Jun 18th 2025
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show
00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Theriot's here. So is Richard Campbell. We've got Hello Gate, the Windows Hello Controversy of Month. No, it's not you, it's them. We'll also talk about some big new games for Xbox. And is Richard going to buy a new laptop? Find out next on Windows Weekly Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is twit. This is windows weekly with paul thurad and richard campbell. Episode 937, recorded wednesday, june 18th 2025. Vexed by perturbations. It's time. Yes, you, winners and dozers, you came to the right place at the right time, probably because you downloaded it and you already knew it's Windows Weekly time. And here, ladies and gentlemen, the stars of our show, mr Paul Theriot of theriotcom, I'm not frazzled, you're frazzled.
01:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What do you mean?
01:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's frazzled. What do you mean? He's frazzled? He keeps changing his settings just to see what happens. I wish that's why I was doing it. But uh, he is in beautiful pennsylvania, lovely mccounjee township, mccunjee township. Also with us from beautiful british columbia, richard campbell of renna's radio. Finally home at last. Home at last in three weeks, you poor guy you have been suffering I had so much fun.
01:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Are you kidding like it's hard to complain, but it is home is very good you have been having usually complain.
01:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Give me a second paul, paul needs no, uh, no uh no challenge, no introduction to complain, anything is a game for Paul. Anyway, we're so pleased, so pleased to be gathered together on this beautiful Wednesday to talk about the latest news from Microsoft. Can I call it Hello Gate?
02:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, Do you mind? I do not mind, mind. I think that's pretty good. Quit on my surface too some patch ago.
02:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Also, I, I, every windows user, maybe every computer user, can sort of relate to this thought, which is you're doing something on your computer windows, my case and uh, something doesn't work, you know, like windows, you know, or me, I, it's something I don't know.
02:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Some combination, it's just you know, normal right so it's not like in my case.
02:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so I have a lot, in fact, one of the, I'm charging two computers over there. One of those is a laptop review laptop like windows hello. Facial recognition doesn't work a lot of the time, it's just kind of the way it is. So you get used to it and you're like okay, fine, whatever, I guess. Yeah, but don't we rely on it for things like recall? You rely on it for all kinds of things, yeah, which is kind of why this is a problem. Um, so the past, I don't know, a week or two, 10 days, something like that.
02:54
I've noticed, uh, like I'll be sitting in the dark like I do, watching tv as one does yeah, open a little laptop and the little eye thing is like, and it's like can't find you, and then it has the audacity to give you, like tips about how you might fix this problem, like maybe you should have more light. This is clearly your fault. Yeah, maybe you should try another face. Do you have another face? One time it told me it didn't see a face Like I'm looking. It's just right in front of the screen, dude, come on. So anyway I chalk this up to me. Right, or Windows, or some combination.
03:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Or the weekend. You can't feel your face.
03:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so it turns out no, no, they in the latest Patch Tuesday, so this would have been yeah, well, eight days ago, I guess. One of the items that was in the list for Windows 10 and 11, I believe, is a um, a fix for a windows hello. Spoofing vulnerability that allowed attackers to perform spoofing locally due to this is in quotes inadequate detection or handling of adversarial input perpetrations oh well, there you go in windows, hello it's perpetrations that's what's happening perturbation, perturbations I am perturbed, I am vexed by the perturbations you ought to be.
04:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a lawyer worked on that.
04:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm yeah, it's a tough one perturbation issue.
04:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so the way this worked in the past and by in the past I mean literally dating back to what the beginning of Windows 10 or something. No, I mean like the way it's always worked is, if you're in the dark, it has an IR camera.
04:33
It's similar to the technology Apple uses for Face ID that can help recognize you in the dark. But now they're just using the camera, and the camera can't see in the dark. Even if you have, you know, light mode on and it's if it's dark enough in the room, it's not going to see you. So hilarious.
04:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So when it doesn't work, it just doesn't recognize you. It's not that it has a big pop-up that says I'm not working now.
04:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I think what Microsoft has done has given me, as a windows on arm user, the ability to experience the intel world, where the congratulations the camera.
05:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know you missed us and it's like aren't you fortunate?
05:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
where are you, where are you, buddy? And you're like you're holding the thing, you're like I'm right here, I'm right here, hello, I'm right here, hello. And uh, it's like, nope, can't see you, and I'm like I am two feet away from the screen, come on. So, uh, yeah. So it's not really clear right now. Uh, how serious this is. It's not microsoft doesn't know if it's been exploited by attackers, right? Um, we're gonna learn more, I think so and this might be an interim fix.
05:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's like first let's lock it down, now let's develop some better software to deal with these what was the phrase you used perturbation. Perturbations, yes. Adversarial input adversarial input.
05:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's a security issue.
05:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, 100 now, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, there's a security uh vulnerability uh update, or you know whatever they call the security vulnerability update, or you know whatever they call it security vulnerability post or whatever about this. So yeah, but like like Richard said, correct, you turn you, you fix the problem first or you eliminate the problem.
06:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you eliminate the breach risk first. Yeah, and maybe we were lucky, right.
06:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, yeah, this is one of those things. You know I this is coming up a little bit later, but I today is the one year anniversary of the day that window or surface laptop seven and surface pro 11 were released, right, the Snapdragon computers, and I have a nearly flawless experience with this laptop that I bought a year ago. If any, actually, the battery life is actually better now than it was a year ago. That's amazing. If anything, actually the battery life is actually better now than it was a year ago. That's amazing.
06:46
But the one thing, one of the things that I didn't like about it and don't think is acceptable in a computer that's this expensive, is it only has the facial recognition. It doesn't have a fingerprint reader as well. I feel like I spent over two grand on a laptop, but maybe it should have both. You know, just picky like that. So I've gotten used to using Windows Hello facial recognition. I actually prefer fingerprint. Frankly, I like to explicitly signal that I want to log in, but, yeah, I've been using it for quite a while now and now it doesn't work.
07:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So yeah, that's fine. Well, I mean so they could add to the front of that screen a nice bright light they could flick on just to get your facial recognition. Then they get all these pictures of you going.
07:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah and if you're stupid enough to have it in light mode when you turn this thing on, you actually get that automatically. Um, but it still doesn't. I'm trying to think. I don't believe it's ever worked in the dark for me since last week. I'm I'm now. I'm not gonna remember every instance, but I I certainly remember this happening multiple times. Where it's dark, open it.
07:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're like what's going on here and my surface studio to what longer ago but now has recognizes my face, not in the darkest recently, but up until recently. And then it would go. There's been an error. Enter your pin yeah, yeah.
07:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I like when, uh, you do the window, the finger one, it says I can't, can't read the finger, you should try another finger. You're like I've only put one finger in this thing, you should know that, you know. Or whatever it's like try a different face. I'm like, yeah, you know, this is what I got.
08:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So, yeah, anyway, we're still not 100% clear on what's going on here, so I suspect we'll have an update Out of sync on the discord just came up the perfect answer, which is they'll add a piece of software that flips to an all-white screen yeah, turn your screen up yeah, boom, yeah, that's your flash, right, like when you do it like a selfie and they you do a fake flash.
08:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Maybe that's the answer. I I look forward to that. I don't have like retina problems or anything, so that'll be a fun way to develop those. Um, yeah, I don't know. So I guess this is the controversy of the well, I call it the week of the week. I guess we usually have something every week.
08:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is this week's part on this, that they've not been up front on what they're really doing here or yeah.
08:56
So this is not as dramatic, I hope, as the uh time that microsoft got hacked and they didn't say anything for months and still, by the way, have not really said anything it's get little vibes of that listen I'm gonna give the midnight blizzard pass, because the state department ended being involved like it was a nation-state actor, and so government puts rules, even around a company like microsoft. Yeah, that's true. They really weren't allowed to talk about that yeah, that may be the case.
09:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, okay.
09:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, well, yeah.
09:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The lack of communication on this. All they could say Perturbations. That's the clue.
09:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, there's a pill for that, by the way, and I feel it happens to all computers. It causes nothing to be ashamed of. Yeah, so I mean I didn't. I have in the past spent time. You know you can go in and retrain it or do an additional you know view of your face to do one with glasses, one with glasses off, that kind of thing. I've done that. I didn't do it this past week, but I bet a lot of people wasted way this used to work. I mean they have no issue prompting me for nothing. I mean, how about prompting me about something that's important? But I don't know.
10:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Anyway, that's what's happening. Well, the fact that we have to sort of deduce what the process here is going to be is somewhat interesting.
10:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's not just insiders, this is for everybody.
10:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, this is in the production product. This is production yikes. So I actually. The other reason this is maybe controversial is that one of the big switches that's been made over the past year has been this move to windows hello ess, which is that more secure form of windows hello that has all kinds of crazy requirements. It's part of the copilot plus pc spec um it's. This is what's protecting recall. You have nothing to worry about. So anyway, we'll see.
10:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't know. Um. And yet another reason why there'll never be a copilot plus pc. That's a pc, just a laptop. Yeah right, because they need to control the input device.
10:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, maybe they get up like an all-in-one or something. But yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, or or that spec evolves somehow. You know that, somehow there's some way to and I don't know how you do that. As I was saying that sentence, it's like somehow determined that there's a secure chain of whatever hardware from your camera to your usb port. Is impossible. It's like a like a credit card skimmer on a atm machine or something.
11:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But I don't know.
11:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
anyway, we're still, this is still fog of war stuff right now. So Very much so.
11:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hello gate. Can I call it hello gate? Is that okay?
11:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Why not? We like a good gate.
11:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I hope you guys have pins you like using instead.
11:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I recommend computing in the light.
11:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know that's just me, but so it works if you turn on the light. Yeah, as long as there's light, you're okay. Okay, I mean not for me, just to be clear.
11:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Right sorry, normally Crazy. Oh, I've gone through the surface diagnostics, now no results.
11:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Wow, I have my little surface diagnostic story. Oddly enough, that's interesting.
12:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So oh weird, have my little surface diagnostic story, oddly enough. Um, that's interesting.
12:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So oh weird so you just have another, a completely different problem, richard. Yeah, something's yeah with the studio too.
12:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's more than a year old and it's like you should replace me.
12:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You didn't get the new thing well, and I'm not gonna get one now, right like I'm, yeah, because it'd be crazy to buy the old chipset like I do want an arm machine but get the thinkpad right.
12:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Why not get the thinkpad? Yeah you want to get a windows device, is that it?
12:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
no, I actually I'm happy to jump off. You know, now that panos is gone, I got no loyalty to the surface machines. Yeah, and not that I had loyalty to panos, but all right, it's just not as exciting. I do have a friend at lenovo. I bet I could get a smoking deal on us oh, there you go.
12:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what almost anybody can never pay list, exactly you know list price 2600
13:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
bucks or sale price 799. Like what's going on?
13:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I yeah, it's incredible if, if, if, uh, you know we have. We have an agency that's trying to sneak in endorsements into our ads, and the line they always put is if I had needed this product, it's what I would have bought, right?
13:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
so if I had needed a windows machine.
13:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A lenovo is what I would have bought that's uh.
13:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
After a particularly drunk evening I lost my phone and then I finally found it. My wife said where is it? And I said it's right where.
13:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would have left it if I had left I don't actually remember leaving it there, but uh, nobody will have it as bad as alex lindsey, who for some reason drove to the liquor store, picked up some liquor and then walked home and the next day said where the hell's my car? That's amazing, I love that. It's brilliant he wasn't drunk.
14:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's no excuse you know that's an interesting kind of uh uber of shame when you show up at the liquor store and you're like, yeah, they wouldn't let me drive home. I, you know, I had to walk. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow anyway, all right.
14:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, so we're done with the gate, is that it? Is that all you got?
14:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
it's all we know so far. Yeah, it's uh kind of light on info. Sorry, but that's well.
14:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I'm glad you did it. It's uh, it's what it's. It was the story. What else we have for today is that the show yeah, so thank, you guys for coming.
14:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm sorry, we started a little late. Um, what else you got? So a couple of insider builds have occurred, some changes coming to, interestingly, recall. So one of the things that's in recall in the dev I think this one is dev and beta channels is the ability to export your recall data so you can access it later. And this, I think, is the first step toward the thing. When I talked to the guys who did recall a year ago and was like was like guys, this is cute, but it only makes sense if it works across devices and they're like we know, we know we can't do that yet, baby steps. So this will at least address the situation where maybe you you've moved from one computer to another. You want to have that data with you, for whatever reason, so you can export it. It's encrypted. They give you a code so you can decrypt it. If you lose the code, you can't decrypt it. That's how encryption works. It's magic.
15:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah.
15:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But it's, you know, it's the. It's what I think, a first step. I would imagine that eventually this will be added to a Windows backup where you could, as part of your Windows backup you'll be, if you want to, you'll be able to export your recall data and then import it when you bring up the new computer, when you sign in with your Microsoft account, that kind of thing. But right now we're not doing the cloud. You can export it to your own thing. It's your problem. Good luck with that. I don't, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you Also.
16:03
I should also point out right now this is only in the EEA, the European Economic Area and it's probably related to the DMA and whatever requirements that Microsoft has. This is something that's going to come up one or two other times. Microsoft discussed some of the changes they were making to Windows, mostly around Microsoft Edge and default browsers and default apps, but for the DMA and they've been pretty upfront about this so like, look, this is what they're requiring, this is what we're doing. I'm still holding out hope that we'll see at least some of that outside of the European Union or the EEA, but not yet.
16:44
And there's more. So there is excuse, excuse me the ai agent that nobody asked for and nobody will ever use. It will help you find settings in the settings app. Um, the ability to reset recall, which you could actually do with a couple of additional steps, but now it's like a one click kind of a thing. Um, they brought back this is probably the biggest news, depending on who you are the you know.
17:05
If you, if you're familiar with the biggest news, depending on who you are, if you're familiar with the calendar flyout in Windows 10, you know that there are a couple of things missing from the version that's in Windows 11. The big one being interactivity, where you go in and add and remove events from your calendar if it was synced up with your account. Now it's in Windows 11. Ever since it came out, it's just been a static display of a calendar. It has nothing to do. It doesn't show appointments or anything like that. They didn't fix that, but they did add back or they are adding back, the clock that used to be at the top of the calendar. So it actually looks like the version in Windows 10, but without the actual functionality. Microsoft hilarious. And then they're doing some improvements to Windows, windows share, voice access etc. So nothing dramatic, but I think the big thing there is the uh well to microsoft is probably the settings ai agent. Like I said, I don't think anyone cares, but I think the recall export stuff is kind of a bigger deal, but definitely, potentially, potentially europe only.
18:00
Um, the other thing happened was that sometime in the past week Microsoft released two new builds to the release preview channel, meaning these are almost certainly what we're going to see on Patch Tuesday next time, or more quickly than that. I got to look at the calendar Yep, next Tuesday, yeah, next Tuesday, which is the Tuesday of week D, which is when we get preview updates. You may recall that the May and June updates this year for Patch Tuesday were enormous dozens of features, et cetera. This one is not, and I have to say I kind of welcome a little break from that.
18:35
So the big one is related to that DMA thing, like I said, which is when you set a different browser as a default, it actually does everything, not just the handful of protocols and URL types that it used to do, including, I believe, pdf, which is manual today, and the point behind that is that the other protocols, including some that were hidden, were the things that forced you to use Edge. When, say, you clicked something in search highlights, in the back of the start menu or in the widget board or whatever you know, it would load Edge. But now if you say, look, I want to use Chrome, you'll actually use Chrome everywhere you know, like God intended. That's nice. That change is also coming to Windows 10.
19:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Isn't that why God made Electron?
19:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, yeah, also coming to windows 10.
19:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So isn't that why god made electron? Well, yeah, I mean, I look, was it or was it the devil?
19:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, I was gonna say, uh, it was, it was facebook, so it was the devil so I I microsoft did a good thing a long time ago that actually came up out of antitrust, by the way which is that default apps interface, and it was was a good interface. It worked and then, over time, they made it harder and harder to use, to the point where we got to Windows 11. And aside from the fact that it originally shipped with no way to switch your default browser, by the way, sons of it, but it also, when they added that back, they only did it partway, right, and so it's like you know, guys, like we get it, you want us to use edge, which, by the way, I will discuss at the end of the show. So not big updates, but that's good, you know, like I said.
20:11
So a couple of other small things the visual preview on Windows share. I mentioned the ability to edit an image that you're sharing from the share sheet and how that's actually really cool. Now you can preview the share sheet because, dear God, the share sheet is becoming an operating system unto itself for some reason. But that's whatever. That's what they're doing. So that's actually, I believe. Let me just make sure All the Windows needs to come long and the short of it.
20:38
If it wasn't for them screwing up Windows, hello, this would have been the quietest week in the history of Windows.
20:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm kidding up windows, hello this would have been the quietest week in the history of windows. Uh kidding, it would have been just updates coming. That made sense, that's as strange I know.
20:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But then we got that and they that's nice return to form. I mean they were like we're kind of doing the non-chaotic thing. Should we screw it up?
20:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they're like, yeah, let's screw it up that means we could talk more about macintosh, which uh you know which?
21:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I got a lot of good feedback on last week.
21:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
so Got to tell you I did ping my Lenovo friend and he sent me to the ThinkPad T14 Gen 6.
21:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, Now is this the Snapdragon or the whatever it's the Snapdragon Snapdragon with a 14-inch, so it's like a carbon, but with Snapdragon.
21:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it's a T-series, it's a.
21:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
T-series, so it's a little tankier than that. It's S series so it's a little tankier than that, it's not? Yeah, it's like 14s. Right, that's the slimmer, but you know what else it?
21:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
comes with my friend fingerprint reader. Yes, hello doesn't work, you don't care.
21:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, that was one of the really good type in your pin like a peasant you can just stick your finger on the thing about.
21:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I actually wish everything had a fingerprint reader. I'm really sad that, for instance, my iphone doesn't, uh because't Because Face ID is not that great.
21:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, Pixel 9 has a fingerprint reader. I like Face ID, but I wish my Mac had Face ID.
21:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wait, they won't sell me one. It has a gigantic.
21:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, this is the new one, probably. Well, that's the Intel one for one thing you want a Gen 6.
21:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, oh, let's go to the 6th generation.
22:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
T14, gen 6 Snapdragon. Oh, let's go to the sixth generation, 14 gen step six snapdragon oh this is lightweight, heavyweight performance that won't weigh you down.
22:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I'm just trying to get you a free one.
22:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So uh, let's go to the t-series, but let's look at the snappy one. Snappy dragon, snappy t-series, co-pilot plus pc. That must be it the one. Yeah, there's their baby, oh oh rich.
22:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now. All you gotta do is load it up with the maximum memory and the maximum storage and the maximum I'm not.
22:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I given what I'm about to talk about. I can't believe I'm saying this, but you might want to look. I believe there's an amd version. It's on clearance, look at that and the amd version has a gen 5 incredible built-in gpu stuff. I don't see where I can customize it it's only a gen 5, you sure I thought that. No, no, I think this one. They did all three yeah, no, you're right.
22:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, this is a gen 6 snapdragon coming soon.
22:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's an amd one you might maybe want to hold out for that for the amd.
22:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I believe they announced this as long ago as iphone last year. I mean, it's been a while, but anyway, that's a terrific laptop.
23:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You would prefer the AMD, wouldn't you?
23:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I wouldn't, but I could see where people might.
23:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Richard, which do you?
23:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
want you know now that he's literally giving me employee pricing for this thing, which is, oh my God, oh my God, 30% off.
23:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm kind of like, oh I think I might just have to pull the trigger on this. But these look like carbons. These don't look they really do, don't they?
23:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
yeah, they don't look that well, nothing, no, they're nice, it's, it's nice oh, I'm so jealous.
23:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The new carbons are like so light. They feel like engineering samples without anything inside of them yeah, these are everything's glued. No, but it's. I mean they're, they're incredible, but this is this is really nice well, I don't see where I can add uh stuff to it.
23:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It looks like it's just yeah these are pre-configured for this 32 gigs of ram terabyte drive. That's not enough for richard okay now terabyte's enough on the laptop.
24:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think it's pretty loud in my back right.
24:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it does have unmatched cpu performance, so this is a orion, it's not no, that's it the snap.
24:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That orion is the um, the cp is that the soc, or oh no, it's the name of the cpu, of course. Oh, cpu snapdragon is the overall I sock.
24:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So they don't do the elite anymore, or is?
24:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
no, that's it, it's, that is it's excellent, yep, excellent, it's.
24:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They just call it orion. Okay, got it. Hey, richard, leave your power adapter behind. I wouldn't do that.
24:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I wouldn't gets it through the air no, I think it gets through the usbc port.
24:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But yes, okay, close enough look at that it's floating on a rock, yeah it's actually uh, it's helping that environment just by being there.
24:47
Just by being there, it's a very zen moment. Yeah, it is built to defy the elements. It will take a while. Mill Spec 810H Very nice, very fancy. It exceeds 12 standards, 26 procedures and 200 plus quality checks. Dude, if you don't buy this, I will. That is awesome. Adreno graphics no see, it says up to 64 gigs, so maybe there's a way to talk them into it. No, that's what you'd want, right, richard?
25:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
because I know I specced out the 64 with the terabyte and the 2880 screen non-touch screen. Oh, I don't need fingerprints on my screen. Who needs?
25:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
touch. Yeah, if you got a fingerprint reader, that's a little red nub for that.
25:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you got a red nub, you're got a nipple, you don't need it.
25:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't like using that any. That used to be necessary because it was very precise, but now trackpads are much better. It's a little purple tunnel. Just wait, it hurts my finger to use it, know it's. I'm so out of shape with it, or whatever. You press too hard.
25:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I got to do the little exercises for my fingertips.
25:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know what that was.
25:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Do we find?
25:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
out what red rum means. Yes, we do.
25:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah we have. We really do know. Your daughter now knows even I know it's the best that's hysterical that's the best when you can share these great movie moments with your children. All right, well, since you have used up all your Windows stuff, we will get to Apple in just a moment. But first a word from our sponsor. No, you have Surface, you have Microsoft 365. You've got AI, ai and, of course, the vaunted xbox, which is the longest segment in the show today. Yeah, all coming up, plus a brown liquor going with a classic a real serious with a classic yeah one.
26:37
Everyone should drink sometime with a story, of course. Of course can't wait. First. I've got a story about our sponsor, this episode of Windows Weekly, brought to you by US Cloud, a name you should know. We've been talking about it for a while and I was fooled when I first heard the name. I thought, oh, they're a cloud company, well, sort of. They're the number one Microsoft Unified Support Replacement. Oh, I'm liking this.
27:05
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28:02
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30:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
All righty, let's just a little apple talk well, I'm gonna relate it to microsoft and windows though. Oh nice, yeah, but mostly by explaining how much windows is terrible. No, no, no, I kid, I kid, no, you kid, he kid, but there are some. There are some interesting things going on with mac os that aren't all new to this new version they just announced, but, um, you know, like their embrace of glass is kind of weird, you know, it's like we did this a long time ago but arrow was a little sluggish right, I mean arrow.
30:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Arrow was an xp.
30:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It was a little too soon maybe it was a driver crisis yeah yeah, it was a driver issue, but that you know, this is the microsoft can't win thing, right, like, in other words, everyone's all upset that Microsoft can't innovate like Apple can, and are you ever going to do this stuff? And it's like okay, so we're going to do this hardware accelerated graphics thing like Apple has. Like, oh, it doesn't run on my computer. You know like it's just like the Windows audience, in a nutshell, is just like we're never happy.
31:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So I mean, it's not just us. They also the vendors weren't happy either, because Microsoft pushed them to update the drivers to support this stuff for existing chipsets and they're just like no, I'm not doing it, Only the new ones. Yeah right, but that's, you know, part of why the customers were so angry.
31:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, passage of time. Better drivers from Intel in particular, they say better integrated graphics chipsets from Intel in particular kind of helped put Arrow over the edge. And then, by the time it finally worked, great, they got rid of it. So, microsoft classic, the Windows XP UI only lasted for one major version of the OS. I mean, I know there were variants of it and of course it was in market for a long time as well. But that UI did not scale. It was bitmaps.
32:02
If you had a really high resolution display, you know the icon. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I bet the icons only went up to maybe 256 pixels, whereas the ones on Apple were really scalable, et cetera, et cetera. So we, we fix problems. Sometimes they take a while, but the couple of things I just want to point out that are interesting to me on the Mac, which we can replicate to some degree on Windows right, are this is two major ones Spotlight, which everyone loves, and including people's on Windows, by the way, because Power Toys has ripped it off twice, right? So there's something called Power Toys Run, which most people are familiar with, I think by default. Yeah, by default. It's all to space.
32:41
We'll bring up this interface in the middle of the screen. That's spotlight right, except for windows. It's a launcher. It's extensible to some degree, but there's now a newer version of it called the windows command palette, and that one is explicitly extensible and they're trying to kind of build this ecosystem around it. If you're a power user, this kind of interface is probably preferable to start, because it kind of does everything that start can do, and more. It's. It does, you know, search, and it does all kinds of things in Tahoe. What they're doing is integrating it with shortcuts and with some other things, and shortcuts is their automation platform. Shortcuts is actually really powerful and this is across all their well, across their major platforms. So it's on iOS, it's on iPad, it's on macOS. It does seem to be a unification push right.
33:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah it's pretty sweet. A la, you know, dave Cutler OneCore yeah it's pretty sweet.
33:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So the closest we have to that on Windows is Power Automate, and there's a version of power automate that is included with windows 11, by the way. I think basically no one even knows it exists. I don't know that anyone uses it for much, but if you looked at any of the keynote stuff or you were paid attention to this and you're like I wish we could have this windows, like to me, like the two biggest things are basically on windows. You know, I mean, they're maybe not exactly the same, um, but I I've only just I've just hit the tip of the iceberg on these things, uh, as they are in tahoe and I have to say they're actually they're pretty amazing. So, um, that's something you want a mac here.
34:13
Is that what you're doing? No, I have a mac. I just I don't. I don't like mac os, uh, for the most part but like. Those features to me are pretty cool, you know. Know, the Mac does a much better job with full screen, for example, like they, although there's also inconsistencies to it. But but the Mac has this notion of full screen apps. You swipe on the trackpad, which we can do a windows right, Three fingers go back and forth, swing apps, et cetera. It's just more elegant on the Mac, it works better, et cetera. I don't know if Richard, Richard, if you've ever just talked about this kind of thing on NET Rocks per se. But one of the big things with XAML when this was introduced as part of Avalon at the time, but Windows Presentation Foundation was it's an XML-based declarative language for, in this case, creating the user interface for an app. Basically Right, and it's a partial class with the c sharp code that sits behind it and you can mix and match and you know it's yeah, there's enough different ways to do things.
35:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You can guarantee that nobody can understand your coach 100.
35:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm literally today struggling with data binding and wps, uh, wpf.
35:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's horrific it's also incredibly the few places where chat gpt will reliably go.
35:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Don't know exactly or they'll just be like here's the answer. You're like yeah, that's not the answer. Like yeah, I got nothing. They're like yeah, we tried.
35:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm sorry, I don't even know why I gave you that no, you're right, it didn't work and nothing will work, and I was just, I was buying time, I was trying to crash, I don't know what happened there, but sorry, yeah, it's hard, it's hard, right.
35:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, but I would say wpf, when it was introduced, uh, to the windows world, uh, well, originally. Well, originally, 2003 is Avalon, and then really, in 2000,. Whatever that was, six was so powerful. It was like a technology handed down to us by aliens, like it was like we found it in a crash.
35:51
We didn't really understand it, but we just shipped it and here you go, build stuff with it and you know we infamously, we know Microsoft sat on it for many, many years and didn't do anything. But the thing that's happened in more recent years with things like Flutter and then with Swift UI in the Apple world, is a new type of declarative programming style where you're writing in the same language that the code behind is written in so Dart in the case of Flutter, or Swift in the case of Swift UI, right, and so this is something I've been looking at too, because I've been really, really struggling with WPF, like I said, also the Windows app SDK, because if you thought WPF was complicated, yeah, don't worry, it gets worse. We need this, we need this so bad. Are you aware of anything like this? Like, in other words, I prefer, I'd like C sharp, I would like to write declarative. It's like actually functional programming. By the way, it's like a declarative, functional style of describing a user interface with very little code. I mean.
36:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would argue the type script, yeah, no well, there's a low level when it comes to UX for multiple devices.
36:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Right Flutter seems to be the most declarative approach. If you're okay with google and you do only care about android and ios, um, I gotta give respect to both the uno guys and the avalonia guys yeah, but those are basically wpf style things that are xaml based, right yeah, and a little narrow in scope and a little more focused, like and you know, and again, both solve the android ios problem fairly well and then struggle to go to larger formats, although yeah, yeah, there are believers in all those spaces, so I've made a lot of people angry yeah, in other words, you have like a wpf app, meaning a windows desktop app, and presumably or hopefully, with, say, uh, uno or whatever.
37:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You could take that code base and and, with a bit of finessing, make, make it run on the Mac right, which, by the way, interesting. But I just look at the. You know SwiftUI has got to be five, six years old now. It's something I've not looked at a lot. I'm stuck in this kind of XAML mindset thing. But when I look at what they're doing and I look at how it works, I think to myself this handles all of the problems state management without any crazy data binding problems, like it's just. It looks beautiful, yep.
38:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So I, yeah, I wish I wish they put it on for scratch. You only care about the phones. I would go flutter. But okay, the days of silver light are behind us. Friend, for getting to the mac.
38:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I know I only care about windows, so I'm kind of I'm in a real hole. There's like nothing I could use. React native, I guess, and richard or leo mentioned um yeah, typescript, typescript.
38:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're gonna love it. What are you? What are you?
38:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
crazy. Oh, it's because I've used javascript before and I hate javascript but I well, it's more functional much nicer yeah, it's about. I know it is more maintainable javascript ultimately it has uh, is it type type safety.
38:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thus the name yeah, it's type script exactly right, um, but yeah, I don't blame you for hating javascript, but I think if you used a subset of javascript, you might be happier. Right and this is.
38:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's never a solution, though I know that's as good as native is there I almost I met a guy I've never met before but I just know from online and stuff who works on NET MAUI, which is Microsoft's the former Xamarin Forms.
39:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And I wanted to talk to him about this. Well, but it's also both WPF and all the other things under it too, right? Fundamentally, maui is a political consolidation within Microsoft of all of the UX platforms.
39:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It is functionally broken. I mean, I don't even, I don't know how anyone uses this product.
39:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's very challenging.
39:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
My wife woke up I think it was Sunday morning and said what's wrong? And I said what do you mean? She's like you were yelling at someone on the phone and I said no, I was yelling at my computer. And I was yelling at someone in Redmond who works on Maui, and I don't even know the guy.
39:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm pretty sure you're yelling at David Art now just to be clear, yeah, well, I try not to name names here.
39:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I love the guy, he's super nice, but this thing is, it's just broken. I don't understand Like what is going on with this thing. Anyway, so this is my world. And then I look at like what's going on with Swift UI and I'm like, oh God, we need, we need something.
40:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
To me it really speaks to. This is an unsolved problem that there's this many stacks. I know nobody's got a good answer here.
40:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I mean I was delighted that they brought back WPF and now I realize maybe that wasn't the greatest idea in the world and that may be.
40:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I would argue they just haven't committed to it sufficiently.
40:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, that that's true too, but I I feel I know there was like a XAML islands thing that probably still does something. But it's possible that the better approach would be like look, if you want to modernize your app, create the front end and when you I three and slash W, windows, app, sdk and just Microsoft should provide the way to bind it to the stuff you've already done on the backend. So we're just going to mix and match, like your existing WPF backend, this new, when you I three, front end. That would have been a way better approach, like re-implementing every single control but doing it in a half assed way and not every single control. Most controls is the most Microsoft thing I've said, since you can't windows low in the dark 10 minutes ago. So it's like this is you know, this is the world that we live in. It's like, uh, and I'm sure what I just described is a hard computer science problem.
41:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I, I'm sure there were. Yeah, but it's all again. It's also a political battle, like xamal islands was originally a NET core 3 problem and then, when they wanted to go to NET 5, they actually deferred to the win ui3 xamal islands implementation. But now where's the? U when ui3 roadmap, like who can navigate? I mean, I do this as a job and I'm struggling to keep track of who's fighting with whom about what here, much less how anybody actually builds software and expects it to be able to use a new version.
41:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The next it almost feels malicious. Like I, I'm old, like visual basic, we can all agree was in many ways ridiculous, certainly as a language was ridiculous. But here's the thing you could build. You could build a UI visually and then you would wire up each of the controls with some kind of event handler, write a little bit of code and the app did something like it worked, and in WPF. What I just said is hilarious and as things as simple as I would like this control to be some system color that's defined in a resource dictionary somewhere. That is not how it works and it's just the sheer number of lines of code you have to write to do the simplest little thing in the world makes this untenable for most people.
42:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just unworkable. Here's the hello world from react. Okay, yeah, so it's a little wordy, but but yeah, but you're creating. Look what you're creating. This is a whole standalone app. Look, let me go to ios. So, by the way.
42:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is an emulator I'm gonna launch you.
42:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is very much like. So, if you want, yeah you. If you look at this, you're probably comfortable with it.
42:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um yeah, you know it's, you have to do a little, but you can read it.
42:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can actually read the. Even as a non-programmer, you could read this and say I think I know what this does, right, you know.
42:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, it's simple. It says hello world.
42:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, you can say hello you in real time, just like swift ui, so you can see. Oh, that's what it's going to look like. Add controls, add stuff, uh, and this is portable across ios, android. I also feel like the web.
43:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, there's a react native too, by the way, for windows. And that's what this is react native.
43:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So it's everything it would work on windows too.
43:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It would work everywhere, yep uh. But see that's. I feel like web development is safer because that's always going to work.
43:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Everybody's got one. Everybody's got one.
43:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Everyone has it. It's going to work everywhere.
43:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The security context is trusted. Your IT people hate you the least with that deployment.
43:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm not saying that's the only thing they hate you with, but I hate myself. So what I want to do is something that hurts me a lot, and as often as possible, that's definitely software development fault. Yeah, wpf is perfect for that. It's just custom tailored for people like me.
43:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I kind of promised myself I'd never learn a platform-specific API ever again. I would also say this and it's been ongoing.
43:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
One of the things that's coming out of South Africa talking to all those young people is learning new platforms today, just not that big a deal I know.
44:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The training's young people is learning new platforms, today just not that big a deal I know it's.
44:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, that's the training. That's true. Materials are better, the tools are better, like everything's better. You know, once upon a time, if you're committing to a stack, it's because you're about to do 9 to 18 months of sprinting on that stack. So you can argue for a couple of weeks to choose it, but when you're going to get an mvp in less than a month, who who cares? Just use something, go get it done. Debating it will take longer than building it.
44:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And, uh, this web platform, you know, uh, JavaScript react, et cetera is so well documented, so well used, that the AR you're going to use to get help with this is going to have ample resources to draw from, it's you know, and you now you're talking about a really interesting filter, paul, which is that I choose a language based on who's got the best model in my llm for it.
44:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, yeah, nowadays that's probably better to do that than anything else. Let me show you what I use to, um, to press my shirts. Hold on a second here. What well? You know, young people probably won't remember this, okay, but in the old days, uh, in order to learn how to program to a platform, you'd have a thing. Oh, I see.
45:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, oh yes, I owned every one of those books.
45:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you actually wrote one of them. Well, I was going to say those books.
45:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Make my book look like a pamphlet.
45:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Together, excellent for pressing things.
45:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
By the way. So we just talked about um uh, um, daniel, choose dan ackerman, right, dan, no, the man who just passed away from apple, jesus uh ackerman, what's his first name?
45:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have to turn on my camera so I can talk to you.
45:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Bill atkinson, bill ackerman, sorry atkinson I'm, so everyone knows him from quick draw and round wreck and all that kind of stuff. He's pretty much the author I was going to say. Do you know? The first thing that he did was he wrote Apple Pascal.
45:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's right.
45:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Which is the language they used for all that stuff on the Mac.
45:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is all in Pascal.
45:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's all Pascal.
45:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Which Delphi is also, by the way. I know that yes, so that's pretty funny isn't it For a long time?
46:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
that's all that Anders Heilsberg was making. Right was various flavors of Pascal. Yeah, one might argue that C Sharp is a new flavor of Pascal.
46:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean the. I know Java. When he did the, whatever that framework was for Java, visual you know, j++ whatever, j++ yeah. You know Object Pascal, but for Java basically.
46:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean yep, you know the uh object, pascal, but for java basically, I mean yep, no, he had a very strong opinion about type, systems and frameworks and so forth, which, by the way, has helped a lot, of a lot of, so I bought a. I bought a house on the back of that, to bring that full circle not necessarily for the quality.
46:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's just how difficult it was he's also the creator of typescript, right?
46:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yes, so before he retires, I'd like to have him set his sight on a functional declarative language for building. Maybe it could be cross-platform, that's fine, something that's like Swift.
46:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That would be very out of character for him. This is a statically typed procedural kind of guy. That's not how he makes things I would that would be wildly out of character.
47:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I won't say anything, but everything's just gets better as it gets closer and closer to common list. But I'm just saying it's actually dynamic typing so you don't have to write all those time static types out.
47:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yes the dynamic time is awesome you only have to write the code once and never touch it again. What's the better thing than that? It's like how about?
47:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
leo, how I'm gonna take you one. I'm gonna take that and raise you to 10. How about we do no typing and we'll call it javascript and we'll just say it could be whatever you think it could be.
47:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you you want to assign a number to that variable.
47:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That used to be a string go to 10 the nice.
47:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the nice thing about dynamic typing. You know it has some protections against that, okay oh boy, I mean in uh, what was it?
47:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
uh, the guy from brave who wrote uh javascript. Yeah, in his defense he did write it in about 13 minutes. So it, you know, came together pretty quick but well, that's why I think you know, the derivatives, like typescript, are probably a good way.
48:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, what is microsoft's version? Is it? That's it? Typescript, typescript yeah I think they're probably a good way to go. Right, it's, it's just the good parts, as they say good enough for the angular team.
48:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Just the good parts, right?
48:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, I just I know web frameworks aren't 100 native, but it feels to me, by the way one of the new things that's coming along with the new Apple 26s, is support for basically web apps.
48:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're not calling it PWA, but it's very aggressive support for web apps, which is curious because Apple has done everything they can to prevent this from being a thing.
48:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Between them and Firefox yeah, well, when I talk about pwa and one of my keynotes, I always say let's face it. Pwa is an amazing set of functionality and you use exactly one thing. You put an icon on the phone so that you can fool normal mortals and they're thinking that's an app and that's all they wanted. They just want an icon so well, some.
48:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And on desktop there's some class of people who likes they want the spotify web app or whatever it is to run like, looking like an app, like a web browser tab, and like, yeah, we could do that too.
49:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what people are using electron for, which is kind of sad, but well it's better than nothing.
49:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The power of the icon's a big deal. I don't know if I've told you this story, but many, many, many, many years ago, uh, I was working with a university. We built an app, uh, using activex controls in ie, yep, and they were very happy with it. They had one professor who hated, who thought that microsoft had killed netscape and so hated everything it was microsoft and we refused to use it he had he couldn't use id and the answer literally was no way to put it in a web.
49:38
Use visual basic to put it in a web view and change the icon to the Netscape icon.
49:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was thinking about this. So with Chrome and now Edge and Windows 10 and 11, right Microsoft faces this uphill battle.
49:53
One of the big successes of Chrome, like we see with OpenAI and ChatGPT and the AI space, is they're getting past the power of the defaults. Chrome is a thing people just go with, like they use Safari, they use Edge, they install this thing and they use this other thing Like this is not supposed to happen. So how do you get? Like Edge does everything that Chrome can do, literally everything. And I was just thinking about this like change the icon, just make it look like Chrome. I bet people they would never know. You know, I'm not saying that's ethical, but that's why it's right at Microsoft's wheelhouse.
50:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, just go for it. Well, let's face it, the edge icon's just not that far from the Chrome icon. Right now. It's a blue swirly versus a multicolored swirly.
50:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're both just swirlies. They're both just swirlies.
50:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's your title right there.
50:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like when you lick your finger and hit someone in the belly button, right in the ear. Okay, anyway, tell us about your surface laptop. I know it's, I know it's nothing but happiness, every richard is.
50:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Richard is slowly rejecting his surface studio. No, no, richard should do the right thing for richard. I'm not.
50:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I wouldn't push him toward I'm pretty sure I'm holding out for the next chip set. It's only a a few months.
51:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, that could do it too, yeah no, I just, coincidentally, I put something aside like I should write about this. We must be coming up on the one year anniversary.
51:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, yeah.
51:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And I looked today. It was a year ago.
51:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Today I'm like oh, I should probably write this today Happy birthday.
51:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I First launch of all time or the second worst launch of all time. Well, people say that because Microsoft sold this stuff based on these local AI experiences that at the time didn't amount to anything and today amount to very little. So one of the things that I write again in this article is like this isn't why you care about this kind of a product, but the reason you do care about it is that some of the stuff we mentioned earlier, which is that when I open the laptop lid of these things I'm reviewing over here that are running Intel or AMD chips the latest versions doesn't matter You're just spinning the roulette wheel to see what's going to happen, because the reliability there is terrible. They have improved, you know, compared to what they were before, that's a low bar. I mean, compared to what you see on the Snapdragon stuff, it's not even close. So for just basic reliability, consistent performance that doesn't nosedive when you're on battery, the efficiency stuff, compatibility across the board is fantastic.
52:15
My wife is using one of these computers. I didn't even tell her, I just gave her the computer and said is your new computer? She's been using it for six weeks. She hasn't had any problems, and people who don't use.
52:23
These are always like, oh, it doesn't run this, it doesn't do that, it doesn't, blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, doesn't it? I mean, I don't know what you're talking about, so I don't. I've never had any major compatibility issues. To have zero compatibility issues. It works with everything, but I the thing about this to me is just, it's that combination of things like big screen, which I love, perfect keyboard trackpad, everything's great and uptime. You know, when I wrote my review of this thing in last July, it was like 10 and a half hours average. I just looked over the past month, it's been over 12 hours. Like it's off the charts, like I love this thing, I love it. The only issue I've ever had, which happened right when we came back from Mexico, so about a month ago, was I was typing it on one day and it wasn't typing the letter S consistently, so I'd hit S and it'd be like nothing, nothing, nothing S, nothing, nothing, nothing. And I'm like, oh, that's not good.
53:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I thought maybe I can't work with that.
53:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I type S a lot. Um, so I think this article. I checked, yeah, there were 371 letter S's just in this one article, so I'm like I need the letter S. Yeah, I have a warranty that goes through next year, so Microsoft would have fixed it for free, but I blew air under it. I didn't want to pop the key off because, God knows me, I would never get back on.
53:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're going to get it back on again yeah, I looked in the self-repair.
53:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This thing's supposedly really repairable. I guess it is if you want something that's in the back. But to get to the keyboard you go through the back and you have to go through all the components that are in between you and the keyboard. And there are like 21 of them. So I'm not taking out the SSD and the whatever like it's all these different parts. It's crazy. So I was like all right, maybe I'll actually get this fixed, that kind of stinks. I wasn't expecting to do that. But they said, all right, first you got to run the surface diagnostic utility, so you sit there for about 15 minutes. Some of it's interactive. You draw on the screen, you do whatever you do. It has nothing to do with my problem. It asked if there was anything else and I said yeah beep. Like all right, it's fine. And I was like okay. And then I'm like well, let's see, it works fine. It's worked fine ever since. I have no idea how it fixed that. I have no idea why it didn't work sometimes, but now it's fixed.
54:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So it's been working. Why is there software in the keyboard?
54:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know. I can't explain these things. Anyway, if you're looking for a MacBook Air style computer, there's a 13.8, a 15-inch version. I mean 10.5 to 12 hours of battery life. The performance is incredible. The screen's awesome. I love this thing so much.
54:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I just love it, and the main reason it's better than a MacBook Air is it doesn't run macOS. Is that the answer? Yeah, so it's a macOS that runs.
55:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Windows. The Mac is thinner and lighter. It's a lot thinner, a little lighter. Um, technically this has more ports, I mean. Whatever that means. They both have their own little proprietary power thing which you don't use anyway.
55:13
So nobody cares use usbc, yep, um, but yeah, they're, they're comparable. I mean, I think that in the windows world, this is probably the thing that looks from a distance. You'd be like like, yeah, those are the same computer and I. It's easy to kind of mock Microsoft for that. I guess there's nothing innovative about that. But, um, but that's what I want. I want something that looks like that. But it's not that right.
55:34
Like, and as every year when Apple improves, like the reason I just discussed Tahoe is, I always look at the new version. I was thinking I never know. And then you use mac for a little while and you're like, oh yeah, it's the mac. I don't like the mac, I just don't like it. But yeah, the stuff that people like, the compatibility stuff, nonsense, the complaints about the local ai stuff valid, but it doesn't get in the way, it doesn't, just doesn't matter. Um, you know there's no cellular connectivity option. That that's not a deal for me, I don't care about that.
56:05
But the thing that really cracks me up about this the most and this was true when I got it and it's more true now is I still get pushback from people who are like well, I have this scanner I bought in 1979 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, and it's like guys, there's class drivers for everything. I mean I, I, I, when I first got it, I had one app and one piece of hardware that didn't work, and today I have zero, everything works. So I and I use a lot of stuff. I know I use stuff here. I have different stuff in Mexico. I never have any problems with this thing, ever. And even when there's something like a file system add in, like the Synology drive, client integrates, no problem, syncs, no problem. Works every day, no problem, and it's like oh, it's running emulated.
56:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How do you know? How do you know?
56:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's fine, nobody cares, do the job.
56:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, it's a fantastic computer and I should say a fantastic platform, so that thing. The three big ones for me last year were the one I bought, the one that you're thinking about buying, but the AMD version would be great too, and then the other one was the IdeaPad. I don't remember. I think it was IdeaPad S, which was also semi-close too.
57:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think I'm going to hold out for the Snapdragon 2 for the laptop and I'm going to build an amd desktop machine. Nice, there you go.
57:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think you're gonna love the best of both worlds, that's yeah, I'll still have one.
57:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know the uh intel machine I, oh, I should say the one thing I would, yeah, the one thing where snapdragon today does fall short is gaming, right, I mean, and yeah, I don't know why that's mostly the cheat and the cheat system problem. But it's also just basic emulation, performance and compatibility.
57:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Like I, it's bad enough. It's been. A lot of these software requires any cheat software to run which runs a lot of ring zero stuff which aren't just like nope. Well, I know I mean, the game won't even start.
57:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Qualcomm wants to fix those problems. But I mean, to me it's like, guys, this is a premium laptop, this is for people getting work done. Um, this is that stuff works great, I mean across the board, like all the creator software, everything. A lot of that stuff is native now, too, which is amazing. Adobe stuff is native um, it's all pretty amazing. So that stuff's fine. But, yeah, if you're, if you play video games, yeah, then don't get this.
58:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But other than that it appeals to me to have one of each right. I got a Gen 13 Intel. It's my main work machine. This thing's the old one, the old Intel machine. It could probably be made into AMD. I'll maybe switch them, I don't know, right.
58:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I figured out Semi-related to this. Microsoft released a firmware update for this product and also for the Surface Pro 11. That were released at the same time and if you go back in time and look at the firmware updates they released for these machines, they're basically identical for the most part. But in April they released one for my computer that was never documented like ever and that happens a lot with Surface Like there'll be a firmware update and then you look to see what's in it and there's nothing on the site about it and then, maybe a week or two later, they finally put something up about it. So at that time in April, I looked to see what it was. I installed it. You know, whatever, maybe that was the S thing, I maybe killed the S key, I don't know. Um, but uh, no, cause it was working after, but it doesn't matter. Anyway, the point is they never documented it. So I'm like did I even see that? Like, like you kind of dug yourself in the documentation for the June update.
59:32
It mentions resolves an issue introduced in the April 2025 release that prevented dot dot dot, which is still not. It has never been documented. The last one on their site is from January. So, uh, surface pro. I don't know if there was an april one as well, but surface pro, according to the site, last was updated in january, firmware wise, and it's a. It's a laundry list that when they do these firmware but it's often like a driver update for almost every component in the system, um, which is nothing to do with qualcomm, it's a, microsoft just does this. It's the way they do things. Um, so if you do have one of these computers, you should, um probably install that and then maybe your s key will work. I don't know, I can't promise.
01:00:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't know why that worked.
01:00:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That it did. Yeah, that upsets. My daughter has a chromebook that the question mark key is broken and the u key is broken and she somehow manages to she.
01:00:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
She cuts and pastes in those keys right, she won't, let me get her a new one, but that's by the way I. I did that with this computer for a little while because you'd finally get the s to work, copy it and then every time you need to ask control v let me tell you something.
01:00:37
The letter s it's a lot of control being. Yeah, a lot of control. Yeah, I'm trying to get work done and I'm like I have to think like a lot of s being, yeah, it's a lot of control being. Yeah, I'm trying to get work done and I'm like I have to think it's a lot of S's.
01:00:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a lot of S's. It was the largest volume in the World Book Encyclopedia.
01:00:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I remember Okay, yeah, it's a bad key, Like you know, Q I could have lived with maybe.
01:00:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a tough one. Just as a reminder, because if of an ad, we'll stick it in here. You're watching well, we'll try to be gentle. You're watching windows weekly paul thurott and richard campbell, both, uh, at their respective homes in north america nice yep, I guess, I don't know, that's correct. Where do you?
01:01:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
consider home, paul. You know I now tell the story of richard explaining this to me about a month ago because I can I sort of think of both places as home. And you know, like here is home, there is some whatever. And Richard says let me ask you a question, where do you own real estate? And I was like in Mexico, yeah, I mean, we'll probably own something here soon. Oh, you think so You're going to? Oh, okay, yeah, I think we're going to have both.
01:01:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're getting serious, but when?
01:01:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
he said that I was like, yeah, no, I can't really say that. That's pretty much it. That's a good point, yeah, cause you know it's like you could talk about what's important to you, but it's like where do you spend your money?
01:01:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Where do you spend your time? Like you know, the only thing better than owning real estate in cities. Having a friend who owns real estate in the city absolutely isn't using it, right? Yeah, nice, why aren't you going to that apartment?
01:02:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
okay, I'll go to your apartment yeah, and yes, I know mexico is also north america. Thank you very much. That's basically why I say it was a map on uh uh fox news.
01:02:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That was like the different mexicos and it was not a joke. They were like mexico, south mexico, whatever. They referred to all of latin america as mexico.
