Windows Weekly 928 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. 

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thorodin's here, richard Campbell's here and we've got a big shoe coming up for you. We'll talk about Windows 11, a lot of new features Thank goodness for Paul's feature tracker. Also the end of the Surface Hub Aww, but the return of the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard. That and a whole lot more coming up next on Windows Weekly Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is windows weekly with paul thurot and richard Campbell, episode 928, recorded Wednesday, april 16th 2025. The rice is done. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show we cover the latest Windows news, microsoft news. Come on, you winners and dozers Gather round, because here comes Paul Theriot from theriotcom. Hello Paul, hello everybody.

01:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Sorry, he's apologizing. That's what I usually do when I meet people Like, oh, you're Paul Thorat. I'm like, yeah, sorry, up front.

01:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Disappointing, isn't it?

01:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
If it isn't now, it will be soon.

01:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I apologize for everything. Also here, Richard Campbell from RunAsRadiocom.

01:20 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Hello Richard, Hello dot com hello, richard, hello last day in uh madeira park. Next week you'll be in us, you'll be down under, yeah, next week. Yeah, so leaving tomorrow, gonna go see the granddaughter for a couple hours before I head to the airport and then yeah it's good to get uh children used to you leaving uh, yeah yeah, that's been really strategies for parents uh, you're not around and that's normal.

01:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, a child just the other day.

01:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We need a puppy as well. I mean, I don't want a puppy, but sometimes you're outnumbered one to one. You got a puppy, I saw.

01:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now we have a puppy. Yeah, nice Congratulations.

01:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I had to take a tick off the puppy already, so, yay, oh boy, that's a little scary. It's been a while since I had to think about ticks so do you have ticks in mexico city, paul?

02:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have some ticks, leo. Oh, I see what you're saying. Um, well, I'm maybe. I mean, there's a lot of dogs.

02:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is a big dog city, yeah I think, I think I'm a friend to all the dogs in my street.

02:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I stopped by they. They see me coming. They're out laying on the sidewalk and you can see the little telecom. Here he comes, little Wapopel, and I'm always like don't get up, and they always get up.

02:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, but you don't get up, don't get up.

02:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Don't get up. Okay, you're up. They're so polite.

02:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now travels. My friends, we're here to talk about windows 11, the feature tracker.

02:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
How's that coming along, by the way, slowly, leo, glad you asked. Um, still in. Uh, yeah, I think I'm gonna keep it in notion. The only issue is it's uh, it's wide. What I want to do is embed it in my site, which I can do, but it's gonna be one of it. Right now it kind of scrolls left to right, which I don't like, so kind of working through that. But I figured I think the next time I do an update that you guys will see will probably be the week d. Let me just look when.

03:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That is next tuesday right not to be confused with week t.

03:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right it was week b, week d of the big update weeks uh, preview updates or week D. So the Tuesday, the 22nd I'll probably update it, but that's kind of the point. That's the beginning of the show, right? So if you're looking at the notes you might notice that A I spelled color as like a British person, which I will now fix.

03:41
But also in the past, when we've talked about what's happened in the past week, especially in the Insider Program, I kind of just laid out like build by build, and I thought, you know, maybe I'll do this like the feature tracker, like we'll just list the features instead, because it kind of the important thing here is not really what exact build something was in or what channel it was in, necessarily although that is important but rather when do we think this is going to come to everybody, right? So I tried to do a little bit of that in here today. We'll see how it goes. I don't know. To me the biggest thing is and we learned last week that actually the biggest thing is, of course, the fourth item in my list. So I did. I'm already doing great with this new format. Preview versions of recall and click to do are coming to stable on co-pilot plus PCs right Patch Tuesday in May. So we should see that in the preview update next Tuesday and we know this because they put it in the release preview channel, which has 23, 24.

04:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
H2 builds and also a Windows 10, which we're not going to discuss because you know who cares Tied to this, still got Windows 10 on this machine, you know.

04:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Don't get attached as a person to flames or anything, yeah don't get too attached.

05:01
I really like that phone style squared off UI. I think it's got legs. So tied to this is semantic search, which I struggled to find a good name for. Sometimes they refer to it as semantic search, sometimes they refer to it as AI powered search or just window search with AI improvements or whatever. But the idea is that Search that doesn't suck, yeah. So, going back to Longhorn, we call it Tiger Search from OS X Tiger from 2003, 2004, whatever year that was. But yeah, this has been the dream for a long time, obviously.

05:40
So semantic search is local AI powered, which is interesting. So it's co-pilot plus PC specific, which will limit its rollout nicely and it will look for it's hard to keep track of this. That's why I have a tracker, but it's because there are so many different features. But they started well, it doesn't matter how they started. So what should ship in stable very soon is image and file slash, document search across local files, if indexed, and OneDrive, and then soon in the future maybe not soon, but in the future third-party cloud storage as well.

06:18
And this past week in 24H2 dev and beta channels they started testing Windows setting search through semantic search. So in other words, you bring up search like I got to keep checking it's Windows key plus Q and S also. So it's one of those going away. It doesn't matter. But when you bring up Windows search and then you can just type in using natural language, something whatever the thing is you want to change, and it will recommend the right thing in settings and then you can go there in using natural language, something I wanted, whatever the thing is you want to change, and it will recommend the right thing in settings and then you can go there from search results, right, so fairly basic.

06:52
Richard last week, I think, mentioned, or the possibility, which I will now accept as a fact, that a lot of this stuff, no, and I mean that because it's very obviously it's. Once he said it I was like, yeah, this is clearly what's happening, Setting the stage for a future where Copilot can control your PC in better ways, right, that today we use it to find a feature, right. Remember, they added a search box to the top of Word and Excel and all those apps and you could type something in and it would say here's where you go. Find that You're like, okay, but how about you just do it. And so I think these are the natural progressions that these things go through.

07:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the equivalent of Siri saying here's what I found on the web about that.

07:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah and because Passing the buck, yeah, when AI evolves so quickly like it is now, you can go to one AI and say how do I do this thing, or whatever, and it will say here's how you do it or here's where you can go find that information. Sometimes it will say I will just do that for you, and it's like that's the one you want, the one that just does it. So I think we're going to get there. Also, copallet plus PC only, but also Snapdragon X only. For now is natural language in narrators, image descriptions, and so it can see people, objects, colors, text and numbers and images and then describe them to you using natural language. That will happen across all Copilot plus PCs. Natural language. That will happen across all co-pilot plus PCs. Eventually, that one is the one I'm really not too sure on it, timing wise, because it rolls out Snapdragon X only. That's the progression there, so we'll see what happens.

08:34
Snipping tool was updated in Canary, but I see this on my dev computer, so there's a text extraction feature. This is the OCR functionality in this app, which is cool, but they're putting it right in the capture bar, which is that little UI that appears when you first run it, and just to make it less clicks to get to it. So I think the idea here is that you took a shot or you open an image and then you can use just immediately, go and get the text out of it very easily. So that is good, so that should be soon. That's an app, that one will happen quick. And then the last set is a bunch of stuff. So there's narrator has a speech recap feature, again, natural language. That weird phone link, start menu integration where the phone link is like a little bar there on the side like a cancerous growth.

09:23
Some more file explorer updates I feel like we get those every month now. The window share feature we talked about earlier, where you can edit the image before you share it, right, those are all in release preview. So that means we can expect those features next Tuesday and I should say in preview, that's release preview 23H2. So we had previously talked about those features in 24H2. Sorry, pretty identical looking set of features. So I think you could expect that again next month, right In patch Tuesday. Okay, that's most of it. I think that was pretty quick, wow.

10:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't expect that.

10:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know what I was thinking about this list of features is that this is a good set of tools to mature. When you're not sure if you're going to have a screen and a keyboard, like I immediately started thinking about, how do you make augmented reality come true? It's these interfaces.

10:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh yeah, text it talks to you, you talk to it.

10:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, you don't need to find things. You want it to snip and extract for you. Like what I've noticed in all those descriptions, there is I don't need a mouse, I don't even read, I need to see something, but I don't really need a screen. Yeah, now think of this from the perspective of I'm looking through a pair of glasses with a camera on it at something else and saying snip that text for me. Right, that's right.

10:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, this is. You know, it's funny, we, I don't know, it feels like it's been 10 years, but in the couple of years now that we've been talking about this in the, the post co-pilot announcement or whatever, you know, I keep bringing up this notion of orchestration.

10:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, I can, this is my this is my totem, or something but um orchestration.

11:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You need a swelling orchestra. Every time you say that, yeah, it's I, I feel like, um, there's platform level stuff for lack of a better term to super technical term for it that needs to happen for uh, windows and then the apps that run in windows to, in a sophisticated manner, be controlled by ai, because you can do screen scrape type stuff and we, you know you see some of that, obviously, um, but uh, yeah, real-time actual control. This is going to come up in the ai section as well, because we're starting to see ai integrating with uh different ais, integrating with different I don't know productivity stacks, if that makes sense. You know, copilot plus Microsoft 365 is pretty obvious, but what about, like Anthropic plus Microsoft 365? It's not a thing yet, but it will be right.

11:55
I mean, this stuff is all coming. So there's a programmability or an extensibility or an automation ability, whatever that has to occur in these platforms. And well, windows in this case. But across it's not just Windows, right, because agents are going to have to integrate with online services as well. Same thing For this stuff to make sense, for what Richard just described to really make sense, everything that we interact with in a kind of a secondhand way right through an agent or an ai or whatever has to support that capability right for it to work well, yeah, now you have to get the feature set done.

12:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But here now you found a way to start maturing this feature set in the existing set of interfaces. Yeah, and once it gets to a certain point, you can now talk about other interfaces.

12:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I mean the we've said this a bunch, but, like, copilot, is a good name because in this current era, you have these tools, which are traditional, which we're all very used to outlook, word, excel, powerpoint, whatever and copilot is this thing that kind of sits over there and works with you. You might ask it questions, you might say, hey, could you do something with this document? But, um, those tools either have to evolve or be replaced with something that's more, oh goodness knows, you can't actually sort out the control panel, so better to do this.

13:13
Yes, that's right yep, we can't look, we can't even get dark mode on us on a window that file explorer displays. But we're gonna nail it with ai, you know yeah no, it'll be, it'll be fine.

13:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Everything will be fine. I know it'll be fine. I know I have so much. Just add another layer on top to fix everything.

13:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, yeah, we get um uh sanofsky team. To come back to one of those architectural diagrams where it's like windows is this little line at the bottom and this is ai and it's like that's the stack and you're like I'm just thinking more along.

13:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You just lay in shag carpet over the asbestos tiles, right.

13:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and some future generation will pull this thing up and be like oh my God, there were beautiful wood floors down here. What did they do? You know why did they do that? Or someone painted the floor.

13:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I've never heard the Win32 API referred to as a beautiful wood floor before, but okay Well.

14:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was yeah, it's no, the one API is a disaster. No, there's stuff below that, though. It's gross and it's slimy.

14:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But it's there Thunking is. Your friend, dave Cutler told me so.

14:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Dave Cutler was right about everything. Just ask him it is. So yeah, I was, just because you mentioned it. Someone asked me about this. You know that Dave Plummer we were talking about that does these videos. I love him, I subscribe, I watch every video he makes, but he did one on Longhorn and I don't know if we talked about this at all, but I very much wanted to watch this. I was super excited when I saw it. I was like, oh, I'm going to learn something new here. And I didn't learn anything new. It turns out he left Microsoft in 2003, which is when this heated up, and his stories are as secondhand as mine and this is not a criticism. Just because of who he is and what he does, I was like, oh my God, there's going to be some exciting information. But you know, as a Cutler acolyte, he was, of course, kind of crapping on the other parts of Microsoft because that's what Cutler did. You know, these other people were children. They couldn't program correctly.

15:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, everything they did was very much of the. We don't have to deal with bugs because we don't write bugs.

15:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Mental that's right, you know it's. It's the guy, the, uh, the prince from, uh, the princess bride, who says you know if I'm wrong and I'm never wrong, you know, like he kind of goes from there right, so, yeah, uh, but but he is cutler right. Color is a genius and and yeah, you know he is Cutler right, cutler's a genius, and he and his immediate acolytes could actually qualify for that, mark Lukowski falls into this category.

15:30
These guys were just absolute geniuses. So Dave Palmer's a really smart guy, but he wasn't in the upper echelon of that part of the company, right. So I can handle Dave Cutler crapping on Jim Alchin or Longhorn, which he called short-term hilarious, it's okay. But for someone else like Dave Plummer to just sort of ride along and do the same thing, it's like yeah you might want to.

15:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're not that guy.

15:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Sorry, you're not there and you're not right about everything. It was a little tough, but anywho, I'm not sure why I got up for that.

16:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Cutler still goes to the office and he's in his 80s. He's amazing, he is a force of nature.

16:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He's a force of nature. If he ever does pass away, he will disappear into a cloud of sparkles and there will be just like a black mark on the ground. No one will ever go back to his original timeline. Yes, yes, where vms actually made sense, and, uh, we live in a different world. Yeah, yeah, okay, uh, I actually forget why I went off on that little longhorn story, but, um, there was a reason, I don't know there were reasons.

16:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So you're bringing all the window stories together, but I know, as I get old, they all they all kind of just blend together.

16:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
so I I transfer from time to time and space to space. Um, just two more windows uh related stories. So microsoft edge remember when they were still using their own rendering engine, they used to do these performance comparisons. They put the computers next to each other, run time, you know things, and we used to get that a lot. Um, we don't get that anymore because now they're using chromium, right. So right, what's the point? Yeah, well, one of the points is that when microsoft makes changes to their, to the rendering engine, they they can just do it for edge, so they could do their own thing, but they also kind of feed back into chromium. They did that thing with the text uh display only on windows because the it relies on windows technology. But the text rendering across all Chromium browsers now is better because Microsoft contributed to that.

17:29
But I guess they're still doing literal web rendering performance work outside of Chromium, although they suggest some of this stuff will go back, because they've done that in the past as well. And I guess in the latest version of Edge, if you haven't updated your browser, it didn't update for you you should do that. Um, depending on it's a browser, it just sort of happens. It sort of happened, yeah, it will. Yeah, and it always you when it happens. But, um, I, apparently it's a noticeably faster web, web rendering. So 9%, I'm not saying it's a huge number, but then again it is 2025. Um, 9%, I'm not saying it's a huge number, but then again it is 2025. Right, it's interesting that you can get that kind of a performance gain and of course, they've been doing the performance work in the UI At some points.

18:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's an indictment, Really. Now you find 10%.

18:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, okay, and this is my problem with, well, one of my problems with these Apple events every year where they're like iOS 19 is 47, blah, blah, blah and you're like how, how, how awful was the thing you shipped last year that you could possibly you have. You don't get big double digit gains every year. What's going on?

18:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
but I guess they do so is it only edge, or is this a chromium speed up? Right now it's only edge but they did say that it might be in a branch they should contribute it back, though, right?

18:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They do, they do, I mean. So the quote that they provided about this was our unique approach and focus to optimizing speed, and the code changes we continuously make to Edge and to the Chromium rendering engine within it have led to real-world performance improvements when using the browser and a variety of hardware.

19:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, but they don't say they're putting contributing.

19:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They don't say this particular feature, but they do they have. So my guess is this will in fact feedback, because they've been pretty good about that.

19:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's some incentive for them not to right. If they don't contribute it back, then you might not use Chrome, you might use Edge.

19:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but then you left on the, on the fork now.

19:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now you're raising everybody. Yeah, you want to be careful. You can't do that. Yeah, I agree. I agree it's bad form if you're suggesting the new version of dot net. Always has big performance improvements that are.

19:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's another one, that's right yeah every time but I should point out that that chromium engines based on the blink engines based on uh, khtml and uh, and I don't think google contributes you don't think there's a lot going on with uh I mean that's what you do, like the kd, and then the kde desktop desktop environment and linux has benefited greatly from google's work somehow I

19:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
doubt it. But you never know. I mean, you never know, I don't, I've never heard that, but it could be. And then this one's just kind of fun. So there is something called the National Recording Registry that's part of the US Library of Congress. That'll be the next part of our government that gets axed once they find out it still exists. But they have as they do every year, they induct songs, albums, artists, all kinds of things into this. So it goes into the Library of Congress. It's there. So this particular one is Happy Trails by Roy Rogers, the Chicago album, the Chicago Transit Authority, helen Reddy, steve Miller Band, tracy Chapman, celine Dion, all kinds of stuff. Hello Dummy, the comedy album by Don Rickles, wow, 1968 is in there, that's in the Library of.

20:43
Congress. Wow, there are two. 1968 is in there, that's in the Library of Congress.

20:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow.

20:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There are two Microsoft-related things in here, one of which I found immediately confusing, but then cleared it up. The first one is the window, what they call the Windows Reboot Chime from Windows 95, which is this one no, that's a donkey brain. I don't know what that was. You know that bloom, bloom, bloom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pleasant sound, right, so Brian?

21:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Eno. He makes a lot of atmosphere. I love the little piano.

21:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Ding ding ding. Yeah, it's nice, it's nice.

21:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's pretty.

21:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And then they redid it again in Vista and I'm sure they've redone it several times since then, but nobody cares anymore. But at that time this was a big deal, so that was kind of a nice that was.

21:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That was nice, these were all distraction tools for the fact that you were waiting to boot up that one.

21:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah yeah, well, they're all of us. You know there's a family of sounds.

21:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah I found a uh, this is a youtube channel. Evolution of all windows startup and shutdown sounds.

21:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah um, what's the guy? Robert frpp was the guy who did the Windows Vista sounds.

21:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
For Patronix From Crimson King. Crimson King, crimson. Thank you. He and Eno are buddies. Oh, that makes sense yeah.

21:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but the other Microsoft related item that made it into the national registry or the national recording registry is the soundtrack album for the game Minecraft. Wow so when I saw Minecraft soundtrack I thought you don't mean the movie that just came out. You know, that's right.

22:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I guess there was a uh, I think 2000 in Minecraft, you have records that you could put on. There are.

22:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So there's yeah, there's music, yeah, yeah, but if you go to Spotify or whatever service and search for Minecraft soundtrack, you will find this and a lot of it is made by I think it's c4, c418 or something, but it's called mine. The theme song is minecraft volume alpha.

22:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh man, this brings me back. I hear this. I feel like I'm in the, I'm in the minds.

22:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is a little bit like a brian you kind of thing isn't it?

22:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, totally.

22:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But there's a whole.

22:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
well, you know, there's an album of these songs and now I can play it because it's in the Library of Congress. That's right.

22:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Honestly, to me it almost sounds of the same era as that Windows 95 music.

23:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It does, doesn't it? Well, it's certainly the same.

23:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This one's called wet hands. It's very relaxing. It's one of the reasons I actually uh like minecraft, because it's very relaxing yeah, this I told the story a million times, but I was.

23:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I walked into my son's room one day and he wasn't playing like an action game, he was playing something that looked weird to me and I was like what the hell is this? And he says this is mine an action game. He was playing something that looked weird to me and I was like what the hell is this? And he says this is Minecraft. I'm like what do you, you know, what do you do? And he's like you build things. I was like okay, and then this, this thing floated by in this space or whatever, and he goes that's harrison's in there too, huh.

23:46
So he had, they were playing, they were doing something together and I was like so cool, I was just like carry on, that looks cool.

23:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, like, whatever thing is good, oh, it's the best I spent.

23:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've spent many hundreds of hours in minecraft.

23:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, building crap well, I hope you still have a movie that looks ridiculous.

24:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, we have a twitMinecraft server. Oh, yeah, right. Okay, yeah, club members have access.

24:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They never did this but to this day, I mean, the best Hall Lens demo I ever got was that first one where they did Minecraft in the room we were in. Oh, I know it had this Minecraft castle on it, but the wall was a Minecraft wall. It looked like Minecraft and it was the real room, but it was all on the stuff you know and the wall broke open, the bricks came out and these minecraft bats came flying out and everyone was like you know, like, like it kind of went right at you and it was. I was like, yeah, this is amazing and we never did anything with that no, so never shipped it.

24:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Do you know how many minecraft players owned a HoloLens headset?

24:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Zero, not counting employees at Microsoft Zero.

24:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, wow, wow, yep, oh man, I always wanted that.

25:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would almost go out and buy a Vision Pro or whatever to do that. The list of things that almost happened with Minecraft is really interesting, cause remember they were going to do like a really realistic graphics thing, but there was something I think it might've been called Minecraft live. They demonstrated it on stage, so it was a game you could go around, it was around briefly, like you could go in the real world and Minecraft would be there to play it.

25:20
Yeah, okay. So I remember the demo on stage because they were on stage, it looked like a chasm opened in front of them or something. Then it went down into the ground. I was like, oh yeah, like you could tell, like this is. It was so cool.

25:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mean this type of stuff and it would be persistent. It was using that Azure location technology. Okay, yeah, azure places, or. And they killed it like almost like months later.

25:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They didn't, didn't well these days, if you don't get 100 million users in two months, which is not important. It's really true. I?

25:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
wouldn't? Yeah, there might have been, I don't remember what. If there was an excuse or reason, I don't know. Maybe there were people walking off of piers. You know, it was bad enough like apple maps debuted and people drive in the middle of the desert because there were no roads there, like, imagine you're walking. Now you're walking around in the real world. I mean, you could walk into walls hit by cars I'm kind of sad.

26:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Pokemon, which was a kind of a google spinoff. Niantic uh the guys. Atiantic were the Google Maps guys and, uh, it just sold out for billions of dollars to the Saudi Arabian sovereign fund. So the Saudis now own Pokemon, pokemon Go.

26:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I was an Ingress player for a while Ingress was their predecessor.

26:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, I was the predecessor. I loved Ingress. It was. It was too complicated for normal people.

26:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, but for us it was great and it became a game where it was very much an insider's game. Oh man.

26:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you had to walk. The thing is, you had to get and this was I loved about Pokemon, too was you had to get out and do it. You had to walk around.

26:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the best steak I've ever had in my life. I mean, you'd hate it. You're more of a french guy guy, but you're not. Yeah, this was like this.

27:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is, if you just had my level for you, paul, you know no ai in it, I'm sorry. A1 on it. Goodness, yes, hp sauce as we call it, hp. Uh. Ladies and gentlemen, let's pause, uh, for a moment to remember Steve and the Minecraft movie which, as it currently stands, is the number one movie in all of the world.

27:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It will always be number one in my heart and I wish it would die in a fire. I don't understand why this movie is popular.

27:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Jack Black pays Steve. That's all you need to know.

27:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That is all I need to know. I agree, that was my primary reason for ignoring it. He's a good looking guy I'm waiting for it.

27:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm waiting for it to stream it. I'm not going to a movie theater ever again.

27:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It'll be fine on an airplane.

27:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Exactly, richard has his airplane movies, I have mine.

28:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Minecraft movie soundtrack. Take a nap, you'd be better off so relaxing so relaxing, I'm gonna download minecraft and show you the twit bill it's really amazing yeah oh my gosh, is there anything in it like uh, one of the promises of doom for a little while was that people would make maps of real places and you could play.

28:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, the brick house studios are in it. Yeah, okay, see, that's cool. Yeah, I like that kind of thing. Uh, it started with, uh, chad johnson, omg craft. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they built that for years. The three or four, maybe five people were really devoted and then I saved it. We had a copy of it and, uh, we put it back up on the server and then I don't I don't want to run the server out of my house anymore, so well, only because I I need all the upstream bandwidth I can get. This was back in the studio where we had so much upstream bandwidth, so, very kind. Fella in our club, whose name uh escapes him trying to remember his name, but anyway, um, lion admiral 1981. I'm trying to remember his name, but anyway, lion Admiral 1981. Lion Admiral 1981 took it over and he's running it. So if you want to get into our Minecraft server, we have a survival server that's set to like super tough to just join the club Seven bucks a month, add free versions of all the shows and access to the minecraft server.

29:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, see, I should mention that more I know I'm surprised this isn't more of a perk mention.

29:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you know yeah, uh, go into the let's play channel on our discord and say add me, because you do have to get whitelisted. Uh, all right, let's pause and come back. Much, much more of windows weekly on the horizon, um, but as soon as it gets here we'll let you know.

29:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But what's that on the horizon? It's on the horizon.

29:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's at the end of the tunnel.

29:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's not going to be good, first might be a train my first.

29:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
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30:36
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31:10
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32:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I'm sorry, no, god, I'm sorry, no, please.

32:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm just going to say to you what's up in the hardware sphere.

32:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What's up yeah, some stuff. What's up? What I was going to say was I've kind of lost track of the history of this. Before the pandemic, microsoft was working on these Surface Hub devices right, which were kind of a which were a hit, yeah, at the time when we were all going into businesses or meeting rooms together and they were doing great.

32:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And we were doing going into businesses or meeting rooms together and they were doing great Projectors and replacing the whiteboard and all in one Before this they had remember. It was like a pixel sense display and now they use the term pixel sense to describe Surface PC displays.

32:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The original Surface. Was that crazy?

32:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
table that didn't work on stage, right, right. Right didn't work on stage.

33:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, right, right. And was the type of thing a hotel or a casino would buy, but not the type of thing a person would buy Right.

33:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And so it was broken the moment you installed it.

33:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, well, you know, it was by design, it was fine.

33:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I remember seeing like a cruise ship. I saw hotels in Vegas.

33:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There were some cool demos for it. You know I Vegas, there were some cool demos for it. I'd like the return to the sit-down Pac-Man style machine where you could be across from someone and both. When you switch players, the screen was swapped so they could play whatever Kind of resembled that to me. Surface Hub, the first version, 50-ish and 80-ish inch screens, I forget, but then right before the pandemic.

33:45
They announced surface hub, I guess two, and this is the one where it was like on an easel and you could string three of them together and have one big screen. It's going to be amazing. And, uh, that it was. You know the pandemic.

33:57
So then the world then the world ended, yeah yeah, so tied to this, I sort of forget the os's, but I uh, the original service hub had like a Teams edition of Windows 10, I would imagine, and then of course, in time they had a Windows-based OS. It was like Surface OS or whatever that they were going to use as they kind of evolved these things. But the original Surface Hub is now well 10 years old, so in October it's going end of life and there's no, uh, there's no upgrade, for you can't put linux on it. You know there's not. There's actually there's no real plans for this thing.

34:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So I don't imagine just bursts into flames either. It's just going to get no updates.

34:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah yeah right, I mean, but you know, as software evolves and you know we'll see, I mean it's we'll see what happens. But I suppose, given the nature of this device, maybe it's not as big of a problem as, say, with a PC. But you know, it's interesting, it's been that long.

34:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, to me it's just like wow, okay, that hasn't been turned on in three years yeah, well, now the people are returning.

35:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Returning to the office is now a thing.

35:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Uh, it's the hot new trend in uh offices actually using the office, um you know, the thing the pandemic did is it get everybody a camera rig and experience with, with sharing software. Like now, the question is do you need to go into the meeting room?

35:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, well, I, I think I think being in person is the point of this return office thing actually.

35:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So maybe I mean, which also begs the question what do you need that thing for?

35:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
because that was always about somebody's not in the office and others yeah well, I mean, depending on the business, there will probably still be people around the office, but if that's not the case, it's still a big display, right I? I suppose you could just use it as a display or whatever.

35:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, Remote your display to it. The other thing about thinking about 2015 is like think about how much better camera gear is or the 3d sensors, Like if you could afford all those things in the first place and they were not cheap, you could afford. You're either out of business and you don't care, or you want anyone.

36:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Anyway, I'm going to forget the details of this too, because, again, pre-pandemic and it just kind of dropped off the face of the earth. But the original, like Service Hub 2, 2s, whatever they were called we got a really good demo. It was one of the last things I did before the pandemic, I think, but they did these in-person demos where these things actually had the USB-C ports all around the edges and you could plug in like a you know webcam. If it was oriented this way, you could pop it up on the top and they were had lots of sensors and all that kind of stuff and they would do palm rejection when you were writing on the screen and they get, you know, multiple people writing on the screen at the same time, et cetera, et cetera. It's it's, it's, it's cool stuff.

36:50
But they, like I said, the, the os's, have evolved. Um. Surface hub 2s is from three, four years later. Um, I think it originally ran on when the same windows 10 team version that the og surface hub ran on. But you could migrate that to what's now called teams rooms for windows, um, whatever, I don't know. So there's still, you know, this side. This may be a business that kind of springs back to life for them, just because of well, the other thing is a ton of competitors.

37:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now, right, there's all kinds of smart boards near hub like yep, microsoft, google killed there google killed theirs yeah, they had a silly name. What was that? Thing?

37:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
called uh. Um, it began with the j. I think, yeah, I can't remember. I can't remember either jam, something, jam board.

37:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it was jam board. Yeah, you're right.

37:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But yeah, so it was kind of like the, the chrome os version of this, you know like a like and you know I'm that might meet a certain need to, if they still made it, but I this will always have a place, I think, in big enterprises and you know, yeah, but I think they also want to get it from a conventional vendor right, like a microsoft should get out, I mean like an actual display vendor.

37:50
Yeah, yeah, what a thought. Uh, yeah, I mean that's probably going to be a lot and is today a lot more common, obviously there you go.

37:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Surface hub 385 inch with pens and smart camera 32 000, yeah, geez forget it.

38:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The original one, I think, was just north of 20 when they announced. Maybe it was 18 at first. Then it went above 20.

38:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But even the so they figured oh, it's enterprises. You know, they pay 10 000 for their cisco zoom room, so they'll pay.

38:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't think it was like this. I don't think it was like a cynical, like how much could we charge? I?

38:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I really did cost that much.

38:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think they were expensive you know?

38:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, yeah, 85 inch screens are big expensive.

38:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean like even surface PCs, like the surface studio. Everyone sees that and says, yeah, okay, but I just want the screen and it's like, okay, well, the PC is $3,500. Just the screen is going to be $3,300. You know like it's, it's it $3,300. It's the most expensive component by far. It's more expensive than all of the other components. It's really expensive.

38:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But yeah, I just have you spend that much money, though you hate to hear it's at its end of life.

38:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, at least you didn't have a four or five year period where you couldn't even use it, so it's fine. What?

39:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
are you going to do? Why would you buy one of these when everybody has a camera and a screen and sharing software and, like it's turned out to be no kind of an absolute concept? Yeah, so it's it beautifully solved a problem that was becoming irrelevant, that's right that's, uh, the microsoft story, uh, in a nutshell.

39:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I guess I don't know.

39:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, it was a boardroom piece it. It was cooler than a projector, right, you wanted that Tony Stark sort of interactive effect. Yeah, yeah, one would argue. Now you should go the meta way and everybody puts on a headset.

39:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, we should all sit in the same room with Boba Fett helmets on our heads Horizon world, because that's not dystopic at all.

39:44
Oh, what a world. What a world. I know. Someday I can't wait to, we'll be sitting on the couch watching a movie. You know, my wife and I, or you and your wife, or whatever, and you won't even be talking through a microphone. You know you'll actually get up to go to the bathroom and be like oh, I forgot what you looked like. What happened, honey? I'm over here, honey, I'm, I am your father, you know, you're still in.

40:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's like so many periods where startups get too much money right where they're getting an a round of 25 million dollars, and so consistently I have a ceo coming at me going how do I build the ultimate boardroom like we're going? We're going to go get this exotic wood table and so forth, but the hardware like I need it to be special, yeah, what does that use?

40:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
because that looks. Yeah, yeah, I. I would imagine, um, that in those scenarios, whatever he's using gets updated every two weeks. You know, the problem is they spend all this money on something and you want to use it for years, as you would, and it's out of date. It's pretty quick, but that's technology I don't know.

40:46
Yeah, intel has made their first major move under their new CEO. This one's kind of interesting. They sold 51% stake, so a majority stake in Altera, which is their field gate programmable array business that they bought for a lot more money than it's worth now several years ago. Altera was actually founded in 1983, which is pretty amazing. By the way, went public in 1988. Intel acquired it in 2015 for $16.7 million, based on a 51% stake worth $4.46 billion. We're saying that this thing is now worth about $8.75 billion. So Intel once again has the touch of Midas to them. But these components are super important and today they're used in cloud data centers. So Intel still owns the other 49%. They're going to remove those earnings from their earnings report, but they still have an ownership stake and they'll still be able to take advantage of it.

41:55
I think they did some sort of what are those? I forgot the name of the chips, not the mainstream chips for PCs, but the high-end chips which were for workstations and now are for data center. They integrate with these type of chips. So you have like a standard powerful Intel CPU that is kind of monolithic but it could be attached to these. It's a weird thing to say like F. What do you call these things? Function, field array or field programmable. Programmable, oh, fpga, yeah, fpga.

42:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's where we need a better term for this, but uh, programmable Gatorade, yeah, not Gatorade, no Gatorade, uh by the way here's Putin's setup. I just thought you might want to for Richard, when they ask you next time, just you know, tell them this is what you need.

42:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's unimpressive. Also, is he in a Hilton. What is this?

42:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It looks like he's in you're right, a Hilton ballroom. That's pretty funny. There's a couple of computers under the table.

42:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He calls down and he's like I plug my Ethernet cable into the port and it's not doing anything. You know like yeah, it's a hilton, that's how it works. It doesn't. It's a hilton. Yeah, you have the worst wi-fi on earth you know that's pretty funny.

43:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're right, it looks like a hotel ballroom. This is so weird looking now who knows?

43:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, I don't know why this bothers me so much, but when Steve Jobs announced the iPad in 2010, he positioned it as this thing that was going to sit between a phone and a PC, and the way he said it was something like the thought or the question has arisen as if, as if it's coming came up on a swamp like steam. It's like the question has arisen is there another device we could sell to everybody?

43:49
oh yes, the answer is yes, um so, but steve jobs, uh, was very upset with the reaction to the first iPad, because people this is when we started talking about consumption devices right, this?

43:59
is a term we never really used before and he had this list of things that it was better than PCs or phones at at the time. You know, email, web browsing, reading, blah, blah, blah, whatever, most of which are consumption activities. And so, for the second iPad, he said this is the post PC era. We make most of our money on post-PC devices. This is the future of the computer. And they have ipad pro. But, uh, the ipad os is limited, um, dramatically and on purpose, to not to harm mac sales. But now that they have ipad pros that cost over a thousand dollars oh my, my setup costs more than an apple laptop yeah.

44:51
So you could throw together an ipad, air or pro of either size screen with their keyboard and their pen, and that thing costs more than a MacBook Air. So the question has arisen, leo, is there room for iPadOS to improve so that it actually could work as well as a computer? And my answer to that for a couple of years now has been yes, but they haven't done it. So every year WWDC rolls around, every year I'm like maybe this is the year, maybe they're going to do it. You know the iPad pro any iPad is so limited that if using final cut pro whatever app it is to render some video and you get an email and you switch to mail, it stops rendering. You know it? This is. It has the most powerful processor imaginable. It's the same thing they use in their computers. I mean, I know there are more powerful versions of the chip, but this little, thin, wonderful portable device could be so much more than it is.

45:42
And now mark german has a report that they might actually be doing it this year. He's very vague, um, but he says they're gonna. Part of this stuff they're gonna announce in two months is, uh, improvements to ipad os to make it more like the Mac. Yeah, multitasking things like that, god forbid. So I last year said look, you forked iOS into iPadOS. Fork it again into iPadOS Pro and put that stuff. Make it for iPad Pro only, or maybe iPad Air and Pro, whatever. That's fine. Most people who buy a normal iPad or a mini are using it to watch movies and read books and play games. You don't have to do that stuff over there. But if you're going to spend as much or more on an iPad as you would on a MacBook Air, this is overdue. So supposedly it's happening. I guess we'll see.

46:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know I'll be the test bed for this. It's funny. I want to use this so bad yeah, why?

46:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
just for, because, uh, well, this is the, this is the dream, right? So this is the one thing that can do everything, right? Um, it's never been done effectively. Maybe there are exceptions, but you know, uh, a folding iphone or phone that could turn into a small tablet, it gets gets there. But one device that you travel with, where you, uh, you attach a keyboard and you're you work like normally, like you would on a laptop, but then you take that thing off and you can watch, you know, play games or you can do whatever you want without that stuff on it. Cool, um, and then the battery life is amazing, right?

47:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's all day, for sure, yeah.

47:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is. You know, it's all day for sure. Yeah, this is, you know it's a. This apple's the one company I think could get this right. You, you can take something complicated by windows like windows, and chop off parts and try to get something simpler, which they technically did for ios. I get that, but, um, but now you have ios, it gets more and more sophisticated every year, like it just needs a couple of things and then you get the, the stuff that's important, but you don't get any of the legacy deadwood, um, and so there's a. I don't know, this is kind of a dream, we'll see. I mean, I, they've never done it, you know so far, and I think it's artificially limited at this point.

47:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But there's an interesting change in the user base at this point, where people use their iphones, maybe to the exclusion of everything else, like that's their main primary computer device, yep, and so they're very used to that the interface, the applications, the way it works. Maybe it makes sense for apple to say, okay, we're going to embrace this change well, I just don't know why they're hesitating.

48:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't. Well, they want a customer you've already got on a mac and move them to an ipad, like why are you sad?

48:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
same price well yeah, that's, that was kind of my point. Once the prices of the ipads rose to the point where they were the same or more, yeah, the excuse for not doing it goes away I'll be very interested.

48:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean I have, yeah, they put the M4 in the iPad Pro before.

48:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's what I mean, like you got to be, I don't incredible. So I feel like if Steve Jobs had not passed away because remember so the iPad 2 was 2011. He was actually out on hiatus because of health reasons Came back to do the presentation. It was so important to him they did that special cover that they still use, which is amazing I mean, I don't know the dates off the top of my head, but it took them a very long time so he passed away that year. He passed away that October. So I feel like if he had stuck around, they would have pushed the iPad as a feature of computing. I really think he was very hot on this post-PC thing. Tim Cook is not a visionary, he is a bean counter. I think he looked at this and said you know, what would be better than replacing the Mac is selling people both. So that's my. I'm just. I mean, I'm projecting here. I don't know that this ever conversation ever occurred.

49:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We talk about this all the time on Mac Break Weekly. I bet we don't know. It's inconceivable.

49:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It doesn't. Yeah, I don't know, it's inconceivable, it doesn't make. Yeah, I don't think that word means what you think it means. But the um, uh, I don't remember the dates, I'm not. I'm not the big apple guy, but you know, over time they introduced a keyboard cover that didn't have a touchpad on it. It was like, well, you'll touch the screen. But we also have this stupid apple pencil, the thing steve jobs made fun of and said, wait, no one will ever want. And then they eventually added the trackpad with the support and they you know, but it didn't have keyboard shortcuts, or didn't you know? It was always a little bit limited.

50:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then just the os now is limited with background tasks and specific multitasking features, whatever I do think, though, that a generation that's grown up on the iphone, I could might completely embrace it and say plus fine Plus, once they do their folding devices, I mean.

50:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Then you can carry it and it's both. I mean, look, I've tried every version we all have right. I know you guys have both done this Like back when I think this might have been a Sony or a Palm TX or something. I remember what the thing was A little Palm device right One of the later ones, as they got kind of nice A little fold out keyboard, little thing. You kind of stick it on there.

50:42
I'm on a flight typing my thousand word editorial about whatever. I'm living the dream I'm flying through space like Thor, and then there's a little bubble within the plane and the little palm thing went and lost the connection, lost everything I wrote. It's gone. So I mean, I've tried, like we talk about. Jerry Purnell used to love those little windows, ce, handheld PC things. That was the size and shape of a mobile keyboard, so the screen was like this, you know, like a Hummer view outside, and you know you hunch over it, you do whatever, cause I think there's a class of people that we used to call them knowledge workers or information workers, people who travel for work, for work, who you know they want the lightest thing possible, but they also want it to do as much as possible, and you try to. I feel like a macbook air is pretty the air.

51:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's what I was thinking. It's the definitive machine in that class and, for a long time, literally the best computer in the world, so my daughter julianne fries with it.

51:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It was so sharp my daughter just got a, the m4 version of the it's pretty spectacular macbook air. Yeah, and the reason she wanted to do she had a surface pro I don't remember, nine maybe and she loved it. She liked the pen. You know she's a student, so she would you know she drew and took notes and all that stuff like a kid would do, I guess. But this thing got like two and a half hours of battery life. She was freaking her out and I was like, well, you can get a new one of these. I guess you could get the snapdragon thing. I mean, that would be pretty good. But I'm like I gotta tell you you get this.

52:04
If you get a back for care, it's gonna. It's gonna last forever.

52:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, yeah and uh. So you're not gonna think about carrying your charger with you because you don't work long enough to use it it's incredible.

52:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So you'll be home before.

52:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She's probably exaggerating as a windows guy to say that that's no I I.

52:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Last year I bought the m3 version and I would say one of the big achievements of the co-pilot plus pc is they. They got into the ballpark of this, but if a the macbook air I had 15 inch, the bigger one it's about 15 hours. But real world battery life, which is nuts um the best snapdragon 11, ish, 12, maybe maybe 8 to 12 depending on the machine, depending on conditions, whatever fans there's no fan in the macbook air, but the one she got. She has a small one, so it's probably. She says she gets 18 hours of battery life. I'm not sure how she rated that, but she was. She's overjoyed by this.

52:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's what she does. You know it really is dependent. I don't get very as nearly what you were saying. Yeah, because of what I do on my macbook.

53:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, what I really yeah, so I just the normal way that I use computers I, that's what I got on that computer. I was, you know it's impressive. Yeah, most of the pcs I review get like six or seven hours if you're lucky. Um, but it also comes with and richard was talking about these cameras and sensors and stuff earlier it has an I think it's eight megapixel. Yeah, just Gort crisp, like just super nice camera. So the the, the iPad air I have is like an okay camera. It's. It might I don't even know, it might even be like it might even be seven, 20. I don't know what it is, it's like okay, it's nothing special. You know the screen's like tiny, it's really thin, but the one she has is really nice Like you can really see the difference.

53:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Alex Lindsay it's funny has been saying that the microphones now on the laptop are so good that he often doesn't send a standalone microphone out in his so that's fascinating to me because I would say in the PC space, that's the one thing that's still lacking.

53:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They've totally caught up on webcams, that stuff's awesome. The one thing that's still lacking uh, they've totally caught up on webcams, that stuff's awesome. Uh, you, five megapixels very common. You're set in c8 as well, but it's. The microphones are garbage and I, I do the same recording test every time to try to figure out some setting. There's all this ai nonsense you can do and whatever, and it just doesn't. It's not. I've never found one that's any good. You need a, you need a microphone, like it's to me, it's. I would never do a podcast on the, the screen, the built-in one, unless you know it was an emergency or whatever. An emergency podcast we wouldn't let you to be honest.

54:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, you're very. Uh, yeah, you're very. You would very clearly be like I don't know what you think you're using.

54:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It sounds like you're under the ocean or something, but this is not working so yeah, no, it's very clear that

54:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
it is not clear. Yeah, okay, um, anyway, wwc, we'll see if they actually do it. I hope so. I'm curious. Uh, on the flip side of this equation, google has laid off hundreds of employees in their newly consolidated uh platforms and devices division. This is where they brought together android and pixel into one group, along with I don't know chrome and, uh, the nest devices and fitbit and all that stuff, right? So, um, I don't think this is as bad as maybe it sounds at first glance. Only because they knew we all knew this was coming. They actually asked people to agree to leave because they were consolidating, and some number did, but I think these are the ones that did not. You fools, you could have taken the money and runs told you to leave. They're like they'll never let me off. I'm so important. What happened?

55:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
told you to leave, but you didn't. You wouldn't we tried. That's pretty funny. Yeah, google's feels like a stumbling drunk. They just yeah.

55:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You just really wonder what's what the heck's going on up there I, yeah, I don't know I, I, I don't know, I don't know I really I just I started using the latest pixel again, which I have to say I love. It's a nice phone.

55:59
The camera's wonderful. It's the most welcome thing in the world. Going back to that, when you take a photo, it could be of anything, it could be a drink in a bar or a sunset or whatever and it's like oh. Every time you're like, oh, my God, look at this. I know I'm going to get used to it and stop doing this, but every time I'm going to get used to it and stop doing this. But every time I like look at this picture, look at this, look at that. You know it's amazing.

56:20
But then you look at the battery life and you're like, oh, yeah, they're right, this is a downside. And you know it's free. Yeah, nothing's free. And and then the watch thing is I want to, I want to physically harm it. I hate it so much. Part of it is just the normal notification thing where it's not set up properly yet. So it's notifying me too much about stuff. I know I'm going to get on top of that and the way I'm going to do that is by turning off notifications entirely, because it's driving me insane. But I swear to God, five, six times yesterday this thing was like and I don't mean it, it didn't go bing, it went like or whatever, and I look and there's nothing there. No, I'm like okay, just making noises no notification.

57:03
There's nothing I don't know why I did it I gonna.

57:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There were at least five times I cannot explain it.

57:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It sounds like my rice cooker. I can't. Oh, lord, we have a. If you, anyone has any samsung uh appliances?

57:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they sing songs no-transcript. So it's not actually specific, it's it's.

57:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
it's definitely a different song. I can tell you that I don't know why.

57:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Interesting. What do they do in Canada? Do you have any Canadian?

57:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, Canada, your clothes are dry, you can, and the chicken dance.

58:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's what we did.

58:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's nothing here that couldn't be turned into something that makes a lot of noise. So they, that's just the, it's the, it's the washer and the dryer and the rice cooker. And we've got a japanese water boiler too that plays a song and all water is hot.

58:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow yeah, I used to have a japanese water purifier that would have a whole. It was a rigmarole.

58:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, this is like okay, so maybe this is an asian thing, but it's like um, we want your electronics to make you happy yeah, right we.

58:30
They were probably among the first to try to like personal, you know, make them into like people, like things, right, like even though it was, it's a white square that doesn't look like a person Although I guess I am a white square, depending on how you look at it. But yeah, so I think, like these. Like you know, I play a little happy songs and like maybe it makes you happy, whereas I'm always like is there a button where I can turn this thing off? Can I gouge it?

58:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
with like a. We have a German dishwasher and all it does is make a very annoying beep. Oh yeah, of course we're done. We are done. It's German. Come open the dishwasher.

59:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was driving slowly through a town in some small town in Germany and there was an old man with a cane and he's walking like two seconds, like two miles per hour or whatever, and I'm like obviously I'm'm gonna let this guy go, even though I could have just driven through the intersection. There's no one else there and he looks at me and he like shook, like his cane at me, and I was like I was like go, and then he hit the car. He's like no, you have the right of way he didn't say it in english.

59:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're following the rules and the rules. I appreciate that, because I hate it when you come to a stop sign and it's obviously this person's right away, well, and he says it's okay, go ahead. And it's like this is how accidents happen. Yeah, follow the rules.

59:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Listen, I live in pennsylvania, so I I have more rules. I have no, there are rules that nobody follows. What I don't like is uncertainty in pennsylvania is all about uncertainty so are you gonna go?

59:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
oh, you want to go, why don't you?

59:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
go. Well, I'll go, oh no, oh, you're gonna go. And it's like want to go, why don't you go? I'll go, oh no, you're going to go. And it's like guys, it's a freaking intersection, let's go, one of you go First person here goes first In Mexico, it's dystopian. It's a fight every time. It could be a person, it could be in a bike, it could be a car bus. Act aggressive and you always have the right of way.

01:00:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There you go.

01:00:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's very different, anyway, samsung.

01:00:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know what we're talking about anymore, but I don't know there it is yeah, like watch.

01:00:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You remember that's the Rice Cooker song.

01:00:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Little Watchers used to do this right. You would have like a I don't know a Timex or some old, old-fashioned watch, and they would always play little songs. Why is there a song built into this thing? I can't even tell the time what do you like.

01:00:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But now it's pavlovian. My mouth just started watering because the rice is done. The rice is right that's amazing.

01:00:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I hope that's true. Twinkle plays.

01:00:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Twinkle, twinkle Little Star when it starts and, according to Wikipedia, it plays a tune called Amaryllis when it's done.

01:01:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Okay.

01:01:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Did Brian Eno do this music? Because that would bring this whole thing home, that would bring us full circle?

01:01:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That would be amazing, full circle. All right, let's take a break, because the rice is done and I gotta a zozy rushi rice cooker is the best thing. It's amazing that ever happened to me.

01:01:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's wow you must have. Uh, I'll let lisa know. You said that, but she agrees. By the way, she's so nice, she's like I'm a distant number two we both look at it, we go.

01:01:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It makes perfect rice. Every time it's like you don't have to think about it, you're moving to new zealand.

01:01:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're leaving the rice cooker.

01:01:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, nice yeah, you can have the house. I just want the rice. I want the rice cooker. That's gonna have everything in it. I just want the rice cooker, yeah all right, let's take a little break.

01:01:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, you're watching windows weekly paul thurot, richard campbell wonderful to uh see you both in your native habitats for the time being. Our show today, brought to you by US Cloud, let me tell you, the name does not tell you exactly what they do. It sounds like a cloud service, right? No, it's the number one, and I mean it, the best Microsoft Unified Support replacement. Now, we've been talking about this for some time now. I hope you know about US Cloud. We've been talking about this for some time now. I hope you know about US Cloud, the global leader in third-party Microsoft support for enterprises. They support 50 of the Fortune 500. And there's three reasons In my mind.

01:02:27
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01:03:20
But us cloud has a new offering. It's called their azure cost optimization services. I mean honestly, when's the last time you evaluate your azure usage? It just it grows on you, right. If it's been a while, you have some azure sprawl. I'm sure a little. You know a little spread, little little spend creep going on. But there's good news Saving on Azure is easier than you think With the US Cloud. They offer an eight-week Azure engagement. It's powered by VBox. In those eight weeks it will identify key opportunities to reduce costs, reduce costs across your entire Azure environment without reducing capability. You'll get expert guidance and access to those engineers I talked about US Cloud Senior Engineers an average of over 16 years with Microsoft products and at the end of the eight weeks you get this beautiful interactive dashboard that will identify rebuild opportunities, downscale opportunities, unused resources. You can take that money and put it in the bank or continue to save. My suggestion invest the savings in Azure into US Cloud's Microsoft support that's what a few US Cloud customers do and completely eliminate your unified spend so you save again.

01:04:31
Sam gave us a great testimony. He's the technical operations manager at Bede Gaming B-E-D-E Bede Gaming. Of course they use a lot of Azure. He gave US Cloud five stars. He said quote we found some things that had been running for three years which no one was checking.

01:04:49
These VMs were, I don't know, 10 grand a month Not a massive chunk in the grand scheme of how much we spend on Azure, but once we got to $40,000 or $50,000 a month it really started to add up. Yeah, that would, wouldn't it? It's simple Stop overpaying for Azure. Stop buying more Azure than you need. Identify and eliminate Azure, creep and boost your performance, all in eight weeks with US Cloud. Visit uscloudcom right now. You can book a call today. Find out how much your team can save. I'm telling you these guys are the best us cloudcom. Book a call today. Get faster, better microsoft support for less. I mean, you can't lose us cloudcom. And if they ask you, please do me a favor, say oh, yeah, I heard about you on windows weekly. Paul and and richard and leo said it was great uscloudcom. Thank you, us cloud for supporting this fine effort we call windows. Weekly, I'm gonna go get a little rice and uh and now, I wish I had some rice, oh yeah, I.

01:05:58
I read an article by a woman who grew up in a chinese family and, uh, she said she bought these chinese dried chinese sausages. Put two in the rice cooker when you cook the rice and it flavors the whole thing. And then doc rock, who's from hawaii, said in hawaii what we do. He says get the zoji rushi and when you have leftover piece of Kentucky fried chicken you put it in with the rice in the rice cooker and it flavors the whole thing.

01:06:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh God, Doesn't that sound good. That sounds fantastic. When's the last time I had Kentucky fried chicken? Well, that's the problem. I have it all the time.

01:06:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You're here really, but not I have it all the time. You're really not here. It's terrible in Mexico, but yeah, I really like Kentucky fried chicken.

01:06:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I see here something that says this just in and then that's all. Yeah, Is there a breaking?

01:06:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
news there is. So Microsoft stopped making their own keyboards and mice and peripherals right Under their Microsoft brand. They they sell some service stuff, but in doing that they got rid of the, the keyboard I'm using right here.

01:06:57
Like I love this thing, the sculpt ergonomic keyboard, ergo key right yeah but in case, uh, and microsoft announced in case was going to bring these things back from the grave or whatever, and uh, then it never happened, but it just happened. So the sculpt ergonomic keyboard or desktop set, I should say, is available from in case, designed by Microsoft, right? It looks identical, in fact, let me see how identical it looks. Yeah, it's so identical. It doesn't even have a copilot key on it. It has the same like layout.

01:07:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The sculpt keyboard is a cult like there are. Oh yeah, they buy them whenever they find them.

01:07:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
By as many things, I used to have three of them in a closet, in a box.

01:07:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're in the cult.

01:07:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I love it 80 bucks.

01:07:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That sounds like the same price. Right, that's about what it was.

01:07:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is. That's not the sorry, that's not the right one, it's not.

01:07:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is designed by Microsoft.

01:07:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, that's a whole line of these things, so that it's the sculpt ergonomic desktop set. So it's keyboard, mouse and 150 bucks, which was about the same price, I think. Uh, my only issue with it is that it was a proprietary usb a dongle, and it still is. Um, here it is, and I wish it was a slash bluetooth something. I thought it was going to be slash bluetooth, but whatever, I will buy one of these immediately. It's wired slash Bluetooth. I thought it was going to be slash Brutus, but whatever, I will buy one of these immediately.

01:08:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's wired only Is that it.

01:08:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, it's wireless. It's just but it uses a dongle oh that's silly Yep, but it works great. Um yeah.

01:08:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is it right 150 bucks Yep that's it.

01:08:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm using it right now. Well, I'm using the Microsoft one. Everybody's one of the vintage ones. I can't show this to you effectively, but I have a USB-A to well, C to A, with a cable. So I put the dongle in the end of it and it's stuck into the front of the Thunderbolt dock. I use Plus. It brings it closer to the keyboard and also there's less interference, whatever. Yeah, I love this thing. I love it so much.

01:08:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In-case, in-case makes. I bet other in-case stuff they make a lot of accessories?

01:09:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, they're pretty well known and actually, yeah, if you go to their designed by Microsoft menu thing which I think you did, I did there's a bunch of stuff and this was not the case fairly recently, so they had a couple of things, I think, for a while, but now it looks like they got a whole thing going so you can get just the keyboard for $120.

01:09:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They do have a Bluetooth keyboard, but it's a square regular every day. No, I don't.

01:09:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I wish this thing. I thought they were going to update it. In fact, I thought part of the update was it was going to have the co-op pilot key. That was going to be one right and that would be also Bluetooth, but I guess no, it's still the same. Whatever, it took long enough. I'm glad they're making it. It's better Get it back a couple Well, not at $150. If I ever thought these things were going away which happened, yes, I did that before and then I went through them.

01:09:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, no, that's the thing.

01:09:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I flew here, with one you know to bring it here. Yeah, yep, breaking news Same thing you get a little something Okay, yes, sure, yes. Sure.

01:10:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And my clothes are dry and I guess this doesn't go into this.

01:10:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And my clothes? Yes, right, and your rice is done. So Notion does this thing where there's like a weird scroll bar thing over on the right and I keep clicking it by mistake and it scrolls all the way down to the bottom of the document. Don't do that it's the first little bit of yeah, okay, uh, so ai, uh, we can go through some of this pretty quickly, but uh, oh wait, I gotta I gotta run my.

01:10:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My clothes are dry. I'll be right back this.

01:10:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This goes on for hours, it's still quite a song.

01:11:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, it's Samson, right? Is this a Samson thing, because they go on for a long time? Yeah, no, it's like we've got to get it all out. It's like we've got it. We've already taken the clothes out of the dryer. Yeah, I know I've got to get through this.

01:11:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Sorry, there's no way to it's like we got it. We've already taken the clothes out of the dryer. Yeah, you know, I know I gotta get through this just sorry, it's there's no way, it's an austrian song called by franz schubert.

01:11:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's why it's so long it's an art, it's a complete aria it's the whole day oh, I bet you, we triggered a lot of people now.

01:11:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now, anthony Nielsen says we're going to get a copyright takedown from Samsung.

01:11:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't think so. Come on Really.

01:11:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
If we get a ding for that I'm going to be very sad. Whatever anyone thinks of the song, their stuff is pretty great actually. Oh yeah, that's the reason we buy it.

01:11:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's why I know the music. I got the thing. Yeah, it works well. Keeps drying my clothes. All right, let's talk AI, because this is dumb.

