Windows Weekly 838, Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell are here. It's finally almost nearly practically official. <Laugh>. Microsoft will acquire Activision. I'll tell you what is official, our last segment on this topic For some time, we'll also talk about ai. Microsoft has announced pricing for Microsoft 365 copilot. You better be sitting down for that one. Plus an Xbox game that offers 1300 classic arcade games all in one that and a whole lot more. Coming up next on Windows Weekly, the show is brought to you by Cisco Meraki. Without a cloud managed network, businesses inevitably fall behind. Experience, the ease and efficiency of Meraki's single platform to elevate the place where your employees and customers come together. Cisco Meraki maximizes uptime and minimizes loss to digitally transform your organization, Meraki's intuitive interface, increased connectivity and multi-site management. Keep your organization operating seamlessly and securely wherever your team is. Let's Cisco Meraki's 24 7. Available support. Help your organizations remote, onsite, and hybrid teams always do their best work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit.
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Leo Laporte (00:01:31):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell. Episode 838 Recorded Wednesday, July 19th, 2023, dabbling with Sparkless. This episode of Windows Weekly is brought to you by Cisco Meraki. With employees working in different locations, providing a unified work experience seems as easy as herding cats. How do you reign in so many moving parts? The Meraki Cloud Managed Network. Learn how your organization can make hybrid work work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit and buy Collide. Collide is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and they ensure that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps. Visit Kolide.com/ww to book an on-demand demo Today. It's time for Windows Weekly to show we cover the latest news for Microsoft. And here you are, ladies and gentlemen. Today's contestants coming onto the stage. It's Richard Campbell from Runners Radio. Hello. Hello. And Paul thurrott podcaster and blogger at thurrott.com. And he's in Mexico. You're in Coquitlam? Yep. Still all is well. A little bit longer. Okay.
Richard Campbell (00:02:59):
Hello James. Thanks to Wink Martindale. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:03:02):
Johnny Gilbert, 97 years old, the announcer for Jeopardy. He does it from his house now. Nice. But he's 97 and he's still going strong. And that's my dream work. A total of 45 days a year and make millions of dollars. It's perfect.
Paul Thurrott (00:03:19):
Yeah. It's a good, it's the sweet spot.
Leo Laporte (00:03:22):
It is ex It's a game. Yeah. I hope people, you know, in that position know how lucky they are. But then there's people like Jim Cutler, who's one of the great announcers of all time, did our, all of our Voss and stuff, who works like a dog. And he's got a studio in his house, so there's no excuse. Yeah. But you
Paul Thurrott (00:03:37):
Know what? If that's what he wants, I guess. Yeah, that's fine. Right.
Leo Laporte (00:03:40):
Sometimes you stumble into these things and then you can't.
Richard Campbell (00:03:44):
Yeah. I would point out that he, Henry Kissinger at a hundred years old Sure. Meeting with the, the Chinese ambassadors,
Leo Laporte (00:03:51):
Still a war criminal,
Paul Thurrott (00:03:52):
Still still screwing up international
Richard Campbell (00:03:53):
Election. Unbelievable. Hundred years old. Listen, I appreciate still war
Leo Laporte (00:03:57):
Criminal at hundred years old. <Laugh>.
Richard Campbell (00:03:58):
<Laugh>. Yep.
Leo Laporte (00:04:01):
We shouldn't laugh. Well, yep. I'm going to see Oppenheimer in a couple weeks. It just opened. Of course. Yeah. And
Paul Thurrott (00:04:08):
Nice. Hopefully an imax.
Leo Laporte (00:04:10):
Yeah. I'm going to see the 70 millimeter imax. Which is funny because when you make the reservation, you know, you're looking at the seats and the, it's like the hollow core of my life. It's all hollowed out in the middle there. All you can do is sit on the edges. So we, I just kept looking until I could find one where I was kind of in the middle. Not the middle of the middle, but high middle. It's gonna
Paul Thurrott (00:04:29):
Be like a tennis match. Actually. Your head's gonna be going back and forth like this the whole time. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:04:33):
I have sat close to the front in imax and that is not a good place to sit. Right. the ideal, I guess
Richard Campbell (00:04:40):
It's a lot of screen
Leo Laporte (00:04:40):
A little ways back, but you want, you really wanna be in the middle for some reason. I'm not sure why. Anyway. Yeah. You don't want your crick in your neck. It is a three hour movie. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (00:04:49):
Ah, it seems to be the thing these days, if you're gonna go to the movies, you're gonna go movies for a long time move. It's gonna be a big
Paul Thurrott (00:04:54):
Move in. It's gonna be a big movie.
Leo Laporte (00:04:56):
Yeah. I'm very excited. I was reading a a blog. There's a ck by a guy who is an expert on Oppenheimer, who's kind of commenting on the historicity of it. And he says it's pretty good, pretty accurate. They're few things they maybe underplayed that maybe should be overplayed. Like why did we do it? And really was Nagasaki necessary. But you know, other than that,
Richard Campbell (00:05:18):
I, they, they needed to, they needed to test the implosion device. I'm
Paul Thurrott (00:05:22):
Tired of all you Monday morning quarterbacks. Okay.
Richard Campbell (00:05:25):
<Laugh>. That's a little
Leo Laporte (00:05:26):
Late for that, I guess. <Laugh> It is last time. I, I think the fifth. What is the anniversary of Trinity? It's the must be the 60th, 70th, 80th anniversary. It's the 80th anniversary of Trinity today, or this
Paul Thurrott (00:05:39):
Week. It will be. Yeah. Right. Well, Trinity, oh, Trinity. I'm
Richard Campbell (00:05:43):
Sorry.
Leo Laporte (00:05:43):
Trinity was where the first explosion,
Paul Thurrott (00:05:45):
At first explode rate was thinking at the end of the war. Yeah. So two years will be the end of the war.
Leo Laporte (00:05:50):
Yep. Yep. Let me see the, let me see these. That
Richard Campbell (00:05:53):
78 years ago.
Leo Laporte (00:05:55):
Yeah. 78. Thank you for the math.
Paul Thurrott (00:05:57):
Mm-Hmm.
Leo Laporte (00:05:58):
<Laugh>. Oh. Anyway, we're here not to talk about anything of that, you know, ilk at all. July 16th. So it was yeah, it was a couple of days ago. It's also the, that was the day that apol 11 took off in yeah, July 16th. Yeah. 1969. Yeah. Speak to the day I was, the day I was born. Oh, well you would know then, but not 1945. Not so much. No, no.
Paul Thurrott (00:06:26):
<Laugh> not unless he's discovered some secret. We we're gonna need to hear about that.
Leo Laporte (00:06:31):
You're not, you're not, what is it? 80, what did you say? 80, 85, 83. 78. 78. When, right.
Paul Thurrott (00:06:35):
Yeah. When you say you remember the Civil War, what are you referring to?
Leo Laporte (00:06:38):
Exactly? <laugh>. Hey, the big news is in everybody has so exciting. The table has been cleared. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as expected, upheld, the judge's decision said there's no reason for an injunction on this even the UK No, you're, you're
Paul Thurrott (00:06:57):
Jumping way ahead.
Leo Laporte (00:06:58):
You, oh, way ahead. Okay.
Paul Thurrott (00:07:00):
I am, give us the
Leo Laporte (00:07:01):
Timeline.
Paul Thurrott (00:07:02):
You guys better than anyone know, I've spent most of this year figuring out the rollercoaster. That is how updates to Windows 11 have changed. <Laugh> Right. Back and forth, back and forth. I never thought anything would ever be stupider longer, more drawn out. And once again, I've been proven wrong. This Microsoft Activision Blizzard merger, activi acquisition, whatever has has been even more topsy Urby. Last week was insane. Yes. Since we convened it has been even more insane. <Laugh>. So, yes. When we left things last week, there were two caveats. Remember, one was that the FTC might file an appeal to the verdict. They did. They were routine roundly slapped in the face and denied that temporarily declined. Yeah. <laugh>, the, the, I, I'm paraphrasing the ruling. It said no <laugh>. Basically it was very short. So that was, that was interesting. That's right. Oh, and I should say just because I, I have to write about this, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, once the ftc lost its appeal, there was a very strong chance I thought that Microsoft might actually consummate this acquisition over the weekend. Right. The problem is, we're in Mexico. We had friends with us and we had already booked a hot, hot air balloon ride for Saturday morning <laugh>. So I brought a laptop. I brought a laptop, and if needs be, I would've written this
Leo Laporte (00:08:27):
Story. I'm filed from a balloon from the gondola, 3000 feet from above
Paul Thurrott (00:08:32):
Mexico City, the AEC pyramids outside of Mexico City, <laugh>. That's not what happened. But too
Leo Laporte (00:08:38):
Bad cuz that's a great dateline. I have to say. Great story. Right, right.
Paul Thurrott (00:08:43):
So don't doubt my dedication. The
Leo Laporte (00:08:44):
Reason we thought it would happen is that there was a, a breakup fee on the 18th. Right? Right. Billion, if it didn't happen by the 18th, a
Paul Thurrott (00:08:53):
Lot. I think it was more than million. 3 billion. 3 billion billion. 3 billion. Yeah. Billion. So yes, we got the, the July 18th date coming up, which is the break the, you know, the end of the deadline which was yesterday. Yeah. As we record this. But we also have the, the UK C M A, which has been like, just kidding. And then back backstep and then just kidding. And they kind of keep going back and forth. So on the weekend, the c it's funny cuz I can't actually do this, but this, the, the UK C M A came out and said, you know what? We got a list of concessions from Microsoft that is meaningful. We are gonna extend our deadline for the for its review of for our review of this new these new concessions. I'm not a uk you know, lawyer or legal expert, whatever. But the CMA typically issues what's called a final decision and then never comes back to readdress it ever again. This is one of the very rare times they've ever agreed to do that. It
Leo Laporte (00:09:48):
Really feels like the final, it's like if we can just find some way to save face <laugh> so that we can say, oh see, we got a concession moving on. Cuz they know it's over. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:10:00):
Using what will be only considered a butchered New Zealand accents, I will say back flipper
Leo Laporte (00:10:07):
Or flopper order.
Paul Thurrott (00:10:12):
So Yeah. Yeah. So, yes. So I think it was Sunday morning. So the so the balloon ride happened. We had this UK story. Okay. The acquisition was not happening.
Leo Laporte (00:10:23):
You're up with that balloon floating above,
Paul Thurrott (00:10:25):
Checking my phone,
Leo Laporte (00:10:26):
Checking my phone. And you're just constantly like, let's see if, did it happen? Did it happen?
Paul Thurrott (00:10:30):
Oh, I was, wait any second. I was thinking, wow. And you know what, the thing that bugs, this is what bugs me, and I didn't figure this out till Monday. I had exchanged some emails with Microsoft PR on Friday night because they issued a statement about the FTC losing the, the appeal. And I don't know this guy, it's just a guy from Microsoft pr and I don't typically do this, you know, so when people write me from a PR company, I always, I always acknowledge the mail and I'll, I'll just write back and say thanks. And I had one guy or woman some years ago who said, you know, you're one of the few people that actually ever does this, you know? And I'm like, okay. I wasn't sure if it was annoying or not. But anyway, I wrote this guy back and I said, thanks. And then I said, and congratulations, which is, I this normally, it's just so outta character for me. And then he said, thank you. He goes, I'm so happy that I can now enjoy my weekend. Which should have been the clue this wasn't happening during the weekend. Right. <laugh>. Yeah. Didn't realize it till one day. He knew he was good. Yeah. Yep. He knew he was good and he was trying and maybe trying to tell you
Leo Laporte (00:11:27):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> hint, the very front hint, hint.
Paul Thurrott (00:11:30):
So I feel bad about that. Anyway, so Sunday, we Sunday we got what I think is the clearest signal yet that Microsoft is acquiring Activision Blizzard, which is that Sony, which apparently never answered a single email from Microsoft in 18 months, suddenly agreed to a deal for Call of Duty. Wow.
Leo Laporte (00:11:46):
Yeah. I was looking at the backstory of this. Microsoft had proposed this in 2021, it said, right? Yes,
Paul Thurrott (00:11:53):
Yes, yes. A long time ago in January
Leo Laporte (00:11:55):
Two 18 months
Paul Thurrott (00:11:55):
Ago. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:11:55):
Yeah, yeah. What
Paul Thurrott (00:11:57):
<Laugh>? Yep. And Sony was like, yeah, we're not even looking at it. You know,
Richard Campbell (00:12:00):
See, you do dust off a 30 month old email and say, okay, yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:12:05):
Yep. It was signed and everything. And Sony just sat on it hoping against hope that the courts would pay no attention to it. Pay no attention to that email sitting in my inbox.
Paul Thurrott (00:12:16):
Wow. I I now hate Sony with a burning fire that I could barely describe <laugh>, but I will give them a little bit of credit because the FTC fell for their baloney Yeah. Rationale like hook line and Singer Sinker and continued that fight after Sony in legal filings admitted, we never actually cared about this. We never, we never thought that they were gonna take it
Leo Laporte (00:12:38):
Away. Okay. I'm gonna defend unbelievable Le Khan. Maybe she wasn't doing this at the behest of Sony. That's all that proves that she had her own reasons to Oh,
Paul Thurrott (00:12:45):
No, no, no. I'm sorry. I don't, I I wanna be clear. I I I don't actually believe that the FTC was literally working on behalf of
Leo Laporte (00:12:52):
Sony. They weren't, they weren't carrying water for Sony.
Paul Thurrott (00:12:54):
No, no, no. I don't believe that. I, but, but they were in fact acting on behalf of Sony. So
Leo Laporte (00:12:59):
It was to, it would would've benefited Sony. No question. But they had their own concerns, and they still do, apparently. You know, they appealed
Paul Thurrott (00:13:07):
It. Yeah. Well, I mean, they do, and they don't, I mean, their concerns 100% matched up with Sony's concerns. So even after Sony was like, I was just kidding. You know, the, the FTC kind of kept it going. I, I, I, I don't remember the
Leo Laporte (00:13:20):
Judge. Well, that's, that's what proves the point is, you know, if they really were just carrying water for Sony, Sony would said, okay, call off some dogs now. And you, that would've been that.
Paul Thurrott (00:13:28):
Right? So once again, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have to have to paraphrase, I don't have this quote in front of me, but when the judge originally ruled against the ftc, there was a beautiful quote, which she said something, again, I'm paraphrasing. You know, you've spent 18 months gathering evidence. You've collected 100 documents of evidence. You've gotten all these experts to rule in. You've, you know, you've interviewed people, and we have found not one item that backs your claim that Microsoft will dot, dot, dot, dot. So yeah, I mean, I guess so. But the there that, the very nature of the fear of Microsoft taking Call of Duty away from Sony and PlayStation, whatever, it was completely unwarranted from day one. And there was it that never changed. So Well, and,
Richard Campbell (00:14:09):
And Sony knew it and even talked about it, and it was revealed, and the FTC continued.
Paul Thurrott (00:14:16):
I, that's my point. So, yeah. At, at literally, they were not working on behalf of Sony. But at some point, when you realize that every argument you've ever made has, is false made up or just baseless,
Richard Campbell (00:14:28):
When do you give up? You, you had a stack of outs.
Paul Thurrott (00:14:30):
Yep,
Richard Campbell (00:14:31):
Yep. Right. Like, at any point along any of these reveals, you could have said, Hey, under the circumstances, we, we withdraw a case.
Paul Thurrott (00:14:38):
So I again, put in the awkward position of defending something that I think is defenseless, I will just say on behalf of the ftc they have been given a political mandate to come down hard on big tech. There was further news about that today, right. With, specifically with regard to mergers and acquisitions. And listen, it's not a horrible defense, honestly, in this day and age to say, I'm sorry, but this company is just too freaking big. No. You know, and the, the, the powerful don't get more powerful. Right. I, that seems to be the, the real point of the argument. Even though, not that
Richard Campbell (00:15:12):
They made that well at all.
Paul Thurrott (00:15:14):
No. But but again, I, I, the thing is with antitrust, with everything, right, you have to look at every individual case. And I, this one never made sense. So, okay. Anyway, let's move on. <Laugh>, that was Sunday. So in order for the CMA extension, the deadline extension actually makes sense. Apparently a UK court had to actually rule that this was going to happen, and they did. And this gave the two sides time to negotiate, right? I don't remember what day that was. Monday, probably Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, whatever. And then today, Microsoft and Activision formally agreed to extend that July 18th deadline to October 18th to accommodate the renegotiation with the uk. I still think this thing's gonna happen pretty quick. One of the interesting things that the CMA said Friday, I'm losing track of stuff now, but was, Hey, I know we said August 29th I think was the day. We're not gonna reinvestigate this case, and we're probably gonna do it a lot more quickly than that. So, Hmm. I actually think this is gonna happen. It could happen any day, but I think it's gonna be within weeks. I don't think we're looking at the fall. I think this happens pretty quick.
Richard Campbell (00:16:18):
Yeah's my guess. It sounds like everybody's done. You know what the outcome's gonna be. Why? Wait.
Paul Thurrott (00:16:23):
Well, here's, here's why you wait. So let's say you're the cma, CMAs, like, Hey guys, I'll tell you what, just give us two weeks. We're gonna write up some stupid document that makes it look like you, your concession
Richard Campbell (00:16:33):
Is, we had a plan. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:16:34):
And then it looks like they did their job. Right. It looks like there was some due diligence. If you come out too quickly with a verdict, it's like, wait a minute, what were you doing? Exactly. Yeah. You know, but if they, right,
Richard Campbell (00:16:44):
I think the other part of this is summer vacation, they don't wanna work in the summer. Oh, that's
Paul Thurrott (00:16:48):
Fine. Okay. That could be too.
Richard Campbell (00:16:49):
And so it's, and plus nobody's watching. Like, this is a perfect time to take out the garbage. Right. <laugh> nobody, nobody's paying attention. Or
Paul Thurrott (00:16:56):
As we used to say, take out the Euro trash.
Richard Campbell (00:16:59):
There you go.
Paul Thurrott (00:17:01):
Yes. So, I, I mean, listen, I, I might've not changed my tune on this as with regards to whether it should happen. I am now, I, I mean, I, I'm sure I felt like this last week, I don't remember what I said exactly, but I, this seems like it's barreling toward this, this conclusion, you know, that Microsoft will
Richard Campbell (00:17:20):
Acquire, I'm gonna pay very close attention to the competition group in New Zealand who also had protests, because I suspect they're just gonna let that one go. But that'll, it'll be fun to see what happens with them.
Paul Thurrott (00:17:31):
Well, it's cuz they're polite there, you know, it's like we disagree, but let's, you know, if you don't have anything nice to say to shut your mouth, <laugh>, you know, that kind of thing. Well,
Richard Campbell (00:17:39):
And I think it's just gotta be a read of the room, right? Like, yeah, yeah. Let's read the room on this one. Right.
Paul Thurrott (00:17:46):
I I, I don't, again, I don't defend the CMA or the ftc, but I, you know, and just looking at it, you know, in the, in the past now a little bit it, again, it's slightly reasonable for the CMA to think, well, it's not gonna be just us. You know, the FTC is going hard after this too. Right. we will look like we did something to protect, you know, whatever. It's, well,
Richard Campbell (00:18:06):
And I think this is what Brad Smith's play was as soon as the FTC came on it, it's like, if we break that, the rest will fall in line.
Paul Thurrott (00:18:14):
Yep.
Richard Campbell (00:18:15):
Yep. And, and I would argue that was more true before the FTC became as crippled as it's been. Like there used to be a time, just not that long ago, but generally speaking, when am, when these American groups, that's not a state F D C, the F D A, the f a, like they were the world's standard when they said the thing was fine, most people signed, most countries signed on at that point. Yeah. But they've all been weakened. And you know, well,
Paul Thurrott (00:18:41):
Yes, but there's also, so I may, maybe someone knows more about this than I do, especially outside of tech, but I cannot think of a single example of an ER or an acquisition like this where a company has made so many concessions. Yeah. And so many deals with competitors on two fronts in this case, in order to mollify regulators and address the concerns and make this thing happen over such a long period of time.
Richard Campbell (00:19:07):
Yes. And even, and even though the concessions were based on deception to the regulators, like you made concession to regulators that were being deceived by your competitors. I
Leo Laporte (00:19:20):
Gotta point out Microsoft is already a convicted monopolist.
Paul Thurrott (00:19:25):
Well, hold
Leo Laporte (00:19:26):
On a second. They've made promises, which they've broken in the past.
Paul Thurrott (00:19:29):
Hold on a second.
Leo Laporte (00:19:30):
Unreasonable for a regulator or a judge to say, well, thanks for the promises, Microsoft
Paul Thurrott (00:19:36):
Here, here's what,
Leo Laporte (00:19:36):
There's more to that than just making promises.
Richard Campbell (00:19:39):
Fair. Never made that point. Not they never
Paul Thurrott (00:19:41):
Made that point. That's, but that's not fair either. Mi Microsoft today is not the Microsoft that did that stuff. Microsoft's reaction to this antitrust case is a polar opposite of what they did in 1999, whatever year it was. And all the stonewalling they did with the EU as well. This is like, I always use this example, I'm sorry, this is like saying, well, Germany is a proven fascist state, and they will do, you know, like, that was a different Germany.
Richard Campbell (00:20:05):
No, but
Leo Laporte (00:20:06):
We have lots of rules about Germany arming <laugh>. Yes. I mean, we still lot keep an eye on them, let me tell you. And even the German government has very strict rules about Nazis.
Paul Thurrott (00:20:18):
But that's fair concerned, but that's still true here. So listen, no case like this in tech has undergone this level of scrutiny. We can sort of make that comparison. Like my, my, it's like, okay, we, we, we still feel like this is a convicted monopolist or whatever, but first of all, that thing was watered down to the point of uselessness by the time it ended. So Yes. Convicted, but, you know, whatever. They also basically as they settled, didn't they, wasn't it settle
Richard Campbell (00:20:42):
Said decree ended in 2011.