01:02:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So so it's like guys it's not all mexico, no, no. Well, and to be clear, mexico, the actual country is, is very diverse.
01:02:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, there's a huge array of environments and cultures and so forth, and it's very affordable. I was looking at a beach house, beachfront house, down in Puerto Vallarta and, I'm sorry, puerto Escondido, which is south of Puerto Vallarta, in Oaxaca, and you can get a pretty nice house for a tenth of what you'd pay here. Oh easy, I'd like to.
01:03:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're talking about california, my friend, so you go.
01:03:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's true, we paid the top price yeah, yeah, yeah, but see, I'll be selling my california house to move.
01:03:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I feel like if we had gone to oaxaca as one of our first trips. Isn't it a great we might have bought a place there. Like not in mexico city, like I love mexico city but you get all the cosmopolitan features because no it's not very cosmopolitan. Yeah, you're like that's part of what I like about it. It's, uh, it's real like it feels like it's.
01:03:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, it's real. You know it's really real, baby.
01:03:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's real plus, I really like I thought the rural part of living on the coast would bother me, and it's the main feature yeah interesting yeah yeah okay, that and gigabit internet everything is solvable right, right.
01:03:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, we have gigabit uh internet in roma norte. So that's it. That is a thing. Oh really, oh, that's nice my connection there is faster than it is here and it comes in on the sticky little like little black wire that looks like nothing, but yeah, yeah, it works great, that's what it is.
01:04:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a dinky little wire with glass inside.
01:04:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's all it is you know you're doing my new geek out talk for the fall for the festival is the undersea cable network. There you go. Oh, that'll be fun. I'm really enjoying writing it.
01:04:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's been yeah that will be really. That's a fascinating. It's a great topic. Yeah, it's really fun. Oh, I wish I could go see it. Do you ever record any of these? They're on YouTube. Oh nice, I definitely want to see it.
01:04:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
All the energy ones, the space ones, the nuclear power, all that stuff's on there and that one will be up there by the end of the year.
01:04:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was walking, taking a walk in the neighborhood a little while ago, and was walking, uh, taking a walk in the neighborhood a little while ago, and I I looked up at the wires overhead and I saw these snowshoes looking things in the wires and I thought what the what the hell are those?
01:04:54
so I took a picture of it yep and I uh it's like a chat gpt and I said what the hell is that? They said that's a fiber optic cable. That's the take up the slack, so they could put more cable in than they need and then extend it. I thought we don't have fiber optic in this neighborhood, except I guess we do. Yeah, or you will soon. Isn't that the best thing about AI, though? I mean, I thought maybe it was a little landing place for pigeons. I didn't know what it was.
01:05:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You thought, that's what it was. You're like maybe they could build a nest, it's nice.
01:05:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then I thought you know what's changed in this world? I don't have to wonder. I could take a picture of it and ask my little friend yeah, and it'll just answer it for you.
01:05:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
At the time, I described this as him inventing Google search, but when my son was like five or something that exists, guess what you know.
01:05:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We've got it. Yeah, now it's even better.
01:05:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, uh, all right, let's continue on with everybody's favorite topic microsoft 365 so this one was interesting to me because I saw headlines about it and it made it seem like it was serious and really negative and I was like, okay, so and and as I wrote this, I, I I originally wrote it as the better business bureau has given Microsoft recommendations about how it might promote Microsoft 365 copilot. But then the more I read this thing that they wrote and then I read Microsoft's response, I realized no, it's actually worse than that. And so there's something called the National Advertising Division, which is part of the Better Business Bureau, by the way, not part of the federal government, it's just an organization but Microsoft belongs to it and they examined the claims that Microsoft made for Microsoft 365, copilot.
01:06:40
And so when you go through them in order, it starts off pretty good, right? So one of the claims is it can generate, summarize and rewrite content in Office document files. And you're like, okay. So it's like yep, how about that? It says here's the claim Microsoft makes, they say, with no limitations on file size, length, number of files, blah, blah, blah. And they said, yeah, actually that's what it does. The product that Microsoft made substantiates this claim. It kind of contorted the way they said it.
01:07:08
There are some limitations to Copilot, obviously, but it doesn't impact how people use the product. They were like it's fine. So that was one of three big bullet items and I was like, oh, this is not going to be as bad as I thought it was. And then I got to the second one. The second one is use it across apps and business chat, and so if you're familiar with Copilot for Microsoft 365, you know that you can bring up Word or Excel or PowerPoint or whatever, and it's integrated into the product. You can ask your questions and you have it create content for you and that stuff works fine. But apparently they make the same claims for what, uh, this organization calls business chat. I think it's just called co-pilot chat or whatever, but whatever the name of the thing is and they're like we need to start resistance.
01:07:50
I thought teams yeah, yeah, yeah, right, teams right, um, yeah, wherever you might chat with this thing outside of one of those apps. And they were like, yeah, it doesn't do that. Um, and so they it sounds like a recommendation. Um, it says Microsoft should modify the advertising to clearly and conspicuously disclose any material limitations regulated to how business chat assists users. And I was like, all right, well, okay, so I guess they're saying it doesn't actually do this thing. They're recommending that Microsoft maybe be a little clearer about that.
01:08:22
It's kind of like the Apple intelligence stuff where they had it on their website and they had ads and people like you know you're advertising this thing, but it doesn't really exist and maybe you should change that. Now there are class action lawsuits, et cetera, et cetera. But the third one was productivity and return on investment. This is important because this is aimed at the business market, right, this is what everyone's looking for. So the numbers vary, but it's something like 67 to 75% of co-pilot users claim they are more productive after some period of time of usage. That varies again by the group, and so the benefit of business is. We looked at the study and they were like yeah, it doesn't say that. They were like yeah, it doesn't say that they were like uh, our recommendation that's phrase is like.
01:09:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
it doesn't mean they are more productive, they just feel more like.
01:09:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
we're not even sure how you're defining productivity, so I don't know how you got this measurement, but this study that you're citing as evidence does not show what you said. It shows Right. So their recommendation was discontinue this advertising.
01:09:23
So I was like okay, so it kind of escalates right and I'm like all right. Well, microsoft issues a statement, says we disagree with certain elements of their conclusions, but then they just said but we're going to do everything. They said Like they're actually going to make all these changes. It's like interesting and I think it might be partly because of what happened with apple like groups are starting to go after these companies making claims for ai, yeah, and the last thing I think a group of lawyers have figured out.
01:09:54
There's money to be made going after these plus, ironically, they can use ai to write the briefs and the site you know previous cases exactly and they definitely claim an increase in productivity, and I was going to say this lawyer, use AI to write the briefs and cite previous cases, et cetera. And they definitely claim an increase in productivity. And I was going to say this lawyer will be like and I was 80% more productive thanks to this, even better than what Microsoft claims.
01:10:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So yeah, it's there you go. Now I'm in jail, but other than that yeah, yeah.
01:10:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was just kind of fascinated. They completely caved, like immediately.
01:10:26
Like they're like yeah, like yeah, no, we're just going to do it like okay, well, and again, the other thing is that's the statement. What are they actually going to do? Yeah, well, uh, modify well. In other words, a lot of the. If you go to the microsoft site, right, any apple does the same thing, claims right, pictures. It's very pretty. There's always these little asterisks or footnote numbers, and you go down to the bottom and it's like one point type and if you bring out your, you know, zoom in the page, you say it doesn't actually do this, or you know we'll say something like so I, I, these claims did not be validated.
01:10:50
Yeah, it's probably that kind of a qualifier, but we'll see. I'm kind of curious now, I, just because I thought like this is kind of a non-story. But then, as I read it, I was like, actually, these get worse as you go. And then Microsoft's like yep, we're going to do it all. Like okay, wow, okay, just like the DMA Like yeah, whatever, whatever you want, it's fine. Arguably the biggest news of the week, though, is this escalating war that we always knew was coming between OpenAI and Microsoft. Right, it's a matter of time.
01:11:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And it still hasn't broken out.
01:11:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You want to restructure and we want to know how our investment is going to land on that, and by that we mean we want to maximize our investment. Yeah, so both of these companies have some leverage of some kind over the other. I will say just, we've talked about this, but just to be clear, microsoft invested in open AI. It has certain rights that it could prevent it from restructuring. It could block the whole thing, yeah.
01:11:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It could block all of it. That was one of the main ones. It has a say in whether they restructure or not.
01:11:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right. Microsoft is apparently not happy that OpenAI just announced they're buying Windsurf for $3 billion, a product that competes with GitHub Copilot. Microsoft is like I think we're done giving you know, doing all this AI infrastructure build out for you. Maybe you should go somewhere else for some of that. That kind of stuff. This is. This is fascinating to me. So one of the this is from the wall street journal, so it's not like Bob's rumor site, but, based on internal documentation found that open AI is considering actually making a formal antitrust complaint to regulators to get it out of this deal. Right? So Microsoft has invested. I believe the total is $13 billion. They own some percentage of OpenAI.
01:12:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They get a percentage of their revenues 49%, but there was a bunch of that's pretty cold.
01:12:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So they're basically turning state's evidence on yeah, yep, that's so cold.
01:12:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They they're basically turning state's evidence on yeah, Yep, that's so cool. They're a stoolie. So I listen, it's genius in a way and it's evil genius in a way, which is what I would expect of the robots over at OpenAI. It's kind of beautiful in that sense, but I guess the deal that they brought to Microsoft for when they restructure was you will now own I think it was 33% of the company, and they were like no, I think we own 49% of the company. Yeah, you know yeah, and they were like well, we want it to be 39%. They're like we want it to be 100%. Everyone wants something. We're just saying we own 49%. So this is the kind of back and forth that's going on Right, and so this feels all like ringsmanship, yep.
01:13:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yep, this is what happens when there's a lot of money.
01:13:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a lot of money. Well, it's not the money. Microsoft's got plenty of money. It's the 400 million monthly users, right.
01:13:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They have not. What are they?
01:13:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
30?. You know Well that's the thing.
01:13:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So this was also in the Wall Street Journal. I don't believe it's mentioned in this article, but some months ago, a year ago, whatever it was a long time ago they did a report on like pickup of users on different AIs, and ChatGPT, like I said, is the chrome of this world. It's just astonishingly successful, and that crosses different boundaries is successful and that crosses different boundaries. Like I mentioned this before, there are so many normal kind of mainstream, non-technical users that I know who are paying for a chat GPT. It's incredible, like it's crazy.
01:14:10
But then there are people who, whatever you're an Apple guy, a Microsoft guy, whatever you are a developer, maybe, whatever it is which is what this Codex well, codex and this Windsurf acquisition, et cetera, targeting developers, it's OpenAI, is like everything. And then there's like everyone else, and then it's well, I don't remember the numbers, but it was, you know, gemini and Anthropic and whatever else, but way down at the bottom, microsoft Copilot, and it was nothing. It was like this sliver and it never really grew from whatever number they hit. You know, back when they first launched this stuff, because really grew from whatever number they hit.
01:14:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know back when they first launched this stuff, because they've not been able to persuade the enterprise to move on to this.
01:14:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So this is this is a uniquely microsoft problem of today, like we um. You know we'll talk about xbox later, but one of the is it microsoft failing in the consumer space is not novel.
01:14:55
Right like well, that's what this really is oh okay, actually that's a good point. I wasn't going to say it that way, but okay, fair enough. The way I was going to phrase it was there's this growing belief that Microsoft would never acknowledge, unless they killed the product, that maybe they've hit a limit, like an upper limit, on who will subscribe to Game Pass in the Xbox space, and maybe they've already hit a limit of a similar type with Copilot, like there's this stuff that's kind of free that you get in windows and I don't, you know, probably an office too, but to actually get someone to pay is a big leap and and for a lot of people in our space, for whatever reason, that's where they draw the line.
01:15:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Look, I'm a system and I talked to a lot of system ends, you know. Look, I'm a sysadmin, I talk to a lot of sysadmins. You know, none of us want to install any of this. The only way we'll get it installed is when an ROI shows up on the CFO's desk. That means if we don't do this, we can't compete with our tribals and we fail Right. That's why you installed any of this. It's why you bought fax machines. It's why you put up a website. That's why you know what. You haven't proven Microsoft at all A real return on investment for enterprises. That's because the moment you do, all hell breaks loose, right?
01:16:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean the bed of business spirit pointed out a great report that cites up to 75% productivity games. So I don't know where you're coming from.
01:16:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't know what the concern is. But you know PCs didn't sell until VisiCal showed up, right Like once you. Once the return is apparent, they will all switch. You have failed to produce the return.
01:16:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm not saying it's not deserved or is deserved I actually don't know but it's fascinating to me that OpenAI, chat, gpt has gotten such buy-in from the world.
01:16:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, because it's the brand. It's Xerox, right, it's Kleenex.
01:16:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's what I mean it. There's something very successful about it that may or may not be tied to its efficacy, compared to say no, no, yeah, it's like because you're selling it to consumers as a known brand.
01:16:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, for a low enough price that they're doing it, just in case it's fascinating, I mean, it's just.
01:16:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a weird problem for microsoft. I I in, by the way, in both, both Xbox and AI actually I've made the argument, and I guess I still will, that they can still win by losing, in the sense that as long as people are using Azure like, imagine if Sony was using Azure and their service took off and Microsoft's didn't it'd be like, well, we're making money there, it's still okay. And if OpenAI slash, whoever else is building AI services that run on top of Azure, microsoft is still winning to some degree. But this is the thing like, they were always a distant number two in cloud to AWS. They've closed that gap, but they're still number two, right, much bigger than Google, but also smaller, I guess, than Amazon. Well, by some measure, right.
01:17:41
I mean, there are certain ways you can look at this business where it makes maybe more money, but whatever it's, wherever it is and it would be interesting if their push for growth for the future was AI-based fails and what they have to fall back on is the thing they already did. If it just becomes infrastructure, it's just Azure and that is a potential outcome. I mean, in the same way that you know, apple will have Apple intelligence on their devices. Some people will use it, some people won't care, but a lot of people will use open AI. Yeah, probably going to be the case on Windows, it might be the case in Office or whatever. I mean, it's kind of a weird problem.
01:18:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, no, and Microsoft is in that usual issue space.
01:18:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know there's a downside to owning enterprise.
01:18:29
Right, which is part of that. Steve Ballmer, you know, interview I mentioned last week that's three hours long that I still recommend strongly that people watch. The other part of this that's interesting about their relationship is just that open AI always comes up with these advanced whatever they service like we're going to do video. Now we're going to do this. We're going to have a notebook, we're going to have, you know, whatever, and then Microsoft would be like and we're going to give it away for free. You know they'll do some little free version of it, Right, it could be part of that too, though I mean nobody but open AI will charge for it.
01:18:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then Microsoft will give it away away for free. These other companies have other revenue streams Google and Microsoft OpenAI. That's how they make a living.
01:19:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, and this is also where you get back to your whole comment about antitrust Yep, exactly 100%, although these guys are undermining our business models repeatedly because we're beating them in the market.
01:19:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You could make a list of all the features that OpenAI has added to chat GPT over the past six months or a year or whatever it is, and in each case in many cases, at least in the beginning they often only go to that very expensive, now $200 a month thing, and then sometimes also the $20 a month paid thing, and then eventually they also make it free.
01:19:34
Usually, right, I bet all the major features of this service are free, with limits at some point that that happens, so they do it too, but Microsoft seems to kind of undercut that a little bit. I feel like it's a weird we're partners but we're competitors kind of situation and we're going to try to gain a leg up by you on you by, and it's always random. It's like you can use open AI as image editing or image creation or video creation, whatever it is, but only on mobile. In the Bing app that nobody wants to use, or they'll add it to Bing search or Copilot search or whatever the hell it's called, whatever you know like they'll do stuff like that and it's like yeah, just because you're giving away for free doesn't mean the group isn't paying the Azure bill that they're responsible for.
01:20:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, so it's made to be free. On the customer side, they're also looking for a unit to put those operating costs against. Oh yeah, of course.
01:20:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But they can afford to do that for the reason Leo said, which is they do have these other businesses so they can kind of subsidize this Biggest company in the world, large revenue model. Yeah, they should look at whatever their operating margins every quarter and be like all right, how much do we have to spend on destroying open AI? Because this is just all coming off the top, you know, and right now they're doing great in that regard.
01:20:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So and yet open AI is still outgrowing them, outbuilding them and certainly out mind sharing them in every respect.
01:20:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Do you guys think if Microsoft had not invested in open AI to the degree that they did, not the original 1 billion but the 11. That were they?
01:21:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
that deal with the One and two, then a little 10. Yeah, but yes.
01:21:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, would they be where they are today? Would that have happened anyway, or would we? Not even be talking about this company?
01:21:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Probably not Because they had to. They needed enough money to get into the situation that created ChatGPT.
01:21:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So Google was never going to do it because this was going to destroy their business model?
01:21:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and then the tech billionaires that set it up strangled it. They didn't wasn't supposed to succeed. Right, and you know Kevin Scott was working looking for workloads for Azure. He wasn't necessarily looking for an AI revolution.
01:21:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look at XAI they're back to the well because they've run through a huge amount of money. They're down to their last 5 billion.
01:21:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And that's what happened with OpenAI too, right, I mean, a billion was nothing, it's expensive yeah.
01:21:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And so you've got to make these partnerships, you've got to make these deals, because otherwise but now it's a little skeezy to say, but can we get out of it?
01:21:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But look at the deal that Microsoft had.
01:22:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Hey, we're going to invest a billion in you and you pay it all back to us in Azure consumption. It was a good deal. Yeah, they should have gone to.
01:22:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
China. They probably would have gotten a better deal there. I'm not really familiar how VC works and stuff. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if it's not unusual for founders to go back to their investors and say, hey, can we? Oh?
01:22:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think that's very common. Yep, yep.
01:22:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think that's very common. You know, we'd like, we like.
01:22:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not usually done to this scale, though. That's the thing. The thing about open AI that's different is, I think, in the history of startups, or actually no, it's the history of independent companies. They are the third biggest in history. It's amazing. They're they're astronomically big.
01:22:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
With a big old asterisk because it's not a proper business model they're operating under still yeah.
01:22:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They do make money model they're operating under. Still, yeah, they do make money under this, but yeah, well, they have revenue. I'm sorry they don't make money.
01:22:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They have revenue a lot. Yeah, I was gonna say they, they, they're getting money. You know, you know. However, you want to term it.
01:22:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, they don't know if they're profitable or not, because we they don't need to tell us it's a fake. Yeah, and how would you count it? Anyway? Like, what we do know is they're burning through enough azure that microsoft's not willing to burn through more, right, right, but that's strangling.
01:23:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's been a problem for other parts of the company. There. There are parts of the company that do generate money, like microsoft 365. There are parts of the company that are kind of on the edge and we really need this to succeed because if it doesn't, we need to do something else with it, like xbox and the game pass and streaming stuff, and there's no doubt that the open ai infrastructure needs were hurting both of those businesses there's no doubt, and they've, and you know, open ai has gone to oracle and others.
01:23:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean they're, you know, yeah, yeah I don't know how much of that stuff's actually up or still just, but it's like open ai.
01:23:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean going to oracle is like, uh, leaving your wife and going back to your junior high school girlfriend, like what are you doing?
01:23:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
like I, just it's just gross sometimes you know, sometimes you know, at some point you just need a, you need, you need an alternative, like they needed an alternative right now.
01:23:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's when they jumped onto the first project that would take them exactly yep, and oracle's a big player in this stargate, thing. So, uh, you know that's a.
01:24:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's an opening, but stargate is still a project.
01:24:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not actually I was gonna say what does it mean? Like they're a big uh, yeah, a big player in like space army, okay I mean win a war first, then we can talk. You know, I don't know like I, I don't know, I don't know what to make of any of this stuff, but there's no, these guys are gonna clash.
01:24:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's no doubt, and I feel like it's well, they're headed right at it and, like I said, this is a game of chicken being played here. They've got, like you've just outlined, like four different antitrust cases that open ai has against microsoft here, like there's a bunch, and, ironically, this will be the one case where they actually save data. Sorry but they're you know, and I think again, I think this is all brinksmanship. Yeah, I do too.
01:24:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, but the outcome is never going to be we're fine, we love each other, everything's great. It's always going to be like these two wary we're going to kick it down the can to the next time we need to stab each other to death. Yep, yeah, it's not a healthy relationship.
01:24:57
No it can't be. Yeah, it's really messed up. I'm kind of fascinated by this. I haven't had time to look at this too much, but I strongly recommend everyone who cares about this at all goes and looks at. If you haven't seen it, it's openaifilesorg.
01:25:13
Apparently, the site was started by former employees of the company that are starting to publicize the problems they see with this company, and it is rather astonishing. So on the homepage they have their four major areas of concern, which are restructuring, integrity of the CEO, transparency and safety and conflicts of interest, and if you just kind of scroll through and read the high level explanation of each of those, it's yikes, like it's actually really bad Now. That said, it's also not surprising in the slightest. I mean, if any cursory look at open AI or cursory understanding of what's happened to open AI in the past two, three years, this should not be surprising to anybody, no, but founded on false means, you know, funded in bizarre ways Like yeah, a lot of weird stuff going on here ways like yeah, a lot of weird stuff going on here.
01:26:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They've been, they it's. It's been a crazy backroom battle, a knife fight since the very beginning. Right, it's literally their dna. It's like it's a group of tech billionaires trying to stab each other I don't know every time one of them gets out, a new one comes in I'm exaggerating to make a point here.
01:26:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't actually know, but I feel like every single person that's left this company, of any import, has crapped on it as soon as they were gone, oh yeah, and been like listen, we got to do something about this company.
01:26:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's really scary.
01:26:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like it's kind of bizarre, like you don't see stuff like that at established tech companies, and I think you raised this point some time ago, richard, a few episodes ago. There is so much money being paid to these people, yeah Right, that the ones who are still there may well just be there, because they're waiting to invest.
01:26:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I would argue not at OpenAI. Well, I don't know. Did you see the story?
01:26:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
that Mark Zuckerberg's been going to OpenAI offering Literally oh my God Bribing. Basically $100 million bonus on a hundred million dollar a year salary. 100 million dollar a year salary?
01:27:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, and supposedly no one has taken him up on this offer and says nobody we care about.
01:27:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you know what?
01:27:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
yeah I mean knowing this.
01:27:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The thing is mark zuckerberg it's like I get it but there might be a cult of sam altman thing going on too, right? I mean, there are people who, if you believe that they're, going to get to AGI first.
01:27:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're not going to leave, yeah, but all of the big shots have Mira Marotti, ilya Sitskever, yeah, I mean, they're all gone now.
01:27:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and, by the way, those are the people who have all dumped on this company. There are quotes on this. Mira Murady, I don't feel comfortable about Sam Altman leading us to AGI.
01:27:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, these are the two that led the coup.
01:27:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah Well, so now they're like yeah, now you're starting to see why.
01:27:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like yeah, exactly, it's fascinating, it's pretty much a soap opera.
01:27:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's incredible. This is not what you want. You know, I talk sometimes about this is so low level or high level compared to this. But, like when I talk about the chaos with Windows and I'm like you know, this is this modern legacy platform. It shouldn't be like this. But this stuff, this is like cloud infrastructure and this is this. People are going to make decisions with this stuff. Yeah, and it is scary, yeah.
01:28:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
For a company this chaotic to have such a problem?
01:28:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
why do you think the enterprise is largest state out of this. Think about look, absolutely google was protecting a business model. But google backed off from doing this years ago. Yes, because to protect their business model, but also because it was like, oh, this is actually even for us, this is a little scary. It's like, yeah, but open a is like you know, like they're just running to town with it, like it's, it's bizarre and leveraging the science fiction elements to help people make poor decisions around it. Yeah, I mean, of course, that's uh.
01:28:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's good you want to be part of the future, don't you?
01:28:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, I mean, you're going to be part of the future. You're going to be food for the future it's up to you, I mean you know. However you want to do it, it's up to you wow, that's crazy.
01:29:11
All right, uh, two more things. Um, so co-pilot vision is slightly different in different places, but it's basically something that lets you interact with the things you see, right, and so on your phone you might use it with your camera to interact or to see what things are in the world. This has become a kind of a common thing. This used to be like an AR feature, right that you would point it at a business and it would give you all the Google Maps information about it or whatever. But on a computer you might use it to interact with whatever you see on screen. It is now generally available in the United States only. It requires a subscriber, a subscription of whatever kind. So Copilot Pro if you're an individual, or Copilot for Microsoft 365, I believe. On that end, if you have the Copilot app on your phone, you can use it for a limited time or limited ways on mobile without a subscription. So you might want to kind of give it a shot. But this is the type of thing which is sort of like Google Lens or even Nokia back in the day before they were part of Microsoft, when they started coming up with Windows phones had an AR app on the phone where you could kind of go sideways and look at stuff out in the world. It would be like, oh, this is whatever you know, this is whatever the name of this business is, and this is that like. It was kind of like this. This kind of functionality is actually pretty useful. Um, so I'm sure it's based on something that open AI did, but only in the U? S for now. But only in the U? S for now. Yeah, well, ga in the U? S for now. Yeah, I don't know if it's available in other, more limited capacities elsewhere or not, but yeah, it is generally available.
01:30:46
I did do an episode about Copilot Vision on hands-on windows recently. I believe it's in the Copilot app, because of course it is. It's in the Copilot for the web and they work differently on both places, because of course they do. Last week I mentioned Dia, which is the new browser from the makers of Arc. There was not a lot of information about what it was and like how it was working. Since then In fact, I think it was today or maybe last night they published a blog post on Substack about what they're doing and actually I have to say this is pretty interesting to me. So I think Leo had it up last week and it was like it doesn't have the sidebar stuff, it doesn't do this and that and everything.
01:31:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was very simple yeah.
01:31:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and that was that's all by design. They're going to bring some of that stuff back, but they from Mark. Yeah, that one of the problems for arc was just the, the bar of entry. Like a lot of people rejected it immediately because they were like what is this thing? It's like two. And then they would do something that was very common on a browser, like ctrl t and instead of getting a browser tab, they would get like a command bar thing and they were like, uh, like I don't like this right now. Power users like you saw this and were like, oh my god, this is amazing this is what I've always wanted so they're.
01:32:01
So they're going to try to hit a more mainstream market with this and making this is the change the icon from Chrome, you know, for edge to Chrome and maybe would fool people. So it does a lot of that kind of stuff where it just looks like a normal browser and they're hoping that this will get you over the top. I like the term they use. So in Arc, what I would have called the marquee features, that thing we just well, there's two things it's the sidebar and the whatever the command bar was called the overriding of control T. They call that a novelty budget and they were like we exceeded our novelty budget.
01:32:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, interesting, what a good way to think of it. Yeah, I like that.
01:32:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah. So in this one the novelty budget was spent on kind of power user features that don't get in your face and don't distract you from the normal UI, and so it's the ability to do those things where you ask it questions that can answer across tabs. So if you say something like I've opened eight tabs for laptops, I should buy which do you recommend? Or something like that it can interact with all the stuff you're doing. There's like a at based referencing of information, like tabs, history, bookmarks, et cetera. But this I have to say, like I don't know what they're using for AI, like I don't know what this is based on, but I I do like the kind of minimalist UI thing that they're doing, like it looks. This looks interesting to me. I wish it was on windows, cause I can't really. I don't use the Mac enough for this to be meaningful, but I kind of want to. I'd like to look at this, but anyway, it's out there If you want to learn more. They have a blog post about it, I'm going to.
01:33:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going to. I downloaded it, I guess know if it's been updated. Let me just see. I don't think it's been updated. I think it's the same release. It's really just a front end to an ai agent.
01:33:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't need that because I have plenty of those. So yeah, but I do something interesting, right? I mean so when r came out for me, anyway, it caused a lot of kind of internal questioning about things and, like I, I came to the conclusion that, like, web browsers are super important, they're the most important app we have so the command is the same thing it opens a new tab.
01:34:07
Now, that's the difference yes yeah, but they yeah but that's the point of it is to like keep it familiar for normal people, but then add this power.
01:34:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There is an update. All right, let me get the update.
01:34:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah I don't think it's going to change the UI like.
01:34:20
I don't think that's you know the point of it, but I, I, there's. There's a point to be made that they lost people with the last thing, and maybe the right approach is to kind of rethink the complexity thing without giving up the power of it, if possible. Right, right, um, but they were just upfront about it. Like they're like look we, they have a list of things. We're going to bring these things back, but we also don't want it to get in the way, right and, and we don't want to turn people off immediately. Like that was the thing, like that that was. This was months ago, but you know, the CEO and some of the people the company were like we would show this product to our friends and family, of course, and I mean good luck, but I can't use this thing. Like my wife, my sister, my whoever. Like they're like no, like this is too much. And that was something they heard from a lot of people, right?
01:35:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I admit, the first time I used arc.
01:35:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I also was kind of like this is ridiculous. Yeah, and that's a big, that's a big problem.
01:35:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And it was a different way of thinking about browsing and you guys, you know, reasonably struggled with it and you guys, you know, reasonably struggled with it.
01:35:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, but we're the kind of hardcore geeks who are willing to spend some energy learning.
01:35:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
that, yeah, and I did.
01:35:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And.
01:35:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I saw the point, you know, and they also. There was a thing they sort of argued that the internet was the computer and that this thing was the front end to that computer and that the point of it was look, you're doing almost everything in the browser anyway, like make it work well for that thing and make it work with the apps you use, that kind of thing. But there's a lot of muscle memory with browsers, even something as simple as Microsoft overriding all tab and windows. So it goes to edge tabs, or there were and actually arc did this where control tab to me should go in order of the tabs, but some people wanted to go in order of the tabs you used last, so that it will. You know, you can control tab, control tab, and it will just go back and forth between those two tabs and, okay, you know, like this you can make an argument in either direction, right? So yeah, anyway, I think they veered too far in the direction of this.
01:36:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They just stripped everything out.
01:36:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, yeah, so one of the things they were taught. There's like little subtle things like all over it, apparently, like even something like the color of the browser page that you're looking at. The web you're looking at bleeds up into the tab or something, giving it more of a see that dark there.
01:36:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of let me go to my website and see what it does See what it does.
01:36:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, If you can find one like a colored background, the background is into the tab. Yeah, that's kind of cool, I mean. I, I'm not saying you don't switch browsers for that, but it's one of the little things. This is the whole list of whatever they did here.
01:37:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They were good at making an aesthetic browser. I do not.
01:37:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Which, by the way, was part of the problem for a Windows user, because these guys came. They're Mac users. They use SwiftUI to do this. They approach the world from that perspective, which is fine if you're on a Mac, but when you use it on Windows, what you get is this thing that never really. It's like IA writers like this too. Like you can tell, it was designed for Mac, it's awesome on the Mac and it's just not quite there in Windows.
01:37:32
You know, it's not quite the same, um, and it probably never will be, I don't know. Uh, you know it took them six to nine months to bring out a Windows version after the first Mac version came out last time, so I hope they don't take that long this time.
01:37:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I think they're doing a Swift. That's part of the problem, right?
01:37:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I've been meaning to look that up. That may not be true anymore. I know they did Arc and SwiftUI or Swift or whatever it's possible. They're not doing that now.
01:37:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I think it would have switched by now, and it's one of the reasons for the.
01:38:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The change was that they yeah, they got a certain level of success.
01:38:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're using the Windows app SDK, obviously, so that's it's built on top of chromium, so it's written primarily in c++, with a significant use of JavaScript, html and CSS for user interface and web technology so it sounds like it's so.
01:38:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the thing that Microsoft all browser makers well, most browser makers probably. I can't say all browsers make it, but typically the UI in a web browser is made with JavaScript and CSS and all that stuff, and Microsoft is actually moving away from that in Edge for performance reasons, right, and so they've only provided a couple of updates, but they've replaced a bunch of the components, like that browser info box that comes down um, oh, this is interesting, and I guess it's a lot faster now.
01:38:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So the desktop app itself is probably a blend of native code, objective c or swift for mac os and web technologies, so they are still native.
01:38:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's weird yeah, well, you want some of it to be native on the platform, I guess, right, I mean, otherwise it would be too slow yeah, and this is what we were talking about earlier.
01:39:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you don't do native, you kind of lose a slight subtle bit of you know comfort and yeah, I don't know if the performance really matters that much.
01:39:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
To most people it's.
01:39:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's more about how that's what it is, finish kind of.
01:39:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But yeah, this was the problem, java. Right, you know, it's like it looks like an app sort of you know, like it does technically run everywhere, but you know, wasn't perfect.
01:39:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know, the only people who care about cross-platform are the developers. Customers just wanted to run on their thing. Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
01:39:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't care. Look, if something makes the developer's life easier and that may result in a better product because they're not stuck on, you know platform specifications, that's great.
01:39:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I had a great conversation with a guy's building the United app, because they were doing native iOS and Android and their big problem was synchronizing deployment of versions. Right, because a feature would come out on the Apple one first and the Android people would lose their minds.
01:40:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You should tell them about Duolingo, because they don't care about that. So I go back and forth between iOS and Android and Duolingo. Let me tell you something. These apps are completely different and there was a feature I had when I was using the iPhone for a big chunk of last year. My wife's on Android and I was saying, hey, this thing, and she's like I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, yeah, I showed her. She's like, yeah, I don't have that. And she did get it, but it took like I think, seven months or something.
01:40:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It was a long time.
01:40:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're not aligned at all. They don't even pretend they're aligned, so that that's one way to do it.
01:40:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know, I don't. It's just can you afford two different teams doing native development?
01:40:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
At least two Right Three. Yeah, it's nice if you can have one team doing one code base you know, if that makes sense, yeah.
01:40:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's the challenge. It is a challenge All right, all right.
01:40:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, okay, yeah, all right, okay, okay, yeah, all right. So I guess, at this point, I should just say hey, hey everybody how you doing, enjoying the show. Yeah, guess what? The xbox segment's just around the corner, but, and it's a beast, and it's a beast. But I just want to say hi, you're, you're watching, buddy. Hey, buddy, how you doing you're watching what show, buddy? Hey, buddy, how you doing You're watching. Should I show the thing that we've been working on in the behind the scenes.
01:41:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now's the time you got it right.
01:41:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, it's not the end, it's just the beginning. Okay, I'm just saying it's not the end, it's just the beginning.
01:41:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The disconnected arms are a little weird. Well, they're going to emerge. They're going to emerge. It's like you've stuck your hand into a baby, that's all folks Wow.
01:41:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That really is all that's it. This is what AI is about, right now, what did you do this with?
01:41:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't do it with anything. Pretty Fly for Assist Guy did it and it's got the chat gpt logo on it, so I'm guessing chat gpt tools were used. Yeah, and then I used iMovie to freeze frame it a few times so there you go yeah, okay. Oh, he says sora, oh yeah. Yeah, that's a chat.
01:42:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Gpt, yeah all right, we'll now turn it into like a tyrannosaurus rex comes from the background, grabs leo and like shakes him like a rag doll, you gotta go, you gotta go onwards to the xbox segment.
01:42:32
My friends, yeah, so charitably. I can't say this has been a great year for xbox. Um, there have been there are more layoffs coming. I think I've alluded to this or you mentioned it outright. I've heard now this has been pushed back to july because of end of year stuff, plus timing around the big show they had a week must be terrible for the employee.
01:42:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I haven't seen him this more demoralized since, like 2011 yep.
01:42:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So microsoft had the big game Xbox game showcase. They revealed these Xbox ally, ally ally, sorry, handheld gaming handhelds we have to call them that Triggering a bunch of speculation. There's been a lot of talk, from Phil Spencer especially, and then rumors and then leaks right that give us various ideas about where things are going. And my conclusion from all this, coming into last week, was, I think that the next generation platform, xbox platform, is going to be based on Windows. It's going to be a PC, it's going to run this lighter version of Windows with the Xbox app front end. It's going to integrate with all your stores and for this to make sense, there's going to have to be some degree of backwards compatibility with your Xbox apps, meaning your console games. Rather, I should say and I don't know how that works. I don't know if there are licensing issues there, but here's what I do know Previous two console gens were AMD-based. They're basically PC platforms. So this might not be that difficult and by doing this, microsoft can offload the unprofitable part of this business to partners who maybe can be more successful with it. It can scale the platform better. The big strength of the PC obviously is you can get a low-end PC and have one experience. But you graphic card RAM, all the stuff and awesome, you know, 4k, ray tracing, et cetera, et cetera.
01:44:20
I've had people complain to me that you me that consoles are a thing and PCs are a thing and never the twain shall meet. But that's not really paying attention to the way that consoles have evolved over the years. You don't release a console, do nothing to it and then wait seven or eight years and release a new one. Go back to the Xbox 360, which launched with 720p video support and then 1080i and then 1080p, and Xbox One, which went to the S and then to the X with 4K sort of 4K, but improved graphics over the time, not just cost reductions, not just nicer designs, but also improved specs. And then we move forward to Xbox Series X and S, and they released two at the same time different tiers right and S, and they released two at the same time, different tiers, right. That's very much like a PC. By the way, it's a simplified form of that model. It's all in-house, microsoft still controls the platform, et cetera, et cetera. But things are shifting right. Sony's done similar things with their PlayStation, their Pro models, et cetera.
01:45:21
So to me, microsoft's big strength in gaming from a platform perspective is Windows, and I've experienced this. I stopped using the Xbox console. I've been playing games on PCs. It's a lot better, not perfect. I may or may not have mentioned this, but I think I told this story. I was on phone rang playing a game over here on this console or this laptop doing work on this laptop. The phone, the phone notification thing, comes up on both computers over the game. By the way, lowering the volume of this should never happen when you're playing a game. Right now, the Xbox platform, microsoft's making for these handholds and apparently now, as we'll discuss, for everything would never allow that. That's the part of that platform is you don't have that stuff. It's not doing all those background things. It's Windows, but it's been stripped of all the UI, all the background stuff. You're just playing the game.
01:46:15
So yesterday, out of the blue, microsoft released a one-minute video which should have no content whatsoever Sarah Bond announcing a partnership with AMD for next gen silicon. Over multiple years, multiple device types, but they've been partnering with AMD for years. This is really an expansion of that. It's not really new, but anyway. So this to me verifies everything I just said, which was mostly speculation but based on information, right? Um, this thing is for uh, this partnership is about next gen hardware, meaning silicon, that amd and microsoft will co-engineer specifically for this new xbox multi-year.
01:47:00
I said for consoles and gaming handhelds very explicitly Microsoft making those things right or Microsoft being the platform maker. Anyway. She mentions compatibility with existing game libraries. I pointed that one out before. This is one you have to be a little bit careful with, because Microsoft has the best backward compatibility story in the industry on consoles.
01:47:25
That took a lot of work, and so where we are today is every game that can be brought forward from OG Xbox has been. We're done with that. The Xbox 360 titles. That was a different platform, remember, this is PowerPC, totally different. So, yeah, we Microsoft has had to emulate that stuff to get it to work. But we are also at the point where every game that could come out of the 360 era has been brought forward. That's we're done.
01:47:53
So what we have left is Xbox one and Xbox series X and S, and I'm going to make the claim that I think these are the same console generation. I and I'm going to make the claim that I think these are the same console generation. They're both based on AMD. There may be exceptions to this, but by and large if you create a game that works on Xbox One, it works on Series X and S. Most new games, even to today not all, but especially for the last several years would come out on both Like it would be Xbox One X and S. This, to me, is part of the same thing and as we move forward now with AMD, again that's going to help that compatibility story.
01:48:30
So if you're an Xbox person, meaning you have a console, you bought games, you may play some games on PC too, whatever. But console the stuff that you bought, hopefully digitally, but whatever, uh, xbox one or newer, pretty much guaranteed to run like that's going to work. The old stuff it's going to be what we have today, I think to some degree like, uh, the xbox 360, slash power, pc stuff, whatever's there is there. Hopefully most of it comes forward. I don't know if there are licensing issues in there, but it's possible.
01:49:02
Yeah, that's part of it but then they talk about so compatibility with existing game libraries very explicitly xbox not, not windows, right, right, um, they also talk about multiple stores. This is something very common and just typical to the pc space. This is not a thing on consoles, right. Consoles are walled gardens, including Xbox. That doesn't mean it couldn't change, but I think the way it changes is you make the console a PC and then you have Steam, you have Epic Games, you have whatever other game libraries. There were leaked screenshots showing that being the case. Like Microsoft is working on that, but it's this quote that really kind of puts it over the top. She said that Xbox was working closely with the Windows team to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for games. That's interesting. You're talking about Xbox. Why would you be making Windows the number one games platform? Because Windows is the games platform. It is the platform that will be the Xbox. Yeah, it's always been the same kernel, yeah, so this is one minute.
01:50:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The question mark here, Paul, is ARM versus AMD.
01:50:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, 100%. So, addressing that, there's nothing in this to suggest that ARM is part of this. Yeah, but I would also say there's nothing in this to suggest that it is not.
01:50:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, that it couldn't be in the future. That's right. Basically building a model for a third-party construction of devices.
01:50:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Part of this is timing. We've talked about this. Arm just kind of isn't there in the PC space yet. But NVIDIA is coming with their graphics. Mediatek, amd's known to be working on ARM chips. Amd, we'll see Qualcomm will release a second gen elite chip and it will have better graphics. That's going to be one of the big focuses for this generation, so it may just be a matter of timing. So for right now we have third-party partner Asus. We'll have others next year. We'll have Xbox, probably next year, doing these portable devices, which will be x64 almost certainly.
01:51:02
But when you think about the future, where ARM makes the most sense is portable. So if these gaming handhelds are a big deal and are persistent and work well, sell well, I should say it would actually make sense, given, assuming, I should say, all of the platform improvements have occurred and that one of the requirements to you as a developer for targeting this new Xbox platform that's really Windows, that get it into the store and get it on these devices that are really PCs, is it has to run an ARM2. That's an easy, that's a checkbox and a compiler thing. I mean you want to test it and all that stuff, but I mean it's not that difficult. It's not. You're not bridging major. This platform bridge has already occurred, like it's not. You're not bridging major. This platform bridge has already occurred. Like it's not a brand new thing, not really. So that's still a possibility to me and I think it does make most sense for for portable Now, you know, in the home, in the living room, whatever it is, whatever.
01:51:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean I, you can debate. Yeah, as long as you got fixed power, you don't really care.
01:51:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It doesn't yeah, but you care. It doesn't yeah, but you. But you want the compatibility, you want the performance to hit a certain heat's not coming from the cpu, it's coming from the gpu yep, yep. So the one thing we haven't seen on an s, an rmsoc yet is discrete graphics, and I feel like this conversation will be very different a year from now, not necessarily because of this, but, um, nvidia is going to enter this market. We're going to see like something's going to happen in this space. There's just no doubt about it.
01:52:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, um, so we'll see how that nothing being said here that impairs that happening right but I do think it is a matter of timing.
01:52:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think they've been treading water for maybe too long. It's why phil spencer and others say against arms.
01:52:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Specifically, qualcomm is chip production. They don't have enough chips to suddenly need a yeah, you know 20 million handhelds.
01:52:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They couldn't produce those chips this is the other reason, right? So this is another reason why you know someone might say well, if xbox is unsuccessful selling hardware, why on earth would lenovo, hp or whoever the hardware makers might be want to make these things either? But but it's because you got to remember, Microsoft doesn't sell a lot of anything when it comes to hardware. So they're the biggest company in the world, but Lenovo is the biggest PC maker in the world. They have 20, 25% of the market. Hp is number two, Dell's number three. These companies get volume discounts on components and also get first dibs on them, and that is something that can a help them get to market quicker and cheaper than Microsoft ever could. But also potentially, uh, because there'll be multiple companies introduce uh, competition. There'll be different. You know, tiers of these devices, certainly, and uh, that will hopefully, you know, lead, we'll see, but we'll lead to lower prices as well.
01:53:40
You know, when Microsoft comes out with an Xbox, it's like yeah, this is kind of a, it's kind of us doing our thing here. It's not. You know, we can't. Really there's not a lot of ways to save money unless we just want to make something that's terrible, Whereas Lenovo could be like oh, we can get a million of these things Like no problem. So I'm excited about this. I I it. It's tantalizing because it confirms some things, but also because it leaves so much like there's still there's still so many open questions, so I think they would just throw us a little lifeline here. Like we know, it's been quiet. This is probably going to be some bad news, but we've got, we're still forging ahead on next gen hardware and, explicitly, consoles and gaming handles, so to me, this is super exciting.
01:54:28
Yeah, no, it's all good news. Yes, so, given this, this Xbox ally thing that Microsoft is doing in partnership with Asus is, I think, the first peak we have at what that will look like. Right, this is explicitly going to run PC games. It's not going to run Xbox games unless, by the way, something changes. We'll see but for now, pc games.
01:54:48
So Microsoft has a site on there I think it's the Microsoft developer site where they are explaining to developers what this platform is and how it differs from PCs. You know how it might be better, worse and different, whatever. And here again you see two tiers, right, better processor and the more expensive one. More RAM, faster RAM too, by the way, more storage, but also Thunderbolt 4 versus just USB on the other one, and that kind of thing. So there's again, we're doing that tiered thing, which is very PC. But they have all these APIs that I have never even heard of that are all about making Windows gaming more like a console experience, right, obviously, controller support and all that stuff, and then the not just controller but all the accessibility interfaces and all that kind of thing. But they have, you know, game saves, offline support, cross-platform offline, you know. Or a game save, you know. Game saves offline support, cross-platform offline, you know. Or a game save, you know. Game continuation support, et cetera, et cetera, like this.
01:55:47
This is not all brand new. It didn't just appear yesterday so they could do this system. This has been around for a while. But this is you know why. It's a little bulky and terrible now. But when I open a laptop to play Call of Duty but maybe I played on this other laptop last time it syncs over the cloud and I pick up where I was and I go right, it actually does work. I think Xbox Play Anywhere is going to be a requirement of this and the point of that's going to be Xbox, pc are the same. It's easy, it's just going to be. We're going to make it stupid easy. Like every game will be Xbox Play Anywhere, because, yeah, so I feel like it's coming together. I, you know, but it's Xbox, so you know, it's like, like I wish it would just kind of happen. But I think they're stuck between a, a rock and a rock, I guess is the way I would say it. But they're trying, okay.
01:56:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, but now we get back to that Blizzard acquisition and that whole. This is about mobile gaming and we immediately thought phone and maybe it was. They've always had a vision of building a handheld Xbox device and they were going to need to build out popular titles in that space and Blizzard had a big chunk of that.
01:56:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Look, I understand to some degree that nothing can happen instantaneously, but I do find it bizarre how much time has passed and there has been no movement at all on any Microsoft or I call it Xbox franchise, microsoft game studios franchises coming to mobile, coming cross platform, you know like what it will. It will happen over time, like there'll probably be be. Uh, you know the the new gears has been pushed back that Brad made this point this morning. Xbox showcase great, but there was no, nothing. Halo, nothing. Well, gears, just to say, oh, it's coming.
01:57:30
Well, there's a remaster of the first game, but the new one next year. All the big stuff is next year, which is really interesting because that's when this new thing is going to come out and what they want for that is to actually have new games, new big games that people actually care about. But I would like to see those things. You know you're going to remaster Gears or the original Halo, like they're about to do again. That should be on iPad, that should be on the phone. You know it should be. Why is this thing not everywhere?
01:57:58
It's kind of bizarre to me.
01:57:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And now, you're rethinking user interfaces too, right?
01:58:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I know, but they've had a lot of experience with that. I mean, that's, you know, game streaming has given them the opportunity to do things like add overlays for touch to what are essentially console games, and that stuff is actually pretty successful. Not for me, because I can't even type on a phone. I'm never going to play a game like that. But you could connect a controller to it to it it would work fine. Yeah, um, you know, it's those. Listen, I said my ipad probably has better graphics on my computer. I mean, it could do it.
01:58:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's no doubt about it, oh, without a doubt, and especially an m-class ipad like those are extraordinary machines. They can do incredible things. You just got to get devs to actually build for the platform, which they've not been doing, which is kind of interesting because it's hard. Yeah, again, that's a totally different chipset, that's a different user interface. That's a tough play, yeah, and on a device that notoriously you don't pay for stuff on.
01:58:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I mean the other right. So Microsoft can help simplify life for developers in some ways by making Xbox Windows right. So this is a known quantity. Everyone understands it. Now it's going to work everywhere. There's a couple of requirements you got to do controller and blah, blah, blah, whatever, but that will be easy. That might free up resources for that kind of thing, but it also gives them a marketing line for those developers who at this point might be like I don't know if supporting Xbox makes a lot of sense. It seems like you guys aren't doing great over there, but now you can say well, it's a pc yeah, which is again always been true since the 360 yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, right that I don't know 360 and ps3.
01:59:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Both went to custom silicon and both came out the other side going. That was a mistake, yeah right, yeah, so interesting.
01:59:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean I I don't know anything about that end of it, like I don't know what it means, to what it would be like to try to develop a game on a Sony place.
01:59:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I have no idea, or even you write your game on the PC and then you test it on the platform. Right, that's the dev cycle.
01:59:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and Xbox, same deal. I mean, I know the platform is essentially common. It's more of a fixed the console side. But I don't, I don't know what that looks like. I've never done it, I've never seen it, so I'm not really sure.
02:00:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But I have to think that this one it's not that far from mobile development, except a little less painful, because the everything's faster. You don't. You're not going out to the cloud if you don't need to, but it is that I'm writing on a different machine than I'm running on right, but now it should be very easy.
02:00:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know, if you're in visual studio today and you are doing a cross platform app, you can run something in an emulator. I mean, yeah, windows would be even easier. It's like, just run this app. They tend not to emulate, they have to just push the device, just play it. You know, yeah, you just play and everyone has one.
02:00:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Like it's just not that expensive, right? You spent more on the pc, you did on the big device anyway, so you're making your changes. Then you do a push, then you grab the controller and go for a while and then you that's a. That's a fun little process, yeah, but it's, you know, development.
02:00:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like stabbing yourself in the eye, except it takes longer and hurts more yep, okay, uh, let me blow through the rest of this so we can get to the back of the book. Stuff um, game pass it's the past. The middle of the month we get a bunch of stuff. Warcraft Pass it's the past. The middle of the month We've got a bunch of stuff. Warcraft 1, 2, and 3 remastered. Call of Duty, world War 2, which actually was.
02:01:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I really liked it it was a good version yeah.
02:01:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, rise of the Tomb Raider classic. That one I don't want to say I've almost finished it, but I've played it a lot and it's one of those games like it's on everything, it's on the mac, it's. You know, it's everywhere, but it's a good one. Crash, uh, bandit coot 4.
02:01:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So there's a bunch of stuff. There's a lot of blizzard titles here, man, like it's happening finally slowly. Yeah, it's been more than a year, year and a half later and here we are, a bunch of warcrafts like this is good news, yeah it's, it's fine everything's fine.
02:01:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, if you're a mine Minecraft fan, definitely check out the updates that were just released. There's the Vibrant Visuals update we talked about, probably back in March.
02:01:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, is that out now?
02:01:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, I love that yeah this is that big graphical update. You have to have the Bedrock Edition, xbox Series X and S. One to the previous conversation, playstation 4 and 5, android, ios and PC. There's a new they call it a drop, but I guess I would call it DLC called chase the skies. The big thing here there's a bunch of new things, but the big one is there's a new. What are they calling it? It's like a floating carpet, that flying mount, so you can fly over the world and you know that opens up.
02:02:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you could always do that, but now you've got something. But now there's a formal yeah, there's a thing you can actually write um.
02:02:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So it's kind of fun and I this one's bizarre to me, but it was. This game has now been optimized for xbox series and x and s. It's like guys, are you kidding me? So I guess it was just xbox one before and it just worked fine, but now it's actually optimized. If you have an x, a new xbox, newer, newer Xbox and this is something I just looked into I loaded Steam on my Mac to see because I have this big game library on there. So if I don't remove the number, but if I have like 40 games to the PC, I think I have four for the Mac.
02:02:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not good, it's depressing.
02:02:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But it's not also, I guess, Steam itself. The app is not native on Apple Silicon.
02:03:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It will be. It's in beta now kind of has to be because they're phasing out. Oh, that's right, they're gonna. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they're gonna that's true.
02:03:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're gonna phase out rosetta too, so, um, that's happening. It's not going to improve the game compatibility thing. That's kind of a bigger issue yeah, that's just the front end, it's not the game yeah, that would seems to me like Apple would have to invest in this because obviously Steam well Valve, which makes Steam has their big investment in Steam Deck and Linux and they've done a lot of work to get their game library on Linux right.
02:03:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That made a lot of games available on Linux.
02:03:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, they did a really good job with that. So something like that would have to happen on the Mac for that to start making sense. I mean the Mac probably I don't really know, but I think the Apple Silicon stuff has really good graphics.
02:03:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They really want game developers. They're pushing, pushing, pushing.
02:03:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know, nobody seems to.
02:03:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nobody's interested. I mean, if you want a new.
02:03:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Markdown editor. It's the way to you know it's the way to go. But other than that, like I, it's great it's Markdown. Yeah, it's great for that. If you have Markdown calendar, oh yeah.
02:04:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We got 38 of those, you know.
02:04:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Do you have halo? No, there's no. No, no, yeah, not an apple.
02:04:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So again, sorry, Okay, we're going to pause just briefly and then get to the tips and the apps and the run as and, of course, the brown liquor. But I do want, uh, the membership isn't growing as much as I would really like to see it grow. Uh, we've kind of stalled at a very good number 12,000 plus or minus uh members, which is fantastic. I mean, that's as big as probably anybody. But I know there are more of you who are not yet members of the club and I don't know what I can do to encourage you to join. I'd really like to get you in. Here's the story About four years ago we created Club Twit because this was in the midst of COVID.
02:04:54
The advertising was dropping off and we kind of freaked out, to be honest, and said we got to supplement that missing revenue somehow or we're going to have to cut back. We weren't able to do enough, as you know. We closed the studio, we had to cancel shows, we let go of some of our most beloved employees. It was a tough, tough time for us, but the club came through and we got it to the point now we're stable. Club revenues are about 25% of our operating budget, so that's good. I mean, without that we'd have to cut another 25%. It's $10 a month. We did raise the price. It is $120 a year. Of course, if you're a member, don't quit, because you can keep your legacy price for as long as you stay a member. So that's the good news. I think 10 bucks is pretty fair. Here's what you get Ad-free versions of all the shows.
02:05:43
I've always been one of those people who hates it when they charge you money and then still show you ads. That's no good. We don't do that to you. What we do is we give you some extra value no ads, but access to the Club Twit Discord featuring me in a jumpsuit. No, that's just a joke. But we do a lot of events this evening. For instance, six o'clock Mic micah's gonna do his crafting corner a really nice chill space. He does lego. Uh, I will go in there maybe, if I get a chance, and do some vibe coding. There's knitting, there's painting, there's baking. 6 pm pacific.
02:06:20
Tonight I do want to mention we're going to do a chat room special for club members on june 25th with Home Theater Geeks. Scott loves talking to the chat room and so he'll be talking to the Discord. Get in there as a club member and you can talk with him, ask your questions right after Intelligent Machines. It's a week from tomorrow. That'll be really cool, that'll be really fun.
02:06:44
We are putting together, I think, a very interesting double header on the 27th. A good friend of mine, long time, one of my best friends for years, like 40 years Norman Maslow, has a YouTube channel called Mazzy's Music. It's all about vinyl, but we also interviewed a couple of weeks ago a guy on Intelligent Machines who wrote a book all about the advent of digital music and MPp3s. So we're going to get them together talk about the future of music, both vinyl and digital. That'll be starting at noon on june 27th uh, noon pacific and we'll go for a couple hours. That should be really interesting.
02:07:25
Uh, friday, june 11th or july 11th. We're not going to do it on the 4th of july, so it'll be the second friday of july for our ai users group. More vibe coding last time we did a bunch of vibe coding and created a twit, or we talked about creating a twit app. Several people have done it. We're going to talk about that and a lot more. I also would like to do image design uh, hands-on tech has its monthly recording. Our photo time is back in July. The assignment is quirky, so we have some.
02:07:53
This is all special programming we do in the club, just for you. We do make it available a month after we do it in the club. So you get club access for the first month, and boy, we sure would like you to come on in. Do we have a free trial, patrick? Is that true? Or are you just pulling my leg? I don't know. I'll tell you what. Here's how you find out twittv slash club twit.
02:08:20
Go to that webpage. All the details are there. There are family plans, there are business plans, there's a yearly plan as well. It makes a huge difference to us in terms of our ability to do what we do. We need the club. Yeah, there is a 14-day free trial. Well, that's cool For new members. Only, if you haven't yet joined the club, you're not sure if it's worth it. Take advantage of the two-week free trial. Twittv slash club twit. That's awesome. Thank you, patrick, for filling me in on that. I must have missed that meeting or I was asleep. Anyway, back to the show. We go. It's time for the back of the book. Paul Theriot, kick things off for us. Yes, where are we? Where are we?
02:09:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We are here. Where are you? Who am I? You know JFK, oh yeah, so I don't know what I'm talking about. So one of the things I've been railing about for the past two years almost is Microsoft auto-enabling folder backup from OneDrive on me, and I've always hated this. It's, when it happens, reverse it and then I have to go to those couple of folders and delete the stupid shortcuts it creates and delete the crap it put up in OneDrive, and it's just inerrant. But since I've been home from Mexico, I've gotten in several review laptops and I had this day where the first time it was three laptops all at the same time, just auto-enabled folder backup, and so I started to like, oh, here I go. And then I've had there were four more since then and I was like you know what?
02:09:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is such a Paul problem.
02:09:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm going to give it. Well, I'm going to explain why. Maybe it isn't. So I'm like I'm just going to live with this, I'm going to deal with it, I'm just going. What could go wrong? I sometimes forget, I know it irritates me on some level, but is there some? It's syncing desktop documents and pictures to OneDrive. Is this a problem?
02:10:21
One of the things I did about a year and a half ago was I moved all of my content out of those folders in OneDrive. I created a root level Paul folder, created a folder structure under there, put it all in there, so at least it's not going to commingle with my stuff as it would for most normal people. So I already did that and I don't want stuff syncing necessarily, but okay, but that's just whatever. And what I discovered was that actually what Microsoft is doing is wrong, like on so many levels. It's even worse than I thought. So there's a whole discussion.
02:10:47
This is in the article. I'm not going to go through the whole thing here, but like what, what is your desktop folder and what is its namespace name? You know, fully qualified path. There's four versions of it. When it does this, four different views for it it's that's insane. But there are things like uh, there are badly written apps. The Adobe apps do this. Uh, of Duty does this. By the way, that writes synchronization data and probably configuration data of whatever kind to your documents folder for some reason. So, like when I go on this computer, I don't think this one is synced yet. Yeah, it's brand new.
02:11:21
There's a whole list of stuff that's syncing to every single computer and syncing actually introduces a variable that could be unreliable. So in the case of Call of Duty, I mentioned this thing where I open the lid and I start playing and it synced from over there. That's in a best case scenario. A lot of times I actually get sync errors and it's because of this activity where it's trying to sync through OneDrive, even though it's not designed to do that, and it's like a Microsoft app. It's like what are you doing?
02:11:48
So there are things like syncing like pictures is actually kind of problematic. So I take a lot of screenshots. This is a Paul problem, but if you take a screenshot in Windows, it has whatever file name screenshot 01, screenshot 02. But if I go to another computer and I take a screenshot there, if it's syncing that folder, it looks at whatever the last screenshot is, and it makes it four or five, six, and then I go back to this computer and then it's seven, eight, nine. This one's in dark mode, that's one in light mode.
02:12:16
These ones are config, whatever the they're all. They're just like. You know what I mean. They're just all over the place, like it's. They have nothing to do with each other. I've had to delete the screenshots from this folder three or four times, maybe four times now. Um, this is a bunch of other stuff, but this is actually really. This is just really bad behavior. I, aside from the obvious, they should ask and then, when you say no, they should respect your choice, like I, there are things Microsoft could do to make this elegant and make sense for everyone. And they're just lazy. And I, I, I, it, it, it's. I don't like it on my own level, but I also, now that I've been using it, I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not doing this. This is what I, what I was doing before, was right. This is bad. And I look I, yeah, okay, I'm a power user, maybe, but I have a very explicit configuration. I would like windows to just respect it. Understand that I am backing everything up, don't worry about it.
02:13:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's none of your business.
02:13:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I came back from build One of the things I did this is now. This is a month ago, right. I went to the build website after the fact and I downloaded I don't remember the number 37 videos so I could watch the session videos which I been doing over time because of the way I work. I put that folder on my desktop right, which then synced to every single one of my computers and I review a lot of laptops and so some number of days with just got wasted some number, right, it's not like they're syncing machine, the machine, they're going up and down and you know, like, like, whatever.
02:13:49
So some number of days later I was doing something on some computer, brought it up, installing apps, what I was doing, and that folder appeared on my desktop and I was like, oh, like that's not good. So it's like, don't give into big tech. That's all I'm saying. Just don't do it. Um, the other one this is going to sound like it's not Windows related, but I'm going to bring it home.
02:14:13
Prime Day is coming up in July, early July. It's going to be four days long. This month, tied to this, prime Gaming, which we have talked about every month, gives away games for free, and this month they're doing it again and it's actually fairly impressive. So haven't done this. If you're, if you have prime, go to gamingamazoncom, sign in the stuff that I see here now, right in the top, that you can get for free. Uh, tomb raider, one through three, remastered, I think four through six were also in there at one point. Saints road two, um, star wars, rebellion I'm not seeing a lot of this because I've already redeemed a lot of these games, right? What's interesting about this is we talked about. These are Windows games, right, so they could come from, depending on the game, xbox slash, microsoft store, good old gamescom, gogcom, epic Games Store and possibly, and Prime too, actually from Amazon. So if I click on Tomb Raider and I say get, get game, and I go through this, I get a code and this one goes to good old game, so I have to sign in there and I add it to my library. But this is the benefit of the PC. This is the thing we were talking about earlier, which is why this new Xbox platform is going to be so great, because there are companies like Epic games that gives away a couple of games a month, I think, which is fantastic, but Amazon gives away a lot of games, like a lot of games. If you have not done this or haven't done it recently, go do this now. It's impressive and because of this Prime Day thing, they're having a big promotion, so this is absolutely worth doing.
02:15:46
And then, on app pick side, uh, two things real quick again, not going to sound like windows, but hold on, it is, um, Camtasia makes two, uh, really famous products that they make more than two, but the two that everyone knows about are Camtasia and Snagit. Snagit is a screenshot utility that we always used to use back in the day when we were making books that were printed on paper as we used to do things. But there are free tools now and a lot of people use other things. But Camtasia is a video creation and editing suite that's especially tuned to doing things like presentations and screen captures and that kind of thing. These products are really good, but they're also kind of expensive.
02:16:25
And so now there's a new version of Camtasia for the web called Camtasia Online, which is optimized for, you know, 1080p screen recordings on a computer. Now it's limited to five minutes, but the point of that is it's for that thing, like you're trying to demonstrate something very specific, and you can just take that file. There's no watermark or anything. You can put it in your editor, you can make multiple versions whatever. You can put it in your editor, you can make multiple versions whatever.
02:16:50
If, for some reason, this isn't good enough. You know Clipchamp is built into Windows. That does. I think it's 30 minutes on screen recording. I looked that one up or something like OBS Studio, which is what I use for hands-on Windows, but very technical and kind of difficult to use Like this is kind of a cool thing and it kind of ties into their desktop product. So if you do have the desktop version of Camtasia, they integrate together and you can do further uh things there. But there's a lot of editing tools and all kinds of capabilities there. Also, on the periphery of the PC space, adobe released a mobile or two mobile versions of their Firefly app, firefly being their in-house AI stuff for Android and iPhone. So the idea here is that you are a creator who has is inspired on the go, like you're out in the world and you're like, oh my God, I want to make this thing. I want to make a like, a generative.
02:17:42
AI image or a video, you can do it on your phone and then, when you get back to your house or wherever your laptop, you open up whatever product using from adobe could be firefly, literally, or photoshop, or premiere pro, whatever it might be and then that video or image is available in your library and you can work with it further from there. You could use it on your phone too. I mean, I know there are people or creators who do videos and edit videos and post videos and all that stuff right from their phone. God bless you. My eyes are not good enough for that, but you could use it in that regard. But if you haven't used Firefly, you do technically need a subscription. I think you get some kind of limited use if you don't pay for whatever subscriptions Firefly subscription, the Creative Cloud subscriptions as well. So if you just get, like Photoshop subscription, you would get it as part of that too. But the quality of the images Is it good? It's fantastic. And the thing is this you're indemnified when you use this. These are known to be not infringing on anything and if anyone were to complain, adobe will have your back. So if you're worried about getting sued because someone sees an image and you're like oh, it looks a lot like my product. Adobe's going to be like nope, it does not. And this is all.
02:18:56
They have an amazing library of content as well, so you can speak into it with a prompt. You can give it a starter image. There's different ways to do it, but I asked it. So the image I used at the top of the page is me describing the Windows XP wallpaper, and at least one of those images is nicer than that photo that came in Windows XP. It's hysterical, it's beautiful. I used it later. I made a version of it with Firefly originally, and then I put it into the. I think it might have been paint actually Paint, or photos, but I used it as styles where you can say, make like a renaissance watercolor or whatever, and I'm using that as my wallpaper now and all my competitors gorgeous, this is gorgeous they're really.
02:19:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean they had to do this because there's so many other companies doing.
02:19:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean this is their space right? Like you know, they're like we have to get this right and look, adobe is expensive, I get that, but they're also trusted and used broadly in this space.
02:19:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's also one of those things where you're already spending the money. You bought Photoshop through Creative Cloud or Illustrator or whatever one you use, and now the suite is just getting better.
02:20:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, this is the rationale for a co-pilot in Microsoft 365. It's the, you know, although they charge for that, but yeah, if you're already, yeah, if you're paying for this stuff, yeah, of course you want this, you know it's amazing, I have a subscription.
02:20:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's so easy to have.
02:20:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know how it did it, but I no-transcript was signed in and. I'm like I don't know how I was signed in. I actually to this moment do not know. I would think it was my Android phone. Yeah, I don't know how it did it. I was like how do you know? Usually they're so weird about it Like I was signed into my account.
02:20:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it did work. It worked fine. It's so funny I've canceled and re-signed up so many times with Adobe. Yeah, because I just resent.
02:21:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So yeah, some time ago I signed up for this. They've gotten in trouble for this, although it's never been rectified. You sign up for some tier of the creative club? Oh yeah, this is so interesting.
02:21:10
It's X number of dollars per month. And you're like you know what? I'm not really getting the value out of this I wanted. And you go back and they're like, oh no, you can leave. You owe 800 and whatever dollars for the rest of the year that you agreed to pay. And you're like, whoa, what are you talking about? All the time. And they're like, no, you have to pay for it. But that's how it works. If you, so you get through the year. Once you do that, then you can come and go. So you have to give them that, you have to give them the year in that year. But once you do that, you can. You can move tears and you can. You can just cancel it.
02:21:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know it's fine but you gotta get after they've extracted their pound of flesh yeah exactly, I have, uh, so many different image generators and I've used so many.
02:21:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't I you know, but I'm always looking at what's new and what's different and what's better, right.
02:21:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Exactly Cause it's going to and it changes over time, you know you don't like to have stolen any of the art. I should actually I should say too sorry to interrupt. When you use Adobe, yeah, when use Adobe, yeah, when you use Adobe, they actually the two top level choices for images are image or whatever. But then the other one's photorealistic, and the the photorealistic ones are like yikes, like they're actually really, really good.
02:22:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, wow, you get 10. I have 10 of 10 monthly complimentary generations of generative.
02:22:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, there you go. So. Yeah, yeah that generations of generative.
02:22:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, there you go, so yeah, so you can actually use it. Yeah, that's good. That's, that's probably enough for most people, right? It's certainly enough to figure out if you want to use it like it's. Yeah, it's good.
02:22:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, all right, richard, you are on my friend um, another show from build, one of many I picked up while I was there with my friend, bob ward. So luxurious to be in person, I think we just enjoyed chilling and talking. Of course, he is one of the great SQL guys. He's been in that team for forever 20 something plus years, since the early days of SQL Server and there's a new version of SQL Server that went into preview during build SQL Server 2025. And, of course, if you're wondering when the ship date is, we know the pattern for Microsoft. They're pretty consistent It'll ship in the quote unquote Ignite timeframe, which would be November.
02:23:16
But how does a pay for database still live in this day and age of lots of free data storage all over the place? And they've just kept adding features. This is their enterprise AI version, so it's got direct support for vector data types. If you want to do rag and store it directly into your sql database, it's ready for that. It's got the ability to do rest api calls from within stored procedures out to various different providers, including open ai and others. So lots of power there. Um, it's a you know, great new version, without a doubt, and, uh, new icon too. That's important to you it is thank you.
02:23:56
So you know bob's been the credible source, or talking about sequels, every's written, all the books and he's. He's the guy, so it's all. It's all good, great to chat with him and, uh, you know, again, we had the luxury of being in person, so I had a good time with that.
02:24:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I am ready for a relaxing, refreshing sherry oak aged beverage.
02:24:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now we're talking. We're talking the original right. And now, why am I talking about McAllen today? Because normally I got it as a gift. This was my thank you for helping to emcee the DevSum conference in Stockholm last week. I've worked with Ulf and Tibby and those folks for years and years and they asked me if I would do the thing, and I always say yes, they're generous to me, I'm generous to them. I did not expect to get a bottle of whiskey. I am not unhappy to receive one Least of all the 2023 release of the Sherry Oak McAllen. This is just to. Let's put it on the table because it's important. It's a $400 bottle of whiskey Yikes, and that's a lot. Yeah, and it's awfully good. Like I'm just going to have a sip to warm up McAllen.
02:25:09
Oh man, mc mccallan. Mccallan is a legend. They literally call it the cognac of whiskeys. They you know this is the rolls royce of whiskeys. They've been around. It's cultish, it's weird. It's like the definitive space side. When people talk about space side whiskeys, they're probably talking about mccallan and for a lot of folks, it may not be your first whiskey ever, but the first time you spent too much money on a whiskey it was probably mcallen.
02:25:34
Now there has been a farm in that location for millennia. When the big new distillery was being built there on beside the existing distillery, they did a bunch of archaeological extractions and found barley growing going back to the mesolithic period right evidence of of stone age constructions, bronze age constructions, iron age constructions. This has been a great area for growing food literally for millennia. So when they talk about mccallallen starting in 1824, it's a lie. You know, that's just alexander reed who who had leased the land in 1819 but there was already a barley farm there he was leasing were a working farm. There's plenty of evidence to show there was whiskey being made the excess barley produced in that area back to the 1400s, as early as whiskey has existed. The original name of the distillery was the Eccles Distillery, named after Esther Eccles, which is a house that was built there again in the 1400s. The actual name, mcallen Estate is from 1543. And if you ever do the tour of the McAllen and I absolutely recommend you do, it's one of the very best uh, you will get a tour of the ester eccles building which is largely looks the way it was when his last major renovation was done in the 1760s. So this is super duper old school whiskey making kind of place.
02:27:08
The name mccallan is a mash-up of two gaelic words, mag being fertile ground and alan being local stream, unless you believe some of the other stories which is related to elan, which is the monks in philian who had a church on those grounds in the 1400s, because it's been a working site for millennia. So alexander reed ran it until he got too old to do so, got passed on to a few other folks. The big thing that happens with the mccallan is in 1892 and roderick kemp takes it over. He'd sold talisker over on the isle of sky and he sort of instituted all the modern whiskey practices with coal and railway and scaling up the distillery. This is also when they went big on sherry casking, because what McKellen has always been known for is being aged strictly in sherry casks. That's no longer true, but for literally 100 years they were using sherry casks, which means big 500 liter casks. Right, the punts from from Yanez are bigger than the typical barrels that they would make and that they use with bourbon.
02:28:16
So then Roderick passed away in 1909, but he had been wealthy enough that he set up a trust called the Kemp Trust, and that has a huge impact on what happens in McAllen, because 1909 is just before World War I and you think about every distillery battles from World War I to the end of World War II, between the two wars and the Great Depression and Prohibition. But McAllen didn't have a whole lot of problem. They had enough money. So what they did was they would cut back production based on what their current consumption was all throughout and what the availability grain was. But they got big into long duration aging before it was cool. They literally talked about doing 12-year plus agings in the 1930s. So even then you could buy a 12-year McAllen before almost anybody else had even put a age declaration on the bottle. So they and that's before they ever used the term single malt, because single malt doesn't show up until the Fittick folks think of it in the 1960s they don't.
02:29:19
Mccallum doesn't jump on board until the 1980s. Meantime they've built out their site bigger and bigger and they have literally a couple of dozen stills. It's a big, multi-million liter production, even in those early 60s and 70s when they largely switch over to steam, although their stills, their spirit stills, which are unusually small uh, were still powered by coal up until the past two thousands uh, so from a numbership perspective after the 1980s, so from an ownership perspective, after the 1980s 1986, suntory bought 25% of them. That got everybody a little anxious and so a few years later, highland Distillers took the rest and that ultimately, in 1990, gets merged into the Erdringen Group, which is famous grouse and Highland Park and a few others. And the Erdringen Group is interesting, like I might just have to do their story on their own at some point. But until now it's just been a sherry maker. It's not until 2004, which is when I started doing tours there that they started doing what everybody else does, which is using American bourbon casks Because they're very inexpensive, and then they would finish in sherry casks.
02:30:26
Now they called that version fine oak and you have to read the bottle very carefully to know that because it'll be in very small print on the bottom Fine oak series, although since 2018 they now call it triple cask matured. But this one says sherry oak cask for the reason it's been only aged in sherry and that is rare. It's not a common thing because the barrels are expensive, but the barrels are expensive. But the editing group is really smart and they made tight relationships with the sherry producers. You understand that over time sherry production has changed. The demand for barrels was so high when Kemp was making sherry caskings, it was because they were buying sherry and casks and just reusing them. But as the demand got higher and bottles got cheaper, the casks became rarer. And so, wisely, the Edgerton Group made a deal with sherry producers, not only to secure their own barrels, but they would actually have the barrels made and then casked in sherry and then they would use them to make their whiskey. They went even further than that. Today they actually make American oak casks and ship them to Yemen to do three years in sherry before being brought back to make into whiskey.
02:31:37
Today McAllen is in the top three, sometimes top two. It's Glen Fittick, glen Livick, mcallen. Their production facility is one of the biggest in the world. It does 15 million liters a year. It is massive 21 stainless washbacks, wooden swashbacks, all about 35 000 liters each, not particularly large, but many of them. They have 12 wash stills that are the normal sort of 12 000 liter size and 24 spirit stills, which are the smallest in the industry at 3,900 liters. They are crazy small and they are uniquely known for using these crazy small, to the point where in the 90s there was a version of the 10 pound Scottish note printed with those stills on the back. It's a very prized note now if you can find one they're rare. They were distributed to the employees at the time and I think one came up for auction for a couple of hundred pounds for a 10 pound note.
02:32:33
Mcallen stuck with direct fire on their stills right up until 2010, but only for the spirit stills, not for the wash stills. Now we all know why we don't do direct fire these days because stuff explodes when you're making alcohol. It's dangerous and so the normal is steam. But there's an argument that when you actually use heat on stills you create other compounds. So this is typical with the wash stills, which have all of the dregs and so forth, the draft in them and those get toasted because you have higher direct temperatures on that. That definitely conveys a temperature.
02:33:14
But McAllen switched their wash stills to steam in the 1970s when everybody else did. They kept their spirit stills initially fired with coal and then they moved to natural gas, and only when they were getting really scaling up in the 2004 to 2010 timeframe, did they started gradually switching all of the stills over to steam, which speaks to this sort of classic thing that people talk about, about older whiskeys better, but then the argument is it's produced differently. Now I also because I repeatedly visited the mcallen distillery, oh, in the early aughts and into the tens saw them build out the new facility, which was absolutely you massive, massive facility. They started in 2014 and finished in 2018. And they added huge amounts of barrel storage. Today they store over 200,000 barrels on site. There's bourbon casks in there now, but for a long time they're just a 500 liter sherry cask which are much larger than their traditional ones. But now they're also making American ale casks and they age them as well.
02:34:15
What makes Macallan such a legend? Besides making a pretty good whiskey, they know how to market and they got positioned in James Bond, specifically in the Daniel Craig Skyfall, where they used a Macallan Fine and Rare 1962 in it, which is actually a 15 year old whiskey. It just happened to have been bottled in 1977 after being distilled in 62. These are extremely rare. I don't know if skyfall drove up the price, but the last one we've seen an auction. They got 125 000 bucks for it and it was a reference to the 50th anniversary of james bond, because 1962 was the first James Bond movie doctor no, uh they.
02:34:51
Speaking of auction, mcallen has routinely broken the record for most expensive whiskey ever sold at auction. In 2007, a bottle of the 1926 sold for 54,000 bucks. Then in 2010, and we I talked about this one before the Le Lique Purdue, which was a custom crystal bottle with 64-year-old whiskey in it, sold for $460,000. In 2019, another 1926 sold at Sotheby's for 1.5 million pounds, that's 2 million US. And just a couple of years ago, in 23, the same kind of bottle sold for 2.1 million pounds that's almost 3 million US. But is it worth $400?
02:35:30
And I was really debating this because it's kind of a one-note whiskey. I mean, it's a very good one-note whiskey, but I wonder if it's me, because it's just sherry cask and virtually every whiskey you drink today has initially been aged in bourbon because the barrels are plentiful, and then finished in sherry because the barrels are not plentiful, and has that literally changed the way we like to taste whiskey? I'm not sure, but the sherry cask is kind of special and, like I said, mcallen makes both. You can go get their triple cask series and they tend to be less expensive by quite a bit. I think the fine oak version of the 18 is like $300 instead of $400 because of the barrel cost differences. It's kind of a big deal. But the older versions of this. So this is the 23 release, which is, I think, current.
02:36:18
A 2013 release of this goes for $800, if you can find one Now. That seems unreasonable. It's basically made the same way at that point in 2013, still aged in sherry casks, and it's not 400, for an 18 is pricey, no matter what you talk about. Like Glen Dronach makes an 18, which is a straight sherry casking, for about 200 US At 43%. It's nothing special. They probably chill filter because they say that. They don't say that they don't. They do not use color, which is fine. You know they don't need to. If you're going to be in share, you're going to get lots of color anyway. So why buy this? Well, you shouldn't I?
02:37:02
was wondering where that was going to go. You should, you should try it. You should have a friend who has one to try it once. So now you, you should have a friend who has one and try it once so now you know, go over to Richard's.
02:37:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're all invited, yeah.
02:37:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Or as a gift, which is exactly how I got it. You know what this is really for you. Like somebody, you want to buy them special and you don't know how much they actually like whiskey, because you can't not like this if you don't know how much it costs. That's right, but the other thing that's happened to me, because I've tried so many different whiskeys, is like for 400.
02:37:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a lot of other things I want to try yeah so there's no reason to get this one now you have on the, you've linked to the 2023 release yes, which is exactly what this is.
02:37:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is the 400 one. If you can again, if you can find one and I think it of the 18s, it's one of the most readily available. Where, like that glendronic 18 good luck finding one it's half the price. If you can find one, most places don't stock 18 year olds. When they do, they mark them up because if you're looking for that, it's because you're ready to spend money on a whiskey, right, like and 18 is kind of my limit for regular drinking whiskeys. Anyway, like, when you get much older than that, it gets much more complicated. Right, yeah, like they drink the 12 for and this is a one drink whiskey like for crying out loud. It's a lot of money 12 for crying out loud, you're gonna be really happy drinking it all.
02:38:25
By the way, the 12 is not cheap, right, it's still 150 drink the 12.
02:38:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look at those six years make what difference the other thing is which 12 like.
02:38:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Actually finding a 12 sherry is not that easy. It's typically the treble cask, which, again, none of these are bad. There's no bad whiskey here, right? I'm just talking about value and proposition. For somebody who's very knowledgeable about whiskey, they're going to be kind of underwhelmed about the Macallan 18 because it is super old school. The Macallan 18 Sherry is the way whiskey has been made for several hundred years, right? At least over 100. And so contemporary whiskeys are a little more complicated than that and people's expectations have moved. This is us, not them, and they are deliberately making a traditional whiskey. Because it is traditional, they make other whiskeys. If you want to drink Macallan it's a little more contemporary you can do it. Get their treble cask, yeah, but this is because you want it old school. So, as a gift makes total sense, do you need to keep it on your shelf? Nah, because you're going to keep it on your shelf. Nah, because you're gonna finish it.
02:39:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's awful good, don't make cocktails with it, but, oh my god, no yeah, no, no.
02:39:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And by the way, if somebody drinks your, your 18 and you weren't looking, uh, you're gonna be that, you're gonna be annoyed. Yeah, no, no. Two ways about that, definitely. And we are talking about edgerton, who owns it, who also makes famous grouse and cuddy sark and a bunch of other really great blends at really reasonable prices, like 20 bucks, and have Macallan in them. You know Macallan only got the single malt game in 1980. What do you think they were doing for the previous 200 years?
02:40:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They were going in blends and they still do to this day 200 years they were going in blends and they still do to this day, right? Mr matt, who lives in new york, uh, says there's a place in his neighborhood that has it on the menu for 127 a glass like for sure.
02:40:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, geez because, but you can go for the 25 for 920 a glass that's pappy van winkle prices.
02:40:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's well, that's a laptop that gonna have one.
02:40:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No excuse, yeah, we have one drink, you got nine one lap to spend on a drink.
02:40:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Go buy the bottle, yeah because you can't.
02:40:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's right. Yeah, richard campbell, he's at run as radio dot com. That's where you'll find that show about sequel server, but all of his great stuff also. Dot net rocks the show he does with Carl Franklin run as radiocom six luxurious weeks in.
02:40:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
British Columbia. Oh, I'm so looking forward, and the summertime too, it's just looking. You know they'll cut that window, friends. It's all green and lush out there and I'm so jealous it's a good time to be home for a few weeks. Beautiful somewhere in the three week mark. She's going to be looking at me like don't you have somewhere to go?
02:41:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
didn't you book something? Paul thurot's at thurotcom. That's where he goes every day to file fabulous reports. Become a premium member and there's lots of extras. Uh, t-h-u-r-r-o-t-tcom. His books are at leanpubcom. I'm sorry to say the Delphi Superbible, but something a little more recent the Field Guide to Windows 11 and his history of Windows through its programming frameworks, Windows everywhere, leanpubcom. It's a nice place. You set your own price. The three of us shall return next Wednesday. We do this show every Wednesday at 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live. That's next week's what is that this is South African.
02:42:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, this will be fun. You haven't opened it yet. Got a little leather on the lid too. It's very cool. So I haven't finished my research on that one side. A little leather on the lid. I haven't finished my research on that one side A little leather on the lid A little leather on the lid.
02:42:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How many times?
02:42:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
have I heard that. Just said that out loud like it made sense, like everything's fine.
02:42:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Everything's fine.
02:42:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can watch us live. You don't have to, but you can if you're in the club. Of course, behind the velvet rope access is that Club Twits Discord page. But YouTube, tiktok, facebook, linkedin, xcom and Kik are also streaming us live every week. So watch us live if you want. If you do watch live, you can chat with us live. We love that. But after the fact, you can download a copy at our website, twittv www. When you get there, you'll see a link to the YouTube page. Great way to share clips with interested parties. A good way to spread the word about this show. Another way to spread the word about this show. Another way to spread the word. Leave us a great review, five stars, if you please, at your favorite podcast client while you're there, subscribe. That way you'll get it automatically. Uh, every wednesday, the minute it's available, the minute we've polished it up meant we put a little leather on the top polishing a turd the Windows Weekly story.
02:43:11
Thank you Paul, Thank you Richard, Thank you all you, winners and dozers, and we will be right here next week. Hope you will too, for Windows Weekly. Bye-bye.
Jun 18 2025 - Vexed by Perturbations
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