Windows Weekly Episode 757 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Windows Weekly. We do it every year, a best of episode. And I'm told there were a lot of great moments in 2021. So thanks to our editors, our producer Mikah Sargent, and to all of you, our listeners who made suggestions. Here you go. The Best of 2021 next on Windows Weekly.

New Speaker (00:00:23):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:34):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley episode 757 for Wednesday to December 29th, 2021. The best of the year. Windows Weekly Is brought to you by thanks, Canary detective attackers on your network while avoiding irritating, false alarms. Get the alerts that matter for 10% off at a 60 day money back guarantee. Go to canary.tools/twit and to the code TWIT in the, how did you hear about a box? Hello everybody. Ho ho ho. It's me father Christmas time for a mugga holiday cheer and some of the best episodes of the year. Thanks to all of you who helped us put this together and our editors and staff and Mike, a Sergeant, our producer this was a very interesting year for windows weekly and Microsoft and Paul and Mary Jo went through quite a few. It was almost a roller coaster, ups and downs. We started the beginning of the year. We couldn't stop talking about something brand new from Microsoft windows, 10 X. I am getting more and more excited about windows 10 X. What do we know? What do we know? There's some leaks. Do we know? There's some leaks.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:01):
Yeah, yeah. We know a lot. We knew we knew some academic kinds of things before, but as of the past week, we know a lot more because it leaked the actual, I think Paul, the whole thing leaked. Paul installed it. Yeah. You install it. Oh it right. Did you install it in a VM or did you install it natively?

Paul Thurrott (00:02:21):
Yeah, I, I think a VM is the only way you can install it, but I had RA fail, build me a better version of it. So that I could get wide screen resolutions and stuff like that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:30):
Nice.

Leo Laporte (00:02:32):
So..

Paul Thurrott (00:02:32):
Or I didn't have it. I mean, he did that and <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:02:34):
I used it, the verge said their conclusion was, this is Microsoft's response to ChromeOS that's which

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:42):
We've known all along pretty much. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. we already knew what it looked like. We had seen screen captures before of what the main start menu looked like. And it looks like a bunch of static icons with your documents listed underneath in a search bar at the top. Very not like traditional windows 10, but very simplified, kinda like the launch. Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:03:06):
Very similar to the ChromeOS a UI. I think that's the big it does when, when people are, when you, it's simple to say, this is the Chromeo S answer or whatever from Microsoft, it is, it is literal a carbon copy in many ways, from a UX perspective of ChromeOS

Leo Laporte (00:03:22):
Interesting. Which, but replacing Chrome with Edge.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there other limitations too, but we, we can get to that.

Leo Laporte (00:03:31):
So I'm just curious, cuz one of the things I was hoping is that maybe 10 X would be kind of a under the hood fix. This doesn't sound like it's that at all?

Paul Thurrott (00:03:42):
Well <laugh> well, I mean, it's hard to say, sorry, but I mean, it is kind of right. It's, it's clearly much smaller and lighter and faster than normal windows 10, which I think is the point, especially for the education,

Leo Laporte (00:03:55):
What did they take out? Why is that?

Paul Thurrott (00:03:58):
Well they took out 132, you know, I mean, that's good. Obviously there are, which is a I should just, we should just address this once and never just forget about it forever because it doesn't really matter. But obviously the thing that we think of as 132 has to exist to some degree for this thing to boot up and run and do what it does. It's windows, right? Windows is 132 mm-hmm <affirmative>. But you know, we've talked a lot about the componentization efforts over the years, et etcetera. So this is the latest evolution of that kind of CoreOS principle where it's a minimal version of windows, much like ChromeOS is a minimal version of Linux with the web browser and with store app and, and pure store app compatibility, like UWP type store, app compatibility. 

Leo Laporte (00:04:41):
Is the biggest, what improvement? I wonder that they're eliminating legacy code. Yeah. Not just win 32, but just kind of

Paul Thurrott (00:04:50):
The biggest problem when you think about it. Yes, of course.

Leo Laporte (00:04:52):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It it's the, it's the millstone around windows, neck. That's right. Yeah. Is this state.

Mary Jo Foley (00:04:57):
Paul, do you, does it say windows core OS anywhere like that you saw in the code? Cuz that was originally when we heard about windows 10 X, which when it was code named Santorini and windows light, the, the kind of the big thing we thought about was it was built on WC OS windows core OS. Right. And instead of built on,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:18):
I mean it clearly is foundation. Right, right. But no, that language doesn't appear in the UI, but why wouldn't right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:22):
I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a story that came out in the financial times. I said Microsoft approached Pinterest quote in recent months about acquiring the company, even though it wasn't for sale. And at first I was like, wait, Pinterest. And the more I dug around on this, I'm like, you know what? I think this story is correct. I think they did do this. And the big question is why, why <laugh>, why, why? So

Paul Thurrott (00:05:51):
Microsoft graph baby

Mary Jo Foley (00:05:54):
<Laugh> I know I saw so many people going it's about the data. I'm like guys, you know, we said that about LinkedIn and here we are. Right. But I think the reason they, if this is true, again, we don't know for a hundred percent, but I think Microsoft wants to continue to try to build itself up as a consumer company because they, you know, they've got the enterprise market, right? Like they're really strong in the enterprise. They've got all the big companies in the enterprise. And then when you look at 'em in consumer and you're like, and you know, they've got gaming, they're really strong in gaming. But after that, yeah, sure. They've got like office 365 personal and family. And they got a couple other things, but not a lot in consumer. And if you're Microsoft and you're looking at where can we grow our market?

Mary Jo Foley (00:06:43):
<Laugh> you don't grow your market necessarily in the places you're strong, you grow it where you don't exist. And so if they bought Pinterest, I think they, they believe that would give them a stronger position in the consumer market. This is my theory about why they did this. It's do I think it makes sense? No. Do I think it's a good idea? No. <laugh> I, it reminds me of the TikTok bit or like we said it before the the show started the Yahoo back in the day. Right, right, right. There are things in there that've been

Leo Laporte (00:07:20):
Expensive as Yahoo. I mean, at least Yahoo was like major, major.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:24):
Pinterest is valued at 50 billion or 56 billion. Oh, that's more

Paul Thurrott (00:07:29):
<Laugh> well, this it's a different age too. I mean, this is also 20 years later, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:33):
It is, but you know, there are things billion you can look at. Yeah. I know you can look at Pinterest and see things Microsoft could use. Right? Like a lot of people were saying, you know, it's all about imaging and they're doing a lot with image processing and computer assisted imaging and blah, blah, blah. You make an AI case for this.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:51):
Find things like this, you kind of stuff.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:52):
Know, kind of stuff I know. Right. You know, you could build up by, by scanning in all the images going, what they index with being now and actually do something with all that in terms of using it as fodder for their AI engine. Okay. You can make a lot of cases for this, right. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:09):
Not a 50 million. There's a lot of it. Geez.

Leo Laporte (00:08:11):
50 what that's the price?

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:14):
Yeah. It's it was some crazy price like that. Holy they have, they have hundred 59 million monthly users. Yeah. Which is big. Right. And a lot of them are people, Microsoft doesn't have women, especially women, women.

Leo Laporte (00:08:29):
Yeah. I mean, there are men like Paul Thurrott who love Pinterest. Exactly. But, but I would guess.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:35):
Also love women, but yeah, no,

Leo Laporte (00:08:38):
I'm gonna forget, you said that Paul gonna guess <laugh> men who love women and the women who hate the, who couldn't care less. Yeah. I'm gonna guess that it's probably what, 80% female. I mean, it's so, but what, what else? What are, this is like double the cost of LinkedIn though.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:55):
It's a lot of money. This is like lot, almost more than cost in Okia twice. What WhatsApp was. That's a lot of money. I don't understand how Pinterest is worth that much, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:06):
I, I, I just, I, I'm not gonna even try to, you know, place judgment on the value of Pinterest. Cause I don't know how companies are valued. It's like a mystery box how that works. But yeah. But, but I, I, you have to think about how, where this fits in the Microsoft vision or is Microsoft just becoming like computer associates back in the day where they're just buying companies. Right. And you could remember computer associates just started buying companies. And it was like, this is a computer associates company and this is a computer associates.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:37):
I, I feel like this is happening broadly in the industry. I I, and I can't give you a specific example unfortunately, but just today I saw a headline that was company I've never heard of is acquiring another company I've never heard of. And then I'm like, okay, let me go look and see what this thing is. And I, I just looked at it, see what the things that they, and I was like, I have no idea. Companies is buying companies, you know, strategic Alliance, you know, some kind of weird positioning. I don't, I don't know. It is weird, isn't it? I know. You know what, it's not for us to understand. It's it's, it's not <laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:10):
Right. I feel like it's like TikTok, like people are like, yeah, there are places that make sense. And I'm like, you know,

Paul Thurrott (00:10:15):
Well, but in the case of Pifer though, were they, were they, are they, were they for sale? Did some other company buy them? I mean, no, they were

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:22):
Not for sale. They're not even trying to like the, the financial time set. They're not shopping themselves around. They're not for, they said they are not for sale.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:30):
So Microsoft just kind of approached them and said approach.

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:33):
Yeah. Hey, what do you think if we bought you

Paul Thurrott (00:10:37):
Pinterest powered by Microsoft 365.

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:41):
So this is a very unusual code name pick of the week. It's a fake code name. And there's a story behind it. I don't know if I ever told Paul this story or not. I can't remember. Don't think so. So I've always been somebody who chases Microsoft code names and some people think that's cute and some people think that's awful. <Laugh> you

Speaker 4 (00:11:05):
Know, it's weird. There's always someone who thinks something's cute and someone

Paul Thurrott (00:11:08):
Who thinks I fall on the cute side of that.

Speaker 4 (00:11:10):
Yeah. I think it's fun. That's the word I would say.

Mary Jo Foley (00:11:13):
I think it's fun too. And I think it, it gives people something to think about. Right. And, and it also gives us as reporters, a way to kind of track things as it moves through the pipeline. Well, there were back when I worked for PC week, which became E week, there were some people at Microsoft who were very angry that I used to unearth their code names all the time. Oh. And so as revenge, after a night of drinking, a group of them together created a fake code name and they planted it to try to get me to write about it, to see if they could fix why. Yeah. So this is incredible. They created a code name called boa B O a. And they wanted me to think it was something, something object architecture or something like that. And they started putting hints around to see if they could trick me into writing about it. So the reason I'm talking about this code name today is one of the people who was a mastermind of this fake code name recently left Microsoft. And I still like him, even though he tried to trick me, I like him a lot. And are you gonna tell me which name is? Yes. I'm. I'm gonna tell you who it is. Don box. Who's a longtime Microsoft employee. He was at Microsoft for 19 years. He's known by many as one of the four authors of the soap spec. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:12:35):
He's one of two people on earth that understands calm for one thing. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:39):
Com is, is love. He used to always say calm is love.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:43):
He's right, by the way. But yeah, no, he's a genius. 