01:11:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, we need smart Over in the Apple part of the fence there on the other side of that fence. A lot of hand-wringing over Apple intelligence and they'll get it right eventually. Something I don't know. There's been.

01:12:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A there was an article in the new york times saying apple is failing well this is.

01:12:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is that trip idiot. So I, I, I saw that I'm like I know, I know, I know, yeah, I know who wrote this and I was like, yep, so look, this is the richest company on earth. They're doing great. They're back at the three trillion, they're fine you know, they're gonna be only, only three trillion they've reorged.

01:12:37
They've moved people around, they're, they're whatever. They'll get it right. But I guess the new thing is so, if you're in the developer beta stuff, you might have seen this, and I think there's a whole bit of now. But ios, ipad os, mac os, 18 slash 15 point whatever, five uh, they're looking at actually improving apple intelligence by using on-device data about you, not me, but it's Apple, so they'll do this in an Apple safe we respect your privacy, kind of a way. But I think this is the little conceptual hurdle.

01:13:12
I think people, people need to get over with AI other than the obvious is it real or not, kind of thing. But I've told this story before too. But this guy complained to me that he enabled Cortana and then it asked him to give him permission to look at his calendar and his contacts or whatever. And I was like, yeah, that's how it works. It can't do anything unless you tell it about yourself. Yeah, and obviously that's going to be even more true of AI, I mean, because there's so much more data. But yeah, so I think Apple wanted this to be the most closed system thing imaginable. But they're coming around to this notion that, look, you're going to have to.

01:13:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If you're going to use this thing're going to have to solve this a year after they said they had it solved. Yeah, well, I'm not sure yeah, I mean I don't know what they I mean the normal apple pattern here is when they announce it in the wwdc, it's going to ship in three months. It's already working. We're just putting the finishing touches on it. They announced something they just didn't have. They even showed a demo of something.

01:14:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Apparently they didn't have, having sat through the Longhorn demo of 2003,. I hear what you're saying, listen.

01:14:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm used to Microsoft presenting fiction. I am not used to this version of Apple Tim's Cook. Apple presenting fiction.

01:14:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, Well, you're putting me in the awkward position of defending Tim Cook and Apple, which, I have to say, I think maybe I just won't even do it. I feel like they were. We knew from the beginning it wasn't going to be immediate and then we learned over time.

01:14:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think they felt like they had to make an announcement and then we'd get it figured out. It would be a stage, and here we are, staring the next WWDC in the face and they still haven't figured it out.

01:14:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I would imagine, whatever the specific announcements for this year's show are, that the central premise is going to be we announce something and then we ship it in September and that's the end of it. I think they're going to go for that.

01:15:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're not going to preview anything?

01:15:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't think so, because that did not. It was not received. It was a mistake. Yeah, it was not received. Well, although you know, to be fair to Apple, with the exception of this conversational Siri nonsense which, again, if you ever use Siri, I don't know what you thought was going to happen. I don't know what miracle you thought this was that, but I think they've delivered by now everything they talked about, except for that one thing. I mean they, you know it's. I mean it's, it's fine, it's fine. I don't think it's changed anyone's life.

01:15:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's the question. The question we keep asking on MacBreak Weekly is does it matter? Does Apple need? They made a mistake, promoting something they couldn't deliver? Fine.

01:15:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But is anybody going?

01:15:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
to not buy an iPhone because Apple intelligence is not that intelligent.

01:15:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, but it may drag people away to other services. Right so, apple? Like there are two things Apple could do people away to other services. Right so Apple? Like there are two things Apple could do. They could just open up the ROAS entirely and allow third plate third parties to integrate at various parts of the stack which you know they don't want to do and aren't doing Apple way, not at all, not their Apple thing. I mean, they don't like that. Or they could do what they did.

01:16:08
But look, every time someone uses chat, gpt on an iPhone or Gemini or something or you know, and maybe then you, oh, and I, oh, I can pay for that. Oh and I, can you have this other thing I might want to use? I mean, you're, you're moving over to a place where maybe the iPhone isn't the important thing anymore, and so I think from that perspective, they felt like they had to do it. The problem I hate to use these kinds of terms, but I think it's just like lazy, but it's like table stakes at this point Like they, they can't not have this because everyone else does, so it and and I have to say to to their credit doing it in this kind of Apple privacy respecting way I think resonates with people, regardless of its efficacy or whatever, and I mean efficacy of AI, not efficacy of privacy protection well, there's even some question.

01:16:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This deferential privacy thing they're using is not it really, until you is can be used safely and it can be used unsafely? It could be it can leak information and it cannot leak information and with apple not really being forthright about how exactly they're doing it, it's unknown, I guess yeah, but it sure sounds like there's an internal battle going on here too it does, doesn't it?

01:17:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
oh yeah, I didn't have different teams are working on different things and like and it's gone awry, it's very it feels like a very bomber-esque microsoft the thing that what this reminds me of is I think this was, I don't.

01:17:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think it was the year after Steve Jobs passed away, or, if it wasn't, it was within a couple of years. They shipped the first version of Apple Maps and it was a disaster. I just referenced this. The people would drive through a desert and there'd be no road or whatever. It wasn't very good. Now they've improved it since then, but Tim Cook went down to Scar Forrestal, who was responsible for that, and said you need to apologize. And he's like yeah, I'm not doing that. Says well, then you're fired. And this time around, no one's getting fired. And I think maybe it's because the decision to do what they did at WWDC last year came from on high. Like I think this time Tim Cook's not going to fire himself. I mean, he may not have come up with this idea, but he okayed it, you know he was part of that.

01:18:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's some question about where John Gendry ended up. Yeah.

01:18:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He's still at Apple, yeah, but he might be on the roof having lunch, if you know what I mean.

01:18:34
Sometimes right guy who used to run apple until yeah, but he might be on the roof having lunch, if you know what I mean sometimes. Right, so I think what will? My guess, because this is what happens in all companies this has happened at apple too um, you won't hear anything about him and then one day you'll find out he, uh, has quietly left apple right and maybe he wanted to spend more time with his family. Maybe he wanted to become an invest like a you know vc guy or something, whatever it was he's moving on to grass band, you know yeah, yep, is that a jim alton reference?

01:19:00
is that?

01:19:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
what that was. That's what that was very nice okay, very nice.

01:19:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, yeah, yeah, so whatever, anyway, he still has a title he's a senior vice president of machine learning and ai strategy. But he doesn't have the role. He doesn't have the operational role anyway.

01:19:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right well, they wanted to put it uh on someone who can actually ship like the guy from uh vision pro yikes uh, I'm sure I'll be.

01:19:23
Well, no, you're right I'm sure we're all fine. Um, so, adobe, and do I have the right link for this one? I do not. Oh yeah, I know I do. Good, good, good. So, adobe, I have to say, um, they've jumped in with two feet on this ai stuff. They've done it in an almost apple-like way, in the sense that because they have this huge library of content that you can license legally and know that it's not taken from anybody or whatever, they've trained their models on that and they um indemnify their customers against any complaints about anything that's credited with their AI. So that's amazing, right.

01:19:59
And they did not announce too many things. Well, they didn't announce anything specific, but they just made an announcement ahead of the Max show, and I don't think Max is a show they have once a year. I think Max might be a show they have up to two to three times a year, but the next Max is being held in London in end of April a couple of weeks from now, I guess and they're going to discuss this in more detail. But they talked about how they were going to bring agentic capabilities across their products, so Acrobat Express, and then all the creative cloud stuff, especially Photoshop and Premiere Pro, and I got to say. This feels really smart to me. These tools are complex, you have to be you know, this is how you sell.

01:20:40
Yet another version yeah, and it's also how you can expand your audience, because this will make these tools more accessible to less um proficient oh yeah, professionals, if you played with the podcast tools that adobe has, no, they're astonishing well, I mean over and above audition what else do they have?

01:20:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
oh yeah, the new podcast, ai tools. This does a transcript of the text of the podcast and then you edit the text and it's the audio for you.

01:21:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I love that yeah, I was thinking I mean I, yeah, so I mean adobe, I, I in my brain I always go right to photoshop, then Premiere, but obviously Acrobat PDF, that stuff is humongous and they'll do all that you know, summarize, blah, blah, blah, whatever generative AI. But the idea like I'll do things, like just something. It's like the Excel example I use, where I use excel once a year, right? So every once in a while I have like like big letters and I want what I want is like a photo that's behind all of those letters but not in the background, right, so it's only in the letters, you know, and there's a name for that. There's a technique to do it and it's complicated and every time I have to do it I have to look it up and I never remember what it is.

01:21:48
But the notion of, uh, speaking or typing or however you do it, and having it tell you, you know, it's like the thing we were talking about in windows or an office where in the beginning it will say this is how you do it, and then with this, these agents, you'll say I want this to happen and it will just do it for you. You know, that will make that kind of thing much more accessible, and it might make people who might not otherwise have paid for these products say, okay, I can use this thing, you know, um, whereas I think for a lot of people they're overwhelming or they're expensive or both, or whatever it might be. You know, maybe this opens this up to more people. It's kind of interesting. So I'm curious, I'm I'm kind of looking forward to.

01:22:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is one of the dreams all along. Right, it's making tool, these tools, easier to use.

01:22:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yep I think they'll do pretty good. I I adobe. This has been like a the one non-dramatic ai. You know thing happening like they. You know generative ai is controversial.

01:22:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
For a long time I just felt like adobe was a place where software went to die. But yes, but you know they've hung on to a few pieces and they've you know, once it make them enough money and then creative, they switched over to cloud, not with some, without resentment.

01:22:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
How anything related to PDF is still a business is is unbelievable to me, but let me see if I can find this number six Adobe Acrobat three trillion PDF files in circulation, 650 million active users.

01:23:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
What? There's also a dozen other editors for PDF and so forth. Like the format's not going anywhere. I don't know how much Adobe makes on it, but at least it's a gateway drug into their creative crowd.

01:23:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it looks like it's pretty good somehow. But yeah, it's amazing to me, it's been a week, so obviously there were 18 open AI announcements. I'm not going to even try to go through all these, but they've announced, by my account, at least five models since we last talked. They're going to retire chat GPT or cheat GPT for sorry so, and they have 4.1 models. They have oh three and oh four mini models. Now they, if you are a user, even a free user, you have an image library. So if you used ChatGPT, which used to be just that standalone tool, dali, right, right, but you can do it just in ChatGPT now I guess it will actually store your image library so you can go reference the things you've done in the past, which to me sounds like duh. You know Microsoft Designer already does that.

01:24:11
There are rumors that OpenAI is going to create a social network now, because I don't know why, okay.

01:24:20
And then I referenced this earlier in the show and Brad had a really good saying for this that I reference again later in the show, called something like AI is removing the moat, and what he meant was that AI is what's going to bring together all these disparate ecosystems where you can kind of mix and match and do whatever you want. So, in this case, anthropic announced that their cloud models now integrate with Google Workspace, and what that means is you can ground this thing on your data your work data as a company and of course, it's all the permissions and all the stuff you would expect there thing on your data, your work data as a company, and, of course, it's all the permissions and all the stuff you would expect there. But, um, you can now ask it questions about the document library that you have associated with google docs, the, you know, the emails that you've sent, the schedule like it's. This is this, expanded out in every direction imaginable, meaning every ai, every email, every calendar, every set of documents that's in the cloud storage wherever.

01:25:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what I mean it makes recall look like nothing at all. It takes screenshots.

01:25:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's fun. I don't know what's your problem, man. It's cool I don't know. Yeah, it's kind of amazing.

01:25:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm also thinking about this GPD-4 thing and thinking they want to retire that to save themselves money, like really. Gpd-4 looks like it was the peak of the inefficient giant. Just grab as much land as you can, kind of mindset. And now it's tuning and processing efficiency and organization.

01:25:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But here's the question Is it getting better or is it just differentiating and changing?

01:25:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Is it actually getting smarter? How do you measure?

01:25:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
better. Well, I know, I know.

01:25:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
What is better.

01:26:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
On the flowers for Algenon scale are they still on the upward side of the slope, or have they they're not getting dumber, yeah, so-.

01:26:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're getting more ubiquitous.

01:26:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're doing more things uh, they're doing more things. I I think I said this before, but to me one of the big successes of open ai and chat gpt specifically, is how ubiquitous it is. Um, yeah, I, I going back in time I would rate. You know we're in the industry so we have kind of a skewed view of where things are, you know, because we see things early and we use things that maybe aren't quite mainstream. But I remember a friend of mine asked me if he should get an iPod and this was you know three, four years in and it was like, wow, okay, I guess this, this is it. You know, this is now, this is normal. Like you know, he loves music tapes and CDs and cars and stuff. I was like I think I want to get one of these. He's like do you recommend this? I was like, yeah, these things are great. The number of normal people I know meaning non-technical, not in the industry who use ChatGPT and actually pay for it is kind of astonishing to me.

01:27:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It just comes up. Lisa asked me can it do text now in images? And I said, yeah, it it do text now in images. And I said, yeah, it could do text now in images. I said let me make an action figure for you, lisa. Yes, oh nice. Yes, it can do text now. Um, so it's better in that respect.

01:27:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But being able to make an action figure. She's really ripped. What. What happened? I? I?

01:27:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh, it's impressive. I asked her to asked it to really be for out there toned toned, the toned this the action figure meme is killing me.

01:27:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Like what?

01:27:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
we're burning forests to do this, you understand but look at, that's a cute image, and then it will be in two seconds. We'll be on to the next thing. It's fine yeah.

01:27:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that's my question is it getting better? I guess it's better at text.

01:27:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I think it is getting better because it's getting more diverse and it it does more types of things. You know right, it rips off more forms of art. I mean, that's just clearly an evolution.

01:28:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Better at ripping off our ability to feel is getting better all the time. Yeah, a couple of weeks ago on dot net rocks, we talked to dr jodo birchhold specifically about how to measure the quality of different lls. Like exactly, yeah that's the question. Yeah, you've got a working app running under gp3 plus right now. Right, if I switch to four, how do I know it's better? Yeah, what does that even look like? And she went. She's, you know, one of the experts in the space.

01:28:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Very much machine learning person, the AI version of the windows experience index, or whatever they called it, the uh that score.

01:28:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
a bunch of test suites like these are the things you can test benchmarks. Yeah, that's what we need more artificial benchmarks.

01:28:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.

01:28:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know, but like. So now we're going to do what we do with CPUs and GPUs.