Paul Thurrott (00:20:44):
Yeah. So I yes to all of that, of course. But I this is a completely different company. Yeah. And a completely different era. This is not them running RHA over the market. They dominate. Right. Well, trying to kill competition and prevent other
Leo Laporte (00:20:59):
Competitors from THEC did bring up the fact that they had made promises in the Zenni Max acquisition, which they did not keep.
Paul Thurrott (00:21:07):
What promises, what do you mean? They, they took one game away from Sony. Was that the promise? Because if it is Starfield, right, if that's the promise, then what you hold that up against is the 127 exclusives that Sony is wielding over Microsoft. And you say, you know, the balance is still way off. So I just, I all we're doing here is giving Microsoft the right to compete on the same playing field that Sony does. And they're not even close on that in that regard.
Leo Laporte (00:21:34):
Ft plus FTC pointed to Microsoft's record of acquiring and using valuable gaming content to suppress competition from rival consoles, including its acquisition of Xeni Max. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Microsoft decided to make several of Bethesda's title, including Starfield and Red Fall, Microsoft Exclusive, despite assurances that had given to European antitrust authorities, it had no incentive to withhold games from rival consoles. Forgive me, but I understand why the FTC was skeptical of promises Microsoft made in the AG ion deal. I, and by the way, this is in the initial filing, Mike, that the FTC brought this up.
Paul Thurrott (00:22:06):
I Right. But what you look at is how many games did Xanax release during this timeframe that went cross-platform? And it's overwhelmingly in that, in that favor. So, yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:22:16):
But no, my point is only that Microsoft does exactly what's good for Microsoft. And if it involves exclusives, of course it's Well, but that's why you regulate them. Yes, yes. Of course.
Paul Thurrott (00:22:28):
It's
Leo Laporte (00:22:28):
Gonna do whatever. It's in its best interest. No, but
Paul Thurrott (00:22:30):
This, this proves the point. Microsoft should be allowed to do whatever it wants, just like Sony does. This gives Microsoft the ability to wield the same weapon against Sony. That Sony and Nintendo wield against Microsoft. I I what will happen is, and, and, and I say this like, you know, like it's a fact. I'm sorry, I didn't mean like that, but what I, I, I, there's, it's inconceivable that what won't happen is at, we'll, look back on this 10, two years, five years, 10 years, I don't care. Microsoft, Xbox, whatever, will have far fewer exclusives than Sony and Nintendo. I, because Microsoft unlike Sony, Nintendo, and this is the reason you go down the exclusives mass dominate in consoles, and Microsoft does not, it behooves Microsoft because they have failed to put their games on as many platforms as possible. Their path is the same one.
(00:23:14):
It is for office, for anything else. Put it everywhere. That's how they make money. It's their strategy. It's what they've done with Microsoft 365 that used to be Windows first and eh, maybe Mac a little bit. And now it's everywhere. It's on mobile devices that they don't make. It's on the web, it's on everything. So that, that's the real proof. That's the real, and all you have to know is what Microsoft does broadly and understand how they're, and look at what they've done specifically with things like Minecraft and apply to here. Yes, there will be exclusives, there will be. So of course there will. But that's, everyone's doing it <laugh> like this. That's the market. You know, they're not, it's not like they're coming in and screwing everything up by having exclusives when no one else is doing it. They have the right to do that.
Leo Laporte (00:23:59):
As far as I know everyone's else is doing. It is not normally considered an excuse.
Paul Thurrott (00:24:05):
It is when you're the minority player in a market in which two other players dominate.
Leo Laporte (00:24:09):
Yeah. Mm. And apparently the judge,
Paul Thurrott (00:24:11):
They're
Leo Laporte (00:24:11):
That're not, yeah. They're
Paul Thurrott (00:24:12):
Not the monopolist here. They just, I just
Richard Campbell (00:24:14):
Find it interesting to find an American institution defending non-American companies. Right. I'm an American company. I
Leo Laporte (00:24:20):
Think it's, I think it's a mistake to say they're acting on the behalf of Sony. They're acting on
Paul Thurrott (00:24:24):
No, no. I, I, I, we literally don't mean it that way. Okay. But, but the net effect is a Japanese company is protected, which by the way, is running rough shot over this industry and needs to be investigated. Mm-Hmm. So, yeah, I mean no, I don't think the Sony, you know, the f c like he, he in a corner to somewhere. But, but their defenses lined up 100% almost. And were equally stupid and proven false. And Sony is just trying to do what Microsoft is trying to do about it, by the way, back in the early nineties, and maintain their dominance by abusing a smaller competitor. They've been doing it for years. That's all. All
Leo Laporte (00:25:01):
Right. I just, I just wanna step in and defend antitrust regulators, cuz I think they're doing
Paul Thurrott (00:25:07):
God's work. No, I, no, I, oh, I'm, oh, actually on that note, please, I, I, I think it's important to note regulation of big tech is one of the most important issues of our era. We will talk about, well, it's not really a big tech thing, but you ha like I said earlier though, you have to look at every case. Right. Individually, this is the one, this is one case where I'm like, I just, you know, I never saw there are
Richard Campbell (00:25:27):
So many important fights, and this is not one of
Paul Thurrott (00:25:29):
Them. Yeah. This, I, that's was the, the, when the FTC sued the black, this in December of last year, I wrote an article called Hey comma ftc. I had a picture awesome picture of a girl, like with a screwed up face. It's, look it up, it's beautiful. And it was like, you're, you're kidding me. All of the ongoing abuse is happening in this industry from Amazon, apple, Google, meta. And this is what you're going after. The thing that will not reshape an industry in any way, shape, or form. Really?
Leo Laporte (00:25:54):
Oh, after meta. And they lost, unfortunately. They're
Paul Thurrott (00:25:58):
Going after. Yeah. What did they go after? I mean,
Leo Laporte (00:26:00):
Well, they went after their acquisition of within, you know, that's the, you know,
Paul Thurrott (00:26:03):
What they should be going after is what the eus talking about is their abuse of social media and their acquisitions of things like Instagram and Well, I agree.
Leo Laporte (00:26:11):
Think about really the privacy issue is a huge one. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:14):
Yeah. Unbelievable. I
Leo Laporte (00:26:15):
Don't know if that's yeah. I don't know if that's within there. It's too
Paul Thurrott (00:26:18):
Big of a fight. It's too big of a fight. I think they looked at this. I don't
Leo Laporte (00:26:22):
Think they have congressional support. That's the problem.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:24):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just, so anyway, I I, I I'm 100% antitrust. I I and the need for regulation. 100%. this case. No.
Richard Campbell (00:26:35):
Yeah. I don't know how much is antitrust and how much is just needing regulation.
Paul Thurrott (00:26:39):
No, but hey,
Richard Campbell (00:26:40):
You know what? We could do
Leo Laporte (00:26:42):
What? Talk about Windows people. People get mad. They say that's the Xbox segment again, it's going on and on. This is Microsoft. The biggest thing thing about going on in the Microsoft
Paul Thurrott (00:26:51):
World is the world. This is biggest story of the year. It's
Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
Not an Xbox
Paul Thurrott (00:26:54):
Story. This is a $70 billion acquisition. This is business.
Leo Laporte (00:26:57):
Is there, have there been other tech acquisi of this size? I'm trying to think.
Paul Thurrott (00:27:01):
I know it's the biggest Microsoft, I'd have to, they
Leo Laporte (00:27:04):
Offered 21 billion for Yahoo to put it in perspective. A a
Paul Thurrott (00:27:08):
Quarter. Well, that's not, Yahoo doesn't need to make the top
Leo Laporte (00:27:11):
Seven or Yeah. What did they pay for LinkedIn? Not that much.
Paul Thurrott (00:27:14):
Eight. No, it was in the, yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:27:16):
It was under 10. No, same with GitHub, right? It was,
Paul Thurrott (00:27:18):
Okay. Okay. I wrote, I have this, oh, I haven't published this article. I'm sorry. I looked up the top Microsoft Acquisitions at one time. Yes. Even, even Nokia doesn't make the top five.
Leo Laporte (00:27:26):
It was like 30 billion, right?
Paul Thurrott (00:27:28):
Nokia? No, that was like 7.8, I think.
Leo Laporte (00:27:30):
Really? Is that all? Wow. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (00:27:33):
I I think it literally is a standout by itself. Like, I don't know, I don't know. At 26 billion for LinkedIn. That was the largest deal. Yeah. That Microsoft had done. I'll just until this one.
Paul Thurrott (00:27:44):
Where is this thing I haven't published yet? So biggest Microsoft acquisitions.
Richard Campbell (00:27:49):
I think it's LinkedIn for 26.
Paul Thurrott (00:27:51):
Yeah. Why can't I find this <laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:27:54):
Da da.
Richard Campbell (00:27:56):
And now, and now
Leo Laporte (00:27:58):
Linkedin was 26. That sounds right. Yeah. That brings
Richard Campbell (00:28:00):
It down. And now Activision big. But even overall, like the Dell EMC deal used to be the largest deal at 67. I think that, I think the, the activation blizzard we slightly bigger,
Paul Thurrott (00:28:11):
By the way, now that I know someone wants us to move on. Let me add an additional thing to this. So I I've also not
Leo Laporte (00:28:15):
Published. Yeah, please. Cause I don't listen to people when they say, move on. No, that's, that makes me take my heels in and do more.
Paul Thurrott (00:28:23):
No, I will not be bullied
Leo Laporte (00:28:24):
<Laugh>. So,
Paul Thurrott (00:28:25):
So one of the many things I'm, look, one of the things I'm looking at broadly is how Activision Blizzard will impact Microsoft. Right? And one of the many ways, one of the obvious ways you look at, it's only gonna be one of several things in this article, eventually is just financials. Right? And so it's an easy thing. They actually, Activision Blizzard just released their most recent earnings. So this is, does not include that, but the four previous financial quarters, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, Activision Blizzard will probably be part put inside of more personal computing. This is the business unit at Microsoft that has Windows, Xbox, and service. And Paula's, not that anyone cares. And that is the smallest of the three business units at Microsoft. It has been there for a couple years now, probably. So if you add in, if you just say, look, pretend it was part of Microsoft, we're gonna take all the revenues, all the profits, throw it into more personal computing, except for the holiday quarter, which is when video games go gangbusters.
(00:29:17):
More personal computing is still the smallest Microsoft business unit. Which kind of cuts to my point of Yeah. You know, it's, it's a big deal. It's 70 billion. But as far as changing things, this is one indication of how honestly Microsoft's cloud businesses, which are Azure and the Microsoft 365 stuff, which constitute the biggest chunks of the other two business units are still bigger, except, you know, again, for Christmas. So I just think that's kind of interesting because and then when you compare it to mi no, Microsoft revenues, right? I mean, we're talking about a company Activision Blizzard that makes between 1.5 and 2.4 billion in revenues per quarter. More personal computing. Again, smallest business unit in Microsoft is 13,000,000,014 here and there. Just that little part, that little part, just that one third part of Microsoft is, you know, seven times as big. So yeah. Big acquisition, but compared to Microsoft, this is like eating a goldfish,
Richard Campbell (00:30:18):
<Laugh>, you know,
Paul Thurrott (00:30:19):
Financially, right? This is like, if I want to buy a piece of candy down the store, I take it out of petty cash. Microsoft does the same thing except they're doing it for Activision Blizzard
Richard Campbell (00:30:29):
And still one of the largest Yep. Tech acquisitions in history. Right. Arguably the largest.
Paul Thurrott (00:30:35):
Yeah. Anyway, this is more to that story. I don't wanna run the whole thing. I, I'll read it. But there's so many different ways to look at how this is going to impact Microsoft and Xbox. Right. And I, the others generally of course, are just gaming related. Microsoft has zero footprint in mobile gaming today. This will change that story. Microsoft has some footprint and PC gaming doesn't change that really at all. Frankly, Microsoft is in third place and consoles doesn't, doesn't change that in the slightest. Subscription services are good, just like Apple moving to services right. As their second biggest business. So there's gonna be some game pass stuff going on there. I think it's gonna be kind of interesting. And at to a very small degree, cloud gaming, which is the cloud streaming stuff.
Richard Campbell (00:31:15):
Yeah. I do still, I still see this as very much the long play of Yeah. Gaming is gonna consolidate around a monthly pass. That's right. And Microsoft has done the best of positioning at this
Paul Thurrott (00:31:25):
Xbox started out as a console, a hardware device. And then it will evolve over time into a set of services. Which again you know, to the point I made earlier, Microsoft today is about cross-platform meeting customers where they are. And I think where they want to be is at the point where they're not selling hardware. Cuz they're the only ones that lose money doing that and just sell the games to everybody. So there may be a future where they do I'm so Xbox,
Richard Campbell (00:31:47):
I'm preferably by collecting money from them every month.
Paul Thurrott (00:31:50):
Exactly. That's the Microsoft model. They're really good at it. And by the way, Richard knows better than anybody. It started with sla not SLAs the enterprise licensing back in the nineties mm-hmm. <Affirmative> what's the term? Software assurance? Essays. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (00:32:02):
Volume, license agreements.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:04):
Volume licensing. Exactly. This is, they, they took this model and they applied it to consumers and it, it's been small, you know, Xbox Live Gold, eh, a little bit Microsoft 365 now family and, and bigger, whatever. It's bigger. But you know, okay, this, this is the volume. This is when we get out to mobile and the, and the volume part of the planet. So yeah, we'll see.
Richard Campbell (00:32:24):
Yeah, I I mean, I think the Xbox Games pass speaks to a long-term industry consuming business model, actually. Yeah. You know, it's the net. Like, you, you, you'll only watch a show cuz it's on Netflix. You'll only play the game cuz it's in game. It's in Game Pass.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:39):
Wow. Look at that. Yeah, that's good. So we'll see.
Leo Laporte (00:32:43):
Okay. When you guys are forced to have a game pass just to play games, you can thank me later
Paul Thurrott (00:32:50):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Oh, but that, hold on a second, <laugh>. So we do that with music, we do that with I know. News TV shows. I know. I mean, this is, yeah, we do streaming
Leo Laporte (00:32:58):
Is the way know.
Paul Thurrott (00:32:59):
Yeah. I'm not, I, we, you know, we're almost post argument over ownership, you know, at that point. Right, right. Yeah. but I I, there is an argument, there's definitely a debate to be had. I don't mean to dismiss it, but I don't
Leo Laporte (00:33:12):
Wanna own physical media. I don't want to carry it around and all that stuff. That's right.
Paul Thurrott (00:33:15):
And the other thing is understand the convenience factor. These things are transient
Leo Laporte (00:33:18):
The problem.
Paul Thurrott (00:33:18):
It's not just convenience, it's,
Leo Laporte (00:33:19):
But are they transient? That's the question. I guess games for sure are, but movies, well,
Paul Thurrott (00:33:24):
In other words, like people, well, but how many people watch the same movie over and over
Leo Laporte (00:33:28):
Again? Yeah, no, you're right.
Paul Thurrott (00:33:29):
Right. I mean, we, I don't know why we want to own these things. I I I, by the way I have 500 movies in my iTunes library, so you know,
Leo Laporte (00:33:38):
Hypocrite. Yeah, but you don't, but don't, yeah, but you don't own those, remember? You know, that's right. There you go. And, and you know, I was watching, I can't remember what, it was a movie that I knew very well that had been edited by apple. Yes. Because apparently they didn't like the sexy scene. So okay. That, I don't know that that's an interesting line to across. They could change it after I buy
Paul Thurrott (00:33:56):
It. They just put a, a picture of Tim Cook's head over the Naughty Bits <laugh>. Mm-Hmm.
Leo Laporte (00:34:00):
<Affirmative>
Paul Thurrott (00:34:00):
I don't know
Leo Laporte (00:34:01):
Who had it. It could just not approve. It could be the studio. I don't know
Paul Thurrott (00:34:03):
Why it was this is happening. This is happening to books too. So I bought the entire James Bond library and Kindle this year as part of a, a wave of rewriting the pass and getting rid of things, say, that are considered racist or whatever. They're editing those books and a bunch of other books, and I haven't looked, but I believe if I go into my library now, I'm gonna have the new clean version.
Leo Laporte (00:34:20):
They'll be edited on the Kindle. Wow. Yep. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:34:24):
See, so that is the world. I know, I know. I don't like that either. Yeah. But I guess the point is that complaint doesn't obviate the fact that generally speaking, this system is better.
Leo Laporte (00:34:37):
Most people, it's what people want. It's what people want. Yeah. Yeah. And the alternatives
Paul Thurrott (00:34:40):
Are, but it's better. It's better to, I mean,
Leo Laporte (00:34:41):
I have ripped all my CDs and stuff to, to mp3, but it's still a pain in the butt to play that over the course of an evening than it is to just turn on Spotify.
Paul Thurrott (00:34:49):
Absolutely. I absolutely, I am. I, I go out in the world. I could be in an Uber like we are here. I could be in a restaurant bar like we are here and there's music playing in my phone. You know, I have a pixel like you do Richard, and it tells what the song is, and I click on it. I go to YouTube music, I add it to my playlist, and that's how I discover music. If I had to pay for those songs every time, what, whatever, what an onerous and expensive process that would be. Right. This is just you, this opens up a world of music Yeah. For a monthly subscription fee. You know, the Game Pass will do the same thing for games mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and just as what do we do music <laugh> Netflix does for, you know, or whatever service we'll do, you know, does for videos and TV shows. That's the point. I mean, you could, you could pay 9 9 99 for a movie, or you could pay 9 9, 9 99 a month. Well, 2199 or whatever it's a month for Netflix and have the whole library watch at your ledger. Right. I mean, I know it's not perfect.
Richard Campbell (00:35:42):
This is the path this that we're on, and it's certainly the play that Microsoft's making.
Leo Laporte (00:35:46):
Yeah. And it's hard to argue against it when consumers prefer it, and I prefer it, but Yeah. Well,
Richard Campbell (00:35:53):
Most consumers prefer the most convenient solutions, convenience. So as long as that's a convenient solution. Yeah. That'll be it. You could make other things convenient. You chose to make this convenient.
Paul Thurrott (00:36:02):
Yeah, I would. I honestly, I, I really, I I I hear you. I, I, but overall, I still think this is like better with the caveat that there are pros and cons. I just think the pros aweigh the cons.
Richard Campbell (00:36:13):
Yeah, no, I agree. And it Well, and not sufficiently enough for you to want to put out further effort for an alternative.
Paul Thurrott (00:36:18):
Well, you know what? Okay, so as prices go up, and this is something we've seen this year in particular, right? So Netflix is going up Hulu's going up, whatever. It's, you're like, you know, all right, so what could I do here? Right? There are strategies, right? And the first strategy is I'm gonna switch between services. I'll use one every month and I'll just kind of binge watch as we go. And that's kind of an interesting thing. But there are people just like, there are people turning to vinyl for whatever reason, or looking at old ways of doing things. Like I have a hard drive that has a bunch of movies on it. I was looking at it the other night. I showed Stephanie, I was like, you know, if it ever happened that we're driving around in an RV or something, we wanna be just, we could live off this thing for like a year. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:36:52):
It's getting old.
Paul Thurrott (00:36:53):
It never,
Richard Campbell (00:36:54):
Yeah, it's not, it's not like there's a lot of new content coming down the pipe right now. There's
Leo Laporte (00:36:57):
Actually a vinyl record store opening downtown in Petaluma. Incredible. Blows my mind.
Paul Thurrott (00:37:04):
Is it gonna be next to an Orange Julius <laugh>?
Leo Laporte (00:37:07):
No, but that would be nice, wouldn't it? Sam Goodies and Orange Julius together again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:37:12):
<Laugh> together again, I
Richard Campbell (00:37:14):
Think have
Leo Laporte (00:37:15):
A, Burke gave me this for you. I think Richard, this is a TS 80 Yes. Video display worksheet.
Richard Campbell (00:37:25):
Oh yes. So that on 27 by 47.
Leo Laporte (00:37:28):
Yeah. So that you can map out the dots on your screens. That be awesome.
Paul Thurrott (00:37:33):
Oh, and Trump pick draw Sprites or something. Yeah,
Richard Campbell (00:37:35):
No, those, those rectangles you're looking at are pixels in the Tierra Sadie.
Leo Laporte (00:37:40):
Wow. That's Hysteric
Richard Campbell (00:37:41):
127 by 47.
Leo Laporte (00:37:43):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:37:44):
All those, all those, you're right. The video game consoles, the computers, they were all under 200 pixels by under 200
Leo Laporte (00:37:51):
Pixels. That's a weird number. 47. Yes. Although it turns into 10 23.
Paul Thurrott (00:37:58):
Well, cuz of over scan, right? Because these were designed for the, the catheter.
Richard Campbell (00:38:01):
Yeah. Yeah. That those, that literally that catheter tube that did in these eyes.
Leo Laporte (00:38:06):
That's hysterical.
Paul Thurrott (00:38:08):
Which is why the,
Leo Laporte (00:38:09):
I'm gonna write Richard Richard Campbell right here in the programmer. We just have to come up with a title of your
Paul Thurrott (00:38:14):
See the sides, the curve. There were no flat screen, like screen screens. Then it was the
Leo Laporte (00:38:17):
That's the battle days.
Richard Campbell (00:38:19):
Wow. It was literally a modified rca, a tv. And, you know, I used it from 10 to 12 and it cooked my eyes. No two ways about it.
Leo Laporte (00:38:28):
Nice
Paul Thurrott (00:38:28):
Too. You learn close. Richard Richie know you learn base that
Richard Campbell (00:38:31):
Remember they said don't sit too close to your tv. Wait. It's your monitor <laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:38:36):
All right. What was the primary advantage of the Home Computers of the day? Yes. Like Apple, they came with an rf.
Leo Laporte (00:38:42):
I have the I have the little analog tv. Actually, this believe it or not, plays Atari video games. Somebody gave,
Paul Thurrott (00:38:51):
I mean, I'm surprised it doesn't play Doom. I it's just like it else. Probably,
Leo Laporte (00:38:54):
Probably could. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. See, it has a little Atari console. It even has a working Atari joystick. And lemme turn it on. This is, see there, you'd have to really zoom in. It's a tiny arcade Atari Press to start, you press the start button. Oh, maybe I have to do it on the joystick. Yeah. Do you wanna play Pacman Asteroids Breakout. Centipede Combat or Loped. Your, your Choice
Paul Thurrott (00:39:22):
Combat All the
Leo Laporte (00:39:23):
Classics, all the cla tempest pong. Wow. You wanna play combat? All right, let's, let's play a little comment.
Paul Thurrott (00:39:31):
I, I couldn't see that with your eyes. What's going on here? I
Leo Laporte (00:39:34):
<Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (00:39:35):
That's the size of a pixel for the original 27
Leo Laporte (00:39:39):
Press. The start key. Let's begin. Oh, I started Asteroids. It even makes the sound. I know. It's so small.
Paul Thurrott (00:39:46):
<Laugh>. That's funny. Yeah. Oh, that's actually kind of a space invader sound, I guess.
Leo Laporte (00:39:52):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. If we just got TTO has released a space invader for iOS and Android. That's virtual.
Paul Thurrott (00:40:00):
Yeah. Dude. So
Leo Laporte (00:40:01):
Did you see that?
Paul Thurrott (00:40:01):
Yes. Yeah. So the guy who invented Space Invaders recently gave an extensive interview somewhere. It's probably easy to look up, but here's a beautiful fact about Space Invaders. Everything was so slow then. So when he had many things on screen, it's like, it moves really slow. Yeah. So there's a feature of the game, whereas you kill these space invaders, it speeds up. That's just because there's less of a processor to do <laugh>. And it just became a, a feature of the game. It's beautiful. <Laugh>. Isn't that beautiful? It works. <Laugh>. Yes. It made so much sense.
Leo Laporte (00:40:32):
Making lemonade out of a lemon.
Paul Thurrott (00:40:35):
I love that.
Leo Laporte (00:40:36):
Yeah. To get my beginner's certificate in the class I took online at BC I had to write a Space Invaders game. Nice. Yeah. In in racket and scheme. All right, let's take a break and then we come back. I'm sorry, I apologize. No more Xbox. Well, until later. Oh. There's gonna
Paul Thurrott (00:40:54):
Be a lot more Xbox
Leo Laporte (00:40:55):
<Laugh>. We're gonna talk about Windows. It's more Xbox coming. No more trash. 80. How about that? But we will, you'll talk about Windows in just a second. Our show today, brought to you by Cisco Meraki, they are the experts in cloud based networking for hybrid work. Whether your employees are working at home like, like our friend Mr. Campbell, here at the shore at a cabin in the mountains in Mexico City, like Mr. Theat here, maybe on a lounge chair at the beach, like me right now, if in my dreams anyway, a cloud managed network provides the same exceptional workspace everywhere, no matter where your employees are. And you know what? You may as well roll out the, the welcome map because hybrid work is here to stay. We, you know, we might resist it, but it's, it's here. And, and, and I think if you're gonna do it, hybrid work works best in the cloud.
(00:41:51):
And I, I wanna underscore, it's not just employees who love it. It's got perks for leaders too. Because your workers are happier, they can move faster, they can deliver better results. And the key is this cloud based, cloud managed network leaders can automate distributed operations. They can build more sustainable workspaces with hot desking, things like that. They can proactively protect the network too, because actually security is job one. An IDG market pulse research report conducted for Meraki highlights the top tier opportunities in supporting hybrid work. Hybrid work is a, according to this report, is a priority for 78% of C-suite executives. Leaders wanna drive collaboration forward while staying on top of or boosting productivity and security. It, and security is one of the big challenges with hybrid work. 48% of leaders report cybersecurity threats are primary obstacle to improving workforce experiences. So absolutely key. And you're now in your cloud managed network is active always on security monitoring.
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That's one of the things that makes the Meraki cloud so awesome. It can use apps from Meraki's, vast ecosystem of partners, turnkey solutions built to work seamlessly with the Meraki Cloud platform. You can do asset tracking, location analytics. You can gather insights in how people use your workspaces in a smart space. Environmental sensors can track activity. They can look at occupancy level. You can, you can stay up on your cleanliness. You can also hot desk based on vacancy and employee profiles. Employees can scout out a place to work reserve ahead of time. And if it's a restricted work area, you're gonna love this. They can book in advance and they can have time-based access, so they can't get in until it's their turn. Mobile device management, very important these days too. Endpoints are everywhere. Integrating devices and systems allows it to manage, update, and troubleshoot company-owned devices.
(00:43:51):
Even when the device and employee are in a remote location, they're in Mexico City. Turn any space into a place of productivity and empower your organization with the same exceptional experience no matter where they work. With Meraki and the Cisco suite of technology, learn how your organization can make hybrid work, work. Visit Meraki, m e r a k i, meraki.cisco.com/twit. We thank him so much for supporting Windows Weekly and these two remote workers here. Actually, I guess you're not technically remote, Richard, although you, you, you're traveling around so much when you're at home in a way, you're remote, aren't you?
Richard Campbell (00:44:33):
Yeah, it's all kind of weird. <Laugh> Don't worry. I, I in August I'll be in Copenhagen. Oh.
Leo Laporte (00:44:39):
And so nice time to be in Copenhagen. Actually,
Richard Campbell (00:44:42):
A great time to be in
Leo Laporte (00:44:42):
Copenhagen. Oh, that'll be fun. So go to the Tivoli Gardens, wander around. It's a beautiful city.
Richard Campbell (00:44:49):
And eventually I'll organize this shot when I'm up on the coast, so you can see the ocean behind me the whole time.
Paul Thurrott (00:44:53):
Nice.
Leo Laporte (00:44:54):
Do you have a house up there?
Paul Thurrott (00:44:56):
Yeah,
Richard Campbell (00:44:56):
That's where we're moving to full time.
Leo Laporte (00:44:58):
Copenhagen?
Richard Campbell (00:44:59):
No, no. To, to up on the coast. Thank
Leo Laporte (00:45:01):
You. Okay. That makes more sense. Okay. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (00:45:05):
Yeah. So if you think he's remote now, <laugh> means to the new place.
Leo Laporte (00:45:08):
Really? Yeah. Surrounded by Redwoods up in the beautiful British Columbia Forest.
Paul Thurrott (00:45:12):
Let's, so you have to take a ferry to get to
Leo Laporte (00:45:13):
It. Really? Yes. Oh, wow.
Richard Campbell (00:45:15):
Yeah. And I want, we, and we have starlink, so, but the Internet's ridiculous.
Leo Laporte (00:45:20):
Oh, well, this will be in, this will be a good test. I think we've had some other people who use starlink on the shows. Interesting. I think Jonathan Bennett does one of our no, is Jonathan one of the hosts of Floss Weekly? Anyway, back to the show. Back to the most important thing in the whole wide world.
Paul Thurrott (00:45:35):
More Activision stuff.
Leo Laporte (00:45:37):
Xbox, <laugh>. Oh, no Windows, right?
Paul Thurrott (00:45:42):
Yeah. The reason we're really here. Yeah. Yeah. So we're barreling to, it's been an interesting couple of years for Windows. In the past two years, we've had Windows 11 arrive. Microsoft moved very slowly to update it, to address the complaints that everyone had from the first release. 22 H two came out last September. Microsoft has, since this time, updated Windows 11 constantly at a Torrid pace. Which, and, you know, which has been kind of fascinating. We've have instances of features that were never tested in the insider program, going public, et cetera, et cetera. Since then, we've also learned that Windows 10 is being put out to pasture, right? The current version is the final version of Windows 10. So they'll, you know, security updates, et cetera. And there's been rumors of a Windows 12, which we think is coming probably next year, right?
(00:46:29):
And so th things are kind of going back to that old three year cycle maybe, or getting close to that. We'll see. And then of course, the Windows Insider program is a hot mess. Even more so than usual, because now we don't have specific Windows releases to test most of the time. We just have different tiers, different features. We have ideas about what each channel may mean, and may not mean we don't know. You know, it's hard to say. They don't really talk. So heading into this summer we're, you know, we're looking for signs, <laugh>, frankly, <laugh> and Microsoft delivered a pretty good sign. So they said something kind of interesting, which I think a lot of people will not understand, because this term does not come up a lot, although Microsoft has used it a lot. And that is that Windows 11, version 23, H two i e, the version that will come up this fall, September probably will be released as an enable enablement package. That means it'll be a tiny update. It will be, it still requires a reboot, but it, what doesn't reset is the source code base, which doesn't matter anybody. But more importantly, the the support slash compatibility base, right? This is in, for all intents and purposes, 22 H two moment four as we've been saying, right? Right. but you, you,
Richard Campbell (00:47:42):
You said this, you said, I don't think there's gonna be a moment four, it's gonna be 23 H two.
Paul Thurrott (00:47:46):
I think they're the same thing. Yeah, exactly. So this, I, I don't mean to say this proves it but I, I, I think we're in the ballpark. I think this is what they're trying to do. Now, Microsoft has actually used this a bunch, so I don't expect anyone to be familiar with any of this stuff. But back when we were doing two years on feature updates for Windows 10, Microsoft released 1903 early in 2019, and it was a major release, a, a, a version upgrade, right? Source code base update compatibility and support update while they're all support updates. But it was a big deal. But when they released 1909, that was an enablement package. It was a minor release, a minor upgrade, and it wasn't as disruptive. It, it rebooted, came back pretty quick, get a new version of it.
(00:48:28):
And most things were the same. They've been doing that a lot. And I, listen, I, no one here will be surprised to know that I complain about Windows and updates a lot, <laugh>. But I will give Microsoft some credit because all these years later, literally eight years later from the time that Windows 10 was released, in fact we're plus or minus a few days of that, right? 2015, it was sometime in July end of July I think they finally gotten it to where they want it. They, they now have every possible avenue where they can update windows in the least disruptive way possible in many cases, right? Some of them have to be disruptive. But and we see this at Mobile SS too. We talk about this, obviously apps are updated separate from the operating system, but pieces of the OS canal be updated outside of the the core os being version upgraded or whatever.
(00:49:19):
So it's gotten better over time. They haven't communicated a lot, so it's confusing. They've changed the rules a lot, the schedule a lot. That's a lot of what we've been talking about this year. And you know, we'll see what happens going forward. But the most interesting thing to this, and I hope everyone here reads this if they haven't already mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is Microsoft issued a white paper that explained how they service Windows, as they call it. And it includes Windows 10 and Windows 11, because they're the two supported versions of Windows today. The <laugh>, I don't care as much about Windows 10 today. Obviously we're kind of moving forward here, but it is fascinating to me that eight years after they released Windows 10, they're now documenting how they serviced it over that time period in a way that they never did during those eight years. And
Richard Campbell (00:50:07):
It's, and the fact that they call the document 1.0 exactly. Is, is that, isn't that just a clear implication? We've been making this up, but we decided to write it down. Would you like
Paul Thurrott (00:50:15):
To read it? Thank you for saying that. That's a hundred percent correct. Exactly. <laugh>. So they have been making it up as they go along. And it's sort of, I guess what I'm, I don't mean to suggest it's not gonna change going forward. I mean, my God, it's been changing all year, but that the very release of this document suggests maybe now we're gonna have a formal, maybe they've reached the point where they feel good about it. A
Richard Campbell (00:50:35):
Group of folks got into a room and said, how do you want to do this? Yeah. And then somebody decided to write it down.
Paul Thurrott (00:50:42):
I, for all the compliance, I will say the appearance of this document, like you said, 1.04. Correct. It's classic.
Richard Campbell (00:50:47):
So as soon as I saw the number, I'm like, it's classic. Clearly.
Paul Thurrott (00:50:50):
Yep. You couldn't have just 7.3 it and pretended you were doing this all along internally, <laugh>.
Richard Campbell (00:50:56):
Cause you would've asked for earlier versions that did not
Paul Thurrott (00:50:58):
Exist. It would've So guileless, it's beautiful. Anyway, but they <laugh> they retroactively pretend that there was a strategy for Windows 10, and they show how that changed over time, when in fact, as you said, making it up as they went along. Mm-Hmm. And now we've got Windows 11 where they don't go into all of the details about, you know, they don't talk about moments, for example. Right. Right. But that from a very high level one annual release, which may or may not have been what we used to call a feature update. Right. So enablement package, still a feature update, but it's really the same code base from the previous version. So it's a lot less difficult on the user base. I, I don't know this for a fact, but I, I, if you think about how Microsoft rolls out any major version Windows, there's this system where, like the, the PCs we know to be most compatible, we'll get it first, and then we, if we get good feedback, then we expand it. And you see there's like a several month range where this thing starts getting deployed out into the world. Right. I think with an enablement package that's not necessary. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because if you're on 22 H two, you are compatible. Yeah. It's the same system. So that's kind of interesting.
Richard Campbell (00:52:02):
I have to wonder if this almost wasn't initially an internal doc to leadership mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, that, that the Eye of Soran largely hasn't been on Windows for a while For sure. And so there was a swing of the eye back for a moment going, what is it you people are up to? And they had to kind of decide what they were up
Paul Thurrott (00:52:18):
To. Right. Because all we see when we look at you is a new version of paint. And what is this stupid phone app? <Laugh>, you
Richard Campbell (00:52:24):
Know, an ongoing PSS complaints about versions. Right. Right. So to me, the other piece of this that gets really interesting is, and I've seen this over and over again in Microsoft, they tend to publish things when they want to end internal arguments. Yes. This is what we've now said publicly. This is, there you go. So we have to follow through with it. Okay. Or explain why we're not going to,
Paul Thurrott (00:52:44):
For whatever it's worth, it's a good document. Like I said, it's worth reading.
Richard Campbell (00:52:47):
It, it actually does explain stuff.
Paul Thurrott (00:52:49):
Yeah. It doesn't go into the, the, the depths of, you know, if you just look like I do at a very granular level mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, what can happen with regards to Windows updates on a yearly basis, a monthly basis, a weekly basis, A daily basis. Right. I kind of really dig into that stuff. They don't go that far down. But you know, if you think about it, like feature update once a year, like they said, features rolled out throughout the year, monthly, typically Right. Through cumulative updates. It kind of covers everything I've been talking about. And app, app app updates of course are separate. But yeah. I I mean, I,
Richard Campbell (00:53:24):
I, you are hoping, you're very much talking about this is transitioning leadership changes in everything and through this course of this document, right? Yeah. Like,
Paul Thurrott (00:53:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you,
Richard Campbell (00:53:31):
There's a subtext here of, and then new leaders came in and this happened, well,
Paul Thurrott (00:53:35):
Remember, so when Windows 10 came out, it was very confusing, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they made a big announcement. Everyone on Windows phone eight, everyone on Windows eight and seven will get this for free. Right? And then, and then Terry Morrison said the dumbest thing he said a lot of dumb things. Well, one of the dumbest things he's ever said, which was, we will support Windows 10 for the lifetime of the device.
Richard Campbell (00:53:58):
Right? What,
Paul Thurrott (00:54:00):
What? That's not a thing. What, what is, you know? So now now that Windows 10 is concluding, what we can see is actually it followed a fairly traditional 10 year lifecycle. Totally. A support lifecycle, which Yeah.
Richard Campbell (00:54:11):
Is it is the typical lifespan of a given piece of heart.
Paul Thurrott (00:54:14):
Exactly. Which is okay, fair enough. Yes, of course. But also typically the lifespan of a version of Windows. Right? right. So for all of the changes windows as a service, as they called it now at the time, now we call it continuous innovation. And we try not to throw up in our mouth a little bit <laugh>. Really, it it's the same, it's the same life cycle, essentially. Yeah. Now, I actually believe with Windows 11, that's gonna change. And they're gonna do what they wanted to do, which was cut down on those things. And I, the reason I believe that was,
Richard Campbell (00:54:43):
Well, anything less than what they did in, in the initial period of 10 when they were being pushed to try and do the release, early release often thing until the customer was screaming. Not just the engineering team. I mean,
Paul Thurrott (00:54:54):
Everybody, well, they really, yeah. So there was a lot of, let's just see if we can get away with this. And there was a lot of businesses saying, yeah, no.
Richard Campbell (00:55:00):
So they had that kind of, no, it didn't provide the benefit. Right. I mean, the bill of goods we've always been sold with rapid release is that it will get easier over time and it will also be better. And for certain products that is true. But I think we've, now, what Windows clearly demonstrated is it does not apply to operating systems.
Paul Thurrott (00:55:18):
The, the, the interesting transition that's gonna happen here, I, I believe, and I think we all believe, is that Windows 12 comes out next year. And so the difference between Windows 12 and Windows 11 is that Windows eleven's predecessor, windows 10 was bumping up, you know, it made sense for it to hit that 10 year life cycle. Right. They weren't gonna be in market for more than, you know, three years or whatever. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> with Windows 12, windows 11 has only been in the market for three years. There will have been. And I think there's gonna be something different. I, I think that in the same way that Windows 11 was just a version upgrade to a new version of Windows 10 that we're gonna call Windows 11. Right. I think that Windows 12 be, will be that to Windows 11. And it's gonna be very interesting to see how they handle the support life cycle of 11. I don't, yeah. I I don't believe it's gonna be 10 years.
Richard Campbell (00:56:04):
No, I think it'll be shorter because it's a shorter live version. Like you're starting to see the short lit, the long term support, short term support Yeah. Effect happening.
Paul Thurrott (00:56:12):
That's, and the
Richard Campbell (00:56:13):
Impact, which almost seems to be a natural
Paul Thurrott (00:56:14):
Byproduct, the support lifecycle. So if you go back, think about all the releases of Windows, you know, 95, 98 2000 xp know the internal, the interim stuff, and then Vista seven, eight, whatever mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, these things came out not exactly every three years, but we'll call it every three years. But every one of those was 10 years of support. Yeah. So at any given time, you had multiple versions of Windows that were supported by Microsoft, right? Yeah. When there was security vulnerabilities, they had to be updated, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and
Richard Campbell (00:56:41):
Well, and, and the 10 year period with a three year cycle meant you could routinely skip versions and you Yes. And you had incentive to do so. Right. That's right. That's right. If you pick the XP seven 10 line, you were much happier than the 2000 Vista eight line.
Paul Thurrott (00:56:55):
Yeah. And actually I, that's a nice little system because for the customer, whether the people or businesses you skip, you're skipping versions. You get a, what is a major release? It doesn't matter how minor every upgrade is when you skip a few or one even, you
Richard Campbell (00:57:08):
Get a, but we never believed there was a minor release would that Operating an operating system was always disruptive. True. So you might as well do it as rarely as possible.
Paul Thurrott (00:57:16):
Yes.
Richard Campbell (00:57:17):
And typically, typically on the hardware cycle, the bigger thing Yes. For me when I was in it, is upgrading these machines is not worth the pain. You're replacing them on a lease cycle every three to five years anyway. And so you just ship 'em with the new os.
Paul Thurrott (00:57:32):
And you said this sometime ago on the show 10 years is starting to look like the hardware cycle too. Yeah. And that kind of matches up neatly. The only thing that would change that is Microsoft's artificial hardware requirements where they, you know, like they did with Windows 11, even though systems on a, a core I seven, I six, maybe even I five, whatever, would've run Windows 11 just fine. Oh
Richard Campbell (00:57:54):
Yeah. Well, and ultimately
Paul Thurrott (00:57:55):
Did they artificial it? Did, they artificially cut it off. And I think that's one of the ways we get to that shorter support lifecycle for 11.
Richard Campbell (00:58:02):
Well, and I'm gonna argue in favor of the TPM for we need more intrinsic security, you know? Yes. It was an artificial constraint. They chose to demand the tpm and then they argue arguably backed off on that. There was, that wasn't a bad cause
Paul Thurrott (00:58:16):
Then. Yes. And, and actually at the time Windows 11 was released, the TPM 2.0 requirement was nonsense because it didn't give you any advantages of a 1.2. But actually since then, they've released some security features for Windows. Mm-Hmm. 11 that do require a TPM 2.0. So I'd like to, I'm not gonna pretend they had this plan. I don't think they're that
Richard Campbell (00:58:34):
Smart. I think they're feeling their way
Paul Thurrott (00:58:35):
From yeah, but it happened. So, you know, here we are.
Richard Campbell (00:58:39):
Yeah. The situation is better. For the most part. It
Paul Thurrott (00:58:42):
Is better. I
Richard Campbell (00:58:43):
Still dunno what laptop to buy, but the situation better.
Paul Thurrott (00:58:46):
<Laugh>,
Richard Campbell (00:58:46):
I can tell you what I just bought. You might be interested in framework. Just took, started taking pre-orders for their Yes. Oh, for the 1616. The
Paul Thurrott (00:58:54):
Gaming. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (00:58:56):
Been staring, staring that too. Rise in seven and available graphics card.
Paul Thurrott (00:59:01):
I have been begging, I talk to PC makers all the time, obviously. Cause they do the reviews. And so one of the, where with this move to 16 inch laptops, they're starting to plump like numeric keypads in there. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not dis I'm not disputing that some people need to want that, but I don't, and I, I said, I don't understand how that can't be modular and give me the option to have speakers. The, and that's
Leo Laporte (00:59:21):
Exactly how framework does
Paul Thurrott (00:59:23):
It. Exactly. Should then, should be. That's why I, I, I saw that and I said, Hmm, that might be the one.
Richard Campbell (00:59:27):
Well, and you know, you know, the boss is a heavy duty CAD user, and so she's a big fan of key of keypads. Like that's definitely a feature for
Paul Thurrott (00:59:37):
Her. Yeah. Yeah. Some people are.
Richard Campbell (00:59:37):
Yeah. And so we're bo we're both planning after the move is settled to change laptops.
Paul Thurrott (00:59:42):
Interesting. Okay. Well,
Richard Campbell (00:59:43):
She'll have a But she actually needs more torque than I do.
Paul Thurrott (00:59:45):
Yeah. Yeah. So she, for in the workstation class, 16 inch, you know, portable,
Richard Campbell (00:59:49):
This might be the one. There
Paul Thurrott (00:59:50):
Are a lot of choices out there.
Richard Campbell (00:59:52):
Yeah. The heavy, the, the T series Lenovos, the, the dau
Paul Thurrott (00:59:57):
Look at w WW series loan of us too, by the way. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:00:00):
The, also, the one neat thing about these, and I have the framework 13, the disadvantage is they don't feel quite as solid. Right? Yeah. Because it's all modular, but the adv and they are three, two, at least on the 13, I guess the 16 won't be, it has to be 16, nine. Right. But 16,
Paul Thurrott (01:00:17):
10,
Leo Laporte (01:00:17):
I would think. 1610. It'd be weird, weirdly tall if it weren't, but they're upgradeable and they, they held onto their promise, because I can get this AMD rising seven in my 13 if I wanna upgrade that. So, no, this is
Paul Thurrott (01:00:30):
It's pretty goal.
Leo Laporte (01:00:30):
Yeah. It's really
Paul Thurrott (01:00:31):
Cool. Don't, I feel like their end game is gonna be, they have influenced or through laws required other peace makers to do this. And then maybe this company unfortunately kind of disappears or gets acquired if they wanna,
Leo Laporte (01:00:41):
I don't know if that's true. I think they're gonna, I just ordered. Well, you know, and it won't come. This is the problem. I ordered it, it won't come to the first of the year, they first quarter.
Paul Thurrott (01:00:48):
So here's, but yeah,
Richard Campbell (01:00:49):
Half a year. That's a long time. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:00:51):
In writing. Well, it's cuz they're in such high demand.
Richard Campbell (01:00:54):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:00:55):
In writing reviews of laptops. Like the two big trends that have occurred over the past several years is well aside from 16 by 10, thank God, is the move to sustainable computing where a lot of recycled materials
Richard Campbell (01:01:06):
Recyclable. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:01:08):
I just forgot what I was gonna say. Oh. And, and the user serviceable stuff. So in the beginning you'd have like a device where like some PC comes out and you're like, oh, you can replace the ssd that's fun. And then you flash forward two years and it's like you can replace a rim, the ssd, you can replace the wireless. Things are all in them. Two cards. You can, you know, you can upgrade them, you can change 'em out. You can do whatever you want. So it's not framework. Right. It's not the, the whole platform. It's not whatever the speakers, everything, but they're, they are moving in this direction. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So we'll see, we'll see where it leads. But I love that you can have a keyboard without a numeric keypad on this. That Right. If you don don't want it, that enough caused me to perk my ears.
Leo Laporte (01:01:43):
Well, and even you can add it after the fact or take it out after fact if you don't want it. It's they, no, I love it. It's all completely it. They have spacers. I mean, it's, it's this new one. Is com more configurable than the 13
Richard Campbell (01:01:57):
And then, and the modular just expansion parts are
Leo Laporte (01:02:00):
Display. Yeah. You choose a good idea. You get, get six of these and you choose what you want. Yeah. U S B C A display Port micro SD H D M I ethernet audio. That's great. Yeah. it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. So deep, deep. Pretty cool. Deep. Pretty cool. I ordered one. I won't get it till next year, but I'll do a, I'll do an unboxing in a, cause I ordered it. That
Paul Thurrott (01:02:24):
Kinda demand by the way, kind of that, that, that's gonna cause people in the PC industry to pay attention.
Leo Laporte (01:02:29):
Oh yeah. They're sold out like this. They just opened this up a few days ago and I dallied, I dithered and I should not have dithered because now it won't be for months. I'm on like the sixth to seventh shipment.
Paul Thurrott (01:02:41):
If you don't mind me asking how much did you spend on this?
Leo Laporte (01:02:44):
I think it was 23, something like that. But I got, so you can have it two, they have two story M two storage base. So I didn't, I didn't populate the second one cuz it's standard Western Digital mm-hmm. <Affirmative> M two ssd. So you can put your own in later down the road if you want.
Paul Thurrott (01:03:01):
There are, there are other things that go into M two as well. I mean, you could probably, I don't know, what would that be? I
Leo Laporte (01:03:06):
Figured two terabytes. I mean, that's what I usually get on my laptops. That's gonna be enough. Yeah. yeah. And you can, you can replace any of the parts, including the battery, which of course is a first thing that that goes on these things. Course.
Paul Thurrott (01:03:19):
But it's neat. I I you add some kind of a USB port, you're like, I'm not really using this, but I am using this other thing. You pop it out, get another,
Leo Laporte (01:03:26):
Yeah. That's what happened with the 13. I didn't use one of the ports very often. I think I got an H DM I port, so I replaced it with an s a little removable ssd. What I mean the, the, the little secret is these are all u s bbc, there's six u s BBC ports. Right. And they make these modules that they slide in and you can have it be u s BBC to something else. I think it's great. Yeah. I love, this is the most interesting to me is you can choose a slimmer non gpu kind of back plane. Or you can choose one with a gpu or you can buy both. And when you want it, lighten, light and thin, take it, take it out. Put the little one in if you don't need it. So, so it's very, it's really, yeah. I'm pleased that they're doing this. Yeah. It's probably not the best, you know, in let in X 86 laptop out there. They're, as you said, they're probably,
Paul Thurrott (01:04:18):
But that's not the point. I I,
Leo Laporte (01:04:19):
That's not the point. Exactly.
Paul Thurrott (01:04:20):
The people who want this. I mean, and, and it gets better over time. Like this one, like you said, is already better than the 13.
Leo Laporte (01:04:26):
Yeah, I was very impressed. I was, I really, that was the question. Are you guys really gonna allow me to upgrade and are you gonna allow me to upgrade the motherboard? Yes, I can upgrade the processor. Yes.
Paul Thurrott (01:04:36):
Listen, this is a win-win, right. People aren't buying new computers every few years. Right? Right. They might want to upgrade a part. So this PC maker wins. You win. Yeah. It's, it's
Leo Laporte (01:04:46):
Perfect.
Richard Campbell (01:04:46):
It's a funny reversal in cycles, right. Because this is the way mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the PC market used to work, and then along came the MacBook Air and the Ultrabook, everything. And then we pushed glued in, we pushed to make Yeah. Everything one piece. That's how Tim Cook made it work. Like, well, this is happen. See what the hardware guy does. Same
Paul Thurrott (01:05:01):
Thing with phones, right? Yeah, same thing. We're starting to see a reversal and maybe head
Richard Campbell (01:05:05):
Back to over to modular phones. Right. But, and that's got less to do with, I want to customize my own way and more to do with Max. I was
Paul Thurrott (01:05:12):
At, at, we were talking about Windows IT pros at their offices in Fort Collins running up the stairs in my Samsung focus, whatever fell out, it, it blew into four different pieces. And the woman, whoever shows behind me said, oh my God, this, you know, I said, no, no, this is what happens. Pop it back together. Off we went <laugh>. And, and that was the point. It was like this little plastic back. It popped you off easily. The battery came out, you know, the sim card probably went flying <laugh>. But you pop, you you you pop it all back together, everything's fine. It was good. You know, that's how phones used to be.
Richard Campbell (01:05:40):
Well, and the replaceable battery meant the phone. Well, that was the point. Blasted.
Leo Laporte (01:05:43):
That was the, that, that, that
Paul Thurrott (01:05:44):
Was the point. Yeah. And you in, instead of traveling, like you see people with these stupid u USB charges plugged into a phone. You, you can take a tiny little sliver of a battery popping your pocket, don't even notice it. And you have all the battery power you need.
Leo Laporte (01:05:57):
Yeah. I will. Let me correct myself, it's three the as ordered and I ordered kind of top of the line. Everything except for that second drive. It's over 3000. Right. So but well,
Richard Campbell (01:06:07):
It workstation class,
Leo Laporte (01:06:08):
But it is workstation class. It's a Verizon that's,
Richard Campbell (01:06:11):
That's
Leo Laporte (01:06:12):
The price. 70 40 series. I think I got the rise. I can't remember which one I got. And the, and the different modules. And I got, I actually got a variety of modules just so I could play with it, play with it a little bit, you know, that was, that was part of the fun. So yeah, this is
Paul Thurrott (01:06:28):
No, they hot. It's usb. So they're hot swappable too,
Leo Laporte (01:06:30):
Right? That's right. I assume. Yeah. Yeah. I got the R nine, which is pretty high end. Super chill. Yeah. 79, 40 plus the Radiant RX 7,700. Well, I wanna play Val on this. You know, that's
Paul Thurrott (01:06:42):
32 or 64. I'm
Leo Laporte (01:06:43):
Confused. 64. I went all the way. There
Paul Thurrott (01:06:45):
You go.
Richard Campbell (01:06:46):
Yeah. It's, and it's amazing. They're not offering an intel version of this. It's just amd
Leo Laporte (01:06:52):
Is that true? They don't have an Intel version. Wow.
Richard Campbell (01:06:54):
Oh, I can't find one in the list. Interesting.
Leo Laporte (01:06:55):
Yeah, you might be right. I bought, you know, the original one was Intel and I was able to go from whatever the ninth generation to the 12th generation.
Richard Campbell (01:07:03):
Can you, can you not love a company that gives you the opportunity performance, performance, performance pro and overkill.
Leo Laporte (01:07:09):
Yeah. So, so just just so I'm clear, this was overkill.
Richard Campbell (01:07:15):
Yes. Obviously,
Paul Thurrott (01:07:16):
<Laugh>. Oh no. I, every, every number you've stated has made that clear. Okay. Nine series
Leo Laporte (01:07:22):
64 64 gigs of DDR five.
Paul Thurrott (01:07:25):
I'm guessing you didn't, you'd get a full HD screen on this thing. It's
Leo Laporte (01:07:28):
I don't know what the screen is. You know what, I, I was resistant ordering. It's gotta be for, it's gotta be, because there were a couple of negatives in the old one. Battery life wasn't great and the screen wasn't great. I just read a review. Somebody got one and, and reviewed it, I think on the verge and said the screen's very nice. And that, that was like, okay, fine, I will do it. And I thought for a while I've been thinking I'm never gonna get another X 86 machine. I love these apple silicon machines so much. But then I realized, oh, wait a minute. I need a Linux, a Linux machine. So,
Richard Campbell (01:07:58):
So you, did you notice they offer you a keyboard with nothing drawn on it? Yes. Just blank keys. Like Yes, very neuro man.
Leo Laporte (01:08:05):
I got the clear keyboard with rgb and they have little raspberry pies in the bag. <Laugh>. I don't know what's going on. I'm gonna, you should order one, Richard, and then you can explain to me what I just bought <laugh>. Guess I don't, I don't know what, I don't know. I kind of went crazy. I I, I might have to order the blank keyboard just to have a blank keyboard. I think it's pretty cool, right? Yeah. It's, that's just a different league of Cool. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:08:32):
I, I would, I wouldn't personally, but
Leo Laporte (01:08:34):
I, I don't need respect key caps. I key caps are for the weak. That's for the week. I,
Paul Thurrott (01:08:39):
I can't see those key caps. My hands are on them.
Leo Laporte (01:08:42):
<Laugh> more. My eyes aren't good enough to see those characters anymore anyway, so why not leave it black? So I, it looks like it's intentional. I got the clear antsy. I may regret this <laugh>. I mean it, but the beauty, I can get another one and just pop it in. Right. If I regret this. So yeah, so you see the circuitry behind it and it glows and that's, and that's important. <Laugh>. Yeah. I guess it's only 49 bucks. If I hate it, I'll get one with key caps. It's pretty hysterical though. Look at it. It's clear. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one I ordered. Call me nuts. I'm actually not a touch typist. It's gonna be a real challenge. <Laugh>. I dunno if I, if you get
Paul Thurrott (01:09:34):
Wait, wait till you know what? It's, it's gonna raise his head when you're writing code <laugh>. Now you're gonna like, where's the damn slash whatever
Leo Laporte (01:09:42):
That actually probably, I know where the things are with coding, probably. I'm thinking. Okay. All right. We'll
Paul Thurrott (01:09:47):
See. We're gonna
Leo Laporte (01:09:47):
Find out if you get a if you get emails from me that the characters are displaced by one row, just, you know, should be able to decode that pretty easily. If it says Q, it's an A. Right? If it says a, it's a Z, you can figure that out. <Laugh> burdens on you, buddy. All right. Are we, do we have anything more to say about with Windows? Yeah, there's
Paul Thurrott (01:10:09):
A lot
Leo Laporte (01:10:09):
More, so. Oh, good. Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Paul Thurrott (01:10:13):
We don't have to go over this too, too much, but there's one interesting point there. So, last week there were two insider builds the beta and release preview channels this week, today actually, we got a dev build out. I'll book oh book Outlook we know is coming to replace mail and calendar at some point in Windows 11 or 12 or whatever. It is now an inbox app alongside the, will they call
Leo Laporte (01:10:35):
It Outlook express, just for old time sake. I wish they
Paul Thurrott (01:10:38):
Would. Cause honestly, well, actually by the way, you should because it's how
(01:10:42):
It is. Don. We have 18 things called Outlook <laugh>. Yeah. Like what are you doing? You know, so No, they won't, but they should. I agree with that <laugh>. But the more interesting thing is I talked to her, I, I mentioned this from time to time. I mentioned it today. Most of the channels in the insider program don't map to a specific release of Windows, whatever, right. Windows 11 in this case. So today's our last week's build rather moves the beta channel into 23 H two. So if you want to te test what will come out as Windows 11, version 23 H two, that right now is the beta channel, eventually that will, you know, migrate into release preview. We'll see. So that's finally happened. I guess if that excites anybody. In better news, I would say, I remember we talked last week about the KNUCK going away.
Richard Campbell (01:11:29):
Yeah. I love the knuck.
Paul Thurrott (01:11:31):
I do too. I've won three of them. I think I big fan. I'm happy to say that as has signed an agreement with Intel to do two things. One, to support all of the current knucks in that are out the world. So
Richard Campbell (01:11:44):
Thats me. 12. Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:11:46):
And will create new nooks based on Intel's they're getting all the knuck, you know, stuff. So they're, they have a license.
Richard Campbell (01:11:53):
Okay. I mean, in the end it's, it's just a mobile chip set. So I'm, I was wondering what they thought. Well, when they said we're gonna make knucks,
Paul Thurrott (01:11:59):
Like I believe it, it also has to do with just the motherboard design, cuz it is, you're right, a hundred percent mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Although there are gaming class versions, right. The sure. The big ones. So I I, I, I think Intel probably still makes reference designs, which they can or cannot just use, you know? Right. And they might keep, I guess they're gonna keep doing that. I'm just excited that they're moving forward with this. And then
Richard Campbell (01:12:20):
I'm sub and the deal must have been, Hey, we'll sign this over to you and do nice PR if you take over the tech support.
Paul Thurrott (01:12:27):
Yes. Under the warranty. Here's, here's the, here's the asterisk. Others can do what ASUS is doing not for supporting the old ones. That's asus. Right. But others can license the Knuck designs and go make new ducks too. So this might result in a world of more knucks <laugh>.
Richard Campbell (01:12:43):
Yeah. Which I, what I thought the Knuck was all about in the first place was Intel building a reference design Yeah. To encourage others to make it. So getting out of it to do that. Okay.
Paul Thurrott (01:12:54):
Apparent. I've never seen one, but apparently there is actually a laptop version of a knuck. But to me, the interesting thing
Richard Campbell (01:13:00):
Was what is that mean? Even that's not,
Paul Thurrott (01:13:01):
I, I don't know. But there's a we've moved to kind of mobile computing, and one thing I think most people probably don't think about or realize about the world is that these U series mobile chips are a hundred percent what? Oh, sorry, rephrase. They're what 99% of the world needs. Right. you can put one in a small form factor computer, and there's all kinds of interesting ways those things can be used. They don't have to be mobile computers. So it sounds like Yeah. You know, mobile computers used to be where we had like, the last gen stuff or, you know, the, the less powerful computers. But these things for most people,
Richard Campbell (01:13:35):
Perfect. Powerful enough. Yeah. Yeah. This is, I mean, for me I've always had a knuck living in the kitchen attached to a Dell Touch display. That's right. Right. And it's just easy way to do the recipe thing and all of those capabilities, but Yeah. And, and ACEs has always made many PCs, but not the kn not really exactly that form factor. Oh, that's interesting. There are,
Paul Thurrott (01:13:56):
Huh? There are actually a lot of companies that make these small form factor,
Richard Campbell (01:14:00):
Small form factor bcs. But I, you,
Paul Thurrott (01:14:01):
You know, you, you go to the well, right? You want to, you want to get it from the source
Richard Campbell (01:14:06):
More. Do you really, do you really want to get it from the source? I mean,
Paul Thurrott (01:14:10):
Yeah, I think so. I did. I
Richard Campbell (01:14:11):
Mean, I would argue that the component cost will go down if they're all using the same form factor, because now they can cross manufacture. Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch of advantages for
Paul Thurrott (01:14:19):
That. Sure. If we, if you thought Surface was a boutique PC maker, let me introduce you to Nook <laugh>, you know there were three years they're very happy. Most of 'em small.
Richard Campbell (01:14:30):
So anyway, but the most common thing is seeing that mounted on the monitor.
Paul Thurrott (01:14:34):
Yeah, like a base monitor. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (01:14:37):
Just sitting on the back of the monitor.
Paul Thurrott (01:14:38):
Yeah. And it was designed specifically to that size and shape, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So that, that would work. You unscrew the screws, you screw it back in <laugh>, you know,
Richard Campbell (01:14:44):
It's sits on the visa mount. Then the other thing I would add to that is you get a a slot expander, right? The U USB plugs, SG slot, that kind of thing. You mount that to the, to the base of the monitor, and then you plug that into a U SB C port on the, on the Knuck and, and you
Paul Thurrott (01:15:02):
Need expansion. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah, it's nice. I mean, hopefully your monitor actually just has that built in, right?
Richard Campbell (01:15:09):
Yeah. Well that's the, isn't that the interesting truth? Again, mo changing coasts. We, we sold the big, big TV in the media room with the media room. So it's like, oh boy, I need to buy another tv. And it's like, oh wait, I have another tv and it's already got Plex and Roku and all that stuff in it. We need nothing. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:27):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (01:15:28):
Wow. Yeah, they, it's interesting. Hang a knock on that and you're done.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:34):
I love it.
Richard Campbell (01:15:35):
It's fantastic.
Leo Laporte (01:15:35):
That's very old school, you know? I mean, especially since you can get a Roku for $43 or something.
Paul Thurrott (01:15:41):
Yeah. But this is the same size as Roku. It's a computer. <Laugh>. Yeah. So do you
Leo Laporte (01:15:45):
Have the, the
Richard Campbell (01:15:45):
Wireless and the Rokus in the PC anyway? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:15:48):
Well, no, I know, but I mean, do you really want to use a PC on your t on your big screen tv? Rarely do I
Paul Thurrott (01:15:53):
Ever, do I ever not want to use a computer? Leo? I, I don't.
Leo Laporte (01:15:57):
It's it's an interesting idea. Yeah. I, I think that the Ns are really cute. I yeah, I, we've always loved them.
Paul Thurrott (01:16:03):
When, when media center was a thing and we had remote
Leo Laporte (01:16:05):
Controls. Yeah, that made sense.
Richard Campbell (01:16:07):
Ah, I did Miss Media Center
Leo Laporte (01:16:08):
Man. But even Knucks have fans. They're not silent. Right?
Richard Campbell (01:16:12):
Depends on the Knuck.
Leo Laporte (01:16:13):
Depends on the No, you get a quiet nook.
Richard Campbell (01:16:15):
Yeah. You can get a Salt State nook.
Leo Laporte (01:16:17):
Ah, no,
Richard Campbell (01:16:20):
<Laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (01:16:20):
That's the, that's the Buddha Chime. How did
Leo Laporte (01:16:22):
You know Knock <laugh> all is come?
Paul Thurrott (01:16:28):
What Windows desktop <laugh>?
Leo Laporte (01:16:29):
Yeah. Well, I mean, if you think about it, I guess Apple really still makes a Knuck. They still make the Mac Mini and I, in fact, my name right here. Yeah, it's, that's as much a knock as anything. Well,
Paul Thurrott (01:16:40):
It is, but I mean, compared to most Knucks, that's actually pretty big <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (01:16:43):
Right? Yeah. It's a big Knuck. It's
Paul Thurrott (01:16:44):
Probably twice as big. Yeah, it's big.
Leo Laporte (01:16:46):
No, you're right. That's right. Yeah. Cuz Knucks are Knucks are that Yeah.
Richard Campbell (01:16:50):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:16:50):
Yeah. Almost lit. Literally VAs ized <laugh>. So the VA amount, it's a
Richard Campbell (01:16:54):
Hundred hundred millimeter square.
Leo Laporte (01:16:55):
Yeah. Yeah. And you can load them up. That, that's what was the cool thing about the Knuck is it made, made a lot of stuff that size, because
Paul Thurrott (01:17:09):
Again, yeah, I, I had one, I added a a lid that had two additional USB front facing U USB ports on it. Yeah. Right. And you know, cuz there's a connection side. There was an additional M two, if you wanted two drives. What Richard was talking about is really kind of perfect. You do the you u USB hub or whatever off of it. Right. And you could leave the, you never see the computer. It's just behind, you know. Yeah. Really nice.
Leo Laporte (01:17:30):
Discords singing. Sometimes you feel like an Uck, sometimes you don't. <Laugh>. Nice, nice.
Paul Thurrott (01:17:38):
Hey, we do the jokes here, guys.
Leo Laporte (01:17:40):
Come on. Easy. mostly I steal the jokes, but anyway. Oh, that's good. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah, it works. Insider program is, are we, where are we? I've, we're, Microsoft has a new font.
Paul Thurrott (01:17:54):
Yeah. So why probably wrote about this two years when they, a, two years ago when they announced it, I don't remember, but apparently two years ago they announced they were looking for a new font. They five, it took them two years. Two years
Richard Campbell (01:18:06):
Sponsor. Huh.
Paul Thurrott (01:18:07):
Hopefully not the same design as that. Worked on the Windows 11 star menu, but whatever. These fonts have actually been a available in the font dropped on menu in all the major office apps for this time period. So if you wanted to be using any of these all this time, you can, you, you could have been and they'll remain in there going forward as well. I gotta tell you, I, maybe I'm missing the point. I actually don't like this Dupant. I tried it in Word the other day and I, I
Richard Campbell (01:18:31):
Never Well, did you like Calibre when it came out?
Paul Thurrott (01:18:35):
That's the thing. I don't remember. I do hate change, so probably not. I
Leo Laporte (01:18:39):
Ideally, that's what I'm thinking, these fonts, you don't notice that they're fonts. Right? They're just there. So this new one's called Aptos, which is funny because that's also, well, they,
Paul Thurrott (01:18:50):
They changed the name of it because the original fonts name meant something like Beerhouse and probably in Germany,
Leo Laporte (01:18:55):
BI means Beer Town. <Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (01:18:58):
Beer Town, sorry.
Leo Laporte (01:18:59):
Bi <laugh>. So
Paul Thurrott (01:19:00):
When
Leo Laporte (01:19:01):
You think about, which is a much better font name. I'll be honest, people don't know how to pronounce Aptos. Is it Aptos Aptose? What is it?
Paul Thurrott (01:19:08):
Yeah, exactly. So I, the thing here, like there was a time when the default font was Times New Roman. That's a
Leo Laporte (01:19:14):
Terrible font. Right. Which is terrible. It's,
Paul Thurrott (01:19:16):
Yeah, it's a terrible font.
Richard Campbell (01:19:17):
Well, it's Satter aerial, right?
Paul Thurrott (01:19:19):
And then they moved to Ariel, and then they moved to Libre. I think that was the Yeah, pretty much. I think that was it. So
Leo Laporte (01:19:26):
I, I don't
Paul Thurrott (01:19:28):
Know. I, this is one I'm not feeling it. I don't know what to say. I, I, you know, we'll see what
Richard Campbell (01:19:32):
Happens. I mean, they all look like variations on Ariel. Yes. They're all sensory fonts. Yep. Yep. I just don't know what is the difference between Aptos, Grandview Seaboard. Yeah. Yeah. Like they put 'em all in. They're subtle. It's like, gee, you had a tough time ticking between them. I defy you to be able to identify them. If I line 'em up
Leo Laporte (01:19:53):
Beside each other, you know how designers are though. They can see the difference. Oh,
Paul Thurrott (01:19:58):
Look at the, I like how the examples are all these things no one would ever make in real life. So this is how we, you know, we can show you what it looks like or whatever. It's like, I
Leo Laporte (01:20:06):
Don't know. It's not the best display of a font I've ever seen. There's people, it's busy. It's crazy. There's a lot of non font stuff. No, this, this does not make you love the font. Yeah. This is never the way you're gonna look at the font plus font in the first place, plus radioactive colors. It's just weird. Yeah. It's just weird. Yeah. I can't tell the difference between these. I really aptos California redwood country. That's not true. That is not redwood country, but okay, fine. It's just a little suburb of Santa Cruz.
Paul Thurrott (01:20:34):
You're su you're such a stickler
Leo Laporte (01:20:36):
For I know Aptos. Believe me, I went to high school and Santa
Paul Thurrott (01:20:39):
And you're no Aptos.
Leo Laporte (01:20:40):
And you're no Aptos my friend. Yeah. does it have, here's the key ligatures. Do you even, is that the key? That's the key to me.
Paul Thurrott (01:20:50):
Ex expended my
Leo Laporte (01:20:53):
<Laugh>
Paul Thurrott (01:20:53):
Interest in this topic.
Leo Laporte (01:20:54):
Okay. Enough. It ain't no Xbox. I'll grant you that. I'll tell you, I'll tell you that right now. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's all right. Let's take a little break and then <laugh>. Okay. You get the choice. Flip a coin. Richard,
Paul Thurrott (01:21:09):
Did you, did you change that headline? Richard <laugh>? Is that you?
Leo Laporte (01:21:13):
Did you, which headline? Maybe I told you. So <laugh>, I, I, I did not change that, but I should have because that's a good time. What was it before? I must have
Paul Thurrott (01:21:23):
Written that during a blackout then. I don't remember <laugh>. I don't remember the
Leo Laporte (01:21:27):
One. And AI told you. So AI and Xbox coming up next. I ha almost hate to say that because I know that many people will say, well, that's this for, that's it for this show. Bye. But there's brown whiskey. I don't looker. There's, there's a good whiskey coming up. Our show today, brought to you by Collide, K o l i d e. Collide is a device trust solution. If you use Okta, a lot of companies use Okta. It, it, it's a really great solution for authentication. But the problem with authentication is just because somebody's who they say they are, doesn't mean they're logging in on a secure system with a secure machine. Collide ensures if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps. And believe me, if you work in security or it, and your company's using Okta, you need this thing.
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Richard Campbell (01:24:16):
I clearly need to change more headlines. <Laugh>,
Paul Thurrott (01:24:18):
I was gonna say, actually it was, it was Richard who told us. So because, I don't know, 2, 3, 4 weeks ago, whenever it was. Mm-Hmm. You said, and I love saying that cuz you
Leo Laporte (01:24:26):
Said, you said, sir,
Paul Thurrott (01:24:28):
It's so accusatory. Did
Leo Laporte (01:24:29):
You or did you not say sir,
Paul Thurrott (01:24:32):
You did that this was, I think you said this exact price mm-hmm. That this was gonna be a very expensive on to existing tiers of Microsoft 365.
Leo Laporte (01:24:41):
It's funny cuz I thought the same thing when I saw this price. I thought Richard was right.
Paul Thurrott (01:24:45):
I I believe you said this exact price.
Richard Campbell (01:24:47):
Yeah. Well, and then, and not that I had any inside knowledge, I was just doing the math and saying this is about where it's gonna land. What I find fascinating about this story was they announced it at Inspire mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and the Microsoft stock price went up 5% in an hour.
Paul Thurrott (01:25:02):
I thought that was bizarre.
Leo Laporte (01:25:04):
No, it makes money. Right? So we should mention the price is 30 bucks a month per user. Oh,
Paul Thurrott (01:25:09):
Right.
Leo Laporte (01:25:10):
$30 per user per month.
Paul Thurrott (01:25:13):
Yeah. So in the commercial space, Microsoft has a, a vast variety of Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Right? Right. Per user, per month. This is on top of some of the subset of those I would imagine, or any of them or whatever. It's so it's, it's sort of like things like there's lots of add-ons. You know, it's like when you're buying a car. Mm-Hmm. Do you do want this mm-hmm. You know, CD changer in the trunk, whatever. These are things you pay for on top of the, the normal subscription teams. Premium is another version of that kinda
Richard Campbell (01:25:40):
Thing, right? Yeah. And yeah, and the extended security for email and so forth. If you don't have an E five, I mean, a lot of that stuff comes with E five mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Right. But e five's pricey. I think lots of people buy E three with the P one security package. Yeah, there you go. Right? That's the, your sort of typical combination. And so I always looked at this from the context of a p3, right. From an E three, because an E3 is a, I mean, you're literally talking about doubling the cost.
Paul Thurrott (01:26:05):
Yeah. You're
Richard Campbell (01:26:05):
Coming beneath three is like 35 bucks a month
Paul Thurrott (01:26:09):
To an individual. You see $30 a month on top of the normal Right. Subscription fee. And you think, I don't pay that for almost any subscription except maybe TV if you pay for that kind of thing. Right. and it seems very expensive and it is to be clear. It is. But th these types of fees for these types of add-ons not, there's nothing like this add-on, but for, for other Microsoft 365 add-ons is Yeah. It's still expensive actually, but it's <laugh> but it's in the range.
Richard Campbell (01:26:35):
Yeah. And he and lies the question. Right. So I'm talking to a buddy of mine who runs it for a 500 seat place. Right? Right. So he's talking an additional $15,000 a month. It's like a
Paul Thurrott (01:26:48):
Month, A month, A
Richard Campbell (01:26:49):
Month.
Paul Thurrott (01:26:50):
No. That's if every single person uses gets it, gets it. Right. And that's, that's the, you
Richard Campbell (01:26:55):
Don't have to use it. They just have
Paul Thurrott (01:26:56):
To Well, but pay. Yeah. But you also don't have to give it to 'em. So like most organizations obviously have some form of organizational units and, you know, sets of users, they all get different they can Right. To save money. Yeah. If we know, if we know that these guys out in the field are never gonna use full office, we can get them the cheapy one, which is access to the web apps and, you know, email on their phone and so forth. So you can play that game. Sure. but man, it, it <laugh>, I mean, you're gonna pay and it gets complicated.
Richard Campbell (01:27:23):
You realize when you start doing the math around salaries and so forth, it's like at a performance improvement of an information worker of two or 3%
Paul Thurrott (01:27:31):
Right.
Richard Campbell (01:27:32):
Is far more valuable than the cost of this. That's what it comes down to. If you saved a couple of hours a year Yep. Working on a PowerPoint deck.
Paul Thurrott (01:27:44):
That's right. You
Richard Campbell (01:27:45):
Paid for that subscription. That's
Paul Thurrott (01:27:46):
Right. This is the example I guess I use, which was that I, I I don't know anything about PowerPoint mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but once or twice this year for some reason I have to make a presentation. Right. So what I'm gonna have is a bunch of downtime. Well, I figured the stupid application out.
Richard Campbell (01:28:00):
No. Yeah. The other side of this is I have power. I'm using PowerPoint 2022, I have PowerPoint 2007 skills. And so making my slide slide look good, takes hours. How do
Paul Thurrott (01:28:13):
I get my <laugh>, my four by three slides from 2007 to look right on a 16 by 10 display
Richard Campbell (01:28:19):
And, and to, and to have the co-pilot take that on for you and just, I mean, there's already good recommendation engines and things in PowerPoint to make it look better. Some of them are not just good,
Paul Thurrott (01:28:29):
Some
Richard Campbell (01:28:29):
Are not.
Leo Laporte (01:28:29):
But at this price, I mean, I don't know what, how price sensitive Corpor prices
Paul Thurrott (01:28:33):
Are,
Leo Laporte (01:28:33):
But this price, it's not gonna be, it's gonna be, you have to justify your,
Paul Thurrott (01:28:37):
Your, the problem
Richard Campbell (01:28:38):
Is, like I said, Leo, you say if a given worker saves two hours a year, you've paid for the year.
Leo Laporte (01:28:44):
Yeah, I understand that. But
Paul Thurrott (01:28:47):
That user, right? So problem is that
Leo Laporte (01:28:49):
User's gonna have to what make write a proposal saying, look, at the time, I know you Jen, and
Paul Thurrott (01:28:54):
You can't, you're not gonna buy from everybody. It's gonna work out. Are you ok? You can't know. That was, that was the conversation. So you can't know until the end of the year. And I don't even know how you really know, like maybe it worked for Bob, it didn't work for, you know, Matt, it did work for him. Like at, at some point. I think it really does make sense to kind of filter this down to only those users where I
Richard Campbell (01:29:15):
Well, and then and now we talk about Viva, right? Because Viva why is the new branding right for corporate surveillance? And <laugh>.
Paul Thurrott (01:29:24):
So hold on a second. So you're, you're paraphrasing the Microsoft marketing cuz I'm
Richard Campbell (01:29:27):
Pretty sure maybe a little bit Yeah, I shortened that up a little bit. <Laugh>. Just a little. Yeah. Yeah. But they, it's like how are we gonna, how are we, we gonna know they're using it. Well, Viva will tell us if they're using it. That's beautiful.
Paul Thurrott (01:29:37):
That's, if you say that <laugh>,
Richard Campbell (01:29:39):
That's
Paul Thurrott (01:29:39):
Reality. Viva Viva did Viva come out of the, where everyone's working from home and now we don't have the
Richard Campbell (01:29:44):
Hundred percent Viva's a product Viva's a set of products that were developed internally for Microsoft that they've ultimately productized and expanded the set from there. I love Microsoft has been struggling. This is the beginning of Office 365 to surface the graph. Right? That's true. Right. In ways that don't upset people. They've surfaced it many times in ways that do Right. See, delve and you know, other products. Like there's, it's very easy to get creepy surfacing the graph.
Paul Thurrott (01:30:13):
And I honestly, I think that's what Viva is. It's a, it's an unwanted intrusion into Paul Spence, you know, 16 hours in teams meetings last week. And it looks like he's been, I don't know, playing Call of Duty the rest of the time or something, you know, like, well,
Richard Campbell (01:30:27):
And I mean, there you and you're on it, right? Like that email you get from Viva that says, Hey, you know, you said you do such and such for someone, did you do it? You know, and that, that is because it's, it's only talking to you. It's less upsetting than it's sending it to your boss and they're pretty careful about not doing those kinds of things. But I, all of this is an exercise and this is incredibly valuable information. What I like about co-pilot in this scenario is it flips the script. In the old delve days when you were working on a document Delve would pop up and say, Hey, Gladys down the hall or has already worked on this document. Super creepy, right? Yeah. If I now say to co-pilot, Hey, I need to build a TPS report, the fact that copilot because of the graph can say, you mean this TPS report? I've just saved you a ton of work. You asked me, you told me you need to do some work. And I made that work less difficult for you,
Paul Thurrott (01:31:21):
Richard. Are are you turning into an AI apologist? Is that what
Richard Campbell (01:31:25):
I'm really not <laugh>. Right? I mean that's why I clearly label this. This is corporate surveillance, but it can occasionally be beneficial. <Laugh>, I'm just
Paul Thurrott (01:31:32):
Kidding. <Laugh>.
Richard Campbell (01:31:33):
Well cuz remember I've also lived on the exchange side. Yes. I've been through e-discovery for harassment where we were going through all that email. We were responsible for fi for pulling that information and we were supposed to be on top of it, right? Like, let's be very clear, corporate assets that you use in your work are owned by the company as is all information that moves through them and they are liable for it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right? So it's part, you know, part of the, that secret job being an IT guy is you do know when everybody, anybody's gonna be let go because you have to turn their accounts off.
Paul Thurrott (01:32:07):
I'm kind of confused. I I'm sorry.
Richard Campbell (01:32:10):
It's all the same problem space. It's that there, there is information that exists within the network because of the network flows and you have to use it responsibly, but you can't not use it.
Paul Thurrott (01:32:20):
We know that windows copilot has been publicly tested. Is Microsoft 365 copilot out in the world?
Richard Campbell (01:32:27):
Not really. They just announced. They, they, so the only first place I saw it was largest customers getting previews. Okay. I was, I think it inspire, they are starting to do more rollout. I
Paul Thurrott (01:32:38):
Feel like I would've heard about it and remembered that. So it's curious to me that they have announced pricing on something. They have not let people see and understand the value of,
Richard Campbell (01:32:46):
Well they said certain customers see, but a la more reason they're testing the price. Yeah. So they finally decided they had to put the pin down. They figured this was the right time to do it. They got the nice stock price spike, you know, we'll, we'll we'll see what happens.
Paul Thurrott (01:32:59):
Hmm. I was surprised by that. Of course. I don't understand Wall Street and the slightest. So my <inaudible>
Richard Campbell (01:33:05):
I think the prioritization of AI is a big deal by a large company. Name me another tech giant that is productized a large language model.
Paul Thurrott (01:33:14):
Yep. Okay. No, you're right. I, I guess in my mind I was, I was looking at the price of this thing and thinking you're excited about this. But yeah, no, I, okay, fair enough. Yeah, of course.
Richard Campbell (01:33:24):
Yeah, no, that, I think that's the real statement. I mean, to me the bigger thing was, alright, now you have a sense of how much this thing costs, that this is the kind of dollars they're gonna have to charge to make it worthwhile. Right. Microsoft pays every day to operate that infrastructure and more importantly, and isn't working it for other profitable workloads.
Paul Thurrott (01:33:46):
Yes. It's and and to the point you and I and you mostly, but I've al you know, been making for months now, it's I don't think people understand how expensive these workloads are on service tro.
Richard Campbell (01:33:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Right. GPD four far more than GD three. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it seems the emphasis here is all 3, 3, 5, 3 ply plus like they're doing everything they can
Paul Thurrott (01:34:07):
Yeah. To yeah. To keep it to the lower
Richard Campbell (01:34:10):
Just, just something they're likely to make money on. Because I think everyone's sound getting sense that they may not make money on four. Like I, and this is why I said this a while ago, but it's like, I don't know that four survives
Paul Thurrott (01:34:19):
O or there's some hardware events which Microsoft and others are trying to make happen where, you know, they, they tailor their chip sets to this kind of thing. Right. Perhaps.
Richard Campbell (01:34:28):
Yeah. And, and Moore's law does still apply. Eventually the hard world will be cheaper, but that's a couple of years from now and nobody's gonna wait.
Paul Thurrott (01:34:34):
Yes. And Chad GPT five will be out
Leo Laporte (01:34:36):
By then. You raised
Richard Campbell (01:34:37):
Such an interesting
Leo Laporte (01:34:38):
Point that I hadn't thought about, which is maybe why it's, it's also, it's expensive cuz it costs them much to do it. But it's also good, it's also a benefit that it's that expensive cuz then people will use Viva and Microsoft would love everybody in every company to be tracked and the data sent back to the home office.
Richard Campbell (01:34:57):
Well, you think you missed a point on that, which is if you're using M 365, the data is being locked. You,
Leo Laporte (01:35:02):
You're already being
Richard Campbell (01:35:02):
Tracked. This is a question. It's being No, I'm not, it's only a question of who's looking at it. Right. And how they're looking at it. Right?
Paul Thurrott (01:35:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Viva Veva just makes it easy
Leo Laporte (01:35:09):
Viva's for the what the front end for the employer. But Microsoft's getting it anyway is what you're
Richard Campbell (01:35:14):
Saying. But I I don't know that No, no. Microsoft's necessary measuring any of that. But what Visa is, is the wrapper that stop you from being sued <laugh>. Right. For not, for not being discrimination. I mean here's, this is a problem I dealt with all the time as an IT person. We roll in a new version of an application. I now watch the logs as that application's being used for a couple of reasons. One is I'm seeing if the new version's actually gonna take the system out because it has some problem that while it wasn't an immediate crashing bug, it is eating resources that is gonna kill off the system. And so I'm, I'm watching that, but I'm also watching like, is the new, are the new features being used? Like they cost me additional resources that I'm, you know, now spending, this is when I'm running my own data center stuff.
(01:35:54):
Right. but also like what parts of the organization are using the new features because they're not using 'em. We're missing productivity. We spent money writing the software. If nobody uses it, it's, it's a complete waste. So we would do targeted a training. It's like, hey, this team doesn't seem to be using these new features. Maybe we just need to educate them better on that. Now there's a path doing that at scale where it's discrimination, right? Where you, you know, you're now scrutinizing workers saying you're not following the workflow that we recommend. So I'm going to, you know, insist on additional retraining. And if you pick it by individuals, then it can look like discrimination. But if you pick it by policy
Leo Laporte (01:36:36):
Right,
Richard Campbell (01:36:37):
Then it's not. And you ha need software for that to abstract that. And that's a chunk of what Viva does is provides that access to the graph to show we're training as applied successfully. And not,
Leo Laporte (01:36:48):
I can tell you're Canadian, cuz here in the US we are free and we don't have to worry about that at all. We just say, <laugh>, you need training, you need training. And you know, that's that. Oh no,
Paul Thurrott (01:36:59):
I'm gonna put it in a different way. It kind of brings us full circle. We're in the US and we're just gonna let AI do everything. God. Oh, there you go. Works it out. <Laugh>. It just doesn't matter. The
Richard Campbell (01:37:07):
Really, I'm sorry. These, these hoops were for jumping through your legitimate society, not ours. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:37:12):
That's true. That's a good point. But I have to say, one of the benefits of AI is it gives you plausible deniability for everything you do. Right?
Paul Thurrott (01:37:23):
Let me lemme get this back on track with ai mm-hmm. And introduce my new favorite acronym or oxymoron, which is Bing Chat Enterprise <laugh> which is announced today. And what, what a great line. You know, a Bing Chat enterprise. It's like Barbie for Business <laugh>, you know, like what? So there anyway exists. So boy, I'm away. I'm not gonna talk about that at all. But apparently it's a thing and Yeah. Yeah. Separate from that. Bing, Bing, the Bing We know and Love or whatever which has the b AI based Bing chatbot has picked up support for visual search, which is something people are probably used
Richard Campbell (01:38:07):
To useful. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:38:08):
You can are used to, I should say, but you, yeah. You can upload images to it, obviously, and it'll search the web and find new ways to steal images. So that's fun. And yeah. Bang. So <laugh>, I don't know did you read the Bill Gates gates note?
Richard Campbell (01:38:24):
Yeah. I also read it right beside the one he wrote in 2012. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> about how dangerous is with, with what Google was doing.
Paul Thurrott (01:38:31):
Interesting. Okay. This is the second time in the past, I don't remember timeframe, six months. He's opined on ai. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> now that Microsoft's doing it. That's interesting. I didn't know. Okay. The goal, I'm interested in that. Well,
Richard Campbell (01:38:44):
You know, what led to open AI was Bill and Elon being on the same page in the, in the in, after Google bought Jeff Hinton and that whole crew outta the University of Toronto mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and added them to Google Brain. There was this real concern that generative AI is being controlled by laboratories inside of Google.
Paul Thurrott (01:39:03):
Yeah. So make it open and
Richard Campbell (01:39:05):
Make it open and it'll be better. Right. Yep. Said the company that then hijacked the entire thing and <laugh> Exactly. Turned it into a corporate enterprise.
Paul Thurrott (01:39:12):
Well, Microsoft is gonna be Microsoft.
Richard Campbell (01:39:15):
Well, and to the, you know, the more sa one of the salient points around that is a group of billionaires got together and said, Hey, we're gonna set up open ai, not just Elon, but Reid Hoffman and Peter Teal and so on. And none of them did it. They didn't
Paul Thurrott (01:39:27):
Do it. I was gonna say, I I How many evil laughs do you think there were during that meeting?
Richard Campbell (01:39:31):
Well, and they double evil laugh of, yeah, we're gonna do this. And they didn't actually do it. They, Elon kept saying, Hey, I put a hundred million dollars into, into OpenAI until someone actually looked at books and went where, and it turned out it was like $15 million and a dozen Teslas
Paul Thurrott (01:39:47):
Of That's weird. Cause he, as he's usually, he's usually, you know, usually not one to spread misinformation. Strange. So, ga for those who haven't read it, gates has a site, by the way. And he re he writes these blog posts called Gates Notes hilarious. And I, if I were to boil this down with the word generator, it basically says we've done this before. There's nothing to worry about. Yeah. And it kinda dismisses the fears of ai, especially AI taking over the world and dropping missiles on us or whatever.
Richard Campbell (01:40:19):
I mean, and, and I don't disagree with that point. I'm more making fun of the old complaint when the other guys were doing it. Right. Yeah. If you weren't, if it wasn't clear to you that this is corporate maneuvering not a concern for society.
Paul Thurrott (01:40:34):
Right. Just
Richard Campbell (01:40:35):
Put the two statements side by side. I
Paul Thurrott (01:40:37):
Mean, with ai, I feel like we've gone through the seven stages of grief. And I, and I, he's written more eloquently to this topic than I have. Although I I've made some of these same arguments. If you look back in time technological advances, the train, you know, the car, whatever. Yeah. You know, we had similar issues. Right. It's like you're killing jobs, you know? Yeah. The job is selling horses. I mean, you don't yes.
Richard Campbell (01:41:01):
So's the thing is, AI's not gonna take your job. Somebody using AI is gonna take your job.
Paul Thurrott (01:41:04):
Yeah. There you go. Which is interesting cuz there is someone pointed, I, I couldn't think of this word last week actually, just now that I'm talking. The democratization was the word I can think of. There is a democratization for of technology that Microsoft, by the way, was, was and probably still is very good at mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, like bringing these supercomputer things down to the general populace. I think that was a big, big strength of theirs. And this notion of like, you had to have a, a specialist doing a certain job, and now you can have someone else plus ai. Right. It opens that type of job up to more people. Yes. less, probably less pay <laugh>, you know,
Richard Campbell (01:41:42):
There's different, well, it's the commoditization of skills and Microsoft's been the ultimate commoditization. There you go. It just take, take technology that usually was fairly difficult to access and make it simple to access, even if it's not as good as the original. So it's
Paul Thurrott (01:41:54):
Sufficient. I will say the word I was searching for and not finding last week was democratization. In this case, I believe your commoditization is a much better word. Yeah, that's
Richard Campbell (01:42:04):
Good. Yeah. I, because democratization intends some sense of nobility. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Commoditization is about blowing out the market.
Paul Thurrott (01:42:12):
Exactly. No, you're right. A hundred percent. That's good. So I, anyway, I, I would say if you, if you're interested in ai, it is worth reading. Yeah. I'm not sure he wrote it, honestly. I mean, maybe that's why it's all real, you know.
Richard Campbell (01:42:26):
Well, it probably is a gate spot somewhere.
Paul Thurrott (01:42:27):
Yeah. But it, you know, I I I, I'm not as fa fascinated with gates as many people are. I, I obviously more, well including
Richard Campbell (01:42:37):
It seems including Microsoft these days. Like they're very arms length with him.
Paul Thurrott (01:42:41):
Well, for good reason for various
Richard Campbell (01:42:42):
Reasons. Yes.
Paul Thurrott (01:42:44):
So it's interesting. This one's interesting. So I don't read everything he writes, so I thought this was interesting.
Leo Laporte (01:42:49):
Interesting. He often feels to me like it's full of bromides. It's almost like, well, that's a little lobbyist. Like
Paul Thurrott (01:42:58):
Yeah. But I honestly, I think a lot of people
Leo Laporte (01:42:59):
Insightful,
Paul Thurrott (01:43:01):
I guess, but you, you, yeah. Like, so, but he spelled out the, the major concerns. And I honestly, for a mainstream audience, I, I feel like useful, this is what we have. Yeah. We haven't gotten it from the, he
Richard Campbell (01:43:12):
Carries a lot of gravity and arguably those things were not written for us as folks who focus on this industry all the time. Right. I
Paul Thurrott (01:43:18):
Mean, the people reading this think he invented Apple and it's fine. It's, the idea is simply that he is speaking to a mainstream audience. And I, I, you know, I was like, okay, he kind of hit all the corners, you
Leo Laporte (01:43:28):
Know? So That's interesting. I didn't even really consider that. That's, the Gates notes are for normals. They're not for
Paul Thurrott (01:43:33):
Right. He's not, he's not inspiring today's tech leaders, I can tell you that.
Leo Laporte (01:43:37):
Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:43:38):
No. You know, like, at all.
Leo Laporte (01:43:39):
So what is, so why does he write this? What does he,
Paul Thurrott (01:43:42):
Because I think he, he's, he's a big topic guy now, right. Cause he, now he doesn't lead a company. Right. So mean he has his foundation, but he's this like, look, I've been around the block. And I honestly, I do think that part of the message, you know, we've done this before, is correct. And this is mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, like I said earlier, I, I've made this argument myself, not as well as he does, but you know, the advent of the car, the, the train, you know, the factories, whatever yeah. Good and bad. That's the point of technology. The, the goal is we emerge on the other side net. Good. Hopefully. Right. Right. And and that's kind of his point. He goes into way
Leo Laporte (01:44:15):
More detail. Richard, you're kind of an AI naysayer. Do you think he gives AI too much credit in this?
Richard Campbell (01:44:21):
No, I don't actually. I think he picked a pretty good line. I don't think he has any special insight there. He's just Bill Gates. I, I don't disagree that I, I know these technologies have weaknesses. I'm not anti-technology by any stretch of the imagination, but I know a hype cycle when I see one. Yeah. And we're in one. Yeah. So our judgment is severely impaired, including mine. Right.
Paul Thurrott (01:44:41):
No, mine too. Yeah. Yeah. You have to, you have to acknowledge that, because that's what I meant by the seven stages of grief. I think we all went through this. Yeah. Oh my God. It's changing everything. Oh my God. The world was then and now it's now, you know, it's like, and then after a while you're like, oh, okay. And now I'm at like, I think it's like msg. It's a little flavor in here. You sprinkle it on something else. Yeah. And it makes it a little bit
Richard Campbell (01:44:58):
Better and too much of it, it gives you a headache. Right. That's right. It's all very reasonable. Yeah. I
Leo Laporte (01:45:02):
Think the thing we're learning is where it is useful and where it's not, you know, it's been oversold as useful for everything, which
Richard Campbell (01:45:09):
Is the nature of a hype cycle.
Leo Laporte (01:45:11):
Right. Unlike blockchain, it actually does turn out to be useful in some circumstances.
Paul Thurrott (01:45:16):
And by the way, not, not to, I mean, it's July,
Richard Campbell (01:45:19):
I know
Leo Laporte (01:45:20):
What's only
Paul Thurrott (01:45:20):
Been couple months for the world at large. Yeah. It's only been since February. So.
Richard Campbell (01:45:23):
Well, and, and now, you know, the, the other angle I had on that is I have seen the trough of disillusionment destroy the usefulness of the product too. Yeah. So moderating response right, to me seemed important.
Paul Thurrott (01:45:35):
I,
Leo Laporte (01:45:36):
That's a good point because
Richard Campbell (01:45:37):
That's, you wanna go through
Leo Laporte (01:45:38):
Good point. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:45:39):
One of the indicators that AI is in fact important to some degree, right? Is that these intermediate, these months since February, feel like years, right? Yeah. Time is moving slowly, contracting slowly. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's, I think that speaks to the fact that this is not a thing. We're gonna lead past this, forget it ever happened, you know, like, I like it is here and it's gonna have some,
Richard Campbell (01:46:02):
This is not 3D tv. That's right.
Paul Thurrott (01:46:05):
And possibly not the metaverse. Yeah. We'll see, the jury stole it. One
Leo Laporte (01:46:10):
Thing that does worry me, and you brought this up, Richard, is the difficulty and cost of gen, of getting the material, the raw material for the large language model. And and there's,
Richard Campbell (01:46:20):
Now this is argument against GPT five, is that I don't know that we have enough material to justify Well, a larger iteration. Well, there was
Leo Laporte (01:46:25):
Just an article about what they're gonna do instead, which is some sort instead, because the internet is too unreliable for really a good model. So they're gonna do
Richard Campbell (01:46:35):
Some, let's, let's be clear. GPT four is a perfect manifestation if you of the internet.
Paul Thurrott (01:46:39):
Yeah. I mean, don't we just need to listen and
Richard Campbell (01:46:40):
Hallucinates and lies to you. Really.
Leo Laporte (01:46:43):
How exciting. <Laugh>, they're gonna do some, I can't remember the name of it. I bookmarked it. I'm looking for it right now. But they're gonna do some sort of synthetic data that's partly creation of humans, partly the creation of other ai. It's basically the mad cow disease of ai. They're gonna have AI consume ai. I love it. Which seems
Richard Campbell (01:47:02):
Like there was a great paper, there was a great paper on an MIT of test versions of Exactly. This who showed data degeneration. Absolutely.
Leo Laporte (01:47:10):
Of course,
Richard Campbell (01:47:11):
Of course. Remember when you used
Leo Laporte (01:47:12):
To it's telephone. Remember when you,
Richard Campbell (01:47:13):
When you used to make JPEGs outta JPEGs until they turned into blobs <laugh>. Yeah. Which by the way, doesn't happen anymore because the JPEG algorithm has improved to the point where it recognizes sufficiently depressed image and stops. Right? Right. And so part of these, what they're doing is the right thing, which is quit slamming more data into a limited algorithm. Start improving the algorithm.
Leo Laporte (01:47:34):
Yeah. This was a Financial Times article. I just found it. Why computer made data is being used to train AI models. Computer made data does not sound like, or synthetic data does. Sounds like the ideal input for ai. And,
Richard Campbell (01:47:50):
And I don't know that I'd count on the financial times for precise titling of technology.
Leo Laporte (01:47:54):
Well, that's true. That's fair. They're, they're taking the name from press release somewhere, I think.
Paul Thurrott (01:48:01):
Yeah. Maybe the future advances that we'll be consumer facing will be chat G p t three point something based, like, in other words, we'll keep advancing along that line.
Richard Campbell (01:48:10):
Yeah. Well, and the bigger thing is just recognizing that the additional parameters buy nothing except additional power consumption.
Leo Laporte (01:48:16):
So let's go parameters. Sam Altman said that he was pretty confident. Soon all data will be synthetic data <laugh>. Oh geez. Chief Executive of Cohere, which is a L L M startup, said, if you, if you could get all the data that you needed off the web, that'd be fantastic. In reality, the web is so noisy and messy. This is, again, a quote from the Financial Times that it's not really representative of the data you want. The web just doesn't do everything you need. Don't that
Richard Campbell (01:48:45):
Old computer phrase phrase garbage,
Leo Laporte (01:48:47):
Garbage in, garbage out. Ego. Yeah. Yeah. Cohere still applies as well as set front of its competitors already used synthetic data, which is then fine tuned and tweaked by humans. Synthetic data is already used, says Goma Gomez, even if it's not broadcast widely, get this <laugh>. This is what they say it is. For example, to train a model on advanced mathematics, cohere might use two AI models talking to each other. Where one acts as a tutor and the other is a student. They're having a conversation about trigonometry says Gomez. And it's all synthetic. It's all just imagined by the model. And then the human looks at this conversation goes in, corrects it. If the model says something wrong and baa bing baa boom, you got a large language model. That doesn't seem like a good way to do it.
Richard Campbell (01:49:39):
Well the argument is the large language model were great if all the data was accurate. And I don't know that that's true, but
Leo Laporte (01:49:46):
It's the data being by two other ais, I guess. Yeah. If it's accurate. I guess we
Paul Thurrott (01:49:54):
Are, we're teetering way off targets.
Leo Laporte (01:49:56):
This is Okay. Sorry, go ahead. Didn't mean to disrupt
Paul Thurrott (01:50:01):
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Richard Campbell (01:50:02):
You
Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
Didn't. We have an AI segment on Twig and that's really what the, what the show will be talking about. So I'll defer to them. I
Paul Thurrott (01:50:08):
Just, bill Gates talked about ai. That's the hook. I don't, I,
Leo Laporte (01:50:11):
That's all there is to say we're done.
Paul Thurrott (01:50:13):
We've gone up into some weird, I don't
Richard Campbell (01:50:15):
Know, I, I'm sorry. The FTC investigation is way more useful cuz as much as we make fun of the ftc Right. The job, their job is to protect consumers. And there is a conversation to be had. Yes, exactly. About the risk consumers of this product.
Paul Thurrott (01:50:26):
And this is the the thing I was talking about earlier where, you know, you look at it case by case. And I look at their arguments for looking at ftc mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I'm like, yes, I I think this has to happen.
Richard Campbell (01:50:36):
Well, I mean, to me, the simplest piece of regulation that I just see no downside to is publisher sources. Right. What data did you use in the model?
Paul Thurrott (01:50:45):
I, I, I talked earlier about a a document that people watching the show would probably be interested in reading. I do not recommend reading the FTCs order. It is blisteringly long and detailed. But the, they want answers for everything. Right. We want to know exactly where this data comes from, how you get it whether you believe or not, that you're violating their privacy. Like, did you steal this? Did you scrape it? Did you it it's, it is, it's incredibly detailed. It's
Richard Campbell (01:51:13):
Also a reasonable set of questions.
Paul Thurrott (01:51:15):
Oh yeah. No, I'm not, yeah. Not disputing that.
Leo Laporte (01:51:17):
And as we know from Sam Altman's congressional testimony, he's always perfectly frank and forthright in all his answers.
Richard Campbell (01:51:25):
You guys have been very well trained to to speak to Congress. Yeah. Aspo, ASPO, you know, as compared to Bill Gates in 1996. <Laugh>. Right?
Paul Thurrott (01:51:33):
Yep. He's like a, a, a sya Nadella bot. But just trained specifically to talk to regulators and lawyers, politicians.
Richard Campbell (01:51:42):
I'm sure there's a $300 an hour service to train you on that stuff.
Paul Thurrott (01:51:46):
AI based. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (01:51:47):
I mean, I mean, I hope they do a good job, <laugh>. I think this is a logical investigation to limit pace for some time while this is going on. It's, I think it's important to acknowledge that an investigation is not an indictment. It is literally, Hey, we see a risk to the consumer here, show us what you're doing so we can help assess that. Yeah. Because you know, what open AI would really like is for the FTC to come back and go, yeah, all good. You guys are fine. Nobody's gonna be hurt by this. I
Paul Thurrott (01:52:14):
Don't see that
Richard Campbell (01:52:15):
Happening. It seems
Leo Laporte (01:52:16):
The likelihood
Paul Thurrott (01:52:17):
Don't see that
Richard Campbell (01:52:17):
Happening. Right. And, and not a
Paul Thurrott (01:52:19):
Better man.
Richard Campbell (01:52:20):
But by the token it's like, you shouldn't fight this because fighting this basically says, oh no, we know we're hurting people. We just don't want you to know how much we're hurting people.
Leo Laporte (01:52:29):
<Laugh> interesting. I just wonder how forthright they're gonna be in answering these
Richard Campbell (01:52:32):
Questions. I think as
Paul Thurrott (01:52:34):
Have never, they have been forthright about any way that they do anything. So this will be fascinating. Yeah. Yep. You thought the Activision Blizzard documents were redacted. This is gonna be just black pieces of paper <laugh>, you know, again, you
Richard Campbell (01:52:48):
Wasted how many cycles on that bloody merger when you could have been working on this. It is
Leo Laporte (01:52:52):
A little bit like asking Coca-Cola. Yeah. Well what is your secret recipe? We, we need to know if it's safe.
Richard Campbell (01:52:58):
Well, I think that's very reasonable. The FDA did ask out all of that. And Phospho acidic has serious conference issues with your body too, by the way It pulls. That's right. Calcium and magnesium outta your bones.
Leo Laporte (01:53:09):
Wow.
Paul Thurrott (01:53:10):
Yeah. And but does it taste delicious, rich?
Richard Campbell (01:53:13):
Yes. Yes it does. Especially just with a healthy dose of Captain Morgan attitude. <Laugh>,
Leo Laporte (01:53:20):
There was, it was a New York Times crossword clue, two word adult beverage, and it was rum and coke.
Paul Thurrott (01:53:30):
There you go. Which is three
Leo Laporte (01:53:31):
Words. Well, I mean two, two ingredient. I think it was maybe two ingredient adult beverage. That's probably what it was. There you go. I wrote Gin and Tonic first, but then I realized it was rum and coke.
Richard Campbell (01:53:40):
That would be my call too. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:53:42):
Much better. Let's do Jack and Coke, cuz God knows there could never be too much Xbox News.
Richard Campbell (01:53:49):
Goodness does. Let's know,
Paul Thurrott (01:53:50):
You sort of said that, that felt a little
Leo Laporte (01:53:51):
Sarcastic. No, I mean it, I love it. I am. I am all in on the Xbox now, man.
Paul Thurrott (01:53:57):
There is. So there's been a lot of Activision Blizzard news. Some weeks that's been the Xbox News this year, this week. There's some other stuff. So it's kind of fun. So Microsoft after 22 years will be getting rid of Xbox Live Gold and replacing it with Xbox Game Pass Core, which is a significant upgrade, actually upgrade. The price isn't going up. You're getting 25 free games to start every month. There'll be more in the future. Multiplayer gaming, of course. This is, this is, yeah. Okay. And it kind of aligns with the other Game Pass subscriptions pretty nicely. I think it was a week ago or two weeks ago, whatever it was, we, we know, we knew that. And now it has happened, the prices for what is now called Xbox Game Pass Console.
(01:54:46):
Right. Which was originally just Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate have both gone up. Right. Subscription services are going up all over the place. You know, that was kind of telegraphed. And this will take effect on sometime in September when it does, if you have, if you are paying for Xbox Live Gold, you will automatically be pushed into this. And I, I, I kind of did, I kind of went deep on this. This is not really worth going too deep on the show, but when you kind of go point by point with all the stuff you get and what changed, I mean the, the big thing here, other than the advent of Game Pass and the need to have something that makes sense with Game Pass is that Microsoft has had this feature or perk of Xbox Live Gold and also Xbox Game Pass. Ultimate called Games with Gold. Right. And I don't know originally if it was two or four, but at one point there were four games and it, over time, it gave you during the lifetime of your subscription access to a, a big library of original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One games. And obviously they went through all the Microsoft <laugh> stuff. They went through all the third parties that agreed to allow these things to be published here this way, and they ran out. Right. We've, we've just run out and so hit 'em
Richard Campbell (01:55:57):
All.
Paul Thurrott (01:55:58):
Yeah. We hit the last year or so, it's been two games on four. The quality or I dunno, quality is maybe not fair, but the recognizability of these games has gone downhill dramatically. So in lieu of that, what they're doing is that 25 plus it will be more in the future games that you get. And I'm sorry, they starting
Richard Campbell (01:56:15):
With, did you say 25 high quality games?
Paul Thurrott (01:56:19):
Well, yes, because what, what they are this time is what I will, I'll call them catalog games. Right. So they're games like Doom Maternal
Richard Campbell (01:56:26):
Now I'm good with this until you put Fall Out 76 on the list. Like, that's where I
Paul Thurrott (01:56:30):
Falls. It's on the list. You don't five game.
Richard Campbell (01:56:32):
You don't like that. Did you ever play that? I love that game. Unless you play it. In which case you find out it is one of the most broken games ever made. Oh,
Paul Thurrott (01:56:39):
Oh, okay. But the, the point is,
Richard Campbell (01:56:41):
It was very
Paul Thurrott (01:56:41):
Broken. They're starting with Microsoft Studio and Bethesda titles. Third parties will, there might be a third party title or two in there, I guess. Yeah. but more will be coming on board. So this kind of replaces the games with the Gold thing. And I mean, honestly, nice, you know, this,
Richard Campbell (01:56:56):
They needed to consolidate this. It had gotten fragmented, you
Paul Thurrott (01:56:59):
Know, it maps nicely to the Game Pass offering.
Richard Campbell (01:57:01):
And I'm a Game pass. I bought Game Pass, goodness knows how ago. I think it was given to me as an mvp. But I pay for it now. And now I'm gonna, cuz I just don't play games on the Xbox. I am from a part of the PC master race for goodness sake. Right. Like I, we're not, I'm not, I'm not doing it. Xbox is for running Plex.
Paul Thurrott (01:57:20):
Wow.
Richard Campbell (01:57:22):
There are games. I would say Diablo four is much better on an Xbox than it would be on a pc just cuz of the, and and you're playing it on your p on your PS portable. I see. With that, that hand gesture, <laugh> No.
Paul Thurrott (01:57:34):
All these years later. And we're arguing consoles versus PCs can't
Richard Campbell (01:57:38):
All just get along. I'm, I'm not arguing at all. There's no argue. It's obvious. No,
Paul Thurrott (01:57:42):
No, you are, you, you're not arguing. You're just saying you're right. I'm like, I'm not arguing with you're
Richard Campbell (01:57:46):
Yeah. Cuz I know position
Paul Thurrott (01:57:47):
Is ridiculous. <Laugh>. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No. Okay. No,
Richard Campbell (01:57:51):
That's fine. That is correct.
Paul Thurrott (01:57:52):
Okay, <laugh>. So it's the second half of July now, this year's flying by. And Microsoft has announced the second site of games that will be coming out through game, the various game pass subscriptions you know, once again, like Uht recognize any of these. So I don't know what to tell you. I so
Richard Campbell (01:58:11):
I serious, Sam is Oh, that's a great game. But that's really
Paul Thurrott (01:58:15):
Serious, Sam. That's not in there, is
Richard Campbell (01:58:17):
It? Yeah, in the, in the game. In in the, the this list. Yeah. It's Sirius Sam may have
Paul Thurrott (01:58:24):
Where, oh, I'm sorry. I completely missed that
Richard Campbell (01:58:28):
Xbox Series article. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (01:58:29):
I uhm
Richard Campbell (01:58:30):
Reading your
Paul Thurrott (01:58:31):
Article back when I was still a PC gamer and I was looking for new shoot. I went through It's
Richard Campbell (01:58:35):
Classic, I mean, those times before you were lost. Yes.
Paul Thurrott (01:58:38):
Okay. I loved, seriously.
Leo Laporte (01:58:40):
Oh
Richard Campbell (01:58:40):
Yeah, yeah. And
Paul Thurrott (01:58:41):
One and two wonderful. Great. I've never great titles. Yeah. Yep. I never
Leo Laporte (01:58:45):
Heard of Si Siberian Mayhem, but I presume it's the same
Richard Campbell (01:58:48):
Game. There might be a
Paul Thurrott (01:58:49):
Reason for that. It's, it's, yeah, it's snow. When you look at the, when you look at the more recent Doom Games and people are like, oh, they brought Doom into the 21st century. No, they didn't. Those are serious Sam games. Those are modeled after Fast and Fast. You, you, you're running in such a way that it feels like you're on ice. You know, they're, they're nothing like Doom. Mm-Hmm. But they're a lot like Sirius Sam. And you might like 'em, it's fine. But,
Leo Laporte (01:59:10):
You know, now I'm looking up the first 10 minutes of gameplay from Sirius, Sam
Richard Campbell (01:59:17):
Siberian
Leo Laporte (01:59:17):
Mayhem. Siberian Mayhem. Cuz I wonder if, if it really is, you know, a si a serious Sam game or some other,
Richard Campbell (01:59:24):
Or something else.
Leo Laporte (01:59:26):
Man, it's cold.
Paul Thurrott (01:59:27):
Hey,
Leo Laporte (01:59:27):
What? Kicking ass warm me up. Yeah, it's serious. Sam. This looks
Paul Thurrott (01:59:31):
Like
Leo Laporte (01:59:31):
Will Rock.
Richard Campbell (01:59:33):
So they, this really is Duke Newcomb.
Leo Laporte (01:59:36):
It's Duke Newcomb. I think this was
Paul Thurrott (01:59:38):
Oh. Actually if you look up up the game, look up the Game Will rock. This is exactly what it looked like.
Leo Laporte (01:59:44):
So I think Duke Newcomb was the original and was a success. And Sirius Sam was a competitor that, but
Paul Thurrott (01:59:50):
Was, it was unique because of the kind of frenetic nature of it. Right. It
Leo Laporte (01:59:53):
Was a great game. Yeah. It's
Richard Campbell (01:59:55):
Just a, it's just a Russian blasting away with different weapons. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:59:58):
And a kind of aude an attitude
Paul Thurrott (02:00:00):
And just the, the sheer amount of stuff happening at one time was what made it fun.
Richard Campbell (02:00:04):
Yeah. Yeah. No, duke Newcombs line was, I'm here to kick ass and chew Bubble Gumm and I'm all outta gum. Right. Right. Mean
Leo Laporte (02:00:10):
Brush became a movie acid. Yeah. I mean that was like that that, that, that has entered the culture regardless of whether you're a gamer or not. Sure. Okay. Well there's a lot of shooting.
Richard Campbell (02:00:22):
Yeah. Yep.
Leo Laporte (02:00:24):
Not any smarter. I think that was good. Was the pitch on serious Sam was all the action. None of the, none of the none of the brains. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:00:30):
None of the plot. None of the plot
Leo Laporte (02:00:31):
And the plot. You just
Paul Thurrott (02:00:32):
Run around. I'm gonna confuse you with a plot.
Leo Laporte (02:00:34):
So this is, this is a serious Sam game. It's good you're in Siberia's. The only difference,
Paul Thurrott (02:00:39):
Well, but it gives it a different locale. Cuz the Serious Sam game originally were kind of tropical. Yeah, yeah. Right. So it's it's a different background basically. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:00:46):
It's different. Different texture matters. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:00:50):
Same exact game. You're like, this seems familiar, but it looks
Leo Laporte (02:00:53):
Different. Yeah. All right. So,
Richard Campbell (02:00:55):
Well, the main thing is you fire it up and you know what to do.
Leo Laporte (02:00:58):
Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:00:59):
There you go. Yeah. Right.
Leo Laporte (02:01:00):
So good. You get this with the games with gold. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Very nice.
Paul Thurrott (02:01:07):
Microsoft last September introduced a preview of something called Game Pass Friends and Family. You may only know about this because last week I talked about how the $1 offer for Game Pass was back. Yeah. This is what was was supposed to replace that. It was so successful. They're canceling it now. So the last we say about it, the better it's going away. Again, <laugh>. Yeah. So that's Okay.
Leo Laporte (02:01:28):
It's gone. So this is not games with Gold anymore. It's called Games with Core. What is it? What is the new No.
Paul Thurrott (02:01:34):
So there's, they've gotten rid of Xbox Game Xbox Live Gold. Yeah. Sub the original Xbox subscription.
Leo Laporte (02:01:41):
So it's games with Core and then it plays
Paul Thurrott (02:01:43):
No, it's called Xbox Game Pass Core.
Leo Laporte (02:01:45):
Yeah. But it's games with,
Paul Thurrott (02:01:48):
No, it's not games with anything <laugh>. It's, it's Game Game Pass Core. Okay. But you, as part of that subscription, you now get, it's starting in the beginning 25 games. And then, then you can download and play on your console.
Leo Laporte (02:01:59):
And then these new
Paul Thurrott (02:02:00):
Ones, oh, I should say they're, go
Leo Laporte (02:02:02):
Ahead. Do these new ones. Is this with the core or No,
Paul Thurrott (02:02:06):
No, these are, this list of games spreads across Xbox, game Pass console, itc. Got it. Okay. And
Leo Laporte (02:02:12):
Ultimate, you understand my confusion. I'm
Paul Thurrott (02:02:14):
Yes, actually I do. You're right. Yep. It's just confusing. And, and, and this is a simplification
Leo Laporte (02:02:20):
<Laugh>. Good.
Paul Thurrott (02:02:21):
Thank you. I mean, we're still talking about Microsoft. I just want to
Leo Laporte (02:02:24):
Get Bill Gates explain it to me. Can he write a gates note on, on what Gates notes On Game Pass? Yeah. On game.
Paul Thurrott (02:02:29):
I mean, they should have called a Game Pass R too. I don't, I
Leo Laporte (02:02:32):
Community Edition.
Paul Thurrott (02:02:34):
So <laugh> I've been talking about a lot about retro games recently. It's fascinating to me that all of a sudden, I, I didn't do this because it was exploding, but I did it on the side and it is exploding kind of alongside what I'm doing. So it's fun. There is a new retro game collection coming to Xbox Series X and S in two days. It's called, what is it called? It's called <laugh>. It's, it's, it's called and Stream Arcade, which is kind of a strange game. It is 1300 retro games.
Leo Laporte (02:03:04):
1300. Yeah. That just seems like pressure <laugh>, that's shot to play 'em all. Are they good games?
Paul Thurrott (02:03:13):
Oh, I didn't say that. Leo <laugh>? No. I mean, I <laugh> of course, like any collection, there'll be good games and there'll be games like, huh. Uhhuh, you know, I don't remember.
Leo Laporte (02:03:22):
Oh, they've got Omega games. You must be happy about that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Trot games. I don't know who's happy about that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Arcade Games. Let's see which Arcade Games? Joust Joust Two. There you go. Classic Rally X Classic Rampage. Okay. Eight big games from Atari. Fun Kissing Cousins. Oh, they got Star Raiders too. That's a good one. Battle Zone. That's good. Well, this is a was great. Underneath, this is like, these are, I mean, a little
Paul Thurrott (02:03:49):
Bit, a little bit of
Leo Laporte (02:03:50):
Everything. Day of the Tentacle on Dos. That's fun. Classic. Classic.
Paul Thurrott (02:03:54):
And that's classic. And that's gonna be weird, weird on a console because Yeah. Well I guess you selected the, the words
Leo Laporte (02:04:00):
Worm Blaster.
Paul Thurrott (02:04:01):
That's interesting. That's a Lucas film game, isn't
Leo Laporte (02:04:03):
It? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. <affirmative>, <affirmative>, tentacle Genesis game. I mean, let's see, with Balloon Boy <laugh>, it was timely at the time.
Paul Thurrott (02:04:12):
Not as, not as funny. No. <laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:04:16):
I don't see any, I don't see any Sonic games, for instance. So it's,
Paul Thurrott (02:04:20):
You're not gonna get the first party Sonic. Cause they do their own things. Right. They sold their
Leo Laporte (02:04:23):
Own. Right. Msx N nes PS one Wow. ZX Spectrum for our Brits. Nice. Mm-hmm. 1999. And Frisky Tom for the 5,200. So that's an interesting mix. It's an interesting mix of platforms. So this is obviously some emulator that they've packaged mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and then they found ROMs that they could get away with. Yeah. Go basically.
Paul Thurrott (02:04:50):
Well, that's a, that's a rather current way to describe their business plan, but Yeah, it's a <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (02:04:55):
It's,
Paul Thurrott (02:04:56):
Yes,
Leo Laporte (02:04:56):
I like it. I think it's great. Yeah. That's cool.
Paul Thurrott (02:05:00):
Hey, the more retro games, the better. And I, and the rationale here, this will be another thing I'm working on, but a report came out about the, some huge percentage of games from the 1990s and older, and especially from like 83 and older are just not available. Like, they're just gone, you know? And I think it's important.
Richard Campbell (02:05:18):
And emulators will save them. The question is, do they need saving? I, I don't know. Well,
Leo Laporte (02:05:22):
I
Richard Campbell (02:05:23):
Don't have the retro
Leo Laporte (02:05:23):
Bug from that era. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (02:05:25):
Yeah. So they should be in a museum. I get that. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:05:28):
Yeah. Like I snap packs
Paul Thurrott (02:05:30):
With other, with other non PC platforms. Is that you? Yes. It,
Leo Laporte (02:05:33):
Yeah. A lot of, you know, a lot of early digital art does not stand up well, but it is part of our history. Right. And
Richard Campbell (02:05:40):
Also, yeah. That our memory of those games is superior to
Leo Laporte (02:05:42):
The experience. Far superior in many cases.
Paul Thurrott (02:05:45):
I don't know. I've been playing some of these, like, I gotta tell you. Yeah. There is something to be said, and it might be tied to the fact that they had to struggle so hard to get things within the, you know, constrained resources of those systems.
Richard Campbell (02:05:56):
Yeah. There's a level of creativity
Paul Thurrott (02:05:57):
There. Yeah. And they really focused on gameplay. I some of those games are still very fun to play. Yeah. Not all of 'em. I mean, obviously there's so many hundreds, thousands of them or whatever, but not all of them, obviously, but some of those classics are classics for a reason. Like they really are kind of fun.
Leo Laporte (02:06:11):
Oh. And to add more fun, you can buy it for $30 a year subscription, or $80 for lifetime access. And according to Paul, one in every 10 pre-orders will be upgraded to lifetime access. So if you feel like I Little gambling, they could throw that in. There you go.
Paul Thurrott (02:06:28):
If we can add gambling to professional sports, I don't see why we can't add it to everywhere. Everywhere.
Richard Campbell (02:06:32):
Well, oh wait, you mean every mobile game?
Leo Laporte (02:06:35):
Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Those you mean loot boxes.
Paul Thurrott (02:06:39):
Listen, Richard, you've brought up a lot of Inconvenient Truth today. I gotta say, it's hurting my heart.
Leo Laporte (02:06:45):
Rich is becoming the annoying guy. <Laugh>
Richard Campbell (02:06:48):
Becoming,
Leo Laporte (02:06:50):
He's the truth teller. No one likes and no one likes that. All right. Coming up, get ready. We've got the back of the book, the tip of the week, the book of the week run as of the week, and Brown Liquor of the Week. Coming up next, let's kick things off in the back of the book with Paul Throt and his tip of the week. Paul.
Paul Thurrott (02:07:12):
Yeah. So GitHub some time ago announced that we're gonna be getting rid of passwords, right. And or password only logins, I should say. This is still gonna have passwords, but you can't just log in with your username and password. So this will push people to two f a or physical keys and or physical keys, I guess. Yep. and now they've announced support in preview of beta, I guess public beta for PAs, keys, which one of those things that can sign it, kind of sit alongside those other things, which I find to be very interesting. So we're starting to see this in, you know Chrome is doing this and some services are doing it. I think the way the GitHub does it honestly, is particularly good. And if of course you have to be a GitHub user, but it, this is worth looking into.
(02:07:52):
It's kind of an interesting step forward to a point where I think we're gonna get rid of passwords. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's, it's elegant. So in other words, you have to sign into GitHub for some reason. Maybe you're at the command line, it brings out that browser prompt, or you're literally at the website, whatever. You can, today you can type in you user Zoom password. If you have two f a you can, you can get a prompt, do it on your phone or you can use a passkey. And I just think the way they, the passkey are nice because they integrate with your device. And so, like, in other words, two A, it is on your phone typically, right? You have a Microsoft Authenticator app or whatever, right? Passkey can be on every device. So if you have a secure way of signing in on your computer, which you do Windows, hello, right. Facial recognition or a fingerprint that will sign you into that service. Right. It passes through. It doesn't replace any of those other things. Although I think it might replace physical keys. You might know Richard, but
Richard Campbell (02:08:40):
I still use physical keys with my GitHub account.
Paul Thurrott (02:08:43):
Yeah. I think they're in, I think they're comparable. But I like, the thing I like about PA Keys is they're on the device. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (02:08:49):
So, and whatever device, well, the big thing was the tie into Hello. Because suddenly a lot of the machines you already own are, yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:08:55):
So for example, today, an example Leo will appreciate for some reason I was signed out of everything on my browser and I went to sign into Mastodon. And I'm using Leo's sir twit.social. And I I of course I have
Leo Laporte (02:09:08):
A, by the way, you're one of our most active posters, so I wanna Yeah. Thank to you. You really use it. I'm No, I'm very
Paul Thurrott (02:09:14):
Grateful. Yeah, yeah. No, I, I'm, it's, yes. So but the problem was on, so I, I it's, oh, I have to do a two FFA key. So I grabbed the phone I'm using and I'm like, it's not in there and it's going on. It's cuz it was on my iPhone <laugh>. Yeah. So I have my iPhone. That's no problem. I brought it out and did it. And what I should be doing is putting it on here, but with a pass key. It doesn't, it's not tied to that one device,
Leo Laporte (02:09:36):
Right? Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:09:36):
Isn't it? And I
Leo Laporte (02:09:38):
Wait a minute,
Paul Thurrott (02:09:38):
Isn't it pass Key is not,
Leo Laporte (02:09:40):
Don't you have to have that iPhone to approve it
Paul Thurrott (02:09:43):
With a two A? You do. Yeah. But with Paske you do not. That could be on any of your devices. So once you're, that's point OFS
Leo Laporte (02:09:50):
One of devices because they're not transportable
Paul Thurrott (02:09:53):
To which you sign in securely. Yeah. Right. So
Leo Laporte (02:09:57):
You, you
Richard Campbell (02:09:57):
Can have have multiple devices.
Leo Laporte (02:09:58):
Oh yeah. You can have multiple devices, which means you have multiple capacities for the same site.
Richard Campbell (02:10:03):
That's right. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:10:04):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (02:10:04):
There you go. Which is what I've been doing with, with Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:10:07):
They don't call for ctp You mean like that? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:10:09):
You have separate UIC keys.
Richard Campbell (02:10:11):
I have a bunch of UBI keys. Cuz you should never have only one. Right. And so it's normal for me to register several with a site. Well
Leo Laporte (02:10:17):
I do that too, but you carry one on your key chain and that's the one you use all the time, right? I
Richard Campbell (02:10:21):
Guess the, yeah. And, and then I'll, and for my personal machines, I've got like a little micro in the keyboard already so I don't have to grab the other
Leo Laporte (02:10:28):
One I use, as I mentioned last week, s s h. So I send, for every machine, I send a public key up to GitHub and then I don't even have to think about it. Cuz they have, I have the private key. And so as soon as they see me, they go, oh, lemme see. Oh yeah, that's you.
Richard Campbell (02:10:44):
But this, I mean, I, and I hate to make a call back to a sponsor, but why don't we make call back to a sponsor? Like this is what Collide does, right. With the device specific security that we're getting with Windows. Hello. For some sites now. That's right. That's right. Where if you're on your usual machine, authenticated done as soon as I'm,
Leo Laporte (02:10:59):
I I don't like about Paske is how many pakis you end up creating.
Richard Campbell (02:11:04):
Yeah. So, cause you have too
Paul Thurrott (02:11:05):
Much. But that's not, but you don't, it's not like you manage them. Right? No.
Leo Laporte (02:11:08):
Cause have a PAs key for every site though, Richard. So I have one UIC key that works on all those sites.
Richard Campbell (02:11:15):
Yeah. But the PAs keys are totally transparent to you. You don't even see
Paul Thurrott (02:11:18):
That's right. That's what I mean. It does. You're not managing anything. It's not like you have like a Paske library you have to take care of, you know. Well, you do. It's,
Richard Campbell (02:11:24):
And
Leo Laporte (02:11:24):
If, if you get a new phone, you've gotta somehow get that Paske library over to the new phone or else
Paul Thurrott (02:11:29):
Not somehow it's actually very easy to sign in through your secure authentication on the device.
Richard Campbell (02:11:33):
Yes. It's just the authentication track you
Leo Laporte (02:11:35):
Do on Apple with the iCloud. This is cause they have, those keys are stored in iCloud,
Paul Thurrott (02:11:40):
I should say. Excuse me. So what, the thing I said front was there are different ways to handle this. I love the way they do it. I, Chrome has one extra step I don't like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. so there are different implementations, but the idea here is that I should be able to go to a new computer in this case, sign in with, you know, use Windows. Hello, go into a browser. Now my passwords are all there and blah, blah, blah, whatever. And then sign into GitHub and it will gimme options. I can sign in different ways. One's a pasi, it will create the passkey the first time on the computer. Seamless. I don't have to go to two f a over here. I don't even have to have this phone. It's wonderful. Two f a is great, like two f a is more secure obviously than just passwords and all that kinda stuff. But sometimes you don't have the phone. I I, that just happened
Richard Campbell (02:12:20):
To me. Well, and especially at home, to me, I like the fact that when I'm not, when we're traveling and even I pull up my usual laptop, it goes, eh, this is enough different. I want more authentication than this.
Paul Thurrott (02:12:31):
Yeah. Yeah. With paske you have the choice. And I, and when you do ch and again, if it's done right, like that was my point. Look, if you are in GitHub, go see how they did it. I really like the way GitHub mm-hmm. <Affirmative> implemented paske. That was literally my point. That was the enable us and see how they did it. Because this,
Richard Campbell (02:12:46):
I'm just excited that the know password thing is starting to come true. You know, in certain places for with certain effort there is a solution because it felt like there would never get off of passwords.
Paul Thurrott (02:12:55):
Right. And I think, I think this is it.
Richard Campbell (02:12:57):
Yeah. I mean, I'm not
Paul Thurrott (02:12:58):
A security expert obviously, but I I see that future here.
Richard Campbell (02:13:02):
Yeah. It's plenty secure. Think it's just a question of easy. We haven't had a problem with security in these new methods. We've had a problem with implementation and convenience.
Paul Thurrott (02:13:10):
That's right. That's right. A lot of it has to, for one of the tenets for security should be if it isn't for, if it has to be seamless and easy for normal people to use. Right. If it isn't, they're not gonna do it. Yeah. And I, and I feel like the way Chrome did it was like, eh, almost I, I really liked with two f a and the Microsoft account, I never have to type in anything other than my user account. The email address. And I get a prompt on my phone and I'm in and I'm done. Like, that's really, I, I'd
Richard Campbell (02:13:35):
Also, I also, of course in living in the IT land, like we have tiered security for a reason. I expect my, I'm, I'm in strongly encouraging system admins to use token keys like UB key because their accounts are targeted. And same for business con compromise stuff that senior leadership should be
Paul Thurrott (02:13:53):
Doing to level security. Yeah. But so 100%, but I mean, for my mother, my brother, I mean, know normal people out in the world. This is too
Richard Campbell (02:13:59):
No, no. And it's not tar. It's too much for them in the first place. And they're not targeted the way that a business leader or assistant adminis as targeted
Paul Thurrott (02:14:05):
A, a UBI key with a lightning adapter on it that you stick into an iPhone will be the weirdest thing that most people ever do with their iPhone. Yeah. <laugh>, you know, like it's this, it's this unusual.
Richard Campbell (02:14:15):
Yeah. and and they'll will lose it inevitably. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:14:18):
Yep. A hundred.
Richard Campbell (02:14:19):
I
Leo Laporte (02:14:19):
I don't think you but keys. I think this might be the beginning of the end. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of do
Paul Thurrott (02:14:24):
Too
Richard Campbell (02:14:24):
Actually. Yeah. I think there were a transitory period. I think we we're getting to better solutions now.
Leo Laporte (02:14:29):
Well, maybe, maybe not better. Maybe people like you, Richard and I will continue to use UBI keys, but Oh no, we're
Richard Campbell (02:14:36):
Fine.
Leo Laporte (02:14:37):
Yeah. But normal people, you know,
Richard Campbell (02:14:40):
They were never
Leo Laporte (02:14:41):
Normal. This isn't, they were never guys,
Paul Thurrott (02:14:43):
Normal people on the world. Please listen to me. Don't even,
Leo Laporte (02:14:45):
Don't listen to these guys. <Laugh>. Don't they use the same password on every site and it's easy. What are you worried about
Paul Thurrott (02:14:51):
ABC one 20 three's? You need get to on, it's
Leo Laporte (02:14:53):
Fine. It's, it's everything fine.
Paul Thurrott (02:14:56):
Okay. So I don't have an app, but I do have a book. I was very excited to see this superior. My collection, my Kindle library. I forgot, I've forgotten about it, but John Romero of ID software fame. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> has written an autobiography. And actually I, when I wrote this, I said I'm only, I'm actually 20% of the way through it. I'm blowing through this book. It's awesome. Yeah. And it is awesome. And I'm not, I'm only at the part, like he got, he's gotten his second job writing games, it, you know, soft disc or whatever. It's awesome. So if you care about this space at all,
Leo Laporte (02:15:25):
He narrates the the audible version. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:15:28):
Chapter 12, destined to Doom
Leo Laporte (02:15:32):
<Laugh>
Speaker 5 (02:15:33):
In 1991, Wolfenstein 3D assumed the number one spot.
Leo Laporte (02:15:37):
He's good. That's pretty, he's a, he's a good reader. He's doing
Richard Campbell (02:15:41):
All right. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:15:42):
He has a very good memory. And he talks about this in the beginning of the book. Yeah. He has one of those like, like Richard does, I think, right? Like a kind of a
Leo Laporte (02:15:47):
Didactic
Richard Campbell (02:15:50):
Eidetic. Yeah.
Paul Thurrott (02:15:51):
Ied iic. Yeah. So he's like that <laugh>. So he has a very clear, like a, a lot of the guys that worked at iid, like John Carmack mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, when asked about details of whatever, they always say, go talk to Romero. He remember
Richard Campbell (02:16:03):
He remembers
Leo Laporte (02:16:04):
<Laugh>, by the
Richard Campbell (02:16:04):
Way. Well, and I, I'm learning
Leo Laporte (02:16:05):
Something else else cuz the copyright is Alfonso Romero. Is that his real name? Alfonso. Oh
Paul Thurrott (02:16:11):
Yeah. He, no, he's Mexican.
Richard Campbell (02:16:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:16:14):
Wow. I love the
Paul Thurrott (02:16:15):
Whole first part of the book is his terrible childhood. Yeah. And his
Leo Laporte (02:16:20):
Horrific, he had a terrible book. Horrific. I remember that from the, the Doom book that you recommended. So I
Richard Campbell (02:16:25):
Met him, mastership Doo he did the opening keynote at the conference in Switzerland. I did the closing on. Okay. And and I think we were like the two old guys. Exactly.
Paul Thurrott (02:16:36):
So we, I suspect he had longer hair than you did
Richard Campbell (02:16:38):
Much, much longer. And and has, and has living in Ireland as well.
Paul Thurrott (02:16:43):
Yeah. So I'm pretty sure he's one of the Sheen brothers and instead of going Estevez, he went Romero
Leo Laporte (02:16:52):
<Laugh> Alfonso Romero is such a good name.
Richard Campbell (02:16:55):
Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:16:56):
Should have kept it.
Richard Campbell (02:16:58):
But he, yeah, I was, I I, as soon as he was talking about he was promoting his old book and talking about the new book coming when I signed up immediately Cool. At the time. Okay. And then I said, so how are you gonna talk about Di Catana?
Leo Laporte (02:17:09):
Yeah. Which was a massive failure.
Richard Campbell (02:17:11):
It was, well and it was one of those things, you know, it's the classic sort of James Cameron, George Lucas, like when nobody can tell you anymore. Mm-Hmm. And you're just gonna build the great work you always meant to build. It happens to everybody.
Paul Thurrott (02:17:24):
Nobody, nobody says no.
Richard Campbell (02:17:26):
Did you ever play Exactly.
Paul Thurrott (02:17:28):
Yeah. Absolutely. Honestly, I didn't hate it, but I, the thing I remember they switched to like the quake engine, like right at the end or something. Yeah. So there were all these like awkward looking shapes, like they were bowling, they were kind of off a little bit and flowers and things, but it was okay. There was, it was like that there was like that stereotypical black character that ran around with you and I think a woman as well. And it got, it got weird. Like there was some weird stuff, but,
Richard Campbell (02:17:53):
Well, I, and I, it's one of those things where, because nobody can tell you no shipping is not required. It took years. I mean, we really, yeah. It kept, he kept pushing it back Right. Until the point. That's why the engine change happened. It took so long. It had become irrelevant.
Paul Thurrott (02:18:07):
So this guy has a, a a, a game making background, I think would surprise even people who know about all the doom stuff. Yeah. So he did Apple two games early in the day, learned the comedy, 64 and all that. So I think that that, that part was a very interesting, and I just know not from the book yet cause I haven't read it all, but he also has remained in this industry this whole time. I mean, fair enough. He hasn't had the big blockbuster games, but he's done mobile games, you know, he's done, he's in recent years has kind of revisited the doom stuff he's made. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> all New Doom, you know
Richard Campbell (02:18:33):
Wads or whatever. And believe me, he's not got the biggest gaming debacle by, by any stretch. You imagine Chris Roberts, Owens the greatest ba in deco of all time. Okay. Because it's still ongoing. Which one? Star citizen. Which star citizen. Yeah. Like if you want to read a story, go read what's happened with Star Citizen, it
Paul Thurrott (02:18:49):
Makes it's never come out forever. Look,
Richard Campbell (02:18:51):
It's No, it's still in beta. It'll, it's it Now you're talking a nine digit number for a product that hasn't shipped. This is a different league
Leo Laporte (02:18:59):
<Laugh>. Right, right. Wow.
Paul Thurrott (02:19:02):
All right. Anyhow, this guy's very interesting. I, this book so far is fantastic. I
Richard Campbell (02:19:08):
Recommend and, and a phenomenal guy. Like it's a worthy story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really Extreme Doom
Leo Laporte (02:19:14):
Guy Life and First Person by John Romero guy. Well that concludes your picks I'm gathering. So it must be time for a run as radio plug from Richard Campbell,
Richard Campbell (02:19:31):
This week's show with Corinne Bessett who I've talked to to before in the past. We, and this was much more of an architectural conversation show cause we were talking about the challenges of sort of contemporary live in the cloud organizations and how all these different SaaS products need to communicate and connect with each other and be secured. And so it was really the challenge of governance around SaaS with this idea that we have all these sprawling services running in all these different places and somehow we need, we want single sign-on. We want control of authentication. We don't control our rights and it's hard. And so you have the right set of products and, and the oversight to it. How do you know that this, this piece was being, was being attacked and that piece wasn't when it's not your stuff, it's all sas.
Leo Laporte (02:20:16):
Wow. That's interesting.
Richard Campbell (02:20:18):
Yeah, it was great, great conversation. Corrine's right in the midst of all of that, you know, as, as a consultant dealing with folks that are battling those problems.
Leo Laporte (02:20:25):
Renna Radio 8 89 available@renaradio.com
Richard Campbell (02:20:29):
Yep. Staring 900 in the face. Wow.
Leo Laporte (02:20:32):
Wow. And I'm in the mood for a nice whiskey whiskey
Richard Campbell (02:20:38):
And one I think you already know and like Oh the Glen Farkles. Oh
Leo Laporte (02:20:43):
Yes. Oh yes.
Richard Campbell (02:20:45):
Glen Farkles meaning the Valley of Green Glass Grass. But that's not the fun part of the story. Obviously a space side. They're just south of the Craig Lace, one of my favorite places to hang out. One of the oldest distilleries first opened in 1836. But the real story of it starts at about 1865 when the grant family buys it and has been continuously operated from the grant by the grant family ever since. You know, we talk about all these distilleries bought by Diageo and Sonari and Nick and so forth. This is the sixth generations of the same family Wow. Running this distillery. Wow. In the mid 18 hundreds. They had a brief partnership with Glen Levitt and got into trouble and were able to buy it back and keep it operating. And it was sort of a thing of we're never doing this again. Yeah. I see This
Leo Laporte (02:21:30):
Sparrow from 1963 says Glen Farkles. Glen
Richard Campbell (02:21:33):
Levitt. Glen Levitt. Right. That's the relationship in the grant family. So, huh yeah. Old school distillery, like through and through, they have the largest stills in the space side at 12 20, 100 21,000 liters. And those giant stills, by the way are direct fired. Wow. Talking. Have you seen in the background there? Is
Leo Laporte (02:21:54):
That the, in the back? Look at that thing. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (02:21:55):
The giant stone. That's, that's one of the used up ones is
Leo Laporte (02:21:59):
This SpaceX rocket. Yeah. It's either that or the MSG sphere. I don't know which. There you go. Right. Wow. That's big.
Richard Campbell (02:22:05):
So yeah. Huge. But so they, you know, we talked about how in the steam revolution in the late 18 hundreds, they started using boilers to heat the stills cuz it a, it was miles safer and it also moderated things. But the grant family decided they liked the flavor of the toasted wash as it's being distilled. And so they still to this day use direct fire. Wow. they also do split fermentation, which is unusual. So they actually ferment two separate periods, a 70 hour fermentation and 105 hour fermentation to pull certain flavors from their malt. That way. Again, unusual approach to to making whiskey. But it said substantial scale. They, they particularly produce somewhere in the neighborhood of seven 50,000 to a million bottles a year. They're dunning, they use only dunning warehouses. Dunning warehouses. So that is rack wooden racks and dirt floors. And they have a lot of space cuz they hold 52,000 casks. Wow. That last count no indication
Paul Thurrott (02:23:06):
Is curiously outta step with the company. It looks like. Is it like a La Vernon Shirley font or something? It's
Leo Laporte (02:23:10):
Very strange. It's weird.
Richard Campbell (02:23:15):
So it's not ap
Leo Laporte (02:23:16):
AP to <laugh>. Yeah, no. It's no apt to us.
Richard Campbell (02:23:20):
They make, they make a few different
Paul Thurrott (02:23:21):
Know TTOs. You know,
Leo Laporte (02:23:22):
Aptos.
Richard Campbell (02:23:23):
Yeah. They do make a few different styles sort. They're, they're, they're classic line, the age line. They make a, a 10, a 12, a 15, a 25, a 30 and a 40. They're all barreled exactly the same way. They're aged in sherry cast a hundred percent no bourbon involved at all. It's cool. They use K in some of their other additions.
Leo Laporte (02:23:41):
You can see that when they put 'em all together, the whiskey getting darker and darker.
Richard Campbell (02:23:46):
Absolutely. And it's great. And they do not use color treating. So it is the natural colors. That's great.
Leo Laporte (02:23:52):
Color's coming from the barrel.
Richard Campbell (02:23:53):
Right. That's from the barrel. That's
Paul Thurrott (02:23:54):
Way, that should be a, I don't know, you can't regulate this, but that should be
Richard Campbell (02:23:59):
The law. Well it's also a consistency thing. Like you want it to be the same color each time when you pick it up and it's not going to be going FARCs. Yeah. You are gonna see variations and all that. Yeah. I usually recommend the 12 for someone who's dabbling in FARCs about $65 readily available. And that's a 43% alcohol again, a hundred percent Sherry Cask. If you want to spend some money, you can get the 25 and that'll cost you a couple of hundred dollars.
Leo Laporte (02:24:23):
Have you tried this? I have the family cla casks.
Richard Campbell (02:24:26):
Well, well, it's funny you should bring that up because the family class is, is I, I, it was originally mocked as a prank except that they cried all the way to the bank. But they deliberately did these distillations at Cassie. They realized one at one point that they had casks for going back to 1952. And so they started doing these family casking. And so you, you know, literally it's like why do people buy expensive whiskey? And it's because they wanted to get something special for someone. So suppose you wanted to get a gift for someone that was from their birth,
Leo Laporte (02:24:54):
Born in
Richard Campbell (02:24:55):
Birthday, 1956. Maybe say you, that's a friend that was born in 1956. So you can go to FARC list to the Family Cast collection.
Leo Laporte (02:25:04):
I would do that.
Richard Campbell (02:25:06):
The 56 is bottled in four. In 24 14. Run you about $7,500.
Leo Laporte (02:25:13):
Oh, nevermind. Holy cow. You can get a bottle of Napoleon for that. That's like
Paul Thurrott (02:25:18):
Copilot. It was expensive.
Leo Laporte (02:25:19):
Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>.
Richard Campbell (02:25:21):
So
Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
Okay. Nevermind.
Richard Campbell (02:25:24):
The, the idea of getting one for someone, and again, that year will be the year it was malted doesn't necessarily say how long it's
Leo Laporte (02:25:31):
Possible. Oh, it might be all different. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (02:25:33):
Yeah. And typically but typically they are they are 30 and 40 year olds. I would feel weird drinking
Leo Laporte (02:25:40):
$7,500. That's
Richard Campbell (02:25:42):
Too expensive. I'm with you. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's so, I mean, and that, that 56 that I was talking about, for 7,500 bucks, that's a 57 year old whiskey. Geez, this happens.
Leo Laporte (02:25:52):
This of wine, a 57 year old wine may or may not be good. Does whiskey always get better with age?
Richard Campbell (02:25:58):
No. Ooh,
Leo Laporte (02:26:00):
Can't. Okay. So
Richard Campbell (02:26:02):
I, I find the sweet spot when you're not price sensitive and I'm price sensitive. Let's be clear. Like I'm only gonna spend so much on whiskey. I spend more than most people. But I've had opportunities to taste all sort. I've taste forties, I've tasted fifties, I've tasted sixties. They get very tarry. Like it's not, you're not going to enjoy them. They, the, the amount of, and the game here is realized they're losing alcohol every year. And if they get below 40%, they can't sell it. Oh, right. Yeah. So they're monitoring these casts, and when they start to get close, when they get below about 46, they're gonna bottle it.
Leo Laporte (02:26:36):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (02:26:38):
Because it's not gonna get better from there. And even then it's like, that's a long time. It's just risky. It, it, they, they can go sour. It's just, it's challenging. So not
Leo Laporte (02:26:48):
Worth, yeah.
Richard Campbell (02:26:49):
Not for drinking.
Leo Laporte (02:26:51):
Yeah. Well, that's the thing. If, if you got this bottle, you wouldn't open it, you'd put it on your shelf. And
Richard Campbell (02:26:55):
Aaron, er nice. The, and this, this is the crazy part, right? Like, it's like what? Well, you could fill it with brown water. I mean, at that point you might
Leo Laporte (02:27:01):
As well just drink it, by the way. Yeah. I still have my Napoleon Brandy bottle, which a beautiful crystal bottle. And it's almost outta Brandy and Dev Vorax said, just go to Costco and get some brandy and put it in there. No one will know the difference. Yeah, exactly.
Richard Campbell (02:27:18):
Yeah. Well, very few people will know the difference. Right? I mean, it's one, it's one of the classic gags when I'm doing a whiskey tasting is I'll drop a brandy in the middle of it just to see if anybody's paying attention. It is not that easy to tell.
Leo Laporte (02:27:29):
That's awesome. This was really good. But of course that, you know, I'm conditioned by the fact that it was thousands of dollars. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (02:27:36):
So yeah. And that's where the blind taste tests are so great for that. Yeah. You know, and so when I have folks who are really into to alcohol in one form or another, will do like blind test testing, vodka ranked these by price. Yeah. You're gonna fail, I guarantee you. Right. And blind test taste testing a alcohol aged in wood, it is extremely difficult to tell the difference between that was barley malt aged in wood versus that was grapes aged in wood because the bulk of the flavor comes from the wood.
Leo Laporte (02:28:03):
Yeah. This was the Louis, the Louis the 13th that came in the Bacarra Crystal dec canor, and yeah, it was beautiful. Nice.
Richard Campbell (02:28:10):
Beautiful. Yeah. And I should do a, I'll do a separate piece at one point. I mean, I've been writing a couple of these scripts, but I've been busy moving, so I don't get a lot done. But it's like some of the best cognac I've ever had was made in transtria for crying out loud. Right. A, a breakaway province of Moldova <laugh> and it was $40. Right. But because it's made in Transtria. Right. But they use the cognac process. You can't call a cognac. Right. And all the Russians buy it, so you don't normally ever see it. Right. But by golly, I've lost a couple of weekends. It's a very fine brandy that way.
Leo Laporte (02:28:42):
Tell me some good cheap brandy. I can put in my Louis the 13th decanter and you will be a winner.
Richard Campbell (02:28:48):
There you go. Beautiful, beautiful piece of glass. Oh yeah. Lovely drink too. But
Leo Laporte (02:28:52):
In fact, you can sell the glass for hundreds of, I mean, it's worth a thousand by itself.
Richard Campbell (02:28:57):
Yeah. And somebody fills it up with ice tea.
Leo Laporte (02:28:59):
Cool. Yeah, I probably should put ice tea in it. I still have, there's a, there's just a finger left in it and I don't want,
Richard Campbell (02:29:05):
Well, I gotta run to Poland in the fall, and that's about as far west as I can get and still have access to Davin. So I will be coming home with some Vin and other Trans tree and Brandis, cuz that's hard. The one of the hardest things that hands on mentioned.
Leo Laporte (02:29:19):
It's a little,
Richard Campbell (02:29:19):
A little tricky to go to Moldova right now. I don't, I don't think that's a good
Leo Laporte (02:29:22):
Idea. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (02:29:23):
So but I'll try and grab it in Poland while I'm there.
Leo Laporte (02:29:26):
Here's a picture of a guy who never, probably ever had the loose, only the 13th. And believe me, if you're holding a $7,000 bottle of brandy like that you don't deserve. I'm saying
Richard Campbell (02:29:38):
This
Leo Laporte (02:29:38):
Guy's making music videos where he is showing off his sneakers. This has, has nothing to
Richard Campbell (02:29:43):
Do with this. Isn't that thing, aren't the points on that digging into his hands? Yeah, little.
Leo Laporte (02:29:47):
I think so. Look at him. You know, I just have learned though, that there's an NFC chip in the cork stopper, so I'm gonna have to scan that so I can join the club.
Richard Campbell (02:29:55):
There you
Leo Laporte (02:29:55):
Go. Oh, I didn't even know that. Maybe mine is so old it doesn't have it. I don't know. That sounds like something new. All right. We that's a, that's a, the Glen Farkles can't. I can absolutely agree. Delicious. Don't get 1956.
Richard Campbell (02:30:11):
You'll be very happy with
Leo Laporte (02:30:12):
The do not get 1956 for me or anybody else, you know? Yeah. Stick with a 12 year old.
Richard Campbell (02:30:18):
Yeah. I mean, and really the 12 to 15 and the 20 if you want to spend money. Yeah. Are the 25, like 20 fives, $200 and I would say it's a $200 experience. Wow. Like, it's legit. Oh wow. For the, compared to the $65 experience you get for the 12th, you will notice the difference. Oh, they're lovely. It's still a lot for a bottle of booze. It
Leo Laporte (02:30:38):
Is, it is. Ladies and gentlemen, we have concluded this edition, this exciting edition of Windows Weekly, the Xbox AI edition. We do Windows weekly every Wednesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern. That would be 1800 utc. You can watch us do it if you want while we're doing it at live dot twit tv. There's audio and video streams there watching live chat live in our open to all irc. You'd only need a browser, although if you, you have an IRC client, you can use that at irc twit TV club. Twit members, God bless 'em all, can use the Club twit discord, get behind the velvet rope and enjoy the paid experience. It's kind of like the difference between a a 40 year old Glenn Farkles and a one-year-old Glenn Farkles <laugh>,
Paul Thurrott (02:31:33):
If you say so, <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (02:31:34):
I don't know. No, it's not. Actually. They're very similar. But you do have the nice warm feeling that you're supporting what we do here with your $7 a month subscription. You also get no ads in any of the shows you get, shows we don't put out anywhere else like Paul's Hands On Windows Show. The new AI show is gonna be club only initially because the club pays for it in effect. So if you're not a member, TWIT tv slash club twit to find out more, and thank you in advance after the fact. All of our shows are available on the website at twit tv. In this case of Windows Weekly, twit tv slash ww. There's a Windows Weekly YouTube channel. Great way to share clips with friends, you know, Hey, did you, did you know about this? You know, 1300 video games in one package?
(02:32:19):
Oh, here's the clip. And, and of course, if you listen regularly, you should probably subscribe. Get yourself a podcast player and and, and subscribe to Windows Weekly. That way. Get it every Wednesday at the minute it's available. Paul Thurrott is@thora.com. That's be a premium member and get all the goodness t h u r r o t.com. His book Windows everywhere. His books plural. And the field guide Windows 11, both are available@leanpub.com and are really good reads. Well, I wouldn't read the Field Guide. That's more a reference. Yeah. You could read it. People read it Paul, like cover to cover, like, put it by the bedside table.
Paul Thurrott (02:33:02):
Yeah, I hope not. <Laugh>. you, I mean, you could
Leo Laporte (02:33:05):
Read it like he wrote it in spurts,
Paul Thurrott (02:33:07):
Right? All all over the place. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:33:08):
Exactly. All over the place. Oh.
Paul Thurrott (02:33:10):
From chapter one to 13, back to settle.
Leo Laporte (02:33:11):
Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Richard Campbell is@runasradio.com. That's where re as radio, the podcast and.net Rocks live. And he lives in Coquitlam Canada, in British Columbia. Paul is in Macungie, pa. Although these days moment, today, these days, he's in Mexico City. How long are you gonna stay today or this trip?
Paul Thurrott (02:33:34):
Through the 31st.
Leo Laporte (02:33:35):
Okay, nice. All months. Is it, is the weather nice? I guess it doesn't get that hot there, huh?
Paul Thurrott (02:33:40):
Honestly, <laugh>. Well, it's been it's eased up, but this is the rainy season. The last week has been insane for rain. It's Oh yeah. Much
Leo Laporte (02:33:47):
More than usual. Yeah. Well, it's been sweltering, but it's been in the East coast, so you're, you're glad to
Paul Thurrott (02:33:51):
Be where to go. Yeah. It it's better than be better than back home.
Leo Laporte (02:33:54):
Yeah. Yeah. All right. It's the time to be away. Yeah. Yep. He's a snowbird. <Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. Basically. Sorry. Sorry. He is a sun, snow and rain bird. I'm a
Paul Thurrott (02:34:05):
Summer bird.
Leo Laporte (02:34:06):
Summer bird, <laugh>. Thank you everybody for joining us. We'll see you next time on Windows Weekly.
Mikah Sargent (02:34:13):
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