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:46):
He also was very instrumental in things like the M modeling language. That was a code name. I also broke, I mean, in the, that was after he tried to gimme the fake code name <laugh> quadrant the modeling environment, WCF code named indigo. So do Don box has been there forever. And then he kind of disappeared off our radar and we found out later the reason we didn't know what he was doing was he was working secretly on the mixed reality team on HoloLens and on my Microsoft mesh and the Xbox one operating system before any of those things were announced. So he was working on all of those projects, but he, and he couldn't tell us what he was doing. Obviously can you,

Paul Thurrott (00:13:24):
Can you tell us, so you never did fall for this, is that right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:13:27):
No. somebody warned me. It was funny. I was at a party and somebody came up to me at the party and said, if you hear about anything about boa, don't write about it. It's fake. It's a fake code name and they're trying to trick you. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And there was a lot of intrigue in those days. We don't have as much fun anymore. I feel like, I don't know why. But do so Don box posts on Facebook on April fools evening that he's leaving Microsoft and he's going to go to some unnamed gig starting in may May 3rd. And so my first thought was, oh man, he's putting this out there to see if anybody bites and it's an April fool's joke. Right. And so I, I had to like work to verify that he actually had left before I could write about him leaving. So I don't know where he's going. He, I know he's very enamored with rust right now. We talked about rust earlier. Go figure. So yeah, I, it's gonna be interesting to see where he resurfaces and hopefully wherever it is, he won't try to put another foot here.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:30):
<Laugh> John box is the best. And I, I find it a little odd that he's not saying where he is going. I know, I know such a good guy.

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:40):
Yep. Boa. Yeah. My code name is a fake code name. Bo

Paul Thurrott (00:14:44):
Code should get a, you should Photoshop a picture of you with a giant snake and send it to him so he can put it up. Well, that would

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:49):
Be hilarious. No, he felt bad about it afterwards. I heard from somebody he was, and he actually asked my forgiveness 

Paul Thurrott (00:14:55):
For it's weird because many of the ideas I have over alcohol are excellent. I'm surprised he <laugh> yeah, it's been a while. Didn't have that experience. Anytime I come up with a plan while intoxicated, it's always the best. Yeah. I know all those purchases I make while intoxicated, all

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:11):
Good. You know what? I, no matter what he did around that, it doesn't matter. Cuz he was always so gracious and helpful and always gave me interviews and tried to help me understand really complicated things like soap and rust and M so I I'm still very, I've read

Paul Thurrott (00:15:25):
His book on calm about a million times. I still have no idea what he's talking about. <Laugh> but he's clearly under, he clearly understands it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:15:33):
So Mary Jo, you must have felt a little vindicated. You got scoop. Actually,

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:39):
Actually this was Brad scoop from a week and a half ago where he said, I think Microsoft's killing windows 10 X and Microsoft wouldn't say, but then yesterday. Okay. I'm just gonna say we, we joke that Microsoft's not evil anymore, but yesterday showed they still have a core of evil in them. <Laugh> <laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:15:59):
What did they became of evil?

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:01):
They take a long blog post about 21 H one rolling out and inside they buried, they buried the 10 X is actually dead news way down and tucked it in there under a subhead. I was like, you know what? You guys built are evil.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:17):
Good job. We, we didn't talk about this. You and I ahead of this, but I'm really glad that you presented it that way because I, I wanna say this in a non ranty fashion we have complained a lot about Microsoft and their inability to communicate effectively. I, most of that is hopefully not malicious. It's just negligent. It's just bad communications. But it's hard to look at how they presented this windows 10 X news and not see it as deceptive. And Microsoft is a company that I trust. And I would say to you in general that you whoever's listening or watching should trust as well. I assume most of you do, but but this is I'm scrolling. This is malicious. Like this is purposefully. They also,

Leo Laporte (00:17:04):
They also did it right at Google iOS. Yeah, they did

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:07):
Keynote at the kickoff of the keynote. They didn't even do it right at the start of the keynote. They let the keynote get underway a little at then posted this. So I'm like, you guys are

Paul Thurrott (00:17:16):
Geniuses. Yeah. Which, which, by the way, I also, I tweeted like, you know, thanks. Thanks for doing that. You know, saw you tweet, I saw your tweet. Like I, I, no, I have a big problem with this and I, and this is, you know, I, I get frustrated with the communications. This was purposeful and I'm sorry, but this is de deceptive. You're lying to your customers following a year

Leo Laporte (00:17:36):
Long exploration and engaging in conversations with customers. We realized the technology of windows 10 X could be useful in more ways. It serve more customers than we originally imagined. We co concluded that the 10 X technology shouldn't be confined to a subset of customers. That's an interesting way to slam it. Instead of

Paul Thurrott (00:17:56):
This is a multiple of nonsense.

Leo Laporte (00:17:58):
I of bringing a product called windows 10 X to market in 2021, as we like, we originally intended, I'm sure Mary Jo wanted to correct that to, as I did. Yeah. Yeah. We originally we are, but this is the best part. We are leveraging learnings from our journey thus far. And I think Robert Frost could have written that line, leveraging learnings from our journey thus far.

Paul Thurrott (00:18:22):
Right. Except that would've been an, an Apollo about the snow. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:18:26):
Accelerating the integration of key founding 10 X technology. So they're rolling it into the other stuff, but you that's kind of what you said, right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:34):
That is what we said. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:18:37):
Yeah. Leveraging learnings

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:39):
Leveraging once you're here, leveraging learnings in a sentence, you know, there's a lot of, you know, cover up stuff. How,

Paul Thurrott (00:18:46):
But you wanna hear something. This is in a post called

Leo Laporte (00:18:48):
How to get the window

Paul Thurrott (00:18:50):
10 21 up, please, please don't pile me up about this. This is very upsetting. So one of, one of my readers made, made a comment to the post I wrote about this that I thought, I think is pretty much says it all. Because if there's a company on this earth that communicates very purposefully in a deceptive fashion and I don't like it, it's apple. And I have a big problem with the way they communicate. However, they're

Leo Laporte (00:19:10):
The famous ones to have bar graphs with no labels on them.

Paul Thurrott (00:19:14):
Right. But when they announced that they were not gonna be able to do their air power, they said, look, this thing did meet our expectations. We're sorry. We're not gonna do it. They just came out and said it. They actually apologized. Yeah. That's the right way to handle this. That's the new apple.

Leo Laporte (00:19:25):
Yeah, I think

Paul Thurrott (00:19:26):
So. Well, I don't know. That was the, maybe it's an isolated incident. I'm not, it doesn't really matter, but I'm just, it's an excellent ex comparison because yeah. And by the way, and John cable, I don't know this guy. He is either a fall guy for everything that's wrong with Microsoft or he is just the antichrist. I don't know. No, he's always the author. No, he's, he's always the author of these like CRA it's like his

Leo Laporte (00:19:47):
Title is just program management, windows, servicing and delivery. He's not even like right. It feels like they came to him and said cable. You're on again. <Laugh> it's

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:59):
Post.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:00):
It's always his job when they're screwing up. Like when, when some feature update is breaking Kindles or doing, whatever's doing, it's always him explaining, everything's fine. The process works. You know, like they, like, for some reason, it's always him when it's bad news <laugh> and it, and I

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:17):
I'm gonna get you even more wound up than you already are about this. Ready? Okay. So when they first posted this mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. It was bad enough. They hid the 10 X news and this blog post, blah, blah, blah. Then they went back in and added a sentence. So it wasn't in the original afterwards.

Leo Laporte (00:20:34):
Oh, wow. That's

Mary Jo Foley (00:20:35):
Awesome. Awesome. Here's the sentence. Okay. This shift in thinking about 10 X is an incredible example of the company's value of a growth mindset at work. <Laugh>, it's incredible. Isn't our customer first focus. I'm like, guys, it was bad already. Now you just made it like 5 million times worse by adding this sentence.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:54):
<Laugh> here. Here's the, okay. So that, that is another mouthful and nonsense. I will say this and, and by the way, I, you know, no one has ever asked, but my God, could we help with the word, like the way to communicate this kind of stuff. I'll tell you what, this really is not the blog post, but the actual decision to kill windows X it's good decision making. It's the right decision, right?

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:12):
Decision making. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:13):
It doing it before you release it. Unlike all the other stuff they released and then cancel later is the right choice. What they should have done is had Panos pane, pen, a letter to customers saying, this is what we're doing. It's the right choice for you. It's the right choice for us. Yep. And we would've applauded him for that. And this was a missed opportunity to demonstrate that there's a, a, a, like an adult in charge of windows. Yeah. Making adult decisions and doing the right thing for the platform and for the community. But that's not what they did. You know, they buried, deceptively buried this news. I know in a, about a completely different topic. And I, I,

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:51):
It was bad. It was a bad choice.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:53):
All right. We gotta get past part of,

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:55):
So yeah. I also will say, as we talked about a couple times on the show, I think part of the reason they did this this way was because there's been an edict from on high at Microsoft. I don't know how high up, but they're not allowed to say they're killing products anymore. Oh, interesting. Right. Huh? Like they're not allowed to use that terminology,

Paul Thurrott (00:22:15):
But they've never even released this product. It's okay to say, they've, they've talked about it. We know it exists. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:22):
You could doesn't they worded it the way you just said and not use the dead word. They could have done that. Yes. I think instead they were like, you know what? Google iOS going on press are distracted. Here's our thing about rolling out 21 H one and the press never reads these blog posts. They're just like, oh, we already get our post written 21 H one is rolling out. Let's hit the publish button. Right. So they're like, maybe they'll just gloss over this. And then later we can say, well, we did say 10 X was gone. Right. And here is, it's like buried in this blog post. Right. yeah. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:22:55):
There's a perfect example of how the best stops can go from windows 10 X. It's exciting. It's new. What is it? And to it's not happening. It's kind of been the story of the year. We're gonna take a look at windows 11 in just a second. Yes. That happened this year. But first a word from our sponsor. We thank the folks at thanks makers of the Canary for supporting our holiday show this year. Tha we love thanks. They've been with us for a long, long time. If there's anything we've learned from this crazy 2021 it's that companies absolutely have to pay a 10 security. And as we always say, security is a matter of layers. And one of the most important layers should be this little box right here. This is called the think Canary. And you might say, well, that doesn't look like a security device.

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Because when they attempt to log in, I'm gonna get some information about the attacker from the email address, they use the password they're gonna try. That's very valuable. You can also generate Canary tokens with your canaries. Those are files, PDFs, documents, Excel, spreadsheets, whatever you want that again, look valuable. The minute they try to open 'em boom, you get alerted. It's really a great system. You can name 'em in ways that get the hacker's attention. I like to, you know, put files on my drive that say things like payroll information. I don't, I don't, I'm not too obvious. I don't say every employee social security number, but you know, payroll information kind of implies that information might be in there. That kind of thing. And when attackers investigate further, you're gonna get notified instantly. So you get the Canary, you get the Canary tokens, you get the console, you get year long, support, upgrades, maintenance, and it's, it's a great deal.

Leo Laporte (00:27:23):
I'll give you an example. Some, you know, small businesses might have a handful of canaries, some big banks, casinos, places like that. They might have hundreds of them spread throughout the network. If you go to canary.tools/twi canary.tools/twi 7,500 bucks a year gets you five canaries. Again, pricing very depending on how many you're gonna get. You also get your console, your upgrades, your support, your maintenance. And if you would use the word TWI in the, how did you hear about a box? You'll also get 10% off the price forever. That's a pretty enticing offer, just like the Canary it's enticing. Unlike the Canary from a hacker point of view, for as a Canary customer, you get a full two month money back guarantee for a full refund, canary.tools/twi. Enter the code TWI 10% off forever. In how did you hear about us box? We thank you so much for supporting us all year long, but in particular for supporting our holiday episode of windows weekly. Thank you, Canary. Thank you for great work. Really a fantastic product. So this was the year. Microsoft surprised everybody by announcing windows 11. It goes to 11 here's Paul throt very first look. So one thing that we now know it is windows 11,

Paul Thurrott (00:28:43):
Right? It well, the, but maybe that's a red herring too, right? I mean, it does say windows 11 everywhere. Yes. Okay. It does setup says windows 11. The UUs says windows 11, wind windows 11. I think

Leo Laporte (00:28:55):
We've seen enough teases that we know it's windows 11. So that's, it is too. That's flattened. Yeah. Decs,

Paul Thurrott (00:29:01):
But who know, you know, again, who knows is

Leo Laporte (00:29:03):
Just a UI shift. Is it just that?

Paul Thurrott (00:29:07):
Yes. There's a couple of tiny things aren't there like that. Well, not that I have experienced directly. I mean, from what I can tell, and I'm not, I haven't dived into it in any technical way. Like maybe Rafael or walking cat might do, but mm-hmm <affirmative>. It is yeah, it's a, it's a UI refresh for sure. It's windows 10 for sure, too. Right. And that's a goofy thing to say. It's like you know, windows XP was windows 2000, right? It's like the next version of windows 2000, you know, windows seven was windows Vista really? I mean, you know, it, you kind of lose track of what's what here, but it's so clearly windows 10, like it's windows 10. I mean, and of course it is right. You know, it's not like I said this, some, I don't remember where I said or wrote this, maybe on Twitter. It's not like someone fired up visual studio start new project you know, X 64, R M 64 native, you know, well, I'll call it windows 11 and started writing. I mean, it's, you know, it's a continuation of the thing we had before

Leo Laporte (00:30:04):
As it almost always

Paul Thurrott (00:30:06):
Force. I mean, it has to be, has to be right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:08):
Has to be, I think so many people were, no, people were all getting overly hyped and, and expecting more. Even when we kept saying it's gonna be basically lipstick on a pig, right? Like people were like, no, you guys are underplaying it, right? Like it's gonna be this massive change underneath. Everything's gonna be different.

Leo Laporte (00:30:25):
I mean, well, I was hoping for that, but you convinced me last week, that that was not

Paul Thurrott (00:30:28):
To be hopeful. Part of the agreement we made with Microsoft is we would over hype it and then under hype it and then, you know, keep people guessing. It's just 

Mary Jo Foley (00:30:38):
It's good. We're on their payroll. It's very good. It's

Paul Thurrott (00:30:40):
Like, yeah. The cabal that we, we are of

Leo Laporte (00:30:43):
They're joking. We are obviously they're joking. Yeah. You say, obviously I know at least one person heard you say

Paul Thurrott (00:30:50):
That. Yeah. So 10 years from now, someone's I I'm sure I heard you saying podcast.

Leo Laporte (00:30:55):
Well, they admitted it just like we've been saying for a long time, this is windows 10 was the last version of windows. Big scoop from Harry. Hey Jeff Foley. Nobody said that. Jerry said

Mary Jo Foley (00:31:06):
What? Jerry, Jerry, Jerry,

Leo Laporte (00:31:08):
Jerry Nixon. It was

Paul Thurrott (00:31:10):
Jerry. <Laugh> a guy named Jerry is like the, the is the conclusion of a Steven Wright joke. Jerry said, it's like, I found out that the guy who built a pyramid was a guy named Jerry.

Mary Jo Foley (00:31:20):
No, they're gonna get Jerry Nixon, Jerry. And we'll start off the launch next week. He'll come out on the stage and he'll be like, guys, I'm sorry.

Paul Thurrott (00:31:28):
<Laugh> no, he should come out and say guys, windows 11 is gonna be the last version of windows.

Mary Jo Foley (00:31:32):
They should everybody. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:31:34):
Everybody. That's what he should say. Well, and by

Leo Laporte (00:31:35):
The way, I looked at his quote and he may have meant the latest, you know, sometimes people that is one use of the word last, the latest version, not the last ever. Oh yeah. Oh, interesting. He wasn't that explicit. He didn't say there's never gonna be another version of windows. He simply said the last version of windows, windows 10. What was

Paul Thurrott (00:31:55):
The context for this comment? By the way, when

Mary Jo Foley (00:31:58):
Did this, there was some ignite session he was speaking in.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:00):
So this was just a guy speaking off the cuff in front of people.

Leo Laporte (00:32:03):
And he very well have meant the latest, which is a completely common usage of the word. Last,

Paul Thurrott (00:32:10):
I will say this 640 K is enough Ram for everybody. <Laugh> it just, yeah. I don't know why we argue about that.

Leo Laporte (00:32:18):
It's a, it was, it was a great point. Mary Jo made and it, and it really it's interesting cuz people it's swept the, the world people said, oh, we all thought it was gonna be less, but it never, Microsoft never said that. Just some guy named Jerry.

Mary Jo Foley (00:32:32):
No. And then on Twitter, it is fair to say no. Then on Twitter, a few people chimed in who worked at Microsoft during the time. And they said, okay, maybe we never said it on the record officially, but inside Microsoft, that was how we treated it. The last version of windows. Sure. So they, they acted like that's how it was. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:51):
Like I think, well of course, but you gotta remember the I call them regimes. Like I wish it was a better word for this, but I mean, at, at the time it was Terry and, and his crew calling the shots for windows and, and to them, maybe they thought that that was true. And by the way, one of things, they also

Leo Laporte (00:33:05):
They'd never leave Microsoft. So

Paul Thurrott (00:33:07):
There you go. Well, I, I, yeah, when Terry was kind of forced out of the company, one of the things I kind of talked about at that time was, you know, Terry was given a terrible job, right. By SA and Nadella. He said, I know you, you can run windows, but you gotta make it work within this whole other thing we're doing around cloud and servicing and all this stuff. And you know, I, I, it just was never gonna work properly. I mean, it was just, it was a tough job. So, you know, the subsequent, regardless of whether Terry's there, whoever's there now. Yeah. We have been dealing with windows 10 for a long time. <Laugh>, you know, six years this next month. Right. that is almost unprecedented. I say almost because windows XP was in market from 2001 till actually, actually it is unprecedented.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:56):
It wasn't as long, it's not windows XP was around for so long. It felt like a lifetime, but actually windows Vista, was it 2000? I think it was the end of 2005. No, 2006. It must have been so five years. So windows 10 has actually been in market longer than windows XP was. And like windows XP was updated over time. Right. We had S P two, we had tablet, PC edition, at least two versions of that. We had at least two versions of windows, media center edition. I mean, there was still churn, but we stuck with it was windows XP mm-hmm

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:31):
<Affirmative>. Yep. I think during the event, my, my prediction is they're not even gonna address this. Is it the last version of windows? No,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:41):
That was they, they should address it. They should do it in. They should, they should do it in a fun way. They

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:45):
Should be funny, but I doubt they will be funny. It's the next version

Paul Thurrott (00:34:48):
Of winners. They should bring up a clip of Jerry and be like, remember this guy. Yeah. We fired him this morning. And Jerry, Jerry's still there. Kidding. You know? And then they,

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:57):
Jerry's still there as far as, as you know. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:58):
Of course he is. I looked at his as a joke just as see if you got anything to

Leo Laporte (00:35:02):
Say, you can <laugh>. So tell it, come on. Really, all we care about is tell us what is, you know, it's, it's a new look. Is it nice? Somebody said, it looks a, like a Mac

Paul Thurrott (00:35:14):
To me. Well, Chrome, it looks like ChromeOS is what right. And, but, and maybe more, more to the point, it looks like windows X, right? This is, yeah. The windows 10 X UI brought over to big windows for lack of a better term. Of course, because it is big windows, it's better than windows 10 X was, it also looks better. It's just running on real hardware, like you know, windows 10 X, we were running in a virtual machine and they look kind of flat and plain, you know, if you think back to like the arrow days when it was like Aero basic was really terrible looking and flat, and then they had a glass and it was kind of awesome. I mean, this is kind of like that it's, this is like the glass version. It's got some translucency going on and is, is, you know, better looking.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:57):
I, this is gonna be controversial for people. There's no doubt about it. There are people who are gonna complain about the simplicity of it, the kind of dumbing down of the UI, there are gonna be people who claim or complain about money memory, hello muscle memory issues where, yeah. All windows versions. Since windows as 95, I've had a start button over the lower left corner. And then the icons kind of come out from there. Now it's centered. So as you run and close apps, oh, the positions are gonna change a little bit. Oh, I,

Mary Jo Foley (00:36:28):
But you can, you can move it over to the left. You can, you can move

Paul Thurrott (00:36:30):
It over the left. That's left <laugh> but you move all of it. Like I I'd, I'd actually like to see the start button, stay over in the left and have the icons be in the middle. But let me just make one point about the, the centered thing. People have theorized about wide screen displays and like, why might they do et cetera, et cetera. This is the way the Mac has worked since 2001, right? When, when apple introduced the doc with makos 10, the first version was in the middle. He was in the middle. It's been there ever since. And hundreds of millions of people use that system every single day and it seems to work. Okay. <laugh> so mm-hmm, <affirmative> I just throw that out there. I know people are, you know, people are freaking, but like someone, Mary Jo I think said, yes, you can, there is an option in there if you want it over on the side.

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:13):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:37:14):
Anyway, answer. So this is modern, more modern it's modern design,

Paul Thurrott (00:37:17):
Which is literally appropriate. Whether you're talking about setting it up or using it, it is windows 10. So that, it's just that begs

Leo Laporte (00:37:26):
The question. Cuz Mary Jo was kind of thinking maybe it'd be more of a consumer targeted windows versus this and that windows 10 would continue as a business. But it sounds like maybe this is just the next version of

Paul Thurrott (00:37:37):
Windows. Well, no, no, no, no. I don't think that changes anything that she said, to be honest the way that this thing will be delivered and not delivered, we still don't know. And it's very possible by the way, there's a registry. There's some registry entries you can screw around with that will just make it go back to windows 10 mm-hmm <affirmative>. So that tells me there's a switch that you can enable a disable where you have new UI old. And I, her idea that businesses will be able to move forward for some amount of time on windows 10, I think is still very valid.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:07):
Yes. I have many thoughts on this. First off the name let's talk about the name. Yeah. So all during beta's test, this thing was, was codenamed or name cloud, PC, which I thought was a great name. Yep. And then when they announced this service today, they're like, so we have windows 365, which is the virtualization service built on top of Azure, virtual desktop. And it lights up your cloud PC experience. I'm like, wait, what does that mean? Like, what's the cloud PC part. Right. I get the service part, but what's the cloud PC part mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so then Melissa Grant, who's a product manager on Microsoft 365 explained to me and she said, so you know how you have a PC on your desk? I'm like, yep. So what if you have one in the cloud PC? So it's like the back end.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:58):
And like, if you think where is all my data and my settings and all these things that we're putting in the cloud being stored, it's this virtual cloud PC thing. And I'm thinking to myself, okay. I think you should have just called the whole thing cloud, PC <laugh>. Yeah. And why did we have to throw windows 365 in here? I get why? Right. Because they have office 365, Microsoft 365 dynamics, 365. So they wanna show this as windows being virtualized. But I think it kind of adds a layer of complexity in terms of the branding that doesn't really need to be there. Hmm. So

Speaker 4 (00:39:30):
Like they're gonna be using both is what you're saying, cloud PC. I go ahead.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:35):
Sorry. No, no, go ahead. I, I kind of enjoy how they reuse cloud PC even after killing it as the name, you know? I know. And I, I, you know, I think for the businesses that this targets, what they're trying to differentiate is you could still man manage your traditional on-prem or remote physical PCs alongside your cloud PCs in the same management. <Affirmative>, you know, Microsoft endpoint, whatever it's called manager. Yeah. Manager. Yeah. So I, I, you know, okay. Okay. Yeah. I, I agree with, you know, I, I, I suppose this precludes them from over offering any other client operating system in the cloud directly to businesses, like I guess Chrome, or what do you call it? Linux maybe. But but if it's going to be windows only, and it is, I mean, yeah. You know, it's not a horrible name, I guess. No.

Speaker 4 (00:40:24):
So Microsoft you're saying that could be something that Microsoft could have done is offer Linux.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:31):
Yeah. I mean, to what end, right? I mean, obviously developers are using Linux VMs and, and businesses are using Linux and Azure as well, but end users using Linux and then end users using Linux remotely is way off the scale. Right. You know, I think from, from a niche perspective, so it's not really necessary. So you wanna call the thing, windows, something, you know, I guess windows 365 makes some sense. Why

Speaker 4 (00:40:56):
Not just so call it teams.

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:58):
I'm kidding. <Laugh> I know right. Call everything

Paul Thurrott (00:41:01):
Teams. Why not? So Mary Jo, I have one major question. I'm hoping you can answer for me. Okay. I'll try. And I have some suspicions, or I guess some educated guesses based on what I've seen from their materials. And then from screenshots, mm-hmm <affirmative> for me, for this thing to be truly useful. I think they need to offer user and users, virtualized apps, not entire desktops. Both is fine. Right? I mean, some people will need the entire desktop. Do you know whether that's a feature of this service right now, in other words from yeah. Go. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:35):
So I asked about this cuz I'm like, okay, so windows 365, lets you basically stream windows from the cloud. Right? It, it synchronizes your settings, your tools, your, and the apps that you have running on windows. Like the, like this is interesting. Developers don't need to do anything to their apps. If you have an app running on your desktop, like it just works. Like if somebody already has brought such and such an app to windows you have to only use windows 10 or 11 once Eleven's available. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but then, you know, when you read into the fine print there's, it's not just this, I should be very clear. This is for businesses, right? Like the requirements for, for windows 365 are you have to have windows VDA E three EMS, which is endpoint management service E three or Microsoft 365 F three E three F five. Right? So this isn't for just like you or saying, Hey, I wanna virtualize my desktop and use it on my home PC. It's not for us.

Speaker 4 (00:42:39):
It is not okay. Right. That's clarity that I, I did not get. So this is not the opportunity for folks to be able to, you know, run things that they can't run on their Mac or other system on until you

Paul Thurrott (00:42:53):
Sort of feel like it is, is gonna head that direction.

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:55):
I kind of feel like it will right head in that direction. I do. In fact, if you're a business user and you have the rights to use windows 365 through your organization, you can run it on an iPad at home, as long as your company lets you do that. Right. right. I mean, you can run it on a consumer device. You just can't be a consumer and subscribe to it yet.

Speaker 4 (00:43:17):
Someone in the chat's pointing out a really important point given that Mary Jo hates consumers, she must have encouraged Microsoft to not give

Paul Thurrott (00:43:26):
This. I'm sorry. I typed that in the chat <laugh> yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:31):
I know. No, so

Paul Thurrott (00:43:33):
<Laugh> well that's okay. One thing they didn't reveal was the price, right? And I, we, you went and Mary Joan and I kind of talked about the offline, but the, the fact that this is very much relegated to bigger enterprises that are spending lots of money with Microsoft suggests that the, the price they will eventually advertise will be higher than people will like. And there'll be a lot of complaining, but you need to understand those guys, all get volume licensing and the actual cost to them will probably be significantly less than whatever the list price is that they finally come up with. Exactly. Right. That said how, what do you think where, I mean, where do you

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:07):
Think that's gonna, I don't don't don't know. So I don't know. They told us August 2nd is when this becomes generally available and they said we're, we'll release the pricing right around. Then the one thing they did release today were like the clouds PC sizes. So if you, I, I did a post about this and I put their screen capture for this. So there's all different like classes of what you would get if you subscribe at different price points so we can see what the price points are gonna be. Mm. Like there's the one CPU, two CPU different amounts of storage and Ram, right. And, and along their categories, they say, okay, if you're a frontline worker, you can get away with the one CPU, two gig, 64 gig configuration of this. Right. So that'll be a fairly low per price. But then when you get up to being like software developer, engineers, content, creators, that kind of thing, they're recommending you go with the H CPU 32 gig 512, 8 C,

Paul Thurrott (00:45:02):
Eight CPU. <Laugh> really? Yeah. Eight CPU. That's a fairly beefy, I mean like eight core

Mary Jo Foley (00:45:10):
Or maybe eight virtual CPUs, right? Oh, interesting. Virtual. So like, this is how they're thinking about it. They're thinking about, you know, with gaming, this is my understanding and I may be wrong, but like with Xbox, the way they, they run the, the game streaming stuff is they have Xboxs in the cloud. Right. And you're actually running in Xbox in Microsoft day data centers. I think this is gonna be like that. Right? They're gonna have machines there running windows with apps, your apps. And this is why there are all these different sizes and configurations, right. Because they're saying, okay, if you're this kind of a user, you're gonna want a lot more horsepower than if you're this kind of user.

Speaker 5 (00:45:49):
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Paul Thurrott (00:46:20):
In the past, I feel like surface has tried to innovate new form factors just to do it. You know, that they that's how they, they saw their mission. For some reason, they've never, yeah. Actually innovated a form factor in their lives, but they, they seem to think this is the biggest thing in the world. And I think when you think like that, you're not thinking through customer problems, you're thinking through what I can do next. You know, like, yeah, what's, what's my, what does my ego want me to do? You know, and surface lap surface book is, is that product, whereas surface studio, laptop, surface, laptop studio, sorry is more like what customers want and need it. It, it actually pays attention to what matters to people that will buy it, not to what matters to the people who made it, you know, agree. And I, and, and that's, I, I, you can apply that thinking to everything that they announced today from surface duo, two to the surface, pro eight, et cetera, et cetera, everything they announced. It's like, we're gonna stop shooting for the sky here and be iterative in a way that makes sense for actual customers. And I think it's gonna make these products more popular.

Leo Laporte (00:47:30):
Me too. Now I have to, to point out on this, the, the, the dearth of connectors is kind of scary. There's two, I know Thunderball four on the left. They still have this stupid windows. I

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:45):
Know connector on it. I, I talked to them about that yesterday. I'm like, so real. You're still using the surface connect thing, like as your parents. Well,

Paul Thurrott (00:47:51):
By the way, one of them if you get a surface laptop studio with a GPU, a dedicated G I believe this, the power supply is 104 Watts. Wow. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's a pretty high wa whatever the number, I believe it's a hundred, four, it's a big number. So, so they need, apparently they they're able to deliver more G use over that thing. You can go to a hundred

Leo Laporte (00:48:11):
On Thunderbolt. So, okay. Four more Watts. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:16):
I could do, I'm pulling that number off the top of head so I could be a little bit off, but I believe it's something big and it's, it's not 45, 65. Like it's a big number. Well,

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:23):
So that's good. Yeah. Well, you know, the thing they always come back to is, well, our enterprise customers say they don't wanna us to reach changing out this part and they want us to stay consistent with this. And,

Leo Laporte (00:48:33):
Well, that makes sense. If you've got an investment in

Paul Thurrott (00:48:35):
This, that's fine, but <laugh> why can you do both? I mean, that's always

Leo Laporte (00:48:37):
Been our so won it. Won't charge in the type C the thunder bolt.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:41):
Well, I don't know about that. It should. Why wouldn't it? You should. I think it would. Yeah, it should. I would think, yeah. Thunderball, that's the spec, right? It will. It should do whatever the spec does.

Leo Laporte (00:48:50):
Tops out at 32 gigs of Ram. That's a little light for a pro workstation mm-hmm <affirmative> style machine, two terabyte, SSD.

Mary Jo Foley (00:48:58):
So I'll tell you the thing. I, there were two things I didn't like about the surface studio laptop. One is if you like, I couldn't master the hinge at all the hinge. Like maybe it's just that I'm AEPT at this kind of stuff, but I was trying to lift it in different ways. And I was like putting my fingernails behind the thing, trying to pull it forward. And the woman's like, no, no, no, no. Just grab it like this with the four finger grab and lift it up. I'm like, oh, good. Okay. There's a way, you know, and it's, it's a woven hinge. It's like, it's cloth. It's not all it it's cloth. It's it feels like special. Maybe it's plastic, but it felt like,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:34):
Well, I mean, obviously it has to be metal inside. Yeah. But there is a,

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:38):
No, it felt very durable. It didn't feel like it was gonna rip or you that you could pull it off or anything. But then I, I was like trying it in different modes. So they have like the stage mode and they have a creator's mode. Right. And then there's this weird mode you can and put it in where it's not quite all the way up or down. And it was like, I thought people would use it to write on it that way or draw on. No, and I, when I tried it, I'm like, wait, it's very bouncy. I'm like the keyboard bouncing up and down.

Leo Laporte (00:50:05):
And I'm like, there's a name for it, Paul. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:07):
It's like stage mode or stage stage mode.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:10):
No stage mode is the one where facing away from you and you can do a presentation. Oh, right.

Leo Laporte (00:50:14):
Okay. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:15):
It it's, it's the, you know, you just enjoy content on it. It's for watching a

Leo Laporte (00:50:20):
Movie. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you wouldn't

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:21):
See that one with a pen there, like right before you get that level. This one. Yes. So, so if you don't have a quite, if you don't yeah. If you don't have a,

Leo Laporte (00:50:30):
So TILs it up a little bit. Not completely

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:32):
Flat. Okay. Right. So I, I put it that way and then it was bouncing, like when I was trying, well, you wouldn't want that.

Leo Laporte (00:50:37):
If you got your, if you're penning.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:39):
No. So then the person who was demoing it to me puts her arm underneath like a Muff kind. And she goes, yeah, if you could do this, you could put at your arm under it to brace it. I'm like what's no, no. And I go, and then I said to her, is this Muff mode? Like what? Like, what is that? <Laugh> oh my God. I really like the duo too. I can't even believe I'm saying that. Me

Leo Laporte (00:51:00):
Too. <Laugh> me too. And you said last week, don't buy it. Leo. You always want the third iteration.

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:08):
I know. I know. But they got

Leo Laporte (00:51:10):
The cameras right. This time it looks like, yep. It looks like it's got it's NFC. It's got wireless people

Paul Thurrott (00:51:16):
Never learn my God. I know who cares what it has. It's a Microsoft Android device. Come on. I know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:24):
But I, I really, so you know what? It is so much snappier than the first iteration, the first iteration you'd do something and you'd be like, I wonder if that worked let's see, let's see if it does something right. <Laugh> time.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:37):
How many versions of Android are they gonna give you on this thing? What did they commit to for support last Android,

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:42):
11 it's shipping with Android. I know, but what

Paul Thurrott (00:51:44):
Is, what did they commit to for, because Android twelve's coming out a week later, so

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:48):
I know, so

Paul Thurrott (00:51:49):
Yeah, the last one never got a single upgrade. I know an Android

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:52):
Version upgrade. It does have NFC. Yes, it does. For people asking. I, I don't know. Like I was, I went in there so skeptical and I went up to the table and the guy goes, so you were one of the people who tested do oh one, right? I'm like, yeah. And he goes, what do you want outta too? I said, I want it to be good. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:52:11):
Yeah, that's a kinda starting point.

Paul Thurrott (00:52:14):
Yeah. Oh gosh.

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:17):
Yeah. But then they, they started demoing it and I held it and I'm like, you know what? I kinda so

Leo Laporte (00:52:22):
Snappy. And the software seemed to work. That was the problem before was the software. The

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:26):
Software was terrible. It was terrible. 

Leo Laporte (00:52:29):
I love the third little screen on the hinge. That was another thing people complained about is not being able to when it's closed on the desk, not knowing what your notifications were.

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:39):
Yeah. I know

Paul Thurrott (00:52:40):
If you remember this, sorry, real quick. I know when we were doing Longhorn, Microsoft tested design with Asus laptop that had a little screen on the outside for this exact same reason. I, so without opening the lid, you could see if you could have notifications. If you had new email, you know, whatever it was, date time.

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:58):
Whether I love that feature, what did they call that thing? I can't remember now, but it

Paul Thurrott (00:53:02):
Was something. Yeah. I don't remember either actually. So maybe someone will remember this don't remember. No. Well that's so Leo said thing about glance. I thought, you know, that might have been part of the name. I think glances

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:14):
On the duo too. That's what they call this thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:16):
The glance. Yeah. But it might have been what they called it in Longhorn too. And then of course never happened, but might, yeah, I don't remember. But it was, it was same.

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:23):
Like I do remember that. Yeah. It's a great, it's a great idea. 

Leo Laporte (00:53:27):
I'm so tempted by this thing and now, and you touched it, you used it and you, I did. And you think it felt pretty good, huh?

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:34):
Yeah. He hands it to me and he goes here, play a game on it. I'm like, no, Nope, no. The wrong

Leo Laporte (00:53:39):
Person use notepad on it. Mary Jo,

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:42):
It doesn't have notepad. Like somebody needs to do this

Leo Laporte (00:53:45):
Android, Android version. There's gonna be a note taking app of some kind. There's actually really good. One called Upid. And you can use it's.

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:55):
I don't like one note. Okay,

Paul Thurrott (00:53:59):
Look guys. It's overkill devices. The problems gonna be the software. I know just that's what I don't how you trust Microsoft with Android. I just there's. No. So

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:08):
I just preordered it precedent for that. Did you? I did. I hit the button? Yes I did. I know. I'm like, oh, well, you know,

Paul Thurrott (00:54:15):
Few months from now, I can return about how you both returned this. I just, I can return it. Just predicting

Leo Laporte (00:54:20):
This conversation. That's what we did. Last time I bought it. I know 1500 bucks. Same price returned it. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:26):
That's so, yeah. And you can return it. And I, so I asked to review it and they didn't make any commitment. So I'm like, I better buy one because they didn't say I could review it. I think

Paul Thurrott (00:54:34):
They didn't let me, maybe they sell out at Mary.

Leo Laporte (00:54:36):
Jo did be able, did you get the black or did you get the I got

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:40):
A glacier. I went for the low end cuz I wanna see how it works. Oh yeah. Ram hundred 28 gigs of they're

Leo Laporte (00:54:47):
Already outta stock on the five 12 and the 1 28. They on

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:50):
The black, black is outta stock. I bought a Tangerine bumper so that I did you guys see the pen thing you can do? There's like a pen case and the pen can stick to it. I loved

Leo Laporte (00:55:01):
That. I thought that was really sweet. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:05):
And the,

Paul Thurrott (00:55:05):
Okay. I don't know whats happening in here.

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:07):
There's a camera button.

Leo Laporte (00:55:08):
Everything is a camera bug. That's life

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:10):
Camera. It didn't seem that bad. No, it didn't seem that

Leo Laporte (00:55:13):
Bad. No, it's just, you know, you put it on the other side.

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:15):
No, but then I, I said to the guy who was demoing the photos thing to me, I'm like, so wait a minute, you still have to hold the phone open to take a photo. If you wanna use those three special lenses. Right. You can't do it with it. Shut. He is like, yeah. You know what you can do. And he he's like holding it open with two hands, like a book, like facing him. And I'm like, it's kinda like taking a picture with an iPad. <Laugh>

Paul Thurrott (00:55:36):
Yeah. I suppose that would allow you to use it like a tripod of sorts. You could stand it up. No, he had

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:42):
Ideas, you know, independently. Yep. He showed that like you could stand it up like a tripod. And he also said you can also hold it way down low and like take an angle up and get a really cool shot. I'm like, okay, there are little weird things you can do with it, but I don't know. Why

Leo Laporte (00:55:57):
Did you get the bumper? Did you feel like you needed the bumper?

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:00):
Yeah. I always dropped my phone. I dropped my phone constantly. Yeah. It's

Leo Laporte (00:56:04):
Expensive phone to drop. I'm scared to

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:06):
$1,500 as you're price.

Leo Laporte (00:56:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:11):
Yeah. Which that was price. Did you get the pen? The price? I don't need a pen. I don't need a pen. <Laugh> I know we should talk about the pen. Well, we're gonna talk about the pen, right? Because that was like the star of this event. And how did

Paul Thurrott (00:56:23):
We go from the most incredible laptop ever invented to a stupid folding device and a pen? What is hap, is there

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:30):
Structure to this? No. Wait <laugh> did you guys see? No, my, my genius idea that I gave them for free at the event yesterday was I said, so, you know, you guys need to do is you need to do a commercial, comparing how you charge your pen in these nice ways under the keyboard. And it's very compact and cool to how apple charges theirs and you compare and contrast and make fun of them on this is the commercial.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:54):
They actually do it exactly the same way. Yeah. It's a,

Leo Laporte (00:56:57):
You put it on top of the

Mary Jo Foley (00:56:58):
Tablet. So what's the one where apple pen sticks into. So that's old.

Leo Laporte (00:57:02):
They don't do that anymore. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:04):
Well, unless you buy the base iPad, I mean, oh yeah. I guess

Leo Laporte (00:57:07):
Pen one. You still take the top off and you connect it to a landing. Yeah, you're right. No, you're right.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:12):
Yeah. They use magnets now too for the new one. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:57:16):
The magnet is very, very strong. I can tell you that. Like when you, when you use the magnet on the duo or any device, now it really sticks to the device. There's no way that falls off anymore.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:26):
What I find kind of funny is there was kind of a dig at one point where they were talking about other companies that made fun of the, you know, two in one device and then, you know, they, they didn't see any need for a pen. And then they came out with one and they called it a pencil <laugh> you know, and it's like, yeah, no fair. But now you have a carpenters pencil that you call a pen. So I don't know. Yeah. You know, I guess we all have different names for things, but you know, we're all, they're just, you know, I think both of these companies and anyone else who's in this business is just emulating each other where it makes sense.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:00):
Yeah. They really want you to use the pen. Right? Like everything at this event was about the pen, the pen, everybody needs the pen, you need it to touch things and to write and to draw. I use the new haptics on the pen and it is very cool. It does feel like you're writing on paper because of the way that I think that's interesting simulated that yeah. It feels very much like paper. It really does. Did they talk,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:21):
Mary Jo I'd have to look this up, but in the paperwork somewhere there's there is actual hardware and I, I know it's in surface pro eight and I assume it's in laptop studio. That is a special hardware that interacts with this new pen specifically. Yes. And it, it combined with the haptics and the new point on the thing, they all kind of work together to make that really natural pen on paper feel. So do they, do you remember anything about this? I can't, I can't even remember the name

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:48):
Of it. There's there's a chip in the pen. G something. Yeah. I'm forgetting that name. That makes that happen. Yeah. You go,

Paul Thurrott (00:58:54):
I think, yeah. You're on you're you're on the track. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:58:56):
Yeah. And then also in the operating system itself, they've done things around inking and touch in windows 11. That makes it way easier for the pen to like register how you're it. So they showed me when, okay. You pointed in a certain way, like the menu changed on Excel because it saw like how you were about to use the pen and, and it was a different way. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. That's very cool. Right? Yeah. I'm like, what if you use windows 10 with it? And they just had this horrified phase. They're like, okay. Windows

Leo Laporte (00:59:23):
10. Oh, what's windows 10. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:26):
Is that the one that's not 99.8% reliable. You're not really worried

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:30):
About that one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it it's, it is like one of those things you need to try that experience to see how it feels. Because I was surprised. I was like, oh, it's gonna just feel the same. Like, God,

Leo Laporte (00:59:43):
You're making crazy. I don't wanna buy those. I don't, I don't want

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:46):
Buy it, buy it and return it if you hate

Leo Laporte (00:59:48):
It. I did that last time. It wasn't too hard. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:59:51):
I wanna hear you. I wanna hear more of Paul's. Let's talk about it opinion on eight, because I, I'm not a big surface pro fan. I don't love that form factor. I know so many people who love it. I know thunder bolts, new, right. The cameras, the builtin cameras are better and new mm-hmm <affirmative> the screen is what did they say about the screen faster refresh on the screen? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:00:16):
120 20, which is rapid. Yeah. That kills battery life. But Paul and I were talking this morning about, they'd be able to, whether you could, whether it would be sensing what you're doing, cuz you don't need it all the time. If you're typing text, you don't need 120 Hertz and note PPA.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:29):
Well, yeah. I mean, ideally what you have is a, an adaptive refresh rate and I don't believe I could be wrong, but I don't think it does that. I think it works the way external monitors work today where you have to, you

Leo Laporte (01:00:41):
Choose going get a choice for 60 or 20. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:45):
The battery life see, goes

Leo Laporte (01:00:47):
Down to 60 has a high speed Thunderbolt, four port hallelujah. There's two of them.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:52):
It's thinner, but not as thin as surface prox. Yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (01:00:56):
Okay. I have to say windows 11 does look good on this. It is kind of made for windows 11. Yeah. It

Paul Thurrott (01:01:04):
Just, to me, it's just, you know, the screen has gone from 12.3 or five or whatever it was at to 13, which is a big deal. I always felt that was too small. I like the new keyboard cover with that little, well for the pen. Cuz that will charge it and you can hide it if you want, you know, angle the keyboard, you know, better battery life modern and turtles, wifi six mm-hmm <affirmative> optional LT on both pro and go, which is what everyone's been asking for. Not on certain laptop studio, which is confusing. That should just be something on, on every device.

Leo Laporte (01:01:37):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> maybe they think it's just too heavy to carry around and it's a desktop replacement

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:43):
Kind. I'm think four pounds. You could carry that around.

Leo Laporte (01:01:45):
Yeah, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:01:46):
Yeah. Anyway, I, this is, this is the big one. This is, it's not something I need or want, but it is, is their flagship surface. It's their, this is the one this is when people think surface, this is what they think. Yeah. And when prox came out last year, whatever that was everybody looked at that and said can we get an installment of these things? I mean, <laugh>, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> so to me that's this is a big deal.

Leo Laporte (01:02:11):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that the display is right on this very important.

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:17):
Very and very nice. Yeah. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Paul Thurrott (01:02:20):
Right. That looks great.

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:21):
So it starts surface pro eight starts at 1,100. Then the keyboard is probably like 150, 160 slim pen. Yeah. Probably 130

Paul Thurrott (01:02:31):
<Laugh> yep. Yeah, it goes up. But you know, they, these things are always on sale. I think you'll see the price go down on this too. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it's good.

Leo Laporte (01:02:40):
A lot of new hardware. I, I should mention that Mary Jo did return her du oh two and I'm kind of glad I didn't get one in the long run, but I'm hoping, I think there will be a du oh three. I really do. And, and that might be the one to get we'll continue on with more hardware from Microsoft. This is our holiday special windows, weekly holiday specials we do every year. We, we have compiled some of the best moments from 2021 <laugh> it wasn't just surfaces. And the duo that Microsoft announced, they also announced at the surface event, the ocean plastic mouse watch,

Paul Thurrott (01:03:23):
You know, I talk to PC makers all the time. They always, there's always these briefings for the past 2, 3, 4 years, maybe HP, Dell, Lenovo, others are talking up their use of recycled materials. They all want to be as, you know, low impact as they can be on the environment and so fast forth. And every one of the devices, every single time, like HP comes up with a new dragon fly, then another dragon Wfly and another Dr. And every time it's like, oh, we we've increased our use of this and that. And it's, it's, it's the biggest thing in the world is like 117 different categories of how they using recycled bits. I, I distinctly remember the first time I'd heard that someone had used one of these companies had used some ocean bound plastics in the molding around a speaker in, in one laptop.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:04):
And it was just something they called out and they said, we're gonna be doing more and more of this and sure enough, that's all they talk about now. And Microsoft came out and they're like, look, we made a mouse <laugh> and was so proud of it. We're gonna call it the ocean, whatever they call it, the stupid name, recycled ocean something. And it's like, guys, you cut it. Do a little more than that. Like, I, I, here's an idea why don't you use re ocean plastic, recycled, whatever in everything and just make it part of your whole deal. And I think they will, but you know, this, I think kind of speaks to Microsoft as more of a boutique PC maker than the big players and the fact that they felt the need to come up with a, a mouse that advertises, which frankly looks like a bar of soap with flavor crystals in it or something. I, I just find to be,

Leo Laporte (01:04:49):
I think it makes you feel good though. It's an interesting choice, especially cuz you don't normally wanna put the word plastic in any product description. <Laugh> sure there's my new plastic Volkswagen bug. I mean, nobody wants that, but in this case they're, they're kind of highlighting, this is made out of plastics, you know, recover to the ocean.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:09):
Yeah, you're right. And unfortunately what it really highlights is how little they do everywhere else. Right? So they have this gigantic product line of beautiful new surface devices and they, I thought they were gonna launch into this thing about, yeah, we're doing this across the board and they went right into accessibility instead. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:05:23):
I should point out. It's only 20% made out of recycled ocean plastics.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:27):
Yeah. They're killing it. I mean they're killing it. So

Leo Laporte (01:05:30):
Even the mouse itself is 80%. Non-Res recycled plastics.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:34):
Oh again, we found this Clorox bottle on the B, should we turn into a mouse? This, any, any effort in this area is good. I don't get me wrong. I'm just saying unfortunately, because it's so should be more, one thing should be more, it just highlights that they're not doing it everywhere else.

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:50):
Yeah. You know, I, I feel like more and more Microsoft is playing up things they're doing around sustainability, especially, you know, with their data centers and Azure. You hear them talk about this a lot, the carbon neutral footprint stuff they're aiming towards. Right. And I think because when Satya Nadella had his, in his closing remarks, he talked about accessibility and sustainability a lot. Like that was kind of his theme. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:13):
2030 I think was the goal to be meant neutral on what carbon emissions or

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:18):
Whatever it was great. So I, I think they believe, and I think a lot of people believe that especially younger people are very attuned to this. They wanna know that the company they work for is on board with trying to fight climate change and trying to do the right thing in that area. So I feel like it was a nod to that. 

Paul Thurrott (01:06:37):
I feel like it is there so far behind, it was, it's not worth pointing out. They they're not even in the game. So maybe they will be by 2030 and that's great. And like I said, any step in the direction is positive. I'm just saying, calling it out in such an obvious fashion by having a product a Mo like a mouse. So you kidding me. Yeah. You, every one of your mice can't have 20% recycled materials and that's crazy. Maybe

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:59):
They are going forward.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:01):
I'm sure they will. All I'm saying is HP, Dell, Lenovo, et cetera, are doing a much better job in this in apple. Everybody has to. How long has

Leo Laporte (01:07:10):
Apple been talking about it? I'm always suspicious because I, I feel like corporations pay lip service to a lot of things, you know, last year. Yeah. Everybody had the black law lives manner matter, banner mm-hmm <affirmative>. But you know, that was, it was more to like, don't, you know, Hey, don't worry about us. We got this. And then business as

Paul Thurrott (01:07:27):
Usual for a bucket of blood at our building.

Leo Laporte (01:07:29):
Yeah. Business as usual. And I feel like, yeah, there's a certain amount of this going on too. But I also think it may be sincere. And in the cases where it's sincere, we should really apply audit because it's so important.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:42):
It needs to be done. You're sucked in with the surface do and now all you're doing is defending this company. All right. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:07:47):
Gonna something that Microsoft did really well. And I was very moved by accessibility and adaptive products and they are, I don't think there's any computer company in the world is as committed and making their stuff accessible. And it's very forefront about that. And you gotta, I know you're Paul, you, you know, you're an evil bitter person, but mm-hmm <affirmative>. You got no,

Paul Thurrott (01:08:09):
Thank you. <Laugh> thank you for acknowledging that <laugh> wow.

Leo Laporte (01:08:13):
You gotta at least give him a pat on the back for that.

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:17):
So I got the blueberry ice cream from Microsoft. Oh, you did. I did. So this is the windows 11 swag giveaway thing. It's a blueberry infused ice cream made by a small gourmet ice cream maker here in New York called Mikey likes it. Here's a description. Blueberry infused ice cream ribboned with the best part of blueberry pie blended with pound cake bites, topped with candy colored chocolate pieces. Disgusting.

Leo Laporte (01:08:52):
<Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:53):
That's awesome. It's been than it sounds okay. But here's what, here's the real kicker. It ain't

Leo Laporte (01:08:58):
Vanilla.

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:00):
Okay, good. I know I wanted it to be chocolate for dark mode. It would've made way more sense, but it embodies the fluid design of the OS and the iconic windows, 11 bloom through the blueberry compos swirls and the blue chocolate candies. I'm not making this up. They said this.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:18):
Yeah. Did you recycle any of it or how does that work?

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:22):
<Laugh> what's the it's like ocean plastic. After you're done with it, you use the container as it's not

Paul Thurrott (01:09:28):
Of the ocean. Mary Jo, what are you doing?

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:32):
It was tasty chocolate. Would've been better, but it was still

Leo Laporte (01:09:36):
So, but that means you're a very special person. You didn't get the review unit for the duo, but you did get the blueberry. So

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:43):
The box, this thing came in, I'm not kidding you. It was huge. And it had the windows 11 logo on it and inside was like a little cake of dry ice and the yeah. And the

Leo Laporte (01:09:54):
Pretty frost. It

Paul Thurrott (01:09:56):
Was so cool. The impact on the environment of that packaging was, I know, would you say it obviated a, some number of mice,

Leo Laporte (01:10:04):
Maybe Mary Jo, you are like, did you get this to Paul? No. No, I didn't

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:08):
Get an ice cream. They knew he would hate it. He doesn't like sweets. He hates ice cream. I

Paul Thurrott (01:10:12):
Don't like, I don't like ice cream, but he's

Leo Laporte (01:10:14):
He's so I think it means you're in with like the influencers. Mary Jo look, I Justine. Yes. I Justine Mike likes,

Paul Thurrott (01:10:23):
It says Blakey likes

Leo Laporte (01:10:24):
It. That's the name of the company that makes it

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:26):
That's the name of the brand.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:28):
Oh, that's how did they get that name?

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:31):
You know, Mikey disappointed. Mikey runs the ice cream place. Neith you

Paul Thurrott (01:10:34):
Nor just, oh, is he that kid?

Leo Laporte (01:10:37):
No, that would be its just a, not that guy. Hipster joke. Yeah. Remember

Paul Thurrott (01:10:42):
God's gotta be owned by what was that? Life cereal. I think

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:46):
Mikey, he likes it. Do you think

Leo Laporte (01:10:48):
Mikey likes it? Like is it registered trademark of life? Cereal. Yeah. <Laugh> all rights reserved. How about blueberry? Compote, swirl. How about that? Is that

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:58):
Exactly? Yeah. So I have hope now that I might get the duo too. If I Justine get the ice cream and I get the ice cream, maybe I am an you're in.

Leo Laporte (01:11:10):
Wow.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:11):
I actually, I confuse you too sometimes.

Leo Laporte (01:11:13):
So

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:13):
I know. Well you do look a lot alike and I have that giggle and stuff, right? Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (01:11:19):
Yeah. I'm Sur I mean, look, I think that's pretty special. I doubt there how many people got that? That's very special.

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:28):
I did feel special. I had it for breakfast yesterday. It was a delight <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:11:35):
Wow. That is so that was the entire entirety of the promotional campaign for windows 11 is sending some, some influencers, some some by the way, still better than those windows. Seven parties though. Right?

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:49):
I know. I worried about that. I worried about that. They said to me, we wanna send you on, on windows 11 day and I'm like, oh no, they're not gonna send me a party kit or they <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:11:58):
Oh wow. Pipeline. I'm impressed. You couldn't, you couldn't keep it till today though. Huh? Couldn't couldn't hold off.

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:06):
No, there's some, there's some in the freezer. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:12:10):
I want to see, go get it. I wanna let me do an ad and you can go get it. Cause I wanna see the blueberry compost squirrel swirls. I wanna see if it does. In fact look like windows 11. Let's see those blueberry compote swirls. Ooh, that doesn't look like windows 11 at all. Looks like purple ice cream. Purple. Why are you eating out of the cat dish? That's the human dish that the cat gives her. I mean the cat's gonna be confused by the dish. He,

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:45):
He, he has his own set of these dishes.

Leo Laporte (01:12:47):
Oh boy. Okay. He's got a little far Mary Jo, do we need to do an intervention? No, she's got a, the cat cat. The dish is cute actually. <Laugh> we, I, I completely understand it's all over the house. Lisa is also cat crazy and we have cat everything everywhere. See? Yeah, exactly. We've seen her Instagram feed. We know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, let me put it this way. When she unlocks her phone. Is there a picture of me? No. Her kid. No. It's a picture of her cat. Yep. So let's be, let's be honest. So but we do like the dish actually. I think I might like it better than the the ice cream.

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:26):
I know it's not the most attractive looking ice cream, but it's pretty tasty. Good. Yeah. It's very purple lot. It's good.

Leo Laporte (01:13:33):
Not everybody tweeted the container. No one can tweeted a picture of the stuff. So I know, I know. Couldn't really see if it looked like windows 11 wall, the

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:43):
Bloom of windows alone, the bloom. Oh my God. I think it's so weird. They call that, that wallpaper design the bloom because that's also what they call the HoloLens thing. You know? They're like you do the bloom gesture, right?

Leo Laporte (01:13:56):
C's famous for reusing stuff. Aren't they? They don't. They are. Yeah. Yeah. No name, every name is overloaded by many times.

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:06):
So I got the surface due. Oh two last Thursday, I believe here it is.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:15):
And that is a white. Is that, what do you call it? Platinum. This is

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:18):
Glacier also

Speaker 4 (01:14:20):
My goodness. <Laugh> do you feel just so productive with that hinge? Doesn't it just be more

Paul Thurrott (01:14:26):
Productive?

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:28):
I be

Speaker 4 (01:14:28):
It's laughable. It's easily laugh.

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:31):
Trying to show you how much the camera bump stands up. Here's the camera bump. So when you fold it over this is what it looks like with the camera bump.

Paul Thurrott (01:14:43):
Oh, it's like a, a book don't

Speaker 4 (01:14:46):
Enjoy.

Mary Jo Foley (01:14:47):
No, no, not enjoyable. But as not as horrible as I thought also, <laugh> like, everyone's like, oh, the camera bump. Thing's gonna be terrible. Right. And it's not that annoying. It's got a really beautiful screen. The camera is really great, but you know, when I reviewed the surface to a one, I mean, it's not, it's not as great as like the Google cameras, but compared to the camera that was in it before it's vastly improved problem with camera is you have to hold your phone, like this to take a picture. Right. <laugh> yeah. Right, right. You can't like take it the normal way. So it's a little cumbersome and you have to figure out how to press the camera button while you're holding the phone. The, that way. A little, little weird. <Laugh> I hate the gestures. I'm like, so hateful on the gestures.

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:38):
I shut off Android gestures, but they're still there. <Laugh> I'm like the gestures so much. Yeah. I don't like it. Trying to, trying to get away from the screen so I can show you the screens, but yeah. I don't know. I I've gotta spend a lot more time with it to see if they fix the software because when I reviewed the duo one, my biggest problem, wasn't the hardware. The hardware is beautiful. I mean, it's awesome. And they've made the hinge even tighter. You're gonna be able to display notifications a little like kinda like glow in the dark icons here. So you can see, oh, I have a notification on Twitter. I have a notification on, on Microsoft mail here. And it so that you don't have to actually, you know, they have the feature in the old one peak, you have to actually open your phone. What good is that right? <Laugh> but yeah, here's the screen. If you can see this.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:28):
Yeah. So you got notifications on a different on the other screen, which is kind of neat. Yeah. It just turned off unfortunately, but <laugh>,

Mary Jo Foley (01:16:35):
I'm like, yeah there.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:38):
Yeah. So this is still kind of like Microsoft launcher style. It's like the Microsoft, you know, the, their own kind of Android

Mary Jo Foley (01:16:45):
Or whatever. Yeah. It is kinda like that. Again, I need to try running app side by side. I wasn't a big believer in that being, making me more productive last year, but I I'm gonna give it a chance. I have 60 days, so I have to return this. So I'm definitely gonna try it out. It's, it's a super cool device. It's really nice, but I just, I, I need a reason for it. I already get the, I'm getting the pixel pro six. It's coming Monday. Not that I'm that excited.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:13):
You have to think the pixel pro six is gonna make you forget all about this thing. This is, this is the problem. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:20):
I know. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, I guess I like that they're experimenting still. I feel like this is truly a generation two device so far from, from my very, very limited testing of it. And you know, what they always say is Microsoft doesn't make a good device to listen. The third generation, I have a feeling that's gonna be true of this, but okay. I'm still doing a wait and see, I'll give you more detail, but clearly more

Paul Thurrott (01:17:45):
Clearly improved

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:47):
At least definitely improved over the first version. If you, a lot of people have review units mm-hmm, <affirmative> ha kind of had that as their, as their observation. It's like, Hey, they really fixed a lot of things. Not just the camera, but it's still not something I pay $1,500 for. Cause why? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:18:07):
Now how are you using it? Are you, have you put your SIM card in it? Are you trying to give it the old college try? I do. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:18:16):
I have a semi that's not my regular SIM right now, but I need to put my own semi and try to make it my, you know, daily driver. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, it's just hard. Cuz I can do everything so much faster and better and more efficiently on a singles screen cuz I'm that's just how I'm use. That's how I use a phone. Right, right, right. It's it's just hard to make yourself think about okay. Dual screen, cuz you don't use it the same way you use like a clamshell laptop because of the size. Right. But you also don't use it the same way you use the phone. So <laugh>

Speaker 4 (01:18:47):
Yeah. It's the camera weird. The, the camera

Mary Jo Foley (01:18:49):
Is way better. The gray gray Wolf. 1, 2, 3. And the discord is saying that it's so much better camera. It is. I still notice a leg in the camera. But again, I haven't tweaked all the settings. He's he's saying the camera's snappier. I took a really quick picture of Sorachi with it and it was good, you know, but like my Google pixel three XL takes a better put mm-hmm <affirmative> and that's an old phone. Right. So, right,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:15):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:18):
Okay. I don't know it's I I'm encouraged that they've made improvements. I'm discouraged that they haven't made more improvements, but

Speaker 4 (01:19:27):
Things would you like to see? Like what,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:30):
How about, how about a bumper that, that evens out that bump <laugh>

Speaker 4 (01:19:33):
That would be nice.

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:34):
The, I, I have the bumper, but I don't wanna attach the bumper cuz then I won't be able to return it. Cuz when you put the bumper on it's it's got like sticky stuff that holds it onto the phone, right? Oh shoes. Okay. Yeah. 

Speaker 4 (01:19:48):
Oh, that's the other thing then if you wanna return it, you have to be very careful with it. So making it, your daily driver would be kind of difficult.

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:55):
Right, right. Like I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try it. I have a feeling I'm not gonna try it a lot. <Laugh> I just feel so you see how much they had improved it. Sure. Sure. I, they have definitely improved. It it's much better than the first version. Yeah. Grey Wolf saying the OS is snappier. It is. Although I hate the gestures. Hate despise. <Laugh> I hate Android gestures. I, the first thing I do is I make sure I never use them. Like have

Paul Thurrott (01:20:24):
You? Oh really? So you mean Android and J so have you upgraded to Android 12 on your pixel three?

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:31):
No, I have not.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:32):
You haven't and you don't use gesture navigation?

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:36):
No, I hate gestures.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:37):
Oh Mary Jo, we gotta, we gotta talk

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:39):
Someday. No, come on back. Buttons, all button guys. This is, this is how this, the day at ease meant us to use phones.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:48):
Wow. <laugh> well unfortunately it's kind of going this direction. <Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:20:55):
I know, I hope they, I hope they let me keep turning them off because I don't, I don't like them. So at build, I believe it was Microsoft announced this idea of Microsoft mesh and mesh is the idea of creating an environment in mixed reality where you can actually interact first in avatar form. And at some point in the future, they hope in hologram form, you know, the whole idea of holo deportations that you could teleport yourself as a hologram and be in a virtual environ it and talk to people and interact with them, do demos and look at things together as if you were in the real world. Okay. So they announced that at build now at ignite this week, they, they said, okay, one of the ways we're gonna manifest this vision is by bringing teams bringing mesh to teams basically.

Mary Jo Foley (01:21:49):
So the way this looks is a little weird, it looks like cartoon characters with no lower half of their body. <Laugh> interacting in various virtual spaces that they've created to represent things like conference rooms or basically anything you want a home, a retail store, whatever. Okay, so this is, this is Microsoft's take on the metaverse and we heard Facebook slash Meta's take on this a week ago. The difference between that take and Microsoft's take is Microsoft is all about the enterprise to start, right? So they even talk about the metaverse for the enterprise as a separate from the way Facebook talks about the metaverse, which is very the

Paul Thurrott (01:22:34):
Meris if you will.

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:36):
Yeah. Yeah. There you go. I like that. I will

Speaker 4 (01:22:39):
<Laugh>

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:39):
<Laugh> Meris yeah. Starship winners.

Speaker 4 (01:22:45):
There you go. This Starship PRI oh, another good title for the show.

Mary Jo Foley (01:22:52):
Okay. So at first this looks kind of ridiculous, but the idea is for, especially for people who don't like to use their cameras in virtual meetings, you could be in a team's meeting and be represented by an avatar with, with your expressions and gestures and just have that thing represent you in a meeting so that you don't have to be on camera all the time. Over time. They want it to be people actually interacting, you know together in other settings. So this is gonna be a very gradually fake thing. They're saying the preview of this is next year. It's nothing imminent for the, for the rest of this year. I saw a lot of skepticism on Twitter about this when Microsoft was showing it, but also some excitement, like some people saying, okay, you know what? They have this, you know capability now in teams where you can all be in a coffee shop together, what do they call it again? Or you can be in. Yeah, I was just trying to think

Paul Thurrott (01:23:50):
Of that name. It's not better toge what's that, what's the name of that? It looks you could be in the classroom or in a

Mary Jo Foley (01:23:56):
Different type of stuff, like drawing a mental blank on what they call. It's

Speaker 6 (01:23:59):
Sort of like a, a, like a lens that you apply where it looks like missing space together.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:04):
Is it together mode

Mary Jo Foley (01:24:06):
Together mode together mode. Yeah, it is. So together mode is one way that Microsoft has tried to pioneer making meetings better be so that it doesn't feel so horrible. Like you're in a grid and you see all their people and it's just like everybody looking bored. Right? This is another way they're trying to bring some new way of interacting during a meeting together.

Speaker 6 (01:24:25):
Thank you. Thank for having me. Obviously it's been we got a lot to dig into. This has been a big, a big year, needless to say, as I guess every year is, but I'm really happy to have the chance to be here. So thanks for sneaking me in for a little bit today. Yeah, you

Mary Jo Foley (01:24:39):
Bet. Great. Now we wanted you to start, like you always do lately and talk about what you call hidden gems. We always, we always get a few of these where you're like, these are things that didn't get a as much press or a notice maybe, but we think they were a big deal.

Speaker 6 (01:24:54):
Yeah. Great. I'd love to do the hidden gems and I'm gonna try to keep it as tight as I can. <Laugh> I I'm gonna do four hidden gems and I'm gonna time myself and try to do them in six minutes. Ooh. They're I picked them. I picked them very carefully because I thought they would give you things to think about and, and perhaps talk about, so hopefully you'll, you'll enjoy them. And of course, hopefully your listeners will, will enjoy them. The fir the first one is something we've been working on for three years and finally reached the world. And it's not a product, but on of this week my first hidden gem is we is this Xbox power on the story of Xbox sort of docu series. Oh, you ruined my tip. <Laugh> oh my, oh, I did. Oh, IM sorry, Paul. No, it's right.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:41):
No, it's okay.

Speaker 6 (01:25:42):
Well, we've been fun. We've been funding this work for three years. Tina Summerford has done just a stunning. This is like a five hour, four and a half hour series. You can get it on YouTube or IMDB, TV, Roku, Microsoft movie. It is fantastic by the way. Oh my gosh. She did just, I mean the whole team did a stunning job and the reason I pick it is because I think a gamers will love it. But even if you don't love gaming, I did like how the team told a lot of the Microsoft mistakes. I mean, it, it

Paul Thurrott (01:26:11):
Does. No, I'm actually, I'm really glad you said this. Cuz I, my, what I was gonna use this as my tip and what I was gonna say was Mary Jo. I know you're not into gaming, but given your knowledge of the history of Microsoft, you have to watch this documentary. Fantastic. Yeah. Cool.

Speaker 6 (01:26:24):
And just watch the first episode and if you don't say, oh my gosh, I wanna watch the rest of it, you know? Yeah. Would be shot. I you'll. Yeah. And the team was very clear. Hey, if we make this, we're gonna tell the, the whole story and we're gonna, you know, there're gonna be some wars that the world sees. And so I picked that one as that's hidden gem Nu number one. Okay. Should we that's great. Move on to number two. Yeah. Okay. Nu number two, hidden jump number two. And you're gonna, you're gonna think I'm crazy for picking this one because it's not particularly, it's not particularly, but it goes nicely with the Xbox one. It's not that sort of glamorous,

Paul Thurrott (01:26:55):
If you want, if you want to keep 'em all Xbox focused. That'd be great.

Speaker 6 (01:26:59):
There's I got a couple, I got a couple of there. I, the second one, which is a little bit more on a serious note is the the actual, the Microsoft store policy changes we made happened a bunch of them that happened this year. And before the policy changes, we published a bunch of app store principles back in October, 2020, and we invited Android and sort of iOS to embrace them. And we said, windows of course needs for embracing. These are the three big ecosystem app store ecosystems. And we basically punched, published a bunch of principles around fairness and innovation and greater opportunity. Economic opportunity for developers. Satya is really on a mission around economic opportunity for creators and developers. And then we updated a bunch of the way that the Microsoft store on windows works and the four I'll just call out, you know, developers can finally bring basically any app store they want to the store.

Speaker 6 (01:27:52):
It can be a win 32 app, a PWA, a UWP, whatever framework they wanna use. They can bring it to the store app. Developers can bring their own commerce into our store. And if they bring their own commerce where they're doing the commerce through their back through their app, then they keep a hundred percent of the revenue and we don't take any of that. Revenue. Developers can bring their own browser engines to the store. Historically stores have locked down to the engine that that ecosystem wanted, and we've opened that up. And since then, opera Yandex, Mozilla, they've all come to the Microsoft store and windows. And then finally, and probably most importantly, the third party storefront apps, you know, are now can be discoverable from within the Microsoft store. And of course we announced that Amazon is bringing their Android app store to, to windows 11.

Speaker 6 (01:28:35):
We're very into windows 10. We're very excited about that. And epic of course has brought their app store to ours as well. So you can search deep link into their stores, go in their store, et cetera. And I think, I think foreshadowing <laugh> publishing principles for the industry and then us walking the talk with our own implementation to those principles. I do think that's a very powerful blueprint for us to use. We did it with stores. I think it's an important, powerful blueprint for us to use in other places. And maybe we'll see more of that in the years ahead. So hidden gem number two. I know it's not sexy. People might be, oh, I just agree.

Leo Laporte (01:29:13):
That was very sexy. Okay,

Mary Jo Foley (01:29:15):
Great. Can we ask you a question about, about the gems? Yeah. Yeah. What about Google? What about Google? Yeah. So they, of them coming to the store. Is it like off the table or

Speaker 6 (01:29:26):
No? Oh no, no, no, no. I mean obviously if we say third party store fronts can be discoverable through, through the win the Microsoft store then great. Let's talk to any storefront that wants to come. I happen to notice news, like what was two days ago, Mary Jo some recently this week, I think they said, yeah, they were bringing an app that is gonna bring games to windows. And we were like, oh, okay. And obviously now we're gonna, we're gonna see what that looks like over time. But yeah, literally anybody who, you know, has that, that storefront, we want to talk to them about their willingness to bring it. And you know, they'll multiple levels of what it means to bring the store. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> with Amazon, we're doing deep work. So, you know, you'll be able to search in our store and find things in their store.

Speaker 6 (01:30:11):
And there's, you know, we're doing a lot of work on the flow, so you only have to enter your Amazon credentials once and all that stuff. So I don't think everyone will wanna do the same amount of work, but yeah, we're not, it's not restricted to a particular storefront. And I think it's the only way for, you know, these ecosystems to move forward in a healthy way. And as I said, you know, Satia is just like creator economic opportunity for creators on windows, economic opportunity for developers on windows it's and you've heard him talk a little bit about it. So that, that was my number two. Okay. Should I go to three? Yeah, sure. Okay. I think you might have hurt me a little bit on time, but I think I'm still within it with, well, we

Leo Laporte (01:30:50):
That's, that's not your fault. We, we interrupt.

Mary Jo Foley (01:30:52):
We'll deduct that. We'll deduct that from the second. Thank you. I appreciate

Leo Laporte (01:30:55):
That. Reset the clock to two minutes. <Laugh> 13 seconds and the clock starting now,

Speaker 6 (01:31:02):
H number three is accessibility with surface and accessibility with gaming. You know, we dedicated like 15 minutes of our surface launch to the, to the surface adaptive kit. And we created this with this inclusive tech lab. We did it in partnership with people with disabilities. And as you guys know, you know, there's these sort of key cap labels and bump labels and port indicators, and even this sort of device opener that we launched and I didn't know how big a deal it would be. And our team said, you know, this is gonna be a bigger deal than you think. And I said I'm not sure it's like $15 of key cap labels. And of course they were right. And I, my doubt, my, my, my lack of clarity was wrong. And it, it, you know, it's become a big thing and an important thing.

Speaker 6 (01:31:48):
And more importantly, maybe even in the surface adaptive kit is this thing we introduce that most people actually have no idea about. We launched this thing called the Xbox accessibility testing service, which is a service we provide to game developers to then partner with members of the disability community as they're building their game so that they can build a game that is more accessible out of the shoot. And so for me, hidden gem number three is just this sort of accessibility and hardware accessibility services for developers who wanna build more accessible things. And I think that was a pleasant surprise for me. And then very few people have talked about the testing service that I think will be quite helpful for dev game devs. Yeah. And so I wanted to make that hidden gem number three.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:30):
Yeah. We definitely talked about the surface and the adaptive kit and the Xbox adaptive controller. Yeah. That would, but not the surface. Yeah. That, that's true. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Speaker 6 (01:32:41):
Last one. Mary Jo, this is actually for all of you, but it's a special Mary Jo Mary Jo focused one. Nice. And this is again, you're gonna, like, people are gonna laugh out loud, but you gotta give me a minute. Hidden gem, number three, hidden on number three is Azure digital twins, and you're gonna sing what, what talking about. I don't even know what you're talking about. No, I know why I know exactly why exactly. Of course you do. Of course, which I said it would it's and there's a couple reasons why, first of all, if you don't know what the heck this is, this is a set of services that we provide in our Azure cloud then enables you know, regular people to create digital models of basically anything physical. It could be a digital model of something simple, like a coffee cup, but it could be a digital model of something super complex, like an entire energy grid or a warehouse or a factory.

Speaker 6 (01:33:31):
And one of the reasons I chose it in addition to the obvious foreshadowing to the metaverse is the fact that one of the best customers we have that's using this is Anheiser Bush in Bev. And since you guys always talk about beer, I said, I'm going to bring this to the show, right? Because what Anheiser has, what these folks have done is they've literally taken 200 breweries and they've created digital twins for every one of those breweries. And now their digital twins are, are literally a, a model of each of these breweries and the supply chain that feeds the brewery and their twins are synchronized with the physical brewery. So the digital model is always live and up to date with what's happening in the physical in the physical brewery itself. And then their brew masters who you guys talk about sometimes can adjust things based on these active conditions that they're seeing in the digital twins. So, you know, I think there's a lot of discuss on the metaverse on the consumer side, which is awesome and excited to talk about that. But actually there's a lot of companies who are sort of already creating their own, you know, version of this using Azure digital twins. And I thought that was kind of a nice blend of consumer commercial. And so number four is the very commercial, but beer oriented Azure deal.

Leo Laporte (01:34:41):
<Laugh> nice

Paul Thurrott (01:34:42):
Ism like Barry, Jo, very, very commercial, but barrier. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>

Speaker 6 (01:34:46):
Exactly

Leo Laporte (01:34:48):
Gonna call Microsoft brew, cuz that would be really a good name. But I think the chat room saying you in your very first gem, you neglected mentioned the name of the story of Xbox power on story of Xbox. I thought, I thought it did maybe. Okay. Maybe the shower just missed it. Credit

Speaker 7 (01:35:05):
Called power on the

Leo Laporte (01:35:06):
Story of Xbox. Exactly. Want to give that credit? You can find it everywhere. Youtube, Microsoft movies everywhere. That's become a, a yearly tradition with Chris Capella and his hidden gem. We, we always love having Chris join us. That was last week for our last show of the week, I guess two weeks ago now for our last show of the season. Thank you all for joining us for every episode of windows weekly. We, we really appreciate your presence. We especially thank the folks who are members of club TWI. They pay seven bucks a month, but they do get up some benefits, including ad free versions of the show, access to the discord, the special TWI plus feed. We're very grateful to to all of our club members and to all of you who listen all week long.

Leo Laporte (01:35:50):
I hope you all year long. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. Paul, Mary Jo, and I will be back with windows weekly on January. Let's see. I think that's the fifth. Yep. With all new content should be a very interesting year for Microsoft. And as you know, we've got the most insightful coverage all year long on windows weekly. Join us Wednesdays 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM Eastern 1800 or 1900 UT C or just get the downloads at twit slash WW. There's a YouTube channel. And of course subscribing is the easiest way to get any of our shows that way you get 'em automatically. As soon as they're available, leave us a five star review, share the wealth. This holiday season, have a great holiday season, a happy new year, and we'll see you all in 22.