01:28:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We're just going to, like, write these things to the benchmark, totally 100, you know just, and oddly enough it is a machine learning model, so it's particularly designed to get good at benchmarks, right that's in fact questions.

01:29:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's probably good enough. It could just lie and output the uh. You know, it would just uh artificially. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like when this uses samsung to take a picture of the moon, and it's somehow perfect every single time. Yeah, yeah, that was amazing, wasn't it? Yeah, interesting I mean I think you know for the people using it's like who cares? I just want a picture of the moon you could have just downloaded it from.

01:29:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The technology had to work there, it had to realize that you were taking a picture of the moon.

01:29:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And then what phase the moon was in. You have no idea.

01:29:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The image recognition technology burning more forests as we speak. Hey, they're not going to burn themselves that's true, that's true and then a section, a segment on our intelligent machine. How many forests have to die? What you know what? What I did this week to burn three forests.

01:29:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So maybe that's the measure we're looking for. It's like number of trees that had to die for this operation to occur successfully do you really want to think about that?

01:30:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
because it really is kind of it's well, we've been looking for a way to destroy civilization with a meme and apparently this is it faster and faster better I want it to be efficient, but I also want it to be funny yeah, you get a good beginning. So now we're trying this with the action figure meme. There you go get it. Five more memes like this, maybe we can get there yeah I.

01:30:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How many megawatts does it use to do that? Right, right I don't know.

01:30:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh, and then meta, which I think we can all agree is the most trustworthy computing. Uh, you know, technology firm on earth says that they will start training their AI models using EU data for the first time. Just kidding, they've been doing it all along, but now they're actually going to. They're going to they're willing to admit it.

01:30:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now we admit it.

01:30:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, cause they're the best. Love those guys. In fact, if you, leo, ever want to start a a meta podcast, definitely Nope, just Leo ever want to start a a meta podcast? No, no, no, just yeah, just throw it out there. It's funny.

01:30:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You should say that because at our editorial meeting yesterday one of our staff said are we going to cover a meta's keynote? And I said nope.

01:31:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would. My only request of such a podcast would be that everyone had to get a perm that was on the show. You know that would be the important.

01:31:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know why, because I mean they're doing interesting stuff, but I just have no interest in covering, like Google IO, we're going to do Build. We should do right, we'd do the Build keynote yes, the Satya keynote's at 9 am on Monday. So we're going gonna do that, um, we're gonna do apple's keynote in june, because that's gonna be of great interest. What apple, of course apple says about what excuses apple gives I, I can't wait to see how they massage the apple.

01:31:47
Intelligence story, but yeah so, so, and by the way, I should mention it for people who are saying, oh, good apple, uh has now, uh really tried to take us down a bunch of times for doing the apple keynotes on I feel like it's become a kind of a cute tradition that you guys have it's yeah, it's fun so we stopped doing it on youtube because we had a lawyer, an actual person, say you know we're gonna ding you.

01:32:12
So we stopped doing youtube. And then they did it to us on twitch and we thought you know what, we can't do this anymore, right? So all the keynotes now are going to be in the club only. We're gonna do them in the club twit discord. The advantage of that is people will be able to participate. The disadvantage is, if you're not a member of the club, you won't see it. So, uh, this, all of these keynotes, we will stream. Mike and I are going to do the apple one. If you guys want to do the build one, I think you're probably going to be at build right yeah yeah, but what if you want to do it with us?

01:32:39
we can't, but we'll do that in the club as opposed to in public.

01:32:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
If you're not a member of the club, this is another reason to join now this is like um, when the guys from mst went off and did their own you know what kind of went off and whatever, and they would, you you'd have to have like a DVD of the movie and then you would play their soundtrack somehow simultaneously and it was like Copyright's a pain in the ass. Yeah, it's hard, that stuff's hard and honestly.

01:33:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is fair use, because we're doing journalism, we're covering it and we're reporting on it.

01:33:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You feel like there's some kind of a fair use argument to be made there? I mean, obviously, Like I don't even understand the argument otherwise.

01:33:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, and we even say hey, if you want an uncommentated version of this keynote, Apple streaming it live, you can watch it there.

01:33:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's plenty of places to see that.

01:33:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, I don't know, To date nobody else has complained, but Apple has so vociferously that we decided well, why take the chance? Because, honestly, if we got kicked off YouTube, that would be problematic.

01:33:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's an issue. Honestly, if we got kicked off YouTube, that would be problematic. Mm-hmm, there's an issue.

01:33:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We stream on all those platforms, including Meta, by the way Facebook and LinkedIn, and Meta and everywhere, and Meta, Meta. We don't stream on Instagram because we can't figure it out. Tiktok, tiktok. We stream on TikTok. Stream your name, oh man, oh, we missed something. What TikTok streamer? Oh man, no, we missed something. What did you get all the AI?

01:33:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
in yes, no, I just was looking at the notes. I screwed something up and then I missed the story and I got to clean it up. Going to be.

01:34:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Aren't you happy, ladies and gentlemen, you winners and dozers, you are watching the fabulous windows weekly. We do this every Wednesday, 11 am Pacific. Fabulous windows weekly. We do this every wednesday, 11 am pacific, 2 pm eastern. And yes, you can watch it live on in our discord, but on youtube, twitch, tiktok xcom, facebook linkedin and something else that I can't remember did I.

01:34:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I, oh, you finally missed one oh damn, I thought this was your.

01:34:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
this was like this was your superpower.

01:34:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What happened?

01:34:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Facebook, linkedin, kick xcom and TikTok. There we go. Hey, twitch, I mentioned Twitch, so if you want to watch live, you can, but obviously it's a podcast, so really there's no. The only reason you would watch live is so that you could be in the chats on these respective platforms, and I have this wonderful unified chat interface so I can see all the nasty things everybody's saying on all the different platforms.

01:35:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's no better form of feedback than live feedback. There you go, the best.

01:35:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I remember we've mentioned this before when I taught Regis Philbin how to tweet, he was so excited about it for about a week and then he realized that people were saying not everybody was saying nice things. I don't do this anymore. You gotta have a little bit of a thick skin to be in the public. Have to. You know the way to do this. Uh, all right back to the uh program at hand. I think this would be a good time for paul thorat to break out his Xbox jobs. Paul.

01:35:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is a big week for Xboxing. Big week, yeah, big week. So there is an Xbox app on mobile which, on the face of things, sounds kind of ludicrous because you could do almost nothing with it, and part of the problem is that, of course, Microsoft doesn't want to put or can't put on iOS, I guess, paid stuff through there or couldn't because of the app store rules and blah, blah, blah, whatever. That's like 30%. Apple took Chunk, yep, but that is going away. Wow, and they're not saying what happened. If anything, they're not allowed to, they are going on. Ios and Android allow users to purchase games meaningbox, ecosystem, games for pc or console. That's fantastic. Subscribe to game pass, which these are paid things like. Normally apple or google would get a 30 percent, whatever you know and I don't. Then they didn't address if there's been some kind of an agreement or a change on the back end or I don't know, but these things are changing, so that's actually really cool.

01:36:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
well, that's unexpected. What did he mean when he said this is an xbox?

01:36:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
well, as you know, everything's an xbox, now, what it's not confusing at all. In fact, they've made it simple. Well, if I don't, know, I don't know xbox games on my phone speaks to everything. Might just be an xbox yeah, well, but it also speaks to something happened I don't know, and that thing is not.

01:37:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Microsoft agreed to pay the fee, so I guess we'll find out that's kind of interesting they didn't need the 30, they're not, they're not there's no way they're reading the 30.

01:37:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's too much money. Or even if it was 50%, whatever, this is no way, so we'll see. We'll definitely hear more about that one. The thing I forgot to put in the notes, or didn't see when I did the notes, is there's a stream your own game feature that Xbox has been testing for consoles. It's now available publicly. It's not every single game you want, unfortunately. There's a licensing thing there, I guess, but there are over 100, uh, xbox games that aren't available on game pass but are available to stream if you own so if I own it on my xbox, I can then not install my ipad, or you're still so.

01:37:50
You stream it on your xbox, but you don't install it, play it on my iPad or what so you stream it on your Xbox, but you don't install it, oh you don't install it.

01:37:56
So in other words, yeah, you go to that same interface that you would use for cloud streaming, like Microsoft calls cloud gaming, because cloud streaming is too obvious and whatever games you have in your library, you've paid for it digitally. Right, are there? So that's cool. And then they're adding guess uh, 19? I don't know if they added them already, they're coming soon, but there's a big list.

01:38:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
is there were 100 now, so that's interesting got an idea that's cool, uh, and actually I should say sorry, it's not just your console.

01:38:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
These work on um samsung smart tvs, amazon fire tvs, metacost headsets, yep so using the xbox app or yeah, wherever xbox can stream, I guess. So that's good. Oh, that's neat.

01:38:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I hadn't seen.

01:38:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I just saw that when you were doing the ad. So I'm not I'm completely up on it, but I know they were testing this and apparently now it's available in uh stable, so there must be a new system update or whatever. Yeah, there is. So, yep, and there's a couple other small things, but that's big. I mean, that's a big one. That's good. It is the second half of April, so now we have. Am I doing things out of order? I think I am. Let me look at this again. Yep, so now we have a new set of Game Pass titles coming across console, pc and cloud, and there's an Activision game in there. Guys, the original version of modern warfare two is available and that means you can stream it If you have cloud gaming through Xbox. God, there's so many games names Xbox game pass ultimate, which I think is a first for that game.

01:39:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can. It's PC. I want to play crime scene cleaner, I know I saw.

01:39:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's crazy. What the it's like the dexter kind of game or whatever.

01:39:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's not a game, that's a job.

01:39:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He never is mowing a lawn, but that's a game too right there's a lawn mowing game yeah, there's a lawn mowing simulator some people find that stuff fun.

01:39:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I know it's crazy. You know what crack far cry 4, but you know before that's a good one.

01:39:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, you know, that's a great shark.

01:40:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Grand theft auto 5, you know well, the greatest game of all time at this point, right, how many, how many, how many, millions and millions.

01:40:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I believe it's what number two best selling game of all time, I think after minecraft or it's right up there either way, um, it's cool, yeah. So yeah, the 20. This is, oh and dredge I played.

01:40:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
He's right wait.

01:40:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, I'm sorry my laurent wrote this is the more recent one game. I'm sorry, maybe I'm wrong about the game. This is modern warfare 2, 2 I know, but the more I guess it's the more recent version. I'm not. I'm not actually sure. Looking at that, somebody out there will know.

01:40:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Can you tell from the album art? I mean, does that? I don't see it.

01:40:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's the reason I thought it was the. Let me look it up.

01:40:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm sorry. Where is it? Oh, there it is. It's the M with a skull on it, man, I know, but I thought I guess it's the new one, I'm sorry.

01:40:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So Modern Warfare 3, the new one and Black Ops 6, the latest, are on Game Pass et cetera. So now Modern Warfare 2 is coming there. That's actually pretty okay, so that's good too. That suggests that it must be the full game. So they must still have multiplayer that works, et cetera. So that's interesting. That suggests so I have Call of Duty installed on a couple of PCs. I I have Call of Duty installed on a couple of PCs. I would imagine that will become available. That means I'm going to get another 130 gig update. That's great. Thanks, microsoft, congratulations, we're all fine. You figured out a way to make me dread Activision games coming to Game Pass. That's fine. Anyway, that's a good one. This is a good set of games.

01:41:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
What if some of these titles end up making an iOS version and now it's coming through your iOS device? Maybe there is a way for them to make money. When the iOS version is available, you can buy it.

01:41:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hmm.

01:41:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Hmm, I actually wonder if the future of Call of Duty isn't the mobile version. Yeah, and in the same way that you can play against PC and, you know, playstation, maybe this first story here about xbox on mobile is a setup. It's a setup you're.

01:42:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're preparing the landscape for being able to facilitate those games there's definitely something going on.

01:42:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's the thing I and yeah, it's bizarre to me everybody's on board for yeah. So we'll see. We'll see what comes out of this. I'm I think there's, yeah, something's going on. That's kind of interesting. Um, if the latest doom game is coming out in mid may, so actually about a month from now, why is there a new doom game? Why, because they have to complete the trilogy. I don't know.

01:42:27
Um the new games are okay, like a new half-life 2 game, and then the world really has gone insane well, I, I mean, the new doom games are modern and different and whatever, but this one is looks like it's more of a back to basics type thing from a playability perspective, which honestly, I think is pretty smart. But yeah, but microsoft is coming out with some uh, doom, uh, or like themed, uh, a console and then some controllers. So if you're really into doom and want everything to look like that, um, I know someone who will buy this.

01:42:57
We all know someone who will buy it. Yeah, yes, yeah, interesting, so that's kind of cool. And then, uh, is there more? There's more, right, yep, see if the okay. Uh, if you're not comfortable with my xbox exclusive games going to the consoles, you might want to block yours. Um, see if thievesieves is going to Battlesnet, which is Blizzard, which is part of Activision, which is part of Microsoft. So it's not that bad, I guess. But Battlenet is a console or just PC? I think it's probably just PC, right, battlenet.

01:43:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not really sure I think so.

01:43:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And then I've looked at my own. I'm like and then meta will start training. It's like, no, that doesn't seem right. Um, and then sony is raising the price of their consoles in a lot of places all over europe, australia and new zealand. Uh, probably because the tariffs right, I think we just blame everything on that now, obviously, yeah.

01:43:54
So if you hadn't bought one by now, uh, good, it's gonna get more expensive I don't understand why it's only in certain locales, though yeah, I don't know why they're actually um it might have to do with tariffs maybe it might actually have to do with tariffs, because they're, uh, the processors and the chipsets, the graphics, are all from amd, right, yeah, which is us-based.

01:44:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're not okay. So they're buying the parts from the us I don't know that'd be the tariffs.

01:44:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's europe, uk, australia and new zealand.

01:44:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, this makes no sense.

01:44:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're talking about a japanese company they don't have tariffs with japan, presumably yeah I love.

01:44:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like a japanese company selling a product that, yes, is made with some american company components, but also a lot of other components and the american countries that are not the united states yes, yeah.

01:44:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
When the united states put on tariffs, it's for their imports, not their exports.

01:44:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So why are we raising?

01:44:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
prices again.

01:44:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, like the trump administration, you obviously don't understand how trade deficits work. So let me explain it. No, just like a friend of mine ex-Microsoft guy, I think on Facebook said something like yeah. He said yeah, so I went and I bought a bagel. So now I have a $5 trade deficit with the bagel shop, so I'm going to have reciprocal tariffs. Yeah, make them pay. Now they owe me $1, 1845 dollars. That's how trade tariffs work.

01:45:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So yeah, smart, yeah it's going to be fine, everything's fine everything's fine.

01:45:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everything's fine. That's the canadian and you, richard. That's good, I like it.

01:45:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, that's why you don't get any playoffs, everything's fine the oilers are they?

01:45:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are they on their way? The?

01:45:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oilers are going. Yes, yes, bloody McDavid and the Canucks are not in, so I pretty much enforced a trade-off for the Oilers, because I am not cheering for the Leafs Never.

01:45:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm pretty sure you've just described different kinds of sushi. I don't even know what you're talking about anymore, canuck.

01:45:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When I was a kid.

01:45:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I one is that like a kind of oyster. What is that?

01:45:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, there's hockey games where you had sticks and they were attached to a player and you'd spin the stick and the player oh yeah of course you hit the puck. I loved that game. Yep, and it was always the maple leafs versus the canadians.

01:46:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, of course yeah, I've only saw like this. The soccer version was like the way you spin the players around and yeah, foosball yeah this was great.

01:46:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was a really fun hockey game. Yeah, really enjoyed that the air hockey game.

01:46:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That was good too, the way that would actually hover above the table a little bit like yeah, you know, like that's, that's pretty.

01:46:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It took a little more energy, though, than this one plus you could hit right in the forehead with that thing if you did it right, yeah it was fun, though if you really spun the player fast, you could hit the puck out of the, out of the into the wall.

01:46:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, of course that was always that in the wall instead. Of flying.

01:46:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That could have been my skull. Hey, it's time for me to say a little something, something about our great club, club twit. We want you to join club twit seven bucks a month and now we've added the 84 a plan. Why should you join those legitimate, I mean, if I'm asking for your money? Here's why the the primary reason is we, even though we have ads, they are not sufficient to pay for everything. So we have to make up the gap and that's why we created the club two years ago and that's why we continue to do the club and it's been great. Uh, we have had to cut back, you know. You notice we might've shut down the studio and laid off people and things like that, but we're doing our part to, you know, tighten our belt and thanks to our Club Twit members, we're able to keep at least keep doing these shows. I hope you appreciate them. I hope you like them.

01:47:26
If you join the club, you get ad-free versions of all the shows. I hate it when somebody charges you for something and then still plays an ad. So you don't get the ads, you don't even get this solicitation, you just get the shows, pure and simple. You get a custom URL just for you. With the ad-free versions of the shows, you also get access to the Club Twit, discord a great hang. It's kind of my favorite social network now because there's smart people. It's kind of a self-selecting crowd of smart interesting uh people who right now are doing mostly just playing foosball looks like in the in the club but it is a great place to hang out.

01:48:03
There's also special events that we do. I mentioned we're going to be doing keynotes from now on in the club, like wwc, dc, build uh, google, io. We also have micah's crafting corner that's coming up. We do that every month. Micah, I think he's building a Lego succulents right now, but you don't have to be doing Lego, you could do any craft. Join Micah tonight, 6 PM Pacific, 9 PM Eastern, for just a chill hang.

01:48:29
Friday it's coffee time. Youtube coffee star Liz happy beans joins coffee geek Mark Prince and me to talk coffee at 1 pm Pacific on Friday. Again, these are all club exclusives. The AI user group on the fourth Friday of every month we talk about how we use AI Hands on tech. Stacy's book club is coming up next month the WWDC keynote. We'll add the other keynotes into that.

01:48:55
So that's all special stuff for club members only, which I love. I love, uh, but the biggest reason to join the club is for the animated gifts. No, the biggest reason to join the club is uh is because you will get the warm and fuzzy feeling that you're helping. Uh, these shows put them on the air and we really appreciate it.

01:49:16
Now I should say we did bring back the annual fee and we are right now in the process. Probably, I think, we're going to ask for a little more in the club, starting soon, because costs are going up. But what we're going to do is guarantee that if you subscribe now, that this price stays, so you won't get an increase if you're already a member New members only Okay, new and returning members. So don't give up your club membership and if you're not a member, sign up now to get to lock in that $7 a month. I think it's a very, very reasonable amount. You get an awful lot. I believe we hope you do too. Twittv slash club twit. Now, uh, back to the program already in progress. We start the back of the book portion of the program with paul thorat's tip of the week. Paul, oh, you're muted. Did I mute you? No, you muted I did it Self-censoring here.

01:50:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Last week I wrote these back-to-back articles about kind of like I didn't.

01:50:28
It wasn't really meant to be a theme, but it was kind of like this notion of alternatives to these big tech, you know, monolithic platforms. You know yada, yada, yada and I wrote this thing, that I wrote whatever, and I was like okay, and then it triggered this memory and I ended up writing a second one. And in the early 2000s, when I was working at Windows IT Pro, I think a lot of Microsoft guys who were involved in IT kind of fell into this trap a little bit, especially back then where you started thinking like I'm going to, I'm going to manage my home, like I, like it's the workplace I'm going to have like a managed environment, maybe active directory, if it was that long ago, or you know, in tune maybe, if it's more recently or something. And I'm going to, you know, my family is all going to sign in with these like accounts and blah, blah, blah, and they try to do that. You know, you try to go through this right. And so I went through various this is what I did.

01:51:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
My children came to me saying, apparently I need to speak to my administrator.

01:51:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep. So you know, like okay, and look, if you think about the history of this stuff, like in the early, very early 1980s, VisiCalc, you know, drove Apple to sales into businesses right, where this thing was personal computing. And then the success of Windows and Office in the 90s, I think, kind of turned it in the other direction where people wanted to get these computers at home and so they could run some of the same software they had at work. I remember my wife owned like a PS1, like IBM, those little crappy computers they sold at Sears, and so she could have WordPerfect right which is what she was using at work, like DOS version of WordPerfect. And you know we've been doing this ever since then. And look as we call it in certification now.

01:52:15
But one form ofortification that we would certainly get from Microsoft is they made a switch. I had to think about the exact I think it was Office 2000 where they were targeting businesses, not individuals by this point. So it kind of went from enthusiasts to mainstream individuals and features, features, features, and then businesses and then enterprises. And so when Microsoft does this stuff in Office or Windows where they're pointing you in certain directions, yes, that's terrible in all kinds of levels, but a lot of it has to do with this kind of centralized control or whatever over users, which, as an individual, it's like I don't know. It's weird to me.

01:52:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Apple didn't even mention Windows Home Server. Like that was a good couple of years.

01:52:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
A well, I could go through the whole lineage there. I had a, an active server domain with literal windows server, whatever, vert, standard edition probably. I did small business server, which sometimes with multiple machines, uh, I had rack mounted stuff. I did um centro, which was the, the medium business server. I can't remember, remember what they shipped under what name that was Enhanced, the EBC, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know, and of course, all the home server permutations, including the stuff that came afterwards which was Essentials, like Windows Server Essentials, I think, was the name of it, maybe at some point, or whatever those things were.

01:53:35
I went through every version of this, every version. But you know, the thing is we've always had alternatives. You know you could have bought a Mac at any time in this thing. There's a whole ecosystem there, obviously. But I feel like right now we're in this golden age of these solutions, right, and I don't think we talked about this last week. But when you look at stuff like Notion, right, so Notion just came out with, uh, notion mill, which is actually my epic in a few, in a minute, proton has that whole suite of stuff, um, slack, you know, whatever you know, you can kind of mix and match now. Um, yeah, alternate web browsers is something that comes up all the time.

01:54:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Uh, opera just updated their browsers and the contemporary hardware for a home server now is a synology or exactly, and that that's, by the way, that was my end game.

01:54:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I well, it will be my end game. I went to a WD NAS, which is basically unmanaged, really, but the next thing I do will be a Synology NAS, for sure. Yeah, of course, and it's simpler and it does what you want and it's I would call that more of a prosumer product than a like a business product, right, like a. You know, microsoft looks at things from a certain way, you know. And anyway, the theme there is just like you're not an enterprise, so like why are you acting like one? Like like why you know why are you doing this to yourself?

01:54:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, so I only did it when I was down to just managing she, who must be obeyed and listen. That's a failure path. Stop, oh my God, it's not going to work out for you.

01:54:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No same. I yeah, I never fully pulled the trigger on this. I think I it was an understand like I did. I had this thing and it was run and I had different things running for many, many years and for a lot of it it was really just for me, which was stupid, but it's just too much. I you know how it is. Like your wife walks in your room and you're like and she's like I can't print or I can't. You know, like you, just you don't want to have these conversations. You know it's like I just want to get life.

01:55:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I want to get I have to get rid of the network printer. What are you doing? Yeah, like you need a scanner, here's a USB one. Plug it in, it's yours. I don't want to know about it Exactly.

01:55:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Same. Yeah, no Pennsylvania. That's right, Sam. She has all this stuff upstairs. I don't even know what it is?

01:55:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't even care If I really need to print something. I will never do I walk up with a USB key to her machine. Oh, I just email it.

01:55:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But, yep, sam, life is too short. Exactly, it's just too short. It's just not worth it. And on that note, so Notion Mail just came out. So they a company, they notion calendar, now love notion.

01:56:00
I think I just asked this last week or the week before when is notion going to start charging me? And this is the answer, because notion mail requires notion AI to do anything. It's a front end for Gmail only. I think it's. They don't say this, but I think it might always only be a front end for Gmail. It's AI powered, so it does all kinds of cool views and stuff.

01:56:17
But if you want to do your own customizations to it, you have to pay for notion AI. Um, I'm not going to, but it's, it's an interesting. It's interesting. Um, I don't really use. I mean, this is the notion. A is not something you pay for to use in mail. It's something you pay for to use across notion. It's something you pay for to use across notion, right? So notion is the app, but it's also with calendar and now mail. So they're starting to build this little suite. You know, it's interesting to me that they don't have their own email service, right? They're going to just use Gmail. Gmail's free. I mean, you know it's hard to argue with, but you would have to pay for notion AI for this to make any sense.

01:56:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And you know if you use Notion as much you still aren't doing, and it confuses me.

01:57:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It confuses me too. I feel like at some point I'm going to try to add a page or a note or whatever they call it. They're going to be like oh, you hit the limit. You have one million notes and you have to pay. You go over a million. You got to pay, you are done.

01:57:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It boggles my mind that this hasn't happened. I don't know why they haven't pinged you and said here's a free license. Tell us how to just remind everyone how awesome we are there you go.

01:57:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, that would be another. I would be okay with that too, but I just I wouldn't. I don't know. I guess at some point, if I end up paying for Notion and this Notion AI is part of that thing, I'm paying for it and thus it makes Notion Mail make sense. I guess I would look at it, but for now they only they have a web client and a Mac client they have. They will have an iOS client soon. They've never said anything about Windows or Mac. I can tell you the web app is installable. It's a PWA, so you can have a sort of app, but you're not going to get that offline. Whatever experience, obviously, well, maybe not obviously. I shouldn't say that. I'm actually not even sure. Maybe you can, I don't know. It's certainly a possibility, but, um, I don't know. I did. I think just only working with gmail is a little self-limiting, but maybe that was smart on their part.

01:58:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not really sure someone look at it anyway, especially if you used to have them yeah, my frustration is I signed up to notion mail with a non-gmail account and it won't let me use that. I have to. It says well no, you have to be signed in with your gmail account and you can't combine them.

01:58:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, oh god very frustrating no, that's not good no, it's not and even I don't like to try it yeah, you can't have two.

01:58:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can't have two accounts signed into the notion app, can you?

01:58:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I bet you can't no, I can't figure it out if every time I try to do it says no, no, you have to be using your gmail account. Yeah, this is a hard computer science problem. It's fine, I didn't really want notion mail so I'm okay.

01:58:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But how would you know? But I don't know. That's the thing.

01:58:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I want to see what the ai integration is doing, all that stuff, and I pay for notion notion has a good vibe to it, kind of a minimalist kind of look.

01:59:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know, I've been trying.

01:59:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I set up a local wiki that I'm serving from the house and I'm trying to move everything over to that, but it's a local wiki. What do you? Well I mean it's also on the net.

01:59:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I know, but you're, you're hosting it yourself you mean self-hosted wiki. So what's the software? What's?

01:59:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I can't remember. It's a. I'll tell you in a sec.

01:59:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean it's like what's this, what's the? Is this onux?

01:59:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
or like it's on linux, it's I have a little server and um, and it's running in the background and um, I have a. You are a domain. I guess you could go there, laportewiki, and then, uh, you would see my wiki, but you wouldn't be able to use it because you have to have a login right there. You go, um, but the theory is I should be able to replace every pretty much everything I do with notion with my own self-hosted stuff.

02:00:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yep and there's probably all kinds of easy I know notion. That's the thing that they. They create something.

02:00:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's very sticky. It's sticky, but it bugs me because all the data is on their server, it's not yeah, right, which is what, which is part of the quest, right?

02:00:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
so, whether it's obsidian or uh, there's a bunch of these, any, any, any type I think is one um there's a bunch but yeah, no, I, um, you know I started moving stuff over.

02:00:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just, I have a lot to move. I have a lot of notion. There's a lot in notion I've been using.

02:00:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like trying to move between music services.

02:00:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you made a couple of playlists, you're screwed man you know, they're tools to do it, but it's ends up being a pain in the butt.

02:00:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Nothing, no, but the tools stink like they're just. It's so many mistakes every time it's really it's bad here's my laporte family wiki with us.

02:00:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nice, there you go. Yeah, that's how I it's a mirror. Oh my god. Oh no, okay, that's how I know it's mine, but, uh, I forgot my password, so I don't know. Um, I can't remember what I uh, I can't remember what software I use is it's some, you know, it's just some you know it's, I think it's a docker. It's a docker, docker container running it.

02:01:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I always have to leave notes for myself of how to fix a Docker thing. I know it's really a pain I'll never remember.

02:01:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's easy to set up. I mean, that's the beauty of it it's really easy to set up. As soon as anything goes wrong, you don't know what you did.

02:01:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and I always figure it out and get it working again and I just have to write a note to myself, right?

02:01:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's like, hey, read this. Oops, I got the wrong two factor. Hmm, I'm hoping, like somewhere I'll see what what it is. Yeah, I got it. Go back. That page does not exist. Nice what, that page exists, all right. Anyway, anywho, I think it's time for Richard to run his radio. Sorry to bog down the show with my stupid wiki. Go ahead.

02:02:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Tech support problems. I did a show with my friend Barbara Forbes Been on before Wikijs. Sorry, I been on before Wikijs.

02:02:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sorry I just said it Wikijs.

02:02:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yes, Barbara.

02:02:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Forbes, tell me more.

02:02:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, it's from a talk she did called how Not to Hate PowerShell, which I thought was hilarious.

02:02:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So don't use it.

02:02:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No.

02:02:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
PowerShell is awesome.

02:02:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, PowerShell is great PowerShell is great.

02:02:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Why would you hate it?

02:02:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, here's how you do this, and one of the things it's pointed to is how sophisticated organizations are getting with PowerShell. What's happening is that senior people are building more and more sophisticated PowerShell scripts to the point where nobody can maintain them. They're just too complicated, there's too many moving parts, and so you get in a situation where the juniors try to do something. They get into trouble, the senior has to bail them out and eventually it's like don't touch it, just leave it alone, which is exactly the same track we get into in traditional software development all the time. Right, and so we fight against that with good documentation practices, simplification, like keeping stuff organized so that other people can maintain it, and that's just not a thing that administrators necessarily think about. So it's just become this odd reality. That powershell is now at a point where they're having the same problems that software developers have and where because that makes software.

02:03:36
It is software right, yeah, and so just the other one we got into was you know, they're getting good enough with the tool. They're starting to do really challenging things and often trying to get to that 100 perfect solution that is incredibly complex, where the 80 solution was simple to maintain, easy to understand, and the 20 you have to do by hand is not that much work, so why do you care, right? So it was just trying to strike that balance, sort of the what's the reasonable thing to do with these scripts and how do you make it so that the team can take care of it? And so, as much as it was sort of a gag going in, it turned into a really solid conversation about being responsible inside your organization.

02:04:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like it yeah. I have to listen to that one one. It's a keeper.

02:04:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I really enjoyed it and it's like one of those things where we just run around and it's like wait, this is actually important and profound. How did that?

02:04:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
happen For all programmers.

02:04:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean this applies to all tools really, without a doubt, we get into this problem every time, right?

02:04:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, runasradiocom for the latest run as episode nine eight zero. I am excited about this whiskey of the week.

02:04:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean we'll call this the MVP series, right, cause these are all the whiskeys that I got while I was at the MVP summit. Somebody brought you something nice. This looks this is from a fellow MVP, john white, from Hawaii, and it's called the 12th Hawaii Distillers Distiller Reserve. And so a little bit about Hawaii. We should probably do this, so this, if you didn't keep, weren't keeping track, there's 137 islands in the Hawaiian chain. What, wow? It's more than you think, most of them, of course, uninhabited.

02:05:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There are eight main islands, and really we're just going to talk about one the big one, hawaii itself, which is not where Honolulu is or any of the big city stuff, that's Oahu.

02:05:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, that's Oahu. This is Hawaii proper, which is the third largest Polynesian island, which begs the question what are the first two? The first two are the North and South Islands of New Zealand.

02:05:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're all considered.

02:05:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Polynesian islands, and is that?

02:05:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
where all of the Polynesian diaspora came from originally was New Zealand. Do you think?

02:05:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, no, In fact, the Polynesians got to Hawaii before they got to New Zealand and became the Maori. There's pretty clear evidence that the Polynesians arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in the 1100s and didn't get to New Zealand until the 1300s oh, interesting.

02:06:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, they were a seafaring tribe though they were, and they traveled absolutely everywhere.

02:06:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's an argument that they made it all the way to South America, and the genetics seem to support that wow.

02:06:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do they know where they originated?

02:06:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
the Polynesian Islands, the original Polynesian Islands, the original Polynesian Islands are are adjacent to the Philippine Sea. That in that area in Indonesia, all of those smaller islands there, it's very cool, it's amazing and extraordinary people navigating with, with simple products. They had the chicken.

02:06:32
They brought the chicken with them and they brought the chicken with them. They spread the chicken around and one argued that they also were the reason the pineapple propagated as far as it has. Uh, but that's getting into really old history. Um, the big hawaiian island is not heavily populated because it has massive volcanoes on it, including uh kilauea, which has been erupting since in 1983, and you go to watch that volcano do its thing. Uh, mauna loa, which is the largest volcano on Earth, is actually the largest mountain on Earth. If you measure from the seafloor to its top, it's bigger than Everest and it's more than half of the total Hawaiian island of Hawaii itself.

02:07:09
Supposedly, the island is named for the legendary Polynesian navigator, hawaii Aloa, who supposedly discovered the island, as I I mentioned, in the 1100s, and it was run as a kingdom more or less for uh centuries. The first Europeans to arrive would likely it was likely James Cook in the 1700s, who also died there in an altercation with the natives, although ultimately the crew was able to settle things up and leave successfully. And then, of course, in 1898, it was annexed by the United States as a territory Hawaii and in 1959 became the 50th state. So, while it's the biggest island by a long way, it's more than 60% of the total mass of all of the islands combined only about 13%. About 200,000 people live on that island, really in two main population centers Hilo, in the east, which is the state, the island capital and sort of the rainy part of the island, and then on the west is Kalauea, kona, on the slopes of one of the volcanoes, and that is where the distillery is. So the 12th Hawaiian distillery is called that because it is the 12th distillery built on the Hawaiian islands and the first one on Kona since the 1950s.

02:08:22
You don't think of whiskey in Hawaii? No, nor should you, and we can debate whether this is whiskey at all. Oh, so Dave Puckett created it. He was actually comes from a family of distillers, but didn't want to be a distillery. He actually worked in construction his whole life, living a big chunk of it in Hawaii, and, as he was getting close to retirement age, started experimenting with distillation in the early 2010s. Oh, it's brand new, yeah, and only set up the shop licensed in 2017. Oh, now, is this whiskey? It sure looks like whiskey, doesn't it? Except that it is honey. What it's?

02:08:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
really mead.

02:09:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is mead, this is distilled mead, so really what they would call honey shine. So arguably we are talking about the very original original alcohol, because if you take honey and you heat it up to a certain amount not particularly hot, maybe 120 degrees or so with a lot of water, typically you want to mix five to one water. That helps break down the honey and suspend the sugars properly so that it can be digested by yeast. But you have to cool it down a bit. If you give it 120, it would kill the yeast off. You need to be about 95, 90, and the yeast will propagate and ferment, because in the end, all of these alcohols are made by a yeast consuming sugar.

02:09:47
The question is, what is the sugar source? In this case, honey is one of the original sugar sources. So there's evidence now of evidence of a naturally occurring alcohol by water and honey being combined with yeast going back 20,000 years Wow, before agriculture, before even pottery. Yeah, we had some forms of alcohol in this way. There are documents from China from 7,000 BC showing a form of mead out of honey and water and rice. And of course, pliny the Elder wrote about his preferred drink being a form of mead in ancient Greece and played a big role in early England as well, particularly around in Wales. In fact, when you research mead for a little while, find out there's over a hundred names for a honey, beer, a mead type thing, because so many cultures developed it themselves in so many ways I'm kind of surprised you have names.

02:10:46
I mean hawaii is known for sugar cane it is now, but you know it also had its own set of bees and uh, and so had a lot of honey available to it. Which begs the question why isn't mead and honey related liquors more popular than they are today? And there's a pretty simple reason for it because the grain, sugar cane and grains are cheaper and easier to grow. Honey is an inconsistent product. In the end it's bee vomit, and bees are fairly difficult to manage. They don't produce when you want them to produce, they only make so much they can abruptly die and their product is inconsistent. So making a consistent product from honey is very challenging, and so, as soon as we had simpler ways to do it, we did, and so that's why you just don't see a whole lot of it around.

02:11:40
That being said, this is what 12th Hawaii does, and actually they make a set of products. So their sort of root product is true honey shine, which is a honey ferment made with yeast that's passed four times through there still, which is a kind of column still, and that's it. It's not that particularly sweet, but it is a 50 alcohol. It's a moonshine essentially, but it's called honey shine. You take that same product, made that same way, and you combine it with a bit of kona coffee, so domestically grown coffee, and you get their kona coffee spirit oh, now, I'm now I'm interested.

02:12:13
That sounds good and then they make a vodka. So their vodka is again the same, but a seven-time distilled. So a much higher alcohol combined with a local purple potato, which is some of the original Peruvian-type potatoes, to make a distinctive vodka. And then the fourth product is this distiller's reserve. So back to the honey shine. But when they were making it they switched to a whiskey yeast which has a bit of a stronger flavor. And then what really made it whiskey-ish is they age it in kewaii wood, which is a domestic wood of Hawaii. Actually, no, it's an invasive wood, it's originally from South America.

02:12:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Most of the stuff on Hawaii I found out is invasive.

02:12:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's not native, it's pretty invasive and so it was brought from South America in the 19's. Not native, it's pretty invasive and it's always brought from south america in the 19th century. It's pretty much adapted to hawaii. They're not trying to eliminate anymore.

02:13:02
But it's not an oak, it's actually a cousin of mesquite huh and so give us kawaii wood is very popular as a smoking wood right, but if you get the bigger trees you can cut barrels from it. And that's what they're doing at the 12th Hawaii Distillery Reserve is they're making domestic barrels which they toast very much the same style as a bourbon barrel and then do aging with it.

02:13:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So they make a honey shine which, is clear, is the only difference between the honey shine and the whiskey, the barrels.

02:13:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And they use a different yeast. A whiskey yeast. Yeah, so a different yeast.

02:13:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Does that give it a?

02:13:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
different character. The yeast plays a role, right, but remember, generally, if the sugars are all digested which typically they are by the bacteria, you don't have a lot of sweetness there, in fact, often in traditional meads, they'll add additional honey.

02:14:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
After the fact, it doesn't taste like honey.

02:14:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, there's no sweetness left. Yeah, yeah, now this having a taste of this. So it smells like bourbon. It's sweet, right, you would swear it's corn. It's got that same kind of sweetness and it is 45 alcohol, but really no burn on the mouth at all. It still smells sweet and tasty. There's a little spice to it. That's gotta be wood and it's a different kind of that's the mesquite. Sure, it's not the oak wood. Yeah, it's got that kind of interesting wood flavor to it. It heats up as it goes down, so you've definitely drank something Again at 45%. It's not incredibly hot, but this is really cool. This is a neat drink. There's two problems with it. The first is it's 85 bucks, oh. The second is it is available nowhere outside of the Hawaiian island.

02:14:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Awesome, you've got to go to the MVP Summit to get a bottle of this. Oh, that's awesome.

02:14:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The bottle. I've got that John brought back for me and thank you so much, John. I'm really delighted with this is batch 34. And it's handwritten on the bottle, so I don't think that's a fake print. I think they just don't make that much of this. Apparently, they have an awesome tour. It's well worth going. I want to go to the big Island that we haven't go to, the big Island, go to Kona, which is where you want to go anyway.

02:15:20
Yeah, uh, taking the nice weather and I think you should take a little spin by uh, if you're lucky, you're going to bump into the distiller there and, um, yeah, yeah, see, dave, and then, uh, reserve, you'll not be disappointed, and the fun I would have with this. My intent with this, uh, is to feed it to my whiskey knowledgeable friends, because I defy you to think this is honey. Wow, it's so cool, is that? Yeah, it's just so. I'm so bourbon-y like you can't even imagine oh love it.

02:15:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That looks like a real treat.

02:15:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm delighted. I'm delighted to try something new, to have spent time reading about mead production and just sort of dig into this oldest of the alcohols, which only makes sense because you need the sugar to produce the alcohol and it's the original sugar.

02:16:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I might want to try the coffee spirits and I've got to try honey shine, because I just wonder what that might want to just come home with one of each. Ok, you sold me Richard Campbell. Thank you for another great treat.

02:16:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Wow, look, I like the direction this whole thing's going, where people are now bringing me things I've never heard of.

02:16:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I go tell the story. Isn't that great.

02:16:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Be blown away.

02:16:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh the joys. Now, if they ever make an avocado whiskey, I hope you'll let me know.

02:16:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's got a lot of sugar in there.

02:16:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a little. It's a little bland. It's also curiously green.

02:16:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Richard Campbell is at run as radiocom that's where he hangs his hat and his podcasts, including run as radio, and dot net rocks with carl franklin and uh, and if you're at a summit and you happen to have a bottle of something interesting, bring it to him I will tell its story, I promise. Hey, mikey he likes it, he likes it like you don't always like it's gonna be not.

02:17:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh, you've heard me say terrible things about some bad whiskey, but sometimes it's good, even if it's bad to know I didn't mean it like that.

02:17:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I just I mean it would be fun for someone if you gave them something and then you actually liked it, you know?

02:17:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
yeah, yeah, no, and this one wowed me. I have already tasted the one for next week, which is actually tasmanian, oh and um. Well, you're going to be down under, so that's when I will be down, so the timing is impeccable. I did this deliberately, but I might bump it out too if I find something while I'm in sydney. But we'll see what happens. But it was a. It was a punch in the face.

02:17:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I'll tell you, mr campbell, have a safe trip. Uh, enjoy that long flight to new zealand. I got upgraded already, so I'm gonna be lucky. Dog, are you in qantas or no? No, I'm united, united, okay. Yeah, we'll have a safe and a trip. We'll talk to you next week in uh news in australia yeah, in sydney.

02:18:12
Paul thurott uh, he is at thurottcom, that's where he hangs his hat. His books are at leanpubcom, and that includes the field guide to Windows 11, of course, windows everywhere. Together they make the dynamic duo that hosts Windows Weekly. We do it every Wednesday, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch it on those eight different streams or, better yet, just get a copy of it after the fact at twittv slash www. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast player and get it automatically. There's even a YouTube channel dedicated to Windows Weekly. It's a great way to share stuff the clips of the show and help us spread the word Sounds like an illicit drug thing, but that's nice, share your stuff.

02:18:59
Whatever you want's nice, share your stuff. Whatever you want to share, share your kit. Paul and Richard, have a wonderful week. You too. We'll be back here next Wednesday. All you winners and dozers for Windows Weekly Bye-bye. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey.