is going to keep happening because the voices that were previously having a conversation about things we didn't want you doing whether it was maybe, I don't know, providing law enforcement with facial recognition technology or whatever it was back in the day, or just military stuff remember there was a big outcry in microsoft over the military contract, the army contract for hololens, for example. Right, we don't want to be, we don't want our technology used for that is it, because it's seattle there's a.
02:03:07
Okay, so there's a chunk of that for sure. I mean, um, ignite's going to be in san francisco, it's not you know, like where would you go.
02:03:15 - Rich Campbell (Host)
They never have protests. No, that's going to be fine. I feel like.
02:03:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Seattle, though, is kind of a hotbed.
02:03:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I feel like Seattle is San Francisco light.
02:03:23
We'll find out, but yeah we're going to find out, so we'll see. But I don't know. I mean, look, this is outside of my, my world, like I don't. I mean still like stuff happens on the planet. I have opinions, who cares? But as far as like the things I do and the events I go to and the the world that my career is part of this, this is a this doesn't happen a lot. You know, this is not normal. I think the you know the military stuff. As we get into cloud computing, that becomes a problem.
02:03:54
Microsoft did the right thing, ethically, when they actually refused to sell their facial recognition technology to law enforcement because, like Connect before it, it had a problem with dark-skinned people, which is a bias built into AI. This is made by middle-aged white guys, literally and they were like we acknowledge this, like we're going to try to fix this, we want this to be better. We don't want this to be biased. Okay, great, and so there was that. You know this was during the time when Satya Nadella's Microsoft was like good Microsoft, like they were, like they were nothing, like they were back in their horrible antitrust days. But when you look at what Meta is doing with open source AI models, trying to get into China or what Apple's doing in China and you look at what Microsoft is doing with anything because they're all running after the same dollar you realize these are just companies. They're trying to be as profitable as they can. They don't care where it comes from and there's no ethics in profitability. They're just trying to make money.
02:04:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
As I said last week, I don't think that I think this will pale compared to the protests against AI.
02:05:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think this is the tip, this is the beginning, yep, yep, and any is. The horrible truth is, you know, this would be the case with terrorism back, you know, when terrorism was kind of on the upswing in the early 20th first century, whatever, anytime, something would happen. You're like great, not only did this happen, which is awful, but now you're giving ideas to others, and so you see what works at an event like this. You see the assassination of those two, that young couple, which is awful, and it's awful for what it is, but it's also like now you're inspiring people in the wrong way awful, and it's awful for what it is, but it's also like now you're inspiring people, yeah, in the wrong way, you know, and that's it's awful like kind of started with uh, luigi mangione, didn't it where we started?
02:05:41
to say yeah. And what was the reaction to that? It was like I mean, by and large, people like good and like are you serious? Yeah like that's not good because we have this, you know, understandable problem with the health insurance we're going to. You know that we're.
02:05:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mean I sympathize with people's hatred Because our health insurance is horrible, but you don't shoot the CEO, you don't.
02:06:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's like, yeah, so yeah, there's no debating that, but this happens. This guy's like a hero to a certain group of people. I mean, that's outside of our industry. There's a lot of stuff like this. There's people who shot people at protests and they become heroes. They get off somehow and they become like a hero to a certain group, and this is what happens.
02:06:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, stay tuned because, coming up on Intelligent Machines, our guest is Adam Becker, whose book More Everything Forever is about AI overlords. Space empires in Silicon Valley's crusade to control the fate of humanity. Look, I trust these guys, he calls them heartless.
02:06:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I want the bros running. You know, like the alien movies, like a lot of Isaac Asimov did this and probably other science fiction writers saw a future where, like mega corporations instead of governments were what that's what Neuromancer was all about. Yeah, yes, exactly so okay, sprawl I, but we didn't see the bro culture part of it. Yeah, it's like part. Now it's gonna be like bro AI is gonna be right. It's like oh god, are you kidding me?
02:07:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
come on that's the sad thing is, I have quite a bit of sympathy. I think you do too. It's quite a bit of sympathy for how people feel about this.
02:07:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, for the message, or whatever, yes, of course, but then you see what they do and you're like I can't get on board with that. Humans are pretty, we're the worst.
02:07:25 - Not JK Simmons (None)
We should be wiped out by AI. We deserve it. This is overdue.
02:07:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
the best or just the worst?
02:07:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, uh, adam becker writes. My new book is about the terrible plans that tech billionaires have for the future and why they don't work.
02:07:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Silicon valley's heartless, baseless and foolish obsessions yeah, this will be fun that's coming up. We're the people that should live forever, which is another one of their weird space and it's like no, you need to burn up in the atmosphere. We, we need less of you. But okay, anyway, I'm not anyway, what is that? Going through on those plans? No, is that the xbox segment? What's?
02:08:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
going on a couple of that pixar uh, a couple ones real quick so mozilla streamlining.
02:08:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, they're killing pocket and also their um kind of review rating service. I had moved, I'd used Pocket for years and I still subscribe to the newsletter because it's a good source of stuff that you might want to read right.
02:08:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's kind of sad, isn't it?
02:08:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It is sad, but I've been using Instapaper since last year. I love it, I prefer it. That's my recommendation if you're looking for something like that. But, by the way, stay subscribed to that newsletter. If you're looking for a source of like, here's some stuff you might want to read, because you can just open it in a web browser and then save it to Instapaper. You don't have to save it to Pocket, which won't exist soon, right? So that kind of stinks. There has been some interest.
02:08:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have used Obsidian as a replacement because they have a web clipper and I could put it in my obsidian folder which is kind of an interesting way to do it.
02:08:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What was that? Uh, there was a great ai-based news feed thing that went out of business, but then yahoo news bought them. Omnivore, was it omnivore?
02:09:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, it was. They went out of business so many have gone.
02:09:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know, uh, they were great, it was a flash in the pan, like it was from. I discovered them in december.
02:09:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They announced this happens a lot. Pocket had been around for a long time Pocket.
02:09:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yep, I mean, mozilla bought Pocket. It's sad they couldn't keep it going. Read it later Inc or whatever. I think in 2012 or something. It was a long time ago. Yeah, it's been a long time.
02:09:23 - Rich Campbell (Host)
They never really could get it done.
02:09:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The Obsidian web clipper turns it into markup and saves it into a clippings folder. Okay, so it has worked out fairly well. The only thing it fails badly on is javascript, stuff like so read it later.
02:09:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Services like pocket or like instapaper do that thing that web browsers often offer, where they just kind of give you a clean reading a reading without the ads and stuff, and so to me like that's good. If you want to, you can click and go through the the actual, um you know web article.
02:09:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If I used it. Instapaper is even older than pocket.
02:09:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think yeah I feel like I had an account there a million years ago and, yeah, I came back and it would look, yeah, I'm looking, I still have an account.
02:10:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh my god, my password's really short it was it was, it was an innocent age, probably um the other one real quick.
02:10:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The last thing I saved on insta paper was 12 years ago yeah, yeah I was joking about windows vista, but look at that, there's windows 8 also fear and loathing in windows 8. Wow, I wrote that headline. I know I'm so probably me actually um, but that's funny isn't that funny.
02:10:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yep, um, yeah, so I just logged into my old insta paper. That's funny. Oh, now they're doing premium. Uh, they're trying to, yeah they do.
02:10:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But, like you know, same thing with pocket, like I never really saw. They never gave me a reason to pay for it, which I would have. You know, I use it every day, literally.
02:10:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, I um I liked it when, uh, you could I can't remember who I could do this with, maybe insta paper where you could send it to your kindle, I don't know every week. Yeah, there's, yeah, I would do that I'd pay for that.
02:11:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I've also been looking at like it sounds weird, even saying this out loud like our like rss feed services. Um, when google reader went out, I I latched on to something called the old reader, which is great like it looks and works like google reader did back in the day, but they've had a lot of outages lately, so I just spent a bunch of time um researching that, and a lot of these more modern versions of these things have integrations with read it later services as well, so you could actually just push like you can from the feed, say, put this in whatever, like I insta paper in my case, like it's kind of it's. You know, it's gotten more sophisticated, I guess, as it would right, but yeah, we'll get, I'm gonna.
02:11:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They want 60 bucks a year. Uh, six bucks a month. I'm yeah, I think I'm gonna try it with obsidian. Aren't they paying for obsidian? I think it might be worth yeah, no, so I'm not.
02:11:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't have to pay for it, so I don't Right.
02:11:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Which means it'll be gone soon too. Yeah, no, I adopted it.
02:12:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So me adopting it is what's going to kill it. Yeah, of course, If history is any guide you know, and then, just real quick, stardock fences six is now generally available. It was in beta before, since I don't know, march or something, and this is that desktop organization tool. So they have like icon colorization, uh, fences groups with tabs and lots of customization stuff. So nice.
02:12:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
10 bucks, if that's, wasn't this a feature Microsoft was going to do uh desktop. Weren't they going to do the stacks or something like?
02:12:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
that, yeah, yeah, you're thinking of well. Well, there were stacks, were like a libraries feature in windows, like in the file system, but also sets which was tabs in every window, but and other things that never happened. The new book by Paul Thurott.
02:12:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Mr Thurott, thank you.
02:12:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I will release you from your bondage. See you next week guys, good night.
02:12:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, because it's liquor time. Well, actually it's richard time. First we're going to run his radio. Let's do that first.
02:13:03 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah you may remember that about a month ago I was in australia. I remember that, yeah. So I was in melbourne. I got an interview with Sarah Young, who is one of the Microsoft security advocates, although I don't know if she still has her job, she'll check on that. Actually, you know so many changes going on, hard to keep track, but she did a great talk that I thought should be made into a show, which is really, how do you talk to the security professionals in your organization? Like, how do you? There's this, there's this energy that builds up when you're not working well together, where they're like the, the productivity impairment group, right, and so it's like what do you do to get security to not get in the way or to to constantly be saying no? And it, weirdly enough, it's the normal, eat your vegetables kind of things. It's get them involved early, understand. Weirdly enough, it's the normal, eat your vegetables kind of things. It's get them involved early, understand their concerns. And so we just sort of talked through all of those elements and it went well.
02:14:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nice, yeah, let's find out if she still works there, but I'm sure she does. Sarah Young, sarah Young, yeah, she's really great. Run as 986. She does, sarah young, sarah young, yeah, she's really great run as nine, eight, six, yeah, now it is, the sun has gone over the yard arm in cape town, south africa.
02:14:19 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Oh, it's 11 yeah, just 10 30 at night, so perfect time to take a night, what we call a nightcap.
02:14:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, what would your cap be this week?
02:14:27 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I got introduced to a whiskey on my way out to south africa, stayed at a friend's place before flying out and she, uh, poured me a a snort of this airstone 10 c cas. So I had to go look it up because I'd never heard of a distillery called airstone and there's a reason for that it doesn't exist. Oh uh, if you actually look at the bottle closely, it's william grant and sons, also known as glenn fittick know them and we've talked about glenn fittick before.
02:14:57
Right, that's the gaelic for valley of the deer. This is one of the classic space sides right on the river fittick um and one of the old distilleries built by william grant back in the 1880s production in 1887, still owned by the grant family. They're on their fifth generation. They do their own cooperage, they do their own bottling. They have that triangle shaped bottle that they got done in night the 1960s when they first started promoting the idea of single malts. So you know, these are the guys who really make, got people hooked on the idea that you should be drinking single malt, not blended, and then worked for better or worse. They're also some of the one of the first distilleries to have a whiskey tour and I've done that tour a couple of times. It's very refined product. But that is not the whiskey we're talking about. We're talking about airstone. But airstone is made in a distillery owned by william grant and sons. It's the alza bay dist Ailsa Bay Distillery, which is an Ayrshire which is down southwest of Glasgow on the Firth of Clyde. So this is right on the water, looking across at the Isle of Arran, and if you kept going you'd eventually hit Jura and Islay, so nominally this is considered a lowland area, but this is not a traditional distillery by any stretch of the imagination. The Ailsa Bay has had a bunch of distilleries in it over the time and in fact, the exact location where this distillery is now was once known as the Ladyburn Distillery, which was also owned by William Grant the whole area because it was such a big grain area. This is where they made a lot of the grain spirits that they used for blending, so the big grain. They call this the Girvan Grain Complex for William Grant, and in the 60s, as they needed to scale up, they decided to build out the Ladyburns distillery in that site, but it only ran until about 75, and then they shut it down and dismantled it because they needed more room for the grain operations. And in fact, if you ever find a bottle of Ladyburn, get it. It's super rare. They did like two bottlings ever.
02:16:56
So the facility they built there is new. They built it in like 2016 or 2012. And their first production run was in 2016. So 24 50,000 liter stainless steel washbacks. It's a very contemporary, designed, high performance distillery 16 pairs of identical wash and spirit stills each 12,000 liters. They're similar to the shape of the one in Glenfiddich. They're just a lot of them and they do both rack and palletized warehousing, so they're built to scale and they're also built to make a huge array of different kinds of whiskey. So, unlike a traditional distillery, it's really set up to just make one thing.
02:17:38
This one does all kinds of things and, in fact, the Elsa Bay operated for eight years before they actually did a bottling officially, because they most of the whiskey they were producing. They were going into other blends on why William Grant? But and in 2016 it is initial no age statement release, which was a heavily peated whiskey. But the Airstone line, specifically as this is a quote from William Grant and Sons developed to attract new drinkers to whiskey because established whiskeys like Glenfiddich and Balvini, also owned by William Grant, are quote too complex and intimidating in choice and language. Okay, I would actually say expensive when you're new to drinking whiskey.
02:18:19
So they make two additions One's called the Land Cask and the other one's called the Sea Cask.
02:18:24
What's the difference between the two? They're both made in the same distillery, but the Land Cask is peated, although it's peated with Highland peat as opposed to isla peat, because isla peat has a lot of seaweed and marine vegetation it's quite a bit stronger. They call it more iodine, where highland peat is mostly heather. You know, in the end this is all rotted plant parts, right, and so you get a different flavor from highland peat, a little lighter and sweeter. Highland pea a little lighter and sweeter. But they also mature the barrels in uh, x bourbon and x sherry casks. Well, inland, from the shores, they call this their rich and smoky pea whiskey. And then the sea cask is basically the same production design, same kinds of barrels, but they're using the rack houses right on the sea, the argument being this adds a little saltiness and sort of a light and floral. You can find this at Abevmo for $35 for a Scottish whiskey. It is a bargain and it was originally produced to sell at Tesco.
02:19:29
So Tesco is a big grocery store chain in the uk and they sold it for 30 pounds off and on sale for 20 pounds because it hasn't sold very well and there's a reason for that. This is a pretty basic, basic whiskey. Uh, I wouldn't disagree that the sea cask is lighter. Uh, because it is. It even looks lighter.
02:19:51
It looks a lot lighter yeah, and of course, if you go and look at the whiskey reviews for it, all those people like complex whiskeys and so they're going to be disappointed with this one, right? Uh, you know, I would call this. You know, sometimes you call some whiskeys mostly harmless.
02:20:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is completely harmless this would be for somebody like me who doesn't want any pete. You want to?
02:20:08 - Rich Campbell (Host)
drink a scottish wishy. You don't want any peat. You want to drink a Scottish whiskey. You don't want to break the bank and what it isn't is harsh in any way. Yeah, but I would say it's very simple. It's kind of a one-noted basic whiskey and they produce it that way. That's how they kept the price down. I strongly suspect that their barrels were heavily used, that these are barrels that they would no longer be willing to use in belvini, and so this sort of getting last cuts out of the barrel to make some inexpensive whiskey from it's the only way they get the price down for a 10 year old to 30 pounds is to, uh, just lower the costs all around. They're using their scale of operations and their generations of barrel utilization to be able to make a very inexpensive whiskey. I'm probably not going to buy it, but I would not steer someone away from it who is just a little whiskey curious. Okay, because it is really a Scottish whiskey and it's a 10-year-old. It'll by far the cheapest 10-year-old I've ever seen.
02:21:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is it smooth?
02:21:11 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's pretty. Like I said, it's's gentle, there's not a lot going on there yeah, and you know it's still, it's only 40 this is not really strong. It's certainly been colored. It's certainly been chill filtered, like they've done all the processes to make this as easy to drink as possible. Uh, and keep the price way, way, way down the down.
02:21:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The drinkable Airstone Seacask.
02:21:33 - Rich Campbell (Host)
But they created a separate name and a separate brand for this, I think largely in conjunction with Tesco. So this is a very contemporary whiskey approach from an old-school whiskey company and I kind of celebrate that, like good on you guys. You're doing the new techniques with your own stuff and you'll be able to get the price down because you've got the materials already. But I've already crossed the line. I like a balvini and I think I'll drink that, admittedly for a hundred dollars a bottle that my friends is richard campbell.
02:22:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you'll find him at home run his radiocom and that's also whereNET rocks.
02:22:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You'll never find him at home.
02:22:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's the thing that's his home on it.
02:22:15 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Because you never know where he's going to be in the world.
02:22:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When.
02:22:17 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I get back from this trip. I am home for a whole six weeks which is almost past the threshold for she who Must Be Obeyed. So we'll see what happens to that.
02:22:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So thank you, Richard.
02:22:36 - Rich Campbell (Host)
You get to go to bed a little bit early tonight. Yeah, I'll be all right. I think I gotta stop by the bar on the way, but oh, I think they turned off the air in here because it's getting so late and the carbon dioxide level shot up, so I had to run over and pop the door open.
02:22:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Richard, you're talking slowly. Is everything okay? No, it was literally getting me.
02:22:43 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I was getting foggy in here wow.
02:22:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, thank you, richard, get out there and have some fresh air in the bar. Uh, paul thurot is saying. Uh, so long to paul thurot as well. He is the guy in charge at thurotcom and, uh, the man who does the books you'll see at leanpubcom, including windows and every. Can I help you? My wife is standing here, I'm a little nervous.
02:23:10
Okay, she's waiting for me to finish. That's making me really nervous. Paul Thurott is at Thurottcom, t-h-u-r-r-o-t-tcom, and, of course, leanpubcom for Windows everywhere and the Field Guide to Windows 11. So, richard, are you going to stay in South Africa for a little bit?
02:23:30 - Rich Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and I'm probably going to miss next week Cause I'm going to be on a game drive and there's no internet, where we're going to have fun.
02:23:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You don't bring a gun on that, though.
02:23:37 - Rich Campbell (Host)
You bring a camera? No, we take bring camera. Yeah, and then the following week in Sweden. So I will be on for that one. What's the big game in Sweden? It's the moose, the moose, the moose.
02:23:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The moose. Thank you, richard, thank you Paul, thanks to all of you for joining us. We do Windows Weekly every Wednesday, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm, eastern, 1800 UTC. If you want to join us, you can, because we stream it live so you can watch live and chat with us live. Club members, of course, get to chat in the discord and watch in the discord, the kind of the behind the velvet rope version. But there's also youtube, twitch, xcom, tiktok, linkedin, facebook and kick, so plenty of other places you can watch um, after the fact, on-demand versions of the show at twitchtv slash ww. There's also um a youtube channel dedicated windows weekly great way to share clips with friends, if there's something you saw that you think is great. In fact, one of the things we do is clip all of those whiskey uh stories and kevin king has made a playlist of whiskey tales uh. So if you, if you like those, there's a whole bunch of them on our youtube channel uh, I think that's youtubecom slash twit. I don't, I'm not sure maybe it'si.
02:24:54 - Rich Campbell (Host)
I also put the redirect in for something weird from my closetcom that's it.
02:24:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the place to go. Something weird from my closetcom youtubecom slash at twit yes no, I think that's it that's it. That sounds good. You seem like you know what you're doing with this computer thing.
02:25:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You're not anymore, you know.
02:25:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not anymore. Best way to get Windows Weekly subscribe that's what the winners do in your Uh-oh. Fly by the Subscribe in your favorite podcast client and, while you're there, leave us a five-star review.
02:25:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Is Lisa just throwing stuff at you now? What's happening? Yeah?
02:25:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, when Lisa wants attention, she's like a cat.
02:25:41 - Rich Campbell (Host)
She insists Acknowledge me.
02:25:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did something fly across the thing here.
02:25:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it was a plate.
02:25:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I thought it's going to be hitting me in the head. The next one what was I saying? Oh, yes, uh, leave us a five-star review because we appreciate the support. Also, subscribe to our newsletter. That's the best way to keep up on what's going on. Uh, with the club and with all of our shows. Twittertv slash newsletter. Of course, that's free.
02:26:06
Thank you, paul, thank you ricardo thank you all for being here, you winners and your dozers. We'll see you next time on Windows Weekly. Bye-bye. Get tech news that keeps you updated without eating up your time. Twittv's short-form podcasts are perfect for a break, commute or just a quick and helpful tech insight. Hands-on Mac and hands-on Windows give you tips to make the most of your devices. While hands-on tech helps solve tech issues fast, and if home entertainment is your thing, home Theater Geeks with Scott Wilkinson has the best recommendations on top-notch consumer entertainment systems. If you like watching the shows, join Club Twit to get full video access, ad-free versions and more Twittv, your trusted tech news made easy. Download our short format shows now at twittv or use your favorite podcast player.
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May 28 2025 - OK, JK